Chapter 5

"Oh, poor little fellow," Midshipman Parham said to himself as William Pitt escaped the great-cabins by the quarter-deck ladder and sat on the deck to scratch at his good ear. The sound of their captain practicing the scale on his tin flageolet came stumbling to their ears through the open skylights aft. "Sound like another ram-cat to you, does it, poor puss? Poor afterguard. Poor me!"

"And I thought you would appreciate music, Mister Parham," Lieutenant Ballard said, hands behind his back and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as Alacrity rolled along.

"Music, aye, sir, but..." Parham shrugged as he grimaced his opinion. Below, Lewrie broke off doing scales and started a halting attempt at the chorus from "The Jacobite Lass," which prompted their surgeon's mate Mr. Maclntyre to sing along, equally badly.

I gi'ed ma love, the white white rose, that's growin' at ma father's wa. It is the bonniest flow V that grows where ilka flow 'r is braw. There's but ae bonnier than I ken, fae Perth unto the main, an' that's the flow'ro' Scotland's men that's fetchin 'for his ain.

"Oh, don't encourage him, Mister Maclntyre," Parham tittered. "Lord, Mister Ballard, sir. The captain cannot play, and Mister Maclntyre can neither sing, nor speak the King's English of a sudden. A proper shambles, that is."

"That's enough, that is, Mister Parham," Ballard smirked.

"And a Jacobite tune, too, sir," Parham continued. "Disloyal to King George, is it not, Mister Maclntyre?"

"Next time ye hae a boil on yer bum, Mister Parham," Maclntyre warned, " 'twill be ma dullest lancet, an' I'll nae be gentle!"

"Masthead, Mister Parham?" Ballard intoned with a cock of his head and frown enough to let him know his antics had best stop.

There was another verse, without vocal accompaniment this time, before the music ended with an embarrassed cough. Lewrie emerged on deck moments later in breeches and shirt, and looked around as the afterguard and watch-standers suddenly found something vital to do, or something fascinating to see over the side.

"Sea's getting up," Lewrie stated, scanning the horizon about them. "She swims a mite more boisterous than in the forenoon."

"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Ballard replied primly. "Winds are yet steady from the nor'east. Some backing in the gusts to east. Might be half a gale, no more, sir. The weather horizon's clear, for now, though we are getting whitecaps now and again."

The rigging whined with a sudden gust of wind that came more from the east, with perhaps a touch of southing. Alacrity rolled a bit more as the winds picked up from astem, and the normally lumpy waters of the Northwest Providence Channel were now long sets of rollers, windward faces rippled like hides by the gusts, and capped with white spume where a borning chop collided with itself.

"Smell rain, Mister Fellows?" Lewrie asked, twitching his noseaweather as the gust faded and the winds clocked back to the expected nor'east of the Trades.

"Sweet water somewhere, Captain," Fellows agreed. "Just a hint now and again. I'd wager squalls by seven bells."

"Have the hands eat?" Lewrie inquired.

"Aye, sir," Ballard reported.

"Topmen aloft, then. Take in the tops'ls and brail up secure. Then we'll have gun-drill as we planned. But no more than one hour," Lewrie ordered, face wrinkled wary. "We'll practice wearing ship to either beam and firing broadsides at a chase."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard agreed. "Bosun, pipe 'All Hands!' Do you send topmen aloft! Trice up, lay out, and brail up tops'ls!"

"If this is a late cyclone, Mister Fellows, could we shelter in a hurricane hole on Grand Bahama north of us?" Lewrie asked as the men thundered up from the mess deck. "What about Hawk's Bill Creek?"

"Hmm," Fellows squinted, taking off his cocked hat to scratch at his gingery scalp. "Do we stand on west-nor'west the rest of the day, sir, we'd be too far to loo'rd of Hawk's Bill Creek, and would have to beat back to it, with Grand Bahama a lee shore to larboard. And Grand Bahama's a graveyard for an hundred ships caught such. Nasty coast in a southerly wind. But... Cross Bay on the western tip should be abeam by late afternoon, sir. 'Round behind Settlement Point in Cross Bay, there's a good holding ground. Low-lying land, with nothing to break a gale, but much calmer waters behind the breakers and mangrove swamps."

"Keep that in mind, if this isn't your regular gale. We could ride a gale out, reaching south. After gun-drill, we'll lay out four anchor cables, just to be safe," Lewrie decided.

"Very well, sir," Fellows agreed.

By six bells of the Day Watch, three in the afternoon, it was clear that this was no average tropic squall line. The horizon astern had darkened to a deep slate gray, shot through widi ragged sizzles of distant lightning at the base. The high-piled white clouds of morning had turned gray and lowering, and raced themselves overhead to loo'rd. They took in the outer jibs, reefed the gaff courses once, then for a second time, before wearing ship north for shelter, with Alacrity laid over on her larboard side, the wake creaming within arm's reach of the deck as she swooped and bounded fast as a Cambridge Coach, darting for safety like a low-flying tern. It was one thing to trust their stout little vessel in deep water in a full gale, but this had the smell of a bad 'un... an out-of-season hurricane.

The first sprinkles of rain hit them as they beat into harbour around Settlement Point, short-tacking easterly, and the wind gusted from the east-sou'east hard enough to make it difficult to breathe.

