"Uhm, ah…" Langlie began to agree, then thought better of it. His mouth worked, as if trying to bite his tongue, or stifle a titter of amusement-the sort of laugh that would never do his career or his professional relationship any good.
"Uhm, yayss, quite," Lewrie chuckled, archly sarcastic over his own repute. "You wish to continue corresponding?"
"I do, sir."
"And I'm to assume that Sophie is of the same mind? Despite the distance involved?" Lewrie asked. "And the temptations of local beaus?"
"I may only gather… ah, assume, at present, sir, that she is not averse to receiving my letters," Langlie stammered.
"Many a slip, 'twixt the crouch and the leap," Lewrie allowed, slapping his hands together behind his back and gazing aloft. "Well then, since you ain't poxed, drunk on duty, breakin' out in purplish spots, and can eat with a knife and fork, Mister Langlie… I'll let this stand. Just don't do anything momentous at long distance, d'ye hear me? God knows how long it'll be before we're back home again, and God only knows what home there'll be to welcome you, if there is a home at all."
"Thank you, sir! Thank you so…!" Langlie cried.
"Carry on, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie insisted, shooing him away. "Carry on."
"Very good, sir," he said, doffing his hat eagerly, clumsily, rapturously aquiver, and his face a perfect portrait of bliss.
"You may not thank me, later, d'ye know, sir," Lewrie cautioned. "The wife now despises the Navy worse than God despises the French, if such a thing is possible, and that'll put you right in the middle of it, right in the line of fire, d'ye see? You're asking for trouble, Mister Langlie."
"I'll bear the risk, sir… gladly," the young officer vowed.
"Then you're an idiot, God help you. Women, sir! Mine arse on a band-box!" Lewrie snorted. "Oh, go shove on a rope or something, sir, do! Shoo! And quit that bloody… beaming!"
"Aye aye, sir!" Langlie said, doffing his hat, even making a wee bow in congй, absurdly formal aboard ship; and still grinning like the worst Lunatick in Bedlam, but almost back to a professional bearing.
Well, it's his poor arse, Lewrie decided to himself, pacing aft to his quarterdeck; he's been warned.
CHAPTER THIRTY
P uerto Rico, Lewrie thought, eying the landmass that had risen from the sea a little after Dawn Quarters; and the Mona Passage. Now what do we do? North-about Santo Domingo, or run back along the south shore, close in?
Out to the East'rd lay golden isles, the storied cays that had featured in his youth, the Danish Virgins and below them the beads-on-a-necklace of the Leewards, each a little gem, and this morning almost presaged by how the sea glittered gold, lapis, and sun-silvered.
Are they poxed, too? he asked himself; now it's Fever Season is there a safe lee shore anywhere in the West Indies?
Lewrie hung in the larboard mizen shrouds, just at the beginning of the cat-harpings, coat, hat, and neck-stock off, and savouring a cool morning breeze, the scent of salt and iodine, and a faint fishy tang of shorelines up to the Nor'east. He lowered his telescope and gazed down and in-board to Proteus's gangways and gun-deck, where sailors crowded round in untidy knots, some still licking their chops after a breakfast remnant, as they formed up by gun-crews a bit before the call was piped for drill on the artillery.
For a miraculous change, they looked healthy and fit again, the last ravages of the fevers left astern and ashore. There were formerly half-dead men who now strode about and joshed with their fellows; there were those who had never been infected, no matter how often they'd gone ashore or slept on deck for coolness when anchored; there were the local lads who might have suffered malaria or the Yellow Jack when babies and now were immune, as was he.
With a word, Lewrie could order the ship to beat up through the Mona Passage, round the eastern tip of Hispaniola, and re-enter her old patrol grounds to the north… with the fresh Nor'east Trades blowing so strong that feverish miasmas would always lie alee, and no one else might fall ill.
With a word, he could put Proteus about, turn his back on those golden isles of the Leewards and the Virgins (though he had a yen for a glimpse of them once more) and then the Trades would brush across the island of Hispaniola, wafting God only knew what nastiness right down on them. At sea, with the deck and bulwark railings pitching and tossing, they could not employ Mr. Durant's tar-and-citron pots to counteract the foul miasmas that brought disease with sweet ones. Surely some who had not yet succumbed ran the risk of another exposure; those debilitated the first time might not survive a second.
