King, Ship, and Sword

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Lewrie cheated a bit, of course, by edging out North'rd 'til the masthead lookouts could barely spot Cockerel, and covertly signalling Parham to take his Pylades out away from Reliant to the limits of her lookouts' vision as well. Four more miles could make all the difference was his main thought-if the French had shied as far away from any patrolling vessels out of Jamaica as they could.

Another day passed, full of boresome ship's routine and gunnery practice; decks were scoured, meals were served, rum was issued twice a day, hammocks and bedding came up from below at 4 a.m. for stowing in stanchions and nettings, then taken below at sundown, after the Reliant stood Evening Quarters. Watches were set and rotated; Noon Sights were taken and their position reckoned by the height of the sun and by the half-hour casts of the chip-log aft. With stuns'ls set, the squadron reeled off an average of nine or ten knots during the daylight hours, much less in the darkness, but still managed runs of nearly 195-215 miles from one noon to the next. And they were running out of ocean. Another day, and they would be off the approaches to Lake Borgne and the first passes through the low-lying Mississippi Delta.

Lewrie paced his quarterdeck, from taffrail flag lockers and lanthorns to the companionway ladder and back again, head down, hands in the small of his back, all his recent good humour gone; fretting he had been wrong, horribly wrong; fearing that the French had kept their two-day lead and had made good time, and were even now anchored at the Head of Passes off Fort Balise, ready to sail up the river to New Orleans… as safe and unassailable as babes in their mother's arms!

As he paced forrud towards the bows, the lowering sun was harsh in his eyes, still yellow, though in the next half-hour it would go red and amber as it neared the Western horizon. Already, the seas astern were beginning to be lost in dusk, and the seas ahead were a sheet of wrinkled copper fresh from the forge, with the wavetops tinged a coral red atop their fleeting blue-grey shadows.

"Lovely sunset in a bit, sir," Lt. Spendlove commented.

"Mine arse on a band-box!" Lewrie all but snarled back.

At the end of the First Dog Watch, which was due in a few minutes (dammit!), they would have to put over the helm and slink back to the South to take station five miles off Cockerel, shrinking the line to fifteen miles North-to-South, and the lookouts' vision shrunk down to five miles or less, depending on cloud cover or the lack of moon.

"Deck, there!" a lookout called down. "Pylades is haulin' her wind an' comin' down t'us! Signalling'!"

Lewrie looked about for one of the Midshipmen of the Watch and found Grainger first. "Aloft with you, Mister Grainger, with a glass and your signals book! Mister Rossyngton, make ready to answer with flag signals! Hop to it!"

He watched Grainger scale the windward shrouds and rat-lines to the cat-harpings, go out the futtock shrouds to the main-top, then get up the narrower top-mast shrouds to the cross-trees to join the sailor posted there as a lookout; glared, rather, urging haste before the evening got too dark to see!

"Deck, there!" the lookout bawled, relaying what Grainger told him, phrase by phrase. "Four… Strange… Ships! Night… Lights… on th' Horizon! Chase! In Sight! Enemy In Sight!"

"What course do they steer?" Lewrie shouted back, hands cupped either side of his mouth, in a quarterdeck, full-gale cry.

"Deck, there!" the lookout prefaced, needlessly. "Chase… Is Stern-On! Bound Nor'-Nor'west!"

"Chart!" Lewrie demanded, going to the binnacle cabinet and the traverse board. Lt. Spendlove spread out the chart, already pencilled with the Sailing Master's reckoning of their position at noon, hours before, and a rough Dead Reckoning track of knots logged on the course since. "The Chandeleur Islands!" Lewrie exclaimed, poking a finger at the long, low-lying string of isles that lay almost dead on their own bows. "They're going North-about the Chandeleurs, into sheltered water! Sail down the lee side, with Breton Island to starboard, and get to Passe a La Loutre, where it'd be hellish-hard t'have at era!"

"Good Lord, sir… they just threw away their lead over us!" Lt. Spendlove said with a gasp. "It would have been safer to stand on direct for the East Pass, and they'd have been inside the river mouth hours ago! Why would they do that?"

"There's deep-enough water in the Mississippi Sound, up there," Lewrie told him, sweeping a finger along the coast East of Lake Pontchartrain and the string of barrier islands that sheltered a very small settlement named Old Biloxi-Cat, Ship, Dog, and Horn Islands. "He could anchor there, he be hard to get at, and land his troops at Biloxi or send all his boats through the Rigolets Pass, here at the Spanish fort, Coquilles, and get into Pontchartrain and down to New Orleans by the back entrance. No one could touch ' em then. Then, if he wished, he could even land his boats here, from Lake Borgne, and it's not fifteen miles up the Chef Menteur road to New Orleans proper!" Lewrie said, stabbing at the very beach where long ago he and an agent from Panton, Leslie amp; Company had explored a landing place for British soldiers!

"He'll use these little islands as a barrier between our ships and his, sir?" Spendlove excitedly said. "Even if he don't know there are British ships so close?"

"The Decean fellow on the lee side of'em, and us, or anybody else's squadron on the windward, and it's as good as an iron shield," Lewrie spat, standing back and letting one corner of the chart roll up. "Mister Rossyngton? Signal to Pylades… 'Come Down To Me'!"

He referred to the chart once more. The Chandeleurs… did anyone live there? He'd never enquired. It was a bow-shaped arc of sand isles and shoals, about fourty miles end to end. Lewrie dug into the binnacle cabinet for a rusty pair of dividers, stepping off distances.

They were sixty miles or so off the Chandeleurs, the French not twelve miles Nor'west of Pylades when spotted, another twelve miles to the Nor'west of Reliant, and were fourty miles off the island chain.

Goin' almost Due North now, so they don't run aground on them in the dark, Lewrie quickly speculated; hmm… twenty miles on that course, say, twenty-five to round the end of the last one well clear o' shoals? Under reduced sail, too, feelin' their way in the dark! Damn slow, then… fourty miles Sou'west down the lee of the islands. They might be clear of 'em by dawn tomorrow!

"Landin' his toy soldiers ain't enough," Lewrie crowed, tossing the dividers back into the cabinet drawer. "He's this close t'success, he'll make for the Pass а La Loutre and get his ships up-river, too!"

Lt. Spendlove leaned over the chart to where Lewrie's finger rested, seaward of the passes but South of the Chandeleurs, windward of Breton Island and the Bay Ronde.

"There by first light tomorrow, Mister Spendlove," Lewrie said, feeling his excitement rising. "I think we've got 'em!"

"Uhm… beg pardon, sir, but… how do we inform Modeste and Cockerel?" Spendlove asked, delighted, wolfishly excited himself, but a bit mystified. "Once it's full dark, none of the night signals will be able to convey any sort of message."

"We go tell him, Mister Spendlove!" Lewrie crowed. "We barge up to him, invite ourselves to supper, and tell him! After all, where he is steering, the course we must steer to meet up with him, and a course t'place us where we need t'be, is pretty-much the same!"