CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Once all weapons were loaded, and the oarsmen took up the stroke again, a slower and more cautious one this time, the confluence of the Jolly and the St. Mary’s Rivers spread wide before them, revealing not just one or two ships, but half a dozen anchored up the St. Mary’s. A schooner lay closest to the South bank, stem-on to them as it streamed to the river current. A French Tricolour lazily flew over her transom!

“That’s Mollien’s schooner, by God!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “That snail-eatin’ bastard we saw at Charleston!”

Beyond her lay a larger brig with no flag flying. Up-river on the American side lay yet another brig, with several masted barges at her larboard side. Even further up-river yet another vessel could be seen, this one a full-rigged ship with a few more barges alongside her. And beyond Mollien’s schooner lay a brig that flew a French flag, and another brig with a French flag strung above a British merchant ensign in sign that she was a prize!

“It’s as crowded as the Pool of London!” Lt, Spendlove rejoiced. “Which do we take on, first, sir?”

“The Otarie… the schooner!” Lewrie quickly decided. “She’s the strongest opposition.” He looked round his gaggle of boats, sorting out the best for the task. He would need the Marines, and most of them were in his gunboat and Reliant ’s two boats. “Mister Rainey?” he called to Lizard ’s Lieutenant. “We’re taking that’un yonder! Once we do, I wish you and your men to guard any prisoners and take charge of her. Work her out to the middle of the Cumberland if you can. Once that’s done, I’ll take the gunboat and my two boats from Reliant and press on to the prize anchored above her. Sergeant Trickett, you and your Marines fix bayonets and be ready to board!”

Please stay sleepin’, just a bit longer! Lewrie prayed as the boats crept into the St. Mary’s. The men aboard the privateer would be sleeping, snugly anchored. They weren’t Navy men, so they might not keep a strict watch if they weren’t at sea. They might have been carousing the night before, contemplating the value of their prize and might already have money in their pockets from previous captures, and lashings of celebratory drink. If only…!

No lights glowed behind the sash-windows in the schooner’s transom, so her captain might still be abed. Lewrie could not see any men walking her decks. They were only one hundred yards off from her when a hesitant and reedy voice called out “Qui vive?” A sailor, no more than a ship’s boy, stood by the schooner’s taffrails in a wool stocking cap over thick blond hair, peering at them wide-eyed with a gaping mouth. The next instant, the lad ran forward with a wordless, shrill or of alarm. The next instant, the schooner’s watch-bell was being rung! “ Garde a vous! Aux armes! Les Anglais, mon Dieu!”

“Well, shit!” Lewrie spat. So much for stealth. “Gun-captain, d’ye have a clear shot? Then put one right through her transom! Wake her captain up! Go, go, go!” Lewrie shouted to the rest of the boats.

The carronade was swivelled to the proper angle and the round platform was pegged in place. The gun-captain drew the trigger line taut, bent to assure his aim one last time, then leaned away and gave the line a hard jerk, and the carronade squealed back on its slide carriage as it went off with a very loud bang. Sleeping shore birds, sea birds, and a flock of white egrets and blue herons cried in alarm and rose from the marshes and woods in swirling clouds.

The privateer’s graceful wide transom was punched clean through, leaving a star-shaped hole of shattered planking and a cascade of glittery glass shards!

If that don’t wake ’em all up, the damned birds did! Lewrie told himself as both of Reliant ’s boats went alongside the schooner, grapnelled to her, and Midshipmen Entwhistle and Grainger led their boat crews and Marines up to her low bulwarks, cheering like mad!

“Come on, come on!” Lewrie exhorted, going to the gunboat’s lone mast once more to take hold of the larboard stays, ready to board her himself. “Lay her alongside her quarterdeck, Spendlove!” Pistols were popping aboard the schooner, and British cutlasses were clashing tinnily with French ones. Feet were thundering as Otarie ’s sleeping crew came boiling up from below, ready to fight for their lives.

