Текст книги "Lewrie and the Hogsheads"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Chapter 4
Lieutenant Bury and HMS Lizard departed for Crooked Island and the Bight of Acklins to make enquiries, with orders to meet up with HMS Thorn either in the Mayaguana Passage entrance, or Nor’east of the isle of Mayaguana, where Lewrie hoped to be after a quick dash down as far as the Turks Island Passage in search of their Spaniard.
Lieutenant Darling spent half his waking hours on deck, pacing duck-like, which left his cramped cabins to Lewrie, who could awaken later than his normal wont, breakfast alone after Darling had finished his, and undertake the heavier burden of a senior officer—to wit, pondering where the foe could be found, and what to make of the tale that Captain Martin had spun. As Lt. Darling’s cabin steward did his daily putterings, Lewrie mused long and hard over the most recent charts of the lower Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos charts. He was delighted to find the notice that the chart was printed by “R. Sayer & J. Bennett, No. 53 Fleet St., as the Act directs from survey done by HMS Alacrity, 1787”!
So long ago, when the world was new and young, Lewrie recalled with a long sigh, when he and his bride, Caroline, had come to the Bahamas, before the first of their three children had been born, their eldest son, Sewallis, birthed at Nassau. Life seemed so much simpler then. Now Caroline was three years gone, and Sewallis had forged his way into a Midshipman’s berth aboard an old family friend’s two-decker seventy-four.
Lewrie shook himself to shed those thoughts, then used a spoon to show the direction of the steady Nor-east Trades, and did some more pondering.
Crooked Island Passage, Mayaguana Passage, the Caicos Passage, and Turks Passage all faced directly into the teeth of those Trades for vessels leaving the West Indies, requiring them to make a series of long boards to weather to reach the open Atlantic. It would make perfect sense for an enemy privateer to lurk high up to windward near the mouths of those passages—well, Crooked Island Passage was too narrow to allow much room for tacking to windward, or the commonest civilian manner of going to weather, wearing about in circles to get to the opposite tack. The other passages, on the other hand, were much wider and had bags of room for either tacking or wearing about. Crooked Island Passage was best for entering the West Indies waters. Lewrie was tempted to write off close surveillance of that’un and concentrate on the rest.
“Ships leavin’ Jamaica would…” Lewrie muttered to himself, then cocked his head in puzzlement. British ships departing Jamaica likely choose a way round Spanish Cuba to the Florida Straits, under escort in wartime, or use the Windward Passage ’twixt Cuba and what had been Saint-Domingue, now the independent Black slave Republic of Haiti, in times of peace. Then they’d opt for the Turks, Caicos, or Mayaguana passages to reach the open ocean for England! The rest of British “sugar” colonies in the Leeward and Windward island chains would have direct access to the Atlantic already. Merchant vessels bound for Jamaica would enter the Caribbean much farther South, then shape course to strike Jamaica from the South, avoiding enemy privateers and any reason for nearing enemy coasts, so…
“So what’s a Spanish privateer doin’ in the lower Bahamas?” he grumbled, half to himself and rubbing his unshaven chin. “Sugar, rum, and molasses—the Dons already have those for export. There’s easier pickin’s nearer the Windward Passage, if they want more.”
Once seized, raw British exports, except for the distilled rum, wouldn’t fetch decent prices for a privateer; only the value of the captured ships would put a privateer’s books in the black. Oh, was there a cabal like the late and un-lamented Treadwell’s Tybee Roads Trading Company still doing business, America would be the best market for looted goods, delivered in re-registered Yankee bottoms, but…
“Damme, it ain’t the exports that’re worth the effort, it’s the imports!” Lewrie realised with a sharp, inward breath, rapping a fist on the dining table.
“Need somethin’, sir?” Darling’s cabin steward asked, startled.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Lewrie told him. “Just thinkin’ out loud.”
In wartime, Spanish colonies, and the few remaining French ones, would be dying for carriages, clocks, chinaware, harpsichords and the new pianofortes, for wines, brandies and liqueurs, bolts of cloth for new suitings and ladies’ gowns, medicines, scented soaps and perfumes, buttons, laces, packets of pins and sewing needles, razor sets, new hats, and God only knew what-all imported to British colonies to be intercepted, stolen, and flogged on sellers’ markets! And, if the goods could be landed in the United States, priced below legitimate British imports, the privateers could earn a perishin’ pile of “tin” as well.
