Boat's comin' alongside!"
"Pass word for the Surgeon Mister Shirley!" Lewrie shouted.
"Signallers are waving once more, Captain Lewrie," Captain Wandsworth pointed out. "Hellish urgent-like? Do you have any cannister or grape stands remaining, I think it's needed something desperate."
"Very well…" Lewrie began.
"Excuse me, sir, but Halifax spells out. 'Up Anchor' and 'Move.' "
"He can go bugger himself!" Lewrie snapped. "Second hoist for Halifax.. . make 'request all your cannister and grape-shot.' That'll keep that pestiferous bastard busy, Mister Grace. Well? Run and send it!" Lewrie growled, noting Grace's wide-eyed goggling of the stir by the entry-port, where Sevier and Nicholas were being hoisted aboard.
"Aye aye, sir," Grace gulped, and dashed for his flag locker and halliards.
"Mister Foster? Break open the shot lockers and make up charges for the guns, quick as you can, and keep it coming 'til it's completely gone," Lewrie said, wanting to dash to the entry-port himself to see to Sevier and Nicholas. Things were coming too thick and fast to suit him, unlike the long minutes of an evolution at sea.
"Charge yer guns… shot yer guns…" a grizzled quarter-gunner was intoning to his weary crews, who had set their rum rations down on the quarterdeck, that priceless elixir of ease abandoned for a rare once, in the face of need. Other crewmen who had gone forward for
their rum ration had gulped it down then returned to their posts, their prime moment of relaxation and jollity stolen by stern Duty.
Wandsworth and Scaiff fiddled and calculated, gazing heavenward and counting on their fingers, muttering and whispering to themselves before reaching a mutual decision. A quick trot down the deck to see to the elevation, and…
"By broadside.. .fire!"
The 6-pounder long guns and the stubby 24-pounder carronades lit off together, shuddering Proteus anew, refogging her in a reeking pall of powder smoke, and making everyone's ears ring. Seconds later, the sound of musketry ashore rose in volume, crackling down the line of trenchworks like the advance of a brushfire, with the crisp sound of burning twigs. There was a roar of several light field pieces, then a howl of human voices raised in rage or fear or glee, the daft bray of a foxhunting horn to urge them on, just before another musket volley.
"Samboes broke the entrenchments," Wandsworth found time to say, tugging at his ear again, "and I think we just saw 'em out. Where your midshipman was wounded, I shouldn't wonder."
"Mister Langlie, you have the deck," Lewrie said, going to the gangway where Sevier was being hoisted inboard.
"Easy with him, lads," Mr. Shirley was saying, already clad in his "butcher's apron" of light leather for surgery, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. The grey army-issue blanket was lowered to the deck, already half soaked in gore, and Mr. Shirley sadly shook his head for a moment as the loblolly boys transferred Sevier's body to a carrying board, an eight-man mess table with rope straps to bind the patient to it, and other rope straps for lifting.
Shirley looked up at Lewrie and grimaced in sadness with another wee shake of his head. Sevier had been savaged by thrusts from bayonets or swords; the cloth and lace of his shirt, the flap of his white breeches were cut open, baring the hideous wounds beneath, cloth stained bright red over purpling puckers and slashes. His face was a new-paper white, his eyes unfocused, and his breath a faint, labouring wheeze, with small flecks of foamy blood on his lips.
"Mister Durant, Mister Hodson… see to Mister Nicholas, while I see Mister Sevier below," Shirley said, getting to his feet and leading the loblolly boys and their burden to the gun-deck ladder.
"What happened, Mister Nicholas?" Lewrie asked the terrified boy, who stood and shuddered, all but blubbering, as blood dripped from his injured arm.
"S-Samboes, sir," Nicholas replied between chattering teeth, "Hundreds of 'em! Broke the line. They were in the trenchworks with knives and bayonets, killin' our people left and right, and laughing fit to bust, sir! Jemmy, he… him and the Army signallers against a dozen, and him with just a pistol and his dirk! They got that far behind our lines, sir, before… I saw. one of the signalmen running and shouting they were all being slaughtered, and I…"
What little Mister Nicholas needed, first of all, was a hug and a lap, Lewrie thought, but that was impossible; he was a "gentleman volunteer," a future officer.
