“My God, sir, I did not…!” Peel spluttered.
“Good God, but they’re at it again,” Lt. Langlie whispered to the Sailing Master near the helm, amidships of the quarterdeck.
“Aye,” Mr. Windwood took sorrowful note. “And it does not help hopes of conciliation that you blaspheme, Mister Langlie.”
“Ah, oops. Sorry.”
“We never get Saint Domingue, who bloody cares, Peel!” Captain Lewrie was going on, with as much heat as before. “Filthy damn’ place, in the main. American trade takes up the slack, not just in sugar and rum, cocoa and coffee. Prices for those goods go up ’cause demand is just as great, and our Sugar Isles fill it, at greater profit. Don’t know much of trade, frankly, but…second-hand goods through Yankee merchants, in partnership with English companies, might be arranged.
“Now, do you really think I’d go off half-cocked like a two-shilling musket, upset your precious Mister Pelham’s impossible scheme for nothing? Believe me, Mister Peel, I’d not risk my command and my career on the off-chance a boy, damn’ near a stranger, goes in awe o’ me. And I resent having my motives being portayed that way.”
Lewrie took a deep breath and calmed himself at last, frowning quizzically to see that Peel wasn’t fuming like a slow-match sizzling down to ignite a bombshell.
“A lad whose existence will most-like ruin my life, anyway, if my wife ever learns of him,” Lewrie concluded, his resentment spent at last, forced to grin in self-deprecating confirmation of his parentage. “And why ain’t you howling, by now?” he simply had to ask.
“Because I had to know for certain,” Peel mystifyingly replied. “With you, in truth, sir, who knows what goes on in your head!”
“Now, that’s not strictly…” Lewrie flummoxed.
“See here, sir…no, forgive that,” Peel said at last, after Lewrie let him get a word in edgewise, that is. “All you say is more plausible, and possible, than anything I heard in London, or since we arrived in the Caribbean.”
“It is?” Lewrie gawped back, expecting a verbal knife-fight.
“I must own, sir,” Peel most reluctantly said, “that I see the eminent sense, the rationale of your thoughts, and as far as I see it…God help me!…I can do naught but agree with your assessments.”
“Mine arse on a band-box, you do?” Lewrie blurted out, with a whoosh of relief. “At long last,” he could not help but add. “May I assume that your next letter to Mister Pelham will tell him of your, uhm…change of heart, then?”
Damme, have I actually done something clever? Lewrie asked himself, for once in my miserable life?
“It will, sir,” Peel vowed, though looking a tad beleaguered as he pondered the personal consequences of defying the prevailing opinion of his superiors in London, not to mention the hurricane of anger that would come from the high-nosed, not-to-be-outshone Mr. Grenville Pelham. “All else is so much moonshine, wishful thinking, grossly in error or…hopelessly out of date.”
“Well…excellent, Mister Peel!” Lewrie crowed.
“Well, not completely!” Peel could not help retorting, “It’ll be mine arse on the chopping-block. Might as well be French…off with my head!” he sourly grumbled, wrapping his wide lapels over his chest as if a fell wind blew, not a tropic one. “This turns out badly, we’d best emulate your friend Colonel Cashman and flee to South Carolina. Find us a safe place to hide from the Crown’s displeasure.”
“Of course, does it work out,” Lewrie cynically pointed out in much gladder takings, almost playfully now, “your Pelham is the fellow gets knighted for quick and clever thinkin’. I suspect our names will never be mentioned.”
“But of course,” Peel answered with one of his accustomed wry smirks, as if he was almost back to normal.
“Pity there can’t be at least a wee shred o’ credit for us, to improve our standing back home, though,” Lewrie alluringly hinted. “It ain’t every day I come up with a good idea. ’Tis a good day I come with an idea, at all.”
“You’re fishing for compliments, you can forget it,” Peel told him, turning bleak once more, and with his hands fiddling at his coat collars as if to armour himself against vicissitude. “I’m the one has to tell Pelham. What you get won’t be a jot on my cobbing. God, he expected folly from you, but not from me!”
“Aye, I’m such a corrupting influence,” Lewrie said, bowing his head in mock contrition. “Put it down to the old Navy excuse, ‘drink, and bad companions!’ Won’t ’app’n, agin, yer honour, sir. Oh, well. No thanks, no credit…”
Peel’s answer to that was an inarticulate gargle.
