Sea of Grey

duff. That letter would get posted in the news back home, getting his name in the papers!

'Nonsense.' Sir Harold waved him off. 'Captain Blaylock can write a properly appreciative report of his own, hey Captain Blaylock?'

'Why, I…' Blaylock responded, mouth agape in high dudgeon and shock for a raw second, before turning bland and agreeable once more. 'But of course, Sir Harold. Anything to oblige,' he stated, obviously weighing the cost of a refusal against the present goodwill of a rich and knighted senior officer.

'Do you wish, then, to take my anchorage tonight, sir?' Lewrie prodded, shamming some more eagerness. 'There's still enough light…'

'You would not mind, sir?' Blaylock asked, leery of his offer to cede the place of honour so quickly.

'It will give Captain Wandsworth more time to do his sums before dawn, sir,' Lewrie replied, rising as if dismissed, the decision having already been made. 'And, being toothless, I can accomplish no more.' 'Makes sense, sir,' General Lamb commented, nose in his glass. 'Aye, up-anchor and stand down below the port, Captain Lewrie,' Blaylock said, draining his glass and rising to his own feet as if to begin the evolutions for moving his ship that instant. 'Do let me walk you to the deck, Captain Lewrie.'

'An honour, sir,' Lewrie replied, lying most pleasantly. Blaylock, for Lamb's benefit, even went so far as to thread his right arm through Lewrie's left, as if they were now as close as cater-cousins on the way to the door.

'Do not make the mistake of trying to best me again, Lewrie,' Blaylock muttered from the side of his mouth once they were out of Sir Harold's earshot, still beaming like an admiring papa. 'I've years more experience at Navy politics than any jumped-up, ill-bred jackanapes of a 'dashing' frigate captain. You finagled me once back in Port- Au-Prince, and robbed me of guns. I s'pose you think you did it again, tonight, hmm? Well, let me tell you something. Oh, I will pen you a modicum of praise for your damn-foolery, but stress the horrid risk you ran of killing our own troops, and one never knows, does one… the Samboes just might've had artillery in those woods, and any casualties from grape or cannister I can always lay at your feet, and there goes your good odour… boy!'

'Don't you run the same risk, sir?' Lewrie pointed out. 'After all, it'll be your guns, tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow's accidental dead can always become yesterday's dead… on paper, Lewrie,' Blaylock whispered, evilly beaming. 'And just who d'ye think will do the writing once you're gone… Lewrie.'

'You will, of course, sir,' Lewrie levelly responded.

'That's right, that's exactly right!' Blaylock softly crowed.

'Unless it's Sir Harold writing Admiral Parker, should you kill some of his men, sir,' Lewrie pointed out. 'Then it's on your head.'

'Ah, but in my case, Lewrie, t'will be an unfortunate accident, a mistaken signal from Army artillerymen.'

'Well, since you seem to have everything covered, sir, I'll go back aboard Proteus and shift anchor,' Lewrie said, outwardly uncaring and eerily calm in the face of such a threat.

'Goodbye, little boy-captain.' Blaylock sniffed. Again, for the benefit of General Lamb, he raised his voice for a proper parting sentiment. 'Have a safe and quick voyage to Port-Au-Prince.'

'Thankee, sir,' Lewrie said, conversationally loud as well, but dropped his voice to a whisper again as he stuck out his hand, forcing Blaylock to take it to make a decent show. 'Before I go, though, you should know, sir… without grape or cannister, Proteus cannot guard the harbour tonight.'

'Against what?' Blaylock asked, with a snort of derision.

'Cutting-out expeditions by L'Ouverture's men, sir. An attempt to blow you sky-high, sir.'

'Oh, tosh!' Blaylock actually giggled at the very idea.

'You did not read my report about the four boats we intercepted, sir? When they saw that they could not escape us, they turned and lit their cargoes of powder, tryin' to take us with 'em. They've dozens of small boats up and down the coast, I'm bound… out of reach of the Army's trenchworks. Who knows what they'll be up to, now they have been stung so bad by naval gunfire… hmmm, sir?'

Blaylock looked as if he'd sneer for a moment, dismissing such a threat, but then went blank as he realized that it was possible, and that his precious ship was now at the point of danger.

'By God, you…!'

'Do you have your report aboard by Six Bells, sir, to accompany Sir Harold's, I b'lieve I can breast the slack of the tide and work my way out on the land-breeze. If you please, sir.'

Didn't think o ' that, didya? Lewrie gloated some more; the first ship out of here's mine, carry in' your damned despatches.

'By God, I'll have your arse for this, Lewrie!'

'If you say so, sir,' Lewrie rejoined, his voice dead-level and his eyes going from calm blue to steely grey. 'If you say so.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Port-Au-Prince was a much more crowded harbour than when Proteus had last lain there, and this time, when sailing down the north channel past Ile de Gonaves, instead of the exotic and otherwordly cries of a myriad of brightly coloured island birds, the overlying sounds were of distant field-pieces, thumping flat and hollow, the faint crackle from musket volleys, and the brooding, menacing thud of voudoun drums.

An ancient stores ship, HMS Grampus, lay at anchor. Once a tall and proud 2nd Rate of 90 guns, she was now a tar-smeared and filthy old barge, little better than a mastless receiving ship or prison hulk, so bereft of upper masts that Proteus's people could conjure that the only way the old warrior could have gotten over from Kingston was under tow.

'Cain't see dot L'Oi-dot Songbird we took, sah,' Cox'n Andrews pointed out, shading his eyes to scan the crowded harbour.

'Well, damme, I'd hoped…' Lewrie said, having counted on the prize being there, so he could get Lieutenant Catterall and Midshipman Adair back aboard to re-enforce his depleted petty officers and leaders. 'Mister Coote?' he called, shrugging it off. 'You'll take the cutter under Mister Elwes to Grampus, once we're anchored. Grape shot, cannister makings, and powder first, mind. We're naked without them.'

Their last night at Mole Saint Nicholas, without grape or cannister, he'd paced and fretted a move by L'Ouverture's men with an armed double watch on deck, armed Marines in the fighting tops, and both eyes skinned for any suspicious shadow or drifting log in the water, worried

that his malicious warning to Captain Blaylock had been borrowing trouble for himself.

'Mister Langlie, once Mister Coote returns, begin loading. I'll be ashore, to find out what aid we may render. Or what we're to do.'

'Aye, sir. Though I don't suppose they'll ask for indirect fire here,' Langlie commented, taking off his hat to mop his forehead with his coat sleeve. 'Our Army's too far inland for that.'

'And I doubt General Maitland's staff runs to lunatics, such as our friends Wandsworth and Scaiff,' Lewrie replied, softly japing him.

'That, too, sir,' Langlie chuckled, turning his attention to the draw of the sails and their course. 'Half a point a'weather, helmsman.'

Two hours of mopping his face, swatting flies and pesky mosquitoes, dipping up water now and then from the communal bucket at General Maitland's headquarters, and Lewrie had even less of a clue as to what Proteus should do once she was re-armed.

At last, coming from a tall set of double louvred doors leading to a parlour converted to offices, he spotted a blue-and-white uniform not worn by the Royal Artillery but by a Post-Captain of his own service, and Lewrie practically pounced on him, naming himself.

'Captain Lewrie, is it?' the officer asked, once he'd spoken.

'Aye, sir.'

'Nicely… of Obdurate,' the officer replied, and his name fit him most appropriately. Nicely was a square older fellow with pepper-and-salt hair, still thick and wiry, a man possessed of the merriest blue eyes and a permanent tan, his countenance fixed in perpetuity in a benign half smile, as if pleased as punch