Hostile Shores by Dewey Lambdin Read Free Book Online

and took notice out-board. “It is … ‘General’ to all ships, and ‘Make More Sail’,” he deduced after a squint with a telescope and a quick referral to the signals book.
    “It appears it’ll be a race, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said.
    “One we may lose, sir, given the foul condition of our ‘quick-work’,” Lt. Westcott told him. “Do you wish the stuns’ls rigged?”
    Sailing off the wind as Reliant was, studding booms could be extended from the course and tops’l yardarms to bare more sail to the following wind, which might gain them a knot or more over the warships of Grierson’s squadron, but …
    “It’s not that far to Hog Island and the main channel, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided, shaking his head No. “We’d barely get ’em rigged and spread before we’d have t’take ’em in for entering port. I’d admire did you remove the larboard hawse buckler and bend a cable to the best bower, instead. Mister Caldwell? How close may we shave inshore of Hog Island?” he asked puckishly. “Closer to the entrance channel than those bastards?”
    “Oh, I see what you wish, sir,” Caldwell replied, spreading a grin on his usually stern face. “Do we alter course a point to larboard now, we should have more than sufficient depth.”
    Lewrie glanced at the chart which Caldwell showed him, then got his telescope from the binnacle cabinet rack and peered forward. He could see Firefly, Lt. Lovett’s little 8-gunned sloop, abeam of the wind as she stood in to the entrance channel. Over the trees of Hog Island, he could make out the peaks of Thorn ’s and Lizard ’s masts, for they were already in port and rounding up into the wind to ghost to a stop, drop anchors, and pay off sufficient scope as their crews handed the last scraps of sail.
    He did not need the glass to look over towards Grierson’s leading frigates; they were a cable apart in line-ahead, all driving hard with white mustachios under their forefeet and cutwaters, and creamy wakes curling down their sides. But, the leading frigate was abaft of abeam to Reliant, and the second and third were off her starboard quarer. Most importantly, they were now at least two cables or better to seaward of his frigate!
    Lewrie went to the starboard bulwarks and leaned far out for a look overside. He had to shake his head over the thickness and length of the weed strands that fouled Reliant ’s bottom and waterline. Some broke off as he watched and swirled astern into the wide bridal train of wake, where sea birds by the hundreds swirled and mewed and dove to snag themselves a bite, or scoop up some of the green slime that flaked off in tasty wee morsels.
    “Mister Westcott, when we’re near the entrance channel, I wish the ship scandalised … Spanish reefs and Irish pendants … to take the speed off her. Topmen aloft as we do, to take in courses, royals and t’gallants. Prepare a cable to the kedge anchor, as well. We’ll stand in somewhere near our old anchorage, bear up into the wind, then let her fall off Northerly before droppin’ the kedge, then ghost on ’til the kedge bites. We’ll let go the best bower then, and be abeam to the prevailin’ breezes, and won’t swing to impede Commodore Grierson’s squadron when they enter port.”
    “And if his lead frigates out-foot us, sir?” Westcott asked with a smirk on his face.
    “Then they’ll put on a pretty show for the good folk o’ Nassau,” Lewrie told him. “The main thing about racin’ the other fellow is to know when to slow down ! We’ll have the centre of the channel and will be the vessel with the right of way.”
    “Very well, sir,” Lt. Westcott agreed, chuckling in anticipation. “All will be ready when you order us to alter course.”
    Reliant stood on under full sail, slowly losing the race to the entrance channel to the lead frigate of Grierson’s long column of warships. She was two cables abeam of Lewrie’s frigate as Hog Island receded and the channel