The King's Marauder (24 page)

“No sir, sorry,” Lewrie replied. “If I must act alone and use my Marines and armed landing parties, in my own boats, I’ll be out at sea most of the time. Of course, I will need to see Captain Middleton for larger boats, so I can land all my men in one group, quickly.”

Rock Soup’ll have t’start with boats and scramblin’ nets,
he thought with a groan;
Then I get out of port soonest, and capture some sort o’ boat for Mountjoy.

“Pity, that,” Sir Hew gloomed. “Gibraltar is in dire need of a permanent naval presence. One would wish that you could have Captain Middleton build boats large enough to serve as gunboats, and man them with your sailors.”

“I have my orders, Sir Hew,” Lewrie said.

Mine
arse
if you’ll have me!
he thought.

“And I cannot countermand them,” Dalrymple said.

Thank bloody Christ!
was Lewrie’s thought.

“Unless there is a true emergency,” Dalrymple posed.

“So long as the dockyard is building more boats for me, it can produce boats for you, sir,” Lewrie quickly countered, “and there are sailors and gunners recovering in the naval hospital, surely, enough to form a harbour guard flotilla, even some recovering officers and Midshipmen separated from their ships and unlikely to rejoin them anytime soon, who could lead them. Does Captain Middleton have twelve-pounders or eighteen-pounders in storage; well, there you go, sir!”

“Once Captain Lewrie had found a transport for the light infantrymen, sir,” Mountjoy stuck in, springing quickly to lay the ground for another of their requests which they had hoped to bring up later, “we
had
hoped to avail ourselves of those men, to man the transport and make up the boat crews.”

“In your plan sent to me, Mister Mountjoy, you stated that Sir Alan has a great deal of experience with, what did you call them …
amphibious
raids and landings?” Dalrymple said, lifting a page from Mountjoy’s proposal to squint over it. “Boat work, in other words, or word, rather? Am-phib-ious?” He worked his mouth over that.

“Buenos Aires and Cape Town last year, sir,” Lewrie boasted. “The Bahamas and Spanish Florida the year before, experiments in the Channel with various torpedo devices in 1804, and landings on the Spratly Islands and the Spanish Philippines in the ’80s ’tween the wars and…”

“Escaping Yorktown after the surrender, too, sir,” Mountjoy added for him. “Two or three ships’ boats got out to sea for rescue, or so I heard. Captain Lewrie’s work in the Far East against native pirates, sponsored by the French, was his first exposure to Secret Branch.”

“Never had to cut a throat, or stab anyone in the back, sir,” Lewrie could not help japing.

I leave all that to Zachariah Twigg, Jemmy Peel, and Mountjoy,
he qualified to himself.

“But, just where did you two envision making your raids?” Sir Hew asked, still un-convinced.

“From beyond Tarifa in the West, to near Cádiz, sir,” Mountjoy assured him, “and to the East, from Málaga right to the French border.”

“Hmm … enterprising, I must say,” Dalrymple commented.

“So long a stretch that the Spanish cannot concentrate to defend against us,” Mountjoy schemed on, “and our choices so varied all along the coasts that our movements would be unpredictable.”

“Like the Vikings, or the Barbary Corsairs, sir,” Lewrie said.

“Minus the rape and pillage, of course,” Mountjoy corrected.

Sir Hew Dalrymple took a long moment to think that over, pulling at his earlobes, tugging his nose, before speaking, and that hesitantly, at last. “Hmm, does the defensive situation admit of the release of two or three companies, on a
temporary
basis, mind, to add some heft to your raids … now and then … then I
may
be able to spare you a few troops,
if
you are able to obtain a suitable transport for them. Just as I cannot countermand your orders, Sir Alan, and dragoon you to become a guardian for the bay approaches, I cannot order any vessel under the Transport Board’s hire to serve under your orders. If such is the case, I cannot imagine how you and Mister Mountjoy can gather all the needed elements, but … I wish you good fortune in the doing, and
if
you manage to put all the pieces together, then I
may
be able to aid you. I make no firm promises, but…?”

He spread his hands wide and shrugged, then stood, signalling that their conference was at an end, and Lewrie and Mountjoy had to be satisfied that he hadn’t given them an outright refusal.

*   *   *

“He didn’t say no,” Mountjoy said with a sigh.

“He didn’t clap us on the back and cry ‘sic ’em’, either. Not a good way to begin,” Lewrie groused as they made their way back down to the town. “At least his sherry was tasty.”

