Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Page 6

  “So we’re between Scylla and Charybdis?”

  “Captured or shipwrecked, if we’re not careful,” Edward replied matter-of-factly. “But we’ll be careful,” he continued with a smile.

  “There’s always Fortune.”

  “Aye, a grand goddess who proves the proverb.”

  “Which?”

  “Hope for the best, but assume the worst and prepare accordingly.”

  “That’s a fighting man’s revision of the proverb, I think,” the lieutenant said with a small grin.

  Hands manned the braces. Edward took back his proffered spyglass and watched the dark ship. He paid little attention to the activity on deck.

  The captain’s commands came quickly. The crew responded eagerly, and soon the small ship was sailing as near to the wind as she could, larboard tacks aboard, her course toward the harbor mouth. Meanwhile, Edward saw nothing to indicate the unknown ship might chase the Peregrinator.

  But we’ll see, he thought.

  Nothing.

  The dark ship sailed her course.

  Cronow glanced aloft, sniffed the air, and nodded his head. “I smell a stiff gale, Mr. Foxcraft; it over-blows no more. Heave out the tops’ls, reefed. If we can keep out of range a bit longer she might not think it worth the risk to come this close to the coast.”

  The mate sent hands aloft, and all went well until the fore topsail weather sheet parted as the yard was hoisted to set the sail, sounding like a musket shot and leaving the weather clew of the sail flapping out of control. Cronow cursed, Foxcraft shouted: there was enough ice in each man’s voice to shiver any man’s spine.

  “Clew up the tops’l, you damn’d jackanapes!” came one shout, then, after the crew backed the sail, lowered the yard, and got the canvas under control, came another: “Splice the sheet and be quick about it, damn you all!”

  The ship was soon orderly again in its disorder.

  Edward had largely ignored the mysterious vessel during the commotion on deck and aloft, but now turned his attention to it again. Here she comes.

  The dark ship changed course. A long puff of whitish smoke appeared from one of the quarterdeck guns, followed a few seconds later by the sound of a distant cannon, un-shotted, reverberating over the water.

  French bastard! he thought, his jaw tense.

  “Damn!” cursed Cronow. “A change of course and a signal, as you predicted.”

  “Aye. She could be a Dutchman looking for a pilot, but I’ll bet you my share of a Manila galleon she’s French and wants us for a prize.”

  “If so, Captain MacNaughton, you’ll likely arrive in Ireland later than the rest of us. You look like better surety than anyone else aboard,” Cronow said, with a grim gallows grin. Edward doubted, though, that the owners would give a damn about ransoming him, or even the ship’s captain for that matter. “Shall we eat then?” Cronow continued, now nonchalant. “We’ve time before she comes in range, and there’s little else we can do at the moment.”

  He turned to the helmsman: “Have a care! Touch the wind and wear no more; we don’t want to run aground on the Bulman rocks and become wreck-goods for the Irish!”

  And then to Foxcraft: “Have the crew eat quickly in their watches, and call me immediately if she does anything other than sail her present course!” And in a low voice: “And keep an eye on the crew!”

  “We have time to eat?” Lieutenant Fielding asked Edward.

  “Aye, plenty of time, even for a short chase like this one. That’s the thing about chases at sea: lots of waiting, requiring lots of patience. It can take all day sometimes, or even days. Skill and a good ship are vital, but Fortune loves a contest too, so you can never be entirely certain how it will end. Probably a lot like a siege on land, waiting and waiting until it’s time to fight.”

  Fielding nodded his understanding; he’d had experience of sieges.

  Edward, Cronow, and Fielding ate quickly in the ‘great cabin’—actually a very small one which could barely seat six at the table—aft of the steerage. They discussed the peripherals of war at sea: lost cargoes and high insurance rates, prizes and privateers and impressed seamen; they spoke hardly at all of the approaching French privateer. Parson Waters snored loudly next door, having, as the seamen put it, returned to his blankets to pray in his sleep as soon as he realized an enemy was nearby. The ensign, tossed back into his cradle by a pair of grumbling seamen, snored loudly too.

