Mere weeks before, after returning to a hero’s welcome from a successful raid on a privateers’ lair up the Saint Mary’s River in Spanish Florida, disturbing rumours had come from further down the Antilles that a French squadron of several ships of the line under a Frog by name of Missiessy was raiding the West Indies. Even more worrisome was a letter that Lewrie had gotten from his youngest son, Hugh, who was serving as a Midshipman aboard a Third Rate 74 under one of Lewrie’s old friends which confirmed the escape of Missiessy’s squadron from the British blockade of French ports, and the news that an even larger part of the French Navy, a whole fleet under an Admiral Villeneuve, had left European waters, and that Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was taking the whole Mediterranean Fleet, of which Hugh’s ship was a part, in hot pursuit … also bound for the West Indies.

With the former Senior Officer Commanding in the Bahamas and his two-decker 64 accidentally run aground at Antigua, for which the fool was to be court-martialled (and good riddance to bad rubbish as far as Lewrie was concerned), the onus of defending the Bahamas had fallen to Lewrie, since his 38-gunned Fifth Rate frigate was the largest ship on station, and he was the only Post-Captain present on the scene. For that dubious honour, he was allowed to fly the inferior broad pendant, a red burgee that sported a large white ball, and style himself Commodore, even temporarily.

Unfortunately for him, the defence of the Bahamas was a task as gruelling as any of Hercules’ Twelve Labours. Nassau and New Providence, the only island of much worth, the only decent-sized town, were lightly garrisoned, fit only to hold the forts which guarded the port, and besides Lewrie’s frigate, there were only two or three brig-sloops and a dozen smaller sloops or cutters to patrol the long island chain.

Captain Francis Forrester, the unfortunate former Senior Officer Commanding (the idle, top-lofty, and fubsy gotch-gut swine!), had got it in his head that it would be the Spanish who would be the main threat, but Lewrie had laughed that to scorn, as had any one else with a lick of sense; the Dons were nigh-powerless any longer, with their few warships in the West Indies rotting at their moorings, blockaded by the Royal Navy. But, with the French out at sea, and nearby … perhaps storming down the Nor’east Providence Channel that very moment!…

Damn my eyes, Lewrie gloomed to himself, after a bleak glance round Nassau Harbour; We may all be dead by supper time.

He had precious-little with which to make a fight of it; his frigate, the 12-gun brigantine Thorn, but her main battery was made of short-ranged carronades, not long guns, and Lt. Darling would get his ship blown to kindling long before he could get in gun-range. There was Lt. Bury and his little Lizard, a two-masted Bermuda sloop that had only eight 6-pounders, and Lt. Lovett’s weak Firefly in port. The larger brig-sloops, Commander Gilpin’s Delight and Commander Ritchie’s Fulmar, were patrolling the Abacos, and Acklins and Crooked Island, respectively.

We’ll have to go game, Lewrie thought; but go we will, even if it’s hopeless. At least my will’s in order.

“Back to the ship, Desmond,” Lewrie snapped. “Smartly, now!”

*   *   *

The cutter was not halfway back alongside Reliant, the boat’s crew straining on the ears, when they almost collided with a fishing boat scuttling into port under lugs’l and jib, crewed by an old Free Black man and two wide-eyed youngsters as crew, all of whom were paying more attention aft than looking where they were going.

“’Vast there, ya blind bashtit!” stroke-oar Patrick Furfy yelled at them. “Sheer off!”

“Ya gon’ fight dem Frenchies, sah?” one of the youngsters cried. “Law, dey gon’ ’slave us all!”

“You saw them?” Lewrie snapped. “You know they’re the French?”

“Nossah,” the older fellow at the tiller shouted back, “but we got told by ’nother feller who got told by dat brig’s mastah dat dere was a whole fleet o’ warships comin’ down de Prob’dence Channel, guns run out, an’ mo’ sails flyin’ dan a flock o’ gulls! Oh Law, oh Law, what gon’ happen t’us’uns?” he further wailed, taking his hands off his tiller to actually wring them in fear.

“Pig-ignorant git,” Cox’n Desmond snarled under his breath.

The next fishing boat fleeing astern of the cutter, headed for the shallows of East Bay and the dubious safety of Fort Montagu, told a different story; her crew swore it was the Spanish who were coming.

“That’ll be the day!” Lewrie scoffed. “Maybe it’s the Swedes, or the bloody Russians! It might be one of our—”

There was another boom, much louder and closer this time, for someone on the ramparts of Fort Fincastle, much higher uphill, must have spotted something out to sea, and had fired off an alert gun. At that, church bells began to ring in the town, summoning off-duty soldiers to their duties, and the townspeople to a panic.

Well, perhaps not one of ours, Lewrie silently conceded.

*   *   *

Lewrie’s quick return to the ship stirred up an ants’ hill of bother as he hurriedly clambered up the man-ropes and batten steps from the cutter to the entry-port, making the sketchiest salute to the flag and the quarterdeck as he did so, and waving off the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, and his silver call, and the hurriedly gathered side-party.

“Mister Eldridge,” Lewrie directed the first Midshipman of the Harbour Watch he could see, “do you load and fire a nine-pounder as a signal gun, and hoist ‘Captains Repair On Board,’ along with a recall to our working-parties ashore.”

“Aye aye, sir!” the mystified young fellow gawped.

Lieutenants Spendlove and Merriman had been aboard, napping in the wardroom, and were coming up from below in their shirtsleeves. The Marine Officer, Lt. Simcock, followed them, throwing on his red uniform coat, with his batman in trail with his sword and baldric, his hat and gorget to be donned later.

“It may be a rumour, it may be true, but there are reports of un-identified warships coming down the Nor’east Providence Channel, sirs,” Lewrie quickly explained. “Just whose, we don’t know, but there is good reason to suspect they might be French. Prepare the ship to weigh, and make sail. We’ll have a quick palaver with the captains of Thorn, Firefly, and Lizard, and then we shall all sortie … God help us. The First Officer is ashore with the Purser?”

“Aye, sir, with the working-party,” Lt. Spendlove said with an audible gulp. He was a Commission Sea Officer in His Majesty’s Navy, and it was not done for him, or any of them, to show fear before the hands. Nor were they to express doubts, even if all of them thought that putting their little ad hoc squadron, chosen months before for shoal-draught work close inshore against lightly armed enemy privateers, would stand no chance against a French squadron, even if that squadron was made up of corvettes and lighter-armed frigates. They were facing the grim prospect of certain death, dismemberment, wounding, or capture. Even pride, honour, and glory had a hard time coping with that.

The cutter had been led astern for towing, and the boat’s crew had come on deck, and Lewrie turned to face them.

“Desmond, I’d admire did ye and the lads strip my cabins for action, and whistle up my steward, Pettus, so he can see the beasts to the orlop,” Lewrie bade. “And, he’s to fetch me my everyday sword and a brace o’ pistols.”

“Aye, sor,” Desmond said, though pausing for a bit before obeying the order. “Ya wish th’ ship’s boats set free for a better turn o’ speed, too, sor?” Desmond asked in a softer voice.

“No,” Lewrie grimly decided. “We may need them, later.”

For the survivors should the ship go down, was left unsaid.