"Fuck you," Lewrie mouthed slow and silent, hoping the bastard could read lips, then gave him a sly grin.
"And just who was that Chinee you pointed out to me, Lewrie?" Twigg asked, once they were outside after the ceremony was ended.
"He was the third partner in the brothel with Sicard and our jolly friend, sir," Alan replied. "He's not one of your pirates?"
"None I recognize, no," Twigg said, pulling at his long nose. "By the color of his button, he's well-connected. One of the Viceroy's staff. Too well-connected, for my liking. Could get us sent away empty-handed, if he wishes. Or ambush us down-river between here and Lintin Island once he boots us out."
"They couldn't get away with that, sir, not with so many ships in the Reach, armed as they are," Lewrie protested. "Why, we'd blow their city to flinders if they tried!"
"Nothing official," Twigg replied, frowning. "Set upon by… pirates… if you will. So sorry. Nothing to do with his Celestial Emperor's glorious navy, or his crooked mandarins. And trade is too good for anyone to protest too much, not this year. Just a country ship, not 'John Company,' they'll say back in London. Anyone wish to dispatch a fleet and army to Canton? No? Any questions for His Majesty's Minister? End of session, then."
"Arrogant shitten bastards," Lewrie spat.
"Who, Mister Lewrie?" Twigg asked lightly. "The Chinese and their arrogance? Or Parliament?"
"Little of both, mavbe. Mister Twigg."
* * *
"Excuse me, sir, you're wanted on deck!" Hogue said, bursting into the wardroom like a bombard. "All officers to the quarterdeck."
They grabbed their swords on the way, sure it was the suspected attack by pirates, or a demand they sail away at once.
"Surely they wouldn't dare, not in the middle of Whampoa Reach?" Burgess Chiswick panted as they dashed topsides. "Should I muster my half-company, d'you think?"
Ayscough and Twigg stood together by the taffrail of the poop, and they ascended in a thundering pack to join him aft.
"Just got a note from the Superintendent ashore at the 'John Company' hong," Ayscough explained, mad as any time Alan had ever seen him. "Seems we have to go ashore tomorrow and entertain more questions from the mandarins about the murder. And look yonder."
'The bloody bastards!" Percival shouted, quite beside himself and ready to tear up a section of taffrail to shred in his bare hands.
"Poisson D'Or's been ordered out of harbor," Ayscough grunted. "For the sake of the rest of the traders," he continued, the sarcasm hotly dripping. "Her chop's been withdrawn, and her cargo's been impounded."
"By the same mandarin Choundas and Sicard dealt with," Twigg surmised. "You may lay any odds you like there'll still be profit enough paid to Sicard to reimburse Choundas for this… penalty!"
Poisson D'Or had already gotten her anchors up, and was paying off from the land breeze with foresails and spanker, her hands aloft ready to let fall her tops'ls once her stern was clear of the American trading brig Salem Witch.
"Damme, to hell with the mandarins!" Alan cried. "Let's be after them, then! We'll never find the bastard until next autumn, else!"
"We'd be fouled by every mandarin junk in the river, Mister Lewrie," Ayscough snarled. "To keep us here for more 'questioning,' see? Might even touch off a war, them and us alone. Goddamn and blast that poxy French bugger! Goddamn him to the hottest fires of hell!"
"Smarter than I thought," Twigg sighed, sounding sadly amused. "I underestimated them, d'you see, gentlemen. Which mistake I shall not make again. They could have gotten Choundas' cox'n off with ten pounds' bribe paid to the court, but I suppose they thought it was better the poor wretch got scragged, so he couldn't talk. Now we know we're dealing with craftier foes. Choundas gets clean away, kicked out of the port, while we have to wait here for our cargoes to arrive. And Sicard stays here, ever the innocent, to keep an eye on us. After murdering the one man who knew most about the native pirates and their lairs. I hate to admit it, gentlemen, but they've made fools of us. And of me. This whole thing was planned long before we tailed them ashore the night Tom Wythy was knifed."
"They lured us, sir?" Mr. Choate asked.
"Aye, lured us. Gulled us, more like it," Twigg snorted. "One of us… Tom or I was to die that night. Perhaps both. To cripple our endeavor. Why else meet with a mandarin on the Viceroy's staff so openly? Trail their colors before us like a false fox? Then pin us in port with more questions, and boot Poisson D'Or out, freeing her to continue her plans for the next season's raiding. But before the next year is out, we'll have them, you mark my words!"
Damme, another year out here, Alan groaned to himself.
