The King's Coat

Chapter 11

“You were fortunate, Mister Lewrie,” Commander the Honorable Tobias Treghues said, seated behind his glossy mahogany desk in the day cabins of the 20-gun frigate Desperate. “I am told the officers of the 12th Foot detachment have talked of a syndicate to challenge you one at a time until you are bested. They were not enamored of your choice of weapons, or how you won.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie said, studying his new lord and master. Treghues was in his late twenties, slim and brown-haired with grey eyes. His uniform was impeccable, as were his cabin furnishings. He showed no signs of poverty, though it had been rumored he was the eldest son of a lord gone to sea to improve the family fortunes with prizes.

“Fortunate also that I had a suitable berth, after losing one young gentleman drowned, and another to the bottle,” Treghues went on.

“Aye aye, sir.” When a midshipman had no better answer, that usually struck the right obedient note without committing to anything.

“You are, for your own safety, to remain aboard until we have sailed. You are not even to place foot in a rowing boat. By the time we return from a cruising patrol, the 12th will have gone to St. Kitts and the problem will have been resolved.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie said, trying to find a new way to do it.

“I do not hold with dueling,” Treghues warned. “Or hotheaded bucks who cannot resist taking offense at the slightest reproach, like some swaggering Frog duke, Mister Lewrie. Usually bad officers, too.”

“I do not wish to give that impression, sir, but I had—”

Treghues waved off the rest of his answer. “Spare me your innocent and honorable motives. Sir Onsley informed me as to the circumstance. He also gives you a glowing report, so I am aware of your services to the Crown of late. You may be useful to this ship, but all I want to see from you is duty done in a cheerful and efficient manner. Spare us your blood-lust for the foe.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie parroted himself.

“Admiral Sir George Rodney has taken over from Admiral Byron, thanks be to God, so we should see some action soon. Hood and Rodney together, and we’ll see an end to these French and Spanish combinations. So, you see what is needed. Get below and into your working rig. I allow you to forgo the waistcoat in these climes, but I expect a midshipman to look like a proper officer at all times, no matter how junior you may be. That means a regulation dirk instead of that pretty hanger of yours. And I prefer a cocked hat to the round one. I took you on sufferance—don’t give me reason to regret it.”

Lewrie nodded and left the cabins, emerging on the upper deck. Desperate had no poop but a long quarterdeck over the captain’s cabin. Her first (and only) lieutenant had quarters below the captain with the surgeon, purser, Marine lieutenant and suchlike worthies. The wheel stood over the captain’s cabins on the long quarterdeck, unprotected by binnacle bulwarks. The lower deck was not a gun deck at all, the artillery being sited on the upper deck where the captain lived in solitary splendor. Hands berthed forward on the lower deck, then petty officers, Marines, warrants and midshipmen, and then the officer’s gun room right aft. The orlop and hold were too crammed with supplies to let anyone berth there.

“What a crosspatch he is.” Lewrie sighed. From the way Treghues regarded Rodney, he must be one of his—not a good sign. Rodney was famed for incredibly bad judgement in appointments.

But the cobbing he had received could not dampen his joy to be aboard any sort of ship once more, and Desperate was magnificent. She was 110 feet on the range of the lower deck, a bit over 30 in beam, of 450 tons burthen. Piercing her upper deck bulwarks were eighteen six-pounder cannon, with two of the new eighteen-pounder carronades on her foc’s’l, short guns mounted on swivelling slides that fired bursting shot to no great range—“Smashers”—he was dying to try them out.

Desperate carried Treghues, a first lieutenant named Railsford, Mr. Monk the sailing master and two mates, one bosun and mate, one warrant gunner, one gunner’s mate and a yeoman of the powder room, a surgeon named Dorne and a mate, five quartergunners, one carpenter and mate, one armorer, one master-at-arms, two quartermasters and mates, a yeoman of the sheets, one coxswain, four carpenter’s crew, one ship’s corporal, a sailmaker and one sailmaker’s assistant, one captain’s clerk, the young purser named Cheatham and his steward, four midshipmen, four young boy fifers and drummers, eighteen boyservants, and fifty-six men rated as either ordinary or able seamen, or landsmen. She also carried Marines; a lieutenant named Peck, one sergeant, one corporal, and thirty private soldiers.

