Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"Well to windward of Vido, sir?" Lewrie asked.

"Aye, sir. 'Bout two mile t'windward, in deep water."

"Very well, Mister Buchanon, alter course. Mister Crewe? One more broadside, then cease fire and secure!"

"Ready, sir! Stand clear? Fire!"

One last wrathful eruption, then HMS Jester was wheeling about, her decks coming more level, not so hard-pressed by the winds, even under reduced sail, and making it easier to secure the 9-pounder guns; to swab them out, remove the flintlock strikers and cover the touch-holes with leather aprons, insert the tampions in the now-blackened muzzles and run them up to the port-sills where they were bowsed snug.

Lewrie lifted his telescope again, from the lee bulwarks, to see what was doing aboard the second ship, and found a cause for great joy. Flames were soaring up her lower masts and spewing long fire-tongues from her opened hatches, forge-bellowing horizontally from her opened gun-ports. Her tarred running rigging and mast-bearing shrouds glowed liquid with darting, climbing, blazing mouse-sized flames. The fires hadn't reached her tiller-ropes or her upper yards yet, so she ran off the wind still, trending a bit Sutherly, under a single fore-topsail, a solitary main t'gallant and a triple-reefed mizzen tops'l, with only her outer flying jib flogging away, far forrud at the tip of her jib boom. On a mostly steady course, he noted gladly. And still flying three large French Tricolours, still safe from burning, so everyone on the breakwater-mariners and landsmen alike-would know her nationality as well as Jesters. Above that burgeoning Vesuvius of smoke, ash and soaring embers that ragged downwind ahead of her, shrouding her like a cloak, they still flew high above, fluttering blue-white-red.

Scrape the damn breakwater, Lewrie speculated; ground on a shoal just at its foot, and burn out, right on their bloody door-stoop! My message'll be noticed, all right. Might even ram into the breakwater and [burn for hours! And when those double-shotted guns took light…!

As luridly, ghoulishly fascinating as it was to watch that ship being immolated, he tore his attention away from her, unlike the hands on Watch, or the many gunners who'd come up to the gangways once their guns had been secured, and went to the windward side to lift his glass. There was their cutter, steering Nor'-Nor'east, slamming swoopy and wet, close-hauled to stand out to sea, out the way they'd come. He saw no other nearby boats, either; no armed response from the port or the authorities, and all the early-rising fishermen had ducked inshore to the beaches for safety. The sun was almost completely risen then, with no hint of redness, no high-piled grey forebodings from the east. A bit lower than the Albanian shore with his glass, and he could barely make out two low-lying pitch-black slivers almost on the horizon. Two ship's boats full of seamen, stroking shoreward with oars. It could be a full two hours later before they stepped ashore, with their tale of woe. By which time, Jester would be long gone, a terrifying will-o'-the-wisp. And French sailors at Corfu, too, would be filled with fear.

"Mister Buchanon, let's harden up to windward," Lewrie said as he lowered his glass and turned inboard. "Lay her full-and-by, course North by East."

"Aye aye, sir." Buchanon beamed, pleased with their early work. "Mister Cony?" Lewrie called down to the gun-deck. "We'll take the cutter in tow, once Mister Knolles and his party are aboard. I've an idea she's spent too long on the beams, and her planking needs some soaking. Inform the cooks they may stoke up, once we're close-hauled, and begin fixing a late breakfast." "Aye, Cap'um, sir!"

Ten days more. Lewrie shrugged. Longer than I'd hoped, but we did it. Wind looks fair t'back a touch more Easterly, too. Make the return voyage a beam-reach all the way, 'less we get a bit of Southing. Make us faster, on that point o' sail, so, say, two days to Trieste or Venice? Then inform Captain Charlton. Of everything!

"A right fair mornin*, sir," Mr. Buchanon commented, once they had the ship thrashing away windward and the cutter was falling off a point or two to meet them. "A fair mornin's bus'ness."

"Amen, Mister Buchanon." Lewrie laughed, rocking on the balls of his feet, aching for a first cup of coffee, but plumb delighted, in the main. "Amen to that."

"Well, no wonder, then, that we only took two prizes," Captain Charlton said, nodding rueful about his poor luck, now he had an explanation for it. "They've gone to earth like foxes. And neither was exactly worth the effort, Commander Lewrie. A poor brig, and one ugly old poleacre. Doubt they could have carried much timber, anyway. I could not stay on-station longer, not with Fillebrowne and Rodgers to look up. You did very well, sir, to stand in lieu of me and Lionheart. And to have taken two prizes, as well. Sent them on to Trieste?"

"No, sir. Burned them," Lewrie told him. "It's in my report, sir." And feeling a bit impatient with Charlton, who only seemed interested, so far, in value gained.

"Burned!" Charlton exclaimed, wineglass halfway aloft. "I don't follow, sir."

"Well, as my report explains, sir," Lewrie began, "we had few hopes of taking inbound ships, since they're waiting for cargoes from the upper Adriatic to come to them. I thought, though, that there'd be outbound ships, already laden with timber and such, still at sea. So, with you gone, I thought to cow them. The first was off Cattaro, sir. Caught her well out to sea and took her back to within the diplomatic limits and anchored her. Nasty bit of work, that. Cattaro is at the end of a rather long estuary, which narrows, so placement was tricky. So the other French ships in port could see her burn, sir, and a wind from shore made it impossible to sail her in afire, as we did with the one off Corfu. We did fetch off her papers and such, sir, so we've all the t's crossed and the i's dotted. And we did turn up some coin and such. Not much. I have that secured in my lazarette now, sir." "Keep prisoners?"

