“Invite Mister Westcott to go native with you,” Merriman chirped, “and he’ll turn them up in a Dog Watch. It comes to women, he’s your boy!”
“Carry on, sirs,” Lewrie said, hiding a smirk, and returning to the quarterdeck to fetch his telescope. He peered at Lizard, Firefly, and Thorn which lay to anchor close by. Their boats were also coming offshore, empty-handed it appeared. Well, Lt. Bury was studying something that might have been a horseshoe crab with a large magnifying glass. No, he’d call it a trilobite, Lewrie thought.
Lewrie lowered his telescope and turned to gaze out to sea. A bank of darker clouds was gathering as the heat of the day grew, threatening yet another afternoon shower or two. Four or five miles out from their anchorage, a slim glass-white waterspout was slowly snaking down to thrash the bright green waters to a froth; yet another nigh-daily occurrence since they had entered the Florida Straits and had begun their slow inspection of the Keys.
“Mister Grainger?” Lewrie called, after turning to note which lad was the Midshipman of the Watch on the quarterdeck. “Hoist ‘Captains Repair On Board’.”
Grand places t’lurk, but not to base, Lewrie thought; unless ye fetch along all that’s needful. Might as well be at sea!
He went to the compass binnacle cabinet afore the helm to roll open one of the Sailing Master’s dubious charts of the area, to look closely at the great bay at the North end of the Keys. Yes, it was as he remembered it from a first perusal… there were rios feeding into the bay, and rivers meant fresh water in abundance.
Time for a conference, Lewrie determined; and time for a change of plans. Some midnight boat-work, to scout the bay out before we go barging’ in.
CHAPTER TWENTY
False dawn had broadened the circle of visibility from the decks and the mast-heads, revealing low shorelands and forests, and the broad bay into which the squadron crept under reduced sail. The winds were light but steady, bringing the scents of sand flats and marsh, of woods and growing things, and the faintest hint of flowers ready to open to the first rays of the sun when the actual dawn came. The waters of the great bay at the end of the Keys were very calm, with no chop or white-caps, and slack-water waves no more than one or two feet high, so the bow waves and wakes of the four warships barely whitened to foam, and they all rode upright, with only a slight angle of heel to the winds.
The smaller three preceded Reliant by only half a mile, spread in line-abreast, with Thorn and her short-ranged carronades closest to the larboard shore, weaker 8-gunned Firefly in the centre, and Lizard on the starboard corner.
“Trust to the leadsmen in the chains,” Reliant ’s Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, said in a low voice as those sailors called back a depth of six fathoms, “If not completely in these ancient Spanish charts. I doubt the Dons ever contemplated a proper settlement this far South of Saint Augustine, sir, so how meticulous the first, perhaps the only, surveyors were… in such a malarial place, right on the edge of a great swamp, well…”
“Neither did British surveyors in the twenty-odd years we held Florida, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie pointed out.
The latest charts of the bay, and the shallow passage between a string of long barrier islands and the mainland, or the mouth of the river which fed into the bay, were an amalgam of old Spanish work and some sketchy surveys done between 1763 and 1783, though both doubted if much had been done to update them once the American Revolution had begun in 1775. Before, there had been no urgency, and once England was at war, there had been no need to correct maps done of such a minor, insignificant colony so far from the main scenes of action.
“Mayami… Tamiami?” Lt. Westcott posed with a brow up in puzzlement. “I suppose we should call it something, sir.”
“Mayami, perhaps… for the local tribe,” Lewrie speculated.
“Signal from Lizard, sir!” Midshipman Warburton called down to the deck from his perch at the top of the starboard main-mast shrouds, almost to the futtocks of the-main top. “Two vessels to starboard and ahead! Anchored! ”
“And, there’s the settlement, dead ahead, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out, “the cook-fires we saw last night are still burning.”
“Right where the river joins the bay, aye,” Lewrie said. “Just heave a net, dip a bucket, and there’s your breakfast and tea-water! Damme, do they look as asleep as I think they look? Two signals, Mister Eldridge!” he barked in rising excitement. “The first to Thorn. Make, her number, and engage shore. By the larboard halliards.”
“Aye, sir!” Eldridge replied, turning to the ratings of the Afterguard who stood by the transom flag lockers, and fumbling with his illustrated lists of signals to call out the right numerals.
“Might be hard to read in this light, sir,” Westcott warned.
“But streamin’ to loo’rd in plain sight,” Lewrie countered, “and if Darling kens the half of it, he may get my intent. For now, crack on a bit more sail, Mister Westcott, and let’s close up within hailing distance, just in case. Let fall the fore course, and hoist the foretopmast stays’1 and outer flying jib.”
Lewrie turned to see Eldridge and the signalmen just then bending on the last code flag to the halliard. They were slow, or Eldridge was not yet familiar with the duty, but he could not goad him to haste… yet. Eldridge seemed to blush, and sped his men to hoist away. Lewrie lifted his gaze to watch the signal soar aloft, then took a few steps aft to tell Eldridge, “Once Thorn shows the ‘Affirmative,’ or the ‘Repeat,’ strike that’un, and the second signal will be to Firefly and Lizard. Their numbers, ‘General Chase,’ and ‘Engage The Enemy More Closely’… on the starboard halliards, if ye please.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Eldridge replied very formally, as if expecting criticism.
“Damme, we’ve finally something t’shoot at!” Lewrie chortled, putting Eldridge at ease, and raising a smile.
The light winds were just abaft of abeam, so the string of code flags to Thorn stood out a bit limply to larboard; legible, if the sky brightened a bit more. After a long moment’s wait…
“From Thorn, sir!” Warburton shouted. “The ‘Affirmative’!”
“Strike larboard for the ‘Execute’,” Eldridge ordered his signalmen. “New hoist ready to starboard… Ready? Hoist away, smartly!”
Lt. Bury in Lizard, and Lt. Lovett in Firefly, must have been expecting such an order, perhaps longing for one, for each rapidly put up the single flag for “Affirmative” and began to spread more sail, angling off to starboard to close the suspicious anchored ships almost before Reliant ’s hoist had been two-blocked.
“We’ll fall in trail position aft of Firefly, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Mister Spendlove?” he called down to the waist.
“Aye, sir?”
“Open the starboard gun-ports and run out!” Lewrie gleefully told him. “And stand by to engage at close range!”
The gun crews gave out a loud, inarticulate growl of approval as the port lids were raised, and the gun-captains summoned the boy powder monkeys from amidships with the first charges of propellant.
A minute or two later, the sun burst above the Eastern horizon, and all that had been murky and ill-defined stood out starkly. Forests and beach-trimmed shores, the meagre clutch of shacks and large canvas tents ashore near the mouth of the river, and the anchored ships now could be seen in detail.
“No flags showing on the anchored ships, yet, sir,” Lt. Westcott noted.