Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

"Matilda," Lewrie pondered. "Matilda. Now where have I heard that name? Seems I have… damme, I'm sure I have."

"A Liverpool 'black-birder' could sell a cargo of slaves here in the Bahamas, sir. Do the Middle Passage, Dahomey to Nassau, with the demand for slaves increasing here, now that…"

"Wait, Arthur! Ssshh!" Alan demanded, raising a hand. "Let me think."

It was recent; he was certain of that much. Since arriving in the Bahamas? He tried to remember ships which might have lain nearby Alacrity at anchor. Portsmouth-no. On the voyage out? Again, no. Slavers stank to high heaven. They crammed three or four hundred men and women into hard wooden racks, forced them to lie back-to-belly as tight as cordwood and fettered for months. Fed them in those racks, half the time, if the weather was bad. Puking sick, incontinent from rotten hog-swill victuals, they fouled their own sleeping spaces and had to lie in excrement like beasts. One remembered slavers close by!

Slavers were fast ships, frigate-built, or like a "razeed" 3rd Rate, cut down to two decks from three. Were they slow, the rates of mortality cut their profits to nothing. The faster the ship, the more slaves arrived alive for sale, though twenty-five percent attrition was the norm for even the most considerate and "gentle" captains.

Where had he seen such a fine, frigate-built ship, a vessel aseaman would envy, foul as that line of work was? In the Caicos, in some harbour… Nassau Harbour… Cat Island…

"Christ!" Lewrie gasped. He got to his feet and crossed over to the chart-space to grope through his bookshelves. "Cony, fetch a light!"

William Pitt hissed at him from the dark. He had been sleeping like a tawny, orange-colored plum-duff on the high outboard shelf by the chart table between the chronometer and the sextant case. And did not like his naps interrupted.

"Oh, bugger y'rself!" Lewrie griped. "Ah, thankee, Cony!"

He found the gold-lettered spine of the book he was seeking, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and flipped through it to see if his memory was correct.

"Eureka, Arthur! Bloody hell! Read that dedication!"

"My God," Arthur Ballard said with a bemused expression when he had completed it. "How the devil did you come by this, sir?"

"Bought it used for six shillings," Lewrie crowed. "Look at the date. March of 1785. It's accounted so bawdy there was an Order In Council to ban its publication in England, but some printer… a Liverpool printer, note… ran up a few hundred on speculation, 'stead of the usual subscription. Matilda was at short-stays, ready for a new slaving voyage, with Nathaniel Marriyat just promoted first mate into her. Time enough for your chains to rust?"

"But where did you get it, sir?"

"At Finney's on Bay Street, Arthur!"

"Aha!"

"At bloody 'Calico Jack' Finney's, not two months' past, damn his eyes! Arthur, they pissed in the font! They did the unspeakable! They took a British ship! A ship we can ask about among the slaver captains who frequent Nassau, among the slave dealers who dealt with her in the past. We can document one of the victims, show that goods off her were aboard Guineaman, the schooner, and piled with other loot ashore long enough ago to confirm when they took her. There'll be a brace or two of 'black-birders' in port soon with the first slaves of the summer. They'll have seen Matilda in Africa, they'll know of her people, and whether she went missing. And this book proves that Jack Finney has bought pirated goods. We've got the bastard! Even if he doesn't do a hemp hornpipe on the gallows, he's finished in these islands… or I'm a Turk in a turban!"

"But he's as guilty as home-brewed sin, sir," Commander Benjamin Rodgers blurted out. "Matilda, all our evidence… no one's seen her for over a year. Due here about July of '85, and…"

"That's as may be, Commander Rodgers," Commodore Garvey shot back, pacing angrily behind his desk. "The court said he is not!"

"But she was pirated, sir," Lewrie ventured to interject. "I find the idea that her people sold off their most prized possessions ludicrous. Why would Captain Beard pawn his navigation instruments just before embarking on a voyage? Why would this Nathaniel Marriyat pawn his brand-new spyglass and his books?"

"Gambling debts," Garvey dismissed with a savage chop of his hand. "To raise money for buying blacks of his own for sale in the West Indies. We don't know, and we will never know. Matilda could have gone down in a storm. It happens, don't ya know, Lewrie. The few items of your flimsy evidence were accounted for by documents of sale, and your case confounded."

"Forgeries, sir!" Rodgers exclaimed. "They had over a month to concoct what was wanting."

"I warned you when you laid this before me, your supposition was weak. I did everything in my power to dissuade you from pursuing this fantasy," Garvey sneered. "The prosecutor…"

"Was a brainless arse, sir," Rodgers retorted. "He didn't like it. He was afraid of prosecuting a powerful man, so he did his least, and that, badly!"

"He told you beforehand it wouldn't hold water, and it didn't. Finney was absolved faster than any court I've ever seen," Garvey said. "Listen to the mob out there, sirs. Listen, you fools! Now Finney's being chaired through the streets like a sitting member of Parliament on his hustings, and King's Justice has been made amockery. The Navy has been made to look stupid, sire, the Bahamas Squadron, and me with it! Our new governor Lord Dun-more is most exercised over this. Bade me over to ask me what sort of idiots I had under my command, and were there any more of 'em out there, running roughshod! What could you have been thinking, Rodgers? There're untold tens of thousands owing Finney now. You shot Guineaman to rags, wounded some of her people, put her on a shoal… you deliberately torched every stick of goods on Walker's Cay, and sank everything that wouldn't burn in the bay! He'll demand recompense, and even should the Crown uphold you, I expect it'll take the entire budget for governing these islands for the next year, sir! The next year entire!"

"She fired into me first, sir, and if pirates really held her as Finney and Captain Malone claim, then nothing is owed, sir. God damme, sir, I salved her afterwards, didn't I? Set her…"

"You'll not blaspheme in my presence, Commander Rodgers, do you hear me, you simple dullard?" Garvey bellowed. "You could have put a guard over the cache of goods…"

"We could not carry it off, sir, and there was too much drink to guard," Lewrie said. "We'd have had to torch that, or tip it into the harbour, anyway, or we'd have lost the crew left behind as guards."

"You do not interrupt me, Lewrie! You do so at your peril! I hold you responsible for this. You're just as culpable, and liable in this affair, as Rodgers!"

"He was following my orders, sir," Rodgers stated. "Finney's agent Runyon told you it was private property, saved for later sale in the off-season, yet you persisted!"

"It was not marked as his property, sir," Lewrie rebutted. "We did bring off the coins, plate and all, and those items we could identify as Finney's. The rest could have been pirate booty, so we…"

"So you set fire to it, with fiendish, childish delight, just to see it burn, you pyromaniac! You hen-headed simpleton!"