A Jester’s Fortune - Dewey Lambdin

Up the ratlines, out over the futtock shrouds and past the fighting tops to the upper masts they went. Spry young teenage topmen and wary top-captains scampered up, then out, along the arms of the t'gallant yards, even as the hands on the deck tailed on the jears and halliards to hoist those heavy yards up from their resting positions to far above the crosstrees. Men stood ready, freeing clew-lines and buntlines as gaskets were cast off. More wind-greedy canvas began to appear as the t'gallants were drawn down, bellying and flagging as crisp as gunfire. And Jester moaned as she heeled even more, masts groaning and hull-timbers resettling as she set her starboard shoulder to the sea and surged forward. T'gallant sails shivered into taut stillness, arced outward and alee by the force of the winds, set more fore-and-aft than the tops'sls, or the courses, in a proper spiral.

A rogue wave, a placid little three-footer, broke under her bows on her cutwater, and she drummed as she shattered it to foam. Another and then another, soggy crashes and hull-drummings, which turned to hisses and sibilance as Jester stretched her legs and began to lope, shrouds and rigging beginning a faint, atonal but eager hum.

"Nine and a quarter knots, sir!" One of the afterguard shouted after another cast of the log.

"Go, lady!" Buchanon muttered to their ship. "Go it, darlin'! Ah, th' joy o' it, sir! A fine mornin' f'r a neck-or-nothin' chase."

"It is, indeed, sir," Lewrie heartily agreed, springing at the knees, feet spread wide, to ride her as she galloped windward.

"Like she's hungry, sir," Buchanon extolled further. "Like ol' Lir's hungry with her. Not twelve mile more, an' 'ose bilanders'll be hard aground, do 'ey hold 'is course, sir."

Lewrie looked aft. Once more, there was Rodgers's Pylades back to leeward, a touch to starboard of Jester's stern, should one of the Chases haul her wind and run Sou'west.

And that'd be about all they could do, Lewrie pondered; it made no tactical sense to try and tack this far offshore, to run northerly. Even the finest-handled warship-5th or 6th Rate, or sloop-could not tack quickly enough without losing a horrendous amount of speed for a long minute or two, then a long minute or two more to accelerate back to her original speed. Should the bilanders turn, should one or both of them try and tack once they got closer ashore, Jester would be nose-deep in their transoms before they could say "Merde dors!"

Rising, swooping, her wake almost sizzling as it creamed along her quarters, Jester strode toward the two bilanders. Three miles, then two miles off. Then one mile and almost within Range-To-Random-Shot, with that ruggedly beautiful coast looming up higher and higher: stark, dramatic, green but seemingly desolate.

"Coasters!" A lookout called down. "Small ships t'wind'rd. A point off t'sta'b'd bows!"

"Damme, not again!" Lewrie growled, all but stomping his feet in anger. With a telescope to his eye, he could see a gaggle of sails off to their Sou'east, at least half a dozen. More damned pirates?

The bilanders weren't waiting round to find out. In the blink of an eye, the left-hand of the pair tried to begin a tack, whilst the right-hand bilander, which was leading by perhaps a half mile, hauled her wind suddenly, almost laying herself on her beam-ends as she swung abeam the wind, pivoting about to run off the wind to the Sou'west. A quick glance astern told Lewrie that Pylades was well up by then and could deal with the one trying to run off the wind.

"Mister Knolles, we'll tack ship. Mister Crewe? Once we're on starboard tack and settled down, be ready with the starboard battery!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

* * *

And, once settled down, after a breathless burst of energy from the hands to cross the eye of the wind, there the bilander was off the starboard side, just a bit forward of abeam, and within a quarter mile of Jesters guns!

"Ready, Mister Crewe!" Lewrie alerted him again. "We'll haul off a point, to let the entire battery bear. Helm up, quartermaster."

"Aye aye, sir. Helm up a point. Steerin' Nor-Nor'east."

"Starb'd batt'ry…!" Crewe bellowed over the rush of the wind in the sails and rigging. "Wait for it! Fire!"

Rolling slightly, rising slightly, atop the scend of the sea and stable for a moment-"on the up-roll"-the guns erupted. Great hot gouts of smoke and embers burst forth, to be quickly winged away alee; a full dozen long-guns or carronades flung solid shot at the struggling old bilander, and she disappeared in a furious froth of spray and pillars of foam, close-aboard her larboard side. That grotesque lateen mains!, whose boom stretched from her amidships to far over her stern, shattered by the mainmast trunk to come sagging alee like a broken goose's wing, as she shivered to the impact of 9-pounder and 18-pounder iron. She rolled hard to starboard in recoil, against the press of wind on her remaining sails, before rolling again, this time so far to larboard they could look down on her main deck. Without the balance of that lateen mains'l, and with square-sails and lateen jibs up forward close-hauled, she fell off fast, slowing in a welter of snuffled foam. Crippled.

