“Ah, but how much support could a French privateer expect from Saint Augustine?” Lewrie hinted. “Hard to send supplies from Havana to there.”
“Not from Havana,” Calderon said with a sly, cock-eyed grin, as if he knew a secret. Warm champagne taken standing upright in the open on the quarterdeck, with the morning progressing, and the bay’s heat rising, was doing wonders. Calderon jerked his chin Northwards in a silent hint, snickering.
“From the Americans, aye,” Lewrie said, and Calderon’s bitter laugh assured him that he, and Admiralty, were on the right track.
“A glass with you, sir!” Lewrie proposed, being liberal with the champagne. “To… His Majesty, the King of Spain!”
He wasn’t quite sure who that was by name, but…
“ Viva la rey!” Calderon cried, clinking glasses with him and tossing back a goodly gulp.
“I wish you better luck in future, Captain Calderon,” Lewrie offered. “Though, it might be best did you work out of the ‘pocket’ harbours on Cuba’s North coast, or Havana, next time.”
“J’ou advise me how to cor… privateer, senor?” Calderon said, finding that highly amusing.
Somebody should, for ye’ve made a botch of this’un! Lewrie told himself.
“Hoy, the ship!”
“You will excuse me for a moment, Captain Calderon? Something I must see to,” Lewrie explained, then went to the starboard rails.
It was the Ship’s Surgeon and his Mates, returning aboard with the Spanish wounded. “There’s nought I can do for their dead, sir, but we’ve fetched their wounded, and I took the liberty of bringing the prizes’ surgeons’ chests. Ready to hoist aboard, sir,” their burly Surgeon, Mr. Mainwaring, reported from his boat.
“Captain Calderon, could you come join me for a moment?” Lewrie asked.
“ Si, senor. ”
“There are ten dead Spanish sailors still aboard the prizes,” Lewrie explained to him. “I was thinking that you might wish to bury them ashore, instead of me conducting a Protestant service. I’m told that three of your wounded are in a very bad way, as well, and won’t be with us much longer. Do you give me your parole, so I may land them ashore, too?”
“J’ou have eet, Senor Capitano!” Calderon firmly declared.
“You have surgeons aboard your ships? Perhaps they could tend to the other wounded ashore, as well,” Lewrie further offered.
“J’ou are the most gracious, senor!” Calderon said.
“Mister Bury,” Lewrie said, turning to Lizard ’s captain. “I’d be grateful did you use your boats to land all the prisoners ashore,” Lewrie instructed, crooking a finger to draw him closer, and some distance from Calderon.
“Certainly, sir,” Bury replied.
“Did any of them, get away?” Lewrie asked, in a mutter.
“Two boats did manage to escape us, sir, into the channel between the mainland and the long, narrow barrier island,” Bury admitted, “They scampered off into the bushes, but we did fetch the abandoned boats off. We did plan to obtain bigger, better ship’s boats, sir.”
“Very good, Mister Bury, excellent work,” Lewrie said with a grin. “I swear you read my mind. Now, I want you to take Lieutenant Simcock and a file of his Marines with you, for security, t’keep the Dons honest. After all the prisoners are ashore, though, fetch off all the boats… leave them nothing that will swim. We’ll keep the useful ones, and scuttle the rest.”
“Ehm… would we not be… marooning them, sir?” Bury asked as if he was being talked into a mortal sin.
“Not marooning, exactly, ” Lewrie pooh-poohed, slyy grinning. “The last I heard, that requires a barren, desert island, and they’ll be on a mainland just teemin’ with game and wild hogs, fish, birds, and oceans o’ fresh water. Spaniards, ashore in a Spanish possession? What could be more humane?”
“Well…” Bury pondered.
