The lookout slid himself out onto the brig's fore crosstrees to accommodate the new arrival. He gave a startled grunt on seeing his skipper's face up here. Hoare could read his mind: "Captain Oglethorpe, bless 'is ol heart, 'ud never 'a made it up 're wifout a block an' taykle."
Sharp eyes or no, it took Hoare a good minute, even with the other's patient guidance, to find the stranger in the murk, but at last he had her. From all he could tell, she was a sharp-looking craft, a three-masted lugger with a topsail on her main. She looked at least as handy as the smuggler Fancy Hoare had seen founder off the Isle of Wight over a month ago. But her masts were more sharply raked, and there was that mizzen besides. There was something familiar about the rig.
"Frenchman, sir, or I miss me guess," the lookout said.
"What makes you think so?" was Hoare's whispered question.
"Seen enough of'em in St. Malo 'arbor, sir, durin' the peace. Chaz Marie."
Hoare was slow in understanding the man's word. Then it sank in. Chasse-maree was what he had said, mangling the French as every good Englishman should. The Chasse-maree, the "tide-chaser," was a fast French coaster, always lug-rigged, always three-masted.
"Smell 'er, sir? Only a Frenchman smells like that, or a Portygee. Garlic. An' she wouldn't be no Portygee, not in these waters. Besides, she don't pong of fish like a Portygee. No, sir, that's French cookin', or I'm a lobster."
"Clever man." Hoare could only agree. Now that the lookout mentioned it, even he could smell the rich scent of garlic, wine, and onions. The product of English sea-cooks was one thing, he thought sadly; French sea-cooking was another kettle offish entirely. And now he remembered who the lookout was: he was Danny Quill, an Irishman for all his Cockney speech, cook's mate.
"She'll be a privateer, sir," Quill said, "packed as full of Frogs as a keg of sardines."
"I think you're right, Quill," Hoare whispered. "Keep a sharp eye out until you're relieved. Are you a good shot?" He had a mind to see a Frenchman served the way that unknown marksman had served him, those years ago.
"Not much of an 'and at musketry, sir, fer a fact. Need practice fer that."
"Well, then, I'll have Leese send up one of his Marines to keep you company. I plan to put a spoke in that Frog's wheel." So saying, Hoare grasped the main backstay to windward, preparatory to sliding down it to the deck.
" 'Ave 'im bring a spare musket with 'im, sir," Quill suggested. 'Oo knows, I might strike it lucky."
"Aye, aye," Hoare answered, and let himself slide. He slid prudently, having seen more than one rash young man peel the skin off his palms on the harsh, tarred cordage of a backstay, just by the sliding.
"Call all hands, Mr. Clay, to quarters," he ordered once on deck, his hands burning a trifle despite his care. "But quietly, man, understand?"
How Clay was to manage preparing the brig for battle quietly was something he decided to leave to the lieutenant.
"Aye, aye, sir," said Clay, quietly, and did as Hoare had ordered. Silently, the Royal Dukes collected at their stations. The stranger's loom was ever so slightly greater.
Hoare knew what his next order must be, and his heart sank.
"And let Nemesis slip," he said. Towing behind Royal Duke as she was, she could only hold the brig back. Then he added, "Belay that. I'll do it myself."
Every man, he thought, should be man enough to shoot his own dog at need, or-if, like himself, he had no dog, at least to let go of his private bark, at need. He stepped to the taffrail and cast his sweetheart's towline off the cleat to which she had been made fast. As he watched, she disappeared astern in the mid-Channel gloom.
"Have the gunners load with chain shot, and run out the guns," Hoare now ordered. "When I whistle, they are to fire. High. High, Mr. Clay!" Clay relayed Hoare's order. All too well, Hoare knew the propensity for even trained gunners to hull the enemy whenever possible, the hull being the most massive target and the place where humans could be hit. Aiming high to disable was a foreign trick; hulling was the English way, and it generally worked. But if this craft was what he thought she was, he had no vestige of hope either of unmanning her or fleeing.
Now, how to assure himself absolutely of the other craft's nationality? It was all very well for Quill's culinary nose to identify her as a Frenchman, and the distinctive Chasse-maree brig could belong to a prize. How to smoke out her identity without revealing Royal Duke's own?
Hoare resolved upon a nocturnal version of the simple old ruse by which a ship flew false colors. As long as she hauled them down and replaced them before firing, honor was observed.
"Hail 'em-in French, Mr. Clay," he said.
"In French, sir?"
"In French, Mr. Clay."
"Aye, aye, sir," he said with a resigned shrug. "Kell vessow?" he shouted.
The awful sound he made in copying Hoare's whispered French delighted Hoare. Though his bellow was enviable, his accent was appalling, but it did as Hoare had hoped and must have left the Frenchman wondering for a precious few seconds, which was just what Hoare wanted.
The stranger gave no reply. Instead, he bore off and laid a course to cross Royal Duke's bows and rake her from ahead-or, more likely, to board. This could only be a tactic of the lookout Quill's privateer, packed as full of Frogs as a keg of sardines.
"Bear away, Mr. Clay, and hoist our colors."
"Aye, aye, sir." Clay relayed Hoare's first order to the helmsmen. There were two of them now, as was normal practice when going into action, neither of them more than two feet from Hoare. They would have heard his initial order, but, as they had been taught, refrained from complying until they heard Clay's clear command. There being no signal midshipman at hand, Clay bent the Union Jack to its halliard himself and ran it up to Royal Duke's gaff.
Hoare watched, watched, waited, eyes fixed on the other ship, judging their relative positions, courses and speeds, counting seconds with snap, snap, snap of his fingers as he had been taught when still a junior mid. Having the inner one of the double curve the two vessels were drawing across the midnight sea, Royal Duke visibly fore-reached upon the Chasse-maree, while each of the two closed upon the other. By the time they were abeam, both were sailing on a broad reach, the Frenchman taking some of Royal Duke's wind and commencing to draw ahead. By the nature of things, she was heeling toward the brig; in daylight, Hoare would have had a clear view of her cargo of privateersman. As it was, Hoare could hear the sound of the many men aboard her, as they nerved themselves to board.
He shut one eye. Thrusting two fingers into his mouth, he gave the shrill, piercing whistle that on this occasion his gun crews knew meant "Fire!"
Mr. Clay's command, unneeded, was drowned in the near-simultaneous crack of Royal Duke's larboard battery-all four laughable four-pounders. Hoare opened his shielded eye. The faint afterglow of the burning powder sufficed to give him a brief picture of the broadside's effect on the Chasse-maree.
Of the four chain shot, one must have gone astray, but the other three had done their duty, and more. One had struck the fore lugsail yard near where it met its mast, and left the sail drooping, useless. A second had struck the forestay, leaving the already weakened foremast unstayed forward, and the lugger herself without a rag drawing forward of her undamaged mainsail. The third ball must have struck in the neighborhood of her steering position, for Hoare could see a mass of heaving confusion about her wheel and could imagine cries of pain and rage. Her colors-the Tricolor, thank God-still flew.
It had been an absolute freak of luck, Hoare knew. Even at so close a range-point-blank musket shot and no more-he would have been overjoyed to see even two shots from his landlubber-manned popgun crews even hit the enemy. Well…