The French Admiral

"Aye, sir."

They could feel Desperate alter course slightly a few minutes later, angling to larboard closer to the coast, where she would be merely another dark shadow against the hulking darkness of Cape Henry and the shore of the bay, while the cutter went blithely on without spotting them.

"By God, we're in the anchorage," Alan muttered. "Too close in for anything but rowing boats. Everyone watch the surface close in."

Desperate wore to starboard, altering course again as she got too close into the shore, probably at Mister Monk's insistence. They were now closing in on those tempting transports that slumbered with only an anchor watch, thinking themselves protected in a secure harbor. Hands came forward to brail the forecourse to reduce their ship's top-hamper, lessening the chance that anyone would spot her. With the taffrail lanterns throwing long glimmering troughs of reflections on the sea, they could now spot any oared guard boat rowing about the transports much more easily, could catch those flashes from oar looms and the splashes they made. It did indeed look as though they might have some of the enemy as prizes before morning!

Anchored tantalizingly close, the French transport fleet looked like a small seaport town with all its street lighting burning in a peaceful evening. Further beyond the transports, the shore was also lit up with the campfires of a newly landed army, adding to the impression of a town.

Desperate took in all her sails, laboriously reloaded her guns with grapeshot and langridge instead of solid shot to repel any boat expeditions that might want to return the favor on her, and hoisted out the boarding nettings. The nets were hoisted loose and sloppy from the ends of the course yards and cro'jack yard on the mizzen to prevent easy entry over her bulwarks by enemy sailors intent on her capture, and draped in unseamanly bights so that no one scaling the nettings could count on any sort of firm foot or handhold before he was picked off or skewered by the men on Desperate's decks. Finally, the boats were led around from astern and the first lieutenant given parties of men for each boat to form a cutting-out expedition against the nearest French transport.

Lieutenant Peck, the marine officer, joined Railsford in the place of honor, along with half his platoon of marines, four to each of the boats. Cottle took charge of the captain's gig, with six hands and a steady quartermaster's mate in command. Railsford took the barge, Avery the cutter and Alan the jolly boat; only Carey remained aboard ship along with the older and less spry hands who could not be expected to scramble up a ship's side in the perfect darkness and continue on into unfamiliar rigging to put sail on a prize.

Railsford's barge led the short parade of four; the night was so black without even a sliver of moon that it was hard to see the boat next in line unless they were almost touching. The hands stroked as softly as they could, the rowports muffled with old tarpaulin or wornout sail scraps. The natty white-painted oar looms had been hastily daubed with tar to lessen their gleam. The stroke was slow to cut down on any splashes that might be seen as reflections from the enemy's riding lights, and to save the men's strength for battle. The making tide did as much to propel them forward as their efforts at the oars.

Alan sat on the sternmost thwart of the jolly boat, tiller bar under his arm, and peered intently into the blackness. The rumble and thump of the oars was maddeningly loud, and he licked his lips continually in concern and a little bit of fear as well. It was not merely the unseasonal chill of the night that made him shiver this time. It was the first time he ad ever been on a cutting-out, and he was on the water in the dark, remembering once more that he could not swim. Under the circumstances, he could not even cry out for aid if he fell into the water, but would most likely be expected to drown in perfect silence. Sitting in the open boat was bad enough, but worry about how he would gain the deck of a French ship in the night was uppermost. Once he reached the dubious safety of an enemy deck with steel in hand to fight whatever presented itself was almost a happy afterthought.

What if there are still troops aboard, like the Ephegenie? he wondered, gnawing his cheek unconsciously. We could end up tumbled back over the side at bayonet point. Given a choice of being skewered or shot, I'd take either one over drowning.

More to the point, had Desperate been spotted despite all their caution, and were they now rowing into a well-laid trap which would result in many deaths, most significantly his own?

He noticed that he had clamped his jaws so tightly shut to avoid chattering teeth that his mouth was beginning to ache, and though he was not exerting himself at an oar, he was breathing about as hard as the two men nearest him.

What the devil is the matter with me? he chid himself. It's not like me to be so skittish. Of course, it's my first time for this sort of expedition, but that don't signify. Mayhap it's because I've seen enough in the last two years to know there is something to fear. What if I get killed?

He felt the muscles of his back twitch at the thought and had to shake himself to settle down. I'll try to go game, of course, like a gentleman should. But not to tussle with a wench again, or lift a bottle or two—God, how hellish. Wonder what the world would be like without me?

Probably much better off, he decided after a moment of rueful cogitation, and smiled in spite of his feelings and the circumstances. Lucy Beauman would weep over him until some other swaggering buck came along, which might not be too long a period of mourning, if he knew anything about impressionable young tits like her. No one in London, certainly; he was already dead and gone to anyone he had known there, anyway. David Avery and little Carey might miss him, a few former shipmates from his first ship Ariadne, such as Keith Ashburn and… no, the rest of them had hated his overachieving guts, and it had been pretty much mutual. Treghues? The captain might do a short hornpipe of delight before he remembered what a fine Christian he was and put his solemn Sunday face back on.

A faint sound intruded on Lewrie's musings; the sound of one of his oarsmen moaning softly, a moan of the truly lost with each oar stroke.

"Just who is that ass who's fucking the manger goat?" he snapped, unsticking his tightly lashed jaw muscles.

There was a soft titter of relief from all his hands as their own fears were momentarily forgotten in disgust for some faceless and nameless shipmate more fearful even than they, someone they could despise most heartily because he could not control his fear like a stalwart English seaman, and they could.

"Ecstasy with the French camp followers will have to wait," Alan said, shifting his numb posterior to a more comfortable position on the hard thwart.

"They'd bring women, sor?" someone asked from up forward with an interested gasp of surprise.

"Who knows," Alan answered wryly. "They're Frogs, ain't they? Do be quiet now, and mind your stroke."

A few moments later, they almost went up the stern of the next boat in line, Avery's cutter. The thought of women carried aboard a French ship had indeed lengthened and strengthened their work at the oars.

"Damn you, Lewrie," Avery hissed. "Ease off, there!"

But they were almost at their destination. Out of the black night they could hear wavelets lapping, could hear the faint groan of ship timbers as a vessel rode to her anchors not far from them. This vessel's taffrail lanterns were not burning; only a faint glow from her binnacle by the unmanned wheel as lit and barely threw the loomhint above her bulwarks, as coastal navigation light or the glow of a coastal town will appear just below the horizon. All four boats drifted into an ungainly pod with upraised oars pointed skyward, trying to fend off with their hands quietly.

"Forrester, take the stern," Railsford said in a whisper as they drifted closer together. "Cut her stern cable and guard her watch."

"Aye, sir," Forrester piped.

"Silence, damn you! Avery, do you take the starboard main chains and go for the wheel. I shall go to larboard and send my people aloft to set sail. Lewrie, do you take the fo'c's'le and cut her bow cables. Do not any of you load a musket or pistol until you are on deck. Use cold steel if you have to put anyone down, and try to do it quietly."

"Give way, gently," Lewrie ordered after the other boats began to drift away far enough to re-employ the oars. He put the tiller bar over to steer alongside the French ship in Railsford's tiny wake. They both ducked under the jutting jib-boom and bowsprit, ghosted to a crawl in a tight turn just under the rails of the beakhead, eyeing the loose bights of line from the brailed up spritsail as a possible way up.

"Hook on," Alan mouthed almost silently. "Boat your oars."

Railsford's boat faded out of view into the night and Alan waited, not sure exactly for what. The sound of Railsford scrambling up the side? Or would that be too late? A response from the sleeping French?

"Let's go," he whispered finally, after the tension began to grow on him to almost unbearable proportion. His men sprang into action, going up hand over hand by the bight of line to the beakhead rails, using the bulge of the gunwale termination as a footstep. Alan had no choice but to try and follow clumsily. He was weighed down with a pair of those awfully inaccurate Sea Pattern pistols in his jacket pockets, a cutlass on a baldric over his shoulder, and his dirk hung by a belt frog from his waistband. If I fall in, I'll sink like a stone, he told himself fearfully.

He stepped on the bow of the jolly boat, hauled himself upward with both hands on the bight of spritsail brace until he could hook one claw over the lowest beakhead rail, which was slimy with night damp and the excreta left behind by French sailors. He almost lost his grip as he used the rails for a backward-leaning ladder, but there was a horny hand on his wrist and a great tug that pulled him up and over the rails with ease to the grated platform atop the cutwater.

"Las' shit that turd'll drop, sir," a harsh voice whispered to him with great glee, indicating the Frenchman who was sprawled ungainly like a sack of scrap canvas at his feet. The man had his slop trousers down by his ankles and had obviously had his throat most efficiently and silently cut as he sat musing at his ease.

"Jesus!" Alan gaped in awe, feeling like a very green and unblooded cod's-head at the sight, which he had not expected. "Any alarm yet?"

"No, sir. Caulkin' like lumber, sir."

"Load your musket," Alan ordered. "Watch my back while I load my pistols."

He had already tamped down powder, ball, and wad into the barrels but had left the pans empty and the hammers full down. Fumbling for powder flask around his neck, he snapped open the frizzens of first one gun and then the next to prime his pistols, dribbling powder into the pans. He could not see what he was doing, but hoped that he was being accidentally liberal. He shut the frizzens, drew the hammers back to half-cock, and stuffed them into his jacket pockets once more. He drew his cutlass, looped the short lanyard around his wrist and touched the man with him on the shoulder to let him know that he was ready.

They advanced to the outer doors to the bulkhead roundhouses where petty officers took their ease when called by nature. There was no one there. Passing through the bulkhead, they emerged on the fo'c's'le. In the faint light of the fo'c's'le belfry lantern, they could see that their men had preceded them and had slit the throats of several Frenchmen sleeping on deck in preference to the close air below decks. Their blood gleamed wet and black in the gloom.

"We've got her," the man said in triumph, baring his teeth in a wide grin and turning to beam at Lewrie, who wasn't sure of anything at that moment.

Then they heard a shout from aft, where Forrester's people should be ascending to the poop deck to take charge of the stream anchor cable and the officers' sleeping quarters, where the small arms would be kept.

"Qui va la?" the shout came.

"Pont de la gard!" a voice called back full of confidence.

"Oh, you unspeakable, ignorant ass!" Alan hissed.

"Merde, alors, c'est I'Anglais!" someone in command screamed. "Aux armes!"

A pistol discharged and somewhere in the dark a man who had been the target—French or English, it was impossible to tell—yelped in agony as he was hit, followed by a large splash.

"At 'em, Desperates!" Railsford bellowed over the sudden alarm and bustle.

"Get that anchor cable cut and set one of their jibs," Alan told the man with him. "Bow party to me. Head aft by the starboard gangway." He knew that Railsford would be on the larboard side, Avery aft by the main-chains to starboard and trying to take the wheel from the awakened French watch party, and most in need of assistance. There were Frenchmen everywhere, as though they had stirred up a hornet's nest, as men who had been asleep on deck in hammocks or bedding on deck rose up and took in hand what weapons they could.

There was a hammock slung before Lewrie, and a man trying to exit the cocoonlike sack. Before he could get one foot on deck, Alan swung his cutlass with all his force and took the man across the neck and chest, bringing forth a howl of Pain as the man tumbled out of his hammock to the deck to twitch and thrash in his death throes.

Several sparks gleamed in the night, then came the ragged crash of muskets or pistols and more cries of anguish. A marine loomed up in front of Lewrie, bayonet lowered and blood in his eyes, howling some wordless shout as he drove for his ribs.

"English, dammit!" Alan cried, forced to step aside from the glittering bayonet point, and the musket shoved between his arm and his side as he ended up close enough to count the marine's remaining teeth. "Stop that!"

"Oh, 'scuse me, Mister Lewrie, sir!" the marine said, once more in possession of his faculties, spinning about on his heel and plunging aft into the fight once more without a backward glance, leaving Alan shaking with the closeness and stupidity of his near-death.

"Alan," Avery called, coming out of the night with his uniform facings flashing. "Are you hurt?"

"Scared so bad I wouldn't trust mine own arse with a fart," Alan said. "That damned bullock almost knackered me."

"Well, this is turning into a bloody shambles!" Avery spat, wiping his cutlass blade on the swinging hammock that had lately contained a man.

There was a deep boom off in the night, a cannon fired as an alarm to wake the other ships to the raiders in their midst. Lights began to appear on the distant decks as crews came up on deck to peer into the night to see where the danger was.

For the moment, anyway, the fighting was over, for the small French civilian merchant crew had surrendered, and those few who had been below were being chivvied on deck at sword point. Very few people really had been killed or hurt. They were not paid to take the risks of naval seamen and had caved in almost before they had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes, the only resistance being the anchor watch around the wheel and binnacle and those mates that had gotten on deck from the officers' cabins aft.

"She's empty," Railsford told them as he came up on the gangways. "They've already unloaded her. Looks like she was carrying troops. Nothing of value. Who was that idiot who said pont of the guard?"

"Somebody aft, sir," Avery said.

"Forrester, I'll be bound," Railsford said. "Only a perfect little Latin student could cling to pontis instead of bateau."

"Ship or boat was classis, sir," Avery advised. "Pontis was bridge."

"And fuck you too, Avery," Railsford growled, going aft to the men by the wheel.

"If the truth be known, Avery," Alan drawled, wiping and sheathing his own cutlass, "classis was fleet; navis was ship, and boat would be a linter, cymba, scapha or, in rare usages, navicula."

"Do tell," Avery snapped.

"And to compound the error, pons was the singular, pontis the plural…" Alan went on, as though nothing had happened of any consequence to their chances for prize-money, and escape.

"Yes, Mr. Dorne," Avery cried, with great exasperation. He walked away.

"Cables're free!" The shout came from the fo'c's'le.

"Avery, Lewrie," Railsford called. "Attend to getting the ship under way!"

The foredeck party had already gotten a jib hoisted and had let fly the spritsail under the jib-boom to get a forward way on their prize so the rudder could get a bite and allow them steerage-way. Alan led three men aloft onto the foremast to cut loose the harbor gaskets from the foretops'l for more speed. Before they could even gain the foretop, however, the hull drummed to several cannon balls fired from the ships to their lee.

"Warship off the starboard bow, sir!" the foredeck party called.

There was something out there, something not too big—another of those damned cutters, perhaps, or a sloop of war.

"We're in the quag now, sir," one of the hands told Lewrie as they gathered in the foretop ready to scuttle out the tops'l footropes.

Small as the enemy might be, they would have artillery which could punch through the frail scantlings of a merchantman, and a crew of trained men ready to board and retake the ship from them.

By God, I'm beginning to wonder if we can do anything right any more, Alan cursed to himself.

"Burn her!" Railsford announced. "Lash the wheel and set her alight. By God, they'll not have her!"

"Back to the deck," Alan ordered. "Daniels, secure our jolly boat!"

"Aye, sir!" the man replied. "We're gonna be needin' it."

They scrambled back down to the deck and began to gather up anything they could find that was flammable, which on a ship was considerable. Within minutes they had a fine little fire going below decks in the waist, made from the straw bedding the soldiers had used before being disembarked.

"Lash the wheel!" Railsford yelled. "Make sure we leave no one behind, now. Into the boats and abandon ship!"

"Anyone hurt from our party?" Lewrie asked his most senior hand by the larboard foremast chains.

"All here, sir," the petty officer informed him. "Even the marines is here!"

"Into the boat, then, hurry," Alan said, looking over his shoulder at how the fire had spread already and was beginning to leap above the gangways to gnaw at the rigging and the base of the masts. He was last to leave the deck after looking around for anyone he recognized still standing or left wounded and discarded in a dark corner. Before he spun away, the French warship had already opened fire with her bow-chasers, and one iron ball slammed hard into the merchantman's hull and flung broken wood everywhere, making him duck and scramble over the side. With a slashed forebrace for a manrope, he lowered himself close to the waiting jolly boat and jumped the last few feet, landing roughly on some of his men who were struggling to ship their oars, making them all curse and grumble.

"Shove off," he ordered, stumbling over their legs and feet to his place at the tiller. "Out oars, there! Give way all!"

As long as they were in the lee of the burning prize, they were safe from the warship's attentions, but that situation could not last long.

The ship was now being pounded to matchwood by the French sloop of war, and was well alight but still under way heading west on the making tide and the slight wind for the rest of the anchorage, while their hope of rescue lay east. Within a moment they would lie exposed on the open waters to the guns of the sloop of war, and would be hopelessly vulnerable targets. Taking Railsford's course as a fine example, Alan steered for the darkness to the south and the black shore beyond the other ships.

"Gawd, they got guts, sir," Daniels said in awe, pointing aft. When Alan looked over his shoulder he could see that the sloop of war, a fine brig-rigged ship of at least fourteen guns, had come about to run down on the burning merchantman, either to nudge her out of the way or put a crew aboard to put her helm over to steer her away from the rest of the threatened transports.

"May they roast in hell for their pains," Alan said, but it did give them a chance to escape, which Railsford took at once, waving an arm and pointing them back east toward where Desperate was anchored, away from the transports and the possible guard boats that would be gathering to intercept them.

"Row like Satan was after you!" Alan encouraged. "Put your backs into it like you never did before."

They tried, he gave them credit for that, but it was a hard row. The tide was against them and splash and dip as they might, sending the boat surging forward with each stroke, they seemed to make no progress at all. He was almost despairing of them keeping up such a furious pace when a gun discharged somewhere and sent at least a six-pound ball humming over them, close enough to wind them with its passage and splash a cable off.

"Who goes there?" an English voice called into the night.

"Desperate!" Railsford shouted back. "Ahoy, the ship!"

"Come alongside!"

"Thank Christ," Alan breathed. "Easy all."

Desperate had raised her anchors at the first sign of alarm to come to their rescue, since nearly a full third of her crew was off on the raid. She loomed out of the dark, a hard shadow still showing no lights and let her boats nuzzle up to her by her chainwales and entry ports even as she continued to gather way.

"Quickly, now!" Treghues's voice could be heard urging them from the quarterdeck. "Lead the boats astern after the people are on deck. Mister Monk, lay her nor'-nor'-west. Mister Toliver, hands to the braces to wear ship. Mister Gwynn, we can use some of your gunners on the sheets and the braces."

Life on the Desperate could be drab and dull, the food could approach swill at times and Treghues could be an unpredictable martinet, but every man jack was exceedingly delighted to get back on board.

"I shall expect your report in the morning, Mister Railsford," the captain said as the ship turned onto her new course and the confusion of overworked hands and frightened arrivals began to sort themselves out to their duty stations. "What a muddle!"

Lewrie went to the larboard gangway for a moment before joining his gunners in the waist. The French prize that had almost been theirs was now turned crabwise and though still burning fiercely was no longer any danger to her consorts, some of which had cut their cables in their eagerness to avoid being set on fire. However, the sloop of war was heading their way.

There were other warships to seaward of them, but of no immediate concern, and by the light of the fire they could espy no ship of any strength that could beat up to windward on the light breeze against that tide to reach them before dawn.

"Mister Gwynn, draw grape from the larboard battery and reload with solid shot," Railsford called from aft. "We shall be having company soon and must give him a proper greeting."

Alan dropped down into the waist and supervised his gunners as the bags of langridge and grape were wormed from the barrels and tossed aside.

Gun captains rolled nine-pounder balls around the deck to find the most perfectly cast that would fly true when fired, then had them rammed down the muzzles and tamped down. Arms raised in the air to indicate each gun's readiness.

"Run out yer guns," Gwynn ordered, and the crews hauled on the side tackles to trundle their charges across the slightly canted deck to the port sills where the carriages thumped against the hull. Side tackle was laid out for smooth recoil with no snags; train tackles were overhauled as well.

"Prime yer guns." Gun captains reached down with prickers to poke holes through the serge cartridge bags. They inserted powder-filled goose quills into the touchholes and stood by with their slow matches.

"Wots 'e got, Mister Lewrie?" the nearest gun captain asked.

"Six or seven guns per broadside, six-pounders most like; that's what they felt like when they were shooting at the prize," he answered.

