"Three miles, hmm," Lewrie muttered. "Mister Wyman, we'll haul our wind and stand due South, for a piece…'til Mister Winwood says we're near 'soundings.' After that, we will wear and reduce sail, to scud back along the coast towards Cape Francois and see what's stirring."
"Aye aye, sir," Wyman said, reaching for a speaking-trumpet with which to relay orders to the watch.
"And let's hope something is out of harbour, Mister Winwood." "Indeed, sir."
Lewrie's familiar old stomping grounds about the Turks Islands had been nearly empty of all but local fishing boats and small traders, the Caicos, Turk's, Mouchoir, and Silver Bank passages glittering but barren, and conversations with local boats had revealed that it was a rare day when they'd seen any sail at all. Such stops had allowed the Purser, Mr. Coote, to purchase a bonanza of fresh fish and sea turtles, now trussed with their flippers threaded together, and all for a song, but useful intelligence was nil.
"Once we take a good, long look into Cape Francois, we'll head back to the Old Bahama Passage," Lewrie decided aloud. "Yankee merchant-men'll be floodin' South this time of year, and most-like that will be where the Frog privateers'll be thickest, too. So many of 'em tradin' at Havana, and other Spanish Cuban ports… before heading further South to the Leewards, ey, Mister Winwood?"
"Always a wrench, to cede the windward station, sir, but in the circumstances…" the Sailing Master said with a noncommittal shrug, as he carefully, almost lovingly, stowed away his own precious sextant in its velvet-lined rosewood box.
"Shortest distance, we might've been better off in the Gulf of Gonave, if they're comin' from Havana," Lewrie griped, "most-like sailing right past us. Or passing far to the East'rd of the Bahamas and Puerto Rico."
"Well, sir, there's great risk in that," Winwood replied, digging out another chart and spreading it on the traverse board. "There are reefs and shoals aplenty near Puerto Rico, and the Danish Virgins, and our own. Anegada and Virgin Gorda are infamous wrecking grounds, and the north shore of Saint Thomas? A rocky maze, sir!"
Mr. Winwood used a closed divider as a pointer as he indicated the dangers, sketching courses from America.
"Do they leave New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, the Chesapeake, or even the Carolinas or Georgia, their best course would be very far Easterly, out to beyond Bermuda, before taking a slant across, abeam the Nor'east Trades, with hopes to fetch Anguilla or Saint Martin just a touch alee of them, and close to all those lee-side harbours."
"Which'd put them in our Antigua squadron's bailiwick, then," Lewrie said, nodding, "and we'd never see 'em…'til on their way back home, through these waters."
"Aye, sir."
"But they can't all sail that far East and South first. There must be some who trade closer to home," Lewrie griped. "Witness those Yankee men o' war and Treasury cutters convoying merchantmen here. Or are you saying we've been handed a bill of goods, Mister Winwood?"
Winwood winced and sucked his teeth; it was a cold day in Hades when he ventured an opinion outside his own expertise.
"It might not have been the most productive area to patrol, sir. How else may one explain why, with over seventy or eighty men o' war on the West Indies Station, we've been so unsuccessful in eliminating the many French privateers?"
"Sloth and indolence," Lewrie scoffed, with a sour laugh. "So little profit in it, such hard work… when it's more exciting, more profitable, to hunt enemy merchant ships and warships! Prowling about for such- even if it's fruitless-holds the greater honour, and a chance t'get your name in the papers back home. Make a great show, with all the huffing and puffing? 'By God, we almost had 'em but for a slant o' wind, but we'll do better next time, wot?' Surely you know their sort by now, Mister Winwood."
"Indeed, sir," Winwood said in response, very even and flat.
And by God, was he lookin' at me cutty-eyed when he said that? Lewrie thought, trying to recall six months of bombast or excuses.
"Sail ho!"
Lewrie's head snapped upward to the mainmast lookout's perch.
"Where away?"