  Edward’s hopes rose when the three returned to the quarterdeck, for the privateer was not sailing as well as he thought she would. She had surely been too long at sea; her bottom must be covered with enough weed, barnacle, and worm to strip some speed from her.

  We might yet outsail her, Edward hoped cautiously.

  Then to his dismay she shook the reefs from her courses and hove out her topsails. He watched the main and fore topsails billow and the dark ship heel even more. If she could carry this canvas in the present winds, he realized, she would surely overtake them.

  “Do you mind, Captain Cronow, if I look at your guns?” Edward asked.

  “They’re yours, sir! You’re as fine a gunner as I’ve ever seen, and we’re too small to ship our own. Our first mate does what he can; he was a gunner’s mate once. Mr. Foxcraft, give Captain MacNaughton any assistance he requires! We may need the great guns, and he’s the best man I know to command them.”

  Edward left the quarterdeck to examine the guns, known more commonly as cannon to lubbers and soldiers, in the waist. A distant observer would see eight, but only four were real. The others were fashioned of wood, fake barrels on fake carriages. The real guns were a pair each of old iron minions and falcons anciently cast during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Of roughly three and two-and-a-half pound shot respectively, they were too small to do any real damage, except to sails and rigging, or to men at close range.

  Joseph Foxcraft looked quizzically at Edward, smiled wryly, and then looked at the captain.

  “So we’re hunting Goliath today? Well, my guns will sling a small shot or two.”

  The mate, born to an English father and Genoese mother, had a pragmatic, if at times sarcastic, optimism that Edward admired.

  “With the Captain’s permission, then,” Edward said, not looking at him but at the French ship, “I’d like to let fly a few times. We might part a stay and discourage him from bothering us so close to a rocky lee shore. What shot do you keep in your lockers, Mr. Foxcraft?”

  “Plenty of small shot, partridge and burrel that is, plus a fair amount of bar, and maybe a dozen or two cast double-head. We’ve a few dozen round shot also, not that they’re much use in these guns, except maybe against a small, thin-hulled privateer at pointblank.”

  “We’ll use the minion just abaft the main mast; it should be the most stable of the two larboard guns,” Edward stated matter-of-factly. “We’ll let fly a few times with the double-head or bar, and if we don’t escape we’ll tell the French captain we were just firing a badly pointed salute and hope he has a sense of humor.”

  “Us firing on him will make him laugh. Hell, he might die laughing and save us all,” Foxcraft noted wryly, then looked at Captain Cronow.

  “Make ready the ship, Mr. Foxcraft,” the captain said.

  “A clear ship! A clear ship for engaging! All hands to quarters!” Foxcraft shouted sharply.

  He assigned a gang of four seamen to work as a gun crew, while the second mate and the rest of the small crew scrambled to make the ship clear for a fight.

  The gun crew quickly cast off lashings and began positioning the designated gun, which had been secured alongside the bulwarks, in line with its gunport. They struck open the port lid, which had been wedged shut with oakum, and they brought loading and firing tools up from the gunner’s store. On Edward’s order, because he wanted a fresh cartridge in the gun and different shot, they drew the tallowed tomkin, or plug, from the mouth of the gun, drew wad, shot, another wad, and the old powder cartridge from the bore, removed the lead apron, and
drew the waxed oakum fid from the vent. The gun crew cleaned the vent, checked the breech rope and training tackles for wear, and greased the carriage trucks.

  And there was still more to do. They moved shot from the bulwark locker to a rope garland on deck near the gun, double-checked the caliber of the shot by measuring it against a shot gauge and comparing it with the roman numeral III painted above the gun port, hung a wad-net filled with wads nearby, and placed a linstock in one of several notches cut for the purpose into the rim of a small tub filled with a couple inches of sand to catch embers. Close by the gun, they placed a large tub of water to wet a swab and cool the gun if it got too hot, unlikely as this was today, and one more amidships, with blankets next to it, in case of fire. Edward ordered the crew not to reload the gun until he had decided which shot to use.

