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Moycroft nodded at Ramsay, who then hauled the huge wooden tiller against the current running beneath the keel.

  “The sound was wrong,” Gordon uttered. “And there was no splash. It was no long gun, no carronade—”

  “A swivel gun?” Moycroft asked.

  Gordon made a short nod. “One bale does not make a cargo and one shot is no broadside. Turn the ship northeast, quickly!”

  Moycroft glanced at Gordon uneasily and finally spoke down to the sailing master. “Trim for this course.”

  “Trim for northeast, aye,” the sailing master called back.

  “Keep your voices down.” Gordon leaned over the rail and cupped a hand to his ear, facing due west.

  The sailing master cast him a squinty glare, then turned to the sail handlers and somehow shouted without shouting. “Hands to braces, boys!”

  Deckhands scrambled to the belaying pins where the braces and sheets were made off. The ship had no need to tack about, but only to adjust her heading, thus the men on the working braces and sheets on each of Helen’s two masts hauled in and the men on the opposite braces and sheets eased out their lines, each man eying the sail for which he was responsible. Each of the dirty yellowed square sails took four men, two on braces and two on sheets, pivoting the yards around till the wind was behind the sail, when the sailing master gave a “That’s well!”

  Once the Helen’s sails were braced to the new course, the ship seemed to know what Gordon was after and made a noble bob forward.

  “Do as I say with precision,” he murmured to Moycroft. “No responses to orders. This is an inexact science …”

  Moycroft frowned and looked down from the quarterdeck to the crew. “Stand by your positions. Keep quiet. ’Vast responding. Send the word forward.”

  Perplexed, the word of stand-by and silence murmured its way to the bow. The unexpected result was that all the men turned, even while manning their lines, canted their ears and eyes to their captain, the unsure young officer pretending omniscience.

  With some effort he managed to separate the creak of his own ship’s spars and the flap of her sails from other sounds out on the ocean … the rumble of other voices, the snap of other commands, the click of a block as a sheet was drawn inward, out there, somewhere, on the water.

  “Better east,” he snapped.

  “Better—” Ramsay clamped his mouth shut, recalling a bit late the command for no responses.

  The ship reacted poorly in the soft water and swiveled against the current, which flooded around some island behind them that they could not see, and changed the course of the water’s flow. Gordon continued listening and a moment later said, “East by north.”

  And half a minute later—

  The bow bobbed like a cobra’s head. Every few seconds he whispered a new correction, hoping his ears were not as exhausted as the rest of his body. The putrid odor continued to puff across the deck with every faltering bit of breeze that ruffled the fog, overlying the pervasive scent of oiled hemp and tar that floated along with every ship everywhere. Each ship carried its own scent, personal to her own cargo, her captain’s whims of construction and maintenance, and any new science that came along.

  “Sir, we’re moving away from them, is my reckoning,” Moycroft attempted. “The sound was over there.”

  “As was the course of the cotton,” Ramsay agreed.

  Gordon’s eyes shifted, but he continued to scan the fog and ignored the men’s challenge. Was Ramsay helping him discover their enemy or diminishing him in Moycroft’s eyes?

  His legs throbbed against the rail with sheer tension. He leaned so far out that Moycroft or Ramsay might easily knock him overboard and be done with him once and for all.

  When they did not take their advantage, he thought them cowards, for he knew their wishes. Once a man knows his own wishes—

  “There!” The cry bolted from his throat.

  He saw only a sliver of the American ship’s stern, low to the water’s surface. Then the fog parted better and he saw a confident hand on the slackened main sheet. One man in particular turned fully to Gordon and the two looked in raw awareness at each other. Envy flared up in Gordon’s chest that the other captain could stand with his helmsman behind him without fearing having his brains bashed out.

  The American captain was dark-haired too, but his hair was brown while Gordon’s was nearly black. He wore tidy whiskers down the sides of his face to the level of his mouth, as if to frame his commands when he spoke. Otherwise he was clean-shaven and rosy-cheeked, wearing a clean white shirt, a black day coat, and an impertinent neckerchief of Brittany blue.

