Troubled Waters

cables. The starboard side guns were manned, and, by tightening or loosing the spring-lines, HMS Savage could be swung to bring fire against any threat that emerged from the woods.

All the ship's boats were led from towing astern, or hoisted off the boat-tier beams that spanned the breadth of the hull, swung out by employing the main course yard as a crane, then loaded with the oldest water casks, the ones whose contents had gone whisky-tan and so reeky as to make the stored water a punishment to drink, and giving a sickly taste to any rations boiled up in it.

From the first peek of dawn to long after the mid-day meal, the working-parties hewed and chopped wood, gathering dryer deadfall limbs and twigs for kindling, taking down manageable-sized younger trees for cordwood, hacking and splitting them to thigh-long lengths. The inside of each huge water butt was scoured clean of slime with salt water and beach sand, rinsed, then trundled inland to the freshwater creek and a spring that Jules Papin had vaguely pointed to on a chart, filled, and trundled back to the beach, to be rowed out to the frigate, then labouriously hoisted aboard for storage in the bilges, on the orlop, with the cordwood and kindling crammed between to keep them from shifting.

Least the sea's kind, Lewrie thought as he took off his hat and mopped his brow on a shirtsleeve… then felt like spitting for luck. Though the skies had clouded over by mid-morning, and the height of the incoming waves breaking on the barren beaches had risen a foot or so, his frigate was not yet pitching, heaving, and rolling, and threatening to pluck her anchors from the sandy bottom and drive aground sideways. The ship's boats, working in Savage's calmer lee, made good time fetching their heavy cargoes back alongside, and the scend that rolled under the keel still allowed the landsmen doing the heavy pulley-hauley work to hoist the refilled butts up and over the side and into the holds.

'Still no sign of trouble, Mister Devereux?' Lewrie asked of his Marine officer.

'The sentries have yet to report any movement along the road, sir,' Lt. Devereux replied. He had landed with two files of Marines, twenty men in all, leaving Sgt. Skipwith aboard with the other half of the Marine complement. Cpl. Plymouth, with ten Marines, was posted in a wide arc about two musket shots to the east of the spring, for a close guard over the working-parties. Cpl. Dudley, with another ten Marines, Devereux had posted even deeper into the woods to keep watch over the rough sand and dirt track that lay a mile further east, to alert them to any threat coming along that road. 'I must allow, sir, that this is the most amazing thing, to actually be standing on the foes' home ground.'

'Pray God, sir, do we land in France again, we meet just as dull a reception,' Lewrie joshed. 'But, aye… it does feel daring, to be here.'

A proper Post-Captain would have remained aboard, pacing slowly and fretfully about, allowing his junior officers and Midshipmen opportunity for action, and 'mention in despatches.' A lazy Post-Captain most certainly would. By this point in his naval career, though, Alan Lewrie knew himself too well; he despaired of ever being proper, and, given his druthers, would be lazy, yet… the lure of walking on firm soil for an hour or so, the temptation to tread on French sand, gravel, pine needle beds, and grass to, in essence, stick his tongue out at the 'snail-eatin' bastards' was simply too great to be denied. And, admittedly, the fretting about the rising of wind and sea, the arrival of a French column, a young peasant couple disturbed from their fornication in the shady groves by the spring, who'd leap up and away and raise the hue and cry, had driven him beyond distraction!

So, once most of the water butts, most of the firewood, had been stowed below, he had ordered Lt. Urquhart to take charge of the frigate and had gone ashore himself; armed to the teeth with his pair of twin-barreled Manton pistols, his hanger, his Ferguson breech-loading rifle-musket slung over his shoulder, and an East Asian pirate's krees knife and scabbard jammed into one of his Hessian boots.

The 'knuckles' of the imagined 'clenched fist' which the Cote Sauvage resembled (in Lewrie's mind, at least) ran north to south for seven miles or so and the charts did not show any settlements at all the whole way. At the bottom of the 'fist,' inside the hook of Pointe de la Coubre, lay the tiny village of La Palmyre; east of the 'thumb' up north lay Ronce les Bains, cross the channel from the lie d'Oleron, and but one lonely track that squiggled through the forests from one to the other.

