Santee, so Martin further explained, had been bound for Crooked Island and Acklins Cay with a general cargo of rice, salt-meats, farm tools, cloth, and such for the cotton and sisal plantations there.
Lewrie looked at Commander Ritchie as Martin prated on, finding a dubious expression on Richie’s face. He’d only met Ritchie the once, and that briefly, but he’d deemed the fellow to be intelligent and quick.
“I thought the plantings on Crooked Island were failing. The bugs and thin soil,” Lewrie said. “Cotton plays it out quickly.”
“Nigh fourty plantations at one time, Cap’m Lewrie,” Martin insisted, “but most’re still thriving, and there’s still over a thousand slaves that need food and clothing. It’s a good market.”
“Just where did the Spanish privateer take you, sir?” Lewrie asked. “Did you get her name and her captain’s name? And, when you were set adrift, in what direction did she sail?”
“As to where, Cap’m Lewrie, we were ’bout sixty miles East of Watling’s Island, slap on the Twenty-Fourth Latitude, when we fetched to,” Martin spat, as if insulted by the questions. “She was the Caca Fuego, out of Cuba, I reckon, and her bastard cap’m was called Reyes, I think. So he named himself. Last we saw of our ship, she was off to the East-Sou’east, maybe to hunt off Mayaguana or something. Damn it all, Cap’m Lewrie, an American ship, a neutral in your damned war, has been taken, and your Navy didn’t do a damned thing about it!”
“I don’t recall the Navigation Acts being repealed, Captain Martin,” Lewrie coolly told him. There was something about the tale, or Martin himself, that made him suspicious. “You took a great risk in entering Bahamian waters, where French and Spanish privateers are two-a-penny despite the Royal Navy’s best efforts, and, did Commander Ritchie come across you with a cargo bound for a British colony, in violation of the Navigation Acts, which limit such trade to British ships, he would have hauled you here to Nassau under arrest, and your ship and cargo would have been impounded.”
“Hah!” Martin burst out. “Of all the arrogant…! I never heard the like! Think you rule the world, you English!”
“Last time I looked, sir,” Lewrie purred back, “we pretty-much do. This side of the world, at any rate.
“Now, we shall land you and your crew ashore, into the care of your Consul,” Lewrie went on. “Mister Stafford has his offices at the corner of West and Marlborough Streets. He will assist you with any needs, arrange lodging and such ’til you can obtain passage back to Charleston.”
“But you’ll do nothing to get my ship and cargo back, will you?” Martin accused. “Damme, I’m ruint, else!”
“On the contrary, Captain Martin, I shall launch a search for her and the privateer at once,” Lewrie promised him. “Though, we both know the odds of her recovery, with Cuba so close nearby, are not all that good. I may call upon you at your Consul’s residence, for more details, if you would be so good?”
Lewrie set aside his glass of tea and rose from the starboard-side settee, where he and the others had been made welcome, signalling that the interview was over. He saw them to the deck and debarking to Fulmar’s waiting boat but bade Commander Ritchie to remain.
“You look skeptical, sir,” Lewrie said.
“Over thirty men in Captain Martin’s crew in two decent-sized boats, sir,” Commander Ritchie said, frowning, “adrift two days since being taken, and they were still fourty miles from Watling’s Island? If she was taken seventy miles East of there, they’d have been high and dry by then. Captain Martin did have a good compass. And when I asked him about his cargo, he acted rather vague, as he did below just now, sir. I tried having some of my people draw forth more from his crew, but they were a closed-mouth lot. There’s something queer about the whole thing. Can’t put a finger on it, but there’s more than Captain Martin is telling, I’m mortal-certain of that.”
“Something to look into,” Lewrie said, nodding. “Along with hunting down this big Spanish privateer, if she’s still prowling the area. She’s made one rich prize and might be hungry for more.
“How would you like to be temporary Senior Naval Officer Present, Commander Ritchie?” Lewrie asked of a sudden, beaming with glee.
“Ehm, well sir…” Ritchie stammered.
“You’ve had a long patrol and deserve a spell in harbour,” Lewrie decided. “I dasn’t risk Reliant down South, among all those reefs and shallows…and the locals’d go pale at the thought of her swannin’ off and leavin’ them to the French threat. Lieutenant Westcott, my First Officer, will stay here with her, ’til I get back. Should any other vessels of worth come in, allow them a spell of shore liberty, then put them back on close patrol round New Providence and the channels.”
“You’ll see to it yourself, sir?” Ritchie gawped.
“As Martin says, it’s a neutral American ship that’s been captured, a matter important enough t’require the utmost effort on our part,” Lewrie said with an easy smile. “A matter serious enough to warrant the attention of a Commodore, hey?”
Now, who do I take with me? Lewrie wondered, peering round the harbour for suitable small warships, strong enough to take on a Spanish brig but shallow-enough in draught to survive.
He determined to set off the very next morning, after another talk with this Martin fellow, once he had scrubbed up and had a good meal.
And, how uncomfortable am I goin’ t’be? he asked himself as he looked round the harbour, espying Lt. Bury’s little Lizard schooner and Lt. Darling’s hermaphrodite brig, Thorn. They drew eight and ten feet of draught, respectively, but were small and already crowded, with no space for a senior officer.
Damned uncomfortable! Lewrie sadly determined.
Chapter 3
It had been ages since Lewrie had served aboard smaller ships, like his first official command as a Lieutenant, HMS Alacrity. Cramped as were the accommodations in Lt. Darling’s cabins, where he had to sling a hammock over the dining table, rejecting Darling’s offer to use his hanging bed-cot, he spent most of his time awake on deck and out of the way, seated right-aft on the flag lockers by the taffrails, on the leeward side. He would have fetched along his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair, but that might have been a bit much deck space taken up from the crew’s room to work.
With no say in the working of the brig, Lewrie found himself a very idle, and happy, passenger, a slab of “live lumber,” for a rare once, and able to take joy in the passage and the sights and sounds. He was at sea, away from the dull chores, and free!
The weather and the climate was nigh-perfect, the sea an ever-changing palette of colours, from deep-ocean dark blue to pale aquamarine or light green in the shallows, as Thorn and Lizard beat up the Nor’east Providence Channel, rounded the northern tip of Eleuthera by Spanish Wells, and stood out into the Atlantic to coast down the long and narrow isle at a safe distance from Eleuthera’s reefs, but still able to make out waves breaking snow-white on her rocks and beaches with a telescope. The waters glittered like a million mirrors, and the scudding white clouds were pacific and benign, with no portents for bad weather, as the two wee ships sped Sou’east-Half-South on an easy beam reach, reeling off the miles at a steady eight knots, and even the heat of mid-day was moderated by a cooling open-ocean breeze. It was, in all, very much like royal “yachting,” and all “cruising and claret”! Lewrie had not thought to fetch along anything to read, but discovered that Lt. Darling kept a decent personal library. When the scenery palled, he could tackle Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the third time; he might actually finish it, at last!