"I'd appreciate that, sir," Lewrie replied. "Brave fellow."
For a complete nit-wit, Lewrie qualified to himself; but even they sometimes have their uses.
"Takes one to know one, as my granny always told me, Captain Lewrie!" General Lamb chortled. "Well, sirs! To Lewrie and Proteus, huzzah!"
"Lewrie and Proteus," Captain George Blaylock said in chorus, the smile on his face patently false, his teeth grinding all the while.
"We'll have need of that sort of support in the morning," Lamb said, once they had tossed back their wine and the steward circulated with a cut-glass decanter to top them up. "L'Ouverture's laddies ain't done, not by a long chalk. Even re-enforced, we'll be hard-pressed."
Think I'll rub Blaylock's nose in it, Lewrie maliciously thought; like a puppy in his scat. Use the upper hand now… or lose it.
"I'd like to oblige you, Sir Harold, but I've fired off the last of my grape and cannister, along with an entire tier of powder kegs, and have only roundshot left. Oh, we could make up new stands of grape and bag musket and pistol balls easily enough," he breezed off, before turning his gaze to Captain Blaylock, "… were there some about."
Lamb swivelled about to peer at Blaylock, almost catching that worthy's outraged scowl; which expression was rapidly amended to the genial, slack-lipped smile of a doting uncle.
"Surely, Captain Blaylock, your ship's magazines should be positively stiff with the proper munitions," General Lamb suggested.
"Ah," Blaylock answered with a petulant snap of those lips as he contemplated his ship of the line being plundered a second time. "Um, I expect they are, but… now we've landed two more regiments and two batteries of six-pounders, this… indirect fire will be unnecessary, hmm? And, should such still be required, would it not better serve to shift Proteus to the outer harbour… now her quiver's spent, and let Halifax take her place?"
Go on, go on, step right in it! Lewrie inwardly gloated.
"My carronades and chase-guns are mounted an entire deck higher than Lewrie's, after all. Hence, less risk of accidentally firing on your soldiers, Sir Harold? And 'tis a business fraught with risk, as it is."
"Captain Wandsworth could recalculate his sums, I s'pose, for Halifax 's greater height;" Lewrie allowed, as if reluctant to accept. "Damme, though, it cuts a bit' rough t'be supplanted, now we've got it down to a science."
"Finish what you started, d'ye mean, Captain Lewrie?" General Lamb quite sympathetically imagined.
"Aye, something like that, Sir Harold," Lewrie said, making his "confession" seem a hard-drawn thing. "Then there's the excitement, I must allow. Blockade work was gettin' boresome in the main, and then here came this marvelous chance for real action, and… for us to up-anchor and move down-harbour as a guardship… well. We'd be worse than useless. Not patrollin', not makin' a contribution…" he concluded, all but piping at his eyes in sadness over "not doing his bit."
"Since Proteus has exhausted her magazines," Blaylock said, getting a sly-boots look on his phyz that Lewrie, for a moment, dreaded with crossed fingers hidden in his lap. "There's no reason for Lewrie to idle here, at all. Halifax can handle anything that arises."
Got you, ya greedy, glory-huntin ' bastard! Lewrie thought, trying not to leap up and whoop in gleeful triumph. It'll be the onliest way that barge of yours gets your name in the papers!
"Oh, sir, now…!" he pretended to protest; not too loudly.
"Perhaps a quick return to Kingston would be in order, Captain Lewrie," Blaylock casually suggested. "To replace your lacks, hmm?"
"Surely, there must be someplace closer, someplace not so deep-down-wind o' the Trades, though, sir," Lewrie grumbled. "That would take Proteus far from her patrol area, and at such a parlous time…"
He left off the "tsk-tsk" inherent in his "respectful" gripe.
"Then down to Port-Au-Prince." Blaylock brightened. "There's a storeship in port now, which freed my ship to escort the convoy here, and guard the evacuation of Gonaives and Saint Marc. Got my guns back, too," he added with a prissy "so there" sniff of retribution.
"Well, if needs must, then of course, sir," Lewrie said, almost tail-wagging eager to serve, no matter how humbly. "Wherever we are needed."
"Do you sail in the morning, then, Captain Lewrie," General Lamb told him, "I'll send a letter of appreciation aboard your ship before you depart, expressing my undying thanks for your actions today. And a copy to your Admiral Parker, as well… to let him know what a paragon he has in his command."
"You do me too much honour, Sir Harold," Lewrie vowed modestly though eating up such approbation like plum duff. That letter would get posted in the news back home, getting his name in the papers!
"Nonsense." Sir Harold waved him off. "Captain Blaylock can write a properly appreciative report of his own, hey Captain Blaylock?"
"Why, I…" Blaylock responded, mouth agape in high dudgeon and shock for a raw second, before turning bland and agreeable once more. "But of course, Sir Harold. Anything to oblige," he stated, obviously weighing the cost of a refusal against the present goodwill of a rich and knighted senior officer.
"Do you wish, then, to take my anchorage tonight, sir?" Lewrie prodded, shamming some more eagerness. "There's still enough light…"
"You would not mind, sir?" Blaylock asked, leery of his offer to cede the place of honour so quickly.
"It will give Captain Wandsworth more time to do his sums before dawn, sir," Lewrie replied, rising as if dismissed, the decision having already been made. "And, being toothless, I can accomplish no more." "Makes sense, sir," General Lamb commented, nose in his glass. "Aye, up-anchor and stand down below the port, Captain Lewrie," Blaylock said, draining his glass and rising to his own feet as if to begin the evolutions for moving his ship that instant. "Do let me walk you to the deck, Captain Lewrie."
"An honour, sir," Lewrie replied, lying most pleasantly. Blaylock, for Lamb's benefit, even went so far as to thread his right arm through Lewrie's left, as if they were now as close as cater-cousins on the way to the door.
"Do not make the mistake of trying to best me again, Lewrie," Blaylock muttered from the side of his mouth once they were out of Sir Harold's earshot, still beaming like an admiring papa. "I've years more experience at Navy politics than any jumped-up, ill-bred jackanapes of a 'dashing' frigate captain. You finagled me once back in Port-Au-Prince, and robbed me of guns. I s'pose you think you did it again, tonight, hmm? Well, let me tell you something. Oh, I will pen you a modicum of praise for your damn-foolery, but stress the horrid risk you ran of killing our own troops, and one never knows, does one… the Samboes just might've had artillery in those woods, and any casualties from grape or cannister I can always lay at your feet, and there goes your good odour… boy!"
"Don't you run the same risk, sir?" Lewrie pointed out. "After all, it'll be your guns, tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's accidental dead can always become yesterday's dead… on paper, Lewrie," Blaylock whispered, evilly beaming. "And just who d'ye think will do the writing once you're gone… Lewrie."
"You will, of course, sir," Lewrie levelly responded.
"That's right, that's exactly right!" Blaylock softly crowed.
"Unless it's Sir Harold writing Admiral Parker, should you kill some of his men, sir," Lewrie pointed out. "Then it's on your head."
"Ah, but in my case, Lewrie, t'will be an unfortunate accident, a mistaken signal from Army artillerymen."
"Well, since you seem to have everything covered, sir, I'll go back aboard Proteus and shift anchor," Lewrie said, outwardly uncaring and eerily calm in the face of such a threat.