Havoc`s Sword

and catch their most powerful frigate at the exact moment she was being moved from the harbour at Pointe-a-Pitre to Basse-Terre, without the aid of a spy in our employ. Someone close to Choundas, d'ye see, sir?'

'No, Mister Peel, I don't,' Lewrie peevishly groused. 'I'm just too dim… d'ye see. Lucky t'know how t'pee without Foreign Office assistance. Damme!'

'My pardons, sir,' Peel replied. 'Perhaps that could have been better phrased… firstly, that you had, uhm, directions and intelligence from British agents, in contact with a French turncoat, on which to base your actions. Rumours are, though, sir… dear as Guillaume Choundas'd wish to harvest your liver, he holds you to be more lucky than brilliant. He was heard to speak of Mister Zachariah Twigg… rather disparagingly… and was rumoured to suspect that his staff had been,

uhm… compromised, and that Mister Twigg, or someone in Twigg's employ, was pursuing him and dogging his every move, just as he was dogged and confounded in the Far East, then the Mediterranean.'

'Oh, the poor, crippled old bastard!' Lewrie chortled. 'Damme, is he feelin' persecuted?'

'And looking over his shoulder, now, sir,' Peel insisted. 'You shook him by the ears, right considerable. Put him off his paces. We have partially succeeded in un-nerving him.'

'Well,' Lewrie queried, turning to face inward, with his elbows on the cap-rails, and not feeling quite so demeaned any longer. 'Does your, uhm… department, bureau, or whatever actually have a spy close to him? Someone in your pay on Guadeloupe?'

'Now, sir,' Peel demurred, sniffing. 'That would be telling.'

'Right, then… be insufferable,' Lewrie snapped. 'And may ye have much joy of it! Tell me this, then. Now that we've got the evil shit half-confounded, where do I go t'find his ships so I can plague him some more?'

'Gone South, both Fleury and Haljewin suspected,' Peel told him. 'Bags of Yankee trade down that way, in the Spanish South American possessions, and the Dutch islands. They're half-starved for lack of any Spanish or Dutch ships able to put in with goods. Half-starved of new trade goods, the last three or four years, and half-starved for real by way of foodstuffs on the Dutch isles. Couldn't grow half of what they needed, even before the wars began. With no takers for their formerly valuable exports, 'tis a buyer's market.'

'Aye, trust the skinflint Yankees to make a killing off of 'em,' Lewrie said with a sneer of distaste natural to any true Englishman of gentlemanly pretensions; money was fine and all, but one could not get caught directly engaged in anything so mundane as 'trade' and all the 'filthy lucre' that came with it. One hired factors too common to be further sullied; one invested, at arm's reach.

'And the Frogs to make their 'killing' off the Americans, sir,' Peel rejoined.

'Not if we can help it,' Lewrie vowed. 'This suspicion of a spy lark, Mister Peel… think it'd be worthwhile to put a flea in one of our captives' ears, and land Fleury or this Haljewin character ashore, before we get to Dominica? Spin 'em a tale of how we knew they'd sail without escort, and when, and laid in wait for them?'

He waved an idle hand at the shoreline whipping by to windward.

'Well, I don't quite… hmmm,' Peel commented, frowning deeply and steepling wide-spread fingers to his lips as he bowed his head in thought. 'Must admit, it does entice, does it not, sir. Not exactly in my brief, though. Without approval from Mister Pelham, I'd rather not 'gild the lily,' as it were, with too much finesse.'

'Your superior, Mister Grenville Pelham, sir, is a pie-eyed idiot ' Lewrie shot back, turning so that only one arm rested on the cap-rails to face him. 'One who's hundreds of miles alee, and hasn't any idea of what's transpired since we sailed from Kingston… just what he wished to happen, and that merely in a general way. Do we sit round twiddlin' our thumbs waiting for specific direction from Pelham, we might just as well sail back to English harbour and swing about/ our moorings 'til Epiphany. You sent him a report by fast packet, soon as we entered Antigua harbour, I take it?'

