Larcum Mudge (Alexander Clay Series Book 8)

by Philip K Allan

  ‘Rampant,’ confirmed Sutton. ‘Consider, there are no end of islands of various nationalities, all hard up against each other, with a long history of trading among themselves. They ain’t inclined to let the inconvenience of a war in Europe stop all that. Poor Montague would have torn his hair out long ago, if he weren’t more concerned with spoiling his coiffure.’

  ‘Yes, I did notice that promotion has not blunted his enthusiasm for a well-turned-out ship,’ laughed his host.

  ‘It has made him decidedly worse, Alex!’ exclaimed Sutton. ‘If the Echo spends much more time in English Harbour, we shall presently have polished away every remaining piece of brass on board.’

  ‘Have a care, sirs, for it be brimstone hot!’ declared Harte, placing a sizzling platter in the centre of the table, loaded with charred fish. ‘Tatties in the chafing dish, and some manner of local cabbage on the side. May I help you to a flyer, sir?’ There was a pause as the two captains were served.

  ‘So what brings you to these waters, Alex?’ asked Sutton. ‘I take it the First Sea Lord had some greater object in mind than the kindness of renewing your acquaintance with me.’

  ‘I am to hunt down the Peregrine, and recapture her if I can,’ said his host. ‘Did you know much about her?’

  ‘Aye, a little. That was a melancholy affair. She was a nice little sloop, not unlike our old Rush. We all believed that she had foundered last year, and some in the squadron thought that a fitting end to an unhappy ship. Then word came from home that some of her crew had been captured, we caught a few more, and the whole sorry tale came out.’

  ‘Did you know Captain Daniels, then?’

  ‘A little, although he thought himself far superior to the likes of me,’ said Sutton. ‘From the short time I spent in his company, I should say that he was a man wholly unsuited to command.’

  ‘Was he a tartar?’ said Clay.

  ‘Very much the brute,’ confirmed his friend. ‘The admiral warned him enough times not to drive his people so harshly, but it was the usual story. Daniels had such impeccable connections that he was able to defy him. I presume, with no possible remedy in sight, that the crew took matters into their own hands.’

  ‘Yet it was not just a simple rising,’ observed Clay. ‘The mutineers must have been led with some intelligence, to have vanished so completely.’

  ‘I daresay they were,’ said his friend, through a mouthful of fish. ‘When will you commence your search?’

  ‘As soon as I have completed our provisions. But I do not envisage that it will be a very lengthy hunt. His lordship believes the Peregrine to lie at Guadeloupe.’

  ‘If it does, it is odd that Camelford has not reported it,’ said Sutton. ‘He commands the Daring and is tasked with patrolling those waters.’

  ‘Sir George mentioned the Daring, and said I could call on her for assistance. I would have sooner had you by my side, John, but he says he cannot spare you.’

  ‘He is right on that point,’ said Sutton. ‘Without the Peregrine, the squadron is short-handed. I am sure he is not seeking to frustrate you, but it is a shame not to spend more time together. It will be touch and go, it seems, for us both.’

  ‘Perhaps we shall have the opportunity to see one another when Camelford and I return with the Peregrine.’

  Sutton put down his knife and fork and sipped at this wine for a moment before replying. ‘A word of caution, Alex, where Camelford is concerned,’ he said. ‘He is a decent enough captain, but he is a deuced odd cove.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘For one thing, he is decidedly bookish,’ explained his friend. ‘The stern cabin of a sloop of war ain’t what you would call spacious, as you will recall, but he has had his shelved from deck to deckhead to accommodate his collection. I tell you; his quarters are more like a bookseller’s shop than anything you would associate with a man-of-war.’

  ‘Are they, by Jove,’ chuckled Clay. ‘That does sound strange, I grant you, but hardly sinister. As the husband to a novelist, I might have expected you to be more approving.’

  ‘He is also prey to the most violent of passions,’ continued Sutton.

  ‘On all occasions, or just when he finds one of his volumes to have been placed on the wrong shelf?’

  ‘I am serious, Alex. As a midshipman he was disrated for assault when he threw a fellow officer down a ladderway, and a year back he killed an American gentleman in a duel. They fought on the beach around the point. It was some dispute over a lady here in Antigua.’

