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

Two more hours
and between them they had selected the six best pistols and checked their
springs and flints before handing them across to Tom.
    “Good thing you’re a big bloke, Tom,” Smith
commented. “With a cutlass as well it will make a fair old load. By the way,
have you ever handled a blade, Tom?”
    A furious outbreak of coughing from Luke led him to
withdraw the question, very apologetically.
    Tom spent the rest of the day sat on the deck with
rags and oil, painstakingly cleaning the heavy pistols and then rousting
through the gunnery chest to find the tools to file down the sears and reset
the triggers to a lighter pull. They were still clumsy brutes at the end of his
labours, but he would trust them not to misfire and to put their ball more or
less where he expected. He liked hand-guns, always had; he had never used one
in earnest but he expected he would now, it was not as if people mattered, not
like he had always thought; the Excisemen had taught him that.
    While Smith gave brief training to the larboard
boarding party Dick and Luke, both possessing farm skills, set up the
grindstone and put an edge to the fifty or so of cutlasses and tomahawks they
could find. The Coles sat down with their own oilstones and sharpened their
knives until they could shave with them; they did not offer to assist any of
the others.
    Next day Tom was set to the great guns, to check and
set the lock on each, one flintlock being much the same as any other. He did
his best, replacing two springs and balancing the others as well as he could,
but he strongly recommended Smith to find slow match and water tubs for each
gun as an almost certainly needed back up.
    By the end of their second day on the French coast
they were ready for custom, if only they could find it.
     
    The luck changed a couple of days later, off the
Isle de Re and the approaches to Rochefort, the Star on a rare north-easterly
wind making a comfortable five knots under courses alone, not wanting the
increased visibility of topsails, far less the high pyramid of topgallants,
never carried by merchant hulls – the small sails added only a little to a
ship’s speed but required extra, expensive hands to set them. Tacking slowly
and laboriously from the south came a fat, slow, round-bowed ship, some four or
five hundred tons at a distant estimate. Anxious inspection by telescope showed
no row of gun ports – she was not an ancient fifth or sixth rate of the French
navy.
    “Set topsails,” Blaine shouted, wheezing and hacking
under the strain of raising his voice.
    Their speed rose to eight knots, closing a mile
every six minutes until their prey should wake up and try to flee. The Star’s
crew was too small to consider raising topgallants or studding sails in a
hurry, but they did succeed in setting a second jib.
    “Hands to chaser!”
    Five men ran to the six pounder, cast the gun loose
and slowly loaded it.
    “Mr Smith, French colours to fore and main, if you
please.”
    They had been flying no flag, private men of war
generally did not, in common with most merchantmen; there was always the chance
that a commercial sailor might see what he wanted to – three or four hours of
flight down wind, even if they escaped, would leave perhaps two extra days of
tacking to make their port – and would believe the Star to be a French national
ship.
    The boarders armed themselves and waited in their
two parties, six from the starboard watch and five from the larboard, Smith at
their head and giving a running commentary, nervously twitching like a
racehorse waiting for the off.
    “Blind, credulous, bloody stupid! If we was Frog
navy we would be looking to give them sea room, stand at least two, better
three, cables off. Surely to Christ he can see we’re at a dead run for him! Two
miles distant. He’s left it too late, it’ll take him at least ten minutes to
change tack and we’ll be closing him before he’s round. Ready at the chaser!”
    They