"Lie!" Dragan Mlavic accused, once he'd attained the gangways on the prize. "Cheat! British, you cheat and lie! Take for self!"
"Sir," Lewrie countered, icily civil, "you were too far down to leeward. Understand… leeward? Too far off. You almost cost us the… our prize, by tacking too soon. Gave the game away."
"So now you keep?" Mlavic raged, flexing knobby rough fingers about the hilt of his expensive scimitar. He'd been followed by three of his larger and most rakehellish accomplices, who couldn't follow a bloody word that was said, of course, but were willing to back Mlavic to the hilt against strangers.
"On the contrary… sir," Lewrie replied, grinding his teeth to remain calm. It wasn't every day an English gentleman was told he was a liar or a cheat; those were dueling words, gentleman-to-gentleman, a cause for blood! "You are entitled to a share of her goods, just as we agreed back at Mjlet with your leader."
And however do ye really pronounce that? Alan wondered.
"And I'll thankee t'take your hand off your sword hilt, before I get angry. Sir," Lewrie dared snap.
" 'Fore some'un gets bad hurt fo' insultin' ou' cap'um, heah me?" Andrews spoke up from Lewrie's right rear, with his right hand firm on the hilt of his slung cutlass. "Ya un'erstan' 'hurt,' mon?" Andrews threatened, backed up by Midshipman Spendlove and five hands off Lewrie's gig. "Be easy, now."
Mlavic squinted his beady little eyes, screwing his face up like he'd caught a whiff of something rotten. For a second or two, he tried to puff out his chest like a pigeon, but thought better of it. Andrews was something out of his experience, a West Indies black seaman, sprung up like a vengeful djinn in Turkish tales, and as fearsome as an ogre. Wearing a coxswain's pipe, pistol and sword, and backed by other hands spoiling for a fight. With a raspy sigh, he deflated, cowed.
"Aye, let's be easy. A misunderstanding," Lewrie allowed.
There was a vituperative, gargling diatribe in Serbo-Croat fired at Mlavic's backers. Sounded damn vituperative, anyway, Alan thought. But Mlavic let go the hilt of his scimitar, to cross his arms over his chest, and his escorts ostentatiously made their own hands go someplace inoffensive and unthreatening, rather self-consciously.
"That's better," Lewrie said. "Stand easy, Andrews. Lads."
"Want guns," Dragan Mlavic grumbled, sounding much abashed but still pigheaded determined to get his fair due. "Guns, shot, powder."
The brig mounted some small 2-pounder boat-guns for stern or bow-chasers, and no more than six 6-pounder carriage guns. All were rather rusty and badly cared for, the carriages looking as dry and fragile as abandoned barn planking. The ready-use shot in the rope garlands near the guns appeared welded together by a reddish oxide scale. Lewrie had no use for them, and if Mlavic could clean them up, paint and oil, file and sand them back into a semblance of proper maintenance, then he was more than welcome to them.
"They are yours, captain Mlavic," Lewrie grandly offered. "As we agreed. Courtesy of the Royal Navy."
The thick-set pirate beamed at that news, turned to his sailors and told them of their bounty, which made them smile at last, and made Mlavic preen like a man just presented with a spanking-new silk coat.
"Anything else you wish, sir?" Lewrie said, trying to mollify the man further. "Ihave her papers, here, and her manifest. She carries wine, cheese, flour, pasta, brandies, various manufactured goods… understand 'manifest'?"
"Manifest, da." Mlavic nodded vigourously. "This I knowing. I see?" He peered at the offered lists Lewrie held out to him, head over to one side and running a tar-stained finger down the top one. Breathing hard.
Can he read a manifest in French? Lewrie wondered. Or can this oak stump read at all? He pointed to an entry-Trousers: 12 Bundles,Used/Mended.
"Any use for this, sir?" Lewrie queried, tongue-in-cheek. "Quite a tasty assortment for you and your men. Various flavoured brandies."
"Brandy, da." Mlavic nodded again, eyes almost crossing with the intensity of his pondering, but glowing piggishly delighted. "Captain brandy? Or, ratafia.. . serve crew? No good, ratafia, pooh!" he spat.
No, he can't read it! Lewrie exulted. Got you!
