Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

"Damn 'at boy," Buchanon spat as he witnessed the wind's death.

"Damn' quick response from old Aeolus." Lewrie frowned, trying to be philosophical about it. Nothing good lasted forever, after all!

The tiller ropes about the wheel-drum creaked as Spenser and a trainee were forced to ease her off the wind as it faded, as the ship sloughed and sagged to a closer, almost weary companionship to waves and sea. The apparent direction of the wind had veered ahead almost half-a-point, for ships working close to weather made half their own apparent wind, backing the true wind slightly more abaft at speed.

"West-nor'west, half north'z close as she'll lay, sir," the quartermaster said, with the frustrated air of a man who'd still won small on his horse that placed, but had lost almost as much on the one he'd backed to win.

"West-nor'west, half north it is, then, Spenser. Full-and-by," Lewrie agreed, just as frustrated. He leaned into the orb of candlelight from the compass binnacle lanthorn. Both their faces were distinct in the growing gloom, as if separated from their bodies.

Still, Alan supposed, with a petulant grunt; we'll weather the Scillies, and Land's End. Few leagues closer inshore, but…

"Grand while it lasted, though, was it not, Mister Spenser?" Alan commented easily. "A glorious, dev'lish-fine afternoon's sail."

"Oh, aye… 'twoz, Cap'um," the older man replied, his eyes all aglow deep under a longtime sailor's cat's feet and gullied wrinkles. With the sound of a gammer's longing for a lost-lost youthful love, he ventured to comment further. "A right rare'un, sir. Damn 'at lad."

"Another cast of the log, if you please, Mister Hyde," Lewrie called aft, stepping into the gloom. Eight Bells chimed up forward; the end of the Second Dog, and the start of the Evening Watch. "Mr. Buchanon, you have the watch, I believe, sir?"

"Aye, sir. Send th' hands below, then?"

"Aye. Nothing more to savor tonight." Lewrie sighed, moving to the windward bulwarks.

"I'll call, should…" Buchanon began, then wrenched his mouth in a nervous twitch, to keep from speaking aloud a dread that should best remain unspoken. Aeolus, Poseidon, Erasmus, Neptune, Davy Jones… by whatever name sailors knew them, the pagan gods of the wild sea and wind had, like e'en the littlest pitchers, exceedingly big ears! And like mischievous and capricious children, could sometimes deliver up from their deeps what sailors said they feared most.

Uncanny, it was, though-whistling on deck usually fetched a surplus of wind, rather than the lack. Gales and storm that blew out canvas, split reefed and "quick-savered" sails from luff to leech in a twinkling, leaving nothing but braces and boltropes. Never a fade, though, never a dying away. Nor one so rapid.

Perhaps tomorrow, Lewrie fretted; comeuppance comes tomorrow!

"Sir, we now log eight and one-quarter knots," Hyde reported at last, sprinkled with spray and damp from the knot log's line.

"Thankee, Mister Hyde." Lewrie nodded, keeping his gaze ahead, toward the west. Aye, we had ourselves a rare old thrash to weather, he thought; nigh two hours at ten to eleven knots! That's at least twenty more sea miles made good, due west, till… damn that boy!

At sundown, winds usually faded, replaced by night winds that might not be so stout, but usually remained steady in both vigor and direction. Clear weather winds did, at least.

And pray Jesus, that holds true, he grimaced. Stays like this the rest of the night… fade around sunrise, of course, for a bit, but that's nine hours at eight knots-say another seventy or so to the good. And only half a point to loo'rd of the best course I can hope to make, if the wind didn't get up, and make us reef in. If we don't get headed! Comes westerly again tomorrow, we'll either fall afoul of Ushant down south, or Land's End or the Scillies up north!

He decided to do his further pondering over charts in his great-cabins, where he could worry and smolder in private.

"Good evening to you, Mister Buchanon," Alan said, touching the brim of his hat in salute. "I wish you joy of the evening, sir."

"And a peace… ahem! And a good night to you, too, sir."

Lewrie nodded firmly at Buchanon's sensible reticence, and his rephrasing, then took himself to the larboard ladder to the gun deck.

Dispatches aboard, too valuable to lose, he mused; Frogs out in fleet strength… wind most like to die away to nothin', head us again… or come up by the bloody barge load, and…

Damn that boy!

Surprisingly, the winds did no such thing, the third day upon passage. There was mist, to be sure, light sunrise winds that slatted sails for a while, but most cooperatively backing to the SW or SSW again. Clouds stayed low and cream-jug pale for most of the day. At the end of the Middle Watch, when the crew was summoned to scrub and sluice, then stand Dawn Quarters, there was a lot of dew, the mists riming everything with damp. Sunrise wasn't ominously red. The fog and mist dispersed, but never quite disappeared, limiting visibility to a scant four miles around Jester, even from the crosstrees. Noon sights were educated guesses of how high that diffuse, cloud-covered sun ball was, but the consensus of results on the quarterdeck, except for Mister Spendlove's, which placed them somewhere on the same latitude as Iceland, showed them weathering the Scillies and Land's End. And dead reckoning, and the record of the knot log, suggested a position beyond the Scillies- almost 100 nautical miles west of the Lizard since yesterday noon.

And, with the wind backing southerly, Jester could come back to due west again, though only at seven or so knots on a light, tantalizing wind, and stand even farther out into the Atlantic.

