"And any British frigate that hauls up within their sight just might be Proteus, and Lewrie, hey?"
"Yes," Peel said after a long frown. "I do see your point, sir."
"So do you accept my apology, Mister Peel?" Lewrie asked.
"I do, Captain Lewrie," Peel replied with a smile, at last, and his hand out for shaking. "Do you accept mine as well. For being my own secretive self when it came to the private signals. Did we wait to use them, they would have been out of date in another two months in any event, so… for not going direct to Antigua, as Mister Pelham wished, too, and disputing your decision to come here."
"I will endeavour to explain myself more plainly in future," Lewrie vowed, shaking Peel's hand. "But for now, I must carry on, sir, so…" Lewrie said, turning away to head for the hammock nettings overlooking the gun-deck and gangways, ready to address the crew.
"Oh, Captain Lewrie," Peel called after him. "Something else I s'pose I must apologise for. Damme, but the thinking you put into your raid, it showed such unexpected, uhm… sagacity and…"
"What, Mister Peel?" Lewrie hooted. "You're sorry you thought all I could do was plod round a quarterdeck and cry 'Luff,' or 'Fetch out yer whores'?"
"Something like that, sir," Peel answered, with a faint wince to be so clearly understood. Not that he didn't think that Captain Lewrie could ever be consistently clever, but… he did have his moments!
"Accepted, sir," Lewrie chuckled with a faint bow and a grand doff of his hat. Then he was busy with the Surgeon, Mr. Hodson, whom he allowed to mount the quarterdeck to make his report, and expressing his wonder that not a single sailor had been killed, and only six men had been hurt, with the further good news that only one of the wounded hands was considered a sick-berth patient.
Sure enough, once HMS Proteus had made a goodly offing and had sailed the shore of Guadeloupe under the horizon, with only the twin peaks of Basse-Terre still showing, the brightly painted rum keg was fetched up from below with all due ceremony and martial music from the Marine drummers and fifers, to welcoming cheers from her thirsty, successful man o' warsmen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Le Bouclier was anchored once more, to her second bower and her lesser kedge, this time with her un-harmed larboard side facing to seaward, with little L'Impudente tied up along her ravaged starboard side.
Saws screeched and rasped, metal hammers and wooden mauls thudded and drummed, and old wood cried as it was torn away with crow-levers for replacement with fresh planking brought up from the bosun's stores. Blocks shrilled as dis-mounted cannon were lowered back onto carriages set back on their trucks, as shattered carriages, stripped of any useful fittings, were hoisted over-side for scrapping or firewood ashore; as replacement yards and top-masts were swayed aloft, up through the lubber's holes in the savaged fighting-tops to be jiggled, then bound into place by weary topmen. The starboard gangway was heaped with the thick rolls of sails too singed or shot-torn to salvage, Fresh rolls of spare sails, huge hillocks of salvageable canvas, and bolts of new cloth smothered the forward gun-deck where Le Voilier, the Sailmaker and his crew, cut, snipped, basted, and sewed to patch damaged sails or start completely new replacements, installing grommets, reef-lines, and bolt-ropes inside the edging seams.
Smaller bundles, too much resembling the hopeful rolls of sailcloth, also littered the starboard gangway, and about the thick foot of the main-mast trunk in a thigh-high heap, stacked like cordwood to free deck space for the working-parties.
Those were the corpses.
The dead had been hastily shrouded, without the benefit of washing first, so their coverings were not the ecru of new canvas, nor the darker, weather-stained parchment dun of used. They were splotched or even brightly splashed with drying gore, the bile and ordure of gutted men. Slain in mid-morning, they still awaited transport ashore to the cemetery outside the port, and it was now nearly sunset. The horrible day had been very hot and still. They already stank.
Le Bouclier's survivors avoided the stacks if they could, walking on eggs as far away as possible, but too tired, too dulled by fear and shock by then to hold their noses at the mounting reek, studiously ignoring them, most of the time. If they could.
It was only when a dead man somewhere in the sloping mass round the main-mast, swelled with rapid tropic putrefaction, vented the foul gases in eerie groans or sighs that the matelots would take notice and leap away in alarm, crossing themselves in dread that some poor devil under the pile still lived and was trying to worm out from under that crushing weight, calling for aid from his shipmates, with whom he had laughed and japed just a few hours before.
And sailors of any nation were superstitious. They could quite easily believe that somewhere among those bundled, shattered husks the confused, terrified spirits of the slain were beginning to stir, to walk and wail as night drew nigh to torment the living until properly buried ashore.
The stench of the dead lay over Le Bouclier like a harbour fog, and the Trade wind, fading with the heat of the day, could not disperse it leeward. Belowdecks, the air was even closer and hotter, even more foetid despite the rigging of wind-scoops, and the liberal use of vinegar and wash-water to scour the decks. A miasma from wounded sailors stashed below continually welled up like hot smoke from a chimneypot, as if driven by their wails, moans, and frantic, fretful mumblings, as they weighed their odds of living, or faced the certain prospect of dying. Half-drunk on rum or cheap brandy used to dull their pains or allay the shock of amputation, their desperate prayers and weepings seemed to create the wind that wafted the stink of their wounds aloft through companionways, scuttles, and limber holes, ever renewable, no matter what brief relief a gust of the Trades might bestow.
Screams and half-shrieked pleas soared upwards, too, as the surgeon and his mates, civilian surgeons from the town of Basse-Terre, and even an exalted physician or two plied their gruesome trade. Bone-saws rasped now and then when amputations were necessary. They were necessary quite often; they were quicker than any attempt to draw out shards of wood splinters, bits of cloth, shot-scraps or shattered bone chips, leaving time to deal with those who needed careful attention. Supposedly, a healthy young man could recover, could live without use of a foot, a hand, an arm, or a leg.
Guillaume Choundas kept station well up to windward, as best he was able, clumsily perched atop the breech of a quarterdeck gun as doleful reports came to him. His monstrous countenance was set in a grim and stoic, brooding death-mask, broken only by a snarling decision or abrupt jerk of his head as the messengers stood near, shivering in dread of him. His cane was leaned on the gun-carriage, so he could use his remaining hand and a silk handkerchief to whisk the swarms of flies, and the stinks, briefly away.
The flies, large and pustulently bottle-green, had found them even before the frigate had begun to limp shoreward, two whole miles offshore; moments after the thrice-damned British frigate had jauntily sailed out of arcs, or reach, of their guns. The flies' numbers had only increased once they had anchored within a cable of the quays.
Though their numbers were equal to a Biblical Plague, Choundas noted that they no longer darted about quite as frantically as before. He imagined they were now sated, merely buzzing about to boast another of their… victories. Another of their mortal feasts!