Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

"Damme, sir, look what ya've done with me poor ship," Captain Grant bemoaned as Lewrie came aboard after funeral services for Burke and Midshipman Mayhew. "Scantlin's shot through, bulwarks all chewed up. It'll use most of me spare timber patchin' hull shots, and what, I ask ye, will the Royal Navy do to compensate me?"

"Let you go free, sir," Lewrie told him, in no mood for dealing with the shifty merchantman. "Go sing 'Oh, Be Thankful,' for all mat I care. Last of your crew's coming aboard now. I'd set a course for home, were I you, and get out of Bahamian jurisdiction before we change our minds."

"She rides light," Grant commented as Sarah and Jane bobbed and rolled beneath him. "How mucha me cargo did ye use for breastworks?"

"Rather a lot, I fear, Captain Grant," Lewrie told him. "We've dumped that over the side. You'll find enough salt left to keep you ballasted and trimmed proper on your voyage. Might even be enough to pay for your repairs and break even, once you pay off your crew back in your Philadelphia."

"No profit, sir?" Grant wheezed. "Damme, sir, a whole sailing season, a whole voyage wasted?"

"That's the risks you take for money," Lewrie shrugged, then turned to leave, to go back to his Alacrity and escort their prizes, and their captives, home. "Stay out of our seas, Captain Grant."

"I'll write the consul," Grant warned, following him to the entry port. "I'll complain to Congress, to the President if I have to. And I will be back, ye know. Ye pass that Free Port Act, and I'll be more'n welcome in the Bahamas again. Me and every American ship."

"Captain Grant," Lewrie said, turning to face him, "I've no more time to play this sly little game with you. Aye, they may pass Free Port Acts; aye, you may be welcome someday in the future, and you may cock your nose at me all you wish. Just remember, though, that a very good mariner and a promising young midshipman died this day making it safe for you and your ship to sail Bahamian waters. Don't make me dislike you. There's no future in it. Ask those pirates."

"Point taken, sir," Grant replied, leaning back a little from the intensity of Lieutenant Lewrie's grim expression. "Point taken, indeed," he reiterated, as he doffed his hat to him as Lewrie descended to his gig.

John Finney was having a rather bad evening. He had stayed in that night, ostensibly to go over his books; but mostly to avoid the sneers he'd been getting on the streets since the mocking broadside sheet had appeared days before. Tale of The De-Bollocked Bumpkin, it was titled in large block letters. There was an engraving, a satirical cartoon below that which featured a slim young woman holding both baby and pistols, shooting at an overdressed, lump-faced churl in a hugely unfashionable wig, tiny hat and flaring coat, like a "Macaroni" of a previous decade, the suiting portrayed as checkered calico, and the male figure leaping legs widespread like some damned "Molly" in an Italian toe-dance company to avoid losing his wedding tackle. A long, stringy caption above the female read: "In his abfence, my dear hufband's piftols shall defend mine honour, cur!"

Whilst over the leaping male figure, a caption read: "Oy means ter have yer, niver a care have oy fer any damnd marriage vow- Oicks!"

There was printed below a short narration, a titillating story of caution to all lusting bachelors who pursued happily married women too hotly. No names were named-but then, none were necessary, as it stated "… as one here in Nassau did quite lately!"I'll murder Augustus," Fiimey swore, tearing the sheet into tiny bits. It was only the fourth he'd gotten in anonymous mail so far. He was certain Augustus Hedley was the artist, Peyton Boudreau the author and sponsor, and Caroline… "Thet bitch! Oh, thet bitch! I'll make her sorry she wuz iver born, I will! Wipe thet sneer off 'er face, take 'er an' have me way with 'er, make 'er beg fer it!"

He instead took another full glass of claret in two gulps, and filled his crystal stem with more. For the moment, he had more pressing worries. He returned to his ledgers, both the legitimate ones his clerk prepared, and the illicit ones kept in his own scrawls, which he himself had trouble reading a month later. It was not a good year.

After Conch Bar, and the wholesale hangings which had followed, half the old lads had gone off for easier pickings; deeper in the Caribbean, or up to the American coast, where Congress was too cheap to keep a navy, or a coast guard worth the name. Walker's Cay had run more away to waters less well patrolled. Finney had had to increase the import of legitimate goods as stolen wares reduced in quantity, so his profit margin had fallen to only a little better than his Bay Street competitors'.

He'd lost huge sums, too, in all the goods that Rodgers, and that damned Lieutenant Lewrie, had burned at Walker's Cay, the pirated, and the hoarded true imports. Those staples, those delicacies, all gone up in flames, depriving him of his expected large markups. And there had been the import duties the cynical, greedy Searcher of Customs had imposed on goods he'd never be able to land and sell, and the bribes demanded to keep him out of court on smuggling charges to boot!

There wasn't much better news from his grandiose plantings on Eleuthera. His overseer had written that both the coastal "white" lands, and the "red" lands farther inland, were failing. Bahamian soil was like a lying whore; rich and beguiling to start with, but too thin to turn under and hope it would revive after a fallow year, its nutrients sucked out by the first lush crops. And with so few animals in the Bahamas, and lack of grazing land for big herds, costly to manure and fertilize. Unless he shipped in tons of manure, his overseer wasn't confident. Cotton, sisal, hemp, sugar cane, even indigo and aloes-none of it prospered. And, the overseer had ended on a dismal note, the Georgia Tidewater and Sea Isle cotton nurslings might be infected with the dreaded Chenille Bug!

He'd be forced to sell, before the fine plantation house could be completed, as fine a mansion as any in the Bahamas, grander than the one Col. Andrew Deveaux had erected on Cat Island. The only value he'd get back from the sale would be the slaves, the ones he'd gotten for so little from Malone (the foolish, greedy bastard!) after he'd taken the Matilda

Finney took another sip of claret and made a face. Try as hard as he might, he'd never developed a palate for it. Petulantly, it went into the fireplace to shatter in a shower of wine across the imported Turkey carpet!

"Fireplace!" he gloomed at that extravagance, a gaudy, useless showpiece in a climate that never got close to freezing. He went over to his sideboard to pour himself a cut-crystal glass of Demerara rum.

"Excuse me, Captain Finney, sir," his butler said, opening the wide double doors to the entry hall.

"Clean it up," Finney snorted, putting his feet on his desk.

"I will, Captain, sir," the butler agreed, secretly amused by his plebeian employer, and his demand to be addressed with a title he never really had-Captain. "In the meantime, sir, this letter came for you. From Commodore Garvey, sir."

"Fetch it here, then, damn yer eyes," Finney sulked, finding no joy this evening in the obsequiousness of his hired help. Finney tore the wax seal off and unfolded the letter. "Damn 'is blood!"

Another of the broadside sheets! Finney wondered just how much he had to pay the bastard to at least be civil to him. They acted as strangers in public, no matter their agreement, or the sums he shoved into Garvey's accounts by the side door at the bank. Now he was down, Garvey'd shoved the knife in, sarcastic and sneering, as was his way. Finney dreaded Garvey might demand even more than the princely three hundred pounds a month he already cost him. "Shit! Shit!"