The French Admiral

The French Admiral (Alan Lewrie #2)

by Dewey Lambdin

Published by McBooks Press 2002

Copyright © 1990 by Dewey Lambdin

First published in 1990 by D.I. Fine, New York

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.

Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting by Dennis Lyall, courtesy of Tall Ships Books.

This one's for

DEREK ROOKE

Former Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

A "Wavy Navy" fighter pilot, who first "got my feet wet" in '76 aboard Seafire off Gulfport and Biloxi.

See what you started?

And for your good lady Louise, and Chris

and Charlotte Rooke of Rooke Sails, Memphis.

But didn't we look grand

touched mahoghany by the sun

with sweat salt and sea salt grit

in that millpond quiet harbor,

everything bagged and furled

and the motor grumbling the pier

with white eyes and white teeth beaming

in the last glimmer of a scarlet sky

as we laughed to finish fifth in class?

Didn't we share a conjurement

a God-hell knockdown wonder

And weren't we so alive?

Coelum non animum qui trans mare currunt.

Those who cross the seas change climate but not their character.

—Horace, Epistle I.xi. 27

PROLOGUE

The French were out. Somewhere on the high seas, on their way to some deviltry in the Colonies, Admiral Comte de Grasse and as many as fourteen sail of the line were assembled. For the British, the Leeward Islands Squadron under Admiral Samuel Hood and the Saint Lucia group under Rear Admiral Francis Drake were already at sea in pursuit. Perhaps just over the horizon, the enemy could be found, and perhaps the British fleet was just hours away from one of those epic sea battles that would decide the fate of the Crown. Or, Midshipman Alan Lewrie thought sourly, we could fuck around out here 'til Doomsday.

There had been a concerted rush to get under way from Antigua, and for a while it had been exciting to see so many ships gathered together with one fell purpose, but after a few days the iron grip of naval routine had canceled out the thrill. Scouting frigates could find nothing of the enemy, and there were damned few frigates to go around to begin with.

Alan began to get the sneaking suspicion that their own fleet was ahead of the French. De Grasse had started from Martinique, south of their own bases in the Caribbean, which might have taken him longer, which was all to the good, if they were to counter any action with the French and the Rebels in combination, allowing them to get to the hinted scene of battle in the Chesapeake or Delaware bays first.

At noon sights, after almost, but not quite, finding a reasonable guess as to their position (and hurriedly fudging a more accurate fix from Avery's slate), Alan had a chance to examine the sea chart pinned to the traverse board by the wheel binnacle cabinet.

He picked up a pair of dividers and measured off a passage at slow speed inside the island chains, instead of taking the outside or windward route. There's a Frog base in Haiti, he thought, and there's the Dons with a fleet in Havana. What if this poxy French admiral stopped off for supplies or more ships? We've seen nothing in the Mona Passage or any other pass through the Bahamas. Only safe route for a fleet of fourteen sail and transports would be the old Bahama Passage, then up the coast of British Florida. Deep water for the most part, good offshore winds abeam most of the way, if not a soldier's breeze north of Savannah…

Alan realized with a small shock to his system that he was enjoying his speculations, which only confirmed his fears that he was beginning to fit into the Navy and gain a real interest in a career as a sea-officer. God, what a horrible fate that would be! he thought. Not that being in the Navy, at sea and thousands of miles from his usual haunts was not bad enough, and none of it his idea in the first place. He had been in uniform for four months shy of two years and lately had had to work at suppressing pride in his newfound skills, and in the mostly good repute he had created for himself as a young gentleman in training.

"Wool gathering?" Commander the Honorable Tobias Treghues asked him with a lofty sniff. If Alan disliked being a seaman more than cold boiled mutton, the captain of H.M.S. Desperate felt the same low regard for him.

"Wondering where the French were, sir," Alan answered, straightening up and tossing the dividers down on the binnacle cabinet.

"How unlike you," Treghues said, and strolled away to the windward rail for a pace before his midday meal.

Stap me, Alan thought sadly. It was bad enough before when he just thought me a rapist and a rake-hell. Now he's been addled by that French gunner with a rammer, he's turned Evangel on us. Probably start leaping about like a Welsh miner at a Wesley meeting next.

Alan sidled off to leeward to stand next to his compatriot Midshipman David Avery, a dark-haired, merry Cornish lad of sixteen, almost seventeen. He shrugged in answer to the unspoken question framed by Avery's raised eyebrows.

"Still hates you, eh?" Avery whispered with a wry grin.

"What else is new?" Alan said.

"Who wouldn't?" Avery shrugged.

"Damned good question," Alan admitted with a soft laugh.

"Signal, sir," Midshipman the Honorable Francis Forrester, their least favorite messmate, shouted from the stern rail. "Attend the flag, sir."

"Mister Railsford," Treghues bellowed. "Hands to the braces and bear up closer to the flag."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Desperate wheeled about and beat up to windward, within hailing distance of Admiral Hood's flagship Barfleur, rounding up alongside to leeward in a flurry of spray. No one could fault her sail tending or shiphandling, for Treghues and his officers were as smart as paint for all the gloom aboard from Treghue's new mental state.

A gig flew across from Barfleur, and a flag lieutenant scrambled up the manropes and battens of the starboard side with a large envelope in his coat pocket. After a brief conference with Treghues, he was back over the side and flying back to his own ship.

"Mister Monk," Treghues called for his sailing master, and that worthy made his appearance on the quarterdeck in his scruffy uniform. "Lay us on a course for Charleston, in the Carolinas. We have despatches for General Leslie."

"Aye, aye, sir," Monk replied, shambling his way to the charts. "Here now, Quartermaster. Lay her due west fer right now. Hands ta the braces, smartly now. The flag's watchin'."

"Charleston," Avery said as they supervised their working parties for the mainmast braces. "We put in there once, Alan. Damned fun place, it was."

"I remember it so as well," Alan replied, almost rubbing his hands in glee. Yes, he had remembered Charleston well, too. It was full of refugees from up-country, run to the port by their rebel cousins. Cornwallis and his troops had been there, and with them had come a great flock of camp followers, traders, whores, and ladies without their husbands. When he had been on the despatch schooner Parrot he had had a wonderful run ashore in Charleston and didn't think things had changed much in the interim. The real problem, though, was going to be getting ashore at all. Treghues might not look kindly on giving him leave.

"Be in soundin's by tamorrer forenoon, sir," Monk said, after he had paced off the distance from their noon position with dividers on his charts.

"Alan, did you realize that tomorrow shall be my birthday?" David told him. "And we are short of fresh meat. Now, if I talked nicely to the purser, he might find it in his heart to send me ashore with him… on King's business, of course!"

"And if you don't take me along with you, you're a dead man, David," Alan warned him.

"Whyever should I do that?" David queried.

"'Cause I know where the likely whores and widows are," Alan reminded him with a simper.

"You've missed your calling." David smiled. "You'd make a devilish grand pimp."

"You're not the first to think that," Alan heartily agreed. "And it's still early days in my career, isn't it? Now get onto Mister Cheatham before he picks somebody else. Tell him we both volunteer."

The next morning Desperate stood in toward Charleston, with the spires of the churches marking the safe passage as range marks. They had been painted black by the Rebel defenders in last year's siege, but if anything, they had stood out even more prominently than when painted white, so Desperate had no difficulty finding the channel. Alan was turned out in his best uniform, as was Avery, while Forrester and Carey were in their usual working rigs. A copy of de Barres' Atlantic Neptune was in Alan's hands, the sketch book of all major towns and headlands of the American coast. It had set him back seven guineas, but it had been worth it to show the sailing master and the others a keenness at the sea trade which he did not always exemplify. He tucked the book under his arm and plied his quadrant to measure the height of St. Michael's spire, which lay just above their bows. He took the height of Charleston Light to the stern and ascertained that they were in the right path for a safe passage over the bar between the forts. With some quick calculations on a slate, he could find a rough position on the small-scale harbor chart that Mister Monk had laid out on the traverse board, and it was pleasing to see that his guess was very close to Monk's quickly pencilled X.

Cottle, Commander Treghues's coxswain, came up on deck in his best blue jacket with shiny brass buttons, his red-and-white-striped loose slop trousers clean, and his feet encased in new cotton stockings and freshly blacked shoes with silver buckles. The boat crew gathered round him and Cottle eyed them keenly so their appearance would not shame their captain or the ship when they went alongside the pier to carry Treghues to meet the port authorities with letters and documents.

"Hawse bucklers clear, sir," Toliver, one of the bosun's mates reported after coming aft from the fo'c's'le. "Best bower ready to drop, and a kedge ready in the stern."

"Let her swing nigh stern-first ta the town afore ya let go that kedge, mind," Monk said, almost as an afterthought. Charleston was a nasty harbor for all its size. On the way in, they had passed small islets and stretches of salt marsh where men were dredging for oysters only knee-deep in water, or loafing on sand spits that would be under water at high tide. "Safe across the bar now, sir," Monk told Treghues.

As if in confirmation, a hail from the leadsman in the foremast chains called out a safe depth of six fathoms. His next cast was half a fathom more, and everyone could breathe easily. Desperate drew slightly less than three fathoms amidships when properly loaded and provisioned.

"Are we getting ashore?" Avery asked after he had come aft from his duties with the ship's boats.

"No one has told me anything of yet," Alan said softly. "But if Treghues is going ashore, we shall be here for a while at least. Surely, we would not pass up the chance for firewood and water."

"Lord, it's hot," Avery complained, plucking at his broadcloth coat and waistcoat. "And you can smell the fever in those marshes."

"In daytime, and with a sea breeze, we have nothing to fear," Alan told him. He had suffered a serious bout of Yellow Jack aboard the Parrot, and had picked up enough lore about tropical miasmas for a lifetime. "Our old sawbones assured us the feverish elements only rise at night, with the mists. Just pray the biting flies don't find us. Last time I was here, the wind was off the shore, and I thought I'd be eaten alive."

"Maybe it's the flies cause fevers," Avery said.

"Don't be a superstitious ass," Alan said, only half in jest.

"Maggots are created in rotting meat, and I've not heard much good about maggots," Avery countered. "Except for eating pustulence in wounds."

"My God, but you're a cheerful creature this morning." Alan exploded in a shuddery laugh.

"A little more attention to your duties there, young sirs," Treghues said in passing, glaring at both of them evilly, with a lingering glance on Alan.

"Aye, aye, sir," they answered dutifully.

"'Bout a mile off the wharf now, sir," Monk said, straightening from his latest calculation with his sextant.

"Short enough row," Treghues said, not seeing the glum expressions of his boat crew, who faced a long, hot pull ashore. "Take in tops'ls and round her up into the wind."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Desperate came about under reduced sails. The best bower dropped into the harbor and raised a circle of muddied silt on the surface as it bit into the mud of the bottom. She paid back from the light wind with a backed tops'l until snubbed by tension on her anchor cable. The stern kedge-anchor was let go, and hands at the capstan took her back up toward her bower until she was held with equal grip by both anchors, bow pointed outward from the town for her eventual departure.

Even as she was making sternway to drop the kedge, Treghues's gig had been led around to the entry port, and Cottle had received his captain into her. Before the tops'l had been taken in aloft, their captain was well on his way ashore to deliver his messages and inquire about the whereabouts of the French.

"Bosun, lead the cutter round for the purser," Lieutenant Railsford, the first officer (and only commissioned lieutenant) called. "Mister Cheatham, you'll mind my own wants, I trust?"

"Indeed I shall, Mister Railsford," Cheatham said.

"And I believe you mentioned the need for two of the young gentlemen to assist you?" Railsford went on, looking at his younger charges, and noting how well turned out Avery and Lewrie were in comparison to the rat-scruffiness of little Carey or the porcine Forrester. "Can't let the image of Desperate down now, can we? Mister Lewrie, you shall take charge of the cutter and assist the purser ashore. And since I believe that today is your birthday, Mister Avery, you have my permission for a short spell of shore leave. Mister Lewrie may join you in your celebrations, but they had best be damned short, if you get my meaning?"

"Aye, aye, sir," they both answered. The captain's clerk was asked to write out two leave tickets for them, giving them until the end of the first dogwatch around sundown in which to enjoy the pleasures of the town.

In a rush they scrambled down the battens and manropes to the barge to join Cheatham, and got the boat under way before anyone could change his mind about allowing them freedom from naval routine, even for a short while.

"It was good of the captain to allow me to celebrate my birthday, sir," Avery said to Cheatham, once they were away from the ship's side and the boat crew was stroking lustily at the oars.

"Captain Treghues does not strictly know of it," Cheatham said. "But we had to go ashore to replenish and cannot sail until the ebbing of the evening tide, which Mister Railsford informs me shall not turn until near midnight. Even immediate sailing orders could not rush us."

"Then we should be doubly grateful to you and Mister Railsford," Alan said with a smarmy smile of thankfulness.

"God, but you are sickening when you are in need of something," Cheatham said, but without any malice. He was not so much older than they, in his mid-twenties, and when not called by duty to be serious, could show a merry and waggish disposition. "I do not want to know what hellishness you had planned, Avery, but with Lewrie, you are in good hands for discovering it. Too good, in faith."

"Aye, sir," Avery replied, hiding his good humor.

"You are to return on time, properly clean and sober, or Railsford and I shall suffer for it," Cheatham instructed sternly. "Were you going ashore alone there would be no questions asked, but with Lewrie…"

"I could attend you and return without sport, sir," Alan said after a long moment of thought. Damme, I do want to get ashore devilish bad, but not if it causes ill will for Railsford or Cheatham. They're practically the only allies I have, he thought.

"No, I'll not turn a lone midshipman loose on the town," Cheatham said after mulling that offer over. "Where I suspect he's going, there are lower elements, and you're a stout enough buck to keep him safe. And sometimes show enough sense to avoid bad situations. Even if our captain… well." Cheatham might have said more regarding their lord and master's puritanical streak, his sudden aversion to Lewrie that no one had yet found a reason for, but that would have been open insubordination about the officer appointed by the Crown over every aspect of their lives. It also would have been injurious to good discipline, especially said in front of the hands who were now working up a ruddy sweat at the oars.

"I'll not let him come to harm, sir," Alan said sincerely, "or get anyone in trouble. My word on it, sir."

"Very well," Cheatham said.

It had all, indeed, begun innocently enough, like most things that Alan Lewrie had gotten into. They had climbed to the wharf at the tip of the town's battery, and had made their way to a public house for a pint or two of cool ale. While there, they had discovered the location of the best house that could offer a good meal, had repaired to an establishment named by the publican and had eaten a magnificent dinner such as they had not seen in weeks.

They shared a middling-sized beef steak that came sizzling from the grill on a pewter platter, split a roast chicken between them, crammed themselves with piping hot local bread made of corn meal and dripping with fresh butter, and had imbibed a bottle each of sinfully good wine, which being a rarity in the Carolinas, was also sinfully expensive. To clear their heads of wine fumes for the main activities of the leave, they had finished off with fresh-made pie and coffee.

"Anythin' else, suhs?" the waiter asked them, bringing a second pot of coffee. "A pipe fer ya?"

"Not for me," Avery said, wondering what a well set up fellow of approximately their own age was doing not in King's uniform.

"Where would one find some sport at this time of day?" Alan asked, opening the face of his silver and gold damascened pocket watch.

"Ya'll want sportin' ladies, ah take it?" the waiter leered, hoping for a better tip. To their nodded assents, he went on, "This time o' day, most the good houses is closed, suhs. But they's some guhls ah know jus' down from the country that're… obligin' sorts," he said, tipping them with a wink.

"Last time I was here I went to a place called Maude's," Avery said with his best man-of-the-world air, or a good attempt at one.

"Army moved onta Wilmin'ton, so did Maude's, suh," the waiter told them.

"Mother Lil's?" Alan asked, remembering his earlier adventure.

"Got ruint, suh. Parish didn't lahk 'em makin' such a row ever' naght. Patrols busted 'em up. Ain't been the same since."

"We could always fall back on your widows, Alan," David said.

"Not if we have to be back at the end of the first dog," Lewrie said. "That might do for me, but not for you. Had we several days, an introduction might do you good, but not for such a short acquaintance."

"Lady Jane's, suh," the waiter said with a knowing leer.

"I mind a Lady Jane's that used to be in Savannah," Alan said, after thinking back on the gossip he had dredged up in his last visit.

"Tha's the one, suh. Got a nahce li'l place up the Cooper bank, lotsa pretty young guhls. Two ah toldja 'bout works there. You tell 'em Mayhew said 'twas alright, they treat yuh special, seein' it's yer birthday an'all."

They decided on the place, paid the bill, and left Mayhew a shilling for his information and directions. Once out on the bustling street, they had to stick to the shade to avoid the direct heat of the sun, which was as fierce as any latitude they had left. They found the house.

"I don't know, Alan," David said, mopping his streaming face with a handkerchief. The house was far away from the main town environs on the banks of the Cooper River, a planter's mansion gone to seed from the early days of the colony, now surrounded by ramshackle warehouses, empty piers, and scabrous cottages and shacks crammed together any old how. The yard was overgrown with weeds and once-trimmed plantings gone riot in the sultry climate. The house itself needed some porch repairs and a good coat of paint.

"Well, it's not Drury Lane," Alan said, noticing how commercial the neighborhood looked, and also how quiet and abandoned in the worst heat of the day. "But then it's not Seven Dials, either. It's your birthday, David. Mayhap there's other places further back in town, but the closer we get to the port, the more the chance for the pox."

"Well, we could knock," David said, "and if we don't like what we see, we can leave."

"Amen to that," Alan said. "If nothing else, we can get something cool to drink. I feel ruddy as a roasting pan."

They went up onto the porch, plied the heavy door knocker, and half a minute later the door was opened by a large black houseservant.

"Lady Jane's?" Alan asked, when it was evident that Avery's tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth at the sight of the man and his bulk.

"It is, suhs. Yo early. Come on in, why doncha?" the black servant said in a menacing deep voice. "Ah'll fetch the miz'ress."

"Well…" David said, hesitating still.

"Y'all kin have sumpun' cool whal ya waits, suhs," the man offered, opening the door fully and waving an arm toward the interior.

That decided Alan, at any rate. He stepped through the doors into the dim coolness of the house, shut up against the searing heat of the day. It had a musty smell, as all closed houses do, overlaid with a redolence of perfume and drinks spilled in the dim past, the faint scent of bedchambers used for sport so long that the sweat and the juices had clung to the wallpaper and drapes. Smells like a bawdy house, alright, he told himself.

David followed him in, and they were steered into a receiving salon to the right, a room of more than usual seediness. The furnishings were worn and rickety, the walls stained by rain or seepage, and the paint peeling in places. The threadbare velvet drapes were closed tight against the light of day, and a table candelabra burned, livening the gloom and attempting to hide the shabbiness with a romantic aura.

"Ah 'spec yo young gemmuns cayah fo some wine whal yo waits," the black man said from the doors, and disappeared into the hallway, leaving them to their own thoughts.

"What will the tariff be, do you expect?" David asked, removing his cocked hat and fanning himself with it, eyeing a place to sit but not trusting the snowy whiteness of his breeches seat to the dubious condition of the upholstery.

"Nothing near a duke's ransom, I'd expect." Alan laughed. "Still, we have six candles burning in midday, and good beeswax, too, not country-made tallow dips. Must do a damned good trade here."

"But not over a crown?" David asked, fingering his purse.

"I sincerely doubt it. Here now, we split our meal, but it is your birthday after all. Let this be my treat," Alan offered.

"Done," David said quickly, which dispelled all his doubts of the establishment. "Like Tom Jones of fiction, you show a generosity of spirit."

"But get into more mischief," Alan said.

Their hostess appeared at that moment, an older woman crowned by a pale blue wig adorned with false flowers and effigies of songbirds, her face boldly painted white, as was fashionable in years past. One cheek sported a large beauty mark, and her lips glistened with red paste. She was dressed in a morning gown in contrast to the care with which she had attended her toilet.

