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

runner the previous day, lost her captain and
first and the youngster left didn’t know what to do when he couldn’t hoist the
lights for the reply, thought to come within hail. Anyhow, the broadside killed
a dozen of her men, including a midshipman whose mother was a niece of the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs! The court found for the captain, but he
was beached and wasn’t never going to command a King’s Ship ever again. I was
master’s mate on watch with him, stayed with him when he was offered a berth as
master of a privateer. He made enough to buy Star in the first twelvemonth, but
his luck’s been out since.”
    Smith was resigned, philosophical almost.
    “How long has he had Star, Mr Smith?”
    “Eight months; long enough to fit her out and take
her on two empty cruises. Not so much as a sniff of a prize. Anything we chased
ran up English colours!”
    Tom nodded; judging by the store-room he had seen
this was not going to be a long cruise.
    “So where are we bound, Mr Smith?”
    “Bordeaux stream, then the Spanish coast if we have
no luck. Rich waters, French West Indiamen as well as coastal traffic.”
    Tom nodded; he knew nothing of those waters, having
previously crossed the Channel only to run directly to Normandy to pick up
smuggler’s cargoes from the smallest fishing villages. He noticed that Smith
was uncomfortable, had left something important unsaid. He waited, let the
silence draw out, dad had always said that the silent man heard most.
    “Thing is, Tom, those are heavily patrolled waters,
too. Both the French and the Spanish keep an eye open in that part of the Bay.
You need to be wide awake in those waters.”
    Tom thought of the picture Blaine had presented – he
could have described him in several different ways, but ‘wide awake’ was not a
term that leapt to his mind.
     
    The Star was a strangely disorganised vessel – there
were two watches, but no petty officers to run them, the men splitting the work
between them as they fancied, the result being that the least popular jobs simply
were not done and the decks grew dirtier on a daily basis while the heads were
utterly appalling. Blaine and Smith were the sole officers – there had been two
other boarding masters but they had refused to sail for a third cruise on the
Star, preferring to earn a living wage instead. The cook had sailed again, and
he boiled the ration beef daily and issued them with biscuit and cheese for
breakfast and supper; for the rest, there were onions for those who wished to
cut them up, and suet and flour and dried plums for anyone who wished to boil
up a pudding. Small beer was issued by Smith, thrice daily, a quart pot per man
at each issue as the water was somewhat dubious, safe only when well boiled
because the barrels had not been scrubbed out before filling; there were no
spirits outside of the captain’s cabin. Discipline was relaxed, to the point of
being effectively non-existent – the men were almost all volunteers and they
could see their own interest as being best served by good behaviour, while there
was no such concept as ‘desertion’ as they were all free to resign at any time,
in theory, though it might have been somewhat impractical to hand in their
notice in the middle of the ocean. In any case, most of the men had a reason to
be where they were, at sea and invisible, not on land in their home towns or
villages, though, naturally, they tended to keep those reasons to themselves.
    Over four uneventful days Tom came to know the names
of the men in his watch, the five other boarders particularly.
    George and Joby Coles were brothers, either side of
twenty, although they did not know their ages for certain. They were Diddicoy,
settled travellers who claimed their families to have been Romany, once upon a
time. They were short, squat, sandy-haired and kept themselves to themselves;
both carried knives where they could be seen.
    John Murray was an older man, nearly forty,
toothless and