“Mine arse on a band-box,” Lewrie said with a put-upon sigh. “Very well! I can take a hint.” He stuck his head over the hammock nettings to look at the dog. “And thankee for the compliment!”
“Deck, there!” the mast-head lookout called down. “Our boats is comin’ off shore!”
Lewrie traded his penny-whistle for a telescope and went back to the bulwarks to look them over for clues, counting them for losses, despite the complete lack of battle sounds. Once out of the shallow inlet, the boats broke off to return to their respective ships; all were there, and rowing in good order. The two new gunboats were closing on Reliant, with red-painted tompions in the muzzles of the commandeered carronades, and a file of red-coated and white cross-belted Marines seated in-board of the oarsmen. He could see Lieutenant Merriman and Midshipman Eldridge in one, with Marine Officer Simcock, and Lt. Westcott and Midshipman Warburton in the other. God knows where he’d found it, but Westcott had a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, which he took off and waved once the gunboat met the first sea waves and began to hobby-horse.
* * *
“The dog and I are glad to see you back aboard, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie japed once the First Lieutenant had come through the entry-port and had gained the quarterdeck. True to Grainger’s statement, the dog had “sung along” with Bosun Sprague’s calls to welcome the officers aboard. “Accomplish anything?”
“Not a blessed thing, sir, sorry to say,” Westcott said with a scowl on his face. He took off his straw hat and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “After our last raid into the inlet, the Dons learned their lesson. The civilians hereabout seemed to have moved away and abandoned what settlements they had. Into the safety of Saint Augustine, most likely. We did spot a few Spanish infantry lurking in the woods, far off, but as soon as Simcock sent a file of Marines in their direction, they scampered, and gave us no problems. Arnold is piqued, I must warn you, sir. His Marines got their boots muddy and their kits soiled for nothing. He’ll be in the ‘Blue Devils’ for two days.”
“At least you got yourself a new hat,” Lewrie pointed out.
“There was an abandoned cornfield, sir, with a scarecrow stood up in it,” Westcott told him, displaying his hat. “The hat is almost new. So was the maize … too green to pick, so that was a bust, too.”
Westcott appeared crest-fallen and weary. After his initial excitement of arming and fitting the gunboats—and sharing his drawings with Lt. Bury during the process—he had been panting for the opportunity to use them against the Spanish, and Lewrie had sent him off on almost every landing … with little to show for it, and not a single chance of action, since.
“Sorry you found no fun,” Lewrie said, more sincerely.
“Well, sir, there was some excitement,” Westcott said. “One of Lizard’s sailors almost got bitten by a snake, a coral snake, Lieutenant Bury said it was. Pretty as anything, but deadly. It took a good dozen very scared sailors to club it to death with their musket butts, and after that, everyone was skittish of where they stepped.”
“Let me guess,” Lewrie japed. “Bury claimed it, and is even how painting a picture of it.”
“If not this instant, he will be soon, sir,” Westcott said, with a brief show of good humour. “Some of our sailors thought to tangle with an alligator … a young one, no more than six feet long,” the First Officer went on. “That wasn’t a fair fight, either, and the alligator won. No one got hurt,” he quietly assured Lewrie, “just some feelings. Oh, Lovett’s men found a dead cow that the locals had left behind, but it was gone over in the heat. So much for hung beef, too.”
“I always said that Florida isn’t worth a tuppenny shit,” Lewrie said, “and I can’t imagine how desperate ye have t’be t’live here.”
“Aye, sir … all biting flies, gnats, sand fleas, and mosquitoes and such,” Westcott firmly agreed. “Once one is in off the beach, it is hellish-warm without a whiff of wind, too. The Spanish are welcome to the place!”
“Fetch anything offshore for the dog, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked. “Ye noted how fond was his greeting to ye, second fiddle with the Bosun?”
“Not a single thing, this time, no,” Westcott said. “He does sound fond of me, Simcock, and Merriman, doesn’t he?”
You’ll tumble to it, sooner or later, Lewrie thought.
“Let’s give the shore party a quarter-hour to get settled, and time at the scuttle-butts for water, then we’ll hoist signal for all ships to weigh,” Lewrie decided. “Time enough to sponge yourself off?”
