A Hard, Cruel Shore Read online

  “Hmm, perhaps,” Lewrie replied, though he was not all that sure of that, either; Vigo was too far from Bayonne, or other enemy harbours, too, and it would take a major effort for the French to provide proper escorts that far from home.

  He looked aft to see his squadron strung astern like pearls on a rope, one cable’s separation between them, with Peregrine and her lone prize brig just attaching herself at the very end, having cut a corner and idled for a time ’til the other warships had crossed her bows. All in all, Lewrie thought that his ships made an impressive, and implacable, display to the French watchers ashore, proof that the Royal Navy would be there to isolate and starve the bastards, and that there was nothing they could do about it, even if the French Navy finally found the nerve to sortie. That thought made him grin.

  He heard a tentative woof near his left leg, and there was the ship’s mascot, Bisquit, raising a paw to stroke at his boot to prompt somebody to play with him. In Bisquit’s mouth there was a new chew toy, a foot-long length of three-inch rope with Turk’s Heads worked into either end.

  “Oh, who’s a good boy?” Lewrie cooed, bending over to pet him. “Yes, you are, Bisquit! Got a new toy? No dog slobber on it, yet? Want t’chase it, fetch?”

  Bisquit’s bushy tail whipped like a flag in a stiff gale, and he dropped the toy, beginning to prance. A snatch, a toss aft, and Bisquit was off in a furry brown streak, pouncing on his toy, giving it a fierce shake, growls, and a chase round the poop deck ahead of pursuit, running far enough away to lower his fore end in invitation.

  Lt. Harcourt, the Sailing Master, and the Quartermasters on the helm exchanged faint smiles. Lewrie was sure that they were doing so, but didn’t care a fig. Once he caught up with the dog and snatched the toy away, he tossed it down to the quarterdeck, plop into the compass binnacle, which got the watchstanders into the game, too, and it was a fine scramble before Bisquit pranced back to the poop deck with his prize in his mouth, eager for more fun.

  And when Bisquit’s played out, I think I’ll give the French a bit o’ fun, too, Lewrie decided.

  * * *

  Once the morning parade past the mouth of the Douro was done, and the squadron had made their way further out to sea, Lewrie had the signal made to Peregrine, and Commander Blamey, for him to Repair on Board for a conference. Instead of taking to his gig for a long, slow crawl up the line to Sapphire, Blamey cracked on sail and brought his ship almost within hailing distance before getting into his personal boat and getting rowed across.

  “Good morning, Commander Blamey,” Lewrie bade him once the man attained the deck. “A nice piece of work, this morning. My congratulations.”

  “Ah, thank you, sir,” Blamey replied, doffing his hat with a proud grin on his face. “Though she’s not all that much t’speak of.”

  “Let’s go aft so I can offer you a glass of something, sir,” Lewrie bade him. “Vinho verde, or would you prefer a tinto?”

  “Oh, the vinho verde, sir, and thank you, again!” Blamey said as he followed Lewrie into the great-cabins, got pointed to a seat by the settee, and got a glass of wine in his hands.

  “Lovely stuff,” Lewrie commented, once he’d taken a sip from his own glass. “After sampling Spanish and Portuguese wines, I may find claret and burgundy too dull.”

  “Oh, there’s Spanish tempranillo, and Genoese monte pulciano to make up for those, sir,” Blamey said with a twist of his mouth, “though I had hoped that we might find a way to obtain some port, as long as we’re off its source.”

  “I would, too, sir,” Lewrie agreed, “but, there’s little that we can accomplish on that head, so long as Marshal Soult and his Frogs hold Oporto. Now, Commander … have you had a chance to take the measure of your prize, her cargo and such?”

  Blamey screwed his harsh face into a fierce scowl and made a faint growling sound of disappointment. “She’s shoddily maintained, both her running and standing rigging as thin and worn as charity, sir, her sails all but patches, and full of filth, so I doubt if she’d fetch two thousand pounds at the Prize-Court. Her cargo, well, sir … salt-meats that, frankly, smell a bit ‘off’ to me, cheap, raw vin ordinaires no better than paint thinner, and about one hundred kegs of gunpowder. The best items aboard her are the bottled soups and such, and the pickled vegetables.”

