The King's Coat

Chapter 9

Friday noon found Parrot due south of Morant Point, beating her way offshore for Antigua. The wind had backed to the sou’east, and with her jibs and gaff sails laid close to the centerline, she clawed for every yard to windward, bowling along with her lee rail slanted close to the bright blue sea, and leaving a creaming wake bone white behind her.

Their passengers were no trouble. Lord Cantner was a minikin of a man, not above five feet tall, but obviously much taller when he sat on his purse. His wife, Lady Cantner, was indeed the raven beauty Alan had seen sneaking down the dark hallway at Sir Richard Slade’s, and she recognized him as well, and blushed prettily when introduced. She was not quite thirty, while Cantner was a stringy sort pushing sixty, and a colt’s tooth for marrying such a younger woman who had such a roving eye. Lewrie was irked that the manservant had his berth space, and was reduced to swaying in a hammock over the wardroom table again. But so far, they had been no bother.

For all the first day, Parrot labored hard to make her easting without losing ground to leeward, but she was putting up a steady eleven knots, and sometimes striking twelve, and it was such a joy to be on deck in the mild winter sunshine, with the wind howling and the rigging humming and crying and spray and foam flying about her like dust from a thundering coach, that Lewrie could find solace from his disappointment in Lieutenant Kenyon. Still, he found it hard to be properly civil to him, so he reduced himself to duty and did not seek out the sort of friendly chats they had enjoyed before.

By the second day the wind had veered more east, and they turned and tacked so they would not be set upon Hispaniola, angling more to the sou-sou’east half east, which would bring them below Antigua but in position for another tack direct for English Harbor, and the waiting winter convoy for England.

It was on the second day that the acting quartermaster went down sick, complaining of severe headaches, and Boggs was at a loss as to the cause. The man quickly got worse, pouring sweat, retching and vomiting, and running a high fever. Boggs began to look worried when the man cried that he was blind and raved in the fever’s delirium.

Bright, the gunner’s mate, was the next man to be struck down. He stumbled to the deck in the middle of gun drill, almost insensible. Next was one of the carpenter’s crew, then a ship’s corporal. After him, it was an older topman, and then the forecastle captain. The acting quartermaster had meanwhile turned the color of a quince pudding, and began to bring up black bile.

“It’s the Yellow Jack,” Boggs told them shakily.

There was no more horrifying name that could have been uttered in the tropics, other than Plague. Yellow Jack was the scourge of the West Indies, and all those scrubby coasts of the Spanish Main and up into the Floridas. Whole regiments could go down sick in a week, and the survivors would not make a corporal’s guard. The most complex objects of the age, the huge and powerful 1st and 2nd Rate line-of-battle ships, could be turned to dead piles of timber and iron as their crews died by the boatload.

“What can we do?” Leonard asked, plainly scared to death.

“There’s bad air aboard,” Boggs told them. “Some feverish vapor trapped below. Tropic land gives off sickening ethers at night as it cools; you’ve seen the mists. Ventilate immediately. We must pump our bilges, flush ’em clean, and scour with vinegar below decks.”

They rigged wind scoops. They pumped the sea below through the wash-deck pumps until the chain pumps brought nothing from the bilges but bright seawater. They scoured every surface with vinegar. The acting quartermaster died. Gunner’s mate Bright died. Two gunners came down with the fever, moaning and shivering. One of the little West Indian ship’s boys went sick, as did Lord Cantner’s manservant.

“We must smoke the ship to drive the bad air out,” Boggs prescribed, and they took plug and leaf tobacco and burned it in tubs, waving smouldering faggots of the stuff in every compartment and nook and cranny, like shamans ministering to an aboriginal sufferer. But the old topman, the forecastle captain, and the ship’s boy died, and had to be interred to the mercy of the ocean, and one could feel the jittery tension in the air like a palpable force.

By evening Docken the warrant gunner had fallen ill, as had five more hands and the cook’s native assistant.

“We must keep all the sick on deck in fresh air in a patch of shade, and give them all the water and small beer they can drink,” Boggs said. “Cut down the grog ration, and stop issuing acid fruits that bring on biliousness. Thin soups and gruels instead of fresh or salt-meat.”

The two gunners died. Lord Cantner’s manservant died. During the night, six more hands began to stagger and sweat, complaining of raging, blinding headaches. Those already stricken turned shocking yellow and began to throw up a black bile.

Vómito Negro, the Spaniards called it: Yellow Jack.

Boggs and Leonard made a project of inspecting the galley and rations on the chance the native cook’s dirty habits might be to blame, but could find nothing they could fault in cleanliness.

By dawn Lady Cantner’s maid dropped in a swoon and cried in terror as she realized she was afflicted. Everyone began to walk the decks cutty-eyed, wary of being too close to another person, and one could smell a miasma of sweaty fear amid the odors of the sickness.

They threw the island animals overboard on the suspicion that they might have carried the fever aboard, along with their coops and pens, and the manger was hosed out, and scrubbed with vinegar or wine.

