“You circle, I pull yer sleeve, sir, that’s th’ way,” Aspinall meekly suggested. “Mind yer kitty…”
Rrrowwr! Toulon bickered, fleeing the imminent danger from his “beloved” master’s clumping feet, wisely taking his tail and paws out of reach in an offended scurry under the settee.
“Who won, Mister Peel?” Lewrie asked, rather loudly. Mr. Peel, temporarily stashed somewhat upright against the deal-and-canvas partition to his cabin, didn’t answer. He was too busy contemplating his shoes, arms lankly dangling, just about ready to drool. “Them or us?”
“Uhm? Sir?” Peel finally responded, looking up blearily. “Up, the cavalry! Huzzah! Forward, the King’s Own Heavy Horse!”
“Why, the damn fool’s drunk as a lord!” Lewrie chortled, as he kicked a constricting shoe toward the dining-coach. He stopped circling long enough for Aspinall to start undoing the buttons of his waist-coat; items which were too “scientific” for him, at the moment.
“Aye, sir…so’e is,” Aspinall agreed, smothering a giggle.
“Aspinall…” Lewrie said, peering at him as if imparting some eternal but urgent verity, “the Yankee Doodles’re a hopeless, drunken lot. It’ll do for ’em, in the end.”
“I ’spect so, sir,” Aspinall said, peeling the waist-coat off, setting Lewrie to circling, again. Aspinall threw a helpless look at Cox’n Andrews, who was doing for Mr. Peel and his coat and things.
“Damme, I’ve lost a perfectly good shoe!” Lewrie complained.
“’Tis here someplace, sir…honest,” Aspinall told him. “Do slip t’other off, and I’ll mate ’em up. Now fer yer stock an’ shirt, sir, and I’ll fetch yer dressin’ gown. Lean on this, sir, will ye?”
Lewrie kicked the second off; this one skittered underneath the settee, causing Toulon to yowl once more and scuttle off for someplace safer, where people didn’t shoot things at him.
“Dry, dry, dry…” Lewrie carped, noting (rather squiffily in point of fact) that he’d been leant against his wine-cabinet. He felt in need of liquid refreshment, but the flimsy latch appeared too elaborate a safeguard for his fingers, too.
“Ginger beer, sah,” Cox’n Andrews suggested, plumping Mr. Peel into a chair so he could remove his shoes. “Good fo’ settlin’ a riled stomach. I’ll fetch some from yo’ lazarette.”
“Capital!” Lewrie crowed, swaying. “We have any?”
“Ten gallon, sir, fetched aboard this mornin’,” Aspinall said, coming back to lumber Lewrie into a chair, as well.
“Poor Kershaw…the clown!” Lewrie commented, tittering over what he’d heard aboard the Sumter, once the dinner party had gotten so soaked that gossip had flowed as freely as the liquors.
Capt. Kershaw of the Hancock frigate had made a total muck of his new command, he’d been told. Lewrie had thought she carried too much artillery, and he was right. She’d been caught in a blow windward of Dominica, and with too much end-weight fore and aft had bucked and reared, had hobby-horsed and rolled so precipitously, that her upper masts and spars had nearly carried away, and her lower masts had been strained almost to breaking.
Capt. McGilliveray had intimated (rather slurringly in-his-cups-gleeful) that Kershaw had refused to lower top-masts ’til far too late. Then, without telling anyone at Prince Rupert Bay, he’d sailed off for Havana to make repairs, despite their Secretary of the Navy, Stoddert’s, strict caution to avoid entering such a pestilential harbour! Within a week, a fifth of Kershaw’s crew had gone down with Yellow Jack. Once repaired, Capt. Kershaw had taken Hancock back to sea, though not back to his assigned cruising ground. No, he’d taken her all the way home, cutting his tour in the Caribbean far too short. And, to make matters even worse, whilst on-passage up the Chesapeake to moor Hancock in the pratique, or quarantine, anchorage below Baltimore, had stranded her on a shoal above York River, which grounding had finally sprung her indifferently repaired foremast!
The last stroke had come when the Secretary of the Navy, Mister Benjamin Stoddert, on an inspection trip to Baltimore’s dock facilities and new naval construction, had gone aboard her once she had cleared pratique and had come into Baltimore. Irked that a whole vital month of usefulness had been lost whilst quarantined (the result of ignoring his orders regarding Havana!) Stoddert had discovered Capt. Kershaw’s…“quirks.”
