"Why, thou mayst ask him thyself, Captain Lewrie," Capt. Goodell said, his eyes merry with delight, and his teeth bared 'neath his hedgelike beard and mustachios. "For here that fiend doth arrive, even as we speak." Goodell chuckled, waving a hand towards the sound of blocks squealing above the starboard side.
Jerking foot by jerking foot, a bosun's chair slung from a main yard rose up over the Hancock'?, bulwarks, bearing a bedraggled figure who sat slumped defeatedly, one palsied and liver-spotted hand clinging to the canvas chair-sling. Pasty-pale, that long-despised face as it weakly swung its gaze in-board in the dullest curiosity, or an attempt at proud disdain, to regard its conquerors with that one good eye.
Uniform tar-stained and smutted with powder smoke and sailcloth dust, rumpled and suddenly too big for his frame, his hat gone and his thinning reddish hair wildly disarrayed, Capt. Guillaume Choundas would have seemed a pathetic apparition. He had also suffered a wound in his bad leg, the red-spotted bandages visible through the rent that a surgeon had made in the thigh of his trousers; with a second gash high on his forehead, right on his receding hair line.
"And that, in the end, is thy wily, implacable Nemesis, Captain Lewrie?" Captain Goodell sourly wondered aloud. "Tsk, tsk."
"Fou/" Lewrie heard the sullen Griot whisper under his breath. "Qu'il aille au diable! Nom d'un chien … engoulevent.1" Which slurs made Goodell stiffen in pious indignation. And Lewrie smile wickedly; for Griot had called Choundas "fool," had damned him, had accused him of being a "God-damned goat-sucker," to boot!
"Vous!" Choundas snarled, soon as he clapped eyes on Lewrie, in a vitriolic snarl that conveyed nearly fifteen years of brooding anger and pain, his undying lust for revenge, since that bright tropic morn when he'd fallen to Lewrie's sword on the pristine beach at Balabac in the Spanish Philippines.
"Why hallo, 'Willy'!" Lewrie gaily rejoined in a mocking drawl, and tipping his hat with glee once he'd gotten over his utter surprise. "Havin' a bad day, are we… ye foetid old bugger?"
"Captain Lewrie, really!" Goodell primly chid him. "Such abuse for an honourably surrendered and now-helpless foe… thy long-standing personal animus notwithstanding… I'll not have it, not aboard an American man o' war, sir! The gentlemanly and honourable courtesies will be observed 'twixt foes, who are, in defeat, foes no longer."
Choundas was swung in-board and lowered to the deck, landing on his good leg but instantly collapsing like a sack of clothes when his hamstrung leg tried to share the load. With a hiss, Choundas summoned the reluctant Griot to his side to help him stand, to shake his uniform into better order, and take a few steps.
"M'sieur," Choundas said, blatantly ignoring Lewrie to concentrate on Goodell, "you 'ave ze best of me, Capitaine, an' 'ave honourably defeated me. To you is ze victoire, an' I 'umbly offer to you my sword," he concluded, knackily shamming nobility, to play off Lewrie's churlishness. With Griot's help, Choundas freed his scabbard from his belt-frog and extended the costly and ornate blade hilt first. Oh no, don't…! Lewrie thought, in a panic, dreading what was coming. Sure enough, Le Hideux s good eye darted at Lewrie, with his lips curled in a tiny smirk of triumph.
"Ahem…!" Lewrie began, like a first attempt to call a waiter.
"Thy reputation precedes thee, Captain Choundas," Goodell said, looking down his raptor's beak at the man, and the temptation of that priceless smallsword that could grace Goodell's mantel for generations, "and I tell thee plain, monsoor, wert thou capable of offering an iota of resistance or deviltry, what I know of thee tempts me to clap thee in irons, regardless of thy rank and dignities…"
That's the way, man! Lewrie silently exulted; take that sword, and guard him close! Deep on your orlop, among the rats!
"Nonetheless, I feel it my duty as a Christian gentleman, and a fellow professional officer of my country's Navy, on which I will allow no slur concerning the proper treatment of prisoners that might sully its glorious name, to take thee as thou stands, an officer and a gentleman of thy navy, who may freely and honourably offer his parole, on thy personal bond of honour…"
"Bluck!" Lewrie objected, stupefied past real words!
"… strictly admitting that the betrayal of such personal word will redound to the greatest discredit upon thyself, thy navy, and thy Republic," Goodell concluded, casting a dubious look at Lewrie. "Wilt thou offer thy parole, or wilt thou surrender, sir?" he posed.
"To such generosity of ze spirit, ze Christian spirit, m'sieur, naturellement, I am mos' 'appy to accept your offer of parole, merci beaucoup bien!" Choundas rasped back, his cruel, scarred lips forming a creditable facsimile of a lamb-innocent, and grateful, smile.
"Mine arse on a band-box!" Lewrie said in a fretful whisper: "I fear I must protest, Captain Goodell! Christian charity aside, sir… most creditable to you… Choundas simply can't be trusted. He should be my prisoner. His Majesty's Government has the older, and greater, claim on him, and…!"
"Did thy ship vanquish his, Captain Lewrie?" Goodell cooed back, suddenly come over Arctic ice, his owl-eyes asquint as if focussed on prey. "Did he strike his colours to thee? He did not! Were he thine, he would languish in chains and filth aboard a prison-hulk at English Harbour for years, as I languished in British captivity, sir… just to satisfy thy animus, which is unbecoming in an officer and gentleman of thy repute, sir! Though his soul be sold to the Devil long ago, and his sins the vilest scarlet, yea, even so, I could never subject even him
to such cruelty. Captain Choundas is now mine, taken in honourable battle. Unless and until he does anything to violate his sacred honour I am honour-bound to take his parole at face value, or defame my country's trustworthiness. Captain Choundas is an American prisoner sir, the fruit of an American victory, and I will brook no further dispute of the matter."
"But France isn't at war with the United States, he'll be let go he'll…!" Lewrie spluttered, appalled.
"Thun-der-ation!" Goodell bellowed. "Did I not say the matter is closed, sir? Thou wouldst gainsay me on my own quarterdeck, sir?"
Lewrie withered under Goodell's fury, blushing furiously to be dressed-down before the American officers and sailors like an idiotic midshipman… before Choundas's sly scorn! "He's dangerous he…"
"No longer, Captain Lewrie," Goodell said, seeming to relent. "At limited liberty ashore in the United States, Choundas will work no more deviltry. And since no formal declaration of war exists, there will be no prisoner exchanges possible, Captain Lewrie. Neither do the French yet hold a single U.S. Navy officer of comparable rank to offer in exchange… dost thou see, sir?" Goodell concluded in much calmer voice, his beard-shrouded lips curling in the faintest of grins and his owl-eyes, for a brief moment, twinkling with glee.
Damme, did the old stickleback just wink at me? Lewrie gawped.
"Captain Choundas will be sent to an American seaport, with my report of his capture… and his nature… made public knowledge to one and all, Captain Lewrie. He will work no further havoc. Nor, return to France before the turn of the century, in my estimation. That is the most I may promise thee, sir, and thou must be satisfied with that."