We might be lookin’ for this Spaniard in the wrong place, he thought. He might be lurkin’ to the lee of the passages!
Referring to the chart again, he looked for a convenient place to lie in wait were he the hunter, and found an area that looked promising. Sou’-Sou’west of Mayaguana Island and to windward of Little Inagua, one could cover both the Mayaguana Passage and the Caicos Passage, and beam-reach cross the Trades from within landfall of Acklins Cay to un-inhabited West Caicos Island, and not a hundred miles from one end of that stalking line to the other, easily done in two days to each leg! Yes, civilian merchant masters could enter through the narrow Crooked Island Passage, but most of them were a cautious lot and would prefer the wider, deeper, and safer passages. The Spanish privateer might even loiter alee of Great Inagua, where all courses through the passages led towards the Windward Passage, and well to windward of his competition!
Lewrie felt like dashing on deck that instant to convey his discovery to Lieutenant Darling, but only half-rose from the chair before plunking back down.
He couldn’t order HMS Thorn to dash down to leeward in search of this “Spit Fire” privateer, not right away. He must wait ’til HMS Lizard returned from her enquiries on Crooked Island! A privateer confronted by both Thorn and Lizard—Darling’s ship was only armed with 18-pounder carronades, good for close-range smashing, but useless much beyond a cable, a mere 240 yards.
“Cheap-arsed shits,” Lewrie groused under his breath, damning all the pinch-pennies at Admiralty who’d substitute carronades for long-ranged artillery just because carronades were cheaper!
Chapter 5
HMS Thorn had been down to peek into the Turks Passage and had come back to within four leagues to windward of Mayaguana before Lizard hove up over the horizon on the third day of searching, just after Noon Sights were made at mid-day. An hour later of sailing to meet her, and Lt. Bury could take his gig over to come aboard the larger hermaphrodite brig.
“And what did you discover on Crooked Island, Mister Bury? Has Captain Martin traded there in the past?” Lewrie eagerly asked.
“No one on either Crooked Island or Acklins Cay have ever heard of him or his ship, Santee, sir,” Lt. Bury gravely replied, as was his wont; he could be a sober-sided fellow, most of the time. “I was told that some of the failed traders and merchants might have dealt with American vessels in the past, but most of those have sold up and moved away, so there is no way of telling. The isles are rather gloomy and desolate, really. Less than half the plantations are still growing a crop, and most are played out and fallow. I saw many very fine plantation houses, as fine as country mansions back home, abandoned, falling to ruin. The grandees sold up and moved away, too, leaving the oldest or youngest of their slaves on the land, and sold off the rest to Jamaica, to make their passage money, most-like, sir.”
“Hah, the callous bastards,” Lt. Darling harrumphed. “That’s a backhanded form of manumission, and the abolition of slavery!”
“I was told that small merchantmen put in there, now and then, sir,” Lt. Bury went on, “perhaps every two months or so, and most of those are from Nassau—food and the very basics for what few bales of cotton are still grown.”
“Tradin’ at Crooked Island’s not the only thing I suspect our Captain Martin was lyin’ about,” Lewrie scoffed. “See how this seems more plausible. I think Martin’s ship was taken on her way out, not when enterin’ one of the passages.”
He laid out his ideas about their suspect privateer preying on imported goods, not exports, and that the Spaniard would have lurked closer to the Inaguas, to leeward of the passages, where an intercepted merchantman would be unable to wheel about and beat back to weather to make her escape, and why and where—looted import goods would fetch greater profits than anything the “sugar isles” could export.
“The Santee still could have been on her way into the passages, sir,” Lt. Bury commented, after pursing his thin lips and frowning. “An American-flagged vessel could have been bringing in desirable imports to sell at Havana, Cap Francois on Haiti, or somewhere on Santo Domingo or Puerto Rico. Americans, as neutrals, trade openly with our enemies. Perhaps it was just Captain Martin’s bad luck to run afoul of a Spaniard who didn’t give a toss for her neutrality.”
“Still, I doubt if Santee was taken this side of Mayaguana,” Lewrie countered, clinging to his original theory. “I think we will come across our Spaniard alee of the Inaguas and the Caicos Islands.”
“Hmm,” Bury studiously opined, “where traffick from each of the passages converge, aye, sir, making for the Windward Passage. That is the most probable place to search.”
“Good enough for me!” Lt. Darling exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Now we’re together once more, shall we set off at once, sir?”
