A lack of gunfire turned his attention Westerly. Far off, now almost hull-down, Sumter and the other French corvette had ceased firing, and were now cocked up to windward, fetched-to. No flag flew on the Frenchman’s masts.
“Well, damme,” Lewrie groaned aloud. “Might as well secure the guns, Mister Langlie. We’ll not overhaul our Chase before beaching us on Guadeloupe. Do you concur, sir? Or do you prefer a shore supper?”
“Sadly, I do, sir,” Langlie said, pouting with distaste and disappointment. “Game’s not worth the candle. That is one fortunate Frog captain, out yonder. Skillful, too, sir.”
“Aye, damn him…whoever he is,” Lewrie spat. “I fear we will hear more from him, in future. Very well, sir. Secure the guns, then get us about and lay us alongside Hancock. Where I must come over all ‘Merry Andrew’ and back-slap ’em. Makes me wish Mister Pelham had got aboard before we sailed…he’d know how to ‘piss down their backs’ in the proper manner. He’s the smarmy skill to appear sincere.”
“’Til they serve him boiled okra, sir,” his First Lieutenant chirped, tongue-in-cheek. “Green, boiled, disgusting…did he not say, Captain? With a dash of ground coal stirred in, too, sir.”
“Hey?”
“Okra, and ashes from a coke furnace, Captain…okra-coke, doye see?” Langlie further japed.
“Now you’re really reaching, Mister Langlie. Lame, lame, lame!”
“Very good, sir.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was a rather crowded little assembly as Lewrie’s gig stroked over to the USS Hancock. Oglethorpe had fetched up her two prizes, as had Sumter, now looking a little worse for wear after fighting the longest engagement of the day with her French corvette. Eight vessels, now cocked up to windward within the compass of a quarter-mile, with boats bearing victorious officers back and forth, other boats transferring a host of prisoners into custody aboard the Yankee ships, or transferring U.S. Marines aboard the prizes to guard captured ships’ companies.
Hancock’s wide weather decks were crowded, too, as Lewrie stood atop the entry-port lip to receive the side-party’s salute, smiling as pleasant as anyone could wish as he doffed his hat and looked about to see what damage the two-decker frigate had taken.
None, was his assessment! What little harm the corvette’s lone broadside had done aloft had already been most efficiently re-roved and only a few hands were still in her rigging, tidying up with paint, tar, or galley slush.
“Ah, Captain Lewrie!” the stern Capt. Malachi Goodell bellowed with uncharacteristic good cheer. “The author of our triumph over the idolators, I am bound, the very fellow who drew us on, like the pillar of smoke by day drew Moses through the Wilderness. Welcome aboard to thee, sir. Wilt thou partake in a celebratory cup of cider, Captain?”
“I would, Captain Goodell, and gladly offer you and your fellow captains my congratulations,” Lewrie replied as a steward offered him a mug of something wet from a handsome coin-silver tray. Goodell’s cider potation was cool, sweet, yet sprightly on the tongue…and vaguely alcoholic? Lewrie noted.
“Normally, I eschew befuddling spirits, sir,” Goodell explained, to answer Lewrie’s mildly puzzled look, “and encourage others to shun the demonic lure. A home-made and slightly aged apple cider, though…in strict moderation…may, on certain rare occasions, prove harmless. Though I still lament how prodigally our honest Americans imbibe the harder ciders, ladies, men, yea, even suckling babes in their cradles.”
“Quite tasty and refreshing, Captain Goodell,” Lewrie complimented him, despite the sermonising. “And with a full measure, may I propose a toast, gentlemen?” he said, perking up the assembled officers—McGilliveray, Randolph, and their first officers, along with commission officers in Hancock. “To the gallant Navy of the United States of America…may today’s victory be but the first of many!”
“Hear, hear! Aye! Huzza! Yyee-hahh!” The last from the plum-phyzzed Georgian, Captain Randolph and his First Lieutenant; evidently Goodell’s mildly aged cider was more inspiriting than Captain Goodell imagined, if taken aboard in sufficient quantities. And since cheers made for dry throats, the servants were hard-pressed to refill all the empty mugs.
And aye, McGilliveray had had a hard fight of it, for his opponent, La Résolue, had resisted bravely ’til her unfortunate Capt. MacPherson had perished, and all his deck officers had fallen, leaving it to a wounded Master Gunner to strike her colours, and her slaughter had been simply frightful, McGilliveray relished to inform him, but “Have no fear, Cap’m Lewrie, Desmond came through without a scratch, and he showed as cool and brave as ever ya could ask for. First across, when we come up close-aboard and stormed her. And how’s that new kitty he gave ya, he begged me ask?”
