The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER ONE

Hoy, the boat!" Mr. Midshipman Larkin cried his challenge to the approaching civilian cutter, though he had known who its passengers were as soon as they had stepped down into it on the distant quay ten minutes earlier; had been awaiting those passengers' return for at least the last two hours past.

"Proteus!" the Mulatto bow man shouted back, seated on the very tip of the cutter's bows, legs dangling to either side with a brass-fitted gaff staff across his lap with which to hook onto the chains. He shot one hand in the air for a moment, showing four fingers, proving that a captain was aboard.

"Come alongside, aye!" Mr. Larkin shouted back, then paced over to join the others of the side-party assembled to salute that officer's arrival back aboard. Larkin was a thatch-haired, ill-featured lout of a lad, all out at elbows and knees in his secondhand uniform, and that didn't even take into consideration the growing he'd done since signing ship's articles over a year before. Though it was a useless endeavour, he twitched and tugged his coat, waist-coat, and neck-stock into better order, shifted the hang of his shoddy dirk, and took a second to remove his battered, cocked hat and swipe his unruly hair with a "Welsh comb," that is to say, with his fingers.

Marine Lieutenant Devereux fiddled with his own immaculate neck-stock, harumphed to clear his throat, and cocked a brow as he regarded his short line of Marines under arms, in a last-instant inspection.

Though ships' officers did not usually stand harbour watches, the First Officer, Mr. Anthony Langlie, was present, as was the Second Officer, the ever-cynical and recently wakened and yawning Lieutenant Catterall. The younger and cleverer Scot, Lt. Adair, also "toed the line" of a tar-paid seam in the starboard gangway planking, his sword loose and ready to present. Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, and Mr. Grace, the ship's other midshipman, also stood nearby, stiff-backed and chin-up with curiosity.

Thud! went the shabby cutter against the hull; a clatter of untidily "boated" oars. More, softer thuds as the cutter shouldered the proper captain's gig, and a grunt or two, some mumbles, as money changed hands for the short passage. Midshipman Larkin dared a peek outboard and downwards from his position at the opening of the entry-port, nodded to the neat-uniformed sailors in the side-party, and stiffened.

The Bosun, Mr. Pendarves, began his long, elaborate call as the dog's vane of the arriving officer's gilt-laced cocked hat peeked over the top step. At a whispered word, officers' swords were drawn, then presented before their faces; well-blacked Marine boots stamped on the creamy-pale, fresh-sanded planking; hands slapped glossy-oiled walnut musket buttstocks and fore-ends. At a word of command from Lt. Langlie, all hands present on deck stood erect and doffed their hats.

The arriving officer leaned back a little, gripping the tautly strung man-ropes for the last step of his ascent up the shelflike boarding battens that began level, and a bit aft, of the main chains. A visitor, unused to such ceremony, might have deemed the officer nonplussed to stillness by the elaborateness of his welcome. But it was simply his way… to seize the man-ropes just below their terminations set below the cap-rail of the entry-port's bulwarks, and jerk himself into the last step, instead of groping and fumbling the cap-rails like some stout "trullibubs" or senior dodderer more in need of hoisting aboard in a bosun's chair. He had barely turned his thirty-sixth year, this January of 1799, and was still almost boyishly spry.

That jerk was accompanied by a nearly playful hop or skip from the last batten to the snowy planks of the starboard gangway. When the officer doffed his hat, though, he did so with solemn gravity, so an uninitiated observer might have doubted his first, playful theory.

Said new-come "lubber" would have seen a slim man in his early thirties, who stood three inches shy of six feet tall, one who might weigh twelve or thirteen stone; still wider in the shoulders than the waist, a man whose snow-white breeches and waist-coat lay trimly flat, still.

He wore a good, hard-finished blue wool shoregoing coat, laced with butter-yellow gilt trim on the lapels, the stand-up blue collar, the side-pocket flaps, and cuffs, with nine real gilt buttons on each wide turn-back blue lapel. A fringed gilt-lace epaulet sat upon the officer's right shoulder, too, denoting him a Post-Captain, though one of less than three years' seniority.

Under that expensive coat lay a white leather baldric on which to hang his sword. A discerning observer would have appreciated that sword, a twenty-four-inch hanger, though he would have been puzzled by the scabbard, for it was of dark blue leather, not black, and both throat and drag were of plain brass, not gilded. The hilt, though, was gilded and most ornate; the typical lion's-head pommel that swallowed the back handguard, but the front guard that swelled to protect the user's fist was pierced-steel, like a scallop shell, with a smaller second shell at the hilt's forefront.

A discriminating man with a taste for blades would appreciate that the hanger was a Gill's and, when drawn, was nearly straight on the back edge, the first eight inches honed razor-sharp, while the lower edge was upswept to the point, so that it gave the impression of a curved-blade hanger.

A discriminating gentleman would have further "Ah-hummed" over the cut-steel square links of the officer's watch chain and fob, deeming him a man of good taste, too.

With the officer's beaver cocked hat doffed, an outsider would have seen a full head of hair atop his pate, still thick and all his own, of a middle, almost light brown, a tad wavy at his temples, over his ears, and loosely gathered into a trim nautical sprig of a queue atop his coat collar, bound with a bow-knotted black silk ribbon.

