Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

And God help 'em, if they're more Yankees, Lewrie thought, still rankled by the wild goose chase that Trumbull had run them. The idea of wasting an entire day in pursuit of a brace of idiots would be galling.

Maybe I'll flog me one, Lewrie imagined, rather happily; for an example to the others!

He began to pace, head down and his hands clutched in the small of his back, unable to stand and wait any longer. Forrud along the larboard gangway, all the way to the forecastle and back, as if by pacing he could walk Proteus closer to them.

"Floggin'!" a seaman called, making Lewrie wonder if they were of the same mind, did these schooners turn out to be callow Americans.

"Summat carried away, there! 'Er mains'l's floggin'!"

Lewrie raised his head and peered at the far Chase; sure enough, her mains'l was now winged out and flapping like laundry, and she sat flatter on her bottom, instead of being heeled over so far, and in his quickly hoisted telescope he could barely espy a scurry of activity on her small quarterdeck, even a pair of ant-like figures ascending the shrouds to re-rove either her throat or peak halliard. He swung to see what the trailing schooner was doing, and found her standing on, still on course-no, by God! She was falling off the wind a bit, to run nearer her consort, as if she would come alongside and aid her!

"What in the world?" he muttered, puzzled even more.

Proteus now loped nearer the pair of them, almost within a long gun-range, and Lewrie quickly strode aft to his proper place among his officers on the quarterdeck.

"Mister Langlie, we'll try a ranging shot from the fore chases," he snapped, once there, at the centre of the hammock nettings. "If anything else, we'll put the wind up 'em."

"Aye, sir! Mister Catterall… a ranging shot!"

"Aye aye!"

Moments later, after much fiddling, the starboard 6-pounder gave out a sharp bark, flinging a ball with the quoin completely out from underneath the breach to stretch the gun's reach. Lewrie could see that roundshot as it slowed at the apogee of its flight, then dash into invisibility once more as it descended. There was a splash, a slim tower of water that rose from the waves as the shot struck about two cables short of the trailing schooner.

"Oh, damme," Lt. Langlie cried, "not again!"

The schooner had hoisted an American flag!

"I'll not believe it 'til I stand on his damned decks!" Lewrie vowed. "Stand on, and reload."

"Aye, sir!"

"Mis'rable, pus-gutted, poxy sonofa-" Lewrie grumbled.

The 6-pounder yapped again, and this time the roundshot struck within a cable of the trailing schooner. A third try, with the quoin in this time, and six pounds of iron struck short and skipped several times, like a flat rock being shied across a pond, to slam home with a thud, flinging a small burst of dust, paint chips, and splinters!

"Huzzah! Pound her 'til she strikes, no matter who she is!"

The far schooner was still sloughing along, her mains'l bagged out and flogging, even with the mainsheet drawn snug. She, too, hoisted an American flag, making Lewrie wonder if he should continue firing into them; surely, this would be a nasty diplomatic incident, if they truly were Yankee Doodle ships, but… why had they run so long, even after Proteus had hoisted her own colours an hour before? Could an entire people, a whole race, be quite that stupid?

There came a fourth shot from the bow chaser, and another strike 'twixt wind and water, smashing in part of her low larboard bulwarks, and caroming through a rowboat stowed amidships in a cloud of splinters. Lewrie eyed her through the telescope once more.

"Mine arse on a band-box… they're havin' a melee, yonder!" he gasped. "Take a look… they're fighting 'mongst themselves."

"Those that'd strike, and those that'd fight, sir?" Lt. Langlie wondered aloud. "Ah! There go her main and fore sheets… and their flag halliard! She's struck!"

"Cease fire, there! Cease fire!" Lewrie bellowed. "Sir, do you close on the far one, and take her under fire when in range. Chasers only. Rest of the gun crews are to ready a boat for lowering."

"Aye, sir," Langlie responded. "Mister Sevier, keep your eyes on this'un. Sing out, does she renege and try to escape."

The near schooner quickly flashed down the starboard side, and the far one, still not repaired, quickly neared. The bow chaser fired once more, finding the range almost at once, and dropping a ball close-aboard her waterline. And down came her American flag, too! Briefly replaced with the French Tricolour that had barely been two-blocked at the peak of the halliard before being quickly lowered, and allowed to trail over the schooner's taffrails in sign of surrender!

"We'll definitely lower boats for this'un, Mister Langlie. And a Marine boarding party," Lewrie instructed, feeling his chest swell in triumph. Still puzzled, it must be said, but triumphant.

