Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

"Aye, aye, Alan. Our normal routine," Ballard said shyly.

"And damned glad of it!" Lewrie commented as he went below.

There were, for once, lashings of fresh water aboard, sluiced into barrels from all the rain, and Lewrie, after waking from gummy-eyed sleep, was enjoying the pleasure of a bath from a lavish five-gallon bucket, when he heard a lookout cry that a ship was entering harbour.

He dressed quickly in clean clothing and dashed to the deck.

"Warship, sir," Lieutenant Ballard informed him as he lowered his telescope. "A sloop of war. Whippet, I do avow."

Lewrie borrowed the telescope to eye her himself. Yes, it was Commander Benjamin Rodgers's Whippet, of the bright redgunwales and a lower-steeved jib boom than the older sloop of war on station. A recognition signal flew from her main yard.

"Mister Mayhew, hoist this month's private signal in reply," Lewrie ordered. He gave Ballard his telescope back and scratched his chin, which still wanted shaving. "Cony, we'll breakfast Commander Rodgers, more'n like. And where's my coffee?"

" Tis a'comin' this minute, sir," Cony assured him.

" 'Nother hoist, sir!" Mayhew piped from the bulwarks, clinging to the starboard stays. "She's flying 'Make Sail,' sir. And here is a third, sir! 'Take Station on Me'!"

"Then we won't have breakfast ourselves," Lewrie spat. "Mister Ballard, pipe 'All Hands' and prepare to single up to the best bower. Mister Mayhew? Hoist 'Anchor,' then numeral Four, and hope he gets our sense."

Whippet prowled north and south off the coast, with "Make Haste" flying continually, until Alacrity had taken in all her anchors, made sail, and joined her. Once out of harbour, Whippet hoisted "Captain Repair On Board" and left it flying until Lewrie was in his gig, and being rowed across to her.

"Took you long enough," Rodgers commented sourly, so unlike his usual merry style.

"Your pardons, sir, but I had four anchors to get up after we took refuge from the storm last night. I trust our signals…"

"What, you no-sailor, you!" Rodgers laughed suddenly, becoming his charming self again. "Runnin' into a hurricane hole at the first half-gale? What's the Navy comin' to, I ask you?"

"You rode it out, I see, sir," Lewrie said, peering about the deck at the sailmaker and his crew who were stitching madly, at the hands aloft still reeving new stays and halyards.

"Had to lay-to with a single trys'l jib, a Spanish-reefed main tops'l, and the spanker at three reefs," Rodgers boasted. "Put out a sea anchor, and I was just about ready to spill ev'ry drop of oil we had, 'fore the storm passed. Nasty one. Had I been closer inshore, I'd have been tempted. Damaged, are you?"

"No, sir. Small stuff, mostly, easily set right."

"Good!" Rodgers exulted, cracking his palms together. "Damned good! There's work afoot, Lewrie! More bloody pirates!"

"Didn't know there was winter traffic enough to prey on, sir."

"Ran across a Spanish three-master yesterday off Great Isaac at the mouth of the Providence Channel. Thought it suspicious that she was makin' nor-nor'east close-hauled, as if she were goin' to put in for Grand Bahama, when there's not much here. Smugglers or banned traders, I thought at first. But when we got her hull-up, We saw a schooner with her, and then she flies up in-irons and ail-aback, and the schooner scoots off north fast as her little legs'd carry her. She'd been pirated, by God! Chased them until the storm came up, and then it was 'save y'rself!"

"Might have gone down in the storm, sir," Lewrie suggested.

"Only port on their course was here by Settlement Point, where they could strip their prize in private," Rodgers went on. "That's why I peeked in here, t'see if they'd sheltered an' hadn't cleared harbour yet. You saw no other vessel at all?"

"Once we got the anchors set, I couldn't see farther than the end of my arm, for all the rain, sir," Lewrie had to admit. "No."

"Damn!" Rodgers spat, all but stamping his foot on the deck in frustration. "Damn!" he reiterated. "She was too small to ride out a storm like that Smaller'n your little Alacrity. I was so sure…"

"Might have sheltered 'round north of us, sir, nearer the Bank, and we'd never have known it," Lewrie commiserated. "By Indian Cay."

Damme, all this folderol for nothing, then, he griped to himself? And I still haven't had me breakfast! Hmm… still…!

"Ah, sir," Lewrie added. "You took their prize back, and they were running here."

"The storm, dammit!" Rodgers groused.

"Not in the morning, sir," Lewrie said slyly. "And once they were aware a storm was building, they still ran for a lee shore during the afternoon? Doesn't make sense. Unless they had someplace specific in mind. Some hidey-hole. An uninhabited cay somewhere in the Little Bahama Bank where they felt snug. And a place to ride out a storm."

"Damme, but you're a knacky 'un, Lewrie! Of course!" Rodgers realized with a grin. "Where they thought Whippet couldn't follow 'em! You were right about Doyle's hideout, you may be right in this. Now look you here, sir."

"Aye, sir?"

"I draw twelve feet forrud, so I dasn't risk the Banks, but I could cruise offshore. You draw…?"

"Eight and a half, sir," Lewrie replied, getting a sudden onset of nerves. Damme, here we go again, tiptoeing through coral!