The officer was much too sun- or wind-burned for Fashion in the better sorts' salons, though. Not completely a gentleman, perhaps, the lofty observer would have sniffed; too much the "sea dog" after all!

The salute done, Lewrie clapped his hat back on his head and smiled at his First Officer, his darkly, romantically handsome Mr. Anthony Langlie. "Everything's in order, Mister Langlie?" he asked. "Nothing gone smash since I left the ship?" he gently teased.

"No, sir, praise God," Lt. Langlie reported. "The working sail set hung slack and allowed to dry, wood and watering done, and Mister Coote's requirements stowed below, sir. Did you, ah… find out…"

"I'll be below and aft, Mr. Langlie," Capt. Lewrie told him in a mystifying way. "Give me ten minutes, then do attend me, and I shall tell you all I have learned. Dismiss the hands back to their seeming drowsiness for now, sir."

"Aye, aye, sir," Lt. Langlie crisply replied, with a hand to his hat and a short sketch of a bow from the waist as Capt. Lewrie went down the starboard ladderway to the gun-deck, then aft past the bulkhead door and the Marine sentry, to his great-cabins.

"Cool tea, sir?" his cabin servant, Aspinall, enquired after he had helped him out of his coat, sword and baldric, and hat.

"That'd be handsome, Aspinall, aye," Lewrie replied, tearing at his neck-stock and opening his shirt collar. "Why, hello, catlins… my littles! And what've you two imps been up to, hey?"

There were many glad trills and meows of welcome, much butting of heads on his Hessian boots; perhaps a tad too much standing on hind legs and whetting claws in bienvenue at his white canvas breeches. Those mischievous looks from both Toulon, the stout and well-muscled black-and-white ram-cat, and Chalky, the grey-smudged white yearling torn only half Toulon's heft, warned Lewrie that they'd be scaling up his thin shirt in their need to be newly adored.

"Miss me, did you?" Lewrie cooed to them, a hand for each, once he attained the chair behind his desk. "Damn my eyes, ye don't nip at me, Chalky! Hand that feeds, and all that? You'll get your 'wubbies,' no fear o' not."

"Yer tea, sir," Aspinall announced after several long minutes of discrete observation, as he sensed the cats' enthusiasms begin to flag. " Bridgetown didn't have no ice, though, sir. All used up for the season, I reckon. Cool from th' orlop, though, sir."

"Massachusetts Yankee ice never gets this far south" was Lewrie's surmise as he accepted the coin-silver commemorative tankard that the crew of his previous ship, the Sloop of War Jester, had given him just before they'd paid off at Portsmouth, and paced aft.

"Er… no luck, then, sir?" Aspinall dared to ask, when ship's officers would not. Lewrie flung himself onto the hard settee lashed to the starboard side, almost sprawled with one leg up.

"Not the answers I was looking for, Aspinall, no," Lewrie said, busying himself with taking another sip. The rob of lemons and sugar were dirt cheap in the Caribbean and the Sugar Isles, and tea was one of the most popular exports from England, so Aspinall brewed it by the gallon, every day or so, and kept it tepid, at least, in a pewter pitcher. Some days it was fresh, some days it was leftovers, clouded and so stout that it could rouse the deathly ill and make them prance hornpipes. Today it was fresh, and merely refreshing.

"No fear, though, sir… we'll find 'em, sooner'r later."

"I begin to wonder, Aspinall," Lewrie wearily said with a sigh, running his free hand over his hair and leaning his head back upon the oak of the hull's inner scantling and decorative panelling. " 'Pon my soul, I do."

Not only physically tired from his shore travels, from riding a hired horse far out into the countryside and back, Lewrie was starting to feel spiritually tired. No wonder, since he had done everything he could conceive of, had pursued every possibility no matter how tenuous, and it had all seemingly resulted in a titanic… nullity!

Toulon and Chalky, now that he'd alit, hopped up for a return bout of "pets" for the duration of the first mug of cold tea. By the refill, Toulon stalked off to claim his master's chair behind the desk, leaving Chalky to sling himself against Lewrie's thigh, wriggle and yawn, then stretch out half on his back with his paws in the air and "caulk" down, instantly don't-feel-a-thing asleep.

A forceful knock on the great-cabin door, the sharp thud of a brass musket butt on the deck, and the cry of "First Awf'cer, sah!" didn't even stir Chalky. "Come!" Lewrie responded.

"Sir," Langlie said, hat under his arm.

"You'll pardon me, Mister Langlie, do I not get up, hey?" Lewrie said, with a helpless shrug and a cock of his head in the direction of the fur-bag at his hip. "Take a pew, do. Aspinall, refreshments for Mister Langlie."

"Thankee, sir," Langlie answered, plunking down into a leather-and-wood chair that was ensembled with the settee, his hat in his lap, and fidgeting with expectation, not of the cool tea decoction, but of news, at last.

"Well, we found the mort known as Mistress Jugg," Lewrie told him, once he'd gotten his tea and had had a liberal draught of it. "Her, and the reputed girl-child that Jugg spoke of."

