Lewrie rocked on the balls of his feet, eyes half-closed in fond speculation of good meals, fresh-water washing of all his salt-stained and itchy garments, as Lt. Langlie saw to their anchoring. Him ashore in Sunday-Divisions best, the St. Vincent and Camperdown medals algeam against his shirt ruffles. Successful frigate captains could expect a warm welcome from merchants, and from the ladies…
He knew Antigua of old. Why, there'd be ravishing matrons, and "grass-widows" simply bored to tears by the local society; there'd be delectably lissome young misses, with lashes and fans all aflutter as he languidly smiled, half-bowed, and doffed his hat. There'd be smiles in return from the more-promising "runners" among the ladies, the well-hooded, secretive "perhapses" if not bolder, carnal "come-hithers."
Had he at Cashman's going-away? No, and come to think on it, he had been retaining his "humours" like a Catholic monk, lately, abjuring even tame relief in the practice known in the Navy as "Boxing the Jesuit"-the one the physicians and parsons condemned for turning manly youth into feeble wheezers, with hair on their pink palms, too!
Why the Devil not? he asked himself; a man wasn 't made to…
Quickly followed by thoughts of Caroline, and reconciliation… then of Desmond McGilliveray, and even more bastardly gullions turning up fifteen years hence to plague him, hmm… perhaps, sadly, not. It was a mortal pity, for the Antigua ladies were raised right in his estimation, as round-heeled and obliging a pack of "genteel" wantons as anyone could wish for… the sort who'd trip you with a daintily shod foot, then manage to be the first to hit the floor, cunningly asprawl beneath you!
"Anchor's set, sir," Lt. Langlie reported, and Lewrie turned to take note of Langlie's relief; at last, his onerous task of First Officer could ease, in harbour. Well, mostly, anyway. "And the battery is secured from the salute."
"Very well, Mister Langlie," Lewrie replied, leaving his lusty reveries. "We'll row out the stern kedge to… there," he directed, pointing five points off their larboard bows, almost abeam. "We have room to swing by one anchor, but I'd admire did we haul her up so the prevailing wind's off our larboard quarters, for an easy departure in a few days. And not go 'aboard' a nearby ship, do we swing foul."
"Aye aye, sir," Langlie said, looking even more relieved.
"Your pardon, Captain, but there seems to be a boat bound for us," Midshipman Elwes announced. "Just there, sir."
Sure enough; once Lewrie had lifted his glass, he could see the colours in the stern-sheets of a large rowing barge, one sporting fully eight oarsmen, a bow-man, a coxswain, and a useless midshipman aft by the tiller, with a Lieutenant seated forward of them, along with another man dressed like some sort of buskined sportsman out for a "shoot" on his private game park.
Commanding Admiral's barge, maybe the Port Captain's, Lewrie intuited; officer a flag-lieutenant, the pasty-faced shorebound sort, but why the civilian!' Lewrie allowed himself a wry smirk, supposing that a functionary from the island's governor-general had been sent out to see what all the fuss was about, and had been caught sitting for a portrait as Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, with fowling-piece, custom rifled musket, a brace of setters at his feet with parrots in their mouths, and all.
Damme though, he further wondered; what's left on Antigua worth huntin' anymore? Rats, and runaway sailors?
"Permission to mount the quarterdeck?" Mr. Peel enquired halfway up the larboard ladder, natty in his other suit of "ditto," this one in sombre grey rather than black, with a subdued maroon waist-coat.
"Oh, shit! Oh, Hell!" Lewrie spat, lowering his telescope for a second so he could rub his disbelieving eye.
"Well, if you feel that way about it…" Peel griped, piqued.
"Mister the Honourable Grenville Pelham is come to call on us," Lewrie told him. "In that barge yonder."
"What? Pelham! WhatthebloodyHellishedoinghere?" Peel gawped, leaping to the quarterdeck, the bulwarks, and seizing Lewrie's glass for a gape-jawed squint of his own. "Where… oh. My eyes!"
"No, borrow mine, I insist," Lewrie grumbled. "God's Teeth!"
"At least he looks pleased," Peel took hopeful note. "He's up and waving like his best horse just came in first. Hmmm… this may not be too bad. 'Ne defice coeptis … 'Falter not in what thou hast begun.' Valerius Flaccus," Peel cited, taking what heart he could.
That'un made Lewrie wince; it had been that ne'er-do-well Peter Rushton's droll advice, just after they had set fire to the governor's coach-house at Harrow, which had gone up in a most spectacular blaze, surpassing their wildest expectations; just before he and that other scoundrel, Clothworthy Chute, had gotten clean away, leaving Lewrie to be nabbed with the port-fire in his hands. The caning they'd escaped (since Lewrie was stupidly "honourable" enough not to tattle) had been Biblical; which thrashing hadn't held a candle to the one his father, Sir Hugo, had given him after he'd been sent down in shame- along with the long bill for damages! Falter not, indeed. Pah!
"My word, Mister Peel, but… what a load of 'balls'!" Lewrie replied. "Pass word for my servant Aspinall, there! If Pelham seems happy, Peel, best we let him crow over whatever it is that's made him so, before we, uhm… tell him what we've been up to. Perhaps over a large bowl o' punch, hey? One with a liberal admixture o' whisky?"
"I've been to Saint Domingue!" Grenville Pelhamm boastfully announced once they were alone in Lewrie's great-cabins. "Direct action, that's the thing, and damme gentlemen, but I do avow that we're on the cusp of success, at long last. Carpe diem, what? 'Seize the day,' so I did! Uhmm, tasty punch, this. What's in it? Diff rent…"
"Oh, some celebratory champagne," Lewrie said, ticking off the ingredients, and manfully striving not to roll his eyes at all the old Latin adages being bandied about in Public School Boy style, with a "pooh-poohing" wave, "properly French, o' course. Cool tea, bottle o' dessert wine, a half-gallon o' ginger beer, sugar, and lemon. The usual ingredients… mostly. Saint Domingue, though, really? Well, well!"
"Got our Mister Harcourt to slip Toussaint L'Ouverture a letter asking to meet him on lie Gonaves, the middle of the bay just off Port-au-Prince… on the strictest q.t. and he did" Pelham said, preening. " Ugliest little monkey ever you did see, but shrewd, for being a butler in his early days. Or so he thought, hey? Oddest damn' eyes he has, too. Like a lion's. His best feature, since he's so short, squat and bow-legged. Went… what's the Hindoo word?… in disguise I did."
"In mufti" Lewrie supplied, for his father used the term after years and bloody years with a "John Company" sepoy regiment.
"I was wond'rin' why you were clad so, uhm…" Peel commented for Pelham was still wearing a dark buff suit of "ditto" with a waistcoat in a green shade most often seen on sadly neglected houseplants, a pale tan unbleached linen shirt, tall riding boots covered by dark-brown corduroy "spatterdashes" to mid-thigh, buttoned up the outside with dark horn buttons, and had come aboard sporting a flat-crowned, wide-brimmed farmer's hat half-buried in assorted dark-brown feathers. The hat was of cheap felt, not beaver, of a colour that Lewrie could only describe as "shit-brickle" or "dyspeptic dog turd ochre." Lewrie could only assume that Pelham had struck an earth-shaking bargain with L'Ouverture, if he still felt need to sport his "costume" days or even weeks later, like a Muskogee warrior displaying his most-recent scalps.