The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Ships is ... ships are lovely creations, Caroline," Finney said with an almost mawkish rapture. "I but thought to name the handsomest o' my vessels for the handsomest, and finest, lady o' my acquaintance. I know I shoulda asked, but like I said, I'm new-come t'fine manners o' the quality. I was tryin' to honour you, thet's all."

  "I wish you would change her name, then, sir," Caroline replied, turning to see if Wyonnie had fetched Peyton Boudreau from the great house to aid her yet. "People assume I did give my permission, and I will brook no loose talk. Naturally, I'm sure it is an honour, but it was not one of my choosing."

  "Ya don't choose honours, Mistress Caroline, they just come to ya," Finney laughed softly. "An' 'tis the devil's own bad cess t'name a ship, then change it. Think of it as a foolish gesture from a man o' deep respeck ... respect for you. I thought t'cheer you, abandoned as you've been. A young wife with a child t'care for, all alone in a hard world, so far from home an' all."

  "I am hardly abandoned, sir," Caroline retorted, getting to her feet. "If you' ve quite finished, I must insist you leave, sir. And I do not think it proper to take any presents from you."

  She almost screamed as he seized her hands and held them harshly in rough but be-ringed bear-paw fists. "Tell ya the truth now, Caroline," he said, losing his teasing, bantering tone, and looking up at her in part triumph, part gruff shyness, "first night I saw ya, dinin' yer first night ashore, I thought I'd seen an angel from heaven. But, there ya were, with yer man, such as 'e is! A fine an' proper young lady, o' the most refined ways, wasted on a ranti-polin' rogue. Know what his nickname is, Caroline? People call 'im the 'Ram-Cat'! Now he's sailed off an' left ya joyless, with a newborn babe t'care for, an' spurned ya fer another. There's talk he won't even answer ya, now ya've had his child. Oh, I seen ... I've seen you traipsin' back from town so forlorn, achin' fer news o' him, an' niver a letter did ya get. More people gossiped, the more me heart went out t'ya."

  Dear Jesus, is that why you did this to us? Caroline wanted to shout in his face. You read them! So you'd know best how to play on my fears! So you could have me? It was all she could do to keep her face composed, for fear of revealing too much.

  "Tis a hard world, it is, with men like that in it, Caroline," he went on with what she thought a well-rehearsed oration. "Ye're now a widow, as much as if he died, and good riddance t'bad rubbish! Yer best shed o' thet caterwauler. But yer alone now. Now, I know 'tis maybe a bad time t'mention it, an' I niver was good with words like a proper feller o' yer upbringin'. But I worship the ground ya walk on, an' thet's the Gospel truth! Caroline, I'm a man with a whole heart, an' it's yours t'command, with thoughts for none but you, these many months past. I've means t'care for ya, t'keep ya in style an' ease! An' you can trim my rough edges as ya get t'know me better. As ya may come t'love me as much as I love you, lass. I mean t'make ya happy, me girl. I mean t'do right by ya, Caroline, as none other can."

  Terrified as she was, held prisoner with easy force no matter her attempts to pull away, his words held her pinioned like a rabbit might be hypnotized by a rattlesnake's weavings. Yet, Finney's plaint of love, presented in such a clumsy, lugubrious and teary-eyed way, was amusing to her, as if she were watching an incredibly poor player in a French farce hawking up high-flown sentiment. She could not stifle a giggle escaping her lips, nor a smile of cruel humour.

  "Ah, she's smilin', she is!" Finney cajoled, misinterpreting. "S'prised ya may be, bein' spooned s'soon, by a rough 'un such as me. But yer thinkin' on it, aren't ya now? Now yer babe's bom, yer able t'get out an' about more, we could spend time with each other, let ya get accustomed t'the idea. Accustomed t'me, dearest Caroline, an' ..."

  "Let go of me, sir," she hissed back, pronouncing each word in arch contempt. "Let go of me and leave this house and never come here again!" Even as she said it, she knew she should have played along to delude him until Alan could come back, until Mr. Boudreau could gather enough evidence to hang this rogue. But her grievance against Finney was too great, and her utter revulsion too quick to contain longer.

  "There's fine things I could buy ya, things I wish flay at yer feet. Me town house, where ya'd be the finest lady ..." he pleaded.

  "Never!" she shouted back, struggling against his grip. "I am a married woman, most happily married, sir! Your suit is not only rude and unseemly, it's odious to me! Let me go, sir! Now!"

