"I will, sir!" someone in the back called out, though several sneered at him for sounding so eager. He came forward, a slim, young man with a nervous smile that showed he had most of his teeth. "Mash, sir. Topman, sir. I'll volunteer for her."
"Very well, Mash." Lewrie beamed. "Any mates of yours able to hand, reef, and steer… serve a gun, back yonder? Any others wish to ship with Mash, then?" he called out.
He saw a pair of likely men shrug and pick up their seabags to shuffle through the press of men and also volunteer.
"Martyn, sir," one husky brute said. "Ord'n'ry Seaman, sir."
"Lucas, sir," said a blond-haired teen. "Topman, sir."
"Bannister, sir," claimed a whip-thin, dark, ferrety lad. "I done a voy-age'r two, but ain't rated Ord'nary yet."
"Good, though, we can use you, and thankee, Bannister," Lewrie said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed to stand to one side. "Any other sailors or watermen of a mind to get out of this hell-ship? Get clean again? Eat decent rations again?"
"Me, sir!" A wee lad about Sewallis's age and size piped up in a falsetto. "Come on, Da!" he said to the man who stood behind him with his hands on his shoulders. "Be t'gether?"
"What's your name, lad?" Lewrie grinned. The boy didn't look like much of a sailor, but at least he was enthusiastic, and he hoped that enthusiasm might spread.
"Grace, s'please ye, sir." The boy tentatively smiled back.
"You're kin?" Lewrie asked the elder man behind him, hoping that the lad wasn't the grownup's "plaything."
"Grace, sir," the man said. He was withered, ropy, and wiry, and looked as if he'd spent his life on the water somewhere. "Had us our own fishin' smack outa Whitstable; but she went down back durin' the winter, an'…"
All they'd owned, most-like, Lewrie surmised; and once lost, they had laboured for others, for a tenth of the income they'd made on their own bottom. For friends, neighbors, or no!
" 'Tis me grandson, Cap'um, sir," the elder admitted with pride. He was grey-haired, missing some teeth, but appeared sound in wind and limb. "Never sailed 'board a big ship all me born days, sir. Me an' me son too, here," he said, indicating a third possibility. "But…"
"Young Grace… Middle Grace, and… Elder Grace, aye." Lewrie nodded. "Three pay certificates for the one household then, men?"
"Aye, reckon it'd help, sir. We'll volunteer f r yer frigate," the middle one allowed, as he gathered up his few pitiful possessions.
More began to come forward, though some Lewrie and Ludlow had to turn away. They were too spindly, too weak and hacking with coughs, or covered with sores, some just too shifty and cutty-eyed-too old, too young, even for ship's servants. And how the Impress Service had hoped to justify dredging them up, Lewrie couldn't begin to fathom.
"Bennett, sir." Then, Peacock and Thornton, Humphries and Inman and Slocombe and Sugden, Grainger and Brough. Only half were sailors or could even charitably admit they were on a first-name basis with a basin of water… but every sound man was more than welcome.
Spooner signed aboard, then Richard, then Brahms…
"German, are you, Brahms?" Lewrie asked.
"Crikey, me a Dutchie, sir?" The East End Londoner guffawed.
Two older fellows came up, both with hard hands of common labourers now fallen on hard times, drink, or a faint brush with the law.
"Smyth, sir," one said, cloaked in a blanket and little else. "With a 'wye,' sir. Ess-Emm-Wye-Tee-H'aich."
"Rumbold, sir," the other announced, this one almost bald with but a monkish fringe of white-ish hair above his prominent jug ears. "I was a waggoner, sir. Know some 'bout ropes an' such…"
"Better than those who don't know ropes or knots, Rumbold," Lewrie assured him, steering him towards the growing clutch of men by the lower entry-port.
Some smaller, younger lads just into their teens volunteered; fit for servants now; later they could train them aloft as budding topmen. Soon as they fed them back to where their ribs didn't show, that is, and hosed them down under a wash-deck pump so they would no longer resemble a pack of chimney-sweep's apprentices.
