Havoc`s Sword

career on the off-chance a boy, damn' near a stranger, goes in awe o' me. And I resent having my motives being portayed that way.'

Lewrie took a deep breath and calmed himself at last, frowning quizzically to see that Peel wasn't fuming like a slow-match sizzling down to ignite a bombshell.

'A lad whose existence will most-like ruin my life, anyway, if my wife ever learns of him,' Lewrie concluded, his resentment spent at last, forced to grin in self-deprecating confirmation of his parentage. 'And why ain't you howling, by now?' he simply had to ask.

'Because I had to know for certain,' Peel mystifyingly replied. 'With you, in truth, sir, who knows what goes on in your head!'

'Now, that's not strictly…' Lewrie flummoxed.

'See here, sir… no, forgive that,' Peel said at last, after Lewrie let him get a word in edgewise, that is. 'All you say is more plausible, and possible, than anything I heard in London, or since we arrived in the Caribbean.'

'It is?' Lewrie gawped back, expecting a verbal knife-fight.

'I must own, sir,' Peel most reluctantly said, 'that I see the eminent sense, the rationale of your thoughts, and as far as I see it… God help me!… I can do naught but agree with your assessments.'

'Mine arse on a band-box, you do?' Lewrie blurted out, with a whoosh of relief. 'At long last,' he could not help but add. 'May I assume that your next letter to Mister Pelham will tell him of your, uhm… change of heart, then?'

Damme, have I actually done something clever? Lewrie asked himself, for once in my miserable life?

'It will, sir,' Peel vowed, though looking a tad beleaguered as he pondered the personal consequences of defying the prevailing opinion of his superiors in London, not to mention the hurricane of anger that would come, from the high-nosed, not-to-be-outshone Mr. Grenville Pelham. 'All else is so much moonshine, wishful thinking, grossly in error or… hopelessly out of date.'

'Well… excellent, Mister Peel!' Lewrie crowed.

'Well, not completely!' Peel could not help retorting, 'It'll be mine arse on the chopping-block. Might as well be French… off with my head!' he sourly grumbled, wrapping his wide lapels over his chest as if a fell wind blew, not a tropic one. 'This turns out badly, we'd best emulate your friend Colonel Cashman and flee to South Carolina. Find us a safe place to hide from the Crown's displeasure.'

'Of course, does it work out,' Lewrie cynically pointed out in much gladder takings, almost playfully now, 'your Pelham is the fellow gets knighted for quick and clever thinkin'. I suspect our names will never be mentioned.'

'But of course,' Peel answered with one of his accustomed wry smirks, as if he was almost back to normal.

'Pity there can't be at least a wee shred o' credit for us, to improve our standing back home, though,' Lewrie alluringly hinted. 'It ain't every day I come up with a good idea. 'Tis a good day I come with an idea, at all.'

'You're fishing for compliments, you can forget it,' Peel told him turning bleak once more, and with his hands fiddling at his coat collars as if to armour himself against vicissitude. 'I'm the one has to tell Pelham. What you get won't be a jot on my cobbing. God, he expected folly from you, but not from me!'

'Aye, I'm such a corrupting influence,' Lewrie said, bowing his head in mock contrition. 'Put it down to the old Navy excuse, 'drink, and bad companions!' Won't 'app'n, agin, yer honour, sir. Oh, well. No thanks, no credit…'

Peel's answer to that was an inarticulate gargle.

'Sorry, didn't quite catch that?' Lewrie playfully enquired with a hand cupped to one ear. It had sounded hellish-like a cranky bear-growl. Peel turned his back and stomped rather bleakly away, towards the taff-rails, where, Lewrie had little doubt, he would seize the cap-rails in white-knuckled hands as if to strangle oak in lieu of a human throat. Lord knew, as a junior officer Lewrie had done the same in the face of utter frustration.

