The Gun Ketch (12 page)

Alan read them his orders, savoring every mellifluous, ringing phrase which directed him "to take charge and command" of His Majesty's Sloop
Alacrity.
Finished at last, he rolled up the document and retied the ribbons, wondering if he should say else.

"I am certain," he began, looking down at their hopeful faces peering back up at him from the waist amidships, "that many of you came up on blood and thunder in the recent war, as did I. Service in a ship in peacetime may not hold the ever-present threat of battle. We may have more time for 'make-and-mend,' more 'Rope-yarn Sundays.' But that is only after we've drilled and trained to be ready to fight, and I am satisfied. And our old friend the sea is still a demanding mistress. I deem peacetime service no less rigorous than war. Mind you, I'm no Tartar nor a slavedriver. But I am a taut hand, and a taut ship where every man-jack works chearly for me, our ship, his mates, and our Fleet is a happy ship, I've found. And that is what will satisfy me, and that is what will bring us safely home from the fiercest gales or the hottest fight, should they come to us. Fair enough?" he asked, expecting no answer. "That'll be all for now. Dismiss the hands, Mister Ballard."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Ballard replied, using that honorific for the first time now that Lewrie's assumption of command was official. "Ship's company, on hats and dismiss! What next, sir?"

"Introduce me to the warrants and mates, Mister Ballard." Once more, Lewrie felt he was standing outside himself like some theatregoer, judging his own performance on the Navy's stage. He had almost reddened with embarrassment as he uttered those trite-but-true phrases he'd borrowed from other, and whom he considered, better, men.

I've six years in the Navy; why do I still feel like such a low fraud? he asked himself.

He knew his own preferences for peacetime service would be to cruise like a hired yacht, sip claret and dine well, perhaps carry some doxy in his cabins for sport. Yet he wore the King's Coat, and perforce had to live what felt like a great sham; a sham which he was sure others would someday recognize.

"Mister Fellows the sailing master, sir," Ballard said as Alan's senior mates gathered round. Fellows was short, wiry, ginger-haired, and seemed like a timorous store clerk. "Mister Harkin the bosun, sir." Harkin was built like a salt-beef barrel with arms as thick as hawsers, and a round hard face. "Mister Maclntyre the surgeon's mate. This is Mister Taft, the sailmaker, Mister Fowles the master gunner..."

"Fowles?" Lewrie interrupted.
"Ariadne,
winter of '80. You were but an able seaman then. My first ship as a newly."

"Aye, sir, I were. Thankee fer 'membrin' me, Cap'n, sir," the clumsy older salt bobbed happily. "An' that 'appy I be t' be a'servin' unner 'Ram-Cat' Lewrie, sir." The introductions finished, Lewrie plucked at his uniform. "I meant to pay my respects to the Port Admiral, else I'd have dressed more suitable for a first-day's inspection, men," he said with a small jape at himself. "Something less
grand!
So, I'll delay going over the ship from bilges to mast trucks until tomorrow at eight bells of the morning watch. At which time I will wear slop-clothing and put my nose into everything. So put right what you will, and have a list ready concerning any deficiencies you want corrected in your departments, or items still wanting, hey?" He gave them a warning, and time enough to present a going concern, sure there were glaring faults hereabouts in a ship fresh from the graving dock and careenage, with most of her furniture and fittings recently reloaded. "Mister Ballard, let us go aft. I assume the ship's books are in the great-cabins?"

"They are, sir. This way, sir," Ballard replied gravely.

"How many hands have turned over, Mister Ballard?" Alan asked as they descended to the waist from the quarter-deck for the hatch to the aft cabins.

"At present, sir, there are thirty-six hands aboard, ordinary, able or landsmen. All but eleven may be rated seamen. The purser Mister Keyhoe has nine men away from the ship at present, to row him over to the dockyards.
Alacrity
came into port with fifty-five, ten short of her rated complement. Five were discharged, sprung or ruptured, three retired. But, there's a new frigate fitting out here, sir, and we lost eleven hands into her. The Port Admiral sent an officer aboard and got them to ... ahem ... volunteer for her," Ballard said with a wry pout.