"Four points orf th' starb'd bows!" the spry young topman wailed back. "Three… four sail! They'm sloops and luggers, there!"
"And we're inshore of them!" Lewrie exulted. "Where bound?" he shouted aloft through cupped hands.
"Standin' North, sir!"
"North, hmmm…" Lewrie mused, riffling through the charts for one of Saint Domingue and Santo Domingo. "Fishing boats, perhaps. Out of a French or Spanish port. Either sort, they're fair game."
He traced the reciprocal course back to the coast, but found no point of origin, other than a few coves or inlets, and those were two-a-penny. He glanced at the commissioning pendant high aloft, which was flowing to the wind, now steady out of the Nor'east once more.
"A point higher than we could manage, goin' close-hauled. That fits," he muttered. "Now, Mister Winwood. Were you wishin' to coast to the East, you'd have to zig-zag, wouldn't you?"
"Aye, sir. A short board along the coast, but a long one, out to sea, to make any ground to weather," Winwood agreed. "Even with a sloop or lugger rig, it would be an all-day chore to make twenty miles to the good."
"Sooner, sooner or later, they'll have to come about onto larboard tack and head Sou'east, would they not? Right into our range, so to speak, sir?" Lewrie snickered.
"Aye, sir… do they not see us first."
"And if they do, their best hope'd be to come about Sou'west, and run back into whichever little harbour or inlet they left," Lewrie crowed. "And… we're still inshore of 'em, and can run 'em down; do they put about this instant!"
Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks and looked out at the land, now that Proteus was within three miles or so of it and scudding along almost due West. Fingers drumming on the cap-rails, thinking, evaluating… With a jump, he was at the binnacle rack and snatching a glass, then up into the starboard mizen shrouds, clambering aloft, up past the cat-harpings and onto the futtock shrouds, dangling dangerously for a second or two before gaining the mizen top platform, where he felt the need to pant for a bit before scrambling onto the stays and rat-lines to the upper masts and cross-trees above the mizen tops'l.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he chid himself; ya impatient sod! That left arm still don't feel right. Must've hurt it worse than I thought at Camperdown. Send a midshipman, next time, or Wyman. He's a well fed look about him, lately.
Once he'd levelled his glass, there they were. Two two-masted luggers, and a brace of single-masted local sloops or cutters, flying large jibs forrud, and all four of them fairly big boats, perhaps over forty or fifty feet, overall. And crammed with people!
Incredibly tiny dark exclamation points were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder over there, he realised, braced up against their weather rails- perhaps as human "ballast" to keep them sailing flatter on their bottoms, making them faster.
"Deck, there! They'm hull-up, now! Four points orf th' starb'd bows!" the lookout atop the mainmast, forward of his perch, cried.
"Deck, there!" Lewrie shouted down. "Cast of the log! Now!"
Those luggers and sloops might just be about forty feet or so in length; Lewrie compromised at fourty-five feet. Their masts should be a third again longer, did they follow Caribbean custom of tall masts to catch more wind in larger sails, as opposed to European custom using shorter masts with longer booms, and the centres of effort of the sails lower to the deck. With sixty-foot masts, he could estimate that they were at least four miles out to sea. Did they turn and run before the wind, he guessed that they could make five or six knots, with the sail they already flew.
"Captain, sir!" Midshipman Elwes squeaked. "We make nine knots!"
"Thankee, Mister Elwes! Good lad! Mister Wyman… hands aloft and set the fore t'gallant, the main t'gallant stays'l, the middle stays'l, and main topmast stays'l! Smartly, now!"
"Aye aye, sir! Smartly t'will be!"
He looked aloft to the commissioning pendant once more. It was a decent wind this morning, a dependable, clear day Tradewind. With a bit more sail aloft, Proteus could make ten or eleven knots with it on their starboard quarters… as it now stood. Sailing almost due West, they'd intersect those small craft within the hour!