“Aye, let’s do,” Lewrie agreed. “We’ll double back and take the Caicos Passage, sail down to West Caicos Island, then begin a patrol line to the West-Nor’west and back, skirtin’ close to Little Inagua, for starters. Hmm, I will wish you to lead, Mister Bury, about ten miles ahead of Thorn, within easy signaling distance. And…
“We’ll hoist false colours,” Lewrie ordered with a sly grin. “If our Spaniard’s already taken one Yankee Doodle ship, then perhaps he’s developed a taste for ’em. We’ll pretend t’be American merchant vessels! When, and if, the Don shows up, we’ll playact as lubberly and cunny-thumbed as village idiots! Act and look completely unlike British men o’ war!”
“Then, does this Spaniard close us from leeward, and we begin to flee back to windward, we can close up with each other,” Darling eagerly added. “Lizard will be the first to run, and I, and Thorn, will pretend to be deaf, dumb, and blind ’til we take fright, and he’ll think he’s caught himself a feast, not a meal, ha ha!”
“If that’s the way he finds us, aye, Mister Darling,” Lewrie happily agreed. “If we stumble upon him under other circumstances, then we’ll have to improvise. Let’s let Mister Bury return to his ship, then we’ll come about to the East-Sou’east-Half-East, under all plain sail. No need to rush, for once.”
And if our Spaniard finds us another way? Lewrie had to ask himself; Lord help us, then. I hope one of us is clever!
* * *
Near the middle of the First Dog Watch, after the second issue of rum had been doled out, and after the belfry, binnacle, and taff-rail lanthorns had been lit for the night, Lewrie found Lt. Darling peering up at the unfamiliar American flag, which now flew from the peak of the spanker boom. He was frowning quizzically.
“I wonder, sir,” Darling muttered with a shrug, “just how many stars we’re supposed to have on that flag?”
“Hmm?” Lewrie asked.
“Well, sir, are there only the original thirteen states in their United States, or more, I mean to say?”
“Well, I know for certain that they added Louisiana two years ago,” Lewrie puzzled, looking up at the flag more intently himself. “Before that, they added Tennessee and Kentucky, and I think that I read that they’d carved off part of Maine—or was it Vermont—to make either Maine or Vermont. I haven’t heard if Mississippi and Alabama are still territories, or have been made states. Why, sir?”
“If our Don gets close enough to count the stars, sir, what if he knows how many should be displayed and is put on the alert if the count’s wrong?” Darling fretted.
“He gets that close, sir, and you’ll have loosed your first broadsides long since,” Lewrie barked in amusement. “I’d imagine that he sees the flag as un-important compared to the ship and our possible rich cargo.”
Hope so, anyway, Lewrie thought, still wondering just how many stars an American flag now had.
He turned to look forward over the bows and jibs to appreciate the lovely sunset, now all but guttered out. Bury and Lizard were out there in the darkness, and when the scend of the sea lifted Thorn atop a long-set wave, he could just make out two tiny black silhouettes of Lizard’s tops’ls. Only the lookouts in the cross-trees could make her out plainly now, or perhaps find her by the glow of her taffrail lanthorns.
Oh, Christ! Lewrie suddenly realized: If Bury stumbles over the Spaniard in the dark, he has no way t’signal us, ’less he looses rockets or shows blue-light fusees aloft! And Navy night signals made to another ship’ll give the whole game away! The Don’ll scamper off and we’ll never see him, again! Why, the Hell did I order ten miles of separation, when two or three at night is almost too far? Speakin’ of village idiots, here I stand!
He would pretend to have no qualms during supper, or when taking his last turns on deck, but he was certain that even large measures of whisky could not gain him a single wink of sleep!
Chapter 6
Fortunately, not only had Lt. Bury and Lizard not seen anything during the night, but he had taken it upon himself to shorten sail and let HMS Thorn close the distance between them to about four or five miles. Lizard’s appearance hull-up above the night horizon, with her taffrail lanthorns in plain sight from the deck, had been cause for Lewrie and Lt. Darling to be roused by the Middle Watch.
“Knacky fellow, is Bury,” Lewrie commented, much relieved to see Lizard’s lights. The very last warmth of a semi-tropic day had vanished, and the light night winds from the larboard quarter were cool, almost nippy in the wee hours before dawn, making him shiver.
“Knacky, sir?” Lt. Darling asked, yawning.
