"Aye, we could," Lewrie suddenly decided, and not just to stop Winwood's mournful droning, either. "They did, didn't they. Andrews, and all our Blacks who ran away to… this. You have a point, Mister Winwood. We could… we should… and, we shall!"
Then you wouldn't have died for bloody nothing, Matthew! Lewrie told himself, feeling a weight depart his shoulders, a half-turn wrench of his heart tell him that it wasn't expedience, had nothing to do with saving his precious neck from a hanging, but might become a real cause! A noble cause!
"Ah, there ye are, sir!" his cabin-servant, Aspinall, exclaimed in great relief to see him, at last, as he came forward from where the great-cabins would be, once the deal and oak partitions were erected. "Sorry t'say, sir, but yer cabins're a total wreck, again, but soon to be put t'rights. The kitties are safe, 'long with the mongooses, an' that damn' bushbaby. He's took up with Toulon an' Chalky, an' hardly don't cry no more, long as he can snuggle up with 'em. No coffee-" "Aspinall…" Lewrie interrupted.
"I know I'm babblin', sir, 'tis just hard t'know ol' Andrews is gone," Aspinall said, after a gulp, and a snuffle on his sleeve. "Him an' so many good lads. But, didn't we hammer th' French, though!"
"Aye, we did," Lewrie agreed, beginning to realise what they'd done, what a victory they'd accomplished, at last. And, beginning to feel that it had been worth it, no matter the price they'd paid. "Is that Irish rogue, Liam Desmond, aboard, do you know, Aspinall?"
"Aye, sir. On th' pumps, I think."
"Pass the word for him, then," Lewrie ordered. A minute later, Liam Desmond came cautiously up the ladderway to the quarterdeck; he'd been summoned before, usually to suffer for his antics. Lewrie noted that his long-time mate, Patrick Furfy, lurked within hearing distance at the foot of the steps.
"Aye, sor?" Desmond warily asked, hat in hand, looking fearful.
Lewrie held out the crushed bosun's call to him.
"Ah, I know, Cap'm," Desmond said with a sad sigh of his own at the sight of it, glittering ambery-silver in the glow of oil or candle lamps. "Andrews woz a foin feller, he woz, always fair an' kindly with us. Sorry we lost him, sor."
"You once said, during the Mutiny at the Nore, that you'd be my right-hand sword, if all others failed me," Lewrie gravely said. "I've lost my right-hand man, Desmond. Are ye still willing?"
"Be yer Cox'n, sor?" Desmond gaped in astonishment. "Sure, and I meant it, Cap'm! Faith, but ye do me honour, and aye, I'll be!"
"We'll get a better, when next in port, but…" Lewrie said as Desmond took the call from him and looped it round his neck on its silver chain. He took a moment to look down at it, battered though it was, sitting on the middle of his chest, and puffed up his satisfaction.
"Have to stay sober and ready at all hours, mind," Lewrie said, and could hear Furfy groan in pity on the main deck, even starting to snigger over his friend's new, more demanding, predicament. "And, we could do with Furfy in my boat crew, too, hmm? A strong oarsman. And, we wouldn't let him go adrift without your… influence."
"A right-good idea, that, sor," Desmond chuckled, looking over his shoulder and calling out, "Hear that, Pat?"
"Another favour, Desmond," Lewrie said. "Get your lap-pipes, a fifer, too, perhaps, and play something for us, now. For Andrews and those who won't get a proper burial sewn up in canvas, under the flag."
"Have ye a tune in mind, Cap'm?" Desmond asked.
"Play 'Johnnie Faa,'" Lewrie told him. It was sad, slow, Celtic, and poignant, sad enough for even the French survivors to feel what it spoke.
Sad enough a tune to excuse even a Post-Captain's quiet tears?
EPILOGUE
"Quid stutdiosa cohors operum struit? Hoc quoque curo.
Quis sibi res gestus Augusti scribere sumit?
Bella quis et paces longum diffundit in aevum?"
"What works is the learned staff composing?
This too I want to know. Who takes upon him to
record the exploits of Augustus? Who adown distant
ages makes known his deeds in war and peace?"
Horace, Epistles I, in, 6-8
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
There was no need for a fire in the magnificently, and ornately, carved fireplace in the Board Room of Admiralty in London, for it was a fine summer day, and the tall windows had been thrown open to take the stuffiness and enclosed warmth from the room. The equally-showy chronometer on one gleaming panelled wall slowly ticked, and now and then a shift of wind off the Thames forced the large repeater of the wind vane on the roof to clack about to display whether the weather stood fair or foul for British warships and merchantmen to depart, or whether Nature might favour a sally by the French, or a combination of French, Dutch Batavian, and Spanish navies together.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, John, Earl Spencer, sat at the head of a highly-polished table. To his right sat the Controller of the Navy, Adm. Sir Andrew Snape Hammond. Down at the other end of the table, not so far away as to be out of ear-shot, for the Board Room was not so grand in scale as most imagined, Sir Evan Nepean, the First Secretary to Admiralty, sat and shuffled his notes and records brought by a junior clerk, a pen poised to record decisions.
"The man's not worthy of a knighthood, I tell you, sir! He is a scandal… a seagoing scandal," the youngish Earl Spencer declared in some heat. "A mountebank, more suited to the company of those scandalous, sordid… circus people Captain Leatherwood rescued."
"Do we not put his name forward, milord," Adm. Hammond mildly pointed out between sips of his tea, "then Leatherwood cannot be placed on the Honours List, either… and, in all, Captain Leatherwood had a trifling action 'gainst a panicked and 'rudderless' ship's company… once those horrid circus people had slain half their officers. It was Proteus that bore the brunt of it, fighting an action lasting one and a half hours, whilst Jamaica barely fired two full broadsides before her foe struck. I grant you, milord, that Captain Lewrie's, ah… repute is not completely of the best, beyond his fame as a pugnacious and sly Sea Officer…"
"Fame, Sir Andrew?" the Earl Spencer scoffed. "Try notoriety." "Even so, milord, he'd earned a bright name in the Fleet before this most recent exploit, and the newspapers, and the public, are falling over themselves in praise of him." To the Earl Spencer's distress, Sir Evan Nepean had been saving London papers, from the best publishers to the most scurrilous, and the many articles snipped out and piled on one corner of the table made an impressive stack. Alongside them was a second pile, mostly of Reformers' tracts, complete with wood-cut art of two frigates battling in what a lubberly artist portrayed as a hurricane. There were portraits of the aforesaid Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN, as well, even more imaginative, and saintly!, along with drawings of Black and White sailors-some labelled with the names of the heroically-fallen Blacks- with Lewrie leading them in the boarding of the French frigate, L'Uranie, as over-armed as an old depiction of a fearsome pirate… without the beard, and with better hair, of course.
"May I say so, milord," Sir Evan Nepean piped up from the bottom of the table, for many of Admiralty's day-to-day decisions were his to make, so that the responsible, and lucrative, post of First Secretary held much more influence than most outside the Navy thought. "But, the Reverend Wilberforce and his followers had made a public figure of him already, not quite on the level of an Admiral Nelson, but close. Do we not offer Captain Lewrie significant, and near-equal, rewards that any successful captain, and the public, has come to expect, there might be suspicions that His Majesty's Government, not just Admiralty, favours the side of slave-owners, colonial planters, and the sugar and shipping interests over what is quickly becoming a widespread sentiment against the institution of slavery."