Lewrie went aft to the transom settee and splayed himself slack-spined on the cushions, his head resting on the sash-window sill for a cool breeze.
Choundas, by God! he thought; can’t the bastard find anything better to do than follow me round the world? I’ve taken my best shots at him, surely someone’d call me ‘out’ and send in another batsman to finish him off! ‘Thankee, I’d rather not, this time, but do keep me posted.’ Bet that’d go down well! Damme, if fame an’ glory ain’t a cursed buggery … do one thing flashy, and they never give you a rest!
He shut his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, trying to recall the bastard. From the description Mr. Durant had read, he’d hit Choundas’s arm, not the chest he’d aimed for. Two hundred yards, even with a Ferguson rifle, was an iffy shot. Their sword-fight on a beach at Balabac in the ’80s … hacking that hateful face into ruin with a last-second, blind slash to save his very life! Ham-stringing him and forcing that leg-brace and mask on him, making Choundas stump and limp with a cane evermore … ! By now Choundas should be a shambling ogre, the stuff of children’s nightmares, an implacable Nemesis tracking him down, a beast to fear, but … Lewrie found himself grinning a bit, seeing him not as his Doom, but as a crippled … clown!
Not as quick as he used t’be, I’ll warrant, Lewrie thought as he fanned the front of his shirt for coolness; it can’t be his sword and mine crossed, this time … he’ll order others. No matter how well he chooses, his minions could never measure up to him!
It also struck Lewrie that Choundas wasn’t part of that massive French fleet, not part of General Bonaparte’s, or of Admiral de Brueys’s grand aspirations, either!
Who’d want a man that gruesome in one’s entourage! Lewrie felt like giggling; He’d put people off their feed! Damme, has Choundas had a comedown … tsk-tsk?
The French Revolution had a habit of eating its own; condemning and executing its early firebrands who were too crude, radical, and brutal to present on the world stage, too identified with The Terror, and its excesses and slaughters. They had a habit of turning on each other, too, denouncing and guillotining both leaders and followers of losing factions in their ever-shifting grasps for absolute power!
And Guillaume Choundas was surely one of the last of the “judicial” murderers who’d purged the aristocrats from his own navy, then purged the “suspect” who didn’t give the Revolution their entire soul.
More than enough reasons to shuffle him off, out of sight; his foul repute, his butt-ugly appearance, his continual embarassment to the glittering, polished “new men!”
Choundas’s appearance in the Caribbean, Lewrie thought, was an exile; a last chance to redeem himself at best, a callous dismissal to the deadly Fever Isles where he could die, unwanted and un-loved, at the worst. He’ll be desperate! Lewrie surmised with sudden joy; he’ll take more risks than he’d usually dare, to vindicate his ugly self!
“Vulnerable,” Lewrie whispered aloud, drawing out the word, syllable by syllable, to savour its import. “Third time’s the charm, by God?”
He jerked to his feet, ready to scrabble to the quarterdeck to shout this revelation to the world, chest swelling with eagerness for the meeting with his arch foe; eager to shout his suddenly discovered sense of courage, when before he might have trembled in his boots with dread. Choundas, and his machinations, would be the Devil one knows, knew too well for terror. If he felt the slightest check on his emotions, it was wariness. He could face Choundas clear-headed, not swooning with anxiety, in future! A shambling, limping, crippled clown!
“Marvellous!” he muttered joyously, aflame to speak to someone, write someone, about this sudden change of heart. But whom?
Caroline? No, he’d told her about his early adventures, and of encounters with Choundas. She knew him too well, or thought that she did. He’d been breezy about the man, swaggering as a proper hero must. To express, to confess, that he’d always feared him would be weakness. And to blather on about no longer being fearful would be even worse, a Frenchman’s insouciant gasconading boasts. There was no way to rejustify himself in her eyes, even did she break the seals and read his letter, instead of using it for fireplace tinder.
