The Captain`s Vengeance

Lewrie breezed on. 'Do the Marines put so much stock in the beast, well… I don't much care whether it serves as a mascot with a red riband round its neck, 'long as no one thinks t'bring snakes aboard for it to fight.'

'I s'pose I'll recognise a mongoose when I see one, sir?'

'Like an ermine or a ferret.' Lewrie chuckled. 'Like an smallish otter, with a talent for killin' cobras and such.'

'Ah!' Langlie rejoined. 'I see, sir. I think. Perhaps we may declare it the ship's official ratter… so long as no more wagers'r made on its prowess?'

'That's what I like about you, Mister Langlie.' Lewrie smiled. 'Your flexibility in the face of un-looked-for adversity. I believe that'll be all for now, Mister Langlie. That should be enough on yer plate, for the nonce.'

'Oh, agreed, sir. Agreed!' Langlie said, rising and departing.

CHAPTER TWO

HMS Proteus s return to English Harbour, Antigua, was actually not necessary, and mostly unproductive. The frigate's mail was still being held at Kingston, Jamaica, by the authorities of the West Indies Station, to which fleet she still putatively belonged, even after her long sojourn.

Thankfully, Lewrie's personal devils of late, Mr. Pelham and Mr. Peel, had long departed Antigua for other climes-all the way back to London, Lewrie fervently wished, so he could live his life free of their cynical machinations, ever more!

Antigua's Admiralty House atop Mt. Shirley held only one letter for him, and that from his new-found bastard son, Desmond McGilliveray, now a sixteen-year-old Midshipman aboard his uncle's (and the captain's) United States Navy Armed Ship, the Thomas Sumter. Desmond sounded as if he was thriving at his new profession, so eerily coincidental to Alan's own. Sumter had just embarked upon arduous and boresome escort duties to convoy a

trade' of Yankee merchantmen home and, most-like, would put back into her homeport of Charleston, South Carolina, for refitting and provisioning. Young Desmond chirped right-merry over the prospects of how much prize money might result from Sumter's-and her small squadron's-recent captures in the Caribbean: French merchant ships and several warships, too-ones that Lewrie had led them to, twice, using the reborn U.S. Navy as British cat's paws in Pelham's and Peel's scheme.

Desmond enthused how 'half-seas-over' his hometown would be when they arrived with prizes in tow, how famous they might be once the news spread from Maine to Georgia, how eager he was to see his adoptive family once more. And, backhandedly, Desmond came close to boasting of a much better reception in Charleston society than he once had, strutting proudly in his uniform, a new-minted hero and promising gentleman seafarer. Which beat being shunned as a half-White, half-Muskogee Indian orphan all hollow, Lewrie sadly suspected.

Desmond happily enquired about Chalky, too; how large or playful the kitten had grown, etc. He'd been Desmond's gift, found shivering and cowering on the boat-tier beams of a French capture; rescued, then shyly presented to the father he'd never known, so heartbreakingly eager to please, to win Lewrie's affection, his claiming…

Lewrie looked over at the settee, where Chalky sprawled, teeth and little paws 'killing' a cushion's tassel, and thought again, quite possibly for the thousandth time, that the lad had meant well, but…

His fears for Desmond's continued safety were allayed by news of Guillaume Choundas being detained on his parole aboard the USS Hancock, that monstrous frigate, which still cruised the Caribbean. Even so… did Choundas ever learn the boy's parentage, the seemingly indefatigable ogre might find a way to harm him, to get even with Lewrie. With a fond smile, Lewrie set Desmond's letter aside and pulled out the inkwell and one of his new-fangled, French-invented, steel-nib pens (one more parting gift from the lad off a defeated French corvette) to pen him a quick answer for mailing. After the British-American riots, when Proteus was last in English Harbour, he was pretty sure that the local authorities would wish them gone as soon as they'd wooded and watered. And not stand upon the order of their going, either! His working parties ashore were already limited to the docks area, and that under the wary guard of the local garrison! No, Proteus had already been absent long enough-it was time for a 'fond' return to the bosom of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's fleet on Jamaica, and the 'warm' ministrations of the fleet's Staff Captain, Sir Edward 'Bloody' Charles.

CHAPTER THREE

Kingston-and Old Port Royal, or what was left of it, after the infamous earthquake many years before-was an ideal anchorage, protected from hurricane winds and winter gales by the Blue Mountains, but Lord, it could be a career-ender to approach if one were ignorant of its dangers! Lime Cay, Rackam's Cay and Gun Cay, Drunken Man's Cay, Christ, you could see those, could spot three miles of rocks and shoal-water reefs that stretched Sou'west to Nor'east, beginning four miles South of Fort Charles at the tip of the Palisades. The reefs, though, like Great and Little Portuguese and Salt Pond Reef on the Western approaches-it took an experienced master or a knacky harbour pilot who knew the sea bottom as well as he knew his wife's, and this time they had drawn the short straw and gotten a pilot with whom they had never worked, one so blithely casual and dismissive of impending danger, he had actually made that grave and sober Christian, Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, throw parallel rules and brass dividers and curse! He had come aboard with the dissembling gravitas of your practiced toper and had only started to slur, titter, and reveal himself as 'three sheets to the wind' after they were committed, halfway into the maze inshore of the Great Portuguese!

And it hadn't helped the deck officers, the captain included, that mere seconds after they had made their number to Fort Charles and had begun the required gun-salute to the flag, that a signal had come in reply for her 'Captain To Repair On Board'-which in this case meant for Lewrie to depart the ship {instanter if not earlier) and get his arse over to the fort, Giddy House, or Admiralty House, in haste.

'Well done, sir,' Lewrie said, doffing his hat to Catterall and Langlie as he readied to disembark, 'given the circumstances, and the pilot's state. Had I known, I'd have not asked it of you, yet… my congratulations for coping so well, Mister Catterall.'

'Erm… thankee, sir!' Catterall responded, greatly pleased at the unlooked-for compliment, though still wheezing and swabbing perspiration.

'My permission to hoist a full bumper,' Lewrie continued, with a sly wink. 'You more than earned it, God knows. Gentlemen?'

With his reports, and bearing his log just in case it might be required, Lewrie took the salute of the crew and side-party, and went down into his gig, which had been towed astern in fear that his rapid reporting would be demanded.

The transition from sunlight to dim coolness almost made Lewrie sneeze as he stopped by the hall porter's station to ply a damp, cool towel on his face and neck before confronting Authority. The weather actually was quite mild, the daytime temperatures averaging in the low to mid-eighties, but no matter the season, the Caribbean sun was still a farrier's hammer. Combine that with Lewrie's trepidation of rencontre with 'the Wine Keg,' Capt. Sir Edward Charles, whose animus he'd roused through no fault of his own, after nearly half a year of swanning about as free of Navy control as so many larks, and it was no wonder that he could feel moisture under his clothes, in his nether regions.

Once dried, Lewrie put the best face on it and nearly marched down the long, gloomy hallway, the hard leather heels of his gilt-tasseled Hessian boots ringing off the plank floor and the hard plaster and shiny paint of the walls. He attained those fearsome double doors, so heavy and intricately panelled, so glossy with linseed oil or beeswax