THE GUN KETCH

I've sent request after request to my squadron commander, and dozens of letters to Caroline, and it's like dropping a stone down a wellshaft and never hearing even a splash. I feared… you cannot imagine what I have feared, sir!'

'Well, rest easy,' Deveaux assured him. 'There's a small bag of correspondence for you and your ship, sir. And a thick packet of letters from your wife. Peyton could not believe you would ignore her so callously. He stated in his note to me that he suspects your superiors are withholding your mail to and fro.'

'I know Commodore Garvey was wroth with me over Walker's Cay and John Finney's trial. He sent us down here out of anger. But I never thought he'd be that vindictive to me!'

'You've written him often, then?' Deveaux demanded.

'Weekly, sir. We're running out of all manner of stores except for food and drink. Sir, if this goes on, my ship'll be crippled for lack of new spars, rope and sailcloth. Yet, without specific orders, I am barred from returning to the Navy dockyard at Nassau.'

'And I trust you've saved a fair copy of your every plea, sir?' Deveaux hinted slyly. 'As a precaution for the future?'

'Aye, sir, that's customary. And in black ink, too,' Alan had to grin as he said it. 'But why would he interrupt my mail? How can a man be so spiteful?'

'We'll discuss that later,' Colonel Deveaux told him. 'Once we get to my house, you read your letters. And fill yourself in on what has been happening in Nassau in your absence. Then we'll talk more.'

Caroline was alive! And well!

He went to her letters first, reading the one with the most recent date to assure himself of her existence and her safety. She wrote that she was blooming big as a mare about to foal, the baby was kicking lustily, and that she carried low, which the physician and midwife she had engaged considered signs of a man-child. Except for the usual complaints and pains, the clumsiness and heaviness, she reassured him that her confinement was not too hard, although she missed the pleasures of riding, gardening, and doing her own cooking; yet, between Betty Mustin and Wyonnie (Lew-rie flushed with remorse as that similar name appeared) she had no difficulties.

After that joyous news, though, there was a plaint that brought tears to his eyes as he read of her tightly denied fears; that he and Alacrity had been sunk or wrecked; that he had died of some fever; that he'd fallen out of love with her and now spurned her; that he did not really desire children, and had turned his back on her, as a rich man might discard an inconveniently pregnant mistress who was no longer as attractive or slim.

…I try and try to imagine you being so involved in some stern Duty that even our Love must be relegated a poor second for the nonce, but dearest Alan, it has been so long since you sailed away, and not one word from you have I received, nor any hearsay as to…

'Oh, Caroline, Christ!' he whispered through a throat constricted by his weeping. 'Goddamme, no, it's not like that!'

He would sail at once to Nassau, he vowed. Damn the threats, or the consequences! Let them court-martial him for anything they damned well pleased, just so long as he could see her one more time, and tell her that her fears had no substance!

'And Goddamn the bastard who did this to me!' he raged. 'Cruel, malicious bastard! How could anyone…? Dozens and dozens of letters and they've kept 'em all. Damme, do they read 'em? Do they gloat over her pain? By Christ, I'll have their heart's blood for thisl'

On the patio, Andrew Deveaux and his wife sat in the shade, and winced as they heard the strangled howl from within their drawing room.

'That poor young man,' Mrs. Deveaux shuddered. 'And his terrified young wife, Andrew! Do you truly believe that his commodore keeps his letters deliberately, dear?'

'I do,' Deveaux scowled, running his hands through his thick and unruly long blond hair. 'That, and a lot worse. Oh, it's foul, I…'

'You're dead, swear to Jesus, you're a dead man!' Lewrie wailed.

'I'd not wish to walk on Lieutenant Lewrie's bad side, dear,' Mrs. Deveaux frowned. 'Not even were I the King of France!'

It took an hour for Lewrie to collect himself enough to join them on the patio for tea, though he was still fretful and jerking at inability to be in action at that instant He could not keep his handsstill, and one crossed leg juddered upon the other as he rocked irately on his chair.

