The French Admiral

"So you may hoist or lower the leeboards by a line wound round the windlass or axle?" Alan tried to picture it. The project was going much faster than he had thought, and their moment of escape was drawing closer all the time.

"Uh, nussir, we nail them leeboards ta the wheels, sir," the older sailor countered. "Lays 'em up close-aboard 'til ya needs 'em, then ya turns the wheel ta lower one inta the warter, sir. Keep tension 'til ya warnt one on a belayin' pin. Free the line an' down she goes, sir. Nail the axle ta the thwarts an' gunnels, wif the wheels outboard."

"That should be alright," Alan said. "But do they fit as they are, or do you need to cut longer axles?"

"New axles, sir," Feather said. "But they's plenny o' them eight-inch beams 'bout. Tried ta make frames fer the wheels, but it was…"

"Too complicated and heavy?" Alan finished for him as he searched for a break-teeth word, and both men nodded their heads vigorously.

"T'only thin', sir, we needs summat 'eavy'n solid fer the leeboards, an' we can't make 'em outen pine bits," Feather said. "'Bout four foot long'n mebbe two, three foot wide, ready planed. We kin taper 'em like a rudder piece, but I don't know what ta use."

"Take a look around the place carefully before it's dark," Alan ordered. "Is there any more we can accomplish tonight?"

"Nah, sir, be dark soon," Feather said. "But we'll have them new keels on by noon tamorrer. Could leave tamorrer night iffen we kin find what we need fer the leeboards."

"Very good, Feather!" Alan exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder in congratulations once more. "Give the hands an extra tot with supper for their good work."

"Aye, sir!" The men near the discussion perked up at that. There was little a British sailor could not do, and there was little a British sailor would not do if it could get him some extra drink.

"If we are leaving tomorrow night, then, best put a few men with Coe to start gathering up food and water to stow in the boats, then."

Alan made his way back up toward the house to pass on his good news to the Chiswick brothers, who had been out in the woods to the west all day since dinner, working on their own plans. He would have a wash, clean linen, a good supper, and then a few hours with Nancy in her bedroom, though there was little point in trying to gain more information from her now if they would be departing the next evening.

He was in the bricked back terrace, ready to enter the house by the back door when a runner came panting in from the fields, calling for Lieutenant Chiswick, and everything went for nought.

"Riders acomin'!" he heard the runner gasp out.

Goddamn, the Rebels have found us! he thought in sudden fear. He dashed into the house to fetch his pistols and his cutlass and found both Chiswick brothers priming their officers' model Ferguson rifles and a squad of soldiers running into the front hall.

"What is it?" Alan demanded as he checked his primings.

"Half a dozen riders coming, goddammit!" Burgess spat. "For your life, go and tell your men to keep out of sight. Do you have any arms with your men?"

"No, just a sentry or two along the creek."

"Move, Lewrie!" Governour ordered harshly.

Alan ran into Coe and passed the order, then went back into the house. North Carolina Volunteers by then were hiding by the windows, and another party was sprinting into the hedges to the east of the front yard. Governour shoved a Ferguson into Alan's hands.

"Here, load up. It's their lives or ours now."

Alan screwed the breech plug open, ripped a dry cartouche with his teeth, and fumbled the ball into the breech, pouring in the powder behind it. His hands were trembling slightly and his insides were by turns hot and cold at the thought of discovery and battle.

"Mollow, Knevet, do you get to the upper windows. Take two men with you to keep the civilians from giving us away," Governour snapped to his non-coms, and his best marksmen.

Alan stood well back from the window as he primed the pan of the rifle with a metal flask. From the front parlor he could see six riders coming up the sand-and-shell drive to the big house, men in blue and yellow, the peculiar horizon blue of Lauzun's Legion that Governour had described to him at supper the night before, a couple of men in outlandish fringed hunting shirts of an almost purple color, waving their tricornes or their muskets over their heads and shouting as though they were after a fox.

They clattered up into the carriage drive that circled a large flower garden before the front terrace. "Hello the house! Come out and hear the wondrous news! Cornwallis is taken with his whole army! They surrender tomorrow! Let's celebrate!"

"Let 'em dismount," Governour whispered. "Fire on my order only."

But they did not dismount, continuing to curvet and wheel about the drive, spilling over into the flower beds as their mounts collided and pranced with their riders' excitement.

"Here, Mistress Hayley, Miss Ledbetter, come out and hear our news," a rakish Legion officer called, sheathing the heavy cavalry saber he had been flashing over his head.

"Maybe they've gone off," a militia officer said, frowning.

"Goddamn them," Governour spat. "Fire!"

He leveled his rifle and took aim. Burgess and two riflemen went to the double doors and flung them open. Alan joined another rifleman at his window, jabbing their muzzles through the glass panes with a horrendous noise. Then came the sharp crack of rifle fire, and men began to spill from their saddles. Horses neighed and screamed as their riders screamed in sudden terror. The rakish Legion officer was punched in the stomach with a rifle ball of .65 caliber, and blood spewed onto his saddle and his horse, though he kept his seat and tried to make off. He did not get very far before a second ball smashed his horse down, and they both tumbled into the flower beds to thrash out their lives. The militia offficer's horse reared back and flung him. Even as he rolled to his feet, Burgess shot him down. One trooper tried to draw a musketoon from his saddle but was riddled by two rounds from the upper windows. The rest were going down before they could get off a shot, except for one man on a roan who thought discretion was the better part of valor and tried to ride off back up the road for help or safety.

It had all happened so quickly that Alan had not had time to even cock his rifle. He rushed out onto the front terrace with the others in time to see two riflemen to the west stand up from cover and blast the fleeing rider and his mount to the ground. There was one final shriek as the man flipped out of his saddle and fell heavily.

A .65 caliber rifle ball fired from close range did hideous damage to a man. Alan walked out into the flower beds through all the carnage and gore to a horse that had been gut-shot and was down and screaming. He cocked the rifle and laid the muzzle within an inch of the ear and put it out of its misery, sick to his stomach at the suddenness of the skirmish.

He had fought at sea often enough to see death and pain, but at least there a man was given warning and a chance to defend himself. The art of skirmish and ambush as practiced by the army left him shaken and weak, though it did not seem to affect the North Carolina Volunteers. They came trooping back into the yard, laughing and joking and commenting on their accuracy, flipping bodies over to see what damage they had done.

"Here, this one's still alive," Alan said, kneeling down by one young man dressed in the Legion's blue and yellow who had been shot in his lungs.

"Oh, God, I'm killed!" the man managed, rolling his head back and forth in pain and biting his lips. "Damn ye ta hell fer all eternity, ye baystards!"

"He won't last long," Governour said after looking at the hole in the man's chest through which blood pumped at every tortured breath. "Listen here, man. Who were you?"

"Hanrahan," the foe gasped. "Seamus Hanrahan."

"An Irish turncoat fighting against the Crown." Governour nodded. "What's this about Cornwallis?"

"He give up yesterday and surrenders his army in the mornin', ye Tory shit-sack," the dying man said, trying to smile. "Ye may ha' killed me, but you'll all be dead tamorra and joinin' me in hell!"

"Visiting the ladies to celebrate, were you?" Alan prodded. "A bit premature of you. How long before you're missed?"

"I'll not be givin' ye that," the man whispered as the effort to talk sapped his last strength. His skin was paling quickly and his lips were turning blue as his lungs filled with blood.

He coughed once, a bright scarlet bloom of life burst from his lips and then he died.

Governour got to his feet and began to reload his rifle as if nothing untoward had happened. "Any more of 'em still have life in 'em?"

There were none.

"With luck, these will not be missed until tomorrow morning," Governour said as his troopers began to drag the dead away. "Here, they have some weapons we need. Strip 'em of their guns and powder."

Governour bent down to a dead horse and fetched off from the saddle a handsome pair of long-barreled dragoon pistols, which he presented to Lewrie. "You'll find these shoot straighter than your own pistols, and you'll need some extra weapons. That man will have powder, patches and ball on his corpse. The caliber will probably not fit your own."

They recovered a round dozen saddle pistols, two pair of shorter pocket pistols, four French model 1777 cavalry musketoons, and a pair of .69 caliber St. Etienne muskets from the militia officer and his dead orderly, along with a welcome supply of dry powder, ball and flints. They had dried some of their own powder and cartouches, but more was always welcome since half the prepared rounds carried by each soldier had been soaked and rendered useless.

"What if they are missed, Governour?" Alan asked after he had found a pocket for all the iron he was collecting. "Wouldn't they be due back with their units in the morning?"

"Three very junior officers and their orderlies wouldn't be all that very important," Governour told him. "They may peeve their commanders by not being present for the surrender parade, but no one would think to search for them until it's all over. They're off celebrating victory in their own style with complaisant ladies! They might send a lone rider with a message, but it's a long way back to their positions at Gloucester, six miles, maybe further, because the road swings north to clear the swamps and marshes and goes above the shore of this Perrin River, and there's no bridges or ferries. Might take a rider four hours on bad roads to come and go."

"So if they had to be back by ten tomorrow morning," Burgess said. "Seems a reasonable hour… no one would comment on their continued absence until two or three in the afternoon, if they sent a messenger for them right away. That would be the earliest he and they could return to Gloucester. And we could be gone by then."

"What if we worked all night on the boats?" Governour asked Lewrie. "We could depart even sooner, could we not?"

"The tide would serve to get us out of the inlet," Alan replied. "Besides, if the messenger and these poor souls don't return by three or four, what would they do? Send another messenger? A troop of cavalry? More luck to them, 'cause we'll be out in the marshes by five, and by the time they get here around six, we'll be under sail."

"But once they arrive at the house and speak to the Hayleys, our goose is cooked," Governour said. "They could signal the French ships to send boats to cut us off. I'd really feel better leaving here tonight. Matter of fact, the more I think on it, it seems best."

"But the leeboards aren't ready," Alan said.

"Hang your bloody leeboards," Governour snapped.

"You cannot," Alan said, over his unease at the slaughter, and in a position of authority and knowledge for once with the land officers. "Oh, we could pole out right now, but with provisions and all, we'd be overset within five miles. There's the keels still to be fitted, and without them, we're unstable as a cup-shot cow. And without the leeboards, we'll make as much leeway as we do forward. How do we know how calm the bay will be, or what strength the wind? We have to finish the boats—it's that or drown out there. And if you think the river was rough, just wait 'til we get out past Cape Charles and onto the ocean."

Governour puffed up as though he was about to burst.

"Believe me, I want to be away from this shitten place as badly as any of you, but there's simply no way," Alan assured him.

"Work at night, then," Governour demanded, adamant.

"By torch and firelight?" Alan asked.

"No, that would be even worse," Governour said finally. "We would be sure to draw attention from the French ships then. Forgive me my impatience, Lewrie."

"Governour, I know what impatience is," Alan laughed without much humor. "I've been impatient since I first saw Yorktown."

They went back into the house for a welcome drink from the wine cabinet and sideboard. Mrs. Hayley, her son, and sister were at that moment being escorted back downstairs from whatever room they had been confined to during the brief action, their tears flowing copiously. Nancy could not look him in the eyes, but the other two were livid with rage and the shock of seeing men killed in their presence.

"Murtherers!" Mrs. Hayley shrilled as soon as she saw them. "You did not give them one Christian chance! Just shot 'em down like dogs! They were all our friends! One of 'em was a neighbor up the neck."

"There is little that is Christian in war, ma'am," Governour told the woman, knowing it would not penetrate but making the effort anyway.

"Is that how my daddy died?" Rodney hissed. "Shot from ambush by a cowardly, sneaking hound? Damn you all, I say!"

"Corp'r'l Knevet?" Governour barked.

"Aye, Governour?" the non-com replied from the stairs.

"Mistress and her charges shall be confined to the upper floors tonight, and for all tomorrow until we are gone. Their meals to be brought to them. Keep a watch on their windows. No lanterns in their rooms, and make sure they have only what they need for decency's sake."

"Right, Governour."

"And shall we be shot as well, sir?" Mrs. Hayley objected. "Have Tories and King's men no honor toward innocent civilians? Where is that gentle treatment which you promised when first you came here?"

"I could care less what happens to Rebels and their broods," Governour snapped coldly. "Be thankful you shall have your lives and your property when the fighting is over, ma'am."

Once the women were hustled back upstairs, Alan opened the sideboard doors and found a stone jug of corn whiskey. At that moment, he preferred it to other, weaker, spirits. He took a deep swig, rattled it about in his mouth, and gulped it down, holding his breath until the fire had passed.

"Whew, what a mort she is!" he said.

"Can't blame her, really," Governour relented, unslinging his rifle and unloading his pockets of weapons. "Pour me a goodly measure of that while you're there, would you? Women know nothing of war, thank God, nor should they, so they have only the vaguest notions of how it is really conducted, or how bestial the average soldier becomes after he faces battle and death more than once. They will never have the slightest idea how rudely they and their property could be treated if we were not honorable gentlemen at heart."

"So leaving them more gold would not help any longer," Alan said. He was still jealous about having to part with his guineas, and if they did not have to do so, would be glad to keep them.

"No, we promised to pay for what we despoil." Governour sighed, flopping down into the wing chair and putting his feet up on a narrow padded bench before the cold fireplace. "Perhaps twenty pounds would do. And they'll be the only ones to profit by this campaign of ours."

"I already gave five, and got little for it."

"Did you learn anything, though it is moot now?"

"Not much. It was all I could do to keep her from spying on us," Alan admitted. "We were to tryst upstairs tonight. Perhaps I could still."

"Then I hope the lady is worth the socket-fee." Governour laughed.

"I've bargained for worse," he replied with a sheepish grin.

"We shall work through the night, anyway," Governour Chiswick said as Burgess joined them from cleaning up the last signs of the ambush. "We can at least slaughter and embrine meat, bake johnny cake, and dry more powder in the tobacco barns. Anyone familiar with growing tobacco would expect to see drying fires on a plantation at night."

"I could put my men to work on the leeboards in the wagon sheds as well," Alan said. "We could burn torches in there to see by. Though we don't know what to use for the boards themselves."

"What sort of boards would they have to be?" Burgess asked, taking a glass of corn whiskey himself.

"Two or three feet wide, four feet long, ready planed from heavy wood, Feather told me. I suppose we can nail or peg something together that would suit."

"Heavy wood, you say." Burgess chuckled, going to the double doors to the front parlor. He rapped one of them significantly. "How would you prefer oiled mahogany. Inch and a half thick, over eight feet long and over three feet wide, both of them."

"Two sets of leeboards!" Alan exclaimed. "Burgess, you're a paragon! I was looking right at them and never gave 'em a thought!"

"I was ready to take 'em myself for our fortifications," Burgess said. "Damn the place, I'd strip it down to the raw bricks rather than be captured for the want of a nail."

"What fortifications?"

"Oh, Brother and I have been busy in the woods," Burgess said. "Preparing a reception for anyone coming up the road. Our visitors tonight never even spotted 'em. We put up some rail fences and laid some surprises, too. See here, Alan, you said you were a hunter back in England, didn't you?"

"Yes, some."

"Ever see a fence you didn't want to put your horse to?"

"Never," Alan bragged, loosened up by the whiskey.

"Nor did I ever know a cavalryman that wouldn't either. There's chevaux-de-frise behind those new fences in the trees, not out front, mind, but in back, where you don't see 'em 'til you're in mid-leap, and if they had sent cavalry against us, they'd end up on the spikes." Burgess snickered with anticipation at the sight. "With our Fergusons, we could have had an edge, too, 'cause we could lay down to fire and load just as fast as standing. There's rifle pits in the woods, too, so we could have had several fallback positions to snipe from while any infantry would have come at us standing up."

"Had they been necessary, we could have given anyone a hot reception," Governour boasted. "We even provided for you. Up by the creek it's too marshy for cavalry or infantry, but south of the woods, they could come across the fields. We put up some log ramparts for you and your sailors, covered with leaves and deadfall to look like a pile of junk wood. Would have made a neat little redan to guard the boats while we covered things south of you."

"You were that confident?" Alan wondered aloud.

"If they had sent troops down here, and if they followed usual practice, we could have cut them to pieces. If they didn't send too many, that is. And after besting them we'd be gone before they could summon a larger force."

"It would have mattered how many they would have sent, though, would it not?" Alan asked, throwing a damper on their celebrations.

"Well, if a battalion had come, the best we could have hoped for was to fall back through the woods to you by the boats, while you held out," Governour said, since it was now moot speculation. "Your men and Mollow with a half-dozen riflemen could have slowed them up. After that…"

"After that, we would have swum for our lives to the boats and hoped they wouldn't have murdered us out in the open water," Alan said.

"We would have put up a damned hard fight they'd have remembered for the rest of their lives," Governour said tautly. "Now, how much can you accomplish tonight if we work in the harm?"

"The leeboards," Alan said, shaking off the gruesome image of their entire force laid out defeated and dead, just like the revellers in the front yard. "The keels have to wait 'til morning, unless we want to show torches down by the boats."

"No. Get as much done as you can."

"Governour," Alan said, getting a premonitory chill once more, "we'll be days along the eastern shore, and God knows what we'll run into. Would it be possible if you or Burgess or Knevet worked with some of my free hands and drilled them on those spare Fergusons?"

"A damned sensible idea, Alan," Burgess said. "Best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"My thoughts exactly."

Using as few torches as possible in the barns to shield the lights from prying eyes, they had worked until nearly midnight. The mahogany door panels were taken down and drilled to accept the axles of the small front wagon wheels, nailed to the naves and ready for installation in the morning at first light on the barges through existing rowports. Alan finally let his men get some rest and went back to the house to take his own. He entered the front parlor where Governour was already snoring on his pallet before the fire, sleeping rough on the carpet. Burgess was ensconced on a settee on his side. Even in repose, the Chiswick brothers were a ruthless-looking crew, Alan thought as he studied them by firelight. They were taller than he was, which gave them authority in spite of their low ranks, slim and almost angular. Even if he had not seen them in action, he would walk warily about them if he met them on the street back home. They had an air about them of habitual command, the sense of being obeyed. Perhaps it came from owning slaves and bossing them about, Alan decided, but they were impressive creatures, perhaps what that Frog Rousseau meant by natural nobility. Daunting personalities, magnificent physical specimens, and pretty enough to turn heads on the Strand or in the parks back in England, should they ever live to get there. Burgess had told him they still had relations in Surrey somewhere and with the Rebels in possession of everything they had built up in the Carolinas, they were hoping to return to England and make a new start. Such an enterprise was dear to his own heart as well; he wished them joy of it.

He sat down in a chair by the sideboard and discovered a bottle of rhenish that had been opened but barely touched. Being careful not to wake his compatriots, he poured himself a glass and sat back to ease his weary body. The house was silent as a tomb, except for the Chiswicks and their snoring. The sentry at the foot of the stairs was drowsing as well.

Don't I have an assignation waiting for me? Alan asked himself. He checked his watch and discovered that it was a few minutes past the appointed hour of midnight. No, after this afternoon, she'll hate the very sight of me. Still, she's a whore, ain't she? What's another guinea or two now?

He stripped off his coat and waistcoat, undid his neckcloth and tossed them onto the chair next to him. He lit a candle with a stick of kindling that had fallen from the low-burning fire and made his way out into the hallway with a bottle of wine and two glasses in one hand, and the candle-stand in the other. There was no sentry on the back stairs from the butler's pantry, though there was one at the back steps wrapped in a blanket against the chill of the night, and very much awake. Alan made his way up the dark stairs to the rear passage of the upper story. There was a door and a mean little narrow corridor that gave entrance to the rooms above through the back, so that night-soil and other unsavory removals could be done without staining the main hallways. He went all the way to the end and found a final doorway. He blew out the candle and opened the door furtively, inch at a time to avoid creaking hinges. It opened noiselessly, though, obviously well oiled to avoid disturbing anyone who was using the chamber.