  Clearing the ship was time-consuming for the small crew, even augmented as it was by the two navy wives who had rushed on deck as soon as they heard the order to make a clear ship. Both had seen action aboard the ships their husbands served on: they had carried cartridges, helped serve guns, loaded muskets, and assisted the sea surgeon. Captain Cronow’s opinion of women was offset by his pragmatism, and any hand lent in battle was a hand well-received.

  Edward held a similar view. Even so, he could not always suppress the superstition, central to his philosophy, that women and Fortune went hand-in-hand. He hoped the women on deck would incline the goddess toward the Peregrinator’s cause and not turn out to be, as some seamen believed they were, bad omens.

  Edward looked the gun over carefully when the mate and his crew finished readying it for its furious purpose. It was in better condition than he had deemed upon first glance; but he wondered about its accuracy and whether any of the crew had fired it enough to become familiar with its peculiarities.

  “Don’t worry, sir, I’ve inspected all my guns for honeycombs and flaws. They’re old, but they won’t blow up in our faces, and this minion is a fair piece,” Foxcraft said, noticing his concern.

  “She’ll be in range soon,” Cronow called over, as he grabbed the ship’s boy by the collar. “Captain MacNaughton, will you need some brandy?”

  “Aye, for the crew.”

  “Jack, my lad,” Cronow ordered, releasing the boy, “bring out a pannikin of brandy and sugar. And if you drink any of it before it’s issued, I’ll flay your hide with the salt eel!”

  The boy, indentured to the captain but happy to have such a tolerant master, grinned and ran below.

  The dark ship slowly, insistently, gained on the smaller vessel. Then, gone was the Dutch ensign, and soon in the wind flew the white ensign, jack, and pennant of France.

  “Aye, look at the white rags Monsoor calls his fighting colors,” sneered Cronow.

  “He means to attack, then?” asked the lieutenant of no one in particular.

  “It’s their signal for us to yield,” Edward said. “At least he’s being lawful and honest, raising his true colors before he shoots at us.”

  A gun boomed in the distance, loaded this time with a round shot, intended as a warning, which splashed and drowned in the sea.

  “And this is his way of telling us that he’ll shatter our hull and rigging if we don’t.”

  So much, thought Edward, for my venture.

  Part of his mind remained calm and analytical, calculating the distances between the vessels and their relative speeds. He considered the likelihood of doing any significant damage to the Frenchman’s rigging before the small ship was forced to strike—probably be after the Frenchman fired his first real shot at them. There was no point in angering the French crew by firing in desperation. A few shots would satisfy both honor and sense.

  But in another part of his mind, a storm raged.

  God’s blood, why of all days, just at the point of completing this tedious voyage, does Fortune send her here? So close, dammit, I was so close!

  First a foolish rencontre in Bristol and now this, as if Fortune were toying with him. He had business in Ireland, money to raise his venture. For months he had worked for this, months of trying to break out of the tedium his life had seemed reduced to, months of taking reduced positions while he planned the forthcoming venture, not to mention the time waiting for the prohibition on his travel to the colonies to be lifted. Nothing infuriated him as much as being so close to an object of desire, so close he could smell it, see it, almost touch it, to have it remain tantalizingly just out of reach. He thrust his frustration into one of the small rooms in a distant corner of his mind and concentrated solely on the immediate situation, step by step, moment by moment. The past was useful right now only for the experience it provided, and the future did not exist.

  “What?” he said, glancing down at Jack, who was trying to get his attention.

  “Sorry, sir, I only asked if you’d want your sword. I’ll fetch it for you.”

  “Aye, do that, though it won’t be that kind of fight. No use hiding the sword if we strike; they’ll strip us and search the ship anyway. Fetch my backsword, not the smallsword, if you please. And my cartridge box, horn, pistols, and buccaneer gun too. You can’t miss it, it’s longer even than I’m tall. You still have the key?” The boy drew it from beneath his shirt where it hung from a length of tarred marline. “Good. Oh, dammit, bring my leather wallet too. And while you’re below, tell the passengers not to come on deck unless the ship is sinking.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Edward would not go below himself, for fear his absence might be construed as cowardice. Within minutes the boy returned, comically overloaded with weapons. Edward immediately took the leather wallet with the confidential letters inside and tucked it beneath his waistcoat.

