And gloat with studiously hidden glee to be rid of his tormentor!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The two warships sailed together, clawing out their offing from Antigua to the East-Sou'east, and close-hauled to windward on the larboard tack. Though HMS Proteus had been quicker off the mark to seize the windward advantage, smothering the USS Thomas Sumter in her lee by her spread of sail, the American ship had still surged up almost abeam of her by late afternoon as the day's heat faded, as the airs borne by the Trade wind grew denser.
"Fresher from the careenage, I expect, sir," Mr. Winwood said as the reason, "with a cleaner bottom."
"Equal our waterline length, Captain," Lt. Langlie supposed as well, "so it stands to reason that both hulls perform equally. Perhaps a touch finer in her entry than ours, but…"
"No better handled," Lt. Catterall said with a dismissive sniff.
"Longer yards, with larger courses, surely," Lt. Adair dared to comment as they watched the Sumter bowl along, barely half a mile alee, "especially 'pon her t'gallants and royals. Fuller-bellied jibs… "
"Mmhmm," Lewrie replied to their guesses, telescope to one eye for the last ten minutes, entire, intent upon his study of her.
"Converted from a merchantman, she's fuller in her beam, too," Lt. Langlie pondered aloud, "so perhaps she sits more upright than we, just a few degrees stiffer, and sailing on a flatter bottom, with a pronounced shoulder… not as rounded as our chines, sir?"
"Mmhmm," Lewrie said again, and that only because he sensed the pregnant pause in their musings that required a response on his part.
"Merchantman or no, she's a swift sailer, I'll grant them," Mr. Winwood admitted with a hint of grumbling over any vessel that could rival a British-built, British-masted, and British-rigged ship, one set up to suit his experiences, and his captain's.
"Aye, swift," Lewrie mumbled. His arms tiring at last, he let the barrel of the strongest day-glass rest on the lee bulwarks of the quarterdeck for a bit. He peered about to windward, then aloft to the commissioning pendant's stiff-driven coach-whip, to the clouds on the horizon in search of dirty weather. There was none. The pendant was fully horizontal, its swallow-tail tip fluttering in concert with the lee edges of the jibs and courses. Even with the larboard battery run out and the starboard run in, Proteus was just a pinch slower than the Yankee man o' war, perhaps by as much as a quarter of a knot, and the cleanliness of her quickwork could not explain it. Americans simply built faster ships, Lewrie decided; just like the French did. Proteus had been based on a British interpretation of a captured French frigate whose lines had been taken off and copied, but… perhaps not copied closely enough.
"Puts me in mind of something from the Beatitudes, hey, Mister Winwood?" Lewrie asked the Sailing Master. "How does it go? That the 'first shall be last, and the last shall be first'? No matter if they out-foot us or point a degree or two more to windward, really. Proteus was made to dominate, not sprint… stay the course in all weathers, keep the seas, and then hammer the swifter when we finally corner 'em."
"Or simply chase 'em off, sir," Lt. Catterall said with a grunt of agreement. "Make 'em out-run us, in fear."
"Well said, sir," Lewrie told him with a brief grin, which drew growls of like sentiment from the rest as he turned back to leeward to raise his telescope once again, bracing the tube on the rat-lines of the mizen stays this time. He sobered quickly, though, dropping back into a brown study usually foreign to his nature, or his officers' experience with him. His statement had been his first utterance in the Past hour, other than a curt directive or two to improve their ship's handling. And, intent upon Sumter once more, he gave all indications of ignoring anything they said.
Lewrie was not studying Sumter in search of a weakness that he could use to keep Proteus ahead, though. In fact, the idea of sailing her hull-under was the last thing he wished to do, no matter how competitive he would usually act to maintain the honour of the Royal Navy, his ship, or his crew. He was not, in truth, peering so intently upon Sumter as he was keeping an eye on one of her midshipmen… his son.