There was a sliver of moon coming through the windows, just enough to see that he was in a large and well-furnished suite at the end of the house. Surely, it had to be Nancy's; she had said her bedchambers were at the end of the house, overlooking the front yard and porches. He was in her sitting room. Groping like a blind man, he snaked his way on past all the furniture to the far doors, which stood open. Once his eyes were used to the gloom, he could espy a tall bed and several chests and wardrobes, a dressing table, and a mirror that glinted moonlight.

With a smile, he crossed to the bed and found a small table by the headboard on which he could deposit his unlit candle-stand and his wine and glasses, though not without a tell-tale clink of glass on glass.

"Who's there?" a tremulously fearful small voice exclaimed.

"'Tis Alan, Nancy love," he whispered, removing his shoes.

"Oh God, after what happened today, ya still come to me and expect me to welcome ya?" she hissed, sitting up in bed with the sheets drawn up around her neck as a thin defense. "Leave my chambers at once, or I'll yell the house down."

"There'll be no more guineas if I do," he warned her, unbuttoning his shirt. "Your visitors this afternoon brought wine and tasty delicacies, but no gold for you."

"Wh… what do ya take me for!" she complained in the dark.

"Sookie told me about you. So why make such a show of outrage?"

"Oh, you smug bastard!" she cried. "If I ever gave my favors ta a man, it was not for coin, sir! What sort of vile creature are you, ta think all women are whores for your pleasure? Just cause you've bought some women in the past doesn't mean we're all for sale for ya!"

"So your lovers just happen to leave you something worthwhile on their way out the door," Alan scoffed.

"Goddamn ya, get out before I scream!" she said louder. "Ya shot down people I knew today, officers that'd been welcome here before, and now ya come creeping into my chambers with blood on your hands and think a guinea makes't alright? Get out, I mean it!"

To make her point, she picked something up from the lightstand and threw it at him. Whatever it was struck him on the shoulder, and he flinched away from her anger. The object clanked to the floor noisily.

"Go, before I kill ya!" she warned.

"Very well," Alan fumed, heading for the door, bumping into the tables and chairs and making even more of a racket than she would have, trying to salvage his pride.

Once downstairs, and into another bottle of wine to replace the one she had thrown at him as a parting gesture, he had to realize that he could not exactly blame her. One or more of the men who had been shot down in ambush had most likely been in her bed once before. What really made him mad was the way she had gulled him out of those guineas.

He was also unhappy that he had gained no useful information from her in spite of being at his most charming, as much as he would have been charming with a courtesan, and he had a nagging feeling that she had gotten more from him than he hoped to learn from her.

Good thing we're leaving here tomorrow, he thought grumpily as he poured himself another glass of wine, before she found a way to get down the stairs some night and cut my nutmegs off for spite.

CHAPTER 13

He woke up feeling like the wrath of God had descended on his skull, having sat up and finished half the bottle on top of all his exertions the day before. A clock had chimed three before he had been calm enough to sleep, and he had been roused at five to head down to the boats to oversee the last construction.

While he was standing around trying to look commanding (and awake), Burgess Chiswick joined him, looking a lot fresher than Alan felt. He did, however, bring a large mug of coffee with him which Alan appreciated.

"Well, this looks promising, I suppose," Burgess said. "Though I know little about the construction of boats. What are your men doing to those beams?"

"Drilling holes," Alan said. "We're ready, except for the keel pieces to add weight and stability. See the boreholes through the existing keels? We'll bolt these on."

"With what?"

"Pine dowels, slightly oversized and hammered into the boreholes. Like the bung in a beer barrel. Should hold for long enough to get us over to the eastern shore and round the capes," Alan said.

"Metal would be better, would it not?" Burgess asked.

"We found some flat angle-iron forged with holes in it for various uses, and some bolts, but nothing long enough to go all the way from side to side. They'd have to be nine or ten inches long."

"Thought I heard a disturbance upstairs last night. Did the fair Miss Nancy treat you well?" Burgess leered.

"No, she threw me out, along with a shower of glassware and stuff," Alan admitted ruefully. "'Twas a bad idea after the ambush."

"Ah, well."

"Shit," Feather spat as the dowel he had shaped splintered as he tried to drive it into the first hole in a beam before lifting it up to fit against the keel member. "This 'ere pine's too light, sir. Even do we get it tamped down wi'out breakin', I wouldn't trust 'em in a seaway."

"What about a musket barrel?" Burgess suggested, kneeling down to look at one of the beams. "There's hunting guns and those French muskets to use. With a vise and a file, we could cut down some lengths to fit into the holes. And then, if some of those bolts are large enough, we could force-thread them down into the barrel bores. That would hold your angle-iron plates on to spread the load if they flex."

"An' iffen the bolts and plates fall off, sir, the musket barrel'd still be snug enough inside ta 'old." Feather smiled, revealing what few teeth he still possessed.

"Well, this isn't going to work." Alan frowned, angry at the delay. "We have to give 'em a try."

Using a piece of string, Feather measured the extreme width of a beam, knotted it carefully, and headed for the barn and carpenter shop to measure off lengths of musket barrel to file off. Queener left off the work with an auger and went with him. He was back in moments with one of the French muskets, trying it in the boreholes already made. With a piece of chalk, he scribed circles inside the marks already made on the shaped beams to show the size of the bore necessary, and dug into the wooden tool box to find an auger with a smaller bit, and to try various bolts until he found some that could be wound down the barrels.

The musket barrels worked well. They were driven down into the holes with mallets until they were flush, and the angle-iron plates were fitted on. Then the bolts were cranked down into the barrels, cutting their own threads in much the same fashion that a weapon was rifled by a worm-borer. After four hours of filing and sawing, drilling, and turning, the barges were ready to be put back on the water. They were now as seaworthy as they could be made without starting from scratch in their construction. Borrowing a few soldiers for muscle power, they shoved them back off the X-shaped bow cradles onto the sand and mud, then hauled them into the still waters of the inlet.

"Hurrah, it floats!" Alan exulted as his crew cheered.

Coe and a small crew scrambled into the nearest barge and got to work to pole her out into deeper water where she would truly be floating, instead of resting with her lowermost quick-work on the mud.

"Try sailing her while you're out there," Alan ordered. "There's a high tide, and enough water in the cove to see how she handles."

"Aye, sir."

"Thank you for your timely suggestion, Burgess," Alan said to the soldier. "For better or worse, now we can do no more. Best start fetching food and whatever down from the barns so we may be ready to sail as soon as it's dark."

"I have never heard a better thing in my life," Burgess said, and trotted back toward the house. Alan turned back to the water and sat on a stump to watch how Coe was doing. The boat had a slight way on her from their last bit of poling as they raised the pair of lug sails. They were cut short but full so as not to overset the boat with too much pressure too high above the deck and her center of gravity. The barge paid off the wind for a while, then began to make her way forward. She heeled over more than Alan liked to see by the light wind in the inlet, but she was sailing. A few more hands to weather should counteract her tendency to heel, he thought, and heavier cargo of provisions and passengers would help.

The boat made a lot of leeway, but as soon as Coe and his men put the leeboards down and they bit into the water, she began to hold her own, no longer sloughing downwind at such an alarming rate.

"Damme if they don't work," he told Feather, who was standing by him. "I shall put you and your man in my report when we rejoin the fleet."

"Queener, sir. Name's Nat Queener," the old man stuck in, taking a pause in his tobacco chewing to nod and speak for himself.

"Well, it was handily done and damned clever work," Alan said.

"Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly." Queener bobbed, tugging at his forelock, or what was left of it, and Alan was struck once more by how little he had known about most of the men—not Coe or this Queener or Cony, wherever the devil he was at this moment, even after all those months on Desperate. Queener was too old and frail to play pulley-hauley at fores'ls or halyards, or take a strain on a tackle, too spavined by a hard life at sea to go aloft any longer, but he was a good member of the carpenter's crew and knew two lifetimes' worth about boats. The Navy was full of such oldsters, and Alan vowed that he would not overlook their talents or their contributions again if given a chance.

Coe tacked the barge about and came back up the inlet at a goodly clip, the once ungainly barge now behaving like a well-found cutter. He bore up to the prevailing winds to try her close-hauled, but there was not enough width to the inlet, or wind, to judge her behavior. The best that could be said was that the boat was tractable. She would not win an impromptu race from anchorage to stores dock, but she could be sailed safely and would perform like a tired dray horse to get them off the Guinea Neck and out to sea, which was all they asked of her.

Coe finally brought her up to the shallows at the mouth of the creek, handed the sails and raised the leeboards, and let her drive onto the mud and sand in the shallows gently with the last of her forward motion. He and his crew waded ashore wearing smiles like landed conquerors.

"Them sodjers is acomin', Mister Lewrie," Feather said, directing his attention inland to a file of riflemen bearing the first boxes and small kegs of water, cornmeal travel bread, boiled and jerked meat, and the dried powder and ball cartouches.

"Feather, see to loading the boats and then make sure the hands have their dinner," Alan instructed. "We plan to leave on the falling tide around half past four or so while there's still enough water in the inlet to float 'em out easy."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Governour Chiswick was there with the advance party, his face set in what Alan recognized by enforced association as bleak anger. He waved for Alan to join him and stalked a way up the brambled bank of the creek for privacy.

"We have trouble," Chiswick whispered. "That damned Hayley brat is missing. Little bastard took off sometime in the night. So you know where he headed."

"Jesus," Alan said, "how did he get past your guards? I thought you had the neck watched so a mouse couldn't escape?"

"Keep your voice down, damn you," Governour warned. "We don't need to panic your sailors, or my people. And yes, he shouldn't have been able to get through, but he stole a rifleman's tunic and the sentries didn't remark on him strolling right past them. We'd better get out of here, now, before he can bring troops down here from Gloucester Point."

"We could pole out into the marshes by Big Island, but we'd be naked as dammit until the sun went down. There's not cover enough out there for a snake. Night is the best time."

"Now is the best time, Alan," Governour insisted. "Unless you want to be killed or captured. After yesterday's ambush, I doubt if anyone is going to offer quarter to us, not if they belong to the same unit as those men we shot down."

"What time did he go, do you think?" Alan said, thinking.

"We think around five this morning, just before first light," Governour explained, impatient to even bother. "One of the sentries on the perimeter thinks he saw someone heading off west, but he thought it was one of our men going to relieve himself. And the sentry who lost his tunic was guarding the house. He got off at four, and took an hour with that Sookie, and when he turned out his coat was gone, so it had to be between four and five."

"Sookie!" Alan gasped. "I'll bet her mistress put her up to that. They must have planned it."

"Of course they planned it," Governour fumed.

"He went on foot?" Alan asked.

"Yes. No horses are missing."

"It is two hours up the peninsula, the roads are so bad," Alan speculated. "Say he left at five, so he could not get there before eight in the morning on foot, even if he knew the country. Take an hour to get someone to act and get a party on the roads. If they sent cavalry, they could have gotten here by eleven to start scouting us. Hell, even infantry could have been here by now!"

"Hmm, there is that," Governour said, puffing out his cheeks as he studied his watch. "'Tis just gone one in the afternoon."

"There is the possibility he could have come across a snake, or no one believed him," Alan said.

"No, they'd believe him if he got there. I would."

"So where are they, then?" Alan asked.

"Cornwallis is supposed to be surrendering this morning, as are Tarleton and Simcoe on this side of the river. Perhaps they are waiting until the formalities are over before gathering up our little band of stragglers. We hid our true numbers from the brat, damn his blood, so they may not think eighteen or twenty survivors are all that important. A stupid reason, I grant you, but stupider things have happened in war."

"Take this whole damned campaign as a case in point," Alan said. "But, they wouldn't be coming to collect survivors, they'd be coming with blood in their eyes, Governour. We killed six of them yesterday, did we not? Why aren't they here already, howling for revenge?"

"I don't know," Governour admitted, a hard thing for him to do. "We've seen no boats going downriver, so no one has raised the hue and cry yet. Nothing stirring on those French ships blockading the river to the east. Look, once we get the boats loaded, what are the chances of getting out of here?"

"Just like I said last night. Horrible," Alan said. "There's no cover out there in the marshes. Big Island isn't high enough to hide a small dog. We put our bows outside Monday Creek and those French will blow us out of the water with artillery. With this outflowing tide, we could gain two knots, and the wind is fair enough, but it's also fair for a frigate to run us down north of the Guinea Neck shoals before we could get ten miles."

"We should have left last night," Governour said petulantly.

"In boats that would have capsized without the leeboards and decent keels." Alan sniffed, wondering just how thick in the skull one had to be to wear a red coat and go for a soldier.

"I grow weary of your attitude, you stubborn jackass," Governour said. "A couple of years in the navy doesn't make you a genius at nautical matters."

"But it beats what you know of boats by a long chalk," Alan shot right back. "I'm not King Canute, and neither are you, we can't change things to suit. We cannot get away until dark, we've already discussed that. Now, what do we do until then? You tell me, you're the bloody soldier! But don't come raw with me."

Oh, shit, he thought. This brute's going to kill me for that, see if he doesn't. But he'll not blame this on me. God, are we fucked for fair. The Rebels an' Frogs are going to come down here and knacker us like sheep. What's the bloody difference, him or them; now or later?

Governour did indeed appear as if murder was on his mind, his face turning purple with anger, and his hands twitching out of control. But after a long minute in which they locked stares and would be damned if either would be the first to look away, Governour spun on his heels and stalked off on his long legs, hands jabbed together in the small of his back, and Alan let out a soft breath of relief that he was still alive.

His relief was short, however, for Governour Chiswick turned just as suddenly and stalked back toward him, and it was all Alan could do to stand his ground without fleeing into the woods.

"You're a know-it-all Captain Sharp, Lewrie," Governour said in a rasp, not a sword's length away from him. "Damn your blood, sir. And damn you for being right. My apologies for rowing at you."

A hand was extended, from which Alan almost flinched until he realized it didn't hold a weapon. They shook hands.

"Sorry I lost my temper as well, Governour," Alan said warmly, his legs almost turning to jelly with surprise.

"Well, until dusk, there's nothing to do but do what soldiers do best," Governour said, smiling as much as he could while still grinding his teeth. "Wait. Take positions in the woods by our preparations and hope for the best."

"Have everything ready for a quick getaway," Alan added.

"If they come, Alan, we shall have no chance of retreat, and damned little of surrender, either, you know?" Governour softened. "I believe we can prevail, but until we see how many troops come, we won't know. I wish to God I could have gotten Burgess away, for my family's sake. The rest of our regiment, what's left of it, is going into Rebel hands this day. I have to save what I can. They're my neighbors, my friends, they trust me… oh, damme for a weak, puling…"

"I have a crew to worry about as well, Governour, men from my own ship," Alan told him. "They're depending on me, too."

"You understand. Good," Governour said. "Good lad." Maybe not as well as you'd like, Alan thought. I'd like to get the hell out of here with a whole skin, and damn the ones who run too slow. But you can't say that aloud, can you, can't even think it, but have to go all noble and talk of Duty and the King and Honor and be the last arse-hole into the boat. God help me, but He must know I'm such a canting hypocrite! If you're dead-serious in what you say, Governour, then you're a hell of a lot better than I'll ever be.

They finished loading the boats and drew them out nearly fifty yards off the mouth of the creek, where there was water deep enough to float them. The North Carolina Volunteers filtered off into the woods with their rifles and cartridge pouches to stand guard, and Alan put his own men on watch as well, drilling them once more on loading and firing the Ferguson rifle, just in case. They ate a late dinner of cold boiled meat and dry cornbread, while over by Yorktown, the shattered remnants of a once-proud army marched into captivity with their flags cased, dressed in the last finery the quartermasters had issued, instead of letting it be captured still in the crates. They marched drunk and surly, as though by infusions of rum and hot sneers they could belittle the victors. By battalion and regiments, they tramped through a gauntlet of Rebel and French troops to lay down their colors and honor-draped drums, pile their muskets and accoutrements, and march away naked and helpless. Lord Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent his second-in-command to represent him. That officer surrendered his sword to Washington's second-in-command, while a British band of fifers played gay music to lessen the shame.

Alan thought of going back up to the house and giving the Hayley sisters some guineas for what they had taken, but after their deception he could not find the generosity in heart to do so, and was sure that if he did go up to the house, he would most likely be tempted to torch the damned place. Had they just sat there, we'd be away with no one hurt by dusk, but they could not leave well enough alone, and that damned imp, he thought furiously, probably thinks he's a fucking hero!

As the afternoon drew on, he began to feel a lot calmer. There was no sign of the enemy, no movement from any of the ships out in the river to put a landing party ashore or come closer for a peek. He started to think they could get away scot-free after all.

But then, a little after three, an outlying picket who had been watching the ford onto the neck came drifting back from tree to tree to carry word that there was an enemy force on the Gloucester road.

"How many men?" Governour asked his scout as they held a quick conference in the trees at the eastern end of the tobacco fields near the muddy lane.

"'Bout a dozen hoss, Governour," the thatch-haired private named Hatmaker told him. "Dragoons, some mounted officers. Mebbe forty, fifty foot ahind 'em, all Frenchies, look like. Blue an' yeller, an bearskin shakoes, dressed putty much like the troopers."

"Lauzun's Legion." Governour nodded. "Odd they sent so few. No one behind them?"

"I waited 'til they wuz past couple minutes afore I cut across country, Governour. Didn't see nobody else."

"We may have a chance after all," Governour smiled wolfishly. "We shall stand and fight. Mark you this, though. We're going to have to kill every last mother-son of them, or word gets out and we'll never have a chance to escape. Mollow, take six riflemen with Mister Lewrie to stiffen his defenses up by the creek. Lewrie, you must cover everything north of the road and around the boats and the creek. Burge, you and Knevet take twelve men and guard behind the chevaux-de-frise in the woods a little north of the road and put some snipers along the lane. Don't expose yourself until they charge right on top of you."

"Right, Brother," Burgess said, a trifle breathless.

"I'll make my demonstration south of the road, and draw them onto me. I'll hold my ground 'til over-run, but I think I can bleed 'em, and force 'em to seek a flank to turn, on my right, along the road and north of it," Governour said, drawing in the dirt with the tip of his sword-bayonet. "Burgess, you'll be my first surprise for them. Lewrie, you'll be my last."

"Aye?" he replied, feeling a trifle dubious a surprise.

"Hold your log redan up there until they pass you, and then fall on their flank. Do it from ambush, don't risk your sailors in the open. They're not used to our practice. Hold your ground and don't be drawn unless I send a runner to tell you to advance south toward the road. If you don't hear from me direct, hold your ground and keep the boats safe."

"Let 'em get stuck into you and then kick 'em up the arse?" he said through dry lips. "I can do that."

"Don't fire too soon, or they get away. And if there are more of them behind this bunch, they may come your way to flank us even wider. Trust Mollow, he's a veteran at this. If I break, I'll fall back on you. Wait for us as long as you can, then get your people out of it."

"Aye, Governour," Alan agreed.

"In any case, wait no more than ten minutes after we have opened fire, and it should be over one way or another," Governour concluded.

"The hell with that," Alan told him, shaky but determined. "We're in this together. If we fall back on the boats, we'll just be grand targets splashing through the shallows. Might as well stand or fall on land, dammit to hell."

"Well said, sailor," Governour said, taking his hand and giving him a farewell shake. "Now let's take our positions before they see us."

Alan did not know what to expect once he got back to his hastily made positions up by the creek. Would the enemy come with drums and fifes like the Rebels that had marched into the parallels facing the Yorktown entrenchments, or would they come filtering through the woods like so many painted savages? He could see no sign of them as yet, and was dying of curiosity. He told his men they would have to stand their ground, just like guarding their bulwarks against boarders, gave them a short pep talk, which he did not much believe even as he said it, and knelt down by Mollow and another rifleman to wait out of sight.

