The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Ready on the gun deck, sir," Fowles reported from the waist.

  "Mister Fowles, we'll bear off and give her starboard, then be ready with your larboard battery, quick as you can, at close range."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Fowles replied quizzically, taking off his hat to scratch his grizzled head so hard his "tarry" queue of hair which hung as low as his waist twitched at his mercurial captain's orders.

  "Helm alee, Mister Neill," Lewrie said. "Steer three points to larboard. Mister Ballard, prepare the hands to wear ship so we cross Guineaman's bows once we've fired, and fall onto her disengaged side."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard replied, crisp and efficient.

  "Guns bear, sir!" Fowles warned.

  "Fire, Mister Fowles!"

  As the first limb of the rising sun peeked over the horizon at last, the artillery came to life, tolling rage down the starboard side from bow to stern. Guineaman screamed as she was hulled; like a steer might bellow and jerk, shivering with terror and anger, as it was bound for the approach of the butcher with the poleaxe.

  "Helm up, hard up, Mister Neill! Wear ship!" Lewrie cried as the last gun went off. Alacrity came wheeling about in her own dense pall of gunsmoke as it was blown down onto Guineaman. Sailors dashed to sheets and braces in the confusion, as gunners below them abandoned starboard guns to run out the larboard cannon and open the ports. Ballard kept yelling orders into the Bedlam, and, drilled and trained to boresome perfection as the crew was, order was never lost, not one second was lost.

  Artillery could be heard ahead and to port as Alacrity sailed off nor'east for the beach; Guineaman firing at last, at where they thought her to be. Alacrity trembled with a sharp slam, a shuffling judder of her stern, as she was struck aft. Mr. Burke on the tiller with his mate Neill gave a soft curse as he fell to his knees in a welter of blood, a long, jagged splinter of bulwark driven through his midsection. Midshipman Mayhew was lifted off his feet and flung halfway across the quarter-deck to the starboard side by a chunk of red-hot round-shot as the twelve-pounder ball shattered. He skidded on his back to fetch up against the after mooring bitts, his left arm and shoulder almost gone, awash in his own gore, and gasping hard.

  Alacrity almost felt as if she'd tripped over something, her forward progress arrested, the deck canting over to starboard.

  "Her anchor cable!" Ballard intuited.

  "Helm up, Mister Neill! Steer due north!" Lewrie called.

  "Aye, aye, sir," Neill replied, stepping over the body of his dying friend, his tears almost blinding him, to put the tiller over."Surgeon's mate!" Ballard snapped. "Mister Maclntyre! Loblolly boys aft!"

  The smoke wafted nor'east on the dying winds, clearing the view at last, as Alacrity rumbled and slithered down the anchor cable that scrubbed her larboard underbody. And there was Guineaman, not twenty yards off, her larboard gun ports closed.

  "Ready grapnels, Mister Ballard. Mister Harkin, Mister Warwick, we'll be boarding her after the broadside," Lewrie instructed. "Starboard your helm, Mister Neill, and lay us hull to hull."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Ready!" Lewrie shouted to his gunners as Guineaman came abeam. "On the up-roll...fire!"

  Guineaman heeled over to starboard under the weight of the iron hailstorm, her bulwarks turning into kindling and whirling in the air thick as an uprooted pine forest in a hurricane. Gun ports and thin planking caved in, and a portion of the larboard sail-tending gangway went flying in one long, ladderlike piece.

  "Grapple to her, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said in a normal tone, once the echoes had ceased. "And away boarders."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard snapped, sounding almost enthusiastic. Lewrie jumped to the top of the bulwarks, drew pistol and sword, and leapt for Guineaman's fore-chain platform to scramble alongside his men to the forward gangway.

  "Christ!" he shuddered, seeing the devastation that his cannon had wrought. The waist was filled with dying men, half lost in scraps of wood, in a maze of broken timbers. Several of the larboard cannon had come loose from the shattered bulwarks and had rolled down on the men serving the starboard battery, crushing them like millwheels.

  Those who could were already raising their hands in surrender, the urge to fight shot out of them. Lewrie went over to the . starboard side to make his way aft to the quarter-deck, where some of Guineaman'& mates stood or sat around the butt of the mizzenmast.

  "You!" Captain Malone growled, half in shock at the ruin of his ship. He brought up the tip of his sword while the others got out of their way, ostentatiously empty-handed as Alacrity's boarding party came to back Lewrie up. "What are you doin' here? We thought..."