There! There was the schooner’s main-mast chain platform, and handholds by which to scramble up. Three of the gunboat’s sailors and two bellowing Marines preceded him before he could reach out and grab hold. He got his feet on the platform, and a Marine reached back to hoist him up and over. He was greeted by a shot, and the bumblebee drone of a musket ball singing past his ear!

Lewrie spotted the shooter, drew one of his pistols, and cocked both locks, raised it, and fired. One of Mollien’s escorts ashore at Charleston, a large “side of beef”, dropped his musket from nerveless hands and clutched his chest before thudding to the deck on his back!

There were three French sailors who had just emerged from the fore hatchway to their belowdecks quarters. One was shot, one was spitted on a Marine’s bayonet, and the third took a cutlass swing on the side of his neck that halfway decapitated him, raising a fountain of blood and a hopeless scream before he tumbled back down below to block others trying to rush to the deck.

Vous! ” Captain Mollien cried, coming to his quarterdeck from an after hatchway, sword in his hand and ready to fight, rushing at Lewrie at once with his small-sword levelled for a thrust.

“You!” Lewrie shouted back, shooting him in the middle of his chest with the second charge in his pistol. Mollien’s charge veered off to Lewrie’s right as the Frenchman stumbled, tripped over his own feet, and fell to his knees by the helm, the hilt of his sword held in limp, twitching fingers. Lewrie stowed his first pistol in a pocket of his coat and drew the second, cocking the right-hand barrel.

“I told you we’d nab you ’fore the year’s out, ye little turd,” Lewrie gloated as he stood nearby. “Clumsy try, that.”

Mollien keeled over to lay on his side, mouth gulping for air like a landed fish, his teeth stained red with his own gore. “ Vous.Anglaispedale, you cannot…” More blood from a punctured lung gushed, and his eyes glazed over, unseeing.

Damme, but that felt hellish good! Lewrie thought, turning to face the schooner’s bows in search of a new threat, but it appeared that their boarding action had been successful. There were over one dozen bodies on the deck, un-moving, and several more propped up on gun-carriages or mast trunks, badly wounded. Even more stood crouched with their arms over their head and their hands empty of weapons.

“There’s more of them below, still under arms, sir,” Midshipman Grainger reported, pointing at the hatchway with a bloodied dirk.

“Sergeant Trickett?” Lewrie called for the senior Marine. “I’d admire did you and your men go down the aft hatchway and work your way forrud. Root ’ em out. Mister Grainger, how’s your French?”

“Passably good, sir,” Grainger replied.

“Shout down to the hold-outs that we’ll be setting this ship afire in fifteen minutes,” Lewrie instructed him to say, “and if they don’t wish t’burn, they’ll come on deck, un-armed, and quickly.”

There was a great cheer coming from somewhere, and Lewrie turned to find that Lizard was passing the privateer schooner close-aboard, her long sweep-oars now stowed away and ghosting along on a very faint breeze. Her crew stood by the bulwarks and rails, waving their hats.

“We will be taking the brig beyond, sir, if you do not object!” Lt. Bury shouted over, waving his own hat on high.

“Aye, Bury, take her and, welcome to her!” Lewrie shouted back, laughing and doffing his own hat. “Go get her, Lizards!”

As Lizard wafted by, Lewrie could look across the river and see Lt. Westcott’s boats approaching the prize brig that was surrounded by sailing barges. There were French sailors aboard the brig, a harbour watch; it was a bit too far for him to see if they were armed or not. He was already so laden with weapons that he had not brought his telescope. There were some American sailors aboard her, too, possibly the crew that would have taken her to Havana or other Prize-Court ports. They were not waiting around to be captured. They were scrambling to board their barges, cut loose, and make sail up-river, out of reach of the British raid. Others were going over the brig’s starboard side to some rowboats to make a quick dash to neutral ground.