About fifteen minutes later, a lone horseman came out of the trees on the far side of the tobacco fields on the road, about four hundred yards away, a fine figure in horizon blue and yellow on a splendid mount. He sat and studied the ground before him for a long moment, before three other riders cantered up to hold a short conference with him. Even at that distance, Alan could see that two were also Lauzun's Legion officers in their hussar shakoes, and the third wore blue and white with a tricorne.

The riders stiffened in their saddles and pointed across the brown fields of neglected tobacco plants as Governour's men stepped out of cover south of Alan's vantage.

"Are they deranged to expose themselves like that?" Alan asked.

"Dem'stration," the private next to him said, spitting a dollop of tobacco juice on the rotting log in front of him and wiping his lips. "Same's bait, they is. Hey, here's yer Frogs."

A body of cavalry appeared on the road, cantered past the officers, and formed a single line-abreast on either side of the muddy road, while one officer joined them. A second Legion officer walked his mount over to take position with a company of infantry that appeared behind the cavalry, these men in horizon blue tunics with yellow facings, white breeches and gaiters, and tall bearskin shakoes. They were four abreast as they wheeled south, halted once in the middle of the tobacco field, faced east and formed two ranks facing the North Carolina riflemen. To their flank, the cavalrymen drew their heavy sabers and flourished them in the late afternoon sun with appallingly good precision.

"Heh, Governour's a puttin' on a show fer 'em." The private chuckled.

"Hatmaker, get yer fuckin' haid down," Mollow told him.

Governour had twelve men in a single rank, impossible odds even if they were riflemen, perhaps two hundred yards away from the waiting enemy ranks. As Alan watched, they went through a drill that Alan did not think such informal troops knew, while Governour stood to one end and called orders that wafted to his ears.

"Poise firelocks!"

"Like musket men." Alan understood.

"Half cock firelocks! Handle cartridge!" Governour called, while a corporal beat the time with what seemed a half spontoon. "Prime pans!"

"They'll think they're reg'lars," Mollow snickered. "Fooled more'n a few that way. Stupid bastards."

"Shut pans! Charge with cartridge!"

The dozen men were pretending at that long range to load from the muzzle with cartridge, though their rifles were already loaded and ready to fire. At the word of command, they seemed to ply rammers, which were really their cleaning rods, and tamp down cartouches, resuming the rammers and coming to attention once more at the command "shoulder firelocks," ordering arms and affixing bayonets, the long sword-bayonets which should have given the game away. But the foe still stood and watched as though mesmerized.

"Why don't they just charge them?" Alan whispered.

"Honor," Mollow spat, as though it was a dirty word.

Only when they had finished their evolutions did the senior Legion officer ride out from his lines to converse with Governour. They saluted each other punctiliously, their words unheard from a distance but obviously couched in tortured and convoluted syntax of two gentlemen expressing the highest respect and admiration for each other, no matter what they really thought of each other. The Frog was removing his shako and bowing from the waist, making a beckoning gesture as though he were granting permission to fire first to Governour, and Governour gave his own back, removing his wide-brimmed campaign hat and sweeping it across his chest, making a gesture to the waiting French troops in turn.

The Frenchman finally spurred his horse about and rode back to his men. He called out once more in a loud voice, and Alan could understand the last offer to surrender peaceably, which Governour spurned.

"Poise firelocks!" Governour called, unshouldering his own piece. "Take aim!"

The French troops at a word of command began to advance slowly, their muskets held out before them with the butts by their thighs and the muzzles up, with the bayonets glinting sharp silver. They were getting into decent musket range, for by firing at one hundred yards one could fire at the moon and achieve just as much good.

"Fire!" Governour shouted, bringing his arm down in an arc.

The rifles cracked, and ten men in the front rank of the French troops were punched backwards into their fellows by the weight of .65 caliber balls. Their own volley came a moment later as they halted and brought their weapons up to fire, but Alan was delighted to see that the Volunteers had knelt down to reload, no longer playing the stiff regular musketeer, and the volley mostly went over their heads.

The cavalry, though, as though spurred into motion by the first noise of battle, lurched forward, their mounts hunkering their hindquarters down and the sabers sweeping off the shoulders to point at the Volunteers, blades held upside down and point slightly down at the charge.

Governour gave the infantry one more volley from a kneeling position, and then faded away back into the pines behind the zigzag fences as the spent powder smoke from his firing formed almost a solid wall through which his men went invisible. But the cavalry was almost upon them, out to one side and swinging in to jump those fences. The cavalrymen whooped and screamed, eager to put sword to the foe and show the dazed infantry who was the better fighter. In a torrent of Gaelic, Polish, German, or French, they came on like a tidal wave.

"Should we…" Alan began.

"Nah, Burgess'll be makin' his move 'bout now." Mollow laughed.

"But…" The infantry had fired the second rank volley into nothing, and then they came on at the charge themselves, now that they had an enemy on the run, wanting to be in at the kill before the cavalry earned all the honors. The mounted officer with them loped alongside them, waving his sword over his head and urging them on.

"Looky thar!" Hatmaker, the private soldier, called out over the sound of battle. "More o' the shits."

"Thort they wuzn't ta come down hyar 'thout they brung a whole passel of 'em," Mollow said, pointing out the second company of troops that was emerging on the road, led by the third officer in blue and white with the tricorne hat. "Virginia Militia, looks like."

They were an outlandish-looking bunch of soldiers, some dressed in purplish long-fringed hunting shirts, some in castoff blue and white tunics over a variety of civilian breeches and waistcoats, some in gray or tan tunics without facings. They formed well enough, though, and came on at a trot, four columns abreast with ten men in each file, jogging forward to the north of the road through the tobacco plants as though they meant to flank the fighting and skirmish through the woods, swinging wide of the cavalry.

The change in sound from the south got Alan's attention, and he turned his head to see the first cavalrymen spur their horses and soar up and over those fences. The roars of challenge changed to shrill and womanish screams as they came down on the double row of chevaux-de-frise that had been hidden in the shadows. Mounts neighed in pain and terror as they skewered themselves on the sharp wood spikes. Those cavalry that had been balked and were milling about in front of the fence suddenly came under fire from Burgess and his men, and gaudily dressed troopers were spilled from their saddles, their useless sabers spinning in the air.

There was time for Governour to get off a volley as well, directly in the face of the charging infantry, punching their officer off his horse before they faded back into the woods for the first of their lines of rifle pits, bringing the French charge to a sudden halt as half a dozen more of their men were smashed down. They stopped to reload, and the quicker-loading and quicker-firing snipers in the woods knocked down more of them before they could raise their weapons to return fire.

"Should we stand ready for this bunch?" Alan asked as the militia seemed to trot forward on a beeline for their own low dead-fall log ramparts.

"Lie down an' keep quiet, now, but do ya be ready ta rise up an' give 'em a volley when I give ya the word," Corporal Knevet ordered, calm as a man in church.

"Steady, men," Alan seconded him, crawling along his line of sailors, who clutched their borrowed rifles with white-knuckled hands. "You can get off two volleys to their one if you're steady. They can't face that. We're going to give it to them point-blank and run their ragged arses all the way back to Gloucester Point."

And I wouldn't believe me for a second, he thought fearfully.

"On, boys, we got the bastards skinned!" the militia officer was encouraging his panting soldiers. He was off his horse, having left it in the rear, a heavyset, sweating man in a too-small uniform wrapped with a large red sash of command, with a gaudy bullion epaulette on each shoulder like a general, far above his true rank. Alan peered out from a gap between two of the mossy dead-fall logs as they came on, swishing through the weeds and the dried leaves of tobacco, their accoutrements jangling and thumping on their bodies, musket butts knocking against each other as they jogged shoulder to shoulder for comradely support.

"Now?" Alan asked Mollow.

"Not yit, be quiet, young'un," Mollow cautioned. "They's swingin' off ta our left. Let 'em get in real close fuhst."

"'Ware them logs thar!" someone yelled to their front.

"Shit," Corporal Knevet groaned, realizing they had been spotted. "Stand to! Take aim… fire!"

They stood up from behind their barriers, to find the militia company not thirty yards away, turned slightly oblique to them and stumbling to a halt at the sight of their weapons. The volley was a blow to the heart, right in their astonished faces, a ragged crackling of shots that took the front rank and the nearest column of files down, so close Alan could see the blood fly from the nearest men struck.

"Load!" Alan cried, not knowing where his first shot had gone. His hands seemed to have plans of their own as he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, flipped up the pan cover, and dug into the pouch at his side for a fresh cartridge to rip open with his teeth.

"Face left!" the officer was screaming, waving a huge straight sword and shoving numb survivors of that fatal volley off to his left to lead out the unharmed files. "Form two ranks!"

Mollow, Knevet, Hatmaker, and the other soldiers got off another volley as they shambled into order, quickly followed by Alan and his men, who were less familiar and comfortable with the rifles. Alan saw some of his sailors grounding their rifles to begin the process of loading from the muzzle, as they had been trained on the Brown Bess muskets aboard the ship, before coming to their senses, or being swatted by a senior hand.

More enemy soldiers were being laid out on the ground, groaning and crying in terror as they were hit.

"Front rank, kneel! Take aim… fire!" the militia officer yelled.

They got off a volley, and at that close range it was deadly, no matter that half the militiamen had not even bothered to do more than stick their muzzles in the right direction. Volunteers and sailors shrieked in agony as they were smacked down behind the log barrier, which suddenly seemed to be about knee high instead of waist deep.

"Charge 'em!" the officer screamed.

"Fire when ready!" Alan screamed back, trying to be heard over all the noise. Rifles cracked, his own slamming back into his shoulder, and the white-bearded older man who had been running at him was struck on the breastbone and was slammed backwards as though jerked on a rope to drop to the ground with his heels flying in the air.

"Better fall back ta the boats," Knevet suggested.

"Once my boys run, there's no stoppin' 'em," Alan shouted right into his face. The enemy charge was coming forward, bayonets pointing for them big as ploughshares and shining wickedly.

The men were fumbling at the loading and firing of their Fergusons, hands trembling like fresh-killed cocks at the sight of the enemy at the charge. If they waited to get off a last volley, they would be all over them, and he was still outnumbered.

"Boarders!" Alan howled, drawing his pair of dragoon pistols and dropping the Ferguson. "Away boarders! Take 'em, Desperates!"

Alan brought up the first pistol in his right hand, aimed, and lit off the charge as his men began to surge forward over the barrier to meet the militiamen. He did not hear the explosion, but a ragged man with a half spontoon leveled like a pike spouted a scarlet bloom below his chin.

Alan dropped the spent pistol and transferred the other to his right hand. He fired, and a soldier in dirty blue and white almost up to the barrier gave a great silent scream, and his waistcoat turned red over one lung.

Then Alan was over the barrier himself, cutlass in his right hand and one of his own pistols in his left. A bayonet lunged for him, and he nicked his blade into the wood of the fore-stock, shoving it out of the way, then slashed back to his right, inside the soldier's guard. He sank his cutlass into flesh and bone on the man's right arm, knocking him down to the dust and the weeds, chopped downward again and laid his opponent's face open. Another man was close, and Alan brought up his pistol and fired. There was a soft pop, but that man's face writhed in terror and he dropped away, clutching at his stomach and dropping the musket that had been near to taking Alan in the chest.

There was a lot of screaming going on, but he heard little of it, for he moved in an unreal fog, a swirling, shifting kaleidoscope of colors through which he waded. Grays and blues and tans, flesh and blood, dark wood and bright metal. He discharged his last pistol somewhere along the way and had no idea where the ball went, found his dirk in one hand and the cutlass in the other as he slipped in under someone's guard and took the man in the abdomen. He was in among the trampled and broken dry tobacco plants, slashing about as though he was cutting a path through them to get at the enemy.

He came face to face with the sweaty, obese enemy officer with the glittering epaulettes, his hat gone and his eyes huge with fear and shock. The man brought up that heavy straight sword, big as a Scottish claymore, but Alan smashed it aside as easily as a feather and the man opened his mouth to scream before he turned to flee, dropping his sword in fright.

Alan seemed to float forward like some vengeful Greek god masquerading as a man in the Iliad under the walls of Troy; he brought down that heavy cutlass blade and cut the officer's back open, tumbling him into the dirt and mud of the field between the tobacco rows, brought it down again and almost severed the head from the shoulders, hacked on the body until he began to hear things beside the ringing in his ears.

"Load up!" someone was ordering. "Load 'an face the road!"

Mollow was at his side, fending off his bloody cutlass with his rifle stock as Alan thought him another foe to deal with. "Hold on, thar, boy! Git yerself a rifle, an' we're gonna do some hawg-killin'!"

The closest weapons Alan could find were militia muskets, and he did not have the right caliber ball for them. He searched back and forth across the fields until he came across the soldier Hatmaker, who had been shot in the chest and would no longer need his rifle.

"Form ranks, form two ranks!" Knevet was shouting, manhandling stunned sailors and surviving riflemen into some sort of order. There seemed too few to be credited. "Spread out, ten foot apart! Load up an' stand by ta fire!"

Alan loaded Hatmaker's rifle, wiping the blood from the breech and stock as he did so. He looked up to see French soldiers from Lauzun's Legion stumble from the woods south of the road, along with a few men from the militia company who had run off from the fighting and had gotten mixed in with them. Cavalrymen in shakoes, sabers abandoned and bearing short musketoons and dragoon pistols, infantry in bearskin headresses with muskets, a wounded officer with a sword in hand being helped along by his orderly. There seemed too damned few of them to be credited, either. As he watched they turned to fire back into the woods from which they came, then spun about to continue running.

"First rank… fire!" Knevet called, and six or seven rifles made a harsh sound, spewing out a thick cloud of powder. "Reload! Second rank… fire!"

This time, Alan aimed and fired, his hands so weak that he could have just as easily hit either the ground at his feet or the bay beyond. A third volley sounded from the woods by the zigzag fences as Governour, Burgess, and their survivors came into sight, and they had the French and Rebels caught in an L-shaped killing ground, just about one hundred yards away, too far for accurate musket fire even for steady men, but as Governour had predicted, close enough to do terrible practice with Fergusons. The enemy melted away, spun off their feet to fall like limp rags.

"Kill 'em! Kill 'em all, goddammit!" someone ordered.

"Close 'em!" Knevet said, and the two ragged ranks began to walk forward, angling right to keep up with the fleeing foe as they finally broke and fled. There were not a dozen left on their feet, then eight; another volley and there were three, a few scattered shots and there were none left standing, only the writhing wounded crying out for quarter as the soldiers walked among them with their bayonet blades prodding at the dead.

Wanting no part of such a gruesome activity, Alan sank to his knees and concentrated on drawing breath into his lungs. He felt as though he had run a mile, and every limb of his body ached as though he had carried something heavy as he had done so.

"Ya hurt?" Mollow asked him, kneeling down by him.

"No, I don't think so," Alan panted. "You?"

"Cut 'r two, nothin' much." Mollow grimaced. He swung his canteen around from his hip and took a swallow, then offered it to Alan, who half drained it before handing it back reluctantly.

"Bastards worn't ready fer this kinda fightin'," Mollow commented. "Bet them Lauzun boys thort they'd tangled with red Injuns back in them woods. Them Virginia Militia put up a good fight fer a minute thar, though."

Alan got to his feet and looked back to the north. He could follow the trail of the fighting through the tobacco fields where plants had been knocked flat by struggling, falling men, like a swath left by a reaper. And the swath was littered with bodies all the way back to the log barrier, bodies spilled on the ground like bundles of clothing empty of the men who had worn them, looking sunk into the ground in ungainly postures, a few squirming back and forth in pain still.

"God Almighty in Heaven," Alan muttered in shock.

"Purty bad, wuhst iver I seen, an' I seen me some fightin'," Mollow went on as they walked stiff legged back toward the north. "You an' yer Navy boys stand killin' better'n most, I'll 'low ya that. Whoo, all them cutlasses aswangin' an' them sailors ayellin' and stampin' fit ta bust, like ta curdled my jizzum!"

"Is fighting on land always like this?" Alan gaped in awe.

"Naw, mos' times hit's almost civilized."

There was Hatmaker, curled up like a singed worm, his yellow hair muddied and his eyes staring at a beetle that crawled under his nose. A sailor was next, struck in the belly, flat on his back with his shirt up to reveal the huge purple bruise and bullet hole that he had clutched before he bled to death through the exit wound in his back. Nearer the logs there was Feather, the stubborn quartermaster's mate, sprawled across the body of a Virginia militiaman, a musket bayonet still in his chest and the musket sagged to the ground like a fallen mast.

And there was old Nat Queener that Coe was trying to help, shot through the body and feebly fluttering his hands over his slashed belly, life draining from him as Alan watched. He knelt down next to him and the old man turned his face to him. "We done good, didn't we, Mister Lewrie?"

"Aye, we did, Mister Queener," Alan told him, tears coming to his eyes at the sight of him. He wasn't long for the world with a wound like that. "Anyone you want to know about you being hurt?"

"Ain't nobody back home, I outlived 'em all, Mister Lewrie. Mebbe 'Chips' an' a few o' me mates in Desperate, iffen they made it."

"I'm so damned sorry, Queener." Alan shuddered.

"Don' ya take on so, sir. Hands'll be lookin' ta ya. Aw, I'd admire me somethin' wet afore I go, Coe. Got anythin'?"

Coe lifted up a small leather bottle of rum and Queener gulped at it greedily.

Alan got to his feet, hearing Queener give a groan and the last breath rattling in his throat.

"'E's gone, sir," Coe said. "'E were a good shipmate."

"Aye, he was. How many dead and wounded from our people?"

"Dunno, sir."

"Find out and give me a list, Coe. You are senior hand, now."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Alan wandered off to pick his way across the field to retrieve his dropped pistols, the dragoon pistols, and to gather up the Ferguson he had discarded at the barrier. He ran across Governour, limping from a sword cut on his leg that was already bound up.

"Hard fight," Governour said matter-of-factly. "But we got 'em all. No one to tell the tale back up at Gloucester Point, so we should be able to get away. It's after four. Once we make the worst wounded comfortable, we should think of being on our way."

"What about the dead?" Alan demanded, suddenly angry that the officer was so callous.

"Have to leave 'em where they lay." Governour shrugged. "We'll put the worst hurt up at the house where the Hayleys and their slaves can care for 'em. They'll send for surgeons. We can't care for them."

"Goddamn you!" Alan shouted, whirling on him.

"Would you rather that was us?" Governour said with a sad smile, pointing to the nearest mutilated dead. "Grow up, for God's sake, Lewrie. Get the names of the dead to leave with the Hayley family. Maybe they'll put something up over their graves, I don't know, but that's all you can do after something like this. You're a Navy officer, or the nearest thing we have to one right now. Act like one."

They laid out their own dead with as much dignity as they could. Of the thirty soldiers and officers from the Volunteers, there were eighteen dead or so badly wounded they would have to be left behind. Of the eighteen sailors and petty officers, only nine would be leaving on the boats. Of the French and Rebel militia, there were not twenty men left alive from the nearly hundred who had come to take them.

Alan copied out his list of dead and badly wounded, then went up to the house, where Mrs. Hayley and her sister Nancy waited on the porch by the back terrace, aghast at the carnage, tears flowing down their faces at the horror that had come to their peaceful farm.

"Mrs. Hayley, Miss Ledbetter," Alan said, doffing his hat to them. "We are leaving soon. I have here a list of the people we left behind in your care, and the names of the dead. I trust in your Christian generosity to tend to them as gently as possible."

"Yes, yes we shall," Mrs. Hayley managed, stunned.

"I was going to give you some guineas, to pay for what we had to requisition, but I would admire if you used it instead to pay the surgeon who comes and perhaps to put up a small marker for our dead, along with the militiamen and French who died here today."

