“He gets that close, sir, and you’ll have loosed your first broadsides long since,” Lewrie barked in amusement. “I’d imagine that he sees the flag as un-important compared to the ship and our possible rich cargo.”
Hope so, anyway, Lewrie thought, still wondering just how many stars an American flag now had.
He turned to look forward over the bows and jibs to appreciate the lovely sunset, now all but guttered out. Bury and Lizard were out there in the darkness, and when the scend of the sea lifted Thorn atop a long-set wave, he could just make out two tiny black silhouettes of Lizard’s tops’ls. Only the lookouts in the cross-trees could make her out plainly now, or perhaps find her by the glow of her taffrail lanthorns.
Oh, Christ! Lewrie suddenly realized: If Bury stumbles over the Spaniard in the dark, he has no way t’signal us, ’less he looses rockets or shows blue-light fusees aloft! And Navy night signals made to another ship’ll give the whole game away! The Don’ll scamper off and we’ll never see him, again! Why, the Hell did I order ten miles of separation, when two or three at night is almost too far? Speakin’ of village idiots, here I stand!
He would pretend to have no qualms during supper, or when taking his last turns on deck, but he was certain that even large measures of whisky could not gain him a single wink of sleep!
Chapter 6
Fortunately, not only had Lt. Bury and Lizard not seen anything during the night, but he had taken it upon himself to shorten sail and let HMS Thorn close the distance between them to about four or five miles. Lizard’s appearance hull-up above the night horizon, with her taffrail lanthorns in plain sight from the deck, had been cause for Lewrie and Lt. Darling to be roused by the Middle Watch.
“Knacky fellow, is Bury,” Lewrie commented, much relieved to see Lizard’s lights. The very last warmth of a semi-tropic day had vanished, and the light night winds from the larboard quarter were cool, almost nippy in the wee hours before dawn, making him shiver.
“Knacky, sir?” Lt. Darling asked, yawning.
“To shorten the separation between us, just in case,” Lewrie told him, concealing his qualms over his decision for ten miles separation once again. To explain would be tantamount to admitting that he was fallible. “Well, I don’t know ’bout you, sir, but I’m for a few more hours of sleep.”
And when he’d clambered atop the dining table and had rolled into his hammock once more, Lewrie did fall into a deep and dreamless sleep, delighted that Lt. Bury had solved his trouble for him. When Eight Bells was struck at 4 A.M. to rouse all hands, he felt as if he was being dragged up from the bottom of a quicksand bog.
* * *
The two ships had passed below Great Inagua by dawn, altering course to the Nor’west, barely in sight of the lights of Matthew’s Town, where the salt cargoes were loaded, and almost in sight of the coast of Spanish Cuba to the Sou’west. They would stride out towards the Southern tip of Acklins Cay, across the empty hundred-mile gulf between the islands, then go back onto the wind to beat up the Mayaguana Passage once more.
With nothing to be seen, Lewrie had time for a leisurely breakfast, a sponge-off with a stub of soap and a pint of water, and a shave before returning to the deck just before the start of the Forenoon at 8 A.M. He could look round the well-ordered decks of Thorn with satisfaction, and had time to appreciate once more the beauty of the morning.
Here, in deep waters, rare in the shallow-banked Bahamas, the sea was a rich, clean blue and flecked with a myriad of white caps and cat’s-paws, under lovely cloud-dappled skies. The winds were piping up lively, more so than the day before, promising a fast passage.
“Deck, there!” the lookout in the foremast cross-trees cried. “Signal from Lizard!”
Lieutenant Darling hurriedly put his telescope to one eye to spot it, leaving Lewrie impatient, for his own glass was still stowed below in his sea bag, not in the binnacle cabinet as it would be.
“She makes ‘Strange Sail To Windward’, hah!” Darling barked in glee. “Stand on as we are, sir?”
“No, come to weather, as if we’re out-bound through the Mayaguana Passage,” Lewrie decided after a bit of thought. “If she is our Spaniard, she may take us for exportin’ ships. Not worth as much as inward-bound European goods, but maybe she’ll take the bait. I’d admire did you make a hoist to Lizard to close the distance even more, to about one or two miles—before yon strange sail can see us signallin’ each other.