McGilliveray and his officers had jeeringly pointed out how sybaritic and luxurious Kershaw’s cabins had been furnished, as grandiose as an Ottoman Pasha’s harem, and in complete disregard of the plainer usages of “spare and simple” American virtue…and how Kershaw’s own ideas of a fashionable naval uniform (bought from that grandee’s purse for himself and his officers once they’d called at Kingston, Jamaica!) was too “Frenchified,” as Lewrie had judged them when first he’d seen them.
The unfortunate Kershaw was too well connected in both Senate and House of Representatives, and too bloody rich, to sack. Stoddert could, however, “reward” him with command of a proposed two-decker 74 to be built in New York (some day when pigs could fly, perhaps) sending Kershaw to the chilly, Spartan-souled, “thou shalt not” North, and relieving him (with all due respect and ceremony) with another officer. Kershaw had been welcome to take along those of his officers who were his favourites, which “kind consideration” most-like pulled up several more cack-handed “weeds” by the roots as well.
Well, no wonder Lewrie had been confused by the plainness he’d found aboard Sumter. Soddenly, he supposed he’d have to strip his own great-cabins of half his furnishings, did he return the favour and dine USS Sumter’s officers aboard…that, or be taken for an indolent Sybarite!
Lewrie would have put more thought into that, but he was interrupted by the harsh noise of a chair being dragged cross his black-and-white painted canvas deck covering. Mr. Peel—evidently not able to walk, but still of a mind to gab—was hauling up to him by fits and starts, hands clasped on the chair arms attempting Hindoo mystic levitation, bump by hopping bump, whilst employing his heels as oars to drag forward by main force.
“Americans’re quite upset, Lewrie,” Peel slurringly said, though trying to over-enunciate. He had one eye open, and was obviously having some trouble focussing that’un.
“And who wouldn’t be, I ask you,” Lewrie replied, without a clue as to what it was that Peel wished to maunder about.
“Kershaw…South Carolinian…one of them. Bad form, bein’ relieved, even f’r cause,” Peel tried to explain. “Massachu-mmm…a ‘Down East’ Yankee replacin’ ’im hic. Useful…that.” Belch!
“Sss-sectional bitterness-ss,” Lewrie replied, so liking the sound of it that he tilted his head and hissed like a serpent for a few more moments. “Dear God, but we’re foxed.” Numb lips…hmmm!
“And who wouldn’t be, I ask you,” Peel heartily agreed, as their ginger beer came. “Hellish brew, corn-whisky…hic! Hellish stuff! Can’t see how…Jonathons stay upright…past dinner. Hic! Worse than…the plague o’ gin, back home. Blue Ruin.”
“Tasty…Belch!…though,” Lewrie commented.
“Oh, ahrr!” Mr. Peel vigourously said, nodding.
“So. We learn anything t’night?” Lewrie thought to enquire.
“Oh, bags, sir!” Peel enthusiastically claimed. He then paused, though, open-mouthed and cock-headed, his silence broken by a few more hiccoughs, and the odd eructation. “It’ll come t’me…”
“Spanish Bitters, sah,” Cox’n Andrews suggested, presenting them with a smallish, glass-stoppered vial, and a plate of sliced lemons, on which he liberally sprinkled the vial’s contents. “Mistah Durant, sah, he say bitters an’ lemons be dah grand specific fer ‘hiccin’s.’ Settle yer bile-ish humours good as gingah beer, t’boot. Bite down, Cap’m.”
“Whyever’d we come here, I wonder…God damn my eyes!” Lewrie grumbled as he gnawed on a quarter of lemon, then quickly blared his eyes and grimaced at the taste and smell. “Turd water’d be…” Belch!
Quickly followed by Mr. Peel’s similar sentiment after he’d
bit down on his quarter-lemon. He sucked in great gulps of air and drained his mug of ginger beer to erase the foul taste.
“Deep breath an’ hold her fo’ a full minute, Mistah Peel, sah,” Andrews solicitously instructed, “an’ yah ‘hiccin’s’ be gone.”
“Gack!” Peel replied, cheeks bulging and a hand pressed to his mouth, and the good eye floundering about for the welcome sight of any receptacle in which to “cast his accounts.”
Christ, don’t puke on my deck chequer, Lewrie sourly thought as he held his own breath and watched; you’ve already ruined it, enough! He ran out of wind slightly before Peel, and began to gasp, his lungs and chest gulping air like a wash-deck pump sucked spillage.
“Lord God,” Peel said with a miserable groan, after a last, and stentorian and prolonged belch. “Think I’ve been purged!”
“Bettah, though, sah?” Andrews enquired.
