“Article Thirty-six, sir,” Westcott offered, “the ‘Captain’s Cloak’ … ‘all other crimes not capital, committed by any Person or Persons in the Fleet, which are not mentioned in this act’ and all that?”
“Article Seven, sir,” their waggish Lt. Merriman said with a snicker, “about not sending in all papers found aboard prize ships? The dispensations were paper, after all.”
“Now, that’s just silly,” Lewrie gravelled.
“Oh, even worse, sir!” Marine Lieutenant Simcock added, in an even more jovial manner. “Since the dispensations relieved enemy civilians of their sins, might we have violated Article the Sixth … ‘no person in the Fleet shall relieve an enemy or Rebel with Money, Victuals, Powder, Shot, Ammunition, or any other supplies whatsoever’? Do we ease their minds, would that count against us?”
“I wonder if officers could be flogged for quarrelling, under the Twenty-third Article?” Lewrie mused aloud with an evil grin. “I don’t want t’flog anyone. I start that, I might as well have half the sailors and Marines on detached duty at the gratings. Starting with Desmond, Furfy, and half my own boat crew.”
“Well, sir,” Midshipman Eldridge piped up from the far end of the dining table, “it’s not as if any of our people profited from it. What they made, they spent. I doubt if any man came back aboard with a single pence … or Spanish centavo … to show for it.”
“Poxed to their eyebrows by the Spanish whores, I expect,” Lt. Merriman said. “That’s what they have to show for it, and they’ll be out fifteen shillings each for Mister Mainwaring’s Mercury Cure. That may be punishment enough … the loss from their pay, and the agonies of the Cure, both.”
“Summon ‘All Hands’ at this Sunday Divisions, sir, and lay the law upon them,” Lt. Westcott sensibly suggested, pausing to pour himself a glass as the port bottle was passed to him. “Just come out and say that you know what they did, after reading them only the Seventh and the Eighth Articles of War, throw in the ‘Captain’s Cloak’, and warn them that they’d best not be doing anything like that, again, or there will be some bloody backs among them.”
“Pretty much a harmless lark, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said with a rare grin, “nothing that would undermine the ship’s discipline in the long run. You would not appear to be a ‘Popularity Dick’. They know you, by now, sir. They also know that they got away with a very rare prank, and know that it is best a one-time thing. A show of your dis-approval, without punishment, would more than suit.”
“Then that is what I’ll do,” Lewrie agreed after a moment to mull that over. “With your able assistance, of course, gentlemen. It would aid in that direction did you, in the course of your duties and interactions with the men, caution them that my sense of humour, and my toleration, is not boundless, hey?”
Captaining by committee? Lewrie scoffed to himself; Damme, just how bone-idle lazy do I appear? But, there’s no helping it, this time.
“Your cook, sir, did us very well this evening,” Lt. Westcott said, “but I still envy the tales I’ve heard of those massive steaks to be had at Buenos Aires. And these greedy gentlemen made no effort to fetch a few back aboard, in a spirit of companionship!”
“Oh, but we would have, sir!” Merriman laughed, “had we any way to preserve them that long.”
“Stuff them in a crock of lard?” Spendlove wondered aloud. “In a cask of local brandy? Roll them in salt and brine them, as our salt-meats are preserved? I doubt any method would avail, and by the time we fetched them aboard, they would be no better than the casked meats on the orlop.”
“Now, the submersion in the local brandy sounds divine!” Lt. Westcott shot back, laughing. “How marvellous that would be, and the brandy could make up for any loss of freshness.
“But,” he grumbled, “I suppose our Army, and all their prisoners, grabbed most of the beef for themselves.”
“What prisoners?” Merriman sneered, his eyes drawn to the last slice of cake on the sideboard. “The Spanish sloped off inland.”
“Mean t’say, General Beresford didn’t capture any of them?” Lewrie asked, a tad uneasy at the news.
“Well, once we repulsed their cavalry a few miles above where we landed at Quilmes Point, we saw very little of them, sir. No one did,” Lt. Spendlove answered. “They’d departed before we got to the bridge over the Cuello, and then we sat on our hands from the twenty-fifth of June ’til the formal surrender of the city was signed on the second of July, and we could march in and take the town.”
“Well then, how many of them got away?” Lewrie pressed.
“I heard an Army officer say that we’d been up against about fifteen hundred at the skirmish, sir,” Spendlove told him.
“Aye, and I heard later that General Beresford thought that he had fought two thousand,” Merriman gravelled, looking round the table to see if anyone else had a wish for cake, before summoning Pettus to fetch him that last slice. “Mind now, the Commodore boasted that we’d engaged four thousand!”
That would sound better in the London papers, aye! Lewrie told himself, recalling a time or two that he had inflated the odds, too.
“They were allowed to just ride off inland?” Lewrie asked.
“Well, we had no cavalry of our own, and with such a small force, I suppose that General Beresford and the Commodore thought that securing the town, and gathering up the treasure and all, was more important, sir,” Lt. Spendlove told them all.
“Like Henry Morgan sacking Panama, sir?” Midshipman Grainger said with a snicker, very tongue-in-cheek.
“No more port for the youngsters,” Westcott teased.
“Oh, sir!” Grainger pretended to cringe.
“Then it sounds as if Beresford has no idea where they’ve gone, or how far they retreated,” Lewrie surmised, “nor how many Spanish troops are still in the field! That don’t sound healthy. How many has Beresford left? Less the four hundred and fourty the Navy lended him, that from sixteen hundred thirty is … less than twelve hundred men! That few, to patrol the town, scout the environs for the return of the enemy, and mount defences? Very un-healthy!”
“More patrolling and policing of the town than anything else, really, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said with a worry-furrowed brow. “None of the local watchmen were co-operating with us when we were there, and if the Spanish had any police force in the city before, we didn’t see a one of them.”
“Nothing but dirty looks from the locals, too, those that took note we were present,” Lt. Merriman commented between bites of cake. “There was a lot of shunning and ‘cuts sublime’, casting their noses high and sniffing … mumbled curses and such. None of our lads went out after dark unless they were in groups, and well-armed, to boot.”
“Or snug for the night in a tavern or brothel,” Lt. Spendlove added. “In their temporary quarters, rather, for those were what was chosen for their lodgings.”
“How entertainin’,” Lewrie drawled. “And, no sign of any who’d rise up and cheer for their independence from Spain, I take it.”
“The Commodore’s Colonel Miranda was spinning moonbeams, sir,” Merriman groused. “I don’t think any of his nationalist rebels even exist! Not among the Argentines we saw.”
“They’d cut our throats as soon as look at us, sir,” Midshipman Eldridge spoke up.
“And that’s not the port talking, sir,” Grainger joshed, and shared a grin with Eldridge, who was much older, risen from Quartermaster’s Mate, and not possessed of the usual Midshipman’s cheek.
“God help our soldiers, then, if the Argentines decide to rise up against us,” Lewrie gloomily said, slowly turning his port glass by the stem. “Hard as it was t’get ’em ashore in the first place, does it prove necessary to evacuate ’em, it could turn into a real mess. I think the charts show less than three fathoms of depth right along the town piers, is that right? Beresford might have t’retreat down to the Cuello River, again, set himself up on the South bank, make sure that the bridge is completely destroyed, and hope that all our boats can get them off.”