Below his feet, boots were thundering on the schooner’s lower deck, doors were being smashed open, men were shouting, and there was a sharp volley of musketry, and a scream or two, as Trickett and his Marines made their way forward through the mates’ wardroom and into a series of storerooms, bound for the foc’s’le. Lewrie took time to re-load his first pistol and re-prime the pans. By the time that he was through, Lt. Lovett’s Firefly was almost up to the prize brig on the American side of the river, and Westcott’s men were swarming the brig and the remaining barges. There were only a few shots fired, and the deck and gangways of the brig looked to be populated only with British tars.

With nothing better to do, Lewrie descended the steep ladder to Mollien’s small cabins. The smell of spent gunpowder was strong, but could not overpower the stench of sweat and soiled and mildewing clothing and bedding.

“Man lived like a pig,” Lewrie muttered. “Did he ever bathe?”

He poked around in the wee desk, into a sea-chest, and under the transom settee to the storage lockers. He found the ship’s muster book, Mollien’s accounts ledgers, logs, and a heap of letters, along with the precious Letter of Marque issued by the senior officer commanding at Basse-Terre on Guadeloupe; proof positive that the schooner Otarie was “Good Prize” for the Court at Nassau.

All that he stuffed into a pillow case. Lastly, there was one of those boxes that looked like a thick book; when opened, he found heaps of receipts, all from the Tybee Roads Trading Company!

“That Treadwell shit’d better hope he’s powerful friends, or he’s a goner,” Lewrie muttered again, quite pleased with himself as he made his way back to the deck. Even if Treadwell was not here, there was solid proof that he had aided at least two French privateers over a year or more, and when the evidence was presented at Savannah, there was a good chance he would pay for it.

His own hands were cheering and jeering as the last French hold-outs came up from below, tossing aside their muskets, pistols, swords, and cutlasses, even personal knives, onto a loose pile of weaponry. A lone Marine emerged from the forward hatchway, his uniform and his kit still in Sunday Divisions best, with his musket slung over his shoulder and a bundle of abandoned weapons in his arms to add to the pile.

Lewrie went forward as Sgt. Trickett appeared from the hatch.

“Beg t’report, Cap’m sir,” Trickett said, stamping and stiffening in parade-ground fashion, “all the lower decks’re clear o’ enemies. No weapons remainin’, no spirits looted, and guards on their run and such. The Frogs did put up a wee fight, up forrud, but we ended that right quick. There’s two dead and five wounded still below. None o’ our lads, though, sir!”

“Very well, Sergeant Trickett,” Lewrie replied, looking over to his Mids, Entwhistle and Grainger. “Any of our people hurt, sirs?”

“Some nicks, cuts, and bruises, sir, that’s all,” Mr. Entwhistle reported.

“Well done, lads!” Lewrie congratulated them all, “Damned well, and briskly, carried! Do you be free with the French’s scuttle-butts and drink some water. There’s more work up-river. Fun’s not over!”

“Sir! Sir!” Lt. Rainey from Lizard cried, once he and his men had boarded and secured their boats to take charge of the prize. “The other privateer is cutting her cable and making sail! She and her prize! I do believe they’re trying to escape us, further up-river!”

“Right, then! Drink up, lads, and we’ll get back in our boats. Mister Rainey?” Lewrie said. “The prize is yours. I will leave you five of my Marines to help guard the prisoners. Be sure that no one gets into the rum, and all those weapons get moved aft of the helm.”

“Aye, sir, I have charge of the prize,” Rainery agreed.

Reliant ’s cutter and barge refilled with men and shoved off as Lewrie waited by the entry-port. The gunboat was brought alongside, and sailors and Marines tumbled down into her, Lewrie going last.

“Shove off, and get a way on!” Lewrie snapped to Spendlove once seated aft by the tiller on a thwart. “Take us close-aboard Lizard, if ye please, sir. I wish t’speak to Bury as we pass.”

“Aye, sir,” Spendlove said.

Lizard had gone alongside the prize brig up-river of Mollien’s schooner, and British sailors were swarming her bulwarks and the sail-tending gangways. Bury stood aft, evidently waiting for Lewrie. He leaned far out to shout his news.

“The French guards took a boat and rowed to the Spanish side, sir!” Lt. Bury told him. “But the prize’s master, mates, and crew are here on board. We’ve freed them!”