“Thank you, sir,” Westcott said with a brief grin. “I do allow that after a morning in that stifling heat, I am a bit ‘high’. Shall we sail as far as the rivers, or Cumberland Sound, sir?”
“I think a loaf off Saint Augustine is in order, first,” Lewrie told him. “The soldiers you saw in the woods surely have reported our presence, and it’s time to drive the point home.”
* * *
By mid-afternoon, the wee squadron was two miles off St. Augustine, temptingly trailing their coats within Range-To-Random Shot of the heavy guns of the Castillo de San Marcos, and daring the Spanish to waste powder and shot. They had worked together long enough by then to be able to tack or jibe about in line-ahead whenever Reliant hoisted a flag signal for “Tack In Succession” or the riskier “Tack, Reversing The Order Of Sailing In Column”. It was their way of showing off to the Dons, or “cocking a snook”, whilst honing their ship-handling.
“Sail Ho!” a lookout shouted down after their third parade down the coast. “Off the larboard beam!”
Westcott and Merriman had been below, napping through the day’s warmth in the wardroom, but came boiling up in curiosity to join the officer of the watch, Lt. Spendlove, and Lewrie, at the bulwarks with their telescopes to their eyes.
“Aloft, there!” Spendlove bawled. “How many sail?”
“Just the one, sir!” the lookout wailed back.
“Looks t’be a large jib … no, two jibs, and a large mains’l,” Lewrie speculated aloud. “She’s bows-on to us, so … her mains’l’s winged out, on a ‘soldier’s wind’.”
He glanced up at the commissioning pendant to determine that the winds were from the East-Sou’east, so if the strange sail was on a winged-out run, she was coming from the Bahamas.
“I think she’s almost hull-up,” Lt. Spendlove commented. “And I think I can almost make out a speck of colour at her mast-head.”
“Red and orange?” Lt. Merriman asked, wondering if the colours of Spain were in the offing.
“All I can make out is red,” Spendlove told his compatriot.
“She might be one of ours,” Lewrie said, catching the tiniest flash of colour in his ocular, too. With the wind directly astern of the strange sail, any flag aloft would stream directly at Reliant, and only a slight fluke of wind could display it properly. “It does look red.”
“Odds are, sir, no Spaniard would be coming from the Bahamas,” Lt. Westcott announced. “Any of their ships, naval or merchant, would approach Saint Augustine from the South.”
Oh, Christ! Lewrie thought with a sinking feeling; Forrester’s got the collywobbles that the Dons’re about to invade his patch, and wants my frigate t’back him up! When Bury came back from Nassau, he said the bastard was anxious about something! The fubsy toad!
“Whoever she is, she’s coming right for us, sir,” Spendlove said, closing the tubes of his telescope and returning to the middle of the quarterdeck to resume his attentive watch-standing duties.
“Deck, there!” the lookout shouted down. “She’s hull-up from the cross-trees! Sail is a one-masted cutter!”
“An aviso from Nassau, with orders, most-like,” Lt. Merriman concluded, his telescope still glued to his eye. “Aye, sir! I can definitely make out a Red Ensign at her mast-head, now. She is one of ours.”
Lewrie shut the tubes of his day-glass, too, his mouth screwed up in mild disgust. Forrester was ordering him back to Nassau, with his prime mission incomplete. He’
d better have a damned good reason! Lewrie fumed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The single-masted cutter, which proved to be HMS Squirrel, came close-aboard Reliant, within easy speaking distance as the squadron jogged slowly North up the coast a bit beyond St. Augustine, and her commanding officer, bellowed, “I have despatches and mail and some men of your squadron!”
“I will receive them all!” Lewrie shouted back, then turned to Midshipman Warburton. “Hoist signals to the other ships, sir. Make ‘Send Boats’ and ‘Have Mail’.”
“Aye, sir!” Warburton eagerly said. Reliant had not received any word from home since departing Portsmouth nigh six months before, and word of mail, or newspapers, set everyone to rubbing their hands in expectation.
The seas were running light, the winds were soft, and the space between the frigate and the cutter was not an hundred yards, with no rushing, foaming wakes to conjoin, so Squirrel’s boat made a quick and easy transit to hook onto Reliant’s main chains and send a Midshipman and ten of Thorn’s long-lost sailors aboard.
