Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Theoni Kavares Connor, the one you mean, sir?" he asked the only-slightly-discomfited Lt. Gamble. "She and the Captain…?"

  "Aye, that's the one," Lt. Adair supplied. "She came down to Sheerness and took shore lodgings, once Proteus was repaired after the Battle of Camperdown, and got orders for the West Indies. The Captain did, ah… spend a night or two ashore, but…"

  "Long before that, just as Proteus was fitting out, just before the Nore Mutiny, well…," Mr. Winwood intoned, and heaved a deep sigh. "Now, foolish as it sounds, there was something fey about her, too, a… Celtic, pagan thing that was extremely odd and… disturbing."

  "Tell it me," Lt. Urquhart asked of him, even more intrigued.

  The Mutiny at the great naval anchorage of the Nore, which was much more dangerous and rebellious against King and Country than ever the more respectful Spithead Mutiny had been, had begun just as demands had been fulfilled among the Channel Fleet. Lewrie had just been "Made Post" into HMS Proteus, fresh from the private yards at Chatham, where she had first tasted water under another captain, and the manner of her launching had, as Mr. Winwood had said, been extremely odd.

  The Admiralty's chosen name was to be Proteus, a Greek sea-god, but, came the day when the bands, the crowds, the dignitaries, and the Church representatives had turned out for the celebration, a retired Rear-Admiral who, at the moment, had been filled with more brandy than sense, and at the nagging of his myth-laden wife, who had been simply besotted with the newly popular tales published by the blind Irish poet O'Carolan and an host of others, cried out, "Success to his Majesty's Ship… Merlin!" as he hoisted his glass to her and drained it off, just as the last restraining props had been sawn through, and a gasp had arisen, and the band nigh-stumbled to a cacophonous halt.

  One simply didn't name a Protestant Christian King's ship, one specifically built to kill Catholic Spaniards and atheistic Frenchmen in the most efficient manner, after a pagan wizard and heathen Druid… even if Merlin had been such a boon to fabled old King Arthur!

  HMS "Merlin" had begun to slide down the greasy ways into the Medway, 'til another senior officer in better mental takings, and relative sobriety (perhaps one without a termagant wife in tow!), quickly got to his feet, seized a full glass, and corrected things with a loud cry of "Success to His Majesty's ship Proteus!"

  At the instant, the frigate had stuck quite solidly on the ways!

  Talk of greater consternation! It was not until an Irish sawyer who'd helped build her, with his little boy at his side, had gone down the slipway and had stood under the ship's bows, right beside her cutwater; had whispered something to her to this day unknowable, then the wee lad had given her the tiniest shove, more like a love pat, in point of fact, before Proteus/Merlin had given out a soft groan, then had allowed herself to be launched, sliding into the river, as sweet as anything!

  Newly "posted" Alan Lewrie was, in fact, her second captain. A bit after her launch, whilst still completing rigging, her first commanding officer and his cousin, her Chaplain, both Anglo-Irishmen landowners in the big way over hundreds of poor Irish cottagers, rowed back from shore one dead-calm night. Not a breath of wind stirred, with not a ripple to disturb the Medway's surface, yet Proteus had heaved a slow roll starboard, steepening the boarding battens to dead-vertical, and the first captain and her Chaplain and been heard to utter shouts, as both suddenly lost their grips-both were abstemious, and sober as judges, so it was reported later. The Chaplain well…

  He fell backwards, striking his head on the gunnel of the ship's boat. He sank out of sight at once, and his body was never found, and, while her first captain had managed to cling to the boarding batten steps, he had claimed that it felt as if the man-ropes had stung him or bit him as hurtful as wasps!

  And, not a week after, said captain was found raving and crying in his nightshirt, dashing about the quarterdeck, or cowering in sheer terror in his cabins, swearing that Proteus had murdered his cousin, and was out to kill him, too! Were his family not rich, he could have ended up in Bedlam in London, supplementing his half-pay (it took rather a bit of doing for a senior officer to be struck off the Navy List for any cause other than dropping stone-cold dead in those days!) off the poking-stick and water-squirt concessions offered those who toured the place and wished to stir the inmates up from catatonia.