"Well, damn my eyes," Lewrie said with a weary disgust. There was no getting around the problem of manning the King's Ships. Seamen were always the rarity. One could bedazzle calf-heads at a rendezvous tavern to take the Joining Bounty with tales of far-off ports of call, and there were young lads aplenty who'd shun their farms to run off to the sea, boys enough with stars in their eyes to sign aboard as servants or powder monkeys. But, seamen...!

In peacetime, the Impress Service could not press by force ashore, even if the regulating officers could find a bribable magistrate who would sign a permission. Even in wartime, the press could not take a man outside the ports, could not (in theory) press-gang civilian landsmen—only recognizable sailors.
Alacrity
could, should the need be direful, board arriving merchant vessels in the Channel, or in legal "soundings" of the British Isles and press seamen. But such men were resentful and mutinous, and Alan didn't much care for that solution. Neither did he care for the scrapings from debtors' prisons, those who knew nothing of the sea and only took tops'l payment to get out of gaol for their debts of less than twenty pounds.

"We need twenty-nine more hands to make our rated sixty-five," Alan figured. "At least ten or twelve of those have to be able seamen. Let's be pessimistic and say ten. A dozen landsmen for waisters, and make what we may of them. Captain Palmer suggested a Mister Powlett' s Marine Society of London. Know much of it, Mister Ballard?"

"Aye, sir," Ballard nodded. "They take poor's rate tykes off the streets, scrub them up and teach mem some knots and pulley-hauley. I do believe they teach them letters and figures, after a fashion, too, sir. Some practical boat work on the Thames..."

"If they can read and write a little, they're miles better than most, then," Lewrie snorted. "He offered them in lieu of ordinary seamen. What think you of that idea?"

"If they're not too young, they may make topmen, sir. And God knows, we may lash and drive anyone to knowledge, given even a slight spark of common sense to begin with, sir."

"Damned right!" Lewrie chortled, having been driven and lashed himself to his lore. "Good Christ, what a brothel!"

His great-cabins were empty of furnishings except for a double bed (a hanging-cot for
two)
and a few partitions, and the chart room desk and shelves. The black and white checkered sailcloth deck cover yawned vast. But the cabins were painted a showy French blue, picked out with gold-leaf trim, with borders, overhead deck beams, transom settee and window frames all painted a gaudy pinkish red!

"Quite elegant, sir," Lieutenant Ballard said with a tiny smirk; just the slightest quirky lift of his mouth, and a crinkle to his eyes. "I am informed your predecessor Lieutenant Riggs adored his comforts more than most officers. You'll be wishing to repaint, of course, sir."

"Damned right I do," Alan growled. He knew what the Navy thought of "elegant"! Any officer, unless he was so senior he no longer had to cater to anyone's opinion, was thought unmanly should he aspire to any degree of comfort or sophistication beyond bare-bones Spartan, living as hand-to-mouth as a lone gypsy on the Scottish border. "In the meantime, I would admire if you would arrange for my personal furniture to be fetched offshore. I'll sleep ashore for the nonce, at the George, until we put this right. And the painter will have to work around my things."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"The books, Mister Ballard?"

"On the chart table, sir. I'll leave you to them, then."

"Thankee, Mister Ballard, that'll be all for now."

"Shall I have some coffee sent aft, sir? From the wardroom stores for now. As a welcome-aboard gesture, as it were, sir."

"Thankee, again, Mister Ballard, aye."

"Oh, whom should I ask for at the George, sir?" Ballard asked, pausing in his leave-taking.

"Uhm... with Mistress Lewrie, Mister Ballard," Alan blushed, making the removal of his hat, taking a seat on the one stool remaining, and opening one of the ledgers a suddenly all-engrossing activity.

"Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard replied, lifting his brows in wonder.

Damme, what have we here? Arthur Ballard asked himself after he gained the weather-decks. Mr. Fowles called him "Ram-Cat" Lewrie? Rare for an officer young as me to have a nickname already. Must be a holy terror! And married? Unless Mistress Lewrie is his mother... God no, who'd have his mother come to see him off! God in Heaven, a married officer, then?

"Whew!" he whistled softly. "Mister Harkin, boat party! Take the cutter!"

