The Gun Ketch (31 page)

"Some other time, then, sir," Finney replied with a shrug of his own, finally dropping Alan's hand. "And good day to you, sir, and thank you for your trade. Do come again, mind."

Lewrie stepped out the door which David the wine clerk held for him, doffed his hat in farewell once more, and strode away towards his horse. He undid the reins from the hitch-rail and looked across the saddle towards Finney's store idly as he fumbled with a stirrup.

Finney stood just inside the still-open door. In an unguarded moment, before he realized that Alan had glanced back at him, he was caught glaring at him from beneath blond brows beetled together with hate. And when caught, Finney put a shadowing palm over his eyes, as if the sun's glare had caused it, made his face bland with a smile of seeming sincerity, and used that shadowing hand to wave him goodbye.

"You shopped at Finhey's?" Caroline goggled once he was home. "Whatever possessed you to enter that man's stores, Alan?"

"Call it curiosity, my dear," he allowed, stripping off his coat and waistcoat, undoing his neck-stock and taking his ease in a chair on the front porch where it was cool. Caroline had a pitcher of sweetened limewater near at hand. "Damme if he didn't have good prices, too. And a wider selection. You do not?"

"Only with Wyonnie to accompany me," she frowned. "I find good bargains along the docks, directly off the trading ships."

"Uhm, Caroline, those that sell direct off the ships ..." Alan complained. "Those goods aren't landed or bonded. The imposts aren't paid. Those are Yankee traders!"

"So I noticed," she grinned between sips of limewater.

"They're violating the Navigation Acts, Caroline," he pressed. "Laws I'm sworn to enforce! Damme ... dash it all, how does it appear, for the wife of an officer holding the King's Commission, to ... to ... !"

"Commodore Garvey's wife shops right alongside me, Alan," she told him. "As does the cook from the Governor's mansion, the butlers for every household that've ever invited us, the ..."

"Well, I'm damned!"

"Would you rather have my eight pounds gone in a twinkling at Bay Street or Shirley Street shops, then, Alan?" she queried without a qualm.

"Do you need more money, then?" he asked.

"Not a farthing!" she chuckled, leaning back into a chair and putting her feet up on a padded footstool. "Darling, I manage quite well, with more than enough left over at the end of each month. But I could not without seeking out bargains. Alan, I will not break you to support me. I am not spendthrift."

"I know that, Caroline," he softened, reaching out to take her free hand. "And I'd not begrudge you our entire fortune, were you to need it."

"I know that, too, love," she purred. "And that is why I will never ask of you until it is needful. I am quite content on my house allowance. And too much in love with you to ever wish to lose your regard by being extravagant. I don't think I'm much for extravagance, anyway," she chuckled. "I'm a country girl at heart."

"I love you, too, dear, for so many reasons," he cooed back at her. "Every day I recognize a new'un."

"I shall send Wyonnie and her husband to shop the docks for me in future, then, love," Caroline promised. "So we do not give the impression that you condone anything illegal. Now it's cooler, I'll bake more at home, 'stead of buying bread from the baker's. Though summers, I will have to trade with the bakeshops. And local dishes are tasty and filling. I need no heavy imported dishes when fish, rice and all are just as nourishing, and the open-air markets are much cheaper. I
love
it here in the Bahamas! And Shirley Street stores are closer and just as economical, if one looks carefully at imported goods."

"Misick's and Frith's," Alan nodded in agreement.

"How did you know where I market, Alan? Have their bills at the end of the month bothered you?" she teased.

"I heard they're a little higher than Finney's, but not so dear as to rival Bay Street," Alan stumbled, feeling a flush of color as he wondered just how Jack Finney had known the exact stores she favored.

Damme, has the man been following her? he shuddered.

"I have a surprise for you, dear," Caroline blushed. "Two, to be truthful. Sit right there and close your eyes."

Hope 'tis a better surprise than the ones I've had this morning, Alan thought, going back over his long conversation with Finney.

