Reefs and Shoals Read online

  If people wished to laugh at those squint lines, though, there was the faint, vertical scar upon his left cheek, the mark of a long-ago duel on Antigua in his Midshipman days, to belie them.

  He flashed his teeth, pleased that they looked whiter against his skin, then puffed his breath into a hand; one more of his ginger pastilles would not go amiss.

  Witty and charming? Lewrie thought; I think I’m ready t’please Charleston.

  * * *

  Mr. Cotton laid on a two-wheeled, one-horse hack for the short trip from his house down to Broad Street, and a hotel which he assured Lewrie had a fine dining room. It would be a small dinner party, assembled at short notice, but Mr. and Mrs. McGilliveray would definitely attend, as well as the U.S. Navy officer commanding the two gunboats which guarded Charleston harbour, and a few others.

  As they alit by the doors to the hotel, Lewrie took a moment to savour the early evening. Broad Street was awash in light from many large whale-oil lanthorns that bracketed the entrances of the shops, taverns, and houses, as well as regularly spaced tall street lanthorns, which were just being ignited. The skies and the thin clouds overhead were shading off to dusk after a spectacular sunset, and there was a welcome coolness to the breezes, though the air still felt humid.

  “Red skies at night, sailors sleep tight, hey, Sir Alan?” Mr. Cotton japed. “Shall we go in and take a glass of Rhenish to prompt our appetite?”

  “Certainly,” Lewrie agreed.

  “And, here are some of our guests, sir!” Mr. Cotton exclaimed, ready to make the introductions. Lewrie turned with a smile plastered on his phyz, recognizing Mr. Douglas McGilliveray, who had captained a converted merchantman, a U.S. Armed Ship, in the West Indies during the Quasi-War with France in 1798. There was a fellow in his thirties wearing the uniform of a navy officer, still the dark-blue coat with the red facings and lapels, the red waist-coat and dark-blue breeches that had been in style since the Revolution.

  At least they got rid o’ the tricorne hats and changed over to cocked hats. They looked like sea-goin’ farmers, else!

  Ever the good host, Mr. Cotton did the introductions, first to the McGilliverays, though Mr. Douglas McGilliveray eagerly offered his hand, and introduced his wife, himself.

  “You’re coming up in the world, Captain Lewrie,” McGilliveray jovially said. “The last time we met, you wore but one epaulet, but now, ha ha! For bravery and success, surely.”

  “A squadron action off New Orleans, sir,” Lewrie happily explained. “So good to see you, again, sir, and in such fine health. And, Mistress McGilliveray … your servant, ma’am,” he said with a bow, and a doff of his hat.

  “Sir Alan!” the older lady gushed as she dipped a brief curtsy. Evidently, even egalitarian Americans did “dearly love a lord”!

  “Hmpf … what’s he doing here?” Mr. McGilliveray muttered, making them all turn to take note of three men slouching against the side of a carriage further up the street.

  “Sir Alan, allow me to also introduce to you Lieutenant Israel Gordon, the officer commanding U.S. naval forces in Charleston,” Mr. Cotton soldiered on, after a nervous peek at the three men, “and his lady, Mistress Susannah Gordon. Lieutenant and Mistress Gordon, allow me to name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate, Reliant.”

  “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Gordon, Mistress Gordon,” Lewrie said, making another bow. “Your servant, sir … ma’am.”

  “And to make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Gordon replied with equal gravity, in a jarring New Englander’s accent; his wife sounded like a Down East Yankee lady, too, when she spoke. Mrs. Gordon found need to use a silk and lace fan, even after the day’s heat had dissipated.

  “But weel no one introduce me to such a grand Anglais sea-dog?” one of the men who had been slouching by the coach requested, forcing them all to turn to face him.

  “And you are, sir?” Mr. Cotton archly demanded, screwing up his mouth over the man’s impertinence.

  “I name myself,” the cheeky fellow said, smirking. “Capitaine Georges Mollien, of ze Otarie … à votre service.” He snatched off a rather small cocked hat, one whose ends had been pulled down nearly to his earlobes, and laid it on his breast as he performed a sweeping grand mock of a bow.