She was a 6th Rate, the smallest type of ship-rigged frigate in the fleet, and with Lewrie joining her, was fortunate to be only six hands short of full complement.

Desperate was too light for the line of battle with her four-inch oak scantlings and beams on twenty-inch centers. She was too fast to be tied to a squadron, but also too well armed to waste on despatches like Parrot. Desperate was what was coming to be known as a “cruizer”; she was a huntress on her own in the most likely places to seek out, take, or burn enemy merchantmen, privateers and light naval units.

Lewrie entered the midshipmen’s berth to find his new mess mates lounging about the small compartment, sandwiched in without air by storerooms and the mate’s dog boxes. The total space was about twelve-by-ten, with barely five feet of headroom between the beams. There was a polished table down the center for dining, chests for seats, and pegs for storage of handy items.

“Hullo. I’m Alan Lewrie,” he said to them, reliving that scene long ago when he had reported below in Ariadne. But there was a difference; he had nearly fifteen months in the Navy, and knew what sort of drudgery and folderol to expect now. He was introduced to the others. There was Peter Carey, a ginger-haired boy of thirteen with the usual modest squirearchy background. There was a gotch-gutted sixteen-year-old pig named Francis Forrester. He was quick to point out that it was the Honorable Francis Forrester, and his elegant manners and his drawling, superior voice made it abundantly clear that he looked on Lewrie’s arrival as another mark of the reduction in tone of their mess.

Lewrie’s other companion was also sixteen, a dark and merry Cornish boy that Lewrie had known slightly long before when posted to the Ariadne after it had become a receiving ship. He and David Avery had gone roaming English Harbor together, and had enjoyed each other’s company, before Avery had joined an armed transport.

Alan carefully removed and folded up his fine new uniform. He packed the waistcoat away for Sunday Divisions, slipped out of his snowy breeches and dug out a ragged pair of slop trousers. He exchanged his silk stockings for cotton, wrapped his best shoes and donned a cracked pair. His worst faded and stained coat he hung up on a peg. Sadly, he packed the hanger away in his open chest and fetched out his dirk, now showing signs of wear around that “best gold-plate pommel.”

“Pretty hanger.” Forrester pouted like a sow, picking it up and studying it. “But your parents should have known better.”

“It was a recent gift,” Alan said, meaning to get off to a fair start, if allowed. “For saving my last captain his ship.”

“Yess,” Forrester drawled. “Avery has been regaling us with the heroism of your derring-do.” He sheathed the hanger and tossed it into Lewrie’s chest like a poor discard at a secondhand shop.

“Did you really kill a man in a duel?” Carey asked, wide-eyed.

“Yes. Dead as cold, boiled mutton. He insulted a young lady of my acquaintance,” Alan boasted, even-toned.

“Carey, we must remember to tremble before the anger of our new manslaughtering Hector,” Forrester said. “Even if he is, by length of service, junior to you. How long at sea, Lewrie?”

“A year. Fifteen months total.”

“Then I am still senior,” Forrester said, pleased to hear it. “June of ’76.”

“We’re not lieutenants, Forrester,” Avery replied. “I actually predate you by a whole month, if the truth be known. We’re all equal here.”

“Ah, the rebellious Adamses and Thomas Paines have been after you again,” Forrester said in a way that Lewrie could only think of as greasy. “Remember that I have the signals and you don’t, so that makes me senior. And I trust that any new errant newlies shall remember that.”

“We had a man who said much the same thing in Ariadne,” Lewrie said, taking a pew on his closed chest. “He died.”

