Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"Company, sir," Lewrie reiterated, completely sure of his facts this time. He shared a wary glance with Knolles and Buchanon, who were more familiar with the eerie by then. It would be impossible to explain it all to Rodgers, anyway. It just was, no matter how improbable.

"Mister Knolles, pipe the starboard watch on deck. My respects to Mr. Crewe, and he is to reman the guns to larboard. Marines to get up and turn-to, double-quick," Lewrie intoned.

Toulon was peering outboard most intently by then, turning about to present himself sideways, as if to loom larger to a so far undiscovered challenger.

Then, from out of those mists where Toulon was staring…

"Boat!" Lewrie cried, the same time as the larboard bow lookout.

Ghostly, a dull grey phantasm that suddenly stood out stark upon that pearlescent fog… suddenly, there was a boat. A small, dhow like two-master. And, most ominously, a hint of others astern of her!

"Mmmuurrr!" Toulon moaned, rather murderous, capping it off with a vicious hiss-and finally, a spit.

"Sir!" Buchanon whispered from his left, pointing down over the larboard side, yet off to the larboard beam. "Lookit!"

Lewrie tore his gaze from the dhow, perhaps the very same one that had come near enough to "smoak" them the previous afternoon. He saw nothing.

"Lookit, sir!" Buchanon said with a shuddery hitch to his voice. "Closer aboard, Cap'um."

Wull, stop me! Alan frowned as he spotted something.

The sea was grey-dark, oil-slicked with dawnlight, and still so millpond-smooth and flat, with barely a wind-fleck, hardly a hint of a roller to disturb its faint glittering… yet disturbed by a tiny vee of a wake which spread back from the head of a seal. He saw the short be-whiskered muzzle, the sleek brown pate, a limpid eye… fleeing.

And far off, on the rocks unseen off the starboard bows, south of the village, there came faint splashing sounds, a fog-muffled dog-pack of frantic cacophany.

The bark of seals!

"Thought it a fair omen, havin' seals here, sir, after so many months," Mister Buchanon uneasily muttered. "Now, though… way 'ey're actin', Cap'um Lewrie…"

Andrews was on the quarterdeck, Cony by the larboard gangway bulwarks along with many of the crew, those from the West Country who had always believed, those newlies who'd seen and heard strange things and come to believe; especially after their ship's first eerie, eldritch encounter in the Bay of Biscay as she'd begun this commission, with the unspoken messages which came from the seals.

"Don't start, Mister Buchanon, 'tis tense enough already," Alan said, feeling a shiver go up his spine, yet trying to maintain outward calm for his superstitious hands, who were turning to stare at their "lucky" captain.

The seals came to him, to Jester. Lir s Children. Cursed or blessed they were, the Selkies of the ancient pagan myths, and harbingers of that forgotten god of the sea, Lir, who seemed to hold the ship, crew and captain in the cusp of his hand, his favourites of fortune… or his unwitting weapons. Lir's Children, the seals. And they were fleeing, splashing into the sea for safety, though greater, toothier terrors awaited them there, who made meals of them; all their playful curiosity abandoned in the face of perhaps an even greater danger.

"Oh, 'tis a bad sign, sir," Buchanon all but whimpered; him, a man grown to the fullness of his strength and courage. "A bad cess."

"A bad business for certain, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie agreed, clenching his jaws stonily expressionless. "No matter it is our commanding captains wish. Cess, though? Don't think so. Hope not."

" 'Ere's no good goin'ta come from 'is, Cap'um."

"Perhaps not, sir," Lewrie allowed, with a tilt of his head to one side. He reached down to stroke his cat down the back, trying to gentle and cosset him, but Toulon was having none of it, came within a hair of lashing out blind with one claw-sprung paw as he gave out one more heartfelt, menacing growl. Yet, instead of springing down to take himself below to the safety of the orlop, as he did during gun-drill or battle, he stayed-hunkered up and sheltering against Lewrie s cloak, and licking his chops in fear, but he stayed.

"If God is just, sir," Lewrie sighed, "and Lir means to watch over us, too, o' course… I think he's warnin' us. Not dooming, hmm?"

"Watch our backs, do we deal with 'ese… wotchyacallems…"

"Serbs, Mister Buchanon." Lewrie nodded. "Aye, we're warned."

There were five boats, Lewrie could take note by then. Small, mostly, no more than thirty-five to forty feet overall, the bulk of them. All rigged with two masts in Eastern, lateen, fashion. Following last of all, a three-masted spectre slowly emerged from the fog. She was long, lean and low, a galliot or xebec -a war galley-of about seventy-five to eighty-five feet in length. The sun had at last arisen, lancing over the Balkan mountaintops from the east, setting light to the mists so that half the dawn's horizon was set afire with a most foreboding crimson and saffron umbra that backlit the galliot and made her stand out starkly black, every bit of rigging, every sail, every peering crewman cut from black paper and plastered to the sunrise… a silhouetted apparition.

Their pirates, it seemed, had at last arrived-pirates they'd been sent to seek, to discover and enlist. But, Lewrie felt deeply in the pit of his stomach, pirates their seeming patron Lir wished to have no truck with.

Red sky at morning, sailor take warning-

And the frightened seals.

Warned, aye, Lewrie thought grimly; aye, and thankee.

Now that their quest was ended, and their dealings with these strange creatures was about to begin… they'd been damned well warned.