"Capital, sir!" Langlie enthused.

"No, no it ain't," Lewrie gloomed.

Two months before, Lewrie's frigate had taken an easy, and rich, French prize near the enemy-held island of Guadeloupe, in the midst of confounding and capturing Lewrie's old nemesis, the fearsome Guillaume Choundas. Proteus had sailed as an "independent ship" with Admiralty Orders fetched out by Foreign Office secret agents; the Honourable Mr. Grenville Pelham, an officious, over-vaunting twit, and his much abler aide, ex-Captain of Household Cavalry Mr. James Peel. Their mission, which everyone but Pelham could charitably call a "right cock-up" of a scheme, had been to discomfit Choundas and the French, first off; find a way to regain possession of the vast wealth of the French colony of Saint Domingue on Hispaniola from the victorious slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, second; then drag the Americans and their spanking-new Navy hooting and hollering into a declared war with the French. Or, run the Yankees out of the Caribbean if they didn't jump through the right hoops. The prize had been icing on the cake.

Lewrie had left their prize safely at anchor in Prince Rupert Bay, in the hands of the local Admiralty Court, with six crewmembers off Proteus for her Harbour Watch. Not two weeks later, though, their prize had vanished! The dimwits of the Dominica Prize Court had flung up their shoulders and mumbled, "Well, it's a myst'ry!" but the prize, her bonded cargo, and his five sailors and one midshipman were missing with her. Lost, absconded…

Had she been left at Antigua and auctioned off, she might have fetched them all over ?15,000, and would still have safely been there!

The eternally sozzled incompetents of the Dominica Court admitted that a man claiming to be the prize's Quartermaster's Mate had come ashore at the sleepy port of Roseau, sculling a boat by himself, saying that, if a certain time period had elapsed without Proteus's return to Dominica, his captain had left verbal orders to sail her to the court at Antiqua, to which Roseau's court was ancillary. They'd been so lax in their dealings, they couldn't even adequately describe him, but… they'd let him sail, anyway, the thoughtless clods!

Lewrie had left Midshipman Burns, his Bosun's Mate Mr. Towpenny, three other hands, and Quartermaster's Mate Toby Jugg aboard the prize.

And Toby Jugg was a man to be leery of.

After all, they'd pressed him off a Yankee brig engaged in smuggling arms to the French, and rebel slaves on Saint-Domingue, in the Danish Virgins the year before. American certificates of citizenship-either forged, false, or merely purchased from Yankee consuls-bedamned, Jugg had appeared as British as John Bull, and liable to the press, no matter where he was found. Jugg's plaint of an impoverished wife and daughter on Barbados had prompted Lewrie to suggest Jugg take the guinea Joining Bounty, to forward on to support his wife and child. He'd even promoted the man to Able Seaman, then Quartermaster's Mate, but… if Toby Jugg had found a way to overpower, or beguile, the rest of the hands, been glib enough to get them to desert with the prize to an enemy port, where they'd be safe from capture in the future for the crime… sell her off for half her potential value, and "go shares" so each would be rich and idle for life, well!

Had Jugg been aided by former "associates" who'd slunk into the bay to wood and water, or look for an easy capture; had he encountered criminal "jetsam" loafing ashore on Dominica, who'd put him up to it?

Dammit, Jugg had been the only Royal Navy Quartermaster's Mate in port, hadn't he? The court officers said the man had worn a Navy man's uniform, had an easy, gruff air of command about him as a Mate should, and sounded fluent in his English, so who else could it have been?

Waving his Admiralty Orders as an "independent ship" as a license to steal, Lewrie had taken Proteus in search of his missing men (and the value of the prize and her cargo!) with a vengeance. It had been a blow to his pride, to his offered trust, a slap in the face as bad as if his whole crew had mutinied! In point of fact, the missing Toby Jugg was becoming about as huge a bete noire to him as Guillaume Choundas had ever been!

Now, after weeks and weeks of searching, of quartering the sea, it appeared that the trail had gone completely cold, and any hope Lewrie had of rescuing his missing people was completely dashed. His last, best, hope had been here on Barbados, in the hills.

Lewrie, Padgett, and Cox'n Andrews had boated ashore, talked to officials, tradesmen, dock workers, and idlers. His clerk, Padgett, proved most useful in discovering that, for a while, a man named Tobias Hosier, formerly a seaman by trade, had farmed a small patch of land inland, in Saint Thomas parish, near a tiny place called Welsh Hell Gully, south of Mount Hillaby. Said Tobias Hosier had been slightly remiss in the tax collectors' books at Government House here in Bridgetown, but… his shortfall of 6s/8p had been made good about seven months before, which happily coincided with the time it would have taken for the note-of-hand on his Joining Bounty to have arrived by mail-packet from Jamaica, where it had been posted!

Any more information, especially a physical description of this Tobias (or Toby), as opposed to the two or three hundred other settlers anointed with that Christian name, any further information about him, would be the preserve of the parish authorities, Padgett was told.

That further search had involved runty hired horses, the roads being almost impossible for a more comfortable coach, and nearly six miserable miles upwards and inland, with nary a hope of even a mean dinner or potable refreshments along the way.

