The King`s Commission

Chapter 3

"'They are ingenious, witty, cunning, and deceitful; very faithful indeed to their own tribes, but privately dishonest, and mischievous to the Europeans and Christians. Their being honest and harmless to each other may be through fear of resentment and reprisal-which is unavoidable in case of any injury.'" Alan read half aloud from a volume that McGilliveray had recommended to him, James Adair's History of the American Indians, published in London in 1776. "'They are very close and retentive of their secrets; never forget injuries; revengeful of blood, to a degree of distraction. They are timorous, and consequently, cautious; very jealous of encroachments from their Christian neighbors; and likewise, content with freedom, in every turn of fortune. They are possessed of a strong comprehensive judgement, can form surprisingly crafty schemes, and conduct them with equal caution, silence and address; they admit none but distinguished warriors and beloved men into their councils.'"

"Well, that let's me out," Captain Cashman of the light company of the 104th Regiment of Foot laughed easily as they sat at table their second day out from Kingston.

"I quite look forward to our meeting them," Cowell said. Without his wig, and with his shirt collar open, he looked like a balding club waiter out on holiday. "They are an admirable people, much abused by contact with the white man. As the French philosopher Rousseau said, they have a natural nobility. Read on, Mister Lewrie, do."

"'They are slow but persevering in their undertakings'-Sorry, Mister Cowell, but negotiations may take longer than you think if that's true-'commonly temperate in eating, but excessively immoderate in drinking.' Hmm, sounds like half my relatives. 'They often transform themselves by liquor into the likeness of mad foaming bears.'"

"Can't take someone like that to Covent Garden," Cashman observed.

"Ah, here's the best part. 'The women in general are of a mild, amiable, soft disposition; exceedingly modest in their behavior, and very seldom noisy either in the single or married state.' Hmm, well, maybe it's not the best part at that."

"Adair is amusing," McGilliveray said, looking up from carving his salt beef. "He got that part wrong, at least among the Muskogee."

"Oh, are the women better than he said?" Alan asked.

"Once married, they are subservient to their husbands. That doesn't mean they cannot nag, or raise their voices. Frankly, the older they get, the more they resemble Billingsgate fishmonger women. Very earthy." McGilliveray gave them a tight smile.

"What we're interested in, my dear sir, is what sort of rattle they are," Cashman drawled.

"Lay hands on a married Muskogee, any married Indian woman, and her male relatives will hang you up on the pole and butcher you for three days. One does not even cast a covetous eye on them, for fear of retribution. It's a blasphemy."

"You mean we can't even bloody look at 'em? Here, Lewrie, this is a rum duty," said Cashman, frowning.

"You may notice them, but you can't ogle them, or follow after them, or try to talk to them. If they're in their monthly courses, you won't see them at all." McGilliveray went on sternly lecturing, as he had since he had come aboard. "They hide themselves away from their families and their village, and anything they touch is polluted. A man who looks on a woman in her courses, gets downstream of one, has to go through severe purification rituals to restore his spirits."

"Don't sound like they run to whores, neither." Cashman winked at Lewrie, who was as tired of McGilliveray's pontifications as anyone else aboard.

"No, we don't, and you're becoming tiresome, Captain Cashman," McGilliveray said, controlling his temper, which Alan had just read was supposed to be "immoderate."

"Seriously, Mister McGilliveray, we're going to have seamen and soldiers running about who haven't had anything better than a harbor drab or a toothless camp follower since their last payday. There must be some release, surely. The whole tribe can't live in chastity belts."

"Indian men do, you know," McGilliveray said smugly. "For the good of the harvest, the planting of the crops, good fortune in hunting, success in battle, when someone dies. That's why sexual relations are so strictured. Also, how do you control the urge to adultery among so many people in such a small village unless the whole thing becomes some form of magic ritual?"

He gave them a deprecating smile to show that he was human, which did nothing to convince either Lewrie or Cashman that he hadn't been got at by Baptists.

"At least, once they become warriors, they do, and once they wed. Before, there is allowed a certain license. Among the younger women as well. They can be rather… enthusiastic about men before they wed."

"Well, how do you tell the difference, then?" Cashman demanded. "And what do you do, bring her a plucked chicken? Flip tuppence across the fire? Tell 'em to wash the mehtar's daughter?"

