‘Thank you, Mr Parslow. I shall be with him directly.’
He reached the glow of the binnacle as Pullings came sliding down a backstay from the top, thump on to the quarterdeck. ‘I think I picked ‘un out, sir,’ he said, offering his telescope. ‘Three points on the larboard bow, maybe a couple of mile away.’
It was a darkish night: an open sky, but hazy at the edges, the great stars little more than golden points and the small ones lost; the new moon had set long ago. When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could make out the horizon well enough, a lighter bar against the black sky, with Saturn just dipping now. The wind had veered a trifle northerly; it had strengthened, and white water flecked the rise of every swell. Several times he thought he had the topsails of a ship in his glass, but every time they dissolved, never to reappear.
‘You must have good eyes,’ he said.
‘She fired a gun, sir, and I caught the flash; but I did not like to call you till I had made certain sure. There she is, sir, just under the sprits’l yard. Tops’ls: maybe mizen t’garns’l.
Close-hauled, I take it.’
‘By God, I am getting old,’ thought Jack, lowering the glass. Then he saw her, a ghostly flash that did not dissolve
– vanished, but reappeared in the same place. A whiteness that the glass showed as a pale bar – topsails braced up sharp so that they overlapped. And a hint of white above: the mizen topgallant. She was on the starboard tack, close hauled on the fresh north-westerly breeze, probably heading west-south-west or a little south of it. If she had fired a gun, just one gun, it meant that she had consorts – that she was tacking and that they were to do the same. He searched the darkness eastward, and this time he saw one, perhaps two, of those dim but lasting wafts. On this course their
paths would intersect. But for how long would the remote unknown hold on to his present tack? No great while, for Cape Ortegal lay under his lee, an iron-bound coast with cruel reefs.
‘Let us haul our wind, Mr Pullings,’ he said. And to the helmsman, ‘Luff up and touch her.’
The Polychrest came up and up; the stars turned, sweeping an arc in the sky, and he stood, listening intently for the first flutter of canvas that would mean she was as close to the wind as she would lie. The breeze blew on his left cheek-bone now; a dash of spray came over the rail to wet his face, and forward the leech of the foretopsail began to shake.
Jack took the wheel, eased her a trifle. ‘Sharp that bow-line, there,’ he called. ‘Mr Pullings, I believe we can come up a trifle more. See to the braces and the bowlines.’
Pullings ran forward over the pale deck: a dark group on the forecastle heaved, ‘One, two, three, belay,’ and as he came aft so ropes tightened, yards creaked round an extra few inches. Now she was trimmed as sharp as she could be, and gradually Jack heaved on the spokes against the strong living pressure, bringing her head closer, closer to the wind.
The pole-star vanished behind the maintopsail. Closer, still closer: and that was her limit.
He had not believed she could do so well. She was lying not far from five points off the wind, as opposed to her old six and a half, and even if she made her usual extravagant leeway she could still eat the wind out of the stranger, so long as she had a very careful hand at the wheel and paid great attention to her trim: and he had the feeling she was sagging less, too. ‘Thus, very well thus,’ he said to the helmsman, looking into his face by the binnacle light. ‘Ah, it is Haines, I see. Well, Haines, you will have to oblige me with a double trick at the wheel: this calls for a right seaman. Dyce, do you mind me, now? Not a hair’s breadth off.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Dyce it is.’
‘Carry on, Mr Pullings. Check all breechings and shot-racks. You may shake out a reef in the maintopsail if the breeze slackens. Call me if you find any change.’
He went below, pulled on his shirt and breeches and lay down on his cot, leafing through Steel’s Navy List: but he could not rest, and presently he was on the quarterdeck again, pacing the lee side with his hands behind his back, a glance over the dark sea at every turn.
Two ships, perhaps three, tacking by signal: they might be anything – British frigates, French ships of the line,
neutrals. But they might also be enemy merchantmen, slipping out by the dark of the moon: a hint of incautious light as the second rose on the swell made merchantmen more probable; and then again, it was unlikely that men-of-war should straggle over such an expanse of sea. He would get a better idea as the sky lightened; and in any case, whether they tacked or not, he would have the weather-gage at dawn – he would be up-wind of them.
He watched the side, he watched the wake: leeway she was making, of course; but it was distinctly less. Each heave of the log showed a steady three knots and a half: slow, but he wanted nothing more – at this point he would have reduced sail if she had been moving faster, for fear of finding himself too far away by morning.
Far over the sea on the Polychrest’s quarter a flash lit up the sky, and more than a heartbeat later he heard the boom: they were tacking again. Now he and the unknown were sailing on parallel courses, and the Polychrest had the weather-gage at its most perfect: she was directly in the eye of the wind from the leading ship of the three – the third was a certainty now, and had been so this last half hour.
Eight bells. It would be light before very long. ‘Mr Pullings, keep the watch on deck. In main and mizen topsails. Mr Parker, good morning to you. Let the galley fires be lit at once, if you please: the hands will go to breakfast as soon as possible – a substantial breakfast, Mr
Parker. Rouse up the idlers. And then you may begin to clear the ship for action: we will beat to quarters at two bells. Where are the relief midshipmen? Quartermaster, go cut down their hammocks this instant. Pass the word for the gunner. Now, sir,’ – to the appalled Rossall and Babbington – ‘what do you mean by this vile conduct? Not appearing on deck in time for your watch? Nightcaps, dirty faces, by God! You are unwashed idle lubbers, both of you. Ah, Mr Rolfe, there you are: how much powder have you filled?’
The preparations went smoothly ahead, and each watch breakfasted in turn. ‘Now you’ll see summat, mates,’ said William Screech, an old Sophie, as he rammed down his meal –
cheese and portable soup. ‘Now you’ll see old Goldilocks cut one of his capers over them forringers.’
‘It’s time we see summat,’ said a landsman. ‘Where are all these golden dollars we were promised? It has been more kicks than ha’pence, so far.’
‘They are a-lying just to leeward, mate,’ said Screech. ‘All you got to do, is to mind your duty and serve your gun brisk, and bob’s your uncle Dick.’
‘I wish I was at home with my old loom,’ said a weaver, ‘golden dollars or no golden dollars.’
Now the galley fires were dowsed in stench and hissing:
the fearnought screens appeared at the hatchways: Jack’s cabin vanished, Killick hurrying his belongings to the depths and the carpenters taking away the bulkheads: the gun-room poultry went clucking below in their coops: and all this while Jack stared out over the sea.
The eastern sky was showing a hint of light by the time the bosun came to report a difficulty in his puddening – did the Captain wish it to be above the new clench or below?
This question took no great consideration, but when Jack had given his answer and could look over the side again, the stranger was there as clear as he could desire: on the dull silver of the sea her hull showed black as it rose, something under a mile away on the starboard quarter. And behind her, far to leeward,
the two others. They were no great sailors, that was clear, for although they had a fine spread of canvas abroad they were finding it hard to come up with her: she had hauled up her courses to let them close the distance, and now they were perhaps three parts of a mile from her. One seemed to be jury-rigged. Tucking his glass into his bosom, he climbed to the maintop. At the first glance he took, once he had settled firmly and had brought the leading ship into focus, he pursed his mouth and uttered a silent whistle. A thirty-two, no, a thirty-four gun frigate, no less. At the second he smiled, and without taking his eye from the telescope he called, ‘Mr Pullings, pray come into the top. Here, take my glass. What do you make of her?’