The Fleet Delegates had also moved eight small gunboats from the Little Nore anchorage into the Great Nore, to secure their weaponry for their own use. On their way out, all of them had fired their artillery at the shore forts, again with solid round-shot. Perhaps it was to show the mutineers' resolve to the Admiralty and its local officials. Or a first round, Lewrie feared, to spur the beginning of a nationwide rebellion? Certainly, they weren't celebration shots, not with solid ball!
News-a mere rumor so far-had come from London that Admiral Lord Howe had succeeded in negotiating a settlement of the original Spit-head mutiny. Working parties ferrying supplies from shore had come back, whooping and hollering with delight over the tidings. Portsmouth and Plymouth, the entire Channel Fleet, were said to be returned to discipline and duty. Word was, "Black Dick" and his lady-wife had gotten a fete, their carriage unhorsed and drawn through Portsmouth 's streets to the town's largest inn by teams of grateful sailors; where Howe had dined-in the chief mutineers and drunk toasts with them-as "matey" as anyone could ask for!
Yet so far in Sheerness and the Nore, those rumored tidings hadn't done much to ease the fervour of the newest mutineers. If anything, news of a peaceful, agreeable settlement had only sparked a new wave of frolic, riotous street parading and shore drinking-but no hint of acceptance of a settlement here.
So for another morning, Lewrie studied the shore with a glass, so close off Garrison Point, he could all but taste the meat and drink. Sailors, done with meetings at Checquers Public House, their chosen shore rendezvous, paraded the streets, tricked out in red cockades and waving their infernal plain red flags of rebellion. Each large group had its hired band, and the sounds of competing melodies blended into an atonal jollity as one pack collided with another with a rival band and simply had to out-tootle, out-blare, or out-drum the others. Even atop the ramparts of the shore forts, drunken sailors could be seen-troublingly arm-in-arm with equally drunken soldiers, or hanging with arms round each other's necks, swaying and singing airs.
Respectable citizens of Sheerness, Lewrie didn't doubt, were all inside behind locked doors, huddled over their silver plate and valuables. Yet the streets were full of garish trulls and sharpers; poorer civilians out for a good time as long as it lasted; or secret traitors and rebels of Republican bent out to stir up even worse troubles?
Children and women also capered and danced with the sailors. There was a chance they were legitimate wives, come down to Sheerness to support their sailor menfolk. Or, as Lewrie also sourly surmised, whores out to make a killing off the myriad of sailors given liberal amounts of shore leave for a rare once.
Not that they had to go ashore for that, Lewrie sighed, as he lowered his telescope and collapsed its tubes; publicans' and pedlars' bumboats plied the harbour waters, ferrying cargoes of gew-gaws out to the ships, proffering the temporary "wives" to seamen who had coin enough to support and claim them. Without a strict watch set by the Bosun and harbour watches, he was mortal-certain every doxy bore small flasks of spirits under her gowns, inside her stockings or hat, to sell in spite of the Fleet Delegates' edict against private spirits.
Oh, Proteus was a merry ship! Music wafted up from the seamen's mess deck, from the forecastle too, for several bumboats lolled under her entry-ports, and real wives and children, and false wives, strolled the gun-deck or danced in drunken, half-clad abandon, groping at their men, being-groped and pawed, before being led below for a quick fumble 'tween the mess tables with two blankets hung for privacy.
Caught staring down from the quarterdeck too long, one blowsy blonde bawd jerked down the top of her ragged sack gown and shimmied, flaunting a brace of pendulous, but rather impressively sized teats at him, shrieking and calling him a "dirty ole awfcer!" drawing the attention of several of his hands to her antics, to his staring.
God, what a dirty puftle, he snorted in derision! Yet doffed his hat and, beaming, bowed her a courtly "leg."
She shrieked again, then blew him a kiss, before turning to have her dugs groped by her partner. The men had laughed-not at him, he suspected; it had sounded good-natured.
And Able Seaman Bales, seated atop a 12-pounder's breech, with his arms crossed over his chest, cast him a brow-raised glare, with a shrewd cast to his phyz after that brief antic.
Point for me, Alan told himself as he paced away, ignoring that glare; now he's sure to think up something else new to undermine me and my authority. Has to!
It was dev'lish-queer, Lewrie thought; this confrontation 'twixt me and this Bales creature… he seems t 'take it so damn' personal! Not just a scheming sea-lawyer born for mutiny an' damn all officers, but… like he hates officers in general, but me in the most particular!
He fetched up at the traffrails and leaned on them, gazing out to sea, and wondered if there was an advantage to save Proteus in this fellow Bales's seething dislike; some way to use that against him, as a fatal weakness. But for the life of him, Lewrie could not recall a Seaman Bales in his past whom he had offended, from any former ship.
Kin to his old first captain, aboard HMS Ariadne, way back in 1780? Surely not-kin would come into the Fleet a midshipman, in spite of Captain Bales being cashiered after his court martial at English Harbour, Antigua. That was the way of the world, and "interest," in the Royal Navy. Sons of fools weren't quite the fools that their fathers were… 'Til they proved it, of course! Lewrie snickered to himself!
Then-"Oh!" struck him.
What if this Bales was old Bales's kin, too penniless and without influence at Admiralty to get the usual "leg up"? Then he would have had to ship as a volunteer, go "before the mast," at first. But with a good education, surely he'd have advanced past his mostly illiterate fellow sailors, have made Master's Mate by now?
"Damme," Lewrie whispered to himself, "wasn't me cost old Bales his career. I spoke up for him, lauded him." Even if I did lie like a rug, he ruefully chid himself; toadyin' for a good name of my own! And no way to get to the bottom of it… without asking this Bales!
"No, goddamn your eyes, no! And take your fool's face to Hell, you impudent gutter trash!"
Lewrie turned about, wincing at the tone and recognising that voice. It was Midshipman Peacham, railing at one of the hands from the afterguard-doing exactly what he'd warned them not to do days before!
Hands in the small of his back, reminding himself once more about being dignified, deliberate, and slow, he paced towards the altercation; but the seamen knuckled his forehead and sloped off before he could arrive, face suffused with what looked like murderous resentment.
"Mister Peacham, sir… something amiss?" he intoned.
"Captain, sir!" Peacham fumed. "These disputatious… hounds! I have never heard the like for Jack-Sauce, obstreperous…!"
"Such as?" Lewrie purred, keeping a solemn face.
" 'Ahem, sir,' he says to me, Captain, Sir"-Peacham stammered in a face-suffusing heat of his own-" 'beggin' yer pardon, sir,' he poses! 'Would you be so good as to advance me the "socket-fee" for a doxy of my own, sir?' the bastard asked! Purser to dispense funds for his rut…?"