  At that point, enter Capt. Alan Lewrie, lucky, again, to get himself such a fine, spanking-new frigate. Or, so he had thought, for not a fortnight later, Proteus had fallen down the snaking Medway to the Nore anchorage, right into the heart of the Mutiny! One mutineer in particular, whom Lewrie himself had recruited off the receiving ship (he'd turned out to be a former Midshipman Rolston back in 1780, when Lewrie first donned King's Coat as a "Mid," a little fiend who had been responsible for a sailor's death and broken to Ordinary Seaman), stoked Proteus's own rebellious cabal of mutineers, and had tried to arrange the murder of all her officers, warrants, and gentlemanly Midshipmen.

  In the end, Capt. Lewrie, kept from being sent ashore as the other officers and captains were by the rebellious committee, had won enough loyal sailors and Marines to launch a rebellion of his own… with the rather embarrassing help from the roughly two dozen prostitutes fetched out to the ship by the bumboatmen-pimps, who'd usually serve as temporary "wives" by sailors with money for their "socket fees," supporting them on shares of their rations, rum issues, and smuggled spirits. The mutineer committee had declared that all women must stay aboard the rebelling warships, long after the sailors' last coins had been, spent, so the doxies had been feeling a touch rebellious themselves!

  Indeed, HMS Proteus was one of the few warships that had managed to escape, under fire from mutinous ships of the line, to join up with Adm. Duncan's much-reduced squadron, which kept watch on the Batavian Dutch Republic's coasts to daunt the Dutch Navy from leaving port to join with a French fleet… after dropping off the whores, and those mutineers they'd made prisoners. It had been reckoned notorious that Capt. Lewrie had sent letters to both Admiralty and Parliament asking that the women receive monetary rewards and letters of thanks for the patriotic and courageous aid they'd offered!

  The Captain had also sent a note-of-hand to his London solicitor, ordering that each of the prostitutes be paid a more-than-decent sum "for services rendered!" and what the Crown, Society, and Capt. Lewrie's wife thought of that, well…

  And when that Rolston had died, now that was eerie, too…

  A transfer from Proteus to a coaster they'd met, hired to take prisoners to the authorities at Sheerness; Rolston coming on deck in chains and shackles, cursing Lewrie for his luck-there it was, again-for how else could one explain how Rolston could swing his cutlass for a killing, beheading blow, but damme if the Captain hadn't deflected it with his tinpenny-whistle! and if the Good Lord, or the pagan sea-god Lir, hadn't been looking out for him, then please explain it!

  Then, when Rolston had started down the boarding battens, with man-ropes in hand, damme if Proteus hadn't heaved a slow roll to windward, and Rolston had cried out, hands springing open as if something had stung his palms, and had fallen into a round pool of lanthorn light 'tween both vessels, surfacing one last time, and looking as if he was floating in a circle of odd yellow-green light, as if sinking into the very eye of a great sea-monster, then had seemed to be sucked down, and howling a final shriek of utter horror!

  After a collective shudder of recalled awe, the bottle of port made another quick circuit of the table, all of them feeling as dry as dust, of a sudden.

  "After that, we played the Dutch a merry jape, sir," Lt. Devereux of the Marines told Urquhart. "We spent weeks close inshore of the Texel, hoisting false flag signals to the fleet they feared was just over the horizon, and pretending to reply to questions… even if Admiral Duncan had barely a handful of old sixty-four gunners present, 'til the Nore Mutiny was settled, and he was re-enforced."

  Urquhart certainly knew what had happened, once the winds had come fair; the Dutch fleet had sailed, but
had been caught upon a lee shore and nearly annihilated, and Proteus, it seemed, had played her own significant part in the battle, engaging a larger Dutch frigate and forcing her to strike after a boarding action. Capt. Lewrie had been seriously wounded in the arm, but had lived. His uncanny luck had held once more, for his arm had not required amputation, as most broken-bone wounds would have done. And that was why the gold medal for the Battle of Camperdown hung on his chest alongside the one for Cape St. Vincent!

  Lewrie… Mistress Theoni Connor… Hyde Park… the Captain and his wife, yes! Urquhart suddenly recalled. A hero with his arm in a sling, a wife with a furled umbrella employing it like a sword after seeing her man's mistress and bastard by-blow at close quarters, making Lewrie hop, duck, and back up briskly! There'd been many salacious snickers in his favourite coffee-house when that tale had been told! He hid his smile as the others touched upon Lewrie's doings in the West Indies, and Lt. Urquhart once more went wide-eyed.