'"Why don't you just tick off what you wish, hmm?" he offered, feeling sly-boots. "Then boat your choices over to your ship, hey?"
Now worm yer way out o' that'un, ya poxy clown! Lewrie thought.
"What you want?" Mlavic countered with a suspicious glint in his eyes. "You pick. Send, your ship. We take rest, da?"
Baited me right back, by God, thought Lewrie, still smiling as if he didn't wish to strangle the hairy bastard that instant.
The winds hadn't picked up considerably, but the seas still long-rolled over seven to eight feet, and Jester, the captured brig and the dhow were pitching, rolling and slatting in a continual clatter as they lay fetched-to. To manhandle cargo up from the holds onto the deck and then down into ship's boats would be pluperfect buggery. Only the very smallest or lightest items could make the journey without getting hands injured or drowned; not much beyond what people could carry in a canvas sea-bag of plunder, and not much beyond a couple of hundredweight into each boat at a time, making the transfer an entire day's drudgery, and a danger-fraught steeplechase for crewmen in wildly tossing boats.
Mr. Giles and his Jack-in-the-Breadroom were standing by, nigh salivating over the goodies the brig held. He could replenish Jester to a fair approximation of Royal Navy standard rations with the stored flour, rice, dried beans and salt-meats. They might be short of issue rum by then, but the brig's vin ordinaire would more than suffice, and the best part of the situation was that whatever he could transship to Jester was absolutely scot-free, taken from a prize for nothing, instead of having to k cough up his personal funds, or Navy Board funds, for them. The purser would still charge for their issue, though, making his five percent. He already had several small crates or chests laid out, Lewrie saw. Tobacco twists for those who chewed, snuff for those that preferred it that way and loose shag tobacco for the smokers. Twelve percent profit on that, along with his slop-goods. Lewrie thought Giles might even desire one of those bundles of Trousers, Used/Mended!
"There are some few things we could use, Captain Mlavic." Alan shrugged. "To allow Jester to keep the seas."
"Good. You take. We keep ship," Mlavic announced. "What?"
"Promise ship. Here is ship," Mlavic pointed out.
"But Captain Rodgers was to capture a ship for you. For Captain Pe-tracic, rather," Alan objected. "Surely he's done that by now."
"Ship, Ratko, da," Mlavic sniggered, doggedly insistent. "Want ship, Dragan. My ship."
"You have a ship there," Lewrie said, pointing at the dhow.
"Want ship." Mlavic frowned. "This ship. More men come, sail both."
"Don't have more men now," Lewrie countered. "Too few to man this ship and yours at same time. French crew, you'll have to guard."
Damme, now he's got me jabberin' pidgin! Lewrie fretted; all that lovely wine aboard, and damned if I ain't short!
"I take ship," Mlavic announced, like a petulant child. Lewrie thought he was ready to stick out his lower lip or hold his breath 'til he
turned blue!
"And can you handle a brig, sir?" Lewrie quibbled. "It's not like your lateener, not-"
"When boy, go to sea," Mlavic shot back, nettled that his professional skills were being questioned. "Go Ragusa, work Venetian ship. Go Corfu, work Naples' ship. Go Malta, work Maltese ship. Go Genoa… work ship, bilander, poleacre, brig… all same. Work Trieste, Venice, Cadiz, Lisbon, all over. Topman, helm, bosun mate… even work Zante… British traders come for currants, da? Go Pool of London, once. Hand, reef and steer, da? Handle brig, da! You give brig. Take some cargo. We keep rest."
Christ, next he'll say he was Able Seaman, R.N.! Alan sighed.
"You have, what… forty hands?"
"Half for dhow, half for brig."
"Mind, you'll have to guard the French prisoners, too."
"No, you take."
"Captain Mlavic, I can't." Lewrie sighed again. "Lookee here, sir. The agreement was for us to operate separately. Secretly. Now, do I turn up at Trieste with French prisoners, the word gets out that I took her and turned her over to you, d'ye see? If she's your prize, then I'm afraid you're stuck with 'em. You'll have to take 'em back to Palagruza and dump 'em in that prison stockade your Captain Petracic was to build."
"No," Mlavic pouted.