  "Maybe 'Calico Jack' couldn't afford to bribe Commodore Garvey any longer, Malone," Lewrie offered, thinking fast, and hoping for a confirmation. "Now we've a new Royal Governor, the price went up too high. You and Finney are on your own."

  Lewrie reached out with the tip of his hanger to ring steel on steel; one beat, two beats, tip to tip on Malone's sword. Malone went backwards, crouched over more like a knife-fighter, body square-on.

  "Either drop that sword, or do something real with it, Malone," Lewrie snarled. "Fight me, you coward! Got the nutmegs for it, hey?"

  Malone allowed the next beat to slap his blade low and away as he let go the hilt and dropped it on the deck. "Oh, no, ya don't! Ya've put yer foot in it this time for fair, Lewrie. Aye, I'll strike to ya, but soon as we're in Nassau Harbour, it'll be you up on charges again, an' this time yer really finished. Firn' on peaceful merchantmen..."

  "John Laidlaw of the Fortune schooner says different," Lewrie told him with a laugh, a laugh which was reinforced by the shock that Malone displayed, as if he'd just seen his own corpse swaying from the gibbet. Lewrie stepped forward and put the tip of his sword to Malone's throat.

  "Jesus, easy, sir!" Cony gulped from behind him. "Don't!"

  "John Laidlaw tells me Guineaman branched out on her own, did a little piracy on her way here to the rendezvous in '85. Was Finney upset with you, Malone, when you took the Matilda? Remember her, the Liverpool slaver? Laidlaw tells my lieutenant that if we dig in the right spot, we'll find the bones of her officers and crew here on the island. And the bones of over an hundred sick slaves you slaughtered 'cause you didn't want the time or trouble to heal 'em up before you tried to sell 'em off. Men and women slaves, Malone! Care if I and my hands do some digging, do you?"

  "Now, look here, mebbe we kin deal, sir, if ..." Malone gasped.

  "Still have the stuff from Matilda, do you?" Lewrie sneered at him, pressing a little deeper with the point. "Sure, you do! You're the sort that keeps his mementoes of good times. And that's more than enough to hang you for piracy and murder this time. You're done for, Malone, you and Finney, damn your eyes!"

  "You'll never get 'Calico Jack,' ya bugger," Malone attempted to swagger.

  "Think not?" Lewrie laughed again. "Cold comfort to you the moment the hangman turns you off. But, I promise you, he'll have a noose right next to yours."

  Lewrie stepped back and sheathed his sword.

  "John Canoe!" he shouted for the huge escaped slave.

  "Aye, Cap'um, sah."

  "He's yours to guard," Lewrie grinned. "Special."

  "Aye, sah," Canoe growled deep in his throat, taking Malone by the upper arm and hauling the heavy-set man into his custody as easily as lifting a child.

  "Captain Malone, you're under arrest," Lewrie called in a loud voice, turning to face the other disarmed pirates. "All of you damned hounds! I arrest you... in the King's Name!"

  "Damme, sir, look what ya've done with me poor ship," Captain Grant bemoaned as Lewrie came aboard after funeral services for Burke and Midshipman Mayhew. "Scantlin's shot through, bulwarks all chewed up. It'll use most of me spare timber patchin' hull shots, and what, I ask ye, will the Royal Navy do to compensate me?"

  "Let you go free, sir," Lewrie told him, in no mood for dealing with the shifty merchantman. "Go sing 'Oh, Be Thankful,' for all mat I care. Last of your crew's co
ming aboard now. I'd set a course for home, were I you, and get out of Bahamian jurisdiction before we change our minds."

  "She rides light," Grant commented as Sarah and Jane bobbed and rolled beneath him. "How mucha me cargo did ye use for breastworks?"

  "Rather a lot, I fear, Captain Grant," Lewrie told him. "We've dumped that over the side. You'll find enough salt left to keep you ballasted and trimmed proper on your voyage. Might even be enough to pay for your repairs and break even, once you pay off your crew back in your Philadelphia."

  "No profit, sir?" Grant wheezed. "Damme, sir, a whole sailing season, a whole voyage wasted?"

  "That's the risks you take for money," Lewrie shrugged, then turned to leave, to go back to his Alacrity and escort their prizes, and their captives, home. "Stay out of our seas, Captain Grant."

