“An everyday or weekly occurrence, then, sir?” Lewrie asked, lowering his telescope, and wondering if he was grasping at straws in the need to discover something criminal to justify the days that he had so far wasted chasing after Will-O’-The-Wisps. “Possibly,” he allowed… grudgingly.
Wish I could send a cutter in chase of ’em, Lewrie thought; or shadow ’em and see what they’re up to.
He closed the tubes of the telescope with a thump and heaved a deep sigh, partly in disappointment, and partly to calm his excitement and appear “captainly” to his officers and men. He turned and handed it back to Midshipman Warburton with a polite “Thankee.”
I send a cutter t’board ’em in the dark, or lurk so bald-faced in American waters, I could halfway start a war! he told himself.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Lewrie said to one and all, on his way to the head of the starboard ladderway, then paused at the top. “There will be some of those lighters alongside with the Purser’s goods tomorrow. Without appearin’ too curious, let’s take her measure, and ask about the barge trade. And, keep a closer eye on the traffic in the Roads, hey? Bon appetit!” he bade them on his way to his supper.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The sailing barge from Savannah came alongside Reliant in the middle of the Forenoon, and Lewrie made sure that he was on deck for her arrival, as were his off-watch officers, Bosun Sprague, and his Mate, Wheeler. Lines from her bow and stern were taken aboard to be bound to the frigate’s mizen and foremast chains, and the barge crew heaved over great hairy mats of ravelled rope to cushion the contact between the hulls.
There were light articles of cargo on the barge’s deck, containing live chickens and layer hens, some squealing piglets, and sides of fresh-slaughtered beef in jute sacks, sacks of flour and cornmeal, and casks of spirits, along with wooden cases of goods for the officers’ wardroom, the Mids’ cockpit, and the captain’s cabins.
Lewrie stood idle by the mizen mast shrouds to look down into her. The barge was closer to fifty feet on the range of the deck than his earlier estimate of fourty, very wide-beamed, and flush-decked with a single cargo hatch between her masts, and smaller crew hatches at bow and stern. Her master was White, as was her helmsman, though the rest of the small crew were Black, most likely slaves.
“We’ll have the light goods, first,” Bosun Sprague bellowed to the barge crew. “Lines comin’ down, and we’ll drag them up the loading skids.”
“Is she about the same size as the barges you saw at Savannah, Mister Cadbury?” Lewrie asked the Purser as he stood on the quarterdeck with a ledger book and a pencil, to cheek off each bought item as it came aboard.
“About average, sir,” Cadbury told him. “There are some smaller, thirty or thirty-five feet or so,” Cadbury told him. “I would say that this one is representative of the bulk of the barge trade. Many of them serve plantations and hamlets up the river, as well. As for the barges you noted leaving port last evening, sir, they may have been bound for the Sea Island plantations landings, for the channels behind the islands.”
“Out to sea just long enough to enter Wassaw or Ossabaw Sounds, then go up the other rivers?” Lewrie asked, leaning most “lubberly” on the bulwarks where the quarterdeck ended and the larboard sail-tending gangway began, with his arms crossed.
“Very likely, sir,” Mr. Cadbury agreed with a primly happy expression, glad to be of assistance. “While I am not a ‘scaly fish’ of experienced seamanship, this barge does strike me that its upper rails are tall enough to weather a stiff beat to weather, well heeled over, long enough at least for a short sea journey from one sound to the next.”
“As beamy as a Dutch lugger, aye,” Lewrie judged, “so she’d be quick to make leeway. And, from here, it doesn’t look as if her hold is all that deep. She might not draw much more than seven or eight feet. Mister Rossyngton? Are you ready, sir?”
“Aye, sir,” their slyest and cheekiest Midshipman eagerly said.
“Then pray do go on and be all boyish curiosity,” Lewrie told him. Rossyngton dodged a crate of chickens and several sacks of meal to the open larboard entry-port and did a quick scramble down the man-ropes and battens to hop aboard the barge, ostensibly to oversee the ship’s working-party who would strap up the heavier items of cargo and prepare them to be hoisted aboard with the main course yard as a crane.
“And when you were on the docks, Mister Cadbury, did you see or hear anything odd?” Lewrie further asked, turning to face the Purser once more.
“Well, not really, sir,” Cadbury replied, half his attention on the goods coming up in a cargo net, and eager to go down to the waist to check items off. “I saw no war-like goods, beyond a few kegs of gunpowder in the chandleries, a brass swivel gun or two, but nothing in sufficient bulk to draw any suspicions. Of course, even in peacetime, merchant ships of any worth carry some armament for their protection.”
“How very true,” Lewrie replied, though thinking that it was a rare ship’s master who would put up much of a fight if he found that he could not out-run or out-sail a pirate or privateer.
“Compared to the reception we got in Charleston, sir,” Cadbury happily burbled on after checking off two more crates, “I found that Savannah’s merchants were much more agreeable.”
“No French ships anchored in port, most-likely,” Lewrie said. “No one to show off to.”
“I gather that it has been a month of Sundays since any Royal Navy ship has called here, so I and my party were looked upon as something of a raree, sir,” Cadbury told him. “The gentleman with whom I arranged these goods, sir, a fellow named Treadwell, when he heard that a British Navy shore party was in his establishment, came out to speak with me, personally, and was hospitality itself, even treating me to a glass of Rhenish, and when he heard that you had requested me to find you a crock of aged corn whisky, he was that eager to turn up five gallons of what he assured me was the very best Kentucky!”
“Not too dear, I trust,” Lewrie said.
“A most equitable price, sir,” Cadbury replied, naming a sum that didn’t make Lewrie wince or suck his teeth. “A very striking man, is Mister Treadwell. Most fashionably dressed in the latest new London style, much as we saw back home before sailing, and… he’s no older than you, sir, but has the most remarkable head of silver-white hair. I took it at first for a wig, but, upon closer inspection, it proved to be his own… very full and curly. All the more striking, given his deep tan. Well set-up, of a lean but muscular build, almost six feet in height.”
“White hair?” Lewrie asked with a puzzled frown. “Did he get scared out of his wits once, d’ye imagine, Mister Cadbury?”
“When he noticed me looking, Mister Treadwell explained that he had once been pale blond, but, spending so much time at sea or upon the rivers hereabouts, bare-headed in the sun, when he was making his fortune, it gradually turned silvery-white, and there’s no one that could explain it for him.”
“Uhmm, how many o’ these barges does he own, d’ye expect, Mister Cadbury?” Lewrie asked, thinking that the only youngish people whose hair had turned white so early were pink-eyed albinos, and most of those in the circuses.
“A fair parcel, I would expect, sir,” Cadbury answered. “For I think there were at least half a dozen lading or un-lading at his wharf whilst I was there, and, on our way down-river, I spotted several others. All fly a white burgee with a blue star, like a company house flag… just as this one does, sir.”
“The barging trade ’twixt Tybee Roads and the city,” Lewrie mused aloud, “up-river to the inland towns. Perhaps out to sea for the island plantations?”