The local magistrate, your typical bluff squire, was not available (though his recumbent form could be espied, sprawled on a settee in his parlour, through the open double doors facing the front gallery of his imposing manor, and his snores were loud enough to unnerve the horses!). Both the vicar and his assisting curate were off "tending to good works"-though they had trotted off on their best hunters, clad in field clothing, bearing fowling guns, and animatedly conversing about " ring-necked peasants" or something such like, as the dour housekeeper of the vicar's manse told them, rather brusquely, between yawns. Evidently, folk did a deal of napping in Welsh Hell Gully.

Trust to Cox'n Andrews, though, to chat up the Cuffies who worked at the hamlet's tumbledown public house, where they dined, to learn that "Mis-sah Tobias" matched the physical description of Toby Jugg to a tee, and where his acreage could be found. Off they'd gone, after an indifferent dinner, but two tankards of rather good ale to the good each, to seek out "Hosier Hall."

"Mistress Hosier, I presume?" Lewrie had said by way of enquiry. He stood with hat in hand, at the edge of the front gallery to a one-story house made of coral "tabby" blocks, ballast stones, and weathered scrap lumber. The gallery wasn't a foot off the ground, its planks uneven and sagging, though the long overhang of the roof, thatched from sugarcane stalks or bamboo or whatever fell to hand on Barbados, gave a more than welcome shade, and the raised gallery that spanned the entire house did provide at least ten degrees of relief from the noonday sun. "Or, should I say, Mistress Jugg?" Lewrie added, keeping a mild and unthreatening smile on his "phyz."

"Oh, saints presarve us!" the faded, fubsy woman cried, fanning herself with her stained housewife apron, turning pale and fretful under her tropical island colour. "Summat's happened t'Toby, are ye come t'tell me? Faith, I…" she said, gulping and collapsing in a rickety porch chair.

Past the open door of the vertical-board house, Lewrie could espy a girl-child in a simple shift, bare-legged and barefoot, coming out to the gallery from the inner gloom holding a squirming puppy. The taxes on windows that London enforced most-like also were imposed on Barbados, Lewrie thought. There was enough light, though, to note that a cradle took pride of place inside, one still rocking, one occupied by a baby in swaddles, and not above a year old.

"Allow me to name myself to you, Mistress," Lewrie said. "Captain Alan Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate. I've…"

"Toby's ship!" the woman cried, lips trembling now and both hands lifted to her mouth as if to press back grief or chew her nails. "Oh, God!" That sounded as if it was wrung from her by a mangle. "Th' poor man's daid, an't he? Oh, sway-et Jaysus!"

"Uh, no, Mistress Jugg… Hosier," Lewrie countered. "He…"

The wife was beginning to sob into her cupped hands; the little girl was beginning to blub, too, though for what reason she had yet to be told- Christ, even the babe in the cradle had wakened and added querulous, hic-coughy wail-ettes of its own!

"He's alive and well… we think," Lewrie was quick to inform.

"He's 'run,' d'ye mean?" Mistress… Whichever snapped, going squinty-eyed and flinty of a sudden, all grief quite flown her. "An' ye're here t'take him back, ye are? T'flog 'im? Court-martial 'im?"

"Find him, aye, Mistress… uh," Lewrie assured her, daring to put one booted foot on the gallery; thanking God that the Juggs/Hosiers could cut off their squawls so quickly. The girl-child still sniffled but hadn't worked up to a full-blown howl and was now almost content to clamber up into her mother's lap, still clasping the long-eared pup to her chest. And the cradled babe (trained to stealthiness, perhaps, by a visiting Muskogee or Seminolee Indian) had gurgled back to drowsiness. "Find our other missing people, too."

"Missin', d'ye say, then? Missin'? Missin' how, sir?" Jugg's woman warily enquired. "Hesh up, now, Tess," she urged her girl.

Lewrie, daring to step up onto the gallery, even to drag up a second equally rickety chair and seat himself, fanning away the tropic heat and the many insects with his hat, explained about the missing prize ship and the hands he had left aboard to safeguard her.

"La, arrah" the woman said at last with a weary sigh. "Tess, cooshlin'. Jump down an' see t'yer brother. An' mind yer puppy don' make in th' house. Nor get in th' cradle an' smither 'im."

She waited 'til the little girl had slid down from her lap and had toddled off inside, dried her eyes for good and all with the hem of her apron, then heaved a long, bitter sigh and stared outwards, unfocussed, on her meagre acreage.

"Be mortal-cairtain yer sins'll find ye out," she whispered.

"Ma'am?" Lewrie gently asked, sure that the woman would confess Jugg's whereabouts, did he play his cards right a little longer.

"Pore Toby, arrah" she muttered with another long sigh. "All 'is work and sweat… all 'is good intentions. I told him, I did… I pleaded with 'im not t'go back t'sea. For sure, I knew in me bones, somethin' bad'd happen, and did it not right enough, Cap'm Lewrie? We could o' got by, we could o' made some sort o' crop, e'en did we hire out, th' both of us, but 'e wouldn't hear of it. Took all o' his savin's an' earnin's t'get this wee parcel, an' Toby'd not abide the idee o' losin' it, he didn't, so sure he traipsed down t'Bridgetown an' got hisself signed aboard a Yankee brig. Th' last night, 'e tol' me they was summat queer 'bout her, but they'd give him the two-crown advance he asked f'r, an' what they call a 'lay' o' th' profits that sounded handsome. Toby thought 'twas a slaver, I thought she might o' been a privateer," Mrs. Jugg or Hosier said with a half-amused shrug.

