The Invasion Year (9 page)

“We
know
Jacmel, on the Southern coast, is rebel-held,” Lieutenant Gilbraith supplied.

“Explore the Spanish half?” Blanding asked, gesturing impatiently for the port bottle.

“Well, sir,” Stroud cautiously replied, looking suspiciously sober in comparison to his supper-mates. “There’s General Kerverseau and his … regiment?… taken over Santo Domingo from the Spanish, and that General Ferrand at Santiago, with the few troops
he
was able to evacuate, but … Commodore Loring already had us look into their situation before we rejoined him, here off Cap François, and I can’t see anything changing in the last week.”

“Don’t know whether those two blasted scoundrels are setting up their own little empires, or have interned themselves with the Dons,” Captain Blanding grumbled. He took a sip of port, smacked his lips, and added, “And, it’s not as if there will be any other deuced French ships coming to rescue them, any time soon, hey? Did they not flee in local luggers, and such?”

Deuced … he’s found another substitute for “bloody,”
Lewrie thought, with a grin;
Or “damned”!

“We saw no sea-going vessels in either port, sir,” Lt. Gilbraith reminded him. “They’re surely stuck ’til next Epiphany.”

“Couldn’t have gotten away with much in the way of victuals, so, when they run short, they will have to start … requisitioning from the local Spanish,” Parham supposed aloud.

“Best not have landed short of ammunition, then!” Lewrie stuck in with a snicker. “Once they start in stealin’, hmm?”

“Or, mess with the Spanish women!” Lt. Gilbraith hooted.

“Don’t quite
know
if our superiors ordered those ports watched,” Captain Blanding grumbled on, sounding querulous. “But, I think we may consider our orders fulfilled by looking into Port de Paix, Mole Saint Nicholas, then Jérémie, before sailing for Jamaica to rejoin the Commodore. Captain Stroud?”

“Aye, sir?” Stroud perked up, eager for any duty to show what he was made of, and make a name, after so many years in the background.

“I’d admire did you and
Cockerel
look into Port de Paix in the morning,” Blanding instructed. “And, though it’s good odds that those rebel slaves have invested the old buccaneer haunt, the Isle of Tortuga cross the strait from Port de Paix, you might go in as close inshore as you may, for a look-see, as well.”

“Of course, sir … delighted,” Stroud replied, trying to hide a grin and maintain his serious façade.

“I’ll place
Modeste
off the coast, halfway ’twixt Port de Paix and Mole Saint Nicholas,” Blanding went on. “Within signalling range of all ships. Fetch to … stand off-and-on under tops’ls … get some more fishing in, hey, Reverend, haw haw?”

“Oh, haul in a
large
grouper, this time, aye, sir!” the Reverend enthused. “Nigh as toothsome as lobster flesh, ha ha!”

“Lewrie … you and Captain Parham’s
Pylades
are to sail into the Mole Saint Nicholas … close enough to determine if that bast—”

“Ahem, sir,” Chaplain Brundish gently chid him.

“… If that
worthy
General Noailles still holds the port, and determine how many, and what sort, of vessels he still possesses,” their squadron commander grumpily amended. “Make a show of force, for whomsoever still is there … seagulls, crabs, the French, or the Blacks. If Noailles
is
there, make him the same offer Commodore Loring made General Rochambeau … I’m in no mood to fart-arse about … shilly-shally, rather,
ahem
! Sail out, fire off a gun for his honour, then strike to us.”

“And, if he’s made a similar accommodation with whichever Black general’s in charge of the siege…,” Lewrie replied with a touch of worry. “Damme, that means I’ll have t’go ashore and deal with one o’ those devils, too.”

“Ahem,” Chaplain Brundish admonished
his
“damme,” too!

