Damme, I should’ve waited a bit more! Lewrie chid himself, for his squadron would cross the course of that strange squadron at better than three cables, hopelessly beyond the best range for his lighter ships. Only Reliant could hit the leading frigate.

“Deck, there!” a main mast lookout screeched. “They’re hoistin’ British colours!”

Has t’be a ruse, damn ’em! Lewrie furiously thought, though he could see the Union flags for himself with his glass.

“The flagship makes her number, sir!” Midshipman Munsell cried from halfway up the weather mizen shrouds. “And, she shows a private signal!”

“Then get down from there and look it up, young sir!” Lewrie barked, totally befuddled. Munsell scrambled down and dug into one of the flag lockers for the books of private codes that were changed monthly. “Well?” Lewrie prompted again.

“Ah … she’s the Athenian, sixty-four, sir,” Munsell hesitantly related, shuffling from one book to the other, “and her private signal is for us to make our number to her!”

“Well, just damn my eyes!” Lewrie snapped, slamming the tubes of his telescope shut with rising anger. “Do so, Mister Munsell.”

Each ship of the Royal Navy, from wee one-masted cutters to the towering three-deckers of the First Rate, was assigned a number which would announce her identity, but did not list who commanded her. That would be found in Steele’s Original and Correct List, and Lewrie did not imagine that Munsell had thought to include Steele’s in his set of essentials; it was most likely below on the orlop.

“Very well, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed. “Make our number to her. Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie cried down to the guns. “They appear to be British, so withdraw the priming quills for now, and un-ship the flintlock strikers.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Spendlove replied, looking far more relieved by that revelation, as did the gunners, than steely English tars should.

“Athenian shows a fresh hoist, sir,” Munsell reported. “It is … our number, and ‘Captain Repair On Board’.”

“Very well, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie said, beginning to work up a wee “seethe” over how late this new senior officer had left things before showing his true colours. “Strike the hoist for ‘Form Line Of Battle’, and replace it with … the small ships’ numbers, and ‘Secure From Quarters’ … followed by … ‘Will Enter Harbour’. Let’s send ’em back to port, before these new’uns get all the good anchorages.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie shouted down from the hammock nettings at the forward break of the quarterdeck. “Run in your guns, draw shot and charges, and secure.”

Lewrie turned to Westcott next, who stood by with a bemused expression on his face, rocking on the balls of his booted feet.

“Once we’re Southeast of the squadron’s line of sailing, we’ll come about to close alee of the first two-decker’s larboard side and I’ll report aboard her. Have a cutter brought round from being towed astern, and alert Desmond and my boat crew.”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott said.

“Just damn and blast that bastard, whoever he is, for waitin’ so late!” Lewrie fumed. “What the Devil did he think he was playin’ at? Is this his lame idea of a grand jape? People could’ve gotten killed!”

I could’ve been killed, more to the point! Lewrie seethed to himself.

“I’m going t’give that clown a piece of my mind!” Lewrie declared, tugging his pistols from his coat pockets and looking round for Pettus or Jessop to take charge of them.

“I do note, though, sir,” Lt. Westcott cautioned, “that he’s flying a broad pendant … the senior plain red one.”

“At this moment, I don’t give a tinker’s damn!” Lewrie spat.

CHAPTER FOUR

“So, who the Devil’s this Lewrie chap, Meadows?” the Commodore of the new-come squadron asked of his Flag-Captain, the officer actually in charge of HMS Athenian, as he idly watched the frigate take in her main course to match speeds with his flagship, about fifty yards off the larboard side.

“He’s listed in Steele’s as Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, sir,” Captain Meadows told the Commodore, Captain Grierson.

“His fam’ly must be poor as church-mice, did they send their eldest to sea, hey?” Grierson scoffed in a lazy drawl. “What is the date of his Post-Captaincy?”

“The Spring of ’97, sir,” Meadows supplied.

“Ha! Good, then, I’ve two years’ seniority over him, whoever he is,” Grierson chortled.

“Beg pardon for the intrusion on a private conversation, sir, but I have some information of him,” Athenian’s First Lieutenant, one fellow by name of Hayes, spoke up.

It was not as if Grierson’s and Meadows’s conversation was all that private, anyway, for Captain Grierson always spoke loudly, and Captain Meadows had been half-deafened by cannonfire since his days as a Lieutenant; neither could hold a private conversation.

“Indeed, sir?” Grierson snapped, looking down his nose at the interloper as if a beggar had tugged at his sleeve for alms.

“Captain Lewrie is known in the Fleet as the ‘Ram-Cat’, sir,” Hayes related as formally as he could; secretly, he did not care for their new Commodore. “For his choice of pets, and his repute for being aggressive. He is also known as ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie for opposing slavery, and liberating slaves from Jamaica to man his ship. He was tried for it, but acquitted. Wilberforce and his crowd are mad for him.”

“Good God, Wilberforce!” Commodore Grierson spat in disgust, as did a great many of The Quality and men of business. “That earnest wee ass! He and his Kill-Joys, pah! They’ll be outlawing drink and horse racing, next! Anything else?”

“There was some face-to-face bother with Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris in 1802, sir,” Hayes went on. “It’s said that ‘Boney’ set some of his agents to kill him, but murdered Captain Lewrie’s wife instead, so he’s been a widower for some time, and … it is also said that he does not have the most discriminating taste in women. There was talk of a divorced lady.…”

“Perhaps his sobriquet of the ‘Ram-Cat’ is not about his pets,” Captain Meadows slyly said in jest.

“That’ll be enough, Mister Hayes,” Commodore Grierson said as he waved a hand in dismissal. “I think I take his measure. And, in any instance, he will not be on-station much longer.”

“Aye, sir,” Lt. Hayes said, doffing his hat and bowing himself away. Arrogant prick! Hayes thought.

The Commodore, Captain Grierson, strolled aft to watch a cutter depart the Reliant frigate’s starboard main-chains and set out for Athenian under oars, steering to cross close under his ship’s stern and end up alongside her starboard side, and the starboard entry-port, the port of honour. Grierson thought of requesting a telescope for a look at this Lewrie fellow, but decided that that would be showing too keen an interest. He would wait ’til he was aboard.

Grierson was certain that he would not like him, already.

*   *   *

“Best coat and hat, sir?” Pettus enquired as Lewrie prepared to board his cutter.

“No, no time for the niceties,” Lewrie decided. “A senior officer sends a summons, and it’s better to obey instanter.”

“I found Athenian in Steele’s, sir,” Midshipman Munsell said as Lewrie began to walk over to the starboard ladderway and the beginning of the sail-tending gangway, where the open entry-port and side-party awaited. “She was brought out of Ordinary in October of last year, and her captain is Donald McNaughton.”

“Thankee, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie told him with a brief grin and nod of confirmation. “A Scot, is he? Perhaps I’ll be piped aboard with bagpipes, and be offered a sheep! Carry on.”

He doffed his hat to the side-party, the crew, and the flag, and quickly descended to the cutter, where his normal boat crew, hands who had been with him in his retinue for years, waited with vertical oars. Once seated aft by Cox’n Liam Desmond by the tiller, the boat shoved off and began a smart and rapid row to the two-decker.