Lewrie slowly collapsed the tubes of his telescope, each click of the tubes seating a step towards a decision. He turned his body to peer forward, past the spread of the main and fore courses, and the upthrust bow sprit and jib-boom, and the anchor cat-heads. A day more on this course to the Sou'east would take Proteus deep into the waters between Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, where privateers and smugglers were two-a-penny during the Revolution in his "green" days.
Though some could call it poaching, Lewrie told himself with a wry grin. The Royal Navy squadrons based out of English Harbour, down at Antigua, prowled those seas when they could spare vessels from the blockade oн troublesome Guadeloupe, whilst he and his frigate were beholden to Kingston and the West Indies Station.
Ostensibly, every British warship answered to Admiral Parker, and his headquarters at Kingston, from the Bahama Banks to Trinidad, from the Antilles to the shoal waters of the Spanish possessions far to the west, such as New Spain and the Isthmus of Panama, so… would trolling a touch more East'rd really be poaching? It could be excused… couldn't it?
The Leewards were a tempting lure, and not just for him alone. The rare Dutch merchant ships still at sea would try to succour their colonies; if they threaded past the blockade in European waters, that's where they would first strike the West Indies. The supposedly neutral Danes, and those pesky Swedes, would be up to their old games of shipping contraband goods and arms, turning a blind eye to ships from belligerent nations in their harbours; merchantmen, privateers, and the odd ship of war that came calling. American vessels, despite the undeclared war against France, still traded with the Danes, the Dutch, and the Spanish… and probably with the French isles, as well, for they were a mercenary lot for all their protestations, and losses to French privateers.
Puerto Rico, well in sight now, and the Danish Virgins would be a grand place for smugglers and contrabanders to break their passages, refit and resupply, perhaps take a little joy of shore liberty before their long jogs home, or put in for shelter from storm winds in those marvelous natural harbours and bays that yawned so emptily… and so covertly, the perfect hidey-holes for nefarious doings.
With the telescope now shortened and safely slung over his left shoulder, Lewrie faced the shrouds and took several cautious steps upward on the ratlines, up where the futtock shrouds of the mizen top intersected the side-stays, until the futtocks almost brushed his bared scalp; where a man would have to make a choice… either take the seamanly ascent out-board by hanging from the futtock shrouds, or confess his lubberliness and snake between to follow the side-stays' easier "ladder" to the mizen top platform, through the lubber's hole.
The arms they'd recovered… Yankee-made arms.
American ships trading along the Spanish Main, at Tampico, Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Caracas, and Port-Of-Spain, the Dutch isles of Curacao would most-like take the most direct route back North, using the Mona or the Windward Passage. Or they could go round-about, skirting the lee side of the Antilles.
What had that Captain Wilder of Bantam, and Kershaw of the U.S.S. Hancock frigate, told him… that they would make a rendezvous point to form American convoys in the lee of St. Kitts? As far to the East'rd, as well up to windward of the Trades as possible, leaving half an ocean of sea-room alee, 'til entering the Old Bahama Channel, or passing west of New Providence yet east of Andros through the Bahamas on theirway home. Then, should they meet contrary winds, they wouldn't end up wrecked on a lee
shore.
Lewrie realised that a guilty Yankee trader could sell all the arms and munitions he wished, pick up an innocent cargo for the return voyage, and then lumber along in convoy with other ships, protected by the guns of his spanking-new and uncurious navy!
Laughin' all the way, Lewrie sourly thought; Bugger it, it ain't like we 're chained like a guard dog. We 're not even on a long leash!
The staff-captain's written orders, when they'd come aboard at last, had pretty-much instructed him to toddle off and make a nuisance of himself 'til Hell froze over… on their enemies, for a change. He had an open-ended, roving brief to chase his own tail if of a mind, in any body of water under Admiral Parker's writ-just as long as Proteus was not "in sight" to plague his seniors' sensitive humours.
