Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Half-mile, I make her, now, sir!” Langlie crowed, enthused.

  “Ready to put the ship two points alee, Mister Langlie, once we are above Coki Point,” Lewrie cautioned.

  A third salvo from the bow-chasers was spot-on, the lee cannon scoring her third direct hit that chewed away some of the brig’s larboard bulwark near the break between her quarterdeck and her gangway. The starboard cannon was still firing high, which error one of their quarter-gunners was correcting, loudly and foully, but that roundshot ploughed through the brig’s main tops’l and shot a stuns’l boom and sail clean away. And that would slow the brig down right smartly!

  “Eight fathom … eight fathom t’this line!” the starboard hand in the fore-chains called out.

  “Coki Point’s abeam, now, sir,” Winwood warned them.

  “Helm a‘weather, Mister Langlie, and bear off!” Lewrie barked. “Two points, no more. Trim for a Fair Wind, course West-Nor’west!”

  There was some disturbance at the channel narrows, a perturbation of silted water over the shoal, the “knuckle” that the brig left as she wore off, perhaps from the splashes of their gunfire. Proteus was turning well before it, though, easing the set of her sails and yards to run with the wind a bit more astern, still fairly flat on her keel, with her batteries still run out or run in.

  “Bless me, we’re right astern, within a half-mile of her!” Mr. Winwood rejoiced. “And well shy of the shoal, it appears.”

  Lewrie tried hard not to mock him, making his face stern, busy with his telescope. “Now, pepper her steady, Mister Langlie. Keep us pinched a tad closer to Thatch Cay, too. Nothing to loo’rd.”

  “Aye, sir. Quartermaster, half a point to weather, and nothing to loo’rd,” Langlie parroted as the 6-pounders erupted again.

  The brig was trying to pinch up, too, but not succeeding, since she sat heavy-laden and heeled a bit more to leeward than the frigate.

  “Twelve fathom! Twelve fathom t’this line!” a leadsman cried.

  Lewrie heaved a large but well-concealed whoosh! of relief at that news; though Thatch Cay and St. Thomas felt close enough to hit with a well-flung rock, before the channel began to widen. They were past the highest ground of Thatch Cay, the tall hill at its easternmost tip where the large fringe of sand shoals lay, so the winds could gust across more directly, without flukey diversions, and Proteus began to sing, striding up the brig’s stern relentlessly.

  “Quarter-mile range, sir. We could try the carronades, next!” Langlie hooted.

  “Do so, sir. Grape-shot her masts and sails!” Lewrie agreed.

  With his glass he could espy her after-guard, officers and mates gathered on her small quarterdeck, looking aft, gawping and pointing at him. Two gun-ports were open in her taff-rail bulwark, and men sweated and heaved to ready a pair of stern-chasers, whilst others gesticulated and most-like swore—a great many mouths were open and a fair number of fists were being shaken at them, at any rate.

  The brig’s guns fired at last, before his own bow-chasers and starboard carronade—the one not blocked by jibs—could. Roundshot came keening down the deck to starboard, sending everyone on the gangways flat on their faces; the second ball thrummed past the hull to larboard, almost close enough to peel paint, but struck far astern in a series of skip-splashes.

  “As you bear … fire!”

  The 6-pounders, with quoins jammed well in, yelped, and the carronade, aimed higher, let out a stentorian belch of smoke and flames. Two roundshot ravaged the brig’s stern, shattering transom boards and windows, while the grape-shot in the carronade struck higher, shredding the spanker gaff-boom and the bare cro’jack yard above it, tearing chunks from the main-top, making those already-weakened starboard ratlines and shrouds ripple as sinuously as a crawling snake, her upper topmast canting to leeward of a sudden.

  “Under a cable, now, sir!” Midshipman Grace crowed, hopping on his toes in glee.

  “Mister Devereux,” Lewrie said. “One file of Marines and sharp-shooters to the forecastle, and clear her quarterdeck by fire when you think you have the range.” By God if they weren’t sailing right up her stern, almost ready to jab their jib-boom over her helmsmens’ heads!

