“This wind is holding, milord. Six more days should see us fair into Anguilla,” he said, doffing his hat.
“Pray God it does,” Lady Cantner said.
“You can still work the ship?” the lord asked, working his sour little mouth as though eating a lime. “Your captain does nothing to assure me. And that mate is so inarticulate he seems half-witted. Pagh, I hate the smell of this…”
“Perhaps one of milady’s scented sachets would serve as well, milord. The assafoetida seems to have had little effect.”
“Gladly,” Lord Cantner said, throwing the foul-smelling bag over the side. “There’s not much to choose between that stuff and the odors from the sick men up forward. Stap me, what a foul stench it is. I’d rather sniff a corpse’s arse.”
You can take your pick of arseholes up forward, Lewrie thought.
“Your surgeon is a fool.”
“Only a surgeon’s mate, milord. An apothecary, mostly. But I doubt if a surgeon’s skill at cutting would avail us.”
“No one will tell us anything, and who the hell are you? Your name escapes me.”
“Midshipman Alan Lewrie, milord.”
“You look like you might know something. How long you been wearing the King’s coat?”
“One year, milord.”
“God’s teeth.” And Lord Cantner turned away in misery.
“It is not his fault, my dear,” Lady Cantner said. “Is there anything I could do to help, Mister Lewrie, perhaps help tend to the sick, or read to them?”
“Delia!” Lord Cantner was shocked at her suggestion.
Tending the sick was for the worst sort, those already so degraded that the odors and sights of sick and injured people could have no further influence. It was a job for abbatoir workers, not titled ladies …
“I doubt if anyone could appreciate a good book just now, milady,” Alan said gently, sharing an astounded glance with Lord Cantner that his lady would even consider such a thing. “The loblolly men shall suffice for the hands. Though I wonder—”
“Yes?”
“The other midshipman, Mister Purnell, was taken ill last night.”
“And he is your friend,” she said, full of pity.
“Aye, milady, he is.”
The thought of Tad lying helpless and puking scared him silly, and Tad Purnell lying sick could have been him so easily, still might be …
“I shall go to him at once,” Lady Cantner said, “if you would approve, my dear.”
“A gentleman, is he?”
“Aye, milord. Of a good trading family from Bristol.”
“I suppose,” Lord Cantner relented sourly.
“Mister Lewrie?” Claghorne called from farther forward.
“Excuse me, milord … milady.”
Claghorne stood by the quartermaster at the tiller head, his hands behind his back and his feet planted firmly on the tilting deck, and glooming bleak as poverty.
“Mister Lewrie, the captain’s took sick as hell,” he said in a low mutter. “I’ll be dependin’ on you an’ Mister Mooney ta see us through.”
“Oh, Christ,” Lewrie said, turning cold all over with another shock to his already shattered nerves. “Has Boggs seen to him?”
“Boggs stands more chance o’ dyin’ o’ barrel-fever than Yeller Jack. Drunk as an emperor down below. Keep that quiet. We don’t want the people gettin’ scared.”
“They’re not already, sir?” Alan shivered.
“Aye, true enough,” Claghorne said. “Knew I could count on ya to buck up an’ stay solid. Must be the only person not scared out a yer boots by this.”
“You misjudge me badly, Mister Claghorne.”
“Then keep it up, ’cause so everyone else misjudges ya, too.”
“May I suggest sir, that you inform Lord Cantner of Lieutenant Kenyon and his distress?”
“I can’t talk his break-teeth kinda words,” Claghorne said. “You do it. I’ve a ship ta run and he can go hang before I let him shit on me again. Stuck up squinty-eyed little hop-o’-my-thumb fool!”
“Aye, sir, but he is very influential. A word from him in the right place and the officer who brought him safe into harbor could gain a commission overnight.”
“I’m a scaly old fish, Lewrie. Not one o’ yer bowin’ an’ arse-kissin’ buggers. I’d be a tarpaulin mate forever before I’d piss down his back, nor anyone else’s, fer favor.”
Lewrie shrugged, knowing that Claghorne was out of his element in the face of a peer and was throwing away a sterling opportunity to gain influence because he lacked the wit, and took such a perverse pride in being a tarry, self-made man of his hands, beholden to no one.
I must be healthy, Lewrie assured himself wryly; I can still toady with the best right in the middle of shrieking hysteria …
* * *
The wind held steady for hours as they drove nor’east. They were still five days from harbor, if the wind held. Thankfully no one else had gone down ill in the last few hours. Perhaps something they had done had worked against the fever. For all the fear and grief, it had so far been a remarkably fast passage to windward.
“God, give us just a little luck…” Alan felt weights slough from his shoulders each time they cast the log. He could get ashore, away from whatever was causing the Yellow Jack. Tad could get a doctor, and he would get credit for standing as an acting officer.
“Sail ho!” the lookout cried from the mainmast gaff throat. “Four points off the weather bow.”
“Aloft with you, Mister Lewrie, an’ spy her out,” Claghorne ordered. Alan seized a glass and scrambled up into the rigging to hug the mainmast alongside the lookout.
“Brig,” Alan said, studying the sail through the telescope.
“Aye, zur,” said the lookout. “An’ a Frenchy, I thinks, zur.”
“French? Why?” Lewrie asked, afraid he was right.
“Jus’ looks French ta me, zur. Can’t rightly say.”
“Keep us informed,” Alan said, heading down to report to Claghorne. “A brig, sir, coming north with a soldier’s wind. The lookout thinks she’s French.”
“Goddamn, what would a Frog brig be doing so close to Anguilla or Nevis?”
“Looking for morsels such as us, Mister Claghorne?” Lewrie offered, drawing a withering glare from the master’s mate.
“An’ goddamn you, too, sir,” Claghorne shouted.
“Aye aye, sir.” Alan shied, backing away.
An hour passed. By then the strange sail was hull-down over the horizon, both ships doomed to intersect at a point off to the east with no way to avoid meeting. Parrot was going as fast as possible but could not get to windward. Neither, in their pitiful condition, could they run. They had already been seen, and any course of evasion would only take them that much farther away from safety and help for their sick, after getting so tantalizingly near. And neither, reduced in manpower, could they fight well if the brig was indeed French.
“Goddamn me, she’s French, all right,” Claghorne said after returning from the lookout perch himself. “Privateer outa Martinique, most-like. Maybe not heavy-gunned but loaded with men for prize crews.”
“So they’ll try to board us, sir,” Lewrie said, wondering if their luck could possibly get any worse.
“They might not, if they see we have Yeller Jack aboard. Them Popish breast-beaters is superstitious as hell. We hoist the Quarantine flag, let ’em see our sick, an’ they might let us go fer safer pickin’s.”
“And if they don’t?”
Claghorne did not answer him, but walked away to the windward rail and began to pace. As close as they were to death from Yellow Jack, it was preferable to being taken a prize and led off to some prison hulk or dungeon on Martinique. With Kenyon down sick, the burden of running, fighting or striking their colors devolved on him, as if he didn’t already have enough to worry about.