  The stealthy American smiled at Gordon, wickedly, as might a leprechaun about to hide gold.

  Balls of fog rolled between them and the American ship disappeared again. Gordon pressed his legs against the rail as if to push the Helen onward. “Larboard better.”

  “Larboard better, sir.”

  He hated Ramsay’s voice. If only he could take the wheel himself!

  “Adjust the trim as needed, Mr. Moycroft. Go ahead and shout.”

  Moycroft shot him an ugly glance. “Brace to this course!”

  Amidships, the sailing master called back, “Brace over, aye!”

  Gordon sensed the sloop’s turning, but with the fog obscuring his view of the bow he could no more than assume the movement. He also sensed the men’s irritation at his strange commands.

  A nervous flutter ran around the wall of his stomach. He was going on instinct and a guess, walking on the edge between the respect of his men and their ridicule. From morning to morning, he never knew which would play out the day.

  As if they had floated through a doorway, the wall of mist thinned quite suddenly. Now the fog was only a sheet of gauze between Gordon and the world. He could make out the deck of the American ship.

  “There you are,” he murmured. “There you are …”

  Thicker fog still hovered over the American’s topmasts and sails, but he could see the American captain standing on his afterdeck as if deliberately striking a storied pose for Gordon’s torment.

  “Strike, I tell you!” Gordon shouted at the American captain, but his words were snatched away by a short gust of breeze.

  The other captain raised his hand to wave at the British pursuers.

  No, not a wave. The American lost his balance, wobbled, nearly fell overboard of his own stern. His smile disappeared. Two men snatched out and caught him back from where he seemed to hover above the water, and the Yankee ship broke into chaos.

  “What’s happening to’m?” Ramsay uttered.

  Shouts came now from the American ship, muffled orders and responses, confused, angry, frantic. Fog clouded the view again, then again thinned enough for Gordon to see the schooner’s captain was bent at the waste over the port rail, peering down into the water. Reflection? Sharks?

  Yes—the sky was changing. He had no need for a barometer to know the weather was turning squally. This air made no secrets.

  He could see the American ship from stern to midships now, and his own vessel to the tip of the sprit and the all the way up the masts to the fore t’gallant.

  “Sandbar!” Moycroft choked. “By the king, they’re stuck!”

  And that was the only fate that could put this moment into the hands of the British. Both gratified and petrified, Gordon watched the Americans and they watched him. Suddenly enough sun burned through to see the ring of brownish tint in the water just under the American ship, and the bluer water around that, as if the sea bottom had put up a thumb to hold the Americans in place.

  “Moycroft, brace over and trice up,” Gordon said quickly.

  Moycroft whirled around and shouted, “Braces and clews! Dump the jibs!”

  The crew scrambled like bees with a purpose. Men ran to the foredeck and unmade the jib sheets. Immediately the giant triangular headsails spilled their air and began whipping like angry horses. The men held those sheets, but did not pass the jibs to the other side, letting them
instead flap in protest.

  “Trice the courses!” Moycroft shouted. But the sailing master and his hands had already figured out that the ship was to be stopped of her forward way and they were ready. The outside bottom points of the lower square sails crawled upward, letting the sails dump air and hang instead like laundry. The Helen was a quick ship and hard to stop, but with her sails like this she suddenly washed to a near-stop and bobbed slowly, abeam of the Americans.

  “Keep us a half-cable’s length away from them,” Gordon said. “Ready a boat.”

  “I’m sure we can draw up close, sir, if that sandbar’s shaped right.”

  “Half a length!” Gordon snapped.

  Moycroft hesitated, then gave the only acceptable response. “Aye, sir. If they choose to fire?”

  “Would you fire on a Royal Navy brig while you’re grounded?”

  Moycroft fell silent. His giant single eyebrow went up on both ends.

  Gordon croaked, “Give me the half-length while we still have a mist about us. Keep them under our starboard guns. Keep the gun crews very visible.”

  “Aye, sir. Hands to the starboard guns!”

