Havoc`s Sword

over him and weep a flood of loss is womanly. I will make a proper oration at his grave. Hurry, now, Jules. It has been a long, long day, and I'm weary.'

'Aye, m'sieur' Hainaut replied, walking close to Choundas for a prop, should he need it, as they went to the entry-port.

And after serving you so well, so long, Hainaut mutinously told himself; you wouldn't even come to say goodbye to me if I fell? Your tool… disposable tool, and nothing more. Just give me even a tiny ship, and I'll make my own way, from here on.

BOOK THREE

'Rebus semper pudor absit in artis!'

'Away with scruple in adversity!'

– Argonautica, Book V, 324

Valerius Flaccus

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Mister Peel,' Capt. Lewrie said, alighting from the spavined roan 'prad' which he had ridden up to, and back from, Admiralty House on its lofty, airy hilltop overlooking English Harbour. He could not quite disguise a smug expression. He had ridden, whilst Mr. Peel had been forced to take 'Shank's Ponies' for his call upon the Governor-General, that is, to walk; and a long, upward walk it had been. Peel was plucking his coat and waist-coat away from his sopping shirt, and mopping his streaming face as Lewrie sprang down by the boat landing.

'Captain Lewrie,' Peel finally managed to reply from a parched mouth. 'Damme, you'd think there'd be a pinch of wind, at the least.'

'Lee-side harbour, Mister Peel,' Lewrie informally informed him. 'Absolutely vital in the islands. The East'rd hills block most of it, and Shirley Heights polishes it off, most days.'

'At least we had wind where we anchored,' Peel said, fanning his hat and peering longingly to the outer roads. 'Not much, but some, and some'd do for me, 'bout now.'

'We'll have you under the quarterdeck awnings, soakin' yer feet in a pan of cool water, 'fore you can say 'Jack Ketch,'' Lewrie vowed. 'So. How was your reception with your, uhm… co-conspirators in the Governor-General's office?'

'Oh, not too horrid, considering, sir,' Peel wryly said, with a grimace, 'given our use of French private signals, which, I gather, are thought too valuable to use at all, unless we spotted Jesus and a band of angels descending for the Second Coming. Shrieks of consternation, 'viewing with alarm'… all the proper forms of disapproval of which officialdom is possible. But for the fact that Mister Pelham holds superior position to them, and might have authorised me to employ them at my discretion… a view from which I did not disabuse them. Might I enquire what sort of warm reception you received, sir? And that is not a pun upon today's weather.' Peel grinned, regaining his breath and his equanimity after such a torrid 'stroll.'

'Ginger beer, sirs! Ginger beer!' a street vendor cried, as he wheeled a hand-cart down the stone quay near the boat landing. 'Best fer tang, best fer th' bilious! Cool ginger beer! Who'll buy…?'

'The local admiral was of much the same mind, Mister Peel. Got cobbed rather well,' Lewrie confessed. 'Your confederates in the Governor-General's mansion just did release them to him. He just distributed them to his captains, and now they're all for nought, so there'll be no gullible prizes brought in by guile. Hence, no admiral's share. Damme, I do hope he hasn't spent his expected windfall already! And we 'poached' on his private 'game park' without declaring ourselves first. And, damn our eyes, we didn't fetch him in even a row-boat to show for our raid. He could care less was Guillaume Choundas the Anti-Christ himself, he's never heard of him, so… you may imagine all the rest. If we do have some form of 'Admiralty Orders,' then sail independent, instanter! Just get out of his harbour, and his sight.'

'Could we?' Peel asked. 'Sail instanter? Do we need anything?'

'Firewood and water, the usual plaint,' Lewrie told him with a shrug. 'You?'

'Not really,' Peel admitted. 'There were some rather intriguin' hints that I garnered… 'twixt the howls, and such. Hints which we just might wish to follow up,' he suggested, tapping his noggin with a conspiratorial air, and that maddening smirk of private information.

'Best we add livestock to our requests, then,' Lewrie supposed. 'It sounds as if we'll be cruising longer than our fresh meat holds out. Or poking our bows into waters where we couldn't buy a goat.'

'Ginger beer, sir? Ginger beer fer yer cabin stores, Cap'um?' the vendor tempted. 'Keeps longer'n ship's water, h'it do, an' won't go flat an' tasteless like small-beer.'

'Sailor, were you, my man?' Peel enquired, taking in the ragged 'ticken' striped slop-trousers the man wore, those from a much earlier issue, each leg as wide as the waistband and ending below his knees.

'Aye, sir. Th' ol' Ariadne, in th' last war,' the man proudly said, 'afore she woz hulked. Right yonder, she were, fer years an'-'

'Scrapped her, did they?' Lewrie asked, peering closely at the grizzled fellow, trying to place him, or to determine that his claims were false. Where poor old Ariadne had lain, stripped down to a gant-line as a receiving and stores ship, perhaps later a sheer hulk rigged to pull lower masts like bad teeth, there was now an equally sad-looking, bluff-bowed 74-gun Third Rate.

' 'Er bottom woz 'bout rotted out, Cap'um. Beached her, yonder, an' burned 'er for 'er fittings an' 'er nails,' the man said. 'In '89 it woz. Come out in '80, she did. I were main-mast cap'm, then. She got laid up, I went aboard th' ol' Jamaica, but I lost me ratin', then got ruptured an' discharged, just 'fore the war ended, in '82. Stayed out here h'ever since. Here, sir… I know ye, Cap'um?'

'Edgemon!' Lewrie exclaimed, suddenly dredging the man's name up from the distant past. 'You taught me handin' and reefin'!'

'Mister… Ashburn, sir?' The man beamed.

'No. Lewrie,' he told him, a tad abashed to be mistaken for a much tarrier, more promising, and handsomer midshipman of those times.

'Oh Lord, Mister Lewrie, aye!' Edgemon cried. ' 'Twas you tried t'catch 'at poor topman wot got pushed off the main tops'l yard, wot was 'is name?'

'Gibbs,' Lewrie supplied. 'Mister Rolston pushed him…'

'Aye, sir, 'at li'l bastard!' Edgemon snarled, the memory still sour. 'Beggin' yer pardon, Cap'um. 'Spect he's a Cap'um hisself, by now, an' God 'elp pore sailormen.'

'No, he's dead,' Lewrie happily related. 'Died at the Nore, a common seaman and mutineer, under a new name.'

'Hung, sir? 'Is sort's bound fer th' gibbet,' Edgemon beamed.

'No, I killed him,' Lewrie flatly said.

'Have a free piggin o' ginger beer on me then, sir!'

'I'll have a whole barricoe, sir,' Lewrie declared of a sudden. 'What's your charge for five gallons?'

'Lor', sir! Uhm… eight shillin's, sorry t'say.'

'Make it ten gallons, and here's a guinea,' Lewrie said, going for his purse to produce an actual gold coin, not the usual scrip that had even made its way to the Caribbean as 'war replacement' for specie. 'Will that buy a piggin for me, Mister Peel, and my boat crew?'