  An outbreak of Yellow Jack, that was why Lewrie had needed the dozen Blacks so badly. Was it before, or after, the Captain's friend had duelled Ledyard Beauman and slain him, when the Captain had had to shoot Beauman's second, too? No matter; that was one reason there was so much bad blood. Against the French, though… Proteus had swept the north coast of St. Domingue (what the rebel ex-slaves were now calling Haiti) of any shipping larger than a canoe; had captured American arms smugglers; captured, sank, or burned French merchantmen and privateers; had crippled that Choundas fellow's big, proud frigate as they had already related, and had put paid to that cruel fiend, too!

  "And weren't there seals barking," Lt. Adair said, with a face full of wonder (and rather red with claret and port), "the night that our boats went ashore to fetch out our Black fellows? Seals in the West Indies have been hunted nigh to extinction, but I swear I heard them, and their splashings, to boot."

  "Some of the lads…," Mr. Coote, the Purser, who had spent the last hour entire in contented and companionable, nodding silence, said. "They swore they saw seals in the water, and even I thought I saw one head, and disturbance in the water. I certainly am sure that I heard them. Mister Langlie's boat crews… our former First, sir… vowed that seals swam to either side of their boats on the way back aboard."

  "Saint Nicholas Mole," Lt. Devereux reminded them.

  One of ex-slave General Toussaint L'Ouverture's armies tried to oust the British Army garrison at the port on the northwest coast, and Proteus had caught a signal asking for help, and had sailed into the roadstead. Close ashore, with the fighting lines hidden in dense forests, Lewrie had sent a signalling party ashore to aid the Army and wig-wag. With their frigate's guns at extreme elevation, Proteus had fired both solid round-shot and bags of grape-shot, adjusting according to the shore party's signal flags, and allowing their own troops to fall back behind a screen of plunging shot and re-form their lines, and, in the process, decimating the slave army. With springs on her cables, Proteus had swung in a wide arc, firing off nearly all of her grape-shot, cartridge flannels, and a whole tier of powder casks from morning 'til sunset, saving the port, and the British garrison in the process!

  "And those French Creole pirates," Lt. Adair suggested with a wry shake of his head. "Had we been quicker about it, there'd have been nigh a million pounds sterling in silver captured, not a mere two hundred thousand!"

  " Barataria Bay, d'ye mean?" Lt. Urquhart cried. "Aye, I read of that'un!" Courageous sea-fights, prize-money, and slews of captured enemy specie brought in had ever caught his eye in the Marine Chronicle … especially since Lt. Urquhart had never even come within hailing distance of anything so adventurous, or profitable… yet. Though, under Capt. Alan Lewrie, it sounded better odds that he could be part of such glorious doings. And reaping the monetary benefits.

  "Mad as hatters, the lot of them," Lt. Gamble said with a sniff. "Rich, bored young grandees, none older than me or Adair, there, but determined to seize Louisiana back from the Spanish and turn it over to France again. And the way they tried to finance their rebellion was to turn pirate!"

  "Play-actors," Lt. Adair sneered. "Murderous, cold-blooded, and capricious little bastards. And one bitch."

  "Stole a prize of ours, as far abroad as Dominica!" Lt. Gamble continued. "Marooned the hands of her Harbour Watch on the Dry Tortugas…'cause they'd yet to do a marooning, so please you! Laughed and hooted, our sailors said once they'd been rescued, like it was a grand game. One shot our Midshipman Mister Burns… poor tyke… just to try his hand at long range, and it took him three days to die. Well, we made them pay, when we finally ran them to earth. Slew the lot of them. 'Twas only the girl that got away, and she nearly slew the Captain for revenge… for scotching their plans."

  "Why are foiled plots always 'scotched'?" Scot Lt. Adair carped.

  " 'Cause you Scots plot so bloody much!" Lt. Devereux hooted.

  "Per'aps it was more ze wrath of a woman scorned, and betrayed, than mere revenge, sirs," Surgeon Mr. Durant slyly suggested, wreathed in a cloud of smoke from his clay pipe. "N'est-cepas? After all, ze Captain 'ad made her acquaintance in New Orleans before rejoining ze ship."