“Let them work her out to mid-river short of the entrance channel, Mister Bury, and anchor!” Lewrie directed, standing in the boat. “We’ll need their testimony before we let ’em sail off! I have need of your ship up-river!”

“I see, sir, and I shall follow you, directly!” Bury promised, pointing up the St. Mary’s to the fleeing privateer and prize brig, and the gaggle of barges that were trying to escape. Two of them had men at the rails tossing goods overboard to lighten them to reduce their draughts, and improve their speed. “We will have those soon!”

“There’s enough wind, it seems, sir,” Lt. Spendlove told him. “Should we hoist sail?”

“Aye, let’s give it a try,” Lewrie agreed. “It’s a lovely morning for a race.” The oarsmen aboard heartily agreed with that as well, and raised a brief cheer as the jib and gaff lugs’l were hauled aloft, the halliards cleated, and the sheets drawn in. It was not a good wind they found, but the gunboat did begin to move forward, breasting the river current and heeling over a few degrees.

It’s a river, so it must be fresh, Lewrie thought. He hadn’t taken his own advice to drink from the freshwater scuttle-butts aboard the privateer. He dipped a hand over-side, took a tentative taste of the river, then scooped up several handfulls to slake his thirst. It was fresh, with a silty, leaf-mouldy taste.

Hmph, ” Lt. Spendlove commented, looking off the gunboat’s starboard quarter. “That’s expedient.”

“What?” Lewrie asked, turning to see what he was talking about.

“Mister Westcott’s cut the last barges free, and is letting the river current take them out into the Cumberland Sound, sir. I think he’s getting the brig under way… but I don’t see many hands aboard.” Spendlove pointed out.

“If the harbour watch and guards have abandoned her, she’d not need many t’work her out,” Lewrie speculated. “Some of Thorn ’s hands, perhaps.”

“None of her own still aboard her, then, sir?” Spendlove asked with a worried frown. “Already marched, off, or… slain?”

“God knows, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said with a sigh.

All of Westcott’s Marines and most of his sailors were getting back into their boats, leaving not over a dozen on board. Lovett’s sloop, Firefly, had not waited for them to complete their work and had continued sailing on, her sails limply filling and flagging as she left the North side of the river for mid-channel and began to slant nearer to Lewrie’s gunboat.

“Hoy, Captain Lewrie!” Lovett bellowed through a speaking-trumpet. “Do you wish me to pursue, or should I board the three-master to see if she can be worked out of the river?”

Lewrie looked at the three-masted ship that was slowly looming up on the Spanish side. He could not see anyone aboard her above her bulwarks, or on her gangways or quarterdeck. No one was working on her forecastle to cut her anchor cable, and no one had laid aloft to free any sail. She might have already been abandoned by the French sailors who formed her harbour watch.

If Lovett fetches alongside her, it’ll take him half an hour t’work back to the speed he’s already got, Lewrie thought, scheming an answer as quickly as he could; He’s best left to pursue.

“View, halloo, Lovett! Go after them!” Lewrie shouted to him, and even from two hundred yards away, Lewrie could see how much that order pleased the fellow. “Tally ho!”

What about the three-master? Lewrie asked himself.

“Mister Entwhistle!” he called forward to Reliant ’s barge. “I fear that you and Mister Grainger must go aboard this prize, here. Spendlove and I will continue on with the gunboat!”

“Aye aye, sir!” Entwhistle replied, looking crestfallen.

“Once the river’s clear astern of you, you may try to get her anchor up and work her out, and anchor short of the entrance,” Lewrie added, more as a sop to their disappointment than anything else. The excitement of the day was over for those lads.

Lewrie looked round again. There was Firefly, slowly stepping away ahead by about an hundred yards. Lizard was astern of his boat by about two hundred yards, standing away from the freed brig. Lt. Westcott and his gunboat, cutter, and barge formed a short column on the American side of the river, astern of them all but making sail.

“Still have that chart with you, Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie asked.

