"I'll not debate the whys, sir," Lewrie said, stiffening a bit, though striving to keep a peaceable and agreeable expression and air. "Did General Rochambeau keep the squadron from sailing? Or were they sent to Mole Saint Nicolas to help the evacuation over there? Landed fresh re-enforcements… here or there, we were told they would. Or have they already sailed?"
"Ye'll not cotch 'em, Admir'l!" a sailor who'd been listening to the conversation hooted. "They's off an' gone! Two day ago!"
"Stop yer gob, ye…!" Vincent roared, rounding on the fellow, but it was too late. Pleased astonishment over the gain of Louisiana, and New Orleans, a chance to insult the despised Royal Navy and send a tyrant packing before he could press some of them were all just too tempting.
"Cap'm Decean, he's got two big frigates and a seventy-four… guns as big as tree trunks… a whole reg'ment o' soldiers!" the crew of Seneca jeered before their master bellowed them to truculent silence.
"I'll thankee t'git off my ship, whoever ye are," Vincent demanded. "Safer for ye… 'less ye have all yer Marines at yer back."
"My regards to the Crowninshield brothers, Captain," Lewrie said as he doffed his hat to the ship's master, then to one and all as he made his way to the entry-port. "Have a good voyage."
"Oh la, maman, ce sont les Anglais!" came a child's wail of fear, drawing everyone's attention to the companionway that led below. Two children appeared briefly before being snatched away by a pale-faced woman.
"Gonna seize 'em 'cause they're French, too?" Vincent snapped.
"How many did you manage to evacuate, sir?" Lewrie asked him in a softer tone.
"'Bout nineteen is all we've room for," Vincent told him, with real fear now that Lewrie, a dread "Brit," would do that very thing. "Daddies, wives, and kids, mostly. Some whole fam'lies, but most the kin o' men who haveta stay behind."
"Paying passengers?" Lewrie wryly asked.
"Ain't chargin' full rates, but…"
"Why, had you an ounce o' Christian mercy, sir, I'd expect you would make room for more… for free… sir," Lewrie drawled as he began to descend the battens to his waiting boat.
"They're in deep, dire trouble ashore, sir," Lewrie told Capt. Blanding after he had reported aboard Modeste, even as the squadron got under way Westerly for the Old Bahama Channel and Florida Straits. "Low on rations, powder, and shot, just about everything, and hangin' on by the skin o' their teeth. I gather that the Black General Dessalines has demanded their surrender already. If Duckworth is late in arriving here, if he plans to come at all, it'll be worse than a Red Indian massacre, sir. Might we consider offering this Rochambeau an alternative? Surrender to us instead, and escape the ex-slave's vengeance? The prize-money for so many ships, warships, and merchantmen would be astronomical… not to mention the 'head and gun' money on thousands of French soldiers," he beguiled. "It's a Christian-"
"Stay here?" Blanding countered, sounding shocked by the suggestion. "Dash it, Captain Lewrie, they're only two days' sail ahead of us! The French squadron's real, it ain't a myth! Some Admiralty clerk, some sneaking spy, didn't weave them out of moonbeams! By all that's holy, sir… this… Decean, is it? This Captain Decean has his orders, just as I have mine… his to reach New Orleans no matter what, and mine to catch them up and bring them to battle. No, sir, I will not let them get away, now we know how close we are on their tail and where they're bound. Right, Brundish?"
"Well, sir," his Chaplain said with his head cocked over to one side, "it would be Christian to assist the French and avoid a blood-bath, yet… we are at war with France."
"There you have it, Captain Lewrie," Blanding barked. "Ah ha! We've a grand battle in the offing, by Jingo! So let's be at it!"
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The first three days of urgent pursuit were sunny and clear as they made a rapid transit from St. Domingue West-Nor'west, crossing the Windward Passage and rushing along the northern coast of Spanish Cuba, squeezing between that shore and the Great Bahama Bank, then up the narrow deep-water throat of the Old Bahama Channel.
After they threaded the narrowest part 'twixt Cayo Cruz and Cayo Lobos, though, the weather turned foul and boisterous, with fretted and mounting seas, rain squalls, and rising winds, forcing them to reef courses, tops'ls, t'gallants, and royals, and stow away the stuns'ls. Pressed by winds fine on the starboard quarters, all four ships rolled and pitched and heaved, and gun-drill or small-arms drill had to be put aside for constant sail-tending. Rain hissed down by the bucket-fuls, seething on the upper decks and gangways, sluicing to either beam, or fore and aft, with every jerking motion, so much at times that it gurgled out the scuppers. No matter how snugly the deck planks were payed with sealing pitch over the pounded-in oakum, water seeped through the gaps to drip and drizzle belowdecks, and plop cold on hands trying to sleep in wildly swaying hammocks at night, onto the mess tables during meals, and making everyone thoroughly miserable. To be "caught short," to stumble forrud to the beakhead rails and the "seats of ease," resulted in a complete soaking-from fresh-water rain, and salt water spray pitched up by the bows as they plunged and rose. No matter the watchfulness of the Midshipmen, the Master-At-Arms, and Ship's Corporals, it was dryer simply to piss in the odd corner of the mess-decks, shit in a wood bucket, and hope to pitch it overside when no one was looking. And the hands who got caught at it ended on report before "Captain's Mast."
"Rrrow!" Toulon complained as a dollop of water caught him on the head as he tried to eat his supper from his dish by Lewrie's place setting. "Mrrf?" was his mournful plaint as he looked aloft to seek the source of his annoyance.
"I trust the wardroom's dryer," Lewrie commented to his First Officer as they supped together, along with the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, and Midshipmen Grainger and Munsell. "A deck above you, and I catch all the rain intended for you," he drolly pointed out.
"It seeps through, eventually, sir," Lt. Westcott replied with a brief, tooth-baring grin. It was well that he wore his napkin tucked into his shirt collar, for a drop of water raised a shot-splash in his pea soup, spattering the napkin, not his uniform. Grainger and Munsell thought it amusing. "We keep tarpaulins on our bedding, same as you, I fear."
"No need to dampen the tablecloth, I vow," Mr. Caldwell sniggered. "No plate'd dare slide tonight."
Munsell and Grainger found that funny, too.
"More sea-room," Lewrie said. "Out of the narrows of the Old Bahama Channel and into the Nicholas Channel by morning, is that your reckoning, Mister Caldwell?"
"Aye, sir… into deeper water," that worthy cautiously said. "Cross the Tropic of Cancer by Noon Sights, perhaps, as we enter the Florida Straits. Pray God the weather clears, for the Straits are a boisterous place of their own, quite the equal of the seas we've experienced lately."
"That won't make Captain Blanding happy," Westcott said with a smirk as he dabbed his lips with his napkin. "Even with clear skies and steady winds, we'd lose a knot per hour."
"'Make All Sail Conformable To The Weather,' hey?" Lewrie added, chuckling. That had been Modeste's signal for two days.