His bastard son… who was at that moment perched aloft high in the Sumter?, main weather stays, just below her futtock shrouds, with a glass in his hands, too, which he lifted every now and again to caution his captain-uncle to Proteus'?, next race strategem. Two other boys of Sumter's cockpit were perched with him, all three hooting and cheering as the American armed ship gradually gained a few more yards on Proteus. They'd wave their tricorne hats and whoop and halloo, teeth-bared, and mouths open in perfect O's, like a pantomime's show against the thunder of the winds. They'd lean far out, with only a finger and a shoe heel gripping the rat-lines and stays, daring each other to greater follies of "tarry" derring-do, and each time Midshipman Desmond McGilliveray matched or bettered their feats, Lewrie sucked in his breath as if to shout and warn them to "belay all that." He could see a grizzled bosun atop the bulwarks at the base of the stays, fist shaking and mouth open to bawl caution at them, but with boys that age, what he shouted most-like went in one ear and out the other, and Lewrie still felt twinges of worry. A. father's worry.
Desmond lifted his glass, lowered it, then waved wide, beaming, looking directly into the lens of the powerful day-glass, as if he knew he was being watched so closely. He raised his glass again and Lewrie lowered his, knowing he was being eyed, and pantomimed a solid grip on the stays with both hands, and was much relieved to see the lad seem to obey, and loop an arm and a shin inside the rat-lines, round a rigid stay. Lewrie made a large gesture of swabbing a coat sleeve over a "worried" brow. "Don't do that!" he silently mouthed over the water.
"Boat ahoy!" Midshipman Larkin had challenged two days following that drunken supper, and the youthful voice shouting in reply had drawn Lewrie to the deck. The turn-out for a foreign midshipman was as thin as charity, so it was Larkin who led Mr. Midshipman McGilliveray to the quarterdeck from the entry-port with his sealed letter for Proteus's captain… who met them personally.
"Captain McGilliveray's sincerest respects to you, sir, and I'm charged to deliver to you this message, Captain Lewrie, sir," the lad had crisply stated, doffing his hat and making a courtly "leg" worthy of an English "mid" reporting to an Admiral-though no English "mid" would ever peer so intently or so openly. And perhaps only a famous man such as Jervis or Nelson would elicit such an awe-struck expression as Midshipman McGilliveray displayed.
"Thank you, Mister McGilliveray," Lewrie had replied, properly gruff and stoical, his hand out for the letter.
"I was instructed to wait upon your written reply, sir, and…" McGilliveray said, stumbling for the first time. He had shown none of the usual youthful curiosity one might expect of a fellow boarding one of King George's ships for the first time, not even craning his head about to see how other navies did things, rigged things, but kept his gaze wide-eyed upon Lewrie far more intently than any courtly book of gentlemanly behaviour could advise when dealing with one's superiors, or elders.
"Oi'll see ta him, sor, whilst… I shall, rather…?" Larkin offered, eyes almost crossed in concentration on "proper" speech.
"No, that won't be necessary, Mister Larkin, but thankee. I'll have Mister McGilliveray below to my quarters," Lewrie decided, which unexpected offer of hospitality confused one, but delighted the other.
"Aspinall, this is Mister McGilliveray, off the United States' Armed Ship Thomas Sumter," Lewrie told his cabin-steward as he seated himself behind his desk. "Mister McGilliveray, my man Aspinall, and a better 'aid and comfort' you'll rarely see. Keeps me minding my p's and q's, does Aspinall. Sit, lad, sit."
"Howdje do, sir," Aspinall had cheerfully said, knuckling his forehead.
"Draw us each a ginger beer, would you, Aspinall?" Lewrie bade as he tore open the wax seal of the letter, still faintly soft, still warm to the touch.
"Thank you kindly, sir," McGilliveray said, seated in an upholstered chair before the desk, hat in his lap, and almost squirming with some inner fretfulness, des
pite the half-smile he evinced. His curiosity did extend to looking about the great-cabins, finally. "Hello!"
Lewrie looked up to see Toulon, who had leaped atop the desk in curiosity of his own, perching himself on the very edge of the desk to crane his neck forward and bob, to study the newcomer.
"That's Toulon," Lewrie had told him. "Where I got him in '93 when he was a kitten. He was just about as huge as disaster, so that's how he got his name. He's almost out-grown his clumsiness, but he can still surprise you."
"He's a big'un, sure enough, sir," the lad said, cautiously petting the ram-cat, ruffling the fur under Toulon's intricately plaited sennet-work collar with the brass disk hung from it. "As big as a bobcat nigh twenty pounds or so, sir?"
Sure enough, Toulon "surprised," stretching too far in his bliss and diving nose-first to the deck. To make it less embarrassing, Toulon leaped into the boy's lap, as if that was what he intended, all along.