The wind veered dead foul, forcing them to face a long board to the suth’rd, which would take them closer to the French island of Martinique. Regretfully they had to tack and stand nor’east as close to the wind as possible for Anguilla, the nearest British settlement.

Boggs was by now half-drunk most of the time in sheer panic at the thought of dying and his inability to do any good for anyone. He made up bags of assafoetida for everyone to wear, and the crew eagerly seized their bags of “Devil’s Dung” like a talismens.

Docken died. The acting bosun died, along with three more men. Two of the youngest victims seemed to recover, though they were weak as kittens and all their hair had fallen out, so there was some hope.

“We are seven days from Anguilla,” Kenyon told them aft on the tiny poop by the taffrail. “Lewrie, we must have the starboard guns run out and the larboard guns hauled back to the centerline to ease her heel. It will make her faster through the water.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Mister Claghorne, we must drive this ship like Jehu for the nearest port. Nevis or St. Kitts, if Anguilla will not serve. It is our only hope that we reach a friendly port with medical facilities greater than our own.” Kenyon seemed foursquare and dependable amid all the suppressed hysteria, but Lewrie could see the tension around his eyes, the desperate glance as he realized just how powerless any man was in the face of the unknown—Yellow Jack.

* * *

On the third day in late afternoon they spied a merchant ship. They hoisted their colors and recognition signal. When she was close enough to hail they discovered she was a packet brig, the Black Friars, bound for Kingston.

“Have you a doctor on board?” Kenyon yelled across the surging water that separated them.

“Yes. Have you no surgeon?” the master called back.

“We have many sick aboard.”

“What is it?” the man asked warily.

“We have fever,” Kenyon had to admit.

“I cannot help you,” the master said as Black Friars sped out of reach on an opposite course.

“Goddamn you,” Kenyon shouted. “Bring to, or I will fire into you!”

Lewrie sprang to one of the after swivels and hastily loaded it. He placed a pound ball right in her transom, but Black Friars did not stop for them, but began to loose t’gallants for more speed. Lieutenant Kenyon looked ready to weep as he watched a possible salvation tearing down to leeward, but he could do nothing. No one would turn a hand for them … for fear of the Yellow Jack …

Leonard went down sick. Boggs decocted a foul-tasting brew of quinine bark and forced the hands to drink it, but no one had faith in his cures. The maidservant died at sundown.

It made no sense. Kenyon, Mooney, Claghorne and Lewrie and Purnell discussed it aft, avoiding Boggs, who by then could not raise a cup to his own lips, much less offer help to the sick.

Men had sickened who had not gone ashore into the tropical miasma. They should have been safe. Men who had spent the night ashore did not get sick, but members of the gig’s crew who had only been to the boat landing in broad daylight had sickened and died. All ate the same rations, drank the same grog and Black Strap and small beer, breathed the same air ashore, on deck at anchor or below decks.

Had it been the whores? Mooney wondered, something you could get from native women? Yet hardly any of the West Indians in the crew had gotten it, and only one of them had died of it. They were on the mend, or immune somehow. When questioned, most admitted to having the Vómito Negro when they were very young, and surviving.

“The salt rations?” Lewrie said, wondering out loud. “Sir, we were ashore and we ate fresh food and drank clean drink. We have not been stricken with it. But the crew on salt rations and biscuit for the most part have.”

“Then how do you explain the maid, or the manservant?” Kenyon asked.

“He was much older, and the woman’s constitution is not a man’s, sir,” Lewrie said, making rationalizations for his own funk … I don’t have to die, he told himself grimly, aware of the sour reek of fear on his body and in his clothes. Some of the hands are getting better, the younger ones. Mostly, it’s the old and the weak that are dying. Oh God, why not in battle, but not like this. I swear to You I’ll offer You anything You want, but don’t let me die …

Purnell’s breathing made him turn his head. Tad was all covered in sweat, his neckcloth and shirt already soaked with it, and his hands on the tabletop trembled like a fresh-killed cock.

“I am all right,” Purnell rasped. “Really, I am…”

“Oh God … take Mister Purnell to the surgeon,” Kenyon ordered.

Around midnight Leonard, the captain’s clerk, died. When they held his burial at dawn after Quarters one could hear the hands weeping and snuffling, but it was not any affection for the departed acting purser; it was pity for themselves in the face of the Yellow Jack.

Lewrie was on deck in full uniform to enforce orders, also armed with a pair of pistols and his dirk. The crew was trembling on the edge of panic, and if the officers lost control the men would run wild, get to the rum and spirits, and destroy any chance they might have had to work their way into a friendly port.

Lord and Lady Cantner stood nearby, holding their small bags of Devil’s Dung to their noses to allay the stench. Lewrie went to them.

“This wind is holding, milord. Six more days should see us fair into Anguilla,” he said, doffing his hat.

“Pray God it does,” Lady Cantner said.

“You can still work the ship?” the lord asked, working his sour little mouth as though eating a lime. “Your captain does nothing to assure me. And that mate is so inarticulate he seems half-witted. Pagh, I hate the smell of this…”

“Perhaps one of milady’s scented sachets would serve as well, milord. The assafoetida seems to have had little effect.”