  Bloody Frogs! Lewrie furiously thought; Never more top-lofty and arrogant than when ye can’t shoot ’em on the spot!

  This Captain Mollien was a short and wiry fellow, two inches shorter than Lewrie, with a pinched, foxy face. On his hip he wore a small-sword, and by the way his dark-blue coat sagged, there might be a brace of pistols in the side pockets. Behind him, grinning just as scornfully, stood two of his mates or crew, both “beef to the heel”.

  Lewrie had been the recipient of many a scornful look in his time, delivered by superior officers, gawping nobility, or St. James’s Palace courtiers who’d caught him in “pusser’s slops” or shirt sleeves, so he knew how to deliver one when given the chance. With one brow up in dis-belief, and a wee lift of a corner of his mouth for amusement, he slowly inspected Mollien from the top of his head of loose, lank, and long dark hair to his open shirt collar and neck-stock worn loose like a rag in the style of the sans-culottes revolutionaries, down an écru linen shirt front to a garish red waist sash, and scanned buff-coloured trousers crammed into a pair of top-boots indifferently buffed and blacked, to Mollien’s scuffed boot toes, and back, again. At the end, he said “How marvellous for you,” in a flat-toned drawl, and turned back to chat with his supper party guests.

  “Well, shall we go in and take seats at our table?” Mr. Cotton quickly suggested.

  “I weeshed to see ze man ’oo ’as come to mak’ war on me,” the Frenchman said, a little louder as if wishing to attract witnesses to his “bearding” of an enemy officer. “To tak’ ’ees measure.”

  “You are impertinent, Captain Mollien,” Lt. Gordon stiffly said.

  “A dog in a doublet,” Mr. McGilliveray harumphed.

  “Make war upon you?” Lewrie purred, after fighting down an urge to swing about and punch the man in the face. “I certainly will, but not in Charleston Harbour. It’ll come … all in good time, gunn’l to gunn’l,” he promised with a bright smile. “Not in the middle of Broad Street, either … unless you desire a violation of the city’s hospitality, and American neutrality. Is that what you came for, with your bully-bucks to protect you?”

  “But I am ze peaceful marchand man, M’sieur le Capitane,” Mollien said, wide eyed and with a hand upon his heart as if basely accused of wrongdoing, shrugging and smiling. “I do not fear one such as you. Ze soft-’anded Anglais aristo?” he added with another smirk.

  “You should,” Lewrie told him, stepping a bit closer, “Indeed, you should.”

  “’Ow much eet cos’ you to buy your star an’ sash?” Mollien asked him. “Peut-être, I can afford eet, too?” He was louder in his mocking, now that he had gathered a half-dozen or so strollers.

  “Several … hundred … dead … Frenchmen,” Lewrie gravelled back. “Think ye can afford that?”

  Mollien pursed his lips to a slit, and he got a wary look on his face. His little bit of street theatre was not going the way he had thought; the idle fop Anglais he’d expected was turning out to be anything but, and … had the Anglais’s eyes gone as grey as a sword blade, from an inoffensive, merry blue?

  “Oh, well said, Sir Alan!” Mr. Cotton crowed. “Well said, I say!”

  “You’ve had your street raree show, Captain Mollien,” McGilliveray gruffly said. “You delay our supper. If you’re quite done…”

  “Un type l’aristo Anglais pédale,” one of Mollien’s sychophant sailors muttered under his breath, elbowing his mate with a sneer.

  He just call me a queer? Lewrie fumed to himself.

  “Captain Mollien, the manners of your men, sir!” Lt. Gordon barked, one hand flexing on the hilt of his sword. “Such language in the presence of ladies! Are these the fine manner
s one usually expects from a Frenchman?”

  “Fie!” his wife chimed in with an outraged hiss.

  Mollien had rounded on his sailors to shush them, but it was too late to salvage the situation. When he turned back to face Lewrie, his face writhed between hang-dog apology and frustrated anger.

  “Indeed, sir. Begone with you!” Mr. McGilliveray snapped, and shifted his grip on his heavy walking stick from elegant cane to hard cudgel.

  “A t’ousan’ pardons, M’sieurs, Madames; eet was unforgivable, and I weel be sure to puneesh ’eem as soon as…” Mollien tried to say.

