Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

"Well, uhm…" Devereux shied, with a painful squint. "Do you put it that way, sir… I know it's a risk, but I still think that did we have them, it would be in the ship's best interests, Captain."

"Dear me, Mister Devereux," Lewrie said, checking their pacing, and with a sad shake of his head, "but I do believe we've managed to corrupt even such a proper young fellow as you! Society ought to lock us all away as a threat to the Public Good."

"And the Navy hasn't, sir?" Devereux chirped, suddenly elated, yet gesturing at the bare, featureless horizon. "Could you but try to speak to your old friend, Colonel Cashman…"

"Well," Lewrie hemmed and hawed.

"And whilst you do that, sir," Devereux rushed on to pose, "I've an idea about that 'indirect' fire. Those slave boats were too far for grenadoes, you recall? But, did we have, say, three or four small coehorn mortars in the tops, mortars we could extemporise to the metal stanchions and forks for the swivel guns, we could fire explosive shell-steep plunging fire!-right onto an enemy's decks, like that Colonel Shrapnel's fused exploding case-shot, and…!"

Six Bells chimed from the forecastle belfry, precluding further thought on that subject; the first was trouble enough, to Lewrie's imagination. Six Bells; eleven of the morning, and a half hour 'til the welcome pipe of "Clear Decks And Up Spirits" for the issuance of the rum ration.

"One bit of devilment at a time, if you please, Mister Devereux. I'm not as young as I once was, d'ye know," Lewrie told him, grinning. "Too much audacity at one sitting leaves me breathless these days."

Lt. Langlie came up to join them, doffing his hat.

"Six Bells, sir. Permission to secure from arms drill?"

"Very well, Mister Langlie," Lewrie replied, now properly stern. "Make sure they're well cleaned and oiled before stowing. Does time permit, have the senior hands instruct the volunteers in basic knots."

"Very good, sir," Langlie replied, in his own properly crisp manner, yet sharing a meaningful glance with Devereux, as if they both were in on things.

"Anything else you wish, then, Mister Devereux?" Lewrie queried. "A 'whore transport' to trail us about, perhaps?"

"A what, sir?" Devereux gawped, this time wholly surprised.

"Ask Andrews about it," Lewrie suggested. "It's an old tale. And you, Mister Langlie."

"Sir?" Langlie paused, halfway to turning and saluting.

"You'd not turn up your nose at a personal, sporting, hunting fusil, I take it?" Lewrie grinned. "What, the entire gun-room?"

"Well, uhm, ah…" Langlie flummoxed, sharing another glance with Devereux, as if to ask what trouble he'd gotten into, now.

"Damme, but I begin to fear we're a ship filled with conspirators from keel to truck." Lewrie snickered.

"One might term it, ah… aspiring, Captain," Langlie replied.

"Aspiring, hey? Hmmm… works for me. Carry on, Lieutenant Devereux. Mister Langlie, a word, sir."

Devereux saluted and left, a bounce in his step, as if eager to inform the other officers that they'd be getting fusils, by hook or by crook. Langlie stood and waited, as a perpetually put-upon First Officer should, waiting for another heavy shoe to drop on his head.

"I am informed by the latest post that you and my ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, are in correspondence, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said. "And I am also informed that my permission was granted. Exactly when did I allow such, Mister Langlie? Hmmm?"

"Why, uhm… at Chatham, sir!" Langlie said, reddening, and of a need, perhaps, to cough into his fist for cover. "The last night we lay at anchor, when we dined your family aboard, and held the singing and such, sir? Sophie, uhm… Mistress de Maubeuge, the Vicomtesse, rather, said that she'd spoken to you about it, and had received your permission, so I assumed…"

"Sound a tad more French when she told you, did she?" Lewrie asked, still stern-faced.

"Well, as a matter of fact, aye, she did, Captain. A tad."

"Do you have the pleasure of seeing her face-to-face again, do keep in mind that when she's scheming, she sounds more French than English,

Mister Langlie," Lewrie informed him. "I did not give her leave to write you.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, sir, I…!" Langlie exclaimed. "I beg your forgiveness, and… I never meant to! That's what you meant about conspiring, just now."

"Oh, hush, Mister Langlie," Lewrie wearily told him, waving one hand dismissively. "After knowing you for a year, I rather doubt you're the sort to trifle with the girl, or tarnish my family's reputation… assumin' such a thing's possible, these days."

"Uhm, ah…" Langlie began to agree, then thought better of it. His mouth worked, as if trying to bite his tongue, or stifle a titter of amusement-the sort of laugh that would never do his career or his professional relationship any good.