"That is good of you, sir," Mrs. Hayley whispered. "I…"

"This was a pointless, useless battle that no one'll remember in a year, most like," Alan went on coldly. "Had we gotten clean away, none of these poor men would have died. It solved nothing, it meant nothing."

"I'm sorry!" Mrs. Hayley wailed, no longer able to bear his words of reproach, knowing full well that she had given her son her consent to carry word down the Neck, scheming happily to get him away unseen so he could play a hero's part and she could be a patriot as well, never having seen the cost of patriotism firsthand.

"What happened to Rodney?" Nancy Ledbetter asked, her face ashen.

"I have no idea, nor do I particularly care," Alan said. "He may be safe up the Neck, or he may lie dead out in the fields or woods. 'Tis all one to me. He brought it on himself if he was hurt or killed."

"You're a brutal young man, sir." Nancy wept, clutching the small bag of coins he offered her along with the paper. "How can you go through life so uncaring about others?"

"Think on this, Mistress Ledbetter," Alan said. "You and your scheming and spying killed nigh on a hundred men, maybe your own nephew, too. How brutal were you, my dear? Would you have wept a tear on my corpse? I doubt it. You'd have bedded me if you thought there was anything more to gain by it, all to bring this about. How can you live with yourself, I ask you, instead? Good-bye, Mistress Ledbetter."

He turned to go, but she clutched at his sleeve. "Forgive us!" she pleaded. "We did not know…"

"Take it up with God. He's better at forgiveness than I am."

So saying, Alan made his way down to the boat landing, stopping to give what cheer he could to the wounded sailors and those soldiers he recognized in one of the slave huts where they had been installed to heal or die, as God willed.

He got down to the boats, where the small party waited to board for the escape across the bay. The tide was running out rapidly now, and the sun was almost gone. The barges twitched at the end of their painters as the inlet emptied with the outrush to the sea. They floated high instead of canting over with their keels in the tidal flats.

"Coe, take charge of the first boat," he ordered his senior hand. "Corporal Knevet, better get your party aboard with Coe, here."

"Yes, sir," Knevet replied, wading out to the boat with the sailors.

Sir, Alan thought. The bastard actually called me "sir"!

There was a sharp pop up the creek, which had everyone diving for their rifles and a spot of cover from which to fire, but after a moment Governour and Burgess came out of the gloomy thickets to join them, the heavy dragoon pistol in Governour's hand still smoking.

"What was that?" Alan asked.

"Nothing much," Governour replied. "We ready to depart?"

"Aye. Burgess?"

Burgess wore a bandage about his head and one arm was in a sling, but he shouldered past Alan to splash out into the shallows without one word, tears running down his face.

"Let's go, then," Governour said.

There was no need to pole or row out of the inlet, for the wind was out of the south-east, so once past the mouth of the narrow inlet, with the lug sails set, they could wear up on the wind to beat through the pass at Monday Creek and get out into the bay far above the watching frigates in the mouth of the York. With the leeboards down in deep water, they were making a goodly clip, lost in the first of the night, dark sails and tarred hulls indistinguishable from the almost moonless waters.

"We want to keep a heading east-nor'east, Burgess," Alan told the soldier, who was seated in his boat. "Keep an eye on the compass for me."

"Yes, I will," Burgess snuffled.

"What happened back there?" Alan asked, leaning close.

"God save us, it was George all over again," Burgess said with a catch in his voice as he tried to mutter too soft to be overheard.

"George? Oh, your younger brother? What was?"

"We caught that Hayley brat," Burgess told him. "Governour said he owed him a debt of blood, and he shot him in the belly, so he'd take days dying. We left him out there in the brambles, out of sight."

Alan waited for a sense of shock, but his nerves were about out of the ability to be shocked by much of anything after all he had seen or done. He pondered how he felt about this revelation.

"Oh? Good," Alan finally said, "serves the little bugger right."

"God, Alan!" Burgess shuddered. "That makes us no better than the bastard who killed George. What does it matter, anyway? We've lost the army, mayhap lost the whole damned war here in the Chesapeake. All we had left was our honor, and now that's gone, too. What's a gentleman without his honor?"

"Alive," Alan told him evenly. "And, if he's not caught with his breeches down or the weapon in his hand, he is still a gentleman to everyone else. I'd have shot the little shit-sack myself if I'd run across him first. Now you and Governour have these men to look after, and your family down in Wilmington to worry about. Forget it."

"I'll never."

"Hard times'd make a rat eat red onions," Alan quoted back to him. "You do what you have to. This war has all cost us most of our decency, and it's not through with us yet. Like our sailing master says, the more you cry, the less you'll piss. Buck up and swear you'll never do it again, but it's done, and it wasn't your hand done it. Governour's still your brother. Worry about how he's dealing with it."

"You're trying to make me feel good about it?" Burgess marveled.

"Let me know when you do." Alan grinned in the dark. "Now keep an eye on that compass. There's just enough moon to steer by. What's our heading?"

"Um… just a touch north of east."

Alan looked to the eastern horizon above them and found a star to steer by, swung the tiller slightly until he was on a close reach to the south-east breeze and leaned back, blanking his mind to what Burgess had just told him, blanking his mind to everything except getting across the bay before sunrise.

CHAPTER 14

"So you made it out past Cape Charles on the night of the 21st, sheltered on Curtis Island, coasted to Chingoteag the next night, and were finally picked up by the brig Dandelion on the 24th," Admiral Hood's flag captain said after reading the report before him.

"Aye, sir," Alan replied.

The flag captain looked up from the written account that Alan had penned once ferried over to the Barfleur. It was an amazing document of raw courage, unbelievable bravery, and clever extemporizing to make the river barges seaworthy. Had there not been corroborating reports from the Loyalist Volunteer officers and the surviving seamen's testimony, the captain would have dismissed it as the work of a fabulist, much on a par with the adventures of a Munchausen.

He studied the young man that stood before his desk, swaying easy to the motion of the flagship. The flag captain was of the common opinion that the finest intelligence, the best character, and the most courage were usually found in the most attractive physical specimens, and he found nothing to dissuade this opinion in Midshipman Lewrie. The uniform was stained and faded, but that did not signify; the lad's hair was neat and clean, shorter than the usual mode and not roached back into such a severe style, the queue short and tied with a black silk ribbon, a pleasant light brown, touched blonde where the sun reached it from long service in tropic sunshine. The face was not too horsey and long, regular in appearance, the jaw not too prominent, but it was a firm jaw. The skin was tanned by sea service, and in the dim cabins, with only swaying lamps for illumination, the face was relaxed from the permanent squint sailors developed, showing the whitish chalk marks of frown lines and wrinkles-to-be in later years, held so squinted the sun could not stain them as it did the rest of the skin. And the eyes, which at first the captain believed to be aristocratic gray, now seemed more pale blue, of a most penetrating and arresting nature, windows to the restless soul within.

Had he not been in King's uniform, he would have dismissed him as one of those pretty lads more given to the theatres and low amusements of the city, almost too pretty, except for that pale scar on the cheek. As for the rest of him, the shoulders were broad without being common, and he was slim, well knit and wiry; the waist and hips were narrow, showing a good leg in breeches and stockings, instead of being beef to the heel like a gunner's mate or a representative of the lower orders. Could have been a courtier, but he gave off the redolence of a tarpaulin man.

"Hate to say so, but this report shall have to be redone." the captain said with a rueful grin that was not unkindly. "It's one thing to state the facts, but all these… adjectives and adverbs and what you may call 'ems, my word. And one does not make recommendations as to rewards for army officers, or suggestions on adopting Ferguson rifles for the Sea Service and all, you see?"

"I do, sir," Alan replied evenly, showing no fatigue or disappointment at this news. It was all one to him, tired as he was.

"The main thing is to be professional in tone, no emotions at all. Wouldn't want your contemporaries to think you were glory hunting. And none of this 'it is my sad and inconsolable duty to report that so and so passed over,' d'ya see? Tone it down and list the dead and wounded later, preceded by the phrase, 'as per margin.'"

"I list them in the margin, sir?" Alan wondered.

"No, but that is the form most preferred by Mr. Phillip Stephens, the First Secretary to the Admiralty. But you cannot address it to him, as you did, but to your captain or commanding officer."

"Forgive me my ignorance, sir, but I have never had cause to write a report on anything before, even when in temporary command of a prize."

"Well, such a report as yours shall cause a good stir back home, and in the Chronicle, I am sure, soon after, so one must adhere to the forms. I'll lend you my secretary to aid you in couching it in the proper manner, but it must be redone before I may pass it on to the admiral or post it to London."

"Aye, sir."

Admiral Hood entered the cabins at that moment, on his way aft to his own quarters under Barfleur's poop. Alan recognized him from Antigua and felt such a surge of loathing arise after witnessing the inexplicable behavior of a man with a reputation as a fighting admiral that he felt he had to bite his tongue to control his features.

"See me soon as you're through with your miscreant, sir," Hood told his flag captain.

"Not a miscreant, sir, this is Lewrie, the one in charge of those barges we picked up today."

"Ah," Hood said, peering down at him over that beaky nose from his superior height. Alan was five and three-quarter feet tall, and he was having trouble finding headroom between the beams, even here in flag country, and Hood had to stoop to even walk, yet he gave the impression of great height in spite of the nearness of the overhead. "Met you once, I think."

"At Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews' farewell ball on Antigua, sir."

"Oh, that's it. This your report?"

"Needs rewriting, sir, as I was telling him."

"Hmm," Hood said, rubbing his nose as he leaned closer to one of the swaying lamps to peruse the document. "Yes, I dare say it does need a large dose of Navalese. Still, quite an adventure."

"Aye, sir," Alan replied, too upset to worry about toadying for once. He wanted to blurt out a question of why Hood had hung back at the Battle of the Chesapeake, wanted to demand why they had not come to rescue the army, which had resulted in so much misery.

"Welcome back to the Fleet, Lewrie," Hood said, tossing the draft of the report down and walking off aft.

"Well, do your best with this," the flag captain said.

"Aye, sir. Er, excuse me, sir, but would you happen to know if the Desperate frigate made it out as well, or what happened to her?"

"Oh, yes, she was your ship." The captain frowned. "Off to New York for a quick refit, but she made it."

"I would wish to get back aboard as soon as I could, sir."

"Yes, quite understandable." The captain frowned again, as though there were something wrong. "Well, that's all for now, Lewrie. Have that report back to me before the forenoon watch tomorrow."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"I'm free now, sir," the flag captain told Hood in the admiral's day cabin after tidying up the last of the paperwork necessary for the proper nautical administration of fourteen sail of the line and all their artillery, men and officers, their provisioning and discipline.

"Good," Hood said, seated at ease behind his desk. "Before I forget, make a note regarding that young man, what was his name?"

"Lewrie, sir?"

"Yes. Seems a promising sort, did he not strike you so?" Hood asked.

"A most promising young man, sir, indeed," the flag captain said with a pleased expression, gratified that he was such a discerning judge of his fellow man that even Admiral Samuel Hood agreed with his opinion.

Near the end of the month Alan reported back aboard Desperate.

He was free of the Chiswicks, free of the land once more, back in the dubious bosom of the Navy for good and all, reporting back aboard his own ship to a sea of familiar faces. Railsford was there to welcome him, pumping his paw heartily. Peck the marine officer, Mister Monk the sailing master, Coke the bosun, and his mates Weems and Toliver, Knatchbull and Sitwell and Hogan 1 from the fo'c's'le guns, Hogan 2 from the loblolly boys, Tuckett and Cony laughing and waving at him, Mr. Dorne and the purser Mister Cheatham making shines over his reappearance. Even David Avery was there once he had gotten below, to clasp him to him as though he had arisen from the dead.

"Lord, what a pack of iron!" David laughed, offering him a glass of Black Strap as Alan unpacked his canvas sea bag of the pair of dragoon pistols, his own smaller pistols, cutlass, and all the tools that went along with the weapons, including bullet molds for the odd calibers.

"And all of it damned useful at one time or another," Alan told his friend. "How the hell did you escape Yorktown?"

"When the storm blew up, I was washed downriver and thumped into the ship just before she cut her cables. They threw down a line and we got towed out into the bay," David related. "Spent the night bouncing on the waves and the wake like a chariot being drawn by Poseidon's horses. Did you see anything of Carey?"

"Only at the boat landing before my last trip." Alan sighed. "I suppose he's a prisoner by now, if he lived."

"Yes, the sloop Bonetta came in bringing word from Cornwallis and a list of those taken. Him and Forrester, both. The captain was mighty upset about that. I saw Forrester. He was part of the Bonetta's crew."

"Paroled?" Alan asked.

"On his word of honor to return to the Chesapeake. He came for his chest, and Carey's, so at least we know the little chub's alive. It was odd, but hate him as much as I did, I felt sorry for Francis at the end."

"He'll be exchanged soon enough, if he gave parole. And he'll be home sooner than us," Alan said. Giving one's parole allowed one to be swapped for an officer or supernumerary of equal rank from the other side's prison hulks, but one had to swear to no longer bear arms in the current conflict, which would remove one from service until some sort of peace treaty was signed. With rumors flying that England could not get together another decent regiment to fight in the Colonies, much less one more army of the strength of Cornwallis's force, a peace was expected to be negotiated. There were also rumors flying that the Lord North government would soon be voted out, and a more accommodating prime minister installed, intent on ending the war.

"Where's McGregor?" Alan asked, seeing that both master's mates' dog-boxes were standing empty.

"Left behind. Where's Feather?" David said.

"Dead," Alan told him. He stripped off his filthy uniform and called for Freeling, who appeared after an insolently long time. "Get me a bucket of seawater to scrub up with, Freeling."

"Goona make ha mess, zur, an' them decks jus' scrubbed thees mornin', they wuz," Freeling said dolefully.

"Freeling, you'll do what I tell you soon as dammit, or I'll have a new steward down here and you'll be hauling on the halyards with the other idlers and waisters. That's after you've been up for punishment and gotten two dozen for insubordination, so move your stubborn arse and do it!" Alan said in a rush. Freeling took a look at him, felt the subtle difference in their prodigal midshipman, and stumbled away to perform his lowly duty without another word, knowing his game of truculent behavior was over.

"Damme, how did you do that?" Avery gawped.

"Life's too short to put up with his insolence," Alan snapped, opening his chest. He dug out fresh linen, a clean uniform, and took the time to reach down and feel the bundle of gold to reassure himself it was still there.

"What happened to you?" Avery asked, intent on this miracle. "By God, I thought you were turning hard before you got left behind, but now you seem… I don't know, even more so."

"I feel I've spent the last few days in hell, David," Alan confessed. As he scrubbed up and dressed in a fresh uniform, he related his recent experiences to an open-mouthed David Avery, who found it hard to credit that anyone could live through them and still have any shred of sanity or decency left to him.

"Much as I thought I despised the Navy, David, it's a walk in a sunny park compared to land service. By God, I'll be glad to leave war behind me forever, should I live to be paid off, even as a two-a-penny midshipman with no prospects. I'll find something to do. I am just so glad to be back aboard Desperate, where my friends are."

"Don't be too glad," David warned him. "There's talk about her."

"What talk?"

"About being the only ship to escape before the surrender."

"Talk from who, these canting whip-jacks, these imitation tars, who found a hundred excuses to stay in New York instead of sailing to fight de Grasse one more time?" Alan sneered. "By God, it was one hell of a piece of ship-handling to get her downriver and through the shoals and the blockade in that storm, even if she did almost drown me. What did this pack of poltroons do, I ask you? Wrung their hands and said it was too bad. Let's wait for Digby and his three ships of the line. Let's throw dinners and balls and parades for His Royal Highness Prince William Henry. Hey, wasn't Virginia to be his personal royal colony? Let's not sail until all the powder's been replaced, everything Bristol Fashion from keelson to truck! God, I'm sick of the lot of 'em!"

Alan had knocked back his third glass of Black Strap, and the lack of sleep and adequate rations were playing hob with his senses. He was on his way to a good argumentative drunk.

"Even though Captain Treghues had written permission from Captain Symonds to try to break out, the impression is that we ran out on everyone back there," David said, feeling little pain, either. "There's nothing official."

"Aye, backbiting never is," Alan agreed vehemently. "Bastards!"

"Passing the word for Mister Lewrie!" a marine called.

"Stap me, if that's Treghues, he'll jump down my throat with both boots on, the state I'm in," Alan said, setting aside his fourth glass of wine untouched. "Do I look sober enough to see him if that's what it is?"

"No one ever is, but you may pass inspection. Here."

David offered him a precious lime from the Indies, a green and semi-shriveled fruit brought aboard God knew how long before, but Alan bit into it and sucked as much of the juice into his mouth that he could stand, to kill the odor of wine on his breath. For safety, he tucked a piece of rind into his cheek to chew on, and went on deck.

"God bless you for that, David, you're a true Christian."

"Aye, I'm up to the Apocrypha now." David smiled.

It was indeed a summons from the great cabins aft to see their captain. Alan removed his cocked hat and entered as the marine stamped his musket and bawled an announcement of his arrival.

Treghues had aged. He was sprouting the first hints of gray in his hair at the temples, and his face was thin and drawn as though there was still some lingering effect of that blow to the head back in August—that, or Mr. Dorne's "slight trephination." Perhaps it was, Alan thought, the ill repute which Desperate had gathered after her daring escape from the Chesapeake Bay. For the son of a lord of the realm, the slightest hint of incompetence or cowardice that could only be answered by requesting an inquiry, would be galling in the extreme. Even a physically fit man would have trouble dealing with it and sleeping sound at night, and Treghues did not look as though he had been sleeping well.

"Mister Lewrie," Treghues said, sitting prim behind his glossy mahogany desk, with his hands folded as though kneeling at a prayer rail.

"Sir."

"Admiral Hood's flag secretary sent me a fair copy of your report regarding your activities ashore. He also sent a short note of commendation with it. I… I find this extremely difficult to say, Lewrie, after our recent contretemps, but he stated, Admiral Hood, that is, stated, that I should be very proud of you. And I am."

"He did?" Alan beamed with sudden pleasure. "Thank you, sir, thankee very kindly, indeed."

"Perhaps this will go a long way to removing the odor which this poor vessel has acquired of late. You are aware to which I allude, sir?"

"Avery discovered it to me, sir."

"A bitter sort of poetic justice," Treghues mused, taking up a clay churchwarden pipe and cramming tobacco into the bowl, an activity he had not been known for before. "I was a bit too hasty to judge you for what you had been before joining the Navy, allowed prejudice to cloud my judgments. And now, I am hoist by my own petard, as the Bard would have said, from the clouded judgments of others."

Captains ain't supposed to be like this, Alan thought. They don't have to explain shit. Why is he cosseting me suddenly? I ain't changed that much at all, maybe for the worse if anything.

"Jealousy and backstabbing I can understand, but I cannot abide what our escape has done to my ship, Lewrie," Treghues said sharply, with a hint of that old rigidity and moral rectitude. "Better we had gone into captivity after burning her to the waterline than endure the sneers from… from these dominee do-littles."

"You went out with flags flying, sir," Alan said, only half pissing down Treghues's back, half expressing his own outrage at the unfairness of any recriminations against Desperate and her people. "That's more than any of these scoundrels attempted. Had they stirred their arses up properly, there'd still be a base on the York, and we'd have been covered in glory."

Damme, you've let the wine speak! Alan thought. He's going to have me flogged raw. And he's got his memory back. I'm fucked.

"Bless you, that was bravely said, sir!" Treghues barked with a smile that was most disconcerting to see. "And never a truer word spoken."

"She's my ship, too, sir. Too many good men died making her what she is, too many died ashore doing everything they could for the army."

"Aye, you love her, too," Treghues responded as he lit his pipe with a taper dipped into an overhead lantern. It was hard to tell if the smoke, or the emotion, misted his eyes. "I had not expected this from you, Mister Lewrie. I was under the impression you hated the Sea Service."

