"Teach your granny to suck eggs, would you, sir?" Captain Sir Edward Charles fumed back, still mopping himself with a pocket handkerchief. "Know better than your superiors, do you?" "Absolutely not, sir, why-!"
"Specific orders will be draughted and aboard your ship by the end of tomorrow's Forenoon, Captain Lewrie. Good day, sir."
"Very good, sir," Lewrie answered, quickly quaffing the last of his claret and getting to his feet, his face now an inscrutable public mask. "Uhm… there is still my courtesy call upon the Admiral. Do you think…?" he enquired in an innocent tone, trying to salvage his odour, thinking that, should he make a favourable impression upon Sir Hyde Parker, what harm he'd done himself with this quarrelsome drunk could be cancelled out. And those orders changed!
"Our admiral is a most busy man, Captain Lewrie," Sir Edward intoned, "engaged with weighty matters anent the war, and his additional duties as prime representative of the Crown in this part of the world. Most busy. Some other time, perhaps," he concluded, not without a malicious simper to his voice, and a top-lofty twitch to his lips. He did, at least, rise to his own feet to steer Lewrie out, though more than a trifle unsteadily.
"Thank you for receiving me, sir," Lewrie was forced by manners to say, just before the double doors closed in his face, and the muffled cry for a manservant to come swab up the mess reached his ears-ears that were burning with rage!
Damme, but I mucked it! he chid himself as he stomped down the corridor, all but leaving gouged hoofprints in the gleaming tropical mahoghany boards; never argue with a drunk! One who holds powers over you, especially! If my luck's not out, mayhap he'll be half-seas-over by teatime, and so foxed he'll forget I was ever here!
"Arrogant old bastard!" he muttered under his breath. "Must keep his manservants up all night, washin' the wine and the vomit from out his wardrobe! Not sayin' he's so ignorant, he doesn't know how to pee, but I'll wager there's more'n a time or two his breeches are yellow, and his shoe-buckles 're rusty! God!" he spat aloud. Cautiously.
And it wasn't as if Sir Edward Charles was likely to stand tall in repute, either, he groused to himself; he was a staff-captain, not the flag-captain of the fleet. A drunken stumbler a pistol-shot shy of being "Yellow Squadroned," a jumped-up senior clerk left ashore by his superiors to shuffle papers for the real fighting captains!
He found a black servant tending to a laving bowl and a stack of towels just by the wide double doors that led out to the courtyard and coachway, a luxury for officers and civilian visitors who wished to swab off perspiration and cool themselves before reporting to superiors. Badly in need of a cooling-off, Lewrie set aside his hat and plunged his hands into the water, sluicing his face and neck several times, wishing that he could bury his head in the bowl until he blew bubbles, or just up-turn it over himself 'til his choler subsided.
"Thankee," he said to the well-liveried slave as he offered him a towel. "Needed that. Hot in there."
"Aye, sah," the slave replied, not quite rolling his eyes with long experience of officers who needed his ministrations after their interviews.
Damme, I know Isaw a man in admiral's togs, standin ' on a balcony as we sailed in. Was that Parker? Lewrie recalled.
Fort Charles had partially blocked his view, along with all of the gunsmoke, but Giddy House had been in clear sight for a little bit! It had been too far off to count buttonholes or cuff rings, but he had seen what looked to be a coloured sash and a star of knighthood!
"Uhm, is Admiral Parker ashore, today?" Lewrie asked the slave.
"Aye, sah," the servant said with a sly smirk. "But he's werry busy, sah," he told him in a distinctive Jamaican patois.
"And here I must still pay my courtesy call," Lewrie responded, retrieving his hat, and his hopes. Something about the servant's expression gave him a salacious clue. "And he'd be busy doing…?"
The slave pointed a finger skyward to the upper floor above.
"His shore office?" Lewrie enquired.
"His chambers, sah," the servant replied with a wee grin.
"Napping, then?" Lewrie further pressed.
"Oh, nossah" the slave answered with a wider grin and high-pitched titter.
"With company, is he?" Lewrie puzzled out. "Well, that's good reason t'be busy, I s'pose. All the live-long day, I take it?"
"Mos' de night, too, sah," he was further informed. "Been ovah t'Saint Nicholas Mole, 'board ship so long… De Admerl, he got -а fine eye fo' de ladies, Cap'um, sah."
Lewrie heaved a sigh of defeat. The staff-captain's impression of him would get to Sir Hyde first, and he and Proteus would be slighted. Attempting to gain admittance, mid-jollifications, would make his odour even worse! He clapped his hat on his head and strode out into the late morning glare, pausing in the shade of Giddy House to steel himself for the full brunt of the sun. And, merry and light as local birds, he could hear the tinkle of a harpsichord, and the soft chuckle of at least two people on the balcony above.
" 'Least someone's havin' a good mornin'," he growled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Remind 'em again, about the Maroons," Lewrie told his officers. "Ail to be back aboard by midnight… with so many ships in port, it's impossible not t'hear the watch-bells chime it. Plain drunks and half-dead get slung below… fightin' drunks'll get the 'cat' and stoppage of rum and tobacco for a month. Remind 'em not t'take too much money ashore, too. That should do it… pray God."
"Aye, sir," the officers, senior mates, and midshipmen chorused as they doffed their hats in dismissal.
It was a hellish risk he was running. Lewrie knew that more men took "leg bail" from ships' companies that were fairly new together, whereas ships longer in commission, and shaken down together, had fewer hands who would end up marked as "Run." After a time, the ship became home, one's closest mates and supporters almost like family. A stake in future pay-outs of prize money could provide a leash, as well, and HMS Proteus still awaited the reward for the Orangespruit frigate. Maybe his luck was in. He uncrossed his fingers.
Lewrie had seen unhappy and happy ships both, and felt that Proteus had shaken down rather well, even after the Nore mutiny and Camper-down. The music, the dancing in the Dog Watches, showed him high spirits; he had a somewhat honest Purser, so the rations were not rotten "junk" and were issued to fair measurements. He had decimated the gunroom and midshipmens' mess of bullies and tyrants, by refusing to take back aboard those budding despots and brutes the crew had wished off during the mass mutiny of the year before. There were very few requests for a change of mess, these days. A constant reshuffling of who could not stand the others in an eight-man dining/sleeping group was a sure sign of unrest and trouble. And, lastly, he had called everyone aft and had spoken to them.