“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that?” Lewrie playfully enquired with a hand cupped to one ear. It had sounded hellish-like a cranky bear-growl. Peel turned his back and stomped rather bleakly away, towards the taff-rails, where, Lewrie had little doubt, he would seize the cap-rails in white-knuckled hands as if to strangle oak in lieu of a human throat. Lord knew, as a junior officer Lewrie had done the same in the face of utter frustration.
Lewrie turned his attention outboard, lifting his glass to see the USS Oglethorpe brig engage the large French three-masted schooner. The schooner had swung off the Nor’east winds to present her starboard battery, using the wind-forced heel to elevate her cannon for the customary crippling shots at Oglethorpe’s rigging and sails, and Lewrie took a deep breath and held it in dread expectation as the two vessels’ bowsprits came level with each other on opposite courses, as the American brig blocked the schooner from view.
Their broadsides, at what he estimated as about a hundred yards, lit off as one in the instant that both ships’ hulls lay exactly opposite each other, as if docked side-by-side, one bows-out and the other bows-in. A massive cloud of spent powder smoke burst into existence between them in the blink of an eye. Oglethorpe, up to windward, was only partially befogged, with the smoke quickly clearing as it was blown alee; the French schooner was the one thoroughly wreathed in it, completely blotted out from view.
Oglethorpe’s masts shivered, and her forecourse yard canted and dropped, to be caught by the chain-slings rigged to prevent its total loss. Her sails were pocked and fluttered like carpets or bedding on a clothesline for dusting by very stout-armed maids-of-all-work. A bare royal spar on her main-mast went winging away, along with about three feet of the slim upper mast that supported it, and both standing and running rigging came snaking down as it was severed by chain-shot, star-shot, and expanding bar-shot.
“God in Heaven!” Lt. Langlie was forced to exclaim. “My word, I mean,” he amended as he realised that prim Mr. Winwood was still near. And with his “holy” face on. “But what weight of artillery does that Yankee brig mount? How many cannon can a brig bear, and serve?”
The French schooner staggered out of the smoke pall. Her foremast was sheered off about ten feet above the deck, her main-mast canted so far aft that it made a rough triangle, like a mast-hoisting sheer-legs, where it rested upon her mizen. And half her starboard side was hammered so badly that one could almost make out bare ribs! Her bowsprit and jib-boom pointed down into the water like a steering oar, and her starboard anchor and cat-head were simply gone! With such a drag, she emerged bows-down, flat on her bottom and low in the water, most of her way shot clean off her, surging up a vast patch of white-foaming sea around her as if she rested atop a stony shoal where the waves first broke as they came ashore.
“Enough, and more, it seems, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said, about to dare the sea-gods and whistle on deck in admiration, or surprise.
Proteus’s crew raised another gleeful cheer to salute Oglethorpe for her quick victory. For them, it was better than a raree show or a championship cockfight. Any day they could see the despised French getting their just desserts was simply “the nuts” to them. And the bloodier and more brutal, the better!
“Damn my…bless me!” Mr. Langlie further commented, a glass to his eye, as the Sailing Master pointedly coughed into his fist and issued a cautionary “Ha-Hemm!” as if clearing
his throat. “Taking the lee position as she did, sir, with a fair amount of her quick-work exposed at her angle of heel, there’s sure to be shot-holes below her waterline. Be a shame to lose such a fine prize, if she sinks. Why, I do believe you can already judge her down to starboard, as if taking water.”
“It appears Captain Randolph is of the same mind, sir,” Lewrie said in agreement with his assessment. “She is listing to starboard. Oglethorpe’s coming about and taking in sail. Save her ’fore she goes down, I s’pose. Ah, there she’s struck her colours! Took them long enough. A blinding glimpse of the obvious, that. Mister Langlie?”
“Sir?”
“Oglethorpe’s busy,” Lewrie decided, swinging his telescope to eye those French prizes, now fleeing to the Sou’east. “Wish her well, and all that, but…if she won’t run down the merchant schooners, we shall. A point to loo’rd, and let’s crack on. They look deeply laden to me. No matter they’re Yankee-built and fast, we stand an excellent chance of overhauling ’em. By mid-afternoon, at the latest.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mister O’Leary, a point o’ weather helm. Haul off a mite, and shape course just to windward of the schooners, there,” Lt. Langlie instructed the Quartermaster of the watch.