"The what?" Lewrie goggled.

"Sorry, I was in the East Indies once. It was a lot easier there, let me tell you. Cheaper too, if you like nautch girls with bums and legs like farrier sergeants," Cashman said irrepressibly.

"There's a lot of ceremony in village life," McGilliveray told them, sipping at small-beer, which was all he would allow himself. "At each ceremony, there's dancing in circles around a central fire, and all the unmarried women sort of cluster together and show off their finery. I shall point them out to you. If they fancy you, you'll know it right off. They run things, long as they're single."

"And if Indian men restrict themselves as you say, they must have to make up for lost time after they're married," Cashman said, grinning. "So if she's there, she isn't polluted, and if she fancies a tumble, she'll come over and flash her poonts?"

"It's a bit more subtle than that, Captain," McGilliveray said with a sigh of the truly long-suffering. "Believe me, you'll know."

"I should think it best if we forswore conjugal relations with the natives," Cowell said, a bit prim. "It would be easiest."

"Hardly possible, I'm afraid, sir," Alan stated. "You haven't seen my sailors a'rut." Or me, Alan qualified to himself. "And if the young unmarried females are so eager for it, I doubt a troop of saints could hold out for long."

"You'll have your rut, sir," McGilliveray snapped. "Speaking further of pollution, I adjure you and your men from making water into any body of water. Running water is sacred, you see, where some of our gods dwell. You don't piss in it, or spit into it, or pass excreta into it. No dumping of kitchen scraps, anything like that. You do that on dry land where it won't drain into running waters. Bury it."

"Well, we can go have a wash, can't we?" Cashman asked.

"Oh yes. In fact, if you don't wash daily, first thing in the morning, they'll look on you strangely. It's our way. But, never get downstream of a woman. It's best to conform to our customs for as long as you are with my people, to ease the negotiations, you see. With so many distinguished chiefs gathered together, the slightest upset can make them leery of the whole thing and then they'll not side with us."

"When in Rome, do as the Romans," Cowell suggested. "Now Mister McGilliveray, tell them about the missionary work among the Muskogean. I mind you said once back in London, with the bishop of Chicester as I remember, that only a few of your people have accepted the faith."

"I should be delighted to hear of it, sir, but I believe that Captain Cashman and I are already due on deck," Alan said, referring to his pocket watch. "Musket drill, you know. If you gentlemen shall excuse us? Please stay and indulge yourselves. You have but to ask of my man Cony."

"Jesus bloody Christ!" Cashman sighed after they had got on deck. "I've about had it with that blackamoor. Like being lectured to by a mastiff. A very unfunny mastiff, at that. Sarn't! Trot the buggers out for musketry! And if Navy rum is too tasty for proper aimin', then maybe a Navy cat'll suit 'em better!"

"Sir!"

Cashman was indeed, as Lieutenant Colonel Peacock had said, eccentric. His speech was littered with Army slang, East Indian Hindi expressions, and a pungent sprinkling of profanity that would make a bosun's mate green with envy. He had come aboard armed to the teeth, wearing an infantry-man's short, brass-hilted hanger instead of a small-sword, four pistols stuck into his sash and a pair of converted saddle holsters, a short fusil slung over one shoulder and a French musketoon over the other.

In a world where officers were to be fashion-plates, and the rankers usually clad in rags, Cashman looked as if he had darned his uniform together since he had bought his first set of colors, and once aboard ship, had doffed half of that.

"Quartermaster, the keg paid out astern?" Alan asked.

"Aye aye, zir. Hoff a cable," the blonde hulk named Svensen told him. "Full hundret faddom line, zir."

"Let's get to it, Sarn't."

The men of the light company split off into skirmishing pairs at the stern rail. They pulled their weapons back to half-cock, bit off the twist end of their first cartouches, and primed pans. Poured powder down the barrels, wadded the waxed paper cartridges around the lead balls, and rammed them home, keeping the rammer free in their off hands instead of returning them to their proper place under the barrels.

The first rank fired, raising froth around the towed keg at one hundred yards range, and stepped back to start reloading while their rear-rank partners stepped up to deliver their shots, not in volley, but within a few seconds of each other.

