"You there?" Pelham gravelled of a sudden, head now well a'list and one eye screwed shut. "Yer ship'z… hic!… there, sir? Damn my eyes, you been coll-… collab-… at sea with the Yankees, 'spite my tellin' ye…?"
Uh oh, Lewrie thought; should've let him slip under the table, and kept my mouth shut!
"God damn my eyes, you bloody… WHAT?" Pelham screeched as he shot to his feet. "Mis'rable idiot bastard, meddlin'…!"
Lewrie swung his leg off the desk as Pelham staggered forward, hands "clawed" as if wishing to strangle him, but, thankfully, he did not get that far; couldn't in point of fact, for Toulon, proudly bound aft toward his lair under the starboard-side settee, dragging his oversized, wide-brimmed, befeathered, and awkward "kill," overhauled Pelham's stumbling, clumping feet.
Which near-collision raised an outraged howl from the ram-cat; which howl seemed to levitate the distinguished Pelham for a startled second; which levitation made Pelham come down attempting to avoid the cat, or his costly new "sportin' hat" (it was hard to judge which), and reel and flail about for what little balance was left to him; which attempt looked like a marriage of an impromptu Irish Jig, a folk dance involving sombreros reported among the mestizo peoples of the Spanish New World, and the frantic whirlings of mystic Muslim dervishes in the Holy Land; which gay prancing brought forth an accompanying outburst in what might be mistaken for an Unknown Tongue, sounding hellish-like "Eeh too-ah gaah, shit hic! arr-eehf the last syllables a wail that ascended the musical scale as Mr. Pelham snagged a booted toe in a ring-bolt mid his descent and landed spraddle-legged on his rump with a gay thud.
"Rrowwr!" Toulon carped from his lair, his kill abandoned.
"Oww-hunngh!" was Pelham's response, quickly followed by a "Hhrackk!" quickly followed by the remains of his breakfast, dinner most-like his supper of the evening before, and about half a gallon of "punch" to boot. Pelham's "casting his accounts to Neptune" didn't do his sickly green waist-coat, buff breeches, or corduroy spatterdashes a bit of good, either.
"Now I understand why they call 'em spatterdashes," Peel said looking like to puke himself, with a pocket handkerchief pressed close to his nose and mouth. "God in Heaven, what's he been eating?"
Mr. Pelham caught a whiff of it, himself, and cast up another flood, just before his eyes crossed, his face went pasty, and he fell insensible to the deck on his right side.
"Pelham a Mason?" Lewrie enquired, quickly masking his own nose.
"Most-like," Peel mumbled through his handkerchief. "Most rich and titled men are. Why?"
"Just wonderin' if what he shouted was some secret language," Lewrie answered, shrugging. "Well. Shouldn't someone help him up, or… something?"
"Damned if it'll be me," Peel announced. " 'Twas your punch done him in. You do it."
"Aspinall?" Lewrie shouted toward the gun-deck. "Sentry? Pass word for my cabin servant… and Mister Durant, the Surgeon's Mate, as well. Carryin' board, and the loblolly boys," he instructed the Marine who popped his head through the forrud bulkhead door. "Mops, brooms… and lots and lots o seawater." To himself he muttered, "May have to rig a wash-deck pump, never can tell."
" 'E looks dead," Peel observed.
"No, he'll only wish he was, when he comes round," Lewrie pooh-poohed. "God's sake, let's go on deck for some air! And when knacky little Mister Pelham can sit up, again, I want t'ask him about how he got to Saint Domingue. Don't care how disguised and careful he said he was, there's something about that knockabout tradin' vessel he used, bothers me. Don't know why, but…"
"Sounded fishy to me, too," Peel allowed as they made a rapid way aft to Lewrie's private and narrow ladder to the after quarterdeck. "Don't trust his trade-craft, the bloody… amateur. L'Ouverture and Rigaud, Hedouville… Sonthonax and Laveaux… those lesser generals like Dessalines and Christophe, they all have agents in the opposing camps. Doubt you could walk from one side of the street to the other without bumping into three or four, and a half-dozen more spies scampering off to report on your ev'ry fart and scratch."
"You think Pelham was gulled?" Lewrie asked, once they reached the brisk fresh air by the taff-rails and flag lockers, under the taut-rigged canvas awnings that now spanned the quarterdeck.