"Wuz she worth much, sir?" another man asked.

"Empty. Usual Frog trash—filth and no cargo."

To get close enough to make his lighter guns do damage, the French commander had to beat up to them close-hauled on the starboard tack. Since Desperate was still making for the mouth of the York River, that meant that the French sloop would spend long minutes almost bows on to them, hoping for a convergence. But this would leave her open for raking fire on her own bow. And when the range was about two cables, and the target barely recognizable in the darkness now that the burning prize had burned out or sunk, this was what Desperate proceeded to give her.

"As you bear… fire!"

One at a time, starting with the larboard carronade on the fo'c's'le, the guns barked harshly, flinging themselves backwards to the center line and stabbing long amber flames into the night. The hands threw themselves on their artillery, sponging out the barrels, inserting new cartridges, ramming down fresh shot, and running out, as well drilled as clever lit-tie German clockwork toys freshly wound up.

The French sloop of war replied, aiming high as was their practice, but the angle of convergence was getting more and more acute and her guns could not bear, so most of the storm passed overhead and to sternward on the first broadside.

He'll not cut us off, Alan decided, seeing the way his own ship was headreaching on the Frenchman; he'll have to haul his wind or pass astern of us, and we'll get clean away.

The shadow of the enemy vessel did lengthen as she turned, seeing that she was not fast enough to intercept Desperate. But as she did so, she got off another broadside, and this one brought all her guns to bear. There was a loud crash from aloft, and things began to rain down.

"Jesus Christ!" A gun captain yelped in alarm as he was almost beheaded by a heavy halyard block that crashed to the deck beside him. Rope snaked down to droop over the guns as braces, stays and sail-tending lines were torn loose.

"Look out below amidships!"

The main tops'l yard came swinging down like a scythe to smash into the larboard gangway, scattering the brace tenders and sheetmen, who had to dive for their lives.

"As you bear… fire!" Gwynn yelled. "Lewrie, take three men and cut that raffle away. Save the yard if ya can. We'll not see its like in the Chesapeake."

"Aye, sir." Leaving a party from the gangway to anchor the free end, he went aloft to see what was holding it and found it resting on the edge of the maintop, snagged by its starboard rigging into the shrouds. The topmast and topgallant mast above it were leaning drunkenly over the starboard side, ready to let go themselves.

"Yeoman," he called down, "work the butt end forrard by the shrouds and begin lashing down." He turned to the bosun's mate, Weems, who had come aloft with him. "We'll have to get a gantline on this end and just lash her to the shrouds. She'll lean there alright for now, do you not think?"

"Aye, sir," Weems replied, sending a man further aloft to haul in a surviving parrel and preventer backstay to secure the upper end of the yard. "But, that up there…"

"Topmast is shattered halfway up, looks like," Alan agreed.

"Might save it an' fish it. Topgallant mast, though. Don't know what's keepin' it aloft as it is. 'Bout ready ta let go."

There was another broadside from Desperate, and a ragged cheer which made them turn to look. They had the French sloop of war at roughly musket shot now, half a cable away, and had just punched some holes into her, making her stagger in the water as though she had run aground on an uncharted reef. Her foremast leaned over drunkenly and she began to slow down, now unable to keep up with Desperate even on a parallel course.

"We'll need more men," Alan said, removing his baldric and cutlass, unloading his pockets of the weight of the pistols, which were still at half cock. He eased the hammers forward for safety, laid everything in the top platform and gritted his teeth to make the ascent to the topmast to see how bad the damage was. It was expected of him, God help him.

There was a great groan of tortured pine, and the damaged masts leaned over to starboard even more, the topmast beginning to split down its length as the weight of the topgallant mast tore loose from whatever last shred had been holding it.

"'Ware below!" Weems boomed.

Alan had no choice but to slide back down the topmast he had been scaling until he fetched up at the lower mast cap and the trestletrees, clinging for dear life to avoid being pitched out of the rigging or torn asunder if the mast split off at the cap. With a final shriek, the entire topgallant mast and half the topmast split off and went over the side to raise a great splash of water alongside, and Alan exclaimed in terror's standing rigging and trailing rigging slashed about him like coach whips.

"I'm sorry, I quit!" he shouted, not caring who heard him. "I've done just about bloody enough tonight, thank you! if you want to kill me, you'll find me in my hammock below decks!"

"Damme, we've lost it!" Weems cried, in anguish at the hurt to his precious rigging and masts. He scrambled up to the cap with Lewrie and surveyed what little he could see in the night. "Not a shred left of it. Ripped every stay, every shroud right out. We'll be the next week makin' repairs, an' where'll we get spare spars enough, I'm wonderin'."

"I am well," Alan told him, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Thank you very much for asking, Mister Weems!"

"Goddamn French bastards, the poxy snail-eatin' sons-abitches!" Weems continued to lament the scarred perfection of his masts, shaking an angry fist at the French sloop of war that was, as Alan finally noted, being pounded to pieces by Desperate's heavier fire. Her own damaged foremast went by the board over the farther side, and must have still been attached, for she stewed about as though snagged by an anchor cable, which threw such a shock to her remaining rigging that Lewrie saw for the first time a ship slung about so violently that she indeed had all "the sticks" ripped right out of her, her other mast crashing down in ruin to cover her decks in timber, rope, and canvas.

"Serves ya right, ya duck-fuckers!" Weems howled.

"May I go down to the deck now, Mister Weems?" Alan asked, picking a rather large splinter out of his palm from the shattered topmast.

"Aye, nothin' left doin' aloft, not on this mast. Hurt yeself. did ya? Best let the surgeon see ta that. Might get a tot of rum outen it if ya talks sweet to him," Weems said.

That's the best offer I've had all day, Alan decided.

CHAPTER 5

Until dawn Desperate made her way painfully to the anchorage at the mouth of the York River. There had been few men injured in the fight with the French sloop of war, even fewer in the abortive attempt to take the merchantman; even so, Mr. Dorne and his surgeon's mates had been busy until that time sewing up cuts and scrapes, taking off an arm here that had been shattered, amputating a leg above the knee on a young gunner who had had the bone smashed into permanent ruin by a musket ball. The low tide slacked and the sea breeze died just before first light, so that the frigate was for a time becalmed, drifting for a piece slowly sternward out to sea once more before she anchored. Once the land breeze sprang up, she could find enough steerage-way to work close-hauled up the York to join her sister ships already in the bay.

"Now, damme, will you look at that," Railsford muttered as he stood by the taffrail, peering into Lynnhaven Bay with a telescope.

Alan was swaying by the binnacle and compass, ready to pass out with fatigue. He had been up all night, like all the hands, tending to what hurts to the ship could be put right immediately, and at that moment could have cheerfully murdered someone for hot tea or coffee. Railsford's words brought him out of his stupor enough to join him at the rail.

"There's that Frog transport we burned out last night. And look you at what the others were," Railsford spat, almost beside himself.

Alan took the heavy tube in both hands and applied it to his right eye, the weight of the instrument making his weary limbs shudder.

"Coasters!" Alan exclaimed. "Potty little oyster boats and such!"

"And not a full dozen of 'em," Railsford moaned. "We were tricked."

"They looked like ships last night, sir. All lit up and chiming the watch bells."

"At the least, we burned out the only decent ship they had and put the fear of God into a French sloop of war." Railsford shrugged, taking the telescope back. "They must have carried all those troops in the line-of-battle ships and larger frigates, crammed 'em in any old how. God, if we could have just caught 'em at sea before they landed, we could have done 'em into fried mutton. So many men aboard, in each other's way…"

"So, except for that sloop of war and a cutter or two, there are no French present as of yet, sir," Alan said, wondering in his fogged mind what that might mean, if anything. The effort was almost beyond his power to reason any longer.

"If we had but known, we could have had all of those scows!"

"And I almost got killed for nothing," Alan grumbled half aloud, a sentiment that Railsford either pretended to ignore at that ungodly early hour or actually did not hear from sheer exhaustion. The first lieutenant scratched his chin and Alan could hear his fingers rasping in his stubbly beard.

"Mister Monk, would you be so good, sir, to take charge of the deck for a moment while I apprise the captain of something urgent?" Railsford asked.

"Aye, sir," Monk drawled, his face drawn with fatigue and looking a lot older than his 35-odd years.

Railsford left Alan the telescope, which he rested on the taffrail for a while, reminding himself that he must remember to stay awake enough to not drop it over the side from nerveless fingers.

The last time I was this exhausted, he thought, I'd walked ten miles before dawn, ridden cross-country with those damned county boys all day, partied and played balum-rancum with a pack of whores all that night, and had to ride home the next morning. And that was a whole lot more fun than last night!

He went to stand by Monk and used the telescope to check out the anchorage up the York. There was the frigate Charon, the sloop of war Guadeloupe, a smaller sloop of war—little more than a ketch, really—the Bonetta, and a small gaggle of gunboats. They looked as peaceful as Portsmouth Harbor on a Sunday morning, and he bitterly wondered what they had been doing while the French had been landing their armament.

The York peninsula between the York and the James was pretty low country, much of a piece with most of the American seaboard that he had seen in his few trips to the continent. The land was higher towards the narrows of the York, up where the little town was reputed to be, and the bluffs ended up being quite steep, but not particularly high. There was some high ground of much the same sort on the Gloucester side, which rapidly tapered off into salt marshes and low ground the further east one could go past the narrows.

"See that house yonder?" Monk said. "Moore's House. Rather fine landmark."

"Where is the town?" Alan asked.

"Around the bend from us, right at the narrows. Not much of a place, by my reckonin', ner anybody else's," Monk added. "Deep water just offshore, mayhap thirty-five ta forty fathom, 'bout a cable out. Closer in, ya got only six fathom, but that's right under the bluffs an' at low tide, too. Lotta tobacco comes outa here. Even outa the Gloucester side. Virginia's famous fer it. If the army ain't burned it fer spite, I'll get me some ta chew."

"Looks pretty low over there, sir," Alan noted on the north shore.

"Aye, once past Gaines Point goin' back ta sea, ya get inta some salt marshes and swamps an' bottom land—Guinea Neck, they calls it. They's farms in there, even so. Corn, tobacco, an' such like. Some pines fer pitch an' tar an' board."

"So the scour of the tide, and the current of the river, lay to the suthr'd, sir, below the bluffs and runs sou'-west along the shoals," Alan said. "With Moore's House on your larboard bow…"

"Aye, so it does. Keep the House ta yer larboard, 'bout five points an' no closer, ya'll not tangle with the shoals, an' you'll have smooth sailin' right inta the York and firm anchor. 'Til the tide turns, o'course."

Treghues emerged on deck, lips pressed tight together in obvious dislike for the bad news Railsford had given him about their wasted effort of the night and how badly they had been fooled. That ended the lesson from Mister Monk on how to get into the York.

"I have the deck, Mister Monk," Railsford said, coming to stand by him to leeward of the wheel, giving the windward, now the landward, side of the deck to the captain. "Stations for anchoring, Mister Coke. We shall require the captain's gig led round to the entry port as soon as the hook is on the bottom, Mister Weems."

"Passin' the word fer the captain's cox'n!"

In contrast to everyone else's appearance, Treghues was freshly shaved and washed, his linen clean and white and his coat brushed free of lint and dust.

You're hating it, Alan thought. You're going to have to tell the bad news about the battle to Symonds and Cornwallis. And admit you failed last night. I must be awesomely tired—I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard!

Still, Alan felt that it was a lesson. A landed army obviously meant large transports, so that was what Treghues wished to see and that was what he thought he had seen. He had risked the ship for nothing, and if they had succeeded in getting into the anchorage and burning all those coasters and local scows, they would have been trapped by the guard ships, including the one frigate they had seen just at dawn up the James, and Desperate would have been destroyed for an exchange that would not have made a decent stake at The Cocoa Tree on a throw of the dice. Not only was Treghues mistaken about the transports, he was mistaken in wanting to attack them at all. Their primary duty had been to deliver despatches, and they had almost lost the chance to do that as well.

Maybe he feels like he has to prove something, to make up for a bad admiral or a lost battle, Alan thought. By God, it's one thing to make the best of what Providence drops in your lap, but quite another to try and force the issue and make your own luck.

"Stations for wearing ship!" Treghues called. "Prepare to anchor!"

Desperate plodded on into the tiny fleet gathering and rounded up into the wind, backing her tops'ls to bring her to a complete halt, at which point the best bower splashed into the bottom and she began to stream back from her mooring. The side boys and officers assembled as Treghues went over the side, saluting amid the squeal of bosun's pipes until their captain's head had dropped below the level of the upper deck.

"Not much to the place, is there?" Avery said, walking over to Lewrie by the entry port which now faced the small town of York. "I hear it aspires to be called York Town, but York Village is more like it."

"I've seen better villages back home, even on Sunday." Lewrie smiled. "Looks half deserted."

"You'd leave, too, if you were about to be stuck into the middle of an army encampment surrounded by the French," David said. "By God, we shall get shore leave here, see if we don't. It looks so damned dull that an entire troop of devils couldn't raise enough mischief to wake a country parson."

"I don't know, David," Alan replied, feeling that odd dread come over him once more whenever he was in close proximity to the place. "I think there will be some fine mischief raised before we see the last of it."

Three more British frigates came in from seaward during the day; Medea, Iris, and Richmond, bearing despatches both from Graves still far out to sea and from Clinton in New York. They had been sent in just a few hours after Desperate; evidently Graves had had more to say, or had forgotten some important items in the first place.

Their arrival brought no cheer to the small flotilla anchored in the York; when they had left the fleet, the wind and sea had been getting up, and Terrible was taking so much water in her bilges that Admiral Graves had been considering taking her people off and sinking her. They still had not caught up with the French fleet under de Grasse and showed little sign of really wanting to, with their own ships so badly cut up in their top-hamper. The last bit of bad news was that none of the newly arrived frigates had any spare spars for Desperate. Nor did any of the few ships of worth in the anchorage, so repairs would take longer than they hoped, unless they could find some decent timber ashore and cut it down themselves.

"Take a good tree ta make a new topmast, sir," Coke the bosun told Treghues that afternoon. "Trestletrees on the mainmast top were sprung an' need new timber, crosstrees gone ta kindlin', tops'l yard is saved but needs fishin' with a lighter piece er some flat iron. New royal an' topgallant yard as well, sir, not ta mention a new topgallant mast."

"But the shore fairly bristles with good pine, does it not, Mister Coke?" Treghues said, once more seemingly in good cheer and normal state of his faculties. "We could send a working party ashore to hew what we need."

"Aye, sir," Coke agreed. "But where we'd get the horse teams ta do the draggin', I don't know. Army might have some ta spare."

"Artillery beasts, aye," Treghues said. "Mister Railsford, I would admire if you would go ashore with the bosun and a working party. See Captain Symonds and discover who in the army we need to talk to about getting some help in felling trees with which to make repairs."

"Aye, aye, sir," Railsford said. "How many men, Mister Coke?"

"Carpenter an' his crew, sir, mayhap a dozen more hands ta do the strippin' an haulin', some what knows horses," Coke speculated. "Maybe twenty all told, sir, at best."

"We shall take the barge and cutter," Railsford decided. "You and I, Weems and… Lewrie in the other."

Alan had been standing near enough to hear and Railsford's eye had fallen on him first. Treghues was in another of his more complaisant moods and made no objection.

"Perhaps I should go ashore now, sir, to liaise with the 'lobsters' first," Railsford said. "It is late in the day to organize any aid from shore and select proper trees before dark."

"Aye, my compliments to Captain Symonds," Treghues said. "See him first, and then talk to the army. We shall put the working party to their labors after breakfast."

"Lewrie, get a crew together for the jolly boat and we shall go ashore now."

"Aye, Mister Railsford, sir," Alan said. He hustled up Weems, who quickly got him a boat's crew and led the towed jolly boat around to the entry port.

They put in at one of the town docks, leaving the boat's crew at the landing under a petty officer, a quarter-gunner with strict instructions to avoid trouble, and walked down the dirt street toward the house that had been indicated as the naval shore party's office. The town teemed with troops in various uniforms of green, red, and blue of the various regiments in Cornwallis's army, even the tartans and kilts of either British or Loyalist Highlanders, Carolina Volunteer units, German mercenaries, and regular line units.

"Quite a muddle, sir," Alan observed, pointing at all the men and horses active around the town. "One hopes Lord Cornwallis knows what he is about."

"Our role is not to question, Mister Lewrie," Railsford said, almost rolling drunkenly after spending months on an unstable deck and foxed by the steadiness of the land. "We must obey and… and hang the larger issues."

"Aye, sir," Alan said.

"There is still time to win a victory over the French and the Rebels, Lewrie," Railsford told him. "Were I you, I would try to put the best face on it before the hands and not let them see their officers looking distressed. You shall get in a lot less trouble with the captain if you do. At this moment he needs all the enthusiasm and cheerfulness he can get from his people. He would be most cross with anyone that showed any signs of worry or defeatism. You are already in trouble enough with him."

"Aye, sir," Alan agreed with a humorless laugh. "Too true."

"That is why we attacked those transports last night," Railsford said unexpectedly.

"Sir?"

Railsford went on, mopping his brow with a colored handkerchief against the late-summer heat. "There were larger transports, further up the James River, along with some frigates, as we were later informed. We did, in fact, burn a ship to the waterline. But, more to the point, we did something, an act of retribution to put heart back into the crew so they could feel we could still strike back on an even basis against our enemies. That is why Commander Treghues took the risk. Not for glory-hunting, and not because he is out of his wits, as you believe. A captain must keep his men in their best fettle, not just in victuals or discipline, but in spirit as well, and you had best remember that if you ever hope to gain a commission."

"I see, sir," Alan replied, crestfallen at the implied rebuke.

"A crew that doubts its own abilities is a crew ready to strike the colors at the first broadside, or when they are hard pressed," Railsford said solemnly.

"But what does one do when recent events are so disheartening?" Alan asked. "When there is no way to put a good face on things?"

"Then hope that discipline and pride will be enough," the first lieutenant said with a smile. "We drill their little minds into rote behavior so they respond without thought, calm or tempest, day or night, peace or war. And we appeal to their pride in themselves as Englishmen and as sailors. We appeal to their pride in their own ship, in their Service. Nothing else much matters outside the bulwarks. All this talk of King and Country is so much moonshine when you get right down to it. People facing death or dismemberment don't care much for the so-called 'patriotic' reasons. They die for their shipmates, to go game before their peers."

"So what must we do to keep the men inspired, sir?" Alan asked, seeing what was necessary over the next few days until they could get out to sea once more.

"Hard work will take their minds off things, for one," Railsford told him as they reached the porch of the house in question. "If we did not have serious hurts to mend in Desperate, we would invent some form of labor to keep them busy. Idle hands and idle minds begin to conjure up the worst in the human spirit. Straighten your hat."

They entered the house and conferred briefly with an aide to Captain Symonds. Railsford was given a letter to take to the army headquarters for draft animals and an escort for the next day so they could go beyond the newly dug perimeter fortifications for their timbers. Then they had to walk out into the country beyond the town to seek out the army before dark. They spoke with a major of light infantry, got passed to a colonel named Yorke, finally to a senior officer from the Brigade of Guards named O'Hara, and got their request approved. They would be allotted the use of two horse teams for only two days, the needs of the army for the placing of artillery coming first, and would get some provincials for an escort, all to meet them at the docks at an appointed time the next morning.

"Warm work, sir," Alan said as they made their way back towards town and their waiting boat. "Think we could—"

"No, we cannot," Railsford intoned solemnly. "Did you not get into enough trouble the last time you were ashore?"

"Not of my own making, sir," Alan protested.

"Trouble is your boon companion, Lewrie. You do not have to seek it out; it always finds you. Were we to stop into what Passes for a public house around these parts for a pint, you'd have a brawl going within half an hour."