"Young genl'men, ah swear y'all took me unawares, callin' so early," she gushed, sweeping into the room in grand, fluttery style. "How good o' y'all ta think o' mah humble li'l establissement."

"You are Lady Jane?" Alan asked, bending deep in a bow before taking her hand and bestowing a kiss. "A young man named Mayhew made us aware of your services as we were dining."

"Such a darlin' boy, as are y'all, o' course," she said in reply. "Do be seated now an' take yore ease. Mose shall fetch us some… oh, here he is as ah speak. Do have some wine with me, though 'tis early in the day for mah usual practice."

The servant had donned a red coat tailored from some cast-off army uniform but now sewn into civilian splendor with many brass buttons and gilt appliques suitable for livery. He set down a tarnished silver tray on the table between them and uncorked a bottle of hock, which he poured into three glasses that at least looked reasonably clean.

"An' y'all're from the harbor garrison, mah dears?" she asked.

"Off a frigate, ma'am," David answered, a bit shy still.

"An' just in from a deprivin' spell o' sea duty." She smiled.

"Aye, ma'am," Alan said, sipping his wine. It wasn't what he'd put on his own table, a little acrid on the tongue, but still potable. Seeing that David was shy, he led off by introducing themselves, told the mistress that it was David's birthday. "So you see the reason for our visit, Lady Jane. Mother Abbess, we come for sport."

"An' how old would ya be on this August day, David Avery?" Lady Jane asked, making a jape as to the date and the month.

"Seventeen, ma'am," David said.

"La, ta be that young again," Lady Jane said. "Ah b'lieve ah have just the girl for you. Of a good family from up-country, cruelly orphaned bah Rebels. She is new ta our callin', so ya will be gentle with her, ah trust, young sir?"

"Oh, indeed, ma'am," David gulped.

"An' fer you, Mister Lewrie?" the abbess asked. "What sort o' girl excites yer humors? Or shall ah just ask mah ladies ta come down an' join us so you can make yer selection? Ah only have the five at present, but ah kin assure you they are all above average in comeliness, an' none so jaded nor lowbred as ta displease the most discernin' taste."

"Aye, fetch 'em down," Alan said, shifting on the settee.

Lady Jane tinkled a bell on the table and, minutes later, a bevy of young women entered the room in morning gowns thin enough to exhibit charms that could be theirs for a fee. David was paired with a young girl named Delia, a petite blonde who indeed seemed a homeless waif—fortunately a most womanly young waif. They sat down together and Mose fetched more glasses. Alan looked over the rest of the party and settled on a brunette with a sleepily sultry expression and long, slim limbs.

"Ah urge y'all ta linger over yore pleasures," Lady Jane said as the rejected girls went back to their rooms. "We us'lly ask a guinea for mah ladies, but… since this is such a slow day for trade, and David's birthday, let us say… ten shillings each? Plus whatever gratitude ya may wish't'extend t'mah darlin's here?"

"And the wine?" Alan asked, having been caught by hidden additions to the tariff in his past experience with knocking shops in London.

"Say a bottle each, another two shillin's, mah dears."

"My treat," Alan said, laying out two crown pieces on the table.

"Take joy, mah dears," Lady Jane said, sweeping up the money and rising. "Ah shall have Mose fetch yore wines. If there is anythin' else y'all require, ya have but ta ring."

Alan was led to a small bedroom over the house's side porch that had a balcony of its own. The windows were open for a breeze and the gauzy drapes stirred in a soft river wind. Once in the room he shucked his coat and removed his neckcloth. His girl, named Bess, came to him and kissed him gently, playing the innocent at first, but warmed up quickly when he embraced her and began to fondle her firm buttocks and hips. The servant arrived with a bottle and two glasses, interrupting them. Alan almost kicked him out the door and shut it.

Bess poured them each a glass of hock, then arranged herself on the narrow bed, parting her morning gown to reveal splendid legs.

"Ya been long in the King's Navy?" she asked as he undressed.

"Too damned long," he laughed, removing his waistcoat. "You been long with this Lady Jane?"

"Too damn' long," the girl smiled back with honest amusement.

"I'm off a frigate," he told her as he kicked off his shoes and began to undo his breeches. "The Desperate, twenty guns, just put into port this morning," he went on, intent on his prize lolling on the sheets. Once in his birthday suit, he slipped into bed beside her and they embraced once more, and she began to moan expertly at his touches, shamming high passion at once, "Oh, mah chuck, oh, ya make me tangle all over."

"Here, how long do we have?" Alan asked.

"This ain't no hop-about place," Bess said throatily as he kissed her shoulders and neck. "No rush, ah reckon. What tahm hit be?"

"Just after one," Alan said. "We have to leave by five."

"Well, we kin have hours t'gether, then," she groaned, pawing at him as though she was trying to save herself from drowning. "Mos' men don't come hyuh 'til way after dark, hit bein' so hot an' all."

"Then let's not play as if we're on the clock," Alan said, undoing the last lacings to her bodice. "Let's spend our hours together trying to please each other, instead of all this sham."

Bess smiled up at him, broke off her acting and gave him a hug which almost resembled fondness. She rolled over to fetch their wine.

"Ah thank ahm gonna lahk ya, Alan," she said. "Hyuh, have a drank. Le's do take ouh tahm. Hit happens sa seldom."

After that, Bess was pleasantly exuberant in bed, eschewing the normal bawd's loud performance that could not be credited. She was only seventeen, she told him as they fondled and nestled in postcoital ease, once a virgin in the Piedmont but ruined by soldiers from both sides in the partisan fighting, left behind when her last lover marched off to Wilmington. Whether true or not, Alan found it a better-than-average whore's tale.

Other than whoring, she had no trade skills and no regard for the usual servant's or washerwoman's wages. The work was easy, the money she got to keep was good, and Lady Jane took care of all her needs. She did not cry penury or guilt like most of the sorrowful stories Alan had heard from rented quim, and seemed content and blase with the life, as long as her beauty and health lasted.

"And what will you do when you're older?" Alan asked her as he stretched naked beside her after another bout.

"Take me passage ta London an' open a house o' my own, ah reckon," she said with a smirk. "Bigges' city ah ever seed was Chawlst'n, but ah'd admire ta see London."

Alan described his former life and all the pleasures of the world's greatest city, which delighted her. In the process he touched on why he had been banished to the Navy, and under further careful coaching he bragged on what he had seen and done in the Indies.

"But whut brought ya hyuh ta the Caralinas?" she prodded.

"Going north to New York," Alan said without thinking. "There is a French fleet on the loose under an Admiral de Grasse. We took a Frog merchantman two weeks ago and found out what they're up to in the Chesapeake or the Delaware, and we're going to find them and stop them. It was me that found the letters from de Grasse to Rochambeau and Washington."

"Jus' one li'l frigate's gonna stop 'em?" she teased fetchingly.

"Whole damn' Leeward Islands fleet," Alan boasted. "Ships up from Saint Lucia, too. Fourteen sail of the line. Would have been more, but Rodney took his treasure fleet home and took three ships with him. It's going to be one hell of a fight when we meet up with those Frogs."

"Ya thank that'll end the fightin?" she asked. "Six month ago, ah'd've been glad ta see people stop akillin' each other. Nouh, all ya sailors'll go back ta England an' the troops, too. That'll be bad for business. Pooh, ah'll never save up enough ta get ta London."

"But with peace, Charlestown will be bustling again, and there still will be a garrison," Alan said, accepting another glass of the wine. It was beginning to taste pleasant, too pleasant, and he vowed to make it his last until the stirrup cup at the door, or they would go back aboard half foxed and Treghues would be furious. "I wager you could get five guineas for your services and go home rich as Moll Flanders."

"Jus' as long as ah don't never have ta go back ta the Piedmont," she said, growing a little sad. She snuggled up closer beside him to throw a leg over and hug him close. "God, hit wuz horrible up there."

Here comes the sympathy plea, Alan thought sourly. Never knew a whore yet who wouldn't try to weep you out of more money.

"I've heard tales about how partisan the fighting was."

"Not jus' the fightin', Alan," she said into his shoulder. "Iver been upta the back country?"

"No."

"Hit's this rebellion," she said. "Won't leave nobody alone. Ya gotta be fer one side er t'other nouh. Neighbors turnin' agin each other, burnin' each other out fer spaht. Rebels aburnin' out Tories, Tories raidin' Rebels, the Regulators runnin' round makin' people choose the Rebels're die. An' when they fight, they don't take prisoners no more. Maybe some o' the reg'lar troops still do, but mosta the militia on both sides jus' shoot 'em all. Iver hear tell o' Tarleton's Quarter?"

"I've barely heard of this Tarleton. Cavalry, isn't he?" Alan sighed, shifting to a more comfortable position in the sticky heat.

"They wuz a fight at Waxhaws, an' Tarleton had 'em beat, an' the Rebels raised white flags fer quarter, but the Legion tore 'em apart anyways and kilt most of 'em. After that, the Rebels started doin' the same. Hit's been Tidewater people agin Piedmont, Rebel or Tory, rich agin pore, Regulators agin King's men—nobody's safe no more up thar. When Clinton took Chawlst'n last year, hit seemed the safest place. We wuz taggin' with the Legion, me an' Momma. Come hyuh where we could be safe, an' be took keer of lahk real ladies, not Piedmont hill trash. Cayn't blame me fer wantin' that, nouh kin ya, ner wantin' away from all that warrin'?"

She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. "You better kill them Frogs're the Rebels'll come back ta take Chawlst'n, er they'll be blood in the streets afore they through with the Tidewater Tories, an' all who serve 'em."

"Surely not a poor young whore with no politics?" Alan teased.

"Hey, hit's no skin offa yore ass," she heated up suddenly, angry at being belittled. "Yore out at sea, where they fight clean. You hain't seen yore neighbors laid out lahk daid hawgs jus' 'cause they give food an' shelter ta Rebels that woulda looted 'em iffen they hadn't. Er seen another fam'ly burned out the next naght when the Rebels come back ta get even with whatever people they thought wuz the closest Tories. Rich dumb-butts lahk you kin call it a war, but hit ain't nothin' but murderin'."

"Take it easy, now, 'twas not my doing," Alan said softly.

"Mah folks didn' want no part of hit," she said, now in full cry with tears beginning to streak her face. "We jus' wanted ta be left alone. But first one side an' then t'other come around atellin' us ta choose up sides er die."

"Time I was going," Alan said, rising to dress.

"Goddamn you," she cried, punching him in the chest. "Mah daddy got hung by a pack o' scum said he was fer King George, jus' 'cause he paid part o' what he owed in tax when the King's man come round with a sword ta make him pay up. Wouldn't even listen to him. An' not a month later we got burned out an' lost ever'thin' 'cause a lyin' dog Regulator got caught an' give our name ta the Tory militia. But hit don't bother the lahks o' you none, does it? Well, you jus' go on an' get yer blueblood arse kilt, an' ah only wish ta God hit wuz yore fam'ly sufferin'."

She collapsed in tears, flinging herself back onto the bed, and sobbed into a pillow to muffle her distress or to hide her lack of real tears. Alan wasn't sure which. Alan picked up his shirt from the floor and started to put it on over his head, but stopped to look down on her bare body as she wept.

Damme, I'm a foolish cully to be taken in like this, he thought, knowing that he should walk out and leave her to her tears, but moved all the same, no matter how stupid he considered himself to fall for a whore's story. He dropped the shirt and sat down on the bed to stroke her back. She hissed something unintelligible at him, but he persisted until she turned to him and took refuge in his arms, wetting his chest with real tears and snuffling and hiccuping with remembered terror and sadness.

"There, there," he said, rocking her gently like a child. God, what if she is telling the truth about what happened? Never let it be said of me that I had a lick of sense when it came to women, especially when they spring a leak, he told himself. Maybe part of her tale is real and not some plea for an extra shilling or two. I'd not like to be back in those wilds with every hand turned against me, either.

"There, there," he soothed, stroking her back and keeping her close and snug until her sobs became less powerful.

"Hey, ahm sorry," she whispered, snuffling. "Ah don't want ya ta get kilt, ah didn't mean that. Hit's jus'…"

"Well, I don't want to get killed, either," he said, and she shrugged in sad mirth against him. "No harm done. Tell me about it."

"Las' thang ah thought ah'd iver do's become a whore," she sniffed, now bereft of strong emotion, almost flat in tone. "Thought ah'd marry one o' the neighbor boys. Didn't know which yit, but that's the way o' thangs. He'd run a farm er a store, an' we'd have babies an' live a normal life, ya know? My daddy'd live a good long lahf, an' my momma wouldn't be owin' ever' meal ta the next man with silver, Rebel er Tory. Me, either."

"I am sorry things turned out this way," Alan said gently, feeling that he meant it, for all his native cynicism. He drew her back down on the bed where she nestled to him like a little girl.

"We weren't rich er nothin', jus' makin' hit from crop ta crop, same's ever'body else," she said in a tiny voice. "When they burned us out, we lost hit all, jus' the clothes we stood up in an' some stuff airin' on the line 'stead of in the cabin. Half the people wuz agin us 'cause they thought we wuz Tories after they hung Daddy, rest wuz agin us after what that Regulator said an' we got burned out. Only folks we could take up with wuz the soldiers."

"And you started following the army," he said.

"First off twuz Rebels." She shrugged. "They took us in over what happened on our farm, but they wuz chased all over hell an' we couldn't keep up, an' all we got wuz sore feet an' pore rations. Then the good people called us whores anyways, an' wouldn't give us a bye yore leave. Called us pore trash't needed runnin' from one parish ta n'other."

"Save us all from the smugly moral," Alan said, minding Treghues.

"Ran inta Tarleton's Legion an' took up with them, got a warsh tub an' some soap ta earn our keep, but soldiers never have much money, not rankers, noways. Told us we couldn't stay less'n we wuz doing more'n takin' in warsh."

"You and your mother?" Alan said.

"Momma weren't that old. Had me when she wuz sixteen, an' ah wuz the oldes' child. She took up with a foot sergeant who didn't mind the two other kids. Best of a bad deal, he wuz. Ah s'pose she's still with him. Least she's still eatin' well iffen she is, 'cause he's the biggest chicken thief in the Legion. A real hard man, but kind enough."

"And what about you?"

"Momma trahed ta stick me ta warshin', but twern't easy," she admitted. "Finally, a corp'rl give me a sack dress he'd stole if ah'd go off in the woods with him. Weren't much of a dress, at that," she said with a fleeting smile.

"And the corporal?" Alan asked, feeling her turn to a better mood than just a few minutes before.

"He weren't much, neither." This time she laughed aloud. "But we could get us money enough fer food an' beddin', an' Momma didn't ask where hit come from after that. I didn't whore fer jus' anybody, though."

"For the officers?" Alan asked, pouring them both more wine.

"Hell, yes," she snorted, now out of tears and laid back at ease. "This cap'n was all worked up 'bout the morals o' his men, but that didn't stop him from havin' me hisself. Then Tom Woods come 'round with an order ta move on, from that cap'n, if ah wasn't takin' up with jus' one of 'em. Anyways, Tom wuz from England and he looked sa grand up on his horse, an' sa clean all the tahm. Not lahk the soldiers comin' round. Ah had me on a new dress, had mah hair warshed an' a li'l scent an' ah could tell raght off he didn't want me run off lahk the cap'n said fer him ta do. He got down an' talked ta me, an' next thang ah knowed, he wuz offerin' ta take me on as his mistress, iffen ah'd a mind fer it. Hit seemed lahk a good deal, an' a way ta get back at the cap'n, sa ah said shore! Got some new dresses, a pony ta ride an' a cart an' pony fer Momma an' her stuff, too. Oh, mah Tom had a slew o' money! He wuz real proud o' me, lahked me ta look good an' show me off ta the other officers, even Colonel Tarleton. Colonel even come sniffin' 'round an' offered me a guinea to lay with him."

"And did you?" Alan asked, stroking her hips and thighs.

"What da you think," she said, smirking. "With the Colonel, hit's lay down're get knocked down. Doubt there's a girl in the Caralinas he hain't had, even he had ta rape 'em ta take what he wanted. Tom weren't too happy on me after that, got all upset, but he knew ah was whorin' when he met me. Maybe that's why he wuz sa eager ta leave me here in Chawlst'n when the army marched north. Momma went on with 'em ta Wilmin'ton, but Tom left me twenty pounds an' tole me he couldn't take no camp followers along as they wuz gonna march light an' fast. Raght after that, the money wuz runnin' out, so ah took up with Lady Jane an' come away with her hyuh."

Alan suspected there was more to Lieutenant Woods's rejection of her than she was telling, but it didn't really matter. She was out of her bad mood and still in bed with him, without a stitch on, and it was barely three in the afternoon. Alan stroked her into a better mood soon enough, and this time, perhaps from some gratitude she felt for his listening, or for his seeming concern, she was more properly passionate, and gave him the best rides he had known in months.

I feel like a fool, anyway, Alan thought as they left the house in the gloom of early evening. It was five, and they would barely be able to get back to the landing and take a boat out to their ship to report on time.

Alan had left her a crown, despite all his good intentions not to be gulled by the girl, and he carried a hastily written letter from Bess to her mother in the event they put into Wilmington or caught up with the army.

"And how was Delia?" Alan asked David as they strolled loose hipped along the dirt road for the lower part of town.

"Damned interesting," David said. "Not as virginal as she seemed at first, thank God. Almost made me feel as if I were ravishing her for the first time for a while there."

"Lots of tears and entreaties?"

"Well, there's that," David confessed. "I suppose that is something they all do."

"Only if it pays," Alan said with a lofty air of superiority in amorous dealings. "With an older man, she might have been a fishwife, if that was what was desired. Now you take that Bess. Started off acting like I was a great treat until she found all the acting wasn't necessary. They all have an air that appeals more to one than another. They're probably comparing tips and sharing notes about us to see what will make them more money from the next pair of fellows like us. Might even take turns playing the ravaged innocent," Alan said cynically.

"My God, what a hard bastard you are," David said.

"What did you think we bought back there, undying love?"

"No matter what you say, I think she truly liked me, beyond the coin we gave her and her mistress," David said stubbornly.

"She might have, David, but it don't signify once we're gone," Alan said. "Tonight she'll be just as nice to the next man with money in his purse. What difference? We got what we wanted. Now, someone you could set up as your mistress, that might be a different story."

"She was not some drab you rattle in an alley," David insisted. "She's more a courtesan, taking hours to please instead of a quarter hour and a quick wash. She has time to decide whom she truly likes or dislikes and is probably genuinely glad to see a favored customer again. I felt sorry for her, actually."

"Well, I can't think it natural that two such pretty girls have to take to that life except from sheer necessity," Alan said, realizing David would believe what he wished. He did not want to dispel all David's illusions or ruin his birthday remembrances with the brutal truth. And Bess had rung true, and had treated him with what felt at the end to be almost genuine fondness, and he did not think her so jaded or skilled.

"My sentiments exactly," David said firmly.

"Still, without necessity, there'd be a lot fewer available and obliging young girls to make sport with, so I think we should propose a toast to brute needs when we're back aboard," Alan said, tongue in cheek.

"Especially our brute needs," David laughed, tipping Alan's cocked hat forward onto his nose. "Remember what Wilkes said, A few good fucks and then we die."

"Speaking of brute needs," Alan said, looking up and down the street, and to where it joined a busier thoroughfare in the market area, "keep a sharp lookout while I pump my bilge on these… azaleas, or whatever."

He stepped into the weeds until he was out of sight and unbuttoned his breeches to make water.

"No worry, Alan," David told him softly. "No one coming but a pack of men with a cart."

"Fine. Be out directly."

"Jesus Christ!" David yelped. "Alan!"

"What?" Alan yelled back, aware of the sounds of running feet in the dirt of the road. He did up enough buttons to preserve modesty and stepped out into the lane, hand on his dirk.

There were three men on the road, big bruisers with staffs in their hands, all intent on beating David senseless, hemming him in as he stepped back with his dirk drawn. Two more faced the weeds, waiting for Alan.