“Aye, sir.” Spendlove said, pulling it from the breast pocket of his coat and handing it over. Lewrie spread it out on his knees. They were past a possible escape route, the very shallow Point Peter Creek on the American side, and there was marsh on either hand for at least a mile on the Spanish side and the North, so…

There came a series of distant bangs from astern. Lewrie saw puffs of powder smoke rising from the marshes on the North bank, and return fire from Westcott’s boats.

“Some of these that ran off must have poled their boats into the marshes, and are firing from cover of the reeds,” Spendlove guessed aloud.

“Yes, well it won’t do ’em-” Lewrie began to say, when the hum of a musket ball sang past, and some shots were fired at them by someone hiding in the marshes on the South bank! Puffs of smoke rose as if by magic, and a ball caromed off the gunboat’s gunn’l, taking a divot of painted wood.

“Warnt us t’shoot back, sir?” a nervous Marine private asked.

“Waste o’ shot and powder,” Lewrie told him. “We can’t see ’em ’til they pop up just long enough t’fire. They’re wastin’ powder, too, if that’s any comfort.”

Lt. Lovett obviously was not quite as sanguine. Firefly ’s larboard 6-pounders erupted one at a time, each evidently loaded with a charge of grape, musket balls, or langridge, for the marshes twitched and shivered in wide swathes. Lovett had turned those four cannon into shotguns. A minute or so later, there were two musket shots from the marshes, another broadside from Firefly that must have been carefully aimed at roughly the same point, another great parting of reeds and marsh grasses like a full gale, and after, that… nothing.

There was still some sniping going on against Westcott’s boats. The boat carronade at his gunboat’s bows erupted, and his Marines and sailors let off a volley of musketry.

It was Lt. Darling’s Thorn that settled the matter. She had slowly worked her way past where the first privateer and the prizes had been anchored and turned her much heavier guns, the six 18-pounder carronades of her starboard battery, loose on the sharpshooters with much the same results that Lovett had. There were no more shots fired at Westcott’s boats!

“They’re almost at the narrows, the bend of the river, sir,” Lt. Spendlove pointed out, holding up a length of spun-wool to judge the wind’s strength and direction, and tautening the main sheet just a bit snugger.

The prize brig was showing her larboard side as she made the turn that led South, with her captor, the other privateer brig, in her wake. As the privateer began her turn, her sails shivering, she let loose with a stern chase gun and the after-most of her larboard battery. The round shot passed so close to the few fleeing barges that two of them shied away off course for a moment, and one sheered North to run for the marshes. Lewrie did a quick estimate of where it might run aground and found that there was a spit of dry land behind all the marsh, perhaps only a tenth of a mile for her small crew to scramble before reaching some woods. Ahead, Firefly was running out her starboard battery in hopes of smashing her to kindling once level with the grounded barge!

Firefly was beginning to make good progress in her chase, closing the distance on the remaining sailing barges and the bend in the river. Astern, Lewrie could see that Lizard had a wee mustachio of foam under her forefoot as well; the wind was freshening just a bit. All of Westcott’s boats were now under sail, the thirty-two-foot barge with two lugs’ls footing away from the single-masted cutter and the gunboat. As Lewrie watched, Westcott put his oarsmen to work once more for just a bit more speed!

The two fleeing brigs might have gotten round the bend, but were still in plain sight above the grasses of the marshes, showing themselves in profile. The privateer opened fire with her larboard guns and roundshot howled overhead, mostly aimed at Firefly, which had little in the way of bow-chasers with which to reply. The wind was on their beams, whilst the pursuing vessels had the winds astern in a sudden shift. The sun was not quite risen, but the East horizon showed a lighter blue-grey streak of clearing behind the darker gloom of the night’s overcast.

“Try a shot with the carronade, sir?” Spendlove asked, eager to be doing something other than tending the sheets.

