The Invasion Year

CHAPTER SEVEN

“How deep into the harbour, past the mole, is a ‘show of force,’ d’ye think, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked his First Lieutenant as HMS Reliant, followed by Parham and Pylades, stood in towards the middle of the entrance channel to Mole St. Nicholas. “Oh, Chalky, ye wee bloody pest… not now!”

The grey-blotched white cat had been loafing on the canvas covers of the quarterdeck nettings, now full of rolled-up seaman’s hammocks, and took Lewrie’s nearness, with a day-glass to his eye, a grand time to “board him”; right atop Lewrie’s left gilt epaulet, and dig his back claws in deep so he could pluck the gilt-laced coat collar with a free paw, and snuffle Lewrie’s left ear.

“Pleased with yerself, are ye?” Lewrie muttered, his head turned and his eyes almost crossed, nose-to-nose with the cat.

“I’ll take him, sir… and, fetch a whisk,” Lewrie’s chief cabin steward, Pettus, offered, reaching out to take Chalky down and away.

“Aloft, there!” Lewrie bellowed to Midshipman Warburton in the main-mast cross-trees. “Anything to report?”

“No vessels in port, sir!” Warburton shouted back, a telescope to his own eye. “Small boats… at the quays, and drawn up onto the beach, sir! No French flags flying!”

Chalky was not taking his removal well; he made close-mouthed Mrrs! of displeasure at Pettus as he was set down on the deck planking, then leapt back atop the hammock nettings to join Toulon, nose-to-nose, as if to complain… or pick a fight.

“It’s early enough, sir, that we still have the land-breeze,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, pointed out. “It may prevail for an hour more, before the Trades take over. Or, less, depending?”

“Deck, there!” Midshipman Warburton called down anew. “There’s a cutter under sail! Coming out towards the moles, sir!”

“What flag?” Lewrie shouted to him.

“Flag of truce, sir!”

“Signal to Pylades, Mister Grainger,” Lewrie snapped over his shoulder to the signals Midshipman of the watch. “Put about to fetch-to. Ready about, as well, Mister Westcott, soon as the hoist is down. Soon as the way’s off her, I’d admire was my gig ready t’row over to speak whoever it is in that cutter.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied, then began to snap out orders to helmsmen, brace-tenders, and the duty watch to prepare the ship for a slight wheel-about to put her bows into the wind off the hills, and bring her to relative rest.

“Pylades shows ‘Acknowledged,’ sir,” Grainger announced.

“Very well… strike the hoist for the ‘Execute,’ ” Lewrie told him, looking aft to squint at Pylades, which had already swung off to Reliant’s larboard quarter, about half a mile astern. Standing in on the early morning land-breeze, almost “Close hauled” already, yet gliding slow and swan-like on such a weak wind, it would not take much to bring both frigates to a halt.

Lewrie paced over to the starboard ladderway to the main deck, peering over the side, to assure himself that his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, had the gig manned and waiting for him.

“Fetched-to, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported.

“I’m off, then. Mind the shop, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he made his way to the entry-port, where a side-party was hastily assembling to see him off, with trilling bosun’s calls, Marine muskets at Present Arms, and doffed hats from the on-deck crew.

“We’ll row over, just outside the breakwaters, and speak that cutter, Desmond,” Lewrie said, once settled in the stern-sheets of the gig.

“Cat hair an’ all, sor?” Desmond whispered from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve a damp scrap o’ rag that’d do.”

He’d not waited for Pettus to fetch up his hand-whisk to remove Chalky’s fur. With Toulon, a white-trimmed black cat, it wasn’t quite as bad a chore, but with the littl’un…! Even hanging his coat in the quarter-gallery toilet overnight did not save his uniforms from appearing “spotty” in broad daylight. He took off his cocked hat to inspect it as Desmond put the tiller over and called the stroke; expecting a parley with General Noailles, Lewrie had had his best-dress laid out for the morning, his best hat left in the japanned wood box ’til the very last moment, yet…! “Aye, give me your rag, Desmond,” he said with a sigh as he began to sponge down his hat and coat.