  She was amazed that he did, in shock perhaps, release her hands to sit back in stupefied hurt, all his hopes confounded. She turned and sprinted for the side door to the parlour, slamming it shut behind her and dropping the latchbar. She rushed to her bedroom, scything herself for being a fool, for not being able to play him along until he was ruined. She massaged her wrists where he'd held her, and felt soiled. She heard a noise and froze.

  Dear God, the latchstring, she cringed! It wasn't pulled, and he could get in! The key-lock she hadn't thought to turn ...!

  She opened her chifforobe and took out a large walnut box, and set it on the bed. Peyton Boudreau had wished to give her some pistols the week before, after Alan's letter had come, and she had accepted, never thinking things would become so desperate. This pair were twin-barreled, heavy as fireplace and-irons, but already loaded.

  "Dear God, save us!" she whispered as she heard the latchbar rise and fall with a creak, heard the squeak of door hinges. "Where's Wyonnie? Why haven't they come?" In desperation, she picked up the first pistol and drew back both hammers to full-cock, then did the same with the second. She took a deep breath to steady herself, thinking of earlier times in North Carolina, and flipped up the frizzens on the pans to check her primings, as her brothers had shown her.

  "Caroline," Finney said, no longer mocking, no longer pleading. She whirled, the pistols hidden behind her skirts, behind her thighs, and came to the door of the bedroom, to deny him entrance, taking one moment to assure herself that her son was still safe.

  "No further, Mister Finney!" she warned him. "There're people..."

  "Me coachman Liam's got yer nigger wench, so we got all the time in the world, girl," Finney smirked. "An' I know fer a fack yer Betty Mustin's off t'dine with others, so that won't wash, either. Listen t'me good, now, an' heed me," he said, advancing on her slowly. "Yer fine man left ya t'founder, you an' the babe, Caroline. An' he ain't niver comin' back t'ya. His sort don't. They takes their pleasure, then when things get 'inconvenient' for 'em, why divil a care do they have fer the poor, sad objeck o' their lusts. Twenty pound, an' out o' the parish, girl, 'fore the magistrate sics 'is hounds on ya! I had me a sister. She went thet way. All starry-eyed over a feller. Thought he'd do right by her, that rich man's boy, but back she come, half dead from havin' his git, and rooned fer life, an' us too poor t'help her, d'ya see. Now, wot ya want with a life like that, when I kin offer ya ..." he crooned, slowly advancing upon her.

  "No closer!" Caroline swore, raising the first pistol. "Out of my house, now!"

  Finney checked for one brief moment of open-mouthed surprise, then put his hands on his hips, flaring out the skirts of his coat and rocked on the balls of his feet.

  "Oh, 'tis a crackin' great barker ya got there, miss," Finney chuckled. "Girl as delicate an' refined as yer sweet self has no business messin' with such brutes. That's a man's thing, girl. Put that down, now, an' let's be easy with each other."

  Sewallis Alan Lewrie took that moment to wake up and begin to fret and wail.

  "See there, Caroline?" Finney japed. "Even yer babe knows yer doin' wrong. Put that down, girl. Tend yer babe. I'll pour us some wine, an' we'll sit an' get acquainted."

  "I said get out, Mister Finney!" Caroline shouted.

  "Caroline, darlin' girl," Finney cooed, stepping closer with no sign of fear, arms out as though to cosset her out of a pet. "My..."

  She pulled the trigger of the right-hand barrel, and the heavypistol leapt and bucked in her hand near enough to tear away from her!

  "Jaysis!" Finney yelped, and backpedaled quickly six paces to the door. There was a fre
sh hole in the left breast of his coat, level with his heart, having passed through front and back as it had been held out away from his body!

  "That was not a lucky shot, Mister Finney," Caroline glowered as she took aim with the gun, going for his groin with one eye shut "My brothers Burgess and Governour taught me to shoot before they went off with their Volunteer Regiment to fight for their King."

  "You... you bitch!" he fumed. He started to rush forward, but she fired the left-hand barrel, and he stopped short, turning pale as a corpse's belly as the lead ball stung the flesh between his thighs, inches below his genitals! And before he could rise or even speak, Caroline brought up the second pistol in her left hand.

  "No more teasing, sir! The next one's for your black heart!" she shouted over her baby's screams. "Get out of here, you Beau-Nasty bogtrotter! Run, you son of a whore! Buy yourself a fetching drab in town and pledge your love to her. Go roll in the muck like the Irish hog you are, sir. But I warn you, if you do not leave my house this instant, you'll be a dead bogtrotter, as God is my judge!"

  Teeth almost chattering in her head, hand sweaty and slick on the curved butt of the pistol, and her vision tunneling, she was just about at the end of her tether. But the twin barrels never wavered. And then, thankfully, there came the sound of running feet thudding through her garden and onto the stone of the dog-run, drawn by her shots!