"Get the Tory shits now," one man rasped.

"The hell you will," Alan said, drawing his own weapon. The man from the pair nearer him swung his staff. Alan leaped at him, taking the wood on his forearm and palm with a loud smack that almost paralyzed his left arm, but he was inside the man's guard, arm extended.

He buried his dirk hilt deep in the man's stomach, bringing a howl of agony, for it was a death wound, death for sure not too many days in future. He bulled over him as the man collapsed, using the body as a shield against the second man's staff. The man jabbed with the pole to keep him away. Alan fended off with his numb left arm once more, slashed at the hands that held the staff and nearly sawed off a couple of fingers. As the attacker flinched with pain, Alan shouldered up to him, shoving him away, and as he spun to turn, stabbed him in the kidneys, which brought another terrified shriek of pain.

David had been knocked down, though he had hurt one of his foes, a man clutching a slashed forearm. Alan gave a great shout and ran to David's assistance even as the remaining two prepared to brain him.

"Die, you bastards," Alan howled, brandishing his bloody blade.

"Leave it," their leader said, and they broke their circle about David to run back up the lane to the north, but they had Alan in their way. As they paused, David picked up a discarded staff and tripped the wounded one, and the others abandoned him as their courage left them. David slashed the last opponent across the back of the thigh as he stumbled to his feet, bringing him down once more for good while the other two made off at their best speed, abandoning their cart and their dead.

"You much hurt?" Alan asked, getting his breath back.

"Of course I am, you ass," David gasped, wiping blood out of his eyes from his head wound. "You think this is claret or something?"

"Go get the watch, then, while I keep an eye on these."

"Uh, could you do it, Alan?" David said, sinking to the ground. "I can hardly see straight. Sort of dizzy and weak, too."

"Help!" Alan yelled in his best quarterdeck voice. "Call the watch! Cut-purses! Murder!"

"I'll be alright, I think, if I can sit down." David sighed. "You go get some help."

"Lawsy mussy!" A black man spoke from the gloom. He was barefoot, dressed in a pair of discarded breeches, ragged shirt, and straw hat, leading a donkey.

"You!" Alan bawled, freezing the man in his tracks. "Go get the watch, or help from the nearest store! We've been attacked by five men and my friend is hurt!"

"He sho is!" the black man agreed, goggle eyed.

"Well, get with it, damn you!"

"Yassuh! Yassuh!"

Within minutes there was an army patrol on the scene, prodding the dead and taking the wounded foes into custody, taking notes on how the attack had started and binding David's head up in a shirt ripped from the back of one of the dead assailants.

"And they said 'Get the Tories'?" the young infantry ensign asked as they made their way toward the lit streets. "You are certain of it?"

"Exactly, sir," Alan replied, trying to find something on which he could wipe his dirk free of blood.

"Might have been an attempt to take your purses." The ensign pondered. "Where were you coming from?"

"The knocking shop up the road, Lady Jane's," Alan volunteered. "By God, it's nearly the end of the first dog. We have to get word to our ship we were set upon, or my cap-tain'll have our hides off!"

"Lady Jane's, eh?" the ensign sneered. "You're lucky to get out of the doors with your heads still attached. We've been keeping an eye on it for weeks now. A little too much roughness going on there for my captain's comfort. You'd not be the first to be robbed after going there."

"You don't think they had anything to do with it, do you?" Alan asked, familiar enough with rough practices back in London to guess that they were indeed lucky to be alive.

"Not sure about that." The ensign shrugged in his trim red coat. "But it's far enough out and dark enough off the main streets for footpads to be sure of easy pickings, not like some of the brothels closer in. Gets a better clientele, with heavier purses than most of the sailors' haunts, at any rate."

"Think you'd better see this, sir," his corporal said from the cart, which still stood in the middle of the road, the runty horse flickering her ears with supreme patience. The corporal held up ropes, grain sacks, two muskets, and some old blankets. "Might have been more than robbery, sir."

"Corporal, send a man to the captain. Tell him we have three Rebel suspects who were part of an attack on two sailors."

"Midshipmen," Alan corrected, not wanting to be considered a mere sailor now that he had his equanimity back, along with his wind.

"Whatever." The ensign sniffed at being corrected. "Send another man to the wharf. Which ship?"

"The Desperate frigate sir," Alan replied. "Commander Treghues."

"However do you spell that?" the ensign asked.

"Commander the Honorable T-R-E-G-H-U-E-S," Alan replied sardonically.

"Ah, one of those, eh? Tell him to really foot it, Corporal."

They were taken to the watch office near the wharves at the foot of the town, and while David's head wound was being staunched and sewn up they gave a more formal statement, interrupted by David's protests at the dullness of the army surgeon's needle.

"I believe that should be all the information we need." a lieutenant said finally. "We have the prisoners to question, and we'll find the others quick enough, you can count on that."

"I believe we are sailing on the evening's tide, sir." Alan said, "Is there a possibility that Lady Jane's could have been involved with this? They treated us rather decent, really, and it would be hard to believe if they were linked to it."

"Doubtful at best. I'm a customer there at times myself," the officer confided with a grin. "No, it was most likely robbery they had in mind. Abduction, possibly, but that would have raised such a hue and cry, and for what purpose? If you were post-captains it would have made more sense. Not even Rebels would have a reason to take you off and pump you for information you most likely didn't have. Ah, there's a boat from your ship here to take you back. Hope your friend heals quickly. Your ship shall be going where, in case we need to send queries by letter?"

"At first to New York, sir. After that, God knows. The Chesapeake or the Delaware," Alan said.

They were escorted to the wharf and into a rowing boat in the charge of the captain's coxswain, who was staring at them sadly. Once under way and the stroke was established, he turned to them.

"You done got yourself in trouble this time, sir," he told Lewrie.

"But it wasn't our fault—we were attacked and almost killed!"

"Not fer me ta say, Mister Lewrie, sir," Cottle told them sadly.

"Wonderful," Alan spat.

"Well, no matter what," David said, trying to fit his hat over his bandaged head and giving it up as a bad go, "you have to admit it was a memorable birthday celebration."

"There's that to savor," Alan remarked sarcastically.

"In case I did not mention it, thank you for saving my nutmegs back there. They'd have dashed my brains out in another minute if you had not gotten the upper hand with them."

"Think nothing of it, David, you'd have done the same for me," Alan said, taking his proffered hand and shaking with him heartily. "How's your head?"

"It hurts most sinfully. How's your arm?"

"Now that it's coming awake again it's throbbing away like a little engine."

"A proper shore leave, then," David laughed. "Eat our fill, topped up on wine, bulled a pretty girl into exhaustion, and then had a fight to cap it all off!"

"Amen ta that, sor!" one of the oarsmen said.

"You keep that up an' you'll be real tarpaulin men, sirs!" another added.

"Everything but a cake with candles!" David crowed.

"We'll get something with candles, and that right soon," Alan said.

But looking back on it, now that the terror for his life was gone, it had been a proper run ashore, damned if it hadn't been.

CHAPTER 1

"Thank God we are back aboard," David said as they gained the entry port to Desperate. "If we run into more assailants, at least out here we outgun them."

"Will you be quiet?" Alan said, sure of what was coming from their captain. "One would think your blow to the head had made you raving!"

"Mister Lewrie? Mister Avery?" Lieutenant Railsford called from the quarterdeck aft. "Come here, please."

Their youngish first lieutenant did not look his usual self; of course, he was stern as always. The life of a first lieutenant for even the most slovenly captain was a continual trial. What could go wrong to upset the usual ordered pace of Navy life kept most first officers biting their nails. In port, Railsford should have found a few moments of peace from the unending anxiety of what would go smash next. Now there they stood, disturbers of the lieutenant's only serene spell in days.

"Damn you to hell, Avery," Railsford snapped, his mouth screwed up as though he were chewing the words. "Damn your black soul to hell."

"Aye, aye, sir," David replied, thoroughly abashed and realizing just how bad it was if Railsford, normally the most forgiving and understanding officer he had, was vexed at him.

"And you, Mister Lewrie." Railsford spun on him. "Very stupid, I must say, Mister Lewrie!"

"Aye, aye, sir," Alan said, ready to be bent over a gun and given a dozen of the bosun's best as punishment. "But we did…"

"Silence!" Railsford roared. He stroked his lean jaws, perhaps to keep from turning his hands into fists. "I heard from the sergeant of the watch what happened. I have told the captain about the particulars, but he is… remarkably exercised about this. Whatever I could say to you shall most likely pale in comparison to what Captain Treghues shall say. Get you aft to his cabins at once, gentlemen!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

They followed Railsford below to the private companion-way to their lord and master's chambers. A marine sentry in red uniform and white crossbelts was there, and was it Alan's imagination, or did he glare at them a little more evilly than most marines regarded midshipmen, and did he bang his musket butt on the deck with a little more enthusiasm and bellow their names to the waiting captain behind the door more loudly than usual?

"Enter!" Treghues yelled back.

They entered the captain's quarters, a fairly spacious stretch of deck in the stern of the upper gun deck, went past the coach where their captain dined, past the chart room and the berth space, and met their judge and jury seated at his desk in the day cabin. He had on his best uniform, and a black expression—a devilish black expression.

He's so purple in the face he looks already hanged, Alan marveled as he came to attention before the desk. He had no sense of guilt for following his baser nature and had not provoked the fight with their assailants, but he was trembling with unease to be facing his captain in such a mood.

"So," Treghues said. Their captain was young and handsome, slim and manly and noble looking, as an aristocrat should be. In better times, he might have made a jolly companion, as long as one preferred hymn-singing and tea instead of caterwauling in the streets. But in the light of the swaying coin-silver lamps, he looked the very Devil incarnate, the sort of man one should rightly fear.

"That will be all, Mister Railsford," Treghues said, as though a curtain had fallen on his anger. "The tide shall slack four hours from now, and you shall stand ready to get the ship under way at that time. I shall inform you as to their punishment."

"Aye, aye, sir," Railsford said, departing, evidently hoping to be allowed to stay to partake of their chastisement, if only to savor the sharper bits.

"So, my two prize wretches have decided to return to us," he said after Railsford had gone. "After they had slaked their vile lusts to the full. Stuffed yourselves to bursting with food, did you?"

"Aye, sir," David ventured in a small voice. "It was my birthday…"

"Gluttony!" Treghues roared, back in his original demeanor, as when they had first entered. "Pigs-at-trough Gluttony, rolling about in your slops like Babylonian Pagans!"

We're going to catch Old Testament Hell, thought Alan.

"Washed it down with oceans of beer and wine, too, did you?" the captain continued, sitting prim behind his glossy desk with his hands on the surface, folded as in supplication for their salvation, even if he did privately consider them demon-spawn. "Got rolling drunk like some godless wretches in Gin Lane! Visited a house of prostitution, I'm told! Spent hours spending, weakening yourselves forever, risking the vilest diseases in the perfumed arms of… of… the Devil himself in disguise!"

"Uh, we did not get drunk, sir," Alan offered, considering that charge at least to be baseless; he could own up to the rest with pleasure.

"Did you not, sir!" Treghues said, slapping a hand on the mahogany with the crash of a six-pounder cannon. "You stand there swaying back and forth, barely in control of yourselves, reduced to the level of animals… reeking of putrefaction and… and… you dare to sass me?"

"No, sir!" Alan said quickly.

"The moment my back was turned, you gulled the first lieutenant to allow you to go ashore, knowing I would have not permitted it under any circumstances, inveigled your way into the purser's working party and took as your shield your own compatriot, used Mister Avery as an excuse to take all the pleasure you could gather!"

"It was my birthday, sir," David said, but not with much hope.

"And is that a reason to fall into the gutter with this poor example of a miscreant, vile, swaggering, crowing cock? I had better hopes for you, Mister Avery. I thought you were a Godfearing young man from a good family, and the moment I withdrew my gaze from you, you let Lewrie lead you astray into the swine pen as though you wished to join the Prodigal Son in his depravity and debauchery."

Try making an answer to that, why don't you, David, Alan thought to himself, amazed at Treghues's speech. Damme if David ain't going to get off with a tongue-lashing, and the real thunder'll be saved for me.

"Well?" Treghues demanded.

"Sir, I asked to go ashore, and I requested Mister Lewrie to go as my companion because he is my friend," David finally said, after gnawing on the inside of his mouth for a long moment. "It was my idea, all of it."

"You take as a friend a caterwauling dissembler who would force himself on his own blood? Then I tell you truly, Mister Avery, you are damned to eternal perdition unless you change your ways, and that right smartly! Well, that is the last time I shall allow either of you ashore for any reason except the good of our Service until I have decided that you have mended your ways and become the sort of Christian Englishmen I would like to have as midshipmen under me."

Treghues stopped, took a deep breath, and sipped at a pewter mug of something. Tea, most like, Alan decided. Whatever it was, it seemed to calm him down, for he leaned back in his chair and almost, but not quite, made a smile—which was more frightening to them than anything they had seen as of yet.

"You both wanted shore leave. You both wanted to partake in all the sordidness this miserable town has to offer," he told them, and found no disagreement from either midshipman. "Then, on your way back, you fought with a party of men and killed two of them and wounded another. You both brought discredit on our Service, our uniform, and our ship. Ten days' salt meat and ship's rations—no duffs, no spirits, no rum issue, no tobacco. Ten days' watch and watch duty. And a dozen each from the bosun."

"Aye, aye, sir," David said, letting out a sigh of relief. It could have been a lot worse.

"Aye, aye, sir," Alan said. He had spent nearly two years being deprived and degraded in the Navy; he could do ten days' minor deprivation standing on his head in the crosstrees.

"And, to improve your souls, you shall, when off watch, come to my cabins and read aloud a chapter of the Holy Bible each day. That, you shall continue to perform until this ship pays off her commission." Treghues spoke with finality.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Now get out of here and give my compliments to the bosun as soon as you can find him. I shall be listening." Treghues pointed to the open skylight over his cabins.

Once on deck, David gave a little groan.

"Go in peace, the service is ended," Alan whispered, removing his hat and mopping his brow. "Christ, what an asylum this ship is!"

"Well, the more we cry, the less we'll piss," David said.

"Speaking of." Alan sighed. "Bosun! Passing the word for the bosun!"

Two hours later the tide began to ebb from slack water. The crew were summoned from below, where they had been napping, and began to let out on the bower cable to drift down on the kedge off the stern. Once at short stays, the kedge was tripped and brought in, the still night air having no chance to carry off the muddy tidal effluvia that the cable brought up as the damp thigh-thick cable was led below to the tiers to dry. They hauled back up to the bower and drew her in to short stays as well.

"Hove short, sir," came the call from the blackness up forward.

"Touch of land breeze, Mister Monk?" Treghues asked by the wheel, once more seemingly sane and rational, the very picture of an Officer of the King.

"Aye, sir, a light 'un, but it's there," Monk said.

"Hands aloft, then, Mister Monk. Hoist tops'ls, jibs, spanker, and forecourse."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The first freed canvas began to fill from the softly soughing land breeze, heated during the day and now warmer than the sea breeze which had cooled to stillness. As that gentle wind found her, Desperate began to make a slight way, beginning to stir dark waters.

"Weigh anchor, Mister Railsford."

The hands spit on their fists, breasted to the capstan bars and put a strain on them. The pawls began to clank as they marched about in a circle, and the anchor cable came in rapidly.

"Up an' down!" a bowman shouted. If the bower did not break free of the mud, if it was snagged on an old wreck or sucked deep into silt, a moment more could have the Desperate sailing over her own cable, bringing her to an inglorious halt, swinging her broadside and tearing the sticks right out of her.

"Anchor's free!" a bosun's mate called as the capstan pawls clanked rapidly, like a drummer's tattoo. In the feeble candles by the fo'c's'le belfry, one could see the puddened ring and upper stock of the bower and hands already over the side to cat it down. Raving, certifiable and leaping mad Treghues could sometimes appear, but no one could ever find a fault with his ship-handling. It was certainly a pity that their departure had taken place so near midnight that the town could not have turned out to gawk and marvel.

Steering carefully for the light, with the church spire squarely dead astern, they crossed the bar as the ebb began to gather strength but still had enough depth to carry them over in perfect safety. Once Railsford, the bosun and his mates, and the ship's master-at-arms and corporal had made their rounds, the hands were allowed to go below to their hammocks, and Desperate became once again merely one more ship on a dark sea, lit up at taffrail, binnacle, and belfry, but otherwise as black as a boot.

Alan and David were given the middle watch to stand together, from midnight to four, when the ship's usual day would begin, so they would get no rest until after the hands had scrubbed down the decks, stood dawn quarters, had brought up their hammocks, and been released to breakfast. Across the bar, the sea was as restless as Alan's nerves. The quick phosphorous flash of cat's-paws broke all about them, though the air was still as steady as a night wind could be and showed no evidence of kicking up. A visit to the master's chart cuddy showed that their barometer indicated peaceful weather. There was a slice of moon ghosting through scattered clouds thin as tobacco smoke, and far out beyond them the trough glinted silver-blue when the clouds did not partially occlude that distant orb. If there was chop enough for cat's-paws, it held no malevolence, for the horizon was ruler-straight instead of jagged by clashing rollers. The wind sighed in the miles of rigging, the sails and masts quivered to the hinted power of the breeze, vibrated down through the chain-wales, and set the hull to a soft quiver, as though an engine of some kind were operating below decks, an engine of the most benign aspect. Alan sometimes thought that the ship was breathing and purring like a contented cat by a warm hearth, rising and falling and slightly rolling with a deep and somnolent breath.

By God, that bastard hedge-priest can't take this away from me, Alan told himself, peeling off his short midshipman's coat and waistcoat. The day had been hot, and the area below decks before sailing had been stifling. He spread his arms to let the cool night wind explore every inch of his body that he could expose and still preserve modesty. He undid his neck-stock, unlaced his shirt and held it away from his skin for a moment. He felt a bit of breeze where one normally did not feel breezes and inspected his breeches.

My God, I came back aboard with my prick damn near hanging out, he groaned. After those men attacked us, I never did up all my buttons. No wonder Treghues was thundering at me like he was.

Bad as the captain's opinion of him was at that moment, bad as it could get in the future (and Alan wondered if such a thing were possible), he could not restrain a peal of laughter at the picture he must have made.

"If you have discovered a reason for glee, by God I'd appreciate you letting me share it," David said from the darkness of the quarterdeck, almost invisible except for the whiteness of his breeches, shirt, and coat facings.

"Did you notice that I was a bit out of uniform when we were aft?"

"No."

"Had my breeches up with one bloody button, that's what!"

David broke into a hearty laugh as well. "You mean to tell me you went in there looking like something out of The Rake's Progress and you didn't know?"

"Me and my crotch exposed, you and your head bandaged—we must have seemed like the worst Jack Nasty-Faces Treghues had ever laid eyes on!"

They went forward to inspect the lookouts and to get away from their captain's open skylight, in case he was still awake and now busily inscribing their names in his book of the eternally damned.

"God, I am laughing so hard my ribs ache," Alan said, stumbling about the deck over ring-bolts and gun tackle and damned near howling, which upset the watch since they weren't in on the joke.

"I have tears in my eyes, I swear I do," David chimed in, pulling his bloody handkerchief out of his pocket and applying it to his face.

"Ah!" Alan heaved a great breath to calm down. He stopped laughing. "I would suppose we had better savor this. It's the last laugh we shall have for a long time."

"Worth it though, stap we if it wasn't. Here now, Lewrie, next leave is on me, my treat."

"Good. And I shall let you go first in the morning. In the beginning, the…"

"No, no, you'd be so much better at the Bible than me," David said, calming himself. "You've probably already violated half of it. Besides, why get us into more trouble by a report of blaspheming?"

"You're right," Alan agreed, leading them back aft.

"Um, Alan, what did the captain mean about you forcing yourself on your own blood back there?" David asked.

"Just raving, I expect. Think nothing on it."