“Gladly,” Lord Cantner said, throwing the foul-smelling bag over the side. “There’s not much to choose between that stuff and the odors from the sick men up forward. Stap me, what a foul stench it is. I’d rather sniff a corpse’s arse.”

You can take your pick of arseholes up forward, Lewrie thought.

“Your surgeon is a fool.”

“Only a surgeon’s mate, milord. An apothecary, mostly. But I doubt if a surgeon’s skill at cutting would avail us.”

“No one will tell us anything, and who the hell are you? Your name escapes me.”

“Midshipman Alan Lewrie, milord.”

“You look like you might know something. How long you been wearing the King’s coat?”

“One year, milord.”

“God’s teeth.” And Lord Cantner turned away in misery.

“It is not his fault, my dear,” Lady Cantner said. “Is there anything I could do to help, Mister Lewrie, perhaps help tend to the sick, or read to them?”

“Delia!” Lord Cantner was shocked at her suggestion.

Tending the sick was for the worst sort, those already so degraded that the odors and sights of sick and injured people could have no further influence. It was a job for abbatoir workers, not titled ladies …

“I doubt if anyone could appreciate a good book just now, milady,” Alan said gently, sharing an astounded glance with Lord Cantner that his lady would even consider such a thing. “The loblolly men shall suffice for the hands. Though I wonder—”

“Yes?”

“The other midshipman, Mister Purnell, was taken ill last night.”

“And he is your friend,” she said, full of pity.

“Aye, milady, he is.”

The thought of Tad lying helpless and puking scared him silly, and Tad Purnell lying sick could have been him so easily, still might be …

“I shall go to him at once,” Lady Cantner said, “if you would approve, my dear.”

“A gentleman, is he?”

“Aye, milord. Of a good trading family from Bristol.”

“I suppose,” Lord Cantner relented sourly.

“Mister Lewrie?” Claghorne called from farther forward.

“Excuse me, milord … milady.”

Claghorne stood by the quartermaster at the tiller head, his hands behind his back and his feet planted firmly on the tilting deck, and glooming bleak as poverty.

“Mister Lewrie, the captain’s took sick as hell,” he said in a low mutter. “I’ll be dependin’ on you an’ Mister Mooney ta see us through.”

“Oh, Christ,” Lewrie said, turning cold all over with another shock to his already shattered nerves. “Has Boggs seen to him?”

“Boggs stands more chance o’ dyin’ o’ barrel-fever than Yeller Jack. Drunk as an emperor down below. Keep that quiet. We don’t want the people gettin’ scared.”

“They’re not already, sir?” Alan shivered.

“Aye, true enough,” Claghorne said. “Knew I could count on ya to buck up an’ stay solid. Must be the only person not scared out a yer boots by this.”

“You misjudge me badly, Mister Claghorne.”

“Then keep it up, ’cause so everyone else misjudges ya, too.”

“May I suggest sir, that you inform Lord Cantner of Lieutenant Kenyon and his distress?”

“I can’t talk his break-teeth kinda words,” Claghorne said. “You do it. I’ve a ship ta run and he can go hang before I let him shit on me again. Stuck up squinty-eyed little hop-o’-my-thumb fool!”

“Aye, sir, but he is very influential. A word from him in the right place and the officer who brought him safe into harbor could gain a commission overnight.”

“I’m a scaly old fish, Lewrie. Not one o’ yer bowin’ an’ arse-kissin’ buggers. I’d be a tarpaulin mate forever before I’d piss down his back, nor anyone else’s, fer favor.”

Lewrie shrugged, knowing that Claghorne was out of his element in the face of a peer and was throwing away a sterling opportunity to gain influence because he lacked the wit, and took such a perverse pride in being a tarry, self-made man of his hands, beholden to no one.

I must be healthy, Lewrie assured himself wryly; I can still toady with the best right in the middle of shrieking hysteria …

* * *

The wind held steady for hours as they drove nor’east. They were still five days from harbor, if the wind held. Thankfully no one else had gone down ill in the last few hours. Perhaps something they had done had worked against the fever. For all the fear and grief, it had so far been a remarkably fast passage to windward.

“God, give us just a little luck…” Alan felt weights slough from his shoulders each time they cast the log. He could get ashore, away from whatever was causing the Yellow Jack. Tad could get a doctor, and he would get credit for standing as an acting officer.

“Sail ho!” the lookout cried from the mainmast gaff throat. “Four points off the weather bow.”

“Aloft with you, Mister Lewrie, an’ spy her out,” Claghorne ordered. Alan seized a glass and scrambled up into the rigging to hug the mainmast alongside the lookout.

“Brig,” Alan said, studying the sail through the telescope.

“Aye, zur,” said the lookout. “An’ a Frenchy, I thinks, zur.”

“French? Why?” Lewrie asked, afraid he was right.

“Jus’ looks French ta me, zur. Can’t rightly say.”

“Keep us informed,” Alan said, heading down to report to Claghorne. “A brig, sir, coming north with a soldier’s wind. The lookout thinks she’s French.”

“Goddamn, what would a Frog brig be doing so close to Anguilla or Nevis?”

