Troubled Waters

'Saw no hand-carried lanthorns or torches, no hue and cry?' Mr. MacDougall repeated, as if a life hung on the answer. 'Hounds barking, gunshots, anything like that?'

'God, no! 'Twas quiet as the grave,' Lewrie told him.

'Ah ha' MacDougall sharply cried, slapping his palm on his desk and guffawing as he swiped his hair out of his eyes once more.

'Well, there were seals on the beach, they barked a bit, but no dogs,' Lewrie further informed him.

'Never saw a living soul coming to that beach, other than your volunteers, Captain Lewrie?' MacDougall demanded, suddenly not sounding so young and schoolboy-ish. 'What other lights were there? A moon?'

'Starlight,' Lewrie related, pouring himself another coffee as he did so, even if the pot had gone tepid. ' 'Twas a new moon at that time. It was, ah… taken into account for the success of the enterprise,' Lewrie admitted, a trifle shame-faced, and talking chin-down to his shirt collar.

'And your own ship's lights were all extinguished, ah ha Yes?'

'Yes, of course,' Lewrie assured him, one brow up.

'Would it surprise you very much, Captain Lewrie, to learn that the Beauman family's overseer on that plantation, and his son, claimed in their testimony at your sham trial that they were awakened by sounds of the slave population, ah… celebrating? That they testified that they quickly roused themselves, took up arms, a hand- lanthorn, and lit a rag torch? That they rushed down to the beach, but arrived too late to re-capture their runaways?' 'What? That's utter shite!' Lewrie spat. 'We didn't…!' 'Fired off a pair of shots at the boats, they swore,' MacDougall rushed on to relate. 'And, though they hit nothing, your ship was so close ashore, they knew her for a frigate, a British frigate, at once. More damaging to you, they swore they could mark your appearance… by the light of your ship's taffrail lanthorns, because you were standing right by one of them, fully illumined}.' 'Mine arse on a band-box if they could!' Lewrie erupted. 'Now, sir… another matter,' MacDougall demanded, picking up a not-so-thick octavo and flipping through the pages to the section he wanted quickly. He rose and paced, tossing hair out of his eyes, and looking like a cherubic, rotund Puck, for he was a young man of substantial girth and heft. 'In what position, relative to the coast, did your frigate lie? Sideways to the beach? How close?'

'Well, as to how close,' Lewrie growled, still fuming over those bald-faced lies. I'm a better skulker than that, by God! he assured himself as he got to his own feet, too exercised to sit any longer. Lewrie and MacDougall began a slow, stomping 'minuet' about the parlour office, mostly circling the un-used chairs before the desk as if participating in a game of 'Odd Man Out,' when the music suddenly stops. 'There was a broken shoal of reef and rocks a cable distant from the beach, and we fetched-to into the wind three cables shy of that, as I recall.'

'And a cable would be…?'

'Why, one hundred and twenty fathoms,' Lewrie supplied, shocked that such was not common knowledge. 'Six feet to the fathom, that'd be seven hundred and twenty feet. Well, the nautical mile is divided into ten cables of six hundred feet each, so, say the reefs and shoals lay six hundred feet offshore, and Proteus was fetched-to eighteen hundred feet further out. There was a break in the reef, right between Proteus and the beach, and we could see the phosphoresence of the waves breaking on the reef and rocks… high tide, round midnight, and we planned for that, too, d'ye see, a much dimmer rim of phosphoresence where the waves rolled in on the sand…'

'Twenty-four hundred feet from shore, on a dark night, ah ha' MacDougall crowed, stopping to wet his quill in an ink-pot before he began tramping a circle of his offices again. 'Sideways, were you?'

'Uh, no,' Lewrie told him, feeling as if he was forced to chase his barrister round the office. 'Usually, the Nor'east Trades blow to the Sou'west, but for the Blue Mountains, and the shape of the coast, so we had winds out of the East that night, and to fetch-to, we had to place our bows into the Nor-Nor'east, with the fore-and-aft sails forcin' her forrud, but the fore-tops'l laid aback t'keep her idlin' in place, and makin' a slow stern-way, away from those shoals. A person on the beach would've seen us close to bows-on, not abeam.'