"I like the fusil, if I can't have a jager rifle," Cashman said, tap-loading his charge and snapping the weapon up to his shoulder. "No one knows exactly why, but a short barrel is just as accurate as a long one."

Bam! And down came the piece, drawn back to half-cock on the way to loading position. Alan nodded as he saw that Cashman had chipped the keg. which, half-submerged, would be about the size of a reclining man at one hundred yards.

"With a smooth-bore"-Cashman continued to talk as he bit at his cartridge, blackening his lips-"it's more a problem of obturation, you see, how snug the ball fits in the barrel."

Tap went the fusil on the deck to settle the powder. The right hand had rolled the ball and paper wad together and stuck it in the muzzle as it came up from being rapped. The rammer came up like a fugleman's cane on parade, and everything was shoved home snug with one firm push. The rammer came out of the muzzle and spun in Cashman's left-hand fingers as he brought the weapon up, pulling it back to full-cock. A quick breath, and a second shot rang out, the second in half a minute.

"No parade ground bumf for us, see," Cashman said, even as he was making a fresh cartouche appear as if by magic. "Just get it done. Three, maybe four rounds a minute, fast as your Ferguson breech-loader. Here."

Alan took the fusil. It was a lighter, shorter musket, just a little longer than a cavalryman's musketoon, with a barrel of about twenty-five inches. As Alan loaded for himself, Cashman went on about it.

"Smooth-bore, takes a bayonet, heavy enough stock to knock some poor bastard into next week, but only.54 caliber. Lighter ball carriers farther with a standard Brown Bess powder measure. And if you use the waxed cartridge as a greased patch, like you would in a rifled piece, the bugger carries farther and straighter. Battalion companies with the Brown Bess average eighty or ninety yards for a killing shot, but the fusil will go a bit farther. One hundred twenty, perhaps one hundred fifty yards. Nothing like a rifle. But it only drops about ten inches in two hundred yards. Frankly, I couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a carronade at two hundred yards."

Alan brought up the weapon, pulled it back to full-cock, took aim and squeezed the trigger, and was pleased to see his ball raise a splash just short of the keg.

"Load, quick now! The Indians are breathin' on you!"

"Respectable kick," Alan said, fumbling through the loading procedure and taking a lot longer than Cashman or his men did.

"Lighter piece, same powder charge as a regular's musket. Masters, you poxy spastic, pick up your bloody rammer, man! Don't drop it!"

"Take 'is name, sir?" the sergeant offered.

"No, take his pulse. See if he's dead," Cashman quipped, and his men laughed easily.

After half an hour, with their mouths and faces blackened by the powder they had eaten and the flash from the pans, they took a short rest while the keg was paid out to one hundred fifty yards.

Alan had finally managed to get off three shots a minute, and had hit the keg twice in that period, though the fusil had pummeled his shoulder almost numb. He walked over to the water butt and dipped the long, narrow sipper down through the small scuttle to draw out a measure.

"Your men seem to know what they're about, I must say," Alan commented.

"They're damned good, aye. Best thing about the bloody 104th Regiment," Cashman spat, wiping his mouth and face clean and making a face at the taste of nitre on his lips. "A war-raised single-battalion unit. No home depot, you see. Peacock raised it himself. Tory patriot, don't ya know. Cheap at the price, too, them that survived the fevers and the slave revolt campaignin'. They'll deactivate us, if they even remember we're bloody here, soon's the bloody treaty's signed."

"You were part of it, originally?"

"Hell, no. My light company's all that's left of a fusilier battalion. Got tagged onto them after most of us went under to Yellow Jack. Came off the ship four hundred seventy-seven men and officers strong, and two weeks later, we made roughly two companies. Now I've barely forty left. These are the best of 'em, though it was hard to choose."

"Lieutenant Colonel Peacock and Captain Eccles seemed a little put off that I suggested light infantry, or that you would be the one to go on this adventure of ours," Alan said smiling.

"This was your doing?" Cashman brightened. "Blessings upon ye, then. Anything to get away from those buggers. What did they say?"

"That you were eccentric, but a hard fighter."