“Would be having the gall to threaten me?” Forrester’s piggy eyes were squinted.

“Now why should I do a thing like that? I’m but stating a fact. You remember me mentioning him, don’t you, Avery?”

“Oh, you mean Mister the Honorable … what was his name?”

“Fotheringfop,” Lewrie said. “Ferdinand Fotheringfop.”

“Choked on his beef bones, didn’t he?” Avery said.

“No, that was Mister the Honorable D’Arcy DeBloat.”

“And what, pray, did he die of?” Avery was playing along, to the great delight of young Carey, who was already stifling a grin.

“Fotheringfop was so elevated an individual, with such an airy opinion of himself that his head swelled one morning at dawn Quarters. We tried to save him and got a gantline to him, but he pulled the maint’gallantmast right out of her. Last seen drifting for Panama. Crew did a little hornpipe of despair at his passing. Sad, it was.” Lewrie pretended to grieve.

Forrester snorted at the foolishness and left the midshipmen’s berth for the upper deck, while Carey dared to laugh out loud and Avery pronounced Lewrie a fellow that would do.

“What a fubsy, crusty thing it is,” Lewrie observed of their mess mate. “What does he expect us to do, carry his scepter for him, or just be his fags?”

“Just a puffed-up dilberry.” Avery shrugged. “Probably afraid we know more than him and show him up before his lord and master.”

“Fat pig,” Carey said, softly.

“Carey, what were the other midshipmen like?” Lewrie asked.

“Dodds was twenty or so. But I’ve never seen anyone drink so much all the time. The captain finally threw him out, said he’d never make an officer, or live long enough to take the exam.”

“Good relations to the captain?” Lewrie probed.

“I think he was a cater-cousin.” Carey frowned. “The other … Montgomery, he was real smart, and nice. He was a year older than me but he knew everything. He got washed overboard in a gale last month north of St. Lucia. He was my friend.” Carey sniffled.

Lewrie shared a look with Avery. They could imagine what the mess had been like for Carey, with one raging sponge in his cups all the time, the brutish Forrester lording it over all the others, and only Montgomery to shield the younger boy. Carey gave no sign that he was a mental giant, or in any way assertive. Just a scared and homesick child, mediocre at best when it came to duty and too small and weak to perform like a real sailor.

“Well, there’s a new order here, by God,” Avery told him with a rap on the shoulder. “Just let the cow-arse try to push his weight around…”

“Of which he has considerable,” Lewrie added.

“Aye, and we’ll fix him,” Avery said. “Right, Lewrie?”

“Amen to that,” Lewrie intoned with mock piety.

“You can’t go too far, though,” Carey said. “I mean, Treghues and Forrester … they’re not related, but you’d think Forrester was his brother.”

“Plays the favorite, does your captain?”

“I shouldn’t say it, but he—”

“A wonderful berth,” Avery sighed. “And I thought that rotten armed transport was bad.”

“Hell with it,” Lewrie said. “I hear she’s made her people a pot of prize money, and she goes her own way looking for fame and fortune. We’re in the right place. Now all we have to do is to convince our captain that we’re the right midshipmen for him.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Avery said. “Here, Lewrie, you wouldn’t have a neckcloth that would pass Divisions, have you?”

* * *

Just before departure, mail came aboard, and Lewrie was surprised to have two packets. Sir Hugo was actually living up to his end of the bargain and had sent him a rouleau of one hundred guineas. Well, actually, the solicitor Mr. Pilchard had sent it. There was no letter attached, and that was no disappointment, but the money was most welcome.

The next was from Lucy Beauman. He had been isolated aboard Ariadne following the duel, then rapidly transferred to Desperate and had not been allowed to see her, though he had sent her a letter that he was not sure her aunt and uncle would allow her to see.