“Allow me to name myself, sir—John Bracegirdle,” the new-come Midshipman said, doffing his hat and bowing from the waist.
“Lieutenant Darling will be very glad to have you and your men back, Mister Bracegirdle,” Lewrie told him, saluting him back. “You have the squadron’s mail in that bag, do you?”
“Aye, sir,” Bracegirdle replied, unslinging it from round his neck and shoulder. “And I have a despatch addressed to you, sir.”
That wax-sealed letter was brought from Bracegirdle’s pocket and handed over. It was from Captain Francis Forrester. Lewrie took a breath, held it, then let it out through pumped-out lips before he turned away to rip it open and read it, dreading the worst.
I thought I told the toad my squadron had Admiralty orders, and I ain’t his junior, but … what the Devil? Lewrie thought, stunned by the letter’s contents.
Forrester would not hook him or net him. He had bigger fish to fry…; so did every Royal Navy warship in the West Indies! The note was more by way of a warning that the French were on the prowl!
Since early May, rumours of the presence of a squadron of Third Rate 74s, some frigates, and troop ships, had come up the island chains of the Windwards, from Trinidad, Barbados, and Grenada. Was it eight or ten warships? Or, was it only four or five? Were they come to stiffen the garrisons of the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, or would they come to invade British islands, or reclaim the islands taken from the French after the war had re-begun in 1803? No one knew.
Captain Francis Forrester’s brief letter said that he was summoning the few brig-sloops under his command, and would lead them South as far as Antigua to re-enforce any Royal Navy squadron he encountered.
Since you made it so evidently plain that you are not under my Command, I must trust that you possess enough Sense to see your Duty clearly, and, if you will not join me out of Patriotism, then in my Absence you will abandon your insignificant Quest after spurious Privateers and take upon yourself the temporary Protection of the Bahamas until my return.
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie said with a snort. “Put the onus on me, and dash off for glory, will you?” He was torn, though, by the temptation to dash off South and participate in a real battle, whether he had to place himself under Forrester’s haughty and vindictive command or not, for doing so beat his fruitless patrolling and the uncertainties of American collusion all hollow. Except for their few shore raids, he’d been doing the dullest sort of blockade duty with not a blessed thing to show for it, nothing of consequence, anyway.
It’s impossible to protect the whole Bahamas with one frigate and a handful of sloops, he furiously thought; any more than Forrester could with a pair o’ brig-sloops and his own ship … and her damned near aground at Nassau for months on end!
But, he quickly realised, if he did dash off to Antigua or St. Kitts, that would leave the Bahamas with nothing but sloops like his and a parcel of cutters like Squirrel to challenge an French invasion, not the Spanish invasion that Forrester had dreaded when he’d spoken to him in the early Spring!
And just why the Devil would the French even care to take the Bahamas? he further asked himself. If they had sent a small squadron to the West Indies, re-enforcing the islands they still held made a lot more sense. So did invading one or more of the British Windward Isles.
The big sugar trades! Lewrie thought, getting a leap of his stomach in his chest, and a touch of cold chill. If the French took Nassau and New Providence, Bimini and the Berry Islands, perhaps even Grand Bahama and the Abacos, they could dominate the Florida Straits! No convoy, no matter how well-escorted, would survive, and it would not be the odd privateer preying on them, but frigates, too! There would go a large portion of British trade.
“Guerre de course,” Lewrie muttered, recalling the French concept of commerce raiding to disperse the strength of the Royal Navy, which would give their fleet an even chance to sail out and fight on more-equal terms, even weaken Channel Fleet to the point that their Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s vast invasion armada could succeed in landing that two-hundred-thousand-man army of his in England and destroying the last opponent between Napoleon and world domination!
If I were “Bony”, that’s what I’d do, Lewrie told himself; but, Christ, we’ve at least twenty ships in the West Indies, and the Frogs are still over one thousand miles from here. It’s no use borrowin’ trouble. Or, jumpin’ at shadows.
