Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

The schooner, though, was much more manoeuvrable and it was not out of the question for her to spin about almost in her own length and try to run Sou'east, abeam the Trades, and pass astern of Proteus at a rate of knots, hoping that the brig would be considered the most valuable prize. With her greater speed, she might dare the risk of broadsides hurriedly ranged and fired. The schooner might dodge right past before a gun could hurt her, and show them a clean pair of heels.

"Don't think of that, don't think of that," Lewrie muttered on his way back aft, pacing sideways to keep his eyes on the brig and the schooner. "Just panic and run, you bastards."

"Courses, tops'ls, and t'gallants all set, sir," Lt. Langlie reported as Lewrie gained the quarterdeck. "Outer flying jib, the inner, and the fore top-mast stays'l set, as well."

Lewrie looked aloft for confirmation, also noting that the main and mizen t'gallant stays'ls filled the spaces between the masts, as they had since they'd come about off Salt Island Passage, to make best use of the weak predawn Trades without showing too much aloft for an enemy to espy and be warned off.

"Were they smart, they'd turn and run back up the bay and get ashore," Catterall commented, still coatless and fiddling with his neck-stock. "We'd get the ships if they don't fire them, but the crews would escape us."

Lewrie spun on his heel to glare at him, freezing Catterall in mid-toilette. "Then let us pray our Chases are bereft of your great experience, sir. Let's pray they're bumbling idiots… sir!"

Catterall gulped and shrugged into himself as his hammock-man held out his coat to don, and he slipped into it as if it were armour.

"Everyone down from aloft, Mister Langlie? Good," Lewrie said. "Now, beat to Quarters. Mister Catterall?"

"Sir?" the hapless Second Officer replied, now dressed but still trying to shrink away.

"Tell off an armed boat crew, with six or eight Marines, and be ready to board one of the prizes, should we be fortunate."

"Aye aye, sir! Mister Towpenny! A boat brought up from towing astern to short stays!"

Lewrie turned back to their Chases, relieved to see that they were still mindlessly intent on fleeing, holding their course, aiming to get round Ram Head into deeper water and run almost due West, with the schooner ahead, of course, and steering a bit further out from the land, almost as if she would challenge Proteus and protect her consort. The French tricouleur stood out boldly from her gaff, swung by the wind to lay against her mainsail. But Proteus was hitting her stride, now, and beginning to surge forward with a purposeful bustle, the apparent wind keener and brisker, and her stout hull "talking" to him in groans and swashings as she parted the rather calm seas like a broad farmer's plough through rich loam.

Gun-ports were hinging up and out of the way on the schooner's larboard side, at least five that Lewrie could see, and she was coming a point "lower" to intersect their course, her gaff-hung sails arcing away from them into mere slivers to cup more stern wind.

"I make the range as under a mile, sir," Langlie said.

The schooner was most likely a French privateer, Lewrie thought, judging her lines more critically. As fine and lean as she appeared, she couldn't bear the weight of more than eight or ten guns, and those could not be much more than 6-pounders. "Man's a bloody Lunatick!" he grunted. "Mister Langlie, I'll thank you to shoot his grandiose dreams to flinders."

"Very good, sir! Mister Catterall, Mister Adair… on the uproll, and open upon her!" Langlie shouted down to the gun-deck.

The schooner opened first, wreathing herself in a sudden bank of sulfurous fumes, the sound of her artillery a muffled stutter; five guns as Lewrie had surmised, and terrier-sharp by the sound of them-6-pounders, or more likely 4-pounders.

Shot shrieked overhead, a splash was raised far out to starboard and the ball skipped high enough to chew a small segment of a bulwark railing and strew stowed hammocks in the racks like wakened worms.

"On the up-roll…" Catterall could be heard yelling, "fire!"

The air was moist and cool with sea mist. Proteus's guns roared and reeled back in-board almost as one, making not only a deep bank of gun smoke, but an instant fog of tortured air, each gun's eruption standing for a moment as a horizontal sea-spout from the muzzles, and making thirteen distinct smoke-and-fog rings that quickly merged into a cloud that only slowly drifted away to larboard and alee as Proteus sailed beyond it, leaving a semi-opaque, surface-level cumulus astern.

"Hit… hit!" Langlie was noting, striving for professional detachment, though almost dancing on tip-toes. "Three… four… six!"

"There is a nasty shoal, sir," Mr. Winwood muttered, coming to Lewrie's left rear. "Eagle Shoal, 'tis called, almost dead ahead, by our charts. They're coming to us, so…"

"A turn away will not increase the gun-range, aye," Lewrie said quickly, with only a slight turn of his head to acknowledge him. "Two points alee, and keep us clear."