And the sea. It was almost calm, mashed flat by a humid, and rather pleasant warmth, glittering and rolling, folding and curling not over three to four feet, more mirrorlike, more oily and without ripples; though the long Atlantic rollers made themselves felt. The ship rose and fell slowly and grandly, lifted, her entire length, by the long period of the scend, instead of hobbyhorsing. When pitch she did, or roll, it was a slow, creaky procedure, quite predictable and almost pleasant for all but the landsmen and new-come Marines, who "cast their accounts to Neptune " over the leeward rails. Faint wake astern, barely a bustle of disturbance down her flanks as water churned sudsy close aboard, and her forefoot cut clean and sure into the round-topped rollers, to part them with hardly any fuss at all.

Uncanny, Lewrie thought warily. Retribution's coming, sure as Fate. They're toyin' with us. Soon, it'll be roarin'. When we least expect it. Damme, I hate surprises!

Dawn of the fourth day was coolish and bracing, with a bit more life to the sea, the rollers now shorter-spaced and surging higher, in four- to five-foot swells. The wind backing even more, now all but out of the south! Toying with them, backing, then gusting up a touch, as it veered ahead a point or two. Yet still easily manageable winds.

Jester would luff up through the gentle gusts, driving close-hauled, and was able to maintain a base course of west-sou'west, and a half-hourly cast of the log showed a steady 7 Ѕ knots.

By noon sights, Alan was just about ready to start chewing his nails in fretful apprehension. And Mister Knolles and Mister Buchanon, two more who knew what whistling on deck could bring, stalked soft-footed about the quarterdeck as if the slightest misstep might bring the sky down on them like a tumbling house of cards!

"Sail Ho!" came a most unwelcome cry, from far aloft.

"Oh, Jesus!" Lewrie gawped in the middle of his fifth breakfast at sea, a forkful of treacly broken biscuit halfway to his mouth.

He was off and running, shrugging into his undress coat, cramming an old, unadorned hat on his head before the Marine sentry's musket butt hammered the deck without his cabins, and his leather-lunged announcement of "Mister Midshipman Spendlove, SAH!"

"Captain, sir," Spendlove began formally. "The first lieutenant's respects to you, and he bade me inform…"

"Yes, yes!" Lewrie snapped impatiently, preceding Spendlove to the quarterdeck. "Where away?" he demanded.

"Two sail!" came another shout from the topmast lookout.

"Sir," Knolles reported crisply, handing his captain his spyglass. "One sail on the larboard quarter, up to the nor'east, royals or t'gallants. Can't see her from the deck, yet. But, there's a second ship, sir… off the larboard beam, a touch southerly of us. Say, east-by-south to be her bearing? Just appeared moments ago, as these morning mists cleared. Royals and t'gallants, 'bove the horizon, sir."

"Thankee, Mister Knolles." Lewrie frowned. He took in the set of Jester's sails, the strength of the wind that flailed the commissioning pendant. Even close-hauled, Jester was loafing along in light morning air. The sunrise cast of the knot log had shown only a touch over seven knots, and the wind felt no fresher than when he'd quit the quarterdeck to go below a half-hour earlier. "Be back, shortly," he said, slinging the telescope over his shoulder.

He climbed atop the larboard bulwarks, swung out around the mizzen stays, and began to ascend the mast, recalling how terrified he had been, the first time he'd been forced aloft, so long ago. All these years, and it still hadn't gotten any easier! He thought, surely, he would be senior enough, and like many post-captains too stout, to have to do this; could stay on deck and let the younger and spryer be his eyes. Except he knew himself for an impatient "hound," and wondered, just before essaying the futtock shrouds, if he could ever be content with second-hand information.

Most careful for a good handgrip and sure feet, puffing some, he got to the deadeyes of the fighting-top after a breathless dangle on the futtock shrouds, scaling the underface of the outward-leaning ropes and ratlines. Then on to the mizzenmast crosstrees, far up by the doublings of the topmast, to take a perch on the bracing slats.

The vessel off to the east wavered in his ocular as he embraced the topmast with one arm. Ship-rigged, he saw; three sets of yellow-tan ellipses-tops'ls, t'gallants, or royals visible, with her hull and course sails still below the horizon. Swiveling to the nor'east, he spotted the second. She was more broadside on, with three umber rectangles of sail peeking over the indistinct rim of the sea.

He returned his interest to the nearest ship. Had she changed her aspect to them? When he first espied her, he'd thought she'd been beam-reaching west-nor'west across the wind, her upper yards and sails fatter and wider. Now, they looked narrower, more edge-on, her masts beginning to overlap in his narrow view-piece.

"Altering course," he muttered sourly. "Comin' over to 'smoak us'. Discover what we are. Well, sufferin' Jesus!"

An infinitesimal gay splotch of color burst forth upon her upper yards, vivid bits of flapping cloth. She was making a signal, as she came about hard on the wind. But, to whom? he wondered. It was hard to make out- plain red square flag atop, what seemed like the Blue Peter next-below, a yellow-white beneath that, and a fourth he couldn't make out. That, of acertainty, wasn't a recognition signal in the Howe System he knew; nor was it one of the private signals to identify one Royal Navy ship to another!

He turned back to the ship up in the nor'east. Sure enough, she was replying. Making a single hoist of what he took to be a red square with a white speck in the center. A one-flag signal-that could only be a reply to an order. More like, an affirmative. And it was not a British "Yes"! And was she turning, too, foreshortening the broadside view of her upper sails? Also coming onto the wind? Merchantmen had no desire to speak each other with flags. Nor be curious about strange vessels. A merchantman sailing independently would shy from the sight of any other ship, even were HMS Victory to heave up alongside with an invitation to dinner!