"I know Christmas is supposed to be a time of sober reflection, and in England, people spend it with their noses in the prayer book," she said as she came back to the front porch. "No, keep your eyes shut for a space longer!"

She bent down to kiss him for a moment, giggling at his temporary helplessness, and mistaking his agitation for impatience.

"But the Klausknitzers, that German couple, have the most wonderful traditions. That carpenter fellow who made these chairs? They exchange gifts such as the Magi brought the infant Jesus, Alan, and I thought it a grand idea. And the perfect season for mine to you."

"May I look now?" he grinned.

"Now."

First he beheld a shiny tube that she held out to him.

"A flageolet," she said proudly. "Made from tin. You always said you wished you could play a musical instrument, and I thought it the perfect one. There's a little chapbook of tunes and instructions in how to read musical notes."

Now
there's
reason for a crew to mutiny, Alan thought, though smiling happily! I'll make a bloody nuisance of myself, bad as some noisome Welsh harpist!

"Darling, it's wonderful, I had no idea...!" he said instead.

"And this," she said, sweeping a drop-cloth away from something that was leaned on one of the support posts.

"Gawd!" he could but exclaim in awe.

What he beheld was Caroline's portrait, an oval-framed oil of her from the waist up. She was depicted standing in her flower garden by the front gate, dressed in a gauzy white off-shoulder sack gown and flowered straw hat. Potter's Cay and Hog Island were hinted in the background behind overhanging tropical flowers and palmettos in a hazy spring morning.

"Damme, that's
Alacrity
anchored there!" he gasped out first, as he recognized the ketch in the far background which flew the Red Ensign and streamed a red-white-blue commissioning pendant.

Bloody hell, wrong thing to say, he winced within himself!

"My God, Caroline, the artist has captured you to the life, I swear," he added quickly, kneeling down to look closer. "Why, he did you so true I'd expect your eyes here to blink any moment. And he caught your smile perfectly! 'Tis like having you looking at me from your mirror scantwise, as you do of a morning. When you're looking pleased and full of ginger!"

"I told you Augustus Hedley was a wonderful artist."

Alan rose and took her in his arms, lifting her off her feet to swing her about as he kissed her.

"I take back everything I ever said about him, darling," Alan laughed heartily. "You're right, as always. He is damned good!"

Alan had been married long enough to know to forbear mention that the waters east of Potter's Cay were too shallow for anchoring a warship, or that
Alacrity
did not sport t'gallant yards above her tops'ls.

"Darling Alan, do you really like it?" she teased.

"Like it, God yes, what a magnificent gift!" he assured her. "Now, every time I look up from my desk, or dine in my cabins, I'll have you there, so fresh and lovely I'll ache for want of you."

"Mmm, having you ache, and miss me when you're at sea wasmy main idea, darling," she murmured coyly in his ear. "Do you still begrudge giving up your awful old harem picture, hmm?"

"Not one whit."

"Augustus'd done so many island scenes, he practically gave our
Sunset Over Nassau Harbour
away in trade," she boasted, pleased with herself, and with his enthusiastic reaction to her gift. "And he did my portrait for only five pounds, and a dozen crocks of my pineapple marmalade. Now, am I not economical, my love?"

"Uncle Phineas would be proud of you," Alan snickered as he let her down to her feet again, though still draped against him. "I am, too. There's only one place I know you to be spendthrift. And thank God for it!"

"You don't have to go aboard ship until after dinner?" Caroline whispered with a suggestive smile. "Then why do we not go and be spendthrift for the rest of the morning?"

"That's my lass!" he beamed, lifting her off her feet again to carry her inside.

"Bring the portrait," she said between long, seductive kisses. "We'll stand it up against my dressing table mirror and see if I look as full of ginger as you think."

"Oh, poor little fellow," Midshipman Parham said to himself as William Pitt escaped the great-cabins by the quarter-deck ladder and sat on the deck to scratch at his good ear. The sound of their captain practicing the scale on his tin flageolet came stumbling to their ears through the open skylights aft. "Sound like another ram-cat to you, does it, poor puss? Poor afterguard. Poor me!"