“Looking for morsels such as us, Mister Claghorne?” Lewrie offered, drawing a withering glare from the master’s mate.

“An’ goddamn you, too, sir,” Claghorne shouted.

“Aye aye, sir.” Alan shied, backing away.

An hour passed. By then the strange sail was hull-down over the horizon, both ships doomed to intersect at a point off to the east with no way to avoid meeting. Parrot was going as fast as possible but could not get to windward. Neither, in their pitiful condition, could they run. They had already been seen, and any course of evasion would only take them that much farther away from safety and help for their sick, after getting so tantalizingly near. And neither, reduced in manpower, could they fight well if the brig was indeed French.

“Goddamn me, she’s French, all right,” Claghorne said after returning from the lookout perch himself. “Privateer outa Martinique, most-like. Maybe not heavy-gunned but loaded with men for prize crews.”

“So they’ll try to board us, sir,” Lewrie said, wondering if their luck could possibly get any worse.

“They might not, if they see we have Yeller Jack aboard. Them Popish breast-beaters is superstitious as hell. We hoist the Quarantine flag, let ’em see our sick, an’ they might let us go fer safer pickin’s.”

“And if they don’t?”

Claghorne did not answer him, but walked away to the windward rail and began to pace. As close as they were to death from Yellow Jack, it was preferable to being taken a prize and led off to some prison hulk or dungeon on Martinique. With Kenyon down sick, the burden of running, fighting or striking their colors devolved on him, as if he didn’t already have enough to worry about.

“Mister Lewrie,” Lady Cantner called from the hatch to the wardroom. “I think you should come…”

Tad was slung in a hammock below the skylight, where there was a chance for some breeze below decks, and Lewrie thought he looked as dead as anyone could that still breathed. He was yellow, the skin stretched taut over his skull, while his eyes were sunk deep in currant-colored circles of exhaustion.

“Tad, how do you keep?” Alan asked softly.

“God, Alan, I am so sick … when I’m gone do write my parents and say I fell in action, will you do that?”

“You’ll be fine, you silly hobbledehoy.” But Tad’s hand was dry as sunbaked timber and hot as a gun barrel, and leaning close to him Alan could smell the corruption of the blood in the bile Purnell had been bringing up.

“I can taste it,” Tad was saying. “I can taste death, Alan, I’m going to die—”

“Nonsense,” Alan said, realizing he was probably right.

“Thanks for … that night,” Tad managed so softly that Alan had to lean ever closer, and it was like bending down over a hot oven. “It was wonderful, not so hard, after all…”

“Just like riding a cockhorse,” Alan said, trying to plaster a smile on his face. Tad tried to smile back but began coughing and retching and choking, fighting for breath.

Alan tried to lift him but he was drowning in his own vomit. Tad gripped his hand with all his strength, going rigid, eyes wide open. After a final gasping try for a breath, he went limp, eyes blank and staring at Lewrie.

“Goddamn it,” Alan cursed, tears burning his eyes. “Just Goddamn sweet fuck all!”

Lady Cantner came to him and held out her arms, tears on her face, and he sank into her arms gladly. “Damme, he was such a decent little chub. Oh, Goddamn this…”

“He was your friend,” she said, stroking his hair, “but his sorrow and pain are ended. God harvests the flowers early, and leaves weeds such as us to suffer and try to understand.”

That’s a hellish sort of comfort, he thought miserably. “Half a dozen worse people could have died except him. God, what a terrible thing this is! Tad, half the crew sick or dead, Lieutenant Kenyon like to be on his own deathbed, maybe a French privateer ready to take us. What next, for Christ’s sake? God, I’m so scared…”

“There, there,” Lady Cantner continued to comfort.

God stap me, but she has a great set of poonts, Alan thought inanely, appreciating the tender and yielding surfaces against which his face was now pressed as she gentled him.

“You must have faith, Mister Lewrie,” Lord Cantner said from the door to the aft cabin, just a second before Alan decided that dying would not be so bad, if he could grab hold of Lady Cantner’s bouncers for a second. “I’m sure the other officers shall see us through.”

“Aye, milord,” Alan replied, stepping back and wiping his eyes. Lady Cantner offered a handkerchief and Lewrie applied it to his face. It was Mrs. Hillwood’s … still redolent of lovemaking. Alan found it hard to keep a straight face, or stifle an urge to begin howling with laughter. He finally managed to say, almost strangling, “We shall do what we can, me and Mister Claghorne. Right now, we are the officers, milord.”

Lord Cantner’s look of annoyance at finding a snivelling midshipman on his wife’s tits changed to a stricken rictus at that news.

“Was it his mother’s?” Lady Cantner asked of the handkerchief.

“Er … not exactly, milady,” Lewrie said, pulling himself together. He had to escape them before he burst out in manic laughter and they ended up clapping him in irons. “I thank you for your comfort when I had given way to despair, milady. I have to go on deck, now. Mister Claghorne will be needing me. Excuse me.”