There was belated fear for his life, wonderment at his courage, a recital of prayers said for him, a brief screed against Wyndham, who had not struck her as a trustworthy gentleman, a denial that she had encouraged him in the slightest manner (which Lewrie doubted … she was a girl, wasn’t she?), profound relief at his victory and survival, deep despair at being denied his presence, grief and tears at their cruel separation (but more prayers for success at his new endeavors in Desperate) and fond hopes of a quick reunion.

She enclosed an embroidered handkerchief for him, scented and splashed with her tears, binding up a generous lock of her honey gold hair. There was also Old Isaac’s completed juju bag, which he was to hang about his neck immediately and never remove. Lewrie was leery as to that instruction; the bag had a redolence of badly cured goat skin, tidal effluvia and perhaps the slight admixture of chicken guts. She wrote:

I shall wate with constant Longing for your Safe Retern, that we may avale ourselves once more of that mutuol Pleasure in our companyunship, and may agane strole without Cares on that particular Strand I have cumm to regard as a most Blesed and Speshul Place.

Awl my Fondness Goe With You, Lucy

Someone should teach the little mort to spell, he thought, but was touched by her sentiments, and by her evident love for him. He took time to pen her a proper but passionate reply, the sort that would turn a young girl’s head for a while. As a fillip, he enclosed a lock of his own hair (still fairly short). Then it was time to sail.

* * *

Admiral Rodney had plugged one hole in the dyke against all the supplies from Europe that reached the rebellious Colonies by taking the island of St. Eustatius, a major smuggling and transshipment port for naval and military stores and a convenient outlet for American produce and manufactured goods with which they partly paid for all the French, Spanish and Dutch largesse.

By keeping the expected flags flying, and with secret recognition signals, Rodney kept the island open, luring in ships that had no chance to be apprised of the change of ownership. It was resulting in scores of captures.

Desperate was sent north with a roving commission to hunt down ships hoping to use St. Eustatius.

Barely ten days after coming aboard, Lewrie emerged on deck one fine brisk morning sated with a good breakfast of thin-sliced fried pork, boiled egg and crumbled biscuit in treacle. He was still smacking his lips and regretting not being able to enjoy a second cup of coffee when the lookout gave a loud hail to the deck below, ending any thoughts of sail drill for the Forenoon watch.

“Sail ho!” he bellowed. “Three points off the larboard bow!”

Lieutenant Railsford chose Avery to dash aloft to confirm the sighting, and Avery handed Lewrie his hat, brushed back his black hair and ran for the mainmast crosstrees.

Treghues came on deck in breeches and waistcoat and went to the wheel, waiting for a report. Peck, the gangly young blond Marine officer, came up, eager for action.

“Two sail, sir,” Avery said. “Schooner and brig. Headed due north, under all plain sail.”

“Mister Monk,” Treghues called. “Alter course to chase, and we shall crack on all sail she can stand. Stuns’ls, too.”

“Bosun!” their stocky, dark sailing master relayed. “All hands aloft and make sail. Trice up and lay out for stuns’ls.”

The single night reef in the courses and tops’ls was shaken out, and Lewrie went aloft to the t’gallant mast as the yards were raised up by the jears. Below him on the main course yard, hands were extending the stuns’l booms, bending on canvas to spread every stitch their ship could fly. Desperate leaned her shoulder firmly to the sea and began to soar across the moderate seas, smashing into the odd wave, but slicing clean through the regular set of rollers, her wake boiling.

By ten in the Forenoon she had run the schooner hull-up before her, and the brig beyond showed all her sail plan; clearly they were overtaking handily, which suggested ships too heavily loaded to run. Desperate was already towing one boat, and put another down to be ready with boarding parties. Lewrie hoped that he would be entrusted with one of those parties.

Just after Clear-Deck-And-Up-Spirits at seven bells of the Forenoon they beat to Quarters and manned their guns. Lunch would be delayed, but with the prospect of prizes ahead, no one minded.

