Troubled Waters

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Uhm . . . Commander Kenyon fell, sir," Thurston reported, going solemn for a very brief moment. "Right as he stepped ashore upon the town piers . . . he and several of his boat crew, all at once. A French volley," the Marine officer offered as the cause, though looking a tad cutty-eyed, to Lewrie's lights. "About the only casualties we had, sir."

  "I see," Lewrie intoned, with a grave nod of his head, though feeling he'd break out in maniacal cackles and do a little jig of mourning if he didn't get below in private . . . soonest. Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow, he thought, biting the lining of his mouth to prevent a broad smile. And there's that problem solved, for good an' all by God!

  "My most utter condolences, Mister Thurston," Lewrie managed to say with a straight face, and a brief semblance of sorrow, himself. "Pray, do you relate to Lieutenant Cottle that I shall take Savage to anchor off Pointe de Grave, for the nonce, and wish him to join me as soon as he may be able . . . so we may take all our people off before the battery goes up. And, my congratulatons to Lieutenant Aubrey, and Mister Cottle . . . to you, as well, sir, on your quick victory."

  * * * *

  And, just at sunset, after all the surviving sailors and Marines were back aboard their respective ships, the stone-bearing barges had been torched and sunk in mid-river, and all the two-deckers, cutters, and brigs had made their crawling way back into the estuary against the wind, but with a falling tide, there came two spectacular explosions. Fort St. Georges split apart in a titanic, roaring fireball first, and stout stone walls collapsed in a roar as the magazine blew, then kegs of powder at each wall. Heavy artillery pieces, already slighted by having their trunnions sawed off, and their muzzles packed over-full with powder and round-shot, then choked with mud, burst apart as fuses set off by the initial explosions reached the touch-holes, shattering hard iron like papier-mache. And the rubble from the walls came down like an avalanche on the flagstone "deck" of the water battery, just as the charges laid underneath it went off as well, blasting parapet and embrasures into the river, and littering the beach.

  Major Loudenne, his two Captains, and four Lieutenants, standing by the bulwarks of HMS Chesterfield as prisoners to watch the ending of his fort, all were later reported to be in tears at the sight.

  Then . . . just as the sun touched the horizon, the Pointe de Grave battery exploded, too. Rectangular stone blocks went soaring into the sky, silhouetted against the livid blue-white blast of exploding gunpowder smoke, lit from within almost pale yellow for a moment, before turning ruddy amber, and all the waggons, all the construction timbers and scaffolding, all the out-of-town workers' huts piled in the centre of the battery's future courtyard, caught fire . . . helped along by the barrels of lamp oil, resin, turpentine, pitch, and tar that Lt. Urquhart had "borrowed" from bosun's stores to help things along . . . and torched upwards in an instant, volcanic plume of flames that lit up the night, and glowed like a lighthouse long into the evening, visible at sea for over ten miles 'til the wee hours just before dawn.

  "Damn' good work, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie told him. "Simply damned fine! Pass word to all your people, they did grand work today."

  "I suppose I must feel gratified by it, sir, if there was little combat," Urquhart bemoaned. "Still . . . it does feel some satisfying."

  "As I told Mister Gamble, not all victories involve blood and thunder," Lewrie cajoled. "Well, we did make thunder, at least, but we accomplished what we came to do, and hardly any of our men were hurt, and none killed, while the French lost hundreds."

  "Well, there is that, sir." Lt. Urquhart seemed to brighten as he absorbed that concept. "The greater good, as it were."

  "Exactly, so, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie said with a sage nod . . . though, in point of fact, the "greater good" was rather hard for him to swallow, too; especially the part where the more senior he rose, the smaller role he might play when his beloved great-guns roared. Oh, it was all very fine to plan something, then watch as it unfolded successfully, but . . . all he'd done this day was stand round like a fart in a trance and observe the derring-do of othersl

  "You did obtain some rather fine remembrances, sir," Devereux said from the side. Lt. Urquhart had at least come offshore in possession of an elegant French infantry officer's bicorne hat, and that poor fellow's excellently crafted Solingen sabre, scabbard, and snake-clasp belt. Well, he'd had to pay Landsman Newcastle, one of their "volunteer Black" sailors, three shillings for the hat, and Able Seaman Bannister a crown for the sword . . . a fact that would be conveniently forgotten in a year or two, once they were hung on his parents' walls.

