Dewey Lambdin - Troubled Waters

"And did you keep journals of your own, sir? Did you write down what your purposes were that evening?" MacDougall pointedly enquired.

"Not reallyl" Lewrie explained, squirming. "Once a commission is done, logs and journals are sent to Admiralty for perusal and storage, so…"

"No, it wouldn't do, would it, to write down 'May first at Eight p.m., turned slave-monger,' hey?" MacDougall said with a moue, followed by a schoolboy's

"I noted the course steered from Kingston, closing the coast at night, dousing all lanthorns… how far offshore it was when we came-to, sending boats ashore under Mister Langlie, and, ah… being received of a round dozen… volunteers," he concluded, blushing a bit.

"What? Doused all lanthorns?" MacDougall suddenly enthused as he scribbled that down on a sheet of foolscap, so madly that he slung ink droplets. "Now that's extremely interesting!"

"It is?" Lewrie asked, at a loss.

"And," MacDougall eagerly pressed, "did you, or any of your surviving witnesses, see any lights ashore, sir?"

"Well, there were some porch lamps and such, a half-mile or so back from the beach," Lewrie recalled. "Where, I assumed, the overseer had his lodgings, perhaps one or two round the main house's porch gallery, where the Beaumans would reside, if they'd been there. It wasn't their only plantation, d'ye see, but the one nearest to my friend Christopher Cashman's plantation. I'd not have tried it on, else, for he'd sent word to them that, if they wished to run and join the Navy, they'd get the Joining Bounty as volunteers, and get the same treatment as any White volunteer. Could've taken twenty or more, the whole lot of 'em, if Admiralty wouldn't notice sooner or later that I was paying twice the number of hands that Proteus was rated."

"But… other than those few lamps, did you see any other light ashore?" MacDougall squirmed like a puppy as he insisted on an answer.

"Nary a one, sir," Lewrie could firmly aver, for he had spent the hours from sunset to dawn in a funk-sweat to be discovered, and it had been a huge relief at the time for Proteus to have stolen in, then stolen out, without waking a cricket.

"Saw no hand-carried lanthorns or torches, no hue and cry?" Mr. MacDougall repeated, as if a life hung on the answer. "Hounds barking, gunshots, anything like that?"

"God, no! 'Twas quiet as the grave," Lewrie told him.

"Ah ha\" MacDougall sharply cried, slapping his palm on his desk and guffawing as he swiped his hair out of his eyes once more.

"Well, there were seals on the beach, they barked a bit, but no dogs," Lewrie further informed him.

"Never saw a living soul coming to that beach, other than your volunteers, Captain Lewrie?" MacDougall demanded, suddenly not sounding so young and schoolboy-ish. "What other lights were there? A moon?"

"Starlight," Lewrie related, pouring himself another coffee as he did so, even if the pot had gone tepid. " 'Twas a new moon at that time. It was, ah… taken into account for the success of the enterprise," Lewrie admitted, a trifle shame-faced, and talking chin-down to his shirt collar.

"And your own ship's lights were all extinguished, ah ha\ Yes?"

"Yes, of course," Lewrie assured him, one brow up.

"Would it surprise you very much, Captain Lewrie, to learn that the Beauman family's overseer on that plantation, and his son, claimed in their testimony at your sham trial that they were awakened by sounds of the slave population, ah… celebrating? That they testified that they quickly roused themselves, took up arms, a hand-lanthorn, and lit a rag torch? That they rushed down to the beach, but arrived too late to re-capture their runaways?" "What? That's utter shite!" Lewrie spat. "We didn't…!" "Fired off a pair of shots at the boats, they swore," MacDougall rushed on to relate. "And, though they hit nothing, your ship was so close ashore, they knew her for a frigate, a British frigate, at once. More damaging to you, they swore they could mark your appearance… by the light of your ship's taffrail lanthorns, because you were standing right by one of them, fully illumined}." "Mine arse on a band-box if they could!" Lewrie erupted. "Now, sir… another matter," MacDougall demanded, picking up a not-so-thick octavo and flipping through the pages to the section he wanted quickly. He rose and paced, tossing hair out of his eyes, and looking like a cherubic, rotund Puck, for he was a young man of substantial girth and heft. "In what position, relative to the coast, did your frigate lie? Sideways to the beach? How close?"

"Well, as to how close," Lewrie growled, still fuming over those bald-faced lies. I'm a better skulker than that, by God! he assured himself as he got to his own feet, too exercised to sit any longer. Lewrie and MacDougall began a slow, stomping "minuet" about the parlour office, mostly circling the un-used chairs before the desk as if participating in a game of "Odd Man Out," when the music suddenly stops. "There was a broken shoal of reef and rocks a cable distant from the beach, and we fetched-to into the wind three cables shy of that, as I recall."

"And a cable would be…?"

"Why, one hundred and twenty fathoms," Lewrie supplied, shocked that such was not common knowledge. "Six feet to the fathom, that'd be seven hundred and twenty feet. Well, the nautical mile is divided into ten cables of six hundred feet each, so, say the reefs and shoals lay six hundred feet offshore, and Proteus was fetched-to eighteen hundred feet further out. There was a break in the reef, right between Proteus and the beach, and we could see the phosphoresence of the waves breaking on the reef and rocks… high tide, round midnight, and we planned for that, too, d'ye see, a much dimmer rim of phosphoresence where the waves rolled in on the sand…"

"Twenty-four hundred feet from shore, on a dark night, ah ha\" MacDougall crowed, stopping to wet his quill in an ink-pot before he began tramping a circle of his offices again. "Sideways, were you?"

"Uh, no," Lewrie told him, feeling as if he was forced to chase his barrister round the office. "Usually, the Nor'east Trades blow to the Sou'west, but for the Blue Mountains, and the shape of the coast, so we had winds out of the East that night, and to fetch-to, we had to place our bows into the Nor-Nor'east, with the fore-and-aft sails forcin' her forrud, but the fore-tops'l laid aback t'keep her idlin' in place, and makin' a slow stern-way, away from those shoals. A person on the beach would've seen us close to bows-on, not abeam."

"And you could not have gone any closer, I take it," MacDougall asked, juggling loose transcript pages. "The danger of the reef, I'd suppose?"

"Less than ten feet of water, inshore of the reef, as I recall from the chart," Lewrie answered, "and only twelve to fifteen feet of water to seaward of it, even at high tide. We fetched-to as soon as the lead-line showed six fathoms. Proteus drew eighteen feet, right aft, so we had a safe margin, with deeper water clear of hazards astern, so an hour or so of drifting wouldn't set us on anything that could rip our hull open. Right along the reef, 'twas three feet or less, even at high tide, so… will you sit down, sir, or must I trot after you?"

MacDougall came to a full stop suddenly, looking round his offices as if wondering why he was there, and where was the nearest chair.

"So, your ship did not lie in profile to the shore," MacDougall pondered, after he'd settled himself once more. "In profile with her bows pointing West towards the cape, or the point, or whatever you…?"