"Like treadin' water 'mongst a pack o' sharks," Will Cony said, scowling hellish-black as the rakish craft approached within hailing distance, dividing and passing down the larboard side, between the village and Jester's starboard side, or astern to flaunt their courage, almost under Pylades' guns, and within "close pistol shot."

"Like the Lanun Rovers at Spratly Island," Lewrie whispered,

"Well, sir… least there's only th' six. An' not thirty of 'em, this time," Cony replied with a mirthless snicker. "Manageable."

"Odd, how things turn out," Captain Rodgers commented, flexing his fingers on the hilt of his small-sword. "Coincidence, hey? Think back. I could swear this is the same lot you drove off from that Dutch merchantman in th' Hvar channel, Commander Lewrie."

"Then they've already had a taste of our iron, sir," Lieutenant Knolles vowed. "Perhaps they'll know to mind their manners 'cause of it."

"Perhaps, indeed," Rodgers mused impatiently, waiting for their vaunting show of seamanship and braggadocio to end, and the negotiations to begin.

"Deuced cocky buggers, sirs," Midshipman Hyde decided to say for them all.

"Anyone see artillery?" Rodgers snapped.

"On the largest, sir," Lewrie pointed out. "Looks to be a pair of six-pounders forrud. She's gun-ports to either beam, but I can't see much beyond some very old, long-barrel swivels, or boat-guns."

"Just the one six-pounder or so forrud on the next-largest, sir," Midshipman Spendlove was quick to contribute. "And more swivels."

The seamen who crowded the rails of the pirate ships were armed, and were most happily brandishing their weapons, all but ululating like painted Red Indians. They were armed with curvy, scimitarlike swords and matching daggers, some very long and slim Arabee muskets with convoluted, curling butts, some inlaid with ivory or brass, like the Hindoo jezails Lewrie'd seen in the Far East, at Calcutta, or among the Mindanao pirates.

"Damme if 'at's a swivel-gun, sir," Buchanon exclaimed, pointing at the nearest forty-footer. "I could swear 'at's a falconet! A wrought-iron breech-loader! Barrel made o' hammer-welded iron rod bundles, an' hooped t'gether. Beer mug sorta iron cartridge gets stuck in the rear o' I th' barrel, an' wedged in place. Lord, sir, 'at was old in the days o' th' Spanish Armada! Blow up, peel apart, an' shoot backwards, if yer not careful with 'em, so 'twas said."

"Dhey are heffing grade need ohf you… unt your veapons, ja!" Leutnant Kolodzcy archly sniffed. "You see how I dell you? Ach, now we be beginnink."

The local vessels had at last left off their pirouettes to show off their prowess, and their lack of fear, and were handing their sails and coming to anchor in a loose gaggle off Jesters bows, where they'd be safe from artillery fire. A boat was got down from the larger two-masted dhow and made its way to the galliot, even as a second boat was being hoisted over from her, and a boat-crew broke out her oars.

"What sort of side-party does a pirate captain rate, I wonder?" Lewrie japed. "What sort of honours should we award him, Leutnant Kolodzcy?"

"None, herr Kommandeur Lewrie," Kolodzcy prinked with asper sion. "You show him nothink. No gondempt… but no honours, eidder."

"No side-party, Mister Knolles. No pipes."

"Aye aye, sir."

The larger rowing boat from the galliot, another Levant-looking craft like a felucca without her single mast, was stroking over to the sloop of war, with two men in her stern-sheets, who stood while others sat and rowed or steered.

"De one from de dhow … de arschloch we speak, yesterday," Kolodzcy said sharply. "De odder, de taller-he ist dheir leader ve are havink to deal vit." The felucca reached Jesters side, her larboard side, below the already opened and inviting entry-port. Not the side of honour, as the starboard was in worldwide naval usage. Whether their leader was aware of this insult or deigned to sneer at his welcome, they couldn't tell, for he sprang from the gunn'l as soon as the boat bumped into the hull, and scampered up the boarding-battens to the gangway in a flash, eager and wolfishly smiling a dazzling white-toothed smile half hidden below a bristling, flowing set of moustachios. He looked about in appraisal, almost as if judging to the pence what the value of looting her might fetch him, before he was joined by his goat-skinned compatriot, a shorter, thicker-set fellow with a lush, unkempt beard.

There was a feast for his eyes, an untold Alladin's Cave of riches laid before him: artillery, muskets, swords, shot and powder… rope and timber, sails and blocks. Even Jesters hatch-covers would be the sort of well-crafted wealth far beyond his wildest imaginings.

Yet he put his hands on his hips, gazed upward at the height of the European mainmast, bared another dazzling smile… and laughed out loud! Like a child overawed by a stroll down the Strand past the toy-makers', Lewrie could conjure, the fellow actually shook his head with what he took for a "Well, what'll they think of, next?" marvelling.

"I speak to him, unt bring him to you, sirs," Kolodzcy offered primly, shooting his lacy shirt-cuffs and settling the hang of a dazzling fresh pale-blue waistcoat.

The fellow didn't wait for that, but, bouncing on his feet with impatience, sprang into action again and towed his compatriot to the end of the gangway, then onto the quarterdeck, where he'd espied the better-dressed officers.

"Ratko Petracic," he boasted, thumping his chest and naming himself to them, as if it should mean something to them, before Leutnant Kolodzcy could even open his sour-pursed mouth. Petracic gave Kolodzcy a withering, amused once-over from head to toe, before turning to his companion of the bearish beard and goat-hair weskit and slithering out a comment that made them both chuckle.