The Invasion Year

His tootling on his humble penny-whistle was legendarily bad.

“Saving the dashed French from the results of the folly they get into is one thing, Brundish,” Captain Blanding told him. “Saving the French from overweening pride… Popery, or that heretical Napoleon Bonaparte and his global ambitions, is quite another.”

“Successful war cures some of those problems, sir,” Lieutenant Gilbraith pointed out. “Pride… ambitions. We can handle that.”

“And you may convert them from Popery, sir,” Lewrie suggested to Chaplain Brundish. “Or, are they outright atheists, lead them to salvation.”

“Now, that’d be as hard as making them humble, haw!” Captain Blanding hooted.

“Just so, sir! Well said!” Lt. Gilbraith seconded.

Toady! Lewrie thought him. Still, it worked for Gilbraith, and for Blanding, too, who laid back his head and bellowed laughter to the overhead. A glass later, and the tablecloth was whisked away, and the cheese, nuts, sweet bisquits, and the port, with fresh glasses, were laid for them. As the bottle circulated larboardly round the table, Captain Blanding got a speculative look on his phyz.

“I wonder, gentlemen, do we discuss our orders for a moment in… well, I cannot term it sobriety, haw haw! But, could any of you tell me the value of making yet another circumnavigation of the island of Hispaniola, and peeking into every little dam… blasted harbour?”

That thought didn’t sober them up, but it did shut them up, for a bit; ’til Captain Stroud, who’d been mostly quiet during supper, silently appreciating the camaraderie, hesitantly spoke up.

“Well, sir, I expect we could forgo Port-Au-Prince. The French lost it long ago,” he said.

“Anything in the Gulf of Gonaives,” Parham seconded, looking a tad squiffy, himself; pie-eyed in point of fact, and sure to need the bosun’s sling to get back aboard his own ship, later. Perhaps into his gig from Modeste!

“Gonaives, Saint Marc, Leogane,” Lewrie recalled off the top of his head. “The Isle Gonave, too? I b’lieve we can safely determine the rebels hold all those. After we peek into Port de Paix and Mole Saint Nicholas tomorrow, the last place a French detatchment could yet be holding out would be at Jeremie, on the Sou’west peninsula’s tip, and that would just about do it, as far as the French half of Hispaniola goes.”

“We know Jacmel, on the Southern coast, is rebel-held,” Lieutenant Gilbraith supplied.

“Explore the Spanish half?” Blanding asked, gesturing impatiently for the port bottle.

“Well, sir,” Stroud cautiously replied, looking suspiciously sober in comparison to his supper-mates. “There’s General Kerverseau and his… regiment?… taken over Santo Domingo from the Spanish, and that General Ferrand at Santiago, with the few troops he was able to evacuate, but… Commodore Loring already had us look into their situation before we rejoined him, here off Cap Francois, and I can’t see anything changing in the last week.”

“Don’t know whether those two blasted scoundrels are setting up their own little empires, or have interned themselves with the Dons,” Captain Blanding grumbled. He took a sip of port, smacked his lips, and added, “And, it’s not as if there will be any other deuced French ships coming to rescue them, any time soon, hey? Did they not flee in local luggers, and such?”

Deuced… he’s found another substitute for “bloody,” Lewrie thought, with a grin; Or “damned”!

“We saw no sea-going vessels in either port, sir,” Lt. Gilbraith reminded him. “They’re surely stuck ’til next Epiphany.”

“Couldn’t have gotten away with much in the way of victuals, so, when they run short, they will have to start… requisitioning from the local Spanish,” Parham supposed aloud.

“Best not have landed short of ammunition, then!” Lewrie stuck in with a snicker. “Once they start in stealin’, hmm?”

“Or, mess with the Spanish women!” Lt. Gilbraith hooted.

“Don’t quite know if our superiors ordered those ports watched,” Captain Blanding grumbled on, sounding querulous. “But, I think we may consider our orders fulfilled by looking into Port de Paix, Mole Saint Nicholas, then Jeremie, before sailing for Jamaica to rejoin the Commodore. Captain Stroud?”

“Aye, sir?” Stroud perked up, eager for any duty to show what he was made of, and make a name, after so many years in the background.

“I’d admire did you and Cockerel look into Port de Paix in the morning,” Blanding instructed. “And, though it’s good odds that those rebel slaves have invested the old buccaneer haunt, the Isle of Tortuga cross the strait from Port de Paix, you might go in as close inshore as you may, for a look-see, as well.”

“Of course, sir… delighted,” Stroud replied, trying to hide a grin and maintain his serious facade.

“I’ll place Modeste off the coast, halfway ’twixt Port de Paix and Mole Saint Nicholas,” Blanding went on. “Within signalling range of all ships. Fetch to… stand off-and-on under tops’ls… get some more fishing in, hey, Reverend, haw haw?”

“Oh, haul in a large grouper, this time, aye, sir!” the Reverend enthused. “Nigh as toothsome as lobster flesh, ha ha!”

“Lewrie… you and Captain Parham’s Pylades are to sail into the Mole Saint Nicholas… close enough to determine if that bast-”

“Ahem, sir,” Chaplain Brundish gently chid him.

“… If that worthy General Noailles still holds the port, and determine how many, and what sort, of vessels he still possesses,” their squadron commander grumpily amended. “Make a show of force, for whomsoever still is there… seagulls, crabs, the French, or the Blacks. If Noailles is there, make him the same offer Commodore Loring made General Rochambeau… I’m in no mood to fart-arse about… shilly-shally, rather, ahem! Sail out, fire off a gun for his honour, then strike to us.”

“And, if he’s made a similar accommodation with whichever Black general’s in charge of the siege…,” Lewrie replied with a touch of worry. “Damme, that means I’ll have t’go ashore and deal with one o’ those devils, too.”

“Ahem,” Chaplain Brundish admonished his “damme,” too!

Oh, buggery! Lewrie thought; If a sailor can’t curse, what’s the bloody world comin’ to, I ask ye! It’ll be no drinkin’, next! Hmm…

He drummed his fingers on the dining table, considering that once a fellow was made “Post,” it was understood that the only way his lieutenants, juniors, and favoured proteges could advance their own careers would be for them to go off and perform something neck-or-nothing dangerous, to get favourable notice in reports at Admiralty, be “Gazetted” in a London paper which would be read everywhere, and have the reports from their captains re-printed in The Novel Chronicle… whilst said Post-Captains sat back and fretted in relative comfort and a lot more safety!

I could send Westcott, his French is bags better than mine, he silently speculated; He seems hellish-eager t’stand out.

“Yet another opportunity to exercise your new-found talent for rescuing Frenchmen, Captain Lewrie,” Chaplain Brundish told him.

“Or, palaver with the Saint Domingues,” Parham added. “Twice in two days.”

“Well, I was just there for show, mostly,” Lewrie had to admit. “It was Captain John Bligh Number Two, and Captain Barre, who did the most of the negotiations. Their French was better. I just stood by, and got cussed at.”

“Yet, if the Black generals round Mole Saint Nicholas have much the same skill with proper French, sir, ’stead of Creole patois, then you’d be on a part with them!” Parham teased.

“Or, perhaps I should delegate, and send you, Parham!” Lewrie said in mock- warning, with a leering grin directed down-table.