Fine bastard’s gullion you are, he scathed himself; your best friend just died, all hell riding down on us, scared so bad I wouldn’t trust mine arse with a fart, and you’re ready to laugh like a deranged loon, and feel up the “blanket” of our “live-lumber”!

He took a glass from the binnacle rack and crossed to join Claghorne, who stood by the windward rail and gripped the narrow bulwark as he stared at their approaching stranger with a forlorn expression.

“About three miles off, now,” Claghorne sighed heavily. “She’ll be up ta us an’ alongside in an hour, holdin’ the wind gauge, dammit.”

“French, sir?” Lewrie asked, hoping against hope.

“Yes, God rot ’em,” Claghorne said. “See the length of the yards, cut shorter’n ours? No guts fer a stiff wind. Black-painted masts, an’ the way they cut their jibs different from ours?”

“Then what shall we do, Mister Claghorne?”

“Might still fox ’em. Show ’em a body, tell ’em we have fever aboard. They don’t want that … Was it young Purnell?”

“He just died, sir,” Lewrie said, getting ready to dive back down into a real session of the Blue Devils.

“Damn hard luck. Watch yer luff, By God…”

The wind had backed a full point to the east-sou’east, and had fallen in its intensity. To stay on the wind for maximum speed they would have to steer more easterly, which was now a perfect course for Antigua, their original destination.

“I do believe that God has a shitten sense of humor,” Claghorne said, trying manfully to keep from raging and tearing his hair at his misfortune.

“Sir, if we have to fight—”

“Mister Lewrie, shut yer trap,” Claghorne said, and stepped away from him to begin pacing the deck again as Parrot seemed to slow and ride a little heavier on the sea.

Lewrie eyed the French brig again, now hull-up and aiming for that point of intersection of their courses. There had to be something they could do besides beat up to the brig and surrender, he thought. If Claghorne could convince them that Parrot had fever aboard, they just might be shocked enough for Parrot to surprise them. Lewrie began to inventory what they had below in the magazines that might serve.

“Goddamn you, you poltroon,” Lord Cantner was shouting from aft at Claghorne. “There must be some idea in your head.”

“The wind is dying, milord,” Claghorne said, close to giving in to despair. “He has a longer hull, an’ with this wind I cannot outrun him. He has more guns an’ most likely nine-pounders that can shoot clean through our hull. If they board us they’ll not leave a man-jack alive, an’ what they’d do ta yer good lady, I shudder ta think about—”

“Well, I shudder to think about what happens to the Indies if I am captured by those frog-eating sonsabitches,” Lord Cantner raved.

“I can give you a weighted bag ta drop yer secret stuff overboard, milord, but I can’t guarantee yer freedom an hour from now.”

“If I could suggest something, Mister Claghorne?” Lewrie said after clearing his throat for attention. Lady Cantner had been attracted to the deck at the sound of the argument and stood by, waiting to hear what would happen to her.

“I command this ship, now, Mister Lewrie,” Claghorne said, “and I’ll thank you ta remember yer place.”

“No, let’s hear him out,” Lord Cantner said, clutching at even the feeblest of straws.

“They want to come close-aboard, and demand surrender. Let them. Put them off their guard with the Quarantine flag and the sight of our sick and dead. Then give them a broadside of double-shot and grape, with star-shot and langridge and fire arrows to take their rigging down and set fires aloft. They’ll be so busy at saving their own ship we may have a chance to escape and make it a stern chase. We shall be going toward our own bases after dark. Would they pursue that far? Could we lose them after sundown?”

“One sign o’ resistance an’ they’ll shoot us ta pieces,” Claghorne said wearily. “Then you’ll be responsible fer milord’s and milady’s deaths.”

“Then what would you do?” Lord Cantner demanded. And both of the Cantners and Alan realized that Claghorne had no plan. He was riding the back of the tiger with no idea how to get off, or how to even change the course of events. Perhaps he could have responded to a lesser set of circumstances like a dismasting, a hull leak, fighting Parrot through a hurricane, even storming another ship’s bulwarks with sword in hand, if ordered by someone else. But this, on top of the fever and all the deaths, and losing Kenyon’s sure hand to guide him was too much for him to handle, and he would be damned if he was going to admit it even if it meant losing Parrot, striking the colors. What little pride he had left would probably force him to consider striking the best possible decision he could have made until the end of his life.

“May I call the hands to Quarters, Mister Claghorne?”

“You wish ta make yer gesture, Mister Lewrie, then go ahead,” Claghorne said, thinking it a small point with no real purpose. “But you’ll not fire a shot unless I directly tell you to, hear me?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Claghorne turned away, and Lord Cantner restrained Lewrie with a hand on his arm. “Let’s pray it works, Mister Lewrie. I cannot abide the idea of striking to a pack of Frogs without at least trying.”

“It may cost us our lives, milord,” Lewrie told him, “but at least we shall retain some of our honor. If I may suggest gathering your papers in a weighted bag, just in case? And in placing your good lady below decks?”

Once free, Lewrie went to his men amidships. “She’s French, boys. And we’re going to sink her or burn her,” he said, trying to look confident. “We shall fetch up all the spare swivels and charges. I’ll want some men to go below to the magazine and break out the canister and star-shot and gun cartridges. Lay out boarding pikes and cutlasses out of sight by the bulwarks. Mister Kelly?”

