THE GUN KETCH l-5

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Put your helm down two points, Quartermaster," Lieutenant Ballard instructed softly. "Lay her head nor-nor'west for the main channel."

  "Aye, aye, sir, nor-nor'west," Mr. Neill echoed. "Ready for the gun salute to the flag, Mister Ballard?" Lewrie asked, sunk deep in the "Blue Devils" and gazing astern to see if he could espy a light on the porch of a particular house above Potter's Cay, on the beach road. "Aye, sir."

  "Wonder why yon ship is dressed all-over, sir?" Midshipman Parham said, pointing ahead to a fine three-masted lugger profuse with flags and bunting. Her decks were afire with lanterns in profligate array all down her gangways, and about her quarter-deck railings.

  "Shut yer mouth, Mister Parham!" Lewrie heard Ballard whisper in a harsh tone as he recognized the house flag atop her mainmast.

  "Sorry, sir," Parham grunted, blushing as he saw it, too. Lewrie came to the nettings over the waist and raised his spyglass to look her over. "She's a new 'un. Oh. One of Finney's. They seem to have something to celebrate yonder this evening." The faint sounds of a band could be heard tootling merry tunes as the many guests danced or sang with rowdy good cheer.

  "Goddamme!" Lewrie shuddered as he read the name on the transom plate of the new ship. "Goddamn him!"

  "What is it, sir?" Ballard asked.

  "Here, see for yourself, Mister Ballard!" Alan said, shivering with dread, and strongly reconsidering an immediate resignation. "Why, the bastard!" Ballard yelped in outrage. There, in ornate, serifed letters, bright with gold leaf, was the new ship's name: Caroline!

  "How dare he presume, sir!" Ballard growled, repulsed by such a boorish, flaunting deed, his prim sense of decorum scandalized! "Put your helm aweather, Mister Neill," Lewrie decided quickly. "New course due west. Steer up yon lugger's transom, but be ready to come about again to due north for the channel when I call."

  "Sir?" Ballard queried, coming to his side. "Helm's aweather, sir. Comin' about t'due west, sir."

  "You'll be using the larboard battery for the salute, Mister Fowles?" Lewrie called down to his master gunner in the waist below.

  "Aye, sir. Ready any time you want, sir."

  "Oh, sir," Lieutenant Ballard objected, but not too forcefully, as he got his quizzical, bemused look. "Surely not!" he tried to pout.

  On their new course, they would ram Caroline in her very stern, or pass down her starboard side at close pistol-shot at best!

  "Open your ports, Mister Fowles. Ready with the salute."

  At half a cable's distance from a collision, Lewrie turned to the quartermaster. "Helm alee, Mister Neill. Nor'west."

  Alacrity bore away upwind of the anchored Caroline, crossing her starboard quarter at a forty-five degree angle at one hundred yards!

  "Fire your salute, Mister Fowles," Lewrie grinned.

  BOOM! "If I weren't a gunner, I wouldn't be here. Number Two gun… fire!" Fowles paced out the stately measure, walking aft with the guns. BOOM! "I've left me wife, me home, and all that's dear. Number Three gun… fire!" BOOM!

  Guests aboard the Caroline, and her mates, had cringed when they saw Alacrity bearing down on them. They'd laughed at Finney's japes against the Navy as he celebrated his victory. Then, here was the Navy bearing down upon them as if to ram and board her! Civilians dashed about in sudden terror as the first cannon fired its reduced powder charge. Women screamed, and the band came to a sudden gurgling halt! Crewmen ran for weapons, sure they were being fired at, or took themselves below for safety, as their mates bellowed for order on the quarter-deck. Hot powder smoke, rank with rotten-egg and hell-fires' stench, wafted over them as Alacrity cruised slowly by across their quarter like vengeance.

  "Ah, there's our host," Lewrie chuckled.

  John Finney came clawing his way through his terrified, darting guests to the rails, to stand head-taller than the rest, gaudy in pale silks and satins, his white-powdered tie-wig askew on his head, as he shook his fist at them and mouthed curses lost in the shouting, the screams, and the deafening gunfire.

  "Helm down, Mister Neill. North for the channel," Lewrie said as the last shot of the salute belched forth and echoed off Caroline's hull. "Haul taut, forrud! Brace up, sheet home! Give us a tune, you men!"

  The ship's idlers who played fiddle and fifes lurched into life, playing a gay pulley-hauley chantey, "Portsmouth Lass," the onlyone allowed in the Fleet, as Alacrity turned her stern to Caroline and steered away for the sea, her flags flying and her commissioning pendant streaming as saucily as some teasing, taunting coquette.