Lewrie squirmed about, carefully shifting feet and hand-holds, to peer Nor'westerly. Hispaniola was under the horizon, Saint Dominque most likely an ocean of gore by now, as old grudges were avenged upon the losers, and Spanish Santo Domingo could most likely now be aflame, as L'Ouverture led his rag-tag armies over the border to "liberate" all the island. Santo Domingo had never amounted to much, really. It was the windward end of Hispaniola, too dryed by the Trades for plantation agriculture, and bereft of mineral wealth. There were, his advisories had informed him, vast ranches raising cattle, pigs, and goats, enough grains grown for domestic use but little for export, and most of that land but sparsely populated, its grandees rather shabby in the main, and most of its people and slaves living hand-to-mouth. Boucanieros, those who cooked, salted, and jerkied meat along the coast, were mostly leftover pirates' descendants, still living and dressing in skins off their goats. Barbecana, their product was; two words introduced into English as "buccaneers," and outdoor roasting parties becoming popular in the United States, Cashman had told him… "barbecues."
Well, that problem, as far as Proteus was concerned, was over and done with, for now; a trifle to be isolated and left to fester or expire on its own, and the small tenders, cutters, and schooners of the West Indies Squadron would manage that chore. To turn North and race down either the north or south shore would probably be fruitless.
He turned again, just as carefully, to face forrud, taking one hand to swipe his unruly hair back into a brief semblance of neatness.
"Nuisance they wish, then it's a nuisance they'll get," Lewrie whispered to himself under the flutter-drum of the winds, and suddenly feeling much happier. "Just like Goodyer's Pig, 'never well, but when in mischief!" he chuckled.
In his mind's eye, he could already see the abyssal royal-blue seas of the Virgins and the Leewards, could almost feel the thuds and thumps up through the stays to his fingers and boot soles of a vessel crossing those "square" waves that could blow up on brisk days, where the chop could be four feet high, with barely six feet between crests… and the rocky-gold islets and cays breezed past in constant parade, their beaches the palest new parchment colour and the shoals the palest glass green.
The steep slopes, the palms and palmettoes, the rounded pastures and cane fields, the "balds" with the pretty, pastel windmills slowly rotating and waving in greeting… drawing him on…
He closed his eyes, drew a deep, pleasing breath of ocean scent, and nodded as he made his decision. If nothing else, it would be like a homecoming.
And, did it prove fruitless, or he got caught poaching, a quick run back downwind to his own kennel was possible.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HMS Proteus hauled her wind and bore away Sou'Sou'east to cut below the western tip of Saint Croix, then take an easy, hill-gentled cruise along that island's southern shore in its lee. Bowing to full winds past the eastern end she stood on for fifteen nautical miles before coming about to starboard tack, to clear the shoals of the Lang's Bank, then headed Nor'west in deep water, roughly aimed for the Salt Island Passage into Sir Francis Drake's Channel. The winds were a tad perverse, though, backing a point, so by dusk she was nearer the small and rocky isles of Norman and Peter Island, where she fetched-to for the night just before full sunset. Cocked up to the night winds as she was, she would make a slow and quiet sternway back out to deep and safe waters to the Sou'west.
The skies were clear and strewn with stars, the winds soughing softly, and the motion of her hull easy, a slow and stately rocking to and fro, the slightest measured pitch and toss as the dark, abandoned bulks of slightly larger Peter Island, and lower Norman Island, wafted rightward off the larboard bows.
It was such a rare event that some of the hands begged for line and hooks, using salt-junk as bait, and soon were hauling up catch after catch, whooping with delight to land fish without battering them to bloody rags whilst the ship was underway. Bonito, red snapper, even a small shark came thrashing up over the bulwark's, and their new Black cook, Gideon, called for more firewood and lit off the grills, expertly gutting, heading, and slicing them into steaks, pausing only to spit tobacco juice from his ever-present quid as he sprinkled salt, pepper, and lime juice over the sizzling slabs. Though there was salt-pork in the steep-tubs already, the fish would augment the usual rations quite nicely, he assured everyone, easily enlisting help among the crew.
"Gon' eat good, boys!" Gideon boasted. "De fish, he eat sweet! What de white folk sometime call 'surf an' turf,' dey have beef wif a fish? Woll, we havin' 'surf an' styl' Mo' firewood, heah! Cut me a mess o' dose lemons, too, Noble! Mistah Morley, ya done wif 'at pompano fo' de cap'um's table? Woll, hand dem steaks heah, fo' he perish o' de hungries!"