  "Lord, Cocky, don't nip my boots, ye daft little bugger," Lieutenant Devereux griped as the Marine complement's pet, the champion rat-killing mongoose that had simply turned up after a drunken night ashore in the West Indies, pounced and tried to gnaw on his new-blacked leather. "Private Cocky, M." was distracted from his mischief by Lewrie's cats, which resulted in a three-way tail chase round the quarterdeck.

  "You may thank me later, Mister Devereux," Lewrie chuckled as he turned to look out-board to the ruined forts. St. Georges was now but a massive, light-coloured pall of smoke, the broad base of the cloud ruddy with subsiding fires, and the cloud drifting eastward towards Meschers and Talmont like a slowly twisting, towering phantom. Off the larboard quarter, though, the battery they had destroyed still burned as bright as the fabled Egyptian Pharos, with tall flames licking and forking at the sunset sky, turning the waters of the Gironde narrows and the estuary astern to a rippling sheet of brass, or polished copper. "Commodore Ayscough did well, today, gentlemen," Lewrie drolly said as he stretched and yawned, "no doubt of it, and all credit to him and the ships under his command, but. . ."

  He was more than ready to get off his feet, pull his boots off, and delight in what might prove to be his last fresh-fish supper, for the locals would be a long time forgiving the destruction they'd caused along the river's shores; perhaps two bottles of excellent French Bordeaux with it, too . . . the Brave-Mouton would go well.

  "Just you look at what we wrought today, sirs," he went on after another yawn. "No matter what anyone says by comparison . . . our boom was a whole lot bigger than theirs!"

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  What marvellous good fun, ah ha!" Commodore Ayscough chortled as the plates, dishes of removes, and the tablecloth were borne away, and the fruit, nuts, cheeses, and port bottle were placed before them. "Haven't had such a run ashore in years!"

  "Took his pipers with him," Captain Charlton dryly added. "Made a fearsome racket. Put the French off, I will gladly allow, though. And, the extra colours proved useful."

  "Borrowed a page from young Lewrie, here," Ayscough said as he used a pen-knife to pare an apple. "His father, Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, rather. Clean and un-used mooring jacks to serve as King's Colours, and a few sheets of our lightest sailcloth painted to represent Regimental Colours, so the French would think we landed three regiments, 'stead of the equivalent of one. Just as we did at Balabac in the Far East, so long ago.

  "This time," Commodore Ayscough gaily related, "one set daunted a French company, come from Cozes . . . that, and our musketry. Two of them caused the fort to surrender, once we flanked round its open end, and when a French regiment did turn up, as we were re-embarking on the beaches, they sat down on their heels, a bit south of Royan, and never advanced another foot."

  "Well, covering fire from our ships made that stretch of road a charnel house, and they'd not have charged into that!" Capt. Cheatham of HMS Jersey added with a merry chuckle. "They'd been marched pillar-to-post already, and were dragging their feet and their musket-butts by the time they arrived, with their tongues lolling out, haw haw!"

  "Colours fooled 'em, I grant ye, sir," Ayscough tut-tutted. "I do imagine, though, 'twas the sight and sound of my pipers in full regalia that put 'em off. There's not a Frenchman born who'd tangle with the Highland laddies. Aye, 'twas a grand day, indeed!"

  "Wish I could have gone ashore," Lewrie faintly comp
lained.

  "You could not, laddy," Ayscough told him, snickering. "There were five other Post-Captains under me, all competent, and chafing at the bitt to take over should I fall, certain they could do it better! Why else do we toast to 'A Bloody War or a Sickly Season'? Surest way to promotion! You, however, were, under the circumstances, indispensable to your small squadron, Lewrie. Oh, Hogue might've taken charge, he's an energetic lad, but he was round the point with his own duties whilst you and Savage were the vital backbone of the entire endeavour, landing the bulk of our forces, the powder . . . it would have taken hours for a small boat to carry word to Hogue, Kenyon, or Bartoe, and hours more to accomplish the task and withdraw in good order."

  "It just feels that command of distant others, not just your own deck, is . . . like laggin' back, somehow, sirs," Lewrie told them.