  “I’ll pitch it into the sea if the French capture us,” he told the boy. Of the arms, he took the backsword first, the boy cocking his head sideways as he did. “What’s the matter, lad? Surely you’ve seen a backsword before.”

  “Not like that.”

  “It’s Highland, and a bit unusual at that.”

  “It has devil faces on the hilt.”

  “Two of something with horns, for sure. I imagine one is David Jones, that Scottish sea devil who rules hell under the oceans, and the other Old Nick himself, who rules hell under the earth.” The boy frowned. “Better two devils in one’s own hand than one in the enemy’s, don’t you think?”

  The boy smiled. “Why do you wear it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Over your shoulder.”

  “It’s a baldric. You’ve never seen one?”

  “Only on soldiers on horses.”

  “Well, when I was a lad your age they were common everywhere. Now mostly only Highlanders and horse soldiers wear them.” Edward re-tied his Scots plaid sash over the baldric. “To let them know who I am,” he said with a wink, “and also to keep my Ferrara—that’s what I call my sword—from bouncing about.”

  He buckled a belt and cartridge box over his sash, keeping the box to his left front. “Now the pistols, young sir, the large ones. You know how to prime a pistol?” The boy nodded. “Good. Take my horn and prime the small ones, if you please.” The boy did as he was told. “Now, tuck them into your belt like this, use the belt-hooks, here, on your right, one in front, one on the side, locks against your body, butts pointing left, half-cock only.” Jack did as he was told, then stood tall, one hand on each pistol butt. “Good lad! Now you’re ready for a fight, buccaneer fashion.”

  The boy grinned proudly.

  Edward leaned over and whispered, “Do you see how some of your crew are looking really scared, like they might run below?”

  “Yessir!” the boy whispered back.

  “Well, men like that might run, but they also might mutiny and try to take over the ship. If anything happens, stand by your captain on the quarterdeck. Understand?”

  “Aye, sir,” he replied, wide-eyed yet resolutely.

  “Good lad.”

  Edward stood up straight. With his left hand on the fish-sk
in grip of his basket-hilted Highland backsword, his right resting on the butt of one of his pistols, and the boy imitating him at his side, he watched the dark deadly ship approach.

  Chapter 6

  I was still in hopes some lucky Accident

  would facilitate our Escape...

  —Capt. Nat. Uring, Voyages and Travels, 1727

  “She’s well within range,” Lieutenant Fielding noted to Edward, once more inspecting the enemy ship through his spyglass. The lieutenant, following Edward’s example, had also armed himself.

  “If this were land, aye, but not at sea,” Edward replied. “We like to fight close, that way we can shoot straight at our target. This privateer captain will wait until his ship is within pointblank range of the guns on her upper deck. They’re probably eight pounders; say three hundred yards. We don’t waste shot at sea by firing at longer ranges. I prefer to fight even closer, at pistol shot: yardarm to yardarm we call it.”

  “Not today, I hope.”

  “It’s quite something to experience, Lieutenant, but no, not today. We wouldn’t survive a single broadside. We’ll have a short running fight, nothing more.”

  Edward subtly pointed out a crewman casting his eyes toward a scuttle that led below, and then nodded in the direction of three nervous seamen who had the look of a cabal among them.

  “They know as well as we do,” he resumed, “that we’re between Scylla and Charybdis, as you put it, and they’ll prefer being taken prisoner to being killed or maimed in a fight they think we can’t win, or drowned in a shipwreck trying to escape a fight. If there’s a mutiny, it’ll probably be of men fleeing below deck or refusing to obey orders, and we’ll see it coming. But if the crew tries to take over the ship and surrender to our enemy, they’ll do it suddenly when we’re distracted. Your best place will be on the quarterdeck, the high ground so to speak. Can you rouse the ensign to join you?”