Havoc`s Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  BOOK THREE

  "Rebus semper pudor absit in artis!"

  "Away with scruple in adversity!"

  – Argonautica, Book V, 324

  Valerius Flaccus

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mister Peel," Capt. Lewrie said, alighting from the spavined roan "prad" which he had ridden up to, and back from, Admiralty House on its lofty, airy hilltop overlooking English Harbour. He could not quite disguise a smug expression. He had ridden, whilst Mr. Peel had been forced to take "Shank's Ponies" for his call upon the Governor-General, that is, to walk; and a long, upward walk it had been. Peel was plucking his coat and waist-coat away from his sopping shirt, and mopping his streaming face as Lewrie sprang down by the boat landing.

  "Captain Lewrie," Peel finally managed to reply from a parched mouth. "Damme, you'd think there'd be a pinch of wind, at the least."

  "Lee-side harbour, Mister Peel," Lewrie informally informed him. "Absolutely vital in the islands. The East'rd hills block most of it, and Shirley Heights polishes it off, most days."

  "At least we had wind where we anchored," Peel said, fanning his hat and peering longingly to the outer roads. "Not much, but some, and some'd do for me, 'bout now."

  "We'll have you under the quarterdeck awnings, soakin' yer feet in a pan of cool water, 'fore you can say 'Jack Ketch,'" Lewrie vowed. "So. How was your reception with your, uhm… co-conspirators in the Governor-General's office?"

  "Oh, not too horrid, considering, sir," Peel wryly said, with a grimace, "given our use of French private signals, which, I gather, are thought too valuable to use at all, unless we spotted Jesus and a band of angels descending for the Second Coming. Shrieks of consternation, 'viewing with alarm'… all the proper forms of disapproval of which officialdom is possible. But for the fact that Mister Pelham holds superior position to them, and might have authorised me to employ them at my discretion… a view from which I did not disabuse them. Might I enquire what sort of warm reception you received, sir? And that is not a pun upon today's weather." Peel grinned, regaining his breath and his equanimity after such a torrid "stroll."

  "Ginger beer, sirs! Ginger beer!" a street vendor cried, as he wheeled a hand-cart down the stone quay near the boat landing. "Best fer tang, best fer th' bilious! Cool ginger beer! Who'll buy…?"

  "The local admiral was of much the same mind, Mister Peel. Got cobbed rather well," Lewrie confessed. "Your confederates in the Governor-General's mansion just did release them to him. He just distributed them to his captains, and now they're all for nought, so there'll be no gullible prizes brought in by guile. Hence, no admiral's share. Damme, I do hope he hasn't spent his expected windfall already! And we 'poached' on his private 'game park' without declaring ourselves first. And, damn our eyes, we didn't fetch him in even a row-boat to show for our raid. He could care less was Guillaume Choundas the Anti-Christ himself, he's never heard of him, so… you may imagine all the rest. If we do have some form of 'Admiralty Orders,' then sail independent, instanter! Just get out of his harbour, and his sight."

  "Could we?" Peel asked. "Sail instanter? Do we need anything?"

  "Firewood and water, the usual plaint," Lewrie told him with a shrug. "You?"

  "Not really," Peel admitted. "There were some rather intriguin' hints that I garnered… 'twixt the howls, and such. Hints which we just might wish to follow up," he suggested, tapping his noggin with a conspiratorial air, and that maddening smirk of private information.

  "Best we add livestock to our requests, then," Lewrie supposed. "It sounds as if we'll be cruising longer than our fresh meat holds out. Or poking our bows into waters where we couldn't buy a goat."

  "Ginger beer, sir? Ginger beer fer yer cabin stores, Cap'um?" the vendor tempted. "Keeps longer'n ship's water, h'it do, an' won't go flat an' tasteless like small-beer."

  "Sailor, were you, my man?" Peel enquired, taking in the ragged "ticken" striped slop-trousers the man wore, those from a much earlier issue, each leg as wide as the waistband and ending below his knees.

  "Aye, sir. Th' ol' Ariadne, in th' last war," the man proudly said, "afore she woz hulked. Right yonder, she were, fer years an'-"

  "Scrapped her, did they?" Lewrie asked, peering closely at the grizzled fellow, trying to place him, or to determine that his claims were false. Where poor old Ariadne had lain, stripped down to a gant-line as a receiving and stores ship, perhaps later a sheer hulk rigged to pull lower masts like bad teeth, there was now an equally sad-looking, bluff-bowed 74-gun Third Rate.