"I'm not their sort," Cashman admitted chearly. "Thank God. I'm amazed they reckoned me a good soldier. I didn't know they'd recognize one if he crawled up and bit 'em on the arse. Beggars can't be choosers, though, and they needed a light company to flesh 'em out. If they had a choice, I'd not have been able to purchase a commission with 'em. I was only a lieutenant with my old battalion. A captaincy was a brevet promotion, but if the loot's good, or the cards run right, I might be able to purchase a real captaincy one of these days."

"Back Home?"

"Hell, no. A captaincy costs near twenty-five hundred pounds for a good regiment," Cashman chuckled. "No, unless God passes a miracle, I'll be soldiering in cheaper places. Here in the Fever Islands, back in the East Indies, where nobody in his right mind would want to go. A regiment like that's a buyer's market. Cost me only three hundred pounds to become an ensign when word got out we were going to Madras. People were 'changing or selling out like the hounds of hell were at their heels. But, if it weren't for the loot, I'd have never had enough for a lieutenancy in the Fusiliers. One way or another, the old Regiment'll have to take me back soon as I get home, and when the Army's reduced, there'll be a chance to buy up."

"Thank God the Navy doesn't go for purchased commissions or commands." Alan shivered, thinking how menial he would be that instant if he had had to depend on his father spending money to get rid of him. "Why didn't you give the Fleet a try?"

"Fourth son." Cashman shrugged. "And damn-all inheritance for any of the others. Already had the future farmer, a sailor, and a churchman, and I had a choice of clerking in Ipswich or going for a soldier. Ever been in Ipswich? Last time I was home, I thought I'd freeze my prick off, and that was in summer, mind. And Suffolk's pretty damned dull any time of the year. I love England well as any man, but there's something about the tropics, if you can survive in 'em. At least it's warm, and not too many churchmen breathing down your neck with their 'shalt-nots.'"

"What do you think of this mission of ours?" Alan asked him.

"Frankly? I think it's a rum'un," Cashman whispered, though the sound of his fusiliers banging away at the keg would have covered his doubts from the men. "If we want Florida back so bloody bad, why not put a couple of good regiments together from the Jamaica garrison and make it a proper landing? Oh, aye, take along some pretties to buy off the locals, maybe form some temporary levies like East Indian sepoys. From what I hear, these Creeks'd make good soldiers if somebody took the effort to train 'em. Good skirmishers and woodland fighters, proper armed. Hell and damnation, I'd like to have all my company with me, if that won't serve. We're too thin on the ground to suit me."

"Bring the rest of your present regiment?"

"Peacock and them?" Cashman laughed sourly. "They'd get themselves butchered. Less'n two hundred of 'em, anyway, and not worth a tinker's damn when it comes to skirmishing. Turn that lot loose in the woods and they'd make so much noise, and get so lost, any Indian in the world'd have 'em for his breakfast."

"My sailors won't be much better, I'm afraid. Cony and some of the party coming with us are country lads, one jump ahead of the magistrate for poaching, but nothing like what one needs against Indians and Dago troops who know the country," Alan confessed.

"Here, you sound like you've been around before. Served ashore, have you?" Cashman asked.

"At Yorktown. We escaped," Alan told him with a touch of pride. "With a light company of Loyalists from the Carolinas."

"Whew," Cashman whistled. "So, how do you feel about this trip of ours?"

"I'm a touch leery, too. Oh, it sounded grand when they offered it to us, and we couldn't say 'no,' anyway," Alan told him with a shrug. "Supper with our admiral, being admitted to high plans, you know. But my captain over there is worried, and now he's got me doing it."

"You should."

"I don't like leaving this sloop in the swamps, at the mercy of those Indians," Alan went on. "What happens if McGilliveray, or White Turtle or whatever, can't convince them to keep their hands off while we're gone? From what I've read, an Indian thinks it's his duty in life to lift from strangers whatever's not nailed down."

"Who says we have to leave things laying about to tempt them?" Cashman replied with a twinkle in his eyes. "You know that once we separate from your ship yonder, you and I are equally in command of this mess. You of the sloop and the longboat, I of the land party. Cowell is no soldier, he's a London paper-pusher with dreams of adventure. And this McGilliveray is only an advisor. They can't order us to do a bloody thing. What do you want to do?"