“Still too far for a light carronade,” Lewrie decided as Lovett opened fire on the barge which had indeed grounded on the North bank, near that long narrow spit of dryer land. Firefly ’s four 6-pounders on her starboard side raised great splashes all round the barge, scoring at least one hit that tore her transom open; the range was not one hundred yards from mid-channel to the marshes. Two or three sailors on the barge had been going over her bows to wade through the clinging mud and silt, but two of them whirled and fell, likely splintered by the shards from the shattered transom. The barge began to sink.

A minute later and Firefly was at the bend of the river, with Lizard striding up to join her, passing both gunboats, much to the frustration of Lewrie, Spendlove, and, obviously Westcott, who held up a fist and shook it at the sloops, shouting something best not heard by gentlemen.

Firefly quickly went about, her sails luffing and re-filling on a new course, with Lizard nipping at her heels.

“Should we continue, sir?” Spendlove asked, sounding weary.

“As long as we can, sir,” Lewrie told him. “I want t’see how it ends. Be in at the kill, even if we can’t contribute much to it.”

Two minutes more and their gunboat was at the bend, too, and going about. Lewrie consulted the hand-drawn chart once more, noting how short this leg was to the South, just over half a mile, with the best channel nearest the Spanish bank, and a long, narrow, and shallow shoal in mid-channel that widened and shoaled further where the river made a turn to the Nor’west for a bit, then bent again to the West. Lewrie saw what they might be driving for; on the North bank there was dry and neutral ground on the American side of the St. Mary’s, right down to the river, with over twenty feet of depth! They hoped to ground there!

“Whoa, that’s a close’un!” One of the gunboat’s sailors cried, snapping Lewrie’s attention ahead once more.

The privateer was nearest to them, still firing, slowly overlapping her prize brig, stealing her wind. It looked as if the two of them were abreast, and close enough to scrape hull paint!

“She’s run t’other’un aground!” the sailor exclaimed a moment later.

“There’s no room for both in the channel!” Lewrie crowed. “It’s not an hundred feet wide! We’ve got the prize, at least!”

“We will board her, sir?” Spendlove asked.

“No, she’s a dead’un. Leave it,” Lewrie laughed aloud. “We’re after the privateer.”

Lovett and Bury were ahead of their gunboat, by then, and when they came level with the prize, they veered East of her. Lovett could not resist the urge to hear loud bangs, it appeared, for he fired his starboard battery into her to make sure that she would not be worked off the shoal. The range was almost hull-to-hull, and the brig flung parts of herself into the air when struck. A minute later and damned if the phlegmatic Lt. Bury didn’t do the same thing!

First Firefly, then Lizard, reached the deep channel that led round to the Nor’west in pursuit of the privateer, slewing far to the South to follow the deep channel, then wearing to take the wind on the other quarter and hardening up a bit to claw over to the North shore to follow the channel to the American side. As each wore, they fired a full broadside at the privateer, which was stern-on to them.

“Got ’er, they did! They ’it ’er ’twixt wind an’ warter!” the garrulous sailor cheered. “Huzzah, Firefly, huzzah Lizard, ha ha!”

The privateer’s main tops’l’s yard was shattered, and her top-mast swung a full 180 degrees to hang inverted. Across the marshes all could see her stern chewed up, with gouts of old paint, dirt, and shattered planking flung out in clouds.

“I don’t think she’s turning,” Lewrie said, quickly looking at the chart on his lap, excitement rising. “There’s over fourty feet o’ water yonder, then one foot or less, right by the bank of the-”

“She’s aground!” Spendlove shouted, waving his hat in joy.

“We’ve got her,” Lewrie said in delight. “A clean sweep!”

“Do you think we could put up a broom at the main top, like the Dutch did ages ago, sir?” Spendlove chortled.

“Hoy, there’s boats puttin’ out from the grounded brig,” the gun-captain of the carronade pointed out. “Can I try my eye on ’em, Cap’m?”

“Blaze away,” Lewrie was happy to allow. The boats had been towed astern of the brig before she grounded, and people had tumbled into them on her larboard side as soon as they were hauled up by the towing lines.

“Damme, is it him?” Lewrie muttered as he saw a tall man with white hair making his way down the battens to the second boat with a musket slung over his shoulder and a red-leather pouch on his hip.