  " 'Er bottom woz 'bout rotted out, Cap'um. Beached her, yonder, an' burned 'er for 'er fittings an' 'er nails," the man said. "In '89 it woz. Come out in '80, she did. I were main-mast cap'm, then. She got laid up, I went aboard th' ol' Jamaica, but I lost me ratin', then got ruptured an' discharged, just 'fore the war ended, in '82. Stayed out here h'ever since. Here, sir… I know ye, Cap'um?"

  "Edgemon!" Lewrie exclaimed, suddenly dredging the man's name up from the distant past. "You taught me handin' and reefin'!"

  "Mister… Ashburn, sir?" The man beamed.

  "No. Lewrie," he told him, a tad abashed to be mistaken for a much tarrier, more promising, and handsomer midshipman of those times.

  "Oh Lord, Mister Lewrie, aye!" Edgemon cried. " 'Twas you tried t'catch 'at poor topman wot got pushed off the main tops'l yard, wot was 'is name?"

  "Gibbs," Lewrie supplied. "Mister Rolston pushed him…"

  "Aye, sir, 'at li'l bastard!" Edgemon snarled, the memory still sour. "Beggin' yer pardon, Cap'um. 'Spect he's a Cap'um hisself, by now, an' God 'elp pore sailormen."

  "No, he's dead," Lewrie happily related. "Died at the Nore, a common seaman and mutineer, under a new name."

  "Hung, sir? 'Is sort's bound fer th' gibbet," Edgemon beamed.

  "No, I killed him," Lewrie flatly said.

  "Have a free piggin o' ginger beer on me then, sir!"

  "I'll have a whole barricoe, sir," Lewrie declared of a sudden. "What's your charge for five gallons?"

  "Lor', sir! Uhm… eight shillin's, sorry t'say."

  "Make it ten gallons, and here's a guinea," Lewrie said, going for his purse to produce an actual gold coin, not the usual scrip that had even made its way to the Caribbean as "war replacement" for specie. "Will that buy a piggin for me, Mister Peel, and my boat crew?"

  "Cover most 'andsome, Cap'um Lewrie!" Edgemon swore. "Thankee right kindly. Alluz knew you'd make a right-tarry awf'cer, sir."

  Oh, don't trowel it on! Lewrie thought, though smiling all the while-the way I remember it, you despaired I'd ever master running bowlines!

  "I'll take, oh… one five-gallon barricoe, myself," Mr. Peel stated. "That'd be eight, did you say?"

  "Ten, sir," Edgemon slyly said, tipping his former "favourite" midshipman a sly wink. Peel rolled his eyes, but paid as well.

  "Mister Peel's treat, lads," Lewrie lied to his boat-crew. "He thought you looked half-strangled, sittin' out in the sun so long." As extra piggins were fetched and filled from the hand-cart, the three requisite barricoes were laid between the thwarts of Lewrie's gig.

  "Do I owe more?" Peel whispered to Lewrie as they stood in what little shade there was, apart from the boat-crew. "And why say it was done in my name, Captain Lewrie?"

  "You're not Navy, Mister Peel," Lewrie said in an equally soft snicker. "There's only so much jollity 'twixt a captain and his hands that is allowed, else he appears t'be playin' favourites, or goes too slack and 'Popularity Dick.' Then he erodes his own authority. Done in your name, though, and nought o' mine… d'ye see? What a civilian does, ignorant o' Navy ways, don't signify, for you ain't in the line of command, Mister Peel."

  "You cannot seem to care for their comfort or welfare, sir?"

  "Care, aye, Mister Peel. But cosset or pamper? Never."

  "You'll recompense me my two shillings, then, Captain Lewrie?" Peel snickered. " 'Twas in a good cause, after all," he pointed out.

  "Should o' bid quicker, Mister Peel," Lewrie chuckled back with sly glee.
"You can't keep up with risin' prices, that's your own lookout. Ahh! That was refreshing! Let's get under way. Coming, sir?"

  "Aye… coming," Peel said, snorting at his "diddlement."

  "Coming… so is Christmas," Lewrie said with a laugh.

  Peel was, indeed, sitting in the shade of the quarterdeck awning with his bare feet stuck into a wide-ish pan of cool seawater, sleeves rolled to the elbow and shirt opened to mid-chest, when Captain Lewrie came on deck, again, at the first challenging shout from the midshipman of the harbour watch, the unfortunate Mr. Burns. A rowing boat was at the starboard entry-port, and Peel sat down his mug of ginger beer.

  "Boat ahoy!" Burns croaked, his pubescent voice cracking. "Who goes there?"

