The Invasion Year l-17 Page 5

  Killing British sailors, killing gentlemen-officers, and one of them a Post-Captain, evidently seemed to check Mirabois’s ardour for blood; there most-like could be a very long war with Great Britain if he waved his signal; a war his masters surely would wish to avoid. He agreed to the delay, ill-mannered and as petulant as any Frenchman.

  “Hoy, Mister Willoughby!” Lewrie shouted up to the Chlorinde’s quarterdeck once his gig was back alongside. “What-ho?”

  “She’s coming, sir, inch by inch, but she’s coming free!” that energetic worthy called back down, still sporting that joyous, beamish grin of his. “Might I enquire what the rebels said to you, sir?”

  “Surrender her and all her people for massacre, perhaps as the entree for the celebration supper, instanter, or they’ll fire heated shot into her, sir! I’ve warned him that there are British sailors aboard, and that he’d best give it a long think, if he don’t wish a new war with us!” Lewrie called back, grinning in spite of things, himself. “Let us work her off, cut their losses, call it a bad-”

  “That gives me a marvellous idea, sir, if you will indulge me for a moment?” Lt. Willoughby interrupted. “Be back in a trice!”

  He’ll inflate the hot-air balloons the women’ve made from their silk gowns, and he’s ready t’fly her off? Lewrie thought.

  Several hundred voices, male and female, began to sing, of all the daft things! It was the French national anthem, that boisterous, blood-thirsty, martial tune. There came the sharp, crack of a swivel-gun, a light 2-pounder, then the Tricolour was fluttering down from the after staff, and cut free to drape the entire stern.

  Up went a British Union Jack in its place.

  Willoughby came back to the bulwarks, with a French officer in a fore-and-aft bicorne hat and gilt epaulets.

  “Captain Lewrie, sir! Instead of waiting ’til she’s made her offing to strike her colours, her captain, here, has agreed to strike now… making Chlorinde a British prize, and, un-officially, a ship now to be reckoned a warship in the Royal Navy!” Lt. Willoughby cried down to Lewrie. “Do they open on her, it surely will be a war!”

  “Oh, very good, Lieutenant Willoughby! Mine arse on a band-box, but that’s good!” Lewrie congratulated him. “I will relate the news to Colonel Mirabois… and hope he chokes on it!”

  * * *

  It was late afternoon before Chlorinde, many tons lighter, finally hauled her hull off the rocks. Despite the loss of her rudder and some stove-in underwater planking, resulting in several leaks that could be patched with fothering and spare canvas, she floated; she’d not sink!

  “Once you’ve made your offing, signal me if you need towing,” Lewrie offered, ready to depart for Reliant, and a celebratory glass of something cool and alcoholic. “One hellish-fine piece of work ye did, Mister Willoughby. Should your captain need a seconding to your report of the day, he’s but to ask.”

  “Thank you for saying so, Captain Lewrie, and I expect we will need a tow,” Lt. Willoughby replied, looking exhausted but immensely pleased with an arduous job well done.

  “Ehm… I wonder if we’re related or not, Mister Willoughby,” Lewrie hesitantly asked, making the younger officer cock his head in expectation of a pleasing coincidence. “My father is Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby. His family’s estate was in Kent… was once with the Fourth Regiment of Foot, ‘The King’s Own’… then with the ‘John Company’ army in India, commanding the Nineteenth Native Infantry?”

  “Uhm,” Lt. Willoughby replied, looking as if he fought a grimace, or a beetle had just pinched his testicles. “Sir Hugo, you say? And… might his father have been one Stanhope Willoughby, who once resided near Linton?”

  Heard of us! Lewrie sadly realised.

  “I believe he is, though he didn’t talk of him, much,” Lewrie told him. And, with damned good reason, he told himself; Father can’t hold a candle t’that old scoundrel’s sins! The both of us are pikers, in comparison… eligible t’take Holy Orders!

  “Oh, that would be the, ehm… that would make us kin, sir. Of a sort, though…,” Lt. Willoughby hemmed and hawed, nigh to blushing.

  “Well, I won’t mention the connexion, if you won’t. No sense lettin’ on you’re related t’that old rogue… or us. Bein’ the son and grand-son to ’em is bad enough.”

  “Quite understood, sir, thank you,” Willoughby said with a very relieved smile. “The French wish to give you departing honours, sir. After the assistance you rendered them, and me, they appear grateful… for Frenchmen. An admiral’s side-party… minus the muskets.”