" 'Fraid you'll have to. Can't continue your cruise with a brig and a dhow both half-manned," Lewrie pointed out. "All of 'em, mind. In good health," he added, wondering if Mlavic was not above killing them and dumping the bodies over the side like "blackbirders" did with sickly slaves. "I have a list of their names, and, as we agreed, I'll pay you an English shilling a head, right now, for their well-being. You'll be able to feed 'em with the stores aboard."
Lewrie snuck a glance at the small knot of French prisoners by the foremast. Government-hired by the French or a speculative voyage, even the French shipmasters were averse to hiring on any more hands than was absolutely necessary. There were only nineteen men, including the cook and the snot-nosed cabin servants, aboard her.
"Now, we'll put in somewhere, find a calm lee behind some island and transfer some supplies to Jester, sir," Lewrie pressed. "But if you want this brig, then you'll have to take them, into the bargain."
Then sail back to Palagruza and outa my hair, please Jesus? he thought hopefully, eager to be shot of the bastard.
"Take brig, da," Mlavic grunted, broken-hearted, piggish. "Take prisoners, da. No hurt them, da. I agree."
"Good, then," Lewrie breathed out, quite pleased of a sudden.
"Go now, Palagruza." Mlavic beamed. "Srpski narod, poor. Have nothing, year and year. British, rich navy, have much. Dragan, he take all. Now," Mlavic said, looking as if he were ready to start weeping over the plight of his people all over again.
Well, if that's what it takes to make him go, then fine! Lewrie silently mused; and may he have joy of it! God, 'fore he blubbers up!
"Very well, sir," Lewrie relented, doffing his hat and forcing himself to look "shit-eatin' " pleasant. "She's yours. Good hunting-"
"Nineteen shilling," Mlavic interrupted, hand out like a Mother Abbess in a knockng-shop. "Nineteen prisoner, I hear say. I knowing. Nineteen shilling. Knowing shilling, too."
And Lewrie was forced to dig into his breeches pockets and rummage about for coins. With no need of purse or money at sea, all that could be found was a single stray golden guinea.
"Ah!" Mlavic exclaimed as it appeared. "I owe you two shilling. Good luck, gold guinea."
His hand was out again, and Lewrie was forced to plop the coin on Mlavic's callused paw.
"Ahem, well," Lewrie said, flummoxed. "Mister Spendlove? We're off. Hands down and into the boat."
"Now, sir? But…" The lad frowned.
"Now, Mister Spendlove," Lewrie smouldered. "Very well, sir. Cox'n? Mr. Giles?"
'Scuse me, Captain, but I thought we'd be taking more supplies aboard," Mr. Giles intruded, joggling his square-lensed spectacles in dismay. "There's the salt-meats, the flour and dried fruits for-" "Now, Mister Giles, dammit!" Lewrie rasped. "Aye aye, sir." Giles wilted. "This tobacco, though…?" "Fetch along what you can carry, sir. But stir yerself."
As the gig stroked back to Jester, breasting and swooping with a sickening motion over the tumultuous sea, the brig's yards were already being braced about, and the dhow was slow-ghosting into motion, falling off to the West on larboard tack, both beginning to gather way.
Lewrie turned to watch them go, wishing them bad cess; the worst old Irish cess a body ever met. Storms, lashings of gales, whirlpools and maelstroms, sea-monsters with teeth the size of carriage-guns, with mouths as big as an admiral's barge! Eat the bastard, somebody!
His gig held a few quickly gathered items, mostly half-filled sea-bags or small chests. In the beginning, the cutter had crossed over to augment the boarding-party, too, and he knew that Mr. Giles had already gotten a fair portion of "goodies" transferred before Mlavic had caught up with them. He had the prize's documents rolled up in a thick round bundle in one coat pocket. He drew them out and looked over the manifest once more, mourning the loss of those brandies, those pipes and kegs of wine. If they didn't put in at Corfu or Trieste after Rodgers and Kolodzcy had drunk him dry, he'd be reduced to the crew's rum-and-water!
"Begging your pardon, sir, but… why'd we depart so quickly?" Midshipman Spendlove asked in a soft voice. And Lewrie imagined that he could hear Andrews his coxswain, six oarsmen and the bow-hook man all grunt a muffled "Arrhh?" a moment after.