“Missed all th’ fun,” Capt. Randolph imparted, between mugs of “sore-needed refreshment.” “Mount fourteen spankin’ fine twelve-pounders, and only fired six o’ th’ starboard batt’ry, at two ships, and they struck quick’z a wink, they did. Aye, fourteen of ’em, an’ longnines on focs’le and quarterdeck, too, twenty-two guns. Don’t that beat all for a li’l ol’ converted brig o’ war? Oh, too bad that schooner out-footed ya. A clean sweep’d been sweeter by far, but…somebody has t’run back t’Guadeloupe with his tail ’twixt his legs an’ bear th’ bad news to that devil Choundas, don’t ya know.”
“Perhaps next time, so well-armed, sir, your gallant Oglethorpe will be the one to surprise greedy and unwary Frenchmen,” Lewrie said, feeling unctuous…and irked, though striving to please. “Assuming they’ll feel pugnacious, after such a drubbing as you gave ’em today. ’Twas smartly, quickly, and efficiently done, sir. My congratulations to you, and your accurate gunners.”
“A moment, Captain Lewrie?” Goodell intruded, now more formal in mien. “Wouldst thou care to meet one of our unfortunate French? Allow me to name to thee Capitaine de Vaisseau Humbert Griot of Le Gascon. Captain Griot, may I present to thee Captain Alan Lewrie, of His Britannic Majesty’s ship Proteus?”
“Captain Griot,” Lewrie said, shifting his cider mug to his left hand and doffing his hat with his right, making a formal “leg” to that grizzled, unshaven worthy. “My regrets for your loss this day, sir.”
“Capitaine Loo—…Lew-ray,” Griot grumbled back, with a quick doff of his own hat, but no bow; he was an anti-aristo Republican to the soles of his shabby boots. “So…you are ze devil I meet at las’…zeone’oo obsess Capitaine Choundas to ze frantic. But for a spy e vous, nevair you find us, I am thinking, non?”
“Tosh, sir,” Lewrie scoffed, though tapping sagaciously at the side of his nose. “I was lucky, was all. Spies! What rot! Your old master Choundas was born with spies on the brain, sir. And how is the poor old fellow, might I enquire?” Lewrie said with a lofty smirk.
“Why, thou mayst ask him thyself, Captain Lewrie,” Capt. Goodell said, his eyes merry with delight, and his teeth bared ’neath his hedge-like beard and mustachios. “For here that fiend doth arrive, even as we speak.” Goodell chuckled, waving a hand towards the sound of blocks squealing above the starboard side.
Jerking foot by jerking foot, a bosun’s chair slung from a main yard rose up over the Hancock’s bulwarks, bearing a bedraggled figure who sat slumped defeatedly, one palsied and liver-spotted hand clinging to the canvas chair-sling. Pasty-pale, that long-despised face as it weakly swung its gaze in-board in the dullest curiosity, or an attempt at proud disdain, to regard its conquerors with that one good eye.
Uniform tar-stained and smutted with powder smoke and sailcloth dust, rumpled and suddenly too big for his frame, his hat gone and his thinning reddish hair wildly disarrayed, Capt. Guillaume Choundas would have seemed a pathetic apparition. He had also suffered a wound in his bad leg, the red-spotted bandages visible through the rent that a surgeon had made in the thigh of his trousers; with a second gash high on his forehead, right on his receding hair line.
“And that, in the end, is thy wily, implacable Nemesis, Captain Lewrie?” Captain Goodell sourly wondered
aloud. “Tsk, tsk.”
“Fou!” Lewrie heard the sullen Griot whisper under his breath. “Qu’il aille au diable! Nom d’un chien…engoulevent!” Which slurs made Goodell stiffen in pious indignation. And Lewrie smile wickedly; for Griot had called Choundas “fool,” had damned him, had accused him of being a “God-damned goat-sucker,” to boot!
“Vous!” Choundas snarled, soon as he clapped eyes on Lewrie, in a vitriolic snarl that conveyed nearly fifteen years of brooding anger and pain, his undying lust for revenge, since that bright tropic morn when he’d fallen to Lewrie’s sword on the pristine beach at Balabac in the Spanish Philippines.
