Sea of Grey

Leewards and the Virgins (though he had a yen for a glimpse of them once more) and then the Trades would brush across the island of Hispaniola, wafting God only knew what nastiness right down on them. At sea, with the deck and bulwark railings pitching and tossing, they could not employ Mr. Durant's tar-and-citron pots to counteract the foul miasmas that brought disease with sweet ones. Surely some who had not yet succumbed ran the risk of another exposure; those debilitated the first time might not survive a second.

Lewrie slowly collapsed the tubes of his telescope, each click of the tubes seating a step towards a decision. He turned his body to peer forward, past the spread of the main and fore courses, and the upthrust bow sprit and jib-boom, and the anchor cat-heads. A day more on this course to the Sou'east would take Proteus deep into the waters between Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, where privateers and smugglers were two-a-penny during the Revolution in his 'green' days.

Though some could call it poaching, Lewrie told himself with a wry grin. The Royal Navy squadrons based out of English Harbour, down at Antigua, prowled those seas when they could spare vessels from the blockade oн troublesome Guadeloupe, whilst he and his frigate were beholden to Kingston and the West Indies Station.

Ostensibly, every British warship answered to Admiral Parker, and his headquarters at Kingston, from the Bahama Banks to Trinidad, from the Antilles to the shoal waters of the Spanish possessions far to the west, such as New Spain and the Isthmus of Panama, so… would trolling a touch more East'rd really be poaching? It could be excused… couldn't it?

The Leewards were a tempting lure, and not just for him alone. The rare Dutch merchant ships still at sea would try to succour their colonies; if they threaded past the blockade in European waters, that's where they would first strike the West Indies. The supposedly neutral Danes, and those pesky Swedes, would be up to their old games of shipping contraband goods and arms, turning a blind eye to ships from belligerent nations in their harbours; merchantmen, privateers, and the odd ship of war that came calling. American vessels, despite the undeclared war against France, still traded with the Danes, the Dutch, and the Spanish… and probably with the French isles, as well, for they were a mercenary lot for all their protestations, and losses to French privateers.

Puerto Rico, well in sight now, and the Danish Virgins would be a grand place for smugglers and contrabanders to break their passages, refit and resupply, perhaps take a little joy of shore liberty before their long jogs home, or put in for shelter from storm winds in those marvelous natural harbours and bays that yawned so emptily… and so covertly, the perfect hidey-holes for nefarious doings.

With the telescope now shortened and safely slung over his left shoulder, Lewrie faced the shrouds and took several cautious steps upward on the ratlines, up where the futtock shrouds of the mizen top intersected the side- stays, until the futtocks almost brushed his bared scalp; where a man would have to make a choice… either take the seamanly ascent out-board by hanging from the futtock shrouds, or confess his lubberliness and snake between to follow the side-stays' easier 'ladder' to the mizen top platform, through the lubber's hole.

The arms they'd recovered… Yankee-made arms.

American ships trading along the Spanish Main, at Tampico, Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Caracas, and Port-Of-Spain, the Dutch isles of Curacao would most-like take the most direct route back North, using the Mona or the Windward Passage. Or they could go round-about, skirting the lee side of the Antilles.

What had that Captain Wilder of Bantam, and Kershaw of the U.S.S. Hancock frigate, told him… that they would make a rendezvous point to form American convoys in the lee of St. Kitts? As far to the East'rd, as well up to windward of the Trades as possible, leaving half an ocean of sea-room alee, 'til entering the Old Bahama Channel, or passing west of New Providence yet east of Andros through the Bahamas on theirway home. Then, should they meet contrary winds, they wouldn't end up wrecked on a lee shore.

Lewrie realised that a guilty Yankee trader could sell all the arms and munitions he wished, pick up an innocent cargo for the return voyage, and then lumber along in convoy with other ships, protected by the guns of his spanking-new and uncurious navy!

Laughin' all the way, Lewrie sourly thought; Bugger it, it ain't like we 're chained like a guard dog. We 're not even on a long leash!

The staff-captain's written orders, when they'd come aboard at last, had pretty-much instructed him to toddle off and make a nuisance of himself 'til Hell froze over… on their enemies, for a change. He had an open-ended, roving brief to chase his own tail if of a mind, in any body of water under Admiral Parker's writ-just as long as Proteus was not 'in sight' to plague his seniors' sensitive humours.

Lewrie squirmed about, carefully shifting feet and hand-holds, to peer Nor'westerly. Hispaniola was under the horizon, Saint Dominque most likely an ocean of gore by now, as old grudges were avenged upon the losers, and Spanish Santo Domingo could most likely now be aflame, as L'Ouverture led his rag-tag armies over the border to 'liberate' all the island. Santo Domingo had never amounted to much, really. It was the windward end of Hispaniola, too dryed by the Trades for plantation agriculture, and bereft of mineral wealth. There were, his advisories had informed him, vast ranches raising cattle, pigs, and goats, enough grains grown for domestic use but little for export, and most of that land but sparsely populated, its grandees rather shabby in the main, and most of its people and slaves living hand-to-mouth. Boucanieros, those who cooked, salted, and jerkied meat along the coast, were mostly leftover pirates' descendants, still living and dressing in skins off their goats. Barbecana, their product was; two words introduced into English as 'buccaneers,' and outdoor roasting parties becoming popular in the United States, Cashman had told him… 'barbecues.'

Well, that problem, as far as Proteus was concerned, was over and done with, for now; a trifle to be isolated and left to fester or expire on its own, and the small tenders, cutters, and schooners of the West Indies Squadron would manage that chore. To turn North and race down either the north or south shore would probably be fruitless.

He turned again, just as carefully, to face forrud, taking one hand to swipe his unruly hair back into a brief semblance of neatness.

'Nuisance they wish, then it's a nuisance they'll get,' Lewrie whispered to himself under the flutter-drum of the winds, and suddenly feeling much happier. 'Just like Goodyer's Pig, 'never well, but when in mischief!' he chuckled.

In his mind's eye, he could already see the abyssal royal-blue seas of the Virgins and the Leewards, could almost feel the thuds and thumps up through the stays to his fingers and boot soles of a vessel crossing those 'square' waves that could blow up on brisk days, where the chop could be four feet high, with barely six feet between crests… and the rocky-gold islets and cays breezed past in constant parade, their beaches the palest new parchment colour and the shoals the palest glass green.

The steep slopes, the palms and palmettoes, the rounded pastures and cane fields, the 'balds' with the pretty, pastel windmills slowly rotating and waving in greeting… drawing him on…

He closed his eyes, drew a deep, pleasing breath of ocean scent, and nodded as he made his decision. If nothing else, it would be like a homecoming.

And, did it prove fruitless, or he got caught poaching, a quick run back downwind to his own kennel was possible.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

HMS Proteus hauled her wind and bore away Sou'Sou'east to cut below the western tip of Saint Croix, then take an easy, hill-gentled cruise along that island's southern shore in its lee. Bowing to full winds past the eastern end she stood on for fifteen nautical miles before coming about to starboard tack, to clear the shoals of the Lang's Bank, then headed Nor'west in deep water, roughly aimed for the Salt Island Passage into Sir Francis Drake's Channel. The winds were a tad perverse, though, backing a point, so by dusk she was nearer the small and rocky isles of Norman and Peter Island, where she fetched-to for the night just before full sunset. Cocked up to the night winds as she was, she would make a slow and quiet sternway back out to deep and safe waters to the Sou'west.

The skies were clear and strewn with stars, the winds soughing softly, and the motion of her hull easy, a slow and stately rocking to and fro, the slightest measured pitch and toss as the dark, abandoned bulks of slightly larger