"In the spirit of mutual cooperation with our new… allies," Lewrie muttered. "We promised to obtain European ships with artillery, and so we did, Mister Spendlove. There was no safe harbour where we'd be able to break out or shift cargo-without revealing our arrangement with the Serbian pirates, mind-so it was best that we let this Mlavic person have her and sail her back to the isles of Palagruza. Far from sight of prying eyes, d'ye see."
"Seems a pity, sir." Spendlove shrugged, seeming to buy Lewrie s glib explanation at face value. "Not like giving up an outward-bounder, full of compass-timber and such. Just our bad luck, I s'pose, to fetch an inward-bound vessel. Rich as they've been laden…"
Christ! Lewrie quailed, stiffening bolt-upright and sucking in some air involuntarily, no matter how rigid he should have held himself before his crew. French gold, from their government for purchasing naval stores! Her captain's personal pelf! Her working capital, to pay her many needs, to victual her or make the odd repairs on the round voyage!
He idly (as idly as his murderously angry fingers would allow!) took a squint through the various documents he held. He'd sent Spendlove and Andrews below to her master's great-cabins straightaway, to delve about and turn up these lists, her log and such, but he hadn't time to scan them thoroughly before his confrontation with Dragan Mlavic.
He suddenly felt very ill. And snookered. And stupid, into the bargain, when he read that the Ministry of Marine had consigned twelve thousand livres in gold to be used for the purchase of seasoned Adriatic oak for naval construction. One locked and wax-sealed reinforced chest, to be safeguarded at all peril, signed over to a capitaine …!
Oh, who gives a good goddamn to whom! he fumed, looking up and out toward Jester, thankful that his gig was now stroking into her lee, where the wave-motion wasn't so boisterous, for he surely felt the need to spew, by then… to "cast his accounts to Neptune"! He eyed the boat and found no locked and wax-sealed bound chest. Mlavic had it, damn his eyes! Damn his scurvy, poxy bloodl
Manfully fighting the almost irresistible urge to moan, curse or scream aloud, he looked down at the bundle he held once more. There was a small sheaf of notes in a spidery hand, a daily accounting list in the rough, to be transferred to a proper account book later. A ledger that was most-like still aboard the brig, or in her Purser's or First Mate's tender care. Another bloody 3,247 or so livres of working capital, less I what they'd paid some Marseilles chandlers, less a pilot's fees…!
And what's so bloody wrong with tears, I ask you! Lewrie thought, I stone-bleak at what he'd lost; by God, I've been robbed! Diddled! That's why Mlavic wished to have her, to winkle us off so quick! He suspected I… and got me so "rowed" I'd not think to…!
"Not a total loss, sir," Spendlove told him as the bow-man took a first stab at the starboard main-chains with his boat-hook. His heel thumped on a bag that lay under his thwart. The bag rustled nicely… could he also conjure a faint chinking sound, a muted metal jingling?
"Aye, sah, foun' ya some cawfee beans, nigh on fo' poun'," his coxswain assured him between orders to the crew to toss their oars and such. "Frenchies allus have de bes' when it come t'cawfee."
"Ah. Coffee. I see," Lewrie replied, summoning up some gratitude; or something that sounded approximate. "Well, thankee, Andrews. Mister Spendlove. Thankee right kindly."
"Some odds and ends, too, sir," Spendlove preened, proud of his scrounging abilities. "Goose quills, right-hand bent. Fresh ink, and some fine vellum paper…"
"Thoughtful of you both," Lewrie expounded as he stood to make his way to the gunn'l for a well-timed leap to the damp, weed-green and slick bottom steps of the boarding battens. "I'm grateful for your concern."
The bag did hold coffee beans, and odds and ends; sadly, it held no coins. Lewrie set the ink-bottle and new quills on his desktop, put fifty-odd sheets of vellum in a drawer.
"Do you stow these away in the pantry, Aspinall," he directed.
"Aye, sir. Oh, toppin', sir! Fresh beans. Like a cup, sir? I could have some ground an' brewed in ten minute.'
"Not at the moment, Aspinall, thankee," Lewrie sighed. "Perhaps later. No relish for it now."