"I tried, sir, honest I did!" Nicholas wailed, fresh tears coursing down his cheeks, cutting clean runnels in the filth on his face as he shivered, trying to remain "manful" before the ship's people. "But they were jab-bin' him and cuttin' at him after he was down, before we got there, and then they came for me, and they were so big and horrid, sir, and if the soldiers hadn't come… I lost my dirk, sir. I looked for Jemmy's, too, but they took it 'fore they were run back across the trenchworks. I'm sorry, sir! I lost my dirk!"
A gentleman's blade, be it inherited sword or humble dagger, was part of his honour; to Nicholas, he had failed miserably at saving his fellow midshipman and friend, had been bested and wounded when faced with face-to-face combat, and, to top it all, had lost his blade. Sure sign of failure, perhaps even a sign of cowardice, to drop it and run.
The 6-pounders and carronades bellowed again; Lewrie had to wait to speak 'til the echoing roar passed.
"No matter, Mister Nicholas," he said, touching Nicholas on his left shoulder. "You went to his aid like a brave fellow, and helped the Army stop their charge after he rushed to yours. Then you brought him back aboard, so he could be among his shipmates. No shame in any of that."
So he can most-like perish among his shipmates, Lewrie thought.
"Now, let the surgeon's mates tend you," Lewrie said, giving him another reassuring pat on the shoulder before returning to the quarterdeck. But he could hear Mr. Nicholas's cries when they tried to peel his coat off, to cut his shirt sleeve away and lift the cloth from the wound; Nicholas sounded like one of his sons after skinning a knee, and nowhere near a stoic young "gentleman volunteer."
"Ready way up there?" Wandsworth was shouting to the 'gunners on the foc'sle. "Ready, here? Fire!"
Midshipman Grace interrupted Lewrie's gloomy thoughts. " Halifax has hoisted another signal, sir. It's 'Captain Repair on Board.' "
"We still fly 'Unable' and 'Am Engaged,' Mister Grace?" he asked, hands in the small of his back.
"Aye, sir."
"Haul 'em down, then rehoist 'em in reply," Lewrie said with a snarl. "He don't like that, he can go fuck himself."
"Uhm… aye, aye, sir!" Grace said, blushing and tittering.
By dusk, when the wagging signal flags could no longer be read and Proteus had shot away her last stand of grapeshot, her last cannister of musket balls, even the lot scavenged from pre-made loads for the 12-pounder great-guns, the ship fell silent.
Halifax had not responded to her call for shot, but had anchored about a cable's distance away in deeper water, along with the merchant ships she had escorted into Mole Saint Nicholas.
Rather surprisingly, those hired ships had become beehives of activity, disembarking boatloads of soldiers who were quickly rowed to the beaches and quays, followed by heaping piles of supplies, ammunition, and field guns.
When the last shot had been fired, Lewrie called for his cox'n and boat to be rowed over to Halifax. Pointedly, he did not change to a clean uniform, nor scrub his face and hands; the greyness of his uniform from the gun smoke fog would speak for him.
"Excuse me, sir," Mr. Shirley said, just before he could leave the quarterdeck for his gig, and a salute from the side-party. "That poor lad Sevier passed over, sir. And Mister Nicholas… the slash on his arm quite shattered it. We had to take it off, just below the shoulder, Captain."
Lewrie blanched. "Nothing else to be done?"
"No use of it, now, sir," Mr. Shirley replied, "and no feeling in it at all. Half-severed, already, and why he didn't exanguinate on the dock before your boat fetched him is a wonder, Captain."
"Very well, then, Mister Shirley," Lewrie said with a mournful sigh. "You did your best for him… for them both. Thankee."
"We were lucky with you, sir," Shirley admitted. "Those boys, well… there's only so much modern medicine may do, sorry to say."
