Hostile Shores

“High takings, sir?” Pettus asked as he poured the coffee.

“Our spook is back, but tonight we’re goin’ t’have a go at ‘smoaking’ her out,” Lewrie explained, beaming in glee. “Once I’ve eat, Pettus, we’ll see to my weapons. There’s a good chance I’ll have need of ’em on the morrow. Oil, brushes, rags, and flints. And, do see that I’ve a clean silk shirt and stockings, and a fresh-washed pair o’ breeches, just in case.

“Damme!” he cried. “With any luck at all, I’m going t’catch that bastard ghost ship out yonder if it kills me!”

CHAPTER FORTY

“Sir? Sir?”

“Uhmph?”

“Seven Bells of the Middle Watch, sir,” Pettus prompted by the edge of Lewrie’s hanging bed-cot, with a small candle lanthorn in his hand. “You said to wake you half an hour before the change of watch.”

“Um, aye,” Lewrie agreed with a curt nod. “I’m awake.”

Don’t want t’be, Lewrie thought, for he had been having one of the grandest dreams of a neck-or-nothing steeplechase, soaring like a falcon over hedgerows, stone walls, and stiles in company with boisterous old friends; even stout Clotworthy Chute, his old school chum who’d been expelled with him from Harrow, could keep up and keep his saddle like a born horseman—which he most certainly was not! There had been naked ladies, full tits bouncing most wondrously, too, all of them handsome. No one he’d known, but it had felt damned promising!

“Cold tea, sir,” Pettus offered.

“Cold, and scant, comfort,” Lewrie muttered, whisking back the covers and rolling out of the bed-cot barefoot, clad in nothing but his underdrawers. As he sipped the tea he looked round his cabins to assure himself that all the sash-windows in the stern, and both the windows in the quarter-galleries, were covered with jute sacking, and would show no light out-board. It was stuffy, humid, and almost cool to the shivering point belowdecks, in those hours before sunrise.

With the pewter mug of tea in hand, he went to the larboard quarter-gallery, had a long pee, swished and gargled with tea, then spat into the “necessary” to clear his mouth.

“Let’s shove me into order, Pettus,” he bade, stripping off the underdrawers and do

“Cap’m’s on deck!” the Master’s Mate of the watch alerted the the others on the quarterdeck as Lewrie made his way up from the waist.

“Good morning, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said in a soft voice.

“Good morning, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie replied, tapping his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Now, where away is our spook? And what is our heading?”

“As at midnight, when you went below, sir,” Spendlove answered. “Course Sou’west by South, making six knots by the last cast of the log, and about fourty miles seaward of the estuary, by Dead Reckoning. The lookout at the main cross-trees reports that he has our stranger’s taffrail lanthorns in sight, just barely … inshore of us, sir! Not twelve miles off! Three points off the starboard bows, at the last hailing.”

“So she is makin’ for the middle of the estuary mouth!” Lewrie exclaimed, clapping his hands together in satisfaction, a sound much too loud for the wee hours, and the tense anticipation of the entire on-watch crew. “Any idea of her course?” Lewrie asked, going to the starboard, lee, bulwarks to peer out, even if nothing could be seen in the deep darkness from the deck.

“She seems to be plodding along on roughly the same course as ours, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said as he followed Lewrie to the rails, “though if she intends to close the coast to visual range of Diomede or us … were we there, of course … she may haul her wind at any time.”

“Uhm, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “We’re fourty miles offshore, and she’s twelve miles closer … twenty-eight miles off. Even at a plod under reduced sail, she could get within twelve miles of the middle of the estuary mouth just before dawn … if she goes about soon. Is she a warship, she surely stands the same watches as us. At Eight Bells…”

He pulled out his pocket watch, but couldn’t read its face in the darkness. The wee lanthorn at the forecastle belfry was shrouded, as was the light from the compass bi

“Ye know, Mister Spendlove, I think this is goin’ t’work!” he said in a low voice, though one tinged with humour.

*   *   *

He hadn’t been all that sure and confident at sundown the evening before, wasn’t even sure that their mysterious ghost would appear near Lobos Island, or had in the meantime made off South nearer the mouth of the Plate Estuary. When within signalling distance of HMS Diomede, he had spelled out his intentions to her captain, requesting that Diomede play the anvil whilst Reliant would be the hammer, or the beater. The frigate had slowly made her way a few miles further offshore, waiting.

Lewrie had felt real hope when the stranger’s uppermost sails had arisen over the horizon, six leagues to the Sou’east of Lobos Island, her royals or t’gallants lit amber by the last rays of the descending sun. Reliant lay to her West with her sham taffrail lanthorns already lit, making her easy to spot, but not so far out to sea near her to give their ghost alarm. Playing the peek-a-boo game too long, their stranger had lulled herself into complacency … or so Lewrie prayed. One last look before supper, and a turn out to sea to wallow along South to the mid-point of the estuary entrances, out of sight for the night, and she would be safe as houses ’til the morrow, when she closed the coast and came in sight once more, still too far aloof and seaward to risk any real danger.

Or so her captain would think!

Once night had fallen, the sea had turned to ink, and the only light came from a myriad of stars, the Southern Cross most prominent, their stranger was below the horizon and out of sight, and Lewrie had ordered a change of course to stand out Sou’-Sou’east, and the reefs shaken from her courses and tops’ls, and the hand-lanthorns at the stern extinguished.

He’d gone below just long enough to shave and take a sponge-bath, then had returned to the quarterdeck, to pace and fret ’til one of the lookouts had called out that he espied their stranger’s stern lights on the horizon, down to the South, and two points off the starboard bows. An hour and a half later, and the report was that their ghost was abeam, and Lewrie had gone below again for a light supper, sure that they would be to seaward of her when the dawn came. They’d altered course at 9 P.M., had cracked on sail for a time, and Lewrie had finally gone below at midnight for a few hours’ rest.

*   *   *

Eight Bells chimed at the belfry up forward in four twin taps, the last stroke lingering, as the Middle Watch ended and the Morning began. Lt. George Merriman relieved Spendlove, and groggy-sleepy men turned out from the gun deck below to replace the night watchstanders. Bosuns’ calls trilled orders, and the frigate rumbled to hundreds of feet as sailors rolled out of their hammocks to thud onto the planks, grumbled, and lashed up their bedding and hammocks into long sausages narrow enough to pass through the ring measures. Off-watch sailors went below to fetch their rolled-up bedding and bring them on deck to stow in the metal stanchions down both sail-tending gangways and the bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and the cross-deck stanchions at the front of the quarterdeck. Other hands were breaking out and rigging the wash-deck pumps for the usual morning’s cleaning with brooms and mops, and holystone “bibles” to scrub the decks snowy-clean.