It was an awesome sight, that great mass of sail, making their easting in two columns, windward and leeward. One hundred and fifty ships bearing the wealth of the New World home to the Old.
Marlowe, standing on the quarterdeck of the Plymouth Prize, took a moment to savor the vision. There was a time in his life when he might have regarded such a fleet with rapacious desire, but now he found, much to his surprise, he was filled with paternal concern.
With that thought he moved his gaze beyond the convoy.
He could still make out the Northumberland’s topsail, though the sloop was hull down to the east. He had sent her ahead, with King James in command, to keep an eye out for what lay over the horizon. Even that small vessel was faster than the great lumbering merchantmen.
Marlowe understood that the first few days would be the most dangerous. Once the tobacco fleet was well out in the deep water they would be safe from attack, for the trackless ocean was too vast for the pirates to go hunting about.
Instead, the Brethren of the Coast tended to stay close to those harbors where they knew shipping would be found. Marlowe had little doubt that they would meet with some of them in the one hundred leagues for which he would accompany the convoy. It had been only a few years since the conclusion of King William’s War, when many legitimate privateers suddenly found themselves out of business and so made the short step to piracy. Now they swarmed like vermin around the Capes.
It was Marlowe’s insight into the mind of the pirate that led to the victory on Smith Island, and he hoped that that alone would continue to make him a dangerous enemy, for he had no formal knowledge of how to escort a convoy. Though he had sauntered about and spoke with the masters of the ships with such great confidence that they all took heart in his command of the situation, he was still doing it all quite extemporaneously.
Thus, it was no surprise that his methods were unorthodox, and it was exactly that unorthodoxy that inspired the confidence of the merchant captains.
It did little, however, to inspire those half-dozen young men of the Plymouth Prize’s crew who were strutting about the quarterdeck, clad in the silk dresses that Marlowe had commandeered from the pirate booty on Smith Island, parasols held daintily over their heads, shooting foul looks in Marlowe’s direction.
They seemed quite put out, though Marlowe had assured them they looked absolutely charming. He had further assured
them that they might run into brigands as soon as they cleared the Capes, and they had to be ready in their disguise.
There were a few things that Marlowe knew for certain about any upcoming encounter with pirates. One was that the Plymouth Prize could never hope to catch a pirate vessel. She was much faster now, for her clean bottom and new sails and tackling, but she was still no match for a swift enemy, and pirates ships, by their nature, were always swift.
The best he could hope for was to drive them away, but that was not good enough. The brigands would hang about, lurking on the edges of the convoy, waiting to pick off a slow or damaged vessel. They would follow the tobacco fleet all the way to England if need be.
What was more, there was little glory in merely chasing a pirate off, and no profit whatsoever. No, the only thing to do was to engage the enemy, beat him, and take him. And the only way a pirate would engage a man-of-war was if he did not recognize her as such.
“Here, darling, whadda ya say you give a piece of it to your daddy here, eh?” one of the Plymouth Prizes called aft to one of his mates in a low-cut red silk dress, and this, as it always did, brought howls of laughter.
“Stow it, you whore’s son bastard, or I’ll do it for you,” the man in the red dress snarled, apparently offended by the proposition. Marlowe thought of Elizabeth. She would have parried the ribald suggestion with more finesse. She would have looked better in the dress, as well.
“Now, don’t let them jab you like that,” he said, trying to bolster the man’s spirits, but Marlowe was grinning as well, and that tended to diminish his sincerity.
The costumed hands were stamping around, swearing and spitting and making a big show of playing the men, making certain that everyone knew they were not enjoying this. It was too bad they felt the need to do that, Marlowe thought. When pirates used that ruse they saw the fun in it, turned it into a great frolic. Of course, they were generally drunk when they did.
Marlowe did know enough about convoys to know that one would expect an escorting man-of-war to be in the lead and to windward of the ships she was protecting. But that was not where he placed the Plymouth Prize. The guardship was halfway back in the line, her gunports shut tight, no bunting flying from her mastheads, and women, or so it appeared, walking about her quarterdeck. As far as anyone could tell, she was just another of the great convoy of merchantmen.
In the man-of-war’s station, under the dual command of her master and Lieutenant Rakestraw, was the five-hundred-ton merchantman Sarah and Kate. Like most big merchantmen, she was well armed. Her sides were painted a bright yellow to accentuate her gunports, and her rigging was ablaze with all the bunting from the Prize’s flag locker. She looked every inch the man-of-war.
When the pirates attacked they would know to avoid the Sarah and Kate. And they would know to attack the Plymouth Prize. Marlowe would see to that.
The masters of the ships in the convoy had wholeheartedly supported this idea.
The Capes were still in sight, low and black, when the sun set behind them and Marlowe allowed his disgruntled men to take off their dresses. He gave them each two extra tots of rum, which did much to mollify them, and settled the ship into her nighttime routine.
They stood on through the dark hours with a fair breeze and Polaris two points off the larboard bow, just one of thousands of stars on the great dome. The convoy spread out to lessen the chance of collision, and the rising sun found the fleet covering many miles of ocean.
Rakestraw in the Sarah and Kate and Marlowe in the Plymouth Prize spent the chief of the morning getting them back into some kind of order.
“Oh, that stupid son of a bitch!”
Marlowe pounded the rail in exasperation as the merchantman he was trying to herd into line suddenly tacked across the Prize’s bow, forcing her to fall off to avoid a collision.
It had been that way all morning, and Marlowe had endured about all that he could when the man at the masthead called down a thankful distraction.
“Deck there! Northumberland’s in sight, hull down and running with all she can set!”
Indeed, Marlowe thought. King James had orders not to rejoin the convoy for one hundred leagues unless it was to report the presence of some danger, and pirates were the danger they were most likely to encounter. And if he was pushing the sloop that fast, Marlowe reckoned, then pirates it must be, and trying hard to overhaul him.
“Mr. Middleton, a white ensign to the foremast head and a gun to windward, if you please,” he called out. That was the signal he had arranged with Lieutenant Rakestraw. It meant that pirates were about, and that he should act his part as man-of-war while the Plymouth Prize assumed her own disguise.
The second officer made the signal and it was acknowledged, and Marlowe eased the Plymouth Prize closer to the pack of merchantmen, just one more among many.