*   *   *

All officers, the Sailing Master, and all the Midshipmen under instruction turned up with their sextants to take the height of the sun to determine their position. Lewrie and Mr. Yelland both brought their Harrison chronometers, which were in satisfactory agreement as to the exact moment of Noon. As ship’s boys struck Eight Bells and turned the sand glasses, they all drew the sun to the horizon and locked the angle on their instruments. Lewrie and the ship’s officers made one syndicate, over by the door to the chart room, whilst the Mids huddled together over their slates to form another.

“Are we in agreement, then, gentlemen?” the Sailing Master asked. “Thirty-seven degrees, twenty minutes North, and Fourteen degrees, fourty-five minutes West? Then I will mark it so.”

“And let me see what a day on this course will fetch us, assumin’ the winds hold,” Lewrie suggested, starting to follow Yelland into the chart room.

“Deck, there!” a lookout’s shout stopped him. “It’s two strange sail! Three points off th’ larb’d quarter. Two sets of t’gallants an’ royals!”

“Bows-on?” Lewrie bellowed back, hands cupped round his mouth.

“Aye, sir! Bows-on, an’ comin’ close-hauled!”

Lewrie frowned and pursed his lips, feeling all the eyes on the quarterdeck on him. It was time to portray the proper sort of Royal Navy Captain, for their sakes.

“An hour, perhaps, before their tops’ls and courses fetch above the horizon,” he mused aloud, “and some goodly time before they’re hull-up. Three hours, altogether, before they’re anywhere in shooting range? If they’re enemy ships. We’ll let them come to us, and, when close enough, hoist our false colours. If that don’t daunt ’em, then we blow the Hell out of them.

“Carry on, sirs,” Lewrie told them all, “if strenuous exertion is in the offing, I think I’ll take a preparatory nap.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lewrie didn’t take a nap, of course. He spent his time aft in his cabins, going over his written orders to Captain Knolles in HMS Comus and the transport masters, and to Colonel Fry of the Kent Fusiliers. He dined lightly, drank only cold tea instead of wine with his meal, and asked for some hot coffee round the time that he was informed that the two strange ships’ courses were above the horizon.

When a Midshipman came to report that the strangers were hull-up over the horizon, he buckled on his sword belt, took a brace of pistols already cleaned, oiled, and loaded from Pettus, and prepared to go on deck.

“Clear away all, Pettus. Off ye go to the magazine, Jessop, and the best t’both o’ ye,” he said. “Take care o’ Chalky and see to Bisquit.”

“As always, sir,” Pettus gravely replied.

Last of all, Lewrie unlocked his desk and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers.

*   *   *

“Captain’s on deck!” Midshipman Britton called out.

“Mister Elmes, I give you the keys to the arms lockers,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch. “Beat To Quarters, if ye will.”

“Aye aye, sir! Bosun Terrell! Pipe To Quarters!” Elmes cried.

Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck to lift a telescope and inspect their strangers. They were still hard on the wind, coming strong, and sailing abreast of each other, with about a half-mile between them. They were three-masted, flush-decked, and gave him the impression that they were not the big 38- or 40-gunned frigates he had worried about. Warships, for certain, but perhaps smaller and weaker, somewhere round the same size and weight of metal as Knolles’s 24-gunned Comus. That would mean that they would be armed with nine-pounders, or the French equivalent of twelve-pounders.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Lt. Westcott said to announce his arrival on the quarterdeck. “Did you have a good nap?”

Lewrie tossed him a quick, sly grin, for Westcott knew that it had all been a sham.

“Leftenant Keane!” Lewrie called out, instead. “Do you keep your men down out of sight ’til called for, as we discussed!”

“Very well, sir!” Keane replied.

“I’ll have the gun-ports closed ’til we’re ready to run out, as well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered.

“Done, sir,” Westcott told him.

Lewrie looked forward past the courses and jibs to determine that the two transports off Sapphire’s bows showed no colours, as he had set out in his written orders, and that Comus was flying the Blue Ensign. He went up atop the poop deck to check on the two transports following his ship’s wake, and was pleased to note that they flew no colours, and were managing to maintain column and a rough one cable of separation. From that vantage, he gave the approaching ships a long inspection with his telescope, then trotted back down to the quarterdeck.

“If they’re indeed French, then they’re hopeful bastards. Or half-blind,” Lewrie commented. “They know Comus is a frigate by now, but can’t they see we’re not a big transport?”

“Even if they do recognise us for a warship, perhaps they’re counting on our lack of speed or manoeuvrability to cut one or two of the transports from our clumsy grasp, sir,” Westcott posed, tongue-in-cheek.

“Strange sail are French!” a lookout called down. “Deck, there! I kin see the cut o’ their jibs!”

“Jibs, sir?” Midshipman Fywell muttered.

“Jibs, younker,” Lt. Westcott turned to instruct him. “The way sailmakers in other nations cut their cloth and saw the panels together varies, depending on what they think the best and strongest way to take strong winds. A sharp-eyed, experienced man can sometime spot the difference.”

“I see, sir,” Fywell said with what passed for a sage nod.

Other Mids were coming to the quarterdeck to report that the lower gun deck was at Quarters, that the upper gun deck was ready, that sail tenders, brace and sheet and halliard tenders were in their assigned places and ready for action. Once reporting, they dashed back to their stations for Quarters.

“At Quarters, and ready for action, sir,” Lt. Westcott said at last, very formally doffing his hat in salute.

“Very good, sir,” Lewrie replied, all his attention on the two approaching ships. They were within two miles, by then, still on the wind. The one furthest off seemed to steer for the head of Lewrie’s column, as if to take on Knolles in Comus. The left-handed ship nearest to Sapphire seemed intent on sailing right up to the middle of the column. They still showed no colours.

“They couldn’t be ours, could they, sir?” Lt. Westcott wondered. “Two of our sloops of war or light frigates pulling a ‘Grierson’?”

A year or so before, a Commodore Grierson had come to Nassau to re-enforce Lewrie’s weak squadron of sloops, brigs of war and vessels “below the Rates”, keeping his identity secret ’til the very last moment, a very clumsy jest that had frightened the life out of the good residents of New Providence, and had re-dounded to no good credit.

“If it is, I’ll have both captains at the gratings, and flog ’em half t’death,” Lewrie vowed. “I didn’t find it all that amusin’ then, and damned if anyone pulls that jape on me a second time.”

He had ordered his frigate, Reliant, and three weak and small ships, all he had in harbour, out to confront Grierson’s large squadron, knowing it was suicide, but prepared to go game and fulfill his duty to the last.

“About a mile and a half, now, sir,” Sailing Master Yelland estimated. “Ah, there’s their damned Tricolour flags, at last. Frogs for certain.”

“And we’re s’posed t’be terrified,” Lewrie growled.

Damme, don’t they find it odd that we ain’t turnin’ about Sou’west and runnin’ for our lives? he had to ask himself; These must be the stupidest, or the greediest, Frenchmen in all Creation!

“Sir, I do believe that they’re not frigates, but corvettes,” Lt. Westcott exclaimed after a long look with his glass. “Like our old twenty-gunned sloops of war.”