  "Comes with seniority," Captain Charlton imparted, giving Lewrie a sympathetic look. "In the Adriatic in '96,1 spent most of my time envying you and the others, Lewrie. All I did was despatch you to a chore, then sit back and fret. What senior officers are paid to do. Mind, though, gentlemen .. . then-Commander Lewrie kept me up nights, in frets of what mischief he'd been up to lately!"

  "I mentioned Commander Kenyon," the Commodore said, turning grave. "Do you gentlemen not object to the discussion of a professional matter or two .. . none? Good. Who should replace the late Commander Kenyon? Lewrie, you worked closer with Erato . .. what of her First Officer as a replacement?"

  "In an acting command, sir, I s'pose he'd do main-well," Lewrie replied, "but Lieutenant Cottle is in his first posting, second in command of anything. He's promising, but young and green."

  Gawd, you call someone else young? Lewrie flinched inside; poor trustin' bastards, lookin' at me like an equal? A senior officer, with wit enough t' judge . . . me ?

  "Ahem," both Captain Charlton and Captain Cheatham said at the same time, for both men had First Lieutenants aboard their ships whom they thought more than worthy of promotion onto "their own bottom" and independent command. Most such promotions on foreign stations, even if both Lord Boxham's and Commodore Ayscough's ships were officially under the authority of far-off Channel Fleet, were accepted by Admiralty, and were as good as permanent.

  Lewrie found the silent interplay amusing, as both turned their eyes to Ayscough, who would have the final say; which of the two prospective Lieutenants had the better record; or, to whom did Ayscough owe more favour, or "interest"? The Royal Navy sailed on a sea of "interest" and patronage. Which candidate might earn him future favours?

  "Damme, and I have a fellow of mine own in mind," Ayscough craftily told them, opening the silent bidding, and teasing them something horrid. "Or, Rear-Admiral Iredell, Lord Boxham, commanding over us all, might wish to put a name forward.

  "In point of fact, sirs," Commodore Ayscough went on, carefully cutting a long spiral of apple skin, which was beginning to resemble a very loose red spring, "Lord Boxham is quite taken by Commander Kenyon and his brave, but tragic, end . . . and the capture of the artillery intended for the Pointe de Grave battery. He intends, I believe, for them to go to London for display. Hyde Park or Saint James's was cited, as well as the Strand embankments. In tribute, he said."

  "In tribute to whom, sir?" Lewrie slyly japed.

  "Why, to Kenyon, and Erato, Lewrie, of course," Ayscough replied, allowing sarcasm free, but subtle, rein. "The 'Kenyon Guns,' the 'Erato Guns,' something along those lines. Our war with France drags on with so few victories since the Battle of the Nile, and the last time that our Army took a hand, it was a disaster. We shove mountains of money at weak and disappointing allies, and are at present without any. The people at home need something to make the struggle feel worth it.

  "Though," Ayscough sourly mused, dancing the coils of his apple peel like a spring atop the table, "given the late Commander Kenyon's, ah . . . peculiarities, 'Erato's Guns' might be best."

  "Peculiarties, sir?" Capt. Cheatham enquired with a sharp look.

  "Health was failing fast," Ayscough almost grunted, "and he was a horrid drunkard, and . . . as Lewrie here gathered from Erato?, surviving officers, Kenyon favoured . . . 'the windward passage,' " he concluded in a conspiratorial whisper. "Preyed on his most fetching seamen."

  "A 'Molly,'' by God?" Capt. Cheatham erupted, looking at Lewrie.

  "And poxed to the eyebrows, sir," Lewrie related in a soft voice. "Dyin' of it, most-like, in the final stages of the Pox, when it erodes one's brain matter. That's the only explanation for how he rambled so badly, and the way he was so grudgeful and nigh-insubordinate towards me. I did put it down to how much he drank at first, aye, or his spite to find one of his former Mids promoted beyond him, but. . . my Surgeon tells me the disease robbed him of self-control. Think a thing, speak a thing, sir. Put him in his place a time or two, and I thought he'd learned his lesson, but . . . "

  "Bloody Hell!" Capt. Cheatham spat, writhing in utter disgust; for the topic, for the mortal, bestial sin, for having to hear a word of it, most-like. He waved urgently for the port decanter. "How does a 'back-gammoner' become a Commission Sea Officer, much less gain the command of a King's ship? Should've been found out years ago!"