Lewrie turned his attention out-board, lifting his glass to see the USS Oglethorpe brig engage the large French three-masted schooner. The schooner had swung off the Nor'east winds to present her starboard battery, using the wind-forced heel to elevate her cannon for the customary crippling shots at Oglethorpe's rigging and sails, and Lewrie took a deep breath and held it in dread expectation as the two vessels' bowsprits came level with each other on opposite courses, as the American brig blocked the schooner from view.

Their broadsides, at what he estimated as about a hundred yards, lit off as one in the instant that both ships' hulls lay exactly opposite each other, as if docked side-by-side, one bows-out and the other bows-in. A massive cloud of spent powder smoke burst into existence between them in the blink of an eye. Oglethorpe, up to windward, was only partially befogged, with the smoke quickly clearing as it was blown alee; the French schooner was the one thoroughly wreathed in it, completely blotted out from view.

Oglethorpe's masts shivered, and her forecourse yard canted and dropped, to be caught by the chain-slings rigged to prevent its total loss. Her sails were pocked and fluttered like carpets or bedding on a clothesline for dusting by very stout-armed maids-of-all-work. A bare royal spar on her main-mast went winging away, along with about three feet of the slim upper mast that supported it, and both standing and running rigging came snaking down as it was severed by chain-shot, star-shot, and expanding bar-shot.

'God in Heaven!' Lt. Langlie was forced to exclaim. 'My word, I mean,' he amended as he realised that prim Mr. Winwood was still near. And with his 'holy' face on. 'But what weight of artillery does that Yankee brig mount? How many cannon can a brig bear, and server

The French schooner staggered out of the smoke pall. Her foremast was sheered off about ten feet above the deck, her main-mast canted so far aft that it made a rough triangle, like a mast-hoisting sheer-legs, where it rested upon her mizen. And half her starboard side was hammered so badly that one could almost make out bare ribs! Her bowsprit and jib-boom pointed down into the water like a steering oar, and her starboard anchor and cat-head were simply gone! With such a drag, she emerged bows-down, flat on her bottom and low in the water, most of her way shot clean off her, surging up a vast patch of white-foaming sea around her as if she rested atop a stony shoal where the waves first broke as they came ashore.

'Enough, and more, it seems, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said, about to dare the sea-gods and whistle on deck in admiration, or surprise.

Proteus s crew raised another gleeful cheer to salute Oglethorpe for her quick victory. For them, it was better than a raree show or a championship cockfight. Any day they could see the despised French getting their just desserts was simply 'the nuts' to them. And the bloodier and more brutal, the better!

'Damn my… bless me!' Mr. Langlie further commented, a glass to his eye, as the Sailing Master pointedly coughed into his fist and issued a cautionary 'Ha-Hemm!' as if clearing his throat. 'Taking the lee position as she did, sir, with a fair amount of her quick-work exposed at her angle of heel, there's sure to be shot-holes below her Waterline. Be a shame to lose such a fine prize, if she sinks. Why, I do believe you can already judge her down to starboard, as if taking water.'

'It appears Captain Randolph is of the same mind, sir,' Lewrie said in agreement with his assessment. 'She is listing to starboard. Oglethorpe's coming about and taking in sail. Save her 'fore she goes down I s'pose. Ah, there she's struck her colours! Took them long enough. A blinding glimpse of the obvious, that. Mister Langlie?'

'Sir?'

'Oglethorpe's busy,' Lewrie decided, swinging his telescope to eye those French prizes, now fleeing to the Sou'east. 'Wish her well, and all that, but… if she won't run down the merchant schooners, we shall. A point to loo'rd, and let's crack on. They look deeply laden to me. No matter they're Yankee-built and fast, we stand an excellent chance of overhauling 'em. By mid-afternoon, at the latest.'

'Aye aye, sir. Mister O'Leary, a point o' weather helm. Haul off a mite, and shape course just to windward of the schooners, there,' Lt. Langlie instructed the Quartermaster of the watch.