“I’m sorry, sir, but it looked as if someone had to…” Langlie said with a groan of worry.
“Oh, be at ease, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie assured him. “We were in disagreement over a joke I wished to play on the French. Still may, does he see his way round it. Once he ‘gets down from his high-horse,’ that is. ’Tis not a killing matter, ’less he wishes to make it so. I expect a decent dinner, and a bottle of my claret’ll bring him back to his senses. Just may do the same for me, you never can tell,” Lewrie concluded with a wry, self-disparaging grin.
“I am at ease, sir,” Langlie replied, grinning wider, himself. “Thank God, how could I ever explain your, uhm, untimely demise to poor Sophie, or…”
“Now you are being impertinent, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie chided him, putting his “stern” face back on for an instant.
“Carrying on, sir, instanter,” Langlie quickly said, doffing his hat, and making a rapid escape, back to his proper duties.
Damn you Frogs! Lewrie thought, turning back to face the island as Proteus ran Large off the wind, now just a bit below the fort, that was still intent on wasting powder and expensive heavy shot on them; I almost had him convinced, but for you bastards interrupting. I still think it’s a good idea. Just ’cause it ain’t my pigeon, not my line o’ work, don’t mean it’s worthless. ‘Lucky, but not brilliant,’ am I? Just a faithful gundog, t’point, run, and fetch, am I? Well, we’ll see about that!
He pushed himself erect from the cap-rails, turned and stomped black-visaged past his captive captains to the binnacle cabinet, left hand flexing fretful on the hilt of his hanger. He glared at them in passing, speculating which of them, the Frenchman Fleury, or the Dutch master Haljewin (however the Hell one spelled that!), would be the better “tablet” on which to carve his mis-directing message.
Over his shoulder, he heard expostulations in wind-muffled Dutch or French, an evil snicker—followed by more unbelieving splutters. Shoes clomped on the quarterdeck planks, coming nearer.
“Excuse me, again, Captain,” Lt. Langlie said, tapping fingers to his hat in a casual salute, “but our prisoners were asking what your argument with Mister Peel was all about, and…I could not help having a bit of fun at their expense. I told them, sir…” Langlie paused, a fist to his mouth to stifle a laugh, and ruin his jape, “I told ’em that you were going to throw them to the sharks, but that Mister Peel thought only one should go over the side, and we’d give him the other.”
“You did, did you, Mister Langlie?” Lewrie said, gazing on them past Langlie’s shoulder. “Well…tell ’em we’ll decide which later.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Arrr,” Lewrie called out, pointing “eeny-meeny-miney-moh” at them. Captain Fleury fainted dead away. And he really did have a very weak bladder!
Chapter Twenty-One
The Admiralty Prize Court on Dominica was ten miles or more to the south of Prince Rupert Bay and its tiny settlement of Portsmouth, at the lee-side port town named Roseau, from the times when the French had owned the island. Lewrie had been forced to trade his smart gig for a humbler but larger cutter and sail down to confer with them.
Dominica had been one of those isles infested with Carib Indians so battle-mad and death-defying that every European power that colonised the Antilles had sworn off the place in 1748, but that hadn’t lasted long. Britain took it in 1763, the French got in back in 1778, then Britain again at the end of the American Revolution. The steep, fern-jungle mountains were simply stiff with Caribs, making it a real “King’s Bad Bargain.”
So was the Prize Court. A greater pack of ignorant “ink-sniffs,” thieves, drunkards, and paper buccaneers Lewrie had never laid eyes on! And it was no wonder that they’d greeted his arrival the same way some gang of adolescent London street imps would welcome the sight of a pie-man with a tray of fresh goodies.
Half-literate, spouting “dog-Latin” legalese, their accents an echo of Cockey “Bow Bells,” “half-seas-over” on cheap rum or strong “stingo” beer, and sporting mementos of their last half-dozen dinners on greasy cuffs, waist-coats, or breeches, unshaven and unwashed—Lewrie suspected their experience of law had come from the wrong side of some magistrate’s bench. He’d have rather dealt with Mr. Peel, who still sulked over their contretemps; it would have been safer, and he would not get gravy-spotted off the furniture, nor would he depart infested with fleas! Besides, this court would refer everything back to Antigua, and reams of paper, gallons of ink, and pounds of stamps and paste would be used up before he, his officers and warrants, or his sailors saw tuppence…sometime in 1810, he sourly suspected. Maybe his grandchildren might have joy of his latest capture’s profit.