Aha! Lewrie exulted to himself, seeing the Tricolour soar up her damaged main mast. She was a Frog, just as I thought! He then gave vent to a real, audible cheer as that flag was just as quickly hauled down, in sign she'd struck to them… to Jester.

"Mister Hyde," Lewrie called for his eldest midshipman, "do you take a party aboard her. With Mr. Sadler, the Bosun's Mate, as senior hand. My cox'n Andrews to assist. Mr. Knolles, fetch to! Mr. Cony, we'll fetch to! And hoist a boat off the beams for the boarding party!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

"Mister Crewe!" Lewrie crowed, "Damn' good shootin', sir, as you always do! Two guns to remain manned until the boarding party's aboard her. Secure the rest."

There were dozen things to do at once; take in sail, cock Jester up to the wind and rig out the falls and tackle to hoist a boat off the waist tier which spanned the amidships. And all the while he kept a wary eye on their supposedly helpless prize, which was now also cocked up into the wind, her yards nearly bare of canvas and her crew slumping hangdog and dejected at her rails.

It was a full quarter hour later that Lewrie had a moment to spare for what else was going on, and he was only called away from his own concerns by the sound of more gunfire down to the Sou'east.

Pylades had stood on, close-hauled on the larboard tack, chasing after the second bilander. She was three miles further inshore by then. Without her prize, it seemed, and venting her anger over it upon a host of local feluccas and small xebecs. The pirates had the bilander not only surrounded, but under way and heading inshore for Bar, snapping back with light artillery like a pack of starving wolves guarding their first kill in weeks from a rogue lion.

Lewrie raised his telescope to take a good gander, standing by the starboard quarterdeck ladder to the waist.

"Sir, it's Hyde!" Midshipman Spendlove intruded. Lewrie swung his ocular leftward, refocusing on the figure of a grinning Midshipman Hyde on the captured bilander's larboard bulwarks, waving at them. The bilander had fallen down off-wind to Jester in the meantime and was now a bit less than a cable's distance-or 240 yards-off, and within hailing. He could see that the prize-crew had erected a spare fore-tops'l yard on her, aft, fitted with a longboats lug-sail for a spanker, so she would have some drive and some leverage to counter her foresails for steerage.

"Speaking-trumpet, Mister Spendlove," Lewrie bade, trading telescope for the open-ended brass cone. "Mister Hyde!" He bellowed across the distance. "Follow in my wake! We'll head out to sea!" He gestured with one emphatic wave of his left arm westward.

"Aye aye, sir!" Came the answering wail, thin and reedy. "We'll follow you out!"

There was more gunfire from the Sou'east, thin and flat. A final fit of pique, it seemed, for Pylades was hauling her wind, turning away from ' the coast to make her own way out to deep water. Denied her prize.

Another quick exchange of telescope and speaking-trumpet with Mr. Spendlove and Lewrie could see even more boats had come out from shore-tiny fishing smacks, small coasters, feluccas or light galleys- just about anything that could bear sails or oarsmen. The second unfortunate French bilander was in the centre, within a mile of the shore, hemmed in closely between her original half dozen captors. Had Pylades contested them for her, Lewrie realised, she'd have been swamped on every hand by six dozen craft bearing hundreds, perhaps upwards of a thousand bloodthirsty pirates or half-starved villagers. They would look upon the coming of a European ship laden with rare goods like the inmates at Bedlam would the arrival of a drunken pieman in their midst, his trays heaped with piping-hot treats. Neutral Mon-tenegran or Albanian villagers, he reminded himself with a snort of frustration, people they had no plaint against, nor any business fighting!

Were they as poverty-stricken as Major Simpson suggested back in Trieste, one scruffy bilander would represent a king's ransom, with all her nails, iron bolts, blocks, rope, furniture, guns and powder, as well as her canvas and cargo. And they'd fight to the last tooth and nail before they'd let her go, as fiercely as a she-bear defending her cubs. But it looked, from where he was standing, much like a horde of rats savaging a side of beef left unguarded!

"We'll not go inshore and cut her out, sir?" Spendlove asked. "Doubt it, Mister Spendlove." Lewrie grimaced as he lowered his telescope. "Mister Knolles? Make sail, and shape a course Due West for now. We'll escort our prize out, and close Pylades."

"I mean, sir…" Spendlove gently insisted. "Mr. Buchanon says this stretch of coast is Muslim. Ottoman Turk. And she's French, so…"

"Want t'die, young sir?" Buchanon sneered, having heard his name cited, as they plodded back toward the helm. "See some o' th' hands die t save Frogs? Or a ship 'at'd be mostly looted 'fore dark anyways?"