"I'd like to send San Ildefonso off to sea under my quartermaster," Alan said after a long moment of thinking. "There's no reason to leave a large, easily discoverable ship in the swamps. The crew could sicken on the miasmas, get over-run by the Apalachees, or the Spanish could find her and bring force enough to take her."

"Best we go quietly on our way up-river," Cashman agreed. "We're going to be dressed pretty much like Indians in these hunting shirts and whatever, so the Dons don't know we're here. So what's stopping you sending this ship back to sea once we're landed, if secrecy is so important?"

"Not a bloody thing," Alan realized.

"And if I wanted to bring another squad with me, so we'd have a round dozen skirmishers, there's no one to gainsay me, either. Out at sea, your ship wouldn't need a party of soldiers left behind."

"What about the samples, then?"

"Oh, we can take 'em up-river, can't we?" Cashman asked.

"Well, this sloop does have a boat of its own, a little eighteen-foot gig. Take five more men to run her under oars, though. Say three minimum, with two of your men aboard as guards."

"I can find enough lads to row her, you just give me one sailor to show 'em what to do. That way, I can take six more men, two as guards as you said, spelling each other, and part of the cargo with me."

"Cowell and McGilliveray might not like it, mind," Alan cautioned.

"The devil with what they like or don't like," Cashman said, sure of himself. "They're only civilians."

"They could ruin your career. And mine."

"There's not much more they could do to ruin mine, the way things are going," Cashman laughed. "How enamored are you of yours?"

"I don't want to get cashiered," Alan said. "I'm getting just good enough at the Navy to want to keep it."

"You'll end up on the beach on half-pay soon enough anyway. And this whole expedition is a pretty neck-or-nothing thing. It's not like it has much hope of turning things around quickly."

"So why are you here, if you don't like it?" Alan demanded.

"Because I might become a substantive captain out of it," Cashman told him. "And the way things are going, it's the only little piece of the war I've left. Desperate or not, it beats garrison duty back on Jamaica, you see."

"Jesus."

"So don't tell me you weren't thinking about getting a little fame yourself out of it?" Cashman teased him. "Of course, long as we're changing things, who says you have to go?"

"Come, now."

"Seriously. If anybody'd asked me as to how we'd pull this off, I'd have stayed off the river entirely. Rivers are like highways in this country. Might as well hire a band. I'd trade for horses with the coastal Indians, and go overland. Lay up by the day, travel by night, disguises or no. If I'd helped plan this, I'd have asked for the Navy to merely get us here and come back to pick us up later. Just like Peacock not to confer with the ones who have to do it. Sail off."

"Damned if I will!" Alan spat. "Cowell would really have my hide for funking on him. And my admiral would have my hide a week later for cowardice. No sir!"

"Alright, then. We go inshore after it's dark, and we head up-river in the dark, to get as far as we can before it's light," Cashman schemed. "Then McGilliveray can turn into any old sort of Indian he likes and lead us the rest of the way, but without having to depend on this coastal tribe, who're like as not hand-in-glove with the Dons already. We'll have enough on our plate with the other tribes as it is."

"Damn your blood, sir!" Cowell fumed after he had been told of the new arrangements. "This is not what we agreed to at all, damme if it's not! I am charged by His Majesty's government directly to…"

"Mister Cowell, Lieutenant Lewrie and I are the senior military representatives," Cashman argued, as the unloading went on. "Now keep your voice down. Or do you wish to draw every bloody Don within fifty miles to this damned inlet? This way, we are much more secure. The sample goods still get up-river, you get up-river, White Turtle gets up-river, and we run the same bloody risks, but we do it on the sly. More than we would leaving the sloop behind to advert our presence."

"I'll have your hide for this, see if I do not, sir!" Cowell raged, but in a sibilant whisper into the tropical stillness. "Once we are back at Jamaica, Sir Joshua shall hear of this. Your captain shall know of your insubordinate attitude as soon as we rendezvous with his ship! And your colonel, too, Captain Cashman."

"The exigencies of the situation, sir," Alan said, almost quoting Cashman verbatim from one of their later planning sessions once the sloop had left Shrike's company and made her final run of fifteen miles for the coast that afternoon. "Based on sound military reasoning, and on Captain Cashman's long experience, with which I concur totally."