"I've done some growing up, sir. And there's no law says I can't change my mind about some things," Alan replied, feeling the wine pricking at the back of his eyes. Damme, he thought, is it the wine speaking, or do I really feel… comfortable in the Navy now? Must be the wine. Bastards like me have no noble emotions.

"By Heaven above, I love this ship," Treghues said, the smoke wreathing about his head, and Alan thought it possibly the oddest-smelling tobacco had ever come across, almost herbal and acrid, not like Virginia leaf or Turkey. "We're shorthanded once more, short four guns aft, but we'll make something brave of her yet. Have you really had a sea change, Mister Lewrie? Are you prepared to do your utmost to restore her honor and reputation?"

"Aye, sir." What other answer was there to a question like that?

"We may receive some older brass nines from the army ashore, short nines, but better than nothing," Treghues continued. "And I must make up the lack of leadership and competence. With Admiral Hood's commendation and his conjurement to do something for you as suitable reward, I am appointing you an acting master's mate, effective immediately. See Mister Railsford to change your watch and quarter bills, and then apprise the sailing master of your promotion There is a salary with it, and though there is the chance you may not be confirmed once back in the Indies and shall be liable for stoppages, I doubt that should occur, if you make a good showing during a probationary phase."

"I… I don't know how to thank you, sir," Alan said, overcome at the honor paid him. Approval from the flag was a mere formality in such cases, and the Admiralty in faraway London paid no attention to such mundane matters, not like making someone a commissioned officer or giving a young boy command of a ship. If he did not do something completely stupid during the trial period, he would be made a full master's mate within two months or so. And from that very instant, he was a junior watch stander, a deck officer in a shorthanded ship, with better quarters than a hammock, the right to wear a sword instead of a boy's dirk, and two ponds, two shillings a month of real pay (or certificates attesting to it in lieu of coin) instead of being allowed money from his annuity. His rations would be the same, the air below decks would be the same, and the dangers of the sea would be the same for all, but everyone below David in rank would now have to call him "sir" or Mister Lewrie.

"Miscreant or not, you have earned it," Treghues said, turning prim once more, as though he had said too much and had let down that rigid guard a captain must keep over his emotions, or had failed to maintain the separation from the ship's people that made his authority absolute. "That will be all, sir."

"Aye, aye, sir," Alan replied crisply. Damme, maybe I can make a commission out of this after all, he told himself once he was on deck and sniffing at the coolness of the air.

"Seen the captain, have you?" Railsford asked, as though he knew what the news was already.

"Aye, sir. He has appointed me master's mate, acting for a time," Alan related proudly. "Who would have thought it?"

"Well, if you do not wish to accept the promotion…"

"No, sir, I'll accept gladly," Alan hastened to assure him.

"Congratulations, then. Now get you below and sort yourself out into your new quarters. Take one of the mates' dog-boxes," Railsford said kindly. "But if you fuck off or let this go to your head, I'll kick your arse for you, see if I don't."

"I'll not let you down, sir," Alan replied.

"Or the captain," Railsford whispered, stepping close to him. "He needs us badly now. No matter how he slurred you in the past, the poor man needs our help. Captains cannot ask, and they cannot be seen to be in need of anything. Were you my younger brother, and you let him down, I'd break you and send you forrard in pusser's slops. It's not just obedience you owe him or the loyalty which is his due, but true loyalty. May I count on you for that, Mister Lewrie? Have you that devotion?"

"Aye, sir," Alan said. "I believe I do."

"No more of your moonshines, no more boyish pranks and japes," Railsford went on. "You're in an important job now, and too many people depend on you. I know you fairly well, and I trust you with the well-being of this ship when you have charge of the deck, as you will, shorthanded as we are. The captain has put his utmost trust in you as well. That's something new for you, being trusted, I know."

"Aye, it is, sir," Alan had to admit, feeling a surge of pride that people were beginning to put power in his hands and delegate authority to his judgment, something that would never have happened in his former life as a rake-hell back in London. "Very sobering."

"Odd choice of words with the reek of the wine-table on your breath." Railsford grinned suddenly. "Enough said for now, then. Get."

Alan went below to the lower deck, then aft to the midshipmen's mess and took hold of his chest to drag it into a vacant dog-box cabin, to Avery's consternation. He had Freeling make up his narrow berth and hung up some spare clothes from the pegs. Like the tiny quarters aboard the schooner Parrot that had been meant for privateer prize masters, the dog-box was made up of thin deal partitions and a canvas door that enclosed a space just large enough for the bed, his chest, a tiny book rack, a mirror and wash stand, and the line of pegs that would be his wardrobe; but it was his, all his, and he could shut the door like a commissioned officer and turn off the sounds of the ship when he was off watch, could even have a lie-down instead of waiting for the evening pipe to call the hands to reclaim their hammocks. There was a small pewter lamp gimbaled on a swinging mount over the headboard of the bed, which he could burn later than others to read in bed, if he felt like it, until nine at night.

He doubted, though, if he would be using that berth much, not if he wished to shine at his new duties and not let Railsford down after the serious nature of the warning he had given him. He did not know if he really felt that devotion to Treghues that Railsford had asked for; Treghues was too alien to his sybaritic nature, too cold and puritanical, too swept up in morality (which was damned rare in these times), but the gunner, Mister Gwynn, had said once before that Treghues would take a great affection for someone for the oddest reasons and dote on them before turning on them again for reasons unknown. The wheel had come half circle, and he was no longer a Godless sinner in the captain's eyes. He was now in favor, and he did not intend to let anything put a blot on that new reputation, not if he could help it.

He could, however, show true devotion to Railsford, and to Monk and the other senior warrants who had held a good opinion of him even in the worst days of Treghues's displeasure. He could feel a warm stirring in his soul when he thought of Desperate tarred with a dirty brush, and that could sustain him. By devoting himself to earning his advancement he could fulfill everyone's expectations, and backhandedly give Treghues his share in the process.

"It's going to be hard work," he whispered to himself in the privacy of his little cabin. "But I've learned enough to handle hard work. I can do this. But damme if I can see how I can have much fun in the next few months."

Was it unspoken displeasure at Desperate? It was hard to figure out, but, with the passing of the equinox, the Leeward Islands Squadron had to go back to the West Indies, or winter on the American coast, so they sailed. Desperate, however, was left behind, to replace artillery at first, refit and restock provisions, and then be sent off with some lighter ships for Wilmington, North Carolina. Lord Cornwallis had taken most of the good troops in the south up to Yorktown, and they were lost forever. Charleston was still strongly garrisoned but had no men to spare for the minor ports. Wilmington would be evacuated, and Desperate would take part in the evacuation flotilla, the strongest ship in their little gathering. With Monk, Alan spent hours off watch, poring over the Cape Fear charts, for it was the very devil of a place to enter safely.

South of Onslow Bay and a former pirate's lair known as Topsail Island, there was a long peninsula that hooked south like a saber blade, narrowing at the tip to a malarial spit of sand which held Fort Johnston to guard the entrance inlet to the Cape Fear River. There were dozens of low islands and seas of marsh and salt grass gathered around the mouth of the river, and only one safe, deep pass. The lower reaches of the river were pretty desolate, except around Brunswick, a town gradually losing out to Wilmington sixteen miles further upriver, and now almost taken back by the weeds and scrub pine. Wilmington was on the east, or seaward, bank of Cape Fear, hard to get to but a safe harbor in storms and a bustling trading center. For a time it had been Cornwallis's headquarters before he had marched off to disaster in Virginia. Now the garrison that had been left behind, the troops and guns at Fort Johnston, were to be evacuated. Along with them would come the hundreds of Loyalists from the south-eastern portion of the colony, who had already fled the wrath of their cousins up-country.

Alan's prophecy about using his cabin so seldom had come true on the way down from New York. If he was not on the orlop deck supervising the proper stowage of provisions and munitions, then he was standing night watches, fully in command of Desperate as her real officers slept. He kept log entries, saw that the glass was turned on the half hour and the bells were struck; that the course was steered as laid down and that the quartermasters on the wheel stayed awake. He toured below decks when he could to see that all lights were out and the hands were behaving, that the lookouts were attentive, that the night signal book was close at hand, and signal fusees ready for emergencies. He saw that the fire buckets were full, that the bosun of the watch and his hands were trimming the sails for best efficiency, that there was no navigational hazard in their path and no ship on a course for an imminent collision, that the knot log was cast to determine their speed at regular intervals and that in soundings along the coast the leadsmen regularly plumbed the ocean depths.

He also had to keep a weather eye out for privateers or some part of the French fleet, which had not been reported leaving the American coast yet and could still be somewhere nearby.

It was such a quantum leap in duties and responsibility that he almost (but not quite) swore off strong drink, and there was no rest, not for a moment on deck. At first he was too embarrassed to have to summon Railsford, Monk, or the captain at the slightest hint of doubt, and got cobbed for waiting too late. On the other hand, when he summoned them too often, he got cobbed for that, too, and developed a slightly haunted look after one week of his new duties.

There was some reward, even so; to stand on deck when everything was running smoothly, hands behind his back and rocking on the balls of his feet, feeling Desperate surge along with a tremble and hum of wind and sea on her rigging and hull, totally under his control. Four hundred and fifty tons of warship, worth more than twelve thousand pounds; aboard were twenty pieces of artillery, over one hundred fifty lives, and it was, for intervals, all his to command.

Another joy was to simply finish the middle watch, see the first hint of dawn, pipe up hands from below, sign the log, and turn things over to Railsford without incident. There might be a single grunt of satisfaction that he had done what was required without killing anyone, or sinking the ship in the process, or tearing the masts right out of her. Usually, there would be a quick conference aft as the hands knelt to scrub decks forward, and Railsford or Treghues would give him a critique on the night's work—what he had done right and what he had done wrong. And so far, there had been enough right things to counterbalance the few wrong.

Another change was in the way he was remonstrated; no more being bent over a gun for a dozen strokes of a stiffened rope starter, no more tongue lashings. The cobbings were short, to the point and were couched as admonitions from a senior officer to a junior officer, done out of hearing from the hands so his authority with the crew would not suffer.

When he began, he thought he had been prepared for standing watch by his stint in the schooner Parrot but he realized that that period had been all play and schoolwork. Lieutenant Kenyon, Parrot's master and commmander, had assigned Lewrie and the late Thad Purnell together to do the work of a single adult, with senior bosun's mates or quartermasters to act as a safety net should they run into trouble someone to prompt them into the right answer, keep them out of real difficulty, and keep their playfulness in check.

Desperate was not schoolwork, and there was no one to turn to as tutor in the night watches; he was the lone man with no one to backstop him. If he failed at this, he would never get another chance, so he took a round turn and two half hitches, as one said in naval parlance, and tried to begin to act like the sea-officer they expected him to be, and the sea-officer he aspired to be.

They sweated blood to make it in past Cape Fear (it was not named Fear for nought, after all) and into the river between the true coast and the long peninsula. If anything, it looked even more desolate than most stretches of the southern American coast, low barrier islands with only sea oats and dune grass, low forests of wind-sculpted pines on the banks, and the salt-grass marshes stretching off to either hand, with only swamp behind. Desperate could, by staying to the middle of the channel, just barely make it upriver, and that took real skill. With a tide running in, they could ride the flood, but would have no control over the helm. They had reefed tops'ls, jibs and spanker set, with a light wind off the great curve of Onslow Bay that gave them just enough forward momentum to give the rudder a bite, but not so much speed that they could run into trouble before dropping a kedge-anchor from the stern if they took the ground on the mud and sand shoals.

"Point ta starboard, quartermaster, put your helm ta loo'ard, handsomely, now," Monk cautioned.

"Five fathom, five fathom to starboard!" the bosun's mate in the foremast chains chanted.

"Sonofa…" Monk growled, wanting to stand on, but worried about shoaling. Off to larboard, there was an eddy that swirled as though the tidal flood was caressing something substantial, which he had just altered course to avoid.

"That's a back eddy, Mister Monk," Alan said, remembering how the current would spin about in the Cape Fear River from his earlier voyages in Parrot. "Lieutenant Kenyon said there was no harm in it, and we stood in quite close to it."

"Aye, but what'd ya draw in yer schooner?" Monk asked, working on a quid of tobacco so vigorously it made Alan's jaws ache to watch him.

"A foot over one fathom, sir. But the main channel was far off to the larboard, ran right up alongside Eagle Island."

"Aye, if yer a coaster," Monk said. "The Thoroughfare, they calls it, but it's too shallow fer the likes o' us."

"And a half four."

"Helm aweather half a point," Monk said compromising.

"Six fathom, six fathom on this line," the larboard man called.

"Aye," Monk went on, puffing with relief to find deep water. "I s'pose ya know the main channel's on the west side, 'least 'til ya get ta Old Town Creek an' the Dram Tree?"

He pointed out a huge bearded cypress on the right bank farther upriver. "Bad shoal at Old Town Creek. Mosta the big ships don't go no further than Campbell Island an' the Dram Tree. Sailors take a dram afore hoistin' sail fer a long voyage from the Cape Fear. What's Campbell Island bear now?"

"Two points to larboard, sir."

"Captain, my respects, an' once past Campbell Island, I suggest we do anchor."

"Very well, Mister Monk," Treghues said lazily. "We'll round up into the wind, let go the best bower and back the mizzen tops'l to let the wind and tide end her up bows downriver. Mister Coke?"

"Aye, sir?" the bosun said.

"I'll not let her fall back too far from the bower, mind. Hang the kedge in the cutter and row her out to drop. Veer out half a cable aft and a half cable forrard. Take Mister Avery with one of your mates."

"Aye, sir."

Lewrie cast a glance at David Avery standing by the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist. Much like the change in attitude when Keith Ashburn had been made an acting lieutenant into Glatton, the squadron flagship when Alan's first ship Ariadne was condemned, it seemed as if a friendship was being tested once more. In the past, it had been Keith Ashburn who had placed the distance between them to protect the authority of his new commission. Here, it was Avery who was distancing himself from Lewrie, finding it difficult to say "Alan" instead of "Mr. Lewrie" or "sir," even in the mess. There did not seem to be any animosity, even though Avery had been in the Navy over four years and was still a midshipman, while Alan had risen like a comet to an acting mate in a little less than two. He was still friendly, but no longer close, and Alan regretted it. And there was little he could do about it without stepping out of role and playing favorites. Railsford had warned him of that one night when he had come on deck to catch a breeze. Best do it now, he had said, before new midshipmen come aboard, and you have no bad habits to break.

When they did receive new midshipmen, Alan and the new master's mate who would be appointed into Desperate would have to rule the mess, supervise the newlies, and keep order without playing favorites. It was sad, all the same, just another slice of naval life Alan detested.

"Mister Railsford, round her up into the wind, if you would be so kind, and bring her to," Treghues finally ordered. Desperate swung about in a tight turn, her helm hard over until her bows were pointed for the sea she had left. At a sharp arm gesture, the bower dropped into the water with a great splash and she began to pay off upriver, driven by tide and sea breeze on her backed mizzen tops'l, while everything else was handed or taken in by the topmen and fo'c's'le-men. They spent half an hour rowing out the kedge-anchor from the stern, letting her go and winching the ship forward onto her bower; they lashed the heavy cable to the mooring bitts and hauled in on the kedge-cable until they had her firmly moored in the river fore and aft. The shallow coasters they had escorted in had to take what moorings they could, since Desperate, as leading ship up channel, had taken the best mooring for herself, and devil take the hindmost.

"Mister Railsford, now we've the cutter free, my compliments to you, and would you depute for me ashore with Major Craig concerning his plans for evacuation. There are orders from General Leslie in Charleston to convey, as well," Treghues drawled.

"I should be delighted, sir."

"Um, excuse me, sir," Alan said.

"Aye, Mister Lewrie?" Treghues asked, turning to face him.

"If you would not mind, sir, I should like to go ashore with the first lieutenant," Alan said.

"Not ten days into your new rating, and you think you have earned a right to caterwaul through the streets of this unfortunate town?" The captain frowned. "You disappoint me, Mister Lewrie. I had thought you had learned your lesson about debauchery."

"Not debauchery, sir." Alan gaped in a fair approximation of shock, or what he hoped would pass for it. "It is the Chiswick family, sir. You mind them, the officers that came off Jenkins Neck with me? Their family is here in Wilmington at last report, and I have tidings and money from their sons to help their passage. I promised Lieutenant Chiswick I would look them up, if possible, sir."

"Hmm," Treghues murmured, cradling his jaw to study him. "On your sacred honor, this is true, sir?"

"Ton my sacred honor, sir," Alan swore. "I gave them my word, sir."

"Very well, then, but if you come back aboard the worse for wear, as you did in Charleston, I will not merely disrate you from master's mate, I'll put you forward as an ordinary seaman."

"I understand, sir," Alan said. And God, please don't let me run across anything tempting this time! he pleaded silently.

They landed at the foot of Market and Third Street, just below St. James church and the white house that Cornwallis had used as his headquarters. The church was in terrible shape compared to the last time Alan had seen it, but it was his destination, operating on the theory that Loyalists would be Church of England if they had any pretensions at all to gentility, and the parish vicar would know where the Chiswicks resided, if they were members.

He knocked on the door to the manse, and a wizened fellow came to open it, more a hedge-priest than anything else, dressed in black breeches and waistcoat gone rusty with age and abuse, and his linen and ample neck-stock a bit rusty as well, as though he had to wash and iron himself.

"Yes, what do you want, sir?" the man asked him, wiping his hands on a blue apron, and Alan wondered if the man was a curate or a publican doing double duty if the parish was not living enough.

"I am seeking information about a family named Chiswick, sir," he said. "I thought perhaps they might be temporary members of your parish. Is the vicar in?"

"The rector is out, sir." The man sniffed, eyeing the King's uniform up and down as though it were a distasteful sight to him. "And I know no one by the name of Chiswick, not in our regular parish."

"They came down from around Campbelltown," Alan prompted. "New arrivals to Wilmington."

"Oh." The man frowned. "And their reason for leaving that country?"

"I believe they were burned out," Alan said, getting a little put out with the man's effrontery.

"Loyalists, then." The man nodded, stiffening up and glowering.

"Here, this is Church of England still, is it not?"

"It is not, sir." The man huffed up his small frame as though insulted. "More to the point, Episcopal, but not Church of England. Had we been else, Tarleton and his troopers would not have used our nave for a stable, sir!"

"Then who ministers to the Tories?" Alan demanded.

"We do, when called, sir. We are Christians, you know."

"Couldn't tell it by me. Who would know, then?"

"Try across the street at the Burgwin House, if you can come away with your soul from Major Craig's torture cellars! Ask of your own kind! Good day to you, sir!" the little man said with satisfaction as he backed into the manse and closed the door.

"God, what a lunatick country!" he grumbled to himself as he went to the house that had been Cornwallis's residence. "Half the Regulators and Piedmont still against the Tidewater, the rest just Rebels, half of 'em still Tory, Scots who hated George the Second fighting for George the Third. The Tidewater mostly Rebel no matter what the Piedmonters think and at each other's throats anyway. And you can't even find an Anglican that'll answer to the name anymore. They're welcome to this asylum and good riddance."

The Burgwin House was headquarters for the notorious Major Craig and his "witch-finder," that anti-Rebel David Fanning, who was rumored to be so eaten with the scrofula, the King's Evil, that he hated all of mankind. For such a nice house, it did have a bad air about it, due, Alan thought, to the smells arising from the cellars, which had been used as prisons for some time. Was it his imagination, fed by the choler of that… whatever he had been… at the manse, that he thought he heard the moans of tortured bodies from below?