After that experience, which had taken up most of the morning, and a horrid dinner at a tumbledown dockside tavern, Lewrie walked out the long single quay that speared at least one hundred yards out from the beach before the waters at low tide would allow a ship’s boat to come alongside, then rambled on all ramshackley for a good fifty yards more. His cutter, with its single lug-sail furled, was the only one in sight, at present, positively handsome compared to the few scabrous and half-abandoned fishing boats drawn up on the sands.
He paused to fan himself with his hat and belch biliously from his repast. The purported squab had most-like been seagull, and the “Roast Beef of Olde England” had most-like barked at the moon and run after cats before its luck had run out! The infamous two-penny ordinarys of his native London had nothing to fear for their reputations by comparison; and they had most-like not poisoned half as many patrons. He might have tried the pork roast, but the natives on the island were reputed to be cannibals, and he’d not put it past the publican to buy a side of “long pig” (as they said in the Great South Seas) and serve up the loser of some Carib feud.
“You men have eat?” Lewrie enquired of his boat crew after he finally reached them. He had let them step ashore for a meal, and the usual “wet,” with instructions for everyone to be back in two hours…and sober, mind. A quick nose-count assured him that no one had been daft enough to take “leg bail” in such a no-hope port; no one appeared “groggy,” either—well, no more so than usual.
“Think it was food, sah,” his Coxswain, Matthew Andrews, dared to josh with him from his privileged position and long association as his sometime confidant. “It was burnt, and it come on plates.”
“Law, Missah Gideon, he b’ile wood chips in slush, it would o’ eat bettah, Cap’m sah,” little Nelson, one of his recent Black Jamaican “volunteers” further ventured to say.
“Sorry ’bout that, lads,” Lewrie commiserated, “but I do think my own dinner was pot-scrapings worse than yours. Let’s shove off.”
“Back to de ship, sah, aye,” Andrews said, shipping the tiller-bar atop the rudder post while Lewrie was offered a hand or two on his way aboard the cutter, and aft to a seat in the stern-sheets.
Two hours later, though, as the cutter bounded close-hauled into Prince Rupert Bay, Lewrie shaded his eyes for a look round. There was HMS Proteus, as pretty as a painting, with her prize moored close by; there was the Yankee stores ship, attended by boats come to fetch out supplies; there was USS Sumter…but there were some new arrivals, too, including a “jack-ass,” or hermaphrodite, brig that flew a small blue Harbour Jack right-forward, sprinkled with thirteen white stars, to show that she was an American man o’ war; another of their bought-in and converted “Armed Ships,” not a vessel built as a warship.
There were three merchant vessels flying the “Stars and Stripes” anchored in the bay, as well. Two were very large three-masted tops’l schooners, with their tall masts raked much farther aft than Lewrie had ever seen before, lying near the new-come armed brig. Farther out in deeper water, and unable to anchor closer to shore for being deep-laden, was a proper three-masted, full-rigged ship, equally as impressive a specimen of the shipbuilders’ art, and “Bristol Fashion” smart.
“Damme, but those schooners look like they’d be fast as witches…even
to windward,” Lewrie commented. “Even with the full cargoes they seem to bear. Ever seen the like, Andrews?”
“Masts raked so sharp, dough, sah…dem Yankees mebbe crazy,” was Andrews’s assessment. “How dey foot ’em to de keel-steps, an’ not rip right out, I’d wondah. Wadn’t here dis mornin’. T’ink dem ’Mericans be makin’ up a no’th-bound ‘trade,’ at las’, Cap’m?”
“It very well could be,” Lewrie agreed. “I think we’ll satisfy my curiosity, before we go back aboard our ship. Steer for Sumter, if you will, Andrews. It appears there’s a gaggle o’ boats alongside of her already.”
“Aye aye, sah.”
“Besides, Captain McGilliveray might have something with which to settle our mis’rable dinners,” Lewrie added with a chuckle.
“Captain Lewrie, sir!” Midshipman Desmond McGilliveray said at the top of the starboard entry-port, stepping forward past the Marine Lieutenant in charge of the side-party that had rendered him honours. The lad was almost tail-wagging eager to greet him, though constricted by the usages and customs of his navy to the doffing of his hat and a bow from the waist.
“Mister McGilliveray!” Lewrie cried with too much heartiness of his own, his eyes equally agleam, and his carefully stern expression creased by an involuntary smile. “Well met, young sir.”
“We saw you come in with your prize, sir!” the lad exclaimed in joy, plopping his tricorne back on his head any-old-how. “Did she put up much of a fight, sir? Did she resist very long, or…?”