“Yes…matter o’ fact, I am, thankee. You were sayin’?”
“Huh? Oh. What did we learn,” Lewrie reiterated. “And why’d we come to Antigua?”
“Why, we came here to introduce ourselves to the powers that be, Captain Lewrie,” Peel told him, head drooping as if suddenly spent by his “dosing” with bitters. “Learn how rife are the Frog privateers…sightings of French men o’ war…oh! And where Yankee merchant ships are trading. That’s what Sumter’s people told me! South o’ here, for the most part. Where you find one, you find the other.”
“Sharks an’ pilot fish,” Lewrie seemed to agree.
“But some go into Jacmel,” Peel added, finally looking up; and looking as bedraggled as Death’s Head On A Mop-Stick. “Didn’t mean to reveal that, but…in whisky, veritas, what?”
“Ah!” Lewrie exclaimed, as if grasping an Eternal Verity or Solid Geometry. “Never mind, then. But, Mister Peel, that means that we must be two ships. Cover Jacmel, up north, or cruise far down along the Leewards, to Aruba and Spanish New Granada. Kill Choundas and his captains with one hand…blockade Rigaud with t’other.”
To demonstrate, he held up first the left hand, then the right, and wiggled his fingers…of which he seemed to have twice, perhaps thrice, the requisite number. Rather fascinatin’, really, and…
“No, no,” Peel carped, as if dealing with a toddler’s questions. “Choundas…on Guadeloupe. Yankee merchants…meet up at Dominica. Sumter convoyed dozens of ’em here. Hired stores ship, too, left her there…Prince Rupert Bay. Here, there…maybe up as far as Saint Croix. Goods for Rigaud or L’Ouverture start from Guadeloupe, do you see? Catch ’em…first leg o’ their passage. Jamaica Squadron gets the ones headin’ for Port-au-Prince or Jacmel…last leg, what?”
“Stop that,” Lewrie growled. “God’s sake, write it all down.”
“Write it…now?” Peel gawped. “Can’t even spell ink, in…”
“Now, aye,” Lewrie owlishly insisted. “So one of us remembers it in the mornin’.”
“But…dash it, Lewrie! I say…!”
“Else we’ll have t’ask the Yankees all over again. Whisky an’ all, Mister Peel.”
“Oh. Oh!” Peel gasped. “Point…taken. Indeed!”
“Well, I’m for bed…can I find it,” Lewrie announced, trying to rise of his own volition. “Lots t’do in the morrow. Re-paint all the masts and spars British-fashion…else the forts’ll take fright an’ shoot us to kindling. Stores t’lade. Naps t’take…oh, thankee, Andrews. Touch t’larboard, is it? Hung from the overhead, now that’s cunning. Sways a good deal, I’d imagine. Ah! Aspinall? Do get Mister Peel ink, quill, and paper, will you?” he called out while his Cox’n took his dressing gown and “poured” him into his bed-cot. “And to all a good night.”
Peel’s muttered grumbles were simply music to his ears as he got comfortable. The windows in the coach-top overhead were open, with a tiny trysail set as a wind-scoop. Lewrie fanned his sheet then let it drop to his waist, savouring the rare nighttime coolness. After a bit of relative silence, marred only by Peel’s faint curses and the skrit! of his quill nib, Toulon at last decided that peace had been restored, and slunk out of hiding in the starboard quarter-gallery storage, and leaped up to join him, slinging his bulk into the crook of Lewrie’s arm and kneading for “pets”…beginning to purr right lustily as his master’s hand stroked and wriggled upon his neck and head.
In vino, and whisky, veritas, Lewrie drunkenly thought on the verge of whirling unconsciousness; and what’d I let slip this ev’nin’? Kindest, if the lad never knows he’s my bastard. Half-Indian, Life’s already hard enough for ’im. And Caroline never learns it, either! I want t’reconcile, he’d be the last straw. Damme, but I must’ve strewed by-blows like dust in a high wind! My “git”! A likely lookin’ lad he is, though…
Chapter Seventeen
Shattered! Shattered in knee timbers and futtocks, from upper first futtock to fourth, amidships, along with her ribs! Her graceful stem—choke piece, knee of the head, stemson timbers and apron—including her fore rib pieces and futtocks were shattered.