Treghues had gone below to catch up on paper-work with his clerk, interview the purser and pretend that there was nothing to get excited about, while Lewrie fretted and stewed in impatience. And when their captain did emerge he was close-shaved, dressed in a good coat and cocked hat, his small sword hung “just-so” from his belt frog.

When they had the schooner within range of a six-pounder, just about six cables off, she took one look and raised her rebel colors to satisfy honor, then quickly hauled them down and rounded to into the wind. Mr. Feather, a burly master’s mate, and Midshipman Forrester went over in the first cutter to take charge of her with ten hands.

“Good man, Forrester,” Treghues commented to Railsford by the quarterdeck nettings. “He’ll keep our prize safe.”

“Aye, sir,” Railsford agreed dutifully but without much enthusiasm. Lewrie stood close by and heard this exchange and weighed it for what he thought it was worth. In his short time aboard he had found that young Forrester had a reputation much like Rolston in Ariadne when it came to discipline and tautness.

Then they were off again in pursuit of the brig. Treghues ordered stand-easy for the gun crews, but unlike old Bales he had had the ship properly cleared for action, though their chase might be a mere smuggler and not a privateer or warship. He was taking no chances, and Lewrie approved. Their captured schooner fell in line-astern far back, so loaded she was barely able to stay in sight.

Water and cheese and biscuit was brought up to the gun crews as they stood easy for a cold dinner with the galley-fire extinguished. Lewrie stood in the waist of the ship by the mainmast, idling on the jear bitts and chewing his dry dinner. The cheese was a navy-issue Suffolk, more like crumbling rock than cheese. Giving up on making a meal on it, he brushed his hands and stood on the jear bitts for a better view.

The brig was now well hull-up, perhaps a league off and still being overhauled. Lewrie imagined that she was badly laden besides being heavily loaded. Her bow seemed to slough and make a large wave even with her forecourse spread taut for its lifting effect. Had her bow ridden higher, lessening her resistance, she might have made a knot more. And as low in the water as she looked, her shallower draft would be of no avail in the maze of islands ahead to the nor-nor’west, where she could normally expect to lose the frigate with her deeper draft.

“Got a good view, Mister Lewrie?” Treghues asked, hands behind his back and staring up at him as he paced the gun deck to inspect his hands.

“Aye, sir.” Lewrie climbed down to doff his hat.

“Learning anything?”

“Aye, sir. She draws a foot deeper forrard,” Lewrie said. “He’ll have to shift a pair of guns, or some cargo, or he’s ours before two hours pass.”

“Indeed,” Treghues said, shocked to hear such talk from a midshipman. “But he can always get a favorable slant of wind. Get into those islands.”

“Aye, he could, sir,” Lewrie persisted. “But the Trades hereabouts drop off around the First Dog, sir, and he’s too deep to risk shoal water. We’re balanced, more sail aloft and have a longer waterline,” Alan vowed, preening a bit.

“So you are confident.” Treghues smiled, using the moment to put life into his crew.

“That I am, sir.”

“We’ll have him, lads. Our new midshipman believes so, so we must, eh? A little more gold in your pockets would not go amiss.”

Treghues passed on to trade joshes with the quartergunners, mostly of the squire-to-tenant “how do your sheep keep, old ’un” variety with the expected reply of bright smiles and much tugging of forelocks, leaving Lewrie abashed. He had tried to make a good impression on the captain concerning his skill and nautical knowledge so that he would think of him as competent and equal to Forrester, but now he was the silent butt of the crew’s humor.

Goddamn him, Lewrie fumed, busying himself with looking at train tackles; I didn’t deserve that.

Before another hour had passed, the brig wore to larboard slightly and opened fire at extreme long range with a six-pounder gun, the ball dropping far short but good evidence of her intent to fight.

I’d get the stuns’ls in, Lewrie thought, peering aloft. If I were the chase I’d wear hard onto the wind, lay her full-and-by to the nor’east and beat up toward St. Barts. Maybe gain a league before we got ourselves sorted out … A Molly or not, he had to give Lieutenant Kenyon credit for a superb education in ship-handling and how to draw out a stern chase, as they had once off Anegada, pursued by that privateer.