“They’re at least six miles or better off, Mister Langlie. For now, let’s stand down from Quarters and serve the crew their breakfasts. Pass the word to Mister Coote and the galley folk.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Mister Grace?” Lewrie called aft, summoning the midshipman to his side.
“Aye, sir?” the lad asked, still afire with excitement.
“Pass the word for Aspinall, and tell him I’d admire a fresh pot of coffee…and tell the gun-room stewards that the officers’ll most-like wish a pot of their own, too.”
“Aye, sir!” Grace cried, dashing off forward and below, almost breathless with second-hand battle glee that had yet to flag.
Lewrie paced aft down the windward side of the quarterdeck, as the gun crews removed flintlock igniters, gathered up gun-tools, and re-inserted the tompions in their unloaded, unfired pieces. Mr. Peel was pacing forward, nearer to the centre of the quarterdeck.
“Well, that was exciting for a minute or two,” Lewrie commented.
“And we were not required to fire our guns in concert, either,” Peel took fairly hopeful note, as if he had his fingers crossed behind his back—on both hands. “So far, we haven’t exactly sinned by an act of commission, have we? Mean t’say…we didn’t do anything overt.”
“Yet,” Lewrie cautioned, with a wee, sly grin that was sure to bedevil Peel’s shaky qualms and recriminations.
“We were merely…present,” Peel insisted. “Just happened by.”
“Still, it’s early yet,” Lewrie took delight in pointing out to him. “Who knows what could transpire ’fore sunset,” he drawled.
“God’s sake, don’t do that, Lewrie,” Peel almost pleaded. “You get your sly-boots look on, and there’s the Devil t’pay.”
“Pelham owe you money, Mister Peel?” Lewrie badly asked.
“Of course not!” Peel spluttered, nonplussed by such a query.
“You owe him, then?” Lewrie went on, tongue-in-check. “Engaged to his sister or some such? He catch you with the wrong woman, knows your deepest, darkest, most shameful secret, does he?”
“No, none of that,” Peel insisted, though Lewrie noted that he turned a tad red-faced, and made it too bland for complete credence. “He controls my career, reports on my fitness for future employment in our little…bureau.”
“That surely can’t be all, Peel,” Lewrie said, feigning a pout of disappointment. “But in some ways, you’re not the same confident fellow I knew in the Med. Mister Twigg’s a horrid old fart, but I cannot recall you bein’ so meek with him, nor can I recall you bein’ the sort to hide his light ’neath a bushel basket and not tell him when he’s wrong, or give him a better idea.”
“Diff’rent era, diff’rent superior,” Peel bitterly replied. “I quite enjoyed working for Mister Twigg, for I could be open with him. And he couldn’t abide time-servers and toadies. I was his partner.”
Peel paused, working his mouth as he realised that it was time to reveal some home truths. “I was a cashiered ex-captain of the Household Cavalry, not quite the ton to polite Society, d’ye see, but that never mattered with Twigg. Pelham is a different proposition entirely.”
“What sort o’ blottin’ did you do in your copybook?” Lewrie queried, sure there was a tantalising tale to be heard.
“Let’s say it involved the wrong earl’s daughter, affiancéed to a fellow officer, a Major, in the same regiment, for starters,” Peel hesitantly admitted.
“Hmmm…do tell,” Lewrie gently pressed. “Doesn’t sound much like a career-ender, though. Young love…all that.”
“Let us say that the young lady in question, and the gallant Major, deserved each other,” Peel said with a bitter sigh. “So easily bored, so needful of amusement she was, which cost me dear. We Peels’re good, landed squirearchy, Lewrie, well-enough off, but we ain’t that rich, and the regiment was expensive enough to begin with. Cost of my ‘colours’ as a Cornet, then Lieutenant, then the vacancy as a Captain? String o’ chargers, the proper kit and uniforms, and a sinful mess-bill each month. Skinflint maintenance of my dignity was half again steeper than my yearly pay, and two free-for-all mess-nights in a month, all the sprees about town, could put me deep in the hole. Then she came along, I was utterly besotted, lost my head, and then splurged my way even deeper, ’til the sight o’ tailors and tradesmen’d force me to hide in stables ’til they’d gone. Toward the end I…our estates are entailed, so my family could’ve cleared my debts, but I was foolishly stubborn it not come to that, so I…”
“You robbed the paymasters?” Lewrie gently nudged.