"Sir!" Alan said, much aggrieved by the accusation, but thinking that the first lieutenant was correct; he had gotten into enough trouble in the past with the most innocent of beginnings. Still, it was pleasing to be thought a bellicose sort of rake-hell by his first officer, for the reputation held no malice from Railsford; rather the opposite in fact.

First light found them once more at the main landing in the town, with two boats full of men and tools, men eager to step ashore, no matter what the reason, after months aboard one ship. They were looking forward to a new face or two, new tales to hear, the possibility of actually touching something green. The work would be no harder than anything required of them aboard the Desperate, perhaps a lot less with horses to do the major hauling once they had felled their choice of trees and stripped them of bark and limbs. It was almost like a picnic outing, complete with rations and drink prepared for later consumption.

They were met by two six-horse gun teams, decent sized horses rather than the usual runty animals found in the Colonies, which had made the huge beasts captured on the Ephegenie so valuable. There were teamsters dressed in the blue coats of the artillery, and a platoon of men in short red infantry jackets with dark blue facings, light infantry of some sort wearing wide-brimmed black hats adorned with a black silk ribbon, bow, and a clump of dark feathers for a plume on the left side of their hats. All of them looked as though they had seen rough service, for the original pristine condition of their uniforms was patched and resewn to orderliness, their white waistcoats and long trousers permanently marred with ground-in dirt, and their lower legs encased in muddy dark gaiters, known as "half spatterdashes."

"You would be from the Desperate?" the young infantry officer asked of Railsford as they alighted on the dock.

"I am, sir," Railsford replied. "Lieutenant Railsford, at your service."

"Lieutenantnant Chiswick, sir, of the North Carolina Volunteers," the lanky harsh-looking officer said,

"Midshipman Lewrie, my assistant," Railsford said. "Our bosun Mister Coke, and his mate, Mister Weems."

"Delightid, sirs." The officer showed no sign of delight at that early hour. "This is my ensign, also a Chiswick. We are at your orders, sirs. What is needed?"

"To go inland and find suitable trees to fell for repairs to our ship, Lieutenant," Railsford said. "Pine trees, for our top-hamper."

"Whatever that is." Lieutenant Chiswick yawned. "Not much left around the town. We shall have to go outside the defense line to find good stands of pine. I suppose a naval officer can ride sir? I have a spare horse for you."

"Thank you very much. This naval officer was raised in hunting country in Dorset," Railsford said, grinning.

Railsford mounted expertly and the two parties fell into a rough column, with an advanced party under a corporal leading off, their weapons at high port, ready for anything, even in the midst of an English army encampment. Railsford and Chiswick followed, with the wagons in their wake, and the sailors in a clump behind. Almost without orders, one squad of infantry went to either side of the road, and the rest brought up the rear, as though the sailors were under arrest for some crime.

Alan was galled that he had to walk instead of getting a horse to ride. He had worn his cotton stockings and his worst, cracked pair of shoes in case of mud and damp, and they were not the best fit he had ever ordered from a cobbler. He hoped they were not going far, or his feet would suffer. He fell in at the head of the rough grouping of men from the ship, alongside the young infantry ensign named Chiswick.

"Whatever the devil is that?" Alan asked, seeing the weapon the young man carried.

"A Ferguson rifle, sir," the ensign replied. "Breechloader."

"How does it do that?" Alan enthused, all curiosity.

"One rotates the screw-breech, which removes the rear estopment from the user's end of the barrel, sir," Chiswick explained, taking hold of a large lever behind the trigger and guard. The whole thing screwed down revealing the screw behind the breech. "One loads it muzzle down from the rear. One can fire four shots a minute, and it is accurate out to nearly two hundred and fifty yards."

Alan noted that the breech of this weapon was already loaded with a powder cartridge, supposedly also fitted with a ball in the chamber.

"You people are most cautious, sir," he observed, "to load here."

"If you had fought in the back-country in the Carolinas, you also would be loaded and ready round the clock as well, sir," the ensign said with stiff pride.

"Ah, I see," Alan replied, trying to ignore the two unloaded and useless pistols stuck into his pockets. "Seen much action, have you?"

"Quite a bit," Chiswick boasted. "We're light infantry. The Lord Cornwallis uses us for scouting and skirmishing—first in and last out of a battle. We can keep up with Tarleton's Legion when the line infantry would be worn out."

"Ah, Tarleton," Alan said, "I have heard of him. Something of a hard man, I'm told."

"These are hard times," the ensign said. "The Rebels in the Carolinas are not exactly gentle, either, I assure you."

"So a girl once said."

"And where was that, sir?"

"A whorehouse in Charlestown." Alan grinned.

"Really? Which one?" Ensign Chiswick asked, with a first sign of humor lighting his face.

"Lady Jane's, just off the Cooper River."

"I am not familiar with that one."

"Well, Maude's had moved to Wilmington and t'other had been shut down for brawling," Alan said.

"I am familiar with Maude's, however." Chiswick grinned broadly. "Too bad she and her girls could not accompany us, but Lord Cornwallis had us strip to the bone for this march to Virginia, and we had to leave most of the camp followers behind. Damned shame, really."

"So there is no sport to be had hereabouts?" Alan asked.

"No, more's the pity," Chiswick spat. "You may get your laundry done but that's about all, and Yorktown is nothing much."

"Speaking of laundry," Alan said, reminded of the letter he still bore in the tail pocket of his short uniform jacket. "Do you know of some woman named Rodgers? Her daughter Bess bade me carry a letter to her. I believe she associates with a Sergeant Tompkin in Tarleton's Legion."

"I know both of them," Chiswick said. "They are across the river on the Gloucester side. No need for cavalry over here yet. Simcoe's Queen's Rangers and the Legion are both over there. Look here, where does a midshipman stand in the scheme of things?"

"Damned low," Alan had to confess with a rueful expression. "Petty-officer level, an officer-in-training. I have been in two years almost."

"An ensign is the most junior officer one can be," Chiswick said, offering his hand. "My name is Burgess, by the way, Burgess Chiswick."

"Alan Lewrie."

They established that Burgess was a year older, nineteen, and had been with the colors for a year with the North Carolina Volunteers. By a fortunate fluke, he had not been at King's Mountain with Major Ferguson, the inventor of the superlative firearm he bore, but he had been at Cowpens attached to Tarleton's Legion and the light infantry that accompanied that body.

"And what happened at Cowpens… lord, what a name for a town?"

"Wasn't a town," Burgess informed him. "Just a big Meadow, a clearing used for cattle feeding and selling. And they beat our arses there."

"Who, the Rebels?"

"Of course, the Rebels," Burgess said. "They're good as informal fighters, sniping from ambush and all of that, but we mostly had beaten them in more formal battles. The hardest part was catching up with them and bringing them to action, or pursuing them once they were beat. But lately, they've been beating us. Wiped out Major Ferguson and his command at King's Mountain in the Piedmont, mostly Loyalist troops with him, but good ones. And then at Cowpens. Took our charge like regulars and then charged us. Governour and I were happy to see the light of day next morning."

"Governour?" Alan wondered.

"My brother, our lieutenant," Burgess said proudly. "He joined up three years ago, being the oldest. I had to stay home until… well, when we lost our lands, there didn't seem to be much point of me not taking the colors any longer."

"What happened to them?"

"Damned Rebels burned us out!" Burgess glared angrily. "Shot all our livestock or drove it off, fired our crops or trampled them flat. Set fire to our barns and stables, torched the house, ran most of the slaves off except for a few house servants. My family had to flee to Wilmington with nothing much more than the clothes they stood up in. Thirty years of work, all gone."

"Where was this?"

"Below Campbelltown, in the lower Cape Fear country."

That did not tell Alan much more, since he was not familiar with anything in the Carolinas beyond the harbors, though he had a rough idea from the description that it was in North Carolina, behind Wilmington.

"Perhaps you can regain your lands when we have beaten the French and the Rebels," Alan offered, trying to think ot something hopeful.

Burgess turned to stare at him as though he was the featured act in some traveling raree show. "Where the devil have you been lately? We shall never get our lands back, nor do I have any hopes for victory any longer, not with a French army over on the other side of the James from us at the momennt and God knows who else gathering on this place. what did you fellows in our wonderful Navy do with them?"

"They beat us." Alan frowned, dropping his voice to a whisper to avoid sharing his thoughts with his crew, which was still trudging along in his rear. He sketched out the progress of the battle which had taken place a few days before, expressing his own distaste for the way it had transpired.

"Well, perhaps there is hope your admiral can get back to grips with this Frenchman de Grasse," Burgess said, mellowing a little. "We could do nothing to stop the landing. They had put four ships in the mouth of the York to keep our ships in while they were landing their troops and guns."

"So that is why no one interfered with the transports. I thought Captain Symonds was shirking or something to not try for them."

"Who's he?"

"Senior naval officer present, in command of the frigate Charon."

"Then he could not have done anything in any case," Burgess said. "They landed all his artillery for the fortifications, all eighteen-pounders. We only have field artillery with the army. You'll be fortunate to get out of this as soon as your ship is repaired. We could be hard-pressed for a few weeks as long as the French are present."

"Well, if there is no sport to be had in this Yorktown, I shall indeed be grateful to put back to sea," Alan said as their senior officers called a halt.

They had left town on the main Williamsburg road to the west and had crossed the line of fortifications and entrenchments before what Burgess had informed Alan was the Star Redoubt, and had crossed Yorktown Creek, a sluggish body of water indeed. Burgess gave him the further information that it had not rained in weeks and all the creeks were low, which was limiting the efficiency of the mills in the area, where they had hoped to grind the corn they had confiscated on their march up the James River. Many of the cavalry and draft animals were grain fed, and were already suffering from the long march from Wilmington and the peregrinations of the army in the Virginias so far attempted. The troops had also been forced to eat their corn green—which had not done their digestions any good—soaking it and frying it in their mess kits instead of baking it to make a more palatable bread.

Once cleared through the lines, men from the North Carolina Volunteers spread out into ragged skirmish order, ahead and to either side of the road as they continued their search for wood. After about another mile of travel, they reached a fork in the road, the fork bending back to the south-east and the main road continuing onward inland to the west. Another halt was called for while the officers consulted.

"Most of this is second growth an' damned scrawny, sir," Coke said, peering about them. "Whatcha think of it, Chips?"

"Trash," the carpenter replied. "Musta been cut over a long time ago."

"If we take the fork, we shall end up in mostly cleared land," Lieutenant Chiswick pointed out, gesturing with his riding crop. "And the army most likely has cut over the area before the outlying parallels for materials to stiffen the entrenchments and clear lanes of fire."

"What about out that way?" Railsford asked, shifting his sore behind in the saddle. It had been years since he had spent any time mounted, no matter how rural his upbringing.

"The Williamsburg road?" Chiswick frowned. "We did not come that way on either of our marches in this area, so I am not familiar with it. Though there are some steep hills in there as we can observe. I am told there is a creek thereabouts."

"Aye, a creek, sor." The carpenter brightened. "They'd be timber as thick as cat's fur along a creek, and in them little hills. Ye can see pine from here, sor."

"That sounds like our best prospect, then," Railsford decided.

"Your men are armed, sir?" Lieutenant Chiswick asked.

"We brought cutlasses and a few muskets, yes, sir."

"Then if it is your intention that we proceed into those hills by the creek, off the main road, I would strongly suggest load your muskets and tell off a portion of your party for protection, sir."

"There may be Rebels this close?" Railsford asked, reining his mare closer to the army officer to converse more softly.

"There are Virginia Militia and some few regulars about, sir under a Frenchman named Lafayette," Chiswick told him, not without a wolfish grin of delight to have the much-vaunted Navy at his mercy in their ignorance of land fighting. "Were I a Rebel officer, God forbid, I should be at the business of scouting the whereabouts of my foe, this very instant."

"An' wild Indians, too, sir?" Coke asked, peering about with new fear.

"I should not be a bit surprised, sir," Lieutenant Chiswick said, hiding his glee at the stupidity of his fellow man. Every newcomer from England expected to be scalped or skewered by painted savages as soon as he or she alighted from the ship, right in the middle of a major town. As a lowly Colonial, Chiswick was only too happy to play the game of scaring the bejeezus out of superior home-raised Englishmen.

"Surely not," Railsford scoffed, only half convinced that Chiswick was having a jape at their expense.

"No organized bands, sir, but they still live in the Piedmont and some have sided with the Rebels as scouts and irregulars," Chiswick assured him, pursing his lips to control his grin. "Either way, it's best not to be too lax. We're a small and tempting morsel beyond reach of our lines."

"Mister Lewrie?" Railsford called.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Tell our people to load muskets and keep a wary lookout, but no firing at anything without direct orders from either me or you."

"Aye, aye, sir," Alan said, turning to speak to the men in a low voice. "Load your firelocks. Check your flints carefully. Prime, but do not carry your pieces at cock or half cock. Do not even think of taking aim unless you hear it from me first, or I'll see the man who did dancing on the gratings, hear me?"

The picnic outing mood was gone now as the men check snapped their firelocks, plied their gun tools to ram down powder cartouches and ball, primed their pans, and closed frizzens.

They were beyond the sounds of axes ringing as the army built up defenses, and they were in wild country, a lot wilder-looking country than anything they had ever seen at home. The clearings were not orderly and terraced fields full of crops, bound by stone walls or hedges, but openings in the woods laced with rank growths of weeds and high grass. The woods themselves were not picturesque nests of trees on hilltops above verdant farmland but brooding, dark forests that sloughed down almost to the dirt road, full of secondary growth and bushes where the sun did not penetrate, except in dapples here and there. Even the sounds of the native birds were different than what they were used to from their youth, making the land alien, too full of threat, and almost too large and uncivilized to be understood. It truly was not Surrey or Kent—more like the sort of place that could harbor thousands of half-naked savages intent on taking their lives from ambush at any moment.

"It is sort of ominous, isn't it?" Alan said to Burgess as he loaded his pistols.

"Definitely not a game park." Burgess grinned. "Are you a good shot?"

"If one can be a good shot with these Sea Pattern monstrosities," Alan said, closing the frizzens and blowing excess powder off, "then yes, I am. I am much better with a musket."

"Hunt much?"

"Some. Birds, mostly," Alan said. "But I must warn you, I am a London man."

"God help us," Burgess said, "but, if you can be successful at fowling, you may not do much harm. Don't let your sailors shoot at any of my men. We'll be out skirmishing. I have to go now. Good luck to you."

Lieutenant Chiswick made a hand signal to his men, and his sergeants and corporals took off silently, leading a party of wary troops to either side of the road to melt into the woods, another party to advance down the road almost in the bushes on either side, well spread out so that a single volley would not strike all of them. A corporal took five men back the way they had come to back-trail the column to avoid any surprises from that direction, leaving Railsford, Lewrie, and their men alone with the artillery teams and drivers. Railsford took out his pocket watch and studied it, to follow Chiswick's last whispered instruction that he wait a full two minutes before following his advance scouts.

"I cannot hear them any longer," Alan said, marveling at the silence with which the North Carolina Volunteers could move through the thick brush and timber.

"Backwoodsmen, I'll wager," Railsford said. "As good as any Indian at this sort of thing. Rather inspiriting to think so, at any rate."

Railsford dismounted suddenly and rubbed the small of his back. "Been a while," he sighed, stretching a kink from his posterior.

And a mounted man is automatically a target for some Rebel sniper, Alan thought grimly.

"Care to ride for a spell?" Railsford offered, evidently thinking the same thing. To a partisan hiding behind some bush or rock, he could not appear to be anything other than an officer, even if the man did not recognize a naval uniform from an artilleryman's.

He's not intentionally trying t' get me killed! Alan thought. And I can't look that senior, even mounted, to be shot by mistake.

"Happily, sir," Alan decided, springing into the saddle.

He was cautious enough, however, to remove his unadorned cocked hat and toss it into one of the gun caissons, believing that a bareheaded man would be even less tempting.

"Hoppy, give me your musket," Alan ordered the nearest armed sailor.

"Sir?" the man said, quailing at the thought of being unarmed.

"Take one of my pistols in exchange," Alan snapped, offering one of the useless damned things. "With these wild Colonials about you in these woods you're as safe as houses anyway, and I might see something to pot for supper."

Satisfied by Alan's innocent lie that he was intent on hunting up a deer for the men's mess, Hoppy surrendered his musket and took the pistol from him. Alan slung the musket over his neck and shoulder so that it hung across his back, muzzle up like an infantryman on the march, which would make him look even more menial to any lurking sharpshooter in the woods.

"Some venison'd go down right tasty, sir," Hoppy said with a smile of relief, wanting to be convinced.

"I hear one deer in the Virginias will feed twenty messes," Alan said loud enough for the rest of the men to hear, understanding what the first lieutenant meant about keeping the men in good spirits. "Mayhap we can get one or two, even if we have to go shares with the 'lobsters.'"

He turned and cantered back up to Railsford, who was still intent on his watch.

"Should have been long enough," Railsford said, snapping the case shut. "Off we go. Lead off, Mister Lewrie."

"Aye, aye, sir," Alan replied, heading down the road. The walk so far had been hell on his feet, and he was glad to get a chance to ride.

He soon caught up with Lieutenant Chiswick, who, a Ferguson rifle in his right hand, was leading his own horse. As soon as he caught sight of the red tunic, he slowed his mount to a plodding walk and tried to keep separation from the infantry officer. Chiswick, however, stopped his own roan and waited for him to catch up, cocking a wry eyebrow at him.

"Your lieutenant prefers discretion over valor, I see," Chiswick smiled briefly as they drew even with each other.

"Not on his own decks, sir," Alan answered a bit more sharply than he would with a naval officer, but Chiswick took no offense at his tone, merely shrugged and turned back to lead the horse up the road once more.

"If you are going to carry a musket, let it rest on your saddle and not hang useless on your back, Mister… Lewrie, did he say?

"Aye, sir, Lewrie," he said softly, slipping the musket to a more quickly usable perch across his lap, pointing to the left side of the road.

They proceeded in silence for some time, with the more experienced Chiswick listening intently to the sounds of the woods, which so far seemed benign in the extreme, for all the foreboding that was hinted in their lush and wild dark jumble.

"Do all your men have Fergusons, sir?" Alan asked almost in whisper. The road opened up on either side in rough clearings, and he could espy some of Chiswick's men in the woods ahead by their red coats and white breeches.

"Mostly," Chiswick said, peering into the woods still. "When our company was raised, my father helped outfit them and thought Major Ferguson was onto a good thing. Some of the other companies had to make do with the Brown Bess or their own guns from home. Do you like it?"

"Aye, sir," Alan said. "I'd like to try my hand with one someday."

"Pity poor Patrick Ferguson could not convince the army to adopt it," Chiswick commented, looking up at Alan for a moment. "Now he's dead and his rifle will most likely die with him."

"It would be perfect for use at sea, though," Alan observed. "To fire at long range with aimed fire would play merry hell with officers on a quarterdeck."

"As long as the enemy did not play merry hell with you," Chiswick grunted. "I cannot imagine just standing there out in the open like you do in sea fighting."

"Mostly you are behind a bulwark or a barricade made of rolled-up hammocks, sir," Alan said. "For my part, I cannot imagine standing out in the open like regular infantry does, trading broadsides or volleys or whatever at a hundred paces."

"Let the line troops do that," Chiswick sneered. "We're riflemen, by God—out on the flanks where we can do the most good, screening the advance or covering a retreat."

"So your brother informed me, sir."

"Well, there are some pines for you." Chiswick pointed to the low ridge ahead with his rifle barrel. "Do you believe they would suit?"

"It is not for me to judge, sir, but I will fetch the carpenter and the bosun," Alan said, looking at the trees growing up the hill to the right and left of the road. "They look tall and thick enough."

"I'll halt my skirmishers at the top of the hill 'til you've made your decision, then," Chiswick offered.

"Aye, sir," Alan said, and wheeled his horse about to canter back.

It seemed that those trees would suit admirably, being both tall enough, straight enough, and thick enough to serve as new masts and spars once they were trimmed of limbs and stripped down. The limbs were not so low on them that the best parts of the trees would have too many knots or knurls once they were cut to the right lengths.

