Puerto Rico, Lewrie thought, eying the landmass that had risen from the sea a little after Dawn Quarters; and the Mona Passage. Now what do we do? North-about Santo Domingo, or run back along the south shore, close in?
Out to the East'rd lay golden isles, the storied cays that had featured in his youth, the Danish Virgins and below them the beads-on-a-necklace of the Leewards, each a little gem, and this morning almost presaged by how the sea glittered gold, lapis, and sun-silvered.
Are they poxed, too? he asked himself; now it's Fever Season is there a safe lee shore anywhere in the West Indies?
Lewrie hung in the larboard mizen shrouds, just at the beginning of the cat-harpings, coat, hat, and neck-stock off, and savouring a cool morning breeze, the scent of salt and iodine, and a faint fishy tang of shorelines up to the Nor'east. He lowered his telescope and gazed down and in-board to Proteus's gangways and gun-deck, where sailors crowded round in untidy knots, some still licking their chops after a breakfast remnant, as they formed up by gun-crews a bit before the call was piped for drill on the artillery.
For a miraculous change, they looked healthy and fit again, the last ravages of the fevers left astern and ashore. There were formerly half-dead men who now strode about and joshed with their fellows; there were those who had never been infected, no matter how often they'd gone ashore or slept on deck for coolness when anchored; there were the local lads who might have suffered malaria or the Yellow Jack when babies and now were immune, as was he.
With a word, Lewrie could order the ship to beat up through the Mona Passage, round the eastern tip of Hispaniola, and re-enter her old patrol grounds to the north… with the fresh Nor'east Trades blowing so strong that feverish miasmas would always lie alee, and no one else might fall ill.
With a word, he could put Proteus about, turn his back on those golden isles of the Leewards and the Virgins (though he had a yen for a glimpse of them once more) and then the Trades would brush across the island of Hispaniola, wafting God only knew what nastiness right down on them. At sea, with the deck and bulwark railings pitching and tossing, they could not employ Mr. Durant's tar-and-citron pots to counteract the foul miasmas that brought disease with sweet ones. Surely some who had not yet succumbed ran the risk of another exposure; those debilitated the first time might not survive a second.
Lewrie slowly collapsed the tubes of his telescope, each click of the tubes seating a step towards a decision. He turned his body to peer forward, past the spread of the main and fore courses, and the upthrust bow sprit and jib-boom, and the anchor cat-heads. A day more on this course to the Sou'east would take Proteus deep into the waters between Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, where privateers and smugglers were two-a-penny during the Revolution in his "green" days.
Though some could call it poaching, Lewrie told himself with a wry grin. The Royal Navy squadrons based out of English Harbour, down at Antigua, prowled those seas when they could spare vessels from the blockade oн troublesome Guadeloupe, whilst he and his frigate were beholden to Kingston and the West Indies Station.
Ostensibly, every British warship answered to Admiral Parker, and his headquarters at Kingston, from the Bahama Banks to Trinidad, from the Antilles to the shoal waters of the Spanish possessions far to the west, such as New Spain and the Isthmus of Panama, so… would trolling a touch more East'rd really be poaching? It could be excused… couldn't it?
The Leewards were a tempting lure, and not just for him alone. The rare Dutch merchant ships still at sea would try to succour their colonies; if they threaded past the blockade in European waters, that's where they would first strike the West Indies. The supposedly neutral Danes, and those pesky Swedes, would be up to their old games of shipping contraband goods and arms, turning a blind eye to ships from belligerent nations in their harbours; merchantmen, privateers, and the odd ship of war that came calling. American vessels, despite the undeclared war against France, still traded with the Danes, the Dutch, and the Spanish… and probably with the French isles, as well, for they were a mercenary lot for all their protestations, and losses to French privateers.
Puerto Rico, well in sight now, and the Danish Virgins would be a grand place for smugglers and contrabanders to break their passages, refit and resupply, perhaps take a little joy of shore liberty before their long jogs home, or put in for shelter from storm winds in those marvelous natural harbours and bays that yawned so emptily… and so covertly, the perfect hidey-holes for nefarious doings.
