The Black Swan (Historical Novel). Rafael Sabatini

and setting his elbows on the rail for steadiness, levelled the glass once more. This time his observations were even more protracted.

      He scanned the tall black hull of that distant ship and the black beak-head carved in the shape of a swan with a gilded crest. He attempted to count the gun ports on her larboard flank as far as this was revealed by the course she was steering. With the same leisureliness he surveyed the mountain of canvas under which she moved, with every sail unfurled, and above which flew no flag.

      So long was he in this inspection that at last the Captain's hard-held patience slipped from him.

      'Well, sir? Well? What dye make of her?'

      Monsieur de Bernis lowered the glass again, and faced his questioner. He was calm and smiling.

      'A fine, powerful ship,' he said casually, and turned to the others. 'Breakfast waits in the cabin.'

      The Major, whose appetite was never feeble, required no further invitation. He departed, taking Miss Priscilla with him.

      As they disappeared into the gangway leading aft, the smile left the face of Monsieur de Bernis. Solemnly his long dark eyes met the Captain's uneasily questioning glance.

      'I desired not to alarm the lady. It is as I think you already suspect. Tom Leach's ship. The Black Swan.'

      'Ye're certain?'

      'As certain as that she's steering to cross your course.'

      The Captain swore in his red beard. 'And this on my last voyage!' he complained. 'Fate might ha' let me end my sailing days in peace. Ye think...D'ye think she means to attack me?'

      Monsieur de Bernis shrugged. 'It is Tom Leach. And he steers to cross your course.'

      The Captain fell to ranting and swearing as a man will who is spirited and yet conscious of impotence when beset. 'The black-hearted, blackguardly swine! What's your fine Sir Henry Morgan doing to leave him loose upon the seas? What for did the King knight him and make him Governor of Jamaica?'

      'Sir Henry will get him in the end. Be sure of that.'

      The Frenchman's calm in the face of this overwhelming peril served only to increase the Captain's fury. 'In the end! In the end! And how will that help me? What's to be done?'

      'What can you do?'

      'I must fight or run.'

      'Which would you prefer?'

      Bransome considered, merely to explode in exasperation. 'How can I fight? She carries twice my guns, and, if it comes to boarding, her men outnumber mine by ten to one or more.'

      'You will run, then?'

      'How can I run? She has twice my canvas.' Bransome was grim.

      In the waist some of the hands newly descended from aloft were shading their eyes to survey the distant ship, but idly, without suspicion yet of her identity.

      De Bernis returned to the study of her through the telescope. He spoke presently with the glass still to his eye. 'For all her canvas, her sailing's laboured,' he pronounced. 'She's been overlong at sea. Her bottom's foul. That's plain.' He lowered the glass again. 'In your place, Captain, I should come a point or two nearer to the wind. You'ld beat up against it a deal more nimbly than will she in her present stale condition.'

      The advice seemed to exasperate Bransome. 'But whither will that lead me? The nearest landfall on that course is Porto Rico, and that over two hundred miles away.'

      'What matter? If this breeze holds, she'll never gain on you to windward. She'll sail her worst close-hauled. You may even outsail her. But if you do no more than keep the present distance, you are safe.'

      'That's if the breeze holds. And who's to warrant me the breeze'll hold? It's an unnatural wind for this time o' year.' He swore again in his frenzy of indecision. 'If I was to go about, and run for Dominica again? It's none so far, and safest, after all.'

      'But it's down wind, and down wind, with all her canvas spread, she'll overhaul you quickly for all her foulness.'

      Bransome, however, was rendered obstinate by panic, and another hope had come to vitiate his reasoning. 'Towards Dominica we're likeliest to meet other shipping.' Without waiting for the Frenchman's answer, he stepped to the poop-rail and bawled an order to the quartermaster at the whipstaff to put down the helm.

      And now it was de Bernis who departed from his calm. He rapped out an oath in his vexation at this folly, and began an argument which Bransome cut short with the reminder that it was he who commanded aboard the Centaur. He would listen to advice; but he would take no orders.

      With a lurching plunge the Centaur luffed alee, then came even on her keel and raced south before the wind.

      The seamen in the waist, who had fallen agape at this abrupt manoeuvre, were ordered aloft again to unfurl, not only the topsails which they had just come down from furling, but also the topgallants. Even as they sprang to the ratlines, in obedience, the great black ship, now left astern on the larboard quarter, was seen to alter her course and swing in pursuit, thus dispelling any possible doubt that might have lingered on the score of her intentions.

      At once it became clear aboard the Centaur that they were running before an enemy. Unaccountably, as il seemed, realization spread through the ship. The hands came tumbling from the forecastle in alarm, and stood about the hatch-coaming in the waist, staring and muttering.

      Bransome, now on the quarter-deck, whither de Bernis had followed him, remained a long while with the telescope to his eye. When at last he lowered it, he displayed a face of consternation, from which most of the habitual ruddy colour had departed.

      'You was right,' he confessed. 'She's overhauling us fast. We'll do better, though, when the topsails are spread. But even so we'll never make Dominica before that hell-hound is on our rudder. What's to do, Mossoo? Shall I go about again?'

      In the obvious urgency of his need, humbled by the realization that if he had taken de Bernis' advice in the first instance, he would now be in better case, he appealed again to that experienced fighting seaman.

      Monsieur de Bernis took time to answer. He was plunged in thought, a heavy frown between narrowed eyes. Bransome assumed him to be making mental calculations, and the assumption seemed confirmed when the Frenchman spoke.

      'It is too late,' he said at last. 'Consider the time you would lose, and the way, whilst she with the weather-gauge of you, would need to veer but a point or two so as to steer athwart your hawse. No, Captain. You are committed to your present course. It means now that you must not only run, but fight.'

      'God of Heaven! In what case am I to fight? To fight such a ship as that?'

      'I've seen victory snatched against longer odds.'

      Bransome took heart from the other's grim calm. 'And, anyhow,' said he 'with his back to the wall, a man has no choice but to fight, no matter the odds. Have ye anything in mind, Mossoo?'

      Thus plainly invited, Monsieur de Bernis became brisk and authoritative.

      'What hands do you muster?'

      'Twenty-six all told, including quartermaster and bo'sun. Leach'll have three hundred or more.'

      'Therefore, he must be allowed no chance to board us. Give me charge of your guns, and I'll show you how a main deck should be fought, so long as you provide me with the chance to fight it.'

      The Captain's gloom was further lightened. 'I'm in luck, at least, in having you aboard, Monsieur de Bernis.'

      'I hope it may prove as lucky for me in the end,' was the sardonic answer.

      He summoned Pierre, the half-caste, from the bulkhead below against which he was leaning, awaiting his master's orders.

      'Tiens, mon fils.' Monsieur de Bernis stripped off the sky-blue coat he was wearing, the fine cambric shirt with its delicate ruffles, his hat, his periwig, his shoes and stockings, delivering all to Pierre with orders to bestow them in his cabin. Then, naked above the