“Aye?” the bosun’s mate said, wary of Lewrie’s intentions.

“Hands to Quarters, handsomely, so the Frogs won’t notice. Load with reduced charges for double-shot. Star-shot, canister and langridge as well. We’ll give them a surprise, a big one.”

“Handsomely.” Kelly grimly nodded. “Aye aye.”

The French brig ran up her colors, and there was a groan from several hands at the sight of the pure white banner with the gold fleur de lis of Bourbon France.

“We’ll show ’em who they’re dealin’ with,” Claghorne said. “Run up the colors,” and their own red ensign soared up the leach of their mains’l to the peak of the gaff yard, which brought a thready cheer from a few die-hards on deck.

“Swivels in every socket,” Lewrie ordered. “Number-one gun, load with double star-shot. Quoin out and aim for the rigging and give those French bastards some of their own medicine. Number-two, double-shot and canister. Quoin half-in and aim for their gangway, got it?”

He went from gun to gun, giving them their load and aiming point, sent a hand to fetch up the case of fire arrows from the magazine, and had them loaded in the swivels.

“Swivel men, aim for the sails and rigging, get it? Set fire to the bastards and give them something to gripe on, ’stead of taking us. Once we open fire you’ve got to load and fire fast as you can, without orders. It’s that or die in chains, got it? Damme, Crouch, quit mooning! What did I say?” Crouch was the slowest hulk he had, hairy and beetle-browed and incapable of concentrating on anything for long.

“Ah aims fer ’is sails an’ keeps at it ’til ’e burns ta hell, sir.”

“Good enough. Now, this is most important. We shall be standing by the windward rail, but not crouched down by the guns. Nobody lays a hand on a swivel until I say. Keep your matches out of sight. They think we’re going to be easy. Keep your small arms out of sight, too. Don’t let the gun ports swing open or we’re dead before we get a chance to hurt them. They think they’re going to take us without a fight and throw us into their hulks on Martinique, so you think on it and look gloomy, for Christ’s sake!”

Considering the victim was French, the men fell into their roles well enough. Indeed, Lewrie had to threaten flogging for overacting to keep a couple of them from wailing and wringing their hands a little too histrionically.

The brig was up within seven or eight cables by then, turning to open her broadside to point at Parrot. There was a sharp bang, and the sound of iron moaning through the air. A ball struck short ahead of them, raising a pillar of water.

“Nine-pounders,” Lewrie said out loud. He stepped aft to see Claghorne.

“They’ll stand off an’ shoot right through us with nine-pound shot,” he said. “We haven’t a chance—”

“How close do you think they’ll come to demand our surrender?” Lewrie asked, gauging the distance between them to be six cables and closing slowly. He saw the brig let fly her tops’ls so they would not pass ahead of Parrot, adjusting their closing rate so that they would end up rounded into the wind parallel to them.

“About a cable, most-like.” Claghorne sighed. “Maybe closer.”

“It would be best if we had them at pistol-shot, sir.” Lewrie said, knowing that Claghorne had ceded him the initiative as sure as that panic-stricken gunner’s mate had done in Ariadne.

“No, no! They’d blow us apart at that range if they fired. I’ll not have it, Mister Lewrie. You’ll obey my orders an’ not do anythin’ rash. You hear me, sir?”

Another bang from the privateer. This time the ball droned over the deck low enough to part people’s hair. All the enemy’s gun ports were open, and a line of ten guns was visible. The brig’s crew crowded the bulwarks and gangway, seemingly hundreds of them that provided the crews to man enough prizes to send them back to their island lair rich men, enough to overpower a frigate, did they get lucky.

Three cables off, now. A third gun fired from the brig, and this ball struck Parrot, thudding into the wale of the hull below the gun ports.

“Damme, the game’s blocked at both ends,” Claghorne said, collapsing against the railing. “I am goin’ ta strike, Mister Lewrie. I order you to stand yer gun crews down.”

“We can’t just surrender, sir…” Alan pleaded.

“Damn you, get forward! Mister Mooney, I want you ta strike the colors.”

“Mister Claghorne!” the husky bosun objected, shocked to his bones.

“I said strike the colors.”

“Aye, sir, but I’ll tell ya this, Mister Claghorne, sir, yer a shiverin’ coward, sir!”

“I’m a realist, damn yer eyes!”

Lewrie went back forward to his gun crews. “Boys, we’re going to strike. That’ll get the Frog in closer so we can hit him. Don’t anybody be alarmed.”

How much worse can it be? he thought wearily, his eyes aching from his earlier jerking tears and the glare of the sea. A band of pain circled his head from staring so intently across the water, and the tension. If we’re prisoners, nobody’s going to hang me for disobeying orders. The French may shoot me, but there’s still the Yellow Jack to consider first. If we fail I can die right here on my own deck, in my own way, and go hard and game … and to Hell with Father, all of ’em!

