Reefs and Shoals

but Mr. and Mrs. McGilliveray would definitely attend, as well as the U.S. Navy officer commanding the two gunboats which guarded Charleston harbour, and a few others.

As they alit by the doors to the hotel, Lewrie took a moment to savour the early evening. Broad Street was awash in light from many large whale-oil lanthorns that bracketed the entrances of the shops, taverns, and houses, as well as regularly spaced tall street lanthorns, which were just being ignited. The skies and the thin clouds overhead were shading off to dusk after a spectacular sunset, and there was a welcome coolness to the breezes, though the air still felt humid.

“Red skies at night, sailors sleep tight, hey, Sir Alan?” Mr. Cotton japed. “Shall we go in and take a glass of Rhenish to prompt our appetite?”

“Certainly,” Lewrie agreed.

“And, here are some of our guests, sir!” Mr. Cotton exclaimed, ready to make the introductions. Lewrie turned with a smile plastered on his phyz, recognizing Mr. Douglas McGilliveray, who had captained a converted merchantman, a U.S. Armed Ship, in the West Indies during the Quasi-War with France in 1798. There was a fellow in his thirties wearing the uniform of a navy officer, still the dark-blue coat with the red facings and lapels, the red waist-coat and dark-blue breeches that had been in style since the Revolution.

At least they got rid o’ the tricorne hats and changed over to cocked hats. They looked like sea- goin’ farmers, else!

Ever the good host, Mr. Cotton did the introductions, first to the McGilliverays, though Mr. Douglas McGilliveray eagerly offered his hand, and introduced his wife, himself.

“You’re coming up in the world, Captain Lewrie,” McGilliveray jovially said. “The last time we met, you wore but one epaulet, but now, ha ha! For bravery and success, surely.”

“A squadron action off New Orleans, sir,” Lewrie happily explained. “So good to see you, again, sir, and in such fine health. And, Mistress McGilliveray… your servant, ma’am,” he said with a bow, and a doff of his hat.

“Sir Alan!” the older lady gushed as she dipped a brief curtsy. Evidently, even egalitarian Americans did “dearly love a lord”!

“ Hmpf… what’s he doing here?” Mr. McGilliveray muttered, making them all turn to take note of three men slouching against the side of a carriage further up the street.

“Sir Alan, allow me to also introduce to you Lieutenant Israel Gordon, the officer commanding U.S. naval forces in Charleston,” Mr. Cotton soldiered on, after a nervous peek at the three men, “and his lady, Mistress Susannah Gordon. Lieutenant and Mistress Gordon, allow me to name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate, Reliant. ”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Gordon, Mistress Gordon,” Lewrie said, making another bow. “Your servant, sir… ma’am.”

“And to make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Gordon replied with equal gravity, in a jarring New Englander’s accent; his wife sounded like a Down East Yankee lady, too, when she spoke. Mrs. Gordon found need to use a silk and lace fan, even after the day’s heat had dissipated.

“But weel no one introduce me to such a grand Anglais sea-dog?” one of the men who had been slouching by the coach requested, forcing them all to turn to face him.

“And you are, sir?” Mr. Cotton archly demanded, screwing up his mouth over the man’s impertinence.

“I name myself,” the cheeky fellow said, smirking. “ Capitaine Georges Mollien, of ze Otarie… a votre service. ” He snatched off a rather small cocked hat, one whose ends had been pulled down nearly to his earlobes, and laid it on his breast as he performed a sweeping grand mock of a bow.

Bloody Frogs! Lewrie furiously thought; Never more top-lofty and arrogant than when ye can’t shoot ’em on the spot!

This Captain Mollien was a short and wiry fellow, two inches shorter than Lewrie, with a pinched, foxy face. On his hip he wore a small-sword, and by the way his dark-blue coat sagged, there might be a brace of pistols in the side pockets. Behind him, grinning just as scornfully, stood two of his mates or crew, both “beef to the heel”.

