The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Ow!" Capt. Alan Lewrie carped as Surgeon's Mate Maurice Durant cinched his bindings tighter. "So snug I can't draw a decent breath!"

"So they will be, Captain," his French-born former physician told him with a sad chuckle as Aspinall helped Lewrie don a new shirt. "Ze bruised ribs and breast-bone knit slowly, so you must expect pain, and think yourself fragile for at least anozzer month before I may say wiz confidence zat you are completely healed, n'est-ce pas, sir?"

"Mean t'say I'm to dodder like a Greenwich Pensioner, on light duties like one of our herniated brace-tenders?"

"I fear zat is the apt comparison, sir," Durant said with a sly twinkle in his eyes as he closed up his portable kit-box.

"Not serious enough to put a replacement captain aboard, is it?" Lewrie fretted as he gazed at Admiralty House on the Palisades of Kingston Harbour. After being battered about by higher authorities in the last few months, he was "oft-bitten, damned shy!" of meddlers, or those who'd reward their favourites with a posting into a frigate, the finest sort of command the Royal Navy could offer an aspiring young officer.

"Oh no, Captain, no fear of zat," Durant assured him. "You mus' be lazy for a time, but zat is not cause for displacing you."

"Oh, good," Lewrie chearly said, perked up considerably. "Lazy I b'lieve I can manage main-well, thankee!"

"Much's you done for 'em, sir," Aspinall commented as he shoved

Lewrie into his waist-coat, "I'd expect 'em t'keep you an' Proteus as one forever. Much's you earned 'em, sir."

They'd sailed back to Jamaica with their pirate schooner flying British colours atop its French Tricolour trailing astern of them and had created quite the stir of excitement once their reports, Lewrie's and Nicely's, had been read, and the amount of coined silver aboard her had been tallied. The Admiralty Court had leapt to condemn the prize, Admiral Parker had bought her in as a fast armed tender for ?4,000, to be seconded to a larger, slower cruising ship so he could garner even more loot at sea. And, for his signal service in their recent expedition, Lt. Darling, Capt. Nicely's protege, had been appointed into her as commanding officer.

Capt. Nicely had finally struck his broad-pendant and departed for a new command of his own, since Admiral Parker realised that he would be much more useful at sea, leading a real squadron, than ever he was as Staff Captain.

"Damme, Lewrie, but you've saved me!" Nicely had grandly stated at his departure ceremony, pumping Lewrie's hand so happily. "Got me a proper broad-pendant at last, and made me rich into the bargain!"

They had only salvaged eight hundred kegs of coined dollars off the prize, the rest of the rumoured six million in silver was scattered over a mile of bay-bottom mud or swampy forest when the Spanish prize exploded. Or, as their few surviving prisoners suggested, there never had been that much, and the rest might have made it to New Orleans on another ship. Pollock could bear them the facts when he returned.

Still, eight hundred thousand Spanish dollars was ?200,000, and that was nothing to sneeze at. Admiral Parker got an eighth, and Captain Nicely got an eighth, as senior admiral and "squadron commander," respectively. But that still left Lewrie his traditional two-eighths as captain of the successful warship, and that resulting ?37,500 was his ticket to a life of imcomparable wealth!

He could buy his farm from Uncle Phineas Chiswick, who resisted the odds with his typical stubborn meanness and absolutely refused to die-if he couldn't take all his own wealth with him, Lewrie suspected. There could be a decent townhouse in London, too, and still leave them ?30,000 to place in the safe and solid Bank of England's Three Percents and that would yield ?1,000 per annum, before the bloody taxes due, of course. A family his size could live as grand as an earl on a sum like that. Why, he could even spare an hundred… well, fifty would suit, he idly supposed… to dower his penniless ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, buy things to improve her paraphernalia to help attract a suitable man with decent breeding and fair prospects of his own. Sewallis and Hugh, his daughter Charlotte (those offspring it was safe to claim!) would be assured the very best educations, and a leg up for their entry into adulthood. His wife, Caroline, well… hmm.

Sudden wealth might mollify her, he could hope, might soften her heart enough to forgive his overseas amours at last. It wasn't as if any of them had been anything more than temporary foreign "diversions," conveniences, really. And weren't a couple of them mounted under the orders of superiors "topped" in the name of grim Duty? That Claudia Mastandrea with the bountiful "poonts" in the Italies, and Charite his most recent?

It felt callous to think that Caroline could be swayed by a pot of guineas, that she could possibly be that flinty-eyed and mercenary. Yet… Riches, as good as absence, might make the heart grow fonder! Too busy to remember despising him whilst spending, getting, feathering her nest, hmm?

Dressed proper at last, Lewrie took his hat in hand and walked to the forrud door, or tried to. Toulon and Chalky had developed a new game with which to plague him. Whether genuinely glad to have him back aboard as their main delight, their security, or their chiefest playmate in "their" great-cabins, or whether this was a holdover from the time that Capt. Nicely had usurped that space, a devious mischief they dreamt up to harass him (when they weren't spraying and marking everything in sight, and thank God they'd stopped doing that!), their sole waking delight, whenever he rose from his bed, desk, or settee, was to dash ahead of him, looking back impishly, fling themselves down in his path with their paws aloft and bellies exposed, and God help him if he didn 't stoop or kneel to pet them and make fusses over them, else his ankles and stockings were in for "heavy weather."

"Aye, damn yer eyes," Lewrie relented with a put-upon sigh, all but stumbling over their writhing, tail-whicking eagerness. With much "oofing" and groaning, he knelt to placate them, but it hurt some, and was a slow process, too. "God's sake, don't try this after dark, will ye, Toulon? I can almost see Chalky, but you, ye menace, you're black as a boot! Yes, big baby Wubby feel good? Oh, you too, Chalky lad."

"Mister Gamble… Sah!" the Marine sentry outside his doorway bawled, slamming his musket butt on the deck and stamping his boots to announce the presence of their newest "gift" Midshipman, Darcy Gamble, who came well recommended by both Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and Nicely.

"Oh, hell," Lewrie groaned, caught kneeling, and a cat's belly under each hand. "Come, dammit! Christ!" he added under his breath.

"The First Officer, Mister Langlie's duty, sir, and-" Mister Gamble began to say, stepping briskly into the great-cabins, hat under his right arm, chin high in the proud execution of his duties. He widened his eyes, though, and could not help laughing at the sight of his captain on his knees.

"Yess, Mister Gamble?" Lewrie drawled, embarrassed, but determined not to let it faze him. He sat back on his haunches and continued petting the cats, careful for his fingers should they get too happy.

"My pardons, sir, but the, ah… mongoose problem the ship had a few months ago, sir?" Gamble stated, eyes on the stern windows, and all but biting the lining of his mouth to stay sober.

"Oh, the Marines' rat-killin' Trinidad mongoose?" Lewrie asked, as if it was trifling. "Our pagan Hindoo mongoose? Aye?" Lewrie secretly savoured the look of perplexity on young Gamble's phyz, wondering if the lad feared he'd landed a berth in Bedlam, not a crack frigate.

"The First Officer, Mister Langlie, is of the opinion that it, ah… was a she, Captain, sir," Gamble reported, lips quivering as the lunacy of what he was saying struck him. "A pregnant she, in point of fact. There are simultaneous sightings of… mon-geese, one must assume… everywhere, now, sir!"

Lewrie shut his eyes and let a bemused smile spread on his face. "Mine arse on a band-box. Yet the rats are kept in check, hey? Next match, Mister Gamble… put me down for a shilling. On the mongoose."

I'm rich enough now, Lewrie supposed to himself as he slowly got to his feet; I can afford aflutter!