He only had eyes for their targets, now. The schooner had taken the worst of their exchange, with holes punched in both her sails, and sections of her bulwark torn open, a low deckhouse afore her wheel shot up, and her inner jib flying loose of both controlling sheet and halliard. His hands took time to cheer as they swabbed out, thumb-stalled vents, and began to wave the powder monkeys forward with fresh charges borne in flash-resistant leather cylinders.

The brig, still flying an American flag, was hugging closer to the shore of Saint John, as if to shave Ram Head by a boat-hook's reach. Urgent signals were now flying from her lee main-mast.

"She'll pass inside the shoal, Mister Winwood?" Lewrie queried.

"The brig, aye, sir. The schooner, though…" Winwood replied with a wince, as if watching an imminent coach accident.

"Schooner's bearing away," Langlie noted. "Ready, down there?"

Gun-captains waved their hands clear of the guns; Catterall had his sword poised on high, nodding eagerly. "On the up-roll… fire!"

"She's standing directly onto the shoal, sir!" Winwood said.

"The brig displays this month's coded signals, sir!" Midshipman Elwes suddenly cautioned, with some alarm.

"He's a lying dog, then," Lewrie snapped, between explosions from their guns.

"But, sir! Really, they're this month's signals!" Elwes protested, eyes wide in fear of error.

"We ain't firin' on her, Mister Elwes," Lewrie took the patience to say to him, direct. "Do you recall our first encounter with Yankee merchantmen? If she's innocent, what's she doin' in company with that Frog privateer? Once our smoke clears, hoist a signal for her to heave to and prepare to be boarded. If she obeys, fine. If she doesn't… then we will fire into her."

"Aye, aye, sir," Elwes said, doffing his hat before dashing off aft to his flag lockers and halliards.

Once again, both the schooner and HMS Proteus had mounded the sea with ragged thunderheads of smoke and fog-roil from their guns. A moment later, the schooner sailed clear of hers, presenting her lines side-on, her hull pocked with 12-pounder impacts, and the upper gaff of her foresail hanging limp and the sail bagged out alee.

Then she struck the shoal, jerking to a complete stop, her mastheads swaying forward, gaffs and booms swinging forward abruptly. Running rigging snapped, heavy lower booms ploughed through shrouds and ripped them loose from the dead-eyes, ripped dead-eyes from the chain platforms! Her bow rose up as if cresting a boisterous wave… but remained at that angle, her bow sprit and jib-boom almost vertical.

Proteus's crew groaned aloud, making "Ooohh!" sounds as if in fellow sailors' sympathy, before recalling that the ship over there was French, after all, and began to jeer and cat-call.

"Someone send for Mister Durant!" Lewrie chortled loudly. "And ask him how one says 'Oops, oh shit' in French)."

"Do you still wish her boarded, sir?" Langlie asked, after the hilarity had faded and the quarterdeck people had returned to duties.

"Aye, I do, Mister Langlie," Lewrie decided after a long moment to think it over, weighing risk to his sailors against the need for a confirming document as a privateer. "Send two boats with Mister Catterall, and a larger boarding party. He's to capture her captain or a mate, if possible, with her Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Does the rest of the crew get ashore, so be it, and let 'em be the Danes' problem. Do they not fire her as they abandon, have our people do it. Instruct him to menace them, but not get into a melee. Do you think he may manage that, Mister Langlie?"

"He's an energetic, simple-minded brute, sir, so I expect that he may," Langlie chirped back with a wry grin on his features.

"Very well," Lewrie announced. "Let's fetch-to and despatch our boarding party, quick as we can. Mister Elwes, what answer did we get from the brig?"

"Can't really make it out, sir, it's all higgledy-piggledy," the boy replied, dashing from aft to a skidding stop at his summons.

"He's a liar and a conspirator, as I suspected, then. Thankee, Mister Elwes. Keep 'Fetch-To' aloft, and think of a way to make that 'Insistent.' Carry on, sir."

Proteus didn't wish to drown any of her boarders by proceeding at full tilt when they scrambled down into the boats, surfing along at the end of short painters, barely held in check by straining coxswains and bow-men with boat-hooks. She would have to slow down and take in sail, steering more for Ram Head with the wind abeam to "make a lee" so the sailors and Marines could disembark down her larboard side.

"Let's make it fast, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said. "Scandalise her and clew up sail in 'Spanish reefs.' Brace in yards, abeam."

"Aye aye, sir!"

Lewrie swung his telescope up and extended the tubes. The brig was almost to the tip of Ram Head, standing off not a cable's distance from the shoals.

"How much water would she have, that close inshore?" Lewrie asked his Sailing Master.