  "In New Orleans?" a puzzled Urquhart gawped. "But that's more than an hundred miles up the Mississippi, in Spanish Louisiana!"

  "Foreign Office doings, that," Mr. Winwood heavily said, with a sage tap aside his nose. "The Captain, I gather, has been involved with their agents several times during his career. Something in the Far East 'tween the wars, something that involved that Choundas chap… again in the Mediterranean, I heard, when in Jester. It might've involved Choundas, again. In the West Indies, a pair of Foreign Office agents spent rather a long time aboard Proteus, that James Peel especially. The Captain was temporarily supplanted in command by a more senior Captain Nicely, and sent to New Orleans in civilian disguise as a cashiered British officer looking for employment on the Mississippi, with just a small party of our sailors… three of whom proved false in the end, and ran… guarded by a merchant agent from the Panton, Leslie Company, who was half a spy himself."

  "Charite de Guilleri, she was," Devereux stuck in. "And a most hellish-fetching wench of nineteen years or so. The Captain managed to meet her, her brothers and cousins, who were all in on it, and… I gather that he and she even might have conducted an, ah… liaison for a time, before they set off on their last foray, and he rejoined the ship."

  "I'm certain that the Captain would not have, ah…,"-Winwood grumbled with a blush. The others smirked at the Sailing Master and his squeamishness; which led Lt. Urquhart to reckon that his Captain was a man of many parts!

  "Saw her only the once, myself," Marine Lieutenant Devereux said with a rather wistful expression. "When we assaulted their camp, on Grand Isle. Standing atop an ancient Indian burial mound or something… chestnut hair flowing in the breeze, dressed mannish, in breeches and boots… and shooting at us with a Girandoni air-rifle."

  "And all honours to Lieutenant Devereux and his Marines, and late Lieutenant Catterall and his party of sailors, for conquering them," the Purser cried, which made them pound fists on the wardroom table.

  "A toast, gentlemen… to Mister Catterall," Devereux called for. "To 'Bully,' God rest him," he added when all the glasses were charged. And they drank in remembrance of their old companion.

  "The Captain boarded one of their schooners and slew one of the older pirate leaders, sword to sword," Lt. Adair narrated, after the port bottle had made another round. "Then, took off in a native boat after the wench, and he almost closed with her, too, before she shot him. Right in the centre of his chest!"

  "Shot him?" Lt. Urquhart.marvelled, a tad wall-eyed, by then. "In the centre of his chest, and he lived} Surely, sir, you're not saying that his… what'd ye call it?… his geas for good fortune made him bullet-proof?"

  "All she did was knock him flat, and make a bruise as big as a mush-melon," the Surgeon, Mr. Durant, said with a wry chuckle.

  "Fortunately for the Captain, the butt-flask of compressed air whic
h provides the motive force was nearly spent," Lt. Devereux related, with a chuckle of his own. "I put it down to extreme good fortune, no more, Mister Urquhart, for, had Mademoiselle de Guilleri had a spare flask, we'd have lost him, certain."

  "You should have been there to see the pirates' captured Spanish treasure ship explode, sir!" Lt. Adair told Urquhart. "She took light somehow, as she drifted off, and when her powder magazine went up, she was blown to kindling. And God knows how many new-minted silver coins went flying sky-high… bright as a royal fireworks, and plopping in the bay in a circle a mile across, and lost forever!"

  "After that, 'twas a rather, dull year, though." Gamble frowned. "Off to Halifax last summer with despatches…"

  He was interrupted by the lone chime of One Bell in the Evening Watch- half past eight, leaving them another half hour before a call for Lights Out at nine, observed in harbour or at sea.

  "… a partial refit, and a full re-coppering, there," Gamble went on. "To Portsmouth, then orders to join the escort of an East India Company trade."

  "We might have gone as far as Bombay, Calcutta, or Canton, but for getting our rudder shot clean off by a French frigate one night off Cape Town," Adair supplied with a pouty look. "Though we did touch at Recife and Saint Helena on the way, and that was enjoyable."

  "And there was the circus," Lt. Gamble said with a twinkle.

  "Circus?" Urquhart, by then rather bleary, enquired, at a loss once more.

  "Why, Mister Daniel Wigmore's Travelling Extravaganza, sir!" Lt. Adair replied. "Surely, you've heard of it, the most famous circus in all the British Isles!"