Dewey Lambdin - The Captain`s Vengeance

"Damn," Lewrie dejectedly muttered as Mrs. Hosier came back out to the porch and sat down again. A jutted hand silently demanded her precious letters, and he handed them over. She fondly straightened them and pressed them fiat with a palm, as if ironing them, before she tucked them away in an apron pocket.

"Toby warn't th' one pirated yer ship, Cap'm Lewrie, not him," Jugg's wife said. "He'd never, else we'd lose ev'rything we've built up, did he haveta run an' change names, again."

"I thought that he'd… if he had, that he'd come to Barbados to fetch you and the children," Lewrie confessed, a little chagrined. "You're sure you've not heard from him, he didn't…"

"Nary a word since that last letter," she firmly stated, chin up and sullen at his accusation. "Nor nary a sight o' him, at least twelve month or more, when the boy was quickened. Huh!" she snorted derisively, "Had he stole a rich prize, ye think I'd still be grubbin' at this farm, that we'd still be livin' in a pore shebeen like this? I'm cairtain ye already asked, down at th' harbour, an' know neither that prize ship, nor Toby, has come in here. An't it sor

"Admitted," Lewried grudgingly allowed.

"So, when ye do find it, if e'er ye do, ye'll already know me Toby didn' steal her. An… an' whoever did, they'd not be th' sort t'let him live." Mrs. Jugg teared up and began to blub again. "That sort'd want no witnesses, oh arrah!"

"Ma'am…" Lewrie said, springing to his feet at her upset.

"Damn 'is eyes, but I almost wish 'e had took her, sure, for he would still be livin', if he did!" She sniffled, blowing her nose on her fingers. "An' bad cess t'ye at findin' him, for you'd hang him, cairtain, do ye. Have to. La, la! What'll we do, wi' Toby gone?"

Lewrie blushed and dug into his breeches pocket for his coin-purse. He counted out about eight shillings and the odd pence in real coinage, and a wadded-up pound note. "Call it bringing his pay up to date, ma'am, and I'm sorry that I cannot do more. Navy paymasters…"

"I'd no take yer charity, Cap'm Lewrie," Mrs. Jugg huffed back, scraping up all her dignity. "But, aye, 'needs must,' sure. Call it hard-earned pay, but a beggar's price for me Toby's life, for all that.

"I'd fling yer paltry silver back, an' spit in yer eye, arrah," she said, rising, stiff-backed and arms crossed over her chest, "but th' pore can't have no scruples, not in this Life. Not like 'quality' folk like your foin self, sir. An' now I'll thankee t'be departin' me lands, Cap'm Lewrie."

"Of course, ma'am," Lewrie said, gathering up his hat. "Mind, is your husband innocent, and if I find him, I promise I'll fetch him back to you, safe and sound… unlashed and not dis-rated."

"Promises from yer like is 'fiddler's pay,' Cap'm Lewrie," she said, "for so 'tis been my experience, sure? How can ye promise such, when… oh, fash!" She swept her hair back from her brows in exasperation. "Don't go makin' promises ye don't mean t'keep. Or promises ye most-like can never keep, is my meanin'. I would admire, howiver it falls, that somebody'd write an' let me know."

"I shall, Mistress Jugg… Hosier… damme, which do you prefer? To which do I write, without confusing the post-boy?"

"Hosier'd do."

"Good-bye, Mistress Hosier," Lewrie said, bowing himself back off the porch and doffing his hat with a sociable bow. Despite what anger she felt, Mrs. Jugg (for so he thought her, anyway) dropped him a bobbing little housemaid's curtsy, then squinted her eyes in embarrassment the next second, to have such a servile habit so engrained in herself… arrah!

"So, the trail's gone cold as old, boiled mutton, sir," Langlie gathered, glumly sipping the last of his mug of cool tea.

"Phantom, spectral false trails are never hot enough to cool, Mister Langlie," Lewrie sourly rejoined. "We've wasted nigh onto two whole months, staggering from port to port, down the whole Windwards, and no one's seen them! Bloody fool's errand. The prize is most-like in Cartagena, Tampico, Havana, or Vera-bloody-Cruz by now, and has been all this time. Therefore, untouchable, 'thout a major military expedition! Damn!"

"And our people are most-like a long-time dead," Lt. Langlie further supposed. "Without Jugg as a culprit, I cannot imagine any of the others capable of the deed. Toffett, Ahern, and Luckaby were good men, and certainly not Mister Towpenny, or Mister Burns!"

"Unless that lack-wit Burns couldn't keep them in control, they found some liquor that we missed, and it got out of hand," Lewrie said to the overhead and the deck beams. "A fight, a knifing and a murder, and they ran off with the ship out of fear, not hope of gain. We both know how insensible poor tars can get. And how quickly. And so quick to quarrel on a bung-full

of rum."

A goodly number of men who enlisted in the Army, a goodly share of sailors, willing volunteers or press-ganged failures, did it for a reliable daily issue of "grog." Where the term "groggy" came from!

"Well, we've searched everywhere we possibly could, except for Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dutch isles down South," Lewrie grumbled, cocking his head to a chart of the West Indies that had been pinned to the larboard side of his day-cabin for months on end. "We've prowled every cay and rock in the Grenadines and haven't found a sign of 'em. I'd say it's time, Mister Langlie, that we confess our failures, then sail back to Antigua and face the music. Then, on to Jamaica, where we belong. Damme, though… Captain Sir Edward bloody Charles…"

"Very well, sir," Langlie glumly agreed. "Shore liberty, sir?" "Hmm? Oh, aye," Lewrie decided. "We've worked the people hard, and they've earned a run ashore. Bridgetown isn't a bad port for 'em. Lots to do… and the shore officials are reputed to be cooperative at huntin' down 'runners.' Larboard Watch first, at the end of the Morning Watch, and back aboard by Eight Bells, midnight."

"With the usual caution for troublemakers and deserters that if they run, or run wild, the starbowlines won't be allowed, sir?" First Officer Langlie said with a twinkle.

"Just so, sir," Lewrie tiredly snickered back. "And whilst the Larboard Watch is ashore, Mister Langlie, you are going to become some sort of legend."

"Sir?"

"There's trade in smuggled rum and spirits aboard," Lewrie said, reaching into a waist-coat pocket to withdraw a hastily scribbled list he'd made at a harbour tavern while waiting for a hired boat to convey him back aboard. "Here are the likely places to look. This time, at any rate. You will also have a word with Mister Coote in the privacy of your mess, and inform him that that jack-a-napes clerk of his sells smuggled tobacco at half the official price. Bits and pieces cut off Mister Coote's supply… God knows what all else he deals in, but he stashes it in a false-side keg in the fishroom, under the tiller flat."

"My word, sir, how did you…" Langlie all but gasped, sitting up straighter.

"Jugg's chatty letters to his wife," Lewrie chuckled. "The man is also skimming off your wardroom's flour and corn-meal to fatten the rats they fight in the cable-tiers and the forrud orlop."

"Rat fights, sir?"

"Rat on rat," Lewrie said, beaming, "for want of terriers. Wagers are laid on 'em, and I'll not have it."

"Well, now that you mention it, sir, I had noticed a diminution in the number of rats aboard, lately," Lt. Langlie said, making notes of his own with a pencil stub and his ever-present pocket notebook. "Though I did put it down to the midshipmen's appetites."

"They don't have that Brutus look, do they?" Lewrie mused. "No 'lean and hungry' air."