Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

Weary, aye… mostly satisfied with their lot for the moment, some a trifle "groggy" as usual, each dusk they still had the spirit to open their voices in rough tune, revive the sentimental, lachrymose airs that sailors liked best of all… and sing the sun down.

" Toulon, don't leave yer mark on the hammock nettings! Sailors have t'sleep on those things!" Lewrie admonished his ram-cat, perched on the canvas-covered bulwark of tightly rolled hammocks, overlooking the ship's waist. He gave him a neck-tousling pet, then strolled up to the windward side, plucking at his shirt. One more sign that they were in the tropics; the day's heat that had been welcome at first, was now nigh punishing, more glaring, and the prismatic flashes of sunlight off the sea were now more like a field of too-bright snow that gave everyone a perpetual squint.

Lewrie turned to face inward, once he had taken hold of a mizen stay and given it a tug to test its tautness, taking note of Dowe, one of the quartermaster's mates serving his "trick" at the wheel. He was an American, the son of a long-dead Loyalist who had fled to Nova Scotia at the Revolution's end. Dowe lowered his gaze from the draw of the sails and eased his own squint, raising his brows for a moment, which made Lewrie smile. With a face at ease, Dowe showed white, untanned streaks round his eyes and on his forehead that squinting kept as pale as a lady's thighs… "them raccoon eyes, sir," Dowe had termed them, Lewrie recalled, making him chuckle, too. He thought he had seen one when HMS Desperate had put into Charleston back in '81, and he was sure he had eaten a raccoon when besieged and half-starved at Yorktown with Lord Cornwallis's doomed army. Either way, Lewrie thought the description apt.

"Sail ho!" the main-mast lookout screeched from the cross-trees.

"Where away?" Lt. Wyman yelled back, his hands cupped about his mouth, though that was little help for his thinnish voice.

"One point off th' larboard bows! Hull down! A schooner!"

"Well, about time, too!" Lewrie muttered, pleased.

They had proved that the ocean was a huge, empty place on their voyage, for even though they had steered Proteus Sou'westerly nigh to the latitude of Dominica, and across the most-used track for any merchant ships, this would only be the second ship they had encountered. Most merchant masters bore on South from Cape St. Vincent to Dominica's latitude, then ran it due West-they only had to solve their slight variation in latitude, daily, and calculate longitude by adding up the 24-hour sums from their knot-logs, by Dead Reckoning. And if all else failed them, the cloud-swept peaks of Dominica were the tallest marks in the Caribbean, damned hard to miss for even the most lubberly, cack-handed navigator-like the master of the only other ship that they had "spoken," a reeking Portugee "blackbirder" laden with a cargo of three-hundred-odd slaves fresh from Dahomey, and so creaky and slow it appeared that at least a quarter of those forlorn souls would die before arrival; the damned fool had actually asked Lewrie where, exactly, they were!

Here though, within two days' sail of English Harbour, Antigua, the presence of local shipping could be expected. English Harbour was a Royal Navy station, a safe place for overseas trade, as well. This schooner, Lewrie surmised, was most-like a local. Schooners were popular craft in the West Indies, fore-and-aft rigged to go like a witch to windward, and "point" at least ten-to-twelve degrees closer to the winds, a desirable trait did one desire to beat back eastward against the unvarying Nor'east Trades. Some adventurous types sailed schooners from as far north as Maine, in the Americas. And schooners made hellish good privateers, too, due to their speed and agility!

"Mister Elwes, aloft with a glass, sir. Tell us what you see," Lieutenant Wyman snapped.

"Aye aye, sir!" the eager young midshipman piped back, dashing to the rack by the binnacle cabinet to seize a telescope, then scampering up the weather mizen shrouds as spryly as a monkey.

"Should we clear for action, sir?" Wyman asked.

"Not quite yet, Mister Wyman," Lewrie demurred. "Hull-down, on such a clear day, means she's ten miles off or more. Plenty of time to 'smoak' her. Unless she runs, of course."

"Hoy, the deck!" Midshipman Elwes cried down. "Schooner rigged, and flying no flag! Sailing abeam the wind, to the Nor'Nor'west!"

"I do, however, desire that we harden up to the wind, sir, and cut the angle on her. Make our course… West by North. Shake out those first reefs in the t'gallants, and stand by, should we need the royals," Lewrie said, after a peek at the compass.

Lewrie took a telescope of his own and ambled back to the windward rail, braced himself on the mizen stays, and eyed their stranger. The merest sliver of her uppermost hull sometimes loomed up above the horizon as a distant swell lifted her; in another moment, she would be swallowed, leaving only the upper part of her sails visible.

Damme, is she foreshortening? he asked himself with a frown. "Deck, there!" Mr. Elwes called. "Chase is hauling her wind… turning West-Nor'west! Chase is hoisting gaff stays'ls!"

Foreshortening, aye; showing Proteus her sternquarters. Mr. Elwes might be presumptive in calling her a Chase, but that turn gave Lewrie a premonitory thrill.

"Has she shown any colours yet, Mister Elwes?" Lewrie queried. "None, sir!"

Lewrie rubbed his unshaven chin, ideas percolating. Even were she British, or neutral and innocent as anything, fear of the French privateers might make a ship run from a strange vessel, one that looked lean and fast like a ship of war, but…

Did the schooner continue West-Nor'west, she could just shave by the northern coast of Antigua, and would be on a perfect course to duck into "neutral" waters in the Danish Virgins, near St. Croix, though by sunset Proteus could surely run her down, with her longer waterline and her much larger sail area.

