“Poor Modeste,” Lewrie heard Midshipman Houghton snigger. “She will be no help at all.”
“Aye, Mister Houghton,” Caldwell agreed, chuckling a bit, too. “She’s not so much leading the stampede as she is being chased!”
“And can’t come about without the risk of colliding with one of them… or causing a whole series of collisions,” the Midshipman further supposed.
“That won’t do Captain Blanding’s choler any good, sir,” Lieutenant Westcott, standing closer to Lewrie, muttered.
“It wouldn’t do mine any good either, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie replied, wryly grinning and shaking his head. “I expect we’ll hear all about it, come tomorrow.”
“Hark… gunfire, sir!” Westcott said of a sudden, head lifted as if sniffing the air like a hound.
No one aloft or on deck had seen the gun flashes, and the sound came down seconds later, after the flashes guttered out.
“Where away, the gunfire?” Lewrie yelled aloft, but no one had a clue.
“I think it came from larboard, sir… up to the North of us,” Westcott said with his head cocked over in puzzlement, and shrugging. “Among the stragglers from the lee-most column, most-like.”
“Gunfire!” a lookout cried at last. “Deck, there! Gun flashes t’larboard… two points off th’ larboard bows!”
“I see it, sir!” Midshipman Houghton cried. “There, sirs! One of the leading ships of the lee column!”
That was even further away than the two merchantmen that they’d seen firing distress rockets, making Lewrie frown in concern.
“Damme, could there be three privateers out there?” he griped. “If there are, let’s hope that Parham and Pylades are close enough to help her.”
“Pray Jesus we get to grips with somebody!” Marine Lt. Simcock fretted from his place by the starboard entry-port on the sail-tending gangway, where a file of his Marines stood swaying with their muskets ready and loaded.
“We’ll try t’find you some amusement, sir!” Lewrie snapped back.
“Sorry, sir,” Simcock all but whispered, much abashed.
It took nearly that estimated half an hour to catch up with the trailing ships of the fleeing convoy, and to get close enough to one of them to speak her. “Hoy, there! This is Reliant!” Lewrie shouted to her from his starboard bulwarks.
“Hoy, the Reliant!” her master called back from the larboard side of his quarterdeck. “This is the Avon! Captain Quarles, here!”
“Were you the one firin’ distress rockets?” Lewrie asked him.
“Aye! A big schooner come up from loo’rd and went aboard the ship astern of us, the Peacock!” Captain Quarles shouted. “Poor old Cap’m Venables was boarded and took before he could signal for help! I cracked on sail, and started firing off rockets to warn the others, but there was nothing I could do for them! What took you so long?”
“Eat shit and die!” Lewrie muttered, and took a deep breath to calm himself before replying. “Where is Peacock now, sir?”
“Last we could see of her, she and the schooner put about onto larboard tack and headed off Sou’-Sou’west! Didn’t you see her, sir?”
“God dammit!” Lewrie spat, realising that the Peacock was lost for good. It had been the better part of an hour since Avon’s first rockets had been launched, since the privateer schooner had ghosted in and pounced, then tacked as soon as the boarding party had secured their prize. Peacock was a full-rigged, three-masted ship, and could sail no closer to the wind than six points, about sixty-six degrees. Slow as that process could be, she would now be miles astern of the convoy, and to dash off to rescue her would involve a very long stern-chase. If her lights were doused, Lewrie could only hope to lay his frigate on the same course of Sou’-Sou’west and thrash blindly after her in the utter darkness.
But, he could not do that. Once clear of the vicinity of the convoy, the privateer surely would head West for some American port to sell her off quickly, and trying to cut a course Westerly in hopes of stumbling across her and the privateer by mid-day tomorrow would be equally bootless. Besides, were there other privateers waiting to strike, he could not abandon the other helpless ships. He had to stay with the trade.
“Thankee, Captain Quarles! If the privateer schooner’s gone, ye may be safe for the night!” Lewrie called over.
“Ain’t you going after her?” Quarles demanded.
“I must stay with the convoy!” Lewrie shouted back. “And damned well ye know it… or should,” he whispered for his own benefit.
“Oh, too bad,” the Sailing Master said with a sigh. “But, we ain’t like that chap from the Bible… the Good Shepherd?”
“If we aren’t, Mister Caldwell, you can be damned sure that our Chaplain, Reverend Brundish, will remind us of it in his next homily,” Lewrie said with a groan.
“How did it go?” Caldwell maundered on. “He went after the last wee lamb, instead of being satisfied with protecting the rest of his flock?”
“A parable, sir,” Midshipman Houghton supplied. “It was one of Lord Jesus’ parables.”
“Bugger parables!” Lewrie snarled, stomping off aft before he fed his urge to strangle someone.
When it came time to round up the convoy at dawn, and chivvy them back into their proper columns after a long and fruitless night of wary patrolling, with the hands at Quarters and everyone sleepless and reeling, they could count up their losses.
Three ships had been plucked from the convoy during the night, by what was evidently a full three privateers, all of them schooners. The masters of a few ships that had escaped close encounters and had manoeuvred clear related breathless tales of being hailed and ordered to fetch-to by men who had declared their ships sailed with Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by France. Some of those who had demanded surrender sounded French, but some sounded as English as plum duff!
Those losses had been galling enough, but to add to the misery there were the ones that had been damaged during the convoy’s panicky stampede to windward. The columns had shredded, wheeling away from the threat, bearing up towards the next column to starboard, and order had turned to shambles.
Another six vessels had gone aboard each other, tangling bow-sprits and jib-booms in another’s shrouds, or slamming hulls together and smashing chain platforms, which loosed tension on upper masts, and bringing them down in rats’ nests of sails, rigging, and spars. Those half-dozen not only had to be found, limping along astern of the rest, but rendered aid from sounder ships, or from the escort ships’ stores, as well.
“A very rum show, by Jove,” Captain Blanding mournfully said to his gathered captains early that next afternoon. “A rum show, I must say! And just how the deuce did they ever find us? Comments?”
No one wanted to touch that one. The sound of Captain Blanding stirring his cup of tea, that metal on china tinkling, was the loudest thing in Modeste’s great-cabins. Lewrie, Stroud, and Parham sat primly on collapsible chairs round Blanding’s settee, where their commander sprawled in untidy, and un-characteristic, gloom.
“Ehm…,” Captain Stroud finally broke the silence with a hesitant noise. “Might they have known to be on the lookout for a Summer trade, sir?”
“Uhm, possible, but…,” Blanding rejoined with a long sigh.
“Possibly the ‘runners,’ sir,” Lewrie felt just bold enough to add. “They were cruisin’ the likely course a trade’d take, somewhat close to Hatteras, and most-like stumbled into one of our ships that had broken away for Savannah or Charleston, asked a few questions of her master, and stood out seaward t’find us.”