Troubled Waters

happen at sea, when ships come to 'pistol-shot' range and flail away at each other. Chearly, now, young sir… the men are watchin'. You're blooded, you marked your man and lived t'tell of it. Here. Take his shako. The rest of the Midshipmen in the cockpit'll be green with envy, and, after a rum or two, you might feel like braggin' of it.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Locke said with a gulp and a final retching noise as he got to shaky feet; but he accepted the shako, and even found the courage to pick up an infantry hanger, as well.

'Quite useful in close combat, a hanger, Mister Locke,' Lewrie told him as they began to stroll away from their massacre. 'I prefer its shorter length, stoutness of blade, and the slight curve, which'll let you get in a slash or drawin' stroke, when a small-sword'll be hung up, and all you have is the point t'work with. Lighter than our brute cutlasses, too, you'll find. Quicker in the hand, and in riposte.'

'I… I wondered why you wore one, sir, but could not dare to enquire,' Midshipman Locke said, trying to play up game in his captain's esteem. He went back to strip the baldric and scabbard from the nearest dead Frenchman, for later.

Why the Devil'd I do this? Lewrie asked himself as they tramped back to the spring, loose-hipped and cocksure, even loaded down with a pile of booty and French weapons. He had had no motive for ambushing those pitifully unprepared French soldiers, beyond the fact that they were there, his people were there, and the opportunity had presented itself. What t'make of it, then, he mused as they followed the creek to the beach; and, what II the French make of it? Have I ruined any chance t'take those forts because of it? Will they re-enforce, now we gave 'em my 'flea-bite'? And… where might they re-enforce?

Might the French think that it had been Captain Charlton's work, forcing them to send more troops to La Tremblade, Marennes, the lie d'Oleron, for it had been in his watching squadron's bailiwick, after all. Well, close to it, anyway; quibble, quibble, quibble, he scoffed.

Was there a sizable garrison at Royan already, and that unit had been a part of it, the French might despatch company-sized road patrols to the Cote Sauvage peninsula, find the newly felled trees, the signs of. a British presence round the spring, and to counter any new landings, might even shift some light guns, a flying battery, to lay an ambush of their own, which would weaken the infantry force that could defend the fort at St. Georges de Didonne!

Might it spur the French to rush the completion of the battery on Pointe de Grave? That would mean more barges loaded with stone or timbers coming to Le Verdon sur Mer… vulnerable barges, open to a night-time cutting-out expedition by Bartoe, Shalcross, and Umphries.

What would that do, though? Lewrie wondered as they reached the beach and the waiting boats; result in a whole regiment sent into the area from St. Fort sur Gironde, down-river? From Saintes, or up from Bordeaux, too?

''Ave a bit o' fun, Cap'm sor?' his Cox'n, Liam Desmond, asked as he brought the jolly boat to ground its bows on the beach. 'Sure, an' we heard th' shootin'. Furfy, here, sor, was all outta sorts ya went an' danced wi' th' Frogs an' left us aboard!'

'Niver 'as any fun, does Furfy,' Willy Toffett teased, tousling Furfy's hair.

'We'll make it up to him, Desmond… soon,' Lewrie promised as he swung a leg over the gunn'l. 'The last water butt aboard?'

'Aye, sor, it is, 'bung up an' bilge free.' ' Desmond chuckled.

'Then let's be off,' Lewrie ordered. 'Mister Locke?'

'Sir?' the Midshipman replied from the launch, alongside.

'Everyone present and accounted for, sir?' Lewrie asked.

'Aye, sir,' Locke firmly replied, beaming with pleasure as the sailors who had been denied a scrap oohed and ahhed and made much of his prize shako and hanger. 'I called my muster list, and all of the hands answered, sir. And, not a scratch on any of our people, sir!'

'Very good, Mister Locke!' Lewrie said in exuberant praise, as much for Locke's quick recovery as for his attention to duty. 'We'll make a scrapper of you, yet! And half a clerk!'

Might not be able t'use that place t'water anymore, Lewrie had to imagine as he discharged his pistols overside, once back aboard HMS Savage. Pity 'bout that, he thought, for his one taste from the creek and spring had been marvellously fresh and pure. Use it or not, I'll send one of the brig-sloops, one of the cutters, cruisin' close ashore, and maybe draw French troops there, away from Royan. Let 'em hope to hurt us back!

Yet, as he returned to his cabins for a well-deserved glass of something wet, there was a thought that troubled him. He had queried only two men about a good place to wood and water; one was Papin, and the other was Brasseur. Perhaps Kenyon, Hogue, or one of the cutters' captains had asked the same, but… he could not quite silence the nagging qualm that one of those two Frenchmen had mentioned it to the military commanders charged with the defence of the Gironde mouth. Why else would French soldiers he taking the coast road, not one of the more direct routes?

One of those two had set him up! Now, which one of them could he trust?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Aye, I've known of that spring since Erato took station here,' Commander James Kenyon said with a frown as he and Lewrie dined aboard Kenyon's brig-sloop, cruising slowly about five miles off the Cote Sauvage. Kenyon paused over his plate with knife and fork poised mid-way 'twixt mouth and meat. 'The captain of a departing ship related its existence to me, in his parting briefing.'

'Did you ever avail yourself of it?' Lewrie asked.

'I always judged that too risky, sir,' Kenyon replied, showing Lewrie that enigmatic, 'I know how to do this better than you' smile. 'A mile inland of the beach, within a mile of the coast road, and deep in rather thick woods? Or, so I was told, sir. When the stores ships and water hoys arrive from neutral Lisbon, or from England, we humbler ships of the Inshore Squadron usually are summoned seaward for replenishment,' he said with a dismissive shrug. 'Top up your wine, sir?'

At Lewrie's nod, an extremely handsome, chisel-featured steward of about eighteen or so, too frail to Lewrie's lights for pulley-hauley or sail-tending aloft-almost a beautiful young blond fellow!-poured Lewrie's glass of Chateau Margaux full again.

As Lewrie took an appreciative sip, he let his eyes dart about Kenyon's great-cabins… not so great, really, aboard a flushed-deck brig-sloop that small, compared to his. And, in keeping with 'stoic' Royal Navy suspicion of too much idle luxury (which translated to distrust of any comforts!), Kenyon's quarters were Spartan in the extreme.

Dove grey paint over ship-lap panelling, with dove grey canvas and deal partitions as plain as an artist's un- used frames, with nary a stab at attempting to make them look like false moulding or plaster walls. Below the panelling the inner faces of the hull scantling and timbers were the usual blood-red. There was a scuffed old black- and-white chequerboard canvas nailed to the deck, but no colourful figured carpets in sight. The table at which they sat, the chairs, the wine-cabinet, and desk in the miniscule day-cabin looked as dull and utilitarian as the chart- space cabinets; second- or third-hand cast-offs of a poor chandler's stocks, or built from scrap lumber some Bosun hadn't missed.

The glasses from which they sipped, though, were good quality, and spotless, the dinnerware rather elegant Meissen china from Hamburg, the flatware a particularly showy and heavy sterling silver, not cheap pewter or iron, and even the tablecloth was as white as new-fallen snow with not a single faint smut from previous spills and washings.

Like Erato herself, Lewrie thought; either grand or shabby.

Lewrie could not fault the care lavished upon the brig-sloop; as he came aboard, the man-ropes were golden- new Manila, served elaborately with Turk's Head knots, the battens fresh-painted and sanded for a firm foothold. The decks were nigh as white as the tablecloth; every gun was new-blacked, and everything involved in sail-tending