"Ya chose well, sor," the carpenter allowed to Chiswick.

"We used to mill timber and float it down to Wilmington on the river," Chiswick told them. "They looked suitable to me."

"Let's get to work, then," Railsford said, all of a bustle to get something accomplished so they could get out of those woods before dark. "Lewrie, have the hands stack arms and start felling those trees the bosun and the carpenter indicate."

"Aye, sir," Alan said, dismounting. "Perhaps we shall finish in time to get a little hunting done, sir."

"What do you say to that, Lieutenant Chiswick?" Railsford said.

"I'd not stray too far if you do," he cautioned, "the fewe: men the better, and the less shots, as well. We don't know who's out here, and don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

"Yes, I suppose so." Railsford frowned. "Still, some fresh meat'd be welcome."

"With a rifle instead of a musket, I could bag something, Sir," Alan said, hoping to get out of standing around supervising the working party. "I would not fire until I was sure of my target."

"Yes," Railsford said, "and you're about as useful at this as tits on a man. Bosun, have we a good woodsman to accompany the midshipman?"

"Cony, sir, 'twas caught poachin' afore he joined."

"I would have to send some of my men, regardless," Chiswick said. "Poacher or not, this is not some squire's private preserve."

"I could take Mollow, sir," Burgess Chiswick volunteered. "And we could use the horses to carry anything we bag."

"Right," Chiswick said after a moment's thought. "But do not go too far or stray too far from the road. If you meet up with any trouble, strike for the river to the north and get into the open. No wild firing, or I'll have your hide, see?"

"When did I need more than one shot, dear brother?" Burgess chided.

"True enough," the elder Chiswick had to admit, albeit grudgingly. "Mollow, do you see the sergeant for the trumpet. Give us a blast on it if you run into any enemy troops."

"That I will, 'pon my honor," the private said, slouching over the barrel of his rifle as no English regular would ever be allowed.

"You wished to try a Ferguson," Chiswick said to Lewrie as his private dashed off on his errand. "Here, use mine."

He offered the rifle and a cartouche pouch, taking Lewrie's in exchange. "If you think twenty rounds will be enough?"

"If not, maybe I can pester a deer to death, sir," Alan replied, matching Chiswick's sardonic, teasing expression.

"Everyone ready?" Burgess asked once Mollow had joined them along with Cony, the wiry young ordinary seaman. "Here, leave your sword behind. You'll only trip on it in the woods. Got pistols just in case?" Every man carried at least one, with the army man armed with a pair of long-barreled, amd probably more accurate, dragoon pistols. Chiswick took off his own sword and tossed it to his orderly, retaining a bayonet.

"Along the creek, or over the hills?" Alan asked the ensign.

"Too late in the morning for game along the creek," the younger Chiswick decided. "They'd come down to drink at dawn and then go back up into the woods. Best cross the hill and see what's on the other side. We'll lead the horses."

Chapter 6

After the first hour they had covered only a mile, creeping like slugs through the woods to the south of the road. Mollow and Cony were out ahead on the flanks, almost out of sight, while Lewrie and the ensign formed the central pair, within a long musket shot of each other. Alan was enjoying himself hugely as he picked a way through the underbrush wide and high enough for the led mare to follow. He had not been this far away from uniforms and naval discipline in months, even though he had to admit to himself that he did not know what the hell he was doing. He was not a trained hunter, not like Mollow, Cony, or Chiswick, who had been at it almost since birth. He was indeed a city man, only exposed to hunting in the summers on his father's not-so-large estate, more at home with bird shooting or riding behind a pack of hounds over open fields.

This silent crouching and stalking, listening for the sounds of game and trying to limit one's own clumsy crashings and slitherings was foreign to him, but he was getting into the spirit of it although it was damned dry work. The ground was too dry to see much in the way of a sign, or to recognize it as old or new if he had. Face it, I am not a Red Indian he thought. Still, it was so close to play instead of work that he could easily lose himself in the process, not being dependent on what he shot to be fed that night or not.

The woods began to open up before him, and he could see signs that the trees had been thinned at one time; some stumps were still sticking up. He could stand up fully, and he halted to survey things. There was less shrubbery, and what was evident was low and fairly new. He looked to his left to see Cony halted as well, merely a flash of red-and-white checkered shirt between the trees. He looked to his right to see Chiswick, who was coming towards him without his horse. As Alan watched, Mollow brought up the rear, leading the animal. Chiswick waved at him and pointed, as though shoving him away, and Alan got the idea that he should turn and go south towards Cony. They carried on this silent dialogue until he determined that that was indeed what the officer intended.

They carried on south for some time until Cony waved them to a halt and motioned them down while he snuck deeper into the woods to the right, their original direction before the turn. Alan sat down behind a tree and brought his rifle up to his side, glad for a chance to get off his aching feet in the cracked and pinching shoes. Chiswick came on down to him from the north to join him.

"We're on someone's farmland," Chiswick said softly, taking a seat near him with his rifle ready as well.

"How can you tell?"

"Stumps, for one," Chiswick said, as though it was self-evident. "And I ran into a rail fence and a lane heading down this way. You would have, too, in another minute. Low, sunken lane. Great place for an ambush. And there was a pasture and another fence on the other side of that."

"Did it look occupied?" Alan asked, crouching by a sturdy bush to tie the reins of his horse so both hands would be free to use his rifle.

"Couldn't tell." Chiswick shrugged.

"Well, is that good or bad?" Alan persisted, a little put off that he had to ask so much information. Damme, I spend nigh on two years getting the lore right at one thing, and here I am a rank amateur again! And the galling thing is, I don't know enough to even ask the right questions. He's going to think me a complete slow coach.

"No way to know until we discover it," Chiswick said with a grin. "If it's a Rebel farmstead, we can take what we like. Might be abandoned after the armies came through here in the summer, and we can still take what we like, loyalties be damned. On the other hand, we could run into a battalion of troops already using it."

"In which case, we fade away like startled deer and head back to the working party," Alan said.

"There's the truth of it," Chiswick replied, very much on his guard from hard field experience, but reveling in danger. "Ah, I see your man wants us."

They rose to a crouch and headed down toward Cony, motioning Mollow to bring the other mount down to where they had waited. Mollow understood his ensign's signal and tied both horses to the same clump of brush, then came to join them so that all the party were together.

"Fence, sir." Cony grinned as though he was at home sneaking into his squire's rabbit runs. "They's a farm t'other side o' this fence. They's somethin' movin', too, sir. Don't sound like men. Cow, maybe."

"Supper, maybe." Alan grinned in return. "And without firing one shot to attract attention."

"Don't eat it before it's skinned, sailor," Burgess chuckled. "I and Mollow will scout ahead. You wait here with your man. If you hear any to-do, get back to the horses quick as a wink and head for the main road. Don't worry about us."

Burgess pulled his rifle back to half cock and went off to the left, pointing the private dead ahead. Alan thought about cocking his own rifle, but demurred, not sure enough of himself in case there was a problem until it had presented itself in true colors.

"Smelt like a farm, though, sir," Cony said almost in his ear, taking dangerous liberty with ship's discipline and the separation expected between a common seaman and a midshipman. "Cain't hide that from my nose, sir."

"We shall see directly, then," Alan said, trying to appear stoical as a post-captain, while ready to squirm with anticpation. It was five minutes before Mollow came sneaking rough the brush to them, almost on his hands and knees.

"We're in luck, that we are," Mollow said, showing the same lack of formality to Lewrie that he had to his own lieutenant before.

"Was it a cow?" Alan asked, still whispering.

"It's a whole damn fuckin' ark over thar," Mollow said. "Farm paddock an' pastures. They's a cow with two calves, coupla sheep an' two half-grown pigs. Mighty skittish, so we don't wanta spook 'em. Mighta been turned out wild. No sign o' life from the house yit. Mister Burgess is a'checkin' that out now, but we can move up. Mind ya do it quiet, now. I'll fetch the horses."

They followed Mollow's trail through the woods until they reached a rail fence made of split pine logs stacked zigzag atop each other waist high. Mollow had very quietly taken a stretch of them down to let room for the horses to be led through. There was a dry dirt lane before them that led to a wider clearing to the left and the hint of a house and some outbuildings. In a pasture directly ahead of them, there were some animals grazing or rooting about, warily distanced to the far side of the pasture near the trees, but showing no real signs of distress.

"Put a halter on that cow, an' the little 'uns'll tag along quiet as mice, Mister Lewrie," Cony said, taking his musket off half cock. "Pigs might be a problem, though, sir."

"We could pack them back on the horses once they're dead."

"Better'n venison any day, sir," Cony said, slinging his gun and heading off for the farmstead to the left.

Ensign Chiswick met them in the middle of the road, his rifle also now slung muzzle down and a rag wrapped around the lock to keep dirt out.

"Place looks abandoned," he said in a normal tone of voice. "The barn's been burned down and the house appears to have been looted. The doors and window shutters are off and the yard's full of castoffs."

"It's not hunting, but we'll take something home for the pot," Alan said, glad that they did not have to take aim and fire at something that would draw attention to themselves.

"And look what else I found," Chiswick said, holding up his left hand in triumph.

It looked like a rough lump of candle wax, which made Alan wonder just what a colonial thought valuable.

"It's soap!" Chiswick chortled. "Homemade soap. Might take the hide off you, but it'll get you clean enough for a burying."

"I'd pass on the burying," Alan said quickly, "but it has been a time since I had a full bath."

"I had noticed," Chiswick japed, wrinkling his nose as though he thought Alan stank worse than most people did. "There is a small creek in the place, dammed up below the barn for a stock pond. Once we get these animals rounded up, we may bathe before heading back."

"Is that safe, way out here?" Alan asked.

"Nothing ran those animals off, so it should be. Now, how are you at roping wild pigs?"

It turned out that Alan was terrible at roping wild pigs. It was easy enough to get a rope around the neck of the mother cow, for they had not been running wild very long. Once she was led into the barnyard, her calves followed along docilely enough. The sheep could be hemmed in with much shouting and waving into a corner of fencing, where Alan could dive onto one and hold it down until a lead could be placed on it. In the barnyard they found two chickens and a rooster, which were despatched with a piece of light wood and gutted on the spot to tie them on the saddles.

The pigs, though. The pigs were devils in disguise, squealing and snorting and making mock charges at them, almost impossible to grab and fast as the wind for being built so low to the ground. A man on horseback could not keep up with their bursts of speed or match their twists and turns. Mollow was an expert with a length of rope, forming a noose at one end and throwing it in a whistling arc to settle over any target's neck to draw snug, making it look like an effortless skill. Even that did not avail over the thick necks of the pigs.

"The devil with it!" Alan gasped after his fourth trip at a dead run across the pasture. "Why don't we… just shoot… the buggers?"

"Suppose we'll have to," Chiswick said, panting on his knees by Lewrie. "Hate to do it, though."

"I hate the bastards," Alan growled. "I'll do it!"

"The noise is what I meant. Look out!"

One of the pigs had raced back straight for them, evidently wanting to get his own back. He was not a wild boar with tusks to slash a man open, but he had a mean set of teeth anyway. Chiswick jumped free, but Alan could not move in time and could only roll away as the hog slammed into him at full tilt, almost knocking all the wind out of him, rooting with his snout at Alan's crotch.

"Damned if you do!" Alan cried, drawing his dirk with one hand and grabbing a forefoot with the other. He stabbed down, up, sideways, as the hog rolled him like a slopbucket around the pasture and began to squeal in pain. Alan had a chance to roll on top and get a few more strokes in with his dirk while the blood flew like a fountain. Finally, assured the animal was dead, he gladly got to his feet and backed away.

The other pig succumbed to a rifle shot, and their course in animal husbandry was over for the day, leaving them time to laugh at Lewrie's appearance. He was pig blood and pig shit, old, dried cow pats and grass stains from head to foot, his stockings torn down to his ankles, one shoe missing, and the seams of his jacket ripped open. The black ribbon that bound his clubbed-back hair was gone and his hair hung lank and dirty on either side of his face.

"Hurrah, you done fer 'im, sir!" Cony roared, taking an opportunity to get a laugh on an officer-to-be.

"Might be needin' this," Mollow said, offering him his shoe.

"Still have that soap, Chiswick?" Alan glared, his chest heaving for air after his battle to the death with an enraged porker. "I think I'll take you up on your offer of a bath."

They slit both pigs' throats, dragged them into the farm yard and hung them up to bleed fully after slicing their bellies open and gutting them. Mollow made a drag from two fence poles depended from one of the horses' saddles and laced them together so that the carcasses could be carried. Then Chiswick gallantly offered to stand guard while Cony and Lewrie got an opportunity for a wash in the stock pond.

Cony was having little of it. He took off his shirt, socks and shoes, rolled up his slop trousers and waded in for a quick splash, not having much use for soap. "'Tis unhealthy ta take too many baths, sir, so it is," he said firmly. "One at yer birthin', one at yer weddin', one at yer dyin', that's all a good Englishman needs."

Alan, though, was happy to shuck his clothes and let them soak in the pond while he waded in with soap in hand, naked as the day he was born.

There was little enough fresh water aboard ship, rationed at one gallon per day per man, and most of that used for boiling rations in the steep-tubs, with only a pint a day for sponging or shaving, so it was heaven to lie back with his posterior resting on the shallow bottom and lave himself with water warmed by the sun. He scrubbed with the hard lump of soap until all his saltwater boils and chafes stung, but it felt like a healing sting, like staunching a cut in seawater. He stood up knee deep and lathered his whole body, then dunked and rinsed. He soaped his scalp and rubbed and scratched with his fingers until his hair felt almost squeaky between his hands.

"A little bit of heaven, is it not?" Burgess asked, squatting by the bank with rifle in hand to stand guard for him.

"Maybe it is dangerous to staunch one's perspiration, or bathe too often, but now and then, it's marvelous!" Alan sighed happily.

"I told your seaman to scrub out the worst from your uniform."

"Thank you right kindly, Chiswick. Let me know when this is maddening to you and I shall spend another twenty minutes in the water."

"Take your time." Chiswick waved as if it did not matter. I had a dunk two days ago in a creek closer to the town. Don't forget to do behind your ears. Your momma would not allow that to pass unwashed."

"Never had one," Alan replied. "I've always had dirty ears. No one would know me without them."

"For dear old nurse, then," Chiswick shot back. He rose to his feet and took a long look around. "This must have been a nice farm once."

"Really?" Alan said, wondering what had been so nice about a cabin made of pine logs with no mark of real civilization to it.

"For this part of the world, yes," Chiswick said, changing his tone, which made Alan swivel to look at him. "More than half the farmers in the Colonies would give dearly to look so prosperous or orderly."

"What was your own place like?" Alan asked, raising one leg to give it equal treatment with the soap.

"Oh, we were proper squires in the Carolinas," Burgess said, smiling but not much amused by the remembrance. "Had a brick house and some columns out on the portico. Painted barns and outbuildings. We grew tobacco, corn, rice, and timber, and had the mill, too. Tried our hand with indigo, but never got the hang of it, not like some closer to the coast. We had a decent herd of cattle and sheep. And some really fine horses."

"I hope you killed all your pigs… painfully," Alan said.

"Never asked 'em." Burgess grinned.

"So you were what my whore in Charlestown called Tidewater people?"

"Charleston," Burgess corrected without thought. "Yes, we were, in a way. Sort of betwixt and between Piedmonters and Tidewater, not fully one or the other. People firmly established in the Tidewater put on more airs than we could afford."

"I'm sorry you got burned out," Alan said, rising and dripping water as he waded the few paces ashore. "Regular trooos or Regulators or whatever?"

"You did learn a lot from that whore of yours," Burgess replied, tossing him a scrap of cloth with which to dry himself. It had been some woman's sack gown once, a light blue linen worked with white embroidery in a pattern that was now hard to identify, evidently something that Burgess had found in the house or the yard, smelling strongly of mildew and leaf mold. It was fairly clean and dry, though, so he used it without another care.

"No, 'twas a troop of horse rode through while the army and the militia were away over toward Charlotte," Burgess said, his hazel eyes narrowing in anger. "Wild as over-mountain men, not even an organized troop, most of 'em. Some local hothead Patriots, too, as they like to style themselves. Most of our neighbors were Scots, loyal to the Crown."

"Were you there then?" Alan asked, sitting down in the sun to finish drying with the scrap of gown across his lap for modesty.

"Aye, I was there." Burgess winced, his hands growing tight on the rifle. "My daddy and momma, my sister Caroline, and my younger brother."

"Did they harm any of you?"

"They shot George." Burgess glared. "Shot him down like a dog. He was just fourteen; he didn't know. They were taking his favorite horse and he went after them and… they just shot him down. And they laughed. He bled to death before we could do anything for him."

"My God, I'm sorry, Chiswick," Alan said, shocked in spite of all the deaths he had seen in his short time in the Navy.

Burgess went on. "Could have been worse. Their leader, one of the local Rebels, was a gentleman. Else we'd have all been killed, and my momma and sister raped. Their leader had that man beat half to death right on the spot. But then, he went on looting the place after that, so it wasn't much comfort to us. We all got used pretty ill, anyway, what with all the shoving and pushing. Couple of our house servants got shot, and they ran off the rest, along with the stock. Then they allowed us some time to gather what we could, and torched the place."

Alan didn't know what to say, so he finished dressing. Cony had done a fair job as hammock-man and had gotten out all the worst smuts.

"I'll stand guard for your bath now," Alan offered.

"I knew that bastard, Lewrie," Burgess almost moaned.

"That Rebel neighbor?"

"It was one of our cousins," Burgess said, verging on tears.

"Holy shit on a biscuit!" Alan gaped. That proves it. The whole bloody country's mad as a lunatick in Bedlam, he thought.

"I grew up with him, played with him, hunted with him, sported with him and his family," Burgess said. "They were better off than us, real squires of the county. They had no use for more land, but they've got ours now, and some of our slaves and our stock. From Momma's side they were, in the Carolina's longer than we were, closer to Wilmington, and the town turned into a hotbed of rebellion until we occupied't. Their daddy was at all the meetings and conventions, saying he was for the King and only wanted his rights as an Englishman, but then they all changed and turned on us 'cause Daddy was a newcomer and stood up for King George. God, I cannot tell you how much I hate them. How I want to see them suffer and die. You cannot know what it is to be betrayed by your own blood!"

"The hell I can't," Alan said without mirth. "When we get back I shall tell you about it, if there's time. But if we got our wishes, a battalion of people would be consigned to Hell. Now stick your head under water for a while to cool the heat of your blood."

"I guess they used us for an example, of what would happen if any more of our neighbors stayed Loyalist." Burgess muttered on as he stripped away his uniform to take a scrub. Like I said, most of our neighbors were Scots. They came over after Culloden, and when they give an oath, they never break it. Most of the lower Cape Fear is like that, around Cross Creek and Campbelltown. I suppose we were just too good a target. Daddy had helped Colonel Hamilton outfit the Royal North Carolina Regiment, our unit, so they had to do something to punish us, what with Governour already with the colors and all, and half the men away fighting. But we felt so safe there, with our neighbors of one mind with us to support the Crown. And with the Fannings and Cunninghams and Tarletons on our side raiding the Rebels, they had to respond. But everyone in the county loved George, Lewrie. He was the best horseman and hunter going, not afraid of anything. I'd rather it had been me, sometimes."

"But your family is safe, now," Alan said, trying to change the subject. God, he thought, and I believed I had a vicious set of relations.

"For the moment," Burgess said, wading into the water and sitting down in the shallows. He did duck his head and came up spluttering, and it seemed to calm him. "Wilmington, though, is full of Rebels and sympathizers. Were it not for Major Craig and his garrison, and Fort Johnston at the tip of the peninsula, I fear they'd be slaughtered in their beds. Daddy's not been the same since, Momma's not a strong person, and only poor Caroline with what blacks we haven't been forced to sell to keep body and soul together to run things. She's a strong girl, is Caroline, but I doubt even she can cope if things get worse. Prices are high, higher for Loyalists from those Rebel townspeople. We left what money we had, but we haven't been paid in months. They were going to seek cheaper lodgings, last we saw them before we marched north. Sorry, Lewrie."

