Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [27]
“What does it say, man?” he demanded.
The lieutenant thumbed through his code book, fumbling and creasing pages.
“Well? Well?”
“Sir…sir…it says to maintain station with the fleet at all costs until further orders.”
Landais swiveled to stare at Bonhomme Richard’s stern then slapped the book from the officer’s hands. “Incompetent youth!” he spat, striding toward the ladder and his cabin. Below, his back to the stern lights and the spectacle of the Atlantic, he pulled the stopper from a decanter and splashed brandy into a glass. He gulped hastily, refilling the crystal while the fire warmed his belly. The decanter’s stopper spun in slow motion on his desk as Alliance rolled with the swell.
That accursed American. Truth be told he wasn’t even an American at all, but a Scot, and in Pierre Landais’s book they were almost worse than the English. How could Jones fight the English when he was really one of them himself? Just as cocky as the English too. Arrogant, as if the whole world belonged to them by right of birth. The Americans showed every sign of turning out much the same way. Landais hated them for it. God knows, he had only gone to America to secure a command. After his refusal to become Lieutenant of The Port Of Brest, he knew there was little alternative to being dismissed. Either that or a posting to some backwater where he would have decayed into senility. The move to America had worked too. Here he was, captain of a brand new frigate fresh off the stocks. But that damned Benjamin Franklin and his dithering committee had placed him under Jones’s command when the fleet by right should have belonged to him. He knew the waters around France as surely as if he had swum them all, and he very nearly had done, some of the buckets he had served on. And now Paul Jones was going to get all the credit. Damn his eyes.
Pierre Landais poured himself another stiff brandy. Nobody was going to get in his way. Pierre Landais was going to become the most famous French mariner ever to hoist his flag on a ship.
Even if it was an American ship.
***
“Clear for action!”
Paul Jones said it quietly in a voice that meant business. His eyes were on the two English ships, sails fat with wind as they bore down on the merchant fleet. He watched them impatiently while behind him, Pallas commanded by Cottineau, hung off the weather quarter, ready to give support. The commodore noted her trim handling, idly wishing Alliance were sailed so competently. As he ruminated, Richard’s crew worked. Nets were placed to protect the gun crews from falling spars and rigging should English gunfire prove accurate. All spare gear was stowed while the powder monkeys began to ferry cartridges from the magazines. The gun captains readied their teams, making sure each man knew his place and what was expected of him. Fingers restlessly rechecked knots and pulleys on the cannon harness, eyes roving to the horizon and the threat the wind carried toward them.
Heads pivoted sharply as a ladle slipped from a bos’n’s hand to clatter on the deck, abnormally loud against the backdrop of the wind sighing in the rigging and the swish of the ocean. Ignoring pallid faces and stares, the bos’n snarled at a boy to retrieve the object and rehang it by the freshwater butt.
The sails grew nearer.
Paul Jones walked the length of the deck’s blind side, eyes sliding over the gun crews and their charges, offering words of encouragement. He determinedly kept his gaze from the skyline to present an assured air to still the men’s growing edginess. He stretched his stroll as long as possible, occasionally casting a withering glance at the midshipman who danced at his heels like a puppy eager to run. By the foc’sle he crossed to the weather rail where Lt. Amiel stood. The young officer’s eyes were welded at the point where sea met sky.
The two men-o’-war were almost within range.
“Run out the guns,” Paul Jones ordered.
Lt. Amiel’s eyes swiveled to the commodore who pointedly ignored him.