The King's Coat

Chapter 3

Their last morning had dawned grey and miserable with a fine, misty rain that swelled the running rigging until it would have difficulty passing through the blocks and sheaves. But the wind had come around to the northwest, and Ariadne was in all respects ready for the sea. The ship was still about twenty-five men short of full complement but that could not be helped in wartime. Captain Bales evidently did not have private funds for recruiting at taverns, or for paying the crimps to deliver warm bodies with all their working parts in order who would wake and discover they were in the Fleet. He must have heaved a great sigh of relief that he was in shape to sail at all, for if a captain could not gather enough men to crew his ship out of harbor, he could lose his commission (and his full pay) and some other captain would be given a chance, while the failure went on the beach at half-pay, there to remain for the rest of his natural life. Those men he had gathered had been pummeled into some semblance of a crew, through fire drills, sail drills, gunnery exercises and the like.

Alan had been disappointed that he had not been given a chance for a final run ashore. If the awful day had indeed arrived when he cut his last ties to the land, he at least wanted to remember it with a stupendous farewell, but it was not to be. The boats had been hoisted inboard and stored upside down on the boat-tier beams that spanned the center waist of the upper gun deck, so there was no excuse to be used for a last quart of ale, a last dinner or a last rattle.

“Anchor’s hove short, sir,” Lieutenant Church, their feisty little third lieutenant, called from the bows. “Up and down.”

“Get the ship underway, Mister Swift,” Captain Bales said, looking like a hung-over mastiff in the dawn light.

“Hands aloft and loose tops’ls. Stand by to hoist fores’ls.”

Lewrie joined a mob of topmen as they sprang for the shrouds and swarmed up the ratlines for the mizzen top. He was no longer dead with fear about going aloft; merely scared stiff.

Off came the harbor gaskets. Hands tailed on the jears, hoisting the yards to their full erect positions on the masts. Others tailed on the sheets to draw down the sails as they were freed, while more men stood by the braces to angle the sails to the wind as they began to draw air and fill with pressure.

There was a difference aloft. The masts were vibrating even more, the freed canvas was flapping and booming as the wind found it like a continual peal of thunder, rattling the yards and jerking them into an unpredictable motion that was like to shake hands out of the masts like autumn leaves. Then, as the topsails began to draw, the yards tilted as the ship paid off heavily to the wind, swinging through great arcs that brought cries of alarm from the newest hands, and made Lewrie moan in sheer terror as he tried to find his balance as footropes and secure holds began to slide from beneath him. The footrope he was on on the mizzen topsailyard was down at a forty-five-degree angle, and new men were skittering it until it almost tucked under the yard in their panic. Senior topmen cursed them into stillness before they all tumbled to the deck.

But the topsail was set, and no one was calling for the royals yet, so Lewrie could look forward and upward to the other masts to see hands working calmly, could look down to the huge capstan head on the upper gun deck, where a hundred men at the least trundled about in a small circle on the bars, and the clank of pawls filled the air, while on the forecastle, the strongest hands in the crew were walking away with the halyards for the stays’ls and jibs, while others of their kind drew on the sheets to bring control of the jibs, laid out almost level to the deck as they strained their great muscles to gain every inch of rope aft to the belaying pins.

Ariadne was no longer sailing sideways from the wind after paying off from her head-to-wind anchorage, but beginning to make steerage way for the harbor mouth; she had changed from a helpless pile of oak and pine and iron to a ship. Admittedly, her crew’s efforts must have raised some cruel amusement from more fortunate captains and officers, but she was under control, and unless taken suddenly aback from a capricious shift of wind, would make her way out of Portsmouth and past the Isle of Wight into the Channel without mishap. For a new crew made up of mostly landsmen, it was the best to be expected.

“Aloft there on the mizzen, set the spanker.”

Back to the mast at the crosstrees, then straight down the mast to the spanker gaff. Experienced topmen walked out the footropes to free the big driver, which was furled on the gaff and would hang loose-footed to the boom that swept over the taffrail. Lewrie had to join them and lie on his belly over the gaff. By this time, his immaculate white waistcoat, working rig trousers and jacket cuffs were turning a pale tan from the linseed oil of the spars and streaked with the tar of standing rigging, even beginning to smell like rancid cooking fat and pick up grey stains from the galley slush skimmed off boiling meat that was used to coat the running rigging. It was almost impossible for a midshipman to stay clean and presentable on a ship, and he knew he’d have the hide off his hammockman if the stains would not come out.

