Reefs and Shoals

Mister Spendlove? We’re falling off alee. Serve that second sloop as best you can!”

“Quoins out a bit,” Lt. Spendlove instructed his gun-captains. “And aim small, lads. Ready, the battery? On the up-roll by broadside… fire!”

The second sloop was almost bows-on to Reliant, with Firefly and Lizard standing well clear beyond her by then. The range would be closer to half a mile, and the target narrow, but the broadside roared out. Already damaged, that sloop shivered like a stand of saplings to the weight and fury of the frigate’s hail of roundshot. Her jib-boom, bow- sprit, and foremast were scythed away, and misses frothed the waters close aboard her.

“Drop it, Mister Spendlove! Dead’un!” Lewrie shouted down to the waist, jeering in the vernacular of the rat-pit to urge a terrier to go kill another. “Cease fire, and secure!”

Beyond the shattered sloops there were several rowing boats, all pulling madly for the far shore or the long strip of barrier islands, like a gaggle of panicked ducks.

“Ye might have to spell this out, Mister Eldridge, but make to Lizard and Firefly, their numbers, and ‘Take Prisoners’.”

Oh, eager lads! he thought a moment later, even as the signal was being assembled, for Lt. Bury in Lizard was already leading her consort in pursuit, sailing much faster than the boats could be rowed, heading them off from escape.

“Belay, Mister Eldridge. It seems it’s bein’ done.” Lewrie said, turning to share a grin with Lt. Westcott, then crossing over to the other side of the deck to see what Thorn was up to.

Lt. Darling had taken his ship past the encampment, almost to the mouth of the river before coming about to fire with her larboard battery, near the eyes of the wind for a bit, sails shivering or laid aback, before paying off Sutherly. When she was done, there was little sign that the camp had been there, but for the burning, smouldering ruin of the shacks and tents, and a new clearing littered with felled trees and up-rooted bushes.

“Mister Westcott, I’d admire did ye bring our head round into the wind and fetch-to, and have all the boats manned. Marines, too, to take possession of the prizes, and scout the camp.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Then, we’ll find out just who, and what, we’ve captured,” Lewrie said with a broad grin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The engagement had been great fun, but a short delight. After came a myriad of details and reports, questions, and tasks to be seen to, which took all the joy of it for Lewrie.

Lt. Simcock returned with half of his forty-man Marine complement from the encampment to report that he, his Marines, and sailors from Thorn had tallied up the dead, set fire to the last of the foodstuff and supplies ashore, then come away before suffering any casualties of their own. “It looked as if there might have been fifty or sixty or so ashore when we attacked, sir. We found about fifteen dead, but the rest ran off into the forests, and it appeared that they did so under arms… pistols and muskets and such. We scavenged what weapons left behind, but…” he ended with a shrug.

“There’s nothing left of any worth to the survivors, sir,” Lt. Darling proudly related. “I and my people saw to that. They’ll not have a single drop of rum, wine, or beer, either. We, ah… appropriated a few kegs, and scuttled the rest, sir.”

“You didn’t find any American corn whisky, did you?” Lewrie took time to ask. “No? Pity.”

Then it was Lt. Merriman, Midshipmen Entwhistle and Warburton, and the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, and his Mate, Mr. Wheeler, who came back aboard from the captured prizes with their reports.

“They are both Spanish, sir,” Lt. Merriman told the assembled officers. “That’un yonder, is the Escorpion, ” he said, pointing to the first sloop, “and the second is named the Santa Doratea. Both are from Havana, each armed with ten guns. Most of the guns bear proof marks from Cuba, some from Cadiz, though there are some odds-and-sods… a few French, Dutch, or even one British.”

“Tell me they’re privateers,” Lewrie urged with the fingers of his right hand crossed behind his thigh.

“Oh, privateers right enough, sir!” Lt. Merriman said with a beamish grin. “We found their registries, and their Letters of Marque and Reprisal, signed by the Captain-General of Cuba, along with their muster books. All told, there were nigh an hundred and eighty men and officers, though not all were aboard when we engaged them.”

“I’ve their papers and muster books, sir,” Lewrie’s clerk, Mr. James Faulkes, interrupted. “Shall I stow them in your cabins, sir?”

“Aye, atop the desk, for now, thankee, Faulkes,” Lewrie said. “Are they worth salvaging, Mister Sprague?” he asked the Bosun.

“Pish, sir!” Sprague scoffed, begging pardon long enough to go to the nearest spit-kid and hock up his worn-out bite of chew-tobacco. “They’re both hulled clean through, aloft and alow, dis-masted, and what little spare spars and such the Dons had aboard are smashed, to boot. We got ’em re-anchored so they don’t drift ashore, but sure as Fate, they’ll both be on the bottom in a few hours, and fothering’d be a waste o’ time, sir, and that’d be a cryin’ pity, for one of ’em is made o’ Cuban mahogany, and do ye maintain her proper, she’d last for ages.”

“Kept nigh Bristol-fashion abovedecks, sir,” Wheeler added, “but all Donnish below, all trash and filth. Damned idle Spaniards.”

“Mister Mainwaring said to inform you, sir, that he counted four dead and two badly wounded aboard Escorpion, and six dead and five wounded aboard the Santa Doratea. He and the Surgeon’s Mates are tending to them, but he suspects that three of the wounded will pass before dusk. He asks whether you wished the wounded be brought aboard Reliant, sir.”

“Aye, before both ships sink out from under them,” Lewrie decided. “You lads, row over to the prizes and help the Surgeon and his Mates fetch the wounded Spaniards off,” he said to the Mids. “If they’re not worth tuppence as prizes, we might as well scuttle them. Mister Sprague, I’d admire did ye see to speeding their destruction along. Pile up flammables, lay trains to their powder magazines, all that. How many hands will you need for that?”

“No more than the boat’s crews t’take us over, sir,” the Bosun reckoned. “We can start right away.”

“Once their wounded are off the prizes, see to it,” Lewrie told him, “and I’ll let you know when to set them alight.”

“Oh, well, sir,” Lt. Darling of Thorn said with a resigned sigh. “It seems all we’ll reap will be Head and Gun Money, with nought from their condemnations and sales.”

“But that would have t’be done at the Admiralty Prize Court at Nassau, sir,” Lewrie countered, grinning wryly, “where we’d most-like end up owing money to the Proctors, even if they were scrupulously honest, which I very much doubt. And besides… do ye really wish to be back at Nassau, for any reason?”

“A point well taken, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Lt. Darling smirked.

“Hoy, the boat!” Midshipman Grainger hailed to a new arrival.

Now bloody what? Lewrie grumbled to himself, thinking that, did victory have an hundred parents, why was he the only one home to deal with the minutiae, and clean up the mess? He was missing breakfast!

“Permission to come aboard!” was the reply.

It was Lt. Bury from Lizard. Lewrie crossed to the starboard side to peer down at him, and waved him a welcome.

“Good Lord, Mister Bury, wherever did ye find that ugly barge?” Lewrie gawped. Bury was not in his usual smartly painted gig, but in a thirty-foot… something, which, by the fact that it floated, could be loosely construed to be a boat; slab-sided without the sweet curves of a proper boatwright, with a vertical stem post and bow, no sweep to its sheerline or gunn’ls, and appeared to be hard-chined aft and shallow-draught, perhaps even flat-bottomed. The stern was a vertical slab, and, all in all, put Lewrie in mind of a slice of “wooden” pie. Worst of all, someone had once painted it sky-blue, but that paint had peeled and blistered and chalked to the point that its colour was dingy grey.