"Sometimes it helps to talk. Go on and bathe. I'll guard."

While the army men splashed in the sun-warmed water he wandered up to a higher vantage point above the stock pond by the burned-out barn and outbuildings. Cony had gone to see to the stock they had captured, and was using a seaman's knife to cut some grass for the cows, once more back the peaceful world of animals and farm chores he had left God knew how long before to take the joining bounty and enter the harsh world of the Navy.

"Keep a sharp eye, Cony," Lewrie had to remind him.

"Aye, sir," Cony said, as he ruffled the becoming tuft of woolly hair on one calf's skull. "Poor beasts. Shoulda been weaned long ago, I 'spects, but nary a soul about fer months ta do it, most like. Nearly a yearlin' now an' still nuhsin' 'is momma."

Reluctantly, Cony took up his musket, cartouche bag, and powder horn and headed off toward the edge of the woods to the west, where they came down almost to the edge of the stock pond. Watching him go, Alan could see that the fence between the pasture where they had seized their livestock and the stock pond had been torn down; perhaps by the raiders who had looted the place, or perhaps by the animals in their thirst once things had settled down and they had returned to the farmstead from the woods where they had fled.

Alan went off toward the yard of the house to keep an eye on the dirt lane that ran down from the Williamsburg road, and the wider expanse of the pastures and fields. There was corn growing there, rows of beans and potatoes of some kind, which might have been ripe enough to pick. Alan reminded himself that they might want to gather some before going hack to the working party. He hunted about for a sack or keg for carrying.

Further north up the road there was another fence, beyond the home garden enclosure, and there were broad-leaved plants there, some already turning brittle and brown under the hot autumn sun; tobacco, he surmised, never having seen growing before, or having much use for it up until then.

He did know that tobacco fetched high prices in London shops, so perhaps Burgess was correct that this had been a fairly prosperous farm once.

Alan was dressed informally in breeches and damp shirt—his waistcoat and short blue jacket were still drying after a good scrubbing—so he was concerned that he stood out too prominently against the greenery. He went back from his vantage point to the shadows of the house, where he could still see a long distance should anyone attempt to sneak up on them, but not be as easily spotted.

The house was not as rude as he had first thought, either being well made and chinked, the timbers adzed flat instead of the logs being laid round or still furred with bark. There had once been precious glass in the windows, and the door and shutters that had been ripped off had once been gaily painted and of good milled lumber, most likely done by the owners themselves. The porch was neat, the supporting posts made square and solid and whitewashed still, the floor of the porch planed or sanded and closefitting as a ship's deck, and nearly as white. There were overturned chairs with cleverly rushed seats scattered about, and he righted one for a rest on the porch near one of the windows.

After a few minutes, however, he became bored, and began to peek into the open window more and more, wondering if the raiders of whichever side had left anything worth looting.

He rose and scanned the area of the stock pond. The soldier Mollow was out of the water and dressing, near his rifle and ready for immediate danger, while Burgess Chiswick was toweling himself dry and already in his breeches and stockings.

Thinking there would be little danger, he rose from the chair and entered the house. It was a lot grander than he had thought inside as well. There was a large room with a plank floor that had been oiled or varnished at one time, and was still shiny under the dust of neglect that had gathered. There had been a cleverly made fireplace and hearth on one wall and a neat mantel. There had been a bookcase, now smashed into kindling, and perhaps a dozen books scattered on the floor. The furniture was heavy and European made, either brought by the emigrants or ordered with profits from the farm's produce, though the cabinets and chests were empty.

One of the books that lay open took his interest, one of Fielding's novels—Joseph Andrews—which he had heard was a merry story.

"God, what a smell," he whispered, now that he was in the house.

Folding the book closed and sticking it into his waistband, he prowled towards the overturned dining table. The glint of metal caught his eyes, and he knelt to pick up a discarded pewter knife, a pair of spoons, and a fork, which went into his breeches pockets. They could use them in Desperate's midshipmen's mess, if only to replace the ones that their steward Freeling had lost over the months. He found a pewter mug smashed flat by something, another fork which was in good shape, and a ladle, which would come in handy for dipping out soup or rum toddies.

Then he tried the bedrooms, which both opened off the main room.

"Oh, my God!" he screeched once he had the door open to reveal what had been hidden. The stench of long decomposition rolled over him like a channel fog.

He dropped the ladle and almost dropped his rifle as he backed away. But it was the sight that had forced him to retreat; there was a nude woman on the high bed, long dead and eyeless. She had been ripped open like a slaughtered hog and had stained the sheets black with her blood and entrails. And pinned to the wall…

At the horror Alan lost what little breakfast he'd had.

Pinned to the wall with a bayonet, a tiny baby too small to be a suckling babe—perhaps ripped from that ravaged belly before birth—now with parchment-dark skin and tiny little bones and leathery looking stains on the whitewash. Beside it, written in blood: THOU SHALT NEVER BIRTH ANOTHER REBEL.

"Jesus Christ!" Alan was gagging, bent almost double but unable to take his eyes from the sight. "Oh, my merciful God in Heaven!"

Burgess burst into the cabin with his rifle ready for firing.

He came to Alan's side and dragged him away and gave him a firm shove toward the door and the fresher air on the porch.

Alan clung to a porch post and continued to heave, though his stomach was empty. "God, I never saw anything like that! No one should ever see such a sight! God in Heaven!"

He emptied his pockets of his loot and flung the utensils into the dirt of the yard, threw away the merry book, and felt he could use one more very long bath to get the oily, cold-sweat feel of putrefaction off his skin, to be cleansed of what he had seen in that bedroom.

"Here," Burgess said, shoving a small, stoppered flask at him. He tore off the cork and took a long pull at whatever it was, which almost choked him. It was alcoholic, that he realized, but hot as fire and twice the bite of neat rum—at the moment he needed it badly.

"What the devil is this stuff?" he managed to choke out.

"Corn whiskey," Burgess said, dragging him free of the porch and walking him over to the well on the other side of the yard. "You'll not see its like in England, but it's popular here—and cheap."

"That could take your mind off your own death," Alan said.

Burgess cranked up the bucket from the bottom of the well, sniffed at the water to see if the well had been fouled, then offered him the bucket in lieu of the missing dipper. Alan took a sip or two, but felt better dumping it over his head and shoulders and swiping his face with both of his hands.

"Wot was it?" Mollow asked, now dressed in full uniform and ready for a killing, his Ferguson at full cock.

"Dead woman and baby in the house," Burgess said tighthly. "Poor Mister Lewrie saw it and near lost his wits."

"The usual sort o' thing, Mister Burgess?" Mollow asked.

"Worse than the usual," Burgess replied.

"Should I be booryin' 'em?"

"Much too late for that," Chiswick said with a shake of his head.

"The usual?" Alan demanded, after another long pull at he flask. "The usual? What's so bloody usual about seeing a woman gutted and her unborn babe stuck to the wall with steel?"

"They were Rebels," Chiswick told him.

"Damn you to hell, Rebel or savage, no one deserved that!"

"I'm not saying anyone ever deserves that, Alan," Burgess insisted, taking back his flask now that Lewrie looked human once more and full of normal, righteous anger. "But like your whore must have told you, this is the worst sort of civil war. It's not flags and trumpets and regulars going at each other like a war in Europe, not here in the South, anyways. It's partisan fighting, and horrors like this on every hand. Families turned on each other, neighbors turned on each other, and after a while the decent spirit of Man gets lost in the tit-for-tat."

"How would you know they were Rebels?" Alan asked.

"You read that… epitaph on the wall," Burgess said. "And you'll notice there's no men's bodies about the place. Off with the fighting in the spring and summer most like and not coming home again, or still bearing arms and not had the chance to discover what happened to their people. Arnold and Phillips were through here; Tarleton was through here scouting and foraging with us as well. Who knows who did it, or when?"

"If that's the sort of war we're fighting, then God damn us all for murdering cowards!" Alan raged. "Women and little babies, for Christ's sake! It's one thing for a man to be punished for rebellion, but this!"

"Like my brother George," Burgess spat. "This could just is easy be a Loyalist farm and those innocents slain by the Rebels!"

"And it still wouldn't make it right," Alan declared.

"No, it would not." Burgess softened, laying a firm hand on Alan's shoulder to steady him. "And I hope the officer and the men who did this die just as painful and as gruesome a death, no matter what uniform they wear. All we can do is make sure we would not do such a deed."

"God, get me away from this hateful country and back I sea where I belong," Alan prayed. "Where the fighting is clean and upright, and a man can keep his honor!"

"Speaking of that, we'd best be getting back to the others," the young infantryman said. "Mollow, find that seaman. We'll be leaving."

"Aye," the soldier replied. "Be takin' the road, I 'spect? Cain't lead no stock through the woods."

"We'll have to. You scout ahead, once we're ready."

Alan went back into the sun to fetch his waistcoat and jacket, still damp but a lot cleaner than they had been before, and donned them. He hung his military accoutrements about him and took up the rifle once more as Mollow and Cony gathered the stock for leading. He was happy to shake the dust of the place from him and unable to smell anything else than the sick and copper odor of death that clung to the farmstead. The fresh blood smell of the 'spatched cocks and the hogs almost made him start gagging all over again, and he walked as far from them as he could, letting Cony lead the horse with the drag as they started out.

He trudged along, stumbling over shallow wagon ruts and loose rocks in the lane between the fences, too shaken to care where they were going.

God, how could any human being with any honor at all do such a murthering thing? he asked himself. Bastard, I may be, but I could never raise my hand against a woman. Maybe Cheatham is right—I am not the basest person that was ever born after all. The Navy would never do such a deed or allow it to happen. Thank God Father shoved me in the Fleet and not some regiment bound for the Colonies, or I'd have run screaming into the backwoods by now, sick of it all.

He tried to harken back to all the women he had known who had done him dirty, trying to discover one who might have deserved such a death, and was amazed that even the Covent Garden whore who had pinched his purse of nearly ten pounds when he was a feckless fifteen could not engage his rage enough to wish her such agony.

And the babe. God in heaven, how could he ever sear that fiendish sight from his memory. He hated babies, usually; squawling little bundles of nastiness best kept out of sight with a nurse and trotted out at bedtime for a cuff on the ead The getting of them was enjoyable, but the keeping of them was not, a matter best left to the sluts who dropped them.

Then there was Lucy Beauman. What if it had been her slashed open like that? What if he and Lucy married someday? And what if it had been his child, his heir, nailed to the wall by some rampaging fiend?

I'd hunt the bastard down and kill him slow, Alan vowed, suddenly full of anger instead of sickness. Whoever did that deserves to die, and to die horribly. I wish I could find him and make him pay, and I don't care if it's that hero Tarleton, or that turncoat Arnold, or Cornwallis himself. The regular army would make him roast, by God.

They reached the main road, Alan never being aware of the dread and anticipation with which the soldiers had walked that sunken farm lane, sure an ambush would occur at any moment. In his anger he was oblivious.

"You are looking positively wolfish," Chiswick commented as they waited for Mollow to scout west against any party advancing on Yorktown to their rear.

"Must be your… what did you call it… whiskey?"

"Liked it, did you?" Chiswick grinned. "There'll be plenty more in camp. The soldiers can brew it themselves from corn, and this country is full of that. Easiest way to get corn products to market from up in the Piedmont, and no taxes to pay for import of claret or port."

"It helps," Alan confessed. "Look here, Burgess. You said to the private that it was the usual, or worse than the usual. So you have seen such an atrocity before?"

"Yes, more than enough, unfortunately."

"Has your unit ever…" Alan asked, wondering what a band of Loyalist volunteers could do in reprisal to the people they ran across who supported the rebellion.

"No, we have not!" Burgess snapped, his eyes narrowing, "How dare you accuse me of such a thing. I've half a mind to call you out for it. We may not be an English unit, by God but we're not a pack of thieving and murthering poltroons, like the Fannings and 'Bloody Bill' Cunninghams."

"My apologies, then, Burgess," Alan said, seeing that Chiswick was indeed ready to kill him for the slur on his unit's honor, and on his own personal honor.

"That is not good enough, sir," Burgess said.

"I most humbly beg your pardon, Mister Chiswick, for by the asking of a question meant in all innocence, that you might have felt that I had cast any aspersions upon you or your company," Alan said in the most formal tone of complete and abject apology, amazed at himself to be backing down from any man, even someone he was beginning to like. He would not have done it in London, and they would have met and crossed swords or stood and delivered a volley out of sheer pride and honor.

He shifted the rifle to his left hand and offered Burgess the right, which Burgess took after a moment. "I am sorry I was so quick to take offense, Alan, but damme, that was a little close to my feelings. We've flogged and hung before to prevent that sort of thing."

"Then I shall be easy in my mind that we are still decent Christians, no matter what sort of service we have seen." Alan smiled as they shook hands heartily.

"Well, not well-churched Christians, I think." Burgess smiled.

"But never capable of such as we saw, so that says something for our salvation," Alan said. "For being a pair of rake-hells?"

"Amen to that."

Once determining that the Williamsburg road was clear of enemy activity, they led their menagerie east, back to the working party, just in time to see the end of labors. Two stout pines had been cut down for replacement masts, trimmed of limbs and laid out to be skinned clean of bark and knurls, Two lighter timbers had been selected for replacement royal and topgallant yards. Other blocks from the butts had been shaped roughly into new trestletree pieces, which the carter and his crew would finish later aboard ship. Not being content merely to satisfy the ready needs of the ship, they had harvested several spare spars as well for future service, the entire gathering slung between the two caissons and the twelve horses reharnessed into a single large team ahead of both wagons.

"Good God above, it's Noah!" Railsford laughed loudly as they hove into sight, leading the cattle and sheep, dragging the pig carcasses.

"Sure you do not want to join the army, Mister Lewrie?" the elder Chiswick asked as he surveyed their small herd. "I could use a good forager such as yourself."

"Though the foraging proved rough on your uniform," Railsford said as he saw the state of Alan's clothes, and his stockings which were little higher than his shoe tops, leaving his legs bare below his breeches.

"The fortunes of war, sir," Alan replied, offering the Ferguson back to Lieutenant Chiswick, who opened the breech and checked the flint professionally in an automatic response to see if the user had fouled it, or done something dumb with a good gun.

"We heard but one shot," Chiswick said.

"That was Mollow killing the second hog." Burgess grinned. "After our sailor here had wrestled and stabbed the first to death, like Samson slaying the lions in the wilderness. That's how he got skinned up."

"Any sign?" his brother asked.

"Quiet as church on a Monday. Looted farmstead, where we found all this, but no sign of French or Rebels. I'll tell you the rest later."

"Good." Lieutenant Chiswick nodded. "You missed dinner, but we've no time to feed you now. I'd like to get back across Yorktown Creek before dark."

"I shall cope," Burgess replied with a shrug.

I shan't, Alan thought, but no one was asking him, and he realized that it was already midafternoon and he had not had a bite to eat since before dawn. Mollow could get a crumb or two from his fellow soldiers, Cony could depend on his mates to have saved him a morsel or two, but Alan had to go without, and it was a long, slow trek back in the heat and humidity, with only stale water for sustenance.

By the time they reached the boat landing and began loading the boats with their prize, it was nearly dark. The army encampments were lit up with squad fires and they could detect the tempting aromas of individual messes in the process of cooking their meals, the smell of bake ovens and the sight of game and domestic meats being roasted for the officers in front of their pavilion tents.

"You would be welcome to eat with us," Burgess offered as he came to Lewrie's side near the docks. "Would your captain allow you?"

"You do not know my captain." Alan grimaced. "I am his prime case of sloth and sinfulness, not to be let out of his sight long enough to get into more trouble."

"A man after my own heart, you are," Burgess chuckled. "But perhaps in future, before you sail, I and Governour could send an invitation aboard for you to dine with us. We could kill one of the fatted calves for you."

"Don't wait for me for an excuse, but I'd enjoy continuing the pleasance of your company indeed, Burgess," Alan said, sure that he had made himself a new friend, if even for a short acquaintance. "I'll bring some wine, even if it's a poor rough-and-ready issue wine."

"Then you should be doubly welcome. I shall say good evening to you, then, until next time."

"Until next time, aye," Alan replied, shaking hands with him once more and adding his warm respects to the elder brother as well. Then it was into the boats and a row out to Desperate. He would not be going empty-handed, even so. The North Carolina Volunteers had gotten one of the sheep, one of the hogs, and both calves, while Desperate got the cow, one hog, one sheep, and the chickens, one of which Alan still posessed for his own mess.

By the time they had lashed their new spars and masts hoard for hoisting the next morning, it was full dark, and the few buildings in the town were lit up, as well as the ships the anchorage. A cool sea wind had sprung up to blow away the heat of the day, and the cook and his assistants were busy boiling the cow for supper. With the news of their good fortune at foraging, everyone had a good word for Lewrie as he strolled the decks, sniffing at the good smells and almost slavering like a famished dog for his fresh meal. Even Treghues had been kindly in his praise, for he had gotten a chicken out of the encounter.

"A good day's work, was it not, Mister Coke?" Alan said as he met him by the larboard gangway, where the bosun and the carpenter were assaying their precious lumber still.

"A fine day indeed, Mister Lewrie," Coke replied. "Though I'd be easier in my mind ta soak these spars in a mast pond fer a few weeks ta season 'em. Guess a dash o' tar'll have ta do."

"Anything to get us off this wretched coast and back to the fleet," Alan said. The chime of the last bell in the second dogwatch freed him from the deck, and he went below to partake of his dinner, knowing that even Freeling could not make the chicken that awaited him unpalatable.

"A tasty looking dish," Avery said as the roasted bird was placed on the mess table alongside the fresh joint of beef that had also resulted from the trip ashore.

"Wish you could have found some potatoes, though," Carey said.

"You ungrateful little whelp! I put my life on the line for this, and you want something else!"

"I like potatoes with all this good gravy," Carey said.

"But it wasn't much trouble, was it," Forrester stated, Unwilling to give Lewrie credit for his pains, even if he shared the resulting largesse. "I mean… you were escorted and all."

"But in the middle of Rebel country," Alan reminded him. "Woods as like as not full of enemy scouts way beyond reach of the lines. Miles out in those dark woods like nothing you'v ever seen."

He laid it on thick, stressing the alien nature of the forests and the dangers even the skilled troops of the North Carolina provincials had worried about. As he talked, though, he took a breast and leg from the bird and a large slice of roast beef dripping juices and piping hot, to leave the rest of the bird to them. They had wine, more pease pudding, and biscuits fresher than ship's issue from the naval stores ashore. There were whole ears of boiled corn that even rancid ship's butter could not ruin—as much as they liked for once. Carey's face was glinting with the greases as he crammed himself full as only a perpetually hungry midshipman could when offered a decent chance. Even Forrester shut up and wolfed his victuals with more than his usual relish.

Not wishing to spoil anyone's supper (even Forrester's) with the account of what he had seen in the farmhouse, he kept silent on that subject, trying to dismiss it from his own mind as much as he was able.

"What smells of rough spirits in here?" he finally asked, wondering if anyone had been painting below decks in his absence.

"Forrester's face." Avery smiled. "Still won't come off, Francis?"

"I am still laying for you, and I will have my revenge."

A day's scrubbing with paint remover had not done much for the splendor of Forrester's countenance.

"When pigs can fly," Avery grumbled through a particularly tasty bit of biscuit soaked in steak juices and mustard.

"What's for dessert?" Carey asked, leaning back from the table and displaying a belly taut as a drumhead. "Any apples left? Freeling?"

"Apple dowdy, zur," Freeling said, making even that welcome pronouncement like an undertaker's greeting. "Thev wuz gone over, zo noothin' ta dew but smoosh 'em un' make a dowdy."