“Uhm… flag o’ truce, sor?” Desmond asked in a soft voice.

“We don’t have one aboard? Well, damme…,” Lewrie snapped.

S’pose this rag ain’t big enough… or white enough, either! Lewrie thought. He dug out his own clean, somewhat larger white handkerchief and handed it forward. “Sykes… stick this on your gaff, if ye please.”

“Aye, sir,” the bow-man replied.

“Ugly-lookin’ brutes, they is, sor,” Desmond commented as they neared the stone breakwaters, and the oncoming cutter.

“Saint Domingue… Hayti… breeds ’em like mosquitoes, Desmond,” Lewrie told him with a faint grin. “Haven’t seen any other sort on this island… not in six years since I first clapped eyes on the bloody place!”

The oarsmen in the rebel cutter, lolling at ease as long as its lug-sail was up, were the usual ferocious-looking bully-bucks, garbed in loose tan shirts worn un-buttoned for the breeze, most with sleeves cut off at the armpits so their muscular bare arms could show, and the most of them sported ragged-brimmed, nigh-shapeless plaited straw hats on their heads against the sun. Most also wore cartridge-box straps or cutlass bandoliers crossed over their chests.

Astern, at the tiller, sat a younger, frailer-looking fellow of much lighter complexion; a Mulatto, in shirt, waist-coat, and knee-top breeches, with some dead French officer’s sword, and a fore-and-aft bicorne. Beside him sat an even larger, darker man who scowled at them as if willing this party of strange blancs to drop down and die, that instant. He, too, wore gilt-laced cavalry officer’s breeches, sword, a captured officer’s coat, and little else, but for a small cocked hat crammed down on his head so hard that the corners drooped towards his shoulders.

“Arret!” the man snapped, his voice a deep, menacing basso; it was unclear whether he referred to his own boat or Lewrie’s.

“Close enough, I think,” Lewrie muttered to his Cox’n.

“Easy all, lads!” Desmond ordered. “Toss yer oars!”

The cutter’s sail was quickly lowered, its tiller put over, and it swung as if to lay its beam open for a ramming amidships. Desmond heaved on his own tiller to parallel the rebel boat.

“Bon matin, m’sieur!” Lewrie called out, smiling. “Comment allez-vous?” He introduced himself, then waited for a response. “Ehm… any of you speak English? Parle l’Anglais?”

“Va te faire foutre, vous blanc fumier!” the big man snarled.

“A physical impossibility, m’sieur… quel appellez-vous?”

“I speak, en peu, Capitaine,” the young fellow at the tiller hesitantly, almost fearfully, said, his gaze flitting ’twixt Lewrie and his superior, as if expecting a blow for making the offer. There was a quick, rumbling palaver between them before the bigger man shoved the other, as if prodding him to speak for him.

“Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e ask… what ees you’ business ’ere,”

Colonel… “Cut-Throat”? Damme! Lewrie thought, appalled.

“We have come to see if all the French have fled your country, sir,” Lewrie replied, as calmly as he could. “Or, if there are still some French we can kill. They are our enemies, as well, don’t ye know.”

The young fellow relayed that to Colonel “Cut-Throat,” who gave Lewrie a most distrustful glower, and spat overside before replying in a growl, more slave patois than French. Garble-garble-garble, as far as Lewrie could make out.

“Ze Rochambeau, ’e flee Le Cap… uhm… yesterday?” the young fellow informed them. “Noailles, ’e ’ave, uhm… demi-douzaine? Demi-douzaine…” The fellow looked terrified that he didn’t know what that was in English, as if his superior would beat him for not knowing.

“A half-dozen, oui?” Lewrie offered.

“Mais oui, demi-douzaine petit navires… ships! Small ships! Noailles, ’e go to Havana. ’As depart-ed!” the scared young man said in a rush.

“Port de Paix?” Lewrie prompted.