"My dear Captain Lewrie, I am almost certain of it!" Peel said with a sneer. "That damned fool, callow… boy!… let himself get used by just about everyone in power on the island, and showed 'em all just how perfidious are our dealings. After him, all our hopes for a British Saint Domingue are completely dashed. And Pelham did it, all by his little self, by being just too clever by half!"
"Well," Lewrie said at last. "There lies the packet brig over yonder. Four to six weeks from now, your account could arrive beside his. I'll have my portable writing desk fetched up… do you decide you might need it, hmm?"
"Might fetch up Pelham's hat, too, while you're at it," Mr. Peel said with a knowing smile. "Your cat can have the feathers, for they ain't dyed. Turkey, eagle, and pelican plumes, mostly. But the hat dye might make him sick. Or as mad as a hatter."
"Good suggestion, Mister Peel," Lewrie said with a bow of gratitude. "And here, I didn't think you cared!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lt. Jules Hainaut had barely gotten his prize schooner tied up alongside a stone quay in the harbour of Basse-Terre when the reply to his urgent flag signals came from Pointe-a-Pitre, the other harbour to the east. The Vieux Fort semaphore tower had signalled that his hoists would be relayed to Capt. Choundas as Mohican and Chippewa had beaten a hobby-horsing way inshore. Despite the hundreds of things required of him to secure both prizes, see to the surviving crews, and turn the vessels over to the local court officials, there was no gainsaying the wax-sealed letter's pithy instruction when it came aboard stained with ammoniacal horse-sweat, and borne by an equally sweated despatch rider.
"Come to me, quickly.1" the single sheet of paper said.
Hainaut groaned with weary misery at what strenuous effort that simple directive implied. Against the winds, a despatch boat couldn't fetch Pointe-a-Pitre 'til mid-afternoon next. The quickest way was by horseback, the only road a rain-gullied sand-and-shell track rutted by cart-wheels. Thirty-two of those newfangled kilometres, at least eight hours at a trot or canter, supposing a change of horses at Capesterre or Ste. Marie was available!
Hainaut would be damned if he'd do it at a gallop all the way, Guillaume Choundas's well-feared wrath notwithstanding. Was he not a warship captain in all but name, with all the duty and responsibility that that implied? Oh, he'd make a great show of leaving with the utmost despatch… but he thought a brief sit-down supper somewhere on the way could be fitted in, explained by the plea of Stern Duty to his hapless matelots, and the safeguarding of the prizes… which prizes were rare and dearly earned money in Le Hideux's purse, too, after all. Surely that earned Hainaut an extra, un-begrudged hour!
"Timmonier, I am ordered to report to Capitaine Choundas, quick as I may. You are in charge until I return!" Hainaut shouted with the proper seeming haste and clattered down the gangplank in the uniform he stood up in, bawling at the despatch rider for a fast mount.
" Vous imposteur petit" the petty officer growled to himself as soon as Lt. Hainaut was lost in the dockside throng ashore. "Go lick your ugly master's arse! Et va te faire foutre" he muttered, as he leaned over the side to hock up a hefty and derisive gob of phlegm.
"You are certain it was Proteus" Guillaume Choundas rasped in the ghoulishly unflattering light of four finger-thick candles mounted in a single stand on the side of his ornate desk. "You are certain it was that diable Lewrie?"
"There is no doubt of it, m'sieur" Jules Hainaut replied with the properly dramatic gravity, displaying grim assuredness, and a hint of residual anger. "Hand-in-glove with two americain men of war. It was Proteus in the centre, with one each in her van and rear. Against such overwhelming force, I regret there was nothing I could do with my two barely armed and undermanned prizes to aid Lieutenant Pelletier," Hainaut gravely explained, lay
ing out the disastrous events as best he had observed them 'til he had sailed the action far aft and under the horizon.
Hainaut had been most careful to swath his clothing at the inn where he had dined (rather well in point of fact) so there would be no betraying food stains upon his person; but from the moment he had come to a dust-cloud halt from his last galloped leg of the journey (begun at the five-kilometre post outside town to look properly winded and damp with horse-sweat) Capt. Choundas had peered so closely at him that he felt as if he were under examination with a magnifying glass, so sharp, glittery, and icily dubious was Choundas's remaining good eye on him, so high-nosed and aloof did his master regard him.
"And all three ships flew their largest battle flags," Choundas pressed. Even though Hainaut had arrived shortly after midnight, and the interrogation had been going on for more than an hour, Choundas was dressed in his best gilt-laced uniform, his neck-stock done up and all his waist-coat buttons snugly buttoned. As was his master's mind as lucid and penetrating as ever.