  "What the devil?" Peyton Boudreau shouted, dashing inside with a smallsword in one hand, and a bell-mouthed coachman's shotgun in the other. His freedman black major-domo was behind him with a musket, and Daniel, Wyonnie's husband, backed them up with a cutlass. "You dog, sir! I'D have the bailiffs on you, damme'f I won't, sir!"

  "For visiting a lady o' my acquaintance, Boudreau?" Finney attempted to bluster.

  "For frightenin' a lady enough to have her shoot you," Peyton sneered in reply, something at which he was awfully good. "Trying to rape a married lady, were you, you scurrilous ill-bred scum? Damme, that'll make a merry tune for the town criers tomorrow! That'll be a fine topic for a broadside sheet to be handed about in every tavern! 'Calico Jack,' not only spurned, but nigh debollocked by a woman defending herself with a pistol, haw haw! Get out of here!"

  "You wouldn't dare!" Finney shot back.

  "I would," Caroline vowed. "I will, I promise you."

  "Ephraim, take his sword. Pat him down for a knife or pistol," Boudreau instructed his major-domo, pressing the muzzle of the shotgun to Finney's breast. 'Tell your brute outside to let go Daniel's wife, or I'll have your heart's blood. Do it, or it's your life, sir, and worm no more to me than gnat's piss, at this moment, I most heartily assure you, haw! Come near my house again, come near Mistress Lewrie one more time, anywhere on New Providence, and you're a dead man. Do you even dare to ride past my property, I'll shoot you dead in the road as I would a rabid cur, sir! That all of it, Ephraim? Good. Now begone! Hear me?

  "Begone, you son of a bitch, haw haw!"

  With Finney disarmed, Caroline at last lowered the pistol and carefully rode the hammers forward one at a time, almost blind to the task through tears of relief, her hands now trembling like sparrows' wings. Now that the threat was ended, she was in horror of what she had almost done. She'd never aimed at anything but stationary gourds or bottles in her life, and here she'd almost taken a man's life!

  She wanted to throw up, to scream, to fall to the floor and let her shuddering wails loose at last. But, now that Finney was being herded out the door and off the property, she went instead to her baby to pick him up and try to comfort him as he squalled in terror. She held him snug to her chest and shoulder, patting his back and stroking him, dandling him up and down as she paced the bedroom in a small circle, and commanding herself not to faint as long as he needed her, much as she wished for a ladylike spell of the vapors.

  "There, there, little man," she wept, trying to smile for him. "There, there. It's all over. Bad man's gone, and won't be coming to hurt you. Momma's here, and she won't ever let anyone scare you ever again, Sewallis! Swear to God, baby, swear to God! And your daddy'll be home soon. Your daddy's coming, and he'll make everything better, you'll see!"

  And pray God, make it soon, she thought as she paced.

  Chapter 7

  "It's Walker's Cay, sir," Lewrie said at last.

  "Again?" Commander Rodgers scoffed. "They wouldn't dare!"

  "Oh, they'd dare, sir," Lewrie replied grimly. "And think it a knacky jest. It's perfect as a hideout, as we already know. And why would anyone ever suspect them to return to it, after we scoured it so well before, sir? Added to that, mere's no Navy patrol stationed in the Abacos except for a visit now and then by a cutter, and never to the north of Pelican Harbour, Marsh Harbour, or Carleton Settlement."

  "Finally, sir, there's that Portuguese captain we spoke to," Lieutenant Ballard stuck in, a hopeful note in his voice. "On his passage south past Walker's Cay, he reported seeing masts, and lights ashore as it grew dark. There should be no one there, sir."

  "He wasn't chased," Rodgers muttered. "He saw no pirates."

  "They didn't see him at twilight, sir, to the east'rd of the island," Lewrie suggested. "He got lucky."

  "God, I wish you'd never talked me into this," Commander Rodgers sighed heavily, rubbing his face in puzzlement "God Almighty, I've half a mind to..."

  "Could be Finney's Guineaman, sir," Lewrie added. "Still caching undutied goods there, still smuggling. We could burn him out, hurt him sore as we did the last time, and then be off for Nassau, with evidence enough this time to prosecute him for smuggling, if nothing else."

  Come on, you dithering twit, Lewrie thought; don't whiffle out on us now!

  "There is that," Rodgers allowed, grudgingly. "Sarah and Jane's ready, sir," Alan pressed. "Do you transfer your Marines into her, Lieutenant Ballard can be off Walker's Cay by dawn to see what's what. If no pirates come out to pursue him, he could sail in, anyway, and how would they know he wasn't there to deliver goods, sir? I'll give up thirty hands to help, and take Captain Grant and his crew aboard Alacrity to guard 'em, whilst you keep Whippet fully manned."