"Well, then…" Lewrie lamely said in answer, unconsciously massaging his left arm, and turning away.
"Damn you, Captain Lewrie! Damn you for blatant insubordination and arrogance!" Captain Blaylock howled, as soon as Lewrie had been let into his great-cabins under Halifax?, poop. "You frigate captains are all alike, damn your blood… swaggerin' cock-a-hoops who think they hung the bloody moon\ I will lay formal charges before Admiral Parker and see you court-martialed! I'll see you broken, d'ye hear me?"
"That is your right, sir," Lewrie wearily replied, prepared for a "cobbing" since mid-afternoon, and steeled beforehand for any abuse that the choleric Captain Blaylock had in his shot-lockers. "It will also be my right to point out to the court that I was unable to clear the mooring, since I was engaged in supporting the Army ashore. With testimony from the Royal Artillery officers aboard at the time, or the testimony of Brigadier Sir-"
"Blazing away at nothing!" Blaylock bellowed back. "Firing off blank charges, just to excuse your insolence! Firing blind!"
"Indirect fire, sir… lofting grape and cannister to harass the slave troops," Lewrie pointed out.
"There's no such bloody thing!"
"There is now, sir," Lewrie responded, almost ready to chuckle in genuine insolence, too tired and sad to let Blaylock's insults get to him. The only thing that irked was the presence of Halifax 's lieutenants, summoned aft to watch their captain take the hide off an upstart. Lewrie snuck a peek from the corners of his eyes at them; some of the six seemed to enjoy the show, though the much put-upon Duncan and others seemed ashamed of the spectacle, their eyes on the painted deck covering. Disputes between Post-Captains, personal or professional in nature-most especially taking another officer to task or upbraiding a midshipman, petty officer or mate-was not to be done in public. If there was no way to find privacy, it was to be done out of earshot, with no noticeable vitriol or raised voices.
Good officers, good captains don't do it this way, Lewrie told himself; but Blaylock, well… says it all, don't it?
"It's impossible, damn your eyes!" Blaylock insisted.
"Then I suggest you ask of Captain Wandsworth, Royal Artillery, sir," Lewrie coolly rejoined. "He's rather proud of what we did, and is simply panting t'write a paper on it for the Royal Society. Oh, I dare say he'll take all the credit for it, call it the Wandsworth System of Supporting Fires, but he needed Royal Navy guns to do it, sir."
Lieutenant Duncan and three others stifled smirks of glee, even snorts of taboo laughter. There then came a rap on the door.
"Come!" Captain Blaylock snarled, and a wary-looking midshipman entered the great-cabins. "Well, what the Devil is it?"
"Excuse me, Captain sir, but Brigadier General Sir Harold Lamb has come aboard, and…" the boy managed to stutter.
"Well then, fetch him in, damn yer eyes!" Blaylock snapped.
The midshipman gulped, reddened, and dashed out of sight, coming back a long moment later to hold the door open while an Army officer and an aide-de-camp entered the great-cabins, ducking under the beams overhead, and almost managing not to knock their white wigs askew, or bang their noggins on the polished oak.
"Captain Blaylock?" the general officer in all the gilt lace and gimp enquired, fanning his sweaty face in the close warmth of the cabins.
"Sir Harold, sir… welcome aboard," Blaylock said, turning as unctuous as anything and practically oozing from behind his desk to go seize the brigadier's hand. "A glass of something cooling, hey? Well met, sir, well met. Our arrival was more than welcome, I'm bound."
"And without notification, Captain," General Lamb said. "Yes, I am a touch dry."
Blaylock snapped his fingers at his steward, who sprang to the wine cabinet for glasses and claret.
"I've despatches from General Maitland for you, Sir Harold. He related to me, verbally, though"-Blaylock all but simpered to be "in the know" from the elevated Maitland's own lips-"that your troops were to be re-enforced with the garrisons of Gonaives and Saint Marc. We picked them up on our way, d'ye see. The other small ports twixt here and there were to concentrate on Port-Au-Prince. From the sound of it ashore as we arrived, I got my convoy in just in the nick of time, haha!"