  “And I’ll accept, gladly,” Lewrie said, grinning.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Commodore Loring took his prizes, his prisoners, and his waif-like refugees back to Kingston, Jamaica, as quick as he could quit the coast, escorting, or guarding, the French and their vessels with his entire squadron. Well, almost all of his squadron.

  The much smaller four-ship squadron, of which HMS Reliant was a part, which had been despatched under “Independent Orders” to pursue the French ships that had sailed from Holland back in May, had never been Loring’s favourites, from the time they had entered the Gulf of Mexico and Loring’s bailiwick, his “patch,” without the usual courtesy call at Kingston to announce their presence. It hadn’t helped to form good relations with the senior officer on the Jamaica Station that they had hunted down their quarry off the Chandeleur Islands of Louisiana and had brought them to action and beaten them, taking four prizes in honourable battle, either; the Royal Navy in the West Indies had been successful at taking islands, but that sort of knock-down-drag-out sea fight had so far eluded them… most pointedly, Commodore Loring.

  Their assigned duty done, Captain Stephen Blanding’s four ships-the 64-gun Modeste, Reliant, and a brace of older 32-gun frigates, Cockerel and Pylades-had been sent to loiter off the other harbours of Hispaniola, both the bloody Saint Domingue and the Spanish Santo Domingo (even though the Spanish showed no signs of becoming belligerents and French allies, again); the almost total elimination of their over-seas trade and hundreds of merchant ships, the drubbing they had gotten at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797, and the general ineffectiveness of their Navy in European waters might have made the Dons leery of taking another shot at war.

  And so it was, again. Commodore Loring’s last orders, before he danced over the horizon with a fine following wind, was for Blanding’s little clutch of ships to make a final reconnoiter of Saint Domingue’s, or Hayti’s, lesser seaports, and report back to Kingston… after the welcomes and celebration balls!

  “Ah well, such is Navy politics,” Captain Blanding told them all with a dramatic heave of his broad shoulders, punctuating those words with so loud and trailing a sigh that he sounded much like a “Montague” skewered by a “Capulet” sword in Romeo and Juliet, and “eating all the scenery” as he over-dramatically “expired.”

  Lewrie hid his smirk at Captain Blanding’s antics; the man was one of the most eccentric officers ever he’d met in his whole naval career. It was uncanny how boisterous, loud, and excitable Blanding could be.

  “A glass with you all, gentlemen,” Blanding proposed, as both of his cabin stewards bustled about to top up their wine. There were only six of them dining this evening as the squadron stood “off and on” the coast, out into deeper, open water, then back. Captain Blanding liked to dine his captains in, quite often, and, over the months since they’d first gotten orders to serve together, had, for the most part, formed a “chummy” association.

  In addition to Lewrie there was Captain Parham, a younger fellow with a single gilt epaulet on his right shoulder, denoting that he was a Post-Captain of less than three years’ seniority. Parham had served in HMS Jester, Lewrie’s first major command, as a Midshipman, and now had HMS Pylades. Parham was a very likable and pleasant fellow. HMS Cockerel’s captain, Stroud, was also new to his “Post” rank, once the First Officer of Myrmidon, a Sloop of War that Lewrie’s Jester had been teamed with in the Mediterranean and
Adriatic in 1796. Stroud was the odd-man-out; he was workman-like, immensely competent, but immensely dull in social situations. Yet, at the same time, if he wasn’t included in off-duty things, he took it as a slight, and was ever pressing for his Cockerel to be given the lead, to prove what he, and she, could accomplish. They all walked small, round Stroud!

  And, with their host came Captain Blanding’s First Lieutenant, James Gilbraith, “Jemmy the One,” as Blanding sometimes teasingly called him. In point of fact, he and Blanding were both much alike: big, bluff, hearty, and stout, extremely fond of their “tucker,” and it did not do to get between them and the sideboard or dining table. Jemmy Gilbraith was also one of those poor fellows whose hide did not agree with harsh tropic sunlight; he was forever red and peeling.

  Lastly, there was Blanding’s Chaplain, and a rarity aboard most Royal Navy ships, the Reverend Stanley Brundish, for the very good reason that most “padres” willing to ship aboard were the equivalent of the Church of England’s ne’er-do-wells, its drunks and failures with so few of the vitally necessary connexions and “interest” that could not land a rectory or curacy even in the poorest London “stew.”