Lewrie unfolded the pages of his letter and read the, first lines or so, then "whuffed" in alarm. Despite any misgivings or forebodings Capt. McGilliveray might feel, the boy's uncle had determined to reveal the facts of his parentage to the lad. He had blabbed all!
"Ah, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Peel had cheerfully called out, emerging from his dog-box cabin. "A visitor, have you?"
"No one to arouse your interest, Mister Peel," Lewrie had almost snapped, regretting such a curt dismissal at once. Not for Peel's sake, but for how lightly he might esteem the lad. "Pray take a turn on deck, Mister Peel. I've a letter from Captain McGilliveray of Sumter."
"Very well, sir," Peel had responded, sounding intrigued as well as a tad miffed to be shooed out, as he departed.
McGilliveray had thought it odd for his kinsman to turn up with a wife and a son, especially a pale-skinned and blue-eyed infant so very unlike himself. They had stayed but briefly in Charleston after the Revolution had ended, since his "bride," Soft Rabbit, could never gain entree into cultured society, even if she could have adapted to civilised dress-or shoes!-or could have learned to speak fluent English. It was a Muskogee marriage, after all, as informal as that of a Black city couple "jumping the broomstick" in the slave quarters.
Desmond and Soft Rabbit had resided with the boy's grandfather, Robert, at his plantation-cum-trading post on the edge of "civilisation far up the Savannah River, and no circuit-riding parson had made it any more formal. From what Capt. McGilliveray had discovered during their brief visit, during a later trip to "Uncle Robert's," he thought their marriage one more of convenience than a love match, as if Desmond felt he'd had to "do the right thing" by her after her "exploitation" by an English sailor-adventurer… for the good of his tribe and clan name. And Soft Rabbit had acquiesced, since the babe needed a father, and she needed support that a low-status former slave could not get in a proud clan huti among the Muskogee.
Capt. McGilliveray had gently railed against his kinsman, deeming him "a stiff-necked prig who had taken upon himself the Burden and Duty to atone for White callousness." Desmond did need someone to cook and clean, sew his clothes, and service his rare bouts of prim desires. The boy was Desmond's "experiment." He was half-White and deserved the same chance his putative "stepfather" had had, to gain an education so he could function in the White world if he so chose, with a solid grounding in Muskogee lore and trailcraft should he choose that life. At best, perhaps, the lad could find a place in the family "over-mountain" Indian trade, a symbolic bridge to Desmond's vaunting dreams of a "partially" civilised Muskogee-Seminolee-Cherokee-Chickasaw-Choctaw-Apalachee race co-existing at the borders of the United States, like the Iroquois League, as the semi-barbaric German and Gallic tribes had co-existed with ancient Rome; as the various Hindoo tribes served a burgeoning British Empire in India. A project, but never a beloved son; a comforting worker, but never a "goody" wife, alas.
"Sadly, the Smallpox put paid to those plans," Capt. McGilliveray had written. "Desmond and Soft Rabbit were carried off, and kindly old Uncle Robert quite enervated, to the point that the lad was brought to us in Charleston by Desmond's youngest brother, Iain, and an older Muskogee nursemaid when the lad was three, and became my ward, whereupon he did receive the best of everything we McGilliverays could bestow on one of our own, and young Desmond's connexions with his Indian nature were effectively severed. Curious as the lad seemed anent his antecedents, I must confess that I can recall no true Fondness beyond his mother. Toddler that he was when he came to us, he held no particular air of Grief for his late Stepfather, even when considering how Stoic our Indians comport themselves. So, when I, at last, informed the lad of the identity of his actual Father, I-thankfully-discerned not a great Disappointment on his part, nor did Desmond evince any sudden Surprise. I suspect that the old Muskogee nursemaid, who stayed with us 'til her Passing in '93, was present when you and Desmond took part in your Adventures, and imparted to him the Truth…"
Meddlin' fool! Lewrie had thought at that moment; There's whole regiments o ' lads, never knew who quickened 'em, but still prospered Silence might've been kinder. He was settled in his mind as an orphan… with a silver spoon, and all. Now… Christ!