"I make it about fifteen fathom, sir, near the point," Winwood answered as Proteus swung her bows Nor'Nor'west, and the yard parrels cried as they were swung about to point the weather arms directly into the wind, the sails now flogging helplessly as they were clewed up at the centres, leaving untidy, thrashing bags suspended like ancient teats at the outer ends, with only jibs, stays'ls and the spanker still keeping way on her.

"Damn!" Lewrie griped. "She'll get a lead on us." "Ah… sunrise, sir," Win wood pointed out, pulling his watch from a waistcoat pocket, as if to confirm dawn's predicted timeliness and heaving a smug, satisfied sigh of approval.

"Very good, sir," Lewrie said with a grateful smile, thinking, though; Such an easy man to please. Just give him exactitude!

Scant minutes later, Proteus was once more under full sail and under way, thrashing back toward her previous speed in pursuit of the American brig, which was now flying stuns'ls in addition to her royals and t'gallants. Lewrie and Winwood stood close together by the double wheel and binnacle cabinet, ticking off landmarks on a chart as the seamarks almost raced past to starboard as the Chase spun out westward for the shelter of Charlotte Amafie.

Cabrithorn Point, Lameshur Bay, and White Point, then the wide, shallow expanse of Reef Bay. Dittlif Point rose up along the southern shore of St. John, then Rendezvous Bay beyond that long, arrowing peninsula, and Bovocoap Point looming up, with the brig dashing along as close as she could inshore, with Proteus standing further out to seaward, just a tantalising bit out of gun-range from her 6-pounder bow-chasers; almost, but not quite yet…

"She is steering dead-on for passage below the Dog Rocks, and Little Saint James Island, it seems, sir," Winwood cautiously opined, toying with his waistcoat buttons. "There is a long shoal, parallel to the shore, below Dog Rocks, with a narrow pass of thirteen fathom between, however. Her captain knows these waters well, we must infer."

"Wants t'brush us off," Lewrie sourly grunted.

"Aye, sir. Once beyond Dog Rocks, though, does she intend the direct route inside of Buck Island before taking a slant into harbour, there are even more shoals."

"Which would force us out alee of yonder Buck Island, and out of any hope of overtaking, if we continue on this course?"

"Aye, sir," Winwood gloomily reiterated, "though I cannot find any indications that the shoals are particularly shallow. The charts show some soundings of six or seven fathom. Deep-laden ships would go well clear of the shoals, but that may be sign of too much caution on their captains' parts. With our maximum laden draught of three fathom aft by the keel and rudder skeg… it makes no sense for him to think that we'd be completely daunted. Perhaps he knows more than our chart may tell us, the location of an old wreck…"

"Perhaps he learned his lore of the local waters in very large, deep-draught ships, Mister Winwood," Lewrie said, trying to put a good face on it despite his qualms of running aground, "under one of those cautious captains of yours. She's down to her draught waterline, same as us, and she can't draw more than twelve or fourteen feet. Show me your rocks and shoals, let's-"

"Deck, there!" a lookout screeched. "Chase is changin' course! Tur-nin' away Nor'west!"

"She's only a bit beyond Bovocoap Point," Mr. Winwood protested in a splutter. "That'd take her…"

"Into Pillsbury Sound, Mister Winwood," Lewrie snapped. "Maybe this 'Jonathon' captain doesn't think he'd keep enough lead on us to enter Charlotte Amalie before we caught him. If he really knows these waters, he must think he holds a high card over us."

"But there's no way out of the Sound, sir. The wind's wrong to weather the Middle Passage, leaving that Leeward Passage past Thatch Cay!" Winwood gawped. "Narrow as a town creek, it is, the soundings uncertain…"

"We'll follow her, Mister Winwood," Lewrie told him. "We will not let her get away that easily. Once past the point yonder, shape course Nor'Nor'west, and follow her… wherever she goes."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sir, I'm bound to point out that this is risky," Winwood said in a mortified whisper as they bent over the chart pinned to the traverse board, once Proteus had come about and was now dead-astern from the American brig, perhaps a mile-and-a-half behind. "My duty as-"

"I know, Mister Winwood," Lewrie said, cutting him off quickly, eyes intent on the chart, and the pair of brass dividers in his hand. "Pillsbury Sound's deep, sir! Twelve to eighteen fathoms all the way to the islets and cays. And nice and wide for the most part 'til you are forced to choose a passage out of it. The Windward Passage is out, and does she try the Middle Passage, she'll be full-and-by, sailing at the ragged edge of this morning's wind… without her stuns'ls spread, thankee Jesus, which means we'll drive right up her transom long before she can get to it. Your Leeward Passage is narrow, but not more than a quarter of a sea-mile…'bout two cables wide, 'twixt Thatch Cay and the north shore of Saint Thomas. Bags of room!"