Sea of Grey

Peter Island, and lower Norman Island, wafted rightward off the larboard bows.

It was such a rare event that some of the hands begged for line and hooks, using salt-junk as bait, and soon were hauling up catch after catch, whooping with delight to land fish without battering them to bloody rags whilst the ship was underway. Bonito, red snapper, even a small shark came thrashing up over the bulwark's, and their new Black cook, Gideon, called for more firewood and lit off the grills, expertly gutting, heading, and slicing them into steaks, pausing only to spit tobacco juice from his ever-present quid as he sprinkled salt, pepper, and lime juice over the sizzling slabs. Though there was salt-pork in the steep-tubs already, the fish would augment the usual rations quite nicely, he assured everyone, easily enlisting help among the crew.

'Gon' eat good, boys!' Gideon boasted. 'De fish, he eat sweet! What de white folk sometime call 'surf an' turf,' dey have beef wif a fish? Woll, we havin' 'surf an' styl' Mo' firewood, heah! Cut me a mess o' dose lemons, too, Noble! Mistah Morley, ya done wif 'at pompano fo' de cap'um's table? Woll, hand dem steaks heah, fo' he perish o' de hungries!'

Lewrie's nostrils twitched and his stomach rumbled with anticipation as the heady fumes flowed aft from the galley funnel. A sweet dark whiff of rum on the wind caught his senses, as well. The senior hands and mates always found a way to cache smuggled rum. It appeared that some of it was being used to flavour the fish. His nose wrinkled as he caught the other scent, the musk-sweet and oily reek of Mr. Durant's miasma pots along the windward side, set in hollows delved into the tubs of sand kept for gun crews' traction, firefighting, and deck scrubbing.

'We'll look as lit up as a whaler with her try-pots goin',' he groused to Lt. Langlie, as he watched Durant and Hodson proceed aft in dodderers' crouches, bent over with prepared pots and burning punks in their hands. 'So much for anonymity… or hiding our presence.'

'Not that we've seen anything more than fishing boats and local traders as of yet, sir,' Langlie counseled. ' Fredericksted Harbour on the west end is little used according to Mister Winwood, and Christiansted on Saint Croix 's north shore is shallow and rocky. The only good commercial entrepфt is Charlotte Amalie, yonder on Saint Thomas, so-'

'Ah-moll-yah,' Lewrie corrected. 'The locals say Ah-moll-yah, not Am-ah-lee, Mister Langlie. Aye, it was a right pirate's hole, in the old days. Smugglers, privateers, slavers… only saw it from off shore, but perhaps tomorrow. I'm told it's a pretty little town. We aren't at war with Denmark. We might even request a pilot and anchor for a day and night. Our old Sailing Master once told me that above the town, on the island's spine, there's a vista where one may sit and look east, all the way down Drake's Channel… Drake's Seat. Said he sat up there himself, like a king on his throne, the old buccaneer. I'd rather like t'do that, myself. See all the isles, all the way out to Virgin Gorda and Anegada… prettiest view in the whole Caribbean, I've heard tell. What Heaven must seem, for sailors.'

'For those few of us who'll be admitted through the Pearly Gate, sir,' Langlie softly joshed, massaging his middle as his stomach emitted a genteel growling. In the dark, Lewrie could feel him wince at his unthinking words, having put his foot in it again.

'More than you'd imagine, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said, after a brief pause and a short snort of amusement; mostly at Langlie's wary shadow-dancing around him. 'I've always held that sailors ain't great sinners, in the main. Their needs and wants are simple and their sins are minor and venal… not outright wicked or cruel. Their lives and livelihoods are too precarious, and the sea's too big for them to go off tyrannical or murderous. Oceans keep the fear o' God on 'em, and keep 'em looking over their shoulders. Superstition, perhaps; fear of the Lord, perhaps, as well. Who knows? There lies your true evil, sir, your true wickedness,' Lewrie concluded, pointing at the faint loom of light, roughly where Charlotte Amalie lay, on the Nor'west horizon.

'So… shore's the trouble, sir? And what little time a tarpaulin man spends there is…?' Langlie puzzled out.

'Respite, sir,' Lewrie snickered, mocking his own pretensions to philosophy. 'Respite.' And Langlie chuckled with him, easier and honestly this time.