“I…I cheated my fellow officers at cards!” Peel ashamedly confessed, come over all hang-dog and unable to look at anything but his shoes. “To buy her baubles, dine her out, the theatres and such, and I…she swore she’d break her engagement, that she’d marry me, but…”
“D’ye mean t’say, you got caught?” Lewrie gawped.
“’Fraid so,” Peel told him in a soft voice. “Always had a knack for cards. I usually came out ahead with honest play, and sure to God you know how easy it is to pluck the sort of hen-heads you find in the better regiments. Snoot-full of drink by ten, lack-wit by eleven, and ready to wager their last stitch on anything you name. Lucky to even see their cards by then.”
“Met a few,” Lewrie commented, hiding his amusement, continually amazed by how arrogantly dense were the second sons of peers of the realm, the sort usually found in the “elegant” regiments. And the sort drawn to cavalry were the truly whinnying-stupid!
“Thought I could pull it off,” Peel continued. “God, after I’d skinned ’em, I even lent them some of their losses back, at scandalous interest, and they wouldn’t even blink!”
“Their sort, they’re lucky they could breathe,” Lewrie chuckled.
“Anyway, one night one of ’em wasn’t drunk as a lord, and cried ‘cheater’ on me, the rest took it up, and caught me with an extra card or two where they shouldn’t have been, so…” Peel supplied, snorting humorlessly at Lewrie’s observation. “I was asked for my resignation. ’Twas that, or a general court, and they’d have done anything to avoid a scandal, not on their hallowed reputation. They forced me to settle up with those I’d fleeced, and everyone but the foot-men had their hands out then. I was allowed to sell my commission, my string of mounts, saddlery, and all. By the time I’d cleared all my debts, though, I was barely left with the civilian togs I stood up in. Horrid stain on the old family escutcheon, too, don’t ye know,” Peel japed, trying to make light of it. “Everlasting shame…the black sheep?”
“Happens in the best of families,” Lewrie cryptically commiserated, with the fingers of his right hand crossed.
“Exactly!” Peel drolly replied, looking Lewrie up and down with
a tongue planted firmly in his own cheek, a cynical brow arched.
“You were sayin’…” Lewrie harumphed, coughing into a fist.
“I was near an American emigrant, myself, one of the Remittance Men exiled for his own good,” Peel further informed him, “but for meeting Mister Twigg. Cater-cousin of my father’s in the Foreign Office arranged an interview. Overseas employment, exciting doings, picking up foreign culture and new languages…robust, outdoorsy work…”
“Meet fascinatin’ new people…betray ’em,” Lewrie stuck in.
“Yes, good fun, all round,” Peel said, laughing out loud for a bit. “’Til Mister Twigg retired, it was. I suppose you could say I’m…compromised, now, in a way. See, Pelham does have something over me. That Major whose fiancée I diddled, well…his father’s country place and Pelham’s father’s estate are nearly next door. Both fathers took their seats in Lords the same month, and both families attend the same parish church, their ancestral pew-boxes cross the aisle from each other. Knew all about me from the outset.”
“Had it in for you, right off, hey? The bastard,” Lewrie said. “The arrogant little pop-in-jay!”
“He is all that, and more,” Mr. Peel mused. “Snobbish, impatient with his inferiors. Sure of his wits and talent, when he doesn’t have a tenth of Twigg’s trade-craft, nor an hundredth of his sagacity or patience, his cleverness.”
“When not orderin’ the murder of thousands,” Lewrie sneered.
“Sublimely self-confident when he has no right to be,” Mr. Peel went on, “and not a young fellow open to suggestions. An uncle, a former ambassador to Austria, sponsored him with the Foreign Office. Naturally, he was shoved into our branch. Twigg was leery, soon as he’d briefed him. Warned me to mind my p’s and q’s, he did. Same as he cautioned me to keep a wary eye on you. Sorry.”
“And who wouldn’t, I ask you?” Lewrie posed, too engrossed with the hope of “useful dirt” on the pestiferous Pelham.
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