“Wos th’ ribbons for, ’en?”
“To tie them on round one’s … ‘nut-megs’ … so they won’t slip off in the middle of things,” Pettus said, whispering by then.
“’At’s a lotta work f’r a fook!” Jessop exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Ye kin see right through ’em, anyways. Izzat why the Cap’um needs s’many of ’em?” Jessop scoffed.
“One for each … bout,” Pettus explained, cryptically grinning.
“Mean t’say ’e topped a mort half a dozen times last night?” Jessop gawped aloud. “Or, six diff’r’nt doxies?”
“Hush, now!” Pettus cautioned.
Jessop looked forward to watch Lewrie butter a last slab of toast, smother it with sweet local key-lime marmalade, and take a bite. He goggled in outright awe!
Lewrie heard Jessop’s later utterances, and looked aft at the lad, smiling and tipping him a cheerful wink.
Not all that bad for a man o’ fourty-two, Lewrie congratulated himself quite smugly; and that don’t count the fellatio, which I doubt Priscilla’s “lawful blanket” is too prudish, or ignorant, t’know about.
She, like all ladies of worth, kept her fingernails short, but his back felt as if Toulon and Chalky had galloped over him with their claws out.
Poor Mister Frost! Lewrie thought; He’ll never know what he’s missin’!
Priscilla might not have strictly been a proper and virginal bride when she’d wed the old “colt’s tooth”, but might have been able to play-act a satisfactory sham of inexperience on the wedding night.
Not that her husband knew all that much about pleasuring her, or any woman. Priscilla had told him with sad amusement their first night that the old fellow came to bed in an ankle-length flannel gown, and had hiked it up only far enough to climb atop her, a business as quickly, roughly done to his release, before he would roll off and go to the wash-hand stand to sponge off, then fall deeply asleep. He did not find it seemly for her to remove her night gown, so it was possible he had never seen her bounty, which could have given him so much more delight, had he the slightest clue! But, Priscilla was his third wife, the first two dying of Child-bed Fever after producing enough males to assure that one would inherit, all now grown with families of their own. Priscilla was less a help-meet, more a house keeper, a hostess at his supper parties, the handy vessel for his rare needs, and a bit of adornment on his arm when invited out, but little else.
Hmm, sounds like most marriages! Lewrie had cynically thought.
Priscilla adored baring her body, being outlandishly nude and posing most fetchingly a’sprawl and inciting. Her “lawful blanket” might never worship at her firm and perky breasts, the insides of her thighs, or at “the wee man in the boat”, but by God Lewrie had been more than glad to attend “services” there! And the rewards of such ardent adoration had been nigh to Paradise itself!
What a waste of a good woman, Lewrie told himself as he mused over his last cup of coffee; Wouldn’t trust her outta sight, but—
The Marine sentry at his door stamped boots, banged his musket on the deck, and cried, “First Officer, SAH!”
“Enter,” Lewrie replied, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
Lt. Westcott entered, his hat under his arm. “The ship is in all respects ready for sea, sir. We stand ready to pipe ‘Stations To Weigh’, whenever you wish.”
“Very well, Mister Westcott, I will come to the quarterdeck,” Lewrie said, rising and snagging his hat off the sideboard, where it was temporarily safe from his cats, who were still busy at their bowls at the other end of the table. “I am sorry I had to call you back to the ship by midnight.”
“Well, sir,” Westcott confided with a faint grin, “all that was needed to be said had been said. Some tears and lamentations, but I doubt such sentiment will last all that long once we’re gone. Dare I enquire of your last night ashore, sir?”
“We’re much in the same boat, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said. “I would say that I regret parting from the lady’s company, but, sooner or later, there’d be her husband t’deal with. At least you have the good sense to get involved with a free lass. Can’t imagine where my mind went!”
Most of a night on the side portico of her house, in the dark, rowin’ just the two of us over t’Hog Island with a basket and a blanket … thumpin’ about in a closed coach out to East End Point, Lewrie reminisced as they strolled out onto the weather deck and up the starboard ladderway to the quarterdeck; and last night, for hours and hours? That’s where my mind, and good sense, went! It’s just as well we’re sailin’ far away, ’fore her husband gets an inklin’ and calls me out. Killin’ him in a duel—for her honour, hah!—would be just too much.
“Good morning, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said to the Sailing Master, who was already on deck by the compass binnacle cabinet with all his navigational tools laid out. “Where away the wind?”