"They did, m'sieur," Hainaut answered with an affirmative nod even if he hadn't been close enough to the action to espy such details and he strove to keep his face bland, but not too bland; with no owl-eyed staring, or too much rapid blinking to put the lie to his statement. Hainaut had seen Choundas conduct harsher interrogations before, and had even been instructed in the tell-tale frailties of men and women determined to bluff their way out.
"Ahum" was Choundas's response to that, taking time to swivel to face his detestable little clerk, de Gougne, who pointedly made an additional note of Hainaut's observation at his master's cue.
No wine, Hainaut thought in worry; dry work, but no wine in the offing. How much trouble am I in? What, kill the bearer of bad news?
In Hainaut's experience of Choundas's little "chats" with those he would expose and condemn, wine was always available to those of too much self-possession, none for the visibly nervous until they had lied their way into a corner. Wine came first for Choundas, then was given to the shaky victim with profuse apologies, as if they had survived the experience-followed by the too-casual "just a matter or two more, Citizen (or Citizenness)" to dis-arm before the verbal blow that struck below the heart. Hainaut worried (and not for the first time) exactly where he stood with Guillaume Choundas this night.
The man had aged, Hainaut noted, in the few weeks since his ship had sailed on her raiding cruise. That arc of Choundas's face he still exposed to the world was much more serely pruned than when he'd wished them all bonne chance; his flesh was more collapsed upon the bones and now of a sickly, pasty cast, as if he had turned hermit, not venturing outside his headquarters unless required, thinned by poor victuals, or the loss of interest in mere food in the face of all his cares and frustrations.
Hainaut almost exposed himself with a faint shudder of dread as he suddenly realised that the vaunted, clever, and capable ogre was not going to succeed this time. Guillaume Choundas was going to fail-, and likely drag him down with him when he went! More so than ever, Hainaut now had to be free of him.
"Your prizes safely made harbour, though, Hainaut? No damage?" Choundas demanded, too solicitous of a sudden for credence, as if they didn't matter in the slightest.
"Yes, m'sieur" Hainaut answered, feigning gruffness, as if he were immune to the temptation of prize-money, too. "Two fine schooners belonging to the same 'Amis' trading company. Both are about, uhm… thirty metres, and very fast, with promising cargoes of dyewood, coffee, cotton, rough wines and brandies, cocoa, kegs of limes and lemons, cocoanuts, sugar and molasses, and tons of cigaros or plug tobacco. In excellent condition, both of them. Lightly armed of course, but stiff and beamy enough to accept a decent battery. Six-pounders would be best, if any are available, m'sieur. Cannon of four-pounder measurement if not, to match their own armament. Pardon, but they would make excellent replacements for those we lost."
Choundas stared at him, disconcertingly unblinking for a long time, as if turned to stone by Hainaut's callow presumptions to offer "tarry-handed" nautical advice to him.
"Of course, in their present condition, they could make a fast passage back to France with their cargoes," Hainaut spoke up, wilting under that obsidian gaze, hating himself for making self-deprecating gestures, for altering his confident voice nigh to apologetic wheedling. "Whatever you decide, m'sieur."
"Indeed," Choundas intoned, with the faintest, crudest lift at the exposed corner of his ravaged mouth. "Well, then. You have ridden hard and far, Hainaut, and must be desperately hungry and thirsty, no?"
"Ready to fight a wolf for the bones, m'sieur, and so dry that I could drink a river!" Hainaut exclaimed with plausible eagerness. "My poor arse… it has been too long since I even sat a horse. Once in bed, I fear I'll sleep face-down, and need a sitting pillow for a week hence! Uhm… what should I do in the morning, m'sieur? Ride back to Basse-Terre to deal with your prizes? Sail back, preferably. There is my crew to see to…"
"One last little matter, Hainaut," Choundas interrupted, almost as an afterthought, which beguilingly coo-some tone to his voice froze Hainaut's innards, "and then I will let you refresh yourself."
"Of course, m'sieur" Hainaut replied, sinking back down onto his chair with his knees ready to buckle.
"Did Lewrie and the Americans," Choundas posed, leaning back in his own chair and toying with a loosely folded sheet of paper with his left hand, "seem as if they lay in wait for you? Dash straightaway for our ships? Could you see any sort of light or signal which might have drawn them to Lieutenants Houdon and Pelletier and their prizes?"
