Reefs and Shoals

“Here you go,” Lewrie said, digging into his coin purse.

“Your boat will be safe enough here at our pier for the night,” Cashman said, once he had Cadbury’s money, and Admiralty note-of-hand. “Bring your sailors along, and we’ll get them settled in, as well.”

* * *

With Liam Desmond, Patrick Furfy, and the other of the boat’s crew in tow, Cashman led the party along Water Street, up Dock Street to round the uphill end of the actual dock cut into the river bank that gave the street its name, then over to Market Street, the main thoroughfare, and uphill again towards St. James Church and Fifth Street, which in Lewrie’s brief time in the city had been the outer limit of Wilmington, with nothing but pine forests beyond to the sea to the East. But it had grown far beyond, since. Where most homes and businesses had been wood, plagued by almost annual fires, there were now impressive stone or brick buildings and houses, some as fine as anything in London. Where Lewrie remembered sandy dirt streets, and full of stray dogs, geese, chickens, and goats, there were now cobblestoned streets with sidewalks, iron lampposts, and very little livestock. There were many more fine carriages than he remembered, too, and a lot more people strolling about in finer clothing than that worn at the tail-end of a long war.

We’ve become a raree show? Lewrie asked himself, noticing how people stopped in their tracks to gawk and stare. He also noted that a parcel of gawkers, young boys mostly, had followed them from the chandlery, as if word had spread of a second British invasion, or bloody Tarleton or Lord Cornwallis had come back!

“Uh-oh,” Cashman muttered under his breath.

“Uh-oh?” Lewrie parroted in query, expecting trouble.

“The French consul, Monsieur Fleury,” Cashman explained, jutting his chin towards a foppish slim fellow at the corner by the church.

M. Jean-Marie Fleury was bristling with indignation at the very sight of a despicable Anglais, his exotic thin mustachios quivering in loathing, and his chin high. He was the epitome of a dandy, dressed in a long-tailed, waist-length, double-breasted green coat with lapels that ended near his shoulders, a short-brimmed thimble of a hat with a tricolour cockade, dazzling white trousers of almost painfully skin-tight cut, and brown-topped riding boots. Grey suede-gloved fingers flexed angrily on the gilt handle of his ebony walking stick, as if he would like nothing more than to dash forward and cudgel Lewrie to his knees.

“Faith, but ain’t he a little terrier, ain’t he?” Furfy said, snickering.

When they were within fifteen feet or so of that worthy, Fleury heaved a great sniff of disdain, stamped his walking stick on the pavement, and directed his gaze skyward and away, in the “Cut Sublime”.

The derisive and insulting gesture made several people titter.

Lewrie came to a stop, staring directly at Fleury. He could not resist. He heaved off a loud “Harumph” of his own, stamped one booted foot, and turned his own head about so he could study the clouds, and the view North down Fifth Street, raising both hands to one eye like the tube of a telescope. That raised another titter from the crowd.

Then, Lewrie began to laugh, with a broad grin on his face. He looked back to Fleury, laughed some more, then walked on past the man, leaving the French consul stuck with his “Cut Sublime”, and no chance of laughing it off, turning coral pink in frustration.

“Well played, Alan old son,” Cashman muttered, restraining his own laughter. “By supper, that’ll be the talk of the town, and every trick taken.”

“D’ye think they’d call that proper diplomacy?” Lewrie asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They had gotten a late start from the Wilmington docks the morning after supper with the Cashmans, but the barge was back alongside Reliant, and Lewrie and the Purser safely on deck, just before dusk. The Bosun and Bosun’s Mate trilled the welcoming call, and the side-party saluted as Lewrie made it in-board of the entry port, doffing his own hat in salute, feeling much relieved to be back on his ship.

Bisquit the dog exuberantly pranced about the shins of the sailors and Marines, yipping, barking, and whining with joy, as if he had been cruelly separated from his master for over a year, and was in paroxysms of rapture to be re-united, which quite ruined the ceremony.

Lewrie gave the dog a pat on the head, reached into his pockets, and offered Bisquit a piece of pemmican, to shut him up. He sniffed, wagged his tail and his hindquarters, then chomped down and ran off with his heavenly new treat.

“Welcome back, sir,” Lt. Westcott said.

“Thankee, Mister Westcott. Anything amiss occur while I was away?” Lewrie asked. “Anyone swim ashore and desert?”

“All’s well, sir,” Westcott assured him. “It seems that this little Smithville’s not much of a temptation. I did allow the Mids to go ashore, along with Mister Spendlove and Merriman, for an hour or two, just to stretch their legs, but…”

“You did not, sir?” Lewrie asked.

“As I said, sir,” Westcott said with a tight little grin, “it has no temptations, beyond a well-stocked tavern.”

“No women, ah well,” Lewrie teased.

“Might I ask how your trip to Wilmington fell out, sir?” the First Officer enquired as they fell into a side-by-side stroll towards the stern.

“Satisfyin’, in part, un-satisfyin’ in another,” Lewrie said, “and damned frustratin’ at the tail-end. Put a Mid and a work-party to heavin’ up the stores we have in the barge, then join me in my cabins for a mug of ale, and I’ll reveal all.”

“Most grateful, sir,” Westcott said, turning to whistle up men to assist Mr. Cadbury in unloading the barge.

* * *

By the time Westcott entered the great-cabins, Lewrie was down to shirtsleeves, sitting on the starboard-side settee and having more fuss made of him by his cats, Toulon and Chalky, who found pemmican a tasty treat, as well.

“An ale for the First Officer, if ye please, Pettus,” Lewrie ordered.

“Right away, sir!”

“Sit, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Here, try some of this pemmican. I fetched back an hundredweight of it for our creatures, but it’s really too good for them. Ten Yankee dollars, in all. Two pounds sterling. You, the officers, and the Mids, make up one pound between you, and I’ll call it quits.”

“Damned decent price, sir… uhm, tasty, too!” Westcott said in appreciation.

“First off, our Consul in Wilmington, and the Lower Cape Fear, is a local attorney,” Lewrie told him. “Don’t pull such a long face, sir, for I found him honourable and decent, and quite diligent about representing England’s interests… and America’s strict neutrality, in equal measure. Between him and my old friend, Christopher Cashman, who knows the chandlery trade and the town’s docks as well as any, I think we can write off Wilmington as a potential shelter for enemy privateers. We’ll have to look elsewhere… to the South. Charleston, Georgetown, Beaufort, and Port Royal in South Carolina, for starters.”

“More fun to be had in Charleston than little Smithville, aye sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a hopeful grin. Chalky abandoned Lewrie’s thigh, leapt down, and made his way to Westcott’s lap stretching his neck and pawing for the remaining morsel of pemmican.

“Much more business bein’ done, for certain,” Lewrie agreed, in a way, “and a harbour much more accessible from the sea, with sufficient depth for fully-laden Indiamen. More temptations for local businessmen to dabble in privateerin’, perhaps. Don’t know about Georgetown, The Winyah Bay is rather shallow, with a narrow safe channel,