The flag signal was bent on and hoisted; Lizard repeated it a moment later, then it was quickly struck, to indicate “Execute,” and Lizard turned up closer to the Trade winds but did not sheet home her fore-and-aft rig as closely as she might, slowing most lubberly. By the time that the strange sail had loomed hull-up two hours later, she was just a little over a mile ahead of Thorn and two points off the starboard bows.
“Permission to beat to quarters, sir?” Lt. Darling asked.
“Any time you like, sir,” Lewrie said with a nod. “I’ll go below and fetch my weapons, just in case.”
When he returned to the deck amid the bustle of the guns being run in and loaded then run back to the port sills, Lewrie could espy the strange ship plainly and make her out to be a smallish brig. She still showed no flag, but she was coming on almost bows-on to Thorn as if she would ram right into her.
“She could pass right between us, sir,” Lt. Darling said with a frown of concern, or concentration, on his face.
“Fire on both of us in passing?” Lewrie speculated out loud. “Then, she’d have to wear about right quickly t’catch us up again. Bad odds o’ takin’ either of us.”
Both Lizard and Thorn were on starboard tack, close-reaching, but not yet hard on the wind, or “full and by”. Lewrie wondered whether the strange ship could score any hits if she was their Spanish privateer, or even if she could man both her broadsides at the same time with a crew reputed to be only around eighty or ninety men. Once the stranger discovered that she was up against two Royal Navy ships, she might just keep on running all the way to one of the many “pocket harbours” on the coast of Cuba, and it would be a long stern chase after her.
Force his hand? Lewrie thought. Keep him level with us?
“She’s only one mile off, now, sir, and coming on fast,” Lieutenant Darling announced, sounding a tad anxious. “She still shows no flag.”
“Signal to Lizard, sir,” Lewrie snapped. “She’s t’haul her wind to larboard, and steer Westerly!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Darling obeyed, sounding a touch confused but calling aft to the sailors by the signal halliards. “Won’t they see it and sheer off, sir?” he asked, once the signal was made up.
“Too late for that,” Lewrie said with a lift of his brows and a puckish grin. “If she’s innocent, we scare ’em out of their breeches. If she’s a privateer—”
“Deck, there!” the foremast lookout yelled. “Strange sail shows Spanish colours!
As soon as the hoist appeared, Lt. Bury ordered his ship off the wind, wheeling Westerly and starting to cross Thorn’s bows, not waiting for the signal to be struck for the “Execute,” the same time as the Spanish brig opened her gun-ports and bore away to larboard.
“Got the bastard! Lewrie whooped. “She’s after Lizard first! Hold course a bit longer, Mister Darling, then haul your wind and go after her. With luck, we might get t’windward of her starboard side and double on her!”
“Hoist our true colours, sir?” Darling asked, now afire with battle-lust.
“Wait a bit longer,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “Let our Don believe we’re ‘Brother Johnathans’ a minute or so more, ’til there’s no way he can wiggle out of the trap.”
The privateer brig had wheeled Westerly, too, in chase of HMS Lizard. It took her crew time, though, to secure and abandon her starboard guns and man her larboard battery, her gun-ports opening slowly after a long minute or two. Just showing guns, though, wasn’t enough; to prove her hostile nature she would have to—
“There’s the proof o’
the pudding,” Lewrie exclaimed as her bow chaser fired a shot under Lizards’s forefoot. “Strike the Yankee flag and hoist our own, Mister Darling! Stand on as you bear ’til we’ve crossed her stern, then go right at her!”
Lieutenant Bury slowly struck the American flag that flew over Lizard’s stern, as if, in her sham role of a neutral merchant ship, she was surrendering. A moment later, though, the Union Jack soared aloft, and Lizard’s starboard guns erupted, wreathing her in a cloud of powder smoke. The two ships were level with each other, not one cable apart. Lewrie and Darling could see the Spaniard’s masts tremble, then begin to foreshorten as she hardened up to windward for a turn away. It was too late, though, for Thorn had closed the distance and strode up off the Spaniard’s starboard quarter at two-hundred-yards range.
