Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

• Название: THE GUN KETCH
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

It's 1786 and Alan Lewrie has his own ship at last, the Alacrity. Small but deadly, the Alacrity prowls the waters of the Caribbean, protecting British merchants from pirates. But Lewrie is still the same old rakehell he always was. Scandal sets tongues wagging in the Bahamas as the young captain thumbs his nose at propriety and makes a few well-planned conquests on land before sailing off to take on Calico Jack Finney, the boldest pirate in the Caribbean.

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Chapter 11

Nor-nor'west for the Berrys, then north of west through the shallows of the Great Bahama Bank to Great Isaac, Alacrity bowled along off the wind. Stuns'ls rode at either end of the tops'l yards, doubling her sail area aloft, and a stays'1 flew in the space between her masts on a jury-rigged jumper stay. Eight-and-a-quarter knots she made, eight and a half toward evening, racing for the Gulf Stream and its relentless northward currents. By five a.m. of the next morning, they had found the darker waters of the Gulf Stream, and bent north, riding the mighty river that added another four-and-a-half knots made good to their forward progress.

"No sign of him," Rodgers gloomed as he ate Lewrie's food and took liberal sips of Lewrie's dwindling wine supply, and had slept in Lewrie's double hanging-cot in Lewrie's stead.

"He stayed in the middle of the Providence Channel," Alan said. "We may even be slightly ahead of him to the Gulf Stream, if he sailed more north'rd of us, closer to the west end of Grand Bahama. Perhaps tomorrow's dawn will tell, sir."

"We're drivin' hard, I'll give us that," Rodgers shrugged. "Do you think she rides a mite bows-low? That'll make her crank for close maneuverin', light as she is aft."

"We're shifting supplies aft into the stern, sir," Alan replied.

"And it might not hurt to shift the Number One cannon from each battery aft as well, sirs," Ballard suggested. "Alacrity used to mount sixteen side guns as a bomb ketch, in addition to her deck mortars."Aye, there's ring bolts, side-tackle bolts, and gun ports being wasted," Lewrie agreed. "Two guns all the way aft, into the great-cabin here. Just forrud of the quarter-galleries. That's over eighteen hundredweight each, or more. Just enough to lift her bows… six inches?"

While Lewrie was a dab-hand navigator, physics was beyond him.

"About that, sir," Ballard said solemnly, furrowing his brows as he calculated the proposition in his head. "Perhaps an inch less."

"Run out the starboard battery, too, and draw the larboard close to her centerline," Lewrie plotted on. "Chock the trucks with old shot-garland rope to keep them steady. Alacrity's flat-run on her bottom, and hard-chined aft. The more upright she sails, the faster she'll be."

"I'll attend to it, sir, soon as the forrud-most guns may be shifted," Ballard replied, jotting notes to himself about the order in which chores had best be performed.

"Four hours' lead, though, sirs," Rodgers sighed sadly. "Even if Finney took a longer northern route… more like five, if ya count the time it took us to up-anchor an' clear harbour. He could be over on Andros, laid up 'til any pursuit'd passed him by. Damn him, but he's a clever 'un."

"Next dawn may tell, sir," Ballard offered hopefully.

"Dawn will tell, dammit all," Lewrie insisted, slapping at the table top. "Dawn will tell!"

The sun rose next morning, blood-red and threatening, above a horizon of gun-metal gray. The Gulf Stream waters rolled and heaved to either beam, heaping high enough to smother Alacrity in the troughs between each long-set rolling wavecrest, and set her canvas luffing before she could rise up to clear air, and crack sails full of wind.

One hundred and sixty miles she'd made on her night passage up the American coast. Lewrie had not slept a single sea-mile of it, but had lain tossing in a chart-space berth, honing his anger.

Finney had violated his home, frightened his wife and son, and however he'd gotten word to flee-if he hadn't fled, Lewrie thought miserably, he'd have taken some revenge on Caroline for spurning him; he knew enough about the brute to not doubt that she might have been dead by then because of the broadside sheet, her and Peyton both!

He had taken the deck at eight bells of the mid-watch, at four of the clock in a chilly, dark morning, as the hands surged up to stow their hammocks in the nettings, wash down the decks, and stand to Dawn Quarters before their breakfast. To fret and pace as the stars paled from the gloomy skies, to see details in the clouds in the false-dawn, and watch the last of the moon sink below the horizon.

"Aloft, there!" he shouted to the lookouts.

"Notnin', sir! Clear 'orizons!"

"Damn!" he spat

"Sir, it's…" Ballard attempted to console.

"Oh, the devil take you, Mister Ballard!" Alan snarled. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and paced off his disappointment, back to the taffrails before returning. "Very well, secure from quarters, and release the people to breakfast."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard replied, not in the slightest miffed by Lewrie's petulant outburst after a year and a half together.

"Sorry, Arthur," Lewrie muttered, smiling sheepishly.

"It's just your way, sir," Ballard smiled in return. "Soon as the galley's hot, I'll send Cony up with coffee for you. I assume you will keep the deck." That was not a question.