“Why hallo, ‘Willy’!” Lewrie gaily rejoined in a mocking drawl, and tipping his hat with glee once he’d gotten over his utter surprise. “Havin’ a bad day, are we…ye foetid old bugger?”
“Captain Lewrie, really!” Goodell primly chid him. “Such abuse for an honourably surrendered and now-helpless foe…thy long-standing personal animus notwithstanding…I’ll not have it, not aboard an American man o’ war, sir! The gentlemanly and honourable courtesies will be observed ’twixt foes, who are, in defeat, foes no longer.”
Choundas was swung in-board and lowered to the deck, landing on his good leg but instantly collapsing like a sack of clothes when his hamstrung leg tried to share the load. With a hiss, Choundas summoned the reluctant Griot to his side to help him stand, to shake his uniform into better order, and take a few steps.
“M’sieur,” Choundas said, blatantly ignoring Lewrie to concentrate on Goodell, “you ’ave ze best of me, Capitaine, an’ ’ave honourably defeated me. To you is ze victoire, an’ I ’umbly offer to you my sword,” he concluded, knackily shamming nobility, to play off Lewrie’s churlishness. With Griot’s help, Choundas freed his scabbard from his belt-frog and extended the costly and ornate blade hilt first.
Oh no, don’t…! Lewrie thought, in a panic, dreading what was coming. Sure enough, Le Hideux’s good eye darted at Lewrie, with his lips curled in a tiny smirk of triumph.
“Ahem…!” Lewrie began, like a first attempt to call a waiter.
“Thy reputation precedes thee, Captain Choundas,” Goodell said, looking down his raptor’s beak at the man, and the temptation of that priceless smallsword that could grace Goodell’s mantel for generations, “and I tell thee plain, monsoor, wert thou capable of offering an iota of resistance or deviltry, what I know of thee tempts me to clap thee in irons, regardless of thy rank and dignities…”
That’s the way, man! Lewrie silently exulted; take that sword, and guard him close! Deep on your orlop, among the rats!
“Nonetheless, I feel it my duty as a Christian gentleman, and a fellow professional officer of my country’s Navy, on which I will allow no slur concerning the proper treatment of prisoners that might sully its glorious name, to take thee as thou stands, an officer and a gentleman of thy navy, who may freely and honourably offer his parole, on thy personal bond of honour…”
“Bluck!” Lewrie objected, stupefied past real words!
“…strictly admitting that the betrayal of such personal word will redound to the greatest discredit upon thyself, thy navy, and thy Republic,” Goodell concluded, casting a dubious look at Lewrie. “Wilt thou offer thy parole, or wilt thou surrender, sir?” he posed.
“To such generosity of ze spirit, ze Christian spirit, m’sieur, naturellement, I am mos’ ’appy to accept your offer of parole, merci beaucoup bien!” Choundas rasped back, his cruel, scarred lips forming a creditable facsimile of a lamb-innocent, and grateful, smile.
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie said in a fretful whisper: “I fear I must protest, Captain Goodell! Christian charity aside, sir…most creditable to you…Choundas simply can’t be trusted. He should be my prisoner. His Majesty’s Government has the older, and greater, claim on him, and…!”
“Did thy ship vanquish his, Captain Lewrie?” Goodell cooed back, suddenly come over Arctic ice, his owl-eyes asquint as if focussed on prey. “Did he strike his colours to thee? He did not! Were he thine, he would languish in chains and filth aboard a prison-hulk at English Harbour for years, as I languished in British captivity, sir…just to satisfy thy animus, which is unbecoming in an officer and gentleman of thy repute, sir! Though his soul be sold to the Devil long ago, and his sins the vilest scarlet, yea, even so, I could never subject even him to such cruelty. Captain Choundas is now mine, taken in honourable battle. Unless and until he does anything to violate his sacred honour, I am honour-bound to take his parole at face value, or defame my country’s trustworthiness. Captain Choundas is an American prisoner, sir, the fruit of an American victory, and I will brook no further dispute of the matter.”
“But France isn’t at war with the United States, he’ll be let go, he’ll…!” Lewrie spluttered, appalled.
“Thun-der-ation!” Goodell bellowed. “Did I not say the matter is closed, sir? Thou wouldst gainsay me on my own quarterdeck, sir?”