Oh, buggery!
Lewrie thought;
If a sailor can’t curse, what’s the bloody world comin’ to, I ask ye! It’ll be no
drinkin’,
next! Hmm …

He drummed his fingers on the dining table, considering that once a fellow was made “Post,” it was understood that the only way his lieutenants, juniors, and favoured
protégés
could advance their own careers would be for
them
to go off and perform something neck-or-nothing dangerous, to get favourable notice in reports at Admiralty, be “Gazetted” in a London paper which would be read
everywhere
, and have the reports from their captains re-printed in
The Novel Chronicle
 … whilst said Post-Captains sat back and fretted in relative comfort and a lot more safety!

I could send Westcott, his French is
bags
better than mine,
he silently speculated;
He
seems
hellish-eager t’stand out.

“Yet another opportunity to exercise your new-found talent for rescuing Frenchmen, Captain Lewrie,” Chaplain Brundish told him.

“Or, palaver with the Saint Domingues,” Parham added. “Twice in two days.”

“Well, I was just there for show, mostly,” Lewrie had to admit. “It was Captain John Bligh Number Two, and Captain Barré, who did the most of the negotiations. Their French was better. I just stood by, and got cussed at.”

“Yet, if the Black generals round Mole Saint Nicholas have much the same skill with proper French, sir, ’stead of Creole
patois,
then you’d be on a part with them!” Parham teased.

“Or, perhaps I should delegate, and send
you,
Parham!” Lewrie said in mock-warning, with a leering grin directed down-table.

“And here I always thought you
liked
me, sir!” Parham exclaimed, laughing uproariously, in which all joined in; Lewrie, too, just to show that he really didn’t
mean
it … much.

“Just so long as none of my officers end up on a platter, with an apple in his mouth, sizzlin’ on a bed of rice, by … Jove!” Captain Blanding bellowed, slamming a meaty fist on the dining table, and laughing so hard that he had to lay hold of his middle to prevent his shaking to pieces.

“Sirs … if I may?” Captain Stroud asked in his ponderous and sober way, once that amusement had petered out, wiggling his glass in suggestion. “A toast to the morrow?”

“Aye, Stroud! Charge your glasses, sirs!” Blanding agreed.

“Gentlemen, I give you ‘confusion … and cowardice!… to the French!’ ” Stroud grimly intoned, and they tipped their heads and their port glasses back to “heel-taps” at that worthy sentiment.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“How deep into the harbour, past the mole,
is
a ‘show of force,’ d’ye think, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked his First Lieutenant as HMS
Reliant
, followed by Parham and
Pylades,
stood in towards the middle of the entrance channel to Mole St. Nicholas. “Oh, Chalky, ye wee bloody pest … not now!”

The grey-blotched white cat had been loafing on the canvas covers of the quarterdeck nettings, now full of rolled-up seaman’s hammocks, and took Lewrie’s nearness, with a day-glass to his eye, a grand time to “board him”; right atop Lewrie’s left gilt epaulet, and dig his back claws in deep so he could pluck the gilt-laced coat collar with a free paw, and snuffle Lewrie’s left ear.

“Pleased with yerself, are ye?” Lewrie muttered, his head turned and his eyes almost crossed, nose-to-nose with the cat.

“I’ll take him, sir … and, fetch a whisk,” Lewrie’s chief cabin steward, Pettus, offered, reaching out to take Chalky down and away.

“Aloft, there!” Lewrie bellowed to Midshipman Warburton in the main-mast cross-trees. “Anything to report?”

“No vessels in port, sir!” Warburton shouted back, a telescope to his own eye. “
Small
boats … at the quays, and drawn up onto the beach, sir! No French flags flying!”

Chalky was not taking his removal well; he made close-mouthed
Mrrs!
of displeasure at Pettus as he was set down on the deck planking, then leapt back atop the hammock nettings to join Toulon, nose-to-nose, as if to complain … or pick a fight.

“It’s early enough, sir, that we still have the land-breeze,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, pointed out. “It may prevail for an hour more, before the Trades take over. Or, less, depending?”

“Deck, there!” Midshipman Warburton called down anew. “There’s a cutter under sail! Coming out towards the moles, sir!”

“What flag?” Lewrie shouted to him.