The Red Ensign sank to the deck and was gathered up in a limp bundle, which brought cheers from the privateer brig. Claghorne ordered the fore course lowered and the jibs backed so that Parrot cocked up into the wind and fetched to. The brig began taking in sail and sidled down alongside, no longer making headway as they let fly, but being brought down to Parrot to her lee by the dying wind.

“Do you strike?” a leather-lunged voice called to them.

“Aye,” Claghorne shouted back. “We have fever aboard.”

The Yellow Quarantine flag was hoisted, and the French laughed. Their gun ports were still open, and Lewrie could see men standing by them with burning slow-match, but the majority of the much less disciplined privateer crew was standing in the rigging or on the bulwarks with muskets or swords, jeering happily at a foe that would strike without even a shot fired for honor’s sake.

Claghorne hoisted a dead man up onto the rail, a man yellow as a custard, the stains of his bloody dark bile still streaking his bare chest. “We have Yeller Jack, comprende? Vómito Negro!”

The brig was close now, a musket-shot away, less than fifty yards. Lewrie could see the men crossing themselves, gesticulating in their lingo, eager to be away from the fever and the pest ship that carried it. Their officers aft were standing in a knot arguing and waving their arms in broad gestures. Hands were going aloft to lower yard and stay-tackles or clew jiggers for boat tackles to hoist out a launch so they could stand off and investigate. The privateers did not want to give up a prize so easily gotten, but neither did they want any fever in their own crew.

“Stand ready, lads,” Lewrie told the uneasy hands. “Easy, now, get ready for it, don’t blow the gaff on me, now.”

The brig was now twenty-five yards off, a very long pistol shot, and men were laying down their weapons to bear a hand on the boat tackles, while others were lifting out long sweeps to fend Parrot off from the hull so they would not become infected.

“Now!” Alan ordered. “Fire as you bear!”

“Damn you, Lewrie,” Claghorne howled as though stabbed in his guts. “Our word of honor! We struck!”

The rest of his ranting was lost in the din as the gun ports were flung open and the guns were run out the last few feet. The swivels were already banging away. Fire arrows sizzled into life and flew in short arcs for the brig’s yards and sails. The first four-pounder fired, flinging a double load of star-shot at the brig’s masts, bringing down braces, sheets and blocks, shattering her for’tops’l yard.

The packed mass of jeering boarders, the teams of men ready to walk away with the stay-tackles, or snub the yard tackles, the men aloft taking in sail, and the men in the rigging for a better view, they were all seemingly scythed away as the four-pounders spewed their wicked loads of langridge and canister, rough bags of scrap iron bits, nails, broken plates and ironmongery, or light tin cases that contained hundreds of small musket-caliber balls.

“Kill them,” Lewrie raved. “Kill them now!”

The swivels were barking again. Even Crouch was loading, ramming and aiming as rapidly and accurately as he could. Fire arrows darted out, flaming dots trailing greasy black smoke. They jammed point-first into masts, bulwarks and the hoisted boat. The spring-loaded bars snapped open as they struck sails, jamming into them so their flames could feed hungrily.

“We gave our word of honor!” Claghorne ranted from aft, but no one paid him much attention in their fighting frenzy. After days of terror of the invisible, their fear came out in an orgy of hatred and destruction against a real foe they could fight, maybe even conquer.

“Larboard men, fores’l halyard!” Mooney cried like a bull. “Off heads’l sheets ’n’ run ’em ta larboard. Smartly, now, laddies.”

Sails made of flax, tanned and dried by tropic sun, shivered and thrashed until powdery with broken fiber particles … Masts and spars, brushed with linseed oil, to keep out rot. Tarred standing rigging holding the masts erect … Running rigging coated with slush; beef and pork fat and rancid butter, the skimming of the galley boiling pots (that the cook didn’t sell to the hands on the sly) so that the lines stayed supple and didn’t swell in the rain and would run true through all the blocks aloft that controlled the jears, halyards, lifts, clew lines, buntlines, braces, jiggers and tackles … And ships are made of wood; painted, tarred, oiled wood—baked as tinder dry as galley pine shavings—given a chance, all of it would burn.

Now the French crew saw the small points of fire aloft that quickly were fanned into large fires. Her sails flashed into sheets of flame that flagged in the wind, lighting the rigging, carrying flame to her spars and her topmasts. The lower masts began to work and groan.

“Sheet home!” Claghorne cried as he saw what was happening. The fire could blow down on Parrot if she did not get away quickly. “Helm up, you farmer. Mains’l haul. Now belay on heads’l sheets. Now belay on the foresheet. Thus!” he ordered, indicating a course.

Parrot began to move, creeping away to the east from the burning French privateer brig, whose masts were now well alight. As Parrot got a way on her the brig suffered a shower of flaming debris raining down on her decks. Her fore-topmast came down like a blazing log.

