The Gun Ketch (19 page)

"Damn ... my ... eyes," Lewrie pronounced tongue in cheek, slowly as if trying it on for the first time. "And is that best uttered with one hand on the hip, sir? Perhaps ... gazing aloft and wondering why the devil all that laundry's drying up there, sir?"

"Goddamme, but you'll do, Captain Lewrie! You're a jolly young dog, and blessed with the second-handsomest lady in the islands. I do avow you'll do right well for me! My irreverent sort of fellow."

"I will endeavor to please, sir," Lewrie smiled back, lifting a glass of champagne to his lips. This Rodgers was a merry wag himself, the sort Lewrie would feel most comfortable and sportive with, and found himself liking Commander Benjamin Rodgers a great deal, wishing he was the commander of the Bahamas Squadron instead of Garvey.

"And do you lodge in town, Miss Mustin?" he heard Caroline ask, conducting their own conversation apart from Navy gossip.

"God, no! Nassau's fearsome noisy and rowdy, Caroline. May I call you Caroline? And you must call me Elizabeth. If only to escape the stenches, I have a small house east of town, out towards Fort Montagu. One gets first shot at the Trade Winds out there, blowing all manner of nastiness alee, as Benjamin puts it. A Loyalist family of my acquaintance bought a plantation there, but the soil is awfully thin ... played out ... so they're running up houses."

"Thank God for the Loyalists, or Nassau'd still be dull as a dead dog," Rodgers commented. "They've braced this colony up good as a soldier's wind and got it moving. God help the American Republic, after running the best of 'em out. And God be thanked they lit here."

"Caroline is of a Loyalist family," Alan bragged.

"Never you mean it!" Elizabeth gushed. "Truly? Why, so am I, my dear! New York."

"North Carolina!" Caroline rejoined, and they both fell into a swoon of comradeship at once. "God, how wonderful, I can't...!"

"We've a funny society here in the Bahamas, Lewrie," Rodgers told him as he topped up the champagne glasses. "Ain't this grand stuff, though? There's us on top. Government, military and naval officials from home. Right under us are the old-time families from Nassau, Eleuthera, Long Island or the Exumas, the rich traders and planters who've been here for years. Third-best, but greater in numbers are the emigre' Loyalists. Under them you have the poor whites, the artisans and tinkers and such. Ex-pirates, deserters, freebooters and buccaneers, who small-hold or fish, ply their poor trades or loaf about. Then come the Cuffys, and it's the same story chapter and verse as it is for the whites."

"How so, sir?"

"Free blacks first, o'course, then slaves at the bottom. But they have a caste system bad as any I've read of among the Hindoos. Octoroons, quadroons, mulattoes, brown to coal black'uns. So a free black but a blueskin is rated lower man a free black who's almost white, d'you see. Straight or woolly hair, pale or dark skin. Now the blueskin may be a home owner and educated, with a shop of his own, makin' enough money to bloody
vote
in England, but his fellow with the straight hair and talk of Portuguese sailors in the family tree is the better man, even were he dirt-poor, illiterate and ignorant as so many sheep. Damned funny world, ain't it?"

"I've heard that said, sir," Lewrie japed, raising his glass in a mock toast. "Though I've never heard much laughter about it."

"Hah, you're a sharp 'un, sir! A glass with you, my lad."

"Uhm, about losing my ship, sir ... ?" Alan inquired urgently as they lowered their glasses to refill.

"Who are your patrons?" Rodgers asked unashamedly. In the Navy, family connections, petticoat influence, and favors given and gotten mattered almost as much as merit and seniority, or competence and wits. Young officers aspired to a circle of "sea daddies" who looked after their careers; senior officers culled their wardrooms and lower decks looking for proteges with connections, too, or talents and abilities. A man was judged by the quality of his prote'ge's, by his wisdom in the choices he sponsored so the nation and fleet were better served, and success by a junior shone just as brightly on his "sea daddy."

"Retired Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews, sir," Alan stated. "And I received this commission from Admiral Sir Samuel Hood."

"Ah, didn't we all, though," Rodgers grunted, since Hood had sat in charge of the Admiralty's professional side for several years.