"No, sir. Thought the more survivors ashore, the more worries. I let them have their boats and sent them in, after tallying up their names so the documentation passes muster."

"Ah-ha!" Charlton laughed. "Aye, the restll not be quite so keen, will they? Might even treat those released as Jonahs. Not even sign them aboard the other ships, nor wish them as passengers for the voyage home to France. I rather like that touch. Now, what about the other ports you shadowed… Durazzo and Volona?"

"I kept a strict accounting, sir," Lewrie cautiously prefaced to the nub of his report. "With no French traffick present, I had to buy some local boats from the Albanian or Montenegran fisher-folk. Sheep, too. Two roosters, and as many of those long red 'Liberty' caps as we could turn up among the Frog crewmen, from the first'un. Went into shore… nothing official, 'long as no Turks saw us, sir… and picked up a few odds and ends. Red and blue cloth, and such, to make up Frog flags. Paid for it all from the first prize's working capital, sir, as 'necessary for the Use and Service' of our vessel."

"Ahum," Charlton purred, going bland. This verbal report from Lewrie was beginning to sound a tad high-handed and verging very close to harum-scarum. "A strict accounting, d'ye say, sir."

"To the pence, sir. And it wasn't much at all," Lewrie assured him, savouring his first glass of welcome-aboard claret, and wondering, after his tale was told, if he'd really get another.

"Roosters?" Charlton squinted. "Sheep? And stocking caps?" "The very thing, sir." Lewrie tentatively smiled back. "Once we had everything in hand, we sailed right up to the three-mile limit off both harbours and came to anchor. I listed my bearings, sir, on the Venetian charts, so there'd be no error. And the Venetian charts are da… deuced accurate. My First Officer, Mister Ralph Knolles, was in charge of the local boat, and one of ours, for his getaway. Fired off some blank broadsides to get their attention, sir, then sailed the boats in as close as he dared, took to our boat, and let the other run ashore. My launch went inside the three-mile limit, sir. Unarmed-"

"Ah?" Charlton interrupted with a chary cough. It was quibblesome, that. He got that bland look again. "I don't see…"

"Well, sir…" Lewrie beamed, after polishing off his wine. Sure there'd not be another, the way Charlton was leaning his head back and staring fish-eyed down the length of his nose at him. "We'd sheared the sheep, then cut their throats and gutted 'em aboard those boats we'd purchased… in situ, so they'd bleed in-place. Bound them upright, at watch stations… the helm and such… and put the stocking caps on 'em, d'ye see, sir."

No doubt he does. Alan shivered. He's goin' bloody cross-eyed!

"So they'd faintly resemble French sailors, sir," Lewrie said, suddenly not finding it quite so clever a message. "And the roosters, sir? Old French folk symbol, I'm assured. Le Chanticlier, they call him? Pegged to the foredeck with a marling-spike… as a figurehead."

"Pegged…" Charlton grunted.

"Did I mention the frogs, sir? Balkan shore teemed with 'em, so we paid for the locals to harvest a bushel or two," Lewrie rushed to say, hoping they played better than the roosters or the sheep. "Had off the hind legs-rather good eatin', by the way!-floured, seasoned, then pan-fried, sir. And scattered 'em all about the decks, dead as mutton."

Charlton sat stock-still, but for putting his wineglass safely on his desktop. He folded his hands in his lap and breathed, off the top of his lungs, for a sombre moment or two.

Both hands free, Lewrie noticed with a sigh; he's goin't strangle me!

But then there was a faint twitch at either corner of Captain Charlton's prim mouth. A slight, purse-lipped upturning. His cheeks went ruddier under his sun-baked complexion, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. A faint grin appeared, like an ostrich chick fighting to leave a damn thick egg. Captain Charlton began to snicker. Then he threw back his head and roared!

With this encouraging sign to go by, Lewrie dared make free with the wine decanter and allowed himself to show his own amusement, merely a faint chuckle at first-whilst Captain Charlton began to bray, loud as Balaam's Ass. He rose from his seat and absolutely staggered aft to the transom settee, fighting for breath and slapping his thighs, clapping his hands over his aching stomach. Real tears could be seen coursing his cheeks! Though it would never do to appear to laugh at a jest one had made, Lewrie found it infectious and shook with silent sniggers. Though he still feared a sudden sobriety on Charlton's part, and a harsh tongue-lashing, once he was over his fit.

"Ah, dear me," Charlton said, though, a good three minutes later, as he dabbed at his eyes and blew his gone-cherry nose. "Oh, sir! I've not had reason to be amused since San Fiorenzo Bay. A moment more, I do beg, sir… to recover my wits. But I never heard the like! And those poor Frog seamen… t see such a sight, sailing right into… Dear Lord! Fresh-'spatched frogs all over the…! Oh, dear me. Whoo!"

He gulped for air and calmed, at last, and came back to the desk for his abandoned wineglass. "A toast with you, sir. A brimming bumper. Admiral Jervis gave me an inkling I might find you unorthodox, but he didn't speak the half of it. To your knacky wit, Commander Lewrie… and confusion-and fear-'mongst our foes."

"Confusion and fear, sir," Lewrie echoed, knocking back a savoury gulp.

A rather pacific, spent sort of minute went by then, with good Captain Charlton emitting the odd wheeze or two, the odd shake of his head in wonderment. Which put Lewrie in mind of that ipostcoital silence one spent with whores one'd never clapped eyes on before.