* * *
“I reckon that we should fetch sight of the North end of Cat Island by dawn, sir,” Lt. Peter Darling opined as they sat down to supper that evening. “A fairly fast passage, so far.” He rapped softly on the wood tabletop for luck.
“And another hundred miles or so would place us just about at seventy-four degrees West, almost twenty-four degrees North,” Lewrie agreed as Darling’s steward poured them white wine. “Just about the area where that Martin fellow said he was captured. Good. Then we can begin to prowl…though when we near Crooked Island, I intend for Lieutenant Bury to put in on the island and nose about to see if the Santee has called there before or if anyone’s ever traded with her and Martin. I find it peculiar that he’d carry a cargo there unless it had been ordered. What if there was no need of his goods, or he had t’unload ’em for less than he paid for ’em?”
“Just one more oddity to the tale he told you, sir,” Darling commented, taking a sip of his wine, nodding eagerly, then tossing off a goodly gulp. “Ah, capital, that! What a sweet and floral bouquet!”
Lewrie had thought to bring some assorted bottles along from his private stocks. He had also fetched aboard a gallon of brandy, a barricoe of claret, and a gallon stone crock of his favourite aged American corn whisky, which he didn’t think that Darling would touch.
So recently out of harbour, there was still fresh shore bread, fresh greens for a salad or two before they began to wilt and go bad, two dozen eggs, a side of bacon, and some of his rabbits and quail, all of which Lt. Darling would appreciate.
Darling was an odd duck, two inches shorter than Lewrie but at least thirty pounds heavier, big in the upper body but with short, bandy legs that scissored when he walked or strutted, and blessed with a round, fleshy, cherub’s face. Ashore in civilian togs, one might mistake Darling for an idler or a happy tradesman, but he’d proven himself to be a tarry-handed and well-salted mariner, and a fellow eager for a fight.
“Oh, God bless Bury!” Darling exclaimed as his steward set out the first course, rubbing his hands in anticipation of the lemoned grouper served with boiled peas. “Of course, he sketched it first.”
Lt. Tristan Bury’s prime avocation was the study, dissection, drawing, and painting of fish, both in textbook profile and in true-to-the-life colour as they would appear underwater. To further his accuracy, Lt. Bury spent a great deal of his free time in the water, with his head submerged in a variety of personally designed devices with glass goggles or panes. None of them yet worked to his complete satisfaction, but someday…!
“At least he eats them, once he’s done,” Lewrie japed. “Be a shame t’let ’em free…like this delicious specimen. Um-mmm!”
“Do you imagine, sir,” Lt. Darling posed after a sip of wine, “that this Spaniard will still be lurking the area? It isn’t as if the lower Bahamas would be as lucrative a hunting ground as the Florida Straits.”
“Well, ’twixt Long Island and the Turks and Caicos, there’s the Crooked Island, Mayaguana, and the Caicos passages,” Lewrie replied, “and the Turks Passage South o’ there. All prime entries and exits from the West Indies or the Atlantic, with a fair amount of traffick even in wartime—most ships sailin’ alone, not in an escorted convoy. They’re grand hunting grounds, and with Cuba not all that far off, this Caca Fuego, this ‘Spit Fire,’ wouldn’t have far t’run, should he cross hawses with one of our warships. Perfect for ’em, really. If the French do come and take the Bahamas, as we fear, they could close all those passages, the Florida Straits included, and there goes our British West Indies trade, ’til someone puts a stout expedition together t’take ’em back.”
“Pray God we are re-enforced soon, then, sir,” Lt. Darling said.
“Indeed,” Lewrie heartily agreed. “I’d not like t’be known as the fellow who lost the Bahamas,” he added with an uneasy laugh. “I’d be ‘Yellow Squadroned’ faster than you can say ‘knife’!”
“So,” Darling said, head down as he sliced off a morsel of fish from his plate, “it’s good odds that our Spaniard is still prowling, and we stand a fair chance to discover him. But,” he said, looking up with his fork poised at mid-chin, “with Cuba so close, as you say, sir, it’s equally good odds that their prize is already anchored at Havana, and never to be recovered. That won’t make the Americans happy.”
“The Yankee Doodles are unhappy enough already,” Lewrie scoffed. “Their Consul, Mister Alexander Stafford, a most annoying Boston ‘Bow-wow’ with the oddest accent ever I did hear, gave me chapter and verse—from Revelation’s apocalypse—over the matter, strongly hinting that he’d be writing his government and London to complain of our callous disregard for the rights and protection of neutrals. I felt like a footman who’d lost his employer’s best shoes, by the time I left!”
Lewrie shrugged and made a grimace. “At least I got a chance to question Captain Martin some more before being tongue-lashed.”
“Was he any more forthcoming, sir?” Darling asked, whilst buttering a slice of bread.
“Not all that much, no,” Lewrie told him. “He stuck to his tale, pretty much. At least he did relate that this Caca Fuego is a small brig—not the ‘big bastard’ he first described—and that he was able to count five gun-ports down her starboard side, the only side he saw, and that her guns looked t’be 6-pounders. The Spanish captain is called Reyes, or Ramos—or maybe her First Mate was named Reyes, or Ramos—and he guessed that she had eighty or ninety men in her crew. It was all just so horrid an experience that he might have become confused.” Lewrie rolled his eyes as he related that.
“It all sounds odder and odder, sir,” Darling said, shaking his head in leeriness.
“The American crew still weren’t sayin’ much, either,” Lewrie groused. “They were all ‘aye, sir’ or ‘no, sir’ or ‘don’t know nothin’ ’bout that, sir.’ I might as well have been talkin’ to clams.”
“Here now, sir!” Lt. Darling perked up with a sly look. “What if this Martin was in league with the Spanish privateers working out of Havana? Perhaps they had a falling out over something and lost their ship because the sums didn’t come out right. We just settled much the same sort of collusion with that Treadwell bastard and his Tybee Roads Trading Company. Perhaps Treadwell wasn’t the only one in Georgia or South Carolina aiding enemy privateers, after all.”
“Hmm, that would make a sordid sort of sense, would it not?” Lewrie mused, drumming fingers on his wine glass. “One hopes that killing Treadwell and putting his company out of business would warn the others off, for a while at least.”
“Or leave an opening for someone new to take up the slack, sir,” Darling said, pursing his mouth to one side and raising one eyebrow.
“Christ, I hope not!” Lewrie barked, chuckling. “Eliminating privateers is like killin’ cockroaches. There’s hundreds more back behind the baseboards for every dozen ye squash!
“No matter,” Lewrie went on after a cooling sip of wine. “The Spaniard we seek, for whatever reason, took a neutral American ship. Whether Santee was innocent or not, this Don’s either too ruthless to stick to the rules or he’s desperate for any sort of prize-money, and none too scrupulous t’care where it comes from. We’ll just have t’see.”