"A frigate, d'ye say, sor?" a man dared to ask from the middle of the remaining horde. "Them as go swift as th' very birds, sor?"
"A frigate, aye," Lewrie responded, put a bit on his guard by the man's deep Irish brogue. As if he didn't already have enough of those on his books already. He'd hoped, in the far east of England, to scrape up mostly English sailors.
"Lord!" Ludlow sneered in harsh voice, "Paddies! All brawn and no wits. Can we not be a little choosier, Captain, sir?"
"Furfy, I am, sir, and that proud I'd be t'get off this prison-barge, Yer Honour… me an' me mates too," Furfy boasted, elbowing at some others near him. "We ain't sailors, nossir, but we're strong, as yer officer says, and fit, sir… eager t'learn?"
"Of a mind to join your mate, Furfy, are you, men?" Lewne asked.
"Kavanaugh, sor. Aye, that I be," one piped up quickly.
"Cahill, sir." Then, "Ahern, sir. Aye, I'll stick wi' Mick."
"Sir, ya feed Mother Desmond's boy Liam three meals a day, and I'm yours f r life, so I am!" another chortled, doffing a ragged, and shapeless, farm hat, a Black Irishman, with ebon hair and blue eyes.
"Mind your manners, you boggish cur!" Ludlow snapped. "Not him, sir, beggin' yer pardon. Too much the sky-larkin' sea-lawyer to me."
"Any skills, Desmond?" Lewrie enquired, despite the caution.
"I read some, write some… taught others some, sir. Fiddler, play nil-lean pipes… songs an' stories. Figure cyphers an' numbers. And a strong back, when all else fails me, sir. Bit o' th' auld harp?"
"A sea-lawyer, as I said, sir," Ludlow sneered. "One step shy of the gallows, I'll warrant. A hopeless drunkard too, most-like."
"Faith, sir," Desmond began to protest, with a smile on his face, "but what man alive'd say 'no' to a drop o' th'…"
"I'll go into her, sir!" someone from the far side announced as he clambered up from below, dragging his possessions in a hammock-roll and a seabag. He stepped forward to doff a tarred, round, flat-brim sailor's hat. This one, at least, had kept the bulk of his issue kit and was dressed in worn, faded, mended, but clean seaman's clothes, and looked to be a real tarpaulin hand in his middle thirties. He wore a full beard and mustache, despite the fashion for being smooth-shaven-perhaps to conceal the hint of a dark red scar which sketched his left cheek and the tinge of blue-blackness which stained his face-a flare-up from a powder charge or a burst from a gun's barrel as the fellow had sponged out in a previous battle.
"Bales, sir," the bearded fellow reported crisply, standing at an easy attention with his head up, quite unlike the remaining volunteers' hunched, hopeless shiverings. "Able Seaman, sir. And a middling good gunner, sir."
"Bales, hey?" Lewrie grinned in pleasure. "Had an old captain named Bales. How'd the other recruiters miss you, Bales?"
"Just come aboard last evening, sir, is why," the man replied. "Turned over from Hussar-28, sir-paid off at Deptford."
"Good, we'll take you, Bales," Lewrie decided. "Join with the others yonder. Now, Desmond…" Lewrie said, turning back to the Irishman. "Any useful skills?"
"Strength for th' hard labour, sir," Desmond admitted, still chipper even under Ludlow 's glare, "but wit enough t'learn a sailor's trade. A stout an' willin' heart, sir, an' ever a cheery disposition for any task ye put me. Fell in with Furfy an' th' lads, an' I'd hate t'part from 'em, sir. Be left behind a'mournin'? Like th' auld song goes, Cap'um… 'one sword, at lea-est, thy right shall guard… o-one faithful har-up shall praise thee,' " Desmond actually sang out in a high, clear tenor.
"Which old song is that you cite, Desmond?" Lewrie chuckled.