“Fresh out of the East-Nor’east, sir, and fair for a beam reach out the channel,” Caldwell told him with a satisfied grin. “You will wish to depart up the Nor’west Providence Channel, once we’ve made our offing, sir?”
“Aye,” Lewrie replied, looking up at the commissioning pendant to judge the direction of the wind for himself. “Out into the Florida Straits, reach the Gulf Stream, and shave close enough to the Grand Bahama Bank to keep well off the American coast. With any luck, we’ll pick up an East-Sou’easterly breeze that will allow us to avoid the Hatteras Banks, and get well out into the Atlantic.” He knocked wood on the binnacle cabinet. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
Lieutenants Spendlove and Merriman greeted him with cheery good mornings in return, and a doff of their hats.
“Just as we break the anchor free, I’ll have the spanker, the tops’ls, and inner, outer, and flying jibs hoisted,” Lewrie decided. “Once we’ve made our offing into deep water, and hauled off Nor’west, we’ll see to the courses and t’gallants.”
“Aye, sir,”
“And … when the anchor’s free, we’ll strike the harbour jack and my broad pendant,” Lewrie further instructed. “I’m sure that that will please our Commodore to no end, hey?”
Sour smiles were shared by all.
“Hands to the capstan, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Let’s have a tune t’spur ’em on.”
“Bosun!” Westcott cried to the waist. “Hands to the capstan! Strike up ‘Portsmouth Lass’!”
Bisquit the dog dashed round the waist ’til he discovered that he was both ignored and underfoot, and slunk his way up to the quarterdeck to squat behind the cross-deck hammock nettings, looking about for a friendly face and a reassuring pat. He came to sit by Lewrie after a minute or two.
“Short stays!” Midshipman Munsell shouted from the bows.
“Stamp and go for the heavy haul!” Lt. Westcott bellowed.
“Up and down!”
“Bosun Sprague! Pipe the topmen aloft!” Westcott ordered. “Lay aloft, trice out, and man the tops’ls!”
Blocks squealed as the lift lines dragged the tops’l yards up from their rests. Lighter blocks joined the chorus after the harbour gaskets were freed and hands on deck drew down the canvas to the wind.
“Anchor’s free!” Munsell cried.
“Hoist away all jibs! Hoist away the spanker!”
HMS Reliant began to shuffle uncertainly, heeling a tiny bit to leeward as the canvas aloft began to catch wind, paying off free ’til the fore-and-aft sails were sheeted home. She then started to inch forward, stirring her great weight.
“Steerage way?” Lewrie asked the helmsmen.
“A bit, sir!” Quartermaster Baldock tentatively replied as he shifted the spokes of the forward-most of the twin wheels.
“A point up to windward, to get some drive from the jibs,” Lewrie ordered, pacing over to peer into the compass bowl, then look aloft at the commissioning pendant and how it was streaming.
Damme, that’s the end o’ that! he sadly thought as he watched his broad pendant come fluttering down the slackened halliard, that red bit of bunting with the white ball in the centre.
“Way, sir,” Baldock reported. “The rudder’s got a bite, now.”
“Steer for mid-channel, then, with nothing t’leeward,” Lewrie told him.
“Mid-channel aye, sir, an’ nothing t’leeward!” Baldock echoed.
“Hands to the braces!” Westcott was ordering, now that the topsails were fully spread, half-cupping the breeze. “Haul in the lee braces!”
Reliant was under way, free of the ground, with just enough of a drive to create the faintest bow wave under her forefoot and her cutwater, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. Before he would go to the windward rail, where a ship’s captain ought to be, he remained in the centre of the quarterdeck, looking shoreward. There were people there, on the piers and along Bay Street, waving goodbye. Some of them were women who waved handkerchiefs. Did some pipe their eyes in sadness?
Just after leaving Athenian and his last meeting with Grierson, Lewrie had announced to the crew that they would be sailing for home … where their pay chits would be honoured in full, and the shares in their ship’s prize-money would be doled out, he had reminded them, to make some of the dis-contented think twice about desertion. He had hoisted the “Easy” pendant and put the ship “Out Of Discipline” for a day and a night to let the whores and temporary “wives” come aboard, and even after full order was restored, he had granted shore liberty to each watch in turn so his sailors could stretch their legs ashore and lounge at their ease in the many taverns, rut in the brothels, and attend the “Dignity Balls” that the Free Blacks would stage. The Mulatto girls, the Quadroons and Octoroons, might be above being shopped by the pimps in the bum-boats like common doxies, but the fancily-dressed “Dignity Ladies”, for a discreet price, would make young sailormen feel as if they had discovered Fiddler’s Green, the sailors’ Paradise, where ale and spirits flowed freely, the music never ended, the girls were obliging and eager, and the publicans never called for the reckoning.