“Bosun, hands aloft and take in stuns’ls,” Treghues called. “Mr. Gwynn, stand by to try your eye with the number one gun.”

Desperate turned off the wind, as master gunner Gwynn fussed over his foremost starboard cannon. Once the quoin was out and he was satisfied, he put up his fist and stood clear, looking aft. Treghues must have waved to him, because the linstock came down to the firing quill in the vent, and the gun lurched inboard with a flat bang. The ball splashed short but directly in line with the brig’s bowsprit. The brig responded with a full broadside of six guns, aimed high. Lewrie could hear the shot as it moaned overhead through the rigging. A sail twitched, and a block and halyard snaked down to thud onto the larboard gangway.

“Stand by the starboard battery!”

Alan looked aloft again. The stuns’l booms were still rigged out, though the sails were mostly furled. Now would be the time to wear, he thought grimly, and this broadside will be wasted. It’s nearly five cables’ range, anyway. This is just what they want of us …

“As you bear … fire!” Treghues shouted.

The guns began to belch and roll back to the extent of the breeching ropes, and the well-drilled crews leaped on them to sponge out, to clear the vents and begin ramming down fresh powder and shot.

Thought so! Lewrie told himself. The smuggler brig had hardened up her braces and sheets and was wheeling to present her stern to them, wearing through at least ninety degrees to the nor’east.

“Goddamn and blast the bugger,” Monk called out as though he had just had his purse cut loose, and Treghues chafed him for blaspheming.

“Hands to train and sidetackles!” Lewrie shouted. “Snug ’em down tight and prepare to come about!” A second later that same command was shouted to them from Railsford on the quarterdeck. Waisters ran to the braces to cast them off the belaying pins while the forecastle captain prepared to heave on his heads’l sheets. But they had to wait until the men aloft had laid in from the yards after securing the stuns’ls, and the brig was gaining time to windward, no matter how the officers aft shouted for the topmen to speed their work.

“Hands wear ship!” came finally. “Put yer helm down!”

“Haul, you people, haul!” the bosun roared.

“Vast hauling and belay!”

Desperate turned up into the wind as steady as a needle on a pin and settled on her new course. The chase was still on her starboard side, now settled just over their windward cathead, and had regained at least half a league of distance on them. It would take the frigate at least two more hours to beat up to windward against that more weatherly brig, at which point it would be near the start of the First Dog Watch.

“Gun crews, stand easy.”

Lewrie climbed onto the jear bitts once more to look to the suth’rd for their first prize. If Forrester had two brain cells to rub together he would wear onto the wind now, as soon as he saw what was happening. A schooner, even a loaded one, could go to windward much better than either the brig or Desperate, could cut the corner off and with even one gun manned, could threaten their chase into heading north once more.

There was no sign that Forrester had the requisite number of brain cells, for she plodded along for long minutes on her original course. A signal went up Desperate’s mizzen, which went unseen.

“Blind fucker,” Lewrie muttered just loud enough for the nearest hands to hear. “He’ll not stand a chance now.”

By the time the schooner came about she was not just downwind of the chase but downwind of Desperate as well.

Desperate stood on for three hours before coming within range once more. The captain of the brig must have been a nacky man himself, because he hauled his wind to head due north, and as soon as Desperate began to parallel her course and open fire once again, he tacked, this time crossing the eye of the wind. He ducked out of the way of the broadside and headed off into the gloom of late afternoon to the sou-sou’east, back the way he had come. Forrester stood no chance even to get close. And the brig was not as unhandy on the wind as Lewrie had thought, for she pulled up half a point higher than the frigate, and was actually very slowly drawing away.

The hands were stood down from Quarters and the galley fire was lit. Lewrie looked at his watch. It would be dusk in forty-five minutes. They would stand to evening Quarters, then, without a prize.