Their gunboat was less than a quarter-mile off the brig’s stern. It was possible that both rowboats might get away. The first got away from the brig’s side and headed for the deep channel. The gun-captain swivelled his carronade round trying to aim at it, but the jib was in the way, its foot less than a foot from the carronade’s muzzle. If he fired, he might set it afire.

“Hand the jib for a while!” Spendlove ordered. “Give the gun a clear shot!”

The second rowboat was now clear of the brig, hands aboard it hastily hoisting a lugs’l and jib. Others were aiming their muskets astern. Some of them fired, and rounds sang past, one thunk ing into the gunboat’s hull. Far beyond the range of a musket, that!

Lewrie saw two of them standing up to re-load, placing a ball in the muzzles and shoving them down with their ramrods… shoving hard!

“They have rifles, not muskets,” Lewrie warned the boat’s crew. He reached for his Ferguson rifle, stowed aft near Spendlove and the tiller. The morning had been so damp and muggy that he had not loaded it, depending on his pistols and sword for fighting.

He turned the long, sweeping trigger guard around one full turn, lowering the thick vertical screw behind the breech. From his rifle pouch he drew out a paper cartridge and shoved it up into the breech. A turn of the screw in the opposite direction sealed the breech once more and ripped the paper cartridge end to expose the propellant charge. Drawing the lock to half-cock, he opened the pan and sprinkled fine-mealed powder in, then closed the pan and pulled the lock to full cock, then turned to sit across the thwart and take aim. Thunk! came another rifle ball from the rowboat which was now under full sail. “Ow, God ’elp me!” an idle oarsman cried as a second shot hit him in his upper arm.

Bang! went the carronade as the gunner finally got a clear bead on the first boat which was still under oars. Lewrie waited for the smoke from the carronade to clear, wondering why he had not practiced with his rifled musket more often, thinking that if there had only been something worth hunting at Bermuda, in the Bahamas…

There! The white-haired man was standing to re-load, placing a thin leather patch and a ball atop the muzzle of his Pennsylvania rifle. He began to push down as Lewrie took careful aim, holding a bit above the man’s head so the drop of the round would strike somewhere in mid-chest. He took a deep breath, let it out, and gently stroked the trigger with the tip of his forefinger.

The powder in the pan flashed off in a cloud of sparks, then an eye-blink later the powder in the barrel took light and the rifle shoved him in the shoulder. He blinked, waited for the smoke from the muzzle to clear.

“Praise th’ Lord, Cap’m, ye got him!” a Marine whooshed in dis-belief. “At nigh-on a hundred an’ fifty yards, is it a foot!”

Held too low, or my aim shifted, Lewrie thought, but all in all he could be quite pleased with his marksmanship. The white-haired fellow wore a shiny white satin waist-coat and a pair of buff trousers. There was a splotch of blood between the bottom of his waist-coat and his groin. Right into the guts, and a death wound for sure! Not right away, of course. That might take several agonising days. The fellow collapsed into the arms of his compatriots, who showed no more interest in shooting back.

Bang! went the carronade once more, and the boat’s crew whooped in joy to see the first boat shot clean through and begin to take on water at once. The men aboard went over the side, a rare few of them swimming to the shallows of the American side, and safety. Most of them, though, were like British sailors, who could not swim a lick. They floundered, kicked, and wailed to keep their heads above water, but the St. Mary’s had them, and by the time the gunboat reached the spot where only the up-turned bow of the rowboat remained afloat on a pocket of trapped air, there was only one survivor to pluck from death.

The other boat from the brig, the one that had been under sail, made the turn to the Nor’west at the end of that stretch of river, wore, and rounded the last of the shoal on the North bank. When in the shallows where it grounded, and its survivors could splash madly into the marshes, it was abandoned.

“Let’s close that’un, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie ordered. “I want t’see if that fellow’s the white-haired bastard behind all of this… that Treadwell.”

“Aye, sir.”

