Free A King's Commander by Dewey Lambdin Page B

us a point free, off the wind, so Jester ’ll sail even flatter on her quick-work. So it takes yon Frog another hour to get within range-to-random shot. If you would be so kind, sir?”
    â€œAye aye, Captain,” Knolles replied, turning to issue orders to brace-tenders, idlers, and helm, the forecastle men who tended the jib sheets and the bosun and his mate.
    No way we’d ever outfoot her, and cross ahead, anyway, Lewrie told  himself. She’ll be up, even if she doesn’t head-reach farther upwind of by dusk, for certain. With the wind gauge, and us to her lee.
    Jester fell off from close-hauled to a fair wind, heading west-by-south, sometimes luffing up as the wind backed no more than half a point. She settled down with less heel to starboard, as the braces and jibs were eased a trifle, the yards swung around with the leading larboard yard-ends not quite so aligned fore-and-aft. Apparent wind eased, no longer keening through her rigging, softer on the ears, so conversations did not have to be shouted above the rushing.
    â€œHark’ee, sir!” Buchanon called, speaking for perhaps a second time in the last hour, as Three Bells of the Forenoon Watch chimed.
    â€œHmm?” Lewrie asked, wondering if there was something he had forgotten that he’d ordained to happen at half past nine a.m.
    â€œThunder, sir,” Buchanon oracled, sniffing at the wind with his large, crooked nose, like a fresh-awakened mastiff.
    A squall line, that’d be a blessing, Alan wished; bags of rain and thunder, somewhere off to windward. Dive into it before the foe did, and tack away, leaving him to play “silly buggers” with himself.
    â€œBut, there’s not a storm cloud in sight, Mister Buchanon,” he was forced to say, after a long, and hopeful, search of the horizon.
    â€œThunder, sir,” Buchanon insisted. “Hark’ee.”
    Lewrie went up to the windward rail, left the quarterdeck to amble forrud along the larboard gangway, to get away from the noise a ship makes, or a crew makes. Something . . . but what? Once more he raised his telescope, resting it on the foremast stays, this time.
    Nope, nary a smudge upwind. The southern horizon was knife-edged, now that the mists and haze had cleared. Rolly, since waves made it, but . . . was there more cloud just looming over the sea, far down sou’west? Not squall-gray or blue-gray, but . . .
    Damme if it don’t sound like thunder, he enthused; off and away . . . but a roll of thunder, nonetheless. A faint sound that was not the wind’s flutter about his head teased at his hearing.
    Or was it a devoutly wished-for fantasy?
    Again came something that might have been, if only . . .
    â€œBosun Porter, pipe the ‘still’!” he snapped.
    He’d served captains who did it; made their people work quiet, with pipes, halliard twitches and finger snaps as orders to the hands . . . their slaves. After Cockerel, a ship run dead-silent would always strike him as Devilish-queer. He’d much prefer raucous caterwauling. At least that bespoke a crew with spirit! He’d made a vow he’d never be the sort of captain who demanded the “still.” Yet, here he was . . .
    Yes, it was thunder! Very far off, up-to-weather thunder, on the wind. “Thankee, Mister Porter, you may pipe the hands free, now,” he said, with a grin on his face. And kept that grin plastered on— looking like the cat that lapped the cream—all the way aft past the curious sailors on the gangway or below at the guns in the waist. And thinking that perhaps he owed little Josephs a lapful of gingersnaps, for whistling up a saving storm! Thinking, too, that he owed Aeolus a debt, as well. The wind-god was an old slow-coach sometimes, in dealing retribution to cocksure sailors . . . but he got there, in the end!
    â€œMister Buchanon is right, gentlemen,” he told the quarterdeck. “I heard thunder on the