“Mister Child, serve her a broadside!” Lt. Darling shouted to his second-in-command up forward amidships of the gun batteries. The carronades lit off almost as one, hurling 18-pounder roundshot at the Spanish brig, and she just staggered to the metal onslaught. The Don was an armed merchantman, built for decent speed and great cargo capacity, not warfare, not built as stout as a man o’ war. When all the smoke had drifted alee, and the carronades began to squeal back out to the ports on their slide carriages, it was evident that she had been savaged, with half her starboard gun-ports and the scantlings of her upper hull riddled with star-shaped shot holes. The Spanish did manage to fire two guns in reply, but then Thorn’s carronades were roaring again, blotting her out of sight.
When the smoke cleared to a thin haze, Lewrie could see that the enemy was close-hauled to weather, even though her foremast looked a bit askew from proper uprightness. And here came Lizard, beating up a point freer to close on the Don’s larboard quarter, one of her bow-chasers yapping to plant a shot square in the Spaniard’s stern transom!
“Fire as you bear, Mister Child!” Darling yelled, exultantly. “Shoot low and hull the bitch!”
Lieutenant Child obliged him, and the carronades roared one at a time from bow to stern. Thorn was almost fully abeam of the Spaniard by then, not one hundred yards off, close enough to hear the shot striking and the groans and screams of rivened wood.
“Her foremast’s gone by the board—huzzah!” Darling whooped as the Don’s foremast, shot clean away from her main supporting stays, slowly tilted to larboard and aft by the pressure of the winds, falling against her mainmast and ripping away sails and yards and rigging.
“She’s struck!” Lewrie yelled as he saw her colours being cut away to sail off astern of her and fall into the sea. Some of her crew stood at the starboard rails with their hands up, tossing gun tools overboard to show that they had had enough.
“A nice morning’s work, Mister Darling,” Lewrie congratulated.
“Cease fire, Mister Child! Drop it, dead’un!” Darling cried as Thorn’s crew erupted in lusty cheers. “Grapnels and lines, there! Secure the guns and make ready to go alongside!”
“How’s your Spanish, sir?” Lewrie asked Darling. “Mine is nigh-nonexistent. I’ll be wanting her papers and whatever we can find of her prizes.”
“Mister Child will be your linguist, sir,” Darling informed him. “He both speaks and reads Spanish main-well.”
Very good,” Lewrie said with a satisfied smile. “Then, we may get to the bottom of all this business, at long last.”
Chapter 7
Thorn and Lizard returned to port several days later with their Spanish privateer, and the American trading brig Santee, which had been cached close to the shore of un-inhabited Little Inagua. Once all the salutes had been fired and both ships had come to anchor, Lewrie sent a signal for one of Reliant’s barges to come collect him, specifying a barge, not his usual cutter. Thorn’s signalmen also made hoists for Fulmar and Lt. Oliver Lovett’s Firefly sloop to send boats—to the American brig.
Lewrie spent little time aboard his frigate, just long enough to scrub up, shave, and dress in his best uniform coat with the sash and star of the Order of the Bath, and both his medals, then he was off ashore to call upon the American Consul and the Prize Court.
* * *
“So, you did manage to hunt down the guilty party and recover Captain Martin’s ship and cargo, did you, sir?” the American Consul, Mr. Alexander Stafford mused as he offered Lewrie a chair and a glass of Rhenish. “Quick work, I must say.”
Stafford was tall and spare, with a stand-offish air that did little to sponsor warm relations ’twixt himself and the authorities of Nassau. He was a Massachusetts “blue blood,” aloof to most people in his own country, much less the more-despised “Brits,” and, in all, a damned poor choice for his diplomatic post, making Lewrie wonder if his presence at Nassau was more a punishment for his acerbic nature, not a reward.
“Perhaps Captain Martin will be relieved to get his ship back,” Lewrie presumed between refreshing sips of his wine.
“Captain Martin, fearing the worst, has left Nassau, sir,” the Consul informed him. “I saw him and his crew aboard one of our ships bound for Charleston from Turks Island, which had broken her passage here. He wished to explain his ship’s loss to his business partners and her ship’s husbands, and try to secure his finances as quickly as possible. I am sure he will be eager to return and reclaim her just as soon as I may write and inform him of her re-capture.”
“Well, he may not, Mister Stafford,” Lewrie said, leaning back in his chair with a smile on his face. “We also recovered all of his papers—manifests, business ledgers, his personal log? Does he return to British jurisdiction, he might find himself under arrest.”