"Choundas might be waiting for us to sail in the spring," Ayscough said. "His ship and Sicard's combined against us."
"Ah, but for now, Captain Ayscough, our crafty little peasant has left something of great value behind in Canton," Twigg spat. "An item he cannot do without, or threaten us with such combination."
"And what is that, sir?" Ayscough wondered gloomily.
"Why, La Malouine, Captain," Twigg almost chuckled. "Sicard and La Malouine. Mister Percival said something a few weeks ago that set me to thinking. I believe he was correct."
"Sir?" Percival gawped, swelling with pride, but unsure about what he had done in spite of himself.
"Who has the largest crew? Sicard. But who has the frigate-built ship with more gunports? Choundas. Somewhere out at sea, in the islands, perhaps among the native pirates, I believe these two ships trade hands back and forth. Perhaps there's more of his fell crew waiting with the Mindanao pirates or the Sea Dyaks even now for his return for them. Well, at the moment, he's a little short of the wherewithal, and shall be for some months, if La Malouine will play the innocent here in Canton."
"No point in her not, sir," Ayscough agreed. "There's little profit in taking an outward-bound vessel, 'less he's willing to give up hands enough to take her all the way back to France. Better he lays low until the opium and silver start heading for Canton next summer."
"Then once Sicard sails, we follow him, and he leads us to Choundas, sir?" Choate asked. "Then it's two ships against our one."
"Aye, he'd like that, I'm thinking," Twigg replied, nodding. "In fact, this departure could be another ruse to draw us out, with Sicard in pursuit a few days later for just that purpose. Well, we shall not be drawn, sir. Truly, we shall not."
"It occurs to me, though, sir," the first officer went on. "Surely, if we know who he is now, sir, and may lay this plot to our government officials back in Calcutta, there'd be a stiff note to the French ambassador, and the game's blocked at both ends for them. And they know who we are, more's to the point, Mister Twigg. Surely, this Choundas'll haul his wind and cut his losses. Go back to France."
"And go home a failure?" Twigg barked, rounding on Choate. "I think not. That wouldn't show him clever enough to remain a secret. And if we did send a 'stiff note,' as you say, it's fourteen to eighteen months before a reply could be sent out here from London or Paris. Once they'd wrangled over where the commas go. And who'd take his place, sir, soon as we're called home? How many more ships'd disappear the next time? Well, we're here now, and we have a chance to stop this bugger's business so thoroughly the French'll give up on the whole bloody idea. Wrap things up neat and proper before we lay eyes on the Lizard."
Poisson D'Or let fall her tops'ls as she took the night wind abeam, drifting slantwise away from her anchorage. Her taff-rail lanterns were burning, as were many smaller work-lights to illuminate her crew's labors. They could espy Choundas by the quartermasters by her wheel on the quarterdeck. They could watch him stroll over to the starboard bulwarks to look back at them as his ship's bows turned down-river.
There was just enough light, for those with telescopes, to see the smug sense of victory on his face.
IV
Chapter 1
In March, the trading season ended in Canton. Whampoa Reach emptied slowly, as ships drifted down-river to Macao, at the mouth of the Pearl River estuary. For many traders and merchants, their families awaited them, and for a time, Macao rang with balls and parties in celebration of a successful season. For some ships, there was time enough to celebrate their freedom from the strictures of Chinese law in one of the most sinful seaports known to mankind, then hoist anchor and hope for the best in the South China Seas as the winds shifted more favorably for Calcutta, Pondichery, Chandernargore, He de France in the middle of the Indian Ocean or all the way to the Cape of Good Hope to begin the long voyage home laden with the treasures of the Far East.
Telesto was one of the first ships to put to sea after two perfunctory days of revel and refit in Macao, bearing south for the Johore Straits and the Straits of Malacca. And in her wake, sure as Fate, another ship dared the changing Monsoon winds-Sicard and La Malouine. They could recognize her, hull down over the horizon, during the first day of passage. And though she fell back until only her tops'ls could barely be espied as the days passed, she was there every morning, the sight of which tops'ls made Twigg almost hum a snatch of song now and again in sheer delight.
"Ship's company, off hats!" Lieutenant Choate commanded. The hands, brought aft by the summoning call from the "Spithead Nightingales," the bosun's pipes, took off their flat-brimmed dark tarred felt hats, or the tarred woven sennet ones, and stood swaying and shuffling in a dense pack.
Perhaps they thought it was a call aft to witness punishment.