  And if it's Arthur doin' it, there's less involvement for you to fear, you hen-hearted dog, Alan thought; upon my head be it!

  "Oh, very well, then," Rodgers said at last, permission to go wrung from him like a dishclout in a mangle.

  "Right, sir!" Ballard said quickly. "I'll go aboard Sarah and Jane at once, with your leave, sir. With your Marines, we'll soon make hash of'em!"

  "If you will excuse me, sir, I'll see Mister Ballard over the side, and transfer my spare hands over to the merchantman," Alan said, rising to gather his hat and sword. And they left the great-cabins before Commander Rodgers could change his mind.

  "Christ, I thought he was going to back out," Lewrie complained in a soft voice as the sideparty mustered to see them off.

  "He is a damned good seaman, though," Ballard assayed with a wry expression. "If not..." he shrugged in conclusion.

  "Well, here you are, then, Arthur," Lewrie said, clasping him by the shoulders at arm's length. "An independent action of your very own at last Take joy of it."

  "Thank you for getting it for me, sir."

  "Think he'd want his first lieutenant that involved?" Alan japed in a whisper. "If it all goes bust, then it's less risk for him. And, Lord, I owe you after Conch Bar, don't I? Should have given you charge of the landing, and I could have gone into Aemilia to put some bottom in 'fool' Coltrop. Hindsight's better than no sight at all, I guess! But I know you'll do us proud. Just take care of yourself, mind? As stiff as you are, me lad, I'd miss you should anything happen. Be your knacky self. But not too bold, Arthur."

  "Coming from you, Alan, that's a wry 'un," Ballard snorted. "Do but listen to yourself, gainsaying 'bold.' Sir."

  "God speed, then, Arthur," Lewrie smiled, stepping back to doff his hat to him. "Mister Ballard. Now go catch me some pirates for my breakfast!"

  Sarah and Jane stood west-nor'west, loafing along under all plain sail,
the striped flag of the United States flying from her mizzen-mast truck. Marine Lieutenant Pomeroy's thirty-five privates, one corporal and sergeant were sprawled on the deck in what shade they could find, dressed in their usual slop-clothing for workingparties, though with their Brown Bess muskets, hangers and bayonets close by.

  Ballard was showing only ten seamen on deck or aloft, what would be expected of a skin-flint Yankee shipmaster, with the others napping below, or resting beside the great-guns. Sarah and Jane mounted only twelve six-pounders, little better than Alacrity's batteries, with two of those disposed in the mates' wardroom below facing aft, or up on the forecastle for chase guns. The rest were spaced out to either beam at every second gun port, so that Sarah and Jane, designed for a stronger armament, sailed en flute, like a piccolo with "open holes."

  Huge bags of "white gold" had been hauled up from her holds to line either beam between the guns, piled up three deep to make breastworks on the gun deck, on the sail-tending gangways above, to absorb the expected musketry, and the impact of a pirate-ship's guns. There was a low breastwork around the quarter-deck and fo'c's'le as well, with a final redoubt of bagged salt around the double wheel and binnacle to shelter the helmsmen.

  "Dawn for fair, sir," Midshipman Parham said, looking at his pocket watch. "And my watch is accurate for once, there's a wonder."

  "Reefs an' breakers t'larboard!" the masthead lookout sang out "On the 'orizon, sir!"

  "That should be about six miles to leeward," Ballard told mem, muttering half to himself. "Close enough to prance past Walker's Cay and see what comes out, but not so close that they think we're stupid. Mister Parham, go aloft. You've seen these isles before-from the sea. Tell me which we're closest to, Walker's Cay, Grand Cay or Romer's."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Schooner to loo'rd, sir!" the lookout called suddenly. "Hull down an' bows on! Two points off the larboard bows!"

  "Belay, Mister Parham," Ballard said, with only a slight twitch of his mouth to indicate any excitement, or notice. "It no longer matters." He paced aft to the taffrails, savoring the windward side which was a captain's by right, then back to the railings overlooking Sarah and Jane's waist and gun deck. Hands clasped on his rump, fingers not even twining upon each other, as much as he wished to do so. Arthur Ballard had a firm grip on his emotions, as a man who aspired to the status of gentleman should, as a taciturn, self-controlied Navy man should. He envied Lewrie his boyish lack of control, his ability to enthuse or show anger, sorrow, or frustration so easily, and Lewrie's ability to command and keep the hands' respect even if he did "let go." But it was not his style; it was not for him.