“It was Spanish,” Mountjoy told him. “Andalusia’s famous for it, and rivals Portugal … when they feel like trading with us.”

“Now there’s incentive for successful raids,” Lewrie laughed. “Haul off lashings of the stuff … if I can keep my sailors and Marines from drinkin’ it up, first.”

“You’ll see Captain Middleton, next, I suppose?” Mr. Mountjoy asked, taking off his wide-brimmed straw summer hat to fan himself, for the sun was fierce, and there was scant wind from off the bay.

“Thought I would, aye,” Lewrie told him.

“When Admiral Nelson had the Mediterranean Fleet, he came with a dozen extra shipwrights to improve the dockyard,” Mountjoy told him. “They were to build gunboats for the bay defence then, too, but nothing came of it. Shortage of funds, God knows why. Most of them survived the outbreak of Gibraltar Fever in 1804.”

“I never heard that it was un-healthy here,” Lewrie said.

“Only every now and then,” Mountjoy assured him, “though when it does break out, it’s as bad as the West Indies. Civilians who can do so leave town and camp out in tents on the eastern side of the Rock, high above the pestilential miasmas, where there are cooling winds. I have been told that by the time the fevers ebbed three years ago, the garrison was cut in half. Thank God it appears to affect the Spaniards, too, else they could have put together an army and marched right through the Landport Gate!”

“Well, in any case, once I’ve seen Captain Middleton, I’m off to sea t’get your boat,” Lewrie stated, “and our transport, too, is God just. Two-masted, about fourty or fifty feet overall?”

“That would do quite nicely, though even after all my time with you aboard
Jester,
I still know little of ships and the sea,” Mountjoy confessed. “A fishing boat, no matter how badly it reeks?”

“Perhaps a coastal trader, with a partial cargo of grain, and an host of rats?” Lewrie teased.

“No matter,” Mountjoy said with a wee smile, “for I’ll not be aboard her. No reason to be.”

“You’ll just sit in your cool offices, or on your shaded gallery, peekin’ through your telescope and playin’ the sly spy-master, instead,” Lewrie teased again. “By God, but His Majesty’s Government
must
be told how they’re wastin’ their money on idleness.”

“My dear fellow, but are you sounding envious?” Mountjoy japed.

“You’re Goddamned right I am!” Lewrie barked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“The tea tastes diff’rent,” Lewrie commented after a sip or two. He held his glass up to the light of a swaying overhead lanthorn with a squinty expression. “Fruitier?”

“Ehm, that’d be a dram or two of orange juice that Yeovill put in it this morning, sir,” Pettus told him. “There’s a whole sack laid by in your lazarette, along with lemons and bunches of grapes, and a few pomegranates, though he isn’t sure what to do with those, as yet. There are all sorts of melons, too, The Mohammedans in Morocco don’t make wine with their grapes, but they sure grow a lot of fruits and such. Do you like it, sir?”

“Aye, right tasty,” Lewrie agreed, recalling how he’d relished cool tea with peach or strawberry juice offered him by their British Consul in Charleston, South Carolina, a few years back.

“Mister Snelling had the Purser buy up
barrels
of lemons, too,” Pettus went on as he bustled about the dining-coach. “Even if Mister Cadrick can’t sell them to the hands and turn a profit. For the good of the crew’s health, Mister Snelling said, for their anti-scorbutic properties.”

“Anti-scarrin’?” Jessop muttered.

“Prevents scurvy, Jessop,” Pettus explained, “like wine, sauerkraut, or apples.”

“Had a lemon, once,” Jessop said. “I’d rather have an apple.”

Jessop had the loose sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows, proud to sport his first tattoo on his left forearm. It was a fouled anchor.

Christ, which came first?
Lewrie asked himself;
The whores, the rum, or that? And which of his guardians lost track of him long enough t’let him have it done? I think I’ll haveta have a word with Desmond and Furfy.

He finished his tea with an appreciative smack of his lips and a dab with his napkin, then announced that he would go on deck for a stroll.

It was a beautiful mid-morning, with thin streaks of clouds overhead, a glittering blue sea dappled here and there with white caps and fleeting cat’s paws. HMS
Sapphire
trundled along on a fine tops’l breeze, her motion gentle and swaying slowly from beam to beam only a few degrees, and pitching and dipping her bows as she encountered the long-set rollers.