  "He was very careful to play 'Jack, Me Hearty,' sir," Lewrie explained. "When I served under him in the West Indies, one would never have guessed . . . when he had all his wits intact, and could be thoughtful of his Pub-lick Face. The one glimpse I got that roused my suspicions could have been explained away, and I was just a Middy, so what did I know of things? No in flagrante delicto, just . . ."

  Capt. Cheatham raised a stiff hand to ward off the rest, and to shush any graphic description; he found restoration in the port.

  "Was he extremely discreet, and kept up a stout facade, well. . .," Ayscough stuck in gloomily. "And, remember, the Navy was very short of competent officers in '94 and '95 as the Fleet expanded. Kenyon was most-like nigh-anonymous, with a mediocre repute round the middle of the Lieutenants' List, just senior enough for promotion."

  "The stress of living a life like that, sirs," Lewrie sketched out, impatient for the decanter to pass his way, too. "Then, comes a ship of his own at last, and the strain and loneliness of command atop it? A sense of bein' second but to God at sea, and with his wits goin' fast? and losin' command of himself, to boot? We all have known captains who turned . . . eccentric."

  "Damme, Lewrie, you would bring up my trained circus of bread-room rats!" Capt. Charlton stuck in, tongue in cheek, to slice through their gloom. It worked; such an outre statement stopped them in their tracks and made them howl with relieving laughter, declaring Charlton a rare rogue, and starting a period of shared reveries of just how eccentric some of their old captains had seemed to them when they were Midshipmen or junior Lieutenants.

  "Thank God the poor man's gone, then," Cheatham said with a sad moue on his face, pouring himself another topping glass when the port got round to him again. "And, for the good of his family, the Navy, and his repute . . . false though it may have been . . . he fell with his sword in hand, his face to the foe, and his wounds in his front."

  "Hear, hear," Ayscough and Charlton chorused.

  Do I tell 'em? Lewrie asked himself, unable, to keep a wince off his phyz, for he had conducted the sea-burials for Kenyon and his men, and had seen on which side of his body Kenyon had been pierced, before they had been sewn up in canvas and tipped over the side under a flag.

  "How did he fall, Captain Lewrie?" Commodore Ayscough enquired, after seeing his pained expression.

  Oh, Gawd! Lewrie cringed; tell the truth, and every Man-Jack in Erato is bound for the noose. Lie, and face a court-martial myself!

  "Commander Kenyon, along with a Midshipman and five of his boat crew . . . ," Lewrie began, hesitantly. "They stepped ashore onto the town piers right after Erato came alongside them, facing the town's shops and houses on the waterfront. There was a company of French infantry, sheltered in them, and . . . "

  "Lovely young fellows, were they?" Capt. Cheath
am sneered.

  "Ah, in point of fact, I'd s'pose so, sir," Lewrie stumbled at the interruption. "Weapons in hand, all that. Preceding the Marines, who should've been first ashore. There were French musket volleys, and return fire . . . swivel guns were fired at the windows and doorways, to drive the Frogs to cover, so the landing-party could join them. There is a slight possibility that their deaths were the result of a combination of fire, sirs . . . hostile and friendly. Might've charged cross the muzzle of a swivel, just as it lit off, accidentally-like, 'bout the same time as some Frenchmen got a few shots off, too."

  There, that'll explain it, Lewrie told himself, trying to think of what Clot-worthy Chute had told him of how to spot a liar, or how to read a card player; what cutty-eyed expressions liars and the confident wore, and tried to plaster the exact opposite on his face. Blink too much, or was it no blinking at all; shrug too deep, eschew a sheepish smile, make firm eye contact, what was it?

  Truth to tell, someone aboard Erato, maybe two or three someones, had fired their swivels about the same time, in the general direction of the village's buildings, but had "sorta-kind of " missed, and had blown the entire party off their feet, all the wounds from behind, and no one had cared much at all. Even Lt. Cottle could not say who had done it, and, from the cutty-eyed way he 'd looked when Lewrie had put it to him, Cottle most-like hadn't made all that much of an effort to find out who did it, and probably would not, in future, either!

  Now, the Eratos would shut their mouths as tight as oysters, and shrug their collective innocence. Oh, it was murder most foul, mutiny and a death-sentence for everyone involved, whether by omission or commission; the ones who did it, and the ones who didn't, but kept mum, and abetted the perpetrators; for those who refused, for whatever reason, to investigate, or those who did but wrote a lying report!