"About here, sir!" Fellows had to shout in Lewrie's ear. "Best bower, then second bower out there, to south'rd of the first!"

"Ready, forrud!" Lewrie yelled through a speaking trumpet "Mister Neill, be ready to tack her. Ready, Mister Harkin? Helm up and meet her 'midships! Jesus, let go forrud!"

Alacrity rounded up, everything lashing and flogging, and came to a stop in her own length against the winds as the best bower anchor splashed into the harbour.

"Larboard your helm! Let go main course halyards! Back forrud sheets!" Lewrie called. Alacrity almost spun like a fallen leaf over to the opposite tack, and began to sail away to starboard, driven by a triple-reefed after-course and an inner jib reduced to little more than a storm trys'l, the best bower hawser paying off abeam, howling through the hawsehole! "Round up, Mister Neill! Meet her! Let go second bower!"

And pray both the bitches bite, Lewrie thought, as Alacrity paid off the wind, with both anchors out, each placed forty-five degrees off her bows!

"Hand the courses, hand the jibs!"

Down came the last scraps of sail, leaving Alacrity drifting to the west, at the mercy of Cross Bay's sandy bottom. Should the anchors fail to hold, she would be wafted onto coral a couple of miles astern before they could get a way on her again!

She snubbed! The best bower anchor, weighted with thirty feet of fist-thick chain and a two-pounder brass boat-gun to ease the jerking which might dislodge the flukes, had held! And a moment later, so did the second bower, similarly weighted on its rode.

"Mister Harkin, pay out half a cable on each hawser and even the scopes!" Lewrie called, then turned to Ballard. "You wanted delegated action at Conch Bar, Mister Ballard? Now you have it! Off you go! Make it quick before the storm's really upon us!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard replied, summoning his boat crews. They would row out the stream and kedge anchors from astem and set them down to match the angles from the bow cables. "Cony, Odrado, let's go!"

* * * *

It took an hour of juggling and pulley-hauley to equalize scope on the cables. By then, as the hands fell exhausted from the capstans, the storm was upon them, and a curtain of furious rain sheeted over the decks, blanking out all vision beyond a couple of feet, blowing so hard it was nearly horizontal. Lightning forked and arced around them, one explosion striking the island, the next so close-aboard their hair went on end, and the thunderclaps were so loud and continuous it felt like Alacrity was being hulled by thirty-two-pounder fortress guns, making the deck tremble and leap as the rigging and masts wailed an unearthly, eldritch chorus of harpy's shrieks.

Lewrie was wet right through, the rain driving past tarred tarpaulin coat and hat like they were gauze, soaking breeches and shirt. Cool as the rain was in the winds, he was clammy and hot beneath, and stiff with blown salt-water, cloth flogging painfully.

With the storm had come unnatural, eerie nightfall, a yellow-green dusk torn by lightning bursts on either hand. Trees ashore bent and tossed, sickly green. Palmetto fronds and leaves came slapping in the air to cling wetly for a moment, then be torn away to swirl aft.

Alacrity jerked, trembled and snubbed on bow cables, on stern cables, tossing her head like a colt being held to be saddled.

"What's astern should we drag?" Alan asked Fellows in one of the few partings of the rain in which they could take bearings.

"Little Bahama Bank, sir!" Fellow shouted back. "What the Dons called 'The Great Shallows'! Miles and miles of coral heads and reefs!"

Alacrity was whirled by a gust, drove forward, and snubbed on a stern cable hard enough to make them stumble before paying back to jerk on best bower, then second bower, making the cables groan on the bitts!

Hellish sunset became black night, blue black with lightning frying iron gray rain clouds that brushed the mast-trucks, with the winds moaning all about like a witches' coven. But it was not a cyclone, not a hurricane—just a terrifying winter storm, and it finally blew out by four bells of the evening watch. The rain drummed vertical and with less punishing force, thinned at last, then ceased. The clouds parted to the east, revealing a late moon and a few kindly stars, even though Cross Bay still tossed and churned, and Alacrity continued to quiver.

Soon, the winds eased to half a gale, with lulls between gusts. They could see the storm astern now, a spectral sea battle raging on the leeward horizon as it tore across the Gulf Stream and the Florida Channel, a wall of blackness supported by a thousand legs of flaring lightning strokes, like blue fires on dark velvet.

"Not a millpond yet, sir," Ballard commented, grunting with a weariness brought on by tension and fear. "But it's over, praise God."

"Calm enough to suit me, Arthur," Lewrie muttered. "You turn in and get some rest. Set regular anchor watches and a harbour watch. I think our people have earned some sleep at last."

"And you, sir?" Ballard inquired.

"Dry clothes, and a boat cloak, and I'll doss down in my deck chair. I'll take the middle watch," Lewrie offered, aching though he was with exhaustion, and the blessed release of being spared disaster.

"No, sir, you turn in," Ballard objected almost truculently. "I normally stand the middle."

"Damme, Arthur, you're silly enough to offer, I'll give you no arguments," Lewrie smiled for the first time since midday. "Call me at eight bells, my 'normal' time, then."

"Aye, aye, Alan. Our normal routine," Ballard said shyly.

"And damned glad of it!" Lewrie commented as he went below.