"Right, then, sir," the lad chirped, going forrud and humming to himself in right good cheer, Toulon prancing tail-high with him.
Goddammit! Lewrie cringed to see anyone happy about anything at that instant! He spread the various documents across the desk and picked through them slowly, catching only a faint impression of import here and there, for his mind was awhirl with other things. Revenge, to be factual! '
Fool me once, shame on you, he glowered; right then, you fooled me, Mlavic. Not the half-wit you look, are you? Fool me twice, well, I doubt it. Make the bugger pay, I will! Wipe that crafty peasant sneer off his brutish phyz… swear t'God I will, 'fore we're done!
Something at last leapt out at him, in his distracted state. A fine sheet of vellum in its own right, folded over into an envelope and still sticky with broken wax seals, which clung to the rest.
There was the crash of a musket-butt without the gun-deck doors, the sound of idle boots being stamped together. "First off cer, SAH!" his Marine sentry bellowed.
"Enter."
"Excuse me, sir, but… on which course should I get the ship under way?" Lieutenant Knolles enquired, looking a touch anxious.
"Ah," Lewrie said, feeling a new flush of anger at himself then. "Sorry, Mister Knolles, for being remiss. I was too rapt in these documents we took from the prize. Looking for an answer to that very question. Our pirates? Where away?"
"Worn off the wind, sir, and steering Nor'east," Knolles said.
"And we're fetched to on larboard tack, hmm… get steerageway to the Sou'west, then return to our original course, Sou'east or so, on starboard tack. Close-hauled, as before."
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles replied chearly, before turning to go.
Damme, another happy sod! Lewrie groaned, sitting down. Well, ain't ignorance just bliss. Ignorance of how much we let slip through our ignorant little fingers! And thank God for small favours we've seen the last of Mlavic and his cutthroats this voyage! Can't wait t'rush home to his master, Petracic, and show off his pretty new toys!
"God, I absolutely despise this!" he whispered to the empty cabins. "Mlavic, Petracic, the bloody need of 'em…!"
He hunched forward over the desk, bear-shouldered and miserable. He unfolded the vellum letter further, peeling another sheet away from [the remnants of a wax patch. Labouriously, for his French wasn't that good, either, he made out that he had the second page of a two-page set of instructions from the brig's former ship s-husbands and owners, for her now-former master. Cautions, warnings, a pithy bit here and there, though framed in a tortuous sea-lawyerese, on how her captain had best proceed in the service of both profit and patrie.
"… 'be advised that a British squadron is now known to be found in the Adriatic,' " he murmured half aloud. "And, it took you that long t'puzzle that out? No idea of numbers… no idea of operating areas, so… 'sellers' agents have opened marts in those ports'… damme, what the hell does that mean… susdit? Susdit? Never bloody heard of it." He suddenly felt the lack of a French dictionary.
He rose from his chair and went forward, out to the gun-deck and up the windward ladder to the quarterdeck.
"Cap'um on deck!" Midshipman Spendlove warned the watch.
"Mister Spendlove, how's your Frog?" he demanded.
The lad shrugged. "Tolerable, sir, I s'pose."
"Susdit. What's it mean?" Lewrie pressed, sounding urgent.
"Susdit?" Spendlove puzzled. "Haven't a clue, sir. Sorry."
"Mister Knolles, do you know what susdit means in French?" Alan glowered, pacing over to the First Officer.
"I, ah… hmmm, sir. Can't recall running afoul of that word, before, Captain." Knolles frowned in sorrow. And in wonder of why his captain was so all-fired impatient for the meaning of a French word. Or why Commander Lewrie had come up without his hat, though he still wore waistcoat, neck-stock, coat and sword.
"Excuse me, Captain." The Surgeon Mr. Howse coughed, midstroll with his ever-present assistant, Mr. LeGoff. "Just taking the air, do you see."
"Yes, Mister Howse!" Lewrie seethed. If there was one thing he didn't need at the moment, it was Howse and his eternal, mournful carping noises! He'd rather have piles, any day!