Now, t'get my puckered arse down from here, he told himself in a silent grimace. Clambering down to the lubber's hole was not manly or nautical, and after those uneasy twinges in his left arm, he didn't quite trust himself on the shrouds and rat-lines. He slung his glass and took hold of a standing backstay, using his right hand and leg to swing out and wrap himself around it, to slide-clamber hand-over-hand to the deck, the greasy, slushed stay grating 'twixt his knees, scissored calves, and along his groin.
With a thump against the bulwarks that he felt through the soles of his shoes, he reached the deck and jumped down to the quarterdeck, with an evident whoosh of relief, flexing his singed fingers despite a career of callouses.
"Damme," he sighed, looking at his breeches and shirt, now greasy with the skimmed fat from the steep-tubs used to lubricate the rigging to keep it supple, and the tar used to keep it waterproof. "At least they're the pale blue'uns. No great loss."
No amount of scrubbing could improve that condition, as Aspinall had proved the last few days, whenever they had caught some rainwater from the brief daily squalls. They were now hopeless.
"Perhaps sky-blue will become fashionable, sir," wee Midshipman Grace tittered; being the youngest, he was the only one who'd dare.
"You're no bigger than bait, Mister Grace," Lewrie told him with mock severity, "and I dearly love fresh fish. I'd keep that in mind, were I you, younker," making the other midshipmen snigger.
He reached out and tipped Grace's cocked hat over his eyes, to prove that he wasn't upset, then stalked over to the helm to stow his telescope. "Mister Wyman, once you've everything ' Bristol fashion' I wish the ship beat to Quarters."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Whoever yon bastards are, we'll have them for dinner."
"Deck, there! Puttin' about! Haulin' 'eir wind, and wearin'!"
"Ah, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said quite gaily, as the First Officer came to the quarterdeck, noting that Langlie already had his pair of single-barrel pistols hung on his belt, along with his smallsword. "I see you've come full-dressed for the ball. Good. The first dance is just be-gun."
After a quick look about, Langlie got a sly look on his face as he said, "From the look and sound of it, Captain, sir, I'd say they've gone past the quadrilles, right to the galop and country dances. Or rather… off to the races?"
"Captain, sir… Mister Langlie, sir," Lieutenant Wyman reported. "I am ready to call for Quarters."
"I'll take the deck, Mister Wyman," Langlie asserted his right.
"I yield with pleasure, sir," Wyman grinned back, with delight of the chase and the hunt in his eyes.
"Mister Sevier to stand as acting lieutenant in lieu of Mister Catterall, sir?" Langlie asked. "He can oversee the forecastle guns."
"Very good, Mister Langlie. And call on Desmond and his lads to give us a tune, once we're at Quarters. Something lively. I will be below, getting presentable… and armed."
"Dear Lord, sir, but I suspect that'un was 'The Battle of Aughrim,' " Lt. Langlie, who had a good ear for music, exclaimed. "An old fight from back in King William's days. Just like our Irish, to cock a snook at us."
"Lively, though, you must admit," Lewrie replied, beating one hand along in time as Desmond, the ship's fiddler, a Marine drummer, and a brace of fifers held forth in the middle of the waist.
"The Pipe on the Hob," "The Bride's Favourite," and old double jigs were mixed with "The Derry Hornpipe" and "Fisher's Hornpipe" as music for sailing into battle, followed by "Jenny's Wedding" and "Lord MacDonald," a pair of reels. Now, within a mile of the sloops and luggers, Desmond and the band were well into a lively, merry tune named "Planxty Browne," with the fiddler and fifers prancing the deck in impromptu dancing.
"I prefer hornpipes," Langlie groused, "Jigs, reels, and all are too… toodly. All over the shop, and too many flutt'ry notes."
"Well, so was Bach, and that little Mozart fellow," Lewrie said with a chuckle. "Might've killed him, in fact. Too many notes in his head, and 'Pop!' Hmmm… d'ye think we're in good range, sir?" "I do, indeed, Captain," Langlie soberly agreed. "Then please run out the starboard battery and give them a try, Mister Langlie," Lewrie bade, turning formal.
