“Mister Lewrie,” Lady Cantner called from the hatch to the wardroom. “I think you should come…”
Tad was slung in a hammock below the skylight, where there was a chance for some breeze below decks, and Lewrie thought he looked as dead as anyone could that still breathed. He was yellow, the skin stretched taut over his skull, while his eyes were sunk deep in currant-colored circles of exhaustion.
“Tad, how do you keep?” Alan asked softly.
“God, Alan, I am so sick … when I’m gone do write my parents and say I fell in action, will you do that?”
“You’ll be fine, you silly hobbledehoy.” But Tad’s hand was dry as sunbaked timber and hot as a gun barrel, and leaning close to him Alan could smell the corruption of the blood in the bile Purnell had been bringing up.
“I can taste it,” Tad was saying. “I can taste death, Alan, I’m going to die—”
“Nonsense,” Alan said, realizing he was probably right.
“Thanks for … that night,” Tad managed so softly that Alan had to lean ever closer, and it was like bending down over a hot oven. “It was wonderful, not so hard, after all…”
“Just like riding a cockhorse,” Alan said, trying to plaster a smile on his face. Tad tried to smile back but began coughing and retching and choking, fighting for breath.
Alan tried to lift him but he was drowning in his own vomit. Tad gripped his hand with all his strength, going rigid, eyes wide open. After a final gasping try for a breath, he went limp, eyes blank and staring at Lewrie.
“Goddamn it,” Alan cursed, tears burning his eyes. “Just Goddamn sweet fuck all!”
Lady Cantner came to him and held out her arms, tears on her face, and he sank into her arms gladly. “Damme, he was such a decent little chub. Oh, Goddamn this…”
“He was your friend,” she said, stroking his hair, “but his sorrow and pain are ended. God harvests the flowers early, and leaves weeds such as us to suffer and try to understand.”
That’s a hellish sort of comfort, he thought miserably. “Half a dozen worse people could have died except him. God, what a terrible thing this is! Tad, half the crew sick or dead, Lieutenant Kenyon like to be on his own deathbed, maybe a French privateer ready to take us. What next, for Christ’s sake? God, I’m so scared…”
“There, there,” Lady Cantner continued to comfort.
God stap me, but she has a great set of poonts, Alan thought inanely, appreciating the tender and yielding surfaces against which his face was now pressed as she gentled him.
“You must have faith, Mister Lewrie,” Lord Cantner said from the door to the aft cabin, just a second before Alan decided that dying would not be so bad, if he could grab hold of Lady Cantner’s bouncers for a second. “I’m sure the other officers shall see us through.”
“Aye, milord,” Alan replied, stepping back and wiping his eyes. Lady Cantner offered a handkerchief and Lewrie applied it to his face. It was Mrs. Hillwood’s … still redolent of lovemaking. Alan found it hard to keep a straight face, or stifle an urge to begin howling with laughter. He finally managed to say, almost strangling, “We shall do what we can, me and Mister Claghorne. Right now, we are the officers, milord.”
Lord Cantner’s look of annoyance at finding a snivelling midshipman on his wife’s tits changed to a stricken rictus at that news.
“Was it his mother’s?” Lady Cantner asked of the handkerchief.
“Er … not exactly, milady,” Lewrie said, pulling himself together. He had to escape them before he burst out in manic laughter and they ended up clapping him in irons. “I thank you for your comfort when I had given way to despair, milady. I have to go on deck, now. Mister Claghorne will be needing me. Excuse me.”
Fine bastard’s gullion you are, he scathed himself; your best friend just died, all hell riding down on us, scared so bad I wouldn’t trust mine arse with a fart, and you’re ready to laugh like a deranged loon, and feel up the “blanket” of our “live-lumber”!
He took a glass from the binnacle rack and crossed to join Claghorne, who stood by the windward rail and gripped the narrow bulwark as he stared at their approaching stranger with a forlorn expression.
“About three miles off, now,” Claghorne sighed heavily. “She’ll be up ta us an’ alongside in an hour, holdin’ the wind gauge, dammit.”
“French, sir?” Lewrie asked, hoping against hope.
“Yes, God rot ’em,” Claghorne said. “See the length of the yards, cut shorter’n ours? No guts fer a stiff wind. Black-painted masts, an’ the way they cut their jibs different from ours?”
“Then what shall we do, Mister Claghorne?”
“Might still fox ’em. Show ’em a body, tell ’em we have fever aboard. They don’t want that … Was it young Purnell?”
“He just died, sir,” Lewrie said, getting ready to dive back down into a real session of the Blue Devils.
“Damn hard luck. Watch yer luff, By God…”
The wind had backed a full point to the east-sou’east, and had fallen in its intensity. To stay on the wind for maximum speed they would have to steer more easterly, which was now a perfect course for Antigua, their original destination.
“I do believe that God has a shitten sense of humor,” Claghorne said, trying manfully to keep from raging and tearing his hair at his misfortune.
“Sir, if we have to fight—”
“Mister Lewrie, shut yer trap,” Claghorne said, and stepped away from him to begin pacing the deck again as Parrot seemed to slow and ride a little heavier on the sea.
Lewrie eyed the French brig again, now hull-up and aiming for that point of intersection of their courses. There had to be something they could do besides beat up to the brig and surrender, he thought. If Claghorne could convince them that Parrot had fever aboard, they just might be shocked enough for Parrot to surprise them. Lewrie began to inventory what they had below in the magazines that might serve.
“Goddamn you, you poltroon,” Lord Cantner was shouting from aft at Claghorne. “There must be some idea in your head.”
“The wind is dying, milord,” Claghorne said, close to giving in to despair. “He has a longer hull, an’ with this wind I cannot outrun him. He has more guns an’ most likely nine-pounders that can shoot clean through our hull. If they board us they’ll not leave a man-jack alive, an’ what they’d do ta yer good lady, I shudder ta think about—”
“Well, I shudder to think about what happens to the Indies if I am captured by those frog-eating sonsabitches,” Lord Cantner raved.
“I can give you a weighted bag ta drop yer secret stuff overboard, milord, but I can’t guarantee yer freedom an hour from now.”
“If I could suggest something, Mister Claghorne?” Lewrie said after clearing his throat for attention. Lady Cantner had been attracted to the deck at the sound of the argument and stood by, waiting to hear what would happen to her.
“I command this ship, now, Mister Lewrie,” Claghorne said, “and I’ll thank you ta remember yer place.”
“No, let’s hear him out,” Lord Cantner said, clutching at even the feeblest of straws.
“They want to come close-aboard, and demand surrender. Let them. Put them off their guard with the Quarantine flag and the sight of our sick and dead. Then give them a broadside of double-shot and grape, with star-shot and langridge and fire arrows to take their rigging down and set fires aloft. They’ll be so busy at saving their own ship we may have a chance to escape and make it a stern chase. We shall be going toward our own bases after dark. Would they pursue that far? Could we lose them after sundown?”