Havoc`s Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Cannon fire erupted to their starboard side, an ominous punctuation to the long-rolling drums and the urgent fifes summoning sailors from below, as Sumter and the French brig o' war began to trade shots. Mr. James Peel, drawn to the quarterdeck as well by their martial preparations, had learned enough by then to ask permission to ascend a larboard ladder before clumping up into the open air. Lewrie took scant note of his arrival, a brief smirk crossing his lips at the thought of Mr. Peel being driven to the deck, whether he wished to go or not. In action, there would be no sulking in his canvas-walled cabin, for partitions and bed-cot would have to come down to give gun crews room in which to serve their 12-pounder pieces aft. It was come up or get trampled.

Lewrie looked down into the ship's waist, spotting the landsmen, idlers, and waisters who were lumbering his furnishings and chests down the companionways to the orlop. There went his own sea-chest, already locked. Peel's, however, was shut but not locked, with shirt cuffs or sock ends showing under the lid; worse than a midshipman's chest… all on top and nothing handy, Lewrie found cause to snicker. A moment later, and here came Aspinall, clutching a sea-bag filled with his pantry things and hobby things, and Toulon cradled in one arm and none too happy about it.

"We'll not take part, Captain Lewrie?" Peel asked, after he had himself a good look about. "Not too active a part, I trust? Ye know what Mister Pelham'd…"

"I intend to allow the Yankees their due honours, Mister Peel," Lewrie told him. "The merchantmen are theirs to reclaim, after all."

"Thank Christ!" Peel muttered, sounding immensely relieved; for the moment, at least. " 'Tis bad enough we're even here, d'ye…"

"I shan't tread on their pride, either, Mister Peel. I'll let 'em learn to toddle on their own. 'Til they look as if they've bitten off more than they can chew, then we'll wade in, if we must."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Peel muttered half to himself.

"For now, we're haring after yonder prize schooners, d'ye see, Mister Peel?" Lewrie pointed out, handing him the telescope. "So they don't break free whilst the men o' war slug it out."

"Excuse me, Captain sir," Midshipman Grace said, coming up and knuckling his forehead in salute, his waist-coat and coat sleeves wet right through, "but the last cast of the log reads eleven and a quarter knots, sir! She flies like a Cambridge coach, this morning, sir!"

"Damme if she doesn't!" Lewrie said, beaming with pride at his frigate's fine turn of speed. "She's bored, and hungry today, Mister Grace. Good ships are like fine, blooded horses. They go stale, do you keep 'em reined back. Our Proteus knows when a fight's in the offing. Like a good warhorse, she wants a part in it."

"And bless her for her spirit, sir!" Grace eagerly agreed.

"I'll never understand you sailormen," Peel grumpily confessed after Grace had gone back to his place in the after-guard. "What mystifying language you use, what superstitions about ships' souls…"

"We're a contrary lot," Lewrie allowed in all good humour as he watched Sumter and the French brig o' war engaging.

"One would think Mister Jonathan Swift used your sort for caricatures when he wrote Gulliver's Travels," Peel harumphed further.

"Not everyone peels their boiled eggs from the pointy end, do you mean to say, Mister Peel?" Lewrie pretended to find inexplicable. "Why, I never heard the like, tsk tsk!"

"Oh, what's the use?" Peel groaned, half under his breath again.

"Damme, but they're good shots, our Yankees!" Lewrie exclaimed as Sumter loosed her entire broadside on the French warship at a range of about one cable. "Ev'ry ball 'twixt wind and water, by God."

The French were replying, though with a much weaker battery, it appeared. Lewrie could detect deep bellows from some 12-pounders mingled with the sharper barks of smaller guns among the French response. Even at such close range, the French were firing high at masts, spars, and sails, as they usually did, to cripple a foe before deciding whether to close or scamper off.

"French men o' war, Mister Peel!" Lewrie enthused, slapping his palms together with joy. "Manned by French Navy men, for certain."

"How can you deduce that, Captain Lewrie?" Peel asked.

"Privateersmen would never offer battle, unless you trapped 'em in a corner," Lewrie explained quickly. "They have too much financial stake in their own vessels, and tomorrow is another day. Run without shame today, take more prizes next time. Privateersmen can't risk damage, either. Repairs come out of their pockets, and time spent in dockyard is lost money, too."

"Whereas naval types know their government will foot the bill?" Peel sardonically supposed. "And they get paid, regardless?"

"Exactly," Lewrie said, laughing briefly. "And look you. They fire high, French Navy fashion, t'make their opponent too slow so they can get away, instead of goin' for a quick kill. There's professional Frog officers over yonder who've been schooled in their tactics maybe too long and too well. But damme, piss-poor gunners."