“To shorten the separation between us, just in case,” Lewrie told him, concealing his qualms over his decision for ten miles separation once again. To explain would be tantamount to admitting that he was fallible. “Well, I don’t know ’bout you, sir, but I’m for a few more hours of sleep.”
And when he’d clambered atop the dining table and had rolled into his hammock once more, Lewrie did fall into a deep and dreamless sleep, delighted that Lt. Bury had solved his trouble for him. When Eight Bells was struck at 4 A.M. to rouse all hands, he felt as if he was being dragged up from the bottom of a quicksand bog.
* * *
The two ships had passed below Great Inagua by dawn, altering course to the Nor’west, barely in sight of the lights of Matthew’s Town, where the salt cargoes were loaded, and almost in sight of the coast of Spanish Cuba to the Sou’west. They would stride out towards the Southern tip of Acklins Cay, across the empty hundred-mile gulf between the islands, then go back onto the wind to beat up the Mayaguana Passage once more.
With nothing to be seen, Lewrie had time for a leisurely breakfast, a sponge-off with a stub of soap and a pint of water, and a shave before returning to the deck just before the start of the Forenoon at 8 A.M. He could look round the well-ordered decks of Thorn with satisfaction, and had time to appreciate once more the beauty of the morning.
Here, in deep waters, rare in the shallow-banked Bahamas, the sea was a rich, clean blue and flecked with a myriad of white caps and cat’s-paws, under lovely cloud-dappled skies. The winds were piping up lively, more so than the day before, promising a fast passage.
“Deck, there!” the lookout in the foremast cross-trees cried. “Signal from Lizard!”
Lieutenant Darling hurriedly put his telescope to one eye to spot it, leaving Lewrie impatient, for his own glass was still stowed below in his sea bag, not in the binnacle cabinet as it would be.
“She makes ‘Strange Sail To Windward’, hah!” Darling barked in glee. “Stand on as we are, sir?”
“No, come to weather, as if we’re out-bound through the Mayaguana Passage,” Lewrie decided after a bit of thought. “If she is our Spaniard, she may take us for exportin’ ships. Not worth as much as inward-bound European goods, but maybe she’ll take the bait. I’d admire did you make a hoist to Lizard to close the distance even more, to about one or two miles—before yon strange sail can see us signallin’ each other.
The flag signal was bent on and hoisted; Lizard repeated it a moment later, then it was quickly struck, to indicate “Execute,” and Lizard turned up closer to the Trade winds but did not sheet home her fore-and-aft rig as closely as she might, slowing most lubberly. By the time that the strange sail had loomed hull-up two hours later, she was just a little over a mile ahead of Thorn and two points off the starboard bows.
“Permission to beat to quarters, sir?” Lt. Darling asked.
“Any time you like, sir,” Lewrie said with a nod. “I’ll go below and fetch my weapons, just in case.”
When he returned to the deck amid the bustle of the guns being run in and loaded then run back to the port sills, Lewrie could espy the strange ship plainly and make her out to be a smallish brig. She still showed no flag, but she was coming on almost bows-on to Thorn as if she would ram right into her.
“She could pass right between us, sir,” Lt. Darling said with a frown of concern, or concentration, on his face.
“Fire on both of us in passing?” Lewrie speculated out loud. “Then, she’d have to wear about right quickly t’catch us up again. Bad odds o’ takin’ either of us.”
Both Lizard and Thorn were on starboard tack, close-reaching, but not yet hard on the wind, or “full and by”. Lewrie wondered whether the strange ship could score any hits if she was their Spanish privateer, or even if she could man both her broadsides at the same time with a crew reputed to be only around eighty or ninety men. Once the stranger discovered that she was up against two Royal Navy ships, she might just keep on running all the way to one of the many “pocket harbours” on the coast of Cuba, and it would be a long stern chase after her.
Force his hand? Lewrie thought. Keep him level with us?
“She’s only one mile off, now, sir, and coming on fast,” Lieutenant Darling announced, sounding a tad anxious. “She still shows no flag.”
“Signal to Lizard, sir,” Lewrie snapped. “She’s t’haul her wind to larboard, and steer Westerly!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Darling obeyed, sounding a touch confused but calling aft to the sailors by the signal halliards. “Won’t they see it and sheer off, sir?” he asked, once the signal was made up.
