Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey
" 'Night, puss. Love you, too."
Murrff' was the shut-mouthed, grunted reply.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
So near, yet so far away.
From Kingston to Saint Domingue was only a little over two hundred miles as the albatross flies, but a real bugger to attain against the Nor'east Trades, forcing Proteus to stand out far to the Sou'east once past the Palisades, tack and jog back as close to the eye of the wind as she could bear, which was Nor'Nor'west! Even a conservative estimation had not allowed enough sea-room in which to weather Morant Point, so there was nothing for it but to tack again to the Sou'east and stand out at least sixty miles to make a goodly offing, before one more try Nor'Nor'west. That one, at least, had put them in the middle of the Jamaica Channel, and out of sight of land, steering as if for a landfall at Santiago de Cuba, or Guantanamo Bay!
And with the mountains of Spanish Cuba almost in sight from the mast-tops, they had tacked once more Sou'easterly, and had jogged along close-hauled, in showers of spray. Saint Domingue had come in sight at last-the heights of the Massif de la Hotte that rose 7,700 feet in the sky, on the jutting southern arm that encompassed Golfe de Gonave.
Another tack Nor'Nor'west, out to sea again, took them over 100 miles north of the northern peninsula, into the Windward Passage before they could at last turn Sou'east for the last time and "beat" into the Golfe de Gonave, north of the peanut-shaped isle of the same name, and attain Port-Au-Prince.
"Would've done better on our own, sir," Lt. Langlie complained as
HMS Proteus ghosted shoreward on a "tops'l" breeze, sails reduced to avoid disaster. Two hands swung the leads from the foremast chains up forrud to plumb the uncertain depths, and even stolid Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, harumpphed, hemmed, and fretted over Admiralty charts of the harbour and approaches, that were conspicuously littered with a myriad of reefs, wrecks, and rocks-and those charts sure to be out of date, if not complete fictions, taken from French charts long ago, which might have been lying fabrications to protect their secrets, and those taken from ancient Spanish charts, from when they had owned all of Hispaniola!
"I know, Mister Langlie," Lewrie softly agreed, "and damn all hired merchant masters. And ships of the line… and their captains. Go to loo'rd like so many wood chips."
Two merchant vessels had been their charge, filled with soldiers and their supplies, the casked meats and bagged biscuit, the ammunition and powder for their muskets and field pieces; ungainly barges slovenly handled and thinly manned, that wore about off the wind instead of tacking, ceding even more hard-won ground to windward at each maneuver at each "corner" of their voyage. It had been all that Proteus could do to stay with them half the time, since the merchantmen crawled along at a snail's pace, and Proteus, like a thoroughbred racehorse, had been forced to fetch-to and wait on them at times; if not, she would have sailed them under the horizon within a four-hour watch.
And then there was HMS Halifax, the two-decker 74, in charge of their little convoy. She, too, had borne troops and supplies, rendered en flute with half her guns landed ashore to make room for them. With her weather decks and gangways crowded with ignorant soldiery, and her own slow handling in comparison with a frigate, their short sail had become a frustrating Hell. Not the least of which was her captain, who had spent nigh on a week of "getting his own back" against Lewrie and his impertinence!
He'd known he was for it when the convoy sailing orders had come aboard at the last minute; he should have known from the first, had he been aboard Proteus to witness Halifax's guns being removed, and boats ferrying troops aboard her. But no, he had been ashore, sporting too much, imbibing a tad too much, then sleeping later than was his custom-rather the Navy's custom, to which he thought he'd become inured, after all these years of enforced activity.
Aye, give me a chance and I'll sleep 'til noon every time, he chid himself anew; but… damn the man!
Proteus led the way into Port-Au-Prince harbour, with the merchantmen strung out astern of her, and the two-decker last of all; just in case there were uncharted reefs or shallows in store, then let it be that saucy jackanapes Lewrie, and his toy frigate, to suffer first!
"Pretty place, though… in a way, sir," Marine Lieutenant Devereux pointed out, after sharing a "fetch 'em close" with the other officers.
Lewrie raised his own telescope at that comment, as they slowly sailed down the passage denoted as the Canal de Saint Marc, towards the port at the very end of the long "sack" of the gulf.
To the left of Port-Au-Prince was a coastal plain, backed by a massive and steep mountain range that began at the port of St. Marc up north, and ran sou'east, then east, all the way to the Spanish part of Hispaniola. South of the town, the Massif de la Selle brooded over the gulf, over 8,700 feet high. Both ranges were densely wooded, and impossibly green and lush on the lower slopes, turning stonier, bluer, and cloud-wreathed near the peaks.
The town, though… it was quite pretty, Lewrie decided, after a long look. Or it had been, in the past. The streets were as wide as Parisian boulevards, lined with a few imposing and rather impressive civic buildings, and hundreds of pastel-painted residences in a riot of sky blues, pale mint greens, pinks, and yellows.