  ‘He sounds more rakish than bookish,’ laughed Clay. ‘My thanks for the warning. I doubt if I shall have time for any affairs of the heart while I am in these waters, but I shall certainly insist he precedes me down any steps.’

  ‘Very droll,’ said his friend. ‘Do you know where in Guadeloupe the Peregrine may be found?’

  ‘Sir George thought at Pointe-à-Pitre.’

  ‘Pointe-à-Pitre!’ exclaimed Sutton. ‘Best of luck cutting her out from there, brother.’

  ‘Yes, the admiral was of much the same opinion. What is so formidable about this place?’

  ‘Where shall I start?’ said his friend. ‘The entrance is deuced narrow and turns about an island that serves the port like a breakwater. On that island is a large battery that will pound you all the way in. Once you are through that, you pass beneath a fortress with no end of guns to cover you. Oh, and the garrison can call on legions of freed slaves to oppose you. Get through all of that, and taking the Peregrine will be as easy as kiss my hand! Save that to get her out, you will have to go by the same route as you came in.’

  ‘But I suppose if this port is so widely considered to be impregnable, at least the French will not expect an attack,’ offered Clay.

  Sutton smiled at this, and leant across the table to pat the top of his friend’s arm. ‘That is what I have always admired most in your character, Alex,’ he said. ‘Your unfailing optimism!’

  *****

  ‘We touch, and before we have had time to draw breath, we go again,’ sighed Macpherson. He was standing at the stern rail of the Griffin, and was staring down on her churning wake, a bold white line drawn across the blue sea, leading back towards Antigua. ‘To think that I joined the marines to better acquaint myself with the world. I was looking forward to the diversions of that wee island. I even have a relation who owns a plantation at some place named Saddle Hill, you know?’

  ‘I do, for you can’t have mentioned him above a dozen times last night, over that third bottle of Madeira, Tom,’ said Blake, looking up from the sketch he was working on. ‘It was ever thus in the navy, where we are always in an unseemly rush to be somewhere other than where we chance to be. But this voyage will at least be of limited duration, my friend. No sooner will we have sunk English Harbour, than Guadeloupe will appear in all her splendour.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said the marine. ‘But what occasion shall I have to visit that island? Apart from wading ashore at the head of my men, with my claymore in my hand?’

  ‘And what of the painting of English Harbour I was going to produce?’ protested his friend. ‘I have completed little more than a few preliminary drawings. I shall be obliged to finish the work almost entirely from memory.’

  The marine came around and looked over his fellow officer’s shoulder, but it was not a harbour scene that lay on the page. Bold lines curved across the paper, conjuring up the lean, weathered face of a sailor with fierce eyes and a hawk nose.

  ‘I know that man,’ said Macpherson, stroking one of his bushy sideburns. ‘Is it not the volunteer I recruited in Devon? The one with a singular name?’

  ‘Larcum Mudge,’ confirmed Blake, pointing with his pencil to where his model stood among the other members of the afterguard. ‘He does have the most engaging features, does he not? I did ask him to sit for me, but he was very reluctant, so I am forced to capture his likeness unawares.’

  ‘Aye, I do recall his countenance,’ confirmed the Scotsman. ‘The moment I clapped e
yes on him, I resolved to get him on board. I must obtain his services as a model for my particular friend John Blake, I told myself.’

  ‘Very obliging of you, I’m sure,’ laughed the artist, bowing in mock gratitude.

  ‘You have set him down right enough,’ said Macpherson. ‘I see you have caught some of the swagger I remember from when he signed on. As if he did me a favour by condescending to grace our ship with his presence.’ From across the quarterdeck, Mudge seemed to be aware of being discussed. He glanced across at them, his fierce eyes lost in the deep shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

  ‘Deck ho!’ yelled the lookout, sitting high on the fore royal yard. He had one arm looped nonchalantly around the mast and the other raised to shade his eyes. ‘Sail off the larboard bow! One of them schooners ag’in!’

  Preston, who was officer of the watch, crossed to the mizzen shrouds, his telescope in his hand. He trapped the brass eye piece under his chin, extended the tube, rested it on a rattling and then focused on the horizon.