Lewrie's nostrils twitched and his stomach rumbled with anticipation as the heady fumes flowed aft from the galley funnel. A sweet dark whiff of rum on the wind caught his senses, as well. The senior hands and mates always found a way to cache smuggled rum. It appeared that some of it was being used to flavour the fish. His nose wrinkled as he caught the other scent, the musk-sweet and oily reek of Mr. Durant's miasma pots along the windward side, set in hollows delved into the tubs of sand kept for gun crews' traction, firefighting, and deck scrubbing.
"We'll look as lit up as a whaler with her try-pots goin'," he groused to Lt. Langlie, as he watched Durant and Hodson proceed aft in dodderers' crouches, bent over with prepared pots and burning punks in their hands. "So much for anonymity… or hiding our presence."
"Not that we've seen anything more than fishing boats and local traders as of yet, sir," Langlie counseled. " Fredericksted Harbour on the west end is little used according to Mister Winwood, and Christiansted on Saint Croix 's north shore is shallow and rocky. The only good commercial entrepфt is Charlotte Amalie, yonder on Saint Thomas, so-"
"Ah-moll-yah," Lewrie corrected. "The locals say Ah-moll-yah, not Am-ah-lee, Mister Langlie. Aye, it was a right pirate's hole, in the old days. Smugglers, privateers, slavers… only saw it from off shore, but perhaps tomorrow. I'm told it's a pretty little town. We aren't at war with Denmark. We might even request a pilot and anchor for a day and night. Our old Sailing Master once told me that above the town, on the island's spine, there's a vista where one may sit and look east, all the way down Drake's Channel… Drake's Seat. Said he sat up there himself, like a king on his throne, the old buccaneer. I'd rather like t'do that, myself. See all the isles, all the way out to Virgin Gorda and Anegada… prettiest view in the whole Caribbean, I've heard tell. What Heaven must seem, for sailors."
"For those few of us who'll be admitted through the Pearly Gate, sir," Langlie softly joshed, massaging his middle as his stomach emitted a genteel growling. In the dark, Lewrie could feel him wince at his unthinking words, having put his foot in it again.
"More than you'd imagine, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said, after a brief pause and a short snort of amusement; mostly at Langlie's wary shadow-dancing around him. "I've always held that sailors ain't great sinners, in the main. Their needs and wants are simple and their sins are minor and venal… not outright wicked or cruel. Their lives and livelihoods are too precarious, and the sea's too big for them to go off tyrannical or murderous. Oceans keep the fear o' God on 'em
, and keep 'em looking over their shoulders. Superstition, perhaps; fear of the Lord, perhaps, as well. Who knows? There lies your true evil, sir, your true wickedness," Lewrie concluded, pointing at the faint loom of light, roughly where Charlotte Amalie lay, on the Nor'west horizon.
"So… shore's the trouble, sir? And what little time a tarpaulin man spends there is…?" Langlie puzzled out.
"Respite, sir," Lewrie snickered, mocking his own pretensions to philosophy. "Respite." And Langlie chuckled with him, easier and honestly this time.
"The stink-pots may help, sir," Langlie said of a sudden, as an almost companionable silence extended perhaps a bit too long. "With the ship lit up like a whaler as you said, who'd imagine we're a ship of war? Whales might be taken in these waters… if they swim through the Turk's Passage a bit north and west of here, as you told me, sir."
"Accidental… camouflage, as the French would say?"
"Pray God it's a fortuitous choice, Captain," Langlie answered, in all seriousness.
" 'Scuse me, Cap'um… Mister Langlie, sir," Aspinall said as he appeared at their side on the quarterdeck, "but that Gideon fella's got yer supper ready. Big slab o' pompano, pease puddin', boiled tatties, and some o' that cornmeal sweet bread o' his, and Toulon 's goin' nigh frantic t'claw the dish cover off. Best come quick, beggin' yer pardon… else he'll have it all."
"There wasn't a portion for him?" Lewrie hooted with mirth.
"Aye, there was, sir, and not a morsel left. Gone quicker'n a wink, and still lustin' after yours," Aspinall warned him.
"It appears I must go below or go hungry, Mister Langlie. Do you have a good supper of your own."
"Aye, sir. Goodnight. And we'll see what fortune the morning brings," Langlie said, doffing his hat.
"Surely, it'll be good, Mister Langlie," Lewrie paused to say, returning the salute, "since we've already managed the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes!"
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