  Brundish, however, was from Captain Blanding’s own parish, and was a distant “cater-cousin,” an erudite and well-read fellow in his mid-thirties who could actually put together a sensible, logical homily, instead of droning through bought sheafs of sermons written by others, and could cite correct chapter and verse off the top of his head, quite unlike the “Mar-Text” reverends Lewrie had come across. Brundish also had a voice like a Bosun’s that could reach the beak-heads from the quarterdeck nettings, could stir up a crew with the enthusiasm of leaping Methodists, tailored his homilies with nautical references, and encouraged all with loud, lustily-sung hymns of the muscular sort. Chaplain Brundish was a constant presence by Captain Blanding’s side… if only to keep him from cursing and blaspheming.

  “I give you a duty most honourably done, at long last!” their senior officer intoned, seconded by a hearty, “Hear him!” from Lieutenant Gilbraith, and they all emulated Captain Blanding by tossing back goodly gulps; though they skipped licking their lips and smacking, as he did.

  “Well, sirs… supper is laid, and a toothsome repast I assure you it will be,” Blanding promised. “Let us take seats, what?”

  A fine meal it was, too, and a most jovial one. When close on the Haitian shore the day before, one of Modeste’s Midshipmen had come across a sea turtle, and it made for a thick and meaty soup. “I saved some turtle meat for your blasted cats, Captain Lewrie, haw haw!” the squadron commander joshed.

  Both Blanding and Brundish fancied themselves talented anglers, and, whilst Modeste had sat fetched-to off Cap Francois, or cruised at bare steerageway, they had hauled in a large red snapper and a small grouper. Captain Blanding’s personal cook had turned the grouper into breaded tarts, using dust from the bottom of the bread bags and flour, a puree of “portable” pea soup, paprika, and fresh lemon juice. Those tarts came as a second appetiser on a large platter for all to share, whilst the red snapper made their first entree.

  Following those dishes came a roast quail for each guest. Captain Blanding insisted on quail and squabs, along with ducklings and chicks, to be stocked in Modeste’s forecastle manger, along with the usual piglets and goat kids, since they are so little and matured so quickly. Captain Blanding was right high on rabbits, too, for like reasons. Their removes were boiled potatoes, somewhat fresh from the chandleries at Kingston, and mixed beans in sweet oil and vinegar, with fine-diced onion. Captain Blanding was very fond of beans of all sorts!

  Next came a pork roast with cracklings; a bordeaux replaced the sauvignon blanc to accompany it. Last, before the nuts, cheese, and port bottle, came an approximation of an apple pie split six ways; the apples were from England, shrivelled and old, but stretched out with soaked ship’s bisquit, with extra sugar and goat’s milk’s sweetness to disguise the lack of actual fruit.

  Through the meal there had been a great deal of relieved japing and chit-chat, now the French had surrendered and struck their flags without casualties, with Lewrie’s tale of going ashore to beard those devils, Dessalines, Christophe, and Clairveaux, in their own den one of the highpoints, then the rescue of Chlorinde for yet another source of amusement.

  “I must say, Captain Lewrie, you have developed quite a talent for rescuing French people in their most desperate moments,” Brundish said, leaning forward on the table with a glint of glee in his eyes; a tad canted by drink, and the glint might have been a bit un-focussed.

  “Confusion to the French!” Parham proposed, which prompted all to up-end their glasses and wait for refills.

  “Man of many parts, is Captain Lewrie,” Gilbraith said loudly.

  “Just as the Good Lord has bestowed upon you, sir, the talent for making war,” Brundish went on, “perhaps He also blessed you with an innate skill which only now emerges. War, implacable, then mercy in war’s aftermath, perhaps? As befits a Christian gentleman.”

  “An English gentleman!” young Parham stuck in. “Hear, hear!”

  “I’d rather not make a habit of it, though, Reverend,” Lewrie replied, trying to shrug a serious moment off with humour. “God also gifted mankind with the joy of music, an ear for its enjoyment, and a talent for makin’ it, but… look what I’ve made o’ that’un!”

  His tootling on his humble penny-whistle was legendarily bad.

  “Saving the dashed French from the results of the folly they get into is one thing, Brundish,” Captain Blanding told him. “Saving the French from overweening pride… Popery, or that heretical Napoleon Bonaparte and his global ambitions, is quite another.”