  As Moycroft began barking orders, Gordon shivered with relief that he wasn’t compelled to entertain questions, thanks to Royal Navy protocol. The men might wonder why he would not come alongside the Americans, where the size of the frigate alone would inflict intimidation, but he was not obliged to tell them.

  Now as the fog grew still thinner, out on the water they could see a little dory boat with a swivel gun mounted upon its bow, from which obviously the bale of cotton had been jettisoned. So there was the attempted trick. James Gordon’s stomach hardened at the lack of congratulations from his own men. There was no cheer of victory, no word of good work from his officers. He had just performed a miracle of instinct, turning away from the obvious direction of the gunshot and the drift of the cotton bale, and he had won.

  He shook off the insult of silence.

  Was half a cable’s length enough? Would three hundred feet blur the frayed splices, the shabby lines, the scratched chain-wales, the halfpenny repairs, the hollow-cheeked crew or their diminished numbers? Nine more dead since Sunday.

  “Mr. Moycroft, be wary.” Gordon turned at random to one of the nearest midshipman who lingered on the main deck. “Mr. Hennessy, you will accompany me. As soon as we’re aboard, find the manifest. I want to know what she’s carrying besides cotton.”

  “Yes, sir. Might be cotton alone, sir.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Grain, lumber, wood or ironwares would ride her lower in the water.”

  “Just find the manifest. And keep away from me.”

  He put his hand upon his pistol. Andrew Hennessy, younger by three years and twice heavier than Gordon, could easily knock his commanding officer over the side and claim an accident. All the men would see, of course, but who would defend Gordon?

  The American pirates were aground on a sandbar, and within a few minutes four men were rowing Lieutenant Gordon in his gig toward the American ship.

  Gordon wished he could do the rowing rather than just sit. The American captain hadn’t made a mistake—Gordon might’ve felt better if he had. The sandbar had been hidden by the fog. Now he could see it, a sugary tan smudge in the pearly water. For the first time he got a good look at the notorious Yankee rig, that infamous Baltimore design whose most prominent characteristic was the rake of her masts. The two giant timbers seemed too tall for the low-lying yellow hull, and were stepped at such a tilt that they seemed to be blown backward.

  The American vessel’s hull was narrow and sharp. Her bowsprit made a natural extension of the shearline, as if the ship were a swordsman’s arm and the sprit his rapier. The schooner’s huge trapezoid sails were strung between horizontal spars running fore and aft. Enormous blades of headsails speared one over the other well out over the water, larger than the frigate’s headsails and more sharply cut. High in the sky flew a triangular topsail on the foretopmast, probably used to pivot the schooner in light following airs. Aft, the main boom extended far out over the water, carrying the sail plan beyond the ship’s stern. Her captain snapped orders to tune the rig in a way that might press the ship off the sandbar. He’d still bear off if he could, Royal guns or not. He was still trying to get away.

  Better take care of that.

  Gordon cupped his hand to his mouth. “Spill air, captain, or I shall order a broadside!”

  The American captain’s blue eyes met Gordon’s brown ones. After a moment’s consideration, the other man waved a hand at his own crew without speaking a single word.

  The American crew reluctantly eased their sheets. Blocks and sheaves clattered softly as they fell to the deck. The booms and gaffs floated out over the water in relaxed posture. The sails gave up their air, which poured out across Gordon’s face like a bad woman’s breath. The schooner made a slight moan as strain fell away, then relaxed and accepted her predicament on the sandbar, under the muzzles of Helen’s guns.

  Was there no one whose counsel he could trust? There were four other men in this boat, yet he dared not but sit in the stern rather than move forward to meet his foe and put his back to his own men. Strange to think … in moments he would be aboard the American ship and be safer there than aboard his own brig.

  Only when the gig bumped the schooner’s yellow tumblehome did he stand and allow himself a moment with his men behind him. He scanned the hull—no name board, no identification but the United States’ ensign quietly flicking on the stern. The defiant Stars and Stripes made big motions in the heavy air, not hanging, but not exactly flying.

  That flag. That sassy flag.