"Aye, I will, and thankee," Lewrie nodded. "More of my bloody… way!" Distressed as he was, Lewrie could not help smiling at himself.

Say Finney's lugger made seven-and-a-half knots, though, Alan calculated in moody silence; five hours' lead to start with, and 160 sea-miles to The Stream… whilst we fetched it in 150 miles. God, we might have cut three hours off his lead. And we're a knot faster, say, all last night and all day today, with the current, now he thinks he's clear of pursuit We'll make twenty-four more miles a day than he, so… if his original lead was only thirty-seven miles…Christ! What if he did put into Andros, the Berrys, inshore of the Gulf Stream down at Bimini to wait it out? Or, he could be flying everything aloft but his laundry, all this time… We'll never catch him up!

"Coffee, sir," Cony announced half an hour later.

"Hmmph?" Lewrie growled, startled from his musings.

"Yer coffee, sir," Cony offered. "An' wot'll ya 'ave fer yer breakfast, sir?"

"This'll do, Cony. This'll do for now," he grumped. "Thankee."

"Aye, aye, sir," Cony nodded sorrowfully.

Bounding, swooping, rolling at the top of a wave, Alacrity was driven on, her course due north. Foam creamed down her flanks to lay roiled astern, quarter-waves sucking low at her after hull as thesea made a perfect shallow S, horizontally from bow to stern, frothing in a millrace under her transom. Eight-and-three-quarter knots now, as enough cargo and artillery had been shifted aft to lift her bows. On steeper rollers she surfed forward, and sometimes defied the ocean a hold on her, the bow-wave breaking aft of her cutwater, and her whole hull lifting from the sea in her haste, as if she would take wings and fly in those moments when wind and sea conjoined, before falling away to snuffle deep and plow the water again with a disappointed soughing.

"Sail ho!" the lookout screamed at last from the cross-trees. "Where away?" Commander Rodgers shouted back, wakened from his nap in Alan's sybaritic canvas sling chair.

"Two points off the larboard bows! A little inshore! Nought but tops'ls an' royals!"

"What's to loo'rd?" Lewrie asked, rubbing sleep from his own eyes, his skin tingling from too long in the sun in a restless nod.

"Almost due west by now, sir, 'tis Savannah," Fellows reported. "Nor'west is Charleston. Little over an hundred mile to either."

"And we're to windward of her, whoever she is," Lewrie crowed, fully awake. "She carries on north, she'll ram herself into the sand shoals off Wilmington, but she'll not weather the Outer Banks, not if I have a say in it! Mister Ballard, you have the deck, I'm going to spy out our little mystery ship."

He slung a telescope over his shoulder, leapt for the shrouds and went aloft, aching to see for himself.

"There she be, sir," the lookout said, once he' d found a perch on the narrow slats of the cross-trees.

"Look like a lugger to you?" Alan demanded, extending the tube of his glass.

"Hard t'say from 'ere, sir. Jus' tops'ls, so far," the lookout opined. "Funny angle, though, Cap'n, sir. Like Levanter lateens, or some'n ain't got 'er lift-lines set proper to 'er royals."

Alacrity lifted on a swell as Lewrie laid the spyglass level on the tiny tan imperfections that marred the even horizon. Miles off, the other ship was lifted upwards as well for a long breath or two, but dropped almost from view as Alacrity settled in a deep trough.

"I'd almost…" he sighed, lowering the heavy tube for awhile. He stood, precariously, on the cross-tree braces, wrapping one arm to the upper mast, inside taut halyards and lift-lines. Braced securely, he raised the telescope again. The distant sails swam into focus.

"Three-masted," he grunted.

"Aye, like lateeners, or… Woooo" he whooped, loud enough to startle people on the decks below. "They're gaff top-mast stays'ls. She's a three-masted lugger!"

A lugger would mount small, oddly shaped sails between the tip of the upper masts and the gaff boom at the top of her mainsails, and that was what he had seen! It was a lugger, sure! But whose?

"Keep a sharp eye on her," he told his lookout. "Sing out, if she alters course or changes the slightest bit."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Lewrie took a stay to the deck, tar and slush on his clothing be-damned, to join the curious on the quarter-deck.

"It's a lugger. Mister Neill, steer us a point free larboard. We'll close her, slow. I make her twelve miles off now. By the end of the first dog watch, we'll have her at less than ten miles, so we may figure out if she's the Car… if she's Finney's."

"If she wishes to keep to the Gulf Stream, she's going to have to harden up and go closer-hauled, sir," Fellows suggested. "Allow me to suggest we stand on north, sir, we'll close her even so. Another two hours, and we'll lose the current ourselves inshore."

"And so will she, if she can't get to windward of us," Alan said. "And she won't," he vowed.

"Chase is goin' close-hauled, sir!" the lookout hallooed.

"Belay, Mister Neill. Mister Ballard, lay us hard on the wind."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Whatever she was, whoever the lugger belonged to, she was trying to flee, to get up to windward, and keep the advantage of the current of the Gulf Stream to weather Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks. One more confirming sign that it most likely was Jack Finney, awakened to the fact of a pursuit.

