Morraine nodded at Hugh. “Lord O’Donnell.”
Hugh nodded back. “You wish to have your mizzen back as soon as possible, Captain?”
The left corner of Morraine’s mouth quirked. For him, this was the equivalent of a broad grin. “It is so obvious?”
Hugh smiled. “Well, yes. And sensible as well. But at a height of six hundred feet, we will see what lies before us and enter the channel between St. Christopher and St. Eustatia as fast and unseen as the wind that’s rising behind us.”
“Which I do not wish to miss, sir. Monsieur McCarthy tells me this is a swift procedure, yes?”
McCarthy shrugged, inspecting the billowing envelope. “It’ll be aloft in fifteen minutes, up for ten, down in ten, deflated enough for you to remount your mizzenmast in another ten. So, forty-five minutes, barring mishaps.”
Morraine nodded, nose into the wind. “Just in time, I would say. I want to be see the lights of Basseterre behind us by midnight.”
St. Georges sniffed distastefully at the pitch-soaked combustibles already smoking in the hand burner that Tearlach Mulryan was readying. “I, for one, am worried that your observer will not see all the ships before us.”
Mulryan raised a mildly contentious index finger. “Ah, but I will, sir. Six hundred feet altitude and this improved spyglass”—he tapped the brass tube in his rude “web gear”—“will show us the horizon out to thirty-three miles or so, and we’ll see the top of most any masts at least ten miles farther out.”
“So you have said.” St. Georges sniffed again, this time at Mulryan’s claim.
“And so we have seen in the trials we’ve conducted since leaving France,” Morraine followed with a calm, if impatient glance at his XO. “However, we will want to keep your men below decks much of the time, now, Lord O’Donnell. In the event our reconnaissance is incomplete, or Fate forces an encounter upon us, it would not do to have a passing ship see our complement to be markedly greater than the expected crew of this vessel.”
“Agreed, Captain. Point well taken. Besides, my men will be busy at their own tasks.”
“Which shall be?”
“Sharpening their swords and cleaning their pieces.”
Morraine’s left eyebrow arched. “Indeed. I took the liberty of inspecting the armorer’s locker after your men came aboard. All snaphaunces, even a few flintlocks. Expensive equipment, if I may say so.”
“Say away, for it’s true enough. But Lord Turenne agreed that it makes little sense to go to all the expense of mounting our expedition, and then arm the shore party with inferior firearms.”
“It is as you say. But almost half were pistols and the new-style musketoons. Most uncommon.”
“As uncommon as our task, Captain.” Hugh leaned back against the taffrail. “We’ll not spend much of our time at ranges greater than fifty yards, if my guess is right. So while we’ll want the ability to pour in a few volleys, I expect we’ll have little time or reason for serried ranks and maneuver. As I hear it, Pitch Lake itself is the only ‘open field’ we’ll encounter. But there’s plenty of bush to worm through. So I suspect most of the fighting will be quick and close.”
Morraine nodded. “Reasonable. Let us hope you do not have much fighting to do, though. Sixty men is not many for such an enterprise, even on the sparsely populated islands of the New World.”
O’Donnell nodded. “I agree.” He smiled. “Perhaps you could convince Lord Turenne to send along a few more.”
Morraine’s lip almost quirked again. “Indeed. I shall mention it to him upon my return, perhaps over our first glass of wine.”
Hugh nodded, let his grin become rueful. It was out of the realm of possibility that Morraine would actually ever meet Turenne, much less have the position or opportunity to suggest anything to the French general about operations here in the Caribbean. In addition to Turenne’s being a phenomenally busy man, Morraine’s appointment as the commander of the Fleur Sable had been a somewhat delicate business, handled by faceless bureaucrats at the unspoken but clear promptings of Turenne’s immediate subordinates. To have gone about it more openly would have been seen as undermining the naval court which had been well-paid to dismiss Morraine as a scapegoat for a young and thoroughly incompetent executive officer who just happened to be the son of an unscrupulous duke. Consequently, it was necessary that Turenne should never have direct contact with Morraine, lest both of them come under the scrutiny of that same duke, who, like most powerful men guilty of suborning a court, would spare no effort to ensure that the lies he had paid to be called “the truth” would not be revealed or revisited.