  “Successful war cures some of those problems, sir,” Lieutenant Gilbraith pointed out. “Pride… ambitions. We can handle that.”

  “And you may convert them from Popery, sir,” Lewrie suggested to Chaplain Brundish. “Or, are they outright atheists, lead them to salvation.”

  “Now, that’d be as hard as making them humble, haw!” Captain Blanding hooted.

  “Just so, sir! Well said!” Lt. Gilbraith seconded.

  Toady! Lewrie thought him. Still, it worked for Gilbraith, and for Blanding, too, who laid back his head and bellowed laughter to the overhead. A glass later, and the tablecloth was whisked away, and the cheese, nuts, sweet bisquits, and the port, with fresh glasses, were laid for them. As the bottle circulated larboardly round the table, Captain Blanding got a speculative look on his phyz.

  “I wonder, gentlemen, do we discuss our orders for a moment in… well, I cannot term it sobriety, haw haw! But, could any of you tell me the value of making yet another circumnavigation of the island of Hispaniola, and peeking into every little dam… blasted harbour?”

  That thought didn’t sober them up, but it did shut them up, for a bit; ’til Captain Stroud, who’d been mostly quiet during supper, silently appreciating the camaraderie, hesitantly spoke up.

  “Well, sir, I expect we could forgo Port-Au-Prince. The French lost it long ago,” he said.

  “Anything in the Gulf of Gonaives,” Parham seconded, looking a tad squiffy, himself; pie-eyed in point of fact, and sure to need the bosun’s sling to get back aboard his own ship, later. Perhaps into his gig from Modeste!

  “Gonaives, Saint Marc, Leogane,” Lewrie recalled off the top of his head. “The Isle Gonave, too? I b’lieve we can safely determine the rebels hold all those. After we peek into Port de Paix and Mole Saint Nicholas tomorrow, the last place a French detatchment could yet be holding out would be at Jeremie, on the Sou’west peninsula’s tip, and that would just about do it, as far as the French half of Hispaniola goes.”

  “We know Jacmel, on the Southern coast, is rebel-held,” Lieutenant Gilbraith supplied.

  “Explore the Spanish half?” Blanding asked, gesturing impatiently for the port bottle.

  “Well, sir,” Stroud cautiously replied, looking suspiciously sober in comparison to his supper-mates. “There’s Ge
neral Kerverseau and his… regiment?… taken over Santo Domingo from the Spanish, and that General Ferrand at Santiago, with the few troops he was able to evacuate, but… Commodore Loring already had us look into their situation before we rejoined him, here off Cap Francois, and I can’t see anything changing in the last week.”

  “Don’t know whether those two blasted scoundrels are setting up their own little empires, or have interned themselves with the Dons,” Captain Blanding grumbled. He took a sip of port, smacked his lips, and added, “And, it’s not as if there will be any other deuced French ships coming to rescue them, any time soon, hey? Did they not flee in local luggers, and such?”

  Deuced… he’s found another substitute for “bloody,” Lewrie thought, with a grin; Or “damned”!

  “We saw no sea-going vessels in either port, sir,” Lt. Gilbraith reminded him. “They’re surely stuck ’til next Epiphany.”

  “Couldn’t have gotten away with much in the way of victuals, so, when they run short, they will have to start… requisitioning from the local Spanish,” Parham supposed aloud.

  “Best not have landed short of ammunition, then!” Lewrie stuck in with a snicker. “Once they start in stealin’, hmm?”

  “Or, mess with the Spanish women!” Lt. Gilbraith hooted.

  “Don’t quite know if our superiors ordered those ports watched,” Captain Blanding grumbled on, sounding querulous. “But, I think we may consider our orders fulfilled by looking into Port de Paix, Mole Saint Nicholas, then Jeremie, before sailing for Jamaica to rejoin the Commodore. Captain Stroud?”

  “Aye, sir?” Stroud perked up, eager for any duty to show what he was made of, and make a name, after so many years in the background.

  “I’d admire did you and Cockerel look into Port de Paix in the morning,” Blanding instructed. “And, though it’s good odds that those rebel slaves have invested the old buccaneer haunt, the Isle of Tortuga cross the strait from Port de Paix, you might go in as close inshore as you may, for a look-see, as well.”