  "Salute's done, sir," Fowles said after carefully counting his shots.

  "I should certainly say it is, Mister Fowles!" Alan laughed.

  Finney could be seen tearing the tie-wig from his head to throw it after them, screaming imprecations that were only thin howls under the chantey-tune, the hull's creaking, and the wake's bustling swash.

  "He may play the hoary seaman, but he's a shopkeeper, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said loud enough for the afterguard to hear. "Just a jumped-up purser, and a 'Nip-Cheese' 'un, at that! Take that, you bastard! We'll have you yet!"

  For a final fillip, Alan raised his right hand and presented an upright middle finger to Finney, a very English gesture of long usage.

  To Alan's amazement, Lieutenant Arthur Ballard stepped to his side at the rails and did the same, as did the midshipmen, and Mister Fellows the sailing master!

  The last Finney saw of Alacrity, as all but her lights faded into the rosy dusk, was her entire crew standing to attention as taut as Sunday Divisions, hands raised in scornful "salute"!

  Chapter 3

  "Damme, Mister Keyhoe, there must be some correspondence!" he barked at his round little purser.

  "Only pay vouchers, I fear, Captain," Keyhoe sighed, shrinking into his dark blue coat to escape Lewrie's wrath. "The paperwork that comes with Admiralty stores shipped down from Nassau in the packet."

  "Did they at least send money for the hands, then?" Alan asked.

  "Uh… nossir. The usual certificates, and those six months in arrears, as usual," Keyhoe had to confess.

  "So the jobbers ashore'll buy 'em up, and the hands'll have a quarter to a half their true pay, aye," Lewrie almost kicked furniture in his anger.

  "Hardly any pay, sir, once they settle their previous debts," Keyhoe muttered on. "Half of it pledged to me for slop-goods, tobacco and sundries. The rest with brothels and taverns ashore on every island hereabouts."

  "Damme, this goes beyond punishment," Alan fussed. "This now begins to sound very much like vindictiveness! Bosun's stores?"

  "None, sir," Keyhoe confessed.

  "Powder and shot?"

  "Again, none, sir. Just rum, wine, small beer, biscuit and salt-meat, Captain. Enough for another two months at full rations."

  "And what about officers' pay, Mister Keyhoe?" Lieutenant Ballard inquired. "Certificates, too?"

  "Aye, sir," Keyhoe huffed. "Had I a way to communicate with my agent in Nassau, I could offer two-thirds value on the certificates, so those vultures ashore don't skin 'em so bad, but I've no coin."

  So you're the king-vulture and pocket it all when the ship pays off in 1789, Lewrie thought sourly. There was only one ship's purser he'd ever liked, Mr. Cheatham aboard the Desperate frigate during the war. And he'd kept a chary eye on him, too!

  "Well, there'll be drink enough to keep our ship's people easy and groggy," Lewrie stated with a sadly bemused snort. "They'll not starve, but it's issue rations, and nothing fresh, 'less we continue to purchase for 'em when we buy wardroom stores. Damn Garvey!"

  "Aye, sir," Ballard said. "But none of us…"

  "I know, Mister Ballard, we're 'skint,' too!" Lewrie nodded in total frustration. "Very well. Working party, Mister Ballard. Warp the packet brig alongside and transfer cargo."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "And call away my gig. I'm going ashore," Lewrie decided of a sudden, feeling imprisoned on his own decks.

  Alacrity had been in her new patrol area for six months. Long Island, Ru
m Cay, Conception and Watling's were sparsely settled, if at all, and the principal settlements were on Cat Island. In that remote corner of the southeast Bahamas, packet ships cameirregularly, most often quarterly. For Alacrity, they brought provisions and vouchers, but no mail, and no replies to Lewrie's letters to the Bahamas Squadron. As indolent and hand-to-mouth as life was in these islands, it sometimes felt as if the rest of the world had somehow ceased to be since they had attained them, as if all civilization had fallen. And hadn't bothered to tell them about it. There had been no summons to a Court of Inquiry into Walker's Cay. There had been no notice of a civil trial for damages laid by John Finney. And no answer to Lewrie's urgent requests for powder and shot, sailcloth, rope, tar, paint and nails with which to keep Alacrity in fighting trim and able to keep the sea. Live-firings to maintain the gunners' accuracy were a thing of the past, as was drill at small arms beyond swords and pikes, since dry-firing shattered the flints in their muskets and firelocks on the carriage guns.