“Flag of truce, sir!”

“Signal to
Pylades,
Mister Grainger,” Lewrie snapped over his shoulder to the signals Midshipman of the watch. “Put about to fetch-to. Ready about, as well, Mister Westcott, soon as the hoist is down. Soon as the way’s off her, I’d admire was my gig ready t’row over to speak whoever it is in that cutter.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied, then began to snap out orders to helmsmen, brace-tenders, and the duty watch to prepare the ship for a slight wheel-about to put her bows into the wind off the hills, and bring her to relative rest.

“
Pylades
shows ‘Acknowledged,’ sir,” Grainger announced.

“Very well … strike the hoist for the ‘Execute,’ ” Lewrie told him, looking aft to squint at
Pylades,
which had already swung off to
Reliant
’s larboard quarter, about half a mile astern. Standing in on the early morning land-breeze, almost “Close hauled” already, yet
gliding
slow and swan-like on such a weak wind, it would not take much to bring both frigates to a halt.

Lewrie paced over to the starboard ladderway to the main deck, peering over the side, to assure himself that his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, had the gig manned and waiting for him.

“Fetched-to, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported.

“I’m off, then. Mind the shop, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he made his way to the entry-port, where a side-party was hastily assembling to see him off, with trilling bosun’s calls, Marine muskets at Present Arms, and doffed hats from the on-deck crew.

“We’ll row over, just outside the breakwaters, and speak that cutter, Desmond,” Lewrie said, once settled in the stern-sheets of the gig.

“Cat hair an’ all, sor?” Desmond whispered from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve a damp scrap o’ rag that’d do.”

He’d not waited for Pettus to fetch up his hand-whisk to remove Chalky’s fur. With Toulon, a white-trimmed black cat, it wasn’t quite as bad a chore, but with the littl’un…! Even hanging his coat in the quarter-gallery toilet overnight did not save his uniforms from appearing “spotty” in broad daylight. He took off his cocked hat to inspect it as Desmond put the tiller over and called the stroke; expecting a parley with General Noailles, Lewrie had had his best-dress laid out for the morning, his best hat left in the japanned wood box ’til the very last moment, yet…! “Aye, give me your rag, Desmond,” he said with a sigh as he began to sponge down his hat and coat.

“Uhm … flag o’ truce, sor?” Desmond asked in a soft voice.

“We don’t have one aboard? Well, damme…,” Lewrie snapped.

S’pose this rag ain’t big enough … or white enough, either!
Lewrie thought. He dug out his own clean, somewhat larger white handkerchief and handed it forward. “Sykes … stick this on your gaff, if ye please.”

“Aye, sir,” the bow-man replied.

“Ugly-lookin’ brutes, they is, sor,” Desmond commented as they neared the stone breakwaters, and the oncoming cutter.

“Saint Domingue … Hayti … breeds ’em like mosquitoes, Desmond,” Lewrie told him with a faint grin. “Haven’t seen any other sort on this island … not in six years since I first clapped eyes on the bloody place!”

The oarsmen in the rebel cutter, lolling at ease as long as its lug-sail was up, were the usual ferocious-looking bully-bucks, garbed in loose tan shirts worn un-buttoned for the breeze, most with sleeves cut off at the armpits so their muscular bare arms could show, and the most of them sported ragged-brimmed, nigh-shapeless plaited straw hats on their heads against the sun. Most also wore cartridge-box straps or cutlass bandoliers crossed over their chests.

Astern, at the tiller, sat a younger, frailer-looking fellow of much lighter complexion; a Mulatto, in shirt, waist-coat, and knee-top breeches, with some dead French officer’s sword, and a fore-and-aft bicorne. Beside him sat an even larger, darker man who scowled at them as if willing this party of strange
blancs
to drop down and die, that instant. He, too, wore gilt-laced cavalry officer’s breeches, sword, a captured officer’s coat, and little else, but for a small cocked hat crammed down on his head so hard that the corners drooped towards his shoulders.