Reefs and Shoals (40 page)

Lt. Bury looked as if he would burst from pride of their accomplishments, spin in a circle and snap his fingers, or shoot out his arms and spin some St. Catherine’s Wheels in delight!

“Where away are
Thorn
and
Firefly
?” Lewrie asked, feeling a bit jealous that he had missed out on all that excitement, himself.

“They are South of Saint Augustine, at present, sir,
prowling
in concert, sir!” Bury informed him.

“Very well, Mister Bury!” Lewrie shouted over. “Take station ahead of me and lead me to them … within, three miles of Saint Augustine on the way!”

“Gladly, sir!” Bury shouted back and waved his speaking-trumpet over his head in glee.

Lizard
cracked on sail while
Reliant
had to take in her tops’ls to the first reef and brail up her main course to match the speed of the smaller sloop.

“Lucky fellows,” Lt. Westcott growled, once done with the reduction of sail aloft.

“Enterprising fellows,” Lewrie amended, looking past the bowsprit and jib-boom, and the feet of the heads’ls, to appreciate the sight of
Lizard
heeling over slightly to starboard and slowly hobby-horsing along, spreading a clean, white wake astern. “For which enterprise, I will dine them aboard this evening, t’hear their tales and celebrate. You will join me, sir?”

“Aye, sir … even do I grind my teeth in envy,” Lt. Westcott said.

“That promised fat boar’s better exercise for your teeth,” Lewrie said with a laugh as he looked aloft to the commissioning pendant. “Let’s give the Dons at Saint Augustine something to think on, Mister Westcott. Hoist my broad pendant, and let ’em know that we are back, and ready to bedevil ’em even worse!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“We decided to emulate your example at Mayami Bay, sir,” Lieutenant Darling of
Thorn
jovially said as he paused in slicing himself a bite of roast pork, “and set the crew of the privateer ashore on their own soil … minus their sea-going kits, of course, even closer to Saint Augustine than the crews of the two privateers we took earlier. They should have no trouble finding shelter. Of course, we kept all of her papers, her muster book, and Letters of Marque.”

“And, it was Bury’s turn to carry them to Nassau,” Lt. Lovett of
Firefly
was happy to add. “There and back again, weren’t you, Tristam? In record time, too!”

“Well, I didn’t want to miss anything,” Lt. Bury shyly agreed.

“And how was Nassau?” Lewrie asked, smirking.

“The port did strike me as much busier than Saint George’s, on Bermuda, sir,” Bury answered rather sombrely and cautiously.

“And Captain Forrester?” Lewrie pressed.

“Ehm … I got the impression that he was impatient over something, sir,” Bury said, ducking his head as if loath to speak ill of a senior officer, or speculate aloud. “When I reported aboard
Mersey,
sir, he
did
ask of you and your doings, and when he may expect you to return to the Bahamas.”

“It was all I could do to wrest myself and my sloop free to rejoin,” Lt. Lovett griped. “Since your
Lizard
is larger, I’m sure that he wished to keep you for his squadron, too.”

“Just so long as you don’t send
me
with the proof of our next successes, sir,” Darling pled with a laugh. “
Thorn
is the largest,
and
the best-armed. Damme if I do not sense lust from here!”

“You haven’t told me how you nabbed the privateer. Pray do,” Lewrie bade as Pettus refilled his wine glass.

“Oh, it was priceless, sir!” Darling hooted in glee. “Just at sunset, we were off Mosquito Inlet and about to put-about Northerly and gain some sea-room for the night, when out she darted from shoreward. Tried to take Lovett on.”

“I was leading, do you see, sir, and Bury and his
Lizard
was astern of me by about seven or eight miles,” Lt. Lovett said, taking up his part of the tale. “She flew no flag, and seemed to come on most aggressively, so we lowered our own, tacked about in a panic, and hared out to sea, to lure her on. Bury evidently saw what was taking place, and stood on, closer inshore.”

“I signalled
Thorn
, sir, got shoreward a bit of her, then went about in chase,” Lt. Bury contributed. Lewrie expected him to elaborate, but Bury lifted his wine and took a sip, as if done.

