The Invasion Year

“And here I always thought you liked me, sir!” Parham exclaimed, laughing uproariously, in which all joined in; Lewrie, too, just to show that he really didn’t mean it… much.

“Just so long as none of my officers end up on a platter, with an apple in his mouth, sizzlin’ on a bed of rice, by… Jove!” Captain Blanding bellowed, slamming a meaty fist on the dining table, and laughing so hard that he had to lay hold of his middle to prevent his shaking to pieces.

“Sirs… if I may?” Captain Stroud asked in his ponderous and sober way, once that amusement had petered out, wiggling his glass in suggestion. “A toast to the morrow?”

“Aye, Stroud! Charge your glasses, sirs!” Blanding agreed.

“Gentlemen, I give you ‘confusion… and cowardice!… to the French!’ ” Stroud grimly intoned, and they tipped their heads and their port glasses back to “heel-taps” at that worthy sentiment.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“How deep into the harbour, past the mole, is a ‘show of force,’ d’ye think, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked his First Lieutenant as HMS Reliant, followed by Parham and Pylades, stood in towards the middle of the entrance channel to Mole St. Nicholas. “Oh, Chalky, ye wee bloody pest… not now!”

The grey-blotched white cat had been loafing on the canvas covers of the quarterdeck nettings, now full of rolled-up seaman’s hammocks, and took Lewrie’s nearness, with a day-glass to his eye, a grand time to “board him”; right atop Lewrie’s left gilt epaulet, and dig his back claws in deep so he could pluck the gilt-laced coat collar with a free paw, and snuffle Lewrie’s left ear.

“Pleased with yerself, are ye?” Lewrie muttered, his head turned and his eyes almost crossed, nose-to-nose with the cat.

“I’ll take him, sir… and, fetch a whisk,” Lewrie’s chief cabin steward, Pettus, offered, reaching out to take Chalky down and away.

“Aloft, there!” Lewrie bellowed to Midshipman Warburton in the main-mast cross-trees. “Anything to report?”

“No vessels in port, sir!” Warburton shouted back, a telescope to his own eye. “Small boats… at the quays, and drawn up onto the beach, sir! No French flags flying!”

Chalky was not taking his removal well; he made close-mouthed Mrrs! of displeasure at Pettus as he was set down on the deck planking, then leapt back atop the hammock nettings to join Toulon, nose-to-nose, as if to complain… or pick a fight.

“It’s early enough, sir, that we still have the land-breeze,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, pointed out. “It may prevail for an hour more, before the Trades take over. Or, less, depending?”

“Deck, there!” Midshipman Warburton called down anew. “There’s a cutter under sail! Coming out towards the moles, sir!”

“What flag?” Lewrie shouted to him.

“Flag of truce, sir!”

“Signal to Pylades, Mister Grainger,” Lewrie snapped over his shoulder to the signals Midshipman of the watch. “Put about to fetch-to. Ready about, as well, Mister Westcott, soon as the hoist is down. Soon as the way’s off her, I’d admire was my gig ready t’row over to speak whoever it is in that cutter.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied, then began to snap out orders to helmsmen, brace-tenders, and the duty watch to prepare the ship for a slight wheel-about to put her bows into the wind off the hills, and bring her to relative rest.

“Pylades shows ‘Acknowledged,’ sir,” Grainger announced.

“Very well… strike the hoist for the ‘Execute,’ ” Lewrie told him, looking aft to squint at Pylades, which had already swung off to Reliant’s larboard quarter, about half a mile astern. Standing in on the early morning land-breeze, almost “Close hauled” already, yet gliding slow and swan-like on such a weak wind, it would not take much to bring both frigates to a halt.

Lewrie paced over to the starboard ladderway to the main deck, peering over the side, to assure himself that his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, had the gig manned and waiting for him.

“Fetched-to, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported.

“I’m off, then. Mind the shop, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he made his way to the entry-port, where a side-party was hastily assembling to see him off, with trilling bosun’s calls, Marine muskets at Present Arms, and doffed hats from the on-deck crew.

“We’ll row over, just outside the breakwaters, and speak that cutter, Desmond,” Lewrie said, once settled in the stern-sheets of the gig.

“Cat hair an’ all, sor?” Desmond whispered from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve a damp scrap o’ rag that’d do.”

He’d not waited for Pettus to fetch up his hand-whisk to remove Chalky’s fur. With Toulon, a white-trimmed black cat, it wasn’t quite as bad a chore, but with the littl’un…! Even hanging his coat in the quarter-gallery toilet overnight did not save his uniforms from appearing “spotty” in broad daylight. He took off his cocked hat to inspect it as Desmond put the tiller over and called the stroke; expecting a parley with General Noailles, Lewrie had had his best-dress laid out for the morning, his best hat left in the japanned wood box ’til the very last moment, yet…! “Aye, give me your rag, Desmond,” he said with a sigh as he began to sponge down his hat and coat.

“Uhm… flag o’ truce, sor?” Desmond asked in a soft voice.

“We don’t have one aboard? Well, damme…,” Lewrie snapped.

S’pose this rag ain’t big enough… or white enough, either! Lewrie thought. He dug out his own clean, somewhat larger white handkerchief and handed it forward. “Sykes… stick this on your gaff, if ye please.”

“Aye, sir,” the bow-man replied.

“Ugly-lookin’ brutes, they is, sor,” Desmond commented as they neared the stone breakwaters, and the oncoming cutter.

“Saint Domingue… Hayti… breeds ’em like mosquitoes, Desmond,” Lewrie told him with a faint grin. “Haven’t seen any other sort on this island… not in six years since I first clapped eyes on the bloody place!”

The oarsmen in the rebel cutter, lolling at ease as long as its lug-sail was up, were the usual ferocious-looking bully-bucks, garbed in loose tan shirts worn un-buttoned for the breeze, most with sleeves cut off at the armpits so their muscular bare arms could show, and the most of them sported ragged-brimmed, nigh-shapeless plaited straw hats on their heads against the sun. Most also wore cartridge-box straps or cutlass bandoliers crossed over their chests.

Astern, at the tiller, sat a younger, frailer-looking fellow of much lighter complexion; a Mulatto, in shirt, waist- coat, and knee-top breeches, with some dead French officer’s sword, and a fore-and-aft bicorne. Beside him sat an even larger, darker man who scowled at them as if willing this party of strange blancs to drop down and die, that instant. He, too, wore gilt-laced cavalry officer’s breeches, sword, a captured officer’s coat, and little else, but for a small cocked hat crammed down on his head so hard that the corners drooped towards his shoulders.

“Arret!” the man snapped, his voice a deep, menacing basso; it was unclear whether he referred to his own boat or Lewrie’s.

“Close enough, I think,” Lewrie muttered to his Cox’n.

“Easy all, lads!” Desmond ordered. “Toss yer oars!”

The cutter’s sail was quickly lowered, its tiller put over, and it swung as if to lay its beam open for a ramming amidships. Desmond heaved on his own tiller to parallel the rebel boat.

“Bon matin, m’sieur!” Lewrie called out, smiling. “Comment allez- vous?” He introduced himself, then waited for a response. “Ehm… any of you speak English? Parle l’Anglais?”