The Invasion Year

“Va te faire foutre, vous blanc fumier!” the big man snarled.

“A physical impossibility, m’sieur… quel appellez-vous?”

“I speak, en peu, Capitaine,” the young fellow at the tiller hesitantly, almost fearfully, said, his gaze flitting ’twixt Lewrie and his superior, as if expecting a blow for making the offer. There was a quick, rumbling palaver between them before the bigger man shoved the other, as if prodding him to speak for him.

“Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e ask… what ees you’ business ’ere,”

Colonel… “Cut-Throat”? Damme! Lewrie thought, appalled.

“We have come to see if all the French have fled your country, sir,” Lewrie replied, as calmly as he could. “Or, if there are still some French we can kill. They are our enemies, as well, don’t ye know.”

The young fellow relayed that to Colonel “Cut-Throat,” who gave Lewrie a most distrustful glower, and spat overside before replying in a growl, more slave patois than French. Garble-garble-garble, as far as Lewrie could make out.

“Ze Rochambeau, ’e flee Le Cap… uhm… yesterday?” the young fellow informed them. “Noailles, ’e ’ave, uhm… demi-douzaine? Demi-douzaine…” The fellow looked terrified that he didn’t know what that was in English, as if his superior would beat him for not knowing.

“A half-dozen, oui?” Lewrie offered.

“Mais oui, demi-douzaine petit navires… ships! Small ships! Noailles, ’e go to Havana. ’As depart-ed!” the scared young man said in a rush.

“Port de Paix?” Lewrie prompted.

“No Francaise, aucun… none. Umph!” as the bigger man gave him a thump on the shoulder. “Colonel, ’e say you go away, now! No more blanc diables mus’ come to Haiti, ever! You go, now!” he said, taking on his superior’s urgency and ferocity. “Ze whe… white devils ’oo come, z’ey will all die ’ere! Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e swears z’is!” To punctuate the last, the Colonel pulled out a long poignard, or dagger, pointedly licked down the length of its blade, and grinned so evilly that Lewrie felt his blood chill.

“Well, ehm… thankee for the information, m’sieur, and we’ll be going back to our ship,” Lewrie replied, performing a slight bow from the waist and doffing his cocked hat. “Enjoy your new country. Ta ta!’ Au voir, rather.”

Desmond got the gig under way and pointed out seaward, the oarsmen bending the ash looms perhaps a touch more strenuously than usual, which suited Lewrie right down to his toes.

* * *

“Noailles had already fled? Well, dash it, I say,” Blanding said with a sigh as Lewrie and Stroud delivered their reports to him aboard Modeste, now the squadron was re-united and striding Sou’- Sou’west for Cape Dame Marie, and Jeremie.

“From what I gathered, sir,” Stroud contributed, not wanting to stand about like a useless fart-in-a-trance, “Port de Paix’s garrison were forced into Cap Francois long ago… and the rebels indeed have invested the Isle of Tortuga, as well. To keep the French from taking shelter there, where their small boats could not get at them with any hope of… well, vengeance, I’d suppose.”

“Noailles didn’t sail away all that long ago, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, with a brow up. “It would seem that Commodore Loring did not maintain a constant blockade over any port but Cap Francois… where all the valuable prizes were.” If ye get my meanin’, he thought, and waited for the shoe to drop with Blanding. “Noailles, so I gather, had half a dozen vessels, all schooners, luggers, or such, with barely the capacity t’take off what little was left of his troops. God knows if he had room for women and children, too. I did not get ashore to see if the rebels had white prisoners… they met me by the breakwaters, and most like would’ve cut all our throats had we tried. Sorry.”

“They say ‘discretion’s the better part of valour,’ Captain Lewrie. No fault of yours,” Blanding said, harumphing a bit, even so, at the disappointment of missing the French. “Havana, did they tell you?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Well, da… blast my eyes,” Blanding said. “And Kerverseau and Ferrand were allowed to sail away, as well… for want of watching? Can’t put that in my report to Admiralty… dear as I wish to. Wasn’t our fault the work was but half-done… and poorly, at that, by Jove!”

“Well, there’s still Guadeloupe, Martinique, a few other isles still in French possession, sir,” Lewrie tried to cheer him up. “The French colony of Surinam, down below Barbados? I just missed the expedition t’take it, back in ’98. Is our Commodore, or Admiral Sir John Duckworth, still aspiring, and… acquisitive… perhaps we will be part of the next venture.”

“We’ll be blockading empty ports, Lewrie,” Captain Blanding re-joined with some heat. “Consigned to vague, far-distant… bloody!… uselessness! Out of sight, out of mind, and don’t come back ’til our rum’s run out, and the water’s brown with corruption. God… mean to say, Heavens above, but this is what success brings, if you ain’t a well-known favourite! Spite-and-jealousy. Spite- and-jealousy! Pah!”

“Well, sir… the bald facts of our reconnoiters, the escape of the French whilst Cap Francois was blockaded…?” Lewrie hinted. “Do we state… all of us… that, per orders, we discovered that the foe had managed to escape, with no blame laid on anyone…? It might take Admiralty a year or two t’mull it over, but… such reports’d raise a large question, wouldn’t they?”

“Bedad, Lewrie, but you’re a sly one!” Blanding exclaimed, come over all beam-ish of a sudden as he grasped the eventual result.

Bedad? Lewrie thought, almost grimacing to stifle a smile; He will end up with a whole new slate o’ odd curses, ’fore his commission is done!

“And…,” Captain Stroud sagely reminded them, “we’ve our prize-money from the Chandeleurs, and our share of the Commodore’s prizes, to boot. Plus the greater glory.”

“Stout fellow, Stroud! Dam… stap me if you ain’t!” Blanding congratulated.

BOOK I

The rank is but the guinea stamp,

The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

~“IS THERE FOR HONEST POVERTY”

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) CHAPTER EIGHT

Walking the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, or hiring a prad for a bracing ride in the near countryside, was a lot safer for Captain Alan Lewrie since the Beauman clan had dissolved. With Hugh Beauman’s icily beautiful young widow now residing in Portugal, having inherited all, and sold up every last stick of the family’s Jamaican plantations-and all their slaves-there was no one to hire bully-bucks to cut his throat in a dark alley, as they’d once threatened soon after Lewrie and his old friend, former Lieutenant Colonel Christopher “Kit” Cashman, had participated in that scandalous duel with former Colonel Ledyard Beauman, and his cousin Captain George Sellers, over who had been at fault for the shameful showing of their island-raised regiment near Port-Au-Prince, when the British Army was still trying to conquer Saint Domingue. Ledyard and his cousin had cheated; Cashman, Lewrie, and the duel judges had shot them down; and Hugh Beauman had been after Lewrie’s heart’s blood ever since. As a further insult, those slaves that he had… “appropriated”… had come from one of the Beauman plantations on