'And you could not have gone any closer, I take it,' MacDougall asked, juggling loose transcript pages. 'The danger of the reef, I'd suppose?'

'Less than ten feet of water, inshore of the reef, as I recall from the chart,' Lewrie answered, 'and only twelve to fifteen feet of water to seaward of it, even at high tide. We fetched-to as soon as the lead-line showed six fathoms. Proteus drew eighteen feet, right aft, so we had a safe margin, with deeper water clear of hazards astern, so an hour or so of drifting wouldn't set us on anything that could rip our hull open. Right along the reef, 'twas three feet or less, even at high tide, so… will you sit down, sir, or must I trot after you?'

MacDougall came to a full stop suddenly, looking round his offices as if wondering why he was there, and where was the nearest chair.

'So, your ship did not lie in profile to the shore,' MacDougall pondered, after he'd settled himself once more. 'In profile with her bows pointing West towards the cape, or the point, or whatever you…?'

'God, no!' Lewrie hooted. 'The shoreline swings in a great arc in Portland Bight,' he continued, taking a welcome chair himself. 'To the West of Kingston, is roughly East-to-West, then begins to jut South down to Portland Point. The Beauman plantation, and Cashman's, are on the coast, quite near the Point. Uhm, have you a pen and paper I may borrow? I'll draw you a rough sketch, though a proper chart of the-'

'A chart}' MacDougall cried of a sudden. 'But, of course! You still have the chart you used that night? '

'Aye,' Lewrie told him, puzzled by his attorney's enthusiasm; wouldn't that chart, still with his pencilled markings, prove that he had premeditated the crime, after all? And, he had to wonder why Mr. Andrew MacDougall, Esq., burbled with laughter, rocked on his chair, and kicked his thick legs in seeming joy. To Lewrie, MacDougall looked about to pop like a haggis, all swollen with steam, and a poke with a sharp-tined fork would do him in!

'One never throws away an accurate chart,' Lewrie said, hoping that MacDougall's glee was a good sign. 'They're rather rare, d'ye see. Certainly, my Sailing Master, Mister Winwood, has his, as well. Never throws anything away, even pencil stubs, he doesn't. He was my Sailing Master in Proteus, and turned-over into Savage. While he may not need charts of the West Indies for now, I'm sure his charts are still aboard.'

'You must send it me, yours and his, at once, sir!' MacDougall urged, swiping hair from his eyes again, and about ready to leap from his chair and start that infernal pacing once more. 'We must have him, this Winwood fellow, too! He was there that night? Oh, capital!'

'Well, in fact 'twas Mister Winwood who took the most interest in the former slaves' welfare, and their spiritual improvement. None had more than a smattering of knowledge of Christianity, before comin' aboard,' Lewrie related, made more at ease by MacDougall's elation.

'Denied the Good News of Christ?' MacDougall scowled. 'Why? By omission, or calculated commission, one wonders. If told they're equal in the Lord's sight, might slaves begin to think, and wonder why they are slaves, and whether their own humanity is the equal of a master's, perhaps? Is that common, d'ye think, Captain Lewrie? As a means for their continued oppression?'

'It may vary from master to master, sir,' Lewrie said, digging round the top of MacDougall's desk to find a spare lead pencil, paper, and enough space in which to begin to draw. 'Some, I'm told, don't go much beyond one of Saint Paul 's letters, the one about 'slaves, obey your masters,' hey? Mister Winwood 'twas the one who helped them take new, freemen's names for ship's books, even used the usual hosing-off under the wash-deck pump that new-come hands get as a sort of baptism.

'He's Low Church,' Lewrie had to caution. 'Halfway to 'Leaping Methodist,' mind.'

'Such a character witness, though,' Mr. MacDougall mused, with his arms about his chest, rocking once again as if in transports of a heavenly rapture at a Welsh revival meeting. 'Oh, capital! Capital! I shall swoon with joy, swear I will, to have him in the box! What a scandal 'gainst the Beaumans I could make!'

MacDougall stopped rocking, turned grave, and peered anxiously at Lewrie. 'Charts. Maps. Where does one get them, from Admiralty?'