"For a poor old man from South Carolina, I s'pose I am lucky at that, Captain Wilder," Kershaw said with a proud and pleased simper. "Sit, gentlemen, sit. We'll have us a pre-prandial, before our supper is ready."
He steered them to some wingback chairs done up in red leather and nailheads, and puttered about at his cherry-wood and brass-trimmed wine cabinet.
Lewrie shot his cuffs, settled the tail of his handsome new cotton dress coat, and crossed his legs at the knee, surreptitiously eying the great-cabins, measuring worth; again, he was impressed. There were good figured carpets on the deck, atop a painted canvas covering of a solid colour. Despite the artillery bowsed to the ports, it was an elegant place, agleam with wax on the overhead deck beams and wainscotting. The furniture was mostly cherry or oddly pale washed oak, and was awash in brass, coin-silver, or gilded fittings. On one bulkhead in the dining-coach was a portrait of the ship's namesake, the Hancock of Revolutionary patriot fame. Lewrie dimly recalled that he had done, or said, something in the large way, but the circumstance escaped him.
This Kershaw was obviously not so poor as he bemoaned, he decided. This was the baronial suite of a rich shipowner or merchant trader.
"In honour of our guest, Captain Wilder, we'll partake of a good Englishman's favourite claret," Kershaw announced, turning back to them with a decanter in one hand and three stemmed glasses nested together in the other. He did the honours of pouring them all a brimming glass.
Wilder went along, though a little irked that stronger spirits such as corn-whiskey or neat rum were not served.
"To your rescuer, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw proposed. "Cap'um Lewrie!" Wilder enthused, before tossing his wine back in one neat slug. Lewrie hoped, for his sake, that it would be a short night! "Captain Wilder is right, ya know, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw said as he topped them up once more. "I was fortunate in getting orders to Hancock. All our major seaports raised subscription money to build or buy suitable ships for this French fracas. Had I depended on waiting for the Charleston, Georgetown, or Beaufort ships t'be built, I'd still be running up and down the banks of the Ashley or the Cooper. Like the joke that's told back home… 'bout the old boy who's flat-broke. If Indiamen went for a shilling, he'd still be running up and down the bank cryin', 'why ain't that cheap'!"
"Man of your reputation, though, Cap'um Kershaw," Wilder scoffed, "t'be left on the beach when the United States needs ev'ry experienced man o' war man, why…"
"It helps that most of the really experienced men were of age in the Revolution," Kershaw chuckled, "Too old now to strap back on the harness. I was only a midshipman in 78. Only served in our old Continental Navy 'til '80, and then resigned my commission to be first mate aboard a privateer."
"That would have paid better, for certain," Lewrie said after a sip of his wine. Kershaw's claret was of a piece with Jean-Pierre's wines at Port-Au-Prince… hellish-good! "And more exciting, too."
"Made my fortune by '83, true, sir!" Kershaw replied, booming for a moment with a burst of laughter. "Your Royal Navy tied us up in knots. Fifty ships in the old Navy, and I doubt more than three were in our hands, in any shape to sail, by the end of the war. Burned or took, or blockaded the rest so long, they rotted at their moorings. In our ports, or in France. Privateers, though… we could always get to sea. And have a high old time of it."
"Always find hands, when no one'd go aboard a ship o' war."
"Quite true, too, Captain Wilder," Kershaw allowed.
"Diff rent now, I take it?" Lewrie asked. "Now that your nation is all but at war with France?"
"Can't beat 'em off with a stick, sir," Kershaw boasted. "Down below New Hampsire, of course. Our Southern states are a bit more hot for it than others. Like some of your neighbours, Captain Wilder?"
"It's our ships the French are takin'… like mine a few days ago, Captain Kershaw," Wilder grumbled, squirming a bit in his chair as if mildly stung or twitted. "It's our trade and livelihood they're harmin'. We're all in it together, North and South, the coasts and the over-mountain folk."
"Most of our skilled officers come from above Virginia, do you see, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw explained, "though Georgia and the Carolinas have thriving ports and build a fair number of good ships. That far from the centre of power, though… this new swamp they bought up on the sly, then turned into our new capital, what they've named Washington City? Oh, a power of money made on that transaction, by people in government who knew about it beforehand, or had a hand in enacting the placement! We poor Southerners feel a bit… overlooked."
"Worse, when the capital was in New York or Philadelphia," the terrier-like Capt. Wilder all but bristled. "Even further away. And wasn't it a whole pack o' Marylanders and Virginians who profited from it?" he slyly asked, laughing to prove that he meant nothing by it, all of which mystified Lewrie. It sounded like a visit to a country house for a weekend, and gossip about neighbours one had never laid eyes on, or a family spat only slightly alluded to before strangers.
Damme, do they dislike each other that much? he had to ask himself, though; North against South, Middle against both, backwoods versus the Low Country interests? And is that exploitable, should we be at war with 'em in future? Their states don't sound that 'united'!
"Never saw much of your part of the Americas, Captain Wilder," Lewrie assayed. " Sandy Hook a time or two, perhaps a stroll ashore in New York. I'm more familiar with Savannah and Charleston. In fact, my wife is from the Cape Fear country."
"Well I never!" Captain Kershaw boomed out, which prompted one of those pleasant interludes wherein family names and places were exchanged, a sport in which this Captain Kershaw took particular delight. He had dealings with some Chiswicks who still were seated around Wilmington, and surely they were Caroline's kinfolk!
By then, Kershaw's steward appeared and announced that supper was ready, so they repaired to the dining-coach and sat down to a fine meal of fresh turtle soup, a roast chicken pan-fried in corn meal, grilled turtle steaks, and air-dryed "leather-britches" pod beans for a remove, washed down with a decent hock or a Bordeaux.
Kershaw apologised for the lack of a fish course, but there was little chance of catching anything fresh, with his frigate bowling along at twelve knots or better most of the time. The catch would have been jerked to flinders by the time they got it on deck!
"Caught us a shark, t'other day," Wilder hooted. "Didn't mean to, really. Hopin' for sea bass, dolphin, or snapper, but a shark makes good chops. My first mate calls it 'sweet revenge,' ha ha! And d'ye know, the very first thing those French sonsabitches did once we struck, was turn up their noses and heave it overside!"
"Perhaps they had no crиme fraоche in which to poach it, Captain Wilder," Lewrie snickered. "B'sides, the French may boast of being a maritime nation, but they aren't all that bold at sea. Maybe they thought the shark had dined on their poor, sunken cousins!"
"Way they go after poor, helpless merchantmen, maybe they are kin t'sharks, but too proud and arrogant t'turn cannibal!" Wilder rejoined quickly, raising his glass to clink against Lewrie's.
"You've seen no French warships, as yet, Captain Lewrie?" his host enquired.
"No, sir. My advisories tell me that there are very few true warships about," Lewrie answered, "though hundreds of privateers. I wonder, sir… perhaps we might break the old strictures, and share some, uhm… 'shop-talk?' After all, I'll be cruising north of Saint Domingue, and I gather that your frigate will be going south after we part?"