They continued to fire at the French ship until their guns would no longer bear. They passed her bows, out of danger of burning, or of being fired upon except with bow chasers, gaining speed and headway. The brig had an inner forestays’l still standing that pulled her head downwind to the north, and turning her broadside to the wind so the fire could rage her full-length unchecked. Thick coils of dark smoke plumed from her up forward where her foremast had collapsed on the deck. Her boat-tier was also well ablaze, shooting flames as high as her main course yard, now bare of canvas. There were some dull explosions lost in the rush and roar of flames, as guns cooked off from the heat, or scattered powder bags burst like grenades on her decks.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” Lewrie shouted to his jubilant men, having to knock gun tools from their hands. “Crouch, leave off. Drop it, dead ’un, Crouch,” he shouted, using the terms of the rat pit.

“Aye, sir,” Crouch breathed, his dumb face flowing with pleasure. “But jus’ looka the fuckers burn, sir. God almighty!” He was leaping up and down in thick-witted victory.

“Ya done ’em proper, sir!” someone shouted to him as he made his way aft through them, telling them to secure from Quarters. They were cheering themselves, slapping each other on the back in glory at what they had done.

Claghorne was waiting for him on the quarterdeck, face red and sword drawn. “Damn yer black soul ta the hottest fires a hell, Lewrie! You disobeyed me, you motherless bastard. You fired after we had struck like a lowdown lying Barbary pirate. I’ll see you face a court for it, I swear I’ll see you hang!”

Alan had not considered their chances of success so great as to have reckoned fully on the consequences of victory. The reality of Claghorne’s threat hit him like a bucket of cold water. They had won, hadn’t they? He realized that he had disobeyed a direct order, even if it was wrong; had violated a major article of gentlemanly conduct at sea. But weren’t they free?

What Claghorne was really mad about was that he had been shamed before the men, and that was what could get Lewrie scragged.

“Dammit, Mister Claghorne, we’re alive and free, and they’ll not be telling anybody about it,” Alan said.

“I’ll know, you little bastard. I’ve a mind ta strike you down right now fer what you did—”

“You shall do no such thing,” Lord Cantner said, coming on deck with his wife. “God stap me, just look at that, Delia. You look on it, Mister Claghorne. It’s salvation, and victory. Honor be damned!”

He was transfixed by the burning brig, and a hush fell over the deck as the men turned to see the end, silencing Claghorne as he, too, turned to stare.

It was a terrifying and heartbreaking sight for sailors to see a ship burn, even an enemy. The brig had been especially pretty, long and lean and fast, golden oak hull with a jaunty red stripe, black wale and bold figurehead, picked out with gold leaf on her rails and entry port and transom carvings. Now she was a smutty lamp-bowl of a hull that served as the vessel of a raging conflagration.

Men could be seen tossing over kegs and hammocks, coops and hatch gratings, anything that would float … their boats had burned. Crewmen were splashing into the sea and calling out as the heat became unbearable, and a hot glow could be seen through her open gun ports. Over the loud whooshing roar of the fire they could hear thin screams as men were roasted to death, or pleaded for mercy on their souls as they hung on for just a moment more of life before going into the sea—few sailors of any nation could really swim, and Parrot could not approach that raging furnace to save them without risking her own safety.

The fight drained out of Lewrie, sucked dry now by all the terror and the tension, and Claghorne’s heart-stopping prediction of a court-martial. He had been wild with passion, leaping and screaming obscenities at the French, raving with all his strength in a berserk release. His headache was back with a vengeance, after all the waiting and hoping that the French would come close enough to be hurt, staring hard over the glittering ocean and hurting his eyes trying to see everything at once. His limbs seemed to have turned to water.

Just like after that fight in Ariadne, he reminded himself, so tired he could barely stay erect. Is it always going to be like this?

“Well done, my boy,” Lord Cantner said, his voice cracking with emotion as he pumped Lewrie’s hand. “Goddamn wonderful job.”

“Thank you, milord, thank you.”

“God bless you, Mister Lewrie,” Lady Cantner added, looking at him with open adoration, that roving look back in her dark eyes. Her chest heaved magnificently.

Once they were ashore on Anguilla, and her lord asleep some night before they sailed, her eyes told him it could be arranged, but at the moment it didn’t seem to matter much to him.

He also knew, or felt, or hoped that Lord Cantner’s influence would stop any court-martial. After all, he was alive and still free to sail for England. The less said about Claghorne’s lack of wit at finding a way to avoid or defeat the privateer the better. A court-martial would be as much a condemnation of his striking the colors as Alan’s disobedience, and striking before doing your utmost to fight was also a hanging offense. Had he not learned, even in his short career in the Navy, that victory had a hundred parents, but failure none?

A rich and influential peer could have things done his own way, as they usually ended up doing. If Claghorne was possessed of any wit at all he would write his report taking credit for the idea, excusing the breach of honor as necessary to save the lord and his lady and all the secrets in his head, giving Lewrie grudging allowance for being a brave little fellow who followed orders well.

“Mister Lewrie?” Lord Cantner asked in a faraway whisper. Alan could not hear him through the ringing in his ears. Too much noise of the guns, he thought. But he seemed so far away, and it was hard to focus on the lord’s phiz. It also seemed to be getting dark awfully early …

He realized he was seated on the deck, shivering all over.

Why are they looking at me like that? he wondered. Haven’t the bastards ever seen a hero? But there was no answer.