Lewrie withered under Goodell’s fury, blushing furiously to be dressed-down before the American officers and sailors like an idiotic midshipman…before Choundas’s sly scorn! “He’s dangerous, he…”
“No longer, Captain Lewrie,” Goodell said, seeming to relent. “At limited liberty ashore in the United States, Choundas will work no more deviltry. And since no formal declaration of war exists, there will be no prisoner exchanges possible, Captain Lewrie. Neither do the French yet hold a single U.S. Navy officer of comparable rank to offer in exchange…dost thou see, sir?” Goodell concluded in much calmer voice, his beard-shrouded lips curling in the faintest of grins and his owl-eyes, for a brief moment, twinkling with glee.
Damme, did the old stickleback just wink at me? Lewrie gawped.
“Captain Choundas will be sent to an American seaport, with my report of his capture…and his nature…made public knowledge to one and all, Captain Lewrie. He will work no further havoc. Nor, return to France before the turn of the century, in my estimation. That is the most I may promise thee, sir, and thou must be satisfied with that.”
Lewrie realised that the game was blocked at both ends; he had lost, and must put the best face he could on his defeat. He heaved a bitter sigh, then said, with passable good grace, “I s’pose I must, at that, sir. Please forgive my zeal to see such a dangerous foe placed where I’d know he could do no more mischief. Had I captured Choundas, I could do no less, did he offer his parole…no matter how galling! My congratulations to you, sir, and I wish you all the notice and fame that pertains to such a triumph. To yourself, your officers and tars…and to the glory of your Navy, and the United States of America.”
I nabbed him, though, Lewrie grimly told himself; I’d not have given him the chance to hand over his sword. Board his ship and shoot him down, run him through…not give Choundas time to strike colours! Could I have…in the heat of the moment? Or lose my command and my honour, get court-martialed for murderin’ a prisoner? God, please, he looks so old and sick, You could pluck him with a fever, or something! A bad batch of oysters…any cause! He has to die, else I’ll never be able to rest easy! Hmmm…there must be a way…
“Zealousness in the pursuit of one’s duty is ever forgivable, sir,” Capt. Goodell was saying, stroking his whiskers in glee to have a Briton apologise to him for anything, “even though thy zeal might be adulterated by personal motives. Thank thy Maker, Captain Lewrie, that, in thy pursuit of just revenge upon such a monster, personal zeal did not overcome the professional, and that thine own hands, and immortal soul, remain unsullied. Great Jehovah’s justice will grind Choundas, be sure of that, yea, even unto chaff and powdered, blighted seed, so black and withered that his evil will be spurned even by the hungriest birds of the air or beasts of the field…and shalt never take root in the fertilest soil.”
“Amen, sir,” Lewrie replied with a fervor he could not really feel; what he felt was oily and unctuous to sham piety, but…needs must. “Well, then sir. I will take my leave. You will sail back to English Harbour, Captain
Goodell? Good. Please allow me to request that you bear my despatches about today’s action to my superiors.”
“Thou will not enter harbour, sir?” Goodell asked.
“Fear I’m bound away on another matter, sir,” Lewrie answered, tipping him a conspiratorial wink, as if a duty of even greater import awaited him, one of a secret nature. “I shall say my goodbyes to Captains McGilliveray and Randolph. My congratulations, again, and…do we have future occasion to work together, to the confusion of the French…or another mutual enemy, please recall that I owe you a duty, and a service, and would move Heaven and Earth to fulfill it.”
“Loath though I am to admit it, Captain Lewrie,” Goodell said as he tentatively offered his hand, looking down at it for a moment as if he could not credit that he was doing so, or that his hand moved of its own volition, “I find myself almost looking forward to such cooperation. Should my country and thine find common cause, mind.”
They shook on that informal bargain; even though Goodell’s paw felt much like a limp, dead flounder, they at least shook on it.
“Off again, are ya, Cap’m Lewrie?” McGilliveray said, frowning. “I was hoping you could dine aboard just one more time. The lad—”
“Fear I must, sir,” Lewrie said, shrugging sadly. “Promise me that, if Sumter bears Choundas to America, you watch him close, parole be damned, will you?” he urged. “And keep Desmond away from him, every minute! If Choundas learns who he is to me, and he will, I’m certain of it…he has his ways!…he’ll find a way to take revenge on me and kill him, if he can. Cripple him as bad as he’s crippled, at the least! For God’s sake, I beg you, Captain McGilliveray, don’t trust Choundas with a rusty fork.”
“I will, though I don’t quite—” McGilliveray quickly vowed.
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