'Might be a garrison at Ronce les Bains, d'ye imagine?' Lewrie asked.

'To close the Pertuis de Maumusson channel, sir, I'd think there would be a battery near there, but… the closest garrison town would more likely be La Tremblade, or Marennes,' Lt. Devereux speculated in a soft voice, his eyes fo-cussed more on the dense woods than Lewrie, on wary guard 'til back aboard the ship. 'About five miles from here, as the crow flies, but eight miles by this road, Captain.'

'And, are our charts accurate,' Lewrie also mused aloud, 'about fourteen miles from Royan, unless there are more roads than the one I see that runs from La Tremblade to Saujon, with a secondary road from that good road at the crossroads, that turns south to the village of Saint Sulpice de Royan to the coast.'

Commander Hogue's Mischief, just days after Lewrie's encounter with Pa-pin and Brasseur, had stopped one of his regular fishermen, and had finally produced a slew of newspapers, and a rough chart of roads and settlements north of the Gironde, which Lewrie had ordered copied and distributed to all his commanders. How much trust he could put in it was still up in the air, but, at least it was a start. The papers, barely days old, were full of boastful malarkey and gasconade, but of much more evident value when it came to information about the state of things in France, and in the local area.

'Last water butt is ready to roll, sir,' Lt. Gamble announced. He looked quite pleased with himself, and a tad excited that they had snuck onto their enemy's shore, and seemed to be getting away unseen.

'Very well, Mister Gamble,' Lewrie said with a grin, feeling a sense of relief himself. It was one thing to dare, but quite another to linger too long. 'Be sure we gather up all the axes and saws as we go. Mister Fisher, the Carpenter, would have our nutmegs off, did we lose a single honing stone.'

'I shall call in my sentries from the road, sir,' Lt. Devereux said with a casual finger to the brim of his hat in salute.

'I s'pose I should return to the beach,' Lewrie told him, with a sigh of resignation. It had felt so good to get his boots dusty for a few hours! 'You'll find me there, Mister Devereux.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

But, before Devereux could send a runner to Cpl. Dudley, a Marine private came panting out of the woods from the road, his musket unslung and held across his chest, ready for action. 'French sodjers on th' road, sir!' he panted as he slammed to attention, lowering his musket to his side. ' 'Bout 'alf a comp'ny, Corp'r'l Dudley says, sir! 'E thinks no more'n thirty'r fourty of 'em, sir! Sham- blin'along, 'e says t'tell ye, sir! From th' south, sir.'

'From Royan, most-like,' Lewrie muttered. 'But, why? Why now, and why here?' Damme, have we been betrayed?he furiously thought.

'Do they seem to be looking for our presence, Private Langdon?' Lt. Devereux asked in a harsh rasp as he fiddled with the hilt of his small-sword, and the tightness of his blade in the scabbard.

'Uh… shamblin', more-like, sir, like Corp'r'l Dudley said,' Private Langdon repeated, bracing to stiffer attention. 'Off'cer on a 'orse, coupla mules car-ryin' tents'r somethin'… goin' along at route step, an' gobblin' away in Frog, sir!'

Lt. Devereux turned a wolfish look at Lewrie; Lewrie looked at him with a gleam in his eyes, and unslung his Ferguson. Lt. Devereux was all but wagging his tail and whining to be let loose, to be sicced.

'Mister Gamble, un-armed men to get the water butt back to the beach… armed men to come with me,' Lewrie growled. 'Mister Locke will come with me. Sorry, Mister Gamble, but someone must command the others, this once.'

'Aye, sir,' a let-down Lt. Gamble sighed, whilst Mr. Locke the Midshipman about hopped in joy.

'Let's go and see if we can sting the bastards,' Lewrie snapped. 'First of the flea-bites, Mister Devereux.'

The coast road was a mile inland of the spring from which they had taken their water, and Lewrie's party of Marines and armed sailors were shambling and panting by the time they reached it. Cpl. Dudley rose from a crouch behind a thick clump of bush and waddled, bent over, deeper into the forest to report to Lt. Devereux.

Twenty Privates, one Corporal, one Lieutenant, Mister Locke, if he does know how t 'shoot, Lewrie toted up as he lingered further back in the woods waiting for