"The schooner astern is underway again, Mister Langlie, sir!" Midshipman Sevier cried, attracting their attention. "She's following us, with her flag re-hoisted."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Lewrie muttered, rubbing his chin. "Fetch us to, Mister Langlie…'fore we end up in Port-de-Paix. Do you keep this'un under our quarterdeck six-pounders and carronades… just t'keep 'em honest."

"Aye, sir."

For long minutes, the frigate and schooner wallowed together, a cable's distance between them, as the labourious process of hoisting up, swinging out, and lowering ship's boats off the cross-deck timbers was carried out. Men from the larboard guns and gangways were ticked off for a boarding party, along with half the Marines, all under arms.

"Hoy!" Lewrie called across with speaking-trumpet. "What ship are you?"

"Comment?" was the reply; and a rather snippy one, too.

"Oh… Frog," Lewrie groused. "Quel navire!"

"Ici c'est L'Oiseau! Un marchand!"

"The Songbird" Lewrie translated aloud. "But a merchant ship, mine arse! There must be an hundred crew aboard her. Her sides are pierced for at least eight guns! Vous кtes le menteur sanglant! Vous кtes un privateer!" he bellowed across. "Vous кtes le prix, а moi!"

He could feel the Surgeon's Mate, the French exile Mr. Durant, wince near his side.

"Your French is… remarkable, Capitaine, " Durant all but tittered.

"Good enough t'call him a bloody liar," Lewrie said with a grin and a shrug of haplessness outside his native English. "What's 'privateer' in French?"

"Privateer, sir," Durant informed him, unable to hide his mirth. "I believe zat is where it came from, ze French."

"Capital! He caught my drift, then." Lewrie chuckled before he turned back to watch more warily as his boats thumped into the Songbird and his boarding party began to clamber over her rails.

"Yankee schooner's passing to windward of us, sir!" Midshipman Sevier pointed out, drawing Lewrie to larboard with his trumpet..

"Hoy, the frigate! Thankee, sir!" a man in a master's coat said as the schooner let fly her sheets to slow and luff up. "This is the Bantam… ten days outta Savannah. Yon French bastard took us off the Berry Islands two days ago. Who do I owe thanks to?"

"End vis ze preposition, tsk tsk," Durant muttered.

"HMS Proteus… Captain Lewrie, commanding!" Lewrie shouted over, then turned to Durant. "My French, his English, it seems. But, what can you expect from our recently departed Colonials?"

"Stood up to us, bold as a dog in a doublet, he did!" Bantam's master was shouting. "Flyin' our flag, with an American doin' all the talking for 'em! I'm Machias Wilder, by the by! Soon as you can hog-tie or chain up yon French bastards, I'd be that proud to stand ye to a stiff drink, Captain Lewrie!"

"And I would be more than happy to accept, Captain Wilder!"

"Probably has no palate, eizzer," Durant lamented. "No cognac. Only raw corn whiskey, I mus' warn you, Capitaine."

"Oh, don't poor-mouth corn whiskey, Mister Durant," Lewrie said, throwing his head back to laugh. "It has its own charm, once you get accustomed."

"I wish to thank you, as well, Capitaine. For ze extract of ze chichona," Durant went on. "Vis God's help, ze four bottle will suffice. I wish to ask, Zo… will we be back in Port-Au-Prince, so I may purchase more from your mysterious source?"

"Can't guarantee anything, Mister Durant, but, does fever break out among us, we'll make every effort."

"Zat is all I may ask, sir. Forgive my intrusion," Durant said, doffing his hat and leaving the quarterdeck.

Odd damn' feller, Lewrie thought as he watched him go; gloomy as anything. Competent, though. We can only hope.

The captured American trading schooner snugged her sheets once more and began to ghost away upwind, out of Proteus's business, for the nonce.

The Royal Navy didn't put much stock in capturing a privateer, Lewrie told himself as he paced along the lee rails facing his prize. Taking a National ship, a warship, counted for more, and the pay-out from a Prize Court was much higher, because a warship was usually purchased into the Navy for re-use. Privateers, though, well… worth a pittance for each gun aboard, along with the "head money" for every crewman noted in her muster-book before capture. There might be more if the privateer had transferred cargo from earlier prizes into her own holds, and that got sold at auction, but most of the time taking one was hardly worth the trouble.

Which way why, he decided, privateering thrived so openly. Most Navy officers didn't want to risk their precious bottoms inshore to chase them back to their lairs, and would let three privateers sail past if there was a chance of taking a rich-laden merchantman, or of winning an honourable fight with an enemy man o' war.