Finally, they were called down to the deck, with Ariadne fully underway and clumping along like a wooden clog down the Channel coast. Lewrie mopped his face with a handkerchief and made his way to the starboard gangway to watch England drift by. It did not look as if any more would be demanded of him for a while, and he now had time to take note of his hunger pangs, and the soreness of his muscles from being so tense aloft. His hands were aching from the climb down a backstay, and were red from unused exertion, but beginning to toughen up. He could rub them together and feel the difference in them from a month before. He looked about him and took note that the ship was now organized—the monumental clutter and confusion of braces, halyards, sheets, clew lines and jears were coiled or flaked into order.

The anchors were catted down up forward, the stinking anchor lines were stored away below in the cable tiers to drip their harbor filth into the bilges, wafting a dead-fish tidal smell down the deck. Except for the watch, the hands had been dismissed below. Those with touchy stomachs were being dragged to the leeward rails to “cast their accounts” into the Channel, and those that could not wait were being ordered to clean up their spew. He thought about going below out of the brisk wind and misty, cold rain, but the idea of hundreds of men who at that moment resembled “Death’s head on a mopstick” down on the lower gun deck, and were being ill in platoons, dissuaded him. He was dizzy from the motion of the ship, a lift and twist to larboard, a plunge that brought spray sluicing up over the forward bulkhead, and a jerky roll upright that did not bring the deck level.

“Mister Swift, I’ll have a first reef in the courses,” Captain Bales said. Seconds later all hands were called, but the mizzenmast had no lower course, merely a cro’jack yard to lend power to the braces and hold the clews of the mizzen tops’l down, so he could sit this one out. He went aft to the quarterdeck and stood by the larboard rail with the afterguard should he be needed to trim the braces. He could see Ashburn standing with the first lieutenant, pleased as punch to be underway, who turned and gave him a wink when Swift was too busy to notice. Lewrie became fascinated watching the water cream bone white down the leeward side, just feet away from him with the ship at a good angle of heel. The hull groaned and creaked as before, but now Ariadne also made a continual hiss as she turned the ocean to foam, and made an irregular surf roar as she met an oncoming wave.

There were ships coming up-Channel in a steady stream with the wind on their quarters, and Alan had to admit they made a brave sight to see, heeled over and rocking slowly, and he wondered if Ariadne made much the same picture to them.

“Lewrie, quit skylarking and keep your eyes inboard,” Lieutenant Harm snapped at him as he headed for the ladder down to the waist. Harm was making good on his promise to keep a chary eye on him, and being such a surly Anglo-Irish bog trotter, was eager to find any fault in him.

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie answered brightly. Cheerfulness seemed to upset Lieutenant Harm very much, so Lewrie made it a point to be as happy and eager as possible around him.

“Mister Lewrie?” Lieutenant Swift called, “Come here.”

“Aye aye, sir?” Lewrie doffed his hat.

“I watched you on the mizzen. You did that right manfully enough, and you’re too old to be wasted on the mizzenmast. See me in my quarters and I’ll move you on the watch lists and quarter bills. I think we’ll move one of the new lads to your place and you may serve on the mainmast.”

“Aye aye, sir.” He secretly dreaded that, for the mainmast was much taller, had longer and heavier yards, carried the main course and the largest tops’l, was the place where studding booms had to be rigged in light airs, and meant a quantum leap in work. The mizzen was manned by the oldest topmen, or the very newest and clumsiest, the nearly ruptured and the ones with foreheads as big as a hen. Some eleven- or twelve-year-old sneak was going to get a soft touch, and he was going to work his young ass off. Still, it did have advantages. He would no longer be in Lieutenant Harm’s division or watch, but would get to serve under Lieutenant Kenyon, the second officer, who was considered much fairer and so much more polite.

Lewrie went forward to the base of the mainmast, where Kenyon and a bosun’s mate were chatting and pointing at something aloft. And when Alan told him of the transfer he welcomed him to the starboard watch most pleasantly.

“Very glad to have you with us, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon said. “Though I am sure you realize that much more work is involved. Still, I can use such a well-set-up young fellow like yourself.”