  "I'll write the consul," Grant warned, following him to the entry port. "I'll complain to Congress, to the President if I have to. And I will be back, ye know. Ye pass that Free Port Act, and I'll be more'n welcome in the Bahamas again. Me and every American ship."

  "Captain Grant," Lewrie said, turning to face him, "I've no more time to play this sly little game with you. Aye, they may pass Free Port Acts; aye, you may be welcome someday in the future, and you may cock your nose at me all you wish. Just remember, though, that a very good mariner and a promising young midshipman died this day making it safe for you and your ship to sail Bahamian waters. Don't make me dislike you. There's no future in it. Ask those pirates."

  "Point taken, sir," Grant replied, leaning back a little from the intensity of Lieutenant Lewrie's grim expression. "Point taken, indeed," he reiterated, as he doffed his hat to him as Lewrie descended to his gig.

  Chapter 9

  John Finney was having a rather bad evening. He had stayed in that night, ostensibly to go over his books; but mostly to avoid the sneers he'd been getting on the streets since the mocking broadside sheet had appeared days before. Tale of The De-Bollocked Bumpkin, it was titled in large block letters. There was an engraving, a satirical cartoon below that which featured a slim young woman holding both baby and pistols, shooting at an overdressed, lump-faced churl in a hugely unfashionable wig, tiny hat and flaring coat, like a "Macaroni" of a previous decade, the suiting portrayed as checkered calico, and the male figure leaping legs widespread like some damned "Molly" in an Italian toe-dance company to avoid losing his wedding tackle. A long, stringy caption above the female read: "In his abfence, my dear hufband's piftols shall defend mine honour, cur!"

  Whilst over the leaping male figure, a caption read: "Oy means ter have yer, niver a care have oy fer any damnd marriage vow— Oicks!"

  There was printed below a short narration, a titillating story of caution to all lusting bachelors who pursued happily married women too hotly. No names were named—but then, none were necessary, as it stated "... as one here in Nassau did quite lately!"

  "I'll murder Augustus," Fiimey swore, tearing the sheet into tiny bits. It was only the fourth he'd gotten in anonymous mail so far. He was certain Augustus Hedley was the artist, Peyton Boudreau the author and sponsor, and Caroline ... "Thet bitch! Oh, thet bitch! I'll make her sorry she wuz iver born, I will! Wipe thet sneer off 'er face, take 'er an' have me way with 'er, make 'er beg fer it!"

  He instead took another full glass of claret in two gulps, and filled his crystal stem with more. For the moment, he had more pressing worries. He returned to his ledgers, both the legitimate ones his clerk prepared, and the illicit ones kept in his own scrawls, which he himself had trouble reading a month later. It was not a good year.

  After Conch Bar, and the wholesale hangings which had followed, half the old lads had gone off for easier pickings; deeper in the Caribbean, or up to the American coast, where Congress was too cheap to keep a navy, or a coast guard worth the name. Walker's Cay had run more away to waters less well patrolled. Finney had had to increase the import of legitimate goods as stolen wares reduced in quantity, so his profit margin had fallen to only a little better than his Bay Street competitors'.

  He'd lost huge sums, too, in all the goods that Rodgers, and that damned Lieutenant Lewrie, had burned at Walker's Cay, the pirated, and the hoarded true imports. Those staples, those delicacies, all gone up in flames, depriving him of his expected large markups. And there had been the import duties the cynical, greedy Searcher of Customs had imposed on goods he'd never be able to land and sell, and the bribes demanded to keep him out of court on smuggling charges to boot!

  There wasn't much better news from his grandiose plantings on Eleuthera. His overseer had written that both the coastal "white" lands, and the "red" lands farther inland, were failing. Bahamian soil was like a lying whore; rich and beguiling to start with, but too thin to turn under and hope it would revive after a fallow year, its nutrients sucked out by the first lush crops. And with so few animals in the Bahamas, and lack of grazing land for big herds, costly to manure and fertilize. Unless he shipped in tons of manure, his overseer wasn't confident. Cotton, sisal, hemp, sugar cane, even indigo and aloes—none of it prospered. And, the overseer had ended on a dismal note, the Georgia Tidewater and Sea Isle cotton nurslings might be infected with the dreaded Chenille Bug!

