Havoc`s Sword

Lewrie owlishly insisted. 'So one of us remembers it in the mornin'.'

'But… dash it, Lewrie! I say…!'

'Else we'll have t'ask the Yankees all over again. Whisky an' all, Mister Peel.'

'Oh. Oh!' Peel gasped. 'Point… taken. Indeed!' 'Well, I'm for bed… can I find it,' Lewrie announced, trying to rise of his own volition. 'Lots t'do in the morrow. Re-paint all the masts and spars British-fashion… else the forts'll take fright an' shoot us to kindling. Stores t'lade. Naps t'take… oh, thankee, Andrews. Touch t'larboard, is it? Hung from the overhead, now that's cunning. Sways a good deal, I'd imagine. Ah! Aspinall? Do get Mister Peel ink, quill, and paper, will you?' he called out while his Cox'n took his dressing gown and 'poured' him into his bed-cot. 'And to all a good night.'

Peel's muttered grumbles were simply music to his ears as he got comfortable. The windows in the coach-top overhead were open, with a tiny trysail set as a wind-scoop. Lewrie fanned his sheet then let it drop to his waist, savouring the rare nighttime coolness. After a bit of relative silence, marred only by Peel's faint curses and the shit! of his quill nib, Toulon at last decided that peace had been restored, and slunk out of hiding in the starboard quarter-gallery storage, and leaped up to join him, slinging his bulk into the crook of Lewrie's arm and kneading for 'pets'… beginning to purr right lustily as his master's hand stroked and wriggled upon his neck and head.

In vino, and whisky, Veritas, Lewrie drunkenly thought on the verge of whirling unconsciousness; and what'd I let slip this ev'nin'? Kindest, if the lad never knows he's my bastard. Half-Indian, Life's already hard enough for 'im. And Caroline never learns it, either! I want ?'reconcile, he'd be the last straw. Damme, but I must've strewed by-blows like dust in a high wind! My 'git'! A likely lookin' lad he is, though…

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Shattered! Shattered in knee timbers and futtocks, from upper first futtock to fourth, amidships, along with her ribs! Her graceful stem- choke piece, knee of the head, stemson timbers and apron- including her fore rib pieces and futtocks were shattered.

Once they had stripped Le Bouclier down to a gant-line with only her lower masts standing, with all her ballast, stores, and guns removed, and careened her on the shingly lee-side beach near Basse-Terre, the surveyors from the dockyard had discovered just how grievous and extensive her damage was. The surveyors and the few skilled shipwrights still left on the island of Guadeloupe, after the purging and execution of the Royalists and the suspect, held little hope that the magnificent frigate could be sufficiently rebuilt. Oh, in France, certainement, they said with high shrugs! In the Caribbean, though, there were no stout oak trees, nor were there great, curving timbers of the proper arcs or thickness, nor the right seasoning, and just to replace her outer and inner planking, and lighter damage to carline posts, bulwarks, and rails would exhaust their scant supply of imported oak.

The shipwrights were most apologetic, but there was little they could do for Le Bouclier. Oh, could a ship bear a surveyor and a team of shipwrights to Cuba, or some other Spanish possession, local mahogany might serve for permanent repair materials… but selecting the right-shaped trees, felling them, sawing them, and transporting them back to Basse-Terre would take months. Even then the mahogany would still require months more for proper seasoning and drying.

'Heart-breaking, m'sieur le Capitaine' the master shipwright, and the commissaire of the dockyard, both had said. Then had fled his presence before the expected storm broke.

Heart-breaking, indeed, Capt. Guillaume Choundas thought. What a wondrous frigate Le Bouclier had been, the equal, if not the better, of any 'Bloody' warship in the Caribbean-now a useless, lifeless hulk. And damn that salaud Lewrie to the deepest level of Hades.

Just as heart-breaking, though more understandable, was what he heard from his superior, the commissaire civil Victor Hugues. He still had his single frigate, now cruising for American prizes off the coast of the Guyanas, far to the southwest. Did she come in in need of repair, Hugues was certain that Choundas would offer bits and pieces from Le Bouclier, to keep one powerful man o' war able to daunt the 'biftecks'… and that Choundas would do so in the proper cooperative spirit, in accord with the ideals of the Revolution!

'You still have two rather fine corvettes, Capitaine Choundas,' Hugues had said with a vengeful smirk, 'which have yet to put to sea to challenge the 'Bloodies.' Let them sail singly, or as a small squadron. Officers and men off your stricken frigate may re-enforce their crews. Or you may transfer those now idled to my command, and I will put them to good use aboard the several enemy merchant ships / took before your arrival. With cannon from Le Bouclier, I could outfit at least three more raiders to pursue le guerre de course.'

'I am the senior naval officer on Guadeloupe, m'sieur le commissaire!' Choundas had thundered back, 'appointed by the hand of Director Paul Barras, premier of the Directory of Five! They are my cannon, my sailors and officers, and do they sit idle in port for lack of cooperation from the island's commissaire civil, believe me, m'sieur, he will know of it in short order, unless… in the cooperative spirit, according to the ideals of La Revolution, prize vessels suitable to my needs… which also now lie idle for want of cooperation!… are not turned over to me I'

A bitter compromise had been reached. Hugues had not been sure that Choundas's writ might prove to carry more power than his own with the Directory, or that the ogre just might have the ear of Paul Barras after all. Hugues got Le Bouclier for scrap-yard use, and four of her great-guns, with which to form a protective shore battery at Deshaies. Choundas received a mere two prize ships for conversion a small brig and one schooner, to be armed with no more than ten guns apiece, crewed by as many matelots as he wished to employ for boarders and passage crews for any prizes taken. Wounded off Le Bouclier who recovered… they would become Hugues's. Naval Infantry, other than Choundas's personal guard detail, would be landed ashore and put under Hugues's command to re- enforce his skimpy 1,500 man garrison.

Choundas sat and sweated, stripped down to shirt and breeches and fanning himself with a 'top silver' plaited palmetto hand fan. Among the princes of the Lanun Rovers or Mindanao pirate fleets, there had been tiny young girls with cool, wetted bundles of palm fronds. Extremely young girls, who would come whenever he had beckoned, would wind out of their colourfully printed batik wraps to service him, or cheerfully, submissively let themselves be pressed down, spread, and taken, as casually as they spat betel juice. Not so casually, the second time he took them, but their fear, then, their weak whines and pleadings, even their looks of revulsion, had been doubly sweet and invigourating. Back when he was a normal-looking man, before that salaud Lewrie lamed and maimed him.

He fanned a little harder, shifting his crippled leg to ease an ever-present dull ache, with perspiration popping anew to trickle down his cheeks and the small of his back-partly from the effort put into fanning for relief from the sullen afternoon's heat; partly from being frustrated to lose the tumescence in his groin that such fond reverie had engendered, and could never be relieved quite so easily as then; and partly from the intrusion of his undying hatred for the Englishman, and the harm he'd done his magnificent frigate!

His noir servants; damn Hugues for freeing them! Damn Hugues, too, for charging him rente on the use of them by the week! Damn them for drawing the line on what they would or would not do for their new master and his coterie, as if some things were below their dignity… as if they had any sense of dignity to upset!

They dared lay complaints of ill-usage with Victor Hugues's sous commissaires civils, they insolently dared to quit his house (when they didn't just run off!), and implored the commissaires for employment with any other house, even at lower wages, if they had to.

The commissaires had sent letters chiding him for harshness; he was to pay more for the services of those who remained.

There were fewer servants in his retinue doing the same amount of labour, and, illiterate or not, those