“Aye, Mister Kenyon. And I may learn the faster,” Alan answered, thinking that it never hurt to piss down a superior’s back. Actually, he would be working much the same duties in any watch or subdivision on deck or aloft, for the watches rotated equally each four hours, using the much shorter Dog Watches in late afternoon to make sure that the same men did not have to work two nights running, and everyone turned up at 4:00 A.M. to begin the ship’s working day, washing and scraping decks and standing dawn Quarters, so there wasn’t much to choose, really.

“Well said, Mister Lewrie. We shall make a tarpaulin sailor of you yet, though the bosun despairs of your ropework. You are not seasick yet?”

“Well … no, sir,” Alan replied, realizing with a shock that he wasn’t. He was clumsy as a new-foaled colt on the tilting deck, and he staggered from one handhold to another, but the ship’s motion did not affect him overly. All he had in his stomach was a raging hunger.

How disgusting, he thought; I’m getting used to this!

“When do I make the changeover, sir, from one watch to the other?”

“Ship’s day begins at noon, at the taking of the sights for our positions,” Kenyon said. “I’d suggest you go see Lieutenant Swift as soon as he’s had his breakfast. Then show up for the Second Dog Watch.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Oh, by the way, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon said, calling him back with a drawling voice. “We have a man missing from my division. He has run. Went out a gunport last night, probably. There’s a rumor he was smuggled money and some street clothing. Heard anything about it?”

“Who was it, sir?” Lewrie said, having a sneaking suspicion of exactly who it was, and where the money had come from.

“Harrison, one of my main topmen. Had a wife and family in the port, so I’m told.”

“He was in one of my boat crews, sir. Had to hunt him down about two weeks ago, but he swore he was only taking a piss behind some crates and barrels,” Alan carefully replied.

“Hmm, that was after you had stood the boat crew to a pint?”

“Uh, yes, sir, I did see a woman with two children but I didn’t connect them with him.”

“Well, you weren’t to know. What I regret is that he was no green hand, but a prime topman. He’s probably halfway inland by now. There are some hands in this ship you can trust with your life and your sister’s honor, and you’ll find out who they are quick enough. There are also some men I wouldn’t approach with a loaded pistol. Since you’ll be closer to them than I, it is up to you to discover the shirkers and the ones who work chearly.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You can’t treat them all like scum, Mister Lewrie, though they are halfway scum when we first get them. Neither can you be soft on ’em. Someday, you may have to order a great many men not only to do something dangerous, but maybe tell a whole crew to go die for you,” Kenyon went on at some length. “I do not expect my midshipmen to be popular with the men, nor do I wish them to be little tyrants, either. The men respect a taut hand, a man who’s firm but fair, and a man who’s consistent in his punishments and his praise, and in the standards he calls for. Don’t court favor; don’t drive them all snarling for your blood. If you are so eager to learn the faster, as you put it, there are good lessons to be had from the older hands. I suggest you find them.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie said with a hearty affirmative shake of his head, though he regarded it much like a lecture from a travelling Italian surgeon who might see salubrious benefits for mankind in the cholera.

“Now be off with you. I can hear the wolf in your stomach in full cry, Mister Lewrie.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

* * *

Ariadne butted her way through the Channel chop until she was out past Land’s End, and began to work hard in the great rollers of the unfettered Atlantic, and up into the Irish Sea to meet her duty.

It was not blockade work for her; that was for the largest 3rd Rates that mounted more guns. Since Ariadne was much older and lighter armed, her lot was convoy duties. She met her first convoy off the Bristol Channel; forty or so merchant vessels under guard by Ariadne and a 4th Rate fifty-gun cruiser named Dauntless, and if she was anything to go by, it was going to be devilish miserable work; Dauntless was sanded down to the bare wood on her bows, and her sides as high as the upper gun deck ports were stained with salt, and her heavy weather suit of sails was a chessboard of patches of older tan and new white.

After getting the convoy into a semblance of order, Ariadne took the stern position and let Dauntless lead out past Ireland for New York in the Americas. The weather was blowing half a gale when they began, and the bottom fell out of the glass within forty-eight hours. Ariadne rode like an overloaded cutter, pitching bow high, then plunging with her stern cocked up in the air, rolling her guts out and shipping cold water over the gangways by the ton. The hatches were battened down and belowdecks became a frowsty, reeking hell where it was impossible to get away from several nauseous stinks, impossible to cook a hot meal, impossible to sit down in safety, impossible to get warm or, once having been soaked right through on deck, to find a speck of dry clothing for days on end. Even in a hammock, one was slung about so roughly it was impossible to relax enough to really sleep. Gunnery exercises were cancelled, and sail drill became sail-saving, as lines parted, sails were torn or simply burst in the middle and flogged themselves to ribbons of flax or heavy cotton. With new rigging, it was a constant war to keep the tension necessary to support the masts as new rope stretched.

