Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

Lewrie left the binnacle and wheel to pace aft to the taffrail, between the two brightly lit lanthorns at Jesters very stern. Golden ripples bal-leted off the ebony sea, far aft and to either beam, as she lay cocked up to weather, waiting for the sun. The wind kissed a part of her sails to sail her forward, caressed the backed jibs to lock her in place as if anchored. A touchy balancing act, against a Bora wind that gusted and muttered, then sighed more softly. With Knolles now gone…

Lewrie looked down over the taffrail, to watch the water break round her rudder and transom post, below the overhang of the gun-room and his great-cabins. His cabin lights were lit, too, and there was Toulon, for a moment, with his nose snuffling the panes of a window, below him. No drift, he thought; well, not much. Gurgling, plashing, sucking sounds arose from the idled hull. A kelpy aroma of weed and slime, a clammy, mussely tinge of a barnacled bottom met his nostrils, along with the faint seashore smell of the not-so-distant land. And the piney, loamy tang of forest on the wind from across the narrows, off the bows, stroking his cheeks as he turned his head from side to side and faced forrud. To weigh them and guess whether Jester needed a pull or a bracing-in to maintain her immobile station 'til dawn.

Fetched-to or not, she moved under his feet with a steady rise and fall, her timbers complaining, and blocks aloft clacking and groaning, her masts working gently as she swayed, pitched easy or fell a bit bows-down as the wind-driven waves in the channel flowed round her like she still had a way on.

He went back forrud to peer into the well-lit compass bowl, to determine had her head fallen off; to blink glim-spotted eyes aloft and strain to make out details of masts, sails and ropes against the skies.

There! No longer ghost-grey, but darkening, beginning to silhouette against a barely lighter greyness, stood the sails. He could see the catheads by the forecastle, make out the brutish humps of the carronades and almost espy the rising, quivering thrust of the jib-boom and bowsprit. A few men could be espied, spectrelike, up forrud.

"False dawn, sir," Buchanon exulted, "six minute. Not 'at far off my guess o' five."

"Close, indeed, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie congratulated. "Hmmm. Under the circumstances, let's say… accurate, rather. Don't want us to be close. That close."

"Aye, sir." Buchanon softly laughed, bending down over the compass bowl like a feeding ox, to peer across it at the shore-lights. He snapped his fingers and he and Mr. Wheelock his Master's Mate went to the rail with a night glass, a day telescope and his personal boat-compass in a golden oak box, to take more bearings as the lee shore emerged from the Stygian blackness to become a storm or charcoal grey murkiness.

"Best I can reckon'z four miles, sir," he reported at last.

"Very well, Mister Buchanon, thankee," Lewrie said with a nod. "Give it ten minutes, say, and we'll be about it. Mister Crewe? Ten minutes."

"Aye, sir!" the Master Gunner said from the forrud edge of the quarterdeck. "Ready whenever ya order, Cap'um."

Lewrie looked over the larboard side, to the second glowing set of lights; binnacle cabinet, forecastle belfry and taffrail lanthorns, plus candle or whale-oil lights ranged along the gangways. More lamps staggered lower down the side, from opened gun-ports. The great-guns were run in to load position and out of the way. Loaded, though, and fully depressed; and ready to fire-when there was a touch more sunrise, closer to true dawn. But before a fully risen sun took anything away. A spectre, seen only by those lights, the rest unfathomable not ten minutes earlier, now he could make out details of sails and masts, the rough textures and dingy paintwork of her hull, and the blooming of discernible colours, where before all had been granite-block black.

Lewrie took out his watch and eyed the pointer of the optional, and more expensive, second hand clack the tense minutes away. The watch face was now almost tattletale grey-not quite true white-as the false dawn spread a gloomy cloud cover of slightly brighter dimness. It was time.

"Mister Crewe?" he bellowed, breaking the yawning, sleepy hush of the four-'til-eight watch. "Let there be light!"