  “So, you wouldn’t cry if we burn her, sir?” Lewrie asked him. “Once the bottled soups and gravies, and the pickled vegetables are removed and shared round the squadron?”

  “Well, not really sir,” Blamey said after a long moment, with another harsh scowl. “There’s better pickings off the North coast of Spain. Though, there are kegs of apples and potatoes, as well, along with flour, salt, sugar, molasses, and dry pastas that should be got off her first.”

  “Good!” Lewrie said with good cheer, “If you would be so good as to hoist the good stuff up from her holds, boats from the other ships can be alongside t’go ‘shares’ of what we wish to keep, we can set her alight by dusk, I’m hopin’.”

  “Dusk, sir?” Blamey asked, waving his empty glass at Pettus for a refill.

  “Dusk, and fire, go hellish-good together, sir,” Lewrie told him with a wink.

  * * *

  The squadron returned to the mouth of the Douro just as the sun was low in the Western skies, most aptly painting the horizon and the clouds a grand, or ominous, amber and gold as they rounded up into the winds and fetched-to, beginning to turn into stark silhouettes of warships loitering just out of gun range from the Castela de Foz.

  The prize brig had possessed two ship’s boats, two dowdy and scabrous twenty-footers, now manned by her former master, mates, and her small crew, laden with their few miserable possessions, and slowly stroking for the headland.

  “If so few French ships put in here,” Midshipman Chenery was chortling with his new mess-mates, “those poor sods will have a long journey home, over the Pyrenees, walking all the way, hee hee!”

  “Where did you pick up the word ‘sods’, Chenery?” Midshipman Kibworth teased him.

  “The prize shows two lanthorns, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out. “She’s ready to go.”

  “Show two lanthorns back, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, back on the poop deck to enjoy the show.

  The winds off the Atlantic that evening were moderate, out of the West by North. The prize brig’s forecourse and tops’ls spread to cup them, hauled down loose and let fall, and she began to gather a bit of way, steering directly for the river mouth. Sailors off Peregrine tumbled down into their rowing boats, oars hoisted aloft, waiting for the last officer to lash and secure her helm, then join them, the last hands who set piles of spare canvas and rope alight, then dashed to the bulwarks to scramble over and leave her.

  “What was her name, I wonder?” Lt. Elmes asked Harcourt on the quarterdeck.

  “Hmm, don’t know,” Lt. Harcourt had to reply.

  “It don’t matter worth a damn,” Lewrie called down to them, then muttered, “Oh, damn!” The prize brig’s crew, slowly rowing into port, began pointing and gesticulating at her, then put their helms over as if they would go alongside their former ship whilst it was going so slowly, and re-take her.

  But no, after only a few oar-strokes in her direction, flames began to wink above her bulwarks, and dark smoke began to waft aloft, and the French sailors turned hastily away and began to row shoreward as if the Devil was raking his talons on their transoms. They knew what cargo they had carried, and wanted nothing to do with the casks and kegs of gunpowder if the hated l’Anglais had left them aboard!

  There was the gloom of the land ahead of the brig, the lights of Oporto and Villa Nova de Gaia sparking to life for the evening, and there was the brig, well aflame now, sailing into the river mouth, beginning to veer a bit to starboard, towards the village of Lavadores on the South bank of the Douro.

  “Charts show a shoal, there,” Mr. Yelland commented, “and it’s noted that the Portuguese were building a mole atop it, before the French put a stop to it. She may
take the ground, there.”

  There were a lot more pinpricks of light ashore, lanthorns and torches lower down the slopes and steep streets of Oporto, as if many watchers were streaming down for a better view of the burning brig, which was now a bowl to contain a conflagration that shrivelled her sails into momentary sheets of flame, before disintegrating into flittering firefly embers borne away and ahead of her by the wind. Her masts and yards, her tarred and slushed rigging, afire from deck to mast-trucks, made eerie, glowing geometric patterns, as if a spider web could glow yellowish-red.

  “Ooh!” was a collective sigh from many hands, “Aah!”

  The fire belowdecks finally reached the gunpowder kegs, and the brig went up like a feu de joie, a brief but brilliant pyrotechnic display that shot skyward like a royal fireworks, planking and bits and pieces of her soaring up and outward in ballistic arcs, and the thunderclap of the explosion was so loud and forceful that men on the squadron’s decks could feel it rattling their chests, feel the stiff gusting of wind, and see the bristly wee wavecrests radiating outward from the wreck as if God himself had slapped the sea.