Lewrie had been the recipient of many a scornful look in his time, delivered by superior officers, gawping nobility, or St. James’s Palace courtiers who’d caught him in “pusser’s slops” or shirt sleeves, so he knew how to deliver one when given the chance. With one brow up in dis-belief, and a wee lift of a corner of his mouth for amusement, he slowly inspected Mollien from the top of his head of loose, lank, and long dark hair to his open shirt collar and neck-stock worn loose like a rag in the style of the sans- culottes revolutionaries, down an ecru linen shirt front to a garish red waist sash, and scanned buff-coloured trousers crammed into a pair of top-boots indifferently buffed and blacked, to Mollien’s scuffed boot toes, and back, again. At the end, he said “How marvellous for you,” in a flat-toned drawl, and turned back to chat with his supper party guests.

“Well, shall we go in and take seats at our table?” Mr. Cotton quickly suggested.

“I weeshed to see ze man ’oo ’as come to mak’ war on me,” the Frenchman said, a little louder as if wishing to attract witnesses to his “bearding” of an enemy officer. “To tak’ ’ees measure.”

“You are impertinent, Captain Mollien,” Lt. Gordon stiffly said.

“A dog in a doublet,” Mr. McGilliveray harumphed.

“Make war upon you?” Lewrie purred, after fighting down an urge to swing about and punch the man in the face. “I certainly will, but not in Charleston Harbour. It’ll come… all in good time, gunn’l to gunn’l,” he promised with a bright smile. “Not in the middle of Broad Street, either… unless you desire a violation of the city’s hospitality, and American neutrality. Is that what you came for, with your bully-bucks to protect you?”

“But I am ze peaceful marchand man, M’sieur le Capitane,” Mollien said, wide eyed and with a hand upon his heart as if basely accused of wrongdoing, shrugging and smiling. “I do not fear one such as you. Ze soft-’anded Anglais aristo?” he added with another smirk.

“You should,” Lewrie told him, stepping a bit closer, “Indeed, you should.”

“’Ow much eet cos’ you to buy your star an’ sash?” Mollien asked him. “ Peut-etre, I can afford eet, too?” He was louder in his mocking, now that he had gathered a half-dozen or so strollers.

“Several… hundred… dead… Frenchmen,” Lewrie gravelled back. “Think ye can afford that?”

Mollien pursed his lips to a slit, and he got a wary look on his face. His little bit of street theatre was not going the way he had thought; the idle fop Anglais he’d expected was turning out to be anything but, and… had the Anglais ’s eyes gone as grey as a sword blade, from an inoffensive, merry blue?

“Oh, well said, Sir Alan!” Mr. Cotton crowed. “Well said, I say!”

“You’ve had your street raree show, Captain Mollien,” McGilliveray gruffly said. “You delay our supper. If you’re quite done…”

“ Un type l’aristo Anglais pedale, ” one of Mollien’s sychophant sailors muttered under his breath, elbowing his mate with a sneer.

He just call me a queer? Lewrie fumed to himself.

“Captain Mollien, the manners of your men, sir!” Lt. Gordon barked, one hand flexing on the hilt of his sword. “Such language in the presence of ladies! Are these the fine manners one usually expects from a Frenchman?”

“Fie!” his wife chimed in with an outraged hiss.

Mollien had rounded on his sailors to shush them, but it was too late to salvage the situation. When he turned back to face Lewrie, his face writhed between hang-dog apology and frustrated anger.

“Indeed, sir. Begone with you!” Mr. McGilliveray snapped, and shifted his grip on his heavy walking stick from elegant cane to hard cudgel.

“A t’ousan’ pardons, M’sieurs, Madames; eet was unforgivable, and I weel be sure to puneesh ’eem as soon as…” Mollien tried to say.

“He can’t help it, Mister McGilliveray… Lieutenant Gordon,” Lewrie drawled again, trying to recall the very