"And I thought you would appreciate music, Mister Parham," Lieutenant Ballard said, hands behind his back and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as
Alacrity
rolled along.

"Music, aye, sir, but..." Parham shrugged as he grimaced his opinion. Below, Lewrie broke off doing scales and started a halting attempt at the chorus from "The Jacobite Lass," which prompted their surgeon's mate Mr. Maclntyre to sing along, equally badly.

I gi'ed ma love, the white white rose, that's growin' at ma father's wa. It is the bonniest flow
V
that grows where ilka flow 'r is braw. There's but ae bonnier than I ken, fae Perth unto the main, an' that's the flow'ro' Scotland's men that's fetchin 'for his ain.

"Oh, don't encourage him, Mister Maclntyre," Parham tittered. "Lord, Mister Ballard, sir. The captain cannot play, and Mister Maclntyre can neither sing, nor speak the King's English of a sudden. A proper shambles, that is."

"That's enough, that is, Mister Parham," Ballard smirked.

"And a Jacobite tune, too, sir," Parham continued. "Disloyal to King George, is it not, Mister Maclntyre?"

"Next
time ye hae a boil on yer bum, Mister Parham," Maclntyre warned, " 'twill be ma dullest lancet, an' I'll nae be gentle!"

"Masthead, Mister Parham?" Ballard intoned with a cock of his head and frown enough to let him know his antics had best stop.

There was another verse, without vocal accompaniment this time, before the music ended with an embarrassed cough. Lewrie emerged on deck moments later in breeches and shirt, and looked around as the afterguard and watch-standers suddenly found something vital to do, or something fascinating to see over the side.

"Sea's getting up," Lewrie stated, scanning the horizon about them. "She swims a mite more boisterous than in the forenoon."

"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Ballard replied primly. "Winds are yet steady from the nor'east. Some backing in the gusts to east. Might be half a gale, no more, sir. The weather horizon's clear, for now, though we are getting whitecaps now and again."

The rigging whined with a sudden gust of wind that came more from the east, with perhaps a touch of southing.
Alacrity
rolled a bit more as the winds picked up from astem, and the normally lumpy waters of the Northwest Providence Channel were now long sets of rollers, windward faces rippled like hides by the gusts, and capped with white spume where a borning chop collided with itself.

"Smell rain, Mister Fellows?" Lewrie asked, twitching his noseaweather as the gust faded and the winds clocked back to the expected nor'east of the Trades.

"Sweet water somewhere, Captain," Fellows agreed. "Just a hint now and again. I'd wager squalls by seven bells."

"Have the hands eat?" Lewrie inquired.

"Aye, sir," Ballard reported.

"Topmen aloft, then. Take in the tops'ls and brail up secure. Then we'll have gun-drill as we planned. But no more than one hour," Lewrie ordered, face wrinkled wary. "We'll practice wearing ship to either beam and firing broadsides at a chase."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard agreed. "Bosun, pipe 'All Hands!' Do you send topmen aloft! Trice up, lay out, and brail up tops'ls!"

"If this is a late cyclone, Mister Fellows, could we shelter in a hurricane hole on Grand Bahama north of us?" Lewrie asked as the men thundered up from the mess deck. "What about Hawk's Bill Creek?"

"Hmm," Fellows squinted, taking off his cocked hat to scratch at his gingery scalp. "Do we stand on west-nor'west the rest of the day, sir, we'd be too far to loo'rd of Hawk's Bill Creek, and would have to beat back to it, with Grand Bahama a lee shore to larboard. And Grand Bahama's a graveyard for an hundred ships caught such. Nasty coast in a southerly wind. But... Cross Bay on the western tip should be abeam by late afternoon, sir. 'Round behind Settlement Point in Cross Bay, there's a good holding ground. Low-lying land, with nothing to break a gale, but much calmer waters behind the breakers and mangrove swamps."

"Keep that in mind, if this isn't your regular gale. We could ride a gale out, reaching south. After gun-drill, we'll lay out four anchor cables, just to be safe," Lewrie decided.