“ Senor Calderon and the rest can have a nice stroll to get to Saint Augustine, and there’s sure t’be little Spanish settlements and farms along the way,” Lewrie schemed on, “and all sorts of fruit and edible berries t’pluck. We leave ’em even one boat, Mister Bury, and sure as Fate, some of the damned fools’d try to sail for Havana, to arrange a rescue, and, what with waterspouts, sharks, currents, and the usual sea conditions in the Florida Straits, it just wouldn’t be Christian. They’d be over-set, swamped, and drowned… or eaten… ’fore they got halfway.”
“Well, in that case, sir,” Lt. Bury said, with the faintest hint of a smile on his face. “I, and Lieutenant Lovett, shall see to it, directly!”
“Capital!” Lewrie encouraged him, then went to the entry-port to inform Surgeon Mainwaring of the change in plans, then aft again to Calderon, who had been busy lowering the level of champagne in the bottle in his absence.
“J’ou land us ashore, senor?” Calderon asked, owl-eyed by then.
“All of you, sir,” Lewrie told him, hoping that Calderon would take the gesture as magnanimous… ’til the last moment. “I cannot find it in my heart to imprison such an affable fellow as yourself, or leave you on parole in such an expensive place as Nassau. Go with my very best wishes, sir! Here, take another bottle or two with you. Perhaps you can toast Captain Narvaez’s brilliance with them, what?”
“That idiota!” Calderon gravelled. “Hees family was hidalgo een Spain, conquistador een Cuba. Family old and reech, weeth the many connexions, so the sindicato who back our voyage, they put heem in command. But, he ees the marinero de agua dulce! The… ah…”
“Complete and total ‘lubber’?” Lewrie supplied.
“ Si si, the… how j’ou say!” Calderon eagerly agreed.
They shook hands; Calderon even went so far as to embrace him and bestow a grateful kiss on Lewrie’s cheek, to the amusement of the others on the quarterdeck, before stepping away.
“Uh, senor, j’ou geef back my papers? My Letters of Marque?”
“Sorry, Senor Calderon, but I must present them to the Prize Court at Nassau, as evidence that we took your ships, and lay claim to the Head and Gun Money for each man aboard at the time of capture, and for each cannon taken,” Lewrie explained. “Like the Red Indians take scalps, hmm?”
“Ah. I see,” Calderon said with a deep sigh, crestfallen. He would be un-employable as a privateering captain whenever he got back to Cuba, and was probably out a goodly sum of his own money as an investment in the venture, to boot.
He’ll need a good, long vacation t’get over this, Lewrie told himself; The long march to Saint Augustine ought to do it.
Lewrie saw him over the side, doffing his hat in salute, and Cox’n Desmond made another effort at a departure call.
“Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, turning back in-board.
“Aye, sir?”
“Once all the Spanish are ashore, we’re going to fetch off all their boats,” Lewrie informed him. “Once that’s done, and we’ve gotten all our people back aboard, we’re going to sink the ones we can’t use, and then… I wish you to see to the destruction of the prizes.”
“Scuttle them as well, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.
“No. Set fire to them and burn them to Hell.”
“Cleverly done, sir,” Lt. Darling dared comment. “Getting the information from the Spaniard… and gulling him.”
Clever? Me? Lewrie scoffed to himself. And all before breakfast? Mine arse on a band-box!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The urge to host a celebratory supper aboard Reliant was strong once the four-ship squadron gained the open sea, but there was still the coast above Mayami Bay to be scouted, the uncertainties of their charts to be dealt with, and sea-room out towards the Gulf Stream to be made. Lewrie sent round bottles of champagne from his newly won case-none necessary to the crafty Lt. Darling who had his own-and a bit of bad news for Lt. Lovett. Someone had to return to Nassau with the privateers’ papers and Letters of Marque. Lewrie urged the energetic and piratical Lovett to make his stay at Nassau as brief as possible, then return to re-join Thorn and Lizard off Saint Augustine to form a scouting-blockading force; under no circumstances was he to be brow-beaten back into Captain Francis Forrester’s clutches!