“I’ll not, it’s mine—”
“Hell, it’s yours, you parish waif, now have it off!”
Bascombe took a serious swing at Lewrie and caught him on the side of the head. Alan shot a fist straight into his face and bloodied Bascombe’s lips and nose, dropping the other boy to the deck.
“Damn you!” Bascombe wiped blood from his face on the shirt sleeve, got to his feet and ripped his waistcoat off, then the shirt, balled it up and threw it at Lewrie. “Here’s your damned shirt, I hope you choke on it.”
“You’ll hand it back to me clean, or I’ll make it a gift. If the blood won’t come out, then you’ll have exactly one silk shirt—”
“’Ere now, ’ere now,” said Finnegan, one of the master’s mates, as he came into the compartment. “Christ, wot a pack of yowlin’ ram-cats; Mister Bascombe, I see summun tapped yer claret. N’ nice Mister Lewrie alookin’ like Goodyer’s Pig—‘never well but when in mischief.’ Wot is it, then, summat seryuss enough fer the captain, er does it stop ’ere?”
“Just a little wrestling match for a glass of flip, Mister Finnegan,” Ashburn said. “Got out of hand.”
“Flip, ya say? I’ll take a measure. Now let’s git this cockpit stright fer eatin’,” Finnegan ordered, knowing exactly what had happened, but relieved that he did not have to report it, which would reflect on his ability to supervise the midshipmen.
Alan tossed Bascombe the shirt with a sly smile and watched as Bascombe dashed out of the compartment to fetch some seawater to stanch his nose and lips.
“You really know how to make friends, Lewrie,” Ashburn said in a low voice after they had sat down away from the others.
“He took that shirt from my chest, didn’t he? He’ll not have my blessings to take what he wants, when he wants.”
“But you don’t have to rub his nose in it,” Ashburn replied. “There’s no harm in him, he just had to look good to attend the Captain’s gig this afternoon. I’d have loaned him one but all mine were dirty.”
“He could have asked.”
“He doesn’t know you well enough to ask. Besides, your usual answer to sharing is ‘no,’” Ashburn said. “My family could buy up yours a dozen times over, most like, but that don’t make me as purse-proud as you! You haven’t gone shares on anything in the mess yet.”
“It’s still stealing,” Alan insisted, blushing red.
“Not stealing … borrowing.”
“Aye, if the hands ‘borrow,’ they get flogged for it, but if we do, it’s Christian charity,” Alan said sarcastically.
“For your information, Harvey’s the son of a country parson. I doubt he’s got two shillings to rub together and no hope of more. His father probably makes less than thirty pounds per annum.”
“Shit,” Alan said. “I didn’t know. But what’s mine is mine. I have to protect it. I don’t have enough to keep a gentleman in the first place and my family won’t part with another pence for me, not if it was for a coffin. Let’s say the splendor of my kit was a very firm goodbye.”
“Just be civilized, Lewrie. You’ll get by with us a lot better. Now Bascombe’s going to get his own back on you and I don’t know what he’ll do, but it won’t be hurtful … much. Don’t take it to heart. We don’t need a Scottish feud down here.”
“Damn you, Ashburn,” Alan muttered. “You always find a way to make me feel like such a low bastard…”
“That’s because you are. Mind now, I like you, Lewrie, I really do. You’re a ruthless, uncivilized young swine, and I doubt you’ll ever be buried a bishop, but you’re an interesting person anyway. You’ll go far in the Navy. Like me.”
Supper was decent, since they were still close to shore and had the opportunity to send for fresh meat and vegetables. And when Ashburn raised the suggestion that they go shares on some cabin stores, Alan did offer to help out, so they would have some drinkable wine and some livestock of their own in the forecastle manger to delay the day when they would have to live totally on issue salt-meats.
Before Lights Out at 9:00 P.M. Lewrie took some bum fodder in his hand and made a postprandial journey to the heads up by the beakhead under the jib-boom. At sea the heads would be scoured continually by the sea, but in harbor no waves reached high enough to relieve the odors, or remove their source. At least at sea, there would be no Marine sentry standing over him to prevent desertions over the bow, as one now patrolled in port.
He returned to the cold orlop deck that was buried in darkness, for after Lights Out, no glims could burn except where permitted by the ship’s corporals. He found his hammock by touch, slipped out of his clothes and rolled in, drawing the blanket over him gratefully.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, feeling the cold and sticky semifluid substance against his legs and buttocks. “They’ve shat in my hammock!” He raised a hand to his nose, expecting the worst, and detected a sweet odor tinged with sulfur. “My hammock is full of molasses.” From the darkness came a furtive snigger.
“Bascombe, I swear to God I’ll murder you,” he shouted into the dark, bringing snorts of laughter from the others, and shouts from the senior warrants to shut up and let them sleep.
Chapter 3
Their last morning had dawned grey and miserable with a fine, misty rain that swelled the running rigging until it would have difficulty passing through the blocks and sheaves. But the wind had come around to the northwest, and Ariadne was in all respects ready for the sea. The ship was still about twenty-five men short of full complement but that could not be helped in wartime. Captain Bales evidently did not have private funds for recruiting at taverns, or for paying the crimps to deliver warm bodies with all their working parts in order who would wake and discover they were in the Fleet. He must have heaved a great sigh of relief that he was in shape to sail at all, for if a captain could not gather enough men to crew his ship out of harbor, he could lose his commission (and his full pay) and some other captain would be given a chance, while the failure went on the beach at half-pay, there to remain for the rest of his natural life. Those men he had gathered had been pummeled into some semblance of a crew, through fire drills, sail drills, gunnery exercises and the like.
Alan had been disappointed that he had not been given a chance for a final run ashore. If the awful day had indeed arrived when he cut his last ties to the land, he at least wanted to remember it with a stupendous farewell, but it was not to be. The boats had been hoisted inboard and stored upside down on the boat-tier beams that spanned the center waist of the upper gun deck, so there was no excuse to be used for a last quart of ale, a last dinner or a last rattle.
“Anchor’s hove short, sir,” Lieutenant Church, their feisty little third lieutenant, called from the bows. “Up and down.”
“Get the ship underway, Mister Swift,” Captain Bales said, looking like a hung-over mastiff in the dawn light.
“Hands aloft and loose tops’ls. Stand by to hoist fores’ls.”
Lewrie joined a mob of topmen as they sprang for the shrouds and swarmed up the ratlines for the mizzen top. He was no longer dead with fear about going aloft; merely scared stiff.
Off came the harbor gaskets. Hands tailed on the jears, hoisting the yards to their full erect positions on the masts. Others tailed on the sheets to draw down the sails as they were freed, while more men stood by the braces to angle the sails to the wind as they began to draw air and fill with pressure.
There was a difference aloft. The masts were vibrating even more, the freed canvas was flapping and booming as the wind found it like a continual peal of thunder, rattling the yards and jerking them into an unpredictable motion that was like to shake hands out of the masts like autumn leaves. Then, as the topsails began to draw, the yards tilted as the ship paid off heavily to the wind, swinging through great arcs that brought cries of alarm from the newest hands, and made Lewrie moan in sheer terror as he tried to find his balance as footropes and secure holds began to slide from beneath him. The footrope he was on on the mizzen topsailyard was down at a forty-five-degree angle, and new men were skittering it until it almost tucked under the yard in their panic. Senior topmen cursed them into stillness before they all tumbled to the deck.