Ready to raise Merry Hell with any shipping he encountered.
"Thankee, God," he whispered aloft, "for a heaven-sent slant o' wind. Now, could You give me just one more?"
CHAPTER TEN
Lt. Jules Hainaut looked about the decks of his small schooner, a captured American trader, only sixty-four feet on the range of the deck, and tried to savour his temporary "command" for as long as it lasted, tried to tamp down his disappointment that it was only for the day, and that Le Maitre, Captain Choundas, seemed averse to ever letting him free. God forbid, but ever since Choundas had learned that his bete noire was in the Caribbean, the monstrous old ogre had come over all protective, as if he'd not risk his "pet," his "like a son to me" protege beyond his sight until Lewrie and Proteus had been eliminated… by his other, experienced "pets," Desplan, Griot, and MacPherson, the talented, the promising, the mature…! Merde alors, but it made Hainaut feel like a mewling infant, a kitten with its eyes barely open and vulnerable to the back-garden crows who'd carry it off like a ripe… worm!
L'Impudente (her American name had been Saucy) was not even the Captaine's to give him, for she was basically the yard-boat Governor-General Hugues used to tour his coastal fortifications… or sail to Marie Galante Island with his friends, wenches, and baskets of wine and food for his occasional romps… a faded, neglected… yacht!
Capitaine Choundas despised long trips in coaches, and a riding horse was pure torture on his mangled body, so,.when he had decided to accompany the Le Bouclier frigate to Basse-Terre to complete her lading for her first aggressive cruise, he needed a comfortable way to return, and L'Impudente was available.
"Follow us to Basse-Terre, Jules," Choundas had ordered, "and I will take passage back to Pointe-a-Pitre with you. Try not to run her aground, mon cher. M'sieur Hugues would never forgive me if you wreck her, and he already despises me enough," he'd said-without humour.
Even that was galling; as if Hainaut had never been a tarpaulin man, a well-trained matelot, boat-handler, or Aspirant who had stood a watch by himself.
Well, for one day at least he was not a paper-shuffling Lieutenant de Vaisseau, a mere catch-fart to his master. He had challenged L'Impudent's lethargic crew to sail her as she was meant to be sailed, had infused them with enthusiasm and had heated their blood with a dole-out of naval-issue arrack, the fierce but coarse brandy, before he even got the schooner away from the dock, with a promise of double the usual wine ration with their noon meal if they showed that magnificent frigate a clean pair of heels and danced a quadrille round her.
Even with a weeded bottom and both running and standing rigging in need of re-roving or replacement, L 'Impudente could dance. Under all the sail she could bear, he'd stood out with the wind up her skirts to carve graceful figures beyond the harbour moles to wait for Le Bouclier. Then, once on course Southwest, then West, he had weaved her about from one side of the frigate's bows to the other, sometimes falling back to pace her alee, then up to windward, ducking under her stern and pretending to fire raking broadsides into her transom.
Capitaine Desplan and his officers, and the frigate's eager crew, had first good-naturedly jeered them, then later cheered them, as the aptly named schooner had taunted and flirted about her. Hainaut didn't see Capitaine Choundas peering over the side during his antics, which was disappointing, as he strove so hard to prove himself a trustworthy ship-handler, but surely the others were telling him…!
L'Impudente had threaded the middle of the five-mile-wide channel between the Vieux Fort and the island of Terre-de-Bas in the Saintes, with antics done for a while, and the frigate finally spreading enough sail to threaten to run her down, dead astern of her in the deeps that L'Impudente was sounding. She stood out a good six kilometers (Hainaut was iffy when it came to the new measurements that the Directory had invented but in the old measurements he was sure he was out far enough to miss any reefs or shoals, and would not damage their Governor-General's little "play-pretty."
He had turned North, with the Trades a bit ahead of abeam, and the lithe schooner had gathered speed and heeled, dashing spray as high as the middle of her jibs, seeming to chuckle in delight to make such a gladsome way, as Hainaut did. Onward, rocking and romping, ranting over the bright sea, until he was far above Basse-Terre, and stood off-and-on to allow the frigate to sail in and anchor first, far from any risk of falling foul of her. At last, he angled in toward the harbour, which was no true harbour at all, just a lee-side road off the town and its quayside street, his crew ready to short-tack once he turned her up Eastward, planning to ghost in alongside Le Bouclier once she had both anchors down.
"Heu, Lieutenant?" the schooner's permanent Bosun said from the tillerhead. "There's something going on astern, I think, m'sieur."
"Touch more lee helm, Timmonier," Hainaut told the helmsman as he stepped past the long tiller sweep to the taff-rail to raise his telescope, a particularly fine one looted from the same disgraced admiral who had "supplied" his smallsword.
"Mon Dieu, merde alors!" Hainaut spat in alarm. "The 'Bloodies'!"
"Hard t'miss, thank God," Lewrie said, pointing his telescope, its tubes collapsed, at the volcano of La Soufriere to the Southeast, and the other peak at the North end of the island that was just about as tall. "It appears we'll make landfall just about level with a town called… Mister Winwood?"
"Deshaies, sir," the Sailing Master informed him, after a quick peek at his chart. "About seven miles offshore, I'd make it, before we bear away due South."
"Close enough," Lewrie said with a wolfish grin on his phyz as he paced about near the windward ladder-head, which would soon be the engaged side, if most French ships were inshore. "If they've watchers ashore, we'll sail faster than a messenger can ride. And if they have semaphore towers, it don't signify. Panic, and bags o' shit; that's what We're here for, after all. Though I simply don't understand why we haven't seen a single one of our warships, all the way here."
"It's possible, sir, that most of them are lurking to windward of the island," Lt. Langlie commented, "where they can snatch prizes."
" 'It is not love but booty that this iron age applauds,' do ye know," Lewrie cited, not above borrowing from Mr. Peel's stock of erudite quotes; though the Latin had quite flown his head. "Tibullus, I believe. Aha! Speakin' o' booty…"
He lifted his glass to eye a schooner of decent size that stood abeam the wind, close inshore but heading outward. Inshore of her was a small ship, full-rigged and three-masted, that was also standing out to sea as if she hadn't a care, or an enemy, in the world.
"Time to hoist the false Tricolours, Mister Langlie," he said.
"Aye aye, sir."
"And, do I have t'fire a salute to their Governor-General, I'd not bemoan the waste o' powder, either," Lewrie chuckled. "All in the best of causes… ain't it, Mister Peel. All's fair in love and war."
"That remains to be seen, Captain Lewrie," Peel frostily said by his side. His nose was still out of joint that no argument he offered could dissuade the mercurial Capt. Lewrie from his enterprise… though Peel had to admit that Lewrie's preparations had been little short of masterful.