"Kit" had winced, but turned, and had taken careful, implacable aim, and Ledyard's cousin, George Sellers, his second, had thrown Ledyard a spare pistol, aiming his own at Cashman, and naturally Lewrie, as Cashman's second, and the judges on the field, to boot, had shot down the cousin, whilst Christopher had carefully plumped his own ball into Ledyard Beauman's belly, the sort of wound that would take several excruciating days to prove mortal.

With such a feud, which now included Lewrie, and death threats from the Beaumans, Cashman had begun selling up his lands, livestock, furnishings, and slaves for a fresh start in the United States, just about the time that Lewrie's precious HMS Proteus frigate had been hit with the Yellow Jack. As a cruel joke on the Beaumans, "Kit" Cashman had proposed a scheme for a dozen Beauman slaves off one of their plantations on Portland Bight (next to Cashman's) to run away and go aboard Proteus some dark night, which they had done, with HMS Proteus slipping close ashore like a thief in the night, and sailing back out as quietly as smoke went up a chimney.

Christopher Cashman landed in Wilmington, North Carolina, eventually, swearing he'd never own another slave (he'd manumitted almost all his house hold servants, and all the married couples, old'uns, and children), and Lewrie had gone on to cut a swath of destruction and mayhem through the King's enemies in the West Indies… 'til 1799, when the shoe finally dropped, and the Beaumans discovered just who had made away with their "property"!

Hugh Beauman, the elder of their Jamaican clan, with his icily beautiful new young wife, his Jamaican solicitor, and witnesses in tow, had come to England last spring, toting a preordained, bought-and-paid-for verdict of guilty, and a sentence of death by hanging.