"The smuggling brig we took in the Danish Virgins, aye," Lewrie stuck in, in hopes to keep her reminiscing. "You received his Bounty guinea, I take it?"

"Aye, and sore welcome it was, for it cleared us o' taxes, an' went a fair way t'payin' th' vicar's tithe," the woman said brightly. "Covered th' storekeeper's ledger… crop t'crop, season t'season?"

Whatever surname she went by, Jugg's woman had at one time been a tolerably fetching wench, Lewrie judged. She was going stout, after two children, but had the sly eye and vixenish, sway-hipped carriage of a bouncy Irish sort; dark, frazzled red-auburn hair, snappy green eyes, high, merry cheekbones, and a wide and generous mouth. In the Caribbean, she was quite the catch for a man of Jugg's social position.

"What sins, ma'am?" Lewrie pressed. "The usual young tar's?"

"Privateersman's sins," Jugg's mate admitted, turning sadder. "Jumpin' ship sins, deserter's sins, Cap'm Lewrie. Navy ship or merchant. Hard masters an' such? Oh, he done a power in his younger days. But nivver mortal blood sins, I tell ye! Jugg, he said? Hmmf!"

"His real name's Hosier, then, I take it?" Lewrie slyly asked.

"Hah!" was her answer to that, and to Lewrie's mystification she went into the house, leaving him stewing on her porch. Not a minute later, though, she returned bearing a large painted mug much like a German beer stein, along with several tattered letters. She sat, then showed him the mug.

It was large enough for two pints, slightly tapering, with two stout handles and a china lid, like a teapot's. One side was crudely painted with a sailing ship, the other showed a tar-hatted sailor with a sea chest at his feet and a sea bag over his shoulder.

" 'Tis th' jug we keep on th' mantel," she coyly imparted. "Some o' th' time 'twas for flowers, summat small change, or sweets up where th' wee'uns couldn't reach. He called it 'Toby's Jug,' so that's where I 'spect he come up with a name for ye when ye pressed him. Hosier… 'twas a mate o' his wot 'slipped his cable' long afore, an' we took it when he lef' th' sea th' last time, and got this land. His real name is Paddy Warder, so 'tis. That's th' one he owned to, he tol' me jus' th' once, an' that I was t'forget it forever. An' so I did."

"So, he had a shifty past," Lewrie said cautiously.

"No more'n most wot end up out here!" Mrs. Jugg/Warder huffed.

"Mean t'say," Lewrie temporised, "might he have been tempted, then? Left aboard a rich prize, with so few other hands? Might he have kept in touch with mates from his rougher days?"

"Cairt'nly not, sir!" his woman angrily huffed. "Toby'd mended his ways, I seen t'that, an' 'twas only need that took 'im back t'sea! Look about ye, sir. What-all d'ye see?"

"Uhm, fields and crops… some creatures?" Lewrie flummoxed, sure that he'd blown the gaff to the wide.

"Five pigs an' a dozen chickens, an' them fair hard enough to feed up, Cap'm Lewrie!" his woman carped. "We bony use of a mule an' plough, then hoe, pull an' weed summat back-breakin', e'en do wee Tess when 'tis needful. Barbados an't like England, wi' nought but th' eldest son inheritin'. Faith, 'tis more like pore Ireland, with dividin' an' dividin' an' dividin', 'til we got but five acres o' mostly stony soil, an' half o' them in truck an' maize t'feed us an' keep body an' soul t'gither!"

"My condolences, Mistress, um… but I must enquire," Lewrie said, perched on the edge of the rickety caned chair, by then ready to duck or bolt did she feel like slinging something at him.

"Oh, faith, and 'tis th' rich'uns, th' titled squires own most o' th' land, an' keep it, hardhanded English fashion, sure!" she accused. "Foin gennulmen such's your like, Cap'm Lewrie, who'd press me man, then think ye'd shown 'im Christian favour do ye 'How him volunteer t'be yer slave, 'stead o' whip-pin' 'im to't, sure an' no better'n them Cuffy sailors he said ye'd stolen on Jamaica!"

"He wrote you about that, did he?" Lewrie asked, after having a good, guilty squirm to imagine that the tale of his "accepting" runaway slaves from the despised Beauman family's plantations to take the King's Shilling (as it were) as Freedmen able to decide their own fate.

"Aye, an' he did," she huffily continued. "He wrote me letters in 'is own hand, mind. An't no scholard, is me Toby, but he can manage, sure. Writin', readin', an' ledgerin', good as any man, so's we won't be cheated like some'd try."

"And he said nothing to you of wishing to run, of any scheme to make off with the prize, or…" Lewrie doggedly pursued.