"Aye aye, sir. Mister Wyman! Make ready! Thank you for the music lads, but now belay! Run out the starboard battery!"
Creaks and groans, squeals and screeches sounded as tackle was run through wooden blocks, as wood trucks and axles turned under gun-carriages as they were trundled up to butt against the port-sills, and ports were opened. Tacklemen stood aside, overhauling their run-out, as gun-captains fussed at elevating quoins, ordering crow-levers for a shift in point of aim. The train-tackles were tautened, and breeching ropes adjusted so the guns would recoil smoothly, without a kink that would jerk their deadly weight aside and maim their minders. One at a time, gun-captains put up a fist to show readiness, and their Number Twos leaned away from their pieces, holding the trigger lines that led to the flintlock strikers over the touch-holes, taut and cocked. "On the up-roll… fire!"
A second's pause as Proteus surfed and wallowed off the winds, slowly rocking upright and hanging still for a moment or two, her deck level to the horizon… then her 12-pounders erupted in ear-ringing power, almost as one! Great thunderclaps, huge jetting clouds of hot gases and smoke, reeking of rotten eggs and coal, as the guns lurched in-board to the limits of their breeching ropes, snubbing with a shock that seemed
like to jerk the stout bulwarks apart, and made the frigate shudder as if she'd run aground!
The smoke was quickly whisked away by the Trades, to scud downwind off her larboard bows, to the shore which was now only two miles away, so the officers could spot the fall of shot among those boats.
Another long second's pause, and geysers erupted from the sea, tall and slender feathery plumes that hung in the sky like suddenly frozen icicles, that only slowly collapsed downward upon themselves in matching circles of frothing spume, drenching the targets like a torrential summer squall, and making them heel and rock, their winged-out sails sluiced and drowned with seawater.
"Damn' good shooting," Lewrie commented. "Now, serve 'em another," he ordered, raising his telescope.
"Sir?" Mr. Winwood whispered from his right side. "Sir, we are getting rather close inshore, and we do have them abeam. Perhaps one point abaft of abeam."
"Damn' good shooting," Lewrie commented. "Now, serve 'em another," he ordered, raising his telescope.
"Sir?" Mr. Winwood whispered from his right side. "Sir, we are getting rather close inshore, and we do have them abeam. Perhaps one point abaft of abeam."
"You wish to harden up and stand out from the shore?" Lewrie asked, the glass still to his eye.
"I would, sir. The best we have are century-old Spanish charts."
"Mister Langlie, a point to windward," Lewrie called. "And put some spare hands in the larboard fore-chains to sound with the lead."
"Aye, sir."
"As you bear… on the up-roll… fire!"
Under a mile now, Lt. Wyman was letting gun-captains aim for themselves, picking their own targets. Proteus shuddered and jerked, anew, as the 12-pounders exploded in a stutter that ran from her bow to her stern. Wyman paced the waist of the ship between the starboard and the idle larboard batteries, between the foremast and main, urging gun-captains and more experienced senior quarter-gunners for a steady pace to keep the guns firing two rounds every three minutes.
"Hit!" Lt. Devereux the Marine officer cried from among his men on the starboard gangway above the guns. "Well shot, you lads! You've hammered one of the luggers, and shot a mast clean away!"
The gun crews cheered, even as they tugged and hauled, even as ship's boys scampered along the deck with their leather cases holding sewn powder cartridges from the risk of premature explosion, even as barrels were swabbed out by the rammer men, as Number Twos held leather thumb-stalls over the touch-holes to prevent backblast from the lingering shards of cartridge bags and smouldering powder embers.
Cartridges were rammed down, roundshot was thumped firm against the charges, as vent-pricks were inserted into the touch-holes, piercing the bags to spill powder, so the jets of fire from the flintlock strikers and the priming powder in their pans could ignite the charges in the blink of an eye when the trigger lanyards were jerked.