He did find a harried staff officer who knew most of the refugees and steered Alan in the right direction down to Dock Street and then inland five blocks, up over the crest of the hill and down into the flats to a tumbledown mansion that had seen better days. It was a daunting sight; the yard was full of crates and junk, the stableyard full of carriages and wagons crammed in any-old-how. Laundry hung from every window and railing, and the place swarmed with men, women, and children in faded finery, with the occasional black face still in livery. People came and went on errands continually. He noticed it was shunned by most residents of the town—he would have shunned it himself if given a choice; it looked like a debtor's prison.

The Chiswick family residence was a single downstairs room. Alan knocked on the doors and heard a stirring within. He tugged down his waistcoat, fiddled with his neckcloth, and adjusted his lovely silver-fitted sword at his side, waiting for admittance.

The rooms had once been a sort of smaller back dining room, for the doors slid back into pockets. The girl who opened the doors regarded him with a cool regality, a cautious nose-in-the-air aloofness at his presence.

"Have I found the Chiswick family?" Alan asked, taking off his cocked hat preparatory to a formal introductory bow.

"It is, sir," she replied, a hitch in her voice. One hand flew to her lips, as if in fear that a man in uniform seeking them could only mean dire news about Governour, Burgess, or both.

"Allow me to introduce myself, Miss. I am Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy. I bring you tidings from Lieutenant Governour Chiswick and Ensign Burgess Chiswick," he said, making a bow to her in the hall to the amusement of several small children who had followed him in from the front porches.

"Oh, my God!" she gasped, almost biting a knuckle.

"Glad tidings, I assure you," Alan went on, rising from his bow.

"Come in, come in, good sir!" she gushed. "Are they well, were they hurt? We heard the army had surrendered and feared…"

"They are in New York at present, both well," Alan said.

Her face broke from seriousness or fear into the widest, most wondrous smile, and she flung herself on him and bounced up and down in glee, giving a little shriek of delight.

"Say you truly, sir? They are alive and well?" she beamed.

"Truly, miss," Alan said, shaken by her emotion and how her slim body had felt against him as she jounced on her toes in relief and glee.

"Momma, Daddy, there's a Navy officer here; he's seen Gov and Burge, and they're safe and well!" she called into the room. Taking him by the hand, she almost dragged him into the room. There had been some attempts made to provide privacy by hanging figured quilts and blankets from light rope strung from one picture rail to another, but the rooms were cramped by furniture; a large bed for the parents could be espied through a part in the curtains, another impromptu bedchamber further back—most likely for the enthusiastic girl—and a small cot sharing the space for a large black woman, obviously an old family retainer, who came trundling out, clapping her hands and weeping for joy at the news.

The parents had been seated in the middle of the rooms, fenced off into a tiny parlor of quilts by the hearth. A small fire tried to relieve the late-fall chill without much success. The man looked to be in his fifties, his hair already white and lank, and he had difficulty rising to greet his guest without support from a cane, and the daughter at his elbow. The mother was sprier, slim and straight-backed, her hair also almost white, and her face lined with care and years. Tears flowed freely as he was introduced to Mr. Sewallis Chiswick and his wife, Charlotte. When they got around to it, the black woman was referred to as "Mammy," and the tall slim girl who had opened the door turned out to be the sister Caroline that Burgess had mentioned.

"Give ye joy, Mister Lewrie!" the mother said once everyone had had a good weep and a snuffle. "And did you meet my boys in New York?"

"No ma'am, I was at Yorktown with them, from the very first," he said, taking his ease as best he could in an old-fashioned dining chair that threatened to go to flinders if he shifted too much or leaned back too far. "Our ship was trapped in the York River with the army and I had to go ashore with artillery. I met them there."

"Then they were with the army," Caroline said. "However did then ya'll escape the fate of the others?"

There was nothing Alan liked better than a receptive audience, so he regaled them for an exceedingly pleasing few minutes, telling them all about the thwarted evacuation, the storm, and their adventure on Jenkins Neck, glossing over the battle and their eventual escape to sea.

"Stap me, what a grand adventure," the father said, thumping his cane on the floor in pleasure and upsetting the teacup which had been balanced on his knee. There was an uncomfortable silence for a second, but the girl leapt to kneel and begin picking up the pieces while the mother shifted uneasily and gave a loud sniff. Alan thought the old fool had broken one of her priceless wedding china. The black woman puffed into action, trying to do the job instead.

"Sit back, girl, an' let Mammy at it. Lord knows ah kin do fer the mister, ain't nothin' new ta me, my, my. Res' easy, Miz Chalotte."

"I have letters from Governour and Burgess," Alan said to break the embarrassing scene, realizing he had monopolized their time too long.

"Have ye now?" the man beamed, the incident of the cup forgotten. "Carry, where's my spectacles? I want ta read 'em. May I have 'em, sir?"

"Daddy, you know they're lost these two weeks past," Caroline told him firmly, getting back to her feet. "But I have young eyes, I'll read them to us all, would you like that, Daddy? Momma, you shift your chair over here so you can read over my shoulder. I know you want to see 'em just as bad as Daddy." She went on like a governess cajoling children.

"Perhaps I should intrude on your joy no longer," Alan said, beginning to realize that Mr. Sewallis Chiswick was adrift in his dotage and was an embarrassment to the mother and daughter. The man spent a full minute patting himself down searching for the lost spectacles, and then called Mammy to fetch them. The daughter got a sad look and shared it with the black woman.

"Lawsy, Missa S'wallis, yo speckticles ain't nowheres ta be foun' an us all lookin' fer 'em all las' week, we has," she chided.

"Let me be your eyes, Daddy," Caroline said soothingly. She sat down by his side on the shabby settee and patted him on the shoulder until he calmed down.

"Yes, you read that letter, Carry. And you stay, young man, and hear about my boys up in Virginia. Mose, get this lad a glass of something, will you? Where is that lazy black squint-a-pipes, anyway?"

Caroline looked up at him, as though daring Alan to even think a single bad thought about her family, and he was forced back into the rickety chair as though driven. The mother was busy shifting her chair, insisting that Mammy assist her. Alan rose instead and did it for her, and the chair was as light as a feather, something even a child would have no trouble shifting. As he resumed his chair, Mammy fetched out a silver service and poured tea for them, carefully rationing the sugar. The tea was not much better than hot water, so she must have been rationing the tea leaves as well. There were, however, some fresh ginger cookies, and Alan chewed on one while the daughter broke the seal on the letter to reveal large folio sheets of vellum. She smoothed them free of travel wrinkles (she cannily saved the wax wafer seal for later use) and began to read.

God, I wish I was anywhere but here, Alan thought as he let the first part of the letter wash over him without impression. If I hadn't promised the brothers, I'd have just dropped this off and been on my merry way.

He let his attention wander about the place to take some sort of inventory of their furnishings and possessions, to see if they were as rich as Burgess had stated, and it was hard to judge. There was good silver and china alongside cracked glasses. There were gilt-framed paintings of nature scenes and relations leaning against some of the most hideous, scratched furniture he had ever laid eyes on. Having found nothing of interest in the room, he let his eyes wander over to the people; the mother sitting rigid as a grenadier guard with a handkerchief screwed into her bony little fists, awaiting bad news; the old man, almost drowsing with a faint smile on his face as he listened to the family chatter from his sons; and the daughter.

She struck him as gawky, God help her. Taking her measure from how she had hugged him with so much abandon at the door, he thought her barely an inch or two less than his five feet nine, much too tall for beauty. Most men, Alan included, liked their girls a lot smaller, more petite, and more roundly feminine. This one was long and lanky, almost skinny. He tried to remember how old Burgess had said she was—eighteen? Maybe she would fill out, but she could also shoot up like a cornstalk and become even less desirable.

Probably going to be a spinster for life, poor girl, Alan thought. Be lucky if she can take service with some monied family, and that'll be a comedown, though you can't get much further down than this shabbiness now. Maybe a poor tradesman or curate would have her. Hell, even a peer's daughter would have problems getting a husband, being that tall. Don't know though, if she gave up heeled shoes, had any sort of decent portion, she might be worth troubling with. She is pretty, in a way.

The more he studied her, the prettier she looked, but Alan put that down to his lack of mutton for comparison lately, except for the Hayley sisters back in Virginia, and they had not been raving beauties fit enough to light up a London season.

Her forehead was high, her brows arched naturally. Her face was a long oval, but not horsey long; her chin firm but small; her mouth was wide and expressive, one minute pensive, the next curving up and dimpling her lower face, stretching lines from chin to near her nicely rounded cheeks. She wore no powder or artifice, but her skin was clear and smooth, with just the hint of the lightest down. At one moment her eyes would be wide with happiness—hazel eyes like her brothers—the next minute they squinted in concern or concentration. Her hair was long and straight and very dark blonde, fine and a little flyaway. Had she the same ash-blonde hair of Governour or Burgess, she would have been too severe, but she gave off more warmth by her very appearance than ever either of those worthies did.

She read well, with a pleasant voice, and Alan did not mind her provincial accent, for it was soft and lyrical. Of course, after listening to sailors for nearly two weeks, creaking iron doors could have seemed lyrical. More than that, she did not falter over words, nor did she read slowly in a monotone, but was expressive enough to give life to the letter, and Alan could imagine Governour reading it aloud. Someone had spent some time educating her along with her brothers, he decided, even if it ended up being wasted on novels and housewifely guides like most of the women back in England, who had so little to do.

Rather cute nose, he decided also, after thinking on it.

She was slim, though; tall and slim, almost skinny. Alan thought she would not gross between seven and eight stone even soaking wet. Her bosom was small and neat. Though she does have a nice neck, Alan thought.

He shifted in his precarious chair with an ominous squeaking of weak joins, and crossed his legs. She looked up at him, pausing at the end of one page, and gave him a smile that raised another squeak from the chair as he sat up straighter and smiled back.

"And so we arrived in safety in New York, and expect to sail to Charleston once the elements shall admit safe passage. Father, I enclose a list of those of our men from the Royal North Carolina Regiment of Volunteer Rifles we know for certain have fallen, or have suffered wounds for their rightful King." She read on, frowning sadly as she did so. "Some of the most grievous hurt we were forced to leave behind in the care of the enemy, praying to Providence that they shall have decent treatment. Alan Lewrie generously gave twenty guineas to our hostesses for the better victualing and physicking of our men. All others who escaped with us, I also detail, so their families may know they are well and whole."

"That was good of you, young man," the mother wept, plying at her eyes with a fresh handkerchief.

"It was the least I could do, ma'am," Alan said modestly, feeling truly modest for once in that emotion-tinged room. "There were several of my sailors left behind as well, too hurt to be moved without causing them more suffering."

"We must confess," Caroline began again, "that the fight to save our boats was a spirited engagement of the most desperate neck-or-nothing nature, and only by the utmost bravery and pluck did we prevail, though whatever joy we had in a final victory over the Levellers and their allies, the slaves of a Catholic King, could not assuage the grief of losing so many fine men and neighbors. The bearer of this particular copy of our letter, Alan Lewrie, we recommend to you, and trust that you shall show him what you can of Carolinian hospitality and gratitude."

Alan made much of his teacup and looked down at the carpet as his pride began to scratch at him; false modesty be damned, he thought he had been pretty good back there during their adventures.

"As a comrade in our distress, we have not, in a cause replete with leaders and fighters suitable for commendation and emulation, seen the like in our mutual experience," Caroline read. She looked up at him with such a smile and such a fetching rise of her bosom that Alan could look nowhere else but directly at her. "To him, we owe our very lives. Were it not for his sublime courage, even in the times when things looked blackest, his canny knowledge of the sea and its navigation, we would now be prisoners of war, or worse. He knew no exhaustion, no sense of gloom, no defeatism, and brought us out of bondage like Moses fetched his Israelites. He…"

She had to stop and take a deep breath or two, and lift a handkerchief to her own eyes before continuing. "He is the finest comrade in arms we have ever had the privilege to know, and can only conjure you to share your gratitude at our good fortune with him."

Damme, that's a pretty high praise for a toadying little shit like me, Alan marveled. Now when was I canny and optimistic? I can't remember anything like that. Still, have to remember, this letter was penned by one of the coldest murthering black-hearted rogues I've ever seen.

"God bless you, Mister Lewrie," the mother bawled, rising to give him a hearty hug, some slobbery kisses on the cheeks, and pats on the back that stung right through his wool uniform and waistcoat. He had to help her back to her chair before she swooned, then got pawed by the old man as well, who could not rise, and Alan had to bend down to receive the elder Chiswick's benison. The black mammy had at him next, and it felt as if he was trying to wrestle his way out of a bear-baiting pit. Caroline hugged him and wept on his shoulder, swearing he was the finest Christian in the world, and he got a chance to take a circumspect survey of her charms, which seemed a lot nicer than his first impressions.

"I cannot pretend to understand military or nautical matters," Caroline said, stepping back from him but keeping her slim hands tight on his sleeves, "but you kept my brothers alive and got them out safely, and I shall forever be indebted to you."

"And we shall regard you as fondly as any member of our family," Mrs. Chiswick said in a high, fruity voice, to which her husband lent his vociferous agreement with so many "hear hears" he sounded like the Vicar of Bray in a Parliament backbench.

"We have something, finally, for which we give thanks," Chiswick senior roared heartily. "There's a tom turkey much too fat for his own good strutting the yard. We should roast the gentleman before he's one hour older. Mother, where are our manners? There's two dozen of claret in the pantry, is there not? Tell Old Mose to fetch a couple out! I want to take a glad bumper or two with this young fellow."

Once again, Alan got the impression that something was wrong, for the happy mood dissolved in an instant, the mother going for her handkerchief again, the black maid piping her eyes, and Caroline had to go to her father and cosset him into a calmer mood. Alan looked about the room. There was no pantry, no sign of a crate bearing even a bottle or two, and most definitely there was no black male servant named Old Mose, or he would have been in the room to hear the news with Mammy. Alan got the impression that Sewallis Chiswick was living in some dreamland in the past, before they had been burned out by their own cousins and run to Wilmington with what little he saw in their rented lodgings, and those were damned poor, at that.

"But I want to take a glass with the lad, Caroline," Mr. Chiswick whined in a pet, and Caroline gave Alan a stern look, touching her lips with a finger and shaking her head slightly.

"Mr. Chiswick, under any other circumstances, I would be delighted to accept your hospitality. I have not had a good roast torm since I left London nearly two years ago, and normally I'd not say no to a glass," Alan replied, rising, "but, my captain only allowed me a few minutes ashore to see you, and I must not allow even the most charming surroundings, and company"—he bowed slightly to the mother, which made her chirp with some remembered coquetry, and to Caroline, who was nodding as though he was a good pupil to say his lesson so well—"to detain me from my duties. Perhaps in future, before the town is evacuated, we could visit again, if you would be so gracious as to receive me."

"Of course we shall!" Mr. Chiswick laughed. "Damme to hell if we shan't, young sir, or my name ain't Chiswick. We may not have been the biggest nabobs in the county, but no one could say that we did not set a fine and merry table. You come back and see us again, soon. You can see George. He'd like you. Wants to be a dragoon or a hussar, but…"

"I would enjoy that immensely, Mister Chiswick, sir," Alan said, feeling his clothing crawl with embarrassment for them.

"He's out riding now," Mr. Chiswick said proudly. "Damme, what a seat that boy has, and such a way with a horse. I've told him the Navy would be surer, but what can you do, eh? Perhaps you could speak to him."

"I would admire that, sir," Alan replied, backing for the door. Jesus, get me out of here before we all die of mortification. The old fart's gone barking mad, he thought to himself.

He said his good-byes and got out into the hall as quickly as decent politeness would allow. He then had to plow through the herd of snotty children who had gathered to watch his departure and who ran shrieking for the porch as he emerged from the lodgings.

"Mister Lewrie," Caroline said, coming out of the rooms and shutting the doors on that pathetic scene. Her eyes were wet with tears. "I must apologize to you. He has been getting better, but the excitement was too much for him, I fear."

"You don't have to apologize to me, Mistress Chiswick," Alan offered. "Burgess told me what happened to your plantation and to your brother George. I am heartily sorry. Better men have broken under the hurt and the strain. My own captain recently went through a debilitating experience himself."

"Thank you for humoring him, though I don't know if that is the best course in the long run." She shuddered, dabbing at her eyes. With a single deep breath that took all her concentration to inhale and hold, she calmed herself and gave him a quick, sad smile.

"I clean forgot this," Alan said, digging for a small purse.

"I could not accept that, Mister Lewrie," she said as he hefted it.

"'Tis not from me, Mistress Chiswick," he told her truthfully. "Burgess and Governour finally got paid what was due since they marched from Wilmington, and they sent this in my care once they knew I would be putting in here for certain. It will help you to set yourselves up in Charleston once you get there."

"Charleston?" she asked, taking the purse from him finally. "I do not understand."

"Wilmington is going to be evacuated. The naval stores will be loaded up and taken off, and the garrison goes south to Charleston. After Yorktown, there aren't troops enough to protect the place. All loyal subjects who wish to go shall find shipping, before a Rebel force marches against Wilmington."

"How soon?" she asked, perplexed.

"We begin tomorrow," Alan said. "We hope to empty the town in ten days. If you need any help with packing or arranging transport to the wharves, send me a note to the Desperate frigate and I can provide some hands and a boat for you and your household."

"Oh, God, this is so cruel." She sagged in defeat against the doorjamb. "When the Rebels take everything and set up their wretched republic, where will we light? What will be left for us?"

"They haven't won it yet," Alan said, as if trying to boast.

"Have they not?" She laughed without glee. "If Cornwallis and all his troops are taken and Wilmington is evacuated, then how long before a Rebel force descends on Charleston as well? Then where do we go?"

"For someone who does not pretend to understand military matters, that is an astute observation," he said, trying to piss down her back, and also expressing a real admiration for her perspicacity. Damme, she's not half intelligent! he thought in wonder. That won't get her a husband, either, poor tit.

"One can only listen to the menfolks and glean what one can from their discourse, though half of it goes right past me, I fear," she said, backpedaling into the traditional woman's role.

"I recollect Burgess saying you had family in Surrey," Alan said. "If things really turn that sour, you could go home to England. Surrey is a pretty place, gentle and peaceful, full of sheep now, but wonderful farm country still. Lots of fine houses, where a young lady such as yourself would make the very devil of an impression."

"This is our home, Mister Lewrie," she told him directly, standing back erect from her slump. "My grandparents sleep in Carolina. And every step we take forces us further away from our land and our heritage. Forgive me, but this is hard on us."

"I shall do everything in my power to help you make the process easier, Mistress Chiswick," Alan told her. "Governour and Burgess saved my bacon a couple of times as well, and I could do no less for them and theirs."

"God bless you, Mister Lewrie," she said, perking up a bit. "I truly believe that the Lord above has sent you to aid us in our time of troubles."

If He has, He's a devilish sense of humor to pick me for your deliverer, Alan thought to himself, but he shrugged modestly in answer.

"Please do come again, Mister Lewrie," Caroline said, putting on a smile which lit up her face, making Alan notice for the first time that she had the funniest little underlining folds of skin below her eyes, a fault that made her eyes seem incredibly merry. "Daddy isn't always lost in the past, and we do so want to repay you with whatever little we still have to offer, if only to feel part of a family for a short while after so much time at sea, away from your own."

"I would appreciate that more than you know, Mistress Chiswick," Alan told her. He took her hand and held it for a moment, but she leaned forward and bestowed a sisterly kiss on his cheek, gave his fingers one slight squeeze, and went back inside.

Alan regained the street and shambled back down Dock Street over the brow of the hill and stood looking down the road towards St. James and the handsome houses that reached almost to the wharves. He waited to digest what he had seen and heard at the Chiswicks. They had opened their home, such as it was, to him, and he felt an odd longing to go back and take advantage of their hospitality, painful as it would be to see the old man maundering through an evening, waiting for him to open his mouth and say something inane.