A watch could not pass without all hands being summoned to reef in or totally brail up the sails, cut away those that had blown out and manhandle new ones aloft and lash them to the yards and their controlling ropes.

“I want to die,” Alan kept repeating to himself as the afternoon wore on on their tenth day of passage. He was soaked to the skin, half-frozen, and his tarred canvas tarpaulin was turning into a stiff suit of waterlogged armor that he swore weighed twenty pounds more than when he had put it on. He had not eaten in three days and had lived on rum heated over a candle. He honestly could not have choked anything down that could possibly scratch on the way back up.

“I hate this ship,” he screamed into the wind, sure he could not be heard over the howling roar. “I hate this Navy, I hate the ocean. And I hate you, too. Rolston…”

Rolston stood nearby at the quarterdeck nettings, looking down at the upper gun deck, a slight smile on his cocky face.

“You love this shitten life, don’t you, you little bastard?” Only the wind heard him. The ship gave a more pronounced heave as a following wave smashed into the transom, rolled heavily to larboard, and Alan dropped to the deck, his feet ripped from beneath him. He slid like a hog on ice along the deck that ran with water until he fetched up against coiled gun tackle and thumped his shoulder into a gun-truck wheel.

“Goddamn it,” he howled, looking straight at Captain Bales by the wheel binnacle. Bales nodded at him with a vague expression, not knowing what the hell he had said.

“Resting?” Lieutenant Swift boomed near to him.

“‘No, sir,” he shouted back, hoping Swift hadn’t been close enough to hear what he had said, though a full flogging could not hurt much worse than being bounced around like this.

“Then get on yer feet,” Swift barked in a voice that could have carried forward in a full hurricane. Alan scrambled to obey and clung to the nearest pin rail, trying to rub his shoulder where he had smacked it.

“Go forward and check on the lashings on the boat tier,” Swift ordered.

“Aye aye, sir,” he screamed back, inches from the officer’s nose. “Bosun’s Mate!”

The duty bosun’s mate, Ream, could not hear a word he said, so he took advantage of the ship’s roll upright to dash over to him and cling to the man as the ship rolled to larboard once more and threatened to take him back where he had started.

“Come with me,” he yelled into the man’s cupped ear. “Boat tiers!”

Alan muttered curses at everything in general all the way along the starboard gangway, clinging to anything that looked substantial. Ream fetched a couple of hands along the way, and Alan took notice that Ream and both hands were also moving their lips in a canticle of woe and anger, probably directed at Alan, but he could have cared less at that point.

They reached the thick timbers that spanned the waist of the upper gun deck between the gangways and stood studying the lashings on the stored boats that were nestled fore-and-aft on the massive beams.

“Chafing,” Ream shouted into each ear, pointing at the ropes that were wearing away slowly before their eyes each time the ship did a particularly violent roll and pitch. “Tell the first lieutenant.”

Alan made his way back aft, getting freshly drenched in waves of spume and spray until he could stagger to the mizzen weather chains, where Swift stood, one arm hooked through the shrouds.

“Chafing, sir,” he shouted.

“Rolston!” Swift bellowed. “All hands on deck!”

Rolston’s mouth moved but no sounds were to be heard as he relayed the message, and in moments men began to boil up from below and muster on the upper gun deck below them.

“Rolston, take windward with Mister Kenyon,” Swift ordered. “And, Mister Lewrie, go to looard with Mister Church. Oakum pads and baggy-wrinkle on old lines, and new lashings doubled up.”

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, knuckling his forehead. Shit, new words again. Baggy-wrinkle? Sounds like my scrotum about now.

He went forward with their little third officer and tried to explain what was desired to each man, but Church simply roared out one command, and everyone fell to with a sense of purpose that left Alan standing about.

“Go keep an eye on ’em,” Church barked, shoving Alan toward the boat-tiers. He realized that he would have to scramble out onto the timbers to the upturned boats, and that timber could not be more than two feet wide and deep, with absolutely no safety line of any kind.

