Whatever she is, she’s fast, Lewrie thought.
To a further question from Lt. Harcourt, shouted aloft with the aid of a brass speaking trumpet, the lookout gave more details about their stranger.
“I kin make our ’er t’gallants!” he yelled. “Nigh bows-on!”
That made Lewrie frown. Yesterday’s Noon Sights had placed them just below the 40th Latitude, hundreds of miles Due West of Cape Finisterre in Spain. Any friendly ship would have made its offing long before, and would not be sailing close-hauled out of the Bay of Biscay, or standing out round Finisterre.
She could be one of ours, leavin’ the blockadin’ squadrons for Gibraltar or Lisbon, Lewrie told himself as he clapped his hands in the small of his back and rocked on the soles of his boots; Maybe.
“Close-hauled on, say, Sou’-Sou’west?” he commented.
“Thereabout, sir,” Lt. Westcott grimly agreed.
Lewrie went to the forward edge of the poop deck to shout down to Lt. Harcourt. “Last cast of the log, Mister Harcourt?”
“Ehm … eight and a quarter knots, sir, half an hour ago,” Lt. Harcourt informed him.
“Hmm, not all that bad,” Lewrie decided, a bit surprised that Sapphire, and the lumbering transports, could make such a good pace.
The typical Westerlys had already backed one point to the West by North, and Lewrie thought it good odds that it might continue to back a point more by afternoon. He could order the convoy to alter course to the Sou’-Sou’east; sooner or later they would have to steer for the Straits of Gibraltar, anyway, and that would put that backing wind large on their starboard quarters, which was most ships’ best point of sail. They might even attain nine knots if he did so, but … why not?
“Mister Harcourt, make General Signal to all ships,” he decided. “Alter Course in Succession, South-Southeast.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Harcourt crisply replied.
He turned and looked up to the Nor’east, again, but there was still no indication of that strange sail to be seen from the deck.
Hard on the wind, is she, bows-on to us? he schemed; Our turn will lay us smack cross her present course, and she’ll have t’haul her wind, sooner or later.
He also wondered why the strange sail was sailing so hard on the wind; this far West of Cape Finisterre, she had bags of sea-room by now, and if she was friendly, and bound for Lisbon or Gibraltar, she could have hauled her wind to a beam reach long before.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Lewrie said, keeping his suspicions in check, and off his face, “thankee for the exercise, Mister Keane, and I will see you all again at Noon Sights.”
He went down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, then aft into his cabins to partake in a tall glass of his cool tea to slake his thirst, and have a sponge-off, and perhaps a change of shirt. Silk, for combat, he wondered?
* * *
All officers, the Sailing Master, and all the Midshipmen under instruction turned up with their sextants to take the height of the sun to determine their position. Lewrie and Mr. Yelland both brought their Harrison chronometers, which were in satisfactory agreement as to the exact moment of Noon. As ship’s boys struck Eight Bells and turned the sand glasses, they all drew the sun to the horizon and locked the angle on their instruments. Lewrie and the ship’s officers made one syndicate, over by the door to the chart room, whilst the Mids huddled together over their slates to form another.
“Are we in agreement, then, gentlemen?” the Sailing Master asked. “Thirty-seven degrees, twenty minutes North, and Fourteen degrees, fourty-five minutes West? Then I will mark it so.”
“And let me see what a day on this course will fetch us, assumin’ the winds hold,” Lewrie suggested, starting to follow Yelland into the chart room.
“Deck, there!” a lookout’s shout stopped him. “It’s two strange sail! Three points off th’ larb’d quarter. Two sets of t’gallants an’ royals!”
“Bows-on?” Lewrie bellowed back, hands cupped round his mouth.
“Aye, sir! Bows-on, an’ comin’ close-hauled!”
Lewrie frowned and pursed his lips, feeling all the eyes on the quarterdeck on him. It was time to portray the proper sort of Royal Navy Captain, for their sakes.
“An hour, perhaps, before their tops’ls and courses fetch above the horizon,” he mused aloud, “and some goodly time before they’re hull-up. Three hours, altogether, before they’re anywhere in shooting range? If they’re enemy ships. We’ll let them come to us, and, when close enough, hoist our false colours. If that don’t daunt ’em, then we blow the Hell out of them.
“Carry on, sirs,” Lewrie told them all, “if strenuous exertion is in the offing, I think I’ll take a preparatory nap.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lewrie didn’t take a nap, of course. He spent his time aft in his cabins, going over his written orders to Captain Knolles in HMS Comus and the transport masters, and to Colonel Fry of the Kent Fusiliers. He dined lightly, drank only cold tea instead of wine with his meal, and asked for some hot coffee round the time that he was informed that the two strange ships’ courses were above the horizon.
When a Midshipman came to report that the strangers were hull-up over the horizon, he buckled on his sword belt, took a brace of pistols already cleaned, oiled, and loaded from Pettus, and prepared to go on deck.
“Clear away all, Pettus. Off ye go to the magazine, Jessop, and the best t’both o’ ye,” he said. “Take care o’ Chalky and see to Bisquit.”
“As always, sir,” Pettus gravely replied.
Last of all, Lewrie unlocked his desk and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers.
* * *
“Captain’s on deck!” Midshipman Britton called out.
“Mister Elmes, I give you the keys to the arms lockers,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch. “Beat To Quarters, if ye will.”
“Aye aye, sir! Bosun Terrell! Pipe To Quarters!” Elmes cried.
Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck to lift a telescope and inspect their strangers. They were still hard on the wind, coming strong, and sailing abreast of each other, with about a half-mile between them. They were three-masted, flush-decked, and gave him the impression that they were not the big 38- or 40-gunned frigates he had worried about. Warships, for certain, but perhaps smaller and weaker, somewhere round the same size and weight of metal as Knolles’s 24-gunned Comus. That would mean that they would be armed with nine-pounders, or the French equivalent of twelve-pounders.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Lt. Westcott said to announce his arrival on the quarterdeck. “Did you have a good nap?”
Lewrie tossed him a quick, sly grin, for Westcott knew that it had all been a sham.
“Leftenant Keane!” Lewrie called out, instead. “Do you keep your men down out of sight ’til called for, as we discussed!”
“Very well, sir!” Keane replied.
“I’ll have the gun-ports closed ’til we’re ready to run out, as well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered.
“Done, sir,” Westcott told him.
Lewrie looked forward past the courses and jibs to determine that the two transports off Sapphire’s bows showed no colours, as he had set out in his written orders, and that Comus was flying the Blue Ensign. He went up atop the poop deck to check on the two transports following his ship’s wake, and was pleased to note that they flew no colours, and were managing to maintain column and a rough one cable of separation. From that vantage, he gave the approaching ships a long inspection with his telescope, then trotted back down to the quarterdeck.