But beyond the town proper were entrenchments, batteries, redans, and small fortifications, all lazily fuming with cooking smoke or the smoke from armourers', farriers', or blacksmiths' forges. The town, too, fumed, and Lewrie caught the sweet-sour aroma of burning garbage as the hazy pall overlying Port-Au-Prince was wafted to them on a fickle wind off the eastern mountains, that blunted and toyed with the Trades.
"Trust the Army t'muck pretty things up," Lieutenant Catterall quipped, all but elbowing Devereux in jest. "Makes you glad you're a Marine, I shouldn't wonder… not one of those dirty-faced soldiers yonder."
"Ah, but you'll note, Mister Catterall," Devereux drolly gibed back, "how pristine the waters of this gulf were…'til we sent all those ships in there."
Sure enough, the Golfe de Gonave, which had been so clear and so sparkling just a few miles astern, was now nigh the colour of mud and tobacco, from the plantation runoff of a certainty-but also dotted with refuse and floating excreta from the many ships' "heads."
"Very well, Mister Langlie… gentlemen," Lewrie announced as he lowered his glass, "hands to stations for anchoring. Pick us a spot, Mister Winwood. Not too near shore, mind. Does malaria come from bad night airs, then these smell sickly enough, even from out here."
"Aye, sir."
"And we'll depend on our own water-casks, long as we're able," Lewrie decided. "As Mister Shirley suggested. With so much ordure in the local streams, dumped by our own troops… no working parties to fetch water, either."
"Aye, sir," the glum Purser, Mr. Coote, sadly had to agree.
"All hands… all hands! Ready to bring ship to anchor!"
"Neatly done, sirs," Lewrie could quite happily congratulate his officers and mates several minutes later. They had come into harbour in "man-o-war" fashion, rounding up into the wind, firing their salute to the highest-ranking naval officer present, and taking in all sails at the same time, whilst dropping the best bower, rigging out the booms, and beginning to lower their boats even as the smoke cleared!
"Our number, sir… 'Captain Repair On Board,' " Midshipman Elwes called out. "From Halifax, sir."
"And why am I not surprised?" Lewrie muttered under his breath.
"Gig's in de watuh, sah… crew's mustered," Andrews reported, sharing a weary grin of foreknowledge with his captain. "Dot mon got it in fo' ya, Cap'um."
"Has a tin ear… can't appreciate good music," Lewrie quipped.
He squared away his hanger, the set of his waistcoat, and shot the cuffs of his best broadcloth uniform. In the lee of the mountains, Port-
Au-Prince was a stifling place, even at mid-morning; humid, steaming, and the air wet dish-clout close. "Right, then… let's be doin' it."
"Ah, Captain Lewrie, so good of you to join us," Captain George Blaylock said with a patently false purr of welcome, though peering at his watch rather pointedly before snapping it shut with a tiny smile of satisfaction.
Halifax had still been under way, the two merchantmen had nigh run down his gig as they had swanned about seeking anchorages close to shore, where they could still have room to swing-and a much shorter row for their boats to ferry troops and supplies to land. At the last, Andrews's boat-crew had had to row like the Devil was at the transom to catch her up, shortly after she had anchored and fired her own salute.
"A glass of something, Captain Lewrie?" Blaylock offered, waving a hand at a wine-table.
"Bit early in the day for me, sir, thankee," Lewrie replied.
It was not too early for Colonel Ledyard Beauman and his staff, who had travelled on Halifax, it being the most spacious. Christopher Cash- -man was the only one of them who sipped cold breakfast tea from a china cup, looking impatient to get his troops ashore, whilst the two majors, and the adjutant, a young sprog of a Captain by name of Sellers, and a nephew of Ledyard's, Lewrie had learned, indulged in a decanter of claret.
"My word, what sort of 'sneakers' the Navy takes in, these days," Captain Blaylock tittered, turning his head to share the laugh with the others.
Lewrie's neck began to burn; to be compared to a "sneak," one of a carousing crew who didn't keep up his alcoholic intake at the same rate as the rest, and feigned his participation! When, by God, he had kept up with the best of 'em in his youth! Still could, he was sure.
Blaylock was a sour little stick of a man, a greying minnikin, as spare and reedy as Commodore Horatio Nelson, though possessed of a much deeper voice from one so lean. He wore a short, tightly curled tie-wig even in this heat, his face and hands tanned woody-brown from thirty years of sea duty, and a complexion flushed with rosacea or some such rash; perhaps too much drink, Lewrie uncharitably thought, asking himself if the entire West Indies Fleet was solely and utterly peopled by hard drinkers.