  The westernmost spit of Thatch Cay passed abeam to starboard; from a quick peek at the chart still pinned to the traverse board, Lewrie could see that the safe channel bent due West for a time, then sharply North. Mandal Point on Saint Thomas loomed upwards, 277 feet in the air, with shoals at its feet churning soapy-white foam where tide, current, and scend collided, long before the prettier breakers along the narrow beach. The brig must bear up for Hans Lollick Island, and deep water … though now without her spanker to balance her helm she could not. Did she try to close-reach, she’d wallow and dither, near the wind then off, like a wounded lizard’s death-crawls.

  Instead, Proteus steered up windward, while the brig sagged to leeward, the range closing even more, to within musket-shot, Proteus’s larboard broadside up-wind of her on her starboard quarter.

  “Mister Langlie!” Lewrie shouted. “Open the larboard ports and stand by to load!”

  The gun crews, the bulk of them frustrated ’til now, leapt for the tackles and tompions as the port lids hinged upward, baring inner paint in a row of stark red squares above her gunwale. Marine sharp-shooters and sailors with good eyes continued a spatter of musketry at the enemy’s decks, making her helmsmen steer by squatting down below the bulwarks and craning up to steer by pendant and sail-set, instead of by compass, making the rest of her crew drop from sight.

  A white cook’s apron appeared over her starboard side, waved frantically. Men stood and waved arms and hats, shouting as loud as they could for mercy as those brutal 12-pounders’ iron muzzles were trundled up to the ports to dip, rise, and slew left or right in aiming before a full broadside.

  “We strike, damn you! We strike, don’t fire, please!” someone in a cocked hat was howling. “Hold fire and we’ll lower our colours, for God’s sake, hold!”

  Two or three cowering members of the after-guard rose up above the quarterdeck bulwarks and cut the halliard for the flag, that came fluttering down to trail in the water, even as others dared, after a moment or two without musket fire, to free braces and sheets, spilling the last wind from the brig’s sails.

  “Fetch-to, Mister Langlie, and get the last boat led round from astern. You will take the boarding party,” Lewrie said. “Take Mister Pendarves the Bosun with you, and the rest of Mister Devereux’s men.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Cargo manifests, ship’s papers, and correspondence before all else, sir!” Lewrie urged. “Inspect the holds later. Quickly, man … before they ditch ‘em or set ’em afire.”

  “A fair morning’s work, Captain,” Mr. Winwood was saying, now that the folderol and danger was past. “Two prizes before breakfast. And a passage through shoal waters that’ll make them sit up and cheer back in London.”

  “We’ll see, sir. We’ll see,” Lewrie cautioned. Though he did feel rather joysome, himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “A present for you, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Devereux said after he had returned aboard and had taken the salute from the side-party. He held out a knitted wool sack that covered something long and narrow and over four feet long. He was beaming with secret delight.

  “What the Devil?” Lewrie muttered aloud as he took hold of it, and felt the hidden object’s hardness and leanness. Imagining that he knew what it might be, he stripped off the woolen cover as quick as a child might rip open a birthday present. “Oh, dear Lord, how lovely!”

  It was a Pennsylvania rifle, octagonal-barreled, fitted at butt, barrelbands, and firelock plates with shining brass, the hinged cover to the patch-box in the buttstock also bright brass, and the stock all of a highly polished, ripply-striped bird’s eye maple! It was indeed lovely, one of the finest examples of the gun-maker’s art that he had ever seen outside of a set of custom duelling pistols; even the plates were engraved so finely tha
t he suspected only a magnifying glass could reveal the detailing.

  “Fresh from Philadelphia, sir,” Devereux said proudly, “and the work of a master craftsman.”

  “You’ve one for yourself, Mister Devereux?” Lewrie asked, lifting the piece to aim at the sky and sight down the long barrel, noting the silver bead on the muzzle’s top, and the cut-steel notch sights at the rear, near the fire-lock. “Was this the only one, I’d understand … envious as all Hell, but …”

  “One for myself, too, sir, near its twin,” Devereux confessed with a little laugh, “and one of lesser quality for every officer and midshipman … as private hunting weapons, ha ha! Two dozen, in all.”

  “Personal possessions of yon brig’s mates?” Lewrie frowned.

  “No looting of a prize, sir … part of her cargo. Withheld as uhm … evidence for the Prize Court?” Devereux snickered.

  “By God, we have corrupted you!” Lewrie laughed. “But this is magnificent, I must own. Find yourself some coehorn mortars, too?”