Up the deck to the ports the guns were rolled one more time, as Proteus swung her bows seaward one point, not only to flee the risk of hidden rocks and shoals, but to close the range on the small craft and cut them off from running any longer to the Sou'west. With the wind more on the starboard beam, it was harder to run the guns out, but the fire-blackened muzzles jutted through the ports and began to wave and elevate in small jerks, 'til the gun-captains were satisfied.
"As you bear… on the up-roll… fire!"
The damaged lugger was struck again, a heavy ball smashing into her larboard side and spilling people into the sea. A one-masted sloop in the lead of their gaggle was hit near her sternquarters and jerked to the impact, rolling half on her starboard beam-ends before rocking slowly upright, but beginning to settle as she started to fill, stern down but still sailing, like a wounded goose.
"Too good to last, sir… the other two are breaking free from their partners," Lt. Langlie pointed out, his arm outstretched to the right and a bit aft. "Ducking astern of us."
Lewrie took a long look at the damaged sloop, and found it low in the water, aft, its transom almost level with the sea. It wouldn't last long, in his estimation; nor would the crippled lugger whose lone surviving foremast could not drag her to freedom fast enough.
"Two points more a'weather, Mister Langlie, and engage the two off the starboard quarters," Lewrie decided. "Those two'll be there, when we've dealt with these. Damme! Right plucky of 'em, to tack and cross our stern! They'll be within carronade shot in a minute. We'll open with the stern chasers and carronades! Ready, the after-guard!"
"Perhaps there's more fight in the Frogs than we thought, sir," Lt. Langlie commented.
Lewrie raised his telescope once more and eyed the boats that were aiming to beat Sou'easterly and run aground where they might on the Spanish shore of Santo Domingo… before Proteus could kill them.
"Whatever they are, Mister Langlie, they ain't French," Lewrie said, after he had gotten a closer look at their foe. "They're Black! Ev'ry man jack of 'em, from what I can see."
The surviving sloop and lugger were within four cables as they completed crossing the wind's eye and began to gather speed for their run to safety, and Lewrie could pick out details. The men aboard them were armed, and wore a semblance of uniforms; cocked hats, military or civilian, but all decorated with the red-white-blue cockade of revolutionary French Jacobins… white breeches and colourful sashes, into which pistols, swords, or cutlasses were jammed. Some wore shirts and dark blue French uniform coats, or coats with no shirts; some had to make do in waistcoats and no shirts, but with crossbelts and brass breastplates in the middle of their chests. There were a few in full uniforms and plumed hats, wearing officer's swords, and dragoon boots, or breeches without stockings or any footwear. But all bore muskets with their bayonets already affixed.
Closer still, and Lewrie could see kegs of what could only be taken for gunpowder, kegs at which some rebel slave soldiers chopped with hand axes and tomahawks, while others worked at flints and lint to kindle sparks and flames, whilst others held oiled-rag torches to be…!
"Damn my eyes, Mister Langlie, I do believe those bastards mean to blow themselves to Kingdom Come, and us with 'em!" he shouted as the two small craft fell off the wind even more and, gathering speed, began to turn toward Proteus's stern quarters… attacking the frigate!
"Marines to the quarterdeck, Mister Devereux! Man the swivels and the carronades, smartly now!" Lewrie urged, feeling a bit of panic. "Mister Winwood, a bit more speed t'get clear of 'em. Mister Wyman? A broadside would do right nicely, 'bout now!"
"Coming, sir, directly!"
"So's bloody Christmas!" Lewrie muttered under his breath, too fearful of the suicidal slaveys to care about "captainly" behaviour.
"Dem fools got de 'nutmegs,' sah," Cox'n Andrews breathed in awe as he appeared unbidden but welcome at Lewrie's side, with a brace of pistols and Lewrie's trusty Ferguson rifle and its accoutrements. "Dey Law', dey's laughin'!"
