Hoare and the headless Captains

Chapter XIV

By only two bells of the forenoon watch, Royal Duke lay hove to a mile off Abbotsbury, midway down the long strand of Chesil Beach. After dark, she would close the shore and drop off the landing party. Having done so, she would double back and retrace her course to Weymouth, there to await their return-"with your shields or on them," as little Lorimer, the clerk-coxswain, put it. Like an astonishing number of his shipmates, he was classically inclined.

The weather was gray, overcast, with a steady westerly breeze and a light chop over the long Atlantic rollers that marched ashore.

"Ye'll be well washed down, lads, before you come aboard this barky again," Stone said. His voice oozed envy. He and another seasoned seaman would cox the two longboats in, for Hoare and Clay agreed that part-time tars like Lorimer would never get the boats ashore without their broaching to in the surf, light though it was likely to be.

Meanwhile, the two officers decided, after putting their heads together, that they would use the time to continue their exercises of yesterday-first aloft, then at the guns. Throughout most of the day, then, the Royal Dukes' vital paperwork was securely stowed while the clerical tars, stiff from yesterday's drills, turned to again.

By the time the gray day drew closed with spits of cold rain, Hoare found himself less despondent about Royal Duke's performance than he had been the previous afternoon. Sail handling had been adequate, though their performance when tacking ship had been enough to make any real seaman weep. However, the crew of the second pair of guns had bettered four minutes not once, but twice, and were cock-a-hoop over it.

After all, Hoare thought, the Royal Dukes were picked men, and women, picked for intelligence and initiative. They were catching on far faster than your average plowman or bankrupt tailor.

As a final fillip, Hoare had informed his people, he and one of the crew would embark in Alecto and the two lilliputian men-o'-war would stage a mock duel. He selected Taylor to accompany him, for he wanted to see whether a woman could make any kind of ship handler. He cautioned himself to make sure they were never below in Alecto at the same time. It would never do for the scuttlebutt to run that their captain was having at one of his crew.

Ever since rescuing it from the ballast of an ancient condemned fifty-gun ship of the line, Hoare had been eager to fire Alecto's own great gun, a solitary one-pounder swivel. It had been an antique when he found it then. It might once have graced the maintop of a Tripolitanian pirate. Or it might have fought at the Hague over a century ago before being dismissed from the service and left to rust as kentledge in new construction. It was better off with Hoare, as he and the port's master parker had agreed. The only change he had made to it was to affix a reliable flintlock firing mechanism over the simple touchhole that had satisfied the long-gone original gunner.

While still under tow, then, he and Taylor rousted the awkward piece out of Alecto's forward bilges, where it had rested ever since being brought aboard. When they had set it in its larboard socket, Hoare tested and greased the crude slide that took up its pitiful recoil. The two then hoisted Alecto's two tall, graceful, simple sails, and they were ready for battle. Hoare signaled Royal Duke to cast them off.

"We're a French privateer, men," Taylor called out, relaying Hoare's whispered command, "loaded with captured bullion and brandy. Come take us, if you can!"

At the helm of the pinnace, Hoare sheered away, out of Royal Duke's wake, and undertook to show the woman how the peculiar little vessel worked to windward. The tender pointed well above the bigger midget's best, scorning Royal Duke's efforts to bring her under her lee.

"Broadside!" Clay bellowed to his Captain in lieu of actually firing. Hoare sneered; Alecto was well forward of her opponent's larboard bow, and Clay could never have trained his guns that far forward.

"Call 'Miss'!" Hoare ordered Taylor, and she did so. In the chill October wind, Hoare thought, and excited by the battle, the woman really looked quite attractive. He must beware.

Royal Duke wore, presented her starboard battery, and "fired." This time, Hoare decided, he must encourage the others.

"Signal 'one hit, larboard chains,' " he said, and made to go forward to the swivel for his turn to fire.

"Excuse me, sir," Taylor said. "What is that brig up to?"

Hoare was about to reprove her for a meaningless question about their own Royal Duke brig when he realized she was looking in the exactly opposite direction.

The stranger was Niobe, Hoare saw. As he had hoped, Francis Delancey had read between the lines of Hoare's signal back in Portsmouth and was standing out to do battle. She was half again the size of Hoare's little gem and would carry a broadside of eight-pounders, nine to a side. Her broadside, then, would throw several times what Royal Duke could deliver. But she was still only a Lieutenant's command, so Hoare could wish Delancey well.

"May we join the dance, girls?" came the hail from Niobe's quarterdeck. Hoare saw that her crew was lining her nearer side.

Since Niobe was newly put in service, Delancey's crew would be new to her and to one another, but Sir George Hardcastle would surely have seen to it that they were experienced hands all.

Hoare was about to welcome her to the exercise when he realized that Delancey's crew was jeering them.

"What ho, the Hoare's Delights!" came clear from her deck. "Ahoy, the Dustmen!"

Looking more closely, he saw Delancey himself on her quarterdeck, squatting under her spanker boom, mouth agape with laughter.

Hoare's temper was seldom far from the surface; now, he lost it.

"Signal 'Catch me if you can'!" he ordered.

Taylor relayed his words in a voice weighted with challenge. To Hoare, she sounded like one of those female Norse divinities that carried away the battle-dead-veeries? Barkalees? Yes, he must, indeed, take care.

With that, he began the dance. He pirouetted around Niobe like a midge around a bullock, leading her away from Royal Duke until the two brigs were lost to sight of each other in the gathering dusk, the pinnace forming the wide third point of an obtuse triangle. Then he swept up under Niobe's counter and past her. Handing the tiller to Taylor, he went forward to the swivel.

He raised one hand long enough to catch Taylor's attention.

"Steady as you go now, Taylor," he whispered futilely and grabbed hold of Alecto's forestay before he could go overboard. With his free hand, he aimed the swivel well over Delancey's head, less than a cable away. He backed off and pulled the lanyard of the flintlock. The piece went off beside his ear, leaving it a-ringing. Alecto would be Alecto no more, by God; from now on, she would be Nemesis forever.

The small cloud of powder smoke went off to leeward swiftly enough. Hoare heard Taylor cough. By God's good grace, his shot went precisely where he had wanted it to go-through Niobe's spanker, a foot above her Captain's head. Delancey, Hoare was delighted to see, had ducked so quickly as to lose his hat over the side.

Hoare waved his own, made his way aft to Nemesis's tiny cockpit. There he took over the helm and turned the little yacht about while Niobe disappeared in the gloaming. On his way back to Royal Duke, he managed to reach over the side and recover Delancey's hat from where it bobbed cheerfully in the Channel, upside down.

As Nemesis retraced her tracks, Hoare indulged himself in a happy waking dream. In the presence of an enraged Delancey, he was addressing Admiral Sir George Hardcastle.

"I truly regret having alarmed Mr. Delancey, sir," Hoare imagined himself saying, in the loud, clear voice he remembered so well. "I fear I mistook him for a Frenchman."

"How could you possibly have done that?" he had the imaginary Delancey bluster. "Did you not see my colors? You must have known you were firing on a King's ship."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Delancey. But I have also known one of His Majesty's ships to hoist French colors in order to amuse the enemy. Why should not a Frenchman do likewise to amuse me?"

In this dream, Hoare had no need to pause for breath but continued.

"For my maneuvers between Nemesis and Royal Duke so evidently amused you that your manners led me to assume that you could not be English. What else could you have been, then, but French? Or Brother Jonathan, perhaps?

"Oh, and by the way, Mr. Delancey," Hoare said in this waking dream, "you dropped your hat. Here it is."

Shaking himself back to reality, he returned to duty and the deck of Royal Duke.