“She strode up to us and called for us to strike, sir,” Lovett went on, “so we hoisted colours and served her a broadside at about a half a cable. When
Señor
saw that, they broke off, but there was the
Lizard
’twixt her and her lair, so she was caught between us. And not a quarter-hour later, just at sunset, Lieutenant Darling and
Thorn
hove up and she struck without firing a return shot!”

“She was the
Torbellino
—the “Whirlwind”—out of Havana, sir,” Lt. Darling gleefully said. “Fifty men, eight six-pounders, and a pair of six-pounder carronades. A two-masted lateener, like an Ottoman xebec, of all things, sir, of about an hundred tons!”

“Handy on a beat to weather, though,” Lt. Lovett opined. “The Spanish found them useful back in European waters, so it’s no wonder that they’d employ them out here.”

“Carronades?” Lewrie asked, shifting in his chair in un-ease. “I’m not aware that anyone but Great Britain mounts carronades on their warships. God help us do the French copy ’em.”

“Well sir, they
are
British,” Lt. Darling told him, “from the Carron Iron Works, with proof marks to match. The Dons were using them for chase guns.”

“But, where in Hell did the Spanish get ’em?” Lewrie pondered, twiddling with the stem of his wine glass. “Could an American chandler or merchant
order
the bloody things, and pass ’em on to just anyone with enough ’tin’?”

“Perhaps to a Spanish … or a French … privateer that shows up at one of the ‘rondys’ which you suspect take place somewhere along the lower Georgia coast, sir?” Lt. Bury gravely suggested, after dabbing grease and sauce from his thin lips. “If, as you already suspect, French privateers are being supported and aided, who is to say if the Spanish do not avail themselves of the same aid? That would save them a long voyage back to Havana to re-victual, and their solid coin is just as good as French
specie,
sir.”

“Matanzas Inlet, Saint Augustine, and the Saint Mary’s and the Saint John’s Rivers, would be close enough to Savannah for scheduled meetings,” Lt. Lovett added. “It is a crying shame that we allowed the Dons to land ashore before we could put the question to them, sir … but we did not know at that time of your suspicions anent Savannah.”

“Just as we let the Spanish go free at Mayami Bay without any questions, either,” Lewrie gloomed, drumming fingers on the tablecloth, “for lack of suspicions at the time. Damn! That is a shame, sirs. What of the Spanish merchantman, then? Have any of you asked her master and crew if they know anything about privateers being based upon this coast? Perhaps
she
was bringing them supplies.”

“It doesn’t appear that she was, sir, from her cargo manifest,” Lt. Darling said. “She carried rice, flour, and cornmeal, on order to the commanding officer of Castillo de San Marcos, to feed his garrison, and powder and
heavy
shot for the fortress’s guns, sir, along with over one thousand flannel cartridge bags for twenty-four- and thirty-two-pounder cannon. But nothing small enough to mount on a privateer.”

“Well, at least we have a prize that won’t end up costing us,” Lewrie said with a sigh. He noted that Lt. Darling was looking a tad cutty-eyed. “Don’t we?” he further asked.

“I sent her master and crew ashore, too, sir,” Darling admitted. “With a load of gunpowder aboard, I didn’t wish to risk any of them remaining aboard and creating mischief. I also had it in mind that fifty or more penniless mouths to feed would cause the Spaniards more trouble than it be worth to keep them ourselves. In your absence, sir, you left me in temporary command, so…”

“Quite so, Mister Darling,” Lewrie had to say after a moment to stifle his frustration; those Spaniards
might
have known something! “I see the sense of your reasoning. No use cryin’ over spilt milk, hey? She must be sent in to Nassau to be adjudged. I can’t send
you
.…”

More’s the pity!
Lewrie thought.

“Thank God, sir!” Darling exclaimed with a
whoosh
of relief.

“She might not need escort, either, for such a short voyage,” Lewrie mused aloud. “One of your Mids, and enough hands to man her?”

“So long as I may expect to get them
back,
sir,” Lt. Darling said, a bit worried. “I am already two hands short of full complement, and my senior Mid, Mister Bracegirdle, is rated Passed Midshipman, and quite valuable to my ship.”