"How appetizing you make it sound," Alan replied as a howl of hot dowdy was put down before them. Half flour, some crushed biscuit, mashed apples with molasses, and a toasty crust that might have been also sprinkled with some sugar. Alan was sure that if Freeling had had a hand in it, the cores and stems and seeds were still there, along with the peels, but he was game enough for something sweet to sort out the odd bits.

"Then yew wooden be warntin' any, ah takes it, zur," Freeling said mournfully, but with a glint to his eyes, which meant that he had been planning to eat what was left of it. Damned if he would!

"Dish me a goodly portion," Lewrie said, gleaming back at him. "A goodly portion, mind you, Freeling."

"Aye, zur."

When spooned out, it was evident that a fair measure of rum had made its way into the dowdy as well, which made them all smack their lips.

"You know," Alan began between heavenly bites, "I wish we could get together with those soldiers again and go back out to that farm on the Williamsburg road. There must be other farms that have been abandoned. I saw beans and potatoes going to waste in the fields, fodder for whatever stock that survived the looting around here. Must be orchards, too."

"Then they may as well be the Golden Apples used to lure Diana," Avery said, frowning. "We will be at sea day after tomorrow after we refit. And I doubt if Captain Treghues would let us ashore for any more scavenging."

"Not us, perhaps, but if I know anything about those Chiswick brothers and their men, they'll be scouting out there at first light for anything they can grab." Alan laughed easily, now getting very tight in the middle and wondering if he had room for two more bites of the dowdy, even in such a noble effort as depriving Freeling of a single morsel. "I could send a letter ashore at first light and let them know we would pay well for anything they could bring us. They did invite me to dine with them, too."

"No large hopes for that with all the work we'll be doing," Forrester said, scooping his spoon around his bowl for the last crumbs and streaks and licking the spoon thoroughly. "But if they could provide us with some fresh fruit and vegetables I'd gladly go shares on it."

"Might be dear. They're a famished lot," Alan warned.

"What else do we have to spend our money on?" Forrester countered. "What would they be worth—a peck or two of potatoes, some peas or beans and a keg of apples or something sweet? A pound altogether?"

"The thought is intriguing," Avery said, "else we'll be back at sea with Graves and Hood, and God knows when we put into a port, again. This might be our last chance for weeks."

"I'd best write that letter now," Lewrie said. "Even if I can't accept their supper offer. Mind, now, I said I'd take them some wine. What do we have left?"

"Four bottles of red, one of claret, but we were saving that."

"That's good enough for soldiers, provincial soldiers at that," Forrester sneered. "Let's send them a half gallon of Miss Taylor for their swill."

"If we did that, we'd not survive our next reencounter with them," Alan said. "They'd kill us on sight after one glass!"

"Have to be the red, then." Avery summed up: "Two bottles of the red… and the claret, too."

"Here, now," Forrester protested.

"A good trade, don't you think? We could even get some meat on the hoof. Surely there is more where this livestock came from?"

"Freeling, bring me ink and paper," Alan said. "And some rum."

CHAPTER 7

The next morning, the ninth of September, dawned with a light fog and a chill to the air, which none of the men were accustomed to after long service in the Indies. It was a welcome chill, though, for they would be put to very hard labor during the day, and under tropical conditions it would have wrung the sweat from them until they left as much water on the decks in their shadows as they could imbibe.

Alan's quickly penned letter went off with Weems, who wanted to secure some new cordage from the other ships in the anchorage, if there was some to spare. In his absence Toliver filled in, with Feather, the quartermaster's mate, who had done the chore a dozen times in his career.

First, the newly carved and formed trestletrees and cheek pieces were hoisted aloft into the maintop, to be lashed and bolted to the upper butt of the mainmast ready to receive the new topmast.

"Ahoy, there!" Coke bellowed. "Ready ta tail on the yard purchase! Haul away handsomely, now! Mister Forrester, do ya ready yer people on the stay tackle as she leaves the deck."

Slowly, the fresh new mast rose from the horizontal until the butt end was all that kept it on deck. A party of men took up tension on the stay tackles to either side and aft to keep it from rolling, swinging, or dashing forward to do hurt to the doublings of the lower mainmast.

"Haul away, my bully boys! Haul, boys, haul!" Coke ordered. "Now walk yer stay tackles forrard, handsomely now!"

He was in his element and enjoying every minute of it, waving even Railsford and Treghues on the sidelines to keep silent and only jump in if something untoward happened.

"Up an' down, Mister Coke!" Toliver cried, leaning down to eye the alignment of the topmast with the lower mast and lubber's hole in the top.

"Snub ya well yer preventers! Hoist away all aloft!"

Up the new topmast went, one foot at a time until it threaded through the gap in the trestletrees and cheek pieces where it was to rest. The new foot piece was inserted, and the roving of the doubling bands was wrapped firmly about it, even as other hands began to set up the newly made upper shrouds. With everything torn away, it was a lot more labor to reset the topmast than the usual drill, for the fore and aft stays had also to be installed and then fiddled with until everyone in charge was satisfied with their tension and the upper mast's angles.

It was halfway into the forenoon watch before the old tops'l yard, now "fished" with one of the precious, seasoned stuns'l booms and lashed about like a giant splinted bone for rigidity, could be rerigged with all the blocks, sheaves, and hardware for the braces, clew-lines, halyards, and jears. They rove it to the top tackles first to be hoisted aloft to the top platform, then secured it to the new halyards and jears to hoist it firmly into its proper position so it could be overhauled for complete trim and reef control. Once in place, the sailmaker and his crew fed the resewn and patched original tops'l up through the lubber's hole into the maintop where the sail handlers could bend it back onto the yard, apply new sheets to help draw it down to its full length, and then brail it up.

As the process was being repeated to begin swaying up the new topgallant and royal masts to their own trestletrees, cheek pieces, and waiting doubling bands, one of the men on the tops'l yard gave a shout and pointed out to seaward. Lewrie was higher than he at the topmast crosstrees, which had just been correctly cross-tensioned by the shrouds, and he turned carefully on his precarious and half-finished perch to see what the excitement had been about.

The morning haze had burned off with the heat of the autumn sun, though the day was still pleasantly cool, which made for almost ideal viewing conditions. As Alan shaded his eyes against the morning sun in the east, he could bareh make out an unnatural-looking cloud on the seaward horizon somewhere just inshore of the Middle Ground and the main ship channel into the bay, he suspected. Certainly it ould not be a ship in the passage—that was near forty miles off, below the horizon.

"Riyals an' t'gallants!" the impromptu lookout declared firmly.

"Looks to be only a cloud to me," Alan said, with a shrug.

"Tis ships, Mister Lewrie, sir," the man insisted.

"Might be Iris and Richmond, then," Alan said. "They were out to pick up all the buoys the Frogs left when they cut their cables a few days back."

"Mebbe our fleet acomin' back fer us, sir," the man went on, nodding his head with the rightness of that thought. "See, sir, that gunboat of our'n out there is headin' out ta check on 'em."

Alan looked closer in. Perhaps ten miles off, almost under the horizon herself, there was a ketch-rigged patrol craft that had come down from higher up the bay at dawn after taking or burning almost every boat or watercraft still on the upper reaches of the Chesapeake, so it would be impossible for the French over on the James to amass any shipping that could threaten the army on the York. Symonds's small flotilla had not left a rowing boat for the Rebels to use above their anchorage.

"Aloft there!" Coke's voice boomed. "Stand by yer top tackles ta take the topgallant mast!"

"'Old yer water, Norman, 'old yer water, damn ye," the carpenter griped, still rasping that last little bit of smoothness between the assembled trestletrees which would receive and hold the butt of the topgallant.

"Go down and tell the captain there are unidentified ships in the bay, and that one of our gunboats is investigating," Alan said to the seaman who had made the first sighting.

"Oh, Lor', Mister Lewrie, I couldn't do that, sir!" he pleaded.

Cool day or not, the work was hard enough, and with so few people aloft Alan had had to do some of it instead of merely supervising, so he turned on the man quickly. "Damn you, go on deck and report to the captain as I instructed you, or the bosun'll have the hide off you tomorrow forenoon!"

"Aye, aye, sir," the man replied, trying to hide his worries about how he might be received by their captain in whatever mood God had seen fit to give him at that moment. Just by trying to weasel out of going he had come close to insubordination and back talk, which could cost him a full dozen at the gratings from a cat-o'-nine-tails. He swung out of the rigging with lithe skill and scrabbled down a newly rigged and tarred backstay to the deck before Alan could think of another word to say.

"Haul away on the top tackles," Coke commanded, and the blocks began to roar and squeal as the topgallant began to make its way up the mast.

There was enough to do to take everyone's mind off the sighting in the next hour, and the seaman reported back quickly and fell to work with a will, evidently glad to have survived speaking to a quarterdeck officer instead of Treghues directly. Anyway, it was no concern of theirs as long as Desperate was not ready for sea in all respects. Had the strange cloud been a host of angels come ready for Armageddon, they would have had to wait until the bosun had the ship restored to "Bristol Fashion."

By the time the fore and aft stays had been rigged for proper tension on the topgallant mast and its yard had been hoisted aloft to be refitted, the seaman had a higher perch over the bluffs and trees of the York peninsula and the outlying islands, almost into Lynnhaven Bay itself, and once more he called out for attention to seaward.

"Now what?" Alan frowned as he balanced on the foot rope of the topgallant yard to aid in brailing up the new sail to the spar.

"Take a look now, Mister Lewrie, sir," the man said, trying to keep vindication from his tone, though it was a given that the man had been right, had known it all along and was pointedly not calling all officers and midshipmen fools for ignoring him.

Alan leaned into the yard to free his hands to shade his eyes once more, and this time he stiffened with intense interest. "Stap me!" he said.

The strange cloud was a lot closer now, well inside the Middle Ground, high enough up over the horizon to reveal the graceful curving shapes of royals, topgallants, and a hint of tops'ls. The little gunboat was coming up over the horizon ahead of the cloud, as if she were leading. The cloud had split, part of it advancing toward the mouth of the York.

"Deck there!" Alan bawled. "Send up a telescope! Ships in sight!"

"Hood an' Graves?" the carpenter asked from the crosstrees below them. He was not as spry as he had been in his youth, and going aloft was no longer one of his required duties, so he was taking no chances on any unsafe handhold over one hundred feet above the deck.

"Can't tell, Chips," Alan replied.

"Musta caught up with them Romish bastards an' give 'em a good drubbin'. Mebbe run 'em halfway back ta Brest!" The carpenter chortled. "Now we kin go back over ta the James an' shoot the Frog sojers ta shit."

If it was indeed the return of the British fleet, Alan realized it would be late in the day before they made their stately way into the fleet anchorage in the York, and nothing could change that, so there was no reason to be impatient. On land or at sea, things moved at their own speed, which was usually damned slow, like a four-hour dinner party. Patience was one of the prime virtues of the age, so Alan felt no hectic desire to have that telescope within the next blink of an eye. He was getting anxious, however; that old shivery, prickling reeling was back, plucking at his heart strings and knotting up cold in his innards.

It could be Graves and Hood, he told himself as he steeled himself to show outward calm. If de Grasse decided to sheer off now, he's landed his troops and guns. I've not heard the Frogs really ever risk too much with their fleets. But Graves was such a tremulous poltroon t'other day, he more like simply turned about and let them go in peace. Best, in the long run. He's finally here, and he can seal the bay. Even a halfwit can accomplish that.

"Glass, sir," a nimble young topman offered, panting from his long climb to the topgallant yard with the telescope. Alan slung it over his shoulder like a musket and scaled up to the cap of the topgallant mast for a better vantage. Hugging the mast, he drew out the tube to its full extension and steadied himself for a look-see.

The first thing that caught his eye was the little ketch-rigged gunboat, now heading straight for the mouth of the York and the passage between the two outlying shoals. She was flying all the sail she could safely carry still hull down. Beyond her, only royals and topgallants were showing—ships of some kind. It was still too far to make out any identifying details, but there were at least eight to ten large ships headed for the York—they overlapped so much it was hard to get an accurate count. He swiveled to look over at Lynnhaven Bay and saw another pack of sails headed in for the old French anchorage, merely a gentler hint of ships, since they were much further away from him, even with Desperate anchored the most easterly of the ships in the base. But he could make out two ships closer to him, two ships that he took to be Iris and Richmond. Was it his imagination, or were they also headed in to join their sister ships in the York? Bows on to him, they were now.

"Pass the word to the deck," he suddenly said. "At least ten sail of the line bound for the York, and an unknown number of sail headed for Lynnhaven Bay. No identification yet."

While he clung to his perch, topmen came up around him to haul up the royal mast and the light royal yard, to secure them into position and link the braces to the lower yards and drop new rope down to the deck and the handling tackle.

By eleven-thirty in the morning, Desperate was a whole ship once more. The lifting lines were flaked down or coiled away for future need, and the crew dismissed to their rum ration and the prospect of hot food. Alan could have joined them, hut he remained in the rigging, now almost to the peak of the royal mast so that nothing on the peninsula would block his view, not the bluffs around the town and harbor and not the lower land out near the islands and shoals. There was a meal on the mess table for him, but he could not go below without knowing for sure, so he remained out of a perverse sense of duty, swaying back and forth as the ship gently heaved and rolled and the masts slowly spiraled against the bright blue sky. He would have to go down soon, for Treghues still insisted on him and Avery coming to his cabins and reading aloud from the Old Testament; after the paint incident, they were all there now.

The ships bound into Lynnhaven Bay and the James he would never be able to identify—they were simply too far off. But it did seem as if several of them—dare he call them frigates?—had separated from the mysterious main body and were closing in on what he took to be Richmond and Iris, and that was damned ominous.

Closer in and now almost to the east, the little gunboat was now nearly hull up; she was close enough to spot her national ensign, and with a strong telescope almost catch the whip of her long commissioning pendant. Behind her, with all sail plans above the horizon, there appeared now a full dozen ships of the line and what appeared to be a couple more frigate-sized vessels.

There was a puff of smoke from the gunboat, a tiny bloom of gray torn away almost at once into a light haze. It was too far away to hear the cannon, but it was a signal nonetheless.

"Oh, Christ, no," he muttered.

On the ketch's foremast, there rose a signal flag. It was from Admiral Graves's book, of course, since the local patrol craft were a part of his North American Squadron, and he had seen this particular flag hoist in the last few days aboard the Solebay as she had led the fleet down to the Cape Henry entrance to the bay on the fifth.

Enemy In Sight.

"Goddamn them," he growled. "Just goddamn the incompetent shits." He tried to read his feelings; would it be more suitable to scream and rant, to be petrified with fear for the future, to play up game as a little guinea cock? He was surprised to feel absolutely nothing, none of the emotions others might consider appropriate to match the situation.

"Deck, there!" he yelled as loud as he could, and saw several white faces turn up to look at him from the quarterdeck. "Enemy in sight! French ships in the bay!"

He did not have to repeat it.

That ought to spill some soup on the mess deck, he thought. Christ, we are well and truly fucked!

Desperate relayed the hoist to Symonds in the Charon, and the little gunboat was ordered back out to sea to scout. She was not gone for long, and was forced to come scuttling back to the safety of the river two hours later, bearing bad news.

Richmond and Iris had been overwhelmed and taken as prizes by the French. There were at least eight sail of the line in Lynnhaven Bay, with several more ships that might be transports in company, anchoring to the abandoned buoys. There were four command flags that she had spotted, one in Lynnhaven Bay, two vice admirals' flags in three-deckers, and a full admiral's flag flying from a huge three-decker that was most likely the Ville de Paris, de Grasse's flagship. There was a two-decker and three frigates anchoring out by the islands at the mouth of the York, and the main passage between Cape Henry and the Middle Ground was most likely to be blocked as well. And all the ships present were flying the white banners with the golden lilies of Bourbon France.

In midafternoon, the closest French frigate in the York fired a single gun to leeward as a challenge, daring any ship or combination of ships, in the English flotilla to come out to fight.

They were trapped.

"He wants our powder?" Treghues scoffed, shocked to the depths of his prim and addled soul.

"Aye; Sir," Railsford said with a shrug. A flag lieutenant from Captain Symonds stood on the quarterdeck with a military officer in the blue, red, and buff of the artillery. "And we are also instructed to dismount our carronades and half our swivel guns and deliver them ashore, with all spare shot."

"That would render us unable to fight!" Treghues barked. "One might as well ask for all our nine-pounders, too!"

"You have nine-pounders?" the artilleryman asked. "Long nines? They might prove useful as well."

"Then we would truly be disarmed!"

"With the French fleet blockading the river and the exits from the bay, Captain Treghues, your armament is at present nugatory, is it not?" Receiving no answer, the artillery officer went on, patting the breech of one of the quarterdeck swivels in appreciation. "Until your Admiral Graves returns, we shall have to fortify, and we have nought but field pieces, none over a six-pounder. And should it prove a long siege, we shall be short of powder and shot for counter-battery fire. Your Captain Symonds has already stripped his vessel of all her eighteens, powder and shot."

"Why do we not simply lay her up in ordinary, strip her to her tops and gantlines," Treghues fumed, "or just burn her outright and turn her crew into… soldiers?" There were few things lower to a Royal Navy man—"farmers" was the common epithet for the clumsy, but for the clumsy and stupid in the bargain, "soldiers" expressed a sailor's indignation quite well.

"You have at present eighteen long 9-pounders, Captain," the naval aide pointed out. "A very long-ranged and accurate Piece, and they would be more useful in the present circumstances ashore in fortifications than aboard the Desperate. Your carronades at extreme elevation could deliver bursting shot as well as any howitzer or mortar barrel, and the swivels could break up any raiding party. Surely, you must see the sense of my captain's request. Perhaps you could dismount half your ordnance to form three half-batteries, and you could be left with a few en flûte."

It did not take a genius to discern that if Treghues refused to grant the request, it would come back before the end of the watch as an order, which would leave him nothing.

"I could retain two as chase guns forrard," Treghues mused, his brows knurled with repressed anger. "And three in battery on each beam. I can spare no more than ten."

"At present, sir," the flag lieutenant said, reminding him that circumstances could indeed demand Desperate's stripping and burning sometime in the future should the siege last a long time.

"My gunners would be most grateful, sir," the artilleryman added. "We shall take good care of your pieces, see if we shan't."

"Naval artillery in the hands of soldiers?" Treghues reared back, ready to go on another tear. "Nay, sir, I shall depute my own gunners for land service!"

"That would be most welcome, Captain." The army gunner nodded gratefully, unaware that Treghues's truculence was anything more than the usual grudge match between army and the sea service.

"We could have barges alongside for the powder and shot by the beginning of the day watch, sir," the naval aide assured him. "Perhaps only the first tier of powder to begin with, and all prepared cartridge bags and shot garlands."

"Aye, if you must," Treghues said, rubbing the side of his head that had been the target of the heavy rammer. "See to it, Mister Railsford. I shall be aft. Judkin?"

"Aye, sir?" his steward replied, stepping forward.

"Pass the word for Mr. Dorne, would you?"

"Aye, sir."

The barges came alongside within the hour while Treghues sulked in his cabins. They were barges slapped together from green pinewood, locally harvested, and minus all the attention to detail one usually expected from a good boatwrignt. They were broader than normal and of shallower draft, still pierced for a dozen oars, with a raised stem post and tiller head. It was fortunate that they were being used on a river, for they looked unhandy in any sort of seaway, even to the less experienced hands. They began to look even more unhandy as they were loaded thwart deep with kegs of powder and rope nets full of ready-sewn powder bags, or stacked with round shot, canister, and grapeshot.

The shot went down the skids to either beam, thick and smooth ramps that could cradle a beef cask or water barrel as it slid up or down the ship's side. The powder, though, had to be hoisted out one keg at a time, checked most carefully for dust or dribbles, slung into a net and then swayed up with the main yard and a series of gantlines to check any swing or sway. They were lowered into the waiting barges as carefully as eggs would go into a farmgirl's straw basket; one shock and…

The artillery was no more easy. The gun tools and the carriages were fairly light and went quickly, but the barrels themselves were sinfully heavy and hard to handle. A barge could take only two barrels before it began to settle down so low that water began to lap near the gunwales and rowports, and the boat was then rowed gingerly to the town dock for unloading with jury-rigged spars set up as cranes.