This evening Lewrie was in what was left of the Second Dog Watch, so he left the gun deck and went up to the quarterdeck to stand by the wheel, where Monk and Treghues and Railsford were conferring.

“Still so confident, Mister Lewrie?” Treghues said irritably.

“He was mighty crafty, sir,” Lewrie replied, searching for something safe to say to a captain who was livid inside. “Most likely a Jonathan captain—”

“What makes you think that?”

“The French and the Dons don’t handle ships that well, sir. He may have been Dutch, but I doubt it. American-built brig with a rebel captain. She was smartly handled, sir.”

“Next thing you know, Mister Lewrie shall be giving us lessons in ship-handling,” Treghues said. “Jesus Lord.”

“I would not presume, sir…”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young sir, or I’ll have you bent over a gun before you can say Jack Ketch…”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Get off my quarterdeck.”

“I’m in the watch, sir?” Alan quailed.

“Then get down to loo’rd and out of my face.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Welcome back to the real Navy, Lewrie thought, gazing off to the north as it got darker. There was a spectacular sunset astern, all reds and golds and layers of clouds painted pink and amber and blue grey, and the seas were bright as glittering rubies. At least he could appreciate that without harm.

Lewrie idled his time until evening Quarters thinking about that brig. She would most likely run to windward until after full dark, then come about north once more, probably wear on a reciprocal course because she did not want to get tangled up with the inshore patrols near St. Barts and St. Maartin. She could go due north outside the island chain. She could not set west—that would take her back into the arms of Desperate and the prize schooner. And on the map engraved in his head, Lewrie saw the Saba Bank. No, she would turn nor’west and run the gap for the other smuggler’s holes in the Danish Virgins, St. Croix as the best bet, Spanish Puerto Rico if she was set to westerly. Lewrie was not sure what Commander Tobias Treghues had planned, but he knew where he would have waited to find her again. But then, nobody was asking him about it, were they?

* * *

If he could not dazzle his new ship with his brilliance, he could at least succeed at appearing competent, and that was what he did in the weeks of cruising that followed. He requested that Railsford let him assist in small arms. He let it be known at lunch to the captain’s clerk that he had assisted an acting purser and had worked in the English Harbor stores warehouses. He chatted with Mr. Gwynn and dropped a hint that he loved artillery and the great guns. At navigation practice with his new sextant (thanks to Lord Cantner’s reward) he displayed to the sailing master his skills naturally, and Mister Monk let it be known that he was a dab-hand at navigating. In the course of his endeavor he casually revealed that Lieutenant Kenyon had let him stand Middle Watch with a bosun’s mate, and that he had filled in as an acting master’s mate in Parrot during her time with fever.

To each of these worthies he also showed a false front, that of a young man lately run to death by duties and happy to be once more a junior petty officer with no major responsibilities. Having been in the Navy long enough to know how hatefully any senior Warrant or Commission Officer regarded idle hands, and knowing that when a midshipman was working some officer was well pleased (and cannily understanding the perverse nature of his fellow man), Alan soon found himself exactly where he wanted to be.

He assisted the master-at-arms and Marine lieutenant at small arms. He assisted Mr. Cheatham with the ship’s books and expense ledgers. He and the gunner’s mate and yeoman of the powder room became coequal authorities on the upkeep of the great guns and all their ancillary gear.

Avery found his niches as well, and they drilled young Carey in terminology and lore until he could spout technical lingo with the ease of a bosun twenty years at sea. Carey also learned how to curse most wondrous-well, it must be said.

As the weeks went by, Treghues and Railsford learned that there was indeed a new order aboard—midshipmen who were useful, instead of the usual snot-nosed younkers-in-training they had grown accustomed to. There was less snarling from Treghues. In fact, there was a grudging acceptance, then a secret delight in having thoroughly salted and tarred midshipmen who could be trusted to carry out an order smartly.