“No Francaise, aucun… none. Umph!” as the bigger man gave him a thump on the shoulder. “Colonel, ’e say you go away, now! No more blanc diables mus’ come to Haiti, ever! You go, now!” he said, taking on his superior’s urgency and ferocity. “Ze whe… white devils ’oo come, z’ey will all die ’ere! Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e swears z’is!” To punctuate the last, the Colonel pulled out a long poignard, or dagger, pointedly licked down the length of its blade, and grinned so evilly that Lewrie felt his blood chill.

“Well, ehm… thankee for the information, m’sieur, and we’ll be going back to our ship,” Lewrie replied, performing a slight bow from the waist and doffing his cocked hat. “Enjoy your new country. Ta ta!’ Au voir, rather.”

Desmond got the gig under way and pointed out seaward, the oarsmen bending the ash looms perhaps a touch more strenuously than usual, which suited Lewrie right down to his toes.

“Noailles had already fled? Well, dash it, I say,” Blanding said with a sigh as Lewrie and Stroud delivered their reports to him aboard Modeste, now the squadron was re-united and striding Sou’-Sou’west for Cape Dame Marie, and Jeremie.

“From what I gathered, sir,” Stroud contributed, not wanting to stand about like a useless fart-in-a-trance, “Port de Paix’s garrison were forced into Cap Francois long ago… and the rebels indeed have invested the Isle of Tortuga, as well. To keep the French from taking shelter there, where their small boats could not get at them with any hope of… well, vengeance, I’d suppose.”

“Noailles didn’t sail away all that long ago, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, with a brow up. “It would seem that Commodore Loring did not maintain a constant blockade over any port but Cap Francois… where all the valuable prizes were.” If ye get my meanin’, he thought, and waited for the shoe to drop with Blanding. “Noailles, so I gather, had half a dozen vessels, all schooners, luggers, or such, with barely the capacity t’take off what little was left of his troops. God knows if he had room for women and children, too. I did not get ashore to see if the rebels had white prisoners… they met me by the breakwaters, and most like would’ve cut all our throats had we tried. Sorry.”

“They say ‘discretion’s the better part of valour,’ Captain Lewrie. No fault of yours,” Blanding said, harumphing a bit, even so, at the disappointment of missing the French. “Havana, did they tell you?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Well, da… blast my eyes,” Blanding said. “And Kerverseau and Ferrand were allowed to sail away, as well… for want of watching? Can’t put that in my report to Admiralty… dear as I wish to. Wasn’t our fault the work was but half-done… and poorly, at that, by Jove!”

“Well, there’s still Guadeloupe, Martinique, a few other isles still in French possession, sir,” Lewrie tried to cheer him up. “The French colony of Surinam, down below Barbados? I just missed the expedition t’take it, back in ’98. Is our Commodore, or Admiral Sir John Duckworth, still aspiring, and… acquisitive… perhaps we will be part of the next venture.”

“We’ll be blockading empty ports, Lewrie,” Captain Blanding re-joined with some heat. “Consigned to vague, far-distant… bloody!… uselessness! Out of sight, out of mind, and don’t come back ’til our rum’s run out, and the water’s brown with corruption. God… mean to say, Heavens above, but this is what success brings, if you ain’t a well-known favourite! Spite-and-jealousy. Spite-and-jealousy! Pah!”

“Well, sir… the bald facts of our reconnoiters, the escape of the French whilst Cap Francois was blockaded…?” Lewrie hinted. “Do we state… all of us… that, per orders, we discovered that the foe had managed to escape, with no blame laid on anyone…? It might take Admiralty a year or two t’mull it over, but… such reports’d raise a large question, wouldn’t they?”

“Bedad, Lewrie, but you’re a sly one!” Blanding exclaimed, come over all beam-ish of a sudden as he grasped the eventual result.

Bedad? Lewrie thought, almost grimacing to stifle a smile; He will end up with a whole new slate o’ odd curses, ’fore his commission is done!

“And…,” Captain Stroud sagely reminded them, “we’ve our prize-money from the Chandeleurs, and our share of the Commodore’s prizes, to boot. Plus the greater glory.”

“Stout fellow, Stroud! Dam… stap me if you ain’t!” Blanding congratulated.