Yet, they stood on for about a minute more, straining for sight of each other, waiting for the lightning to illuminate what their respective foes were doing. Nature obliged with another crackling bolt of lightning, one that seemed to leap from the sea, not from the low and racing clouds, a triple forked bolt that jerked across the sky like the flailing arms of a marionette.
"Heads'ls are shivering!" Lt. Langlie yelled, pointing his useless night telescope at the French frigate. "She's going about, sir!"
Sure enough, the enemy was swinging nearly bows-on to Proteus's starboard quarter, jib-boom and bowsprit pitching upwards as she rose, fore-and-aft heads'ls getting smothered for air as her fore course came directly downwind and stole the force of the wind. Just as an impenetrable squall of rain swept over her from astern and blotted her out!
"Helm up, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie shouted. "Get us about, quick as dammit! Clew up tops'ls, there!"
And the wear was quick, for with so little pressure aloft, the brace-tenders could swing the yardarms just that more easily, despite the gale of wind. And, that new, broader rudder helped her get round, too. "Quartermasters… make your new course Due West!" Lewrie cried.
It was still a staggering, thrashing muddle for hands tending to the freed running rigging, for the gun crews, whose brutally heavy pieces along the larboard side strained breeching ropes and handling tackle 'til they groaned, with the frigate laid over nearly fourty degrees on her starboard side for a long minute. Proteus's hull groaned and creaked, the masts gave out ominous moans, but, there were none of the crackling, popping, or snapping sounds of imminent disaster. The music stopped, of course, with everyone slid over to leeward, and the distraught bushbaby and the rest of the livestock found something new to wail about.
And, as she slowly rolled back upright, as the tumbled waisters, brace-tenders, and gunners got back on their feet and regained control, the curtain like rain of the squall passed, and the stiff wind lowered its pitch and volume for a moment.
"Let fall the tops'ls!" Lt. Langlie shouted through his speaking trumpet. "Sheet home, sheet home!"
Then, there was the French frigate, now also steering Due West on larboard tack, about a half a mile up to weather and three points off Proteus's larboard quarter, sailing parallel with them.
"What d'ye plan t'do, now, ye snail-eatin' sonofabitch?" Lewrie roared, cupping his hands to his mouth as if his voice could carry all that way in the storm. "We've dry priming up forrud, Mister Langlie?"
"One would hope, sir!" the First Officer replied, laughing like a hyena to see the French countered.
"Fire a challenge shot from one of the six-pounder chase-guns," Lewrie demanded, chortling himself. "The only way he gets to the merchant ships is through us, by God! Let's see if 'Monsieur Crapaud' has the 'nutmegs' for a stand-up fight!"
"Mis-ter A-Dair!" Langlie shouted over the din of the weather, and the rush of the sea against the hull as Proteus began to step out right-lively under her re-spread sails. "Fire… chase-gun… to… windward!"
The bows dipped in a steady hobby-horse fashion, spray flying up over the beakhead rails, over the top of the roundhouse and forecastle platform, but a 6-pounder's flintlock striker was cocked, then the trigger string tugged, and the chase-gun erupted with a sharpish noise, almost lost against the drum of rain, with a bright red flash, a spurt of grey-white gunpowder, and a shower of bright cloth embers from the cartridge flannel, and the crew cheered some more to know a formal challenge had been made, and the French could not pretend that they hadn't seen it, or the puny feather of ricochet that leaped from the sea before the enemy frigate's bows. Had they any honour, combat, warship to warship, broadside to broadside, must be accepted, now.
"She's reducing her main course, sir," Lt. Langlie pointed out, "and shaking out a reef in her tops'ls."
"Wants a bit more speed in-hand, aye," Lewrie agreed, "though she'll not pass ahead of us, and on this wind, there'll be no clever manoeuvring. Being on her lee will work in our favour. Hard as both of us are pressed, she'll not be able to fire on our masts and sails, as they usually do. Can't lower the breeches low enough for that."
"Whilst we, heeled at this angle, have our choice of shooting at hers," Langlie realised with a smile, "or jamming the quoins fully under our guns' breeches, and hull her 'twixt wind and water, aha! It is quite advantageous for us, sir. My congratulations. The old adage of always seizing the weather gage doesn't always avail, it'd seem."
"Well…" Lewrie replied, shrugging in perplexity for how best to answer, for the tactic truly hadn't occurred to him; he merely wished to get to grips, and put himself 'twixt the enemy and the convoy. And, Langlie "pissing down his back" with praise… that wasn't his typical demeanour. False modesty wouldn't suit; neither would polishing nails on the lapel of his coat to preen, were he baldly honest about it.
Do I owe him money? Lewrie wondered, in a hard-snatched moment of idleness.
There came another flash of lightning, another peal of thunder, and with it, the burst of a cloud of white smoke on the enemy warship's starboard bow; the challenge had been noted, and accepted.
"D'ye hear, there!" yelped the lone lookout who had been sent to the mizen cross-trees to watch their stern, who, 'til that moment, had little to do except cling like a leech to the swaying mast and hang on for dear life. "Hoy, th' deck! Second enemy frigate, two points offa th' starb'd quarter!"
Oh… My… Christ! Lewrie thought in sudden shivers of dread.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It took a further lightning strike on the sea, one more of those lingering, flickering monsters, to espy the second Frenchman from their decks. Smaller than the first, perhaps, or just farther off? She was running "both sheets aft" with the wind right up her stern, to the Nor'west, or a touch West-Nor'west, bounding, pitching, and slithering over the blue-black, white-flecked sea… for the convoy!
"Nothing we can do about it," Lewrie spat through gritted teeth, his jaw ruefully clenched. "They do work in pairs, and in all this excitement, I forgot that, damn my eyes! Nothin' t'be done but shoot the shit out o' this'un, and Devil take the hindmost."
Which would be Festival, the slowest, Lewrie thought; the poor, old cow! For the only taffrail lights still anywhere near enough to be made out clearly were certainly the circus ship's. Eudoxia! He cringed, fearful for her in French hands… even if she had come within a hair of clawing his eyes out.
"First honours to Mister Adair, and his chase-guns!" Lewrie felt need to shout, to keep his crew's spirit up, and put his own impending fight ahead of anything else. "Let's have tunes more to his liking!" he ordered, turning to face the enemy frigate, which was now surging up closer to abeam of Proteus, and slowly falling down onto her. Desmond and the other musicians launched into livelier, more Scottish airs-" Campbell 's Farewell to Red Castle," "Hey, Johnny Cope," "The Flowers of Edinburgh," and one of Lewrie's old favourites, "The High Road to Linton."
He stood at the larboard bulwarks, the windward side that was a captain's proper post, clinging against Proteus's motion with his left hand on the mizen stays, his right hand beating the tempo of the music… waiting, and shamming utter serenity for his officers and sailors, which was about the hardest thing to do before the iron began to fly.