"I've never been part of a family," he muttered. "So what's the point now? Probably be bored shitless in an hour. If Govemour or Burgess were there, 'twould be a different kettle of fish. The old man's gone Tom O'Bedlam, and his wife ain't far behind him, even on her best days. The girl's the only attraction, and she's so…"

He was going to say "pitifully gawky," but the word "handsome" swam to the fore instead, which thought made him shake himself all over.

One thing for certain, he needed a drink after all that familial bumf, so he betook himself down to Market Street and entered an ordinary. He considered a brandy, but didn't think that was the thing to have on his breath when returning to the ship, so he settled on an ale. He stretched his legs out by the fire to warm himself from the damp winds that chilled the street, noting how the locals shied away from him and stopped conversing so loudly as long as a man in King's uniform was in sight. The ordinary was attached to a chandler's next door, and after finishing his beer, he wandered in. Foraged over as the countryside had to be, there was a goodly selection of foodstuffs present, a sure sign that the prices would be high, bespeaking Rebel connections inland.

"Need anythin', sir?" the publican asked, clad in the universal blue apron that seemed so homey in this alien and hostile land.

"Do you mind the refugee house on Dock Street, across the hill?"

"Aye, I knows it well, sir. Send a lot o' trade up here."

"I'd like to send something to one of the families."

"Ah, the Henrys, I expect."

"No, the Chiswicks."

"Across the hall from the Henrys. Good customers in past, afore the troubles," the man said, seeming almost kindly compared to the rest of the citizenry toward Tories, as they called them.

"I'd like to send a dinner up to them. Have you turkeys?"

"Aye, sir, I'm turkey poor at this moment," the man smiled. "I kin cook up anythin' ya want an' deliver it."

"I want a truly magnificent bird, with all the trimmings you can think of. What you'd put on your own table had you the mind for it."

"I'd be layin' in a couple bottles o' wine, too, with mine, sir," the publican said. "Dinner fer…"

"Four, including the old black servant woman," Alan told him.

"Got a bird that'll feed 'em all fer nigh on a week, an' all the trimmin's, with a couple bottles… say, ten shillings fer all, sir."

"So be it." Alan winced at the price. A dinner like that back in London from even a Piccadilly or Strand ordinary-kitchen would not go over a crown, and the bird not a penny a pound of it. "Let me send a note with it."

"Be a ha' penny fer paper, sir, an' a ha' penny fer the King's stamp," the man said slyly. "God knows, tax stamps got us in this mess, so we got ta obey the King's laws, ain't we now, sir?"

"I take it the ink's free," Alan said wryly.

"Scribble away, sir, scribble away!"

Alan left the shop and headed for the boat landing on Market Street, feeling… good about himself, savoring the emotion of having done a kind act for the Chiswicks and wondering just how big a fool he was for doing it, and if the man even intended to deliver the dinner.

Yorktown must have deranged me, he thought. Here I am worrying over a family I never clapped eyes on before, acting serious as a sober parson for the first time in my life, and going back aboard without even a try for some mutton. And I can't even share that dinner, much as I'd like to look at the girl some more, even if she is poor as mud. Maybe they really will bury me a bishop.

CHAPTER 15

It was only after most of the civilians had been put aboard the shallow coastal ships in the river that they began to extricate the army from the garrison. Patrols had found no organized Rebel activity beyond the town, so it was thought possible to finish up the evacuation.

Alan had gotten a nice "thank you" note from the Chiswicks and an invitation to dinner, but he was worked much too hard to be able to accept for days. He did not know how much their sons had sent them, so he did not wish to intrude on their penury if they had to lay out money only to entertain him. The food in Desperate was good enough now they were in harbor, and the chandlers and purveyors could get in their last good selling season on the fleeing Loyalists and ships' crews. He ate his fill of some very good dinners that Freeling did not mangle or burn.

Toward the last week of November, though, as the weather turned rainy and cold, he was surprised to get a note from Caroline Chiswick, asking for that promised aid in packing and moving. After showing the note to Treghues, he was allowed ashore once more on a private errand.

He took Cony and several sturdy hands to do the fetching and carrying and to row the cutter through the blustery morning wind and rain. Sopping wet even through a tarpaulin watch coat, he reached their lodgings to find absolute disorganization.

"Mister Lewrie, thank you for coming." Caroline smiled in relief as he entered the frowsty warm room. "I did not wish to throw ourselves on you, or be a burden to you, but…"

"If you need help, then there's nothing for it but to get some, Mistress Chiswick." He was smiling back, feeling glad to be in her presence once more. "Now, what may I do? I'd have thought you would have been on one of the ships long since, so I must own to some surprise to receive your note this morning."

"Daddy hasn't been feeling well." She sighed, her hands knit together as though she was at the end of her own tether. "He…"

She led him to one corner where they could converse without the rest of the family—or his curious seamen—overhearing them.

"He became more lucid in the last few days, less involved in his memories, but then he began to weep over all we've lost, and nothing could console him. I sent for a physician, but there was little he could do but put him to bed and told us to cosset him and wait it out. Otherwise we would have taken passage with the Henrys, who had lodgings across the hall. But they could not wait, and they had so much to pack…"

"How is he doing today, then?" Alan asked, stripping off the tarpaulin garment. "Pardon my familiarity in presuming to pry."

"He thinks he is home," she whispered in a small voice, the pain making her shake so that she had to place a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, something Alan was only too glad to allow. "He doesn't understand why we have to pack up and leave, and Momma doesn't want to upset him. I've tried packing what I could, but as soon as he sees me gathering things up, he… oh, dammit!" she finally burst out, catching herself almost at once and apologizing for losing control. "I have tried, the good Lord shall witness I have tried, but I'm only a weak woman."

"I don't think you weak at all, Mistress Chiswick," Alan told her, his heart going out to her in her travail of trying to nurse a loony and cajole a stubborn but weak mother at the same time. "Is he rational enough to listen to reason?"

"No, I fear not."

"Then lie to him," Alan said bluntly. "If he doesn't know where he is, then you may tell him you're already in Charleston, ready to go home, or going to Charleston to see his sons, who are already there. You must go there now and again."

"Only once in our lives," she confessed. "Wilmington is the biggest town we've seen, except for that. But he always did love going. I could try. Oh, thank you, Mister Lewrie, you're inspiring."

"Sneaky, but inspiring." He grinned.

"The Lord shall forgive us a small lie, in a good cause," she said with a firmness he was glad to see.

"You go work on him, and I shall have my men gather up your belongings and get them into your wagon. Which one is yours?"

"We have none," she said. "We had to sell the wagon and the carriage and all the horses just to pay for lodging and food once our coin ran out. No one extends credit, and everything is dear."

"No problem." Alan grinned. "Cony?"

"Aye, sir?"

"Go out and hire us a wagon. Handle the drays yourself and we'll save tuppence or two. Hold on, how much is to go?"

Alan saw all the heavy furniture, the beds and the chairs, the tables and paintings, the carpets on the floor, even if they were far past the times when Axminster or Wilton would have claimed them as their work. Caroline must not have been able to pack up much, he surmised.

"The mattresses and pillows, the crates that Mammy and I have already packed, and the trunks."

"The rest?" Alan wondered.

"It came with the lodgings, or was found from other unfortunates such as we for a few pence," Caroline said, trying to put a brave face on it. "I have one large trunk for the last of our clothes, and one for all the quilts and such still hanging. The rest is packed."

"One 'orse dray, sir," Cony said, looking at the meager pile of possessions that represented three generations of work and life.

"Go get one then," Alan told him grimly.

Caroline ducked through a quilt barrier to her parents' bedroom and began to speak to her father. Alan could hear her telling him that he was there to take them to Charleston to see Gov and Burge, see all the sights and buy new horses and a slave or two, some "fancies."

The old man was having little of it, however, and insisted that there were good reasons to stay where they were, snug in their own beds at home on their own lands. Alan didn't want to hear all of that, so he got busy ordering the hands to shift everything out to the front of the lodging house, letting Mammy point out what was to go and what was to stay while she had herself a short weep between loads.

They finally got the room picked clean of all the Chiswick belongings, and the landlord came in to see that nothing of his would be going.

"They owe fer the last two days, sir," he said, leaning on the doorjamb as though he would not move until he got his money.

"How much?" Alan asked.

"A crown," the man said, smiling hopefully.

"Bugger me!" Alan gawped. "I wouldn't pay that much to sleep in St. James' Place!"

"They ain't leavin' 'til I get my money," the man blustered.

Alan crooked a finger at one of his hands, a fo'c's'le man named Fields, who easily stood taller than Alan and weighed fifteen stone, the sort who could seize a headsail sheet and almost walk away with it himself in a full gale.

"Now, sir," Alan crooned softly, dragging the little man into the hallway. "There's a lot of furniture been added to this room to make it livable, some of it rather good and bought for a penny on the pound, unless I miss my guess. Why don't you take that in trade? If you do, then I won't have to have Fields here tear off your legs and cram 'em up your fundament."

"You wouldn't dare, sir!"

"Take him out back and dismember him, Fields."

"Aye, sir," Fields said, lumbering within reach. "Hain't never tried ta rip a man's legs h'off afore. Might be a treat."

"Alright, go, just go!" the landlord cried, ducking out of range.

Finally, Mr. Chiswick was bundled up into winter clothing and was carried out to the dray, protesting all the while that he could walk, and his wife stumbled alongside him while two seamen linked arms to make a chair for his frail body. Caroline came out of the house in a dark red velvet traveling cloak with the hood up over her fair hair, and a muff over her hands, and the sailors winked and leered at Lewrie, thinking him quite the fellow to have become friends with such a pretty girl.

"Do we have everything?" Alan asked, getting back into his watch coat and going to her side on the porch.

"Aye, I made a last check." She sighed, finally looking weak and helpless for a change, instead of so rigid and self-controlled. They made their way down to the boat, loaded all the possessions into it, and rowed out to the small schooner which Caroline had booked for passage. But the master bluntly informed them that he was full up, since they had not paid to reserve their space and others had come aboard since.

They had to pick their way through the anchored shipping, searching for a ship that would take them.

"Like Joseph and Mary looking for lodging," Caroline said, trying to smile and regard it as an adventure.

"I'm cold," Mr. Chiswick complained.

"We'll find the right boat soon, Daddy," she told him.

They tried a brigantine, a ship lying near Desperate, but once more they were rebuffed. A passenger came to the rail and gave the Chiswicks a hearty hello, but had no joy for them.

"Mister Henry, sir, surely our few belongings would take no room at all," Caroline bargained, and Alan could see that though she was trying to stay friendly, her teeth were set on edge with frustration. "We could sleep four to a pallet in the corner of a cabin, or hang our quilts for privacy."

"But my dear girl, that would crowd my family so, and the others aboard this poor ship," Henry shouted back smarmily. He was a richly dressed man, and his wife looked as fashionable as a London belle on her way to a ball. Alan was sure they had as much room as a post-captain.

"They's a tiny bit o' room, young miss," the master called down. "But I'm overloaded now, an' the risk o' takin' more weight… if there be the four o' ya an' all that dunnage, I couldn't do it fer less'n twenty pounds."

Caroline considered this, though Alan was sure it was most of their money. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, a strange smile still on her features.

"The hell you shall," Alan said. "Cox'n, get a way on her and steer for Desperate."

"Aye, aye, sir!" the man replied. "Give way tagither!"

Minutes later he clambered to the deck through the entry port, sought out an audience with Commander Treghues and explained the situation, stressing that no one would show a decent, God-fearing family the slightest Christian charity. He knew how Treghues thought by then.

"They have no money for passage?" Treghues asked.

"They do, sir, but so little that the tariff would break them, and all they have is what their sons sent them from New York. Mr. Sewallis Chiswick was a prominent Loyalist, helped to outfit local military units, and they'd hang him sure as fate if he doesn't get away," Alan said.

"And how pretty is the girl, Mister Lewrie?" Treghues asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Sir?" Alan gaped. Damme, he's having a good day, I didn't know he was that sharp anymore, Alan thought.

"I know you, Mister Lewrie," Treghues warned, still smiling that lazy, superior smile. "Since Yorktown you seem a changed person, for the better, I might add, but as Horace tells us, men may change their latitudes but not their character, or something like that. I'll not ensconce an innocent and impressionable young girl aboard to liven your social life."

"If you would but see them, sir. They wouldn't take up much room, they have so little left of their possessions. They could do quite well in the chart space, all four of them. They'd sleep in hammocks if that was all we had to offer."

"Very well, I shall take a look at your refugees," Treghues said, rising from his desk and shrugging on a grogram watch coat over his uniform.

Once Treghues looked down over the rail at the bedraggled family seated in the cutter among their treasured possessions, dripping wet and freezing, he lurched into action. Stay tackle went over the side, and the dunnage went soaring aloft in parbuckles. Bosun's chairs were rigged to hoist the old man and his womenfolk into the air and deposit them on deck. Judkin, the captain's steward, and a wardroom steward were there in minutes with hot rum toddies. Treghues offered up the use of his day cabin aft for their comfort, while he would berth in the chart space. The carpenter began sawing and hammering to create new bed boxes, and the duty bosun's mate rushed aft with rope and tackle to rig them from the deckhead so the heel of the ship would not disturb their rest. The old man and his wife were tucked into the first beds finished, with warming pans and hot bricks wrapped in sailcloth to thaw them out from their sojourn on the chilly river.

"However do you do it, Mister Lewrie?" Railsford asked him mildly as Alan thawed his hands around a pewter mug of rum toddy on the quarterdeck once the cutter had been tied up alongside and its crew dispersed.

"Do what, sir?" Alan shivered, savoring the fumes rising from the mug.

"Go skylarking ashore and discover the most ravishing creatures, time after time, so I hear. That Miss Lucy Beauman on Antigua, for one, and now Miss Chiswick for another."

"One does what one can for the young women of this world, sir," Alan replied feeling just a little smug at Railsford's attitude and from the crew's reaction. They had taken the unfortunate Chiswicks into their care as gently as if they had been their own aged parents.

"You slyboots!" Railsford went on. "Still, it was a decent act. So unlike the old Lewrie, I'd wager there was a different person masquerading as a master's mate."

"I promised the Chiswicks I would look out for them, sir," Alan said. "Even a rake-hell may have a heart now and then."

"Still, our rake-hell would not have had a heart if the girl was not so lovely."

"Do you find her so, sir?" Alan grinned tightly, cocking a brow.

"A bit too tall for fashion, but that don't always signify."

"Mister Lewrie?" Treghues called from the larboard quarterdeck ladder.

"Aye, sir."

"That was a charitable thing you did, sir, bringing that family out here to Desperate. I'm told most of the shipping is filling up, and I have word from ashore that there are more people who wish to depart."

"Aye, sir, people who could not rub shoulders with the rich and fashionable, who need their space," Alan sneered. "Or merchant captains who want five pounds a head for a two-day journey at best. They'd gouge the dead for a shovelful of dirt on their coffins."

"And that," Treghues stated primly, "is why a gentleman, or one who has any pretensions to gentility, should never consider a career in Trade. It's all buying and selling and usury and following the dictates of Mammon to the exclusion of any decent sentiments. Easier a camel may pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man, or one who has traded in the misery of his fellow man, enter the kingdom of Heaven."

But prize-money's just devilish fine, Alan thought cynically.

"I want you to go ashore again, Mister Lewrie."

"Aye, sir?"

"Give my compliments to Major Craig and his staff. There are but the ships reserved for the troops and their equipment. If there are more loyal subjects who wish to embark, I shall find room for them in those merchantmen, if I have to do it with Peck and the marines to enforce it. And, since you have started the procedure, we shall take on as many who wish to go. Look especially for those poor and with few possessions who will not crowd us overly much. We may double up the wardroom and senior warrant berths. It has not been so long that you slept in a hammock, and as you say, it is only for the two days."

"Aye, sir," Alan said, trying to keep from screaming. Damme, I believe I have fucked up again. There won't be room below decks to swing a cat without getting fur in one's mouth at this rate.

On November 30th, only two days behind schedule, the flotilla of ships and coasters hoisted anchor and made their way slowly and carefully down the Cape Fear River on the very first of the ebb tide. To the chants of the leadsmen, they braved the shoals and eddies. Their passengers, and there were a lot of them by that time, crowded the decks to take their last looks at Wilmington. When Alan had a chance he took a look at the place, too. He had had fun there, and the next time he saw it there would most likely be a new flag flying over it, lost forever to the egalitarian notions of a jackass stubborn pack of rogues who had defied their King and had muddled their way to victory over one of the most powerful nations and the most powerful navy in the world. That most of their victories had been the result of even more incredible muddling on the part of the King's forces was hard to bear. What debt they would owe the French and Spanish, and what form of payment their insincere allies would demand, would possibly shatter the existing world order, placing both of the Indies in jeopardy. Until some damned Whig majority was voted in and brought the whole shameful thing to an end in a wave of weariness and self-abasement (but call it what it was, abject surrender), the war would probably stagger on, mostly to prevent the Frogs and Dagos from grabbing everything in sight. And if the Whigs cried penury for the huge debt run up by the war, they could walk off with everything England had, and leave her as helpless as the Danes, with few overseas possessions, little trade, and a Navy more suitable for a child's daydreams on a duck pond. Would the French be so encouraged by this that de Grasse would go home and put together the invasion force that succeeded in crossing the channel and recreating the Norman Conquest, Alan wondered?

"Ten fathom, ten fathom with this line!"

Alan drew his attention back to the ship and took a bearing on one of the tiny sandspits in midchannel. They would pass it safely to larboard, in a channel marked from their earlier ascension as better than fifteen fathoms. No danger.

The Chiswicks were on the taffrail, looking sternward at the land they would never see again either. The father was propped up on the flag lockers, his wife to one side and Mammy to the other to support him. Caroline wore her dark red traveling cloak with the hood thrown back, gripping the ornately carved taffrail with hands that looked kid-glove white, even at that distance. Alan had suffered in silence aboard Desperate before and had found solace aft out of everyone's way, gripping the rail in that way, so he could sympathize with her at that moment.

Once Wilmington had fallen out of sight astern and nothing was left but the barren narrow cape and the bleak salt-grass meadow shore, she came forward to about the larboard mizzen chains, more intent on the working of the ship than in pining away for the shoreline.

"Mister Lewrie, do ya see them marsh grasses yonder?" Monk asked.

"Aye, sir. Swirling," Alan said. "Wind's heading us a point. Hands to the lee braces, prepare to harden up! Quartermaster, stand by to give us a point free."

"Clear ta starboard, iffen we do," Monk grumped, staring with a telescope at the shore to their right. "Half a mile afore we gets inta trouble over there."

"Here it comes," Railsford said, gripping the hammock nettings.

The wind ruffled cat's paws on the choppy waters, and Desperate leaned heavily as the gust hit them.

"Give us a point free!" Railsford called.

"Bosun, tail on the lee braces!"

"Don't forget the tops'l set," Railsford cautioned.

"Tops'l braces, off belays and haul away!" Alan cried. "How's her helm, quartermaster?"

"Worn't 'nuff fer a good bite at first, sir, but she's fine now," the quartermaster said, as he and his mate spun the wheel gingerly a few spokes at a time to demonstrate better control with more flow on the rudder.

"We get headed like that again and we'll have to bear up sharp and tack her on a short board to larboard before we can come back onto the safe pass," Alan griped.

"Somebody whistlin' on deck?" Monk asked, peering about to see if someone was violating one of the cardinal superstitions of a seafarer's life. Whistling on deck always brought the wind, usually from a direction and in such strength that would put lives at hazard to reef down aloft. Even marines and idlers knew better.

"Wimmen on a ship, Mister Monk," the quartermaster whispered. "I'd take a whistler any day."

Alan didn't mind women aboard ship, especially the particular woman who had come to observe him in action, and he was pleased that he was showing well, being all nautical and tarry-handed, conversing as an equal with the first officer and the sailing master.