Once his own gilt-laced cocked hat was back on his own head, he astounded the boy by extending his right hand for a warmer greeting; a hand that young McGilliveray took with a puppyish delight and shook in return, right heartily.
“Steered right up to her, yardarm to yardarm, in the dark, and only fired one bow-chaser, just t’wake ’em long enough to surrender!” Lewrie replied, proud for a chance to boast and preen. “I’ll tell it all to you later, should we have the chance. But I have come to see your Captain first.”
“He is aboard, sir, and aft,” Midshipman McGilliveray informed him, only slightly crest-fallen. “I shall tell him that you have come aboard, Captain Lewrie. This way, please.”
Lewrie’s arrival alongside, though, had created enough stir to draw Sumter’s First Officer, Lt. Claiborne, from the great-cabins aft to the gangway, minus sword and hat.
“Ah! Captain Lewrie, good,” Lt. Claiborne said, coming over to greet him, as well. “You got our captain’s note, I see.”
“Uhm, no Mister Claiborne, I came direct from Roseau and the Prize Court offices,” Lewrie told him.
“And you escaped with your purse, Captain Lewrie? Congratulations,” Claiborne replied, frowning for a second. “My captain is now in conversation with several of our merchant masters, and wished to speak with you, regarding their informations. A glad happenstance, you came to call on us. If you will follow me, Captain Lewrie?”
“Lead on, sir. Talk to you later, lad,” Lewrie promised to his newly acquired “offspring.”
He was led down a ladder to the gun-deck, then aft into the cabins under the quarterdeck, clutching the hilt of his hanger in one hand and his hat in the other; suddenly self-conscious to be ogled like some raree show, with many faint, fond, almost doting smiles to every hand. Lewrie could only conclude that Sumter’s people had gotten a whiff of rumour concerning his relationship to Midshipman McGilliveray, who was obviously a “younker” well thought of aboard that ship to begin with.
Damme, even that hawk-faced Marine lieutenant goggled me like a new-born swaddlin’ babe! Lewrie groused to himself as he was admitted to the day-cabin, where the air was close, hot and still, despite the opened windows, coach-top, and wind-scoops; where several men ceased their conversation and rose to greet him. Lewrie blinked to adapt to the dimness of the cabins, after the harsh brightness of the deck.
“Captain Lewrie, thank you for responding to my request for a conference so quickly,” Capt. McGilliveray said, coming forward to take hands with him. He gave Lewrie no time to explain that he had not gotten McGilliveray’s note, but began to introduce the others present.
There was another U.S. Navy officer off the hermaphrodite brig, an almost painfully tall and gaunt, dark-visaged fellow in his middle thirties, named to him as one Captain Randolph, of the Armed Brig USS Oglethorpe.
“Proudly commissioned in Savannah, Captain Lewrie, suh,” Capt. Randolph told him with a warm smile, “an’ named f’r one of your English lords, James Oglethorpe, who founded th’ Georgia colony,” he said in addition, and in a liquid drawl even rounder and deeper than South Carolinian McGilliveray’s, were such a thing possible.
“And ya know what they say, Randolph,” McGilliveray japed him, “that all the rogues went t’Georgia’, ha ha!”
“Proud of it, suh, proud of it!” Randolph happily rejoined.
“And Captains Ezekiel Crowninshield and Gabriel Crowninshield,” McGilliveray continued, indicating a pair of stouter and younger men who were, at first glance, as alike as a pair of book-ends; gingery-haired and florid. “Their schooners are outta Mystic, Connecticut, magnificent and fast sailers, the Iroquois and the Algonquin.”
“Twins, as well, sirs?” Lewrie asked of them after a greeting.
“Built side-by-side in the same yard, Captain Lewrie,” he was gladly told in a much harsher “Down-East Yankee” nasal twang. “First swam within a week of each other, too.” One brother said.
“Raced him hyuh,” the other boasted. “Beat him all hollow.”
“And last but not least,” McGilliveray said further, “Captain Grant, off the Sarah and Jane. Captain Grant, Captain Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate.”
“Your servant, sir,” Lewrie politely said, though the name was nagging at him; the ship and her captain, both, as he stepped closer to take Grant’s hand. “Oh! ’Tis you, sir. Well met, again.”
“Why, bless my soul, if it ain’t that little pop-in-jay laddy, who gave me so much grief in the Bahamas!” Grant exclaimed. “Ruint a whole cargo o’ Caicos salt on me, too…eighty-six, was it? Just a Lieutenant, then, ye were, in yer little converted bomb-ketch…?”