About two cables' distance now, the small boats surging up to carronade range, and Lewrie could hear a chant that nigh-shriveled his "stones" above the rumble of gun-trucks and the drum of running feet.
"Eh Eh! Heu! Canga, bajнo tй!
Canga, moune de le! Canga, do ki la!
Canga, li!"
"What the Devil's all that?" Lewrie demanded to know.
"Don' know, sah… Obeah stuff, maybe," Andrews replied, crossing himself for luck and blanching a touch pale. "Some sorta witchie workin'. Voodoo… voudoun. Deir Creole tongue."
"On the up-roll… fire!" Wyman screeched, at long last.
Not a full second after the guns erupted, before the spent gunpowder could even begin to wing alee, there came a huge tongue of yellow flame off the starboard side amid a titanic gust of wind that flung a pea-soup fog of reeking, blue-white smoke at them, stinging hot, and shot through with splinters, chunks, and burning embers! In that stentorian blasting roar, shrieks and screams could be heard. Things went wetly Plop! against the deck where they stood!
"Aah… that's part of a hand," Lt. Langlie said in a shuddery voice as he recognised the object.
"Get it overside, and let's sink the other one," Lewrie snapped, nauseated by the sight. The smoke of the broadside, and the blast, was clearing very slowly, and the second one still lived… somewhere out there.
"There, sir!" Marine Lt. Devereux shouted, pointing at a vague outline. It was the one-masted sloop, rounding up within a cable off Proteus's starboard quarter… chasing her!
"Six pounders and swivels, aim aft!" Lewrie shouted, gathering up his rifle. "Marines, put 'em down!"
"Eh! Eh! Heu! Heu! Canga, bafio tй!"
"Marines, cock your locks! Level… by volley… fire!"
"Canga, moune de le! Canga, do ki la!"
Lewrie took aim, the action at full cock, and squeezed the trigger of his Ferguson. The butt slammed back into his shoulder with an emphatic reassuring thump. His target, an "officer" in a blue coat over ebony skin and ragged field workers' trousers, clapped both hands to his face as the bullet took him in the left cheek, knocking his ornate cocked hat off as he left his feet and flew backwards into the tillerman and some sheet-tenders. The stutter of a volley of Brown Bess muskets followed a second later, and half a dozen Blacks were cut down, their cheering and shouting stopped. Swivel guns mounted in the metal forks atop the taff-rail and after starboard bulwarks barked and yapped, spewing handfuls of grape-shot or.75 caliber musket balls in a deadly hail that chopped down even more. Then the 6-pounders, loaded with roundshot and stands of grape-shot, began to fire, slamming so hard that chunks of hull and bodies were flung skyward, almost burying the sloop's bow in its own wave as it was bludgeoned to a stop.
"Canga, li!"
A torch was lowered to an open powder keg, the bearer bleeding from a dozen wounds, but still chanting and screaming at them. Before more musketry could bring him down, he smiled and shoved the fire into the keg- "Canga, li!" his dying comrades gleefully urged him!
"Duck!" Lewrie shouted, along with twenty others.
Not one hundred yards astern in Proteus % wake, the sloop went up in a boil of flame-shot smoke, smashing in every transom window and taff-rail lanthorn glass pane. A huge, feathery pillar of water arose, bearing up planks and oars, bits of mast, seared ropes, and gobbets of flesh… to patter down amid a foetid shower of seawater!
The people on the quarterdeck got back to their feet, mumbling and working their jaws, tugging at their ears from the assault on eardrums and sinuses. A few even bled from their ears and noses.
Astern, there were now two roiled circles of white spume, with only a few identifiable bits of wreckage to be seen
"Don't s'pose there's much point in looking for survivors, is there, sir," Lieutenant Langlie said; it wasn't a question. He looked stunned.