"Did that have anything to do with the way he turned against you so quickly after Commodore Sinclair took over the squadron?" David asked. "I mean you've never been really all that forthcoming about your past before the Navy. As your friend, it would make no difference to me, but…"

"Sir George knows my father, and like me thinks about as much of him as cowshit on his best shoes. And there's Forrester sneaking behind our backs to his uncle Sir George," Alan said quickly. "Put those two together and you get Treghues trimming his sails to suit Sir George."

"My father caught me with the cook's daughter," David confessed in a soft voice. "She was fourteen, I was eleven. I already knew I was down for the sea, but I thought I had another year before they sent me."

"You precocious young bastard!" Alan laughed. "Well, did you get into her mutton?"

"No, actually. Not for want of trying, though. And she was an amazingly obliging wench. So you see, I understand being sent off for something."

And now I am supposed to tell you all because you have shared a confidence with me, Alan thought, feeling weary and old for his tender years. Well, you'll not get an admission from me, no matter how much I like you and trust you.

"My father wanted me gone, David. I'll not go into the reasons, but he never loved any of us, not once. To this day I am not sure what I did to finally displease him," Alan lied glibly, "but displease him I did. And he packed me off to Portsmouth with Captain Bevan, Sir George's flag captain, in the Impress Service then. I doubt I'm welcome back home."

"But he supports you well enough. I know you have a yearly remittance, a pretty healthy one, near as good as mine," David said. "That doesn't sound too bad to me."

"David, do you love me?" Alan asked.

"Aye, I do, Alan. You're the best friend I've ever had in the Navy, the best friend I've ever had, period."

"Believe me that I hold the same fraternal regard for you as well, David," Alan said, turning warm as he realized that he really did hold David Avery as his closest and merriest friend. "But what happened back in London is dead and gone, and there's nothing to revive it. Nor do I care to. If you truly are my friend, please believe that it is nothing that I, or you, would be ashamed of, nothing to destroy a friendship."

"But you don't want to talk of it?" David sighed, partly in disappointment. "Well, there's an end to it, then. I shan't mention it again, or pry at you. And whatever passed between you and your father could never force me to lower my esteem for you."

"God bless you, David. Perhaps in future, when it is truly of no consequence or I have sorted things out and made something of myself, I shall tell you one night."

"Over a half-dozen of good claret and two towheaded wenches."

"Done!"

At 4:00 A.M., the ship's day officially began. Bosun's pipes trilled the call for all hands, and the petty officers passed among the swaying hammocks, urging the men to wake and show a leg and form on deck. Pumps were rigged to draw up clean salt water to wash the decks, while the men rolled up their voluminous slop trousers above the knees and bent to the already pale timbers with holystones and "bibles" to scrub, sanding off any graying of the decks dried by tropical suns, raising up the dirt of the day before and sluicing it off into the scuppers, slowly abrading the deck a tiny bit thinner than the day before. However, wood was cheap and eventually, before they could ever wear enough away to harm the ship, Desperate would have been hulked long since or had her bottom fall away from rot and teredo worms.

With the pumps stowed away once more, the men brought up their hammocks, each numbered and carried to its required place in the bulwark nettings, having been wrapped up tightly and passed through the ring measure so that all were as alike as milled dowels and would serve as a guard against splinters or musket shot during battle. The hands then stood to their guns, the eighteen 9-pounder cannon that were Desperate's main reason for existence, and the two short-ranged carronades on the fo'c's'le and the swivel guns on the quarterdeck. As dawn broke they were ready for action against any foe that appeared.

There was nothing in sight, not from the deck and not from aloft in the crosstrees of the masts. It might be halfway into the day watch before they caught up with the fleet, but before then, not even an errant cloud on the horizon could be mistaken for a tops'l.

"Fall out the hands from quarters, Mister Railsford." Treghues gave the order from the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist of the upper deck. "Pipe the hands to breakfast."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Excuse me, sir, but who is midshipman of the watch?" Alan asked Railsford.

"You had the middle?"

"Aye, sir, both of us. And we shall have the forenoon as well."

"Get you below and eat, then," Railsford said. "Might as well get into working rig, too, or your shoregoing clothes are going to get too dirty."

They stumbled down to the lower deck and aft, past the marine compartment to their tiny midshipman's mess, which was right forward of the master's cabin and the first lieutenant's. Young Carey was there already, digging into a bowl of gruel liberally mixed with salt meat and crumbled biscuit, slurping at his small beer with evident enjoyment. His eyes lit up as he saw them, not having had the chance to ask them how much trouble they had gotten into.

Midshipman the Honorable Francis Forrester was also there, round and glowing even though the morning was still cool, and also busily feeding. Cater-cousin to their captain, one of the original midshipmen from her commissioning, nephew to their squadron flag officer, Sir George Sinclair; an airily superior young swine they could have gladly dropped over the side on a dark night.

"I had hoped you had stayed in whatever sink or stew you had discovered in Charlestown," he said between bites. "Was it worth it?"

"We had a wondrous meal the like of which you would have considered a snack," David told him, stripping out of his good uniform. "We drank some rather good wine, and then we repaired to a most exclusive buttock shop and rantipoled about until we had exhausted their entire stable."

"Don't waste a description of the women on him, Avery," Alan said as he dug into his chest for working-rig quality uniform items. "Didn't you know that Francis is still an innocent in that regard? Come to think on it, I cannot remember ever seeing evidence of his manhood, and there's not a scrap of privacy in this mess."

"Well, from what I hear, you'll be paying the price for your little escapade," Francis retorted hotly, but unwilling to try his arm against the two of them—they had bloodied his nose more than once in the past. "Hope you enjoy watch and watch. Hope you like watching me enjoy a good bottle of wine while you sip your water."

"You're a swine, Francine," David said. "A portly sow with two teats."

"Goddamn you!" Forrester roared, almost ready to rise, in spite of past experience.

"Blaspheme a little more softly, please," Alan said. "Before the captain decides to share the misery out. He's not in the best of moods today. Come to it, neither am I, so watch yourself and walk small about us."

They sat down to their bowls of mush, and the mess steward set out a pitcher of water before them, eyeing them with a certain sadness.

"Have a heart, Freeling," Alan entreated. "Slip some small beer our way, won't you?"

"Oh, ah god a 'eart, Meester Lewrie, zur, bud iffen ah dew, ah won' 'ave no 'ead when 'a capum 'ear of eet," Freeling responded.

"Bloody hell!" David said, taking a sip. "At least it's not wiggling today."

"Not even half brown. A good vintage," said Alan.

It was around three bells of the day watch, just after gunnery exercises, that Desperate caught sight of the fleet on the horizon to the north-east, after a good sail north along the coast with a soldier's wind. They were now roughly parallel with Cape Fear, slanting landward at a shallow angle to eventual landfall at Cape Henry and the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, to peek in and see if the French had arrived.

Alan was in the rigging with a telescope, clinging to the shrouds with arm and knee crooked, leaning back onto the ratlines just below where the futtock shrouds began below the maintop.

Well, no one's sunk while we were gone, he decided, counting the ships. There was Admiral Drake's small group of ships up from St. Lucia, now free of keeping guard on the French base in Martinique and very far from familiar waters; there was Princessa, the flagship, Terrible, Ajax, Intrepid, Alcide, and Shrewsbury. Further north he could espy Admiral Hood's flag flying on Barfleur; also Invincible, the Alfred, Belliqueux, Monarch, Centaur, Montagu, and Resolution riding in her wake. Fourteen sail of the line all told, and too few attendant frigates, as was usual. If the rumors were correct, and de Grasse had brought fourteen sail out of Port de France and had not picked up other ships at Cape Francois or Havana, then they would be evenly matched ship for ship in line of battle once they fell on their enemy.

It was so large a problem that his own paled in comparison, and he knew that he was looking forward to the battle with a certain relish, at that time in the uncertain future when upwards of thirty massive warships would come up within pistol shot of each other and begin to blaze away with every gun available.

Alan had seen single-ship actions since being almost press-ganged into the Navy, and such events as a fleet battle happened too rarely to be missed. He knew he had an extremely good chance to survive it, if it did occur, since frigates would not stand in the line of battle, but would be in the wings, repeating signal hoists and ready to rush down and aid some crippled larger ship. This battle, if it came soon, would truly decide the fate of the rebellion. Without the French fleet, there wasn't a ship on the coast that could stand up to the Royal Navy, and the blockade of their coast could check the last imports and exports that kept their miserable efforts in the field. This would be the crushing blow, and when it was over, everyone on the losing side would sue for peace, and Alan could go home to England. Maybe not to London, not as long as his father was alive. But he could take off naval uniform and begin to live the life of a gentleman once more, so he had a personal stake in victory and frankly, could not even begin to imagine any other result.

Then, no matter what career was open to him after getting out of the Navy—which had treated him so abominably—he could brag for the rest of his life that he had, by God, been there! Sword in hand, making every shot count, eye-to-eye with the Frogs, pistoling mounseers right and left, or whatever else his imagination could do to enliven an observer's role as the tale grew with the telling.

I'll probably bore some people to tears with it. He laughed. There I was, hanging upside down from the clew garnets, four third-rates on either beam! Harro for England and St. George and pass the bloody port if you're through with it! And the best part of it all is, I'll be safe as bloody houses for a change, instead of scared fartless.

Unwinding his limbs from his precarious perch, Alan clambered down to the starboard bulwarks along the gangway and jumped the last few feet to move back aft to the quarterdeck, where Treghues, Railsford, and Monk were plying their own telescopes to survey the immense power spread before them.

"Still fourteen of the line, sir," Alan said to Railsford.

"Be more than that when we reach New York." Railsford grinned at him. "Admiral Graves can add at least seven more, plus frigates. We shall have this Count de Grasse on a plate, mark my words."

"Mister Railsford, signal the flag there was no sign of the French at Charlestown."

"Mister Forrester!" Railsford bellowed.

"Sir?" Forrester called, running from the taffrail flag lockers.

"Signal 'negative contact.' Make sure Princessa or one of the repeating frigates replies with a matching signal."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The signal system, even with special contingencies included by Admiral Rodney before he departed the Indies, was meager almost to the point of muteness. Many signals were guns fired either to windward or leeward, ensigns hoisted from various masts, perhaps a certain colored fusee burning after dark. There were only so many signal flags, and each had a meaning mostly laid down in the Fighting Instructions, so anything that did not do with bloody battle took some ingenuity to convey. Usually it resulted in such confusion that ships sidled down to speak to each other at close range anyway, and captains developed their lungs by shouting and bawling at each other through speaking trumpets, making their choler permanent.

Today was no exception. A red ensign hoisted from the windward foremast, and a blue signal flag at the gaff of the spanker was not understood as 'negative contact'; negative something, maybe, but what? The nearest frigate, the Nymphe, hoisted another flag that stood for "interrogative." Nymphe then lowered the interrogative and raised another which ordered Desperate to close with her. Since Nymphe was commanded by a post-captain and Desperate, as a sixth-rate, boasted only a commander, they had to yield their advantage to windward and come down to her, which would result in a long hard beat back to their assigned position once the message had been passed and understood.

"Play with your fancies: and in them behold upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; hear the shrill whistle which doth order give to sounds confused," Mr. Dorne, their nattily attired surgeon, was emoting as roundly as Garrick in Drury Lane. "Behold the threaden sails, home with the invisible and creeping wind, draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, breasting the lofty surge!"

Oh Christ, he must have aired his wig again, Alan thought.

"Henry the Fifth!" Railsford barked with glee. "Quite appropriate!"

"Oh, do but think you stand upon the rivage and behold a city on th' inconstant billows dancing; for so appears this fleet majestical, holding due course for Harfleur." Dorne ran on, now striking an oratorical pose, to the amusement of the assembled officers. Even cherubic Lieutenant Peck of the marines was smiling as though in fond memory, but being a marine, Alan was not sure that grin had anything to do with Shakespeare. Probably thinking on the last orange-vending wench he fondled in a theatre.

"Sounds most powerful like it, indeed sir," Monk agreed.

"Now you tell me, Captain, that the Bard did not do some time in the sea service," Dorne crowed.

"Follow, follow, grapple your minds…" Treghues began with some enthusiasm, but then stumbled and groped, not so much to remember the verse as to wander off the subject entirely, as though something else had caught his attention. He raised his telescope to look at Nymphe once more.

"Follow, follow, grapple your minds to sternage of this navy," Forrester recited, unable to resist the temptation to toady with his betters or show off his excellent education. "And leave your England as dead midnight still, guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, either past or not arrived to pith and puissance, for who is he whose chin is but enriched with one appearing hair that will not follow these culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?"

"Hah, hah, young sir, a scholard lurks!" Dorne shook with pleasure. "You are most familiar with him, I grant you."

"Aye, sir." Forrester beamed, trying to put on an air of modesty. "Especially Henry the Fifth, and that passage, which deals with the Navy."

"And when do you get enriched with that one appearing hair, Forrester?" Carey asked, with all the carrot-headed innocence that only the youngest midshipman could get away with.

"You would do well to grapple your mind to your duties and making something of yourself, young sir," Treghues said, shutting off their open enjoyment of Carey's dig. "Better indeed to emulate Forrester than be japing and frivolous! Or you shall never live long enough to grow that one appearing hair in my ship."

Poor Carey flinched as though he had been slapped in the mouth, and his eyes welled up in an instant. "I am sorry, sir," he quavered, on the edge of losing all control. Carey spun away and almost ran to leeward to be as alone as a completely humiliated and hurt thirteen-year-old boy can be on a ship.

Had discipline allowed, the assembled officers and warrants might have given an orchestrated chorus of groans at the harshness with which Treghues had chastised Carey for such a harmless remark. Even Treghues realized that he had gone a little too far, for he barked at them to be about their business and not stand about like cod's-heads.

Poor little get, Alan thought. Still, it's better him than me for a change, and he has been getting away with a lot lately.

"Don't stand there making gooseberry eyes at me, Lewrie," Treghues blustered. Alan realized he had raised his eyebrows in surprise at Carey's humiliation and Treghues considered it a reproof. "I doubt you know any Shakespeare at all, do you?"

"A little, sir," Alan replied, trying desperately to remember some.

"Let's hear it."

"Um, uh…"

"As I thought," Treghues said primly. "By the heavens, you're a rogering buck with no wit at all, aren't you? What was the last book you read? The guide to Covent Garden women? That Cleland trash?"

The last interesting one, yes, Alan had to admit, if only to himself. "A book, well, a chapbook really, about naval battles, sir."

"Who wrote it?"

"A man named Clerk, sir. A Scot. Avery's father sent it."

"A Navy officer?" Treghues asked sharply.

"No, I don't think so, sir, but it was a most interesting—"

"And I suppose you think that makes you equal to an admiral now, does it, just like this store clerk?"

"His name is Clerk, sir—"

"Fictional trash," Treghues sneered. "Bend your mind to your duties, sir! Take to heart what you read in the Bible this morning. Scotsmen, of all things!"

Since the morning's lesson had been from Genesis, there wasn't much that Alan could take to heart, unless he wished to recreate the human race, and he had already had a fair head start on that issue. Thankfully, Treghues turned away to more interesting things, allowing Alan to escape with a whole skin and to take refuge in what duties he could find.

He did not consider himself such a great sinner, not after all the examples in his life for comparison, so it was hard to reject the wave of self-pity that confronted him. When he had joined Desperate, even after a fatal duel for Lucy Beauman's honor, Treghues had not been so badly disposed toward him, not until that French gunner had smacked him with a rammer. There had been a time when Treghues had treated him fairly, decently, had thought him a 'comer.' To recognize that Treghues treated everyone oddly now was little consolation.

"Mister Lewrie," Railsford called from aft.

"Aye, sir?"

"Mister Cheatham requests your assistance with the ship's books in the holds. Do you attend him?"

"Aye, sir, directly," Alan answered in relief.

Once below with their youngish purser in the bread room, Alan could relax a little, though he was sure that Cheatham had good reasons to despise him after his and Avery's escapade. But Cheatham put him at ease almost at once.

"The Jack in the bread room is aft in the rum stores at present, Mister Lewrie," Cheatham said. "We shall be opening a new cask of salt meat for noon issue, and I need someone to attest as to its fitness."

"Aye, sir."

"Care for some beer?" Cheatham asked, waving a hand lazily at the keg in the corner.

"Beg pardon, Mister Cheatham, but Captain Treghues has me on water and ship's rations for the next ten days," Alan told him, licking his lips all the same. "After yesterday, I would not like to get either one of us in more trouble."

"Devil take it, Lewrie. Take a stoup," he commanded, which order Alan was only too happy to obey. He took down a wooden mug and poured himself a pint.

"Confusion to our foes, sir," Alan said, before taking his first sip.

"Hear, hear!" Cheatham acknowledged, tapping a pint for himself as well. "Now, Mister Lewrie, while we have some privacy, just what have you done that would turn the captain against you so badly?"

"I… I would rather that remain private, Mister Cheatham, sir," Alan said, wondering if he had to stand on the quarterdeck nettings and tell the whole world before they were satisfied. "It is not so much what I have done, but what has happened to Commander Treghues."

"I will allow that he has not been himself for the last month or so," Cheatham said, frowning between quaffs of beer. "There is a question as to whether he is in full possession of his faculties."

"Mister Cheatham, were we ashore in peacetime, Treghues would be confined to Bedlam, playing with his own spit." Alan grinned.

"No matter," Cheatham said. "He is our master and commander, appointed over us by the Crown, and that is disloyal talk. Whether it is true or not," he concluded, ignoring his own remark, which could be taken for the same sort of disloyalty. "All of us… Mister Railsford, Peck, the sailing master, Mister Dorne… look you, Lewrie, you're a good sailor and you're shaping well as a sea-officer. Before the captain's… misfortune… he thought well of you. It is without credence that he could turn on you so quickly without reason. You have friends in this ship, Lewrie, and we might be able to advert your good qualities to set aside whatever the captain has formed as to his opinion of you."

"David Avery did not speak to you, did he, sir?"

"Not recently, though he had expressed concern earlier," Cheatham said, closing the bread room door for more privacy and retaking a seat on a crate. "Perhaps I could be of some aid to you."

"On your word of honor that it goes no further, sir," Alan begged.

"I must discuss it with Mister Railsford, for one, but you may be assured of my discretion. My word on it," Cheatham assured him.

"I was accused of rape, sir," Alan began, feeling he had no one else to trust. He outlined how his father had snared him with his half-sister Belinda, how he had been forced to sign away any hopes of inheritance from either side of the family, and to take banishment into the Navy.

"And you have no clue about your mother's side of the family, the Lewries?" Cheatham asked after hearing the tale.

"None, sir, save my mother's name… Elizabeth. They said her parents are still alive, but God knows where, or whether that's really true."

"Sounds like a West country name," Cheatham surmised. "I seem to have heard the name Lewrie before in some connection, but it does not have any significance at present. Tell me about her."

"She was supposed to have bedded my father before he went off to Gibraltar in the last war, where he won his knighthood, but he left her with nothing," Alan said. "He always told me she was whoring before he came back and had died on the parish's expense. He found me in the poor house at St. Martin's in the Fields and took me in, and signed the rolls to claim me. I don't even know what she looked like."

"But you bear her maiden name."

"Aye, sir."

"So perhaps he did not marry her, but felt some remorse to learn that she had died in his absence and left him a boy child."

"Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby never had any remorse about anything, sir." Alan laughed without humor. "I remember a big man coming to claim me and taking me in a coach. First time I ever saw the inside of one. Next thing I knew I had the best of everything. Except for affection, that is."

Damme, I'm getting maudlin as hell just thinking about this, he thought, feeling a wave of sadness sweep over him such as he had not felt for two years.

"Perhaps you are worth something to somebody, else why keep you?"

"That might explain why I was set up with Belinda, and caught red-handed in bed with her by so many people, especially our solicitor and the parish vicar as well, sir!"

Alan thought a while. "You mean my mother's people may have had money?"

