The French Prize Read Online Free PDF Page A

the street, and nearly collided with the man hovering there, waiting.
    â€œGood evening,” Jack said by way of inquiry, but this fellow did not look to be having a good evening.
    â€œGood evening, Captain ,” he said, and there, for the first time, the word was used with a mocking, ironic tone. Jack’s reaction was instant: the flush of rage, the balled fists, but the man did not seem to notice, or care.
    â€œI’m here at the behest of Mr. Jonah Bolingbroke,” he said. He spoke like a man struggling to talk above his station, the words stilted, the accent wrong. Normally, Jack would have found this amusing, but he was too angry now.
    â€œMr. Bolingbroke takes exception to your conduct last night, and demands satisfaction of you on the morrow. There’s an empty lot on Second Street in the Southwark—”
    â€œI know it.”
    â€œSunrise. Tomorrow,” the man said.
    Biddlecomb searched his memory, trying to recall what obligations he had for the morrow. Cargo was coming aboard, but he would not be needed for that until sometime later.
    â€œVery well, then,” Jack said, then thought better of that arrangement. “No, hold a moment, I’ll never find a second would agree to sunrise. Pray, make it eight o’clock. There’s no one in the Southwark will care either way.”
    Bolingbroke’s second seemed a bit taken aback by this arrangement, but he nodded and said, “Very well then, Captain , eight o’clock.”
    He turned on his heel and marched off, not so much appearing in a hurry as appearing to want to seem as if he was in a hurry. Jack watched him go and thought, I reckon I have time enough to kill Bolingbroke in the morning and then get on with my business .
    This was all very surprising. Over the years he had beaten Bolingbroke senseless and Bolingbroke had beaten him senseless but neither had taken offense enough to demand satisfaction. Jack wondered what might have changed. Could Bolingbroke have been pushed to this by Jack’s elevation to command? Could he not stand the adulation that had come Jack’s way after that business west of Montserrat? That had been a close-run thing. And now, nearly a year later, he might die as a result of it.
    â€œThat would be ironic,” Jack said out loud. Jack Biddlecomb hated irony.

 
    3
    That business west of Montserrat. It was nearly a year gone and Jack was only now realizing that it had made a pretty big splash among the mariners of Philadelphia. Why, he could only imagine. Perhaps because it was one of the Americans’ few unqualified wins, after so many merchant ships of United States registry, hundreds, in fact, had been picked off like birds in a tree by French privateers.
    They had cleared out of Barbados two days before, well laden with sugar and molasses, which was pretty much all they shipped from the West Indies because they were just about the only things the West Indies produced that were of any value. Abigail caught a nice slant of wind that drove her along to the east of the Leeward Islands as they shaped a course to catch the prevailing southeasterlies and the Gulf Stream north.
    The morning watch belonged to Jack Biddlecomb. It was ten minutes shy of eight bells, 3:50 A.M. , when he came up on deck to relieve the second mate, Oliver Tucker, standing the night watch. From the stuffy confines of the after cabins Jack stepped through the scuttle and onto the quarterdeck, into the embrace of the reliable trade winds off their starboard quarter.
    The stars were formed up in their brilliant cascade overhead, a great sparkling dome unbroken by moon or cloud, but Jack’s eyes went to the sails, always right to the sails, every time he set foot on deck. He looked aloft, past the crossjack yard to the mainsail, the main topsail and the main topgallant. The canvas was barely visible in the sweep of stars, but there was light enough that he could see their set, and he saw that it