Reefs and Shoals Read online

  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 thunking 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 stre
tch 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!

  EPILOGUE

  “Expulsis piratis—Resituta Commercia”

  “He expelled the pirates and restored Commerce”

  —MOTTO OF CAPTAIN WOODES ROGERS, FORMER GOVERNOR OF THE BAHAMAS

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “I’ve the fair copies of your reports ready, sir, if you would care to glance them over,” Lewrie’s clerk, Faulkes said.

  “Aye, thankee, Faulkes,” Lewrie agreed, seated on the settee to starboard of his great-cabins. Reliant and her small squadron were quietly anchored in West Bay below Fort Charlotte in Nassau Harbour, at long last, and he could lounge at ease in his shirtsleeves and a comfortable old pair of white canvas trousers, with a tall glass of cool tea sweetened and lemoned the way he liked it.

  The most important of his correspondence was to Admiralty, far off in London, which described all his actions over the last few weeks, the capture of three French privateers, the Insolent, Otarie, and the Furieux, the amphibious landings his squadron had made, and the raid up the St, Mary’s River. Included was his evidence against the late, un-lamented Edward Treadwell and his Tybee Roads Trading Company, and details of the nefarious plan to aid enemy privateers for profit, in violation of American neutrality.

  A second set of evidence had to be sent to the British Ambassador at Washington City, with a briefer report that covered his raid, and its results, which proved the existence of Treadwell’s plot, and justified his “kind of, sort of” skirting of American neutrality in the narrows of the river, so the ambassador could present the matter to the American government. That would be tit-for-tat and “so there” for American complaints that British forces still garrisoned the upper reaches of the Michigan Territory, ages after the peace treaty that had ended the Revolution in 1783!

  Despite his distaste for the necessity, Lewrie would have to send a copy of the evidence, the ledgers, account books, and all, to their Consul at Savannah, that “top-lofty” idler, Mr. Hereford, with a cover letter that most carefully disguised Lewrie’s loathing of the man and referred to him as a colleague. Hopefully, Hereford would stir up his lazy arse and present the matter to the city officials in Savannah, perhaps to their state government, too, who might lodge accusations and prosecutions against the Tybee Roads Company and all of its subsidiaries. Did they seize the properties and assets, there was a good chance that their seizure and sale, or fines, would make someone in state government a tad richer when it was dissolved!

  Thud! went his Marine sentry’s musket-butt on the deck beyond the door to his cabins. “Midshipman Munsell, SAH!”

  “Enter,” Lewrie idly said without looking up from his reading.

  “My duty, sir, and I am to tell you that a Navy brig-sloop is entering harbour, sir,” Munsell reported, hat under his arm. “She’s made her number … the ah, Delight, sir. I believe she is listed as being assigned to the Bahamas Squadron.”

  “One of Captain Forrester’s?” Lewrie asked with his head over to one side in curiosity. “I thought he took both of his brig-sloops South. Hmm. How far off is she, Mister Munsell?”

  “She’s hull-up at the moment, sir,” Munsell informed him, “an hour or more from anchoring, or firing a salute.”

  “That’ll give me time enough t’read all this over before whoever it is comes callin’, then,” Lewrie decided, yawning. “Thankee, Mister Munsell. Come report to me when
I should have t’be up and dressed.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Lewrie quirked his mouth in faint frustration once Munsell had departed. He had planned to finish reading the reports and see them, along with his personal letters, to the packets bound for Savannah, the Chesapeake, and England, then put his head down for a long, lazy nap, but Delight’s arrival put paid to that idleness.

  Damn! he thought; I wonder if her captain is important enough for me to put on my bloody star and sash?

  * * *

  Thankfully, it was a whole two hours before Delight came into port, fired her salute … a cautious one of twelve guns befitting a Post-Captain of a Fifth Rate frigate … and came to anchor. She made a hoist of “Have Despatches”, then another of “Permission to Board”, which Reliant answered with “Captain To Repair Aboard”, and a boat made its way to the frigate’s starboard entry-port.

  Lewrie awaited the newcomer on deck in the warm early-August sun, shoved into his everyday uniform, with the lesser concession of the star of the Order of the Bath pinned to his coat breast.

  Bosun Sprague and his Mate, Wheeler, did the ship proud with their welcoming calls, the fully-uniformed Marines and sailors of the side-party saluted smartly, and the on-watch hands doffed hats as the officer, a Commander with a lone gilt and fringed epaulet perched on his left shoulder, doffed his hat in reply.

  Midshipman Rossyngton saw him from the entry-port to the quarterdeck where Lewrie stood, whispering to the new arrival.