"Nought but four letters from 'im did I get, sir," she informed him, "th' last four month ago. Run? Aye, an' what sailor wouldn't?"

"Long before the prize disappeared, hmm," Lewrie muttered, his spirits

sinking at the thought that he'd been on a wild goose chase all this time. "Might I be so bold, Mistress… Hosier… as to see the last couple of letters, to see if there's anything… any hint of…"

"Mummy, piddle!" little Tess urgently said from the cabin door. "Swab it, then shoo that dog out, and-" "No, mummy! Baby piddled," wee Tess amended. "See?" Tess wriggled damp fingers, then the babe within began to carp and wail, so Mrs. Hosier (Whomever) leaped to her feet and scornfully flung her husband's letters at him before entering the house, there to make soothing but frazzled noises.

As Lewrie sorted the crinkly sheets, he could be forgiven (perhaps) for a slightly smug and amused "tetch" of relief that all of his three legitimate children, and both his by-blows, were long past swaddles, piddles, and poops.

Thet damt Lt. Caterall hoo thinx himsef so Clevver but wat a Buffel-Hed!… Ferst Off. Lt. Langlie [spelled correctly, for a wonder] rites Capts. ward moon-caff in luv Capts. pett so is Lt. Adare [phonetically, he supposed] top lofty too smart by haff afavryte. Capt. Loory [a close approximation] the idel basterd him his catts all spoony over them tho thay Piss on hammok netts we must sleep in them… Mr. Pendarves Towpenny the Bos 'n Mate ar hard men never take calls from ther lipps tis a hard life the Navy dear.

Lewrie wished he could take the letters along or find paper and pen to make some notes, for Jugg had chuckled over the way some of the crew were getting their hands on smuggled rum or American corn whisky and where it was usually hidden; how the assistant and clerk to the Purser, Mr. Coote, the Jack-in-the-Breadroom, was working a fiddle in tobacco twists and sundries that he concealed in the fishroom; all about the breadroom and cable-tier rats being bred, where they were "pitted" in battle, how they were fed off wardroom flour and corn-meal, thanks to the "Pusser's" aide, too; how the Marine complement's Trinidad Hindoo mongoose was unfair competition…

What bloody mongoose? Lewrie silently gawped; and how did they smuggle that aboard? We've never been t'bloody Trinidad!

Oh, it was a rare and embarrassing glimpse into the lives of the people "before the mast," their complaints and sorrows so well hidden from officers under a mask of rote duty.

Jugg himself… sullen and truculent, embittered against those over him, those with Admiralty-ordained rank, or social position, with inherited money or soft hands. Indeed, he steered a quarter-point alee of mute insubordination, boasted of it to his wife, whether dealing with captain or officers as eagerly as he would with a main-mast or gun-captain with the power to order him about so brusquely.

Toby Jugg, or Hosier, or Warder-whatever he truly named himself- would never be a glad hand, no matter were he promoted to Bosun or Fleet Admiral! Yet Jugg, for all his simmering grievances, his ability to doff his hat, cry "Aye aye, sir!" and tug his forelock and smile while supping on his superior's shite, evinced no mutinous plots, schemed none, and reported none; nowhere in his letters did he sound like a man who would run. Be-grudgingly, Jugg admitted that he had settled in tolerably well, that Proteus was a competently run frigate whose mates and officers knew their professions, and that she was mostly a happy ship

.

… was rated Able rite off and struk for QwarterMasters Mate hah Me in a red wesket butt Sailing Master Winwood putt my name for 'd am now Rated serving on the helm At lest Proteus is ever in the way of fyteing as all frigates the Capt. betes the Kings Enemmys ever Dear it looks fare to be prime for Prize Monie Capt. tho is madd for Qwim thay call him Ram Catt not for his petts…

Embarrassing, aye, to think how much of his personal, private life his sailors, and Jugg, knew! Jugg had learned about his American bastard son, Desmond McGilliveray, knew all about Theoni Connor back in London and his other by-blow, Alan Michael Connor; how his wife, Caroline, was chewing brass rags over his peccadilloes, and that there was a "dear friend" somewhere back in Europe (now that narrowed it down, didn't it?) who'd written anonymous your-husband's-a-swine letters, and how the hands-his trusted "ship's people"!-crammed fists into their mouths to keep from howling and chortling out loud over his doings!

thay reck her a lucky ship tho Dearun for her lawnching was rite Odd she wud not swimm stuck on the ways as Proteus butt gott haffway when thay ferst name her Merlin butt change it an Irish sawyer hiz son whisper to her stemmpiece then she swamm Capt. Loory is sayd to seen Selkies sum say he has there favour sure.

Jugg had also been struck that Proteus was a musical ship when the work allowed, and he'd quite enjoyed that.

Liam Desmond his lap pipes ar capital we hev 3 gudd fiddlers Mr. Rain (?) Saylmaker plays a Dago Gittar even Capt. Loory plays tin whissle lets us hev manie dear gay Irish tunes plays them butt nott well poor man tho he dus not mind step slip jigs nott like sum top-lofty English hoo 'd shutt us up call us mutinuss.

