Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"Very well, Mister Buchanon. You'll alert me when to brace up and turn?" Lewrie asked. "Mister Crewe! Begin, larboard battery!"

"Stand clear!" Crewe roared, looking up and down the deck, for the raised fists and taut flintlock striker lanyards of his individual gun-captains. "Fire!"

"Helm alee, half a point," Buchanon could be heard to mutter.. after that titanic slam of nine guns going off in broadside. Jester lightly reeled in recoil as the carriages hog-squealed inboard. She'd fired blank charges with no ball, so she didn't feel gut-punched, like a proper battle's broadside. Full cartridges, though, not reduced saluting charges, so she spoke the dawn with a convincing hostile bellow, and a warlike belch of powder-smoke.

"Stop yer vents!" Crewe sing-songed like it was drill. "Swab yer guns! Overhaul yer run-out tackle, overhaul yer recoil tackle, same as always, mind. Charge yer guns!"

Three broadsides in two minutes was quick shooting, and Jester had been in commission, with almost daily practice, over two years-had fired for true against foes too often to be slack now. Regular as clockwork, every forty seconds by Lewrie's timepiece, there was another stupendous crash and bang, as if she'd loaded round-shot atop cartridge. So it would appear completely real to any watchers ashore. Though they'd look in vain, once they had their wits about them, for a fall of shot.

"Three an' a quarter mile, sir!" Buchanon sang out. "Helm alee, Mister Buchanon, harden up on the wind a mite. Lay her nead Nor'west by North, for now. Serve 'em another, Mister Crewe!"

Hands were at the braces and sheets to pull taut as the helm was put down and she shied away from the shore and the harbour breakwaters and fort, just shy of a diplomatic violation, yards creaking to cup a wind that crossed her decks from the starboard side, just abaft of abeam.

And in that rudely awakened town, there were now hundreds more lamps aglowing, from almost every window that faced the sea and bay on the northern side. It was too far to make out figures on the docks or breakwater, but the scurrying of half-dressed, panic-stricken citizens and mariners could most happily be conjured up in the mind. Just as the sun burst over Albania, just about breakfast time, the artillery barked out a mastiff's basso warning, louder than any landsman's cock.

"North by West'd be best, now, sir," Mr. Buchanon counseled in a wary voice. "Haul up to a beam-reach."

"Well to windward of Vido, sir?" Lewrie asked.

"Aye, sir. 'Bout two mile t'windward, in deep water."

"Very well, Mister Buchanon, alter course. Mister Crewe? One more broadside, then cease fire and secure!"

"Ready, sir! Stand clear? Fire!"

One last wrathful eruption, then HMS Jester was wheeling about, her decks coming more level, not so hard-pressed by the winds, even under reduced sail, and making it easier to secure the 9-pounder guns; to swab them out, remove the flintlock strikers and cover the touch-holes with leather aprons, insert the tampions in the now-blackened muzzles and run them up to the port-sills where they were bowsed snug.

Lewrie lifted his telescope again, from the lee bulwarks, to see what was doing aboard the second ship, and found a cause for great joy. Flames were soaring up her lower masts and spewing long fire-tongues from her opened hatches, forge-bellowing horizontally from her opened gun-ports. Her tarred running rigging and mast-bearing shrouds glowed liquid with darting, climbing, blazing mouse-sized flames. The fires hadn't reached her tiller-ropes or her upper yards yet, so she ran off the wind still, trending a bit Sutherly, under a single fore-topsail, a solitary main t'gallant and a triple-reefed mizzen tops'l, with only her outer flying jib flogging away, far forrud at the tip of her jib boom. On a mostly steady course, he noted gladly. And still flying three large French Tricolours, still safe from burning, so everyone on the breakwater-mariners and landsmen alike-would know her nationality as well as Jesters. Above that burgeoning Vesuvius of smoke, ash and soaring embers that ragged downwind ahead of her, shrouding her like a cloak, they still flew high above, fluttering blue-white-red.