'I did,' Peel agreed, 'and I am mortal-certain that he would approve every step we have taken so far, and praise our industry…'

'The boy might as well be in London, for all the good he is to us, Mister Peel,' Lewrie pressed, 'with three or four months 'twixt our correspondence. Now, do we let one or both o' these fools go ashore to tell Choundas how we took 'em, and how 'twas a traitor offered them up on a plate to us, same as his precious frigate, and Haljewin's cargo was, it'll have him tearing his hair out by the roots. You know how brutal Choundas is… recall what Twigg surely told you about him at that long meeting you had before you sailed out here? His 'charming' little… diversions? Like child rape, child buggery, making people suffer as he takes his pleasure, worse than that Marquis de Sade sonofabitch of theirs? Aye, he's most-like got fucking and torture as equal partners in his head, by now. Most-like gets a cock-stand at the smell of hot irons and melted lead.

'Most-like set himself up a dungeon and a torture chamber, soon as he lit out here. Might've been his first priority for all we know,' Lewrie argued with impatient haste as the lee port of Basse-Terre loomed up, and the tiny islets of the Saintes could be made out before the bows; time, geography, and the Trade Winds were stealing any opportunity to fetch-to and send Fleury and Haljewin ashore, before they were too far Sou'west of Guadeloupe, and spend hours beating back. To drop under the horizon, then return to land captives would be too suspicious a move, but to drop them off now would appear natural.

'He's a vicious beast, certainly Captain Lewrie, but…' Peel attempted to counter.

'Choundas would adore searchin' for a spy in his midst, Mister Peel! They could tell him we were bound South t'hunt his privateers, too. Us, sir; Lewrie, and Proteus, out to harm him, personally! And all he can is stew and fret that we'll find one or all, and eliminate his little squadron, and there's no way he can warn them. He's lamed, but he ain't paralysed. He's not the sort to sit patient and trust to Fate. Damme, sir, he'll be forced t'do something to keep his hand in, to prove to Hugues that he's vital, capable…! He's truly convinced there's a spy responsible for his troubles, Choundas will move Heaven and Earth t'find him. Does he produce one, he's vindicated, don't you see? 'Weren't my bloody fault, 'twas those damned British and a damn' traitor done it!' He'll have weeks and weeks to sit idle, 'fore those ships of his report back, and he's not the man to take his ease in an armchair and catch up on his reading.'

'Hmmm…' Mr. Peel said, maddeningly dithering while gnawing on a ragged thumbnail, and all the while time, position, and advantage were passing by at a rate of knots! 'There's truth in what you say, I grant you, Captain Lewrie, but…'

'But, mine arse, Mister Peel!' Lewrie spluttered. 'The chances are passin' us by, 'long as you hem and haw. We could fetch-to right this minute…!'

Boom-boom… bo-boom, faintly from windward.

The western coast of Guadeloupe tucked in upon itself a bit as one reached its southernmost extremities. Proteus, standing Due South just beyond the heaviest cannon's range, had extended her distance by another mile or so as the shore trended away. Even so, the Vieux Fort on the final point below Basse- Terre had attempted to take them under fire, and by the basso notes of the bowling round-shot that went up the scale in an eerie minor key as it neared, Lewrie suspected 32-pounder or even 42-pounder guns, with which to enforce the new three-mile-limit of territoriality, their maximum range.

Sure enough, four massive waterspouts leaped for the sky, high as their frigate's fighting-tops, fat yet feathery, and aroar as tons of seawater were vertically displaced, then slowly collapsed upon themselves as torrential as a mountain river's falls. Smaller feathers of spray staggered towards Proteus as the massive balls caromed off First Graze to Second Graze, then Third, before losing enough forward momentum to gouge little more than leaping-dolphin splashes as they finally sank.

Proteus's sailors jeered and cat-called with derision for such a hopeless show of defiance, for their First Graze had struck the sea one whole mile or near short of her sides, with their final, weary splashes still half a mile shy.

'Better luck next time, Froggie!' Lewrie heard Landsman Desmond shrill between tunneled hands.

'Yair… waste yer powder, Monsewer!' his mate, Furfy, howled.