“Arrest!” Stafford barked, scowling over the possible indignity. “For what cause, sir?” he archly added.
“Trading with the enemy,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “a charge of Conveyance by knowingly purchasing and transporting stolen goods, to wit, a shipload of British goods taken by a Spanish privateer and offered on the Havana market?”
“Spain is not our enemy, sir!” Stafford snapped. “Spain is your enemy. The United States is neutral in your war, and in a state of amity with all nations!”
“Well, what else may you call a shipload of powder, shot, and naval stores—ordered from Boston, by the way, and put aboard the Santee at Charleston—then shipped to Havana with written proof in Captain Martin’s hand that he knew what he was selling to the French and Spanish privateers? Then, sir, after noting that he had made himself and his partners a very tidy profit by doing so,” Lewrie went on, “he writes in his log, and in his business journal, that with some of that profit, he purchased several hundred kegs and hogsheads of British beer, ale, stout, and porter—all plainly marked with the brewers’ marks—and listed in the cargo manifests as so many in a lot of Whitbread, in a lot of Bass, in a lot from Strangeways Brewery, and so many kegs of Irish Guinness, hmm, sir?”
“Well, I… I…” Stafford spluttered, going red in the face and looking like a hanged spaniel, which pleased Lewrie greatly.
“He almost got away with it, too, Mister Stafford, but for the bad luck of running afoul of a man more suited to piracy than privateerin’, and there was the biter bit, hey?” Lewrie told him. “Unless you wish to lay legitimate claim to the Santee and her cargo, sir, I have no choice but to turn her and my Spanish prize over to the Prize Court to be condemned, evaluated, then put up for sale. Santee might fetch a decent sum, but I expect the merchants of Nassau to snatch up the beer quicker than you can say ‘knife’! Neutral or not, she’s as guilty as your Captain Martin.”
“I will do no such thing!” Stafford growled, looking insulted by the suggestion. “Such is not in my brief. I represent the interests of my country, nothing more, and the insinuation that I would attempt to profit from the situation, I find offensive!”
“Then, upon the best interests of your country, sir, I assume that you will be writing the authorities in Charleston to tell them of this breach of American neutrality,” Lewrie purred on, grinning as he sloughed off the very idea of Stafford feeling offended e
nough to call for a duel for his “injured” honour. “I will be writing our Consul, Mister Cotton, at Charleston, and our Ambassador at Washington. If you feel your country’s interests have been violated, perhaps you may write Spain’s Captain-General at Havana as well, warning him that his privateers had best leave American ships alone, from now on.”
“I will consider it!” Stafford snapped most stiffly. “Will that be all, sir?”
Lewrie finished his wine and set the glass aside, then rose to his feet. “You may also caution the authorities in Charleston that I fully expect that once the Prize Court has been made cognizant of all the particulars, they will refer the matter to civil court, which will issue a writ against your unfortunate Captain Martin in all British ports.
“That’ll put a rather large crimp in where he can put in to trade in future, but…upon his head be it,” Lewrie said, widening his arms. “I shall take my leave, sir, and good day to you, Mister Stafford.”
* * *
Lewrie returned to Reliant later that afternoon, once the last of his business ashore was done. His welcome aboard from the ship’s crew, summoned to gather on deck and the sail-tending gangways, with hats off, was a lot more boisterous this time. As soon as he appeared above the lip of the entry-port, they raised a great cheer.
“Ah, Mister Cadbury!” Lewrie called out to the Ship’s Purser, summoning him over once the cheers died away. “You’ve stowed our…spoils away securely?”
“Aye, sir,” Cadbury replied, looking glummer than usual.
“I’m thinking that we can issue the beer and all for a penny a pint, and no more than two pints per day,” Lewrie suggested. “With the rum issue atop that, I don’t want ’em staggerin’ drunk on duty.”
“Pints, aye, sir, though…” Cadbury waffled, as if the idea was taking food from his children’s mouths. “Only about half of the ship’s people own pint piggins, d’ye see, sir? I’d have to purchase them from shore, out of my own accounts, and Admiralty won’t—”
Lewrie and the Hogsheads Page 3