The current had lifted the boat from the mud and silt, and the loose grip of the first of the marsh grass reeds. Like Moses’ baby cradle set afloat on the Nile, it rocked gently as the gunboat came alongside it.

The gunboat sidled up to the rowing boat, and sailors took hold of its gunn’l ’til a couple of short lines could be lashed between some thole-pins, and Lewrie could step over from his boat to the other, and kneel on a thwart to look down at the man sprawled in the inch or so of water in the boat’s sole. He was a well-dressed gentleman in a satiny waist-coat, a ruffled shirt and white neck-stock, in buff trousers and top-boots. But, he was groaning and gasping in pain, those trousers dark-stained almost from his waist to mid-thigh with blood, with a visible bullet-hole seeping almost in a flood.

“Do you think that is he, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked.

“Treadwell. Edward Treadwell of the Tybee Roads Trading Company?” Lewrie asked in a loud voice as if trying to rouse the dead.

“Ye-yes,” the fellow weakly admitted. “He-help me for… for the…” He had to stop to stifle a loud cry.

“I fear, sir, that with a wound like that, there’s nothing to be done,” Lewrie told him with a shake of his head, not even trying to be sympathetic; it had been a fine shot after all! “You’re slain… and bound t’meet your Maker before the hour’s out. All your friends and partners are run off without a care for you, too. We’ve stopped your business with the privateers. You’re through!

“Now, think of this as a death-bed confession, sir,” Lewrie continued, leaning closer, looming over Treadwell, filling his sight, and softening his tone. “Don’t face Eternity with a lie. What did you do with the people off the prizes when they were brought in?”

“Su-surgeon,” Treadwell gasped, instead, writhing about and trying to both claw at, and staunch, his wound.

“No help, there, I told you,” Lewrie snapped. “What… did… you… do… with… the… prisoners?”

“Aah!” Treadwell cried, whimpering. Tears rolled from his eyes; of pain, or fear of death… or for the ruin of everything he’d built? There was no telling.

“The prisoners!” Lewrie roared.

“Sa-safe. Saint Aug-Augustine,” Treadwell whimpered so faintly that Lewrie had to bend to hear him. “Spanish have…”

“Good,” Lewrie said, leaning back. “Thank you for that. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Lewrie cheerfully added. “Give my regards to the Devil.”

Lewrie stood up to return to his boat, but took a moment for looting, instead.

“Would you care for a Pennsylvania rifle, Mister Spendlove?” he said, lifting Treadwell’s piece, its powder horn, priming flasks and leather pouch. “It’s a rather fine one, custom-made, I’d expect.”

“Ehm… thank you, sir,” Spendlove hesitantly said, stunned by his captain’s revelation of a very ruthless nature. “We will simply leave him, sir?” he asked once Lewrie was back aboard.

“Like the Vikings saw off their kings,” Lewrie told him with a grin. “Set his boat adrift to get snagged in the marshes, or waft out to sea. It was his river…; let it have him. Let’s go see if Bury and Lovett are done with the privateer. She should’ve struck by now.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Spendlove replied, much subdued.

Lewrie sat down on the after thwart once more and dug into his cartridge pouch for a worn-out toothbrush, an oily rag, and a length of twine with a small weight on one end and a brass slot for a cleaning patch on the other, opened the breech of his Ferguson rifle-musket, and began to clean the bore, the pan, and touch-hole.

He looked up, distracted by the cries of marsh birds. The sun was fully up, at last, and the sounds of combat had silenced, allowing the myriad flocks of gulls, terns, sandpipers, herons, ibises, egrets, and skimmers to soar up from hiding. The clearing sky was teeming with them in their swirling thousands. Beyond round the bend of the river, Firefly, Lizard, and the privateer were close together, the smoke from the last broadsides still risen above them, as if from eye-level from his boat a naval battle was occurring on a vast green lawn, with the last of the river mist hazing the vast and verdant marsh grasses.

Damme if this ain’t the best day I’ve had in months! he happily thought; And a right-handsome one, t’boot!

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