“Mister Warburton?” Lewrie said, shaking himself free of his fretting, and returning to the here-and-now. “Pass the word for my clerk, Mister Faulkes, to attend me in my cabins, instanter.”
“Aye, sir.”
He dashed below and sat down at his desk in the day-cabin with no mind for the cats, who were glad to see him, but disappointed by his inattention. He opened the ink-well, dipped a pen, and began to write the gist of Forrester’s note for each of his subordinate captains.
“You sent for me, sir?” Faulkes said a few moments later.
“Aye, Faulkes. Will you make three copies of this at once,” Lewrie said, “and they are to go to Lizard, Thorn, and Firefly with the Mids who come to collect the mail. There’s already one of Thorn’s Mids on deck. Make sure that Mister Bracegirdle gets her copy.”
Faulkes blew on the hastily written note to dry the ink, reading it as he did so, and hitched an audible breath at its contents.
“A French squadron on the loose, sir?” Faulkes asked wide-eyed. “Might they come here, do you imagine?”
“Not all that likely,” Lewrie told him after a moment more to mull it over. He got back to his feet and headed for the deck again, leaving a puzzled Faulkes and two frustrated cats in his wake.
He got back to the quarterdeck just as HMS Thorn’s temporary “Sub-Lieutenant” was regaling the watch officers with his tale of woe at Nassau.
“… thought we would be slung into irons and kept as replacements ’til next Epiphany,” Bracegirdle was chortling, “As for my part, I was allowed liberty on the town, but our poor hands were sent aboard Mersey, in lieu of a proper receiving ship. It was only when Commodore Forrester announced that he would be sailing that her First Officer said that Mersey was at full complement, and released them as supernumary, and it was only the kindness of Lieutenant Richmond of Squirrel who thought to fetch us back to the squadron, ha ha! We would have stayed at Nassau, kicking our heels, else!”
“Ah, Captain sir!” Lt. Merriman said, noting Lewrie’s arrival on deck. “It appears that Squirrel’s captain, Lieutenant Richmond, did us good service in delivering Mister Bracegirdle back, and further good service by sorting out the despatches and mail into packets for each ship, beforehand.”
“Capital!” Lewrie said. “We will distribute ours, at once, at the start of the First Dog. Mersey has sailed, Mister Bracegirdle?” he asked the Midshipman, who appeared to be a cheerful and competent fellow in his early twenties.
“Aye, sir,” Bracegirdle replied, “tho
ugh I thought I’d never see the day,” he added with a hint of amusement.
“Ripped herself free of the coral under her keel?” Lewrie asked, tongue-in-cheek. “Or was it a reef o’ salt-meat bones?”
“A bit of both I would expect, sir,” Bracegirdle said, grinning.
“The French squadron,” Lewrie posed, “is it rumour or were there definite sightings?”
“Rumours at first, sir,” Bracegirdle informed him, “then it was mentioned in the latest newspapers from home. It is certain that they sent a small squadron under an Admiral Missiessy to the Windwards back in the winter, and there’s quite a stir that an Admiral Villeneuve has escaped Toulon with a larger squadron. The London Exchange suffered a huge fall in the price of consols at the news, and that the blame was put on Admiral Nelson for not blockading Toulon as closely as demanded, if you can imagine, sir!”
For anyone in government, the newspapers, or English Society to cast any aspersions on Horatio Nelson by then was un-thinkable, especially in the closer society of the Navy, after his many crushing victories, and everyone on the quarterdeck growled objections.
“But the papers also say that Nelson has gone after them with the entire Mediterranean Fleet, so God help the French when he catches up with them!” Bracegirdle confidently declared. “Even if Villeneuve comes to the West Indies to join the other fellow, Nelson will settle their business!” That was greeted by agreeing growls and cheers.
That’s a diff’rent kettle o’ fish! Lewrie thought; If Nelson’s on his way, he will lash into ’em … if only to shut his detractors up, and win himself more glory and praise! The preenin’ wee coxcomb! No worries, then. Forrester’s off on a goose-chase.
“My quick note to Lieutenant Darling did not contain that information. Pray do deliver it verbally to your captain once aboard Thorn, Mister Bracegirdle,” Lewrie bade him.
“Hoy the boat!” Warburton shouted to the first approaching boat.
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