“Good morning, sir,” Lt. Elmes said with a doff of his hat as Lewrie emerged onto the quarterdeck.

“Good morning to you, sir,” Lewrie replied, tapping the front of his own hat in return. “Good t’be back at sea?”

“Aye, sir,” Elmes gladly agreed. “Though I doubt that our men would agree. One whole day of shore liberty has only piqued their interest.”

“Grumpy, are they, Mister Elmes?” Lewrie asked.

“Not really, sir,” Elmes told him with a smile. “All in all I’d say they’re in fine fettle, what with the action with the French, the prospect of prize-money to come from it, and a run ashore. And more of that to come?”

“So long as we’re working out of Gibraltar, aye,” Lewrie said.

That promise pleased Lt. Elmes right down to his toes, for he and the rest of the wardroom had had much more free time ashore than the ship’s people. Over supper the first night out at sea, the conversations round Lewrie’s dining table had been rapturous and excited about exploring the many caves, touring the massive fortifications, the excellence of their meals and the wines, the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables (some smuggled cross The Lines from Spain) and an expedition by donkey-back to the heights of the Rock, and their encounters with the filthy Barbary apes which ran wild up there. What else his officers and Midshipmen had done with the ladies of Gibraltar was anyone’s guess, and none of Lewrie’s business, but count on Lt. Geoffrey Westcott to smirk, wink, and grin in sign that he had managed to find himself a liaison, if no one else did. Among those hundreds and hundreds of foreigners that Mountjoy had mentioned who resided at Gibraltar, many were women; Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, principally from Genoa, many of whom practiced their own version of “mercantile trade” with the soldiers and officers of the garrison, those merchants, and the crews of ships putting into harbour.

Lewrie had taken
Sapphire
cross the Straits to look at Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in North Africa, and take a peek at the nigh-impregnable fortress there. There had been no shipping there, but he’d found it disturbing that there were no British blockading ships present, either. He’d trailed his colours only four miles offshore, one mile beyond the maximum range of the heaviest fortress guns, then had ordered the course altered to the Nor’east to begin prowling the coast of Spain.

“Land ho!” several masthead lookouts shouted, almost as one. “Deck, there! Land ho, two points off the larboard bows!”

The Sailing Master, Mr. George Yelland, popped out of his sea cabin on the starboard side of the quarterdeck, looking disheveled and unkempt, as if he had been napping in his clothes. “Landfall, sir?”

“Mountaintops, most-like,” Lewrie commented. “Let’s look at the charts.”

They crossed to the larboard side of the quarterdeck and went into the dedicated chart space. Yelland dry-scrubbed his face with rough-palmed hands, making a raspy sound against his unshaven cheeks, as if to rouse himself to full wakefulness, before leaning over the chart of the Spanish coast pinned to the angled tabletop. He checked their latest position from yesterday’s Noon Sights, followed the pencilled line of
X
s which showed their hourly Dead Reckoning positions, and made some humming noises.

“Mountaintops, certainly, sir,” Yelland opined at last. “The Andalusian coast possesses some truly magnificent ranges. From where we reckoned ourselves to be two hours ago, we are in sight of the Sierra Nevada range. Which particular mountains sighted is still moot, but … the shores I believe to be about eighteen miles off, and we should sight the port of Fuengirola in a while.”

“No shoals reported?” Lewrie asked.

“Not unless we proceed to within a mile or two of the coast, sir,” Yelland informed him, “where the soundings show six fathoms or less.”

“Very good, sir,” Lewrie said. “We’ll stand on as we are, and see what turns up. With the coast so mountainous, and the roads tortuous-bad, as they usually are, we might stumble upon a fair amount of coasting trade. Sorry to have interrupted your nap.”

“Not a nap, sir,” Yelland said, stifling a yawn. “Simply resting my eyes.”

Lewrie went back out onto the quarterdeck, snatched a day telescope from the binnacle cabinet rack, and went up to the poop deck for a slightly higher vantage point. There were clouds to the North and East, but if there really were mountains up there, they were only darker, still indistinct smudges that could be taken for rain clouds beneath or ahead of the rest.

There was a whine, and a pawing at his knee. Bisquit, wakened from a nap atop the aft flag lockers, had brought his newest, favourite toy, a length of old three-inch line whipped with twine to stiffen it, with a monkey’s fist fashioned at either end, and made tasty with some slush from the galley. The dog could gnaw on it like a bone or shake it like a snake in mock “kills”, with delighted yips and growls.