"Taut enough, sir?" Alan asked Railsford.

"Aye, Bosun, belay every inch of that!"

Alan turned as though to peer at the cape peninsula with one of the telescopes, and in so doing took a look at Caroline Chiswick. Her color was high, whether from emotion at being driven from Wilmington as a refugee or from the sea breeze, he could not say, but she was smiling, which was more than she had done in the last few days after being ensconced aft, and when he glanced at her, she gave him a wider smile, which he could feel all the way down to his toes. Pauper or not, she was an attractive diversion until he could get back to the West Indies.

The wind shifted once more, this time backing almost a point and a half, giving them a perfect breeze to make it out to sea past the last low islands. The first rollers in the open bay struck her and set her pitching her bows up and rolling to starboard.

"Hands make sail, Mister Railsford," Treghues ordered. "Plain sail, with two reefs in the tops'ls for now and two reefs in the courses. And I'll have the main topmast staysail run aloft to steady her helm."

"Full an' bye'll get us our offin', sir," Monk said, studying the long, whipping commissioning pendant aloft as a rough wind indication.

"Make sail and then we'll harden up and lay her close-hauled," Treghues said. "Mister Coke, better get some more buckets on deck. Our live lumber will be casting their accounts into the Atlantic, soon."

"Aye, sir." Coke glowered, thinking of the ruin of his pristine decks as their passengers began to spew.

Half an hour later, with Desperate in the lead to windward, the evacuation fleet stood out to sea headed roughly sou'-west to make an offing from that treacherous shore where the soundings were always wrong and they had enough sea room off a lee shore should the wind turn foul. The passengers were indeed having a rough time of it, losing their breakfasts over the side, or hugging the buckets. All the Chiswicks but Caroline went below to get out of the raw wind. Now free of duties until the day watch, Alan went to the windward rail to join her.

"This is quite exciting, Mister Lewrie," she said, her face glowing in the breeze and her hair ready to escape from her pins. "I never knew there was so much involved in sailing. All those men going aloft and walking on air, it seemed, to work on the sails! Do you do that?"

"I did, until my promotion," Alan said.

"You have had a promotion," she said. "How wonderful for you."

"I was a midshipman, have been for almost the last two years. In a way, I still am, but I was made acting master's mate the first week of November. Until then I spent half my life aloft."

They chattered on until Treghues came back on deck, and Alan took her hand. "If you wish to stay on this side of the deck our captain will oblige you, but I must go to loo'ard."

"Why?"

"It's tradition. The windward side of the quarterdeck is for the captain alone, and the rest of the watch standers must go down to leeward."

She accepted his hand and he led her down the slanting deck along the nettings at the front of the quarterdeck.

"You call it loo'ard once and leeward the next," she said. "I believe you are speaking a foreign language."

The next half hour, until Treghues retired aft, they spent laughing as he explained a sailor's life, some of the pranks they played on each other, and the seeming nonsense of the seaman's vocabulary, until Alan noticed she was shivering in the wind, which had turned quite cold.

"You'll catch your death up here. You should go below and get warm. They'll be piping dinner soon, anyway," he told her.

"Forgive me, Mister Lewrie, but I could not bear to do so. I have monopolized you, I fear, for purely selfish purposes, but I could not face another moment in the cabin. Getting away for a while has been most refreshing."

"I'm sorry there is only you to… bear up under this burden on your family," he said.

"I was raised to be self-reliant," she said, her face growing pensive as she stared back toward the distant shore. "All of us were. But lately, there has been so much duty, and no one to help me cope."

"I know what that is." Alan grinned. "This promotion has piled a load on me, too."

"The morning you came in answer to my note, I was ready to give way to despair. Without your timely assistance, we would still be looking for a ship. Thank you for taking charge as you did, Mister Lewrie. I appreciated that more than you could ever know."

"I was glad to be of any help to you," he said, turning gallant. "Someone as young and pretty as you, Mistress Chiswick, should not have to bear such a heavy burden. There are gayer things to consider."

"Why, thank you, Mister Lewrie." She colored prettily. "But surely such amusements as you suggest are only folly and frivolity. Perhaps in better times, but for now, we do what we must, and I would be an ungrateful daughter to even think of such things while my momma and daddy need me. Just as you must suspend your own amusements until the ship is tied up in some harbor, is that not so?"

"Yes, I suppose so." He shrugged.

"Our journey began long ago, upriver," she said, trying to be light about it but not able to hide the sadness in her. "Now we're only on one stage of it and where we'll have to go from Charleston I don't know. Maybe back to England with our relatives in Surrey, as you suggested. Maybe the Indies, or Florida or Canada, or the Moon."

"Then will you consider frivolous things?" he prompted, to get her out of her sad mood.

"I promise you I shall be nothing but frivolous," she told him, smiling once more. But the shore was almost under the horizon, and the refugee fleet aft of them was in the way, so the smile didn't linger.

"If you would like to be alone with your feelings for a while, I could walk you aft," Alan suggested, wondering why he was trying to cajole her when she seemed ready for a good cry.

"No, that's the last thing I need right now, I pray you," she said quickly. "Things come, things go, and you can't change that. But I will miss this country. A few more years and… do you remember seeing that very fine house on the way downriver, on the right? This side of the ship?"

"Just before we picked up the ships at Fort Johnston, yes."

"The Orton house. We were ready to expand our house to copy it, just before all the troubles began." Caroline smiled in fond memory. "I don't think we could have ever really afforded it, but Momma was set on it after seeing an oil of it, and Daddy usually let her have her way in most things. It would have been a sign that we belonged here for good. Now I'm glad we didn't build on, it would have been too much to lose."

"You lost a lot, so Burgess told me," Alan said, trying to find a way to continue talking to her that didn't set off her bitter memories.

"Aye, we did, but not as much as others, more than some. If we had not declared for the Crown, in spite of how bad they tried to run the colony and how venal their appointed men were… well, it would have been a Tarleton or a Fanning that burned us out, anyway. Maybe God wants the Chiswicks back in England. Just the way that perhaps God wanted you to be a sailor."

In spite of his best efforts, Alan had to break out into a fit of guffaws, which prompted Caroline to forget her musings and try to cozen the reason for his humor from him, which, naturally, improved her own.

"Do you mock the Good Lord, sir?" she said, pretending to frown.

"No, and I don't mock you, either, but the idea of me being meant for a sailor set me off. Sorry. I'll tell you about it someday, but it wasn't my first choice for a career."

"Ah, second sons get no choice, do they?" She smiled, thinking she understood. "What would you have been otherwise?"

"A man who sleeps late and dines well," Alan told her.

"And a less somber one, I think." She grinned as though they had shared a great secret. "You really must smile more, Mister Lewrie."

"Me?" He laughed gently. "But I'm a merry sort almost all the time. Too much so for some. Ask anyone."

"So serious for… twenty?"

"Almost nineteen, in January. And you," he said, taking liberties with her good humor, "are such a sober thing for eighteen."

"Burgess told you of me?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow and turning her mouth up in a wry expression, as though she was trying to gnaw on her cheek. "He would. What did he say?"

"That you were the prettiest girl in two counties, but too serious by half, and that's an opinion with which I heartily agree."

Caroline made no answer to this, but turned away to savor the compliment from her brother, and the corroboration from a handsome young man at her side, trying to hide her pleased expression.

The bosun's mate of the watch, Weems, took a squint at the half-hour glass by the belfry and put his whistle to his lips. He blew the welcome call "Clear decks and up spirits" while the purser and an acting quartermaster's mate brought up a keg of rum. The hands began to queue up for their predinner rum ration.

"That means the men are to get their rum and water," Alan said. "They can get a tad rowdy, and dinner will be served aft, in half an hour. Best you get below, much as I hate to send you."

"Much as I hate to go," she replied. "Will you be here after we have dined?"

"Yes, but I shall be in the watch today, and I am sure the other officers think I have monopolized you enough." He chuckled. "Though you might wish to come on deck when four bells chime in the late afternoon. We stand to the guns for evening quarters then, and it is interesting to watch."

"They just rang seven."

"One for every half-hour turn of the glass, eight bells for a four-hour watch," he explained, walking her aft to the upper entrance to the great cabins to avoid the milling crowd of seamen on the gun deck. "After dinner there will be eight bells at four in the afternoon, then when you hear four bells again, that will be halfway through the first dogwatch, five in the afternoon."

"Every half hour?" she teased. "I believe you are making this up to make sport with me. More of your nautical cant and humbug."

"That's exactly what I called it for a long time." He laughed. "Enjoy your dinner, and my best regards to your mother and father."

She gave him one last smile and departed the deck for her cabins, leaving Alan shivering on the deck, though warmed by a glow inside at her evident fondness. He had enjoyed talking with her and laughing with her, for she had a merry disposition in her nature that she had to hide most of the time in her dealings with the world. And as the most rational member of her family present, she had her sobering responsibilities to consider first and foremost. But when free of them, she could be a charming and waggish companion, more so than any other female Alan had come across. Others did not pretend to so much wit and shunned repartee that would unsex them and make them a conversational equal to their men.

Alan thought that the Colonies did not regard mental feebleness as a desirable trait in their women, or spent more time and effort educating their daughters and allowing them free participation in discourse, much like what only a peer's daughter could expect. Still, she was not as free with her tongue and wit as a Frenchwoman at a levée, conversing on just any topic at hand in le haute monde salon society he had heard mentioned as the vogue in Paris.

He was looking forward to seeing her in late afternoon, but when she emerged on deck, it was Treghues who escorted her and her mother, and Alan had to stand down to leeward from them and attend to his duties on the watch. Alan felt a pang of… annoyance… (he would not dare to call it jealousy) at that development.

His captain was another new and different man with the Chiswicks, slightly raffish without crudity, jolly and charming, and was even heard to laugh lightly now and then, an event that made hands stop in their tracks and goggle at this unheard of novelty from a naval captain.

The humorless fart's wooing her! Alan glowered inwardly. I swear, there's a pretty picture. Trust the son of a lord to get what he wants, every time. And she's eatin' it up like plum duff, damme if she ain't! Just like a woman to sniff out the boss cock with the most chink and start spoonin' him up. And I thought she was better than that. Now I've got the proper reckoning of her. Let her lick his boots if that's her game. I've had better, anyway. Gawky bitch.

Alan contented himself with the thought that Treghues would not have any ulterior designs on her, at least, thinking his captain too holy a hedge-priest to do more than hold hands and gawp, even if he felt the urge, which Alan doubted as well. Treghues was too moral to even admit to the desires of the flesh. And he had to admit that if the Chiswick family was gone smash and reduced to impoverished misery, then Treghues at least had the blessings of future title, rents, land, and all that prize-money to offer them in exchange for what few lusty demands (if any, Alan thought smugly) he would make on their daughter. He even had to smile at the thought of somber and pious Treghues wed to the get of a bankrupt colonial, too tall and skinny for fashion, and how his aristocratic friends would make sport of them behind their backs every time they took the air or attended some "tasteful and acceptable" entertainment.

Hope you like praying a lot, my dear, he sneered. If you ally yourself with such a one as him, you'll be doing a lot of it.

"Watcher luff, quartermaster," Monk warned, coming to the wheel. "Mister Lewrie, attend yer mind ta duties, would ya please, sir?"

"Aye, Mister Monk," Alan piped, torn from watching the couple as they took the air on the windward rail.

"Han'some piece, she is." Monk grinned as he studied the pair. "Though slimmer'n an eel, an' not a spare ounce o' nothin' to grab hold of. I likes my women bounder."

"So do most, Mister Monk," Alan said, gazing up at the set of the sails, all duty again. "So do I."

"Still, she's got the captain laughin', damme if she ain't. Now there's a thing. Be good fer him. He's not had much joy these last few months. I never heard tell o' him messin' with the ladies much, nor even goin' ashore fer pleasure o' any sort. Holds himself taut as a forestay, he does."

"How much of that is Treghues, and how much of that is demanded of a captain, Mister Monk?" Alan inquired innocently.

"I've had captains'd take a girl to sea right in their cabins." Monk grinned. "Mind ya Augustus Hervey? When he was a young post-captain in the Mediterranean back in the sixties, he musta made sport with over two hundred women in one commission. Duchesses, servin' girls, an' two nuns ta top it off. 'Twas a wonder his weddin' tackle didn't drop off."

"Nuns, Mister Monk?" Alan asked.

"Ya know them breast-beatin' priests an' popes is the randiest pack o' rogues goin', no matter what anyone says. They don't wear them cassocks fer nothin'. Finest garments in the world fer fornicatin' when the humor's strong on ye. Ya think ya seen somethin' when the bum-boats come 'round the fleet when we hit port, ya ain't seen nothing 'til ya put foot ashore in a Catholic land. 'Course, ya could keep Mother Phillips at the Green Canister in silver from all the condoms ya'd wear out, an' come home ta find Half Moon Street richer'n St. James' Place."

The humor was on Alan strongly after this short talk, and he felt an unbearable urge to readjust his privates, but could not, not as long as the Chiswicks were on deck. She suddenly looked a whole lot more desirable to him, however, after Monk's dissertation.

Dusk grew on the sea as the short early winter day began to end, and the hands were piped to quarters. Treghues's fifers and drummers came on deck in their livery and began to rattle and toot bravely while the marines turned up in their scarlet finery, and the seamen cast off the gun tackle and stood swaying by their pieces. Aft, in Treghues's quarters, the missing artillery had been replaced by short nines, older bronze guns not as reliable or as long as the newer long nines made of iron that were Desperate's original equipment.

For half an hour, until almost full dark, they stood waiting for the appearance of an enemy ship, while Treghues prated on from the nettings overlooking the waist about the ship and what would happen should battle present itself, to which the Chiswick women nodded often.

Finally, the hands were released from quarters, the guns bowsed down once more, and the men gathered up their hammocks from the nets to take them below. The overhead lookouts were stood down, and the men of the duty watch took up vantage points on the gangways and upper decks.

Treghues led the women aft toward the entrance to their cabins, and Alan was in their way. He looked at Caroline and tried to smile politely, but could not find it in him to be that charitable; he doffed his hat in a civil gesture, then turned away to his duties once more and missed the sudden frown that knit Caroline's brows together, hearing only Treghues inviting them to dine with him and share a captain's largesse.

There was a full moon that night that rode through a cold and clear sky. The stars stood out like candle flames, and the sea shone a lambent silver in the moon trough, each wave-top to either side to moonward flecked with sparkling glints. At the cast of the log, Alan found that Desperate was sailing at a fair five and a half knots even with three reefs in courses and tops'ls so that the slower and shorter merchantmen could keep up with her. He was aft, using the night glass to study their charges and count them, when he heard footsteps approaching. He turned to see Caroline Chiswick pacing the deck, and he stiffened as much as if Commander Treghues had caught him napping. He could see in the faint light of the taffrail lanterns that she wore her hooded traveling cloak and muff.

"Good evening, Mister Lewrie," she said, hesitant about approaching him.

"Good evening, Mistress Chiswick," he replied civilly.

"I could not sleep," she said. "All the creaking and groaning the ship makes. And footsteps overhead constantly."

"I shall order the quarterdeck people to walk softer," Alan said.

Two bells had already pealed from the fo'c's'le belfry, so it was after one in the morning, he knew. An odd hour for a girl to be up and about, especially without her momma or servant as chaperone. The lack of supervision intrigued him.

"Do not do anything on my account, sir," Caroline said, stepping to the rail for a secure hold on the canted deck. "You must not make any changes in routine for our sakes, I pray."

"Do your parents rest well, miss?" Alan asked.

"They sleep soundly, thank you for asking, Mister Lewrie," she replied. "Um, this afternoon, Mister Lewrie, did I do something to disturb you?"

"I cannot think of anything, Mistress Chiswick." Alan frowned as though sifting his memory.

"When we went below, you answered my smile with such a look of complete… disinterest… that I feared I had inadvertently angered you in some way," she said with a haste that was out of character for the studied girl Alan had learned she was in their short acquaintance.

"I was on watch, after all." Alan shrugged in dismissal. "Our sailing master had already cautioned me to be attentive to my duties, and Captain Treghues was present as well. He's the one made me an acting mate, and I am still on sufferance to keep the rating."

"I see," she said, a slight line still creasing her forehead. "And you can do nothing to hurt your career in the Navy. You must love it, then, in spite of what you said before dinner."

"Actually, I detest it like the Plague," Alan confessed, screwing his mouth into a wry grin. "It was not my idea to enter the Navy, but I have become competent at this life, and it's most likely the only career I shall have."

"I had not gained that impression," she said. "Not the competent part, I assure you. You seemed most competent, in all things, when we sailed today. And competent at organizing our entrance into this ship, in everything. Surely, it's not that awful for you, is it?"

"I have come to accept it," Alan replied stiffly.

"I am sorry, I did not know that they could press-gang people as midshipmen," she said, attempting a smile as wry as his. "I had heard the food was bad and all, but… well, I'll not pry into a private concern of yours if it is bothersome to you to speak of it."

"I suppose you could call it press-ganged," Alan told her. "My family… look, I'm a second son, not in line to inherit, and there wasn't much to go around even then, not enough to keep me as a gentleman at home in London. And I was only an adopted son at that, without the blessing of the family name."

That sounds innocent enough, he decided. If she knew my real background, she'd go screaming for the ladders.

"And what did your father do?"

"Not much of anything." Alan grimaced. "He was knighted for something in the last war on Gibraltar—Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby. We lived in St. James, at the mercy of his creditors, most of the time. Had land and rents in Kent, nothing big, though, far as I know."

"But the Navy is a respectable career for a gentleman," she pressed, shifting a half step towards him. "Your captain was kindly disposed to you when we asked of you at supper. He said you were, how did he say it… shaping quite well as an officer-to-be."

"He did?" Alan marveled. Which only goes to prove that he's as barking mad as a pack of wolves, he thought.

"Oh, yes, he did. Though I am afraid he seemed a little put out that you were such a prominent topic," she whispered hesitantly.

"Oh?" Alan marveled some more, quite happy to hear that Treghues had been put out, and that he had been talked of.

"He said you came aboard after you had fought a duel for a girl's honor, the daughter of an admiral?" Her voice had a shiver of dread.

"The admiral's niece," Alan said, preening a little. "He has not seemed enamored of me, for that and a few other reasons."

"Did you hurt your foe?"

"I killed him," Alan informed her. "That's where I got this," he went on, lightly touching his left cheek which still bore the faint horizontal scar that Lieutenant Wyndham of the Twelfth Foot had administered.

"Because he ruined your beauty?" Caroline chuckled waggishly.

"No, that was a by-blow," Alan said, unable to credit a woman who could jape about something like that. "Excuse me, but I must return to the helmsmen. I have spent too long aft."

"Have I angered you again?" she asked.

"No, you haven't," Alan said. "And if you can stand the wind, I would be delighted to converse with you further, but I cannot skylark back here. I've the ship to run, and don't want the captain to catch me."

"Then I would be delighted to join you," she said, slipping her arm between his for support as they walked forward. "Your captain is a bit stiff, isn't he?"

"Absolutely rigid," Alan snickered softly, leaning his head near her so the hands would not hear him make complaint of a captain.

"Dining with him was like having a traveling evangel making free with your hospitality when he's out riding the circuit in the backcountry," Caroline whispered. "I was quite relieved when we retired."

"I am sorry you had such a poor time."

"Are you?" she wondered aloud, one eyebrow lifted.

"Yes, for your sake," Alan rejoined.

"Ah, now I see why you treated me so coldly," she said, dragging him to a stop before they reached the wheel.

"Nothing of the kind," he assured her, damning himself for looking so obvious. "It was fear of seeming slack on watch."

"From someone my brothers said fears nothing?" she teased. "From what little I know of you, Mister Lewrie, I could not imagine there is anything in this life you fear."