"North of Memory Rock yonder, there's a ten-fathom pass," Commander Rodgers schemed, oblivious to the harm Alacrity might suffer on this mission. "Mister Cargyle! Chart!" he shouted over his shoulder to summon his sailing master the way one would shout for a slow-coach waiter. "Ah, here! We both could enter. I'lltake the deeper water between Middle Shoal and the Lily Sand Bank, nor'east across the Bank to just north of Matanilla Reef. Alacrity will go inshore of me to exit through the Walker's Cay Channel farther south and east, and we meet up there. Then we'll both have a peek at Walker's Cay. 'Tis a famous pirate's lair of old. Mayhap these buggers're usin' it again!"

"Aye, aye, sir," Lewrie answered, knowing what Lieutenant Coltrop down in the Turks had felt like at last.

"Don't get too close to Walker's Cay, don't spook 'em out too soon, Captain Lewrie," Rodgers warned him. "If they're there."

"Should I be so fortunate as to get across the Bank in a whole vessel, I'll not, sir," Lewrie commented wryly.

"Still have that Trinity House sailing master, Gatacre aboard?"

"No, sir," Lewrie sighed. "Commodore Garvey promoted his first officer off Royal Arthur into the schooner I took, and sent 'Dread-Nought' away to survey the east coast of Andros."

"So Lieutenant Garvey is now third in Royal Arthur," Rodgers grunted.

"Rising like a spring tide, his career does, sir."

"Gawd, old 'Horry' must bloody love you these days!" Rodgers laughed. "Right, then! Off you get. Trinity House pilot or no."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Lewrie scrambled over the side into the stern sheets of his gig for a lumpy ride back to Alacrity after the salute had been paid to him. The sea was still fractious in the wake of the storm, and he held on for dear life.

At last, he thought, though; I'll get my coffee, my shave, and my bloody breakfast!

As the crow flies, it was only forty miles sailing from the deep-water entrance on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank, roughly eight miles north of Memory Rock, to deep water on the east side, in the middle of Walker's Cay Channel.

In the wake of the storm, though, the winds had gone lunatic. One hour they might have nor'easterlies, the next hour they'd clock around from the north or the nor'west The morning's watch had been sailed nearly close-hauled to weather, but in the afternoon, they even had winds up the stern from the west.

It took Alacrity all that first day to navigate her way eastward to the Lily Bank in waters than ran from twenty-seven to thirty feet deep, but near sunset, they encountered shallows not fifteen feet deep, and there was no pass through the Lily Bank and its myriad sand bars which lay bare or awash, with thousands of sea birds crying and wheeling over them as they fed on tiny reef fish or mollusks.

They anchored at true dark at about 78°32' west and 27° 10' north at the Lily Bank's southeast extremity, having covered only a heartbreaking thirty-two miles, eight tantalizing miles short of Walker's Cay.

Just a bit before sunrise the next morning, they found depth enough and open water to the nor'east, except for one quick fright when it shoaled around a circular submerged outcropping from eighteen feet deep to a bare ten. Then, within musket-shot of the northern side of Walker's Cay Channel, they'd shaved the topaz shallows of Matanilla Reefs southernmost tip to give the island a wide enough berth so any pirates in harbour would not be alerted, but giving Alacrity's lookouts a chance to spy out the anchorages.

They then headed out to sea to meet Whippet and report.

"Your schooner is there, sir!" Lewrie told Rodgers in his cabin, which Lewrie had to admit was even fancier than his own. "May not be your pirate schooner, but a schooner. And a three-masted ship, too."

"How near did you go?" Rodgers fretted. "Think they saw you?"

"No, sir," Lewrie grinned. "We struck our topmasts and reefed the gaff courses and jibs low to the deck, then kept off seven miles, with only our lower masts and fighting tops showing. They showed no sign of alarm, long as we had 'em in sight."

"Damned good, Lewrie!" Rodgers nodded in relief. "They must think we're still huntin' 'em off Grand Bahama, or goin' all the way north-about outside the Little Bahama Banks. Where exactly?"

Lewrie spun the chart around on the table, so everyone couldhave a good view; he and Rodgers, the sailing masters Fellows and Cargyle, and the first officers.

"They're in this long tongue-shaped inlet north and west of the island proper, sir," Lewrie sketched out. "They've rocks and shoals to their nor'west on the east side of Walker's Cay Channel, coral and exposed rocks north, and shallows on the east to Seal Cay. But there is a chain of tiny islets running nor'west from the western tip of the island. They're anchored here, half a mile or less off the beach by the last one west. They must have fifteen to eighteen feet depth in there, sir."

"Sand bars on the south side of Walker's Cay, too, sir," John Fellows stuck in. "They trail off south then east all the way to this Grand Cay. And there's reputed to be a one-fathom shoal sou'west of the island. About here, perhaps. Making one entrance channel into their sheltered inlet off those islets, sir."

Lewrie thought it odd that Cargyle said nothing at all, but he put that down to the man having been daunted by Rodgers' aggressive personality in the past. He thought it an unproductive relationship.

"They're in a cul-de-sac!" Rodgers elated. "If that shoal you suspect does lie to the sou'west, Mister Fellows, then there are only two escape routes. They come to deep water in Walker's Cay Channel and run out that way, or they take the eastern side of your shoal back down south over the Little Bahama Bank again. How big is it?"

"No one knows, sir, sorry to say," Fellows fidgeted nervously. "But… from the south end of this shoal nor'west of the island, one could reasonably expect a channel into the anchorage, and this long tongue inlet where they are moored of perhaps… mile and a half?"

"And were Whippet to be in the middle of that channel north of your mysterious shoal at dawn, her guns could cover anything that moved!" Rodgers sighed with pleasure. "And here is where I wish your Alacrity on the morrow, Captain Lewrie!"