"No way to tell, not out here," Cheatham said. "But my brother works in the City, at Courts' Bank. I could write him and let him make some inquiries on your behalf. If you were set up, as you put it, it would clear your repute with the captain and put your own mind to rest as well. If your father has recently come into money or land through your maternal side, that would be proof positive."

"It must be!" Alan was thrilled. "Why else would he send me off with a hundred guineas a year and force me to sign away inheritance on both sides? Sir Hugo never did anything that didn't show a profit. God, Mister Cheatham, if only you could do that! You don't know how miserable I have been, not knowing why I was banished. I admit I was a strutting little rake-hell. And given half a chance, I probably would be again, to be honest. But nothing as bad as they were, at any rate!"

"Then we shall attend to it directly." Cheatham smiled at him, and the smile automatically raised Alan's suspicions as to his motives. Damme, what's in it for him, I wonder? The life I've lived, there's no way to know when someone really means friendship, except for David.

"Um, I was wondering, sir, why would you…" he began.

"Because whether you can realize it or not, you have friends in this ship and in this world, Lewrie." Cheatham anticipated him: "Railsford thought you'd be squint-a-pipes about it. Do you really think yourself so base as not to be able to garner trust and friendship from others?"

"Yes, sir," he said without pausing to think, and felt his eyes begin to water with the truth of it. Until he had gotten into the Navy, he had never had a real friend, never had a word of approval from his father, his half-relations, or tutors. Now here were people ready to make supreme efforts on his behalf to uphold his honor and good name—what there was of them—and go out of their way to settle all the nagging questions in his mind about his heritage. Too much was happening to keep his feelings in check.

"God, Mister Lewrie," Cheatham said, almost in tears himself, "I had no idea, my boy! Forgive me. You do have friends who care about you—not just people with influence who will be good for place or jobbery."

"I am beginning to realize that, sir." Alan shuddered. "Back home, there was no one I could turn to. Jesus!"

"What?"

"In a way this is so disgusting, sir." Alan smiled in self-deprecation. "Who would have thought that of all places, I would find… a home… in the bloody Navy! I've spent the better part of my service scheming to get out of it!"

"Why would you, when you're so deuced good at it?" Cheatham asked. "Oh, I suppose it is natural to be suspicious, growing up a London boy in such a household as you described, but there is good in this world, and you have some of it in you."

"A streak perhaps," Alan allowed. "A thin one, sir. I doubt I'll be buried a bishop."

"Who can say what you'll amount to?" Cheatham said, cuffing him on the head lightly. "No, I would not go so far as to say you could ever take holy orders. But you are who you make of yourself, not what others have told you you are. Think on what you have accomplished in the short time you have worn King's Coat—other than wenching and brawling your way through the streets of Charleston, of course. Consider the people you know that think well of you. You could not have earned their approbation without being worthy."

I don't know about all that, Alan thought. You've never seen me toady when I've my mind set on something. Still, there was the good opinion of Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews and his Lady Maude; also their lovely niece, Lucy Beauman, who was all but pledged to him. And then there were Lord and Lady Cantner, whose lives he had saved in the Parrot. There were probably as many others who hated the sight of him, but he wasn't particularly fond of those either, so to hell with them.

But with Railsford, Cheatham, and, most likely, Mr. Dorne to improve his chances, and even Mister Monk's professional acceptance as a seaman, and the willing cooperation of the other warrant and petty officers who took him at face value, there was suddenly a lot less to fear than he had thought. He took another deep draught of beer, and his prospects suddenly seemed that much brighter.

"I cannot tell you how much this means to me, sir," he told Cheatham. "I was despairing that I would be chucked onto the beach to starve if it was up to the captain alone. Maybe there's an answer in my past that would force me to think I'm someone better than the image I have formed of myself ere now. But I'm not betting on it, mind. What if I'm much worse than what I know of myself now?"

"That's our Lewrie," Cheatham said kindly. "As chary a lad who ever drew breath. Now let us take a peek into this salt beef cask to see if it's fit to eat, shall we?"

CHAPTER 2

On the 25th of August, 1781, Desperate went inshore once more, to Cape Henry in the Virginias, acting as the eyes of the fleet. Should she run into danger, there was another frigate with her with much heavier artillery to back her up, but being of deeper draft she wasn't much help close inshore.

"Passage'll be 'bout a mile off Cape Henry," Mister Monk said, referring to one of his heavily pencilled and grease-stained charts by the binnacle. He was partly teaching, partly talking aloud to himself. "Far enough offshore ta avoid the Cape Henry shoals, an' 'bout two mile off a the Middle Ground. Ya young gentlemen mark the Middle Ground? Silt an' sand shoal."

Forrester, Avery, and Lewrie peered over his shoulder to mark it in their minds, while Carey, who was much shorter, wormed his way through to peek almost from Monk's capacious armpit.

"What about north of the Middle Ground, sir?" Carey asked, turning his gingery face up to their sailing master. "Up by Cape Charles?"

"No, main entrance is this'n, south o' the Middle Ground. To the north of it, ya'd never know how much depth ya'd have, wot with the scour. At high tide, ya might find a five-fathom channel, 'un then agin ya could pile her up on a sand bar in two, so deep draft merchantmen an' warships use the south pass. With our two-and-a-half-fathom draft, we'd most like be safe up there, but anythin' bigger'n a fifth-rate'd spend a week gettin' off."

"It's big once you're in, though," Avery observed, looking at the chart past the entrance they were discussing.

"Like the gunner told the whore," Alan whispered.

"Let's keep our little minds on seamanship, awright Mister Lewrie?"

"Aye, Mister Monk, sir," Alan replied with an attempt at a saintly expression.

"Now look ya here," Monk went on, tapping the chart with a stub of wood splinter for a pointer. "Once yer in, there's Lynnhaven Bay. Un from Cape Henry ta Old Point Comfort, due west, mind ye, ya got deep water an' good holdin' ground. But—and mind ya this even better—from 'bout a mile north o' Point Comfort an' from there up ta these islands at the mouth o' the York River, ya got shoal water at low tide, and this shoal, they think, sticks out damn near thirty miles east, pointin' right at the heart o' the entrance. So ya can never stand too far in at low tide or on a early makin' tide without ya choose Lynnhaven Bay er bear off west-nor'-west for the York, er up nor'-west into the bay, itself."

"So the best places to base a fleet or squadron would be either in Lynnhaven Bay or in the mouth of the York, sir," Avery said.

"Right you are, Mister Avery, right you are."

"Which is why Cornwallis and his army have marched north from Wilmington in the Carolinas, to set up a naval base to control the Chesapeake," Alan said, marveling.

"Un right you are, too, Mister Lewrie." Monk beamed, proud of his students. "Either way ya enter, ya got ta choose Lynnhaven Bay, York River, er further up, but if ya take that route, ya gotta be aware o' this here shoal comin' outa the north shore o' the Gloucester Peninsula north o' the York, so that cuts yer choices down even more. I'd never stand in further than ten miles past Cape Henry afore choosin', and God help ya you ever do otherwise yerselves if yer ever in command o' a King's ship, Lord spare us."

"And there are no markers or aids to navigation?" Forrester asked.

"Nary a one, sir," Monk replied. "Mosta the shippin' roundabouts is shallow draft coasters an' barges ta serve all these tobacco wharfs on the plantations, er carryin' trade ta Williamsburg further up the James, so up ta now, there wasn't no need fer 'em. But, up the James er up the York, er way up the Bay, it's the world's best anchorage ta my thinkin' for a fleet."

"Then why haven't we set one up here before, sir?" Carey asked.

"There's not much ta the Continental Navy, in spite o' that fight we had in the Virgins last month. Biggest threat was de Barras up in Newport, an' the North American Squadron covers them. Most o' the fightin' was around New York or down in the Carolinas. But now this bugger de Grasse is on his way here, we'll control the place."

"And with ships here in the Chesapeake, we'd be free to range from way up here on the Patowmac and Baltimore down to Norfolk and the entrance," Alan said, smiling. He could see what Clinton and Cornwallis had in mind. "We'd cut the communications from Washington and Rochambeau to his southern forces."

"A nacky plan, ain't it?" Monk said, as though he had thought of it himself. "So ya all look sharp as we work our way inta the bay, and y'll see the Middle Ground, all swirly like a maelstrom sometimes. Two leadsmen in the foremast chains by four bells o' the forenoon, now we're in soundin's. And we'll lower a cutter an' sound ahead, too, as we're comin' in on the ebb tide."

"Let me," Carey volunteered, almost leaping in eagerness.

"Aye, the boat's yours, Mister Carey. Ya put these younkers ta shame sometimes, so ya do!"

"And the leads, sir?" Alan asked.

"Do ya take yer copy o' the Atlantic Neptune an' place yourself in the foretop, Mister Lewrie. Mister Avery, y'll be with the hands in the forechains. Un Mister Forrester, I 'spect the captain'll wish ya ta be on the quarterdeck ta handle any signalin'."

"Aye, sir," Forrester said with a smug grin.

Desperate was ready for any trouble entering the bay. The hawse bucklers were removed and cable ready to run at bow and stern, both the best and second bowers seized to their lines, and a kedge and a stream anchor on the stern should she have to maneuver herself off a shoal with muscle power.

"Cape Henry, sir," Monk said to Treghues on the quarterdeck. "I'd feel better a point ta starboard if ya so mind, sir."

"Hands to the braces, stand by to wear a point to starboard!" Treghues shouted, then turned to Lieutenant Railsford. "Brail up the main course now and get a little way off her, but leave the tops'ls for now."

"Aye, aye, sir."

With guarded caution that to an outsider might still have seemed almost dashingly rash, Desperate made her way to the entrance, arrowing almost due west down the three-mile-wide channel, past the disturbed water of the Middle Ground, past the tip of Cape Henry into Lynnhaven Bay. Beyond, the Chesapeake was a sparkling sack of water, nearly devoid of shipping but for a few small British ships servicing the troops ashore, along with a large frigate, the Charon, a sloop of war just slightly smaller than Desperate, the Guadeloupe, and some small armed cutters and store-ships drafted from the coastal traffic.

Desperate finally idled close enough to Charon to be able to speak to her, and from her commander Captain Symonds they discovered that the French were nowhere to be seen as of yet. There were some armed gunboats working further up the bay near Annapolis to keep some Continental infantry units from taking to the water in some homemade barges.

They also learned that Symonds and Cornwallis had rejected Old Point Comfort west of Lynnhaven Bay as the naval base. The bay would be too exposed to the coming hurricane season, and the land around Old Point Comfort was too low and marshy to be fortified—was barely two feet above high tide. A French ship, with her higher mounted guns, could drift right down on any battery established there and shoot it to pieces. Instead, Cornwallis would fortify the south bank of the York River just east of the town of York and the narrows at Gloucester Point. The land was much higher there, with steep bluffs to discourage any attempt to storm them, and batteries dug into the bluffs could return the favor to a ship of any force that attempted to get close enough for cannon fire. They would also be free of the marshes and their agues, and would have several choices of streams for fresh water if they had to hold out for any length of time.

So far, Cornwallis and his troops had had little trouble in these rebellious Virginias, raiding far west up toward Williamsburg and Jamestown, getting into one scrap on the James. But the enemy had been too daring and had tried to force a crossing into low marshland and forests right in the teeth of the field artillery and had gotten cut up badly. After scouring the neighborhood for victuals and harvesting what crops there were, the general was moving slowly back to Yorktown to begin his fortifications and was awaiting the arrival of the fleet into the bay. They had heard of the possible arrival of the French, and Clinton and Admiral Graves had promised to return troops south, so the possibilities were excellent for a grand battle which would not only destroy the French fleet in the Americas and knock them out of the alliance with the Rebels, but also destroy what men and guns that the Rebels were assembling from the south. Once what passed for an army in the Virginias was destroyed, the entire country was open to British troops as far west as the Appalachians, which would cut the rebellion in two. Symonds's news was electric, and reeking of confidence.

After a quick survey up north around the York River anchorages-to-be, Desperate wheeled about and made her way back out of the bay to carry the glad tidings to Admiral Hood and the Leeward Islands Squadron.

It was puzzling to Lewrie, all the same, as to just where those French had gotten to, and he mentioned it to Lieutenant Railsford in the evening watch as their ship once more trailed the taffrail lanterns of the heavy units of the fleet, now on their way to New York to collect Admiral Graves and his line-of-battle ships.

"We have beaten them to the coast," Railsford commented.

"But what happens if the French are now busy retaking Charlestown and the Carolinas, sir?" Alan demanded, as much as a midshipman could make a demand upon a commissioned officer.

"The information all points to the Chesapeake," Railsford said, looking up at the set of the tops'ls that shone like eery shadow wings in the night. "So we must expect that the information is correct. Even if they did land south of us, they must know that their fleet could be bottled up in Charleston harbor and lost to the rest of the war effort. And it would only be a matter of time before our ships, with Admiral Graves's as well, and all of Cornwallis's army, would march or sail south and put them under the same sort of siege that won the place last year anyway. The Chesapeake is more vital at this moment, and closer for de Grasse to link up with de Barras's few ships in Newport. Like us, they could only stay on the coast until the equinox, and then have to flee back to the Indies, so here is the best place to effect something strategic. Cornwallis and his army is the magnet that will draw them, as it draws us."

"Well, sir, it seems to me that if de Grasse is behind us, then he could be sailing into the Chesapeake right now, and us none the wiser. Why not simply take our present fleet into the anchorage at the York River, or wait off the capes while we send a frigate to Admiral Graves and wait for him to arrive?"

"Because we would be only evenly matched without Graves and end up fighting a draw much like Arbuthnot did last year," Railsford said, grinning at Alan's efforts at strategy. "And if de Grasse came by way of Cape Francois, who is to say that he has not made combination with other French ships, or stirred those Dons out of Havana? They had ten sail of the line."

"By way of the Old Bahama Passage!" Alan was enthusiastic. "I thought that was the way they might come."

"But then we might be the ones outnumbered and overwhelmed," Railsford said.

"But if we cruised out to sea, sent frigates to scout, and could fall on the transports, even if we were outnumbered, we could cancel this de Grasse's plans overnight. If I were in charge, I'd… well, sir, there is a hopeful thought for you."

"You'd cost us the squadron," Railsford told him. "And then Graves would not have the force to do anything more. No, Cornwallis and his men and artillery can hold the bay while we assemble everything that floats to be sure we'll smash him when we come back. If he gains the bay while we are up north, then we can bottle him in anyway. He's most like brought troops as reinforcements, stripped the Indies to do it, and with him gone it'll be a year before the French could put together another fleet to send to the Caribbean, if then."

"Oh, that would be a different prospect entirely, sir," Alan said, seeing the wisdom of it.

"It's good practice, though, to use your mind as you have been doing. Good practice for when you really are an admiral, God help us." The first lieutenant chuckled.

"Now there's another hopeful thought indeed, sir!" Alan agreed.

Four bells chimed from the belfry, halfway through the evening watch on a dark night, as the moon waned further. Alan wandered to the lee rail of the quarterdeck and leaned on the bulwarks, for no one could see him there violating the rule that midshipmen never lean on anything, or slouch.

Someday when I'm an admiral. Alan gave a wry laugh. After we win this battle, the war will most like be over, so there won't even be time enough in service to gain my lieutenancy. I suppose the admirals we have at present know what they're doing, so there's no sense in my getting worked up about things. Still…

Somewhere out to leeward was a black shore, lost in the full darkness, and over the horizon from his vantage point. There was something nagging at him, but what he could not say; not fear this time, such as he had felt when faced with the prospect of action against another ship. His role in this would be that of a properly enthusiastic spectator, then a paid-off veteran soon after—and that was about as valuable in England as a dead rat. Worse. One could always eat the rat and sell the pelt.

It finally came to him that Cornwallis's army could do nothing to stop the French from entering the bay and landing their armament, and that was what was bothering him. Even with only fourteen ships to face up to 24 French and Spanish liners, the real point was to deny the French an anchorage anywhere in the bay; and if it cost a squadron to do that, it would be worth it, for the army would still be in one piece, and whatever the French and Rebels put together in the way of held units would have been smashed or decimated before even stepping ashore.

The air was cool, almost chilly compared to the tropical climate Alan was accustomed to. He involuntarily shivered, and hoped it was merely the damp night that made him do so.

CHAPTER 3

Even if Alan Lewrie and his compatriot-in-crime David Avery had been blood relations to Commander Treghues, and in his best graces, they would have stood no chance for shore leave once Desperate anchored off New York. Alan thought New York a finer port for fun than Charleston, with its atmosphere seething with competing interests, the graft in military and naval stores, the spies and whispered confidences, and betrayals and the threat of the Rebel forces pending over all of it as if it were a besieged Italian city-state intent on survival in the time of the Borgias. It was a place that could turn a vicar into a pimp or fleshbroker and an honest man into a thief. It had most certainly turned many Loyalist women into grateful courtesans for the many handsome young men in uniform.

But Admiral Hood did not wish even to enter harbor, but anchored the fleet without the bar off Sandy Hook. However, the Nymphe, under Captain Ford, did cross the bar into the harbor, bearing despatches.

A flotilla of supply barges rowed ouit to them, but none of the many ships would be allowed out of discipline, pending a rapid assembly of the battle-worthy vessels of the North American Squadron, and an even more rapid return to the Chesapeake.

Boring, Alan decided, definitely boring. I've swung about out here before in the Ariadne and it was always deadly dull. And the way Treghues is acting lately, it's a wonder a boat full of clergy don't descend on us playing sad music, instead of us being allowed out of discipline.

"Bosun of the watch!" Railsford bellowed.

"Aye, aye, sir?"

"A boat for Mister Cheatham. Smartly now!"

Alan looked on hopefully, but it was Forrester who was entrusted with the duty of rowing their purser ashore. Cheatham shrugged eloquently at Alan byway of commiseration, but patted the large packet of letters he carried with him. So it was more than Alan's own letters to Lucy Beauman, Sir Onsley, who was now ensconced in London with the Board of Admiralty, and Lord and Lady Cantner. Cheatham was indeed posting a letter to his brother in London as well, regarding Alan's background.

The more Alan had thought of it since baring his soul to Cheatham in the bread room, the more he was certain that his father, Sir Hugo, had cheated him out of some sort of inheritance—nothing else made sense. Why else get him into Belinda's mutton and then entrap him with a ready-made pack of witnesses to force him to sign all those papers? He kicked himself for not asking for a copy to take with him. Face it, he thought, slapping his memory to life once more, you should have at least read them, instead of just scribbling your damn name to 'em.

He could console himself with the fantasy that somewhere in the near future Cheatham's brother would write back with proof positive of his father's perfidy, which he could dash into Treghues's leering face, at Captain Bevan, and at his master, Commodore Sir George Sinclair. They would fall all over themselves to take him into their good graces in atonement for their beastliness of the recent past. With their influence, and with the influence he had garnered from Lord Cantner and Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews, he would be well on his way to gaining that coveted commission, which would mollify Lucy's daddy and open all the doors to a peacetime future.

Interest was everything, if not second to outright jobbery and bribing his way to the top. Professional skill in ship-handling and seafaring were all right, but even the saltiest tarpaulin man could not advance without interest in those circles that abutted on the crusty older men at the Admiralty. Since he had so little interest as of yet, he was careful to curry to those he had.

May not make much difference anyway, he thought to himself. He must, according to the rules of thumb, be upwards of twenty, of two years' service as a midshipman or master's mate, and have been entered in ship's books for six years before he could even gain admission to an examination for his lieutenancy, and the war could end within a month after they beat de Grasse in the Chesapeake. Then where would he be in regards to Lucy Beauman?

Just the thought of her made him groan. She was so young, so delectably blonde, with startlingly blue-green eyes, the color of a shallow West Indies lagoon. She idolized him, and each time he saw her, she had advanced just a bit closer to the softly feminine ideal of the age. She loved him openly and frankly. She was also as rich as Croesus; or her father was, which was much the same thing. And the match was not totally out of the question—if he cleared his name, if he made something of himself that her father would let in the front door, before someone more suitable came along. Or before Lucy met someone she liked better. It was a long sail to Jamaica, and she might as well be on the other side of the world at the moment.