Sure enough, Sumter got off a second broadside, well-aimed and laid, long before the French could. Lewrie turned and glared at Peel, pointing at his telescope in silent, urgent demand, and Peel surrendered it, albeit in sullen bad grace, then wandered about the deck in search of a replacement, headed aft towards the binnacle racks.

The second French broadside was delayed, as the brig o' war was instantly pocked with fresh shot-holes. Chunks of gunwale and bulwark timber went flying in clouds of smoke, dust, and splinters, and the brig shuddered as if suffering the ague, sending sympathetic shivers aloft that almost spilled wind from her sails! The answering broadside, when it did come, wasn't half the strength of the first, either; ragged and stuttering, and still firing high, as if their gun-captains were too panicky to shove the wooden quoins in under the breeches to lever the barrels downward. Lewrie could gleefully think the French gunners were already near that point where the choreography of gun-drill became a teeth-chattering, snot-drooling rota; just do your small part, swab quick-duck; load quick-duck; run-out while squatting in dubious safety; touch-off without offering your body as a target, and hang aiming! Get shots off, no matter where the ball went, fast as you could, and don't dare look aside at the maimed and the dead, or let yourself think, imagine…!

It happened to the best of crews, Lewrie knew, when things got desperate. And the way that Sumter's gunners were getting off three well-aimed and laid broadsides every two and a half minutes was creditable in anyone's navy.

Sumter paused in her firing as she passed down the side of the French brig, larboard side facing larboard side on opposing tacks… and then swung up to windward at the last moment, slewing a great foaming froth as she performed a radical turn. Her guns were run-out anew, smoke-dulled ebony muzzles levelled like the muskets of a firing squad.

"She'll stern-rake her, by God!" Lewrie exulted, full of admiration, and succumbing to "battle-fever," even if he was but a spectator and not a yardarm-to-yardarm participant for a change.

And Sumter did, her gun-captains igniting their powder charges as each piece bore directly up the French brig's stern, and at a distance little over a good musket shot. He did not need his glass to see the French brig o' war shiver, again, as her main-mast came tumbling down in ruin, as round shot bowled her entire length, caroming side to side in splintery ricochets that ripped the French ship's entrails out. A round-shot came bursting out from below her larboard cat-head in an immense whirlwind of broken planking, some of the inner faces painted red, perhaps… but it looked like a spurt of her heart's blood!

His own crew was cheering, safe themselves for a rare once, and always happy to see "Monsoor" done the dirty. A moment later, and the crew raised a louder and more enthusiastic cheer, for someone upon the French ship's quarterdeck cut the flag halliards right-aft, abaft her spanker, to let a massive Tricolour flutter down to drape her stern in sign of surrender.

"That's the way, Sumter, that's the way!" Lewrie hooted in joy at seeing a thing done smartly and well. He pounded a fist on the cap-rail of the quarterdeck nettings' bulwark, before remembering how glum Royal Navy captains were supposed to be-far too late, as usual.

The USS Sumter sailed on for a space, then hauled her wind and fell off in pursuit of the square-rigged prize vessels. Her late foe had struck her colours, and was so damaged she would not be going anywhere anytime soon, at any rate. A stern-rake would have killed and wounded so many of the French brig's crew, created so much havoc belowdecks, that it would take hours for those still on their feet to raise a jury-mast aft, plug shot-holes below the waterline, pump her out, and get any sort of way on her again. A painfully slow and crippled way, so slow that any real hopes of escape were foredoomed if the foe decided to renege on her honour-bound pledge of surrender A privateer might break his oath and attempt a run for it, but French Navy officers, even jumped-up petty officers made into the gentleman-officer class, might not, Lewrie thought.

Besides, Lewrie smugly considered, the brig o' war had already been working at a disadvantage, with so many of her hands away in the prize vessels. He doubted they had enough healthy people aboard for a full rowing crew in all four of their ship's boats!

"They are, uhm… disturbingly good," Mr. Peel commented in the relative quiet after the guns had fallen silent. "That was a quick and brutal drubbing. Well-laid, too."

"Did you expect any less, Mister Peel?" Lewrie replied. "They may not have had much of a navy the last time round, but they're among the world's best sailors… as their privateers and that Captain John Paul Jones proved, time and again. Not too surprising really, when you think on it. They are half-British."

"Then surely not a people whose nautical aspirations should be encouraged… or, fostered, as it were," Peel glumly admonished.

"But of course they should!" Lewrie enthusiastically countered. "They're damn' good, didn't you just say so? With more ships in commission, encouraged by a few more victories like this one, they just might declare war on the French, and be a tremendous ally. And they wouldn't cost us a groat, not like the Austrians or Neapolitans, 'cause they're too proud to take the sort of subsidies we toss around. Millions of pounds a year, and what have we gotten for our money? Weak-kneed fools, and utter failure.