"We've sent ashore for orders, Lewrie," Captain Blaylock said, as he waved-no, shooed!-Lewrie to a wing-back chair. "Asking when and where General Maitland wishes us landed, and in what order."
"Can't clutter up the piers," Ledyard Beauman commented. "Make all sorts of confusion. Take our time, hey? Not 'til needed."
"What poor excuses for quays this harbour boasts are too busy already," Captain Blaylock added. "But what can one expect from the idle French. Good enough for them, I s'pose. You'll hold all of your boats, Lewrie, 'til we tell you when and where to come fetch and land."
"Tell Maitland what we've brung," Ledyard opined, legs stretched out, and all but resting on his spine in his chair, his glossy boots that rose above his knees, dragoon fashion, gleaming. "Know best what he needs, first. Artillery or shot… loose powder… cartridges?"
Lewrie caught Cashman's frown of disapproval, no matter it was carefully veiled in the presence of his "betters."
"In my experience at Toulon, sirs, I'd imagine that cartridges for the troops already here would best suit," Lewrie blandly stated. "If not at the quays, then there are several stretches of beach, would serve the purpose. Cartridges, pre-bagged powder for his artillery… one company could be employed to pile and tote, then guard-"
"At that debacle, were you?" Captain Blaylock snapped. "What a bloody muddle, it was."
"Aye, I was, sir. Were you, as well?" Lewrie asked.
"No, I was not, sir," Blaylock said with a petulant little moue. "Utterly ruined by the timidity of our so-called allies, the Spanish, by putting too much trust in the French Royalists. Admiral Hood was… hah! Hood-winked!"
"Good'un, sir! Capital!" Ledyard Beauman haw-hawed.
"Hood-winked," Captain Blaylock repeated, so taken with his jape that he could not resist, "by gasconading boasts of fealty from French anti-Jacobins, was the way I heard tell it. The Dons' admiral, ready to trade fire with Hood over who held the right to command? Lost out and sailed away. And not six months later took hands with the Frogs, against us! Pah!"
"Out-gunned, out-manned, and under-supplied, though, sir," Alan Lewrie pointed out after the growls of past betrayal and prejudice had subsided. "Generals Dugommier and Bonaparte held the high ground and all the cards."
"Oh, tosh!"
"Much the same terrain, when you look at it," Cashman piped up, in a cagey sort of voice. "A seaport with a small perimeter of level ground… surrounded by heights. Too few troops to push out into the countryside 'thout getting cut to ribbons, and outnumbered nearly ten to one. Too few troops to defend a larger perimeter. Too few guns, at the moment, to break a determined assault, sirs?"
Lewrie allowed himself a tiny grin of agreement at the stress that Cashman used; were he this General Maitland, he was certain that ammunition and more field guns would be his greatest demands. Now!
And yes, now that Kit had brought it up, Lewrie realised that a strong comparison could be made between Toulon and Port-Au-Prince; it explained the fey feeling he had experienced whilst ghosting shoreward, that prickle of wariness and uncertainty. The situation was much the same, too, with a British force surrounded, almost besieged, by enemy troops in much greater numbers. Did it turn out the same, was there to be a massacre of the innocents, as had happened when Hood had quit the place, and the Republican French soldiers had waded out into the water to shoot and bayonet the thousands who could not find room aboard the departing ships…?
He gave himself an involuntary shake, wishing he had taken the offer of a drop of something, after all. For certain, he was suddenly glad that he would be shot of the place, once the stores were landed, and Proteus could get out to sea to serve in the blockade.
"Samboes don't have guns!" Ledyard quibbled. "Most of 'em are armed with cane-knives. Few muskets… few shoes, wot?"
"Our artillery will cut them down in waves, like reapin' cane," Captain Sellers chortled.
"Never even get in musket range," Major Porter added, "when the grape and cannister'll lay 'em out long before."
"Why we brought along caltrops," Ledyard Beauman boasted. "It was Cashman's suggestion, wasn't it?"
"Caltrops?" Captain Blaylock enquired, peering at Cashman. "Scrap metal, ten pence nails and such, sir," Colonel Cashman explained with a shrug of modesty. "Colonel Beauman has the right of it… very few of 'em are shod. Take two and bend 'em together, so however it lands, a couple of points always face up, sirs. Strew 'em by the hundreds in the long grass before a position, even if a clear field of fire's been cut, and they'll tramp right over 'em before they see 'em. Even a Cuffy's horny hoof can't take that. Lame 'em, take 'em out of the fight… die of lockjaw days later, and take even more t'tend 'em. Brought enough for our own use, and I know that General Maitland had his quartermasters on Jamaica scour the countryside for scrap iron. Sure t'be umpteen thousands of 'em, cased up and waitin' to be landed, soonest. Slows 'em up somethin' wondrous, sirs."