"No… I doubt there is, Mister Langlie," Lewrie replied, his own ears ringing like Bow Bells. With an outward calm he did not feel, he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, bit off a cartridge, then shoved it ball-first into the breech and cranked it shut. He primed the pan and closed the frizzen. "Now, let's come about and see to the other two boats, sir. Place us up to windward of them, and we'll use the larboard battery. No closer than two cables to 'em."
"Quite, sir," Langlie enthusiastically agreed.
"Carpenter to sound the well, and inspect the transom from the bilges up. Water carries the power of explosives better than air, I'm told," Lewrie prosed on, slinging the rifle, and turning to Andrews to take his double-barreled pistols to load and prime them, too. "We may have a plank stove in below the waterline from… that."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Anyone hurt?" Lewrie called out. "Yer bowels still work?"
His still shaken crew began to chuckle; even if more than a few were shifting their slop-trousers and clawing at their fundaments, as if their bowels had worked just hellish-fine, thankee.
"Ah, still living, Mister Winwood?" Lewrie chirped.
"Aye, sir. Never seen the like, sir," Winwood marvelled, about as much as Winwood could sound surprised by anything. "Why, they must be mad as a hatter to immolate themselves like that! Drunk as swine!"
"Anything t'kill oppressors, more-like, Mister Winwood," Lewrie speculated, still working his jaw, popping his mouth open like a fish to fully restore his hearing. "They tried t'sink us. Or die tryin'."
"They came out here deliberately then, do you think, sir?"
"Runnin' arms and powder along the coast," Lewrie said, shrugging in perplexity. "The roads must be horrid, with all those mountain ranges ashore, as bad as Italy. We were told that this L'Ouverture was out to invade Spanish Santo Domingo. We might have put a spoke in his wheel for a few weeks by intercepting these… madmen. Perhaps the other two boats'll tell us more. Do we take a prisoner or two?"
Wouldn't put it past 'em, Lewrie imagined, though; sent 'em out to sink a blockading ship? Lured us in? Was it deliberate? Jesus!
Proteus wore off the wind again to due West, well clear of her previous encounter, reduced sail, and ghosted down on the two crippled boats. In the short space of time since they had maimed them, one of them, the smaller sloop, had sunk, and only her bow bobbed upright in the sea, with a few wailing survivors clinging to it. The lugger was low in the water, and people were bailing with hats, pails, and their hands, others trying to rig a jury-mast from a pair of oars atop her planked-over forepeak, attempting to spread the leach and foot of her after lugsail to the wind by extending the oars out like cat's whiskers, with the tack of the sail shinnied up the foremast. As the frigate neared the lugger, wailing could be heard, and her crew, augmented by survivors from the sunken sloop, took up arms and stood trembling but game, some levelling their muskets at an impossible range.
"Pass the word for Surgeon's Mate Mister Durant," Lewrie said. "He speaks good French. Those slaves once got their work orders in it."
The larboard 12-pounders were run out and ready, the carronades and 6-pounders manned, as were the swivels. Devereux's Marines stood along the larboard gangway with their muskets, and a boarding party in Wyman's charge had cutlasses slung in baldrics over their shoulders, more muskets and pistols in their hands, and boarding pikes ready to deter any more suicidal charges.
"A point more alee, Mister Langlie," Lewrie ordered. And their frigate veered even closer to the lugger.
"Less than a cable, sir," Winwood warned.
"Mister Sevier… a shot from the bow-chaser! No shot across the bows… hull her if you can!"
The 6-pounder on the forecastle yapped, and its ball hit short but in line with the lugger, to carom off the sea and bound across her deck at head-height, scattering the close-packed Blacks, and killing a couple of the taller or slower ones.
"Ah, Mister Durant," Lewrie said, turning to the Surgeon's Mate. "Since my French is so execrable, perhaps you might try to make them see reason, and surrender. No one'll be harmed, tell 'em. I'll even let them go, once we've inspected their boat, and had a chance to interrogate them. They don't stand a mouse's chance, else. I'll set 'em ashore, unarmed, and I'll sink the boat, but they'll live. We're not grands blancs … we're British."