"Looks naked as a whore's belly," Mister Gwynn the gunner commented as he surveyed his bare decks. For the first time, below the gangways on either beam, the gun deck was free of tackles, blocks, and sheaves, free of guns, rope shot garlands, netting bags for practice shot, and water tubs for the slow-match, or firefighting. There were now two 9-pounders on the fo'c's'le forward as chase guns, and only three abeam remaining with which to fight; one pair just forward of the mainmast, and one pair just under the break of the quarterdeck for balance fore and aft. With her gunports empty, she did resemble a flute waiting to be played, instead of a warship. There were times that larger frigates had been disarmed or had given up half their guns to ease the burden of carrying troops, which was where the term flûte had arisen, but no one had ever imagined that lithe little Desperate would ever be called upon to surrender her guns 'til she was finally decommissioned. It was ironic that her commissioning pendant still flew from the mainmast truck under the circumstances.

"This is getting serious," Alan decided.

"Aye, so 'tis," Gwynn replied, ruminating on a wad of tobacco in his cheeks. He leaned over expertly and spat into the kid by the foremast. "Fuckin' army got themselves trapped, so they did."

"And us with 'em," Alan said.

"I ain't no man for land fightin'," Gwynn growled, chewing hard at his almost dead plug. "Lice and fleas, sleepin' rough on the ground 'stead of swayin' in a comfy hammock and caulkin' easy nights. Takes a pure fool to be a soldier, and not much of a man, neither. Nobody worth a damn ever took the King's Shilling and put on a red coat."

"At least they don't have press-gangs," Alan said. Poor as the life of a soldier could be, and with such little regard from the citizens towards them, no one had to scour the seaports and coastal towns to drag people into the army.

"Takes a superior kinda man to make a seaman." Gwynn smiled. "But he's the kind that needs a little prodding to sign aboard, like."

"A one smart enough to run, sir?" Alan said. "Caught anyway."

"Then how'd we get you, Mister Lewrie?"

"Damned hard luck all around, Mister Gwynn." Alan grinned.

"Get your gear together, then. See what sort of damn hard luck we have ashore."

Gwynn could joke about it—he was a senior warrant, a man who was retained in peace or war aboard ship. In war he was in charge of all the artillery, powder, and shot. In peacetime he could live aboard ship with his family in Desperate as long as she was laid up in ordinary and her guns stored in some warehouse ashore. A gunner's mate like Tulley would be turned out onto the beach to make his own way, but a man with a warrant from the Admiralty had a lifelong living if he so chose, since his skills were valuable; more so than those of a lieutenant, who would go on half pay once he was no longer needed.

So Gwynn was not going ashore, much as he might crab about the conditions they might face. He was staying aboard ship.

Tulley was going ashore, though, along with Lieutenant Railsford, who would command Desperate's batteries. There would be full crews for all guns, which would require a gun captain each piece, a quarter-gunner for each half-battery of three guns, a rammer, powderman, shotman, a ship's boy to fetch powder cartridges, and only two hands for tackles, since they would not be trying to roll guns up a sloping deck to firing position. That was still seven men per gun, and represented nearly half of Desperate's allotted 160-man crew.

Of the midshipmen's mess, only young Carey would stay aboard to help supervise the remaining crew with the sailing-master and the captain. The quartermaster would stay, but his mates were available as senior petty officers. The bosun, Mister Coke, would stay, along with his mate Weems, the sailmaker and his crew, cooper, carpenter and the mast captains, and able seamen from the tops.

Leaving the ship presented a problem for Alan beyond the wrench to his soul at going into siege warfare on land, for which he was so unprepared; what was he to do with the contents of his sea-chest?

A locked sea-chest was fair game in the holds to anyone with a clasp knife and a little privacy. Even if left in the midshipmen's mess, it was vulnerable to pilfering. Alan had valuable writing paper in it, books and shirts and silk stockings, his prize-money certificates, and the records of his meager sea career, which he would have to present some time in the future to gain his money. And there was that gold. All the rouleaux of guineas—beautiful one-guinea and two-guinea pieces that could vanish in a twinkling! They were much too heavy to carry on his person, and much too valuable to leave behind.

There was no way he could confide in anyone aboard to safeguard the gold for him without admitting he had pilfered it from the French prize Ephegenie, and that was damned near a hanging offense. Even the mild and supportive Cheatham would not countenance it should he learn of it.

What was worse, he had no confidence in ever returning to Desperate. The French fleet was blockading the bay and the mouth of the river, and it would be storm season before they departed. There was a French army on the James shore of the York peninsula, and Cornwallis was going into fortifications to withstand a siege that might result in the surrender of the British army if Graves and Hood didn't get their act together soon. Desperate could end up a French prize of war, and his sea-chest could end up looted. He could become a prisoner of war, confined to a hulk or dungeon by sneering Rebel or French captors, stripped of every possession on his person except his clothes. Desperate might be burned to the waterline to prevent her use by the victors. And all his gold with her!

Damn Treghues, I wouldn't put it past him to set fire to her, he thought in an exquisite agony of indecision. Then I am once more as poverty-stricken as a pregnant bawd. And in prison to boot. Oh, God, I should never have pinched the stuff. I knew it at the time, but I needed it so dev'lish bad! If I'm not killed in the battle, I'm stuffed in irons until the war's over and out of the Navy without a hope, and out all my money, too. What's to happen to me then? What career would be open to me without prospects or sponsors or gold enough for security?

Still, officers were usually released on their own means it they gave their parole to no longer bear arms against their captors, and their personal property was usually respected. There might be a chance.

Taking great care not to be seen, Alan, in packing a canvas sea bag of things to sustain life ashore, slipped into his hoard and stuffed a deal box of two hundred guineas in one-guinea coins into his bag. If all else failed, he would have enough to survive confinement.

Might be enough to bribe my way into better quarters or something, he thought ruefully. Anyone thrown into debtor's orison could find good treatment and victuals if he had money enough on his person; how could a French or Rebel prison be any different? Besides, if he was ashore and in the tender mercies of the army long enough, a little gold could come in handy for delicacies or drink. His whore in Charleston had sneered at the Rebel Congress's currency as "not worth a Continental," so a gold piece could command a lot of clout in an economy starved of specie.

"Ready ta play lobsterback?" Mister Monk asked, rolling through the small midshipmen's mess from his quarters aft in the officer's wardroom. He smelt pleasantly of rum.

"Aye, Mister Monk," Alan replied, drawing the strings taut on his sea bag. "Though I fear I don't know the first thing about it."

"Anythin' ya need ashore?"

"A telescope, perhaps, sir. I doubt a sextant would prove useful. Or any of my books."

"I've given the first lieutenant two o' the day glasses, an' one o' the night glasses," Monk said. "All we kin spare, in faith."

"I fear for the contents of my chest, though, sir," Alan ventured hesitantly. "Tis all I own in this world, like any sailor…"

"We shift 'em inta the wardroom fer safe-keepin' once yer gone," Monk announced. "An' y'll be back aboard now an' agin ta fetch fresh."

"That would be most kind, Mister Monk, indeed," Alan said with a lively sense of relief. Monk would keep a good eye on things, as good an eye as he could until something dreadful happened to the ship.

With a lighter burden on his mind, Alan shouldered his sea bag and went on deck to muster with the hands to board the boats for shore.

CHAPTER 8

For days on end their tasks were easy. The army had already dug the fortifications for them—raised banks of earth shoulder high. For the battery of naval guns, the rampart was only waist high, and the native earth had been left in place like a ramp that spanned the trenches. On this they constructed "decks" of pine lumber, set up their trucks, and slung their artillery pieces.

The soldiers had already prepared the ground before the ramparts as well, having sewn nasty abatis, sharpened stakes driven into the ground to slow down and channel onrushing attackers into fire lanes before the guns and the few swivels allotted them. The ramparts themselves also bristled with sharpened stakes to prevent their being crossed by even the rashest Rebel soldier. Not that they represented a real defense, even with the fascines and gabions to stiffen them.

They were nakedly in the open. On their right was York River, and the so-called Star Redoubt to their right rear. There was a long and connected fortification on the right on their side of the Yorktown Creek and its steep ravine. Far away on their left, there were some other redoubts, small oblong semi-forts, but none of them tied together by any connecting trenches or earthworks. The army officers who had sited them in position had assured them that there was nothing to fear, for a determined foe had little hope of climbing the hills to get to their portion of the outer defense line. Far away on their left was the best approach route, across the lower-lying Wormsley's Pond and Wormsley Creek, where there were more redoubts and connected trenches.

Lewrie was pretty much on his own most of the time, since once he had come ashore the efforts of the Desperate's crew had been dissipated by the needs of the army. Lieutenant Railsford and two half-batteries had been sent over to the Gloucester side, where the nine-pounders formed the core of Tarrleton's and Simcoe's artillery, other than light field pieces suitable for dragoons and cavalry units. Happily, Midshipman Forrester had gone with him. Gunner's mate Tulley, Sitwell from the fo'c's'le and most of his men had gone into the inner defense line with the carronades and one of the nine-pounders to make up a full battery of guns stripped from lighter naval units of the same caliber. Unhappily, Midshipman David Avery had been assigned to those guns and that battery. Alan had been sent out to this rashly exposed and isolated fortification on the far bank of Yorktown Creek, and it wasn't even a redoubt with four or more solid walls that made one feel safe. It was merely a redan, two walls connected at an angle of no more than thirty degrees. One of his nine-pounders was at the apex of the two walls, and one on each end. In between, there were two light 6-pounders from the army on their large wheeled field limbers, with only a grizzled—and forbiddingly evil-looking—sergeant in charge. He had four light 1-pounder swivel guns on the low rampart for use against troops in the open. Once they were in close, he had the support of two dozen Hesse-Cassel Jagers, and if the artillery sergeant was an evil gent, then the Jagers were very devils incarnate. Each one sported a mustache nearly the size of a marlinspike, on which they paid more keen attention than upon their uniforms. Alan was beginning to distinguish them by which way their facial hair pointed; the officer in charge of the redan wore his curled down, then up at the tips like a bow wave—that was Feldwebel-leutnant Heros von Muecke, and how Alan could Pronounce that was pretty much anyone's guess. Not that it mattered much; von Muecke could barely rumble one complete phrase in English before reverting to his native tongue and spitting saliva over the person addressed.

His sergeant—a real sergeant (or feldwebel) instead of a bastard hyphen such as von Muecke—was a white-blonde lout named Kniemeyer, and his hairy lip appliance stood straight out, as the whiskers on a cat that was intently interested in something that moved. It was also bright red and could be recognized on a dark night. There were two corporals who were addressed only as "unteroffizier," and if they had names Alan had yet to discover them (not that he was all that eager to make their acquaintance—they stank like badgers), but he could recognize them by the color of their mustaches.

Alan had Cony with him from their previous excursion into the forests, a quarter-gunner and three gun captains, three powder boys, and eighteen other men. They had been issued muskets, cutlasses, and boarding axes for their own defense should they prove necessary. But there were only so many muskets to go around, so a round dozen would have to do, and they would have to depend on the Jagers to keep the enemy off them. And that was something that the Jagers were reputed to be very good at, even if they did look somewhat silly in their red and white ticken-striped long trousers so tight around the knee and lower legs, their yellow-buff waistcoats, and the shabby rifle green tunics with the red facings. As a light company, they at least wore a recognizable tricorne hat instead of a fur cap with the metal front plate of a battalion company or guards unit. Altogether a scruffy lot, who scratched a great deal and whose idea of a bath was to smoke themselves by a fire while their clothing was smoked as well to get rid of the "gentlemen's companions." Alan was sure that they were steady fellows, but if they ever got the wind up and decided to flee, whatever they said in parting would be totally unintelligible, and the naval party would be left holding the redan by themselves without a clue.

Behind the redan's walls, and safely out of reach of the guns, they had dug some pits which they had walled in and covered to store the powder cartridges and kegs of powder they had been allowed. To keep the elements out, they had covered the mounds with scrap sails that had been tarred to make them waterproof. Behind the magazines, there was a small hollow that had been expanded into a dugout for von Muecke and Alan.

With enough pine boughs and cut grass Alan could make a passable bed with his hammock spread over it for a ground cloth. There were some ditches to keep water from flowing to the hollow, and it was roofed with excess pine boards and scrap limbs, with another piece of sailcloth over it as well. Not that it was Alan's idea of a great way to live, half in and half out of the ground. But it was the best quarters they could find to assert their rights as officers and gentlemen, and the men in both the army and navy expected officers of the gentleman caste to keep up their appearances and their separation. Von Muecke had made great expostulation about the dignitat he was due as a Feldwebel-leutnant, which was, like the rank of midshipman, half noncommissioned officer, half gentleman. To have to share quarters with a navy man, he had had to be convinced that Alan was indeed a gentleman of suitable ton and of a rank high enough so that it would not be demeaning for him to share food, company, and farts.

He had also, once assured of Alan's bonafides, insisted on the disguising of their dugout to the point that it was hard to find after dark if a fire were not burning at the uphill lip and entrance.

"Gewehr!" von Muecke had spluttered, wetting down his mustache in explanation. "Die Amerikanische Jager geschutze und… pif pif! Sie sind todt, verstehen sie?"

"Please speak the King's English, you hairy twit."

"Ach, der English, jah! Reppel oder Franzosiche… sniper! Pif pif und you shot dead, verstehen sie? Oder der artillery zink zis der kommando hauptquartier… nein? Ah, der command post, jah. Und zey into us a feldhaubitze feur. Grosse boom, grosse todt gentlemenner, jah?"

"Gross indeed," Alan had said.

Conversation was so difficult that they seldom attempted it after that beyond the usual line of duty, and Alan was careful to stand back far enough to avoid the tiny explosions of moisture after every tortured umlaut or guttural tongue trill. Come to think of it, von Muecke didn't smell like a bottle of Hungary water himself.

Below their position, there was a broad open plain that once had been carefully tilled farmland surrounded by the low, but steep, hills at the edge of the creek behind them. To their right was a cul-de-sac that led between two fingers of ridges, too steep to assault and only guarded by a redan of light infantry with no guns for support. Their own position was on another cul-de-sac route, a fairly open and flat dome between two more ridges, with a final bulge of land to their rear, perhaps six feet higher than their walls, and with two escape routes to the rear that swept round the dome. Immediately behind the dome of land there was one route down, not over a thirty-foot drop, but fairly steep; steep enough to require lots of horses to hoist the guns up into position onto the flat space. Behind that by perhaps thirty yards was a small bench with another drop-off as one headed east for the creek, and then the steep banks of Yorktown Creek itself. They had come down from the north to emplace their guns through a narrow cut in the first cul-de-sac, and if challenged on their front, would never get the guns out of there.

Mayhap that is why we have so little round shot up here, Alan thought. And so little powder. The army might get their light carriage guns out in a hurry on those big wheels, but we'd play hell with the nine-pounders on their little trucks. And if we're so all-fired important up here, where are the supporting troops to back us up?

They had food enough for a week or so, all hard biscuits and salt meat from either army or naval stores, some rum to dole out each day at midday, and could be resupplied from the rear if one didn't mind half-killing a packhorse or a mule in doing it. Alan and von Muecke both had the use of a mount should they need to communicate with the rear, but the more Alan had ridden about in the last few days, the less he thought of their usefulness and the hill on which they were emplaced. Oh, they had a great field of fire, but no one in his right mind would attempt to climb up in the face of the guns, not when they could go into the first cul-de-sac to the north, where the ground was easier. Certainly no cavalry would try it.

So he slouched on the inner side of the rampart by the hour, looking for a foe that never came and showed no signs of ever making an appearance. He became extremely bored, perhaps more bored than he could have ever become aboard ship.

The days slipped by until a week had gone. That night it finally began to rain, after being dry for weeks. It came down in sheets and the wind rose, soaking the ground and the men huddled under their blankets. And when it no longer rained so hard that the droplets slanted into the mouths of the gun magazines, it started to pour continually, hour after soaking hour. By dawn the creek behind them was rising and making rude noises as the banks filled with the runoff.

"Be able ta grind corn now, Mister Lewrie, sir," Cony told him as he served him a cup of bitter "Scotch coffee" in the officer's dugout the next morning. "All the creeks'll be up enough."

"Be able to drown in mud as well, Cony," Alan grumbled.

"That, too, sir." Cony smiled. The man was blissfully happy; off the ship and away from the harsh discipline, out in the woods and in his element again, which was heaven for a former rustic and poacher. He was short and slim, a dirty blonde young man only a few years older than Lewrie, and claimed that he was from the West country, born and raised east of Offa's Ditch near the Welsh border, but didn't have the irritating burr of Zedland, only the lilting, musical accent of a Welshman. That was perhaps where he got his hawk's nose and sharp features. Yet he was handsome in his own way, as handsome as a common lad could expect to be. He was baked and seared a light teak color, like everyone else in Desperate after two years at sea. Still, rated for service on the guns and the decks, he was barely considered an ordinary seaman.

Alan had never really noticed him before. Cony had never stood out at anything, believing in the safety of mediocrity and the center of his own mob instead of standing out. Yet Cony had a certain intelligence and had latched onto Alan after the harrowing experience at the Rebel farm, perhaps hoping to strike for mess steward to replace the awful Freeling. He had almost unconsciously taken up the duties of hammock man, seeing to Alan's needs and comforts once they had gotten ashore.

"Beggin' yer pardon, Mister Lewrie, but would ya admire a hare fer yer breakfast, then?" Cony offered out of the blue.

"Rabbit?" Alan gaped, now fully awake. "I would think hunting in this rain would be terrible."

"Set some snares back on t'other side of the hills, sir," Cony said.

"A poacher on two continents are you, Cony?"

"Aye, sir. You'd have to share with the hairy gentleman, but 'tis a fine, fat rabbit."

"And I expect you have a second laid by for your own breakfast?" Alan teased.

"That I do, sir," Cony replied without shame, showing the natural guile of the admitted scrounger and woodsman.

"In that case, it sounds hellish good."

"Tis on the spit at this minute, sir."

Alan nodded his thanks and Cony slipped out of the dugout, leaving Alan to finish his burnt-bread imitation coffee, which was at least hot enough to get him started for another morning of drudgery. He dressed quickly and threw a tarpaulin watch coat over his shoulders for a rain cover and went outside to inspect his battery and the redan.

The cook fire was burning for the men's morning meal and the iron pots were simmering up gruel and chunks of salt meat. The artillerymen and Jagers had individual squad fires burning. The smoke lay close and heavy to the ground like a morning mist. The rain no longer poured down in buckets, but now drizzled endlessly and miserably from a pewter sky. Only half the open fields could be seen below them, and the far woods were lost in fog or mists.

"Mornin', Mister Lewrie, sir," Knatchbull the quarter-gunner said as he emerged from the dugout.

"Morning, Knatchbull. How do the hands keep?"

"Damp right through, sir," the man replied, knuckling his forehead in rough salute. "We could use some sailcloth er tarpaulin, sir, ta kivver up the sleepin' spaces."

"I shall request of some after breakfast," Alan said, studying the small tents the Jagers and the army artillerists had erected. "Perhaps some tents would keep the rain off. How about our guns?"

"I'm that worried 'bout the breechin' ropes, sir," Knatch-bull said. "Iffen ya could take a squint, sir. Them posts we sunk ta serve ta attach the breechin' ropes an' side tackles an' sich're in mud now."

"Are they shifting?"

"Not so's ya'd notice, Mister Lewrie, but they will iffen ya sets light ta a powder charge ta fire a gun."

"I doubt if we could find a dry cartridge this morning, anyway."

"Aye, sir, sich a day it is."

"Guten morgen, herr mittschiffesmann Lew-rie," van Muecke dribbled. "Eine schreckliche tag, nicht wahr?"