"Say we give, or sell dirt-cheap, modern artillery to 'em. It's all they need. They have Southern live oak for hulls, the tall, straight pines for masts and spars, the tar, pitch, and oils, the flax and hemp for sails and rope, and do they build a few more frigates like Hancock … I told you all about her!… Guns, powder, and shot are all they really lack. Say the Crown reimburses our cannon foundries so they still make the same profit as if they sold 'em direct, and that is money spent at home, not thrown away on Prussians, Hindoos, the Chinee, or… men in the Moon! The Crown would adore it!"

"Well, given what we've seen this morning, yes, they seem to be more than capable at sea," Mr. Peel tentatively acceded. "And, yes, we do waste millions in solid coin, I'll grant you. But they're rivals in trade, Lewrie. You give 'em an inch, they'll dominate the Caribbean, the carrying trade…"

"They'll never be so strong that they'd threaten our sugar colonies, though," Lewrie objected. "And, as friendly allies, with solid commercial ties to us, whyever should they?"

"Oh, stop!" Peel said with a groan, looking as if he wished to cram his fingers in his ears. "You make it sound too alluring. 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' don't tempt me to concede. You have led me into folly enough, thankee very much!"

"What the Crown, Admiralty, and your Mister Pelham cannot seem to see, sir, is that the Americans are a fact of life," Lewrie pointed out, sensing a victory, and becoming more diplomatic. "The French, us in some future crisis… someone 'd force 'em to build a strong fleet. Now, wouldn't it make more sense to woo them while they're weak? Make the Yankees grateful for our aid? Make 'em our friends?"

"Well, it's not like training puppies, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Peel said with a snort of derision. "You can't leash-train a whole nation. Do recall that British foreign policy must be bound by what is best for us in the long run. We do not have friends, not permanent friends. We have interests, just as the Americans do. Really…"

"No, but you'd do best to pet, feed, and praise a litter o' pups, get 'em used to your voice," Lewrie replied with a wry chuckle. "Else you come home some dark night and find a pack o' wolves waitin' on you. Better they're glad t'get their treats and play 'fetch,' than forage on your livestock. Or confuse you with prey. Hmm? What d'ye say?"

"Well, it might be plausible, but…" Peel waffled. "Pray God this is a real insight on your part, Captain Lewrie. That it doesn't have anything to do with a certain American midshipman who might need fostering, and encouraging."

"Don't know what you're talking about!" Lewrie curtly retorted, leaning back, stiffly drawn.

"Oh, sir," Peel cynically drawled, as if preferring to talk of anything but Lewrie's madcap idea, and more than happy to change what they discussed. "Do you not! Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face. There's not a man on this ship, nor the Yankee ships, could be in doubt of him being your by-blow, once he saw you side-by-side. It might be hard enough, explaining what you just up and did on your own to Pelham… 'gainst all his cautions and instructions, mind if you were singly motivated to do the Crown a valuable service, based upon your appreciation of the circumstances obtaining, but… understand, sir, that I don't wish to construe your motives… have you_r motives construed as personal, or trivial, d'ye see…"

"And I tell you that all I've done, I've done with a cold-eyed appreciation for the way things truly stand," Lewrie said, teeth gritted in response to such an insult, "not for a need to impress a young man. I can't help it if our superiors back in London are idiots, that you got sent out by lordly sots addled with delirium tremens, on their good days, like that Colonel of yours who thought we could starve America of emigrants if we just had Saint Domingue! What I see is a chance to rid the New World of French influence forever, do we do this right, and to Hell with Saint Domingue! We'd have a grand ally 'twixt our Canadian holdings and the Caribbean, with rich trade, cross a British lake called the Atlantic Ocean, Peel! And who's t'say Saint Domingue can't rot on the vine a few more years 'til its putrid corpse rots to the bones, then begs us and the Yankees for peace!"

"My God, sir, I did not…!" Peel spluttered.

"Good God, but they're at it again," Lt. Langlie whispered to the Sailing Master near the helm, amidships of the quarterdeck.

"Aye," Mr. Windwood took sorrowful note. "And it does not help hopes of conciliation that you blaspheme, Mister Langlie."

"Ah, oops. Sorry."

"We never get Saint Domingue, who bloody cares, Peel!" Captain Lewrie was going on, with as much heat as before. "Filthy damn' place, in the main. American trade takes up the slack, not just in sugar and rum, cocoa and coffee. Prices for those goods go up 'cause demand is just as great, and our Sugar Isles fill it, at greater profit. Don't know much of trade, frankly, but… second-hand goods through Yankee merchants, in partnership with English companies, might be arranged.

"Now, do you really think I'd go off half-cocked like a two-shilling musket, upset your precious Mister Pelham's impossible scheme for nothing? Believe me, Mister Peel, I'd not risk my command and my career on the off-chance a boy, damn' near a stranger, goes in awe o' me. And I resent having my motives being portayed that way."

