“Frankly, sir, you scare the piss out of them,” Mr. Peel replied.
“Well, hmm…” Lewrie mused, shooting his cuffs and re-setting the line of his coat. “Good.”
“And who wouldn’t be, I ask you, Captain Lewrie,” Peel smirked. “Considering, hmm?”
Lewrie had grabbed one of his bled-out sky-blue coats, had slung his hanger’s waistbelt over his chest like a cutlass’s baldric, and had a pair of his double-barreled pistols shoved into his waistband. Still without stockings or neck-stock, and still bare-headed, he had to admit that he just might present the slightest image of an unshaven, tousled buccaneer of the last century, of the bloodthirstiest piratical bent!
For a fillip, Lewrie screwed his face into a murderous grimace, glared at the pair of them, and uttered his best theatrical “Arrr!”
Peel had to turn his back before he laughed out loud. After he had mastered himself once more, he crossed the quarterdeck to Lewrie’s side up to windward, as Proteus and her prize “trailed their colours” down Basse-Terre’s leeward coast, just a cable or two outside the range of the French forts, but well within plain view, and with their Union Flags flying atop every mast, as well as over the biggest French Tricolour they could find aboard the merchant ship.
“Captain Fleury, I strongly suspect, did piss himself after he got to his quarterdeck, sir,” Peel said in a confidential murmur. “He had heard the rumours about our last raid, and taken the Dutch captain of that ship we sank aboard as a passenger, who’d told him all about how brutal we, and you, were. Haljewin is his name, and a fount of information, he is. Though he did manage to contain his bladder.”
“Actually pissed himself?” Lewrie snickered. “My word!”
“Let’s just say that his stockings are yellow, and his breeches buttons are rusting, sir,” Peel said with a chuckle. “This Haljewin, though…Choundas and Hugues had chartered his ship to bear munitions to Rigaud, at Jacmel or Jéremie, and we cost them sore when it went up in flames. Haljewin had a rather unpleasant tête-à-tête with Choundas afterward, and fled aboard Captain Fleury’s ship for safety, and a way off the island, soonest. Before Choundas murdered him for letting him down, d’ye see. And before Fleury set sail, they had a week or two to hear other interesting bits, come down to the waterfront.”
Dammit, but Peel was beginning to play his superior’s game, that pregnant pause and brow-arched leer that would force the other person to ask him to continue, that would allow Peel (or Pelham) to make the un-informed party twist slowly in the wind, give them their moments of smug superiority…that, or slap ’em silly for holding out!
“Arrr?” Lewrie growled, with a black-visaged grimace at Peel.
“Won’t work on me, sir,” Peel assured him. But Peel did relent and inform him of how they had removed Choundas’s frigate from the equation; that Choundas and Hugues were at deadly logger-heads; that there were now two corvettes and two additional vessels converted to privateers in Choundas’s little “squadron” and that the lack of powder and shot, of boots, tents, blankets, muskets, and such with which to bribe or bedazzle the lighter-skinned, French-educated Gen. Rigaud on St. Domingue to be Gen. Hédouville’s instrument, was most effectively ruining French hopes to reclaim the island colony outright.
“Captain Fleury’s ship, though, sir,” Peel continued. “Just a general cargo. He’d gotten into Jacmel and back out with sugar and coffee, cocoa, molasses, and rum, and had come back to Basse-Terre in hopes of selling some of it to local merchants, getting an escort from Hugues out to the open seas, past our patrols round Hispaniola, and getting his goods back to France.”
“Aye, tight as the French are blockaded, here and there,” Lewrie surmised, “that sort of cargo would be worth its weight in gold.”
“Even more relishing, sir, Fleury was chartered by Hugues,” Peel added, beaming with pleasure. “He and this Captain Fleury were to split the profits. Dare I say, this loss will anger Hugues, no end. And drive another wedge ’twixt Hugues and Choundas.”
“Where was their escort?” Lewrie asked.
“None available, since Hugues’s own frigate is off far west, on the Spanish Main, searching for American prizes, sir,” Peel said, “and Choundas was so stung by Hugues’s criticism that he sent all his ships to sea. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Either way, Choundas is sure to be held responsible, no matter what he did or didn’t do.”
“So, does this Haljewin fellow, or this Fleury, know where we’d find Choundas’s privateers?” Lewrie demanded, eager to crack on sail, secure his prize with the Admiralty Court not half a day’s sail South on Dominica, and start hunting them down.