  There didn't seem to be much point in patrolling the area, either. There was very little sea traffic except for fishing boats and the rare inter-island packet. There was no foe to fight, no trade worth the name to protect, and hence, no piracy to defend against. It was rare to see a deep-draught seagoing ship pass by, since most of the trade headed for Nassau, Eleuthera or the Exumas up north, or down south to the salt isles of the Turks and Caicos in season. Alacrity made a nuisance of herself by stopping every ship she could catch to inspect cargoes and manifests to enforce the Navigation Acts. And plead for their personal letters to be forwarded to Nassau, should a ship be going there.

  Yet, most mysufyingly, there had not been one article of mail from the outside world received in the entire six months. And with the lack of personal correspondence, the hands had gone sullen and slack, as had the warrants and officers. Try as they might to keep the men active with hydrographic work, with the erection of night-beacons and day-marks to aid navigation, it was a halfhearted endeavor as weeks wore by with little pay, few amusements and dulling drudgery to face, with no hope of novelty, or relief.

  With no Admiralty funds with which to purchase fresh meat and vegetables, Lewrie had resorted to many refreshing shore expeditions. They would land and hunt wild goats, pigs or iguanas. They would lay at anchor for a day or two and let the hands fish, or gather conch from the shallows, then stage "maroons" with music, singing, dancing and drink enough to at least mellow the men as their food cooked by nighttime beach campfires. By day, they'd extemporize the means to play village games like football or cricket, endless "best-of-seven" tournaments of watch against watch. Even that had palled, lately.

  Turtle races, cockroach races, rat-catching… they'd tried it all on. They'd allowed the hands to keep parrots they caught ashore, wild kittens and puppies. They tried to capture wild pigs and temper them to abide being penned in the manger forward by the break of the forecastle for later consumption. Lately, only William Pitt was fond of the menagerie, licking his chops in drooling expectation over the fractious shoats, and attempting to creep up on unsuspecting parrots.

  On almost uninhabited Rum Cay, Lewrie had rented a small piece of white land, and had hired an older man to watch it for them, with hopes of fresh vegetables and melons, buying the seeds out of his own pocket, as he had several other small lots of supplies. But now, he was down to his last thirty pounds, and was practically living on the ship's rations himself most of the time, with no replies from Nassau requesting funds from his personal accounts. Every officer or warrant with a shore agent was similarly cut off!

  And, he had no idea if he was now a father.

  Or a widower.

  There had been no letters from Caroline; not one!

  Childbearing, the ordeal of childbirth, was the scourge of women, no matter how healthy. "Childbed Fever" they called it and even back home in civilized London, the annual bills of mortality bore thousands and thousands of victims. What could be expected in such a rude climate as the Bahamas, with so few skilled physicians he could not force himself to contemplate any longer.

  And half of those hopeless drunkards, he thought miserably!

  He threw himself into anything, if only so he could cease his frantic brooding for a few hours. Swordplay until he frothed with sweat. Practice upon the flageolet until he could carry a tune from start to finish at a regular meter. Hunting and fishing. Amusing William Pitt with a cork on a piece of string for hours.

  And sulking. And morose imaginings of Caroline dead, until his lack of news for good or ill, his hours of staring raptly at her portrait, his fretful sleep and vivid, nightmarish dreams, had sunk him into a deep despondency, a surreal resignation.

  Clarence Town on Long Island was a dreadfully boresome place, worse than Anglesgreen on Sunday, and this was a market day. He took a table in the shade of a veranda at the one inn the settlementcould boast and ordered rum, lime juice, sugar and water for a cold punch. He put his feet up in a rickety chair, removed his hat, undid his neck-stock, and settled in for an afternoon of drinking, an activity which was beginning to figure more prominently in his life lately.

  There was a London paper nine months old to read, what was left of it, after being pawed over by countless other patrons, so he was in for the day, if he read all eight pages slowly.

  "Ho dere, Navy mon," a fetching black girl said from the railing overlooking the sandy street. "Got no-thin' bettah t'do on ya run asho', now, an' you a hon'some young feller, Lord."

  Did I bring my condom with me, he asked himself? No, I'll not! There's Caroline, now. Well, would it hurt to sit and at least talk with a woman? Six months, it's been.