The sight of their officers and mates wearing steel on their hips was rare. Rarer still was Chiswick's half-company of native sepoys clad in dhotis, red coats and cross-belts, tricornes and puggarees for the first time in over six months, drawn up like a Marine detachment on a proper warship with their muskets held stiffly at shoulder arms, Chiswick and his native subadar and havildars before them.
"Men!" Captain Ayscough began in a rumble that could carry as far forward as the fo'c'sle belfry. "I know there have been some rumors flying below decks about just what it is we're doing out here."
Amen to that, most of the men nodded in agreement.
"What are we doing with such a heavy battery hidden away below. Why do we have Hindoo troops with us," Ayscough continued, hands in the small of his back and rocking easily to Telesto's motion from the vantage point of the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist and upper gun deck. "Maybe you wondered why we run this ship 'Admiralty Fashion.' And, I'm sure, since poor Mister Wythy's death in Canton, you've been wondering what led to it. Well, it's come time to tell you all. It's the French, lads! The bloody French!"
Ayscough sketched out for them the fact that they were a Navy vessel in disguise. He outlined what Sicard and Choun-das were up to with the native pirates. How good English sailors had been overcome and slaughtered far from home for opium and silver by not only native pirates, but by the French as well.
He drew a sheaf of documents from one large side pocket of his dark blue frock coat. "I bear a Letter of Marque from 'John Company,' lads! I hold active commission from our good King George the Third! And I have a Frog pirate lurking off my stern-quarters! They risked drawing steel on Mister Lewrie, one of your officers. They murdered an agent of the Crown back in Canton, and then their leader, Choundas, threw his henchman's life away, let him be strangled to death at the hands of those Goddamned heathen Chinee rather than let him answer questions! Choundas is out here somewhere, men, and we're going to find him and kill him, him and all his sneering, torturing, Godless Frog crew. And any pagan pirate that'd deign to shake hands with him. For now, though, the ship that gathers up his spoils, washes good English blood off their foul booty and sails the seas acting innocent as your own babies, is astern of us. Well, we'll stop this bugger's dirty business. We'll do it to save the lives of other God-fearing English seamen. We'll do it to revenge Mister Wythy's murder. And we'll do it to put such a fear of retribution into the bastardly Frogs and all their help-meets in these waters that them that survived'll tremble in their beds and piss their breeches whenever they think of it!"
There was a ragged howl of agreement with Captain Ayscough's sentiments. No fouler creature drew breath than a Frenchman, to true English thinking. No Jolly Jack would abide a pirate. Unless of course he was English, and preyed on other nations' shipping-then he was Drake and Robin Hood rolled into one. And sailors were a most sentimental lot, their feelings simple sometimes, but close to the surface, and closely held dear. Ayscough had them.
Except for one hand, speaking for a pack of whispering mess-mates. "Er, 'scuse me, Cap'um, but… er… beggin' yer pardon an' all, sir, don't mean ter… uhm…"
One of his mates gave him a nudge. "D'zat mean we goes back ter Navy pay, Cap'um?" he finally stammered out.
"It does not!" Ayscough smiled. "Merchantman pay-rate until we pay off back home in old England!"
If anything, that raised an even greater chorus of cheering. "Mister Abernathy, we shall splice the mainbrace!" Ayscough said in conclusion. "Mister Choate? Dismiss the hands."
"Ship's company, on hats and, dismiss!" Choate yelled. "All hands forward to splice the mainbrace!"
Abernathy and his Jack in the Bread Room, the assistant purser, went below with a bosun's mate, master-at-arms and ship's corporals to fetch out a keg of rum. There would be no debts due on this issue. No "sippers" for sewing another man's kit back up, for taking a watch, or for a favor or debt. All would get full, honest measure in addition to whatever issue came at seven bells of the forenoon watch at "clear decks and up spirits."
"Still there, Mister Hogue?" Ayscough shouted up to the cross-trees of the main-mast.
"Still there, sir!" Hogue assured him with an answering yell. "Mister Percival, I'd admire you hoisted the cutter off the midships tiers in the day watch. And dismount the taffrail lanterns."
"Aye, sir," Percival replied.
"Mister Choate, gun drill in the day. watch as well. Sharpen 'em up. Say, an hour and a half on the great guns, and then rig out boarding nettings along the bulwarks, and chain slings aloft on the yards. Strike useless furniture below once it's dark."
"Aye, sir."
"Aye, sir," Percival replied.
"Mister Choate, gun drill in the day. watch as well. Sharpen 'em up. Say, an hour and a half on the great guns, and then rig out boarding nettings along the bulwarks, and chain slings aloft on the yards. Strike useless furniture below once it's dark."