'I trust your wife is well, Lieutenant Lewrie,' Deveaux asked.

'Aye, sir,' Alan said, trying to be as gracious as his hosts. 'The physician and midwife are confident the child's due late this month. A boy, they believe. Why, I could be a father now, even as we speak!'

'And your other letters are reassuring as well?'

'From my shore agent, Courts Co., my bank back home, my grandmother in Devon. Even one from my father in India. Caroline had saved them, no longer…' he gulped down a threatening spasm of raw emotion, 'no longer believing I could, or would, respond to her until I returned to Nassau.'

Sore as he hurt, he had to grin slightly, remembering what his father Sir Hugo had penned. It had begun 'You silly ranti-poling dog, sir! Have I not drummed into you one should rent, not purchase, quim?' That smile, however, was just as quickly gone.

'God, it's so petty. So base! So cruel to her!'

'It's Jack Finney,' Deveaux declared bluntly. 'Sugar?'

'Finney? How could he get at Fleet mail, sir?' Alan gaped.

'Not Finney directly,' Deveaux allowed. 'I doubt he has interests in your personal letters. But you did anger him when you caught his ship trading in pirated goods, and you stung him upon his sorest spot when you burned the cache and hauled him into court. He has powerful friends, sir. And money enough to buy anyone he desires.'

'So even you believe he's a pirate, sir?' Alan hoped aloud.

'I'm certain of it,' Deveaux stated firmly.

'So he's bought himself a clerk in the Commodore's office, then. That way, he'd know where our patrols would be, so he might tell his piratical confederates,' Alan realized. 'And he never sued us because he would have been exposed as a smuggler at the least! Those goods we burned were never landed or bonded. And all this time Rodgers and I were fearing he'd end up making us jump through his lawyers' hoops!'

'I expect it cost him considerable to stay out of court on any smuggling charges, to boot,' Deveaux smiled thinly. 'The assembly in which I sit, sir, the courts, the Governor's Council… see here, sir, Nassau is an offal-ditch, an open sewer, a cesspit of corruption, and all is for sale! When I was awarded my grant of land for what little I did to retake New Providence, I was more than happy to settle on Cat Island. Did you know even this salubrious isle was named long ago for an Arthur Catt, a pirate? And does that not tell you something about the Bahamas, sir? Most of the year, I am quite content to avoid Nassau with all its back-stabbing, money-grubbing squalor, and limit my visits to Assembly sessions. Even so, this far happily removed, we still get a whiff of its corruption, like an ill wind from an abbatoir. I have heard rumours. Peyton did not speak of them in his letter to you?'

'Some vague hints, sir. But I took them to involve my letters. And my exile. He wasn't sure what had happened to me, either. He had written before, demanding me to answer him, to answer Caroline, or tell him why I would not. But how could I? I never got those, either!'

'And thought to use me as intermediary, after he no longer could trust the Navy to forward mail. Or trust the Navy at all, sir,' Colonel Deveaux said grimly. 'He's begun to suspect something foul in our government, and said to me he'd also begun to nose about, to make discreet inquiries. I only pray to God they are discreet. There're thousands at stake in this, and the men involved are not above murder to keep their doings quiet. And to ask about John Finney's doings… though a power of talk about him is common coin. People love to gossip about 'Calico Jack.' He's the sort who gets talked about. And loves it.'

'Do you know him well, sir?' Alan inquired.

'Well enough, only as an acquaintance, mind,' Deveaux smirked. 'He's not the sort one has for a firm or trustworthy friend.'

'I hear a lot of people say the same, Colonel Deveaux.'

'Nodding acquaintances before the Dons landed, and allies when I mustered the volunteers. He helped arm them, you see, and brought his battleworthy bully bucks along,' Deveaux chuckled. 'In such need as we were,