Sir Harold took a seat without being bade, opened wax seals upon his orders, and shifted under a coin-silver overhead lanthorn to read them quickly, reaching into his ornate coat for a pair of spectacles that he held close to the page like a quizzing glass. He looked up briefly as Blaylock's steward placed a glass of wine on a small round table by his chair, nodded his thanks, then returned to his letters, a deep frown growing on his wrinkled face.
"That should be all, gentlemen, you may go," Blaylock said to his lieutenants. "You too, Lewrie. I will send you a letter aboard in the morning," he warned, turning pointedly frosty and stern.
"You're Captain Lewrie?" Sir Harold brightened, lowering letter and specs and rising to his feet, dodging a deck beam at the last moment as he came to Lewrie, hand out. "Spoke to Wandsworth. God bless you, sir, you and your ship! Never seen the like in thirty years as a soldier! Without your good offices, I dare say my lines would be completely rolled up by now, and an entire regiment massacred!"
" 'Twas a risky experiment, General," Lewrie said, shaking hands with Lamb. "But with your Captain Wandsworth's able and eager direction, him and his aide Lieutenant Scaiff, we thought it worth trying. Spur of the moment, all that?"
"Which succeeded admirably," Lamb prosed on, pumping away with belated joy. "Your two brave lads, who went ashore to signal?"
"One passed over, sir. The other lost his arm," Lewrie related, turning sombre again. "Should've sent older men, Commission Officers, or gone ashore myself, instead of…"
"Weren't to know, Captain Lewrie," Lamb assured him. "War ain't predictable, or clean. You pick men for such, send 'em off with your fingers crossed, even those in a 'forlorn hope' to breach the walls of a fortified position, never knowin' what the butcher's bill will be. The sorry price to pay for holdin' command over men. But, our duty. Should've seen him, Captain Blaylock, him and his ship this morning," he told the
stricken Blaylock, who stood with mouth agape in anguish. "Put out boats and rowed his ship into the shallows, and just in your 'nick of time,' too, else I and most of my troops would've been slaughtered long before you rounded the far point. Ah, but we surely know we can count on the Navy to save our hides, hey, sir? Do you let me make free with your claret, I'd admire to offer a toast to Captain Lewrie and his ship…"
"HMS Proteus, sir," Lewrie supplied, beaming with pleasure; and sensing salvation from Blaylock's bile, and a court-martial.
"Saw Major James lead a re-enforcement inland, General Lamb. I wonder how he fared?" Lewrie asked, as Blaylock's steward fetched out another glass and poured a brimming bumper. "Is he well?"
"Caught 'em strung out and disorganised, he did, sir. Carved 'em thin as a roast at a two-penny ordinary!" Lamb boasted. "Gave 'em the bayonet and ran 'em back into the woods… where your grapeshot and cannister strewed 'em six ways from Sunday! Oh, James got a cut or two, and I doubt his tailor'd approve, but he's main-well. I will tell him you asked of his welfare?"
"I'd appreciate that, sir," Lewrie replied. "Brave fellow."
For a complete nit-wit, Lewrie qualified to himself; but even they sometimes have their uses.
"Takes one to know one, as my granny always told me, Captain Lewrie!" General Lamb chortled. "Well, sirs! To Lewrie and Proteus, huzzah!"
"Lewrie and Proteus," Captain George Blaylock said in chorus, the smile on his face patently false, his teeth grinding all the while.
"We'll have need of that sort of support in the morning," Lamb said, once they had tossed back their wine and the steward circulated with a cut-glass decanter to top them up. "L'Ouverture's laddies ain't done, not by a long chalk. Even re-enforced, we'll be hard-pressed."
Think I'll rub Blaylock's nose in it, Lewrie maliciously thought; like a puppy in his scat. Use the upper hand now… or lose it.
"I'd like to oblige you, Sir Harold, but I've fired off the last of my grape and cannister, along with an entire tier of powder kegs, and have only roundshot left. Oh, we could make up new stands of grape and bag musket and pistol balls easily enough," he breezed off, before turning his gaze to Captain Blaylock, "… were there some about."