He took a deep breath, waited until the ship rolled about as much upright as she was going to, and ran out onto one of the timbers. The ship slammed her bows into a wave as the stern lifted once more, the beakhead buried in foam, and she lurched as if she had been punched right in the mouth. The beam seemed to dance out from beneath him, but Alan was close enough to fling himself forward and grab onto one of the lashings that stood out from the nearest craft, the jolly-boat. One leg dangled into the waist, but he had made it by the merest whisker.

He scrambled up on top of the jolly-boat with the help of one of the older hands and clung to her keel with a death grip. The man smiled back at him, teeth gleaming white as foam in his face.

Don’t tell me this cretin enjoys this, Alan thought …

“New lashin’s first, er baggy-wrinkle, sir?” The man asked, coming close enough to carry the smell of his body.

Alan clung tight as Ariadne rolled once more to larboard. He felt more than heard the grating as more than two tons of wooden boat shifted against the tiers to the leeward side—the boat he was sitting on.

“New lashings!” he decided quickly, bobbing his head nervously.

“Aye aye,” the man yelled, then scrambled over to the next boat, with a grace that Alan could only envy, and shout something to the rest of his party, then hopped back over to Alan.

“How do we do it?” Alan asked when the wind gusted a little softer than normal. “I’m not too proud to ask.”

“Stap me if I know, sir, thought you did.”

And that’s the last time I am not too proud to ask, Alan promised himself as the man beamed his stupidity at him.

Alan bent over as far as he dared and studied the existing lashings, the way they threaded under the beams, crossed under like a laced-up corset and crossed over the boats.

“Give me a … bight on the forward timber,” Alan shouted. “Then make sure it’s wrapped snug in oakum or old canvas. Take it up and over the boat, under this beam we’re on, and on aft … then back forward, like … well, like a woman’s bodice is tied up, see? Double lashings this time.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Ship work on a heaving deck or shaky spar was, as Ashburn had prophesied, much like church work; it went damned slow. Alan inspected each point where the new ropes could rub on wood and had them padded and wrapped. He thumped on each bight until satisfied that they were as taut as belaying pins so there would be no play after they were finished. Lieutenant Church made his way out to him and gave him an encouraging grin, squatting on one of the boat-tiers.

Once his men had gotten the idea, Alan swung his way over to the centermost boats, the massive cutter and barge, to watch from another vantage point. He was feeling very pleased with himself, in spite of being wet as a drowned rat and aching in places where he hadn’t thought one could ache.

“Being useful?” Rolston shouted into his face, taunting him.

“Yes, damn yer eyes,” Alan shot back, and was disappointed that he had to repeat himself to be understood. His throat was almost raw with the effort of making himself heard.

“Church tell you to do that?” Rolston shouted back.

“Do what?”

“Rig new lashings before padding the old … that’s wrong.”

“What if the old ones part before you have new ones on?”

“They won’t part,” Rolston shrieked into his nose. But he didn’t look as confident as he had earlier, which prompted Alan to look at what his hands were doing. Rolston’s team was applying a single lashing without any padding or baggy-wrinkling, and were loosening the frayed lashings to pad them.

“Then what the hell are we doing out here?” Alan demanded. “Did Kenyon tell you to do it that way?”

Rolston looked away.

Alan made his way farther to starboard over the barge to the captain’s brightly painted and gilt-trimmed gig, which was being lashed down in much the fashion that Alan had thought correct, providing him with a tingle of satisfaction. He waved to Lieutenant Kenyon, who clambered out to join him. But once out there Kenyon took one look at the way the two heaviest boats were being treated and frowned.

“Rolston, you young fool,” he shouted. “Leave those lashings be!”

“Sir?” Rolston cringed, not able to believe he had done wrong.

At that moment Shirke came from aft to request some top-men to go aloft and secure a corner of the mizzen tops’l that had blown out her leeward leach line.

Alan looked at Rolston, gave him a large smile, then went back to his own hands, who were busily doing things all seamanlike.

He climbed over the keel of the biggest and heaviest boat, the barge, and was about to traverse the short distance to the jolly boat when he felt the barge shift underneath him. A frayed lashing gave way and came snaking over past his head with the force of a coach whip. It struck the jolly-boat and cracked like a gunshot, leaving a mark in the paint.

“Jump for it,” he yelled, wondering if he could do the same.