He 'd been coming round, Lewrie sadly thought, letting the note drop to his lap; better the Devil you know, 1s'pose…

Jugg had had a snug berth, promotion and decent pay, shares in Proteus's prize money, acceptable shipmates, and no obvious grievances. Most deserters took "leg bail" within the first few weeks, or months, aboard, 'til they established a personal investment. There were some who'd "run" after getting the Joining Bounty, before their kits were deducted, then enlist under a fresh name at another recruiting rendezvous, but Jugg hadn't had that chance. Perhaps wasn't even that sort, after all.

"Damn," Lewrie dejectedly muttered as Mrs. Hosier came back out to the porch and sat down again. A jutted hand silently demanded her precious letters, and he handed them over. She fondly straightened them and pressed them fiat with a palm, as if ironing them, before she tucked them away in an apron pocket.

"Toby warn't th' one pirated yer ship, Cap'm Lewrie, not him," Jugg's wife said. "He'd never, else we'd lose ev'rything we've built up, did he haveta run an' change names, again."

"I thought that he'd… if he had, that he'd come to Barbados to fetch you and the children," Lewrie confessed, a little chagrined. "You're sure you've not heard from him, he didn't…"

"Nary a word since that last letter," she firmly stated, chin up and sullen at his accusation. "Nor nary a sight o' him, at least twelve month or more, when the boy was quickened. Huh!" she snorted derisively, "Had he stole a rich prize, ye think I'd still be grubbin' at this farm, that we'd still be livin' in a pore shebeen like this? I'm cairtain ye already asked, down at th' harbour, an' know neither that prize ship, nor Toby, has come in here. An't it sor

"Admitted," Lewried grudgingly allowed.

"So, when ye do find it, if e'er ye do, ye'll already know me Toby didn' steal her. An… an' whoever did, they'd not be th' sort t'let him live." Mrs. Jugg teared up and began to blub again. "That sort'd want no witnesses, oh arrah!"

"Ma'am…" Lewrie said, springing to his feet at her upset.

"Damn 'is eyes, but I almost wish 'e had took her, sure, for he would still be livin', if he did!" She sniffled, blowing her nose on her fingers. "An' bad cess t'ye at findin' him, for you'd hang him, cairtain, do ye. Have to. La, la! What'll we do, wi' Toby gone?"

Lewrie blushed and dug into his breeches pocket for his coin-purse. He counted out about eight shillings and the odd pence in real coinage, and a wadded-up pound note. "Call it bringing his pay up to date, ma'am, and I'm sorry that I cannot do more. Navy paymasters…"

"I'd no take yer charity, Cap'm Lewrie," Mrs. Jugg huffed back, scraping up all her dignity. "But, aye, 'needs must,' sure. Call it hard-earned pay, but a beggar's price for me Toby's life, for all that.

"I'd fling yer paltry silver back, an' spit in yer eye, arrah," she said, rising, stiff-backed and arms crossed over her chest, "but th' pore can't have no scruples, not in this Life. Not like 'quality' folk like your foin self, sir. An' now I'll thankee t'be departin' me lands, Cap'm Lewrie."

"Of course, ma'am," Lewrie said, gathering up his hat. "Mind, is your husband innocent, and if I find him, I promise I'll fetch him back to you, safe and sound… unlashed and not dis-rated."

"Promises from yer like is 'fiddler's pay,' Cap'm Lewrie," she said, "for so 'tis been my experience, sure? How can ye promise such, when… oh, fash!" She swept her hair back from her brows in exasperation. "Don't go makin' promises ye don't mean t'keep. Or promises ye most-like can never keep, is my meanin'. I would admire, howiver it falls, that somebody'd write an' let me know."

"I shall, Mistress Jugg… Hosier… damme, which do you prefer? To which do I write, without confusing the post-boy?"

"Hosier'd do."

"Good-bye, Mistress Hosier," Lewrie said, bowing himself back off the porch and doffing his hat with a sociable bow. Despite what anger she felt, Mrs. Jugg (for so he thought her, anyway) dropped him a bobbing little housemaid's curtsy, then squinted her eyes in embarrassment the next second, to have such a servile habit so engrained in herself… arrah!

"So, the trail's gone cold as old, boiled mutton, sir," Langlie gathered, glumly sipping the last of his mug of cool tea.

"Phantom, spectral false trails are never hot enough to cool, Mister Langlie," Lewrie sourly rejoined. "We've wasted nigh onto two whole months, staggering from port to port, down the whole Windwards, and no one's seen them! Bloody fool's errand. The prize is most-like in Cartagena, Tampico, Havana, or Vera-bloody-Cruz by now, and has been all this time. Therefore, untouchable, 'thout a major military expedition! Damn!"

"And our people are most-like a long-time dead," Lt. Langlie further supposed. "Without Jugg as a culprit, I cannot imagine any of the others capable of the deed. Toffett, Ahern, and Luckaby were good men, and certainly not Mister Towpenny, or Mister Burns!"

"Unless that lack-wit Burns couldn't keep them in control, they found some liquor that we missed, and it got out of hand," Lewrie said to the overhead and the deck beams. "A fight, a knifing and a murder, and they ran off with the ship out of fear, not hope of gain. We both know how insensible poor tars can get. And how quickly. And so quick to quarrel on a bung-full

of rum."