  “Whee!” Midshipman Holbrooke crowed. “Magnificent!”

  “I wish we’d caught the other,” Midshipman Ward tittered, “so we could do it, again!”

  Satisfied with the show and the probable effect it had on the watching French, Lewrie slowly clomped down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, and bent to reassure Bisquit, who was no fan of loud noises.

  “Well, that’ll put the wind up them, sir,” Lt. Harcourt said with a triumphal grin on his face. “Quite clever.”

  “Clever? Me, Mister Harcourt?” Lewrie scoffed. “I believe it was Captain Yearwood who first proposed such a show, in jest, and in his cups, too, if memory serves. I’ll have t’send him a thank you note.”

  “A damned good show, anyway, sir,” Mr. Yelland crowed.

  “Aye well, I must admit I always liked t’see things go boom,” Lewrie confessed, still more attentive to the dog’s distress.

  “Perhaps we could do the same off Vigo, sir?” Lt. Elmes asked, tongue-in-cheek.

  “We’ll see, we’ll see,” Lewrie replied, then stood back up to turn sobre. “I’d admire that we signal all ships, while they can still see a flag hoist, for the squadron to get under way, course North by West, to clear the coast for the night.”

  “Aye, sir, general signal, make sail and way, Course North by West,” Lt. Harcourt repeated, then called out for the Master Gunner. “Mister Boling!” he bellowed, “load two six-pounders for a general signal!”

  “You have the watch, sir,” Lewrie told them, “I’ll be aft in my cabins … cackling over my witches’ cauldron t’see what fresh mischief we can conjure. Bisquit … want t’come aft where it’s safe and quiet? Bring your toy, mind. Come on!”

  BOOK THREE

  To be sure I lose the fruits of the earth,

  but then I am gathering the flowers of the sea.

  —ADMIRAL BOSCAWEN, PRIVATE LETTER, (1756)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Conditions at sea off the North coast of Spain might have become warmer than the weather during the squadron’s first foray, but milder temperatures did not signify a Spring-like lull in the winds, or the boisterousness of the ocean. One day out of three, the prevailing Westerlies piped up, the seas turned steep, and when HMS Sapphire was within sight of land, the on-rushing waves roared and smashed ashore in tumbling white breakers that almost could be heard from five miles off, forcing Lewrie to tread carefully in the search for prizes, with many looks over his shoulder to see if the weather would turn so foul that his ship might be unable to wear about to face it, and be driven to ruin on that battered coast.

  The Sailing Master and the Lieutenants all agreed that conditions were marginally improved since their last outing, even so, so … if things were better, where were the French? It had been at least a fortnight since the squadron had quit the coast and sailed for Lisbon to replenish. The French surely would have noticed their absence, gotten over their initial panic, and gotten back to the business of supplying their armies, yet … where were they?

  After despatching the rest of the squadron to their operating areas, Sapphire had made her appearance six or seven miles off from Aviles and had slowly prowled Eastward under reduced sail as far as Santander, sometimes closing within four or five miles off the small fishing ports and fetching-to. Her presence had terrified many of the Spanish fishermen, robbing them of a day’s catch, sending what looked like racing regattas dashing into the shelter of their home ports, but there was no sign of French convoys, or escorts, or much of anything.

  * * *

  “We’ll have t’think of something else, then,” Lewrie growled as he sat in his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair on the poop deck, staring intently, frowning rather, at the little seaport town of San Vicente de la Barquera, and the wide and deep notch of an inlet on which it was situated. He levered himself to his feet and clomped down the ladderway to the quarterdeck.

  “Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said to the watch officer, “I’d admire did you fetch the ship to, and haul one of the cutters alongside, then muster a boat crew.”

  “Aye, sir?” Lt. Harcourt replied, so taken aback that he made that sound more like a question.

  “Mister Fywell,” Lewrie turned to one of the Midshipmen, “do you pass word for Mister Roe. He speaks decent Spanish as I recall.”

  “Aye, sir!” Fywell said with a quick doff of his hat, then a dash below to the officers’ wardroom.

