After a few more days of perfect isolation on an empty sea, a fresh convoy arose on the Southern horizon, one much smaller but perhaps just as rich, flying the blue-white-red horizontal-striped flags that denoted a Portugal convoy, and sure to be filled with ports and madeiras, sherries, costly liqueurs, fruit preserves and bottled citruses. This convoy passed quite close, within a mile of Lewrie’s, and both groups of ships waved hats and shirts and raised lusty cheers of welcome to each other. The England-bound sailors might have cheered to see what they might have mistaken for a squadron of warships which meant additional safety for a few hours beyond their own two escorts, and the hands of Comus, Sapphire, and the soldiers aboard the transports surely cheered the liquid delights aboard the convoy! Whether they could drink them, or not.

*   *   *

HMS Sapphire rang to the clatters and clangs of an hundred poor Welsh tinkers all tapping away as her hands went through the steps of cutlass drill, paired off in mock melee to hone their sword-play. On the open poop deck, Lewrie was squared off against their senior Marine Lieutenant, the stern John Keane, Lewrie’s short hanger versus Keane’s straighter and longer smallsword, and frankly, Lt. Keane was the better swordsman, very fast and darting, with a very strong wrist. Lewrie was in his shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, working up a sweat and beginning to pant at the exertion, which seemed as wearying as any real combat he had ever experienced.

Keane lunged, and Lewrie countered with a twist to bind, then stepped forward inside Keane’s reach, his left arm fending off Keane’s sword hand, bull-rushing him backwards and giving him a thump in the chest with the silver, lion-head hilt, then a mock slash with the flat of his blade that, had it been for real, the wickedly honed edge would have dis-emboweled the man.

“I trample on your entrails, sir!” Lewrie hooted in triumph.

“I expire, sir, thinking last thoughts of Mother,” Keane said in matching jest, though he didn’t look as if he approved of Lewrie’s ploy, or the hardness of that thump.

“As hellish-good as you are, sir, that was the only way that I could prevail,” Lewrie cheerfully admitted. “But, a boarding action, a melee, with enemy sailors tryin’ t’kill ye any-old-how is not as fine as the elegance of a swordmaster’s salle. That’s why I prefer the hanger … I can always get inside or under my opponent’s guard.”

“A break for water, sir?” Lt. Keane suggested.

“Gad, yes,” Lewrie heartily agreed. “I’m dry as dust.”

The First Officer, Lt. Geoffrey Westcott, also in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, had been matching blades with Midshipman Leverett, and that pairing took a water break at the same time. Westcott’s harshly-featured face was split in a grin as he delivered a final suggestion to Leverett, who had been schooled, like all young gentlemen of means, in the sword, but was learning that elegance and grace wouldn’t stand a Chinaman’s Chance if shoved nose-to-nose, elbow-to-elbow into a melee with barely enough room to employ a sword. Westcott looked as if he had handily bested the young man, with tactics as “low” as Lewrie’s.

“A good morning’s workout,” Lewrie said after wetting his dry mouth with a first dipper from the scuttle-butt. “Pretty-much the only decent excercise an officer can get, aboard ship. Several brisk turns round the deck don’t hold a candle.”

“Indeed, sir,” Lt. Keane agreed. “Though I have contemplated ascending the stays and ratlines to the tops, a time or two.”

“Your dignity, though, sir,” Midshipman Leverett jibed, as he waited his turn at the water butt. “That’s an acquired skill.”

“How’s the leg?” Westcott asked in a barely audible whisper.

“No problem at all,” Lewrie whispered back. “Not a twinge.”

Lewrie had known too many older officers who had been so long at sea who were halfway lamed by the rheumatism engendered by the cold and damp, their continuing careers a perpetual misery of aches and pains, much less anyone who had been as “well-shot” as he had been. He felt damned grateful to have avoided the rheumatism, so far, and to have healed so completely. Well, gout’s another matter, he told himself with a wee laugh.

“Sail ho!” a lookout bawled out from high aloft.

“Where away?” Lt. Harcourt, who had the watch, shouted back.

“Three points orf th’ larb’d quarter!” the lookout cried.

Lewrie and Westcott, and the curious Marine Lt. Keane, drifted to the aft corner of the poop deck’s larboard side, but even from that height the horizon up to the Nor’east was unbroken, a severely straight line of blue against a fair-weather azure sky.

“In the Nor’east by East, or thereabouts,” Lewrie speculated. He turned and looked aloft at the long, streaming commissioning pendant which stood out fairly stiffly with its outer length fluttering to the East by South. The Bay of Biscay’s prevailing Westerlys had backed a point after dawn, giving his convoy a point free of sailing on a beam reach, perhaps endowing them with another half-knot above their usual plodding pace.

Whatever she is, she’s fast, Lewrie thought.

To a further question from Lt. Harcourt, shouted aloft with the aid of a brass speaking trumpet, the lookout gave more details about their stranger.

“I kin make our ’er t’gallants!” he yelled. “Nigh bows-on!”

That made Lewrie frown. Yesterday’s Noon Sights had placed them just below the 40th Latitude, hundreds of miles Due West of Cape Finisterre in Spain. Any friendly ship would have made its offing long before, and would not be sailing close-hauled out of the Bay of Biscay, or standing out round Finisterre.

She could be one of ours, leavin’ the blockadin’ squadrons for Gibraltar or Lisbon, Lewrie told himself as he clapped his hands in the small of his back and rocked on the soles of his boots; Maybe.

“Close-hauled on, say, Sou’-Sou’west?” he commented.

“Thereabout, sir,” Lt. Westcott grimly agreed.

Lewrie went to the forward edge of the poop deck to shout down to Lt. Harcourt. “Last cast of the log, Mister Harcourt?”

“Ehm … eight and a quarter knots, sir, half an hour ago,” Lt. Harcourt informed him.

“Hmm, not all that bad,” Lewrie decided, a bit surprised that Sapphire, and the lumbering transports, could make such a good pace.

The typical Westerlys had already backed one point to the West by North, and Lewrie thought it good odds that it might continue to back a point more by afternoon. He could order the convoy to alter course to the Sou’-Sou’east; sooner or later they would have to steer for the Straits of Gibraltar, anyway, and that would put that backing wind large on their starboard quarters, which was most ships’ best point of sail. They might even attain nine knots if he did so, but … why not?

“Mister Harcourt, make General Signal to all ships,” he decided. “Alter Course in Succession, South-Southeast.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Harcourt crisply replied.

He turned and looked up to the Nor’east, again, but there was still no indication of that strange sail to be seen from the deck.

Hard on the wind, is she, bows-on to us? he schemed; Our turn will lay us smack cross her present course, and she’ll have t’haul her wind, sooner or later.

He also wondered why the strange sail was sailing so hard on the wind; this far West of Cape Finisterre, she had bags of sea-room by now, and if she was friendly, and bound for Lisbon or Gibraltar, she could have hauled her wind to a beam reach long before.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Lewrie said, keeping his suspicions in check, and off his face, “thankee for the exercise, Mister Keane, and I will see you all again at Noon Sights.”

He went down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, then aft into his cabins to partake in a tall glass of his cool tea to slake his thirst, and have a sponge-off, and perhaps a change of shirt. Silk, for combat, he wondered?