Scrape the damn breakwater, Lewrie speculated; ground on a shoal just at its foot, and burn out, right on their bloody door-stoop! My message'll be noticed, all right. Might even ram into the breakwater and [burn for hours! And when those double-shotted guns took light…!

As luridly, ghoulishly fascinating as it was to watch that ship being immolated, he tore his attention away from her, unlike the hands on Watch, or the many gunners who'd come up to the gangways once their guns had been secured, and went to the windward side to lift his glass. There was their cutter, steering Nor'-Nor'east, slamming swoopy and wet, close-hauled to stand out to sea, out the way they'd come. He saw no other nearby boats, either; no armed response from the port or the authorities, and all the early-rising fishermen had ducked inshore to the beaches for safety. The sun was almost completely risen then, with no hint of redness, no high-piled grey forebodings from the east. A bit lower than the Albanian shore with his glass, and he could barely make out two low-lying pitch-black slivers almost on the horizon. Two ship's boats full of seamen, stroking shoreward with oars. It could be a full two hours later before they stepped ashore, with their tale of woe. By which time, Jester would be long gone, a terrifying will-o'-the-wisp. And French sailors at Corfu, too, would be filled with fear.

"Mister Buchanon, let's harden up to windward," Lewrie said as he lowered his glass and turned inboard. "Lay her full-and-by, course North by East."

"Aye aye, sir." Buchanon beamed, pleased with their early work. "Mister Cony?" Lewrie called down to the gun-deck. "We'll take the cutter in tow, once Mister Knolles and his party are aboard. I've an idea she's spent too long on the beams, and her planking needs some soaking. Inform the cooks they may stoke up, once we're close-hauled, and begin fixing a late breakfast." "Aye, Cap'um, sir!"

Ten days more. Lewrie shrugged. Longer than I'd hoped, but we did it. Wind looks fair t'back a touch more Easterly, too. Make the return voyage a beam-reach all the way, 'less we get a bit of Southing. Make us faster, on that point o' sail, so, say, two days to Trieste or Venice? Then inform Captain Charlton. Of everything!

"A right fair mornin*, sir," Mr. Buchanon commented, once they had the ship thrashing away windward and the cutter was falling off a point or two to meet them. "A fair mornin's bus'ness."

"Amen, Mister Buchanon." Lewrie laughed, rocking on the balls of his feet, aching for a first cup of coffee, but plumb delighted, in the main. "Amen to that."

"Well, no wonder, then, that we only took two prizes," Captain Charlton said, nodding rueful about his poor luck, now he had an explanation for it. "They've gone to earth like foxes. And neither was exactly worth the effort, Commander Lewrie. A poor brig, and one ugly old poleacre. Doubt they could have carried much timber, anyway. I could not stay on-station longer, not with Fillebrowne and Rodgers to look up. You did very well, sir, to stand in lieu of me and Lionheart. And to have taken two prizes, as well. Sent them on to Trieste?"

"No, sir. Burned them," Lewrie told him. "It's in my report, sir." And feeling a bit impatient with Charlton, who only seemed interested, so far, in value gained.

"Burned!" Charlton exclaimed, wineglass halfway aloft. "I don't follow, sir."

"Well, as my report explains, sir," Lewrie began, "we had few hopes of taking inbound ships, since they're waiting for cargoes from the upper Adriatic to come to them. I thought, though, that there'd be outbound ships, already laden with timber and such, still at sea. So, with you gone, I thought to cow them. The first was off Cattaro, sir. Caught her well out to sea and took her back to within the diplomatic limits and anchored her. Nasty bit of work, that. Cattaro is at the end of a rather long estuary, which narrows, so placement was tricky. So the other French ships in port could see her burn, sir, and a wind from shore made it impossible to sail her in afire, as we did with the one off Corfu. We did fetch off her papers and such, sir, so we've all the t's crossed and the i's dotted. And we did turn up some coin and such. Not much. I have that secured in my lazarette now, sir." "Keep prisoners?"