  “No, sir, but those’ll come. Ah, here’s Mister Langlie, coming aboard with even better news. I’ll let him tell the rest.”

  Lewrie almost pounced on Langlie, primed to eagerness.

  “She’s the Sycamore, sir, out of Philadelphia,” Lt. Langlie reported, after he’d taken the salute, doffed his hat, and had been given his own covered rifle up from the boat below the entry-port. “A native tree, I s’pose, or the name of an Indian tribe. Her master was wounded, and is still aboard. Rather panicked by the thought of expiring, sir, so he was open to questions … between prayers and pleas for his last will and testament to be taken down, that is.”

  “Will he live?” Lewrie asked.

  “His wounds are more fearful than mortal, sir. Mister Durant is of the opinion that he’s more likely to pass over from fret than shot,” Langlie chuckled. “He openly confessed that he’s been smuggling to the French for some time. With most of their overseas trade curtailed, ‘tis a lucrative endeavour, I gather. He also admitted he’s run arms to L’Ouverture on Saint Domingue. Now his country is all but at war, any large cargoes or arms and powder would have been suspicious, and expensive, with the United States Navy the best customer, so he made arrangements through French agents in Philadelphia to meet the privateer and transfer her arms aboard his ‘innocent’ ship.”

  “What’s his cargo, then?” Lewrie asked, absently stroking his new rifle.

  “Two thousand stand of arms, Charleville muskets with leather accoutrements, two thousand pairs of boots and shoes,” Langlie intoned as he read from a list he pulled from a coat pocket. “One hundred and twenty thousand pre-made cartridges and twist paper, shot and powder for half a million more … four six-pounder Gribeauval Pattern pieces of artillery with caissons, limbers, harness, and the essentials for a battery forge-waggon. Blankets, slop-trousers, cross-belts, shakoes, and other uniform items, bayonets, infantry hangers, and officers’ quality swords … most of it recently snuck into Guadeloupe aboard a Frog frigate, sailing en flute, sir. A real treasure trove.”

  Turning up in Kingston, with that brig astern and the British flag flying over the American, would represent a treasure, a “golden shower” of prize money, Lewrie was mortal-certain.

  “There’s also an innocent cargo of molasses and sugar, Captain,” Langlie went on. “Saint Domingue coffee, tea, and cocoa would have put Sycamore far ahead of the game, once they’d unloaded the arms.”

  “Just their bad luck, but to our good. This is documented? We have them by the ‘nutmegs’ about this, for certain?” Lewrie demanded.

  “Every bit of it on paper, sir, even the captain’s private log. It was well hidden, but not destroyed. Mister Neale, our Master-At-Arms, was part of my boarding party and he and his Ship’s Corporals, Burton and Ragster, are old hands at knowing where sailors hide things.”

  “And what they made off with, God only knows … or cares, with all this on our plate,” Lewrie chortled. “And the rifles were part of the cargo?”

  “Ordered specifically, sir. L‘Ouverture’s people are mad for ’em. Yours, sir … do you look close, you’ll find it engraved with Toussaint L’Ouverture’s name, sir. It was to be a present to one of his generals, a man named Dessalines.”

  “God almighty!”

  “We also found three men aboard whose certificates are ‘colourable,’ sir,” Langlie told him. “As English as Bow Bells, and with so obvious a set of frauds, they were pathetic. Should we press ’em, sir?”

  “But of course,” Lewrie said with a sly grin. “I’ll not turn up my nose at volunteers … willing, or no. Muster ‘em on the gun-deck, and I’ll have a word with ’em. We’re making sternway onto the shores of Saint Thomas, and need to haul off. The wind’s veered half a point North’rd, and we’re on a lee shore. Might have to sail all the way to the western end of the island, then beat back to pick up Catterall and our boarding party … .”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Mr. Winwood suggested, coming to his side and looking to Lieutenant Devereux expectantly. “With the wind veered so, it would be possible to stand back down this Leeward Passage, here, with the wind almost abeam, and be off Ram Head in less than two hours. I, uhm … I must say, Mister Devereux, those are dashed hand-some rifles.”

  “You are welcome to take your pick from the lot, Mister Winwood. As a private, personal hunting weapon,” Devereux assured him.