Or the schooner might try to come about, rounding Antigua, and head Sutherly for St. Kitts. In Antigua 's lee, schooners were two-a-penny, and by full dark she might hope to escape in the gloom, letting another similar schooner be the goat.

Proteus slowly swung onto her new course, her decks heeled over more to leeward as the press of wind on her reset sails made her start to race and surge. She was after a "Chase"; and like a staghound on a firm spoor, like a tiger pacing an Indian millet field after an addled goat, she strode out confidently, surely. Off-watch crewmen were drawn to the deck by the commotion, all but licking their chops in anticipation of a prize.

"This isn't a cockfight, lads!" Lewrie had to shout. "There's gun-drill to perform. Keep yer eyes in-board, and your minds on your evolutions… 'fore the Bosun and Master Gunner pass among you, with their… reminders?"

Even so, Lewrie knew, the hands would whisper among themselves, try peeking over the gangways or out the windward gun-ports; men aloft would find a way to send the latest observations down to their mateys, no matter what the Bosun, the Master Gunner, the Master At Arms and his Ships' Corporals threatened-it was simply too much of a novelty!

"Deck, there!" Midshipman Elwes cried. "Chase is hull-up, sirs! She now shows a flag! French colours!"

A hundred horny paws slapped together and rubbed with a sound like dry grit; a hundred voices muttered "good prize!" together, and a palpable frisson of delight and greed swept the decks, making mates, sailors, and officers alike beam with joy, and ships' boys jig-dance.

Lewrie clapped his hands behind his back, and pondered. If he hoisted the French Tricolour, as well, there was a chance that he might reel this schooner in like a fish, relieved to meet a fellow Frenchman so far from home. A privateer? Lewrie silently mused, more than glad t'see a National ship? Enough to haul her wind and fetch-to, waitin' on us?

There was the possibility that a Frog privateer would know the few confirmed French ships of war sailing out of Guadeloupe by sight.

"Mister Wyman," Lewrie said, with a sly grin, "do you hoist a French flag on the foremast… and run up a 'who are you?' where she can see it. Does she answer with a private signal, she's confirmed, and ours."

"Oh!" Lt. Wyman gawped for a, second. "My goodness gracious, I see, sir! Aye, sir! We know the Frog's 'qui va la' signal."

Moments later it was done, and they waited to see what signal would be hoisted in return. Despite his best intentions (like most of those, Lewrie could rarely keep 'em!) a smug grin creased his face, a "slyboots" look of cocky satisfaction.

"Deck, there!" Midshipman Elwes cried. "French colour's down… she's hoisted British!"

"Hah! Liar!" Lieutenant Wyman commented, all but hooting to his fellow officers, who had also come up to share the excitement.

Well, damme, Lewrie thought, deflated in an instant; Didn't think o' that! Could she really be?

He cupped his hands and bellowed aloft, "Mister Elwes, has she changed course? Reduced sail? Hoisted any signal at all?"

"No, sir! Still running! Same course, and no private signal!"

"Damn!" Lewrie griped softly. "Mister Wyman, get that Frog rag and signal down, then. Hoist our own colours, and this month's recognition signal. And ready a forecastle gun to fire to leeward."

"Aye, sir."

The Red Ensign went up the foremast, a string of code flags was bent on and hoisted, followed a minute or two later by a single cannon shot. The schooner was closer now, not over four miles off as Proteus swiftly strode up to her with a bone in her teeth.

"Deck, there! Chase now bears Nor'west by West! I think I see stuns'ls! No reply to signals!"

"Dammit, make our heading Nor'west by North, Mister Wyman, and hoist royals," Lewrie snapped, now irritated. "And once that's done, we'll beat to Quarters, and ready the larboard battery!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

Proteus heeled a bit more, her wake and bustle growing louder and more insistent. Three-quarters of an hour, and the schooner grew larger as they closed the range to three miles, no matter how swiftly the schooner scudded along in flight. She had lowered British colours long before, seeing that the ruse was fruitless. Hands stood swaying behind the great-guns, already loaded with the smoothest and roundest solid iron balls, charged with powder, and the newfangled flintlock strikers primed.

"Ease that quoin out even more, there, lads," Lt. Catterall told his larboard gunners. "We're heeled, and shooting to leeward, so keep the barrels aimed high. We'll adjust once we're close and the ports are open, so you can mark your target and gauge the range."

"Mile and a half, I make it, sir," Lt. Langlie volunteered from his place near Lewrie on the lee rails. "Almost Range-to-Random-Shot, for the six-pounder chase gun."

"We'll wait 'til the larboard battery can bear, Mister Langlie," Lewrie countered, slowly pacing, now dressed in his second-best uniform, with his sword at his side, and the sweat trickling down his back and itching icily on his spine. "I doubt yon schooner mounts anything heavier than a four-pounder… Once we're near abeam, with the guns run out, perhaps this 'M'sieur will gain some sense, and strike before we have to blow him out of the water."

" Antigua, to leeward, there… I think," Lewrie heard Lieutenant Devereux, their Marine officer, say. "And Barbuda, off our starboard bows?" he opined, jutting his chin towards a greyish hump on the horizon. "No, couldn't be… Sergeant Skipwith?" "Sure I don't know, sir," Skipwith commented. "Still an hundred miles to leeward, sir," Lt. Langlie took time to inform their senior "Lobsterback." "Well, a day's sail, by now. I expect you're mistaking squalls on the horizon for islands. Were Barbuda and Antigua this close, we'd see them plain. The channel between is only thirty-seven miles, d'ye see…"