“Another matter, first, sir,” Peel insisted, a finger raised.
“Arrr, Mister Peel!” Lewrie gravelled.
“Impressive, sir, truly,” Peel mocked. “No, from what Haljewin says, Choundas is turning the island inside-out, seeking a spy. ’Twas Choundas’s conviction that you, sir, are simply too dim to have pulled off our raid, with such an exquisite timing as to estop a vital and secret cargo, and catch their most powerful frigate at the exact moment she was being moved from the harbour at Pointe-à-Pitre to Basse-Terre, without the aid of a spy in our employ. Someone close to Choundas, d’ye see, sir?”
“No, Mister Peel, I don’t,” Lewrie peevishly groused. “I’m just too dim…d’ye see. Lucky t’know how t’pee without Foreign Office assistance. Damme!”
“My pardons, sir,” Peel replied. “Perhaps that could have been better phrased…firstly, that you had, uhm, directions and intelligence from British agents, in contact with a French turncoat, on which to base your actions. Rumours are, though, sir…dear as Guillaume Choundas’d wish to harvest your liver, he holds you to be more lucky than brilliant. He was heard to speak of Mister Zachariah Twigg…rather disparagingly…and was rumoured to suspect that his staff had been, uhm…compromised, and that Mister Twigg, or someone in Twigg’s employ, was pursuing him and dogging his every move, just as he was dogged and confounded in the Far East, then the Mediterranean.”
“Oh, the poor, crippled old bastard!” Lewrie chortled. “Damme, is he feelin’ persecuted?”
“And looking over his shoulder, now, sir,” Peel insisted. “You shook him by the ears, right considerable. Put him off his paces. We have partially succeeded in un-nerving him.”
“Well,” Lewrie queried, turning to face inward, with his elbows on the cap-rails, and not feeling quite so demeaned any longer. “Does your, uhm…department, bureau, or whatever actually have a spy close to him? Someone in your pay on Guadeloupe?”
“Now, sir,” Peel demurred, sniffing. “That would be telling.”
“Right, then…be insufferable,” Lewrie snapped. “And may ye have much joy of it! Tell me this, then. Now that we’ve got the evil shit half-confounded, where do I go t’find his ships so I can plague him some more?”
“Gone South, both Fleury and Haljewin suspected,” Peel told him. “Bags of Yankee trade down that way, in the Spanish South American possessions, and the Dutch islands. They’re half-starved for lack of any Spanish or Dutch ships able to put in with goods. Half-starved of new trade goods, the last three or four years, and half-starved for real by way of foodstuffs on the Dutch isles. Couldn’t grow half of what they needed, even before the wars began. With no takers for their formerly valuable exports, ’tis a buyer’s market.”
“Aye, trust the skinflint Yankees to make a killing off of ’em,” Lewrie said with a sneer of distaste natural to any true Englishman of gentlemanly pretensions; money was fine and all, but one could not get caught directly engaged in anything so mundane as “trade” and all the “filthy lucre” that came with it. One hired factors too common to be further sullied; one invested, at arm’s reach.
“And the Frogs to make their ‘killing’ off the Americans, sir,” Peel rejoined.
“Not if we can help it,” Lewrie vowed. “This suspicion of a spy lark, Mister Peel…think it’d be worthwhile to put a flea in one of our captives�
�� ears, and land Fleury or this Haljewin character ashore, before we get to Dominica? Spin ’em a tale of how we knew they’d sail without escort, and when, and laid in wait for them?”
He waved an idle hand at the shoreline whipping by to windward.
“Well, I don’t quite…hmmm,” Peel commented, frowning deeply and steepling wide-spread fingers to his lips as he bowed his head in thought. “Must admit, it does entice, does it not, sir. Not exactly in my brief, though. Without approval from Mister Pelham, I’d rather not ‘gild the lily,’ as it were, with too much finesse.”
“Your superior, Mister Grenville Pelham, sir, is a pie-eyed idiot,” Lewrie shot back, turning so that only one arm rested on the cap-rails to face him. “One who’s hundreds of miles alee, and hasn’t any idea of what’s transpired since we sailed from Kingston…just what he wished to happen, and that merely in a general way. Do we sit round twiddlin’ our thumbs waiting for specific direction from Pelham, we might just as well sail back to English harbour and swing about our moorings ’til Epiphany. You sent him a report by fast packet, soon as we entered Antigua harbour, I take it?”