"From his hands personally, sir," Alan boasted. "First in '83 off Cape Francois, then this February along with Admiral Howe, at the Admiralty. Face to face, as it were, sir."

"Don't come any better than that!" Rodgers said with brows up in appreciation. "I know for certain neither o' those worthies suffer fools gladly. Damme, what wicked fun! I do believe I'll have a chat with our lord and master Commodore Garvey tomorrow. Put a word or two in his ear about your... dare I say... august connections to shiver his tops'Is! Make him wonder what you're doin' here in his command. If you're here to keep an eye on him."

"Even more reason for me to sail as far off as possible," Alan sighed. "And stay there until I rot, sir."

"Aye, but with a rovin' commission, an independent ship, free of all his guff," Rodgers chuckled. "Can't ask for better duty, nor better chances for mischief, I'm thinkin'. No, once I drop the word on Garvey, your command'll be safe as houses. He'll fear to displace you so his son may prosper."

"That is a relief, sir."

"Damme, I may have to start bein' sickeningly patronizin' to you m'self, Lewrie," Rodgers laughed. "If I mean to aspire."

"If you do not fear Captain Garvey, sir," Lewrie responded, tongue in cheek, "perhaps I should begin to patronize
you!"

"One never knows, does one?" Rodgers snickered, eyes alight.

The waiter came to open the second bottle of champagne, and Alan leaned back in his chair to see the civilian Captain Finney and his party leave the room. Finney's jaw was tight and working fretful flexings. He swiveled his head to look back once, and gave Lewrie a petulant glare.

And fuck you, too, Alan thought smugly, whoever you are.

"Hmmm," Lewrie had opined when Caroline had shown him which house she wished. It had once been a gatehouse stables, then some overseer's cottage for the Boudreau plantation, a Bermudian "saltbox" done in stone, little better than a country croft. It had one large parlor and dining room in one half, and two bedrooms for the other, with deep covered porches front and back. A breezeway had been added on the right-hand side opposite the sitting rooms, what Caroline termed a Carolina "dog-run," to make a covered terrace and separate the house proper from the added-on kitchen and pantries, and their great heat. Off the back porch was a detached bathhouse and "jakes." It had clearly seen better days, and needed work.

"Bit... dowdy, ain't it?" he'd suggested dubiously.

"The Boudreaus want an hundred guineas a year for their row houses, Alan," Caroline had told him. "Wood, with barely a scrap of land in back. Sure to be eaten to the ground by termites in a year! Here, we have stone walls, and stone floors, and stone will be cool in high summer. The Boudreaus will replaster, replace the shakes, and allow me to re-tar against the rains. I know it looks a fright, but with some paint, our furniture, draperies ... and just look out at this view! All this for only sixty guineas the year, Alan!"

The house faced nor'east, fronted by Bay Street, across the sound from the eastern end of Potter's Cay, turned eater-corner to face the Trades so the porches and "dog-run" would be cool even in midafternoon heat. And from the porch, Potter's Cay and Hog Island were dark green and pale dun, swimming in waters that ranged from as clear as gin or wellwater to aquamarine, turquoise, emerald and jade, and there was an inviting beach just across the road on the East Bay where only the smallest ships could moor.

"Here, we'll have half an acre for a small vegetable garden, and flower beds, Alan," she'd praised on. "Should I wish a coach or saddle horse, I may day-rent from them,' stead of us having to buy mounts or an equipage and paying to stable them. And they'll allow me all the manure I wish for the garden and all. The Boudreaus are Charleston Loyalists. Low Country Huguenots, Alan. Wonderful people, and when Betty Mustin introduced us and they found I was from North Carolina, well .'.. 'tis a marvelous bargain, dearest!"

"Well..." he'd waffled, not seeing the possibilities.

"So close to them, I'll need but one maid-of-all-work at a day, Alan, saving us even more on servants' wages. With their land played out, and a glut of slaves now, they're servant-poor. Oh, do but indulge me in this, love! And when you return, I'll have us a home to do an admiral proud!"