"Aye, sir."
"Mister McTaggart, fetch a spare stuns'l boom and a boat compass to install in the cutter, if you'd be so good, sir."
"Aye aye, captain."
"Before dawn, gentlemen, this bastard Sicard will wish he never laid eyes on our Telesto" Ayscough predicted grimly. "We'll begin to get some of our own back with these poxy Frogs!"
It was a nacky ruse, Lewrie had to admit as he saw it put into service. The heaviest ship's boat, the thirty-six-foot cutter, was swayed off the tiers and lowered over the side around three in the afternoon. A studding sail boom about twenty feet long and six inches thick was lashed across her sternposts. At each end of the boom, a heavy glass lantern had been lashed. The captain's cox'n was put in charge of her, given a boat compass and a small crew to set sails, a barricoe of water and some dry rations in case they were away from the ship for longer than planned, and then they were paid out to be towed astern. They were given muskets, pistols, cutlasses and a small boat-gun mounted in the bows, partly to counteract the weight of the lanterns and boom. The cox'n was entrusted with slow-match, flint and tinder, and a hope they could find them in the morning.
As the late afternoon progressed, and the armorer's whetstone competed with the fifers, fiddlers and pipers, Telesto's lower courses were reduced, taken in by one reef. The stays'ls between the fore and main-mast, and the stays'l between main and mizzen, were lowered. The ship soughed a little less lively in the sea, slowing by perhaps half a knot. Just enough to allow La Malouine to draw a few miles closer to them before full dark, so that any lookout from her cross-trees or upper royal mast cap could just barely, with a strong telescope, make Telesto out as riding a slight bit higher above the horizon- enough to make out her tops'Is in full and reassure them she was still there.
Chiswick and Lewrie paced the quarterdeck, from nettings on the starboard side to the taffrail and back, each time pausing by the stern to raise a telescope, though seeing anything from the deck was a forlorn hope. The sun was westering rapidly, and the skies to the east were already gloomy, the skies to their starboard side going amber and the high-piled billows of clouds beginning to take on the colors of sunset in one of those magnificent tropical displays.
"I would suppose the timing of this is rather tricky," Burgess opined, staring down at the cox'n and his crew, lazing happily in the cutter being towed about one decent musket-shot astern in their wake. With time on their hands, one definite job to do and sheer, blessed idleness until they were let slip, they were napping or skylarking to their hearts' content.
"I've heard of it done, mind," Alan admitted. "Never thought I'd see it attempted. Like club-hauling off a lee shore. At least the moon's going to cooperate. Be dark as a cow's arse by eight of the clock. What little is left before the new moon'll get hidden by those clouds, too, I trust."
"What if this Frog sails up too close?" Burgess asked.
"Then we might go about and give him a sharp knock, anyway."
"God in Heaven, what if it's not him, after all?" Burgess fretted. "I mean, it could be any ship, couldn't it? This Sicard could have slacked off once he saw we were headed south, let another ship pass him, and gone off to play silly buggers with his pirate friends."
"If that happens, Burge," Lewrie assured him with a wry grin, "we'll look like no end of idiots. Or Captain Ayscough will."
That would kick the spine out of the crew, Alan thought, taking on some of Burgess' fretfulness and turning to stare at the captain and Mr. Twigg up forward by the wheel binnacle. All the spine he'd put in them that morning. It made the hands easier to control if they knew what they were about, he realized, and he'd seen enough examples of captains who explained things to their crews. Contrariwise, there was the risk of saying too much of one's expectations. And when those expectations or predictions turned out false, a captain could expect to lose renown in his own ship, making the seamen and mates, even the officers, suspect his abilities the next time.
If the ship astern of them turned out to be something other than La Malouine, it would be disastrous for morale. Not to mention the no-end-of-shit wrangling if they fired into a stranger, or loomed up on her beam like… well, like a pirate, themselves!
"Could be just about anybody back there," Burgess reiterated.
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Alan harrumphed. "Let's not go borrowing trouble, Burge. It has to be La Malouine. She chanced the taifun weather to keep an eye on us. She's been there big as life and twice as ugly, every hour since we left Macao. Why would Sicard go off east now, when he's just as loaded as we are with profitable cargo? He has to get it to Pondichery and send it home in one of their Indiamen or lose money. I doubt King Louis could pay the bastard that much, else."
"I've been wondering…" Burgess began again, sounding a bit more tremulous and doubting.