Lewrie took a deep breath and calmed himself at last, frowning quizzically to see that Peel wasn't fuming like a slow-match sizzling down to ignite a bombshell.

"A lad whose existence will most-like ruin my life, anyway, if my wife ever learns of him," Lewrie concluded, his resentment spent at last, forced to grin in self-deprecating confirmation of his parentage. "And why ain't you howling, by now?" he simply had to ask.

"Because I had to know for certain," Peel mystifyingly replied. "With you, in truth, sir, who knows what goes on in your head!"

"Now, that's not strictly…" Lewrie flummoxed.

"See here, sir… no, forgive that," Peel said at last, after Lewrie let him get a word in edgewise, that is. "All you say is more plausible, and possible, than anything I heard in London, or since we arrived in the Caribbean."

"It is?" Lewrie gawped back, expecting a verbal knife-fight.

"I must own, sir," Peel most reluctantly said, "that I see the eminent sense, the rationale of your thoughts, and as far as I see it… God help me!… I can do naught but agree with your assessments."

"Mine arse on a band-box, you do?" Lewrie blurted out, with a whoosh of relief. "At long last," he could not help but add. "May I assume that your next letter to Mister Pelham will tell him of your, uhm… change of heart, then?"

Damme, have I actually done something clever? Lewrie asked himself, for once in my miserable life?

"It will, sir," Peel vowed, though looking a tad beleaguered as he pondered the personal consequences of defying the prevailing opinion of his superiors in London, not to mention the hurricane of anger that would come, from the high-nosed, not-to-be-outshone Mr. Grenville Pelham. "All else is so much moonshine, wishful thinking, grossly in error or… hopelessly out of date."

"Well… excellent, Mister Peel!" Lewrie crowed.

"Well, not completely!" Peel could not help retorting, "It'll be mine arse on the chopping-block. Might as well be French… off with my head!" he sourly grumbled, wrapping his wide lapels over his chest as if a fell wind blew, not a tropic one. "This turns out badly, we'd best emulate your friend Colonel Cashman and flee to South Carolina. Find us a safe place to hide from the Crown's displeasure."

"Of course, does it work out," Lewrie cynically pointed out in much gladder takings, almost playfully now, "your Pelham is the fellow gets knighted for quick and clever thinkin'. I suspect our names will never be mentioned."

"But of course," Peel answered with one of his accustomed wry smirks, as if he was almost back to normal.

"Pity there can't be at least a wee shred o' credit for us, to improve our standing back home, though," Lewrie alluringly hinted. "It ain't every day I come up with a good idea. 'Tis a good day I come with an idea, at all."

"You're fishing for compliments, you can forget it," Peel told him turning bleak once more, and with his hands fiddling at his coat collars as if to armour himself against vicissitude. "I'm the one has to tell Pelham. What you get won't be a jot on my cobbing. God, he expected folly from you, but not from me!"

"Aye, I'm such a corrupting influence," Lewrie said, bowing his head in mock contrition. "Put it down to the old Navy excuse, 'drink, and bad companions!' Won't 'app'n, agin, yer honour, sir. Oh, well. No thanks, no credit…"

Peel's answer to that was an inarticulate gargle.

"Sorry, didn't quite catch that?" Lewrie playfully enquired with a hand cupped to one ear. It had sounded hellish-like a cranky bear-growl. Peel turned his back and stomped rather bleakly away, towards the taff-rails, where, Lewrie had little doubt, he would seize the cap-rails in white-knuckled hands as if to strangle oak in lieu of a human throat. Lord knew, as a junior officer Lewrie had done the same in the face of utter frustration.

Lewrie turned his attention out-board, lifting his glass to see the USS Oglethorpe brig engage the large French three-masted schooner. The schooner had swung off the Nor'east winds to present her starboard battery, using the wind-forced heel to elevate her cannon for the customary crippling shots at Oglethorpe's rigging and sails, and Lewrie took a deep breath and held it in dread expectation as the two vessels' bowsprits came level with each other on opposite courses, as the American brig blocked the schooner from view.

Their broadsides, at what he estimated as about a hundred yards, lit off as one in the instant that both ships' hulls lay exactly opposite each other, as if docked side-by-side, one bows-out and the other bows-in. A massive cloud of spent powder smoke burst into existence between them in the blink of an eye. Oglethorpe, up to windward, was only partially befogged, with the smoke quickly clearing as it was blown alee; the French schooner was the one thoroughly wreathed in it, completely blotted out from view.