Did he love her as well? He thought about that as he penned her long, continuous sea-letters. She was heart-stoppingly beautiful, desirable, sweet, and unspoiled (in the biblical sense, at any rate). She was also his key to financial security after the war. No one else had ever fallen so head over heels in love with him (not anyone with that much chink). He had not had a major affair of the heart, having taken the usual route of paying silver for pleasure, or of taking advantage of house servants and country girls, just as any other young buck.

He felt something strong for her, but not knowing what love felt like as an emotion, he continually questioned it. He knew himself fairly well as a rake and a rogue, but this feeling for her was much greater than anything he had felt for a graceful neck, a well-turned ankle, or a firm bosom. Yet damned if he could put a label on it. He puffed up with it when he wrote to her in short bursts between duty and sleep, and her rare letters filled him with pleasure and the passion of jealousy if she even mentioned another male. Frankly, her letters were only part delight, were misspelled so badly he could barely credit them—and damned if he could discover what was so fascinating about what she had worn to church or how her hair was fixed for a carriage ride, or how difficult it was to find a maid who could iron properly. Her latest screed had been a damnation of the French Navy, who seemed intent on denying her the right shade of blue ribbons, and a fervent wish that Alan would skewer all the bothersome pests as soon as dammit and let her get on with sartorial splendor.

So what if she's feeble? he asked himself. Most women are, when you get right down to it. That's not what they were created for. If I want someone to talk to about something that matters, I'll toddle off to a coffee house or a club. He remembered the night in London, just before a descent into the Covent Garden district for a run at the whores, when two educated men had almost come to blows at Ozinda's over whether women could be educated at all!

If one got a fortune and a termagant mort came with it, then one could always keep a mistress. In the better circles, which Alan fervently hoped he could soon rejoin, it was a matter of course that the wife was for breeding children, and the mistress for pleasure. The thought of domestic drudgery, of having to stay in and listen to the empty pratings of a woman night after night made Alan and most of his past friends shiver with dread.

God help the poor who have no outlets, he thought. And God help me should I turn out to be one of them.

No matter what happened, he had his reserve money—over two thousand pounds in gold coins lifted from their last prize, the Ephegenie. It was part of a much larger trove that had been hidden in a large chest in that ship's late captain's necessary closet. That gold was now deep within his sea-chest, wrapped up in a discarded shirt so worn, mended, stained, and daubed with tar that no one with any taste whatsoever would even look at it, much less borrow it or disturb it.

Ironically, he could not make much use of it, since to dig down to it would reveal its presence, and a midshipman's chest—even a locked one—was no safe place for anything. There were times that Alan regretted taking the money, and not settling for the roughly 125 pounds he would have received as a share out of the prize-money once the main mass of coins—nearly 80,000 pounds—had been discovered. Admittedly those regrets were rare, but the thought had crossed his mind. Instead, he had to depend on the 100 guineas his father sent, and how long that arrangement would last, he had no idea, or any great hopes for in future.

His reveries were interrupted by seven bells chiming from the fo'c's'le belfry; eleven thirty in the forenoon watch. Almost immediately the bosun's pipes sang and the order was bellowed to "clear decks and up spirits." The hands lashed down their labors and queued up for their rum ration. Soon they would be allowed to go below to their dinner, while Alan would have to wait, his stomach already in full cry for sustenance. There was fresh food coming offshore, but he would not share in it. There would be small beer and the last of the rum to savor for even the meanest hand, but he would not taste that fiery anodyne to the misery of a seagoing life.

"Lucky Forrester," Avery said, standing by the rum cask with the purser's assistant as the rum was doled out.

"He wouldn't know what to do with time ashore," Alan said.

"Might take two guineas to find a girl that'd let him put the leg over her."

"And she'd have to be beef to the heel, at that," Alan added.

"This is grievous to me," Avery said, looking at the rum.

"No grog fer ye today, sir?" the purser's assistant asked, waving a measure about toward them, knowing full well the captain's instructions and delighting in having power over the midshipmen in this regard.

"No, thank you," Avery said stiffly. "Carry on."

He and Alan made their way aft to the quarterdeck, unable to bear the sight of the hands smacking and savoring their liquor.

"Lots of activity," Alan said, indicating the fleet about them. "Damme, look there. Is that a load of lumber going into Terrible?"

"Lots of spare rope, too," Avery said, picking up an unused brass telescope. "I swear her masts look sprung. See what you think."

Alan took the glass and aimed it at Terrible. The third-rate 74 did indeed appear badly worn, her masts slanted from the more usual slight forward rake. Except for closing with Barfleur a couple of times or sailing close to another, larger frigate, Desperate had been far out to windward from the fleet for the most part of their passage, unable to see much as to the condition of their fleet.

"Come to think on it, David, half of them appear they've just come through a major storm. There's not a ship present that looks well set up."

"Then I sincerely pray the French look just as bad," David said, taking the glass back. "We seem more due a refit than a battle."

"We're more at sea than the French, usually—their big ships at least." Alan was repeating common knowledge. "But what's this delay in aid of? I should have expected this Admiral Graves to come boiling without the bar at once and get us on our way. God knows what the French are up to while we stew here. Any idea who he is anyway?"

"Lord North's cousin, I am told," David said sourly.

"Is he, God save us!" Alan shuddered.

"Who knows, he may actually be good," David said, placing the telescope back in the rack by the binnacle. "You know how people feel back home. They wouldn't do a damned thing for the Hanover Crown or the government unless they're damned near bribed by promises of graft and jobbery. I expect they considered themselves lucky to get anyone at all, the way all the so-called fighting admirals have retired to their estates to sit this war out. It's not popular in the first place, even if the government was, which it's not."

"This factionalism will do for us one of these days," Alan remarked.

"We were lucky to get Hood and Rodney together with one fleet for a while. I'd feel better with Rodney back out here, but…"

"Once he clears all his creditors, perhaps he shall come."

"How many ships did Mister Railsford say de Barras had up in Newport?" David asked suddenly.

"Eight sail of the line, I think," Alan answered. "Why?"

"What if he and de Grasse combine in the Chesapeake?"

"Then we smash both of them together," Alan said firmly.

"Perhaps Graves cannot leave New York uncovered. We might have wasted our time coming to him for assistance. God, I wish we were both post-captains right now," David said, with some heat. "This not knowing anything is driving me to distraction."

"Don't believe that the post-captains know much more than we do now," Alan cautioned. "All we have to do is fight. They'll point us at the foe like a gun, and all we have to do is discharge at the right time. We shall either do something glorious, or look like a complete pack of fools—so what is there to worry about?"

"God, you are an unaware bastard," David said, grinning and shaking his head in wonder at his friend's attitude.

"I dare say," someone drawled, and they spun about to see if the captain had caught them at their speculations. David pointed to the open skylight over the captain's quarters.

"Oh, damme," Alan whispered.

"I shall be on deck directly, and I trust I shall see two midshipmen doing something more profitable with their time than second-guessing their betters!"

"Aye, aye, sir," David called back as they made their escape to the bows, far away from that disembodied voice before Treghues made good on his threat.

"Now will you look at that!" Alan exclaimed. "Mister Avery, will you join me on the foredeck? Look at the state of that carronade slide. Not enough grease to let it run freely, I swear!"

"Thank you," David whispered. "I was about to remark on the forebraces, and there's nothing wrong with them."

"Surnmat amiss, sirs?" Tulley, the new gunner's mate, asked them as he ascended to the bow-chase guns to join them. He was a recent replacement for poor Mister Robinson, who had been shot in the knee and discharged a cripple from his position a bare three weeks before, in their fight with the Continental Navy brig-of-war Liberty. Tulley was too new in his berth and warrant to feel safe even with midshipmen, especially in a ship run by a seeming lunatic, and was as nervous as a cat to be found lacking for the slightest excuse.

That was the main reason he did not treat the midshipmen with the usual patient disdain that was the customary usage of human existence, and the Fleet. He was also big, bluff, and hearty, a plug of oak with flaming ginger hair and a permanently sun-baked complexion. He had, so far, appeared no brighter than he had a right to be.

"Might have a word with the quarter-gunner about this slide," Alan said. "The captain said he would be on deck directly."

"Aye, thankee, Mister Lewrie," Tulley quailed. "Did he, by God? Mister Sitwell? Call yerself a quarter-gunner an' roon one a my guns fer the lack o' some tallow?"

"Me, Mister Tulley?" the quarter-gunner barked, deeply offended.

As Alan and David waited for their own meal to begin, drab as it promised to be, they could delight in hearing Tulley berate the offending Sitwell, hear Sitwell roar for Hogan the carronade gun captain and pass on the grief. By the time Treghues appeared on deck, he was drawn to the ado and paid no attention to them as they betook themselves below out of danger.

"That is one thing I absolutely love about the Navy sometimes, David," Alan said as they sat down to their dinner. "You can stir up such a shitten storm for other people over the slightest trifles."

It was later, during loading of stores scared up by Cheatham from the warehouses, that the wind shifted into the east and began to blow dead foul for any of Admiral Graves's ships to work their way down harbor and cross the bar to seaward.

They spent three more days swinging at their anchors, gazing at the shore with fond regard, and wondering what was to occur before the wind at last veered favorable and the signal to weigh broke out on the flagship, Admiral Graves's ninety-gun second-rate, London.

Treghues had gleaned a little information from other captains, and had passed it on down the chain of command, and by the time it had reached the midshipmen's mess, it was frankly disturbing.

The frigate Richmond had come in from the Chesapeake on the 29th with the information that so far no French ships were anywhere near the bay.

De Barras in Newport had sailed—no one knew where, but it did not take an educated guess to discern the final destination. De Barras had transports with him, and the French had nearly five thousand troops around Newport, with heavy siege artillery. Should he combine with de Grasse, that would make up to a possible 22 French ships to face theirs.

And they would only be nineteen ships of worth. The North American Squadron could contribute no more than five, since the Robust was in the careenage undergoing repair, and the Prudent was lacking spars and masts enough to sail.

Admiral Graves brought out London, Bedford, Royal Oak, America, and Europe—the Europe so in need of careenage and repair herself that the fifty-gun fourth-rate Adamant also joined the fleet to take Europe's place if she had to drop out. That would leave a dangerously weak gap in the line if Adamant faced a line-of-battle ship, for she was more suited to commanding a light cruising flotilla than fighting a major battle in the line. She was an oversized cruiser, not meant for heavy punishment.

"Now what's he signaling," Treghues snapped, pacing the deck in a fit of nervous energy. "Mister Carey?"

"Um…" Carey fumbled with his slim signals book and a telescope nearly as tall as he was. "Can't quite make it out, sir. The flags are blowing away from us."

"That is what the repeating frigate is for, young sir," Treghues reminded him sternly. "Now what is the signal?"

"'Engage the enemy more closely,' sir?"

"Does that make sense even to you?" Treghues replied. "Where is the enemy in the first place?"

"Uh, no, sir." Carey blushed, turning red with embarrassment.

"Those two flags together, in Admiral Rodney's signals book, are 'Engage the enemy more closely,'" Railsford prompted from the sidelines, "but in Admiral Graves's system, they mean…"

Carey tumbled to his mistake and almost dropped the telescope in his haste to fetch out the proper sheet of signals. "'Make easy sail,' sir," he said, with an audible gasp of relief.

"Now this one," Treghues said, as a new hoist went up their flagship's yards. "You, Lewrie."

"'For Solebay,' sir, 'Captain Everitt.'" Alan was reading even before the frigate named in the signal hoisted a reply. Immediately a second hoist was made on the London. "'Proceed ahead to leeward,' sir."

"Is that what you think, Mister Forrester?" Treghues asked.

"Um… I believe that is correct, sir," Forrester replied, most unsure of himself, but not wishing to grant Lewrie any competence.

"Hah… hmm," Treghues said, slapping his hands into the small of his back and stalking off toward the starboard gangways.

"Wish to God we were using our own signal book and not Admiral Graves's version," Railsford muttered, taking off his hat to smooth back his hair. "We have the more ships, so it would only be fair. This is confusing in the extreme."

"Only natural," Alan whispered to Avery, "the Navy's spent the last two years confusing the devil out of me!"

"There's another hoist!" Treghues cried, coming back aft in a rush. "Last miscreant to read it gets to kiss the gunner's daughter."

"To Barfleur,' sir," Alan said quickly as soon as he saw the single flag. "'Send boats.'"

All of them stumbled out almost at once in their haste to avoid a caning. A second flag had appeared.

A third, explanatory hoist went up London's yards. Alan read it as number 48, which would be… "I am sinking"? Couldn't be, he thought. But maybe it could be. No, maybe it's 98. That's… "Take on excess supplies."

"'Take on excess supplies,' sir!" Alan was beaming, glad to be the first to answer, but barely ahead of Avery, who gave the same answer barely ahead of Carey, who did the same barely before Forrester began to say something else and ended up not saying anything at all, merely flapping his lips like a boar at a slop trough.

Treghues had promised a caning, and he could not play favorites in public. Forrester got the gentle attention of the bosun's strong arm for a half-dozen with a stiffened rope "starter," after which Treghues decided that signals lessons were over for the day. Forrester looked absolutely betrayed and aggrieved, which pleased them all to no end, and he grumbled that he would get his own back.

For all the urgency with which they had finally departed New York, the cruise down the coast of America was remarkably leisureable. The line of major warships made no more than four or five knots during the day, taking in sail during the night to crawl even slower, while the frigates dashed ahead and dashed back to report what little they saw, stirring about like cockroaches scuttling around a parade of snails.

The time passed as it always did in the Fleet; hands up to scrub decks, lash up hammocks and stow, breakfast, gun drill in the forenoon, rum issue, and dinner. Sail drill, fire drill, evolutions for passing cable, musket practice, and cutlass drill. Evening quarters, down hammocks, and more rum before supper. Stand down the overhead lookouts, lights out, and sleep. All the mind-numbing routine of a ship-of-war that ground the men down to mere numbers and parts of a watch, a division, until they could act without thinking at all—there was punishment in the forenoon watches for those slow to learn. Perhaps for a little relief there would be music and exercise in the second dogwatch, a little make-and-mend in the fresh air after the sun had lost some of its heat; fiddles and tin whistles and barefooted young men dancing hornpipes because they were young and strong and still full of energy. Not that they did not think about things to come anyway, when given half a chance. There were too many warlike preparations to be ignored, like all the extra cartridge bags that the sailmaker and his crew were making up for the master gunner, Mister Gwynn, and his mate, Tulley; why gun drill was a touch more earnest than usual and the men practiced leaping from one battery to another as though they might be called to fire on both beams at once; the rasp of the grindstone from dawn to dusk putting wickedly keen edges on cutlass blades, pike points, bayonets, boarding axes, and officers' swords. For those that were well churched, there was a lot of muttering over prayer books and Bibles. Those that could read and write—perhaps a third of the crew—wrote letters, just in case, and wrote last notes for the others less fortunate. Mr. Dorne, his apothecary assistant, and the loblolly boys brought out the stretchers and carrying boards and refitted them—a most ominous sign—and when Dorne went to the armorer to have his surgical tools honed, everyone shrank away nearly in terror.

"I can make out Cape Henry, sir!" Forrester bawled down from the foremast crosstrees high in the rigging. "Solebay is closing the shore!"

"Very well," Treghues said in a conversational tone that could not have carried much further than his immediate circle. He was turned out in his best uniform coat, as advised by Mr. Dorne, and dressed in a clean white shirt, neck-stock, waistcoat, and breeches. His fingers drummed on the hilt of his ornate smallsword.

Desperate and Solebay were in advance of the fleet line of battle. Desperate was flying everything she could from aloft to keep up with the larger frigate in order to serve as the communications link between Solebay and London. Even with her deeper draft, Captain Everitt's ship had been selected to lead, since Everitt knew the Chesapeake well and had aided Cornwallis and Symonds in selecting the proposed fleet anchorage on the York River.

Alan caught himself yawning, his jaws creaking with the effort to keep them shut. He had been in the middle watch, and had not had much of a chance for any rest after the morning call for deck scrubbing and dawn quarters. He had been lucky to get below long enough to choke down some gruel and change into clean linen and silk stockings. Dorne advised that silk was easier to extract from leg wounds than cotton. He shrugged to settle himself more comfortably into his waistcoat and jacket.

He had seen men yawn before battle; a sure sign of fear and nervousness, he had been told, and he wondered why he was affected in such a manner. Desperate would be little more than an observer, and they would be safe as babes in bed, unless something disastrous occurred.

Am I frightened, or just excited by the thought of battle? he asked himself. God knows I've seen enough blood and powder to last me a lifetime. This should be mere rote by now.

Still, the news about de Barras, the lack of information about the whereabouts of de Grasse, and the seeming poor condition of their fleet, all contributed to his anxiety. He had read the Fighting Instructions and then once more perused Clerk's little booklet and had gotten a glimmer of something beyond simple tactics and the movement of a single ship-of-war.

I was better off before, ignorant about what goes into this sort of endeavor, he thought. God, as nervous as a virgin at a hiring fair! Graves, Hood, and Drake… surely they're calmer… done it before and all that. If I was still ignorant about this, maybe I'd have gotten a single wink of sleep last night!

He yawned again, and his jaw muscles shot pain down his neck as he tried to restrain himself once more. Let's get it over with! Anything but this miserable ignorance and waiting for doom to come.

He turned to study how the other officers on the quarterdeck were comporting themselves. Monk was doodling on one of his personally marked charts, humming a tune to himself softly. Treghues was a study in self-control, languidly seated on the nettings and railing over the waist and only the movement of his fingers on his sword hilt betraying concern. Lieutenant Railsford was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, passing his brass speaking trumpet from one hand to another. Peck, the marine officer, was making bubbling noises through flaccid lips, totally unaware of his actions.

Trust the bullocks to show great calm, Alan thought with secret delight, nudging David to turn and witness Peck's behavior.

"If he had a beard, he'd be eating it," Avery japed softly.

"Signal from Solebay, sir!" Forrester screeched. "'Enemy in sight'!"

"Oh, shit," Alan whispered.

"Oh," Treghues said, getting to his feet, but otherwise showing no emotion. "Mister Avery, repeat that signal, will you."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Can you see any ships from the masthead?" Treghues bawled, his hands cupped around his mouth.

"No, sir!" Forrester replied, his voice breaking with the effort. "Lots of bare trees, sir!"

"Damned foolishness," Treghues sniffed.

"Settlers here 'bouts strip pine trees, sir," Monk commented, going to the captain's side. "Then they fires the slash 'round the base ta smoke the tar out while they're still standin'. Mayhap that's what they sees."

"Perhaps," Treghues said, nodding. "Has the signal been acknowledged?"

"Aye, sir," Avery answered.

"Very good," Treghues said. Judkin, his steward, came on deck to bring Treghues a mug of something to drink and he sipped at it thoughtfully, looking up at the rigging. "Mister Railsford, we shall stand on to the capes as long as Solebay does, but I would admire if you reduced sail. Get the stuns'ls off her to begin with."

"Aye, aye, sir. Topmen aloft! Trice up and lay out to take in stuns'ls!"

"Might as well strip down to all plain sail," Treghues said casually. "Get the royals off her, too."

"Aye, sir," Railsford agreed, anxious to be doing something other than stand around and fidget, and glad for some hard toil to take the men's minds off the possibility of battle as well.

"Signal from Solebay, sir!" Forrester howled.

"Speak, thou apparition!" Treghues barked back, almost in good spirits, making Alan wonder just what it was that was in that drink and wanting some if he did not have to sell his soul to the devil to get it.

"Enemy is French, sir!"

"Well, I sincerely doubt it would be the Prussians!" their captain erupted, which brought a welcome bout of laughter to the decks to loosen the tension.

"De Barras, do you think, Mister Monk?" Alan asked their sailing master as he sharpened a piece of charcoal for a marker.

