III
"Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum."
"To the farthest gulf of the rich East."
– TOWN MOTTO OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
Chapter 1
Another watch with Percival, the second officer, Alan sighed as he mopped his brow. Another broiling forenoon on a deck holystoned to pristine whiteness that reflected back the heat of the sun, wondering if Percival ever felt the heat, ever grew faint and weak. Plenty of people drop dead of apoplexy back home, Alan thought; why not this bluff ginger bastard?
Bad as their relationship had been compared to the easy acceptance he'd gained with the others in the wardroom, it had gotten a lot worse after the durbar at Sir Hugo's house, to which even Choate the first officer had not been invited, and Alan had. Lewrie suspected Percival despised him in the beginning for rising so quickly in the Navy, and now most heartily despised him for being in the know, for being privy to secrets. For seeming so well-connected with the people who matter, here in the Far East, and back home with the Admiralty.
Yesterday's noon sights placed them exactly on the Equator, almost even with the Johore Straits, the normal passage, and by this noon, they would have made fifty leagues to the north farther on, even with fitful winds staggered almost to nothing by the heat at the Equator.
With such a late start from Calcutta, they'd be lucky to make Canton or Macao by the start of the trading season. If they arrived too late, there might not be a member of the Co Hong who would agree to be their compradore in their legal trading. Mr. Wythy had worried there would be so many other ships anchored off Whampoa full of cotton and spices that the value of their goods, arriving so late, would not fetch a price good enough to defray expenses.
All of which made Lewrie wonder once more if this whole thing hadn't been dreamed up, this tale of piracy, to bilk the Foreign Office and the Admiralty out of a free ship and cheap goods to make Twigg and Wythy rich. If they cut up a pirate fleet or two in the process, it would make a grand report back home, but who couldn 't find some pirates to bash out here, he wondered? It's not as if one had to go looking for them very hard. The whole ocean teemed with them like lice in a rented bed back home. Mr. Brainard the sailing master was an old China hand, along with Twigg and Wythy, in the "country trade" for years. Even Captain Ayscough had sailed in Asian waters in the last war. On the surface, it would make sense to hire their services on, but they all might be in combination to make a pile of money. Of course, Alan Lewrie had always been a suspicious and somewhat cynical observer of his fellow man. If the whole thing was so much twaddle, he hoped there would be some profit for others out of the venture. Such as himself.
"Sail ho!" the main-mast lookout hailed. "Fine on the starboard bows!"
"A little off the beaten track, surely," Alan commented. "Most merchantmen would be farther west nearer the Malay coast, I'd think."
"Say 'sir' " Percival demanded softly.
"Aye aye, sir," Alan picked back with a bright smile.
"Two sail! Both fine on the starboard bows!" the lookout added.
"Boy, run and inform the captain," Alan told one of the ship's boys.
"My decision to make, Mister Lewrie," Percival huffed. "I am senior officer in this watch, and I'll thank you to remember that."
"Aye, sir."
"Go aloft, Mister Lewrie. Report what you see. I want an experienced pair of eyes in the cross-trees," Percival snickered.
"Aye aye, sir," Alan was forced to reply, much as he hated scaling the masts. He'd done enough of it as a midshipman, and had been damned glad to make his lieutenancy, which at least let him stay firmly rooted to a safe and solid deck most of the time. But he slung a heavy day-glass over his shoulder like a sporting gun, went to the windward shrouds and scampered up the ratlines. Out over the futtock shrouds that inclined outward to anchor the maintop platform and the deadeyes and shrouds that held the topmast erect, hanging by fingers and toes briefly. Then up the narrower set of stays to the cross-trees where the lookout perched on slender bracing slats of wood a fat pigeon would have cast a wary eye upon.
"Where away, Hodge?" Alan asked the grizzled older man. "Three sail, now, Mister Lewrie," the sailor replied, pointing forward. He cupped his work-worn hands round his eyes to shut out the blinding sun. "An' I ain't so sure they ain't sum-mat up t'larboard as well, sir. Jus' a cloud, mebbe, sir."
"Cloud, Hell," Alan puffed, trying to steady his shaking limbs to hold his telescope after that grueling climb. "Four sail to starboard, and perhaps two to larboard. Tell Mister Percival. You've better lungs than I."
While Hodge bawled his report down to the deck, Alan studied the view. They were passing between a sprinkling of small islands and islets between two larger land masses- Anambas to the west of their course, and a larger island of Natuna to the east'rd. There was a safe channel of at least one hundred miles width, but littered with these reefs and islets. Perfect lurking grounds for Malay or Borneo pirates, he thought. They'd try to catch ships passing to the west of Anambas after using the Johore Strait. 'Course, they could be fishermen, Alan thought.
But, as they drew closer, hull-up over the horizon, Alan could see they were using the barest and crudest of sail rigs, and the froth about them was not a wake, but the working of many oars and paddles, far more oarsmen than any fisherman would take to sea. The hulls were blood red, winking with what he took to be gilt trim.
"Hodge, inform the deck I believe they're pirates." Alan stepped out of the cross-trees, took hold of a backstay and wrapped his legs about it to let himself down to the quarterdeck hand over hand in seamanly fashion.
"Half a dozen to starboard, three, possibly four to larboard, sir," Alan told the captain. "Red hulls. Lots of paddlers or oarsmen."
"War praos" Ayscough nodded grimly. "Mister Brainard?" "Aye, sir?"
"Any hopes the wind will pick up?" "No, sir," the sailing master informed him. "Not with this heat, not this far easterly of the usual track. We've everything cracked on now but the stun'sl booms, and not a fraction above seven knots do we make."
"I see," Captain Ayscough grunted. "Then if we can't outrun 'em, we'll have to fight. Mister Choate, beat to Quarters!"
"What is it, Alan?" Burgess Chiswick asked as he came on deck, drawn by the drumming and fifing of the ship's small band. His lean, dark sepoys were struggling into their red coats below them on the gun deck, just below the quarterdeck nettings.
"Pirates, Burgess. Maybe the ones we've been searching for."
"Subadar!" Burgess bawled, shouting for his senior native officer and clattering down to the gun deck.
Telesto mounted a light battery of two twelve-pounders forward on the fo'c'sle as chase-guns, and another two right aft in the wardroom, one to either side of the rudder and transom post to deal with ships attempting to rake her from astern. There were six more twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck, three to each beam. Each gun took a crew of seven men to operate it efficiently in Naval usage, with a ship's boy serving as powder-monkey to fetch and carry from the magazines for each one.
Her main battery was on the upper gun deck; twenty eighteen-pounders which required nine men apiece. Even in the Royal Navy, both sides could not be fully manned at the same time, so there were only eleven men per gun to share between, which would require some nimble hopping back and forth if the pirates attacked from both sides at once: three men to load and charge each gun, and the rest milling about in the center of the gun deck to haul on the tackles to run the guns out and throw their weight on hand-spikes and crows to shift aim right or left while the gun-captain would adjust the elevation of the guns with the new rotating screws. All were, mercifully, equipped with flintlock igniters like a musket, instead of the older types that required a tin or goose-feather quill priming tube and a slow-match fire.