  He'd be forced to sell, before the fine plantation house could be completed, as fine a mansion as any in the Bahamas, grander than the one Col. Andrew Deveaux had erected on Cat Island. The only value he'd get back from the sale would be the slaves, the ones he'd gotten for so little from Malone (the foolish, greedy bastard!) after he'd taken the Matilda

  Finney took another sip of claret and made a face. Try as hard as he might, he'd never developed a palate for it. Petulantly, it went into the fireplace to shatter in a shower of wine across the imported Turkey carpet!

  "Fireplace!" he gloomed at that extravagance, a gaudy, useless showpiece in a climate that never got close to freezing. He went over to his sideboard to pour himself a cut-crystal glass of Demerara rum.

  "Excuse me, Captain Finney, sir," his butler said, opening the wide double doors to the entry hall.

  "Clean it up," Finney snorted, putting his feet on his desk.

  "I will, Captain, sir," the butler agreed, secretly amused by his plebeian employer, and his demand to be addressed with a title he never really had—Captain. "In the meantime, sir, this letter came for you. From Commodore Garvey, sir."

  "Fetch it here, then, damn yer eyes," Finney sulked, finding no joy this evening in the obsequiousness of his hired help. Finney tore the wax seal off and unfolded the letter. "Damn 'is blood!"

  Another of the broadside sheets! Finney wondered just how much he had to pay the bastard to at least be civil to him. They acted as strangers in public, no matter their agreement, or the sums he shoved into Garvey's accounts by the side door at the bank. Now he was down, Garvey'd shoved the knife in, sarcastic and sneering, as was his way. Finney dreaded Garvey might demand even more than the princely three hundred pounds a month he already cost him. "Shit! Shit!"

  My dear sir;

  Have you seen one of these? I was not aware your interest in interrupting Alacrity's mail had an Intimate Raison d'Etre. was the inscription penned in the left margin.

  The enfolding, larger folio-sized sheet of paper had a hastily written note which quite took his mind from the curses he was about to hurl at the uppity cur, who'd sprinkle his notes with Latin, French or even Greek, just to (Finney swore) gall him over his lack of schooling.

  Lt. Coltrop' s Aemilia cutter is just returned from Spanish Wells in some haste. He informs me that Whippet put into port there four days past, inquired of Lt. Blair of the Barracouta sloop as to the nature of my patrol Assignments, and was last seen heading North towards Great Abaco! A ketch-rigged Warship and a merchant ship were seen to be in company with her by a fishing lugger who put into Spanish Wells.

  Aware of my stringent Requirements for Whippet and Alacrity to stay far South, Lt. Coltrop came to me at once, sure that Rodgers and Lewrie may be staging some immense Mutiny against me,
sir. The only cause for hope they may have to redeem themselves would be, as you know, a sudden Revelation about a certain Matter. Do what you think best, as shall I, from this moment forward.

  "Jesus an' Mary," Finney shivered. "It's all up, ain't it?"

  "Sir?" his butler inquired distantly.

  "Get out. I said, get out! Leave it!" Finney shouted as he got to his feet. He shoved the broadside sheet and the letter into one of his private ledgers, tucked them under his arm, and began to pace his palatial parlour and receiving rooms. He took inventory of his fineries as if seeing them for the first time, a visitor to his town house. The inventory took him through the dining room, into the large salon on the other side of the entrance hall, through still-rooms and butler's pantries, through wine cellar and library, up the stairs to peek into all four huge bedrooms, marveling again how well furnished they were. Sumptuous, some said. Bordello "Flash," others cruelly whispered behind his back—after they'd had his meats, wines and music, after they'd fawned to his face and simpered at his japes!

  "It's all up," he told himself again, halfway between tears and rage. "Don't want me t'have nothin', won't let me have nothin', niver in this life, the bastards! Build all this, they find a way t'take it from me, they do. Wisht t'God I'da had time t'kill Boudreau... an' do fer that uppity bitch an' her rogue! Ah, well. Me curses on 'em, 'tis the best ye'll do, Jack, me lad. It's all up. Ye had a good run, did ya not?"

  Not only would he lose the plantation, but he'd lose the slaves, his house and all its lovely "pretties," the best mat money could buy. His stores, his ships, his chandlery, his ... "Ah, shame of it, now!"

  But, there was money in the house, and money in his stores. And in the bank. Enough to start over somewhere else. And he still had a fine little ship in the harbour, ready to take him anywhere in the wide world he wished. He ripped open the chifforobe in his own bedroom, took out a leather traveling case, and set the ledgers inside it, then began to pack bom it and an ornate sea-chest, his mind already calculating the best of the tide.