Theoni Connor? Again, no. She had always seen him as heroic, and any admission of past dreads would demean him with her. He could explain just who this bête-noir was, at least lay out the odds of the possible future confrontation, now they were due to cross each others’ hawse, but … maybe weaning himself of Theoni Connor was the better course. It was three years before Proteus sailed home to pay off, and at least two months each way for letters.
He could write his father, baldly stating, “By the by, that dog we chased in Asia is now here, and we hunt each other. The weather is fine …” That might be best, he thought; surely his father would be able to put a flea in Sophie’s ear, and that would get back to his own household in short order, reawakening concern for him in Caroline’s heart. Again, that was two months’ mail packet passage before the news could affect anyone, for good or ill.
Cashman? He felt like telling somebody! Cashman, though, was hipdeep in selling up his plantation, was too distracted with his ongoing feud with Ledyard Beauman … and his gleeful, cackling preparations for that duel. He was an old friend, a man, a seasoned soldier, so surely he’d understand, did a respected, courageous officer relate a few twinges of worry over an old foe’s reappearance, and how he had found a way to deal with him … over a few bottles of champagne?
Perhaps the next time he was ashore, visiting Kit; though that was an unbearably long time to sit on the matter. And, when ashore, their time would mostly be spent on the duel, since Cashman meant to hold him to his promise to second him, and the over-formal punctilio of the code duello would prove exacting.
The curse of command, Lewrie sourly realised, deflating from a brief moment of exuberance; good tidings or shiverin’ shits, there’s not a single soul you can tell! The public masque ya wear in Society … yer good odour as a hero won’t allow it ashore, either! he thought with a self-deprecating scoff over “hero.”
No, he would have to “play” the imperturbable Royal Navy stock character, as seen on stage, saving his innermost feelings only for a “good woman.” After all, that was what a life’s helpmeet was for, the role in life as stock characters for “good women.”
Or bad’uns, who don’t parlez any English, Lewrie told himself with a smirk; to unburden oneself just might be an active verb, there! In more ways than one.
“Aspinall, how are we set for something cold to drink?” Lewrie asked the empty great-cabins, and his manservant popped his head from his small pantry, where he’d been doing some sennet-work napkin rings.
“Pitcher o’ cool tea with lemon an’ sugar comin’ up, sir!”
Lewrie went to the desk and ruffled Toulon’s belly fur, tickling him under the chin. The cat awoke in a trice, and after a brief yawn and stiff-legged stretch, he began to wriggle and writhe about, eager for some play, tail whisking again, and his eyes wide.
“You poor old puss,” Lewrie said with a sigh, fingers escaping quickly snapped jaws and batting paws for another “attack” upon belly fur, that put Toulon into a fit of flipping from side to side. “May not know it, but you’re my onliest audience, Toulon. You’ve the only ears I can whisper into. ’Cause you’re the only one who can’t blab.”
“Mmmrrph!” Toulon replied, trapping a hand and rasping tongue on a finger.
“I love you, too, you rascal.”
POINTS OF SAIL AND 32-POINT WIND-HOSE
Also by Dewey Lambdin
The King’s Coat
The French Admiral
The King’s Commission
The King’s Privateer
The Gun Ketch
HMS Cockerel
A King’s Commander
jester’s Fortune
King’s Captain
AFTERWORD
Perhaps it’s not a good omen for Alan Lewrie, but the captains and admirals who pa
rticipated in the Battle of Camperdown had no luck at all. Too tainted, perhaps, with the worst part of the Nore Mutiny in the spring of 1797, their ships’ crews the worst and most threatening to naval and social order (see King’s Captain for Lewrie’s part in it), none of them, even after winning a victory and eliminating a threat of joint Franco-Dutch invasion of England itself, none of them prospered. And one, the captain of Agincourt, was cashiered for cowardice.
The way the Dutch fought, close-up and courageous, shattered as many British ships as they lost. None of the Royal Navy ships served for very long after being extensively repaired; nor were any of their hard-won prizes taken at Camperdown worth anything, either. They were bought in, also given extensive repairs, but five or six years later, most of them ended up as non-sailing hulks or harbour receiving ships.