  He looked between the gig and the schooner into the crystal water, down at the brown water where the sandy bottom held the American keel between its fingers. He knew the sight of pure fortune—nothing else could have given him this prize.

  Taking his life in his hands for the tenth time today, he put his foot over the Helen’s rail and climbed over the side.

  The Americans

  THE SCHOONER’S VARNISHED RAIL was cool to his touch as James Gordon pulled himself aboard. He tottered briefly in imbalance, then clumsily discovered the fir deck. Everyone was watching him. Every man on two ships.

  The silent and quick Hennessy arrived immediately and thumped down the nearest companionway as if he knew his way around. Despite his bulk, the midshipman was light on his toes and comfortable in the cramped quarters of a ship. The two of them stood now on the deck of the Yankee schooner, before an audience of rebels, scoundrels and deserters.

  Gordon scanned the American crew. Their cheeks were rosy, their eyes free of jaundice, their lips moist and hair clean. There was not a hint of scurvy. How boastful, in its way. There were all manner of men here, with a harmony of skills that came from willing participation. Their faces spoke of a dozen ethnic roots—German, Swedish, Dutch, French, Celtic, Negro, and of course English.

  And there was the captain, mere steps from Gordon. The blue neckerchief flipped against his neatly whiskered jaw.

  “Welcome aboard,” the captain said. His voice was intellectual, his diction commendable, his accent decidedly Northern.

  Suddenly Gordon felt hot inside his wool jacket. The tropical sun disclosed itself through the dispersing fog and beat upon his shoulders. God, but these latitudes were despicable. Not only must their siren call threaten his command, but he must sweat in his uniform. The indignity.

  He drew a breath to clear his head.

  “I am Lieutenant James Edgar Gordon of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. You are defying the Crown’s legitimate wartime blockade of hostile ports.”

  Dry throat.

  The American captain said nothing.

  Gordon ignored the slight. “I almost didn’t find you, Captain. Your distraction nearly worked.”

  “Distraction?”

  “You have no yawl boat aboard. Your boat is out there, in the water somewhere, dumping flotsam a
nd firing a signal gun, pretending to be big. You are an intriguer, sir.”

  Hennessy thumped up from the aft hatch and handed Gordon a clutch of papers in a leather pouch. Gordon opened it and rifled the papers. It was the cargo manifest.

  “The Comet,” he began slowly. “And it seems you’re carrying dangerous cargo.”

  In an oddly friendly manner, the American asked, “Are you endangered by baled cotton?”

  The schooner’s crew broke into laughter at Gordon’s expense.

  His dry lips pulled at each other. “Cotton, for wadding to tamp into French guns.”

  “Perhaps, if we were carrying saltpetre or gunpowder. Cotton is not contraband, Mr. Gordon. Would you deny natural trade with our island neighbors?”

  “There is a blockade of America, sir. There is war.”

  “America is not at war, sir.”

  “What difference does America make to the world?”

  Gordon did not dare look up from the papers in his hands. The men were all looking at him, but for different reasons.

  The other captain asked, “Is Britain so uncivilized as to deny us a means of prosperity?”

  “Britain civilized the seas, Captain,” Gordon quickly corrected. “If not for us, there would be no trade at all. Pirates would roam unchecked. You Americans stomp and whine, all the while making profits upon the waters. Who patrolled those waters and spilled the blood and cleared out the pirates—”

  “Britain has been stifling our commerce since 1787, Lieutenant,” the captain said. “The sea is the common highway of all nations. The United States have the right to free trade.”

  Gordon looked up from the manifests. “Is that how you justify smuggling?”

  “What do you expect when Britain blockades our waters?”

  “People cannot be controlled on land,” Gordon said. “The sea is the key to the land. We know we must control it.”

  “You’ve never respected our victory in the War of Independence.”

  Gordon drove away the humor. “What is there about it to respect?”

  The American captain’s eyes flickered like water. Something about all this was entertaining to him. For a moment the two men seemed almost to be seated over lamb and crumpets, discussing politics before a crackling fire.