“Too late for that,” Lewrie said with a lift of his brows and a puckish grin. “If she’s innocent, we scare ’em out of their breeches. If she’s a privateer—”
“Deck, there!” the foremast lookout yelled. “Strange sail shows Spanish colours!
As soon as the hoist appeared, Lt. Bury ordered his ship off the wind, wheeling Westerly and starting to cross Thorn’s bows, not waiting for the signal to be struck for the “Execute,” the same time as the Spanish brig opened her gun-ports and bore away to larboard.
“Got the bastard! Lewrie whooped. “She’s after Lizard first! Hold course a bit longer, Mister Darling, then haul your wind and go after her. With luck, we might get t’windward of her starboard side and double on her!”
“Hoist our true colours, sir?” Darling asked, now afire with battle-lust.
“Wait a bit longer,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “Let our Don believe we’re ‘Brother Johnathans’ a minute or so more, ’til there’s no way he can wiggle out of the trap.”
The privateer brig had wheeled Westerly, too, in chase of HMS Lizard. It took her crew time, though, to secure and abandon her starboard guns and man her larboard battery, her gun-ports opening slowly after a long minute or two. Just showing guns, though, wasn’t enough; to prove her hostile nature she would have to—
“There’s the proof o’ the pudding,” Lewrie exclaimed as her bow chaser fired a shot under Lizards’s forefoot. “Strike the Yankee flag and hoist our own, Mister Darling! Stand on as you bear ’til we’ve crossed her stern, then go right at her!”
Lieutenant Bury slowly struck the American flag that flew over Lizard’s stern, as if, in her sham role of a neutral merchant ship, she was surrendering. A moment later, though, the Union Jack soared aloft, and Lizard’s starboard guns erupted, wreathing her in a cloud of powder smoke. The two ships were level with each other, not one cable apart. Lewrie and Darling could see the Spaniard’s masts tremble, then begin to foreshorten as she hardened up to windward for a turn away. It was too late, though, for Thorn had closed the distance and strode up off the Spaniard’s starboard quarter at two-hundred-yards range.
“Mister Child, serve her a broadside!” Lt. Darling shouted to his second-in-command up forward amidships of the gun batteries. The carronades lit off almost as one, hurling 18-pounder roundshot at the Spanish brig, and she just staggered to the metal onslaught. The Don was an armed merchantman, built for decent speed and great cargo capacity, not warfare, not built as stout as a man o’ war. When all the smoke had drifted alee, and the carronades began to squeal back out to the ports on their slide carriages, it was evident that she had been savaged, with half her starboard gun-ports and the scantlings of her upper hull riddled with star-shaped shot holes. The Spanish did manage to fire two guns in reply, but then Thorn’s carronades were roaring again, blotting her out of sight.
When the smoke cleared to a thin haze, Lewrie could see that the enemy was close-hauled to weather, even though her foremast looked a bit askew from proper uprightness. And here came Lizard, beating up a point freer to close on the Don’s larboard quarter, one of her bow-chasers yapping to plant a shot square in the Spaniard’s stern transom!
“Fire as you bear, Mister Child!” Darling yelled, exultantly. “Shoot low and hull the bitch!”
Lieutenant Child obliged him, and the carronades roared one at a time from bow to stern. Thorn was almost fully abeam of the Spaniard by then, not one hundred yards off, close enough to hear the shot striking and the groans and screams of rivened wood.
“Her foremast’s gone by the board—huzzah!” Darling whooped as the Don’s foremast, shot clean away from her main supporting stays, slowly tilted to larboard and aft by the pressure of the winds, falling against her mainmast and ripping away sails and yards and rigging.
“She’s struck!” Lewrie yelled as he saw her colours being cut away to sail off astern of her and fall into the sea. Some of her crew stood at the starboard rails with their hands up, tossing gun tools overboard to show that they had had enough.
“A nice morning’s work, Mister Darling,” Lewrie congratulated.
“Cease fire, Mister Child! Drop it, dead’un!” Darling cried as Thorn’s crew erupted in lusty cheers. “Grapnels and lines, there! Secure the guns and make ready to go alongside!”
“How’s your Spanish, sir?” Lewrie asked Darling. “Mine is nigh-nonexistent. I’ll be wanting her papers and whatever we can find of her prizes.”
“Mister Child will be your linguist, sir,” Darling informed him. “He both speaks and reads Spanish main-well.”
Very good,” Lewrie said with a satisfied smile. “Then, we may get to the bottom of all this business, at long last.”