There followed a series of groans and gunshots as other lashings parted under the tremendous weight they had restrained, and he was on a slide along the timbers toward the jolly-boat as the barge came free.

One of his men had been sitting on the boat-tier between the two boats. He turned to look at the weight that was about to smear him like a cockroach between a boot and a floor, and screamed wordlessly. Alan leaped over him, one foot touching the man’s posterior, and flung himself across the keel of the jolly-boat. The man grabbed at him and hauled away, which pulled Alan down off the keel and down the rain-slick bottom of the upturned boat. Using Alan as a ladder, he got out of the way and disappeared over the far side.

The ship now rolled back upright for a moment, snubbed as her bow dug deep into a wave, and came up like a seal blowing foam. The barge shifted back to the starboard side, making a funereal drumming boom against the cutter.

Rolston came over the top of the barge to check for damage as Alan hoisted himself out of harm’s way, just in time to meet Lieutenant Church and the panicked working party. The ship tucked her stern into the air once more, rolled to larboard, and Rolston fell between the barge and the jolly-boat. He was face-down on the boat-tier as the barge began to slide down on him, a leg dangling on either side of the thick beam.

Wonderful, Alan thought inanely; I’m about to see a human meat patty and it couldn’t happen to a nicer person …

Then, without really thinking or calculating the risk, he planted his feet on the boat-tier, leaped forward and grabbed Rolston as he flung himself off the tier to drop to the upper gun deck, which was about eight feet below them. He had the satisfaction of landing on Rolston, who landed on a thick coil of cordage at the foot of the mainmast. Overhead, the barge slammed into the jolly-boat to the sound of splintering timber.

Now why in hell did I do that? he wondered, trying to get his lungs to work again after taking an elbow in the pit of his stomach. For a moment he thought he was dying, until with a spasm his lungs began to function again and he could suck in fresh air. As for Rolston, he was stretched out like a dead man, but Alan could see his chest heaving.

“Merciful God, are you alright, young sir?” Lieutenant Roth asked him, kneeling down by both of them.

“I believe so, sir,” Alan said, trying to sit up, which was about all he thought he could manage at the moment. Roth hoisted Rolston up in his arms and slapped him a couple of times, which cheered Alan a bit. In fact he wished that he could do that to Rolston himself!

Rolston rolled his eyes and groaned loudly, trying to shrink away from that hard palm.

“Stupid gits,” Lieutenant Kenyon shouted down from above. “Get your miserable arse up here. Now.”

“Aye, sir,” Alan shouted back, thinking it was a summons for him, as usual.

“Both of you,” Kenyon added.

Lieutenant Swift and the captain were there on the gangway by the time they had ascended to that level by the forecastle ladders and gone aft to join the officers.

“Silly cack-handed, cunny-thumbed whip-jack of a sailor you are, sir,” Swift howled, spitting saliva into the wind in his fury. “A canting-crew imitation tar would know better than that. There’s a jolly-boat stove in and the barge damaged as well because of you.”

“Sorry, sir,” Alan said along with Rolston.

“Oh, not you, Lewrie, at least not this once; it’s Rolston I’m talking to.” Swift’s face was turning red as a turkey cock’s wattles. “Get back to work, Mister Lewrie.”

“Oh, aye aye, sir,” said a surprised Alan, not on the carpet for the first time since he had joined Ariadne.

“If it wasn’t for Lewrie you’d be pressed flat as a flounder, and good riddance to bad rubbish…” Swift was going on as Alan scrambled back across the boat-tiers to leeward, out of earshot.

I should have let him get mashed, damme if I shouldn’t have, Alan thought. But now I’ve done something right for a change, and somebody else is getting grief.

* * *

An hour later, they finished lashing down the boats and by then the watch had changed. Alan went down to the lower gun deck and sniffed at the odors of sickness and bodies. Even as bad as the weather was topside, he almost contemplated going back on deck rather than stand the atmosphere down here, but he peeled off the sodden tarpaulin and began to work his way through the swinging hammocks toward the after-ladders to the orlop. He passed the junior midshipmen’s mess, where there was a single glim burning. The master gunner Mr. Tencher had a stone bottle by his elbow on the table, secured by fiddles, and was humming to himself.

“Lewrie,” he whispered, not wanting to wake up his sleeping berth mates. “Want a wet?”