Once they had stripped Le Bouclier down to a gant-line with only her lower masts standing, with all her ballast, stores, and guns removed, and careened her on the shingly lee-side beach near Basse-Terre, the surveyors from the dockyard had discovered just how grievous and extensive her damage was. The surveyors and the few skilled shipwrights still left on the island of Guadeloupe, after the purging and execution of the Royalists and the suspect, held little hope that the magnificent frigate could be sufficiently rebuilt. Oh, in France, certainement, they said with high shrugs! In the Caribbean, though, there were no stout oak trees, nor were there great, curving timbers of the proper arcs or thickness, nor the right seasoning, and just to replace her outer and inner planking, and lighter damage to carline posts, bulwarks, and rails would exhaust their scant supply of imported oak.
The shipwrights were most apologetic, but there was little they could do for Le Bouclier. Oh, could a ship bear a surveyor and a team of shipwrights to Cuba, or some other Spanish possession, local mahogany might serve for permanent repair materials…but selecting the right-shaped trees, felling them, sawing them, and transporting them back to Basse-Terre would take months. Even then the mahogany would still require months more for proper seasoning and drying.
“Heart-breaking, m’sieur le Capitaine,” the master shipwright, and the commissaire of the dockyard, both had said. Then had fled his presence before the expected storm broke.
Heart-breaking, indeed, Capt. Guillaume Choundas thought. What a wondrous frigate Le Bouclier had been, the equal, if not the better, of any “Bloody” warship in the Caribbean—now a useless, lifeless hulk. And damn that salaud Lewrie to the deepest level of Hades.
Just as heart-breaking, though more understandable, was what he heard from his superior, the commissaire civil Victor Hugues. He still had his single frigate, now cruising for American prizes off the coast of the Guyanas, far to the southwest. Did she come in in need of repair, Hugues was certain that Choundas would offer bits and pieces from Le Bouclier, to keep one powerful man o’ war able to daunt the “biftecks”…and that Choundas would do so in the proper cooperative spirit, in accord with the ideals of the Revolution!
“You still have two rather fine corvettes, Capitaine Choundas,” Hugues had said with a vengeful smirk, “which have yet to put to sea to challenge the ‘Bloodies.’ Let them sail singly, or as a small squadron. Officers and men off your stricken frigate may re-enforce their crews. Or you may transfer those now idled to my command, and I will put them to good use aboard the several enemy merchant ships I took before your arrival. With cannon from Le Bouclier, I could outfit at least three more raiders to pursue le guerre de course.”
“I am the senior naval officer on Guadeloupe, m’sieur le commissaire!” Choundas had thundered back, “appointed by the hand of Director Paul Barras, premier of the Directory of Five! They are my cannon, my sailors and officers, and do they sit idle in port for lack of cooperation from the island’s commissaire civil, believe me,
m’sieur, he will know of it in short order, unless…in the cooperative spirit, according to the ideals of La Révolution, prize vessels suitable to my needs…which also now lie idle for want of cooperation!…are not turned over to me!”
A bitter compromise had been reached. Hugues had not been sure that Choundas’s writ might prove to carry more power than his own with the Directory, or that the ogre just might have the ear of Paul Barras after all. Hugues got Le Bouclier for scrap-yard use, and four of her great-guns, with which to form a protective shore battery at Deshaies. Choundas received a mere two prize ships for conversion, a small brig and one schooner, to be armed with no more than ten guns apiece, crewed by as many matelots as he wished to employ for boarders and passage crews for any prizes taken. Wounded off Le Bouclier who recovered…they would become Hugues’s. Naval Infantry, other than Choundas’s personal guard detail, would be landed ashore and put under Hugues’s command to re-enforce his skimpy 1,500 man garrison.
Choundas sat and sweated, stripped down to shirt and breeches and fanning himself with a “top silver” plaited palmetto hand fan. Among the princes of the Lanun Rovers or Mindanao pirate fleets, there had been tiny young girls with cool, wetted bundles of palm fronds. Extremely young girls, who would come whenever he had beckoned, would wind out of their colourfully printed batik wraps to service him, or cheerfully, submissively let themselves be pressed down, spread, and taken, as casually as they spat betel juice. Not so casually, the second time he took them, but their fear, then, their weak whines and pleadings, even their looks of revulsion, had been doubly sweet and invigourating. Back when he was a normal-looking man, before that salaud Lewrie lamed and maimed him.
He fanned a little harder, shifting his crippled leg to ease an ever-present dull ache, with perspiration popping anew to trickle down his cheeks and the small of his back—partly from the effort put into fanning for relief from the sullen afternoon’s heat; partly from being frustrated to lose the tumescence in his groin that such fond reverie had engendered, and could never be relieved quite so easily as then; and partly from the intrusion of his undying hatred for the Englishman, and the harm he’d done his magnificent frigate!
Havoc's Sword Page 21
