Read Online A King's Commander by Dewey Lambdin - Free Book Online Page B

fretful apprehension. And Mister Knolles and Mister Buchanon, two more who knew what whistling on deck could bring, stalked soft-footed about the quarterdeck as if the slightest misstep might bring the sky down on them like a tumbling house of cards!
    â€œSail ho!” came a most unwelcome cry, from far aloft.
    â€œOh, Jesus!” Lewrie gawped in the middle of his fifth breakfast at sea, a forkful of treacly broken biscuit halfway to his mouth.
    He was off and running, shrugging into his undress coat, cramming an old, unadorned hat on his head before the Marine sentry’s musket butt hammered the deck without his cabins, and his leather-lunged announcement of “Mister Midshipman Spendlove, SAH!”
    â€œCaptain, sir,” Spendlove began formally. “The first lieutenant’s respects to you, and he bade me inform . . .”
    â€œYes, yes!” Lewrie snapped impatiently, preceding Spendlove to the quarterdeck. “Where away?” he demanded.
    â€œ Two sail!” came another shout from the topmast lookout.
    â€œSir,” Knolles reported crisply, handing his captain his spyglass. “One sail on the larboard quarter, up to the nor’east, royals or t’gallants. Can’t see her from the deck, yet. But, there’s a second ship, sir . . . off the larboard beam, a touch southerly of us. Say, east-by-south to be her bearing? Just appeared moments ago, as these morning mists cleared. Royals and t’gallants, ’bove the horizon, sir.”
    â€œThankee, Mister Knolles.” Lewrie frowned. He took in the set of Jester ’s sails, the strength of the wind that flailed the commissioning pendant. Even close-hauled, Jester was loafing along in light morning air. The sunrise cast of the knot log had shown only a touch over seven knots, and the wind felt no fresher than when he’d quit the quarterdeck to go below a half-hour earlier. “Be back, shortly,” he said, slinging the telescope over his shoulder.
    He climbed atop the larboard bulwarks, swung out around the mizzen stays, and began to ascend the mast, recalling how terrified he had been, the first time he’d been forced aloft, so long ago. All these years, and it still hadn’t gotten any easier! He thought, surely, he would be senior enough, and like many post-captains too stout, to have to do this; could stay on deck and let the younger and spryer be his eyes. Except he knew himself for an impatient “hound,” and wondered, just before essaying the futtock shrouds, if he could ever be content with second-hand information.
    Most careful for a good handgrip and sure feet, puffing some, he got to the deadeyes of the fighting top after a breathless dangle on the futtock shrouds, scaling the underface of the outward-leaning ropes and ratlines. Then on to the mizzenmast crosstrees, far up by the doublings of the topmast, to take a perch on the bracing slats.
    The vessel off to the east wavered in his ocular as he embraced the topmast with one arm. Ship-rigged, he saw; three sets of yellow-tan ellipses—tops’ls, t’gallants, or royals visible, with her hull and course sails still below the horizon. Swiveling to the nor’east, he spotted the second. She was more broadside on, with three umber rectangles of sail peeking over the indistinct rim of the sea.
    He returned his interest to the nearest ship. Had she changed her aspect to them? When he first espied her, he’d thought she’d been beam-reaching west-nor’west across the wind, her upper yards and sails fatter and wider. Now, they looked narrower, more edge-on, her masts beginning to overerlap in his narrow view-piece.
    â€œAltering course,” he muttered sourly. “Comin’ over to ‘smoak us.’ Discover what we are. Well, sufferin’ Jesus!”
    An infinitesimal gay splotch of color burst forth upon her upper yards, vivid bits of flapping cloth. She was making a signal, as she came