"All but the compass binnacle lights had been ordered doused m'sieur" Hainaut answered, unable to avoid looking perplexed by such a question. "They did steer directly for the two larger groups, just as soon as they heaved up in view, yes, now that you mention it. But that was near dawn, and even the binnacles had been snuffed by then. It is possible that they kept mast-head lookouts aloft after dark, or sent theirs aloft earlier than ours, m'sieur. But I did not get the impression that they lay in wait for us. It was an unfortunate thing that we were spotted by the lead ship in their patrol line furthest to the Eastward, but… did they operate together to intercept any ships returning to Guadeloupe, they surely would have known to search as far to windward as possible."
"Such a fortuitous… coincidence, though, do you not believe, Jules? Hein? Following the first inexplicable fortunate coincidence off Basse-Terre, when we lost Le Bouclier and the arms shipment? You do recall that, I presume." Choundas sneered, all arch and Arctic cold. "Or the recent loss of a rich merchantman just off Deshaies not a week ago, when Lewrie and Proteus just happened round Pointe Allegre, just at the instant that a Capitaine Fleury's ship cleared the cape?"
"I was not aware of that loss, m'sieur" Hainaut said, frowning.
"No, I am now certain that you were not, for you had no way of knowing the day, or the hour, of her sailing for home," Choundas told him. "She was betrayed, cher Jules.
"Just as you were betrayed, just as Le Bouclier and Capitaine Desplan were betrayed," Choundas gravelled in a hoarse, rasping voice. "Fleury, and that fat fool Haljewin, are prisoners on Dominica, though at least Fleury had the wit to write me of his taking, of being for a brief time a prisoner aboard Lewrie's frigate. Fleury carefully wrote a veiled account of his ordeal, in a crude but workable cypher known to me. You remember that despicable old salaud who interrogated you when you were captured in the Mediterranean, the wicked Zachariah Twigg, or Simon Silberberg, whatever he called himself?"
"I do, m'sieur" Hainaut gasped for real. "Unfortunately."
"He is here, Hainaut!" Choundas barked, slamming his left hand on the desk-top, and making clerk de Gougne nearly jump out of his skin. "Fleury described a civilian with Lewrie who named himself as a John Gunn, but from the description I conclude was really Twigg's old aide, a British agent named James Peel. Seeking my destruction, just one more time, they have brought Twigg out of retirement and paired him and Lewrie to destroy me a
nd all my works. So far, they succeed, Jules."
"Mon Dieu" Hainaut whispered. "Surely not, you…"
"Not through luck, not through guile or superior numbers, non" Choundas snapped, "but through treachery. Twigg, Peel, and Lewrie are being assisted by a spy, a whole cabal of spies and traitors operating here on Guadeloupe, Jules. Under my very nose. On my own staff, among commissaire Hugues's most trusted people. Under my very roof, hein?"
"Su… surely you cannot suspect…!" Hainaut blustered, awash in sudden fear that his master thought it was he!
"I did, dear Jules," Choundas whispered, as malevolently cruel as a hawk honing beak and talons before tearing its quaking prey into gobbets. "Twigg had you for weeks before exchanging you for British midshipmen. The thought had crossed my mind, understandably so, n'est-ce pas?" Choundas even took a moment to roar with abusive amusement at Hainaut's gulping and blinking torment. "As false as you have played me all these years, you did make me wonder."
"False? M'sieur, really…!" Hainaut flummoxed.
"Don't pretend undying loyalty, Hainaut," Choundas snapped, now thin-lipped and flushed in aspersion. "I am not completely blind, nor am I deaf. You love only yourself, Hainaut. No shame in it, so long as when you dissemble energetic fealty to France you are useful to her… and to me."
"Master, I…"
"Do not even try to swear your undying gratitude, or loyalty." Choundas cautioned.
"While you were at sea, things on Guadeloupe have taken several turns for the worse, or the better, depending," Choundas gloomily said, grimacing with distaste. In the harsh, badly angled candlelight, his face resembled that of a satanic ghoul from folk or children's stories. "It seems that Paris is not happy with our unproductive little war on American trade. Commissaire Hugues has been a thoughtless glutton for money, Hainaut. He's sold privateering commissions throughout the Caribbean, in every Dutch, Danish, and Spanish port, not just to Frenchmen. Asks for an additional share of the proceeds from our local privateers, and uses his Prize Court to inflate the value of the captures for those who go along with him, and for his own gain. Naturellement, that makes for outright piracy preying on our allies, too, and threatens to upset what coalition the Directory has been able to muster against the hated British! It took me some time to discover all of this, but-"
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