Oglethorpe's masts shivered, and her forecourse yard canted and dropped, to be caught by the chain-slings rigged to prevent its total loss. Her sails were pocked and fluttered like carpets or bedding on a clothesline for dusting by very stout-armed maids-of-all-work. A bare royal spar on her main-mast went winging away, along with about three feet of the slim upper mast that supported it, and both standing and running rigging came snaking down as it was severed by chain-shot, star-shot, and expanding bar-shot.

"God in Heaven!" Lt. Langlie was forced to exclaim. "My word, I mean," he amended as he realised that prim Mr. Winwood was still near. And with his "holy" face on. "But what weight of artillery does that Yankee brig mount? How many cannon can a brig bear, and server

The French schooner staggered out of the smoke pall. Her foremast was sheered off about ten feet above the deck, her main-mast canted so far aft that it made a rough triangle, like a mast-hoisting sheer-legs, where it rested upon her mizen. And half her starboard side was hammered so badly that one could almost make out bare ribs! Her bowsprit and jib-boom pointed down into the water like a steering oar, and her starboard anchor and cat-head were simply gone! With such a drag, she emerged bows-down, flat on her bottom and low in the water, most of her way shot clean off her, surging up a vast patch of white-foaming sea around her as if she rested atop a stony shoal where the waves first broke as they came ashore.

"Enough, and more, it seems, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said, about to dare the sea-gods and whistle on deck in admiration, or surprise.

Proteus s crew raised another gleeful cheer to salute Oglethorpe for her quick victory. For them, it was better than a raree show or a championship cockfight. Any day they could see the despised French getting their just desserts was simply "the nuts" to them. And the bloodier and more brutal, the better!

"Damn my… bless me!" Mr. Langlie further commented, a glass to his eye, as the Sailing Master pointedly coughed into his fist and issued a cautionary "Ha-Hemm!" as if clearing his throat. "Taking the lee position as she did, sir, with a fair amount of her quick-work exposed at her angle of heel, there's sure to be shot-holes below her Waterline. Be a shame to lose such a fine prize, if she sinks. Why, I do believe you can already judge her down to starboard, as if taking water."

"It appears Captain Randolph is of the same mind, sir," Lewrie said in agreement with his assessment. "She is listing to starboard. Oglethorpe's coming about and taking in sail. Save her 'fore she goes down I s'pose. Ah, there she's struck her colours! Took them long enough. A blinding glimpse of the obvious, that. Mister Langlie?"

"Sir?"

"Oglethorpe's busy," Lewrie decided, swinging his telescope to eye those French prizes, now fleeing to the Sou'east. "Wish her well, and all that, but… if she won't run down the merchant schooners, we shall. A point to loo'rd, and let's crack on. They look deeply laden to me. No matter they're Yankee-built and fast, we stand an excellent chance of overhauling 'em. By mid-afternoon, at the latest."

"Aye aye, sir. Mister O'Leary, a point o' weather helm. Haul off a mite, and shape course just to windward of the schooners, there," Lt. Langlie instructed the Quartermaster of the watch.

"They're at least six miles or better off, Mister Langlie. For now, let's stand down from Quarters and serve the crew their breakfasts. Pass the word to Mister Coote and the galley folk."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Mister Grace?" Lewrie called aft, summoning the midshipman to his side.

"Aye, sir?" the lad asked, still afire with excitement.

"Pass the word for Aspinall, and tell him I'd admire a fresh pot of coffee… and tell the gun-room stewards that the officers'll most-like wish a pot of their own, too."

"Aye, sir!" Grace cried, dashing off forward and below, almost breathless with second-hand battle glee that had yet to flag.

Lewrie paced aft down the windward side of the quarterdeck, as the gun crews removed flintlock igniters, gathered up gun-tools, and re-inserted the tompions in their unloaded, unfired pieces. Mr. Peel was pacing forward, nearer to the centre of the quarterdeck.

"Well, that was exciting for a minute or two," Lewrie commented.

"And we were not required to fire our guns in concert, either, Peel took fairly hopeful note, as if he had his fingers crossed behind his back-on both hands. "So far, we haven't exactly sinned by an act of commission, have we? Mean t'say… we didn't do anything overt."

"Yet," Lewrie cautioned, with a wee, sly grin that was sure to bedevil Peel's shaky qualms and recriminations.

"We were merely… present," Peel insisted. "Just happened by."

"Still, it's early yet," Lewrie took delight in pointing out to him. "Who knows what could transpire 'fore sunset," he drawled.

"God's sake, don't do that, Lewrie," Peel almost pleaded. "You get your sly-boots look on, and there's the Devil t'pay."

"Pelham owe you money, Mister Peel?" Lewrie badly asked.

"Of course not!" Peel spluttered, nonplussed by such a query.

"You owe him, then?" Lewrie went on, tongue-in-check. "Engaged to his sister or some such? He catch you with the wrong woman, knows your deepest, darkest, most shameful secret, does he?"