That was one explanation for why French privateers operated so boldly in the Caribbean, and why it seemed that the dozens and dozens of British warships had such abysmal luck in catching them.

But! This L'Oiseau, or Songbird, would fetch them something to show for their efforts, he could greedily speculate; the return of an American merchantman to their control might just result in a reward of some kind, too! Something beyond this Captain Wilder's generosity for restoring his livelihood to him, something official from the United States government, once they found a Consul at Kingston, or…?

"Deck, there!" the lookout called down from his rolling, swirling perch high atop the mainmast as Proteus lay fetched-to. "Sail ho! Full-rigged ship, four points off th' larboard quarter! A frigate!"

"Oh, no!" Lewrie muttered, climbing up the mizen shrouds once more, his telescope slung rifle-fashion over one shoulder. "You're not 'in sight,' ya can't have a penny of 'em. Whoever you are. Not enough t'share, as it is."

Once settled securely, he unslung his glass and extended it 'til he had a shaky view of the new arrival. Sure enough, it was a three-masted, full-rigged ship, heading almost bows-on towards them. From the proud cant of her jib-boom and bow-sprit that hobby-horsed closer and closer, from the thickness of her crossed yards and lower masts, she did look like a frigate! But whose?

He slung his glass again and scampered back to the deck with a bit less decorum than a proper captain ought to display, trying to hide his anxiety as he peered over at the French schooner.

"Mister Langlie, is that prize of ours well in hand yet?" he snapped. "Her crew's been disarmed and fettered, sir, and is now under guard by a file of Marines," the efficient Lt. Langlie replied. "I've placed Mister Catterall aboard her as prize-master, with Towpenny, the Bosun's Mate, as his second, and Midshipman Adair and twelve hands to get her under way, sir. If those choices meet your approval, that is, Captain."

"Perfectly. Then let's get under way ourselves, and ready the ship to meet yon frigate. They may have sent a man o' war north, with a clutch of privateers, t'keep an eye on them and their prizes. Once under way, sir, we'll return to Quarters. And someone tell that Captain Wilder over there t'stand well aloof of us, if things go wrong."

"Aye, sir," Langlie replied, without a qualm at the thought of impending combat.

"Deck, there!" the lookout shouted anew. " 'At strange sail is a frigate! She's hoistin' colours… American!"

"Well, whyever not?" Lewrie said, making it a humourous gripe to disguise his own qualms, and ease his crew's, as well. "Everyone else has, hey? But it may be a common ruse in these waters. We will still get under way… just t'be sure."

"All hands…!" Langlie began to cry.

Another hour, with the sun beginning to lower in the west, and HMS Proteus was nearing the stranger, boldly standing towards her with gun-ports open and all national flags hoisted; ready for battle if the strange frigate was lying, but with a query in that month's private signals also flying aloft.

The frigate stood on towards them, as well, with her ports shut, and angling a bit below her bows, to the Westward, as if to cede them the wind gauge and the traditional advantage.

"Pacific of 'em, sir," Lt. Langlie commented. "To sail alee."

"Mmm-hmm," was Lewrie's chary opinion of that.

"Rather a big'un, ain't she," Lieutenant Wyman noted. "My goodness gracious, she must be a forty-four gunner."

"Over-sparred, though, Mister Wyman," Sailing Master Winwood pointed out, "with much too much aloft. You midshipmen take note. Under all plain sail, her masts are as tall as ours when flying royals. Mark the length of her yards, as well. Under a sudden hard press of wind, she'd not get those reefed in safely. She may very well be an American frigate. 'Tis a common mistake I've seen from Yankee yards."

"My word, perhaps she's a fifty-gun Fourth Rate," Wyman opined, finally spotting the second, upper row of closed gun-ports, painted black to match her bulwarks, instead of the white of her lower gunwale.

"The Yankee Doodles built some two-deckers during the Revolution but I never heard of them serving," Lewrie felt prodded to contribute, dredging up so-called intelligence from his advisories. "Most-like, I believe they rotted on the stocks before launch. Their new construction plans may call for two-deckers, but did they need hulls on short notice, they might have razeed one before completion, and outfitted her as a large frigate."

By God, but she is big, though! he thought, daunted by the idea of having to fight her. With a two-decker's much stouter lower timbers and deck beams, she might be able to carry 24-pounders below, and even 12-pounders on the upper gun-deck.