"What the devil's a fellow to do?" he sighed to himself, wondering again at his easy surrender to her will, at how quim-struck he had become so quickly. So like a—by God—so like a
husband!
He shivered at the image. Why, next would come children, sure as fate! Nappies and fouled swaddlings! Conversations centered upon a host of domestic dullities—teething, potty training, breeching, and all! No, he thought grimly, surely not with spritely Caroline, please God?

And though the house was a bargain at sixty guineas, there was more to consider; those drapes, those painters and plasterers, those improvements. His purse was nicely full, but not bottomless. Yet to move them in, stock the larder, purchase implements for the gardens, equip the kitchen and outfit those porches with some needed furnishings had set him back an additional sixty guineas already, so there had gone most of his grandmother's remittance, and the £500 he had brought out had to be left with a local banker for her to draw upon for "improvements," the bulk of it, and her household allowance doled out to her with his shore agent at what he prayed was a liberal eight pounds the month. Suddenly, marriage was becoming more a "pinchbeck," coin-counting drudgery than a terror, he decided.

"Pray God Phineas was right," he muttered aloud. "She'd better be 'economical' as Christ feeding the five thousand."

"Sir?" Lieutenant Ballard asked, interrupting his pacing to leeward.

"Eh?" Lewrie jerked, wakened from his pecuniary musings.

"I swore you said something, sir."

"Just maundering to myself over the high cost of domestic life, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said with a shy grin, waving one hand idly. "Pay me no mind. Now we've what seems a constant three-and-a-half fathoms to work with in this Exuma Sound, I was indulging myself."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard said, going back to his duties.

Alacrity
stood sou-sou'east with a touch of easting, driven by the Trades large on her larboard quarter. The day before they'd gone close-hauled up the chain of cays and shoals east from Nassau toward Eleuthera, threaded the Fleeming Channel near Six Shilling Cays, and now loped across the Exuma Sound for their first survey area.

Well, perhaps "loped" was too strong a word, since they towed a pair of local-built, two-masted luggers of thirty-foot length, with their own ship's boats a-trail of them on long towing bridles, so their forward speed was much impaired.

Lewrie wasn't sure he wanted too much speed, anyway, given the clarity of the sea around them. He could look over the side and see the bottom quite easily in the midmorning light, could espy the occasional coral head to the west as the Sound shoaled, and observe
Alacrity's
shadow rising and falling away as it passed over stray, startled bat-winged rays or sharks below, or shimmering clouds of bright-hued fish.

James Gatacre and his assistant came aft from the bows, trailing the four midshipmen. He ascended to the quarter-deck and peeked into the compass bowl. He laid a thick-fingered hand on the traverse board, which made John Fellows the naval sailing master , sniff suspiciously. Gatacre turned his heavy, craggy head aloft and eyed the set of the sun. He peered down at the issue chart and paced off progress along their course from the Fleeming Channel entrance.

"Ahum," he said, folding up his dividers and shoving them into a pocket. "Captain Lewrie, my compliments to you this morning, sir."

"Mister Gatacre," Lewrie nodded pleasantly.

"Might I humbly suggest to you, sir, that we get the way off her and come to anchor in the next ten minutes or so?" Gatacre said. "There are rumors of a sandshoal, and sand bores ... ahum, just about here, to be plumbed, sir."

Lewrie peered at the chart himself. Where the dead reckoning of their course ended, assuming the chip log was right and they were doing six knots and a bit, where Gatacre's thick thumb rested, given four miles to the inch, they were...

"God's teeth!" Lewrie spat. "Mister Ballard, all hands! Take in tops'ls, pay out a cable to the best bower, hand the forecourse and the inner jibs."

"Nought to dread, Captain Lewrie," Gatacre smiled confidently. "We've a good two miles before we fetch it. Assuming the position of the wreck was taken correctly, o'course. Nought to dread."

"The wreck!" Lewrie goggled. "Christ on a bloody cross! Quartermaster, put yer helm down. Two points to weather. Mister Ballard? Loose sheets and let her luff!"

"Did I not mention it last night in your cabins, sir?" Gatacre frowned.

"You mentioned shoals, sir. But said nothing about a wreck."

"Bless my soul, I was sure I had, sir," Gatacre chuckled at his failure, bemused by a faulty memory. He stuck a forefinger into his ear and waggled it about vigorously, as though that action restored thoughts.