"No, none of that," Peel insisted, though Lewrie noted that he turned a tad red-faced, and made it too bland for complete credence. "He controls my career, reports on my fitness for future employment in our little… bureau."

"That surely can't be all, Peel," Lewrie said, feigning a pout of disappointment. "But in some ways, you're not the same confident fellow I knew in the Med. Mister Twigg's a horrid old fart, but I cannot recall you bein' so meek with him, nor can I recall you bein' the sort to hide his light 'neath a bushel basket and not tell him when he's wrong, or give him a better idea."

"Diff rent era, diff rent superior," Peel bitterly replied. "I quite enjoyed working for Mister Twigg, for I could be open with him. And he couldn't abide time-servers and toadies. I was his partner."

Peel paused, working his mouth as he realised that it was time to reveal some home truths. "I was a cashiered ex-captain of the Household Cavalry, not quite the ton to polite Society, d'ye see, but that never mattered with Twigg. Pelham is a different proposition entirely."

"What sort o' blottin' did you do in your copybook?" Lewrie queried, sure there was a tantalising tale to be heard.

"Let's say it involved the wrong earl's daughter, affianceed to a fellow officer, a Major, in the same regiment, for starters," Peel hesitantly admitted.

"Hmmm… do tell," Lewrie gently pressed. "Doesn't sound much like a career-ender, though. Young love… all that."

"Let us say that the young lady in question, and the gallant Major, deserved each other," Peel said with a bitter sigh. "So easily bored, so needful of amusement she was, which cost me dear. We Peels're good landed squirearchy, Lewrie, well-enough off, but we ain't that rich' and the regiment was expensive enough to begin with. Cost of my 'colours' as a Cornet, then Lieutenant, then the vacancy as a Captain? String o' chargers, the proper kit and uniforms, and a sinful mess-bill each month. Skinflint maintenance of my dignity was half again steeper than my yearly pay, and two free-for-all mess-nights in a month all the sprees about town, could put me deep in the hole. Then she came along, I was utterly besotted, lost my head, and then splurged my way even deeper, 'til the sight o' tailors and tradesmen'd force me to hide in stables 'til they'd gone. Toward the end I… our estates are entailed, so my family could've cleared my debts, but I was foolishly stubborn it not come to that, so I…"

"You robbed the paymasters?" Lewrie gently nudged.

"I… I cheated my fellow officers at cards!" Peel ashamedly confessed, come over all hang-dog and unable to look at anything but his shoes. "To buy her baubles, dine her out, the theatres and such, and I… she swore she'd break her engagement, that she'd marry me, but…"

"D'ye mean t'say, you got caught?" Lewrie gawped.

' 'Fraid so," Peel told him in a soft voice. "Always had a knack for cards. I usually came out ahead with honest play, and sure to God you know how easy it is to pluck the sort of hen-heads you find in the better regiments. Snoot-full of drink by ten, lack-wit by eleven, and ready to wager their last stitch on anything you name. Lucky to even see their cards by then."

"Met a few," Lewrie commented, hiding his amusement, continually amazed by how arrogantly dense were the second sons of peers of the realm, the sort usually found in the "elegant" regiments. And the sort drawn to cavalry were the truly whinnying-stupid!

"Thought I could pull it off," Peel continued. "God, after I'd skinned 'em, I even lent them some of their losses back, at scandalous interest, and they wouldn't even blink!"

"Their sort, they're lucky they could breathe" Lewrie chuckled.

"Anyway, one night one of 'em wasn't drunk as a lord, and cried 'cheater' on me, the rest took it up, and caught me with an extra card or two where they shouldn't have been, so…" Peel supplied, snorting humorlessly at Lewrie's observation. "I was asked for my resignation-'Twas that, or a general court, and they'd have done anything to avoid a scandal, not on their hallowed reputation. They forced me to settle up with those I'd fleeced, and everyone but the foot-men had their hands out then. I was allowed to sell my commission, my string of mounts, saddlery, and all. By the time I'd cleared all my debts, though, I was barely left with the civilian togs I stood up in. Horrid stain on the old family escutcheon, too, don't ye know," Peel japed, trying to make light of it. "Everlasting shame… the black sheep? "

"Happens in the best of families," Lewrie cryptically commiserated, with the fingers of his right hand crossed.

"Exactly!" Peel drolly replied, looking Lewrie up and down with a tongue planted firmly in his own cheek, a cynical brow arched.

"You were sayin'…" Lewrie harumphed, coughing into a fist.

"I was near an American emigrant, myself, one of the Remittance Men exiled for his own good," Peel further informed him, "but for meeting Mister Twigg. Cater-cousin of my father's in the Foreign Office arranged an interview. Overseas employment, exciting doings, picking up foreign culture and new languages… robust, outdoorsy work…"

"Meet fascinatin' new people… betray 'em," Lewrie stuck in.