  "Cat got ya tongue, fine sah?" she teased. She wasn't as dark as most, tarted up in a decent sack gown she'd altered so it fell low off her shoulders, and bared a darkly shadowed cleft between heavy breasts that swelled her bodice far beyond the original owner's design. She sported a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied beneath her chin with a yellow ribbon, and to keep off the August sun, a small parasol which she twirled fetchingly.

  Damned handsome wench, Lewrie appraised silently. More coffee-milk than black. Huge brown eyes, that pouty mouth, and… Christ!

  "Just taking my ease for the day," he said at last.

  "Dot rum punch be bettah wit' de pineopple in it, sah. Ya let me show ya how, sah, an' do I get a glass, I be obliged," she teased. "De son, he be hot t'day, Cap'um sah."

  Oh, Christ, I'd best…! He squirmed inside.

  "Take a seat with me," he said instead. "Indeed, it is a hot day. I'd not see a lady suffer. And it's a very old paper. And who might you be?"

  "M'name's Wyannie, sah. Wyannie Slocum," she smiled in victory.

  Hot, sweaty couplings they had, in a rented room of the tavern. Bodies sheened with perspiration as they plunged away at each other in total, wanton abandon. Her legs were strong and muscular, and Wyannie bucked and thrust back at him with equal vigor, enfolding him with all her limbs, writhing and shoving to meet him hard enough to lift him in the air off the crackling straw mattress and creaking bedropes. She squalled and grunted, panted and lowed like a cow, cursed and groaned and shuddered, then ended each time in hissing screams.

  There was more rum punch between bouts, mutual sponge-downs with a pitcher of water and a mildewed handcloth, which renewed their heat. She'd roll a firm thigh across him to ride St. George as he squeezed those heavy breasts, or teased large, dark rock-hard nipples with his thumbs. Once she romped atop him facing away toward his feet, which led to her bent forward, kneeling on the side of the rickety, low cot and him standing behind her with a death grip on her madly rocking hips as he thrust deep into her as frantic as a hound, sweat rolling off his chest and belly, off her solidly firm buttocks, to mingle with their juices. They'd bellowed like bulls and had fallen almost senseless in an exhausted swoon after that one, Alan's mind areel with her cheap perfume, a woman's odors, and her exotic, musky aroma.

  "You come t'Clarence Town agin, Alan?" she breathed lazy as a ca
t as she lolled open and idle beside him. She picked up a top-silver palmetto-frond fan and began to cool him. "Got me a nice shack down t'the beach. We c'n go dere nex' time, luvah-mon. Save ya money an' not need t'rent a room heah."

  "We never did discuss your fee," Alan sighed. "We were a touch too… eager, for tawdry business talk."

  "Ah ain't no who'," she chuckled as she rolled over to kiss and fondle him. "Jus' walk inta town t'market, an' sell m'melons an' veg'tables. Jus' comin' heah t'buy m'rum, an' dere ya wuz, a'lookin' finel Had me a mon, but he drown las' year fishin', an' nobody else since. Nobody 'roun' heah wort' messin' wit'!" she snorted in contempt. "Some as tried. An' I ain't sayin' de lonely don' pester me s'hard I didn' sport wit a mon a time'r two. I be a who', Lord, I en' up payin' you, darlin'! No, I got me a patch o' white Ian', I got de nets, an' goats an' chick'ns, so I c'n keep m'self right good most de time. Ya don' owe me nottin', luv."

  "Well, stap me!" Alan purred, pleased as punch at the news.

  "I know ya ship come heah once de mont'," she said, sitting up on one elbow and leaning over so her breasts spilled over his chest. "Ya come t'me, hey? I be yer wo-m'n when yer ashore. Ya sport wit' me good's ya do t'day, Wyannie don' need dese no-'count Clarence Town bo-eys. None o' 'urn's ram-goat as you, Cap'um Alan!"

  "You make a tempting offer, Wyannie," he told her. "A damned handsome offer!"

  "Shack needs t'fix up some. An' I may need a few t'ings, so Ic'n look pritty fo' ya," she allowed. "Ya know wot dey say, shillin' he be good's de poun', in Clarence Town. Mebbe ya gimme two, t'ree shillin' t'tide me ovah 'til ya get bock t'me an' I c'n luv ya agin, hey, darlin' mon? Den I be ya wo-m'n, an' ya have me all t'y'self."

  Right, and I'm Prince Henry the Navigator, Alan thought wryly; I thought it sounded a little too good to be true! Still…

  "Wot ya say, luv?" she cooed, drawing him over to her, lifting a breast to his face to be suckled and licked, trailing her lips over his neck and shoulders. She reached down to dandle his waking member.