Havoc`s Sword

Private Doakes he is not to dab gun-oil on the stock, this time, hmm?'

'Sah!'

'And did you do good practice, sir?' Catterall asked.

'Rather doubt it, Mister Catterall,' Devereux dismissively said. 'Our closest approach was just under three hundred yards, and even the rifle-musket can't guarantee accuracy that far. Did keep 'em worried, though, I expect, to hear balls hum round their ears that far away.'

'Lord, I'm dry as dust!' Catterall ventured, hands in the small of his back and creaking himself in a backwards arc to resettle bones.

'We'll splice the main-brace, if I've learned anything about the Captain,' Devereux promised. 'Soon as everything's 'Bristol Fashion.''

Catterall turned away for a last look-over of his charges, making a face at the very thought of rum, and thinking that Lt. Devereux was a stingy bastard at times. 'Oh, jolly,' he falsely cheered.

'Now, Mister Winwood,' Lewrie said, beckoning the Sailing Master up to the starboard mizen shrouds, 'at Nor- Nor'west, should we attempt to work our way to windward below Monserrat, or should we stand on 'til we fetch Nevis, or Saint Kitts, before tacking for Antigua?'

'I suggest we stand on, sir,' Mr. Winwood said. 'The Trades're back to normal… so far, that is. Not above Saint Kitts, though.'

'Very well. Consult your charts and make a best guess for me, as to when and where we may safely shave Nevis. Aye, no need to put us on a lee shore on Saint Kitts, should the Trades back Easterly.'

'Aye, sir. I shall see to it.'

'Mister Peel?' Lewrie beckoned again, as Winwood went down to the binnacle cabinet. 'A moment of your time, if you please.'

'Captain Lewrie,' Peel said, tight-lipped and still truculent.

'My apologies for any Billingsgate language in the heat of the moment, Mister Peel,' Lewrie casually explained, 'but if we are bound to work hand-in-glove 'til God knows when, I s'pose I do owe you further explanation of my… madness,' he continued, with a disarming grin.

'I quite understand you wish to take Choundas down a peg in the eyes of his compatriots, Captain Lewrie,' Peel coolly allowed, stiffly formal. 'I would also imagine that tweaking his nose this morning was something personal to you.'

'Quite right, Mister Peel,' Lewrie cheerfully confessed. 'Was he watching this morning, or will he just hear of it, he'll know the name of our ship. And you have already told me that he knows I'm in command of her. Your Mister Pelham suggested that that knowledge might lure him into folly… since chasing me down to kill me is personal to him, too. This little piece of work should fix his attention hellish-wondrous. Right? '

'Granted, Captain Lewrie,' Peel said, gravely nodding, and seeming to relent his insulted stiffness a tad.

'But what'11 it do among his smuggling captains and crews, his small and weak auxiliaries… his privateers?' Lewrie posed, beaming with evil glee. 'I deliberately destroyed that Dutch ship to make the point that, do they cross my hawse, there'll be no mercy, 'long as they work for Choundas. That rumour will get round among 'em, count on it, soon as Proteus, and Lewrie, and Choundas are linked. Other warships might play by the accepted rules, but they'd best write their wills and sleep with one eye open as long as I'm at sea.

'And any British frigate that hauls up within their sight just might be Proteus, and Lewrie, hey?'

'Yes,' Peel said after a long frown. 'I do see your point, sir.'

'So do you accept my apology, Mister Peel?' Lewrie asked.

'I do, Captain Lewrie,' Peel replied with a smile, at last, and his hand out for shaking. 'Do you accept mine as well. For being my own secretive self when it came to the private signals. Did we wait to use them, they would have been out of date in another two months in any event, so… for not going direct to Antigua, as Mister Pelham wished, too, and disputing your decision to come here.'

'I will endeavour to explain myself more plainly in future,' Lewrie vowed, shaking Peel's hand. 'But for now, I must carry on, sir, so…' Lewrie said, turning away to head for the hammock nettings overlooking the gun-deck and gangways, ready to address the crew.

'Oh, Captain Lewrie,' Peel called after him. 'Something else I s'pose I must apologise for. Damme, but the thinking you put into your raid, it showed such unexpected, uhm… sagacity and…'

'What, Mister Peel?' Lewrie hooted. 'You're sorry you thought all I could do was plod round a quarterdeck and cry 'Luff,' or 'Fetch out yer whores'?'

'Something like that, sir,' Peel answered, with a faint wince to be so clearly understood. Not that he didn't think that Captain Lewrie could ever be consistently clever, but… he did have his moments!

'Accepted, sir,' Lewrie chuckled with a faint bow and a grand doff of his hat. Then he was busy with the Surgeon, Mr. Hodson, whom he allowed to mount the quarterdeck to make his report, and expressing his wonder that not a single sailor had been killed, and only six men had been hurt, with the further good news that only one of the wounded hands was considered a sick-berth patient.

Sure enough, once HMS Proteus had made a goodly offing and had sailed the shore of Guadeloupe under the horizon, with only the twin peaks of Basse-Terre still showing, the brightly painted rum keg was fetched up from below with all due ceremony and martial music from the Marine drummers and fifers, to welcoming cheers from her thirsty, successful man o' warsmen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Le Bouclier was anchored once more, to her second bower and her lesser kedge, this time with her un-harmed larboard side facing to seaward, with little L'Impudente tied up along her ravaged starboard side.

Saws screeched and rasped, metal hammers and wooden mauls thudded and drummed, and old wood cried as it was torn away with crow-levers for replacement with fresh planking brought up from the bosun's stores. Blocks shrilled as dis-mounted cannon were lowered back onto carriages set back on their trucks, as shattered carriages, stripped of any useful fittings, were hoisted over-side for scrapping or firewood ashore; as replacement yards and top-masts were swayed aloft, up through the lubber's holes in the savaged fighting-tops to be jiggled, then bound into place by weary topmen. The starboard gangway was heaped with the thick rolls of sails too singed or shot-torn to salvage, Fresh rolls of spare sails, huge hillocks of salvageable canvas, and bolts of new cloth smothered the forward gun-deck where Le Voilier, the Sailmaker and his crew, cut, snipped, basted, and sewed to patch damaged sails or start completely new replacements, installing grommets, reef-lines, and bolt-ropes inside the edging seams.

Smaller bundles, too much resembling the hopeful rolls of sailcloth, also littered the starboard gangway, and about the thick foot of the main-mast trunk in a thigh-high heap, stacked like cordwood to free deck space for the working-parties.

Those were the corpses.

The dead had been hastily shrouded, without the benefit of washing first, so their coverings were not the ecru of new canvas, nor the darker, weather-stained parchment dun of used. They were splotched or even brightly splashed with drying gore, the bile and ordure of gutted men. Slain in mid-morning, they still awaited transport ashore to the cemetery outside the port, and it was now nearly sunset. The horrible day had been very hot and still. They already stank.

Le Bouclier's survivors avoided the stacks if they could, walking on eggs as far away as possible, but too tired, too dulled by fear and shock by then to hold their noses at the mounting reek, studiously ignoring them, most of the time. If they could.

It was only when a dead man somewhere in the sloping mass round the main-mast, swelled with rapid tropic putrefaction, vented the foul gases in eerie groans or sighs that the matelots would take