"I'll send a letter to your captain before the night's out, I will!" Cowell went on. "And a despatch to Sir Joshua. If the sloop is no longer germane to our enterprise, she may serve to inform your superiors of my extreme displeasure with your conduct, sir!"

"Do what you like, sir," Alan replied with a genial tone.

"Mister Cowell, I must warn you to keep your voice down, sir," McGilliveray hissed, coming to their side. "Sound carries a long way at night, and you may be sure someone is watching and listening to every word you say, every action we do, this very minute."

It was hard to think of him any longer as young Mister Desmond McGilliveray, since he had shed his poor suitings for a snuff-brown linen shirt with the sleeves cropped off, a breech-clout tied about his waist with a hank of learner thong, a yellow waist sash, and deerskin leggings and moccasins. The bare coppery flesh of his legs, arms and chest revealed intricate tattoos that had been concealed by a European's togs.

"Do you know what this impudent… puppy… has done, sir?" Cowell raged. "Him and that jack-a-napes, jumped-up gutter-snipe Cashman?"

"Please discuss this below decks, and quietly," Alan cautioned. "And let me get on with the loading, if you please, gentlemen."

McGilliveray almost dragged Cowell to the hatch-way and led him below, where they stumbled down the darkened ladder to the lower deck.

"Gig iss in der vater, zir," Svensen told him. "Vater butt, biscuit box, zalt meat barricoe, der mast, zails und oars, zir."

"Good, Svensen. Andrews shall take her as cox'n, and the soldiers shall do the rowing. Get the hands started on loading her with the smaller pile of goods yonder. As much as you think best. If we can't get it all aboard, sort out as many different kinds of things."

"Zir?" Svensen begged, unwilling to take responsibility with items unfamiliar to him.

"Then we'll let Mister Cowell or Mister McGilliveray see to that. You'll not keep this ship hidden here, as I first told you. Take her out to sea as soon as we're on our way. Meet up with Shrike and tell the captain we didn't think it was safe to leave her here."

"Aye, zir, t'ank Gott, me neider!"

"Give him this letter telling him the reasons for my decision. And I expect Mister Cowell shall have one for you, too," Alan said, smiling. "I shall go below and change."

Alan stumbled down to the hold accommodation deck of the small sloop, and stripped out of his uniform as men bustled about past curtains that served as light traps from the hold where they could at least see what they were doing in carrying goods and weapons to the spar deck.

"This is so damned daft!" he grumbled as he exchanged white slop trousers for an old pair of buff breeches reinforced with leather on the seat and inner thighs, some cavalryman's castoffs. They were much too big for him, but they would serve. A forest-green linen shirt went on over those, a faded blue sash about his waist outside the shirt, in which he stuck a boarding axe, much the size of an Indian's tomahawk, a pair of dragoon pistols he had kept as mementos from Yorktown, and a short dagger. Then came cartouche pouch and musket implements slung over his shoulders, and a baldric for a sword.

He eyed his hanger, the lovely Gill's in its dark blue leather sheath with the sterling silver fittings, the sea-shell design on the hilt and guard, and the gilt pommel of a lion's head. It was too precious to him to traipse about before sticky-fingered Indians, or lose, along with his life, if this expedition went sour. With a sigh, he put it down and exchanged it for one of the cheap Spanish cutlasses from the ship's weapons tub. He went aft to his quarters in the stern and wrote a short note which he wrapped about the scabbard, instructing that if he did not return, it should be sent to his grandmother in Devon whom he had never laid eyes on.

That act convinced him, if nothing else did, that there was more than usual danger in what they were about to do, and he regretted that he had not taken the time to write a few letters. There was Lucy, whom he had been forbidden from seeing since his disastrous actions of the months before. There was his maternal grandmother, who had rescued him from ignominy and poverty. There was Caroline Chiswick, now safely in the arms of her family in Charleston, if they had not already sailed for England by now. Poverty-stricken she might be, but she had been such a sweet and lovely girl, a little too tall and gawky for fashionable beauty, but damned handsome nonetheless, and devilish smart and delightful to converse with. God help him, he felt a pang for Dolly Fenton, and wished that he were back in her bed that instant. She at least had for a time loved him as well as she was able, and that was damned fine. He still regretted that last hour or so with her, when he had to tell her he was sailing away for good, and that her dreams of a little love-nest for just the two of them could not be. She had wept as quietly as she could, clung to him, given him passionate love once more, saving her real tears and squawls for total privacy. She had been so sweet, too, so dependent, yet good of heart, and, thank God, nowhere near as dumb as Lucy.