"Uhm, yayss, quite," Lewrie chuckled, archly sarcastic over his own repute. "You wish to continue corresponding?"

"I do, sir."

"And I'm to assume that Sophie is of the same mind? Despite the distance involved?" Lewrie asked. "And the temptations of local beaus?"

"I may only gather… ah, assume, at present, sir, that she is not averse to receiving my letters," Langlie stammered.

"Many a slip, 'twixt the crouch and the leap," Lewrie allowed, slapping his hands together behind his back and gazing aloft. "Well then, since you ain't poxed, drunk on duty, breakin' out in purplish spots, and can eat with a knife and fork, Mister Langlie… I'll let this stand. Just don't do anything momentous at long distance, d'ye hear me? God knows how long it'll be before we're back home again, and God only knows what home there'll be to welcome you, if there is a home at all."

"Thank you, sir! Thank you so…!" Langlie cried.

"Carry on, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie insisted, shooing him away. "Carry on."

"Very good, sir," he said, doffing his hat eagerly, clumsily, rapturously aquiver, and his face a perfect portrait of bliss.

"You may not thank me, later, d'ye know, sir," Lewrie cautioned. "The wife now despises the Navy worse than God despises the French, if such a thing is possible, and that'll put you right in the middle of it, right in the line of fire, d'ye see? You're asking for trouble, Mister Langlie."

"I'll bear the risk, sir… gladly," the young officer vowed.

"Then you're an idiot, God help you. Women, sir! Mine arse on a band-box!" Lewrie snorted. "Oh, go shove on a rope or something, sir, do! Shoo! And quit that bloody… beaming!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Langlie said, doffing his hat, even making a wee bow in congй, absurdly formal aboard ship; and still grinning like the worst Lunatick in Bedlam, but almost back to a professional bearing.

Well, it's his poor arse, Lewrie decided to himself, pacing aft to his quarterdeck; he's been warned.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Puerto Rico, Lewrie thought, eying the landmass that had risen from the sea a little after Dawn Quarters; and the Mona Passage. Now what do we do? North-about Santo Domingo, or run back along the south shore, close in?

Out to the East'rd lay golden isles, the storied cays that had featured in his youth, the Danish Virgins and below them the beads-on-a-necklace of the Leewards, each a little gem, and this morning almost presaged by how the sea glittered gold, lapis, and sun-silvered.

Are they poxed, too? he asked himself; now it's Fever Season is there a safe lee shore anywhere in the West Indies?

Lewrie hung in the larboard mizen shrouds, just at the beginning of the cat-harpings, coat, hat, and neck-stock off, and savouring a cool morning breeze, the scent of salt and iodine, and a faint fishy tang of shorelines up to the Nor'east. He lowered his telescope and gazed down and in-board to Proteus's gangways and gun-deck, where sailors crowded round in untidy knots, some still licking their chops after a breakfast remnant, as they formed up by gun-crews a bit before the call was piped for drill on the artillery.

For a miraculous change, they looked healthy and fit again, the last ravages of the fevers left astern and ashore. There were formerly half-dead men who now strode about and joshed with their fellows; there were those who had never been infected, no matter how often they'd gone ashore or slept on deck for coolness when anchored; there were the local lads who might have suffered malaria or the Yellow Jack when babies and now were immune, as was he.

With a word, Lewrie could order the ship to beat up through the Mona Passage, round the eastern tip of Hispaniola, and re-enter her old patrol grounds to the north… with the fresh Nor'east Trades blowing so strong that feverish miasmas would always lie alee, and no one else might fall ill.

With a word, he could put Proteus about, turn his back on those golden isles of the Leewards and the Virgins (though he had a yen for a glimpse of them once more) and then the Trades would brush across the island of Hispaniola, wafting God only knew what nastiness right down on them. At sea, with the deck and bulwark railings pitching and tossing, they could not employ Mr. Durant's tar-and-citron pots to counteract the foul miasmas that brought disease with sweet ones. Surely some who had not yet succumbed ran the risk of another exposure; those debilitated the first time might not survive a second.

Lewrie slowly collapsed the tubes of his telescope, each click of the tubes seating a step towards a decision. He turned his body to peer forward, past the spread of the main and fore courses, and the upthrust bow sprit and jib-boom, and the anchor cat-heads. A day more on this course to the Sou'east would take Proteus deep into the waters between Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, where privateers and smugglers were two-a-penny during the Revolution in his "green" days.