“Alacrity, Captain Grant,” Lewrie supplied him. “But, then…you’d not have lost so dearly, had you obeyed the Navigation Acts and steered wide o’ me. And the salt wouldn’t have been used for bulwarks and your ship not commandeered as bait if you’d stayed in the Turks Islands and testified ’gainst Calico Jack Finney’s pirates as I asked you to.” Lewrie still held Grant’s hand, though they were done shaking; his smile could have been mistaken for courteous, but there was a definite frost to his voice.
“Well, we live an’ learn, do we not, Captain Lewrie,” Grant at last said with a wintry smile of his own, almost pulling himself free.
“We do, indeed, sir,” Lewrie replied.
“Whatever happened t’Calico Jack Finney?” Grant had to enquire.
“I chased him into Charleston harbour and killed the bastard,” Lewrie told him in a casual, off-hand way, still grinning.
“Dear Lord, that was you, Captain Lewrie?” Capt. McGilliveray said with a gasp of wonder. “Why, I watched the whole thing from the Battery! My my my, will wonders never cease. That we’ve crossed each other’s hawses, if ya will, more than once. In so many things, well!”
“Life is funny that way, aye, Captain McGilliveray, I grant ye,” Lewrie answered, glad to turn his direction and dismiss Grant.
“Ever’body says that,” Capt. Randolph of the Oglethorpe mused. “but usually with long faces when they do,” he japed, solemn-faced.
“If you’ll have a seat and join us, Captain Lewrie. A glass of something cool? We’ve cold tea, or…” McGilliveray offered.
“Cold tea’d be capital, thankee, sir,” Lewrie said as he seated himself. “I take it that you were discussing some matter concerning a mercantile nature, sirs?”
“Missing ships, sir,” McGilliveray intoned as his cabin servant fetched Lewrie a tall tumbler of tea, with the unhe
ard-of luxury of a chunk of ice in it!
“Walsham, Massachusetts,” one of the Crowninshields boasted to him. “The Dons an’ the Dutchies’re mad for th’ stuff, our New England ice. Can’t pack it outta the Andes mountains ’fore it melts, I guess. Mule train’s too slow.”
“Too-small packets, ’Zekiel,” the other Crowninshield quibbled. “Has t’be stowed in bulk, in chaff an’ sawdust outta sunlight. Keeps itself frozen, ya see.”
“We’ve lost a ship, mebbe two,” the brother Lewrie now knew to name Ezekiel baldly announced, stealing McGilliveray’s “thunder,” as the Yankee Doodles would say in their colourfully colloquial way.
“Down South,” the one dubbed Gabriel stuck in. “Sailed behind us. Had ’em in sight for a piece…”
“Older schooners. Slower’n ours,” Ezekiel chimed in. “And we were racin’ each other, like I said, so we sailed ’em under. Mohican was t’put in at Saint Lucia, but that’d only delay her two days or so, no more, and…”
“And Chippewa was t’come inta Roseau t’meet us,” Gabriel grumbled, “but we’ve laid over almost a week now, and there’s neither hide nor hair o’ either one of ’em, Cap’m Lewrie, and we’re getting worried, I’ll lay ya. Coasted up hyuh t’ask of ’em, but…”
“Powerful worried,” Ezekiel Crowninshield butted in. “Wasn’t a speck o’ foul weather on our passage, and nary even a squall astern of us did we see t’upset ’em.”
“Trusted, salty masters and mates, good an’ true Mystic lads in the crews, too, so…” Gabriel Crowninshield interrupted, shrugging in mystification.
“So, no mutiny or buccaneering,” Lewrie surmised, sipping at his tea, already suspecting the worst.
“Gentlemen, I fear that those ships have been taken by French cruisers,” Lewrie was forced to tell them. “When I took my prize last night, we learned some things from our prisoners. That captain of whom I spoke, Captain McGilliveray, that Guillaume Choundas? We took away his best frigate a few weeks ago, but he still commands two corvettes and now has converted a schooner and a brig as privateers, and our captives told us he’d sent ’em South, to prey on American ships in particular. To hurt your commerce as sorely as you’ve hurt theirs. And make himself and their Governor-General, Victor Hugues, a pile of ‘tin.’ If he can’t challenge American warships round Hispaniola, and further up North, he intended to put all four vessels to sea beyond your immediate reach, and purge you from the oceans, as you made passage home with all those rich cargoes of yours. Sorry.”
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