  "Hoy, the ship!" an equally teenaged voice cried back. "Barge to the United States Armed Ship Thomas Sumter, with an invitation for your captain and officers!"

  "Mister Burns?" Lewrie snapped from behind the gawky scarecrow, making him almost leap out of his shoes in sudden alarm.

  "Boat coming alongside, sir," Burns stammered. "From the, uhm… that Jonathon ship lying over yonder, with an invitation, sir."

  "Let 'em lay alongside and come up, Mister Burns," Lewrie decided. "Since they're almost hooked onto the main-chains already!"

  "Uhm, aye, sir!" Burns parroted, gulping in dread before going to the entry-port to converse with the barge. "Mister Pendarves, man side-party for a Lieutenant! Turn out the duty watch."

  "And we'll discuss your nodding off right after, Mister Burns," Lewrie said, glowering. "You, Mister Pendarves the Bosun, his strong right arm, and the 'gunner's daughter,' for being so remiss."

  "Aye aye, sir," Burns miserably said, his lower lip quivering.

  "Hmm… quite the uniform, sir," Peel took note with a smirk, as he came to Lewrie's side. "All the 'go,' is it? Of your own devising, I trust?"

  "It was!" Lewrie snapped back, trying to ignore him.

  His experiment with light cotton uniform coats instead of hard-finished wool in the tropics had been an utter failure. The dark blue coats had dyed waist-coats, shirts, breeches' tops, and anything else they brushed against, including upholstered great-cabin furniture; and the gold-lace pocket trimmings and ornate cuff detailings, even detachable gilt epaulets, had turned a suspiciously bright greenish tinge at the edges. Now, with most of the offending dye leached from them (and the major damage done to his wardrobe) Lewrie was left with a brace of coats of a disturbing light blue, which could still bleed faint tints if caught on deck in a driving rain. It was use them or admit to one and all his serious error, so Lewrie perversely clung to them, though their use was severely limited to clear-weather days far from shore or those rare days at anchor when he had no shore calls to make, and expected none in return.

  "And you paid your tailor, in full, I s'pose, before uhm…?" Peel whispered in mocking amusement.

  "Yess!" Lewrie hissed back, disgruntled. "Oh, dear," Peel commiserated.

  Whatever surly rebuke Lewrie had in mind was squelched by the arrival of an officer at the lip of the entry-port, saluted by a small side-party requisite for the welcome of a Lieutenant, whichever navy claimed him… excluding the French, of course.

  Lewrie had thought he had seen the uniforms of the new American Navy when he had been dined aboard USS Hancock, but this fellow looked like a relic of their defunct Continental Navy, which Lewrie could but briefly recall from one brisk encounter in his midshipman days in '82.

  White stockings, dark blue breeches, dark blue coat with bright red turnback lapels and cuffs, a red waist-coat with gilt edging; and doffing a very old-fashioned tricorne hat to the saluting sailors and Marines as the bosun's calls shrilled and twittered.

  "Permission t'come aboard, sirs," the strange officer called.

  "Permission granted," Lewrie allowed with a "captainly" grunt.

  "Allow me t'name myself t'you, sir," the man went on, sweeping his hat low in a greeting bow, though with a confused look on his phyz. "Lieutenant Ranald Seabright, of the United States Armed Ship Thomas Sumter. I bring an invitation from Captain Douglas McGilliveray to your captain, and such officers as he may wish t'bring, to dine aboard the Sumter this ev'nin', sir. Might I enquire if your captain is now aboard?"

  "One of the Charleston McGilliverays, is your captain?" Lewrie asked, stepping forward with a surprised grin.

  "He is, indeed, sir," Lt. Seabright declared, taken aback, perhaps, by the sky-blue apparition before him. "And you are, sir?"

  "Alan Lewrie, captain of his Britannic Majesty's frigate, the Proteus, sir," Lewrie told him, doffing his own hat and making a bow.

  "Oh! D'lighted t'make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie, sir," Seabright said, in what Lewrie recognised as a Low Country Carolinas accent; Seabright's "sir" was more akin to "suh."

  Damme, Lewrie thought, still eying the old-fashioned uniform in

  some suspicion as to whether the United States Navy actually had one.. or did they let their officers wear whatever was handy; Last time, that Captain Kershaw and most of his officers were from the Carolinas. Are there any Nor'east Yankees at sea?

  Lt. Seabright, though, was eying his own uniform coat with just as much dubious suspicion, as if of half a mind that Lewrie was "having him on," and the nape of his neck was actually turning red.