By the way, those purists who might object to the Orangespruit frigate being there … sure, I knew she was a very old warship in ’97 and was probably a hulk by the time of the battle, but she was a 36-gunner, and the name was very Dutch, and since I know little of Holland beyond tulips, windmills, cheeses, and beers, well … I’ll not steal a victory from a real captain and his capture, and I’ll not name a ship Edam or Gouda, either. Lewrie will get his share of prize money from her taking, and that’s all he cares about, thankee very much.
Many thanks to the U.S. Naval Institute Press, and Michael A. Palmer, for Stoddert’s War regarding the rebirth of the U.S. Navy and its operations during the Quasi War with France in the Caribbean, and thanks to Ty Martin, USN (Ret) and former skipper of Constitution for a list of proposed ship names of American frigates that weren’t used … so I could “borrow” one for the USS Hancock. I suspect we will run into Hancock and Captain Kershaw again. Mr. Martin’s book, A Most Fortunate Ship, details Constitution and her operations in the Caribbean during the Quasi War, as well as her later illustrious career.
By the way, the founding of Washington “City” and the District of Columbia where President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol in 1793, was a neat little boondoggle with government money, and some so-called “upright” characters made themselves a “shower o’ tin” buying up swampland for a song and selling it for scandalous profits. My my, how things never change!
Thanks also go to “Bosun” Bob Scappini and his rowdy crew up in Rhode Island, who wore themselves out re-enacting a Revolutionary War artillery unit ’til, after shifting battery eleven times one day under a broiling sun, they found one of my books and decided that becoming the “Landing Party” off the American Sloop of War Providence might just be a lot cooler, and not involve so much heavy lifting!
They also sent me a tape and lyric book they’d made of sailing chanteys and pulley-hauleys, from which the words to “Nottingham Ale” came. May the Ship’s Company & Landing Party “splice the mainbrace”! And beat the Middies from Annapolis, next long-boat race.
Thanks also, again, to Bob Enrione for the year-long loan of a set of books about the Royal Navy and the era from his vast collection, and for attempts to dig up some information about Haiti and the slave revolt.
Haiti, or Saint Domingue … well. Ask three Haitians about it and you’ll get five differing opinions, and a lot of shifty-eyed looks. Even now, it’s an uneasy subject, how their ancestors founded the first independent Black nation anywhere in the world, and a poorly represented topic, too. I had to order research material, mostly reprinted in generic-bland trade paperback form, done by order from digitized storage, one of which was one of the worst “historical novels” I had ever read, and which shall remain nameless and authorless. A Brief History of The Caribbean by Jan Rogozinksi (Meridian Books) was very helpful, and explains the background, from Columbus’s arrival, the massacre of the Arawak and Carib Indians, the introduction of sugar cane and necessity of slavery, along with the resultant uprisings and revolts.
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James is one of the few informative texts I found about Haiti’s history, and the amazing Toussaint L’Ouverture, who would eventually be called the Black Napoleon for his military skill. It was written in 1938, and revised in 1963, and good luck finding one in a bookstore. (James was an admitted Communist who wished all Africa to emulate Haiti!) For those interested, it is from Vintage Books, a division of Random House.
The mutiny aboard HMS Hermione, wherein her captain Hugh Pigot (one of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker’s favourites, which tells you a thing or two about Parker!) and all his officers, senior mates and most of his midshipmen were murdered, the deed done in part by his own “pets” he’d brought from a previous command, outraged the Royal Navy and all of British society, coming as it did so soon after the Spithead and Nore Mutinies. Pigot was a vengeful, petty, inconsistent, pain-loving beast who turned an adequate crew into maddened desperadoes. It took over twenty years, but about a third of the true culprits and leaders were hunted down with implacable, untiring zeal by the Royal Navy. I found The Black Ship by Dudley Pope most informative on this mattere.