Lamb swivelled about to peer at Blaylock, almost catching that worthy's outraged scowl; which expression was rapidly amended to the genial, slack-lipped smile of a doting uncle.
"Surely, Captain Blaylock, your ship's magazines should be positively stiff with the proper munitions," General Lamb suggested.
"Ah," Blaylock answered with a petulant snap of those lips as he contemplated his ship of the line being plundered a second time. "Um, I expect they are, but… now we've landed two more regiments and two batteries of six-pounders, this… indirect fire will be unnecessary, hmm? And, should such still be required, would it not better serve to shift Proteus to the outer harbour… now her quiver's spent, and let Halifax take her place?"
Go on, go on, step right in it! Lewrie inwardly gloated.
"My carronades and chase-guns are mounted an entire deck higher than Lewrie's, after all. Hence, less risk of accidentally firing on your soldiers, Sir Harold? And 'tis a business fraught with risk, as it is."
"Captain Wandsworth could recalculate his sums, I s'pose, for Halifax 's greater height;" Lewrie allowed, as if reluctant to accept. "Damme, though, it cuts a bit' rough t'be supplanted, now we've got it down to a science."
"Finish what you started, d'ye mean, Captain Lewrie?" General Lamb quite sympathetically imagined.
"Aye, something like that, Sir Harold," Lewrie said, making his "confession" seem a hard-drawn thing. "Then there's the excitement, I must allow. Blockade work was gettin' boresome in the main, and then here came this marvelous chance for real action, and… for us to up-anchor and move down-harbour as a guardship… well. We'd be worse than useless. Not patrollin', not makin' a contribution…" he concluded, all but piping at his eyes in sadness over "not doing his bit."
"Since Proteus has exhausted her magazines," Blaylock said, getting a sly-boots look on his phyz that Lewrie, for a moment, dreaded with crossed fingers hidden in his lap. "There's no reason for Lewrie to idle here, at all. Halifax can handle anything that arises."
Got you, ya greedy, glory-huntin ' bastard! Lewrie thought, trying not to leap up and whoop in gleeful triumph. It'll be the onliest way that barge of yours gets your name in the papers!
"Oh, sir, now…!" he pretended to protest; not too loudly.
"Perhaps a quick return to Kingston would be in order, Captain Lewrie," Blaylock casually suggested. "To replace your lacks, hmm?"
"Surely, there must be someplace closer, someplace not so deep-down-wind o' the Trades, though, sir," Lewrie grumbled. "That would take Proteus far from her patrol area, and at such a parlous time…"
He left off the "tsk-tsk" inherent in his "respectful" gripe.
"Then down to Port-Au-Prince." Blaylock brightened. "There's a storeship in port now, which freed my ship to escort the convoy here, and guard the evacuation of Gonaives and Saint Marc. Got my guns back, too," he added with a prissy "so there" sniff of retribution.
"Well, if needs must, then of course, sir," Lewrie said, almost tail-wagging eager to serve, no matter how humbly. "Wherever we are needed."
"Do you sail in the morning, then, Captain Lewrie," General Lamb told him, "I'll send a letter of appreciation aboard your ship before you depart, expressing my undying thanks for your actions today. And a copy to your Admiral Parker, as well… to let him know what a paragon he has in his command."
"You do me too much honour, Sir Harold," Lewrie vowed modestly though eating up such approbation like plum duff. That letter would get posted in the news back home, getting his name in the papers!
"Nonsense." Sir Harold waved him off. "Captain Blaylock can write a properly appreciative report of his own, hey Captain Blaylock?"
"Why, I…" Blaylock responded, mouth agape in high dudgeon and shock for a raw second, before turning bland and agreeable once more. "But of course, Sir Harold. Anything to oblige," he stated, obviously weighing the cost of a refusal against the present goodwill of a rich and knighted senior officer.