A goodly number of men who enlisted in the Army, a goodly share of sailors, willing volunteers or press-ganged failures, did it for a reliable daily issue of "grog." Where the term "groggy" came from!

"Well, we've searched everywhere we possibly could, except for Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dutch isles down South," Lewrie grumbled, cocking his head to a chart of the West Indies that had been pinned to the larboard side of his day-cabin for months on end. "We've prowled every cay and rock in the Grenadines and haven't found a sign of 'em. I'd say it's time, Mister Langlie, that we confess our failures, then sail back to Antigua and face the music. Then, on to Jamaica, where we belong. Damme, though… Captain Sir Edward bloody Charles…"

"Very well, sir," Langlie glumly agreed. "Shore liberty, sir?" "Hmm? Oh, aye," Lewrie decided. "We've worked the people hard, and they've earned a run ashore. Bridgetown isn't a bad port for 'em. Lots to do… and the shore officials are reputed to be cooperative at huntin' down 'runners.' Larboard Watch first, at the end of the Morning Watch, and back aboard by Eight Bells, midnight."

"With the usual caution for troublemakers and deserters that if they run, or run wild, the starbowlines won't be allowed, sir?" First Officer Langlie said with a twinkle.

"Just so, sir," Lewrie tiredly snickered back. "And whilst the Larboard Watch is ashore, Mister Langlie, you are going to become some sort of legend."

"Sir?"

"There's trade in smuggled rum and spirits aboard," Lewrie said, reaching into a waist-coat pocket to withdraw a hastily scribbled list he'd made at a harbour tavern while waiting for a hired boat to convey him back aboard. "Here are the likely places to look. This time, at any rate. You will also have a word with Mister Coote in the privacy of your mess, and inform him that that jack-a-napes clerk of his sells smuggled tobacco at half the official price. Bits and pieces cut off Mister Coote's supply… God knows what all else he deals in, but he stashes it in a false-side keg in the fishroom, under the tiller flat."

"My word, sir, how did you…" Langlie all but gasped, sitting up straighter.

"Jugg's chatty letters to his wife," Lewrie chuckled. "The man is also skimming off your wardroom's flour and corn-meal to fatten the rats they fight in the cable-tiers and the forrud orlop."

"Rat fights, sir?"

"Rat on rat," Lewrie said, beaming, "for want of terriers. Wagers are laid on 'em, and I'll not have it."

"Well, now that you mention it, sir, I had noticed a diminution in the number of rats aboard, lately," Lt. Langlie said, making notes of his own with a pencil stub and his ever-present pocket notebook. "Though I did put it down to the midshipmen's appetites."

"They don't have that Brutus look, do they?" Lewrie mused. "No 'lean and hungry' air."

"Probably purchasing the dead losers from the fights." Langlie laughed. "Aye, sir, I will see to all of it."

"Damme, the people will think you have eyes in the back of yer head, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie crowed. "That you're a dark, devilish wizard who knows all and sees all. Most-like ask you to take augury on chicken guts, next. Hold one of those Gothick… seances. Speak to the dead…"

"Only for people who could pay, I would, sir," Langlie replied.

"Speakin' of chickens…"

"Sir?" Langlie enquired, pencil poised.

"Haven't some of the chickens gone missing, lately?"

"Well, aye sir, and so they have. Forgive me, but I did suspect that your cats had, um…" Langlie said, squirming and blushing.

"It's the mongoose, more like," Lewrie offhandedly told him.

"Beg pardon, sir… mongoose, did ye say?" Langlie gawped in perplexity. It wasn't often that his efficient First Lieutenant wore a bewildered, nigh cross-eyed expression, but he produced a passable facsimile.

"Mongoose. The Marines' mongoose," Lewrie assured him. "Blue riband, champion Hindoo rat-killin' emigrant mongoose. From Trinidad, or so I learned. It's been beatin' the sailors' best rats, and they don't much care for it, so it's creating bad blood. Find it, Mister Langlie, run it to earth. It's probably been keepin' its hand in by practicing on creatures in the manger up forrud. That's where all our chickens have gone, I'd wager."

"Find a mongoose and get rid of it, sir… aye," Langlie said as he scribbled into his little book.

"Well, if all else fails, definitely put a stop to the fights and definitely spare our fowl," Lewrie breezed on. "Do the Marines put so much stock in the beast, well… I don't much care whether it serves as a mascot with a red riband round its neck, 'long as no one thinks t'bring snakes aboard for it to fight."

"I s'pose I'll recognise a mongoose when I see one, sir?"

"Like an ermine or a ferret." Lewrie chuckled. "Like an smallish otter, with a talent for killin' cobras and such."

"Ah!" Langlie rejoined. "I see, sir. I think. Perhaps we may declare it the ship's official ratter… so long as no more wagers'r made on its prowess?"

"That's what I like about you, Mister Langlie." Lewrie smiled. "Your flexibility in the face of un-looked-for adversity. I believe that'll be all for now, Mister Langlie. That should be enough on yer plate, for the nonce."

"Oh, agreed, sir. Agreed!" Langlie said, rising and departing.