"Yes, good fun, all round," Peel said, laughing out loud for a bit. ^: 'Til Mister Twigg retired, it was. I suppose you could say I'm… compromised, now, in a way. See, Pelham does have something over me. That Major whose fiancee I diddled, well… his father's country place and Pelham's father's estate are nearly next door. Both fathers took their seats in Lords the same month, and both families attend the same parish church, their ancestral pew-boxes cross the aisle from each other. Knew all about me from the outset."

"Had it in for you, right off, hey? The bastard," Lewrie said. "The arrogant little pop-in-jay!"

"He is all that, and more," Mr. Peel mused. "Snobbish, impatient with his inferiors. Sure of his wits and talent, when he doesn't have a tenth of Twigg's trade-craft, nor an hundredth of his sagacity or patience, his cleverness."

"When not orderin' the murder of thousands," Lewrie sneered.

"Sublimely self-confident when he has no right to be," Mr. Peel Went on, "and not a young fellow open to suggestions. An uncle, a former ambassador to Austria, sponsored him with the Foreign Office. Naturally, he was shoved into our branch. Twigg was leery, soon as he'd briefed him. Warned me to mind my p's and q's, he did. Same as he cautioned me to keep a wary eye on you. Sorry."

"And who wouldn't, I ask you?" Lewrie posed, too engrossed with the hope of "useful dirt" on the pestiferous Pelham.

"Pelham put me on notice, right off," Peel told him, "that I'd best tread wary and sing small, or I'd be an un-employed ex-captain of cavalry, an «-employed agent, and I was no proper gentleman, to boot! Fetch and tote, run his chores? He'd do the thinking, thankee very much. Damn him, he enjoys having me on tenter-hooks."

"Surely he must know by now that he's been sold a complete bill of goods on this Saint Domingue business," Lewrie scoffed. "He can't expect to win, after better men than he broke their health and reputations trying."

"Sometimes he makes me wonder, Lewrie, he truly does," Mr. Peel said with a slow, befuddled shake of his head. "Pelham's one of those who think pot-holes fill before they step in them, as if the rules are different for the rich and titled. Pelham's smart enough to see this mission as a morass, but it's rare to see him suffer a single qualm. Then he comes over all energetic, as if, does he scheme and wheedle hard enough, he's going to win and prove his mettle, despite it being a bloody pot-mess!"

"Let him, then," Lewrie said with a dismissive shrug. "He sent you on a journeyman's errand to finish off Choundas, and ride 'whipper-in' on me… and thank your lucky stars for't. We're a side-show, to Pelham's lights, whilst he stays on Jamaica with his eyes on what he thinks is the main prize. He won't even know he chose wrong 'til it's much too late. Whereas the do-able part of his compound orders- our part-is well in hand, and damn'-near done."

"Well… when you put it that way," Peel said, perking up some.

"How did you get saddled with this chore, and Pelham, anyway?"

"Well, other than Mister Twigg, no one else knew as much about Choundas and his methods," Peel tossed off, as if it was of no matter. "Then, discovering you were out here, so aptly placed… someone else of whom I had personal knowledge… even Twigg said my presence was a necessity. I tried to stay in the Mediterranean, but…" he said, shrugging. "Pelham came as a surprise. By then, it was simply too late to demur without poisoning my credentials with the bureau. And I relish this job!"

"Hmmm," Lewrie mused, pulling at his nose. "So all Pelham knows is what you tell him in your reports?" Lewrie broadly hinted, tapping the side of his nose sagely.

"Lewrie, that sounds suspiciously… mutinous," Mr. Peel gaped (or pretended to) with a hand to his chest as if aghast at what he was hearing. "You don't actually mean that I should lie to him! Or… are you?" Peel added, sounding almost wishful.

"Not lie, Peel, no," Lewrie quibbled, "just couch things in the best light. Give him chapter and verse of your best justifications as to the Yankee Doodles. Just passing mention of the faint possibility of secret cooperation leadin' to better things," Lewrie sweetly coaxed. "And make sure that Twigg and your superiors back in London are kept appraised of what a spectacular opportunity just… fell into your lap. Your lap, Peel, not Pelham's."

"Well… Twigg would like to know what we're doing, I'd wager," Peel muttered, indeed looking a trifle ill-at-ease at the ploy. "He's still got good entree at the Foreign Office. And Choundas was the main target to him, all along. Twigg was never taken with the scheme about buying Saint Domingue by suborning L'Ouverture or Rigaud. In a private moment, he conjured me to not be too disappointed did the larger scheme fail."

"Twigg must have seen that Pelham would be in over his head, and so aspiring a twit he most-like plans t'be Prime Minister," Lewrie said with a sneer. "Yet you still go out of your way to uphold that, too."