Let’s belabour the obvious—slavery sucks. As Christopher Cashman tells us, it brutalises both the victims, and the victimizer, in the end. Why it is still tolerated in Sudan and other African countries today is beyond me. Just ’cause it’s Blacks enslaving Blacks, does that make it too Politically Correct to deal with? Would we be “dissing” some group, whom we must not only tolerate but embrace according to the rules of Diversity and Multiculturalism, if we spoke out against it? Heaven forfend!
Brutality down sooner or later engenders brutality up, as in a “comeuppance,” and the record of horrors and atrocities committed during Haiti’s War of The Skin are a sickening litany of evil, no matter how “modernists” wish to justify it by claiming that “extremism in the pursuit of (fill in the blank) is no vice,” or that the White masters got what they deserved. Thinking like that merits only scorn and derision from rational and realistic people.
Let’s also remember that L’Ouverture and Henri Christophe, his follower, reinstituted slavery to prop up a shattered economy and get the unskilled “Field Blacks” back on the land where they would not be a perpetually rebellious, unemployed and illiterate under-class, too “dark” to rub shoulders with the lighter-skinned upper-class leaders. Plantations in a broken economy were the only rewards they could give out … and what good’s a plantation if you don’t have people to work it and reap you a profit, hmmm?
Though L‘Ouverture has kicked the British out after years of occupation, we’re not done with Saint Domingue, yet, not by a long chalk. There’s still General Rigaud and other dissidents vying for power, so the arms smuggling and piracy will continue. There’s still the Frogs, who wish to conquer the place themselves and restore the old order of things. Once Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul, then Emperor of The French, he sent one army after another to Haiti/Saint Domingue to subjugate the place, and L’Ouverture ended up betrayed and imprisoned in the icy Maritime Alps in Europe, there to perish from hunger and cold.
That, though, lies in the future, and for now, Saint Domingue is still a bug-a-bear for British interests in the Caribbean, a place to be blockaded before their revolution spreads, and that will keep our boy Alan Lewrie busy.
And damme, but don’t he just have enough on his plate!
His happy marriage (relatively speakin’, o’ course!) has gone as tits-up as a dynamited bass, his sweet wife is out for blood and/or money—whichever comes first—and he still doesn’t know whom to shoot who’s sending all those “dear friend” letters! His “volunteer” crew is still a problem should anyone ever recognise them as runaway (stolen!) slaves. He did need ’em perishin’-bad, though!
And forgery, as any careful reader of the earlier books knows, does run in the family!
There’s Cashman’s duel to arrange, Ledyard Beauman’s deserved bloody end to manage, if for no other reason than to remove him from the British gene pool so the Ministry of Silly Walks won’t get funded ‘til the 1960s, and what’ll be the up-shot o’ that anent Lewrie and h
is relationships with the other Beaumans?
And, God above, there’s Guillaume Choundas to face once more, a “right shower o’ bastards” all by himself! Does he discover that he and Lewrie are in the same ocean (trust me, he will) then all sorts of mayhem could break loose. And trust me, such will!
Hey, I didn’t nickname the series “Sex, Swords, and Sailing Ships” for nothing, don’t ye know! Why, there’s even Toulon’s love life that hasn’t been touched upon, yet, and …
Oops. That’d be telling.
For now, in good ol’ down-home Southern parlance, “We’ll leave the latch-string out for ya”, and, as Granny Clampett always said … “Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?”
Notes
1 Namasté = Good morning.
2 Chalé jao … mulaayam! = Go away, soft(ly).
3 Chaay, krem ké saath/naashté ké liye for do = Tea with cream/breakfast for two.
4 Bahut achchaa/Ek dum = Very Good! At once!
5 kutch-pultan=a poor, undistinguished regiment.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
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SEA OF GREY. Copyright © 2002 by Dewey Lambdin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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eISBN 9781429976572
First eBook Edition : April 2011
Sea of Grey Page 43