Dewey Lambdin: The French Admiral

"You should write your friends and patrons and let them know of it. I suppose you wasted no time informing the Beauman family. You are permitted to write the young lady, I remember?"

"Aye, sir, I already have."

"And your new friends, the Chiswicks in Charleston," Treghues said. "Heard from them yet?"

Alan looked at him sidelong; his captain's face was almost red with shame, and Alan knew he must be crawling to have to solicit information of such a personal nature from an underling. Treghues had formed an instant affection for Caroline Chiswick, perhaps out of pity, or out of long-suppressed longings brought to the surface by his head injury and the dubious "cure" that had followed. Alan was his only link, his only source of intelligence as to their new address, and hard as it was for a proud man, a commissioned officer, a ship's captain, and a stiff-neck like Treghues to ask, he was asking for a crumb. The girl had not said yes to his proposal to write, after all his charm and pleasantness.

Dammit, captains don't do such things, Alan thought. Does he see the mail come aboard first, does he know I have a letter from her? If he did, he'd have seen the address, so he wouldn't be asking. Is it safe to lie? What the hell, I'll chance it. Caroline did put her name and address on the outside sheet.

"Not yet, sir, though I have hopes."

"I was quite taken with their plight. The father is not well, is he?"

"Not well at all, sir, mostly in his mind," Alan breathed out, not catching any sign of true awareness in Treghues's voice or expression. "And Mrs. Chiswick, well… she may be in good health, but she is not a person meant for adversity, if you get my meaning."

"That poor young girl," Treghues said, with such emotion that Alan thought him ready to shudder. "Forced to cope with all that, barely a penny to their names from all that land and property stolen from them by the Rebels, taking care of her parents so dutifully…"

"It's a da… a terrible shame, sir, and a burden I marvel she could bear for long," Alan agreed. "Did you know that her brother, Burgess, told me the principal rogues who turfed them out were their own cousins?"

"Were they?" Treghues said, stopping their perambulations and seizing Alan's sleeve with an iron grip. "Were they, indeed, sir? God, I pity those who could not flee retribution of that pack of Rebels! What sort of country can they hope to have, built on the blood of their betters, allowing just any fool the right to vote, dictated to by the mob and resorting to bloody revolution and civil strife at the merest trifles. We'll have to go back in and restore order some day when they find they cannot govern such a herd of malcontents. How shall they collect taxes when they would not pay what they owed the Crown? How often shall they call out the militia or the troops sworn to this rebellious Congress to put down a new outbreak? You mark my words, within ten years they'll be cheering the sight of a scarlet coat to save them from their egregious folly. I only pray the Chiswicks get away safely to England and are spared the abuse and frightfulness of the mob's fury."

"They have relatives in Surrey, sir. There was talk they may take passage if Charleston is threatened," Alan said, wondering if he should try to break loose, for Treghues was gripping him so hard he was fearful for his arm. "Though what they'll use for money, I don't know."

"Aye," Treghues almost sobbed, turning Alan loose and resuming their walk toward the taffrail. "I lent them one hundred pounds. I hope it is enough. My heart went out to her… and her family. Had I only the means to rescue every loyal Briton who escaped… Do you know the name of their relatives in Surrey?"

"No, sir, I'm sorry, I don't. Chiswick, I should think, though, sir, same as them," Alan replied, massaging his arm on the sly.

"Should you ever hear from them, I would be deeply obliged to you if you let me know their address, Mister Lewrie. There is much I could do for them if only I was allowed," Treghues ordered, then looked off into the middle distance. "I feel it my Christian duty as a God-fearing man, as a Briton, to help at least that family, if I cannot do for all of the unfortunates torn loose from all they held dear by this terrible war."

"Oh, I shall, sir," Alan promised, lying like a butcher's dog. He tried to keep a straight and uninterested face as Treghues peered at him.

Alan found it hard, even so, to look Treghues in the eyes, but that was alright, for the captain also got a shifty look and could not face him, either.

"Thank you, Mister Lewrie. That shall be all. Again, my congratulations on your good news from home. Return to your duties, sir."

"Aye, aye, sir." Poor shit, he thought. Mooning away over the girl and having to finagle her whereabouts from a rogue like me must have half killed his soul. He's getting devilish strange, even worse than before. And that funny tobacco he smokes now, whew! God knows where Mr. Dorne found it, but it has to be medicinal as hell, like smoking mildew and oakum. God, if there's a sane captain in the Navy, I've yet to meet him. Command must drive you loony!

Alan realized that sooner or later he would have to tell Treghues the Chiswicks' address, if only to retain the captain's favor, but damned if he'd enjoy doing it. It was rather confusing, the feelings he had for Lucy Beauman, the most perfect beauty of the age he had seen, and Caroline Chiswick, who was pretty in her own quiet way. He still could not call it jealousy , but he was a lot closer to that opinion than he had been before.

"Hull up now, sir," Railsford said with a hint of concern.

Alan turned to look aft and could see all the sails of their pursuer, with the hint of a darker streak now and then above the waves that would be her hull. He took hold of the hilt of his sword and gave it a hitch to a more comfortable position. He might be using it in an hour.

"British, by God!" Monk spoke suddenly, as a distant patch of color appeared on the stranger's foremast top.

"Mister Monk, I weary of correcting your unfortunate habit of taking our Lord's name in vain so frequently," Treghues said for the thousandth time. "It may be a ruse."

"Signal, sir!" the lookout called, and David Avery was sent aloft with a glass and the signal book to spy it out.

"Recognition signal, sir!" he screamed down minutes later. "This month's! Tis Roebuck , sir, her private number!"

"Hands been fed, Mister Railsford?" Treghues asked.

"Aye, sir."

"Douse the galley fires and clear for action, just in case."

"Aye, sir."

But the stranger was indeed Roebuck , one of the ship-rigged sloops of war that had accompanied them on their raid on the Danish Virgins back in the late summer of 1781. She surged up close and her captain took up a brass speaking trumpet to speak to Desperate .

"What lit a fire under you, Captain?" Treghues shouted, with his leather lungs and cupped hands around his mouth in lieu of a trumpet.

"The French, Captain Treghues!" the other retorted. "Thirty sail of the line and a transport fleet have fallen on St. Kitts!"

"Jesus!" Alan muttered. St. Kitts was part of a pair of islands, Nevis and St. Kitts, that were not a day's sail from Antigua, and Antigua was the main base of the Leeward Islands. Admiral de Grasse was wasting no time in making use of his splendid fleet after returning to the Indies from the Chesapeake and Yorktown. Lewrie frowned in depression as he thought of his last few months; a failed opportunity at the Chesapeake battle, the loss of England's last field army at Yorktown, the evacuation of Wilmington, and the rumors of a revitalized Rebel army under General Greene closing in on Charleston; now this disaster. If the French took St. Kitts, Nevis was barely five miles across a safe channel. Then what came next, English Harbor? They had already retaken St. Eustatius, Admiral Rodney's treasure trove. If Antigua went, there went the Indies.