With the telescope now shortened and safely slung over his left shoulder, Lewrie faced the shrouds and took several cautious steps upward on the ratlines, up where the futtock shrouds of the mizen top intersected the side-stays, until the futtocks almost brushed his bared scalp; where a man would have to make a choice… either take the seamanly ascent out-board by hanging from the futtock shrouds, or confess his lubberliness and snake between to follow the side-stays' easier "ladder" to the mizen top platform, through the lubber's hole.
The arms they'd recovered… Yankee-made arms.
American ships trading along the Spanish Main, at Tampico, Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Caracas, and Port-Of-Spain, the Dutch isles of Curacao would most-like take the most direct route back North, using the Mona or the Windward Passage. Or they could go round-about, skirting the lee side of the Antilles.
What had that Captain Wilder of Bantam, and Kershaw of the U.S.S. Hancock frigate, told him… that they would make a rendezvous point to form American convoys in the lee of St. Kitts? As far to the East'rd, as well up to windward of the Trades as possible, leaving half an ocean of sea-room alee, 'til entering the Old Bahama Channel, or passing west of New Providence yet east of Andros through the Bahamas on theirway home. Then, should they meet contrary winds, they wouldn't end up wrecked on a lee shore.
Lewrie realised that a guilty Yankee trader could sell all the arms and munitions he wished, pick up an innocent cargo for the return voyage, and then lumber along in convoy with other ships, protected by the guns of his spanking-new and uncurious navy!
Laughin' all the way, Lewrie sourly thought; Bugger it, it ain't like we 're chained like a guard dog. We 're not even on a long leash!
The staff-captain's written orders, when they'd come aboard at last, had pretty-much instructed him to toddle off and make a nuisance of himself 'til Hell froze over… on their enemies, for a change. He had an open-ended, roving brief to chase his own tail if of a mind, in any body of water under Admiral Parker's writ-just as long as Proteus was not "in sight" to plague his seniors' sensitive humours.
Lewrie squirmed about, carefully shifting feet and hand-holds, to peer Nor'westerly. Hispaniola was under the horizon, Saint Dominque most likely an ocean of gore by now, as old grudges were avenged upon the losers, and Spanish Santo Domingo could most likely now be aflame, as L'Ouverture led his rag-tag armies over the border to "liberate" all the island. Santo Domingo had never amounted to much, really. It was the windward end of Hispaniola, too dryed by the Trades for plantation agriculture, and bereft of mineral wealth. There were, his advisories had informed him, vast ranches raising cattle, pigs, and goats, enough grains grown for domestic use but little for export, and most of that land but sparsely populated, its grandees rather shabby in the main, and most of its people and slaves living hand-to-mouth. Boucanieros, those who cooked, salted, and jerkied meat along the coast, were mostly leftover pirates' descendants, still living and dressing in skins off their goats. Barbecana, their product was; two words introduced into English as "buccaneers," and outdoor roasting parties becoming popular in the United States, Cashman had told him… "barbecues."
Well, that problem, as far as Proteus was concerned, was over and done with, for now; a trifle to be isolated and left to fester or expire on its own, and the small tenders, cutters, and schooners of the West Indies Squadron would manage that chore. To turn North and race down either the north or south shore would probably be fruitless.
He turned again, just as carefully, to face forrud, taking one hand to swipe his unruly hair back into a brief semblance of neatness.
"Nuisance they wish, then it's a nuisance they'll get," Lewrie whispered to himself under the flutter-drum of the winds, and suddenly feeling much happier. "Just like Goodyer's Pig, 'never well, but when in mischief!" he chuckled.
In his mind's eye, he could already see the abyssal royal-blue seas of the Virgins and the Leewards, could almost feel the thuds and thumps up through the stays to his fingers and boot soles of a vessel crossing those "square" waves that could blow up on brisk days, where the chop could be four feet high, with barely six feet between crests… and the rocky-gold islets and cays breezed past in constant parade, their beaches the palest new parchment colour and the shoals the palest glass green.
The steep slopes, the palms and palmettoes, the rounded pastures and cane fields, the "balds" with the pretty, pastel windmills slowly rotating and waving in greeting… drawing him on…
He closed his eyes, drew a deep, pleasing breath of ocean scent, and nodded as he made his decision. If nothing else, it would be like a homecoming.
And, did it prove fruitless, or he got caught poaching, a quick run back downwind to his own kennel was possible.