"That lot from Newport?" Monk surmised, speaking heavily. "Mayhap. They sailed 'round the 25th, so they'd have plenty o' time ta get here by now. Iffen they is, we're gonna have 'em fer breakfast."

"Sir!" Forrester shouted down once more. "The count is 28 sail of the line!"

"God's teeth, Mister Monk," Alan said. "It's the entire French Navy!"

"Repeat the signal, whether it is accurate or no, Avery."

"Aye, aye, sir."

As they closed with the coast, Solebay continued to feed them news. There was a large group of ships anchored in Lynnhaven Bay, identified for certain as warships. There were three flagships present, one the gigantic three-decker first-rate of over one hundred guns, de Grasse's reputed flagship, the Ville de Paris. But as of yet, none was stirring.

Having gotten as close as they dared to the entrance, Solebay finally hauled her wind and came about back toward them, which required Desperate to tack as well in order to retire toward the tops'ls of their own fleet on the north-east horizon.

"This shall be a grand opportunity," Treghues said, almost capering like a young seaman about the quarterdeck. He was so energetic he reminded Lewrie of the Treghues he had known when he first signed aboard. Still, it sounded more like a good opportunity to get a lot of men killed. But, Alan realized, Treghues was odd enough to regard his own crucifixion as a blessed event.

"The tide is making, and with this nor'easter breeze, they'll not make it out past the Middle Ground or the Cape without a lot of short tacking. Some will run aground or foul each other." Treghues explained the situation happily. "We have but to fall on their van and chop it to bits as they emerge, throwing the rest into total confusion."

"We have trapped them," Forrester said, once more restored to the deck and the presence of his mentor. "It shall be a glorious day!"

"Indeed it shall, my boy. We shall shatter a French fleet, snap up their transports and all their artillery, crush them between Cornwallis and ourselves, and eliminate the French either on land or sea in the Americas. Not only will this rebellion finally be confounded, but the Indies shall lie open to us with one stroke."

Desperate came within sight of the fleet later that morning, and it was impressive to see those nineteen great beasts rocking along under all plain sail in perfect alignment. London signaled for an early meal so that galley fires could be doused long before battle was joined, and Desperate's crew tumbled down to their mess deck with a hearty appetite. In honor of the occasion, Treghues relented in his firm instruction concerning Avery and Lewrie, and they were allowed the last of the fresh bread and some not-quite-rancid butter to accompany their salt pork and peas, washing it down with a glass or two of wine for the first time in days. They toasted victory noisily.

But it took time, time to move that line of ships across the sea at six knots, time to align the formation perfectly, with the thrilling signal flag for "Form line of battle" flying from London. Still in the lead, Solebay reported that the French were scurrying to ferry their crews back aboard from duties ashore, and were cutting their cables and making sail. As the tide began to ebb and flow outward, they began to get under way, now not so limited in their ability to make the open sea. The French van was not in any particular order; it looked like a panicky scramble to escape the confines of the bay before being penned into it.

Alan was still yawning, this time from lack of sleep and the fumes of the wine he had imbibed with his dinner. He longed, though, to have the use of a telescope to see just how disordered the French were. Even from the deck it did not resemble a fleet so much as an informal regatta of small boats all trying to beat their way into the same narrow channel. Some of them were moving, some were dead still with their sails hanging limp as old rags, winded by the more weatherly vessels and unable to gain enough air to do much more than maintain steerage-way. To everyone, it looked as if the French were offering their van up for destruction.

"God," he muttered, "this is going to indeed be glorious, and I can't see a tenth of it. This is going to be worth all the canings and cant, all the humbug and the stupidity!"

Desperate was to windward, almost due east of the capes, and even without a glass, they were close enough on the disengaged side of the fleet to see that Alfred, one of Hood's ships in their own van, was just about to enter the passage between Cape Henry and the Middle Ground.

"Signal from the flag, sir," Avery called.

"Damme, what is this now?" Monk cried with as much pain in his voice as if he had just been run through.

"'Wear together to the port tack due east'!" Avery shouted, unable to believe what he was seeing.

"Goddamn my eyes, that can't be the signal!" Railsford bustled to read the hoist himself.

"I should think you should know my feelings best about people who blaspheme, Mister Railsford," Treghues said, chiding him harshly.

"Sorry, sir, but this puts me beyond all temperance."

"He's letting them come out!" Alan fumed, beside himself with the sense of a sterling opportunity lost forever.

"Of course he is," Treghues said. "Admiral Graves is not rash enough to put his own ships in peril on the Middle Ground. He is letting at least their van exit the passage, where we shall fall upon them. Why fight in the mud flats and shoals around the Middle Ground?"

"Because that is where the enemy is, sir," Alan observed, without thinking, lulled by Treghues's too-good mood of the morning.

"Ah, you alone know better how to handle fleets, I see," the captain said with a bitter relish, back to his usual self once more. "You are criticizing the officers appointed over you by the Admiralty and the King, but then, you always know best, do you not, Mister Lewrie?"

Hang it, Alan thought. I'll not knuckle under this time. Why should I run in fear of having my honest say, when asked, even if it doesn't please? After a moment's reflection, however, and the realization that he was responding to one of God's prime loonies, he tempered that rash resolve.

"Would it not be better to bear down on him at this instant, sir, and smash his van now?" Alan asked, trying to couch his complaint as a question to be answered in the reasonable tone with which it was offered. "Once the van is in disorder, the center will have to bear away and end up on the Middle Ground or the shoals around Cape Henry, would they not, sir?"

"And violate the Fighting Instructions?" Treghues asked contemptuously. "One never breaks the unity of the line of battle until the foe is flying. To bear down we must needs break the line, wind our own ships as they are doing, and overlap our fire. With you in command, we would lose the fleet. How foolish and precipitate you are."

"Impatience o' the young, sir," Monk chortled, trying to defuse the captain's evident anger.

"Thoughtlessness of the headstrong," Treghues countered. "But Mister Lewrie does a lot without considering the consequences, do you not, Mister Lewrie?"

"I have never done anything without forethought, sir." Alan spoke back gently, trying to allay the hell he was expecting to catch. Damme, there was never a truer word spoken! How often can I damned near get my arse knackered since I was out of swaddles without scheming and planning to get anything out of life?

"You are swaggering deuced close to open insolence, sir!"

"I truly mean no disrespect, sir," Alan said.

"Do you not, sir!"

"The fleet is coming about, sir," Railsford reminded Treghues, who was lost in the passion of his pet.

"Very well, hands to stations to wear to larboard," Treghues said, reluctant to leave the subject, but forced to by duty.

The next two hours, until about four in the afternoon and the start of the first dogwatch, were almost heartbreaking to witness. The fleet took up the new course due east, Hood's strong division now the rear of the battle line, with Drake's few ships as the van, backing and filling. Given the grace period, the French were beginning to sort themselves out into a line-ahead of their own, the van now in perfect order. Their center was beginning to exit the bay, and the milling rear division was also sorting itself out of chaos as well.

Desperate was by then near the head of the British line, with the ships of Admiral Drake, almost on the beam of Shrewsbury, the leader. She backed and filled as well to maintain rough station well in sight of the divisional flag in Princessa and in sight of London far to the rear. Finally, when it seemed hours too late, Graves signaled to bear down and engage the opposite ships. But for some reason he left the signal for "Form line of battle" hoisted as well.

This resulted in all ships turning slightly to starboard to bear down on a bow-and-quarter-line oblique approach, what Clerk's booklet told Alan was named a "lashing approach." Since the fleets were converging at a slight angle already, the vans would come together first, then the centers, and the rear divisions in both fleets would remain out of contact or gun range 'til late in the day, unless something was ordered to change it.

It was a daunting prospect to see all 28 enemy ships in one ordered line-ahead, a line much longer than theirs, with many more guns ready to speak thunders; a line that they could not match ship for ship as usual practice, for the French could bring more ships from the rear to double on them once they were engaged.

Alan was on the gun deck with his men when the first ships tried firing at the range of random shot. He could not see anything below the bulwarks and the gangways, aching as he was to witness what would transpire. All he could see were masts and sails and then growing clouds of powder smoke as more and more ships began to trade broadsides. Desperate was at quarters, the men swaying easily by their light nine-pounder guns, which in this battle would be as useful as spit wads at thirty paces. No matter how stiff the discipline, everyone craned his neck for a view, or took little excursions atop the gun barrels or the gangways when the officers were not watching them. Even upwind of the fighting, though, Alan scented the powder smoke and saw the grimy gray-tan wall of smoke climbing higher than the liners' masts and crosstrees. Hiding himself behind the thick trunk of the mainmast, Alan furtively scrambled up on the jear bitts, his favorite vantage point, so that his head was above the line of the bulwarks and hammock nettings. The sight that met his eyes filled him with awe.

"What do you see, Lewrie?" Carey called out below him, hopping up and down in excitement.

"God, what a sight," Alan breathed. "It's glorious, it truly is! They're all in range for good practice now—Drake's ships and the French van. You can see only the topmasts and tops'ls of the Frogs, now and then a stab of flame from a gun barrel through the smoke. Our ships are so full of powder fumes they look like they're on fire!"

All the officers were too busy with their telescopes to note if they were sneaking a look. Lewrie reached down and hoisted Carey into place with him.

"Good Lord in Heaven!" Carey exclaimed in wonder. "Oh, I shall remember this all the days of my life."

The cannonading increased in fury and volume as he spoke and more ships came within range, and the guns slammed and boomed and barked in an unending storm of fire and metal. As far as they both could see, there were many ships—a forest of ships—with their courses brailed up to avoid the risk of flames, their tops'ls shot through like rags, upper masts hanging drunkenly here and there in both dueling lines of battle. The air quivered with the shock of broadsides, rattling their internal organs, setting their lungs humming with the power and terror of modern warfare. In the British line closest to them, they could witness shot ricocheting off the sea and raising tall waterspouts, could see hard-flung iron balls smashing home to tear loose clouds of paint chips, wood splinters, and spurts of ingrained dust and dirt, striking great sparks when encountering metal and shattering on impact with something as solid as themselves.

"The French line is much longer, isn't it," Carey said, tears of passion streaking his smutty face. "Why does not Admiral Hood engage back there?"

"They might double on him if he did," Alan said. "They could cut across the end of his line to windward and fall back down to fight on both sides of his ships at once. Perhaps he is waiting for them to try, and he will rake them across their bows when they turn up."

"Alan," Carey said, suddenly dead serious. "I know that war is a terrible thing. But is it so terrible that it is wrong to feel as though we are seeing something grand?"

"I don't think so, it's what they pay sailors for," Alan japed.

"So it would not be wrong to say that I love this?" Carey pressed.

"No." Alan smiled. "I confess I love it, too."

"Good, 'cause so do I," Carey said fiercely.

"Mind you, young Carey, I only say that because we are not being shot at personally," Alan admitted wryly. "You can cheer all the fame and honor and glory you like when you're seated in the balconies."

Men were dying over there, ships were slowly being torn asunder by the shocking weight and power of iron; gun carriages were being overturned and their crews pulped in agony, riven by splinters or swatted dead like flies. The hideous reality was, however, over there, and not here in the Desperate, and even with prime examples of butchery not a month in the past to use as an example and a warning, Lewrie could not deny the fact that he was choking up with a pride he had never expected to feel in the Service. His eyes were moist and hot, his throat tight with emotion.

Marine Captain Osmonde back in Ariadne was right, he decided grimly. This is brutal and bloody and cruel and horrible, and it can eat a man up but I swear to God above that I truly do love it! They have made me into a sailor, damn them all, and I will make an officer of myself if I live to manage it!

Shrewsbury, lead ship of all the British line, came reeling out of battle, surrendering her place of honor as she could no longer maintain control over herself. Her rigging was shot to pieces so badly that she had barely a shred of sail aloft. Her gangways and bulwarks on her engaged side were pockmarked and shattered with shot holes, the oak stained black with spent gunpowder. Desperate's people gave her a rousing cheer as she retired, having done all she could do. Sadly, Intrepid, the next ship in line, looked in about the same poor condition; her rudder hanging in tatters from her stern posts, she was being steered by relieving tackle below decks, but she still fought. Next, Princessa was missing her maintopgallant mast and the spanker over the quarterdeck. Her lower shrouds were shot through, threatening the stability of her masts as she rolled. Ajax, to her rear, had hardly any top hamper left, and Terrible was listing noticeably, her lower gunports dangerously close to the water, and her foremast spiralled back and forth as though it would go by the board at any moment. The other ships astern of her could barely be made out in the pall of smoke.

But there was Hood's rear division, now almost dead astern of Desperate, nowhere near firing range, maintaining a maddening line ahead and showing no eagerness to engage, almost parallel to the French line.

"Why does he not bear down," Lewrie said, almost wringing his hands in frustration. "Damme, he's throwing away the last chance we have."

"Get down from there, now," Mister Gwynn suddenly ordered, up from his magazines to survey the battle with the freedom his warrant gave him. "Set a good example for the hands, Mister Lewrie."

"Aye, Mister Gwynn," Alan replied.

"Twas this very way with Byng in the last war in the Mediterranean," Gwynn commented as softly as he could once he had strolled aft by Lewrie and young Carey. "Back when I was a raw rammer man. The way sea battles are. Half the ships never get a chance ta fire a shot."

"You'd think there was a better way," Alan complained. "To bear down and break through the other line or something."

"Not for the likes of us to say, Mister Lewrie."

"Goddamme, what a waste."

"War mostly is a waste," Gwynn grunted, cutting himself a plug of tobacco to cram into his cheeks. "Anythin' that takes a man outen a woman's bed and away from easy reach of a bottle is a waste, t' my thinkin'."

By half after six in the evening, Cape Henry was far astern and almost under the horizon. The action still raged, though the broadsides were becoming very ragged and slow, the gun crews decimated and stunned into numb exhaustion from the continual roar and the shock of horror piled upon horror on those gun decks.

It was also possible that ships were running low on powder and shot; a battle that long would have emptied Desperate's magazines hours before.

They had not fired a shot themselves but had stood down from quarters after rendering what aid they could to the crippled Shrewsbury. Alan rotated to signals duty on the quarterdeck as cold food was issued, and small beer or American spruce beer was passed liberally to quench the dry throats among the crew.

With a better vantage point, Alan noted that the worst-damaged French ships were able to slip away to leeward to allow fresh vessels to take their place from that reserve in the rear, still untouched by Hood, who had not budged from his role of disinterested spectator. Alan felt a cold anger seething in his breast at an act which he could only describe as that of the ultimate poltroon. He lifted his telescope to see better as the light began to fade. London was not looking good, nor did any British ship that had managed to engage, and Alan could imagine the letter of rebuke that Graves would send Hood once he had a chance.

There was something different about the London—what was it?

"Signal is down, sir!" he shouted, having discovered what was missing.

"Watch her closely," Treghues said, almost at his elbow. Alan took a sideways glance at his young captain and was shocked. Treghues looked a dozen years older. He was gray in the face and barely a shadow of himself. He held his mouth in a bitter arc of disapproval, and Alan felt that for once the displeasure he evinced was not toward him personally, but toward the entire conduct of the day.

About five minutes later a single flag hoist went up a halyard, a blue and white checkered flag. Lowering his telescope, Alan consulted the short list to find the meaning. "Goddamn and blast," he whispered sadly, almost drained of emotion or the ability to be surprised by anything. "Signal, sir: 'Discontinue action.' Yeoman, hoist a repeat on that."

"I see," Treghues said. "Thank you, Mister Lewrie."

There was no groan of disappointment heard on Desperate, no low curses or signs of reaction. Perhaps men slumped just a bit more on hearing the import of that one colored bit of bunting. The battle had been fought, and it appeared from where they stood that they had just lost it.

CHAPTER 4

Perhaps Midshipman Carey's geste against Midshipman Forrester was not the most aptly timed event in the continual war of wills in the mess that Alan had seen yet, nor was it particularly bright to jape so soon after such a galling failure as the Battle of the Chesapeake. The repercussions did not bear thinking about, and had Lewrie or Avery had a chance to talk Carey out of it, they most definitely would have. But, given Lewrie's own recent history and the series of misadventures that seemed to dog his existence, it was much of a piece, and therefore seemed almost fated.

Once full dark had fallen, the galley stoves had been lit and the steep-tubs began to bubble and boil to prepare the crew's dinner, though few men or officers who had eaten with such gusto at dinner in the forenoon watch had much of an appetite for their plain-commons supper. Avery was in the evening watch, which left Carey, Forrester, and Lewrie in their small mess compartment to be served boiled salt beef and biscuits, livened only by a communal pot of mustard and the watered-down issue of red wine come aboard in New York, with a redolence of varnish. There were only four men in their mess, and the normal issue for a seaman's mess of eight was a four-pound cut of meat. Minus gristle and bone, it might make a third of a pound of meat for each man. Theirs, however, was even tougher than most, composed of more useless junk, and had the consistency, even after boiling, of old leather.

"Freeling, if you do not deal sharply with the mess cook when they choose the joints, I shall see you at the gratings," Forrester threatened, throwing his utensils down in disgust. "This is inedible!"

"Aye, zur," Freeling answered noncommittally. He was half dead already, a toothless oldster of forty who appeared over sixty from a hard life of seafaring, herniated from hoisting kegs with stay tackle once too often, shattered by too many years aloft in all weathers. He had seen too many midshipmen come and go and turn into officers, and held a particular abiding hatred for each and every one of them. Even bribes could not move him to charitable efforts on their behalf.

"I mean it this time, damn your eyes," Forrester snarled.

"You're not going to eat that?" Carey asked, eyeing his plate and the raggled strands of meat. Carey would eat anything.

Forrester did not answer but picked up his utensils once more and began to gouge at the beef to carve it into bite-sized pieces. It was much like trying to slice old rope with the edge of a fork as the only appliance.

"Why not just pick it up and gnaw?" Alan said. Forrester was the only person he had ever seen who seemed to prosper on ships' rations. The lad had been fat as a piglet when Alan came aboard in spring, and now was in such fine and obese fettle as to excite the fantasy that soon some villagers would trice him up by his heels and bleed him for the fall killing. It was September after all, almost time for the first frosts and the slaughter of excess animals for the salt kegs or the smokehouses.

"That would be more your style," Forrester said. "I leave it to you. Such a lot of peasants! God rot the lot of you!"

"Did you hear some snuffling and rooting, Carey?" Alan jibed. "My ears definitely did. Or was it human speech after all?"

"Oink, oink," Carey said through a mouthful of biscuit.

"Do not row me tonight, Lewrie," Forrester snapped. "Perhaps this performance of ours today did not affect you, but, by God, it angered me!"

"But it did not seem to affect your appetite," Lewrie said, happy to have Forrester to abuse to alleviate his own sense of gloom concerning the battle. Desperate had been short two midshipmen when he had come into her—one had drowned, the other was a raging sponge who had been drunk most of the time and was finally dismissed, a hard feat to accomplish at any level of English society in these days. Forrester had been the tyrant of the mess until Avery and Lewrie had sided with Carey and played one prank after another on him until Forrester had been driven almost to distraction. It enlivened the usual drabness of their existence, and there was little that Forrester could do about it. One did not complain to superiors that one could not hold his own against the spiteful cruelty of his peers. It was their rough and tumble microcosm of society, where lads as young as ten or twelve became men along with becoming potential officers, and if one could not cope, one could not hope to prosper. It had come to blows a few times, at which point Forrester could only snarl and withdraw and scheme to gain his revenge, an event that so far he had never achieved, for with three against one, he had no chance. His not being the brightest person ever dropped also had a great deal to do with Forrester's frustrations.

Angry or not, Forrester managed to clean his plate and call for the cheese after Freeling had removed the joint to save the last of it for Avery.

"A small slice for me," Carey said as Forrester cut into the hoop of fairly fresh Cheddar recently shipped from England.

"Cut it yourself," Forrester replied, still sulking and taking the equal of two men's shares.

"Oink, oink," Carey said again.