"
How
long before you're ready to sail, Alan?" Caroline asked, once they were tucked companionably into the high bedstead, and the last candle had been snuffed for the night.

"Four days, I should think." He yawned. "She had at least a halfhearted refit before I got her. Coppering's good, hull's sound, and the bosun has most everything set to rights again. Once we're done loading stores. And our passengers."

"Oh, God, your ... what did you call them ... live-lumber?" She snickered in the dark as she snuggled to him, as he put out an arm to receive her head on his shoulder.

"More," he complained, putting his face to her sweet hair.

"More? How?" she asked.

"God knows, darling. There's that Trinity House master, Gatacre and his mapmaker. They're to swing hammocks in the wardroom. Six midshipmen in a draft for the Bahamas Squadron, and never one of them ever aboard a ship, hanging like bats from the overhead on the orlop, right-aft by the fishrooms. And this morning, the Port Admiral tells me I'm to transport a chaplain and his wife and servants to Nassau, in my cabins. That means I'd have to feed and water them, out of my own purse, damme. I'll end up in a hammock in the chart-space if they keep shoving bodies at me! Least they could do is put plate aboard."

"What's that?"

"If you carry coin for the treasury, or solid pay out to a foreign station, you get a small percentage. No hope of that, though." He sighed. "Some Reverend Townsley and his lawful blanket."

"Why, I met them, Alan!" Caroline exclaimed. "They're staying here at the George. Stiff company."

"Must be a poor sort of hedge-priest if he has to take chaplain pay," Alan chuckled. "You never see reverends in wartime. Too busy at saving civilian souls of a sudden, don't ya know! What were they like?"

"Snooty as earls." She shivered against him. "They're related to some captain... no, some comm-something..."

"Commodore?" Alan asked suspiciously. "That was it A Commodore Garvey, out in the West Indies."

"Oh, stap me, he's commanding the Bahamas Station!" Alan cried. "They could ruin me if I treat 'em less than royal. Gawddd!"

"We took tea together this afternoon," Caroline said. "He said your commodore already had his wife, son and daughter out there. The son's in the Navy, too. A midshipman, I think he told me. Or maybe he'd just made lieutenant. I forget. They're a formidable pair. And with two wagonloads of goods. So they couldn't have left a poor parish," she decided. "Unless they looted it on their way out."

"Two wagonloads, Lord," Alan groaned. "Where'll I stow it all? Maybe I should just give 'em my cabins for the entire voyage. And I'll leave 'em blue and rose, too. That ought to be grand enough for 'em."

"I think they're lovely."

"The Navy wouldn't. I should have painted earlier. Let them describe their quarters to Commodore Garvey once they get to Nassau, he'll think me a primping dancing-master."

"I still say they looked elegant," Caroline decided aloud. "Found lodgings yet?" he inquired. "There's little time left."

"I know, my love!" She sighed as she burrowed deeper into him with sudden ardor. "I've seen several. I'll take care of it, never fear. Oh, God, this is going to be so hard, to watch you sail away, and here I am, in Portsmouth, where I don't know a soul! Four days?" She wailed softly.

"Four days we should make the most of," Alan muttered, running a hand over her hip and thigh, delighting in her shivers of expectation. That night in Petersfield, they'd left a candle burning in their eagerness, and she'd come to him with a robe on, not a bedgown. A robe which slid down her shoulders and parted to reveal a girlish slimness, a veritable feast of creamy skin andproud young, close-set breasts, a taut, flat belly trimmed by riding, and long, incredibly fine and tapering smooth legs. He still had not gotten over the wonder of being with anyone so delectable, of her being his to caress and stroke into passion at a whim.

Like Venus on the half-shell, he exulted silently, like Aphrodite rising from the waves ... but even better!

"You don't think me gawky and spindle-shanked?" she teased him as he nuzzled her graceful neck. "You don't prefer more roundness?"

"God, Caroline, you're the loveliest woman ever I did see!" he told her truthfully. She rolled on top of him to kiss him, to receive his kisses as his hands slid down to her firm little buttocks to draw the bedgown higher.

She uttered a thrilling little laugh as he found her hips, as his fingertips brushed her bare flesh.