"So, you concur with my putting the scheme in play, sir?" Peel decided to ask, to get verbal assent before Pelham went arse-over-tit, while he could still form sentences.
"What? Oh… knacky ruse. Yes. S'pose," Pelham agreed, now noticeably swaying. "Clever! Amusin'. Damme, we set sail, already?"
"I'm glad you approve of my extemporaneous actions, sir," Peel most-carefully intoned, "and that Captain Lewrie may attest to such an approval." He tipped Lewrie a broad wink.
"Glad to be of service, Mister Peel," Lewrie gleefully agreed.
"Where'd those damned Colonials get all their prizes?" Pelham enquired, plopping down into his side-chair again, and tugging at his neck-stock as if strangling, or suffocating in his too-warm clothes.
" 'Bout ninety miles West-Nor'west of the Grenadines. They took four merchantmen back from Choundas's newest raiders," Lewrie casually explained, thinking that Mr. Pelham was sufficiently "liquored" to be amenable to part of the truth. "They also took one of his raiders into the bargain, and sank another. Picked up the survivors from that one, and fetched 'em all in. You'll have a good time interrogating 'em, I think, Mister Pelham. Once they're handed over from the Americans to our officials, that is. Should've seen 'em!" Lewrie enthused. "Ev'ry shot 'twixt wind and water, made one strike with a single broadside…!"
"You there?" Pelham gravelled of a sudden, head now well a'list and one eye screwed shut. "Yer ship'z… hic!… there, sir? Damn my eyes, you been coll-… collab-… at sea with the Yankees, 'spite my tellin' ye…?"
Uh oh, Lewrie thought; should've let him slip under the table, and kept my mouth shut!
"God damn my eyes, you bloody… WHAT?" Pelham screeched as he shot to his feet. "Mis'rable idiot bastard, meddlin'…!"
Lewrie swung his leg off the desk as Pelham staggered forward, hands "clawed" as if wishing to strangle him, but, thankfully, he did not get that far; couldn't in point of fact, for Toulon, proudly bound aft toward his lair under the starboard-side settee, dragging his oversized, wide-brimmed, befeathered, and awkward "kill," overhauled Pelham's stumbling, clumping feet.
Which near-collision raised an outraged howl from the ram-cat; which howl seemed to levitate the distinguished Pelham for a startled second; which levitation made Pelham come down attempting to avoid the cat, or his costly new "sportin' hat" (it was hard to judge which), and reel and flail about for what little balance was left to him; which attempt looked like a marriage of an impromptu Irish Jig, a folk dance involving sombreros reported among the mestizo peoples of the Spanish New World, and the frantic whirlings of mystic Muslim dervishes in the Holy Land; which gay prancing brought forth an accompanying outburst in what might be mistaken for an Unknown Tongue, sounding hellish-like "Eeh too-ah gaah, shit hic! arr-eehf the last syllables a wail that ascended the musical scale as Mr. Pelham snagged a booted toe in a ring-bolt mid his descent and landed spraddle-legged on his rump with a gay thud.
"Rrowwr!" Toulon carped from his lair, his kill abandoned.
"Oww-hunngh!" was Pelham's response, quickly followed by a "Hhrackk!" quickly followed by the remains of his breakfast, dinner most-like his supper of the evening before, and about half a gallon of "punch" to boot. Pelham's "casting his accounts to Neptune" didn't do his sickly green waist-coat, buff breeches, or corduroy spatterdashes a bit of good, either.
"Now I understand why they call 'em spatterdashes," Peel said looking like to puke himself, with a pocket handkerchief pressed close to his nose and mouth. "God in Heaven, what's he been eating?"
Mr. Pelham caught a whiff of it, himself, and cast up another flood, just before his eyes crossed, his face went pasty, and he fell insensible to the deck on his right side.
"Pelham a Mason?" Lewrie enquired, quickly masking his own nose.
"Most-like," Peel mumbled through his handkerchief. "Most rich and titled men are. Why?"
"Just wonderin' if what he shouted was some secret language," Lewrie answered, shrugging. "Well. Shouldn't someone help him up, or… something?"
"Damned if it'll be me," Peel announced. " 'Twas your punch done him in. You do it."
"Aspinall?" Lewrie shouted toward the gun-deck. "Sentry? Pass word for my cabin servant… and Mister Durant, the Surgeon's Mate, as well. Carryin' board, and the loblolly boys," he instructed the Marine who popped his head through the forrud bulkhead door. "Mops, brooms… and lots and lots o seawater." To himself he muttered, "May have to rig a wash-deck pump, never can tell."
" 'E looks dead," Peel observed.
"No, he'll only wish he was, when he comes round," Lewrie pooh-poohed. "God's sake, let's go on deck for some air! And when knacky little Mister Pelham can sit up, again, I want t'ask him about how he got to Saint Domingue. Don't care how disguised and careful he said he was, there's something about that knockabout tradin' vessel he used, bothers me. Don't know why, but…"
"Sounded fishy to me, too," Peel allowed as they made a rapid way aft to Lewrie's private and narrow ladder to the after quarterdeck. "Don't trust his trade-craft, the bloody… amateur. L'Ouverture and Rigaud, Hedouville… Sonthonax and Laveaux… those lesser generals like Dessalines and Christophe, they all have agents in the opposing camps. Doubt you could walk from one side of the street to the other without bumping into three or four, and a half-dozen more spies scampering off to report on your ev'ry fart and scratch."
"You think Pelham was gulled?" Lewrie asked, once they reached the brisk fresh air by the taff-rails and flag lockers, under the taut-rigged canvas awnings that now spanned the quarterdeck.
"My dear Captain Lewrie, I am almost certain of it!" Peel said with a sneer. "That damned fool, callow… boy!… let himself get used by just about everyone in power on the island, and showed 'em all just how perfidious are our dealings. After him, all our hopes for a British Saint Domingue are completely dashed. And Pelham did it, all by his little self, by being just too clever by half!"
"Well," Lewrie said at last. "There lies the packet brig over yonder. Four to six weeks from now, your account could arrive beside his. I'll have my portable writing desk fetched up… do you decide you might need it, hmm?"
"Might fetch up Pelham's hat, too, while you're at it," Mr. Peel said with a knowing smile. "Your cat can have the feathers, for they ain't dyed. Turkey, eagle, and pelican plumes, mostly. But the hat dye might make him sick. Or as mad as a hatter."
"Good suggestion, Mister Peel," Lewrie said with a bow of gratitude. "And here, I didn't think you cared!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lt. Jules Hainaut had barely gotten his prize schooner tied up alongside a stone quay in the harbour of Basse-Terre when the reply to his urgent flag signals came from Pointe-a-Pitre, the other harbour to the east. The Vieux Fort semaphore tower had signalled that his hoists would be relayed to Capt. Choundas as Mohican and Chippewa had beaten a hobby-horsing way inshore. Despite the hundreds of things required of him to secure both prizes, see to the surviving crews, and turn the vessels over to the local court officials, there was no gainsaying the wax-sealed letter's pithy instruction when it came aboard stained with ammoniacal horse-sweat, and borne by an equally sweated despatch rider.
"Come to me, quickly.1" the single sheet of paper said.