"Ye-ess?" Lewrie drawled lazily.
"If Sicard is dogging our heels like this, that must mean that Choundas is somewhere up ahead. Where they could combine against us," Burgess mused as Lewrie turned to go forward again, leading the Army man with him wordlessly. "He left Canton the end of November last year. Time enough to get back to wherever he's based, re-man his ship, clean her bottom to make her faster. What did you call it?"
"Careen and bream," Alan replied. "Yes, I'd expect him in the Malacca Straits, if that's what he was doing. Narrow waters, where we have to pass. But remember, it's patrolled out of Bencoolen, and other ships'd be about. Perhaps too many for what he has in mind. He can't let anyone see him fighting us. He's supposed to remain as covert as we are, mind. Maybe farther north, on the eastern side of the Malay peninsula. Closer to the Johore Strait."
"Among the native princes," Burgess grimaced. "And pirates."
"Never let it be said that you don't give a world of joy to your companions, Burge," Alan moaned sarcastically.
"I only speculated to pass the time," Burgess replied, a trifle archly. '"Tis not my nature to get the wind up over nothing. Like some sailors of my acquaintance. Or is that the result of a pea-soup diet?"
"That's a natural wind," Alan told him, tapping the stiff back of Chiswick's cocked hat to tip it forward over his nose.
"I know what you and Caroline think of me, Alan," Chiswick said stiffly, refusing to be japed out of his sulk. "A calf-headed dreamer. Too starry-eyed to prosper. I heard you that day we came back from Sir Onsley's. It's because I wept in the boat when we escaped Jenkins Neck after Yorktown, isn't it? Well, what Governour did to that little shit… he had it coming, I know that, now. But it was against everything we'd fought for up to then. He shot him in the belly, a fifteen-year-old little hound. But a civilian hound, Alan. He wasn't even armed. It wasn't right. And I had a perfect right to be upset. Well, how much of a hard-handed warrior do I have to be before I live that down with you?"
Burgess' elder brother had put a dragoon pistol into the lad's stomach and blown it away, down low where it wasn't immediately fatal, so death was days away. Days of unspeakable agony. He'd gotten past their pickets, run all the way through the marshes and creeks to tell the French and Virginia Militia they were at his mother's plantation down Jenkins Neck. If not for him and his misplaced heroism, they'd have gotten clean away, and half of Governour and Burgess' men would still be alive; half of Alan's seamen would be home now on a pension, or enjoying life. A lot of Virginians in their Militia would still live, and the stern veterans of Lauzun's Legion would be swilling cheap vin ordinaire, slurping down snails and veal cutlets in some French tavern, instead of laid out in death-rows by the Ferguson rifles and his sailors' cutlasses. It had been a smoky horror, at little more than arm's reach, and when it was over, the dead greatly outnumbered the living. All for nothing. Corn-wallis had surrendered and the war was to all purposes over and lost. Governour had lost neighbors and lifelong friends from his orphaned detachment of North Carolina Loyalists. He'd done what felt right at the time, yet Burgess stumbled into the boat, shaking like a whipped puppy.
"I hold nothing against you, Burgess," Alan whispered softly. "I doubt you gave the harsh side of life, and soldiering, enough thought before you took this commission. And Caroline and I were worried about you out here in the East Indies. Mind, now," he said, taking Chiswick by the elbow, "that was before I even suspected I'd be stuck out here myself!"
"You didn't volunteer to"-Burgess gasped-"to look after me for Caroline's sake?"
"Do I look that stupid?" Alan sighed.
"Yes, I thought you did. Ah, I see. Sorry, Alan. All this time, I thought you'd volunteered, for Caroline," Burgess fumbled. "I mean, the volunteering part. Not about your looking stupid, ey?"
"That's a fine relief."
"Excuse me, I've been nursing this… not a grudge, actually, ever since we sailed. I was rather glad to see the back of you when I went ashore in Calcutta. And here we were, together again, and I thought it was your doing. Something you said to your father, Major Willoughby."
"Burgess, you idiot!" Alan grinned. "The less I have to say to Sir Hugo, the better, man! No, I'm not your governess. And, no, I never held you in less respect because of Jenkins Neck. I think you're a glory-hunting fool sometimes, but that don't signify. You're not as brutal and direct as your brother Governour, so yes, I do think you less suited for all this death-or-glory venturing. But that don't mean I consider you soft."
He still had his doubts about that, but Burgess was a friend.