"Damn you, will you stop that stupid noise!" Forrester barked, rising from his seat and taking a swing at the younger boy with the back of his hand. Before Lewrie could respond and deflect the blow completely, he had succeeded in cuffing Carey on the head.

"How would you like me to kick your nutmegs up between your teeth, Forrester," Alan warned, grabbing the offending hand and holding it immobile against Forrester's best efforts to free it. "By God, it's blow for blow in here, and well you know it, just like a Scottish feud."

"Goddamn you, Lewrie, unhand me," Forrester commanded, squirming with the effort to free himself. "I'll square your yards for you!"

"The hell you will," Alan said, laughing cruelly. "You may inherit your daddy's title and rents, but you'll always be a churlish, craven pig."

Alan let go of Forrester's arm with a shove that almost unseated him. Forrester glared at him hard while Alan cut himself a slice of the cheese and poured a glass of Black Strap in lieu of port. He knew Forrester's type from civilian life, the bullying sort who would try to get even backhandedly, but would never face an enemy in a fair fight, and he enjoyed taunting him with a merry grin of physical superiority.

"How sadly is our aristocracy fallen, Carey, since the days of the Crusades," Alan scoffed. "Or when they faced Caesar's legions painted blue with woad."

An hour later, the master-at-arms and ship's corporals came about to see that all lights were extinguished for the night to lessen the mortal danger of fire, and they turned in. Alan took a moment while Forrester was forward in the heads to warn Carey to be on his guard in days ahead.

"He doesn't frighten me," Carey said with a smirk. "What can he do to us? Three of us against him."

"But he might get to you when we're not here."

"No matter, you'll settle him for me," Carey said, full of young confidence in his older mates to protect him. "But I'll make him pay for that slap."

"Carey, I think—given the captain's mood—that you leave well enough alone for now." Alan frowned. "Let it go, or you'll get us all in trouble, not just Forrester."

Carey had only smirked at him once more, then skinned out of his clothes and sprang into his hammock to curl up and sleep, and Alan thought no more about it, eager to get to sleep himself for a few hours before his midnight-to-four tour of duty in the middle watch.

Perhaps it was something about blue woad that set Carey off, for at dawn quarters the next morning, all the midshipmen turned up on deck to await the rising of the sun and the possible renewal of the battle with the French fleet, whose riding lights had been visible all night on the south-east horizon, still headed out into the Atlantic under easy sail.

As the grayness of predawn began to lessen the darkness, and the binnacle, belfry, and taffrail lanterns began to lose their strength, some of the men began to titter into their hands and almost bite their tongues to keep from laughing out loud about something.

Must be a grand thing to get them going, Alan thought wearily after another night on deck with only three hours' sleep. There's not all that much to be amused at in this fleet.

"Silence on deck," Lieutenant Railsford snapped, unusually out of sorts.

"Whatever is with the people this morning?" Treghues growled, stalking by the windward rail, unshaven as of yet and unfed.

"Don't know, sir," Railsford replied.

"I'll prove to them they have nothing to laugh about after yesterday, by…" Treghues said, almost blaspheming himself.

I like him better when he has a mug of whatever that stuff is, Alan thought, planning to ask Mr. Dorne if the captain was under any medication; not that he really expected an answer, but he was intrigued anyway by the sudden change in behavior that Treghues evinced whenever he partook of it.

A man next to him on the gun deck began to laugh softly and Alan went to his side. "If you wish to be at the gratings in the forenoon, go ahead and laugh, why don't you?"

"Sorry, sor," the man replied, much too brightly.

"Just what is so all-fired funny to you?" Alan queried, and the gunner jerked a finger in the general direction of the starboard gangway and screwed his mouth shut, trembling with the effort not to laugh.

Alan looked up at the gangway. Nothing funny up there; the yeoman of the sheets looked about as stupid as usual, the marines were mustered properly at the hammock nettings with their muskets, and the landsmen and brace-tenders all seemed normal enough. Lieutenant Peck was pacing slowly, as was his wont, with his burly sergeant in tow, just as every morning.

"Oh, my God!" Alan gaped at Forrester as he came aft from the fo'c's'le belfry. "Carey, you little shit, you've done for us, by God if you haven't! It had to have been Carey… Avery has more bloody sense!"

Forrester had had his countenance adorned during the night. There was blue paint on his face, large dots on each cheek, a false mustache a Hessian guardsman would be proud of, great arching false brows, a streak down the nose and two quarter-circles on the jowls to emphasize their roundness, with a final large blot on the slack chin.

"Jesus," Coke, the bosun, commented as he spotted Forrester. "We're for it now, Mister Lewrie!"

"Amen to that," Lewrie whispered back.

"When'ud ya find the time, sir?" Coke asked once he was past them.

"Me?" Alan yelped. "By God, it wasn't me… honest!"

"Merciful God!" A wail came from aft on the quarterdeck as Railsford spotted Forrester's phyz in the lightening gloom. "Mister Forrester, what is the meaning of this?"

"Mister Railsford?" Forrester snapped back, too sleepy to be wary, too surprised by Railsford tone and totally unknowing the nature of his sin.

"What sort of harlequin are you to appear caparisoned so?"

"Sir?" Forrester replied, on his guard now and feeling about his body to see if he was properly dressed after donning his clothes in the darkness of the midshipmen's mess with no time for a peek in a mirror.

"You… clown!" Treghues shouted in his best quarterdeck voice as soon as he spotted the miscreant. "How dare you turn out like that! Get below and wash that… that foolishness off at once, do you hear!"

"Sir?" Forrester begged, aware that he was in trouble for sure.

"And I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing the first lieutenant," Treghues said.

"But, sir…"

"Now, idiot!" Railsford commanded.

The word "wash" alerted Forrester to the possible nature of his offense. As he saluted and spun away to disappear below decks, he felt of his waistcoat, his breeches, then his face as a last resort, and was appalled to bring his fingers away still sticky-damp with blue paint.

"Mister Lewrie, get your miserable carcass up here instantly!" Treghues bawled, and there was no denying the summons. With a bitter shrug he scampered aft to a quarterdeck ladder and faced his irate captain.

"Sir," he said, doffing his cocked hat in salute.

"I know your brand of deviltry by now, Lewrie, and this time you shall pay for it in full measure," Treghues said, spittle flying from his lips.

"I did not do it, sir."

"Don't bother to lie to me, Lewrie!"

"On my honor, sir, I did not do it," Alan persisted.

"Avery, Carey, come aft at once," Railsford commanded.

"There's no need for that, Mister Railsford. I know who the biggest sinner in my own crew is, you can be assured of that."

"Sir, Mister Lewrie had the middle watch all night."

"Sir," the other midshipmen said as they reported and saluted.

"On your honor, did you paint Forrester's face blue, Avery?" their lieutenant asked of him. Avery had seen Forrester's new appearance and had said nothing, but even the seriousness of the situation could not keep the smirk off his face as he swore up and down that he had not done the deed.

"There's nothing to laugh about," Railsford barked, his own lips quivering at the edge of humor anyway, which did nothing to keep Avery from grinning even broader. "Carey, was it you?"

"Oh, this is a waste of time," Treghues grumbled. "Mister Coke!"

"I did it, sir," Carey said, pleased with his handiwork.

"You?" Treghues gaped.

"Aye, sir. Forrester cuffed me at supper last night."

Forrester reappeared on deck, the sharp edges of his new makeup now smeared, but still bright blue.

"I told you to go below and wash!"

"It won't come off, sir," Forrester admitted miserably. "It's paint, sir. I tried, sir, honest I did!"

"Did you strike Carey last night?" Railsford demanded.

"I…"

"Did you or did you not?"

"Lewrie stopped him from doing more," Carey stuck in mischievously.

"Sir, they were…"

"Did you strike a fellow midshipman?" Railsford reiterated.

"Aye, sir, I did, but they…"

"Bully!" Railsford roared. "To think of a young man of your size, cuffing a little boy about. You disappoint me, Mister Forrester."

"Vile wretch," Treghues said, frowning heavily at his relative. "I had thought better of you until now, boy! And you, Carey, playing at shines as men such as us bleed and die yonder. All of you, shame on you for being such a spoiled pack of unfeeling prodigals. What did we do yesterday? Watched a battle being lost, good ships shot to pieces, good men shot to pieces, and you dare to cut such a caper and still call yourselves gentlemen-in-training as professional sea-officers. Well, you'll pay for it. Mister Coke, a dozen of your best for Forrester and Carey, and a half-dozen for Lewrie and Avery as well. Mastheading for Forrester and Carey until I remember to let them come down. And get that… stuff, off your face. Carry on!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

Once Treghues was gone below and the strokes had been given out, Railsford turned on them as well. "Goddamn you all for this childish… shit. I shall have the next fool flogged again, so help me!"

The sun was fully up after quarters were stood down, a day of calm seas and light winds. The sixth of September could have been a marvelous day to be sailing, were the circumstances different. The British fleet still sailed in easy column towards the south-east, pursuing the French, who were perhaps five or six miles off to leeward, drawn further and further away from the Chesapeake and the coast. But there was no question of battle being rejoined; too many ships had been roughly handled and needed urgent repair. The light winds were a blessing, allowing shattered topmasts to be struck so they could be fished or replaced with what few spare spars had been available from ships less hurt.

Admiral Drake's van ships had taken the worst of the pummeling; the Intrepid and Shrewsbury looked as though even an easy swell would roll the masts right out of them. But Terrible was the worst off, nearly in sinking condition, and her many wounded being parceled out to the less damaged ships for medical attention. The chain pumps clanked continually to stem the inrush of the sea from her bilge and lower decks.

The frigates still dashed back and forth on their ceaseless errands to scout dangerously close to the French and to keep an eye on their intentions, to carry spare timber and spars from well-endowed vessels to those most needy, and to pass messages too complicated for the meager signaling book.

Or messages too vitriolic to be shared, Alan thought grimly He could imagine the choler with which Graves might be penning a despatch to the Admiralty about the debacle, dashing off irate questions and accusations to Admiral Hood; Drake might be pouring out pure bile about the near destruction of his ships in the van, thrown away without proper support by the rest of the fleet, especially Hood's rear division. Hood and Drake might be countering with invective about Graves's incredible decision to let the French form beyond the Middle Ground and the waste of a splendid opportunity that Providence did not give grudgingly to any admiral.

How long does it take to become an admiral, anyway, Alan wondered as the usual ship's day proceeded to spin out its ordered sameness. Even with a newly like me in charge, we'd have accomplished more yesterday than what this pack of fools did. And if I should ever make flag rank, will we still have a navy at this rate? We should have stood on into the bay and cut the Frogs' gizzards out of them! Even I know that.

The day before, the sight and sound of battle—in the early stages at least—had raised in him a martial ardor and pride in his uniform that he could scarcely credit as coming from such a churl as himself, and now it all seemed like a fever dream. What was the point in becoming an officer in such an inept Service? What sort of honor and credit would it bring him, and what sort of glory was there to reap with such an addled pack of bunglers?

Why are we still following that damned de Grasse like a cart horse on the way to the stable? Alan wondered. There was a French army in the Chesapeake now landed in Lynnhaven Bay, an army that would force Cornwallis to withdraw within his siege-works sooner or later. The fleet needed to go back and aid the army. Let de Grasse bottle them up in the bay. He would be denied entrance until after the hurricane season began, and had no force of note still with him other than his ships to threaten New York or Charlestown or any other port on the coast. A fleet, even a large one, had never succeeded in taking and holding a garrisoned and fortified location on its own with only marines to put ashore. By God, I don't believe one of these ridiculous jackanapes in charge over us has the slightest idea what to do with the fleet now. We'd do better with that damned Frog to lead us.

In the afternoon a flag hoist from the London summoned Desperate to attend her. Once near enough to hail, London's hard-pressed sailors had a chance to laugh at the sight of Forrester at the main masthead, still blue in the face as a Pict, for the paint indeed would not come off.

"A talisman, is your ancient warrior?" a lieutenant from London asked Treghues by way of greeting as he gained the quarterdeck with the usual canvas-bound packet of despatches under his arm.

"Your japery is out of place, Lieutenant," Treghues said with icy harshness.

"Your pardon, Commander Treghues," the lieutenant stammered, taken off guard and remembering his place in the scheme of things when facing a senior officer, even if the lieutenant was blessed to be the senior in the flagship of a major fleet. "Admiral Graves sends his most sincere respects and directs you to make the best of your way into the Chesapeake to deliver despatches to Lord Cornwallis and then return to the fleet."

"And where shall the fleet be, I wonder?" Treghues asked of him. "Halfway to France? Still tagging along behind de Grasse?"

"I would not presume to know, sir. We shall still be at sea, certainly, to the east'rd of the capes."

"Hmm," Treghues sniffed in a lordly manner. "My deepest compliments to Admiral Graves, and I shall assure him the safe arrival of despatches or die in the attempt."

"Very good, sir. I shall take my leave, then, and not detain you."

"Good day, sir," Treghues said. "Mister Railsford! Mister Monk! Stations to tack ship and lay her on the most direct course for the Chesapeake. Drive 'em, bosun. Crack on all the sail she can fly."

Before the lieutenant from London had even regained his seat in the flagship's cutter, Desperate was boiling with activity as every reef was shaken out, as she wore about to pinch up close-hauled preparatory to tacking across the wind to a course opposite that of the fleet.

Even with a light north-east wind, she began to fly like a Cambridge coach with the wind broad on her starboard nuarter, one of her fastest points of sail.

"Be in soundin's agin by around two bells o' the evenin' watch, sir," Monk announced after they had taken several casts of the log. "We're nigh on nine knots. Will ya be wantin' ta enter the capes afore dawn, sir?"

"High tide should be making around then?"

"Just the start of the flood, sir. But we'll be off the entrance 'bout six bells. Be full dark, sir, and no moon ta speak of. Even so, I wonder if ya wants ta stand in under full sail er plain sail, what with no idea of what the Frogs left behind."

"Might not be a bad idea to reduce sail, especially the royals and topgallants before sundown, sir." Railsford stuck into the plans. "Even if the sun is going down behind the French watchers and we'll be out in the gloom, they'd shine in the last light."

"You'd have us loiter off the channel 'til dawn and the turn of the low dawn tide, Mister Railsford," Treghues countered, "and our orders brook no delay. Royals down in the second dogwatch, topgallants down after we fetch the coast, but we'll enter just as the tide is beginning to flow inward. We shall just have to chance any French warships."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"I'll have the ship at quarters, no lights showing, as we enter."

Treghues looked about the deck once more, then went below to his quarters, bawling for his steward Judkin to attend him.

"Probably wants to look his best when he sees Symonds or Cornwallis," David whispered once he was off the quarterdeck.

"He'd have to wear coronation robes to sugarcoat this disaster," Lewrie observed. "What a shitten mess."

"Oh, don't be such a Cassandra," David sighed. "Once Graves gets his fleet in any sort of order, he'll turn about and come back into the bay, and where will de Grasse be then?"

"The only reason they harvested Cassandra's liver is because she was always right," Lewrie said, grinning. "Keep that in mind, my lad."

"I love you dearly, Alan, but there are times when you have absolutely no faith in our superiors," David replied, withholding most of his vexation. "If you weren't so jaundiced in your outlook, you'd fare all the better. Think on this: there's a clutch of French transports in that bay, most likely without decent escorts, what with de Grasse and de Barras off ahead of Admiral Graves. We could snap one or two of them up tonight on our way in."

"What if Symonds and his frigates have already done so?" Alan countered. "They might not have left much for us. At least, for once, I hope they haven't."

"God, you're hopeless," David grumped.

"But still alive and prospering," Alan retorted.

The seas had begun to rise once they got in soundings. They reduced sail bit by bit as it got darker and darker, so that not even the faintest reflection of the setting sun would gleam from the upper yards. Just before entering the black channel near midnight, they even brailed up the main course to reduce the chance of fire if they were intercepted by a lurking French vessel. They then went to quarters.

Not a light showed above the gangways, and the slow-match in the tubs by each gun was shielded from sight and the gunports still were tightly closed so they would not give themselves away.

"Ships in the bay, sir!" The message was passed down from the topmast, from the lone lookout to the maintop to the quarterdeck staff. "Ridin' lights aburnin'!"

"Three men to each gun, excess crews stand easy amidships," Mister Gwynn the gunner ordered softly. "Be ready to leap to it on either beam."

"Lewrie?" A disembodied voice called from the quarterdeck. Lewrie recognized it as Railsford's.

"Aye, sir."

"Do you go forward and remind the boy at the belfry to ring no bells but only turn the half-hour glass at the change of watch." Railsford thought a moment as it neared midnight. "Then take charge of the fo'c's'le."

"Aye, aye, sir."

He went forward, stumbling over men and gun tackle in the stygian darkness until he reached the belfry at the break of the fo'c's'le, where one of the ship's boys stood by the bell.

"You ring that damned thing and the first lieutenant'll have your head off," Lewrie said. "Turn the watch glass, hour glass and all when the small glass runs out, but no bells."

The other two were peering almost eyeball-close to see when the last of the sand ran out of the half-hour glass and did not answer, but only snuffled in anticipation. Alan went on up to the fo'c's'le and the carronade gun crews, making sure the slow-match for the pair of short-ranged "smashers" was safely out of sight on the gun deck first.

"Sitwell," he whispered into the gloom.

"'Ere, Mister Lewrie."

"Stand easy."

"Aye, sir."

Once on the foredeck, Alan could see much better in the night, and the assembly of anchored ships ahead of them were quickly evident by their riding lights in the taffrail lanterns. There seemed enough ships there for a couple of brigades of troops, perhaps enough supplies for a full season of campaigning. The French were in the Chesapeake to stay, certainly. And where they were, there would be Rebel units as well.

"Sitwell, send a man aft to the quarterdeck and request a glass," Alan said. "Neither of the lookouts has one up here."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The hand returned via the gangways with a day telescope instead of one of the precious night glasses. It was better than nothing, but did not gather the light as well. At least I don't have to look at everything upside down and backwards, Lewrie thought, extending the tube and raising it to his eye. Expecting some kind of guard ship at the mouth of the main channel that led to the precious merchantmen, he looked instead off to either side of the bows for a darker, harder shadow in the blackness. Even a rowed cutter could give the game away, and if there were indeed French warships in the bay, it would summon one of them up in a moment.

"Summat ta starboard, sir," one of the bow lookouts exclaimed in a harsh whisper. "Looks like a ship, sir, four points off the bow."

Alan swivelled about and laid the telescope on the man's shoulder to let his arm guide his eye. "Yes, it's a ship, alright, under tops'ls and jibs only. Going away?"

"Cain't tell, sir."

"Sitwell, send a man aft. Enemy ship to starboard, four points off the bow."

"Aye, Mister Lewrie."

Within minutes the messenger was back, a little out of breath from making two trips to the quarterdeck in as many minutes. Even before he could lean back on something to rest, Alan was snapping fingers for him again.

"Run and tell the captain the ship to starboard is slipping aft and appears to be going away. She's six points off the bow now."

"Aye, aye, sor!" the man gasped.

The minutes passed agonizingly slowly as the French guard ship went her unwary way further off toward the Middle Ground and the north end of the ship channel until she was lost in the blackness, her slight wake not even discernible any longer against the pattern of the few cat's paws.

"Guard boat, sir," the lookout called, "dead ahead. A cutter o' some kind, Mister Lewrie."

"Sitwell, pass it on."

"Maple," Sitwell hissed. "Go aft an' repeat the message."

"Agin, Mister Sitwell?" the now weary man complained. There was a meaty sound much resembling a bare foot connecting with someone's nether anatomy and the messenger staggered off along the gangways once more.

Alan could make out the enemy, a large cutter with a single mast and a gaff sail and jib winged out for a reach across the wind. She was crossing left to right ahead of them, perhaps two cables off, but Desperate was slowly falling down on her and it would take a crew of blind men to miss seeing her!

"Anything to larboard?" he asked.

"Nothin' yet, Mister Lewrie," the other lookout replied.

"Sitwell, another man aft. The cutter is heading north towards our starboard, about two cables off at right angles."