Reefs and Shoals

“Well done!” Lewrie cheered him.

“Oh, buggery,” was Lt. Westcott’s glum, muttered assessment.

“We have made amphibious raids ashore, too, sir!” Bury boasted. “ Near Saint Augustine! Would you care for a fat boar or two, sir? We brought off what livestock we could find!”

Lt. Bury looked as if he would burst from pride of their accomplishments, spin in a circle and snap his fingers, or shoot out his arms and spin some St. Catherine’s Wheels in delight!

“Where away are Thorn and Firefly?” Lewrie asked, feeling a bit jealous that he had missed out on all that excitement, himself.

“They are South of Saint Augustine, at present, sir, prowling in concert, sir!” Bury informed him.

“Very well, Mister Bury!” Lewrie shouted over. “Take station ahead of me and lead me to them… within, three miles of Saint Augustine on the way!”

“Gladly, sir!” Bury shouted back and waved his speaking-trumpet over his head in glee.

Lizard cracked on sail while Reliant had to take in her tops’ls to the first reef and brail up her main course to match the speed of the smaller sloop.

“Lucky fellows,” Lt. Westcott growled, once done with the reduction of sail aloft.

“Enterprising fellows,” Lewrie amended, looking past the bowsprit and jib-boom, and the feet of the heads’ls, to appreciate the sight of Lizard heeling over slightly to starboard and slowly hobby-horsing along, spreading a clean, white wake astern. “For which enterprise, I will dine them aboard this evening, t’hear their tales and celebrate. You will join me, sir?”

“Aye, sir… even do I grind my teeth in envy,” Lt. Westcott said.

“That promised fat boar’s better exercise for your teeth,” Lewrie said with a laugh as he looked aloft to the commissioning pendant. “Let’s give the Dons at Saint Augustine something to think on, Mister Westcott. Hoist my broad pendant, and let ’em know that we are back, and ready to bedevil ’em even worse!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“We decided to emulate your example at Mayami Bay, sir,” Lieutenant Darling of Thorn jovially said as he paused in slicing himself a bite of roast pork, “and set the crew of the privateer ashore on their own soil… minus their sea-going kits, of course, even closer to Saint Augustine than the crews of the two privateers we took earlier. They should have no trouble finding shelter. Of course, we kept all of her papers, her muster book, and Letters of Marque.”

“And, it was Bury’s turn to carry them to Nassau,” Lt. Lovett of Firefly was happy to add. “There and back again, weren’t you, Tristam? In record time, too!”

“Well, I didn’t want to miss anything,” Lt. Bury shyly agreed.

“And how was Nassau?” Lewrie asked, smirking.

“The port did strike me as much busier than Saint George’s, on Bermuda, sir,” Bury answered rather sombrely and cautiously.

“And Captain Forrester?” Lewrie pressed.

“Ehm… I got the impression that he was impatient over something, sir,” Bury said, ducking his head as if loath to speak ill of a senior officer, or speculate aloud. “When I reported aboard Mersey, sir, he did ask of you and your doings, and when he may expect you to return to the Bahamas.”

“It was all I could do to wrest myself and my sloop free to rejoin,” Lt. Lovett griped. “Since your Lizard is larger, I’m sure that he wished to keep you for his squadron, too.”

“Just so long as you don’t send me with the proof of our next successes, sir,” Darling pled with a laugh. “ Thorn is the largest, and the best-armed. Damme if I do not sense lust from here!”

“You haven’t told me how you nabbed the privateer. Pray do,” Lewrie bade as Pettus refilled his wine glass.

“Oh, it was priceless, sir!” Darling hooted in glee. “Just at sunset, we were off Mosquito Inlet and about to put-about Northerly and gain some sea-room for the night, when out she darted from shoreward. Tried to take Lovett on.”

“I was leading, do you see, sir, and Bury and his Lizard was astern of me by about seven or eight miles,” Lt. Lovett said, taking up his part of the tale. “She flew no flag, and seemed to come on most aggressively, so we lowered our own, tacked about in a panic, and hared out to sea, to lure her on. Bury evidently saw what was taking place, and stood on, closer inshore.”

“I signalled Thorn, sir, got shoreward a bit of her, then went about in chase,” Lt. Bury contributed. Lewrie expected him to elaborate, but Bury lifted his wine and took a sip, as if done.

“She strode up to us and called for us to strike, sir,” Lovett went on, “so we hoisted colours and served her a broadside at about a half a cable. When Senor saw that, they broke off, but there was the Lizard ’twixt her and her lair, so she was caught between us. And not a quarter-hour later, just at sunset, Lieutenant Darling and Thorn hove up and she struck without firing a return shot!”

“She was the Torbellino -the “Whirlwind”-out of Havana, sir,” Lt. Darling gleefully said. “Fifty men, eight six-pounders, and a pair of six-pounder carronades. A two-masted lateener, like an Ottoman xebec, of all things, sir, of about an hundred tons!”

“Handy on a beat to weather, though,” Lt. Lovett opined. “The Spanish found them useful back in European waters, so it’s no wonder that they’d employ them out here.”

“Carronades?” Lewrie asked, shifting in his chair in un-ease. “I’m not aware that anyone but Great Britain mounts carronades on their warships. God help us do the French copy ’em.”

“Well sir, they are British,” Lt. Darling told him, “from the Carron Iron Works, with proof marks to match. The Dons were using them for chase guns.”

“But, where in Hell did the Spanish get ’em?” Lewrie pondered, twiddling with the stem of his wine glass. “Could an American chandler or merchant order the bloody things, and pass ’em on to just anyone with enough ’tin’?”

“Perhaps to a Spanish… or a French… privateer that shows up at one of the ‘rondys’ which you suspect take place somewhere along the lower Georgia coast, sir?” Lt. Bury gravely suggested, after dabbing grease and sauce from his thin lips. “If, as you already suspect, French privateers are being supported and aided, who is to say if the Spanish do not avail themselves of the same aid? That would save them a long voyage back to Havana to re-victual, and their solid coin is just as good as French specie, sir.”

“Matanzas Inlet, Saint Augustine, and the Saint Mary’s and the Saint John’s Rivers, would be close enough to Savannah for scheduled meetings,” Lt. Lovett added. “It is a crying shame that we allowed the Dons to land ashore before we could put the question to them, sir… but we did not know at that time of your suspicions anent Savannah.”

“Just as we let the Spanish go free at Mayami Bay without any questions, either,” Lewrie gloomed, drumming fingers on the tablecloth, “for lack of suspicions at the time. Damn! That is a shame, sirs. What of the Spanish merchantman, then? Have any of you asked her master and crew if they know anything about privateers being based upon this coast? Perhaps she was bringing them supplies.”

“It doesn’t appear that she was, sir, from her cargo manifest,” Lt. Darling said. “She carried rice, flour, and cornmeal, on order to the commanding officer of Castillo de San Marcos, to feed his garrison, and powder and heavy shot for the fortress’s guns, sir, along with over one thousand flannel cartridge bags for twenty-four- and thirty-two-pounder cannon. But nothing small enough to mount on a privateer.”

“Well, at least we have a prize that won’t end up costing us,” Lewrie said with a sigh. He noted that Lt. Darling was looking a tad cutty-eyed. “Don’t we?” he further asked.

“I sent her master and crew ashore, too, sir,” Darling admitted. “With a load of gunpowder aboard, I didn’t wish to risk any of them remaining aboard and creating mischief. I also had it in mind that fifty or more penniless