  “He can’t help it, Mister McGilliveray … Lieutenant Gordon,” Lewrie drawled again, trying to recall the very words that that blood-thirsty old cut-throat and spy, Zachariah Twigg, had once said to that foul beast, Guillaume Choundas, to goad him at Canton, China, so many years ago. “Captain Mollien was born under a three-penny, ha’penny planet, never to be worth a groat … a swaggerin, ‘gasconading’ Frog who’s but one step away from outright piracy!”

  Mollien looked angry enough to draw his sword or one of his pocket pistols, rowed beyond all temperance by Lewrie’s caustic slur. He also looked utterly cowed and defeated. Mollien had not put his wee cocked hat back on his head; he still held it in both hands as if deferring to his betters, gripping it so hard that he was wringing it out of shape … like a desperate beggar.

  Can’t find a way t’slink off? Lewrie gloated.

  “You weel nevair catch me, Capitaine,” Mollien said, chin up, though looking a tad shaky and unsure as he took a step or two away as if ready to depart.

  “Yes, I will,” Lewrie levelly promised him, “before the year is out. Run all ye wish; it don’t signify. Leave port this instant, I and Reliant will find you, sooner or later. If not me, then it’ll be another of our ships. The Royal Navy will be out there, looking for you and the rest of your privateersmen. We will always be there, just over the horizon. Adieu, Captain Mollien.”

  Mollien seemed so frustrated that he didn’t even deny that his ship was a privateer. He performed a sketchy bow in congé, realising that his hat was still in his hand, and, pinch-faced with his cheeks aflame, stepped back and spun on his heels, bumping into his sailors. He shoved them back, hissing threats and curses at their unfortunate comment that had cost him his dignity, and had ruined his taunts.

  “Ahem!” Lt. Gordon said. “Apologies, Captain Lewrie, for that fellow, but … he isn’t an example of American manners, and I hope you don’t think less of us for his low behaviour.”

  “Or, think less of our fair city of Charleston, Sir Alan,” Mrs. McGilliveray said in a sweet Low Country accent. She had pulled her own fan out and was fluttering away at Mollien’s effrontery.

  “Short of a street brawl, Mistress McGilliveray, nothing ever could diminish my appreciation of such a lovely city,” Lewrie gallantly responded. “Now that’s over, does anyone feel as peckish as I do?”

  “Indeed, let’s go in!” Mr. McGilliveray seconded. “I’m fair famished!”

  “Quite the street raree,” Mr. Cotton commented, casting a last look down Broad Saint to assure himself that Mollien and his sailors were indeed gone. “One that redounded to Mollien’s loss, ha ha!”

  “At the end of a successful performance, one usually rewards the juggler or singer with tuppence, or five pence,” Lewrie said, in good takings now that the fellow was gone. “Should I have tossed him something?”

  “Oh, no more than a ha’penny, Sir Alan,” Mr. Cotton snickered. “It wasn’t all that good. Perhaps no more than … ha ha … a groat!”

  As they were led to their table and took their seats, Lewrie did wonder if Mollien was cleverer at sea than he was at mockery, or quick-witted repartee. Had he goaded the man perhaps a tad too raw? And what would a clever Frog do to get his own back?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Boat, ahoy!” was the shout from Reliant’s quarterdeck.

  “Aye aye!” the cutter’s bow man called back, showing four fingers in sign that a Post-Captain was aboard. It was absurd, really, for the boat was one of Reliant’s cutters, manned by Lewrie’s usual boat’s crew, and had left the frigate not half an hour before, and it would take a blind man not to see Lewrie seated aft by Cox’n Desmond in all his shore-going finery.

  The bow man hooked onto the main chain platform with his gaff, and the oars were tossed vertically, then boated. Lewrie carefully made his way to amidships, stood on the gunn’l briefly, seized hold of the after most stays, and stepped aboard by the chain platform, then up the boarding battens. Bosun Sprague’s silver call piped, the crew on watch faced the entry-port and removed their hats in deference, a side-party of seamen and Marines greeted him … and the ship’s dog, Bisquit, went mad with joy, barking, yipping, and dancing about, daring to stand on his hind legs and put paws on Lewrie’s midriff, his tail whipping like a flag in a full gale, and his tongue lolling.