“I did,” Peel agreed. “and I am mortal-certain that he would approve every step we have taken so far, and praise our industry…”
“The boy might as well be in London, for all the good he is to us, Mister Peel,” Lewrie pressed, “with three or four months ’twixt our correspondence. Now, do we let one or both o’ these fools go ashore to tell Choundas how we took ’em, and how ’twas a traitor offered them up on a plate to us, same as his precious frigate, and Haljewin’s cargo was, it’ll have him tearing his hair out by the roots. You know how brutal Choundas is…recall what Twigg surely told you about him at that long meeting you had before you sailed out here? His ‘charming’ little…diversions? Like child rape, child buggery, making people suffer as he takes his pleasure, worse than that Marquis de Sade sonofabitch of theirs? Aye, he’s most-like got fucking and torture as equal partners in his head, by now. Most-like gets a cock-stand at the smell of hot irons and melted lead.
“Most-like set himself up a dungeon and a torture chamber, soon as he lit out here. Might’ve been his first priority for all we know,” Lewrie argued with impatient haste as the lee port of Basse-Terre loomed up, and the tiny islets of the Saintes could be made out before the bows; time, geography, and the Trade Winds were stealing any opportunity to fetch-to and send Fleury and Haljewin ashore, before they were too far Sou’west of Guadeloupe, and spend hours beating back. To drop under the horizon, then return to land captives would be too suspicious a move, but to drop them off now would appear natural.
“He’s a vicious beast, certainly Captain Lewrie, but…” Peel attempted to counter.
“Choundas would adore searchin’ for a spy in his midst, Mister Peel! They could tell him we were bound South t’hunt his privateers, too. Us, sir; Lewrie, and Proteus, out to harm him, personally! And all he can is stew and fret that we’ll find one or all, and eliminate his little squadron, and there’s no way he can warn them. He’s lamed, but he ain’t paralysed. He’s not the sort to sit patient and trust to Fate. Damme, sir, he’ll be forced t’do something to keep his hand in, to prove to Hugues that he’s vital, capable…! He’s truly convinced there’s a spy responsible for his troubles, Choundas will move Heaven and Earth t’find him. Does he produce one, he’s vindicated, don’t you see? ‘Weren’t my bloody fault, ’twas those damned British and a damn’ traitor done it!’ He’ll have weeks and weeks to sit idle, ’fore those ships of his report back, and he’s not the man to take his ease in an armchair and catch up on his reading.”
“Hmmm…” Mr. Peel said, maddeningly dithering while gnawing on a ragged thumbnail, and all the while time, position, and advantage were passing by at a rate of knots! “There’s truth in what you say, I grant you, Captain Lewrie, but…”
“But, mine arse, Mister Peel!” Lewrie spluttered. “The chances are passin’ us by, ’long as you hem and haw. We could fetch-to right this minute…!”
Boom-boom…bo-boom, faintly from windward.
The western coast of Guadeloupe tucked in upon itself a bit as one reached its southernmost extremities. Proteus, standing Due South just beyond the heaviest cannon’s range, had extended her distance by another mile or so as the shore trended away. Even so, the Vieux Fort on the final point below Basse-Terre had attempted to take them under fire, and by the basso notes of the bowling round-shot that went up the scale in an eerie minor key as it neared, Lewrie suspected 32-pounder or even 42-pounder guns, with which to enforce the new three-mile-limit of territoriality, their maximum range.
Sure enough, four massive waterspouts leaped for the sky, high as their frigate’s fighting-tops, fat yet feathery, and aroar as tons of seawater were vertically displaced, then slowly collapsed upon themselves as torrential as a mountain river’s falls. Smaller feathers of spray staggered towards Proteus as the massive balls caromed off First Graze to Second Graze, then Third, before losing enough forward momentum to gouge little more than leaping-dolphin splashes as they finally sank.
Proteus’s sailors jeered and cat-called with derision for such a hopeless show of defiance, for their First Graze had struck the sea one whole mile or near short of her sides, with their final, weary splashes still half a mile shy.
“Better luck next time, Froggie!” Lewrie heard Landsman Desmond shrill between tunneled hands.
“Yair…waste yer powder, Monsewer!” his mate, Furfy, howled.