“Departing salute to the Governor-General, sir?” Lt. Westcott prompted.
“Aye, Mister Westcott, carry on,” Lewrie agreed, pacing over to the windward bulwarks where he belonged, and, as the gun salute boomed out in its slow measure, and the leeward side became wreathed in smoke, Lewrie doffed his hat to the women ashore, one memorable woman in particular whom he, in retrospect, had best never see again!
Once the last gun had been fired, Marine Lieutenant Simcock came to the top of the starboard ladderway. “Beg pardons, sir, but, given our departure for England, I wonder if ‘Spanish Ladies’ might be welcome.”
“A fine idea, Mister Simcock!” Lewrie heartily agreed. “Carry on and put a good pace to it, as you did before.”
“‘Fa-are-well, and a-dieu, to you fine Spanish la-adies, fa-are-well, and adieu, to you la-dies of Spain! Fo-or we’ve received orders to sail for Old England, but we hope very shortly to see you again! We’ll rant and we’ll roll, like true British sailor-men, we’ll rant and we’ll roll, all across the salt seas, ’til we strike Soundings in the Channel of Old England, then straight up the Channel to Portsmouth we’ll go!’”
Reliant’s sailors were bound for home. It was a beautiful morning of fresh-washed blue skies and white clouds, and the waters in the channel out to sea were clear enough to see schools of fish darting from the frigate’s shadow, the waters shading off to the most brilliant blue-green, bright jade green, and aquamarine. Now that the running rigging was belayed on fife and pin-rails, the excess flaked or flemished down, and the sails drawing well without tending, the crew could find time to sing, belting out the words with the joy of departing.
Older mast-captains and the younger and spryer captains of the tops had gathered in a group atop a hatch grating beneath the cross-deck timbers of the boat-tier beams in the waist, forming an impromptu chorus, swinging their arms as if their hands already held home-brewed ale mugs in their favourite old taverns.
“‘No-ow I’ve been a topman, and I’ve been a gunner’s mate, I can dance, I can sing, a-and walk the jib-boom! I can han-dle a cutlass, and cut a fine figure, whenever I’m given en-nough standing room!
“‘We’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailormen, we’ll rant and we’ll roar, both aloft and be-low! ’Til we sight Lizard, on the coast of Old England, then straight up the Chan-nel to Portsmouth we’ll go!’” that chorus roared, and the ship’s boys, the cabin servants who served as nippers and powder-monkeys, pranced and practiced their horn-pipes round the covered hatchway, and the very youngest raced round and shrieked with delight, with Bisquit in pursuit, or being the chased, it was hard to tell which.
“Let them rant, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as he joined Lewrie by the windward bulwarks.
“Aye, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied, a happy grin on his face, and his right hand beating the time on the cap-rails as he sang along now and then. “It’ll take half an hour more before we haul off Nor’west. They’ll play out long before then.”
He looked aft towards the larboard quarter to see Arawak Cay and the eastern tip of Long Cay well clear; off the starboard quarter stood the long spit of Hog Island. And framed between the taffrail lanthorns lay the harbour channel and the town of Nassau, glowing in an infinite variety of pastel paint on the walls, already shrinking away, the green hills of early Spring turning brown and dusty in the glare of late Summer.
“Mind, though,” Lewrie said, “does the wind give you an opportunity, I’ll have the fore course, main course, and t’gallants filled.”
“I don’t suppose it matters at this point, sir, what our duty will be once we leave the dockyards,” Westcott said with a shrug. “I only hope whatever we’re set to is as successful as our last.”
“Even if it ended badly,” Lewrie said, sighing and leaving the bulwarks to walk a few paces forward to look down into the waist at his singing and capering crewmen. “Damme, I’m going to miss Darling, Bury, and Lovett. We made a hellish-good team!”
“But, with any luck, sir, we’ll find another,” Westcott said with a hopeful tone.
“We’ll see,” Lewrie said, nodding. “We’ll see.”