No longer a mystery, Lewrie thought with satisfaction; now she was a chase!

The afternoon wore on, with both vessels clawing up to windward. Alacrity was already the possessor of the wind gauge. Weatherly as a lugger was, she could attain perhaps a full point closer to the winds, but Alacrity was just the slightest bit faster. Making leeway as she did, she still head-reached her chase, and closed the range to eleven miles, to ten, to nine, bringing the lugger almost hull-up, as Alacrity sailed the shorter closing angle.

"We're gaining on her, by Christ!" Rodgers chortled with glee.

"The Caroline was New Providence-built, sir," Lieutenant Ballard told him coolly, blushing a bit as he pronounced her name."As flat-ran and shoal-draught as Alacrity. Perhaps more so. But she makes just as much leeway as we do, with so little below the waterline for the sea to bite on. Long as we hold the weather gauge…"

"And damme if we might just be half a knot faster," Lewrie added with joy. "A full knot off the wind in the Gulf Stream. She'll be within range of random shot in six hours."

"He'll try to slip away once it's dark," Rodgers snorted. "No lights showin', they could tack an' pass astern."

"We've moon enough to see that, sir," Lewrie countered. "And, to expect to beat against the Gulf Stream? No."

"Chase is 'aulin' 'er wind, there!" the lookout interrupted., "Turnin' west an' runnin' free, d'ye hear, there!"

"By God, here's another angle to cut short!" Lewrie laughed as he grabbed Ballard by the arm. "Arthur, haul our wind, now! We might gain a mile on him if we're quick enough! Come about to west-nor'west!"

"Aye, aye, sir. Mister Harkin, all hands! Ready to come about!" Rodgers and Lewrie got out of Ballard's way, taking a corner of the quarter-deck free of tumult to inspect their chase with telescopes.

"Runnin' for Charleston, it appears, into neutral waters," Com-. mander Rodgers decided. "Damn him."

"He has too much sail aloft," Lewrie stated. "Inshore, he'D pick up a land breeze later today. See how she heels, sir? That's too much heel for a flat-run hull, even off the wind as she is now. She's sailing on her shoulder, not her bottom. If he doesn't reef in those lateener topmast stays'ls, she's working too hard, bows-down."

"By God, he's no real sailor, is he, Lewrie?" Rodgers hooted. "Had you some champagne, I'd pop it now, to celebrate. We'll have him, by God, we'll have the bugger yet!"

"Many a slip, 'twixt the cup and the Up, sir," Lewrie smiled. "Aye, he may not be as tarry as he boasted. But he's running us one merry little chase. And, when it comes to it, he'll fight like some cornered rat. Now, to keep him out of American jurisdiction, we have to overtake him, take the lee position to block him."

"We'll have him," Rodgers insisted stubbornly. "We'll have him."

Chapter 12

By sunset, Alacrity left the Gulf Stream, inshore into waters that chopped instead of rolled. Caroline was still an hour ahead at the least, out of the Stream first, and making a more direct course, with less leeway, even as the land breeze found her. Try as they might to counter the last of the powerful current, Alacrity ended up dead astern of the chase, beating against the land breeze, lumping and booming against the chop and the short rollers of the returning scend of waves breaking over the horizon against the Carolina coast.

"She still makes too much heel," Lewrie decided after pondering the dark spectre in his telescope. "So do we," he added, comparing the angle of his decks against the chase's.

"Nighttime land breezes will be gentler, sir, not as strong," Ballard speculated. "That'll ease her."

"Topmen of the watch aloft, Mister Ballard. We'll take first reef in the fore-tops'l," Lewrie ordered.

"Are ya daft, Lewrie?" Rodgers hissed from the gloom of sunset by his elbow. "I thought ya wanted t'catch the bastard?"

"I do, sir. But the fore-tops'l depresses the bows, and heels us too much, even going close-hauled as we are. Letting the fore-and-aft sails do the work lets us pinch up to windward half a point."

"You are captain, sir, but I'm your superior," Rodgers grunted.

"Do but let me try it, sir," Lewrie begged. "Two hours. There's moon enough to see her, and a sextant'11 tell us if she's gaining, by the height of her mast-trucks 'bove the horizon. We're even in speed for now, perhaps a quarter-knot or half-knot faster, and that's not enough to intercept her before she's in American waters."

"Two hours, then," Rodgers allowed at last. "But should we fall too far behind, it'll be your fault, Lewrie. Your fault, hear me?" "Aye, aye, sir."

Eased just the slightest bit, though, sailing more upright on her natter bottom, Alacrity closed the range. Six miles off, five and then four, with more of Finney's Caroline visible above the horizon at each chiming of the watch bells. Satisfied that his solution had worked, Lewrie slumped down for a nap far aft on the signal-flag lockers, muffled against the sea-wind's chill in a gro-gram boat-cloak. With his head lolled against the taffrail, he nodded off at last, his last waking sight the dark, creaming wake alongside.