“God, yes, Mister Tencher, sir,” Alan croaked in gratitude. He seated himself on a chest and locked his elbows into place on the table so he wouldn’t slide about. The gummy wetness of his clothing that had been soaked in salt-water for hours almost glued him to the dry wood.

“Cider-And, boy,” Tencher promised, pouring him a battered tin mug full of something alcoholic-smelling.

“And what, Mister Tencher?” Alan asked, sniffing at it as it was handed over to him.

“Good Blue Ruin, Holland gin.” Tencher laughed softly, his leathery face crinkling. In the fitful light of the glim he looked as if he had tar and gunpowder permanently ground into his wrinkles.

“God in Heaven,” Alan choked after a sip. He had ordered Cider-And in country inns and had usually gotten rum or mulled wine as the additive. Plus, he was never partial to gin, but he took another sip, grateful for the hot flush in his innards.

“Hear ya done somethin’ right tonight, Mister Lewrie.”

“It was nice not to be caned or shouted at for a change, Mister Tencher,” Alan said, tears coming to his eyes from the fumes of the gin.

“No gunner’s daughter fer you, eh?”

“Until tomorrow.” Alan gave Tencher the ghost of a smile. The man had run him ragged, trying to pound the art of handling artillery into him, and had had him caned more than once when he didn’t have the right answer. He could not feel exactly comfortable with Tencher but he meant to be civil if the man was going to trot out free drink.

“Rolston should owe you a tot fer saving his life, ya know,” Tencher said, filling his own mug again and taking a deep quaff.

“Well, we shall see,” Alan said, forcing himself to choke down the rest of the mug. He knew that if he made it to his hammock without passing out he was going to be a lot luckier than he had any right to be. “Thankee kindly, Mister Tencher, that was potent stuff. I shall sleep like a stone if they don’t call all hands again.”

“Don’t mention it.” Tencher winked. “Earned it.”

Alan made his way out of the mess, clinging to the top of the half partitions toward the double ladders. Someone took him by the arm in the dark and spun him to a stop.

“Lewrie.”

“Rolston?” he asked, thinking he recognized the voice.

“Think you’re a clever cock, do you?” It was Rolston, alright.

“I’ll not let you make me look ridiculous like that again—”

“You don’t need any help from me to be ridiculous.” Alan tried to judge just where Rolston’s head might be so that when he hit him, as he felt he soon must, he could get in a good shot.

“I’ll settle you.” Rolston’s voice was shaking.

Alan could barely make out a face, but he knew the fellow must be almost weeping with rage by then. “I’ll square your yards for you for good and all—”

“No, you won’t,” Alan said, prying the hand from his arm and pressing it back away from him against Rolston’s best effort with an ease he would not have had weeks before. “And if you lay hands on me once more I’ll kick your skinny arse up between your ears, right where it belongs.”

“Watch and see if I don’t get you, Lewrie.”

“Watch out for yourself.” Alan chuckled. “I might not save your miserable life next time … farmer.”

Alan took a few cautious steps toward the coaming of the hatch, wary of a sudden shove from Rolston that could send him crashing to the hard deck below, ready to dive flat and let Rolston go arse-over-tit instead. But Mister Tencher came out of the mess area with his glim and a handful of scrap paper for a trip to the warrant officer’s heads in the roundhouse before the focs’l, and Rolston had to turn on his heel and go forward to his own berth space. Alan, relieved, went below to his own, where he slid out of his wet dripping clothes and sat on a chest to towel himself down in the dark.

His skin was burning with saltwater rash and he could feel the chafe in crotch and limbs, where boils were erupting from the constant immersion and the sandpaper effect of wet wool. He rolled into his hammock nude, wearing a blanket wrapped about him like a cocoon. He tried to inventory what he had dry to wear but was so sleepy, exhausted, battered and drunk that he soon fell into a swoonlike sleep, dreaming once more of getting everyone who had been in any way responsible for his current predicament in the Navy all together in one place, and roasting them over slow fires.

* * *

Two days later, once the weather had moderated, they only found twenty ships of their convoy at first light. Perhaps fifteen more came straggling back into sight over the next few days. It was likely that the five missing merchantmen would never be seen by anyone again. At first Alan was a bit irked that no one said anything about his saving Rolston, then realized that it was just one of those things that was, after all, expected from a midshipman or a sailor, with no thanks needed or expected.

What a shitten outlook they have in this Navy, he sighed.