The King - Dewey Lambdin

"After the mercury cure, sir, I hope I never cross the hawse of another woman in my life!" Hogue groaned.

"Nonsense. Just fother a patch over your hull before you hoist battle flags, Mister Hogue. See Archibald and buy yourself an eight-shilling condom. Good as any from the Green Canister in Half Moon Street back home."

"Well, 'cept for being poxed to her eyebrows, she was a cunning little wench, sir," Hogue had to admit, albeit sheepishly.

After four more circumambulations of the deck, they returned to the telescope and made a great dumb-show of studying all the ships within sight through the thinning fog, always coming back to La Malouine. Nothing stirred but the crewmen of her night anchor-watch. Alan saw a French master's mate take off his hat, scratch his scalp and give out a great yawn so wide it was almost painful to watch, which made his own jaws ache at first, then yearn to gape in boredom as well.

"Doesn't much resemble a pirate, does she, sir?" Hogue whispered as he sat down on one of the signal-flag lockers to enjoy his tea.

"Can't imagine her catching an Indiaman, much less cowing one with her little battery," Alan agreed. They'd been rowed past the ship several times on errands or visits to other vessels farther down the Reach. La Malouine mounted eight-pounders fore and aft as chase-guns, and iron twelve-pounders on either beam-only sixteen of those in total, too. There were no secret lower-deck gun ports such as Telesto had, either. And La Malouine's waterline was so bearded with marine growth the tendrils seemed to wave at them in passing, no matter that she was coppered to slow the weeds down. Flying everything but her master's shirt and breeches, it was doubtful she'd attain nine knots in a full hurricane.

"Hmmm," Alan muttered as a native sampan came sculling out of the fog behind their quarry. "Damn early for a social call."

Hogue took the eyepiece while Alan retrieved his own mug of tea and sipped it with pleasure. The wardroom servant had made it almost boiling hot, and thickly laced with molasses.

"Sir," Hogue hissed. "He's bound for her. They're hailing the anchor-watch now. Hollo, here's a new'un!"

"Let me."

There was a European in the sampan, dressed in white shirt and black breeches, white stockings and woven sennet hat. As Lewrie watched, he stood up, grabbed the man-ropes and ascended the boarding ladder battens with a lithe, easy grace. Alan got the impression at that range of reddish hair, remarkably pale skin and a faint smudge of beard on the stranger's lean face.

"Yes, he is a new visitor," Alan mused. "Do you keep an eye on him, Mister Hogue. This fog should blow off soon. Perhaps by the time he departs, we may spy which ship he came from. I'll be below shaving. Sing out if you discover anything."

"Aye aye, sir," Hogue replied with a small nod, and the sigh of the permanently put-upon. Well, bedamned to him, Alan thought, as he made his way forward to the ladders that led to the quarterdeck; he's a midshipman, even in disguise. Hogue ought to know by now to expect the shitten chores! Snot-nosed younkers, he sneered. God save me from lazy midshipmen!

Hogue was waiting upon him when he*returned to the deck, as were the rest of the ship's officers. Eight bells had rung, ending the middle watch, and "All Hands" had been piped to begin the ship's day. "Rope-Yarn Sunday" or not, the decks still had to be scrubbed down.

Wash-deck pumps were being rigged, and the hands were milling about, rolling up the voluminous legs of their slop-trousers above their knees, holystones ready to begin wet-sanding the decks. The captain, Twigg and Wythy, Brainard and Choate were all present on the quarterdeck. Percival and McTaggart were forward, supervising the bosun and his mates.

"A good morrow to you, Mister Lewrie," Ayscough grunted, looking no more thrilled to be up and about at that hour than anyone else.

"Captain, sir," Alan replied, doffing his hat.

"Yon visitor aboard La Malouine" Ayscough continued, sounding hoarse as a bear with a head cold. "Seen him before, have you?"

"No, sir."

"Well, Mister Hogue informs us he departed not a quarter-hour after he came aboard her," Ayscough harrumphed. "Went back down-river to another vessel. Still foggy, but she seemed to be about the fourth or fifth, somewhere thereabouts."

"That would be either Salem Witch, or Poisson D'Or, sir," Alan said, recalling the rough chart of the anchorage they'd sketched over the last few weeks. "A Massachusetts Yankee. Lots of them were privateersmen during the war, sir. Maybe this one's not yet given up the trade."

"And what of this Poisson D'Or?" Twigg demanded.

"Newly arrived, sir," Choate stuck in. "She's a small three-master. About six or seven hundred tons burthen, she looked to be. Arrived just at the end of September, sir. Suppose she got her name from her paint-work. Ochre hull picked out in white along the bulwarks and gunwale. Black chain-wale, same's most ships. Poisson D'Or. Gold Fish, d'you see?" He concluded with a sharp laugh.

They did, but didn't find the play on words as amusing as Choate did, which forced him to utter a cough and harrumph of his own to sober his thoughts.

"You're the only one that's seen her so far, I take it?" Twigg pressed. "What did you think? How was she built? Manned and armed?"