“For a day or so, he may style himself
Sub
-Lieutenant, then,” Lovett said with a laugh.

There were so many small vessels in the Royal Navy like those in Lewrie’s little squadron that were Lieutenants’ commands, that they had, since 1804, been allowed a second Sailing Master to serve as an additional watch-standing officer, and one seasoned Passed Midshipman who would hold the temporary rating of Sub-Lieutenant for as long as he was aboard that particular ship, returning to his Midshipman’s rank when re-assigned. Most of the Navy thought that the term sounded a trifle silly and pretentious.

“You want him back, sir, he’d best not claim
bein’
one,’” Lewrie hooted, “else Forrester’d poach him off you, quick as a wink! Why, with enough hands,
and
a Sub-Lieutenant, he might be tempted to arm and fit out a jolly boat to protect New Providence from the Dons! That’d be a fine addition to his squadron!”

“That is, indeed, what I most fear, sir!” Darling said with a mock shiver.

The rest of their doings along the Florida coast had been just as eventful, and Lewrie’s young officers were more than happy to tell him all. With the use of the larger boats they had seized at Mayami Bay—scrofulous enough to appear civilian, and harmless—they’d sailed or rowed into every inlet they could find, into every river’s mouth, in search of trouble. The few small clusters of huts they had encountered—far too small to even be called hamlets—they had raided and burned to the ground, rounding up what livestock they could catch and sailing off with it. Settlements were few, and the number of settlers even fewer, an amalgam of dirt-poor Spaniards, half-breed survivors of the original Indian tribes, and runaway Black slaves from plantations in Georgia, and the results of inter-breeding of all these who’d come to eke out a living in Spanish Florida. Only twice had they met any resistance to one of their pre-dawn landings; they had raided Matanzas Inlet, cutting out a large thirty-two-foot fishing boat, and had landed armed sailors near the mouth of the shallow Matanzas River, where they had found a ruined earthen fort, a small settlement, and little else. The inhabitants had run off, there was little to loot, and they were just about to return to their boats when a small troop of Spanish cavalry had shown up from St. Augustine, about twenty or so, who had charged them. With a low berm to raise them above the ground, and the remains of the fort’s wall, even sailors could face the terrors of a cavalry charge, and they had skirmished with them, killing two of the soldiers, wounding a few others who had reeled in their saddles, and had run the rest off back to the town.

“A hellish-scruffy lot, sir, even for soldiers!” Lt. Darling boasted. “Being Spanish, though, what could one expect? The Indians were better at it.”

During another pre-dawn landing, at Amelia Island, North of St. Augustine, and the burning of what few buildings were there, they had been hailed by an Indian in deer-hide breechclout and vest, his head swathed in what looked like a Hindoo turban with feathers … hailed and cursed out in good
English,
and told to bugger off if they knew what was good for them! Lt. Lovett had led the shore party, and had laughed him off … ’til the arrows had started flying and several muskets had been fired in their direction.

“I think their first volleys were more dire warnings than any real attempt to kill us, sir,” the piratical Lovett imparted. “He just popped out of the brush, about a long musket-shot off, said that he and his people were Seminoli, and that we were scaring off the deer, and we should go away, for there was nothing of value to loot, sir. We never got a clean shot at any of them, the way they only stayed in sight long enough to shoot at us, then disappear again. I considered that discretion the better part of valour, and ordered the men to make their way back to the boats, in parties of ten. When they saw that we
were
going to leave, they stopped shooting, and it was only once we were headed out to the ships that they stood up and showed themselves.”

“
Met
some Seminoli, long ago,” Lewrie was happy to reminisce. “During the Revolution, when we went up the Apalachicola River in West Florida to treat with the Muskogee. The Seminoli
are
Muskogee, and the new tribe’s name means ‘Wanderers’. With the original tribes wiped out by the Spanish long ago, I s’pose this land’s empty enough t’suit ’em. They let you off easy, Lovett. I once saw a Muskogee bowman take down half a dozen Spanish soldiers and their local Indian allies in half a minute. Notch an arrow, draw, aim, shout ‘
Yuuu!
’ and down they went!
Flick, flick, flick!
”