  "He really is, ye know," Peel said, tongue-in-cheek.

  "Once made the acquaintance of a Mister McGilliveray," Lewrie said, "one of your merchant adventurers among the Indians to the West. Might your captain be kin, d'ye think, Mister Seabright?"

  "Certain of it, sir!" Seabright replied, more at ease suddenly. "That's exactly what my captain's people did, before the late war."

  "Then I shall accept Captain McGilliveray's kind invitation in good expectation of resuming, as well as making, the acquaintance. Urn, how many of my officers, Mister Seabright?" Lewrie asked, still trying to dredge up the Christian name of the McGilliveray he'd met in Spanish Florida towards the end of the Revolution; he thought it was something Scottish, clannish… Highlander-ish? Unpronounceable?

  "Yourself, plus three others, sir," Seabright answered. "Whomever you choose. The captain will have one midshipman at-table, sir. Kin," he explained, with a shrug, "So…"

  "Ah! Very well, sir," Lewrie said, asking the time to be expected. "Two Lieutenants, and one younker to keep yours company at the foot of the table, then. 'Til then, Mister Seabright, and thankee."

  "Was that wise, Captain Lewrie?" Mr. Peel said after departure honours had been paid, and the barge was being stroked back over to a sleek frigate-like three-master about half a mile farther up the roads. "The Yankee Doodles… recall what Mister Pelham told you, sir. They are more competitors than allies. Other than our signals book, we do not share information with them. It might be taken as, uhm… by our superiors, that is…"

  "Oh, rot, Mister Peel," Lewrie breezed off. "If anything, it'll prove t'be a harmless diversion. We get a chance to see if the smaller American warships are built as stout and novel as their new forty-four gunned frigates. I told you 'bout them, didn't I? You told me they've established anchorages in Prince Rupert Bay on Dominica, and in South Friar's Bay on Saint Kitts. Much closer to Guadeloupe, mind, and what they know of these waters, and French activities, might be fresher than our information. We could learn more from them than they from us."

  "If played right, I s'pose, sir," Peel dubiously said.

  "And we, without actually saying that we're here on a specific mission," Lewrie slyly hinted, "discover to them who and what Choundas is. Now, do they feel like making the effort to stop his business as the best way to protect their own trade, we'd have more eyes and ears at sea helping us run him to ground, and all unwitting, too! They're a spankin' new navy, just itchin' t'beat the Be-Jesus out of the Frogs. T'gain fame and honour, t'lay the foundation for a permanent fleet not subject to the whims o' their Congress's parsimony. Damme, Mister Peel, they'd best whip somebody… soon!"

  "So eager for a victory or two that they'd go after Cho
undas in our stead, Captain Lewrie?" Peel snickered as he saw the sense of this piddling little revelation to their supper hosts.

  "Damme, they divert him from his plans, or do they really corner him and beat the stuffing from him, I shan't cry," Lewrie vowed. "However the deed's done, hey?"

  "And there is always the possibility that, should they meet up with Choundas, and lose to his greater cleverness and skill," Mister Peel said with a quizzical brow up, "well, perhaps their Congress and voters decide having a national navy, instead of a gaggle of revenue cutters, and thirteen state militias at sea, is a bad idea. Hence, no competition in the Caribbean, and their trade protection put into our good hands, Captain Lewrie. Hmm… int'restin'."

  "Which'd please your Mister Pelham, and his masters in London, right down to the ground," Lewrie realised, beaming at just how devious Peel could be. "Sending him home wearin' the laurel crown, gettin' him off my back… and you, promoted and feted, or whatever it is they do in the Foreign Office to 'good and faithful servants'?"

  "They mostly came from privateersmen, smugglers, and pirates, Peel seemed to agree, "… our Americans."

  "Set a thief t'catch a thief, you're saying?" Lewrie laughed.

  "Something like that, Captain Lewrie."

  "And it'll be amusing, too, Mister Peel," Lewrie brightly told him, already shuffling through his mental "muster book" for people to take with him that evening. "The McGilliveray I met was half-Scot and half-Muskogee Indian… whom the Jonathons call Creeks. The longer

  we spent up the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida, the more native he went, 'til he got so guttural I couldn't understand half of what he said… and made me feel for my scalp ev'ry morning. Is his kinsman even close to the same bare-arsed, buckskin sort, you'll be able t'dine out on the tale the next five years!"

  "You'll wig and powder, for safety's sake, or wear your own hair then, Captain Lewrie?" Peel proposed, chuckling.