"Well, Mister Twigg, sir, she's about the same size as one of their new frigates," Choate continued. "Were she a French royal ship, I'd take her for a thirty-two-gunned Fifth Rate. Pretty fine-cut entry and fore-foot, so she's not that old. Some of their latest construction. She had what looked to be eight-pounders for chase-guns. What else she mounted, I couldn't tell; the ports were shut. But when I was rowed past her, she was unloading cargo, and I didn't see over one hundred hands, all told."

"Were she a civilian ship, she'd not need sixty hands in peacetime," Mister Brainard speculated. "In these waters, that'd be about average for a crew. And, if Mister Choate says she's fairly new, she'd be fast as the very devil, just like most Frog ships that're frigate-built. Outrun pirates faster'n you could say 'Jack-Ketch.' "

"What else did you espy, Mister Choate?" Twigg grunted. "What impression did she make upon you?"

"Well, sir, she was set up good as 'Bristol Fashion.' Looked to be a pretty ship." Choate shrugged in confusion. "Saucy, sort of. Hands were dressed neat. Hull was coppered and her waterline was pretty clean, like she was recently careened and breamed."

"I see," Twigg rasped, pulling at his long nose in frustration. "Odd, though, for visitors to come calling so early in the morning, even before M'Seur Sicard could be expected to have his breeches on."

So far, Twigg's enthusiasm about La Malouine had seemed to be sadly misplaced. Although the ship had a larger than average crew, that would be only as expected in a country ship that had to face the danger of piracy on her lonely voyages. She was slow as Christmas, couldn't outrun a well-paddled prao, so those extra hands would be necessary to man her guns, repel boarders if necessary or deal with the natives on those mysterious islands far out in the Great South Seas where La Malouine traded for sandalwood, bird's nests, furs and shark fins. What made La Malouine at first suspicious could be explained away easily, and after a time, had been.

There were at least ninety French ships in Whampoa Reach, and all during September and October, they had speculated upon all of them. Now it was nearly mid-November, and they still had no solid leads, no standout suspect to bait.

Alan felt a twinge of sorrow for Twigg and his eternal suspicions about even the most trivial thing. But only a slight twinge of sorrow, he had to admit. So far, this adventure was a dead bust, and they knew no more today than they had the morning they'd sailed from Plymouth. Perhaps their disguised foe hadn't come to Canton at all, and was lurking somewhere far out to sea, outfitting to begin another season of piracy once the opium and silver began to flow outward from India the next summer.

Twigg and Wythy were from some shadow-world, anyway, Lewrie sighed as he watched their lanky secret agent pace deep in thought. God knows, HM Government paid the bastard to distrust everyone! Show Twigg an entry hall back home, point out the black-and-white marble tiles, and the bloody wretch'd see grey between the cracks, get out a crowbar and have 'em up to see what's underneath! And I'll bet that Ajit Roy of his tastes his food and drink first, too, Alan suspected.

"Might not have come off this Poisson D'Or at all, sir," Alan said, hiding a wry grin of almost cruel amusement at Twigg's expense. "I mean, this fog hasn't burned off or blown away. Who's to say what ship he really was from? Once near Salem Witch or Poisson D'Or, he could have doubled under their sterns and gone somewhere else. And neither Hogue nor I recognized him. Could have been anyone, sir."

"Why the covert visit at such an hour, then, sir?" Twigg said, turning to stamp back to them. "Why double under another ship's stern or bow to throw us off, as you put it, unless there was a good reason? I'd not expect even a blind man could miss our continual observations by now, Mister Lewrie. Should never have entrusted spying-out duty to you or any of the ship's people in the first place. I…"

"Sir!" Hogue intruded on the beginning of Twigg's latest tirade against amateur sleuths. "Damme if this ain't the same bugger to the letter, sir!"

"A little decorum, if you please!" Twigg snapped. "None to take notice but us. Be about your regular duties. Tom?"

Wythy went to the starboard rail with him, and they proceeded to stroll the gangway as innocent as newly risen babes. Alan went back up to the poop deck to supervise the scrubbing, jiggling and thumping the mizzen shrouds and backstays with a belaying pin to test their tension, as a ship's officer or mate would every morning.

There was a sampan coming by, and a European sailor sat almost in the bows on the squarish bow thwart, a man dressed in tan canvas trousers, faded blue shirt and dark blue sailor's jacket, with a red kerchief about his neck. His feet were bare and horny as any sailor's and he looked sublimely at ease to ride without labor for a change, leaving the poling or sculling to the Chinese at the matching stern platform. A clay pipe fumed lazily in his mouth.

Just forward of amidships, not quite under the thatch-laced "cabin" of the sampan, sat another European, though. And damned if he wasn't the same man Alan had seen scaling La Malouine's side not half an hour earlier! Closer to, when he could steal a glance at the sampan, he could espy a very slim young man, perhaps only a few years older than himself. There was that same dull red hair, pale skin and a slight, very tenuous attempt at a beard, which was the same dull ginger, a beard-lette which followed the line of the jaw very low down. Perhaps the man's essay at hiding what seemed a rather slack chin, or drawing the observer's eye upward from a prominent Adam's apple.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" Alan whispered. "They come calling?" The sampan was not exactly aimed at Telesto's main chains and boarding ladder, but she was tending slowly enough in that direction to give the impression that that was her destination. "What the Hell."