'The stink-pots may help, sir,' Langlie said of a sudden, as an almost companionable silence extended perhaps a bit too long. 'With the ship lit up like a whaler as you said, who'd imagine we're a ship of war? Whales might be taken in these waters… if they swim through the Turk's Passage a bit north and west of here, as you told me, sir.'

'Accidental… camouflage, as the French would say?'

'Pray God it's a fortuitous choice, Captain,' Langlie answered, in all seriousness.

' 'Scuse me, Cap'um… Mister Langlie, sir,' Aspinall said as he appeared at their side on the quarterdeck, 'but that Gideon fella's got yer supper ready. Big slab o' pompano, pease puddin', boiled tatties, and some o' that cornmeal sweet bread o' his, and Toulon 's goin' nigh frantic t'claw the dish cover off. Best come quick, beggin' yer pardon… else he'll have it all.'

'There wasn't a portion for him?' Lewrie hooted with mirth.

'Aye, there was, sir, and not a morsel left. Gone quicker'n a wink, and still lustin' after yours,' Aspinall warned him.

'It appears I must go below or go hungry, Mister Langlie. Do you have a good supper of your own.'

'Aye, sir. Goodnight. And we'll see what fortune the morning brings,' Langlie said, doffing his hat.

'Surely, it'll be good, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie paused to say, returning the salute, 'since we've already managed the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes!'

HMS Proteus hauled her wind Sutherly and got underway one hour before Dawn Quarters would normally be stood, with only a cursory try at scrubbing decks to perfect cleanness. She stood Sou'east-Half South for awhile to gather speed and clear any shoals, until she was roughly even with the Salt Island Passage, then tacked about to take the winds on her starboard quarter, and, under reduced sail, loped Westerly, to prowl close to the southern coast of Saint John, for a peek into Coral Bay before angling off toward Saint Thomas to look into the Pillsbury Sound which separated the islands, and held several tempting hurricane holes where privateers and smugglers could lurk.

Saint John, Lewrie recalled as he loafed by the windward rails with a spyglass, had been a productive island, with many plantations of sugar cane, before a slave rebellion had slaughtered most of the White owners and driven the rest away. With British and French help back in a rare example of 'tween wars' cooperation, the slaves had been massacred, but not before the fields had been burned to stubble, the houses, presses, barns, and mills destroyed as symbols of cruel subjugation. A renascence had never occurred, and Saint John brooded in a sleepy, funeral silence, with most of the arable land going back to jungles, and left alone as if accursed. Perhaps it was, Lewrie speculated.

Coral Bay, between narrow headlands on her Sou'east corner, was one of the great, but unused natural harbours in the world, and were the Virgins in British hands, would have supplanted Kingston for Navy use ages ago, since it lay so much further up to windward of the main passages to the West Indies. And once out of the main channel, Coral Bay funneled out into narrow leads to North and Nor'west, into hurricane holes, the worst winds and storm surges blocked by headlands and narrow but high peninsulas.

'If not there, sir, there's Pillsbury Sound,' Mr. Winwood was saying, pointing at a carefully tacked down chart. 'There's eleven to fifteen fathom right up it, where it splits round Grass and Mingo, Congo and Lovango Cays. There's a Windward Passage, narrow but practicable for in-bound vessels, of the same depths. A Middle Passage to the west of Grass Cay, and a long, narrow but useable channel between Thatch Cay and the north shore of Saint Thomas.'

'Great escape routes, aye,' Lewrie commented, after returning to the binnacle cabinet and the traverse board. 'That last'un leads out to deep water, past Hans Lollick and Little Lollick, I see. What about Red Hook Bay, here, at the east end of Saint Thomas? And Saint James Bay… these little inlets?'

'Very shoal, sir, and exposed to the Nor'east Trades, but with decent holding ground. Hard sand bottom,' Winwood opined. 'But a wee privateer or a small trading schooner might be able to put in there. Pity we don't have something similar, as a tender, to explore, sir. There are anywhere from four to nine fathom for anchoring, but so very many shifting sand shoals.'

'Well, we'll just have to stand in close as we dare, but keep our heads, won't we, Mister Winwood?' Lewrie tried to tease the man.

'Somewhat close, sir,' Winwood mournfully lowed; their Sailing Master was an impossible sobersides, and would not recognise a jape if it kicked him in the crutch. 'And there is the matter of Danish sovereignty, Captain.