  “Welcome back aboard, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, doffing his hat in salute, and trying not to laugh out loud.

  “Thankee, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, ruffling Bisquit on his head and neck with his left hand and doffing with his right. “I would stand upon my dignity,… if I could find it. Now, now! Get down, sir, and behave yourself.”

  “My apologies for cutting your time ashore short, sir, but, the French schooner began preparations to sail, and—” Westcott began to explain.

  “And, you’d’ve preferred to go after her, instanter, but thought leavin’ me behind’d look bad?” Lewrie interrupted, grinning.

  “Something like that, sir,” Westcott replied, shrugging. “She made up to a single bower, and hauled in to short stays, beginning about an hour ago. She’s just taken a pilot aboard, and looks ready to weigh, sir.”

  “You sent for a pilot, sir?” Lewrie asked, removing a telescope from the compass binnacle cabinet, and going to the larboard side for a closer look at the French vessel.

  “I did, sir, but so far—” Westcott said.

  “But none have responded, so far, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie posed, sounding tongue-in-cheek and more idly amused than upset. “And, ain’t that just uncanny!”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “As I suspected,” Lewrie told him over his shoulder, his attention focussed on the activity aboard Mollien’s schooner. “Do we confer with the Sailing Master, I believe we’ll find that she’ll be crossin’ the Charleston Bar just at the peak of high tide, right at slack-water, and, by the time a harbour pilot responds to our request, the tide’ll be on the ebb. We might squeak over the bar … not that Mollien needs that much depth under his keel, but we do, more’s the point. Captain Mollien will think himself a ‘sly-boots’ … but, he ain’t.”

  “Mollien, sir? Is that the French captain’s name?” Lt. Westcott asked.

  “Aye,” Lewrie told him, shutting the tubes of the telescope and turning in-board to face his First Officer. “Met him last night, him and a brace of his larger sailors. He almost ruined a most pleasant and congenial supper party,” Lewrie said with a laugh, filling Lieutenant Westcott in on the confrontation, and on how Mollien had had to slink away with his tail between his legs, fuming. “Lieutenant Gordon of the United States Navy contingent, and his wife, accompanied Mister Cotton and me back to the Consul’s residence afterwards, just in case Mollien felt pettish enough t’waylay me, but nothing happened. I had a good night’s sleep, after that.

  “Damme, what’s the dog doin’ on the quarterdeck, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie demanded of a sudden, noting that Bisquit had slunk from the sail-tending gangway to shelter by one of the 32-pounder carronade slides.

  “Well … I expect he followed you, sir,” Westcott replied. “He adores everybody, you included,… and has come to expect that anyone coming off-shore has a treat for him.”

  “Well, I do,” Lewrie gruffly confessed, “but he’ll get it on the weather deck, not up here. Mister Munsell, attend me, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir?” the Midshipman perkily replied. />
  “See that the dog gets this,” Lewrie directed, digging into his shore-going duffel, “but not on the quarterdeck, hmm?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Too late! The aroma of fresh-fried ham on fresh-baked bisquits with gravy, carefully wrapped up in a packet of tarred sailcloth, got the dog to its feet. Instead of peeking longingly from the shelter of the carronade slide, Bisquit sprinted forward and began to prance and whine round Lewrie. Midshipman Munsell took him by the collar to tow him to the starboard ladderway and then to the main deck to feed him his treats.

  “The rest of your time ashore went well, dare I ask, sir?” Lt. Westcott enquired.

  “Main-well indeed,” Lewrie told him with a pleased expression, further explaining that their Consul, Mr. Cotton, and his supper guest, Mr. Douglas McGilliveray, from one of the great trading houses in the state, and a man who had his finger on the pulse of Charleston commerce, did not suspect that any aid and comfort was being provided to French or Spanish privateers, and that vessels such as Captain Mollien’s Otarie rarely called, at all. “No, I think we’ll have to search further South of here, Mister Westcott—Hilton Head Inlet, Stono Inlet, Port Royal, or Savannah, Georgia.”