Those damned drums! He remembered how they’d thudded like bloody beating hearts, ripped from the chests of the massacred. They scared the piss outta me, for certain, and put my “high-yellow” girl into pluperfect shits, t’boot. Don’t see how that’s useful.

“No fluency in their Creole lingo?” Captain Barre asked, a brow up in doubt. “No background information?”

“I doubt anyone speaks their private patois, sir,” Lewrie told him, “but, they deal with the outside world in French, don’t they? As for background information, well… I did pick up on who-hates-who and how much, the various massacres and betrayals, but…”

“Know much of Dessalines, do you?” Captain Barre pressed, now with a faint sneer of disappointment. “Christophe, Petion, and Clairveaux?”

“All four of ’em have been betrayed, betrayed each other, even turned on L’Ouverture, more times than I’ve had hot suppers, Captain Barre,” Lewrie replied. He had no wish to go ashore and deal with the rebel generals, no wish to put himself at that much risk, but the way Barre spoke to him rankled. “None of ’em have a shred o’ trust for any Europeans, at this point,” he added, after a sip of his cool-ish wine.

“And with good reason,” Commodore Loring interjected. “After what the late, un-lamented, General LeClerc, and this chap Rochambeau, did to them. They came with a plan for complete extermination of any Blacks living on the island, and thought to re-populate it with fresh slaves, unaffected by thoughts of independence, or liberty. That is the only way that Saint Domingue could be returned to profitability,” Loring said with a shrug. “Their principal exports depend upon slave labour. Rochambeau deliberately rounded up Blacks and Mulattoes, and drowned them by the umpteen-thousands, right here in Le Cap Bay, not a year past.”

“They’ll burn the ships, and the survivors, to Hell,” Captain John Bligh said with a sigh. “With very good cause. Unless we arrange for the French departure.”