"Susdit, did ye say, sir?" Howse asked with a deep, bovine lowing, all but rocking on the balls of his feet, hands behind his back in superiority. "Why, I do believe susdit means 'the aforementioned,' or 'the aforesaid.' Ain't that right, Mister LeGoff?"
"B'lieve so, sir. 'Aforesaid,' " that gingery terrier agreed.
"Ah!" Lewrie grimaced suddenly. "Thankee. Shit!"
And dashed below to his cabins again, leaving them all to cock their heads and wonder what exactly had caused that!
"First bloody page, first bloody page," Lewrie fumed, shuffling papers in a fury, "where it bloody was 'aforesaid.' Hah!"
To shorten the voyages, and avoid the greater costs in crew pay and rations (he slowly but breathlessly read) and to avoid the perils of capture by hostile warships, to reduce the turnaround time between deliveries of naval stores and compass-timber vital to the Navy or the private builders' yards, agents for the Directory were urging the suppliers formerly of Venice and other ports far to the north of the Adriatic to transship, in their own, perfectly neutral, bottoms, to…!
"Hah!" Lewrie cried aloud again, in triumph this time.
Into Venetian Durazzo, into Venetian Cattaro; Volona, in Venetian-held Albania, and to Corfu Town, and other ports in the Ionians!
He sat down-plumped down!-into his chair, feeling giddy with sudden knowledge. They'd taken the brig so suddenly, her people hadn't had time to ditch her papers overside. She hadn't been merely halfway through her voyage, she'd nearly been at the end of it! He'd feared her turning Easterly and running into Durazzo as a refuge. A refuge, indeed, for that was probably where she was headed all along.
This revealing letter was recent, dated not two weeks earlier, hand-delivered aboard the morning the brig had sailed, most-like. And left lying out, so the brig's master could refer to it.
Venice! he thought scornfully; up to her ears in trafficking to the very people who'd eat her alive, sooner or later. Fat, faithless rabbits, too used to Spending and Getting, getting by on her ancient laurels and martial fame, but prostituting herself to the French just as bad as the Genoese had the year before. Italians! he groaned.
A word in the right ear, though… didn't the Venetians value their freedom, so they could make this much money from trade, when you got right down to it? Were they to put this to the Doge or the Secret Council of Three, who ran the Doge, couldn't they quietly strangle one ' or two of the largest players, and frighten off the rest? Then, with most of the Adriatic oak and naval stores trade quashed, there'd be no need for reinforcements-not from pirates, certainly!
Lionheart, and Captain Charlton, had they not come foul of some French warships down near the mouth of the Straits of Otranto, might be yet on-station-that is, if she hadn't taken so many prizes she'd been forced to sail for Trieste, for want of hands to sail or fight her.
"No, didn't exactly sweep the seas, last time, did she?" Lewrie muttered to himself with a half-humourous grunt. He thought it likely she was still hunting her patrol area. He decided to sail south, speak to Charlton and show him this evidence of Venetian complicity.
He'd have to move the patrols farther south to cover all the bolt-holes and entrepots for smuggled naval stores and timber, once he'd seen proof-positive that the French and Batavians, along with their avaricious neutral helpers, the Danes and Swedes, were leery of sailing as far north as Venice or Pola any longer.
And, that far to the Suth'rd, Ratko Petracic and Dragan Mlavic were of little use, far below their usual haunts. Were the Venetians employing their own ships for the trade, there would be little the pirates could do, against a "neutral" nation's merchantmen.
Little good the Royal Navy could do, either, Alan sourly realised, to stem the flow of goods down to Durazzo, Volona, Cattaro, and the isles. Those neutral bottoms of the Serene Republic of Venice were just as off limits to them, and they couldn't touch them without creating an international incident.
Lewrie rose from his desk and prowled his wine-cabinet for drink, to see what he had left after ten days of Rodgers and Kolodzcy aboard. It wasn't much, but he thought he'd earned a pale glass of spiced Austrian geunirxtraminer. Needed one, rather, after the way he'd been taken by
Mlavic. God, that irked!
"Fool me once, shame on you," Lewrie whispered after a bracing sip. "But 111 have you, ya smelly beast… you and your master, too. Never wanted a thing t'do with ya in the first place, and now 111 nip this sordid, shitten business in the bud. Get my guinea back, too!