“It would appear that the French are in a bit of a pique at the moment, Captain Lewrie,” Peel snickered, “and any boats despatched to port would most-like be shot to atoms long before they could be identified as truce boats. Have to make a show of usefulness, satisfy the honour of their bloody Tricolour rag, don’t ye know. They’re simply too angry to listen to reason, at the moment, so…it appears we can not implement your plan, for now, sir.”
“Dammit, Mister Peel, they couldn’t hit the ground with their bloody hats, we could lie off safe as houses!” Lewrie countered.
“I do not dismiss your suggestion out of hand, sir,” Peel said with a pinched expression, looking as if he was wrapping resistance to the idea about himself as he tucked the lapels of his coat together. “I only say that it is a matter which will require some cogitation on my part before deciding whether it advances our enterprise, or proves to be so transparent a ploy to Choundas that we end up appearing just too clever, thereby, uhm…shooting ourselves in the foot by forcing him to deem the presence of a British spy in his circle groundless. I also note that we are almost past Guadeloupe. Why, it might take hours to sail back, right into the teeth of those heavy fortress guns, again. To return so quickly would be even more transparent to him, and—”
“No! Ye don’t say!” Lewrie drawled, as if he just that instant had had a blinding glimpse of the obvious. “Really?” he sneered.
“There is hardly a call for sharp words, Captain Lewrie!”
“The hell there ain’t. Our best shot at it is past, whilst we stood here yarnin’ and…cogitatin’,” Lewrie spat. “If not now, do tell me when, sir! Ye said yourself, ’twas a good idea, in the main. Damme, Mister Peel, I don’t have ’em often. You keep assuring me of that, God knows. Young Pelham ain’t here t’hold your hand and impart his…wisdom to you…!”
“Damn you, sir!” Peel barked, himself rowed beyond temperance. “Damn you for that! I need no cosseting to do my best! For two pence I would demand satisfaction…sir.”
Lewrie made a show of withdrawing his coin-purse from a breeches pocket, undoing the draw-strings, and delving inside for coins. Jovial blue eyes had gone cold, steely grey, and his face was a killing mask. He raised one brow in deadly query.
“Two pence, did you say, sir?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Lt. Langlie intruded, all but stepping between them in sudden worry. “Mister Peel, sir…Captain, sir! Do but draw a deep breath, the both of you, and consider the consequences to your good names…your caree
rs, if nothing else, I conjure you.”
“I’ll not be insulted so publicly,” Peel snapped, eyes boring into Lewrie’s, not allowing Lt. Langlie a lone inch of personal space in which to part them.
“I’ll not be treated like a lack-wit, too dumb t’pee on my own, either,” Lewrie rejoined.
“Dear God, sirs,” Anthony Langlie groused at the both of them, as softly and confidentially as he dared while still getting his point across. “Is not our King’s business, and the destruction of this man Choundas, more important at the moment than either of your senses of honour and hurt feelings?”
“Mister Langlie!” Lewrie growled, rounding on him, as if to tear a strip off his hide for daring to gainsay a Post-Captain placed over him by that selfsame King.
“Your pardons, sir, but I cannot stand by and see you ruined,” Lt. Langlie pleaded. “I know not what grievance, or difference, you gentlemen share, but surely it cannot be so dire a matter over which you must come to logger-heads. Do, pray, allow me to counsel cooler minds, some time to consider your actions before either of you does or says anything else…from which you cannot demur later. I know it ain’t my place, Captain, and I could be broken for it, but…”
The desperation in Langlie’s voice, the worry in his eyes, at last got through to Lewrie. He drew that demanded deep breath, then screwed his eyes shut for a long moment. With a long exhalation, he relented.
“Thankee, Mister Langlie,” he said, forcing a bleak grin onto his phyz. “Thankee for your concern for me.”
“And you, Mister Peel?” Langlie felt emboldened to enquire from their supercargo. “Can you not give it a good, long think before…”
Peel grunted as if he’d been punched in the stomach, but waved off any further “assistance” from the First Officer. “Thankee, Mister Langlie. A minor matter, as you say. But a trifling, passing snit…of which I shall say no more, other than to characterise it as a professional, and brief, parting of the minds. You will excuse me, sir?” Peel asked of Langlie, doffing his hat and essaying a short bow. Peel gave Lewrie a shorter jerk in his direction, too, before stomping off for the larboard quarterdeck ladder to go below.
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