"Might as well write my fucking will while I'm at it!" he muttered, suffering a premonitory chill even as he said it. His insides cooled noticeably, and his stomach got a touch queasy as he finished gathering up a change of clothes and a few personal items in a sea-bag.

Damnit, this was a bloody undertaking, not like a sea-battle at all, which was gory enough for anyone's tastes. With Mc-Gilliveray to lead them and negotiate, they might be safe as houses, or they could end up tortured to death, screaming for death, and painted savages dancing about waving their own hair and their privates at them in glee!

"Jesus, I'm scared witless!" he whispered soft as he could in the privacy of his quarters, the temporary luxury of untold space in the former master's cabin. He had been frightened before. Any time he had to scale the masts. Before battle was joined, when he had time to think about how he could be mangled. The two duels he had fought in his short life. The shelling at Yorktown, or the horrible battle they had fought with Lauzun's Legion and the Virginia Militia on Guinea Neck before they could escape. Even the first few weeks under Lieutenant Lilycrop's pitiless eyes as he fumbled his way to competence had tied his plumbing into hot knots, but nothing like this icy dread.

"Damn the Navy, damn King George, damn everybody!" he spat, within a touch of begging off at the last minute. It was all he could do to walk to the cabin door and think about joining his party.

There was a knock on the door, which almost loosed his bowels.

"Enter," he bade from a dreadfully dry mouth.

Cashman stepped inside, clad in pretty much the same rig as Alan, but with the addition of a scarlet officer's sash.

"You look like death's head on a mop-stick," Cashman said with a quirky little cock of his brows.

"How I look is nothing on how I feel," Alan grumbled.

"Then let's liquor our boots," Cashman suggested, crossing to the former captain's wine-cabinet. He drew out a wine bottle and took a swig from the neck, then handed the bottle to Lewrie.

"Ah, that's the ticket," Alan sighed. "Incredibly foul vin rouge, my last taste of civilization."

"I hope you've remembered rum for my troops?" Cashman asked. "God knows how anyone could do what we're about to do sober."

"Aye, rum enough for everyone for three weeks, though not the usual sailor's measure. A sip, no more."

"It's beginning to feel a touch insane about now, ain't it?"

"Insane ain't the word for it, sir." Alan shuddered.

"Call me Christopher," Cashman told him. "Growl we may, but go we must, you know. Give me that bottle, if you've had enough. I feel the need for a generous libation to put me numb enough to get on with the business."

"Feeling daunted yourself, hey?"

"Bloody terrified," Cashman admitted easily. "You?"

"I was wondering if I could break a leg or something at the last minute." Alan grinned back at him. Cashman tipped him a wink.

"Either way, it's bloody daft, the way we leap at chances for honor and glory," Cashman said with a belch, and handed the bottle back, which bottle had diminished in contents remarkably in a very short span of time. "Personally, I think it's a lot of balls, but that's what they pay us for. This is the worst time, when one steps out into the unknown. Once we've been shoved into motion, it usually goes much better."

"That's been my experience." Alan nodded. "What about Cowell and McGilliveray?"

"Cowell sahib is still scribbling away at his objections, but the Turtle-rajah came round at the last, long as the goods get up-river. He suggested the sloop would do better to handle the transfer of goods from Shrike, instead of having your ship come inshore with her. Wants you to pass the word to your captain to load her up and stand ready to meet us once we get the gora logs convinced to set out the red war pole."

"Could you possibly speak the King's English, Kit?"

"Ah, sorry, not possible, you see. Been too long away from it. I can pidgin with any Samboe you want from the Hooghly Bar to the Coromandel coast. I can even get along in Creole with the slaveys up in the Blue Mountains. Who knows, by the time we're done, I'll master Creek, too?"

"Well, we can open another bottle," Alan sighed, tossing the empty onto the coverlet of the hanging cot. "Or we could get started while it's still dark and quiet."

"Best go, then. Or we'll never." Cashman tried to smile.

"Aye. Goddamnit."

"Amen, parson Lewrie."