  “And a handsome gesture, too!” Winwood actually enthused, come over all a’mort with greedy pleasure.

  “Our prize is secure and in good order, Mister Langlie?” Lewrie asked him. “No troubles from her crew or mates?”

  “Secure, sir, and ready to proceed. The crew disarmed and our Bosun, Mister Pendarves, and trusted hands to back him up in guarding them,” Langlie confidently stated. “Very little real damage done.”

  “Very well, gentlemen. Let’s get under way back down the Leeward Passage. We know it, now, and I know when I’ve stretched my luck in unfamiliar waters for the day. Better the Devil you know, hey? And not an inch to loo’rd this time. Hmmm … stern kedge anchors readied for dropping, just in case this pass holds a last surprise … right?”

  Lewrie reluctantly surrendered possession of his new rifle into Andrews’s care, then went down the starboard ladder to the waist where three seamen stood hang-dog, awaiting their fate. Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and faced them. One, the youngest, hopefully a teenaged topman, stared back fearfully, eyes blared and swallowing in shuddery gulps. One stouter, older fellow dared glare back at him in a sneer. The third, a lanky-lean man in his middle thirties, couldn’t meet his eyes, but darted his glance about or found the grain of wood deck planks intriguing, his flat, tarred hat pulled low over his brow.

  “Well, lads, you’re caught, fair and square,” Lewrie told them. “False certificates so badly done, if you paid more’n a shilling each for ’em, you got swindled. What names you use? Your own, or aliases?”

  The young one, at least, perked up to that statement, glancing at the sneering man in alarm for a second.

  “Don’t signify,” Lewrie went on, naming himself and his frigate. “You’re runnin’ from debtor’s prison, termagant wives, or whatever, I don’t care. We’ve had fevers, and we’re short-handed. You’re British, no matter how you protest it. You all wish to be ‘John Bull’ or ‘Billy Pitt,’ so be it, ’cause I’ve more need of you than the authorities back home. ’Tis becoming a tradition aboard, for people to take new names when they sign on. The pay’s less than merchant service, but the rations are fair measure and decent quality. We don’t flog unless you’re a total bastard, and as you’ve seen this morning, we’re lucky with prize money. A man … a boy, could do worse. How much is that Yankee captain owing you?”

  “N-nigh on twelve pounds, sir,” the youngest said in a shy voice. Merchant captains were infamous for “crimping” off their crews near the end of a voyage; when met by a Royal Navy vessel In Soundings of home waters, they’d gladly give up all but the me
rest few required to work into port, and pocket their pay—sometimes with connivance with officers of Impress Service tenders.

  “I’ll screw it out of him, and it’s yours, lad,” Lewrie vowed, “and pay a willing volunteer the Joining Bounty … no matter which name he puts down in ship’s books. Oh, it’ll go to pay for what kit you don’t have, but we’ll fetch your sea-chests aboard so you’ll have most of what you need already, and save a bit with our Purser, Mister Coote. He’s a fair man, can you believe that of a ‘Nip Cheese.’ So, what’s it to be? Volunteer and make the best of it, or be pressed, and begrudge me to the end of your days?”

  “Willy Toffett, sir, and I’ll volunteer, then,” the teen said with a relieved smile. “Main topman, I was.”

  “And you, sir?” Lewrie asked the second, who still glared, but with a resigned and bitter air of helplessness.

  “Press me and bedamned,” he gravelled, halfway surrendering to Fate, but determined to go game. “And put me down as Toby Jugg. With two ‘Gees,’” he almost snarled, but with a sardonic smile to excuse it.

  “Your choice, then,” Lewrie allowed. “Rating?”

  “’Twas an Able Seaman, aboard Sycamore.”

  “Then Able you’ll be rated, here, with the extra pay that goes with it,” Lewrie promised, though that did nothing to mollify the man.

  “Had a woman and girlchild on Barbados,” Toby Jugg groaned. “Never see ’em again, now. Poor as church-mice and …”

  “Your Joining Bounty could be sent on to them,” Lewrie hinted.

  With tears beginning to well in his eyes at the thought of not seeing his woman and daughter for years, his face clouded and taut, he nodded his assent, still unable or unwilling to accept his lot. A man who might have been pressed before, Lewrie suspected, unwilling to give his right name for fear of punishment for desertion.