"Might you wish to be taken aboard and taken elsewhere, sir?" Lewrie asked; he didn't want the fellow "scragged"! "If you are in danger, an escape for you and your family can be arranged."
"Mon Dieu, Capitaine Lewrie," Brasseur said as he set his cognac aside and wrung his hands. "Leave La Belle France? We mus' be curs-ed, our famille. Long ago Anglais outcasts, now, toujours outcast from new country. But… it may be zat, or face ze guillotine. Merci, m'sieur, merci beaucoup! Per'aps I mus' ask you for zis."
"Well, then," Lewrie said, reaching for his coin purse to shake out three guineas. "I'll not keep you so long that your police become suspicious, Capitaine Brasseur. Daunting as the information you bring is, putting yourself to further risk will not be necessary."
"No 'flea-bite,' Capitaine Lewrie?" Brasseur asked. "A pity. But wiz ze re-enforcements 'oo come…?" He heaved a deep, negative shrug.
"Don't see how we could accomplish anything, now," Lewrie found himself saying. Disgruntlement, perhaps, or a faint, peevish suspicion of his own, but he added, "Nice idea, but no future in it. Not anywhere near where you live, m'sieur. There are better places… no matter." He cryptically cut himself off, still wondering which to take as Gospel… Papin's version, or Brasseur's.
"Ah, j'ai oublie!" Brasseur cried, all but slapping his head. "Forgetful of me. I 'ave ze newspapers you ask for." He traded coins for a wad of papers kept in the chest pocket of his fisherman's smock. "Zey mention ze raids on Cote Sauvage, an' ze re-enforcements… to assure our citoyens … ze local people."
"At last! Thankee kindly, sir," Lewrie enthused, even though he knew that most French papers lied like a rug-as the Frogs said, "Lied like a bulletin from Paris"-and he would need help from Devereux and Durant and Lt. Urquhart to get a proper translation.
Brasseur gulped down the last of his cognac, stated a sum for his goods, and pocketed his money. Lewrie walked him back to the deck, then up the larboard ladderway to the gangway and entry-port.
Both men stopped, though, for a large crowd of sailors were now gathered round Mr. Durant and his patient, Quarter-Gunner Brough, who sat atop a sea-chest just aft of the main-mast trunk.
"This'll be good," Lewrie told the Frenchman.
Durant, now in rolled-up shirtsleeves and stained leather apron, was reaching into Brough's gaping mouth with pliers. He twisted, and even Lewrie could hear the sickly crunch of rotten roots. Mr. Durant jerked hard, and the sailors whooped, clapped, and shouted "Fire One!" as Durant held up the tooth like a conjurer who'd just pulled a dove from someone's nostril. It was a large molar, worthy of a dray horse, stained brown with a lifetime of "chaw-baccy," and black with corruption. Brough put a hand to his jaw, spat blood, but made no sound.
"Ge' on wi' ith!" he shouted, to show his "bottom."
"Oil of cloves, Brough?" Durant offered, but Brough had surely been dosed with a double tot of rum, already; to which offer the poor fellow shook his head side to side… tentatively, it must be said. "No fankee, thir!" Brough insisted, glowering at the Surgeon as fiercely as he thought he could get away with, this side of insubordination; the thought that his pay would be docked for his treatment, paying for his own agony, might have had something to do with it.
"Care t'make a wager, sir?" Lewrie asked Brasseur. "Two to go, and the odds favour him squeakin' by the third." Fears of lingering too long aboard an enemy warship or no, Brasseur looked bloodthirstily intrigued, with that "better you than me, mate" smirk on his face.
"Go fer t'other'uns!" Willy Toffett urged. "Sure'z Christmas comin', he'll squeal like a shoat. Got money on't, hey, lads?"
Out came the second tooth, as rotten as the first, and with it a spurt of greyish blood and yellow pus which Brough spat into a wood pail, demanding again that Durant get it over with. "Yer borin me, Mister Durant, sir!" he made himself cackle, to the gloomier, quieting crowd of onlookers, some of whom were now regretting their wagers.
Out came the last, and after swigging his mouth clean with sea water, Brough leaped to his feet, arms aloft, and dancing like a successful boxer fresh enough to gloat over his win.
"Huzzah, Mister Durant!" Lewrie called down. "Most neatly done, I vow! And, Brough…'nother tot o' rum and light duties for a day, for ye stood it manful!"
"Merci, Captain," Durant called back, bowing at the waist after his pair of loblolly boys had taken charge of his pliers, pail, and apron. "Ah he, m 'sieur… vous etes Capitaine Brasseur, oui?" Durant all but skipped up the ladderway to the gangway, and began a palaver in rapid Frog. His chances to speak his native-born tongue were lacking aboard Savage, but for the hour a day he tutored the Midshipmen and a few of the Master's Mates who might aspire to Commission, someday; the rest of his waking, on-duty hours were conducted in English, at which Durant had become more than proficient, but… when a chance arose he would gladly seize it, if only for a few minutes with another Frenchman, no matter his class or station, and "slang" away. Brasseur on his part seemed to enoy it, too, after making a torturous way with Lewrie and a nearly total lack of a common language between them.
"I offer him my medical services, for him or his crew, sir," Durant said with chuckle. "For some reason, Capitaine Brasseur refuses my kind offer, you see."
"He should not be delayed too long, Mister Durant," Lewrie told the Surgeon. "Gendarmes, spies, and the guillotine, hmm?"
"Oh, mais oui!" Durant replied, wincing. Au revoirs were said in haste, fakes attention said for Brasseur to take care, and even more merci beaucoups, along with bonne chance and good luck before the fellow went down the man-ropes and boarding battens to a waiting boat.
Lewrie stood by the open entry-port, his cocked hat held high in salute, with a smile plastered on his phyz, though fuming that both his informants had given him diametrically opposed observations, and he still couldn't fathom which to believe. Bastards! he snarled; vous menteurs fumiers… lyin' shits! Or, is it fu-miers menteurs} Tow an adjective… le waggon green, by God.
"Anything of note aboard his boat, Mister Devereux?" he asked the Marine officer.
"The usual trash, and nothing more, according to Corporal Skipwith, sir," Devereux said with a faint smirk. "Hardly any catch this morning, either, he told me."
"Mister Urquhart? Soon as Desmond secures the launch, pray do get us under way," Lewrie instructed. "We shall continue our little jog down towards Point Grave, and see if there are any changes to the battery there. Might take a pot-shot at it, do I feel surly. And I do."
Lt. Urquhart acknowledged his orders, touched his hat, and went to the quarterdeck. Lewrie thought a stroll to the forecastle and a turn down the starboard side might settle breakfast, but…
"Your pardons, Captain," Mr. Durant said, a quizzical look upon his face. "There is something I must mention. I do not know if it is important, but…," he said with one of his deep, Gallic shrugs.
"Walk with me, sir," Lewrie offered, and they set off forrud.
"That fellow, sir… Jean Brasseur," Durant began, raising an eyebrow in query. "He sells us more than fish and wine?"