The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

happened already this week?
    He was on the brig, and a dirty, scruffy, ill-cared
for vessel it was! Eight small cannon and two empty ports on each side, there
should be twelve all told. Four pound, he estimated. A chaser in the bows,
roundshot in the ready-use rack about the size of an orange, probably six
pounds. Not navy, as dirty as this. Not a merchantman, they carried
stern-chasers for defence, had no use for a great gun in the bows. Not a
smuggler – they ran, would fight only as a very last resort, never carried
broadside guns which would condemn them as pirates. Must be a privateer, and an
unlucky one, at that; profitable private ships turned would-be crewmen away,
never had to resort to force to make up their numbers.
    He looked more openly about him as his eyes became
accustomed to the light. There was a watch of fifteen or sixteen men, which
suggested a crew of about forty when he would have expected the better part of
a hundred, privateers needing boarders and prize crews.
    Stood six feet away, out of arm’s reach, was a lean,
medium-tall, hard-looking seaman, a man who knew what he was doing. He was
unarmed, so he thought he had no need for any weapon; best to take him at his
own price, assume that he did know just what he was doing. He was dark-haired,
swarthy, brown-eyed, hook-nosed, looked more like a Spaniard or a Romany than a
local Englishman, Tom thought.
    “Captain wants to speak to you. What’s your name?”
    “Tom Andrews.”
    “I’m Jack Smith, prize master, Star of the Avon.
Captain’s name is Blaine, by the wheel. You coming?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Smith – if that was the name he wanted – relaxed,
turned his back and led Tom aft, happy he would not be attacked from behind,
not by a man who had just called him sir – he would have had other names for
him if he was after blood.
    “New man, Captain. Name is Tom Andrews.”
    The captain nodded and coughed and sniffed; he stank
of gin, explaining, perhaps, the state of the Star. He was skeletally thin,
undernourished, the bottle probably his only sustenance, far gone; he was watery-eyed,
fair hair uncut and thinning, blowing wildly in the light wind. Tall but
stooped, Blaine would have been much the same height as Tom, looked over his
shoulder, never into his face.
    “How old are you, Andrews? You look big enough to do
a man’s work.”
    “Sixteen, sir. Last month.”
    “Still got some height to make, and a lot of muscle
to bulk out – you will be a big fellow before you’re finished! By the way you
stand you have used the sea, Andrews?”
    “Yes, sir. My dad had a drifter, a thirty footer. I
crewed with him since I could walk, just about.”
    “Good. You’re here now and you can make a choice –
gun crew or boarder, whichever you wish. Ordinary seaman, not a landsman, so
that will make you a one-and-a-half share man. If you show you’re good enough
we’ll change that to ‘able’ and two shares. You don’t have to sign on, of
course – if you want you can always swim back to Poole.”
    Tom smiled at his wit – captains always had to be
humourists. He had already seen that there was no land in sight, that they were
well out into the Channel. He raised his hand, politely.
    “I volunteer, sir. Boarder, if you please.”
     
    “Captain Blaine knows the sea, Tom, he just had a
bit of bad luck which turned him sour a bit,” Smith explained. “Beginning of
the war, he was doing well, a young man, I don’t know how old exactly, say
twenty-five or so, but he had his own frigate, Arrow, 28, nine-pounders, was
cruising off Chesapeake Bay when the lookouts called a sail at dawn, making out
to sea in the fogs you get there, couldn’t see hardly nothing. Captain closed
her and then made the challenge at a cable, gave her a gun across the bows as a
wake up. She made no reply and set her topsails and seemed to swing towards, so
he gave her a full broadside and closed and boarded. Kestrel ship-sloop, had
taken damage from a big blockade