"Aye, sir!" Crewe roared back, waving a smouldering slow-match fuse in a linstock for a signal. And along Jesters bulwarks, a dozen answering fireflies were fanned into heat. "Swivels.. .fire!"

And a dozen slow-matches were lowered to the touch-holes of the skyward-pointing swivel guns. There were sudden gouts of smoke and sparks. Then, with breathless whooshes, a dozen rockets went soaring aloft, scattering comet-trails of red and amber fire-dust. Darde a feu - fire-arrows-minus their iron spring-arms, designed to snag in sail canvas and burn a ship to the waterline; un-Christian weapons, some said. Pirate weapons, said others; a sneaking, vile, ungentlemanly invention. Now they were signal fusees that hissed skyward, no more dangerous than holiday fireworks; pretty amber comets bearing copper-blue star-bursts.

A creaking and an oaken groaning, a faint muttering from larboard and the jangle and snapping of blocks and halliards, as the second ship let go her backed jibs, braced round her backed mizzen tops'I. Canvas thundered, flagged and crackled for a moment, all a'luff, then drawing, curving neatly to the press of wind as she fell away to starboard and began a slow wear-about, beginning to cream salt water down her sides.

"And again, Mister Crewe!" Lewrie snapped. And once more, the swivel guns coughed out their pyrotechnic charges, flinging a brilliant galaxy of stars to five times the height of the mainmast truck. Well out abeam, so they'd not drift back and ignite anything.

"Light, sir!" Buchanon shouted, pointing astern. Ruined or no, the Citadel had watchers on her walls, and had hoisted a lanthorn atop the seaward parapets. A third volley of fusees two minutes later, and tiny lights began to wink into life ashore as people were roused.

"Cease fire, Mister Crewe, and secure the swivels," Alan said, feeling satisfied. "Tend to your larboard battery. Mister Buchanon, get the ship under way, larboard tack, then wear her."

"Aye aye, sir. Bosun, hands to the jib sheets…!"

Then it was Jesters turn to fall away, to cease fighting cross-hauled, and surrender to the insistent winds, to heel and creak as she went about, presenting her left side, then her stern to the wind, with the Citadel and the town, the surrounding hills sweeping across the bow and settling on the larboard bows, just over the cat-head. The courses were brailed up, t'gallants at second reef, tops'ls at first reef, and the royals gasketed to horizontal pencils atop her spiralling masts to make a slow passage.

"Mister Hyde, hoist the colours," Lewrie cried.

Atop the fore mast, main mast and mizzen, three ensigns shinnied up the flag or signal halliards, the Red aft, Blue forrud-most, and the White Ensign on the highest; reverse order for an entire fleet of rear, van and main body squadrons. So no one could possibly mistake Jester for anything else but Royal Navy this morning.

Lewrie took up his telescope and stood by the windward bulwark, studying the second ship, and satisfying himself that the French flags were prominently displayed aboard her. Both vessels scudded dead off the backing Bora from the East-Nor'east, bowsprits jabbing at the breakwater, sliding inshore of Vido Island to run West along the mole.

There! Lewrie told himself with grim satisfaction, as he saw the first ruddy flickerings above her bulwarks, more a warm roasting-pan or a fireplace's brass back-plate reflector's glow. Sooty waverings of heat shimmered upward, not quite yet become smoke, like air quivering over a smith's forge. He swung the telescope tube lower and a bit to the right, concentrating on her stern. It was almost light enough now that the cheery glow of lanthorns in the masters great-cabin, in the glossy panes of the sash-windows, didn't dazzle him. So he could espy the cutter waddling and pitching as she was fended off to be left to starboard and astern. It was now light enough to count heads, for Lewrie to discern the white collar-tabs on Spendlove's shorter jacket, and the white turn-back lapels and cuffs of Knolles s coat. Even more whiteness appeared, as they began to hoist the cutter's lug-sail, and gather a slight way, broad-reaching at first, to the Nor'west and off from the ship. "Gettin' close, sir," Buchanon warned.