Dewey Lambdin - The King

"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!"

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.

"Now how the hell do I know when four minutes have passed?" Choate griped. Even the compass binnacle candle had been extinguished now, just in case. "Night black as a Moor's arse…"

"I hadn't thought about that, sir," Alan had to admit. "Perhaps if you prised the glass cover off your watch, sir? Read it by feel?"

"Not my watch, Mister Lewrie. My wife gave it me."

"My father gave me mine, sir," Alan stated.

"Mister Lewrie," Choate coaxed. " Tis for the King!"

"Excuse me, sir, I'll go aft into the passageway. Perhaps I'll find a glim there, sir."

Damned if he'd ruin a prize watch for anyone!

They were saved by Ayscough and the others coming on deck and issuing the instruction to come about. Ropes slithered and hissed through blocks. Sheaves squealed in those blocks loud as opera stars. Sails rustled and boomed, and the hull groaned loud as a storm as she adjusted to a new angle of heel, resettling her timbers in complaint.

There was nothing to see. And damned little light from the occluded stars to see by. The sliver of moon was not enough light to help pick out a man on deck were he dressed all in white.

"Keep close watch astern," Ayscough warned. "Just in case."

But there was nothing there, either. The only sign of motion on the sea were the taffrail lanterns in the cutter's stern, far out ahead of them, and those almost on the rough edge of the horizon, so low were they to the water, and so far off by now after their triangular diversion. It took a sharp eye to make out that there were two and not one, foreshortened together as they were.

"Well, damme," Ayscough muttered after half an hour had passed. "Where is that bastard? Not hide nor hair of him. Can't even smell him. Anyone see phosphorescence from his wake ahead? No? Damme!"

"Has to be ahead of us," Twigg insisted.

"Might have reefed for the night, same as us," Choate opined. "Still, even at the four knots we were doing before we turned, we'd at least be abeam of them. He'd have slowed to keep his interval."

"Or," Ayscough wondered aloud, "Sicard would have dashed on ahead. The cutter's lights are closer together than our taffrail posts by eighteen feet, and lower to the water. He might have cracked on more sail to catch up. Mister Choate, hands aloft. Lay out and let fall the tops'Is to the second reef. Loose t'gallants to the first reef."

"Aye, sir. Bosun, no pipes. Topmen of the watch lay aloft!"

"There, sir!" Hogue almost screamed from the larboard gangway ladder. "Something went between us and the cutter's lights! Two points off the larboard bows, sir!"

"Avast, Mister Choate. Quartermaster, put your helm down. One point closer to the wind. Make her head sou'sou'east," Ayscough barked. "Hands to the braces."

"Aye, sir," the quartermaster replied, spinning his spokes on the huge double wheel slowly. "Helm down a point. Sou'sou'east. Wind large on the larboard quarter, sir."

"Thus, quartermaster. Steady as she goes."

"Aye aye, sir. Sou'sou'east, thus," the man intoned.

Maddeningly, after that brief, tantalizing glimpse, there was still nothing to be seen. Another half an hour passed. They allowed the hands at Quarters to stand easy, or lay down to nap on the bare decks. They rotated the lookouts to allow fresher eyes to peer into the almost Stygian blackness, searching for their foe.

Another half-hour passed.

"There!" Percival rasped in a harsh whisper. "Hear it?"

Very faint, almost like a fantasy, there came a chiming.

"Six bells o' the evening watch," Ayscough agreed. "Damme, for us to be able to hear that, he has to be up to windward of us. And not too far to windward, at that!"

Hogue with his incredibly sharp eyes was back from larboard, tugging on the captain's sleeve, and pointing to their left, over the larboard side. The captain stood behind Hogue, letting his arm be a pointer. Ayscough sucked in a quick breath, then let it out in a sigh of contentment. "Ayyye!" he whispered.

There was something out there. Something a little more solid than the spectral shadows that had played at the edge of their vision for the last hour, the kind that are seen but not seen, apprehended and then lost to sight the harder one peered for them. This one did not go away.

"Helm down another half a point, quartermaster. Handsomely does it," Ayscough ordered.

"Aye, sir," the senior quartermaster agreed, grunting as he put his weight to the spokes, and the steering tackle ropes on the wheel barrel groaned softly. Three, four spokes of larboard helm, and Telesto leaned a bit as the wind came larger on her left beam.

"Yes!" Alan muttered. "Sir, a light!"

It wasn't much. A tiny, insubstantial afterthought of a light. Not so much the light itself, but the outer glow it threw, like the glow of a seaport under the horizon reflected on clouds.

"One… two…" Ayscough counted. "Yes, one at his binnacle, one forrud, that'd be by his fo'c'sle belfry. Damme, look at that!"

A smoky brown square appeared, barely discernible from black, behind the second glimmer, an almost butcher-paper brown.

"Captain's or wardroom quarter-gallery, sir," Alan supplied. 'They've some canvas screens or curtains over the windows, but there's a lantern behind."

"Aye." Ayscough was almost panting with excitement. "If he…" Ayscough held up his hands, calculating angles and distance. Left hand by the brownish hint of illumination, right hand and index finger aimed at the foremost glow like a gun. "Two points off the larboard bow, and I make the range to be two cables. We've got him! Mister Choate, wake the hands at Quarters. I intend to rake him in passing with the starboard battery. Boot him right up the arse. Then wear ship and give him the larboard battery from close aboard. If we take him by surprise he'll fall right down to us. To hell with the wind gauge! He'll not be expecting us to fight from leeward."

Alan dashed down below to the lower gun deck as midshipmen and ship's corporals passed their messages. He found Hoolahan, his Irish gunner, resting on a jute-bound bale of cloth bolts, silk bolts that were worth more money than his entire county back home. Owen, the senior quarter-gunner, was napping with his back leant against a carline post that supported the upper deck, his feet propped up on a crate of tableware worth a duke's ransom.

"Stand by, men. We've spotted him. Starboard battery first, right up his stern, then larboard guns at twenty paces."

They could hear gunports being drawn open overhead, and the heavy, dull rumble of gun-trucks as the eighteen-pounders were drawn foot by foot to emerge from the opened ports. They unpegged and opened their own. Cool night air, damp and salty, entered, making them all tremble with chill. With anticipation, and a little fear, too.

"Ah, yes," Alan said, sticking his head out a port. Once one spotted La Malouine, it was hard to believe that she could ever have been hidden by the night. There was the wash and greenish phosphor glow of her wake. The faintest reflection of that phosphorescence on her lower hull at the waterline, and those betraying glimmers of belfry and binnacle lanterns. "Can you mark her, Owen?"

"Uhmm… might need a set of younger eyes, sir. Here, Hoolahan, you could poach a bunny at midnight."

"Why, so oi kin, sor!" Hoolahan grinned, ever the cheerful one. "Jus' don't let 'im be loik t' last lot. Barely got the deck clean."

"Just look, don't prose on, boy," Owen groaned.

"Aye, sor. Mebbe cable, cable 'un t'half now, Mister Owen."

Telesto leaned to starboard more as she went up to windward. Gunners removed tompions, spun the elevating screws to compensate for the heel of the ship.

Greased slides whispered as the short, brutal thirty-two-pounder carronades were run out. Iron wheels creaked as the lay of the barrels was corrected. "Oi kin smell 'er now, sor. Gahh, bloody Frog stink!" "As you bear!" a voice shouted. "Fire!"

It crossed Lewrie's mind that this ship had better indeed be La Malouine, and not some parsimonious merchantman that begrudged even a ha'porth of whale-oil for lanterns.