Though some could call it poaching, Lewrie told himself with a wry grin. The Royal Navy squadrons based out of English Harbour, down at Antigua, prowled those seas when they could spare vessels from the blockade oн troublesome Guadeloupe, whilst he and his frigate were beholden to Kingston and the West Indies Station.

Ostensibly, every British warship answered to Admiral Parker, and his headquarters at Kingston, from the Bahama Banks to Trinidad, from the Antilles to the shoal waters of the Spanish possessions far to the west, such as New Spain and the Isthmus of Panama, so… would trolling a touch more East'rd really be poaching? It could be excused… couldn't it?

The Leewards were a tempting lure, and not just for him alone. The rare Dutch merchant ships still at sea would try to succour their colonies; if they threaded past the blockade in European waters, that's where they would first strike the West Indies. The supposedly neutral Danes, and those pesky Swedes, would be up to their old games of shipping contraband goods and arms, turning a blind eye to ships from belligerent nations in their harbours; merchantmen, privateers, and the odd ship of war that came calling. American vessels, despite the undeclared war against France, still traded with the Danes, the Dutch, and the Spanish… and probably with the French isles, as well, for they were a mercenary lot for all their protestations, and losses to French privateers.

Puerto Rico, well in sight now, and the Danish Virgins would be a grand place for smugglers and contrabanders to break their passages, refit and resupply, perhaps take a little joy of shore liberty before their long jogs home, or put in for shelter from storm winds in those marvelous natural harbours and bays that yawned so emptily… and so covertly, the perfect hidey-holes for nefarious doings.

With the telescope now shortened and safely slung over his left shoulder, Lewrie faced the shrouds and took several cautious steps upward on the ratlines, up where the futtock shrouds of the mizen top intersected the side-stays, until the futtocks almost brushed his bared scalp; where a man would have to make a choice… either take the seamanly ascent out-board by hanging from the futtock shrouds, or confess his lubberliness and snake between to follow the side-stays' easier "ladder" to the mizen top platform, through the lubber's hole.

The arms they'd recovered… Yankee-made arms.

American ships trading along the Spanish Main, at Tampico, Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Caracas, and Port-Of-Spain, the Dutch isles of Curacao would most-like take the most direct route back North, using the Mona or the Windward Passage. Or they could go round-about, skirting the lee side of the Antilles.

What had that Captain Wilder of Bantam, and Kershaw of the U.S.S. Hancock frigate, told him… that they would make a rendezvous point to form American convoys in the lee of St. Kitts? As far to the East'rd, as well up to windward of the Trades as possible, leaving half an ocean of sea-room alee, 'til entering the Old Bahama Channel, or passing west of New Providence yet east of Andros through the Bahamas on theirway home. Then, should they meet contrary winds, they wouldn't end up wrecked on a lee shore.

Lewrie realised that a guilty Yankee trader could sell all the arms and munitions he wished, pick up an innocent cargo for the return voyage, and then lumber along in convoy with other ships, protected by the guns of his spanking-new and uncurious navy!

Laughin' all the way, Lewrie sourly thought; Bugger it, it ain't like we 're chained like a guard dog. We 're not even on a long leash!

The staff-captain's written orders, when they'd come aboard at last, had pretty-much instructed him to toddle off and make a nuisance of himself 'til Hell froze over… on their enemies, for a change. He had an open-ended, roving brief to chase his own tail if of a mind, in any body of water under Admiral Parker's writ-just as long as Proteus was not "in sight" to plague his seniors' sensitive humours.

Lewrie squirmed about, carefully shifting feet and hand-holds, to peer Nor'westerly. Hispaniola was under the horizon, Saint Dominque most likely an ocean of gore by now, as old grudges were avenged upon the losers, and Spanish Santo Domingo could most likely now be aflame, as L'Ouverture led his rag-tag armies over the border to "liberate" all the island. Santo Domingo had never amounted to much, really. It was the windward end of Hispaniola, too dryed by the Trades for plantation agriculture, and bereft of mineral wealth. There were, his advisories had informed him, vast ranches raising cattle, pigs, and goats, enough grains grown for domestic use but little for export, and most of that land but sparsely populated, its grandees rather shabby in the main, and most of its people and slaves living hand-to-mouth. Boucanieros, those who cooked, salted, and jerkied meat along the coast, were mostly leftover pirates' descendants, still living and dressing in skins off their goats. Barbecana, their product was; two words introduced into English as "buccaneers," and outdoor roasting parties becoming popular in the United States, Cashman had told him… "barbecues."