"It is when I have to decipher that," Alan mumbled under his breath, but saying out loud, "Good morning to you, Mister von Mooka."

"Muecke," the soldier corrected. "Fon Mehr-keh, verstehe?"

"Whatever." Alan shrugged and waved it off with a hopeless grin. "Any sign of the enemy this fine morning?"

"Nein, mein herr. Ich habe… I have der scouts aus also."

"Powder dry?"

"Jah, oder zuh primings sind… sput!"

If he does that one more time he'll hit my coffee, Alan thought, protecting his mug from the small shower of spit that had accompanied the sound effect of a squibbed priming.

"My hammock man Cony has a rabbit for us to share, Mister… Fon Mee-key. We shall have a decent breakfast, at any rate."

"Ah, eine rappit? Eine hase? Wunderbar!"

Alan wandered off to the forward artillery piece of the redan to look over the bleak countryside, shivering slightly. It had seemed like summer over the last week, not as fierce as the Indies, but warm enough during the days. Now, with the rain coming down as though it would never cease and the fogs blanketing those sharp hills and tree tops, it felt more like true autumn, more seasonal for the last of September it also made those far hills and trees seem more forbidding than before, more wild and uncivilized. Every good Englishman that got a plot of ground, an estate, or a farm spent countless hours shaping and weeding, cutting back thickets and removing underbrush, reforming Nature into gentle and civilized gardens and fields as orderly as a Roman villa. It was Man in charge of Nature, announcing his sovereignty and superiority over the dumb beasts and the wildness. But here, there was so much Nature, it was inconceivable that anyone could even begin to make a dent on it, and it made Alan feel puny and insignificant. And there were thousands of miles of this sort of wilderness stretching off to the Piedmont and beyond, into God knew what sort of savage remoteness, a country that might just stretch to Asia; limitless as a map of Russia, as wide as the mighty Atlantic Ocean and just as trackless and harsh, deluding the traveler with its lush or rugged beauties, just as the sea deluded the unwary.

"God, get me out of this beastly place!" Alan softly said. "It's driven the Rebels mad, every one of 'em, and it's out t'get me!"

After half the hare for breakfast, Alan had his mount saddled and took a long ride to the north to seek out supplies for his battery.

He came down off the front slope and rode at the edge of the hill line into the next cul-de-sac north, perhaps a quarter mile, seeking the small draw at its north end for passage through the convoluted terrain.

"Halt, who goes thar?" a voice challenged from the mists "A damned wet sailor!" he called back, after he had gotten over his sudden fright. Under his tarpaulin coat he had his pair of pistols, the ones bought nearly two years before in Portmouth, but they had lain unused except for a cleaning and toiling; midshipmen could not wear their own iron except for a useless dirk, and once battle was joined he had never had a chance to go below for them. They were still next to useless under the folds of the tarred coat, but he had reached for them.

"Watch wot yer adoin' with yer hands, thar, sailor," the invisible watcher shouted back. "Ride up an' be reco'nized!"

"Ride up where, damn you?" he said. In reply, a soldier got to his feet from the bushes not thirty paces away to his right, holding a rifle at full cock and ready to fare.

How can a man in a red coat be so invisible? Alan marveled, reining his horse about to walk up near the man. He thought that he recognized the uniform. "North Carolina Volunteers?"

"That we are. Now, what in hell're you?"

"Midshipman Alan Lewrie, from the redan to the south."

"Open that coat an' let's see yer true colors." Alan unlaced the coat and pulled it back to reveal the navy uniform, the white collar tabs of a midshipman and the anchored buttons.

"Guess yer wot ya say ya are. Where ya agoin'?"

"To find some tents for my men and tarps for my guns."

"Gonna ride through that thar draw, wuz ya?"

"I am an officer," Alan reminded the man, stretching his rank, and snippish at the casual affront to his "dignity."

"I kin see that." The man nodded in agreement, lowering his rifle and taking it off cock. He began to wrap an oily handkerchief about the firelock and frizzen to keep his priming dry. "But ya ride up thar an' somebody'd put a ball in yer boudin's afore ya could say Jack Sauce!"

"Then how am I to get through the draw… private?" Alan asked, his blood rising.

"Get on down an' I'll lead off."

Alan had to dismount and squelch through the wet grass and mud behind the soldier, who did not give him a backward glance until they were almost in the notch of the draw.

"Corp'ral o' the guard, thar! Gotta horse an' rider with me!"

More men popped up from the thickets and Alan was waved on past.

"Mister Lewrie," someone called. "Come to accept our invitation?"

"Ah, Burgess Chiswick!" Alan grinned, happy to see someone that he knew. "On my way past, really."

"Surely your errand is not so important you could not break your passage, as I believe you sailors say, and have a cup of coffee with us."

"Real coffee?"

"The genuine article," Burgess boasted.

"Then I accept, with pleasure."

He was led into camp behind the draw, where life was lived more openly than in the forward face of the position. Tents were slung under the trees or stretched like awnings over lean-tos for shelter and concealment. Very small fires burned, with a lot less smoke than Alan could credit.

"Brother, look who I found tramping in the woods," Burgess said as they got near the shelter he shared with his sibling. "I promised him some coffee if he'd bide awhile with us."

Alan was made welcome under their rude shelter while his mount was led off by an orderly. He shed his tarpaulin coat and sat down on a log before the fire, which was damned welcome after a morning in the cool damp. A large mug of coffee was shoved into his hands and when he took a sip he made the happy discovery that it had been laced liberally with brandy, which made him sigh in pleasure.

While he took his ease, he explained where he was set up what his errand was, and related his experiences with the Hessians.

"Poor bastards," the elder Chiswick said. "Sent over here as a ready source of money for their prince or whatever he is, no idea of the country or what the fighting is about. Even have to supply their own rifles."

"Diddn't look like yours," Alan commented.

"No, it's more like a rifled musket or one of these Rebel Pennsylvania rifles," Burgess told him, adding a top-up of brandy into the mug. "Poor work, but more serviceable than what the Rebels have."

"I thought the Rebels had a wickedly good gun."

"Damned long ranged, and most of 'em can shoot the eyes out of a squirrel at two hundred paces." Burgess shrugged. "But, it's slow to load because of the rifling in the barrel, a lot slower than a musket, and the stock's too light to melee with hand-to-hand."

"Won't take any sort of bayonet, either, unless you shove a plug down the barrel," Governour stuck in. "And then where are you?"

"Then why make them?" Alan asked.

"Because they were light enough to carry in the woods, accurate enough to drop game with one shot when that's all the chance you get to feed your family, and long ranged enough to avoid having to sneak right up on a deer or what have you. It was never meant for a military use. You put a line of Rebel riflemen up against a line of regular infantry and you'll get your much-vaunted riflemen slaughtered every time once the regulars go in with the bayonet," Governour confidently said. "We and the Jagers can fire three, four times as fast as they… and give 'em cold steel after our last volley."

Governour and his younger brother were good-looking fellows. However, even the younger Burgess had a ruthless look. They both had sandy hair and hazel eyes, but those eyes could glint as hard as agate, so Alan assumed they truly knew the heart of the matter when it came to skewering and slaughtering Rebels.

"So I may depend on the Jagers?" Alan said.

"Absolutely," Governour assured him. "They're highly disciplined and crack shots, near as good woodsmen as we. And Heros von Muecke can be relied on to stand his ground like Horatius at the Bridge. He's a bit hard to take—thinks he's some German blood royal and can get his back up over the slightest thing—but we've skirmished beside him before, and he and his men have always been bloody marvels."

"That is reassuring, since I don't know the first thing about land fighting," Alan said, leaning back on the wall of the lean-to. He described where his battery was and how the redan was laid out, until he began to notice how the Chiswick brothers were both frowning.

"Tis a bad position," Burgess said with finality.

"Why?" Alan asked, once more beholden to someone for knowledge and slightly resenting the necessity of it, of being so unprepared for what he was being called upon to do. Damme, I was getting right good at the nautical cant, and here I am an innocent lamb again, he thought.

"We rode over that last week, Alan," Burgess said. "You only have what… a ten-, fifteen-foot rise to your front, and you're set in the open before that last bit of ground. Steep hills on either side, higher than you but not unscalable."

"A regular officer would think unscalable," Governour spat.

"Rebels'd be all over you like fleas on a dog. Come at night, most like. I would," Burgess said.

"No way down the back side, and if you do get down, you're stuck on one bank of the creek with no way down, or across," Governour added.

"Never get your guns out of there if you have to withdraw," added the younger Chiswick.

"Never get your own arse out of there, either."

"Well, what about you and your troops, then?" Alan sputtered.

"We cover both sides of the defile in a crossfire, and the front of both little fingers of the ridge." Governour sketched in the dirt with some kindling from the small fire. "If overwhelmed, we fall back and skirmish to the marshes of the creek to the north-east. We can fall back on the fortified parallel on the river or into either the Star Redoubt or the Fusilier's Redoubt. Really, I don't know what the officer who sited you was thinking of," he concluded, tossing the stick into the fire.

"There is no reason to cover that ground, 'cause no one could ever use it."

"Because it is too steep and wooded on the east slope, and goes right into the deep ravines of the creek," Alan said, seeing the sense of it. "They could not bridge it, or find boats to cross it."

"Exactly." Governour smiled briefly. "Might find sites for mortar or howitzer batteries in there, but you'd be much better placed up here with us. If they did set up in there, we could butcher their flanks."

"But the ground is so boggy now, it would take fifty mules to get one gun shifted." Alan groaned. "Mayhap those army guns could move in all this, but mine would not."

"We could make a strong-point with our battalion and Lewrie's guns, Governour," Burgess enthused. "We would not have to fall back as we planned if assaulted. And with von Muecke's Jagers to flesh us out…"

"Aye," Governour said, getting to his feet stiffly. "Do you entertain our naval compatriot while I see Colonel Hamilton about this. He could get the battery resited for us."

Lieutenant Chiswick shrugged into his coat and squared his hat, then stalked away on his long legs to see their battalion commander while Burgess lifted the lid of a stewpot.

"Have you breakfasted, Alan?" he asked.

"My man Cony snared a rabbit last night. Yes."

"Mollow shot a deer yesterday. Care for some venison?"

"Well, I'd not say no to a slice or two," Alan beamed.

It did indeed take nearly four dozen mules to shift the guns to a better site over the next two days, after Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton had made his protestations to Cornwallis's aides. The rain still came down in sullen showers, clearing for a while and warming up just enough to make everyone steam below gray skies, then starting in again for an hour or two. Alan was constantly shifting into his tarpaulin coat and out of it, constantly checking the priming of his pistols and his musket, and learning the value of an oily rag wrapped around a firelock, or the worth of a whittled pinewood plug in the muzzles to keep the loaded charge fairly dry. At a suggestion of Governour's, Alan sought out a wagon-wright to see if he could get field-gun wheels and axles attached to his gun trucks, with some longer timbers to serve as trails and limbers. There was only one dry path across the marshes to their rear, the one the guns had negotiated the week before, and he was damned if he would surrender his artillery for the lack of proper carriages when finally placed in a position he could hope to evacuate.

They tore down the abatis and loaded them on muleback to be redug into the new position, shoveled down the ramparts into the shallow trench and filled in the magazines and dugouts, leaving only bare patches of earth to show that they had ever been there. The area looked like mass graves when they were finished destroying the redan, and the ease with which it went down gave everyone a squeamish, impermanent feeling.

There came a time, eventually, when Alan could have killed for a clean set of linen, and there was little that Cony could do to keep his uniform presentable in the field. Alan asked permission to go back to Desperate for some fresh things from his sea-chest, and it was granted. Burgess was curious about shipboard life, so he came along as well, and they had a pleasant ride back to the town and the docks.

"Boat ahoy!"

"Aye, aye!" the bowman shouted, holding up one finger to indicate a very low rank to the deck watch of the frigate and the need for only the smallest side party. Under the circumstances, the bosun's mate did double duty of piping them aboard and representing the ship as watch officer. There were few enough people on deck, at any rate.

"Permission to come aboard, Mister Weems," Alan said doffing his hat and nudging Burgess to emulate him.

"Aye, Mister Lewrie," Weems said. "How're things ashore?"

"Only half misery, considering, Mister Weems. This is Ensign Chiswick of the North Carolina Volunteers. I suppose that is much like a warrant rank, possibly an acting lieutenant."

"Yer servant, sir," Weems said, knuckling his brow.

"And yours, sir," Burgess replied.

They went below to the midshipmen's mess, where only little Carey resided at present. He was glad to see Alan, and was full of questions directed at both of them, seeming in full, childish awe of the soldier.

Alan rapped on the light, temporary partition between his mess and the officer's wardroom, and was bade enter. He led Burgess in to meet Mr. Dorne, Cheatham, Lieutenant Peck of the marines, and the sailing master, Mister Monk.

"Had enough of soldiering, have you, Lewrie?" Peck drawled, taking his ease on the transom settee with a clay pipe fuming by the window.

"And learned sweet damn-all, sir," Alan agreed. "I would not presume to enter the wardroom, but I believe my chest is stored here, and I need fresh linen and things."

"Aye, so it is." Monk nodded. "Mister Chiswick, sir, take a seat an' have a drop with us while ya wait."

"Thankee kindly, Mister Monk," Burgess said, shying his hat at a peg and drawing up to the scarred mess table.

"Ya bring yer laundry, too?"

"No, sir. Just my thirst," Burgess said easily. "And a curiosity about your ship."

Alan dumped his jute bag of soiled linen, hoping a hammock man could eventually tend to it, and dug down into his chest for clean shirts and stockings, a more presentable neckcloth, and a second pair of shoes that he could rotate with the only pair he had been wearing in all the muck over the last few days of rain and sogginess. He was intensely relieved to see that nothing had been disturbed in his absence and that a very torn and stained shirt in the bottom was still in the same position and gave off a muted, heavy clinking sound as he shifted it. He packed himself a fresh pair of breeches and a pair of working rig slop trousers as well and relocked his chest.

"Sit down as well, Mister Lewrie, don't stand on ceremony," Monk ordered. "They's grog, there, an' some decent red as well. Top up an' share a glass with us."

"Thank you for the wardroom privilege, sir."

"Big doings ashore, then, Mister Lewrie?" Mr. Dorne asked as he straightened his eternal tiewig and peered over his tiny spectacles.

"Nothing much yet, sir. No sign of the enemy to the west of us."

"Well, they are up on the Gloucester side," Peck said. "Lafayette and some Frogs. Lauzun's Legion, I'm told. Lancers, dragoons, and foot, along with some unit called the Virginia Militia. Some of 'em marched in, some boated in from the French camp on the James."

"And we could not stop them, sir?" Alan asked, filling a glass with the red wine. Rum he could get ashore, and it was getting tiresome.

"The French're absolute masters o' the navigation now. Not one British craft c'n swim but by their leave," Monk said.

"Well, there's the spy boats," Peck stuck in.

"Sneakin' in and out at night with letters to an' from Clinton an' Graves in New York ain't challengin' the French, sir," Monk retorted.

"Any word on when we may expect relief, sir?" Burgess asked.

"None yet, lad."

"It is not like Cornwallis to sit so idly, I assure you, sirs," Burgess said out of pride. "In the Carolinas, we marched like… like foot cavalry, active as fleas. There is still a chance to march inland to Williamsburg and cross over into better country. And with enough of these small transports I saw here in harbor, we could cross to the Gloucester side. Tarleton is a Tartar—he could cut a way through for us."

"There's to be an attempt to cross the bay to the eastern shore soon, I have heard," Cheatham volunteered. "A solid enough rumor of it, in faith. Heard it from the supply quartermaster ashore. Send fireships downriver to frighten the French away and cross before they can respond."

"I wish they would tell us," Alan ventured, thinking that he was too far from the harbor to reembark on that experiment, and fearful of being left behind as a forlorn hope or rearguard. "It would take some time to get our guns back aboard for the attempt."

"Yea, well." Monk coughed in embarrassment and looked away to busy himself with a large swallow of grog.

That's exactly what would happen, Alan realized with a cold shudder under his heart. Some regulars would get off, but the Volunteers and my people would be sacrificed. Goddamn and blast the bastards!

They shifted to cheerier topics; the good state of health of Lieutenants Railsford and Forrester over on Gloucester, what Avery was doing with the heavy guns closer around the town, but it was a gloomy mess.

Wardroom privileges did not extend to supper, so Alan and Burgess excused themselves as the mess cloth was spread, and no one made any noises of invitation to dine with them. Mr. Dorne was good enough to see them out on deck, taking the need of air as an excuse. But once on deck, they met the gloomy presence of Commander Treghues, who swooped up like a wraith in the dark.

"Mister Lewrie, is it?" he said.

"Aye, sir. Come aboard for fresh linen, sir. May I present Ensign Burgess Chiswick of the North Carolina Volunteers, sir."

"Mister Chiswick, give you joy, sir. I hope Mister Lewrie has not let the reputation of the Navy down?"

"Indeed not, sir," Burgess replied. "He has been a most resourceful fellow and a good companion. His battery is attached to our redoubt just on t'other side of the creek. Good artilleryman, he is, sir."

"Yes, he likes the sound of guns. Good work, Mister Lewrie," Treghues said with a small chuckle, which was so out of character from the harsh and bitter man Alan had come to know that he strongly suspected the captain had totally lost his wits, even if it was a startling improvement.

"Who would have thought it?" Alan whispered after Treghues had quit the deck for his cabins and his own supper. "Mister Dorne, sir?"

"You'd not notice in the dark, Mister Lewrie, but I performed a slight trephination upon him after you left the ship," Dorne said softly enough so that even Burgess could not hear. "There was pressure upon the cranium from the occluded blood resulting from the blow he received, which I relieved, and he is remarkably restored to his former self thereof. He has little memory, however, of the last few weeks."

Dorne slipped him the wink to let Alan know that he had forgotten even his grudge against his least-favorite miscreant rogue.

"Thank bloody Christ!" Alan breathed.

"There is, however, a slight problem," Dorne continued. "He was dosed with a tincture of hemp, a decoction from the South American plant cannabin, more correctly Nicotiana glauca, in wine for pain. That led to some lucid moments before the trephination, and he has grown quite… fond of it, I am afraid. Since my supply is gone, I do not know what he shall be like in future. But we shall see. Perhaps it is best that you are ashore at present, and cannot rekindle any unfortunate memories."

"God, yes," Alan agreed. "I'm off like a hare."

"More like a fox, if I know you well at all," Dorne said. "And good luck to you in our shared misfortune."

"Aye, Mr. Dorne, and good fortune to you as well."

Once ashore and on horseback once more, Burgess was most complimentary in his opinion of Commander the Honorable Treghues, and of the people in the wardroom.

"A most charming gentleman, your captain," Burgess said.

"As long as he has his wits about him, yes," Alan replied, and spent the next few minutes of their ride filling Burgess in on how the captain had behaved before his surgery, and how brutally he had treated everyone. Alan did not go into Treghues's reasons regarding himself; he liked Burgess and wanted him to remain a friend.

"You're a lucky fellow, Alan," Burgess opined.

"How do you come by that, Burgess?" Alan asked, mystified.

"When you are on shipboard, you have your fellow midshipmen in a snug mess with a steward and a hammock man to see to your table and your kit, never have to sleep out in the wilds in all weathers, and you are assured where your next meal is coming from. What more could you desire in time of war?"

"Going back to London and raising merry hell," Alan said, laughing, "and letting some other person fight the damn thing."

"Well, had I the choice to make, I would have preferred the navy to the army," Burgess said. "Like that wardroom where your officers live and dine—it looked damned comfortable."

"Burgess, all the partitions are deal or canvas and come down when the ship is piped to quarters," Alan explained. "There normally would be artillery in the wardroom, and when the iron begins to fly there is no safe place aboard a ship. They shovel the dead—what's left of 'em—and the hopelessly wounded over the side to make space in which to keep the guns firing. Trust me, there is nothing desirable about being aboard ship then. There's more safety ashore where one may dig."