"Do you wish, then, to take my anchorage tonight, sir?" Lewrie prodded, shamming some more eagerness. "There's still enough light…"
"You would not mind, sir?" Blaylock asked, leery of his offer to cede the place of honour so quickly.
"It will give Captain Wandsworth more time to do his sums before dawn, sir," Lewrie replied, rising as if dismissed, the decision having already been made. "And, being toothless, I can accomplish no more." "Makes sense, sir," General Lamb commented, nose in his glass. "Aye, up-anchor and stand down below the port, Captain Lewrie," Blaylock said, draining his glass and rising to his own feet as if to begin the evolutions for moving his ship that instant. "Do let me walk you to the deck, Captain Lewrie."
"An honour, sir," Lewrie replied, lying most pleasantly. Blaylock, for Lamb's benefit, even went so far as to thread his right arm through Lewrie's left, as if they were now as close as cater-cousins on the way to the door.
"Do not make the mistake of trying to best me again, Lewrie," Blaylock muttered from the side of his mouth once they were out of Sir Harold's earshot, still beaming like an admiring papa. "I've years more experience at Navy politics than any jumped-up, ill-bred jackanapes of a 'dashing' frigate captain. You finagled me once back in Port-Au-Prince, and robbed me of guns. I s'pose you think you did it again, tonight, hmm? Well, let me tell you something. Oh, I will pen you a modicum of praise for your damn-foolery, but stress the horrid risk you ran of killing our own troops, and one never knows, does one… the Samboes just might've had artillery in those woods, and any casualties from grape or cannister I can always lay at your feet, and there goes your good odour… boy!"
"Don't you run the same risk, sir?" Lewrie pointed out. "After all, it'll be your guns, tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's accidental dead can always become yesterday's dead… on paper, Lewrie," Blaylock whispered, evilly beaming. "And just who d'ye think will do the writing once you're gone… Lewrie."
"You will, of course, sir," Lewrie levelly responded.
"That's right, that's exactly right!" Blaylock softly crowed.
"Unless it's Sir Harold writing Admiral Parker, should you kill some of his men, sir," Lewrie pointed out. "Then it's on your head."
"Ah, but in my case, Lewrie, t'will be an unfortunate accident, a mistaken signal from Army artillerymen."
"Well, since you seem to have everything covered, sir, I'll go back aboard Proteus and shift anchor," Lewrie said, outwardly uncaring and eerily calm in the face of such a threat.
"Goodbye, little boy-captain." Blaylock sniffed. Again, for the benefit of General Lamb, he raised his voice for a proper parting sentiment. "Have a safe and quick voyage to Port-Au-Prince."
"Thankee, sir," Lewrie said, conversationally loud as well, but dropped his voice to a whisper again as he stuck out his hand, forcing Blaylock to take it to make a decent show. "Before I go, though, you should know, sir… without grape or cannister, Proteus cannot guard the harbour tonight."
"Against what?" Blaylock asked, with a snort of derision.
"Cutting-out expeditions by L'Ouverture's men, sir. An attempt to blow you sky-high, sir."
"Oh, tosh!" Blaylock actually giggled at the very idea.
"You did not read my report about the four boats we intercepted, sir? When they saw that they could not escape us, they turned and lit their cargoes of powder, tryin' to take us with 'em. They've dozens of small boats up and down the coast, I'm bound… out of reach of the Army's trenchworks. Who knows what they'll be up to, now they have been stung so bad by naval gunfire… hmmm, sir?"
Blaylock looked as if he'd sneer for a moment, dismissing such a threat, but then went blank as he realized that it was possible, and that his precious ship was now at the point of danger.
"By God, you…!"
"Do you have your report aboard by Six Bells, sir, to accompany Sir Harold's, I b'lieve I can breast the slack of the tide and work my way out on the land-breeze. If you please, sir."
Didn't think o ' that, didya? Lewrie gloated some more; the first ship out of here's mine, carry in' your damned despatches.
"By God, I'll have your arse for this, Lewrie!"
"If you say so, sir," Lewrie rejoined, his voice dead-level and his eyes going from calm blue to steely grey. "If you say so."