  ‘Edward grows very adept at performing his duties one-handed,’ commented Macpherson.

  ‘Indeed so,’ said Blake, closing his sketchbook and rising from the quarterdeck carronade he had been sitting on. ‘What have you found for us, Edward?’

  ‘Another of these little local trading craft,’ said Preston. ‘We shall pass within hailing distance on our current course. Mr Todd!’

  ‘Yes sir,’ replied the midshipman.

  ‘Kindly give my compliments to the captain, and tell him that we are closing with another schooner. Showing British colours.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the youngster, wheeling off towards the ladderway.

  ‘Are we especially interested in such wee craft?’ queried the Scotsman. ‘I understood that we have come here on the hunt for more substantial prey?’

  ‘Standing orders in the squadron,’ explained Blake. ‘Any ship encountered is to be investigated, although it would be a bold privateer or smuggler who sailed up to a Royal Navy frigate in broad daylight, as this one is currently doing.’

  Both the Griffin and the unknown schooner were travelling swiftly, so that when Clay arrived on deck the other ship was easily visible, up over the horizon already. He examined it in a perfunctory way, and then closed his telescope. ‘Kindly signal to them to heave too, if you please, Mr Preston, and bring me within hailing distance.’

  The flag signal had to be made twice before it was understood on board the approaching ship, and she eventually came up into the wind and wallowed in the swell. On her delicate twin masts, a mass of fore and aft sails shivered and flapped in the breeze. Her narrow hull was almost a hundred feet long, and lay low and heavy in the water. Her bulwarks were pierced with a half dozen gun ports per side, at each of which stood a six-pounder cannon. Her crew seemed a motley collection of various nationalities, mainly black or Hispanic. A red-faced man in a straw hat and a bright green waistcoat stood by the wheel, barking instructions to the crew.

  ‘Ahoy there!’ shouted Clay through his speaking trumpet. ‘What vessel is that?’

  ‘The Saint Christopher, out of Bridgetown, Barbados, sir,’ came the reply. ‘My name is Adams, and I am her owner.’

  ‘What cargo do you have, Mr Adams?’

  ‘Sugar and logwood for the most part,’ came the reply. ‘We are bound for Antigua.’

  ‘You are very heavily armed for a simple trader, Captain,’ continued Clay, indicating the line of guns.

  In response the man barked an order, and four crewmen gathered around one of the cannons. A moment later they lifted it bodily off the deck.

  ‘What the deuced …’ exclaimed Macpherson, turning to Blake beside him, who was chuckling to himself. The man in the waistcoat gestured to the sailors to put the cannon down, and pointed his speaking trumpet back towards the Griffin.

  ‘The pair in the bow are real, but the rest of my pieces are Quakers, sir,’ he explained. ‘They serve to frighten off privateers, but will answer for little more.’

  ‘Am I to understand that all those other cannons are false?’ queried the marine.

  ‘Quite so, Tom,’ smiled Blake. ‘Wood and canvas, for the most part, I would think. They are convincingly done, I grant you.’

  ‘Have you passed by Guadeloupe, Captain?’ continued Clay.

  ‘Aye, that we did,’ said Adams. ‘And were stopped by another king’s ship for our troubles. I would hold it very kind, if you have completed your enquiries, to let us pass. I should like to make port before it grows dark. That is when these waters belong to the French privateers. And guns that they cannot see will not serve to distract them.’

  ‘I understand, Captain. You may proceed. Have a safe passage,’ concluded Clay, turning away from the rail. ‘Have the encounter noted in the log, Mr Preston, and then put us back on our original course, if you please.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied the lieutenant.

  The big frigate ponderously turned back across the wind, rather more slowly than the sleek schooner. Macpherson continued to look after her as she sped away towards Antigua, the island marked by a few puffy white clouds on the horizon.

  ‘Tell me, John, how distant is Barbados?’ he asked. His friend considered for a moment.

  ‘Mr Armstrong is the man to answer that question, but I should say it lies perhaps three hundred miles away, off beyond Guadeloupe,’ he said, pointing towards the south. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Did you not mark the strip of fresh canvas on that ship’s main sail?’ said the marine. ‘I would wager my commission that she is the same craft as we passed on our way into English Harbour when we arrived. I am no authority on navigation, but I should say that yon schooner has made a very swift passage indeed, if she has truly gone so far for her cargo.’