"Do recall, Captain Lewrie," Peel said with his nose in the air, "that I, in my fashion and present line o' work, am as duty-bound as you to your Admiralty. To support my superiors in all they do and obey orders with alacrity and enthusiasm. No matter if I think them daft as bats," he sardonically commented. "Though I am no longer an Army officer, I still know how to 'soldier,' sir!"

"One hopes, when you led a troop of horse, you could adjust to changes, though, not just clatter about obedient to out-dated orders like a mechanical, clockwork toy grenadier. When out of touch with a higher authority… as we are at present, on a 'roving commission'?" Lewrie pressed, determined not to appear impatient with Peel's sturdy sense of honour. Surely in his line of work, such was a hindrance!

"Well, of course," Peel allowed.

"But you think like a soldier, not a seafarer, Mister Peel, and I will tell you the diff'rence," Lewrie added, smiling now, sure that he had him lured, hooked, and in play, with the gaffing and landing to come as certain as sunrise. "Can't send a galloper off to the colonel and expect an answer an hour or so later. Once out of sight of land, we're completely on our own, d'ye see, and weeks or months 'twixt new instructions, with only the vaguest idea where we'd be found if anyone tried. It all depends on time, distance… and the winds, Peel."

"I have noticed that ships are driven by the winds, believe it or not!" Peel retorted, getting his back up again.

"Pelham lies downwind of us, Peel, nearly ten days to a whole fortnight there-to-here, close-hauled to Antigua," Lewrie explained with a smirky, confidential air. "No matter how angry you make him he can only cob you long-distance. The packet brig he'd use to communicate with London starts at a disadvantage to the packets which depart from upwind of Jamaica, d'ye see? Do we put into Antigua, the next few days, assumin' a Jamaica packet's in port and ready to sail, your report takes a full week t'reach him. A day more, say, for Pelham to scream and run about in tiny circles before he damns you by post, but it'll be six weeks 'fore his irate scribblin' reaches London… and perhaps six weeks before they tell him he can lop yer prick off. And Twigg and your superiors'd have your reports two weeks to a month before that. By then, we could very well have ev'rything in our bailiwick wrapped up neat as Boxing Day gifts! Choundas… and a preliminary alliance with the Americans, both. Then who's boss-cock, and who's the goat, eh, Mister Peel?"

"Dear Lord, Lewrie!" Peel exclaimed with a shudder of dread, and looked about himself for the prim Mr. Winwood, who would chide Vice-Admirals for blasphemy. "Why is it every time you start scheming, that I suddenly feel like a prize ram being led into the shearing pen? No, worse! A runt ram, bound for the ball-cutter shears! These years you spent on your roving commissions, so independent… I fear you've been hopelessly corrupted."

"O' course I have!" Lewrie cheerfully laughed. "That, and all that 'drink and bad companions' I mentioned, too. But you do believe we'll get Choundas, in the end?"

"Yes, I do. I'm sure of it," Peel was forced to agree.

"Do you think we'll get the Yankees into alliance with us?"

"Well, I've my doubts on that'un," Peel demurred.

"No matter," Lewrie quickly dismissed with a wave of his hand. " 'Tis the effort that matters, the chance that beguiles, when London hears of it… from you. Surely it's an option they already considered, but… to see one of their agents hard at work on it? One o' their delirium tremens dreams, most-like, right up there with… bright-red, man-eatin', dancin' sheep!"

"Well, there is that," Peel muttered, gnawing on a thumbnail. "By God, Lewrie, the effort would seem bold, even inspired! I do take your point. Did one wish to present the Crown with a plan more likely of fruition… as ambitious as seizing Saint Domingue, that's certain… uhm, to steal attention from Pelham, it goes without saying," Mr. Peel fretfully speculated, almost turning queasy for a moment.

"Mmm-hmm," Lewrie encouraged, with a gesture that could be misconstrued as miming the feeding of one's rival over-side to the sharks.

"Though some might take it as immoderate boasting," Peel fidgeted. "Tooting one's own horn, Of being that sort, mean t'say."

"Under-handed," Lewrie drolly supplied.

"Quite."

"Sneaking," Lewrie said on, "not the proper, gentlemanly thing."

"Well, yes…" Peel replied, cutty-eyed with embarrassment.

"Better than spending your whole career being thought of as an unimaginative rear-ranker," Lewrie beguiled. "A back-bencher Vicar of Bray. And disappointing old Twigg's expectations of you?"

"Well, there is that," Peel said, stung to the quick by the idea of letting his old mentor down. "One could express the hope. Pose the outside possibility…!"

"There's a good fellow!" Lewrie congratulated him.

Gaffed, landed, and in the creel! he silently chortled; But, my God… what a stiff and righteous prick!