'Far and fast, I fear,' Nicely had gloomed. He wriggled as if the crutch of his breeches had suddenly pinched a testicle. 'There's the matter of all those damned Samboes of yours, Lewrie. Your Cuffy sailors. More to the point, where and when you got 'em, d'ye see.'
'Ah? Hmm, hey?' Lewrie flummoxed, like to cough up half of a lung suddenly. That was not the ugly shoe he'd expected to be dropped!
'I did note, and wonder, where ye'd found so many free Black volunteers, the weeks I was aboard, whilst you were away, but…' his squadron commander had said, doing some fidgetting of his own.
They're going to hang me! the irrational part of Lewrie's brain screeched at him. The rational half was too stunned to put forth any opinion. I'm caught, red- handed! Christ, shit on a …!
' 'Tis the Beauman family, d'ye see,' Nicely had carped. 'A dozen of their slaves ran off one night. Nothing too odd about it, at first glance. One of the risks of slave-holding, with all the tales of the Maroons who've fled into the Cockpit Country, or the Blue Mountains… where the Beaumans thought they'd run, even was that plantation right on the sea, on the South coast, and rather far from Maroon territory.'
'Ah… gerk!' had been Lewrie's sagacious reply, and his heart banging away like Billy-Oh, about two inches below his tonsils, it felt like. 'Bother ye for the port, if you're…?' he asked, trying damned hard not to stammer. 'Then, so, sir?' he managed to state.
'Organised as the Maroons are,' Nicely had gone on, 'it wasn't beyond credence to think that they couldn't arrange an escape for any number of slaves determined enough to join them. And, God knows word can pass secret 'twixt house and field slaves, and runaways, quicker than their masters could manage. No, Lewrie… 'twas only after the Beaumans managed to find witnesses who said that a darkened ship was in Portland Bight that very night that they began to suspect that the runaways might have had some help, and the ex-slave Maroons are not in possession of many boats, none larger than canoes and such, so…'
'Perhaps a French, or Spanish, privateer, that…' Lewrie tried to say, with a puzzled shrug.
'Then, there was all that folderol 'twixt your friend, Colonel Cashman of that West Indies regiment the Beaumans raised to put down the slave rebellion on Saint-Domingue, and the family,' Capt. Nicely had gravelled reluctantly on, 'the duel that followed the accusations slung about after that pot-mess of a battle outside Port-au- Prince, just before the withdrawal of all British forces… cowardice charges by Cashman, 'gainst the younger Beauman… Ledyard Beauman, was it?'
Lewrie could only vaguely nod; he did not trust himself to speak.
'Incompetence charges in reply, then that duel!' Nicely sniffed in gentlemanly outrage at what a shambles that had turned out to be… Ledyard Beauman too scared or drunk to obey the niceties, firing at Cashman's back before 'Kit' could turn, stand, and receive; Cashman drilling the foppish bastard in the belly; Ledyard's second, a cousin, Captain Sellers from the disbanded regiment, tossing Ledyard a second pistol and drawing his own; and Lewrie, as Cashman's second, shooting him dead, too, and…
'Your friend sold up and sailed for America, right after?'
'Uhm, aye, he did, sir,' Lewrie answered, sensing a reprieve if Kit Cash-man was suspected. 'Good Lord, Captain Nicely, ye don't think that Christopher had a…! Well, I'm damned if…!'
'The Beaumans did, at first,' Nicely had intoned, so solemnly that Lewrie felt that faint hope shrink like a deflating pig bladder.
'Spite, sir, pure and simple!' Lewrie managed to declaim.
'Spite, perhaps, on Colonel Cashman's part,' Nicely countered. 'A parting jape on the whole detestable Beauman clan, and an expensive one. For, wherever your friend Cashman lit in the United States, the dozen fit and young slaves would prove useful in a new farming venture, or a source or ready funds, if not, but…'
Nicely had drawn out that 'but,' turning it into a descending glissando worthy of a dying diva's final aria, nailing the first spike into the coffin lid by adding, 'Of late, though, Hugh Beauman, head of their clan, has heard-tell that your crew has quite a few more Cuffy sailors in it than the usual frigate so long on station in the Caribbean.'
'Why, those bastards!' Lewrie spluttered, summoning up every shred he could muster that even resembled righteous indignation, and whey-faced innocence. 'Cashman slew Ledyard, /killed one of Hugh's cousins, so…! Before your time, sir, in my midshipman days during the American Revolution, Lucy Beauman and I were, ah… friendly. We even considered a union, should I earn a commission, but the Beaumans would have none of it. Almost had t'duel one of 'em then! Barred the house, Lucy and I cut off…!'
He pointedly didn't supply that he'd been rogering a scandalous older 'grass-widow' on the side whilst trying to squire Lucy, that he had escorted Hugh's married sister, Anne, about town unchaperoned one day, and not his fault, that faux pas in gentlemanly behaviour.
'So I have learned, Lewrie,' Nicely had sternly muttered. 'Just as I'm aware of the Beaumans' threats on your life following the duel, which Mister James Peel of the Foreign Office took seriously enough to discover to me, and get you and Proteus safely out to sea, and out of their reach. We are all aware of that.'
'Ah… we, sir?' a stalwart Capt. Lewrie had quailed.
'Well, of course, we, sir!' Nicely had barked, obviously grown weary with tip-toeing and shilly-shally. 'Me… Peel, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, the island governor, Lord Balcarres…' he ticked off on his blunt fingers. 'Spiteful, vengeful calumnies laid against you by men who've held grudges against you since the '80s may not be deemed sufficiently actionable beyond an initial enquiry. But…'
The dying diva warbled again.
Didn't know he liked German operas, Lewrie fearfully thought at the mere mention of 'enquiries.' One look aboard by the Beaumans, and he'd meet up with 'Captain Swing,' and why the Hell had he thought the theft of a dozen slaves, no matter how perishing-bad he'd needed hands to man his ship, could escape notice forever? A semi-drunken evening with 'Kit' Cashman after the defeat and withdrawal from Saint-Domingue, as Cashman was closing his accounts and preparing to emigrate; 'Kit' sniggering as they schemed a way to punish the Beaumans, and, indeed, it was meant to be an expensive, parting jape against them, hitting them where it would hurt them the worst… in their pocket books! A way for Lewrie to flesh out his under-strength crew, with
Cashman even offering to urge some of his White ex-soldiers from the disbanded regiment to sign aboard as Marines…!
'Such scurrilous charges 'gainst a Commission Sea Officer, and one so successful, and valuable to the Crown, well!' Capt. Nicely had sniffed again with prim anger. 'Baseless charges, of course… Well, we feel that the repute of the Royal Navy should not be tainted with such, so… that is why we thought it best, all round, were you, and Proteus, to be sent away on other duties, Lewrie.' As he said that, Capt. Nicely had squirmed on his chair like a Hindoo fakir trying for a comfortable spot on his bed of nails.
'Ah, hmm,' Lewrie had responded with an audible gulp of relief. 'So, how far d'ye think I…?'
'There's despatches in need of transport to Halifax,' Nicely said with a vague wave of his hand, and a cutty- eyed expression on his face. 'Hellishly boresome place, Halifax. Fogs, rocks, and shoals… deuced hot summers for that far north, mosquitoes big as wrens, swarms of them as thick as, well… fogs. Nothing much there, but for their dockyard and store houses. What the town was settled for, to service ships on the North American Station, and a seasonal haven for line-of-battle ships from our station, as well. Excellent yard facilities, I know, though. And, isn't Proteus in need of a bottom cleaning, and a re-coppering? '
'Well, there is that, sir,' Lewrie had perked up.