  *****

  Later that afternoon, the Griffin was sailing south, with the island of Guadeloupe filling the eastern horizon. Big white clouds dotted the sky above a chain of dark green forested mountains that soared thousands of feet up from out of the blue water. At the southern end of the range was the highest point, the lofty cone of a volcano. One of its slopes was green with scrubby vegetation, while just beside it was a scree of blackened lava. Against the sky, a line of smoke could be seen, drifting up from the summit. Through his telescope Clay examined the little settlements dotted at the mountains’ feet and the occasional fishing boat working close in to the shore.

  ‘This half of the island is named Basse-Terre,’ explained Armstrong, who was standing by his side. ‘It is forest for the most part. The other half is much flatter, and it is there that all the sugar plantations lie. The two portions are a little like the wings of a butterfly in shape. The place that they touch is where Pointe-à-Pitre is to be found, on the far side of those hills.’

  ‘The French once produced a deal of sugar in these parts, I collect,’ said Clay.

  ‘Heavens, yes!’ exclaimed the sailing master. ‘Volcanic dirt, together with all the sun and rain hereabouts makes cane grow like weeds. Guadeloupe planters were rich as kings, back before the war. Why, at the end of the War of Seven Years, the French traded all of Canada for the return of this island, certain that they had struck a bargain.’

  ‘But all of that is to be found beyond these mountains?’

  ‘Yes sir. When we round the southern point, we shall open up the bay that contains Pointe-à-Pitre.’

  ‘I very much wish to find the Daring first,’ said Clay. ‘I would sooner not announce our presence just yet. The admiral said she was generally to be found close to the Saintes.’

  ‘Those little islands will appear presently, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘They lie off the southern end of Guadeloupe.’ He waved towards the bow, just as the lookout hailed from the masthead.

  ‘Deck ho! Sail ahoy! Man-of-war from the look of her!’

  As they approached, the other ship appeared from beyond the southern cape of the island, and stood out to investigate the new arrival. She was a neat little sloop, ship rigged with three
masts, just like a half-sized version of the Griffin. Her black hull had a broad yellow stripe along it, and a carved figurehead of a goddess in a flowing blue dress stared out from beneath her bowsprit.

  ‘She is very like my first command,’ said Clay, closing his telescope. ‘Mr Russell, kindly make the squadron recognition signal, followed by our number.’

  A line of coloured bundles rose up to the masthead, and the flags broke out in response to a deft snap of the halliard from the sailor assisting the midshipman. After a pause, the sloop replied.

  ‘That is the correct response, sir,’ said Russell. ‘She is the Daring, sixteen-gun sloop of war, Master and Commander Stephen Camelford is her captain.’

  ‘Kindly signal for him to come on board, Mr Russell,’ ordered Clay. ‘Mr Armstrong, please have Captain Camelford shown down to my cabin when he arrives.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  *****

  Clay heard his visitor long before he saw him. The frigate had hove to in order to receive him, and the clatter of his boat’s arrival alongside was accompanied by a flurry of shouted oaths, one of which was entirely new to him in spite of his two decades in the navy. When Captain Camelford arrived in the cabin, he proved to be a large young man with a prominent head and thin red hair. His solid face was bracketed by bushy ginger sideburns and spotted with freckles. He came through the door with a face like thunder, banging his hat into the hands of Harte and striding over. Clay regarded his visitor with surprise. To a lowly commander, a senior post captain like himself was considerably superior in rank, yet he could detect little of the deference he might have expected. Like the volcano the Griffin had passed earlier, Camelford seemed ready to erupt at any moment.

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain,’ Clay said, rising to shake his hand. His guest’s grip was firm, yet slippery at the same time.

  ‘Your pardon, sir, ’tis only seawater. I splashed my arm coming up the side,’ he growled.

  ‘No matter, do please take a seat,’ said his host. ‘Harte, a towel for the captain, followed by some madeira, if you please.’ Slightly mollified, Camelford settled into the chair.