  “I’ll be aft for a moment, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie went on. “I’ll fetch you the keys to the arms chests, just in case, and some money.”

  “Sir?” Harcourt asked.

  “With any luck, Mister Roe can buy us some fresh fish for our supper, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said with a grin as he went aft to his cabins.

  Should’ve thought o’ this sooner, Lewrie chid himself as he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk where he kept a stout ironbound chest that held his passage money and personal funds, took out a wash-leather purse, and sorted out some coins, lamenting the fact that His Majesty’s Government sent so much silver to support their so-called “allies” that private banks, large employers, and stores minted their own coinage, and that mostly brass or copper.

  He did have a goodly pile of thruppence, six pence, and even some older silver shillings, all nice and shiny, and … tempting? He dug out a spare purse, dumped those coins in it, and drew the strings to secure them. With that, and the keys to the arms chests, he returned to the quarterdeck, just as Marine Lieutenant Roe, in his shirtsleeves, came to the quarterdeck.

  “You sent for me, sir?” Roe asked, puzzled.

  “Aye, Mister Roe, I did,” Lewrie replied, a sly smile on his face. “Once we’re fetched-to, I wish you to take this purse of coins and go buy us some fresh fish from any Spaniard who doesn’t run off screamin’ at the sight of you. While you’re doin’ that, I wish you to enquire, casually mind, where the French supply ships are. Hang the cost if they wish t’haggle. Hmm, you might forego your red coat, and all, so they don’t think you’re there t’press ’em. You’ll go armed … pistols and cutlasses … but keep ’em out of sight ’til you really have need of ’em.”

  “Ehm … aye, sir, I see,” Lt. Roe replied, looking as puzzled as Harcourt for a moment, then breaking out a grin of agreement, and some amusement. “Fresh fish it will be, sir!”

  “I’ve told off Crawley and his gang to man the boat, Captain,” Lt. Harcourt said, more intent on fetching a brass speaking-trumpet so everyone as far forward as the foc’s’le could hear his commands to round the ship up into the wind and fetch her to.

  But of course ye did, Lewrie sourly thought, striving not to roll his eyes; You and the old Captain’s Cox’n are still thick as thieves.

  “All hands!” Harcourt bellowed. “Stations to wear ship and fetch her to!”

  * * *

  Lewrie went back to his solitary perch on the poop deck onc
e the ship had rounded up into the wind, with squares’ls backed and the fore-and-aft sails trying to drive her forward. He took a telescope with him so he could scan the dozen or so scrofulous fishing boats between Sapphire and the shore, hoping that just one of them would not panic and dash into harbour with the rest.

  This could take a while, he told himself, and wondering why the Spanish, who were now not only British allies, who were living under the boots of the occupying. French, would run from the sight of a British warship.

  Lewrie thought of returning to his deck chair, but Bisquit the ship’s dog had usurped it for a good, yielding place for a nap, and regarded him with one eye half-slit to see if he’d have to jump down. Lewrie walked past the chair, giving Bisquit a head rub on his way aft to the flag lockers and the taffrails, where he would have an un-interrupted view, now that the ship was cocked up into the wind with her stern facing the shore.

  There were two or three fishing boats within a couple of miles of Sapphire, close enough for his telescope to make out ant-sized Spaniards pointing at his ship, ignoring their nets for the moment. Farther off, one or two boats looked as if they would give up on a catch, hauling their nets in empty as if they would flee.

  Surely, the French don’t put guards aboard, do they? he had to ask himself; That’d be a good way o’ getting’ their throats cut.

  Hard as he looked, he saw no sign of anyone on the nearest boats in uniform, or under arms, making him think that the French might be closely watching the fishermen from a shore promontory, and would punish anyone who might dare to have “truck” with a British ship, them and their families as well, with the loss of their boats and livelihoods the least of it.

  It had worked for others, seeking information from fishermen, even cajoling them into passing and delivering messages back and forth from British agents or partisanos. When Lewrie had had the Savage frigate, blockading the mouth of the Gironde River in France, he had developed good relations with French fishermen who’d sell him fish, sausages, and fresh bread for solid coin, and information on the two shore forts, later, both of which he’d assaulted and blown sky high, at last.