"God bless you, then, Alan," Burgess brightened, standing taller in his own estimation, and what he took to be Alan's. "Here's my hand on it. It wasn't concern for a helpless fool you felt. It was concern for a friend. A firm friend, I trust."
"Aye to that, Burge," Alan replied, shaking hands with him.
"A fellow I'd be proud to have as a relation someday."
"Thankee kindly for your opinion, Burge," Alan said, feeling cornered. Now the little oaf was buttock-brokering his sister at him! Maybe I'd be better off if he despised the very air I breathe! I'm much too young for that, sweet as Caroline is, he thought.
"Ahoy, the lookout!" Ayscough wailed upwards to the cross-trees. "Still there?" His permanent litany, it seemed.
"Royal 'bove the 'orizon, sir!" the lookout shouted back.
Just after full darkness, before the last waning sliver of moon-rise, they let slip the cutter. Telesto had brailed up her main course, taken a first reef in all three tops'ls and reduced her t'gallants to third reef to reduce their silhouette against what was left of the sunset horizon. From the deck, it appeared they were alone on the ocean, an ink-black shadow on an ink-black sea.
With lug-sail winged out, and a small jib set forward, the cutter paced alongside Telesto for half an hour, slowly drawing ahead from stern-quarters to bow-sprit. From sprit-s'l boom to larboard bows: a cannon-shot away, another spectral imagining.
"Four knots, sir," Alan reported to Ayscough after a check of the knot-log. Ayscough nodded and drew out his pocket watch, leaning over the single candle in the compass binnacle to read it. Other than that one tiny glimmer, the ship was dark as a boot.
"Eight of the clock. Sound eight bells forrud. End of the second dog-watch," Ayscough ordered.
Ting ting… ting ting… ting ting… ting ting, the last echoing on and on. Time to begin the evening watch. Time on a well-run ship to call the lookouts down from aloft and post the oncoming watchstanders on the upper deck vantage points. Time to recover the hammocks so men could sling their beds on the mess-decks and sleep, for ship's corporals to prowl about below to see if every last glim was extinguished for the night. Time to light the taffrail lanterns to help illuminate the quarterdeck for the watch-keepers, and warn other ships of her presence to avoid collision.
Ahead on the larboard bows, there was a tiny flurry of sparks as the captain's cox'n struck flint on steel, several times, until the tinder caught. A brief flare of light. Then the sullen ruby glim of a burning slow-match swaying about in the darkness.
"And the Lord said, let there be light," Ayscough whispered, as first one, then the other taffrail lantern began to glow their yellow whale-oil cheeriness.
"Mister Choate! All hands on deck! Stations to come about!"
Chapter 2
If he holds his course, sir," Mr. Brainard said in the airless chart space, all ports and doors, all partitions doubly cloaked in covert canvas, "at a pace of about… uhm, say five knots with night-reefs aloft, he'd be here by now." A pencilled X appeared on the ocean chart. After a moment's thought, Brainard drew a guesstimate circle around the X. "We put about here, nor'west with the wind abeam, at ten past the hour. Held that course for one hour, tacked to east, sou'east at ten past nine of the clock. We should, if God is just, be somewhere off his starboard stern-quarters now. We should see him dead ahead, or slightly…"
"Excuse me, sir, Mister Choate's compliments, captain, and the hands are at Quarters," Lewrie reported, leaning through the folds of canvas that served as a light trap for one betraying lantern that swayed and winked coin-silver bright over the chart table.
"Any sign of his lights, Mister Lewrie?" Ayscough asked.
"None, sir."
"He's sneaking along to trail us like a foot-pad in a London fog," Twigg sniffed. "All the more sign he's out there. An innocent ship would be burning her running lights."
Evidently, Twigg and Ayscough had shared the same doubts Burgess had expressed earlier as to the identity of their dogged pursuer.
"As I was saying," Brainard continued, marching a brass divider across the ocean chart slowly, punching a small pin-hole in the paper and turning to protractor and rule. "Do we come about to our original course in… ahhumm… five minutes, say, and we'll be astern of him. He should be dead ahead, or fine on the larboard bow. I say five minutes, so we do not overrun his track in the dark."
"Very well," Ayscough grunted, satisfied as much as he was going to be until he could throw rocks at La Malouine and hear them go chunk. "Six after ten. Mister Lewrie, let me see your watch? Ah, with mine. My respects to the first officer, and he is to lay the ship back on our original course of sou'sou'east half south in… four minutes."
"Aye, sir," Alan replied, stumbling out of the chart space to fumble his way to the passageway that led forward to the quarterdeck. He relayed his message to Choate.