Forrester, however, began to pout more, to purse his lips and squint his porcine eyes and curse them roundly. He was being threatened, and he knew it. Oh, he still had Captain Treghues’ favor, since he had long been the man’s star pupil, and their families were obviously cater-cousins. He was one of the original crew when Desperate was commissioned, and it would take an act of incredible stupidity or craven cowardice to break that bond. But when it came to something prestigious to do, his name was no longer the first on Treghues’ lips.

Nor could he hold his superior social position in their mess, because if he struck out at Carey, he had Avery and Lewrie to contend with, and he could not push his weight around with either of them. He did try, but Avery was a most inventive fellow when it came to filling the young man’s shoes with molasses during the night, nailing his chest shut when he was on deck, starting small rips in his hammock with a shaving razor that would tear open and leave his wide arse hanging out in the air by the start of the Morning Watch; substituting smaller sizes of slop trousers so that Forrester had to appear on deck with a distinctly pinched look about the middle. With all of them on deck during the day at exercises and drills, Forrester found it hard to respond with his own brand of trickery, since they all watched him close in a cabal sworn and dedicated to drive him to distraction.

Lewrie was a little more direct. When Forrester was caught trying to sabotage Avery’s chest one morning, Lewrie simply told him that if he caught him at it again he would kick him in the balls. And when he caught him trying to open his own chest the next day, Alan made good on his threat, which made Forrester crouch for a week.

After the loss of the smuggler brig, Desperate made up for it … there were still dozens of islands engaged in illicit trade and hundreds of ships crossing the Atlantic on the Trades. Not a fortnight went by that they did not send a prize crew into port with the Red Ensign flying over the striped colors of the Rebels, the flag of Spain, or the golden lilies of France.

Their prizes were small—brigs and snows, brigantines and schooners, luggers and cutters, but the value of the cargoes and bottoms lost to the American Rebellion mounted steadily. Powder, shot, carriage guns, stands of arms, crates of swords and uniforms, blankets and camp gear for Washington’s army—rice, pitch, spars, indigo, molasses and rum, log-wood, and bales of cotton—it all piled up in Admiralty Prize Courts warehouses in British hands.

To Lewrie it was as much like a legal form of piracy as any he had ever read about (with not the slightest idea that he would ever be involved), piracy with the right to have a bank account.

And while Article Eight of the Articles of War specifically stated that all contents of a seized ship were property of the Admiralty, Desperate could continually feed herself on casks of salt-meat “condemned” as unfit, firewood, water, coffee and cabin stores from the officer’s messes, “split” flour sacks, “rat-infested” bread bags, crates of wine that no one thought to list in the prize manifests, livestock that had “died,” spare cordage and sailcloth and yards and spars … everything they needed to continue cruising. They ate well, they drank well and they maintained their ship in prime condition at their enemies’ expense, and the prize money piled up for eventual payout.

After two months Desperate was becoming seriously undermanned for fighting, much less for working the ship. One at a time she had been forced to part with quartermasters and mates, bosun’s mates, both master’s mates, half a dozen hands into this prize, ten into that one, until all the midshipmen, including Carey, had been called to stand a deck watch with no supervision.

The turnover in an active frigate that spent so much time on the prowl, and had had such good luck with prizes, was nearly fifty percent a year, but it made grand chances for able men. Able seamen constantly rose to more demanding acting positions. And they could always hope that the man they replaced was not languishing ashore, waiting to be recalled, but had been appointed into another ship, leaving them the possession of their new berth and extra pay.

The man sent off could not expect to return to his own ship, and stood a good chance of rising in the service in a new vessel, but perversely, they usually preferred to return. Desperate and her ways were a known quality, with a firm but fair captain and for the most part decent officers. Who knew what the next ship would be like?

Finally, Desperate was forced to put about and head for Antigua, as miserly manned as the seediest merchantman with a skinflint for a master.