"Well, no, sir, but… mean t say, sirs… Frogs or no, they are fellow Christians. Even if they are Papists." Spendlove reddened. "I just wondered… what would happen to them, do we not…"

"Fetch a pretty penny." Mr. Buchanon sighed, rubbing the side of his nose. "Per'aps th' most value o' 'at prize, do 'ey sell 'em in a slave-market. Blue-eyed, white-skin Christians're valuable. Do 'ey not cut a few throats first, mind. Nor rough 'em up too vicious."

"As the old saying goes, Mister Spendlove," Lewrie said, as he slammed the tubes of his telescope shut and stored it in the binnacle-rack, " 'God help the French,' sir. And it was their choice. Run in that close to a piratical shore to escape us? Well, on their heads be it, Mister Spendlove."

"An' 'ey are Frogs, after all, young sir," Buchanon reminded the midshipman. "Like you say, Cap'um… 'God help th' French.' For 'ere's ought we could do for 'em, now, 'thout gettin' dozens o' men o: our own killed t'save 'em. Poor motherless bastards."

CHAPTER 3

Captain Benjamin Rodgers, too, was of the opinion of "God help the French," and agreed with Lewrie that "on their own heads be it" if an enemy merchantman escaped their clutches only to stagger into even greater harm among the savages of the coasts.

"Look at it this way, Alan," he said, chortling, as they put their heads together just shy of Corfu. "Its a bit less prize-money for us, but do th' damn pirates get her, she's a dead loss for th' Frogs just th' same. One less bloody cargo t'help 'em build their navy 'gainst us!"

"Just so long as they only take outward-bound ships, sir," Lewrie reluctantly agreed with him, leaning forward to snag the neck of the claret bottle on the table between them as they celebrated aboard Pylades in shirtsleeves and unbuttoned waistcoats, their neck-stocks undone and comfortable. "Oh, I'd 'How the locals as many of the timber or naval stores cargoes as they wish. Good huntin' to 'em, I say, but I'll-"

"Cargoes already bought and paid for, mind, so 'tis double their loss," Rodgers interrupted, as had ever been his energetic wont. "May e'en be triple th' loss… do th' Frogs still have a maritime insurance fund, like Mr. Lloyd at his coffeehouse in London. Or have a sou left in it? By God, sir… the grief! Their poor ships'-husbands an' owners… weepin' an' wailin' ev'rytime their little Lutine Bell rings! Haw!"

"But I'll fight tooth and nail for an inbound ship, sir," Lewrie persevered with a much-put-upon sigh well hidden from Rodgers. Falling back into old, forgotten habits, he consoled himself with a wry chuckle; it was difficult to get a word in edgewise when Benjamin Rodgers was full of himself and "chirping wordy"!

"Aye, poor wine 'board an outbound ship," Rodgers hooted, full of mirth, retrieving that bottle for his own enjoyment. "After they've drunk up all their 'bubbly' Mean t'deprive me, th' surly bastards."

"All their export goods, sir," Lewrie rejoined in good humour. "They don't have that good an economy, that much silver or gold specie with which to pay for-"

"Amen and amen t'that, Alan old son!" Rodgers guffawed, banging the bottle on the table in his exuberance. "Aye, short as they are for solid coin, why… an' how many other nations' bankers'll honour any o' their Letters of Exchange, 'cause they're paper promises… not worth th' paper they're written on!"

"Bills of credit, but based on what, sir?" Lewrie said quick as he could, before Rodgers went on another tear. "Redeemed when, if ever-"

"An' ev'ry inbound vessel we take, then, is another nail in th' coffin for 'em," Rodgers exulted, getting to his feet to pace. "They have t'buy grain or starve, from th' Barbary States or their old chums th' Americans. Must be in bad debt with them already! Most o' their merchant fleet already swept clean off th' seas, blockaded."

"A huge drain, sir… on an already thin-stretched economy. Or treasury. Worst drain may be right here in the Adriatic. Can't win a war without a navy… can't build or maintain their navy without stores from the Adriatic. And can't purchase-"

"That'll be something t'tell Captain Charlton, next time we cross his hawse, wouldn't it, Alan?" Rodgers speculated. "That we're doin' a power more t'hurt th' Frogs than anyone else at th' moment. Makin' 'em bleed through th' nose for want o' timber. Might bankrupt 'em. By God, we could! Bankrupt 'em… d'ye think?"

"Very possibly, sir." Lewrie grinned. "And make a tidy profit in prize-money, in captured silver and gold for ourselves, with every inbound ship we take. As for the outbound, we might as well let the pirates have 'em. Or burn 'em, since-"

"Hellish waste, though." Rodgers sobered for a moment. "So far, we've seen some damn' handsome ships, for th' most part. Worth a lot to the Austrian Prize-Court. Not a third th' value of th' inbound, but…"