Lewrie dashed to the landward, the larboard side, to peer out almost anxiously for a glimpse of them, but the night was black and the sea was ebon, with only tropic starlight to gleam off whitecaps and horses as the deep ocean waves met the shore, and the rebounding echoes of those that had crashed on the beaches hours before.
There! he thought, espying a misplaced whitecap between wavetops in a trough, the faintest, quickest glimpse of a head, a flash of eyes, as briefly chatoyant as a cat's from the single burning lanthorn, lambent and large approving sea-hound's eyes…
Then the apparition was gone as if it had never been, as if he had wished it to be, leaving him grinning when he should have been deflated with disappointment and dread of his crime.
"Damme, if I don't feel we've done something right, tonight," Lewrie said. "Even was it wrong."
"Aye, sah."
There came a whoop as a new-come was hosed down under the force of the wash-deck pump, turning and shivering naked, along with a laugh from his waiting companions and the off-watch crew who'd gathered for the show, encouraging him to make the best of it.
Mr. Winwood came forward, a bared sword in his right hand, once the fellow was through, urging everyone to hush. He laid the blade on the man's right shoulder, as if conferring knighthood, and said, "With God as my witness, I christen thee in a new life and a new name. Put on sailor's clothing and be known as…"
"Abraham," the former slave supplied, in an awed tone.
"As Abraham Howe. Welcome aboard, lad!" Winwood cried, laying the sword on his left shoulder then the top of his head, eliciting a round of applause from the sailors, and two dozen hands to be shaken.
"Uhmm… Andrews," Lewrie murmured.
"Aye, sah?"
"You might, uhm… pass the word among the crew. About those seals? Might make them easier of mind about our little raid," Lewrie suggested.
"Oh, aye, sah!" Andrews laughed, tumbling to it. "By de way, sah?
Don't know if ya ever knew it, but my slave name was Caesar, sah. My ol' massa name me after some damn' ol' Roman," Andrews said in a soft voice, as if daring to suggest a first-name basis.
"Want to pick another whilst Mister Winwood's dolin' 'em out?" Lewrie replied with a tentative chuckle, feeling that there was an accusation in there someplace. It stung, in fact, since he had known it, ages before, but had quite forgotten it; like any seaman aboard ship, Andrews was "Andrews" or "Coxswain," known by his place and his duty, with nothing more required between a common seaman and an officer. If Andrews, to hide his identity in the Navy, had chosen a new name, a new first name, when he'd run away, he'd never bothered to learn it, either!
"Think ah'd have t'strip an' bathe, sah?" Andrews asked, a tiny mocking edge to his voice.
"Mister Winwood's Church of England, not a Dissenter, so total immersion's probably not necessary," Lewrie said, tongue in cheek, to jape Andrews out of whatever "pet" he was in. "A wee dribble atop yer head'll be all." Damn, he still couldn't recall his first name!
"Ah'll stick with the one ah got then, sah," Andrews said, as if weary of trying. "Too many ship's books, an' those fake papers you and Mistah Padgett done for me, already got it down."
"I'd admire, did you have a word with our new volunteers, once they're named and settled in," Lewrie went on as if Andrews had not put him on the spot, for whatever bloody reason. "Cruel as it was, they might be feeling a touch homesick."
"Missin' dey mamas an' daddies, sah," Andrews expounded. "And worryin' 'bout how bad de beatin's and whuppin's gonna be when dey is missed. Gonna be a ruckus raised. White folks is antsy enough 'bout runaways and rebel slaves, already."
"You don't think they'd talk, do you?" Lewrie asked suddenly.
"I think dey'd die fo' dey say a word, sah," Andrews told him, turning to face him in the darkness for a moment. "Deir sons is free, and dot's all dot matters. De massas are fooled, with a scare put on 'em, and dot sort o' victory's worth all de lashes dey can deal out."
"But they'll still be homesick," Lewrie pressed.
"Aye, sah, dey will. And I'll talk with 'em, and try to ease dey minds."
Matthew! Lewrie suddenly recalled, after frantically dredging his memory; his first name's Matthew!
"I'd admire that… Matthew Andrews."
"Aye, sah."
In the faint gleam of the single lanthorn, Lewrie could see his eyes brighten.
"Carry on, then, Cox'n."
BOOK FOUR
Saepe trucem adverso perlabi sidere pontum?
Saepe mare audendo vincere, saepe hiemem?
How oft under unkindly stars thou glidest over the
savage deep? How oft in thy daring thou conquerest
the sea, and oft the storm?
Catalepton, IX 47-48
PUBLIUS VlRGILIUS MARO "VIRGIL"
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Proteus now had a distinguished list of names on her books for all the world to wonder at; there was a Howe, a Hood, an Anson, even a Byng. There was a skinny little runt going by George Rodney, another by Hawke, yet another was now a Cook, a massive teenager who still was growing (if such a thing were possible for someone already built like Atlas) was named Jones Nelson. And, of course, there was a Groome, to reflect his slave duties as a horsetender; a Carpenter, a Sawyer, even a Brewster, for a slightly older fellow who'd tended the vats where the molasses had been turned to rum. Along the same line, Proteus boasted a Newcastle, a Bass, and a Samuel Whitbread, in honour of their favourite imported English beers; even if they'd never been allowed a taste, the stone bottles and names emblazoned on them had been thought of as a white man's, their masters', ambrosia.
What Proteus did not have, though, were skilled sailors, for the new "volunteers" were farmboys, landsmen, and "new-caught fish," about as ignorant of the sea as any clerk press-ganged from a Wapping tavern in London. And, to beat all, for the first few days the bulk of them were seasick, as well as homesick!
Lewrie had decreed a "sea school" be formed, with the experienced tars, both White and Black, as the "bear leaders," to guide the newcomers about, name the myriad items of rigging and sails, and get them acquainted with their future duties. During this time, none were to be "started," even the stupidest.
Their frigate stood out from Hispaniola far to the Sou'east, to cruise along the southern shore of Saint Domingue, well out of sight from the port of Jacmel or any shore watcher, most especially of other Royal Navy ships that might get near enough to "speak" her and wonder where Proteus had gotten all of her ham-fisted, puking amateur Black sailors.
And her newcomers had had a lot to which to adjust, besides the homesickness and nausea. The first few days, they'd been dazzled by their spanking-new slop-clothing uniforms, the "privilege" of stockings and brass-buckled shoes (hastily put aside except for Sunday Divisions) never bought for field hands, the art of sleeping in a properly spread and hung hammock and its rolling-up each dawn, of scrubbing decks, and pulley-hauling-eating!-alongside White sailors. They had been at first amazed then incongruously daunted by that closeness, as if it were perhaps too much egalitarianism to digest at one sitting.
Certainly, their first sight of White sailors being "started" by the bosun and his mates on their way aloft to trim or shorten sail before the almost-daily squalls had been a revelation; even if Lewrie never allowed petty officers to use the stiffened rope starters in real anger, just as instructive incentives to quicker action. And while it had been weeks since a man had merited a dozen lashes from the cat-o'-nine-tails, whilst lashed barebacked to an upright hatch grating, the idea of punishment for anyone in violation of the Articles of War that Lewrie had read weekly had sent them first into giggling fits, then a sombre reflection about upright behaviour, and just what they had gotten themselves into.