"Imagine my Astonishment, two evenings past, sir, when your comments made me put two and two together!" Capt. McGilliveray had penned further. "The utter Coincidence, and the odds against such! I only knew what little Desmond had related to me, and that, long ago anent your identity, or Character, and must confess that I knew nothing about you other than your most recent Success off Guadeloupe. Enquiries made ashore, though, sir, quickly satisfied my Curiosity as to the Illustrious Name you have gained in the Royal Navy, and the many Successes you have had against your King's foes; Fame which I was quick to pass on to young Desmond, who, enflamed by his own Eager Curiosity, made enquiries ashore whilst on his errands among Midshipmen, Warrants, and those few Officers who might deign to converse with him; such revelations assured him that he is the Scion of a most capable and honourable Gentleman…"
Only heard the good parts, Lewrie had silently thought, squirming in sudden dread; Wait'll the other shoe drops. So, now what? They passin' him onto me? I'm t'be his Daddy, of a sudden? Dear God, I'm to set him an example?
Lewrie had laid the letter aside, and looked up to see his "son" stroking Toulon, who was now all but cradled in the crook of one arm, belly exposed and paws in the air, with his head laid back in rapture to be getting such diligent attention. The lad looked him in the eyes and gulped, near to shying should Lewrie speak a single callous word.
"Well, well," Lewrie finally said, after clearing his throat. "It would appear that we're… kin, young sir. Now, what the bloody Hell do we make of that?"
"Don't… don't know, sir," Desmond meekly said, with a gulp-
"I never meant t'leave your mother… leave Soft Rabbit, but," Lewrie began, stammering a tad. "Your father,…Desmond, 'twas him, said it would be best. That he'd see to her, after I sailed away. I was wounded. Touch and go that I'd live, for a while, there, anyway, so… it seemed best, all round. Couldn't have taken her to London, any more than Desmond could have settled her in Charleston."
"Was she really a princess, like he said, sir?" Desmond asked, in almost a desperate pleading. "A Cherokee princess?" Lewrie sat up with a start, smothering the wince he felt.
"A captured Cherokee princess," he finally lied, unable to dis-abuse all the lad's callow assumptions, those sticking points to which his very self clung. "Man-Killer, the Great Warrior of your father's White Wind clan, raided far north and took her. Brought her back for a valuable slave. Quite a coup, they thought. She wasn't visiting… the Muskogee said the T'se-luki weren't the real People, not as good as them. Couldn't even talk right, the Cherokee, they told me."
"But they let you marry her, even so, sir?" Desmond pressed at him, snuggling Toulon to him as if for comfort. "Being an outsider, and all, I meant. Was it…?"
"She served me supper, one night," Lewrie told him, reminiscing almost happily, despite the awkward circumstances, "and I was l
ost in a trice. Unmarried Muskogee girls may choose whom they wish, and we met later down at the lake… we talked, or tried to, and… she was so very fetching and handsome, so slim and wee, really. Very sweet and gentle a girl… and smart as paint, too, quick to learn things! Uhm…"
Randy as a stoat? Lewrie had thought; do I dare tell him that?
"Yet you never thought to write her, or look for her, once the war ended, sir? If you loved her as much as she…?"
"I'd barely made my lieutenantcy, and the Royal Navy distrusts junior officers who marry," Lewrie extemporised, squirming in embarassment. "We're to make Commander first, then marry some retired admiral's proper daughter. Does she come with acres attached, that's even better, d'ye see, young sir? Besides, they slung me ashore in London on half-pay, then shipped me halfway round the world to India and the Chinese coast for nigh on three years. By then, I'd met my Caroline."
"The lady on the bulkhead, sir? She's very pretty. Do you have… children, dare I ask, sir?" Desmond shyly probed.
"Three… two boys and a daughter," Lewrie said, crossing his fingers over how long that situation might continue. "And a ward, to boot. A genteel French girl, well… young woman, by now, whose kin were slain at Toulon. Promised a dying French officer I knew from the Revolution that I'd see for his cousin Sophie. You'd like her I'll wager. Unless, of course, you have a special young miss dear to your heart back in Charleston?" Lewrie thought to tease, to finagle more probing, and upsetting, questions.
"Oh… none particular, yet, sir," the lad actually blushed, before turning a touch gloomy. "Even as a McGilliveray, d'you see… We're a long-settled and respectable family, and all, but…"
"But people still think you not quite… the ton? Because…"
The lad merely bobbed his head, as if in shame, seemingly more intent on nuzzling Toulon to his chin; which was just heavenly to the ram-cat.
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