Dewey Lambdin - The Baltic Gambit

Best leave Lt. Arthur Ballard, RN, a brave and honourable memory to his family, his associates… and everyone else. Courageously lost in the King's Name… and not a jealous, love-sick, and ascetic fool.

"Ah, there you be, sir," Pettus gaily said as Lewrie came back to the cabins. "Your supper is here, sir. Can't speak for the quality of the boiled carrots, but the potato hash with bacon is fresher, and there's half one of the gun-room's chickens, with some of your good Cheshire cheese rolled in biscuit crumbles, and toasted. Claret with it, sir?"

"Capital, Pettus," Lewrie said with genuine eagerness for food, though feeling a pang of conscience to sound too eager, after the death and ravaging of some of his men… of Ballard's passing. He sat down at his solitary place at the head of his dining table and scooted up to his place setting, whipping the napkin cross his lap.

Just as a bowl of portable soup was put before him, he caught a strain of music from up forward on the gun-deck. "They sound in decent spirits, considerin'," Lewrie commented.

"Oh, aye sir," Pettus agreed, pouring a new glass of good aged claret for him. "Earlier, well… you can't keep our tars gloomy for very long, after all, sir. Once they're done grieving, that is."

Earlier, Desmond had played the dirge-like Johnny Faa while the funeral service had been read, and the corpses-those that had not been slipped out a gun-port during combat-were slid overside from beneath the Union Flag, wrapped in canvas and weighted with shot for sea-burial. As Lewrie had come back aboard round dusk, and the labours to repair the ship had ended, and the crew gathered idle during what was left of the Second Dog, it had been Admiral Hosier's Ghost, an old American air, Katy Cruel, and other gloomy tunes.

Now, though… once the hands had eat, and the mess-tables had been cleared away, Lewrie could recognise a gayer minuet tune called Constancy, the livelier Flannagan's Favourite, and the tune played as they'd stood into action in the morning, The Jolly Thresher.

And by the time that Lewrie finished his soup and started in on his entrйe-with two smaller saucers of everything for the famished cats, the crewmen had launched into One Misty, Moisty Morning again.

One Misty, Moisty Morning, when cloudy was the weather

I met up with an old man, he was clothed all in leather.

He wore no shirt unto his back, but wool upon his skin,

singing Howdye-do and Howdye-do, and Howdye-do, again!

I went a little farther, and there I met a maid…

As it had been in the morning, perhaps only three or four hands took the main verses, whilst everyone else roared out the short refrain, pounding their fists on the mess-tables, stamping their feet on the oak decks, hard enough to make the frigate's timbers shudder.

This maid her name was Dolly, 'twas in a gown of grey.

I was feeling somewhat jolly and persuaded her to stay.

And many kind embraces there, I stroked her little chin,

singing Howdye-do, and Howdye-do…!

"Amazin', really," Lewrie mused aloud after dabbing his lips and taking a sip of wine. "After all they've gone through today, the mates they've lost…"

"Like I said, sir," Pettus reminded him, "the life of a sailor, or so I've learned in my short time aboard, is hard misery, and short commons, most of the time. They'll take what joy they can, when there's a reason for it… and time enough. After all, sir, it isn't every day they're in a real battle, and win it." They'll miss their shipmates but… not for all that long… not so long as they're still alive, sir, and able to brag about it."

"Amen," Lewrie agreed, perking up at the notion; and how apt it was when applied to the late Arthur Ballard. "Amen to that."

Sir Valentine: These banish'd men that I have kept withal,

Are men endu'd with worthy qualities.

Forgive them what they have committed here

and let them be recalled from their exile.

They are reformed, civil, full of good.

And fit for great employment, worthy lord.

– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

The Danes had thrown in the towel, withdrawing from the League of Armed Neutrality. For a day or two, the British fleet had lain at anchor in Kioge Bay below Copenhagen, then departed for the Baltic to confront the Swedes, but that was anti-climactic. They had gotten to sea with their small squadron, but, as soon as they'd learned how the Danes had been beaten, they returned to port at Karlskrona, pointedly warned by Lord Nelson that it would be better did they remain there, if they knew what was good for them!

That left only the Russian fleet to deal with, and there were signs that the confrontation would be at sea, for the amount of drift ice had been greatly reduced by the arrival of Spring. Surely the thaw had reached Reval and Kronstadt, and the Tsar's warships were now free.

A swift frigate had caught up with the fleet, fresh from Great Yarmouth, bearing orders and mail to the flagship HMS London. Just as soon as the signal flags had been hoisted, every ship had sent a boat to her to collect it. Midshipman Furlow returned in the launch with a large canvas bag, and scampered up the side with it, holding it aloft like a fresh-killed fox at the end of a thrilling hunt as the officers gathered round him and cheered, as happy as the pack of hounds would round the Master of the Hunt. Lewrie's clerk, the unfortunately named Mr. George Georges, the Purser Mr. Pridemore, and his Yeoman took hold of it and quickly sorted it out for distribution at Seven Bells of the Forenoon; when gunnery practice had ended, just before "Clear Decks amp; Up Spirits" was piped for the rum ration.

Aft, Lewrie quickly pawed through his own small pile of correspondence, the official letters first. "Victualling Board… Sick amp; Hurt Board… general bumf to all ships," Lewrie muttered as he tore them open and quickly scanned them, laying them flat in a shallow wood box on his desk once read, not in any particular order, to be dealt with later. There was nothing of urgent import regarding him, just the ship; no orders direct from Admiralty. He could turn to the rest.

"Ooh, shit!" he hissed inward through his teeth. There was actually a letter from his wife, Caroline! She had broken her bitter and aloof silence, wonder of wonders, and written him! Naturally, he would leave that one for the very last, sure it was yet another of her acidic screeds… the sort sure to curdle his mid-day meal, whether he read it before or after dinner. Tentatively holding it at two of its corners, Lewrie laid it back down on his desk-top.

The rest of his personal mail… there was one from his eldest son, Sewallis, and one from the younger, Hugh. There was a bill from a Yarmouth chandler and one from a London tailor. Eudoxia Durschenko had written him-"Leave that'un for the very last," he muttered-and one from his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy. He was about to open it when he caught sight of the senders of a pair of others.

Christopher Cashman, his old friend who'd moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, and had become an American, who'd provided a thoroughly false affidavit for his trial, had sent him a letter! He was about to pounce on that one, when the last really caught his eye.

His barrister, Mr. Andrew MacDougall, Esquire, had written him!

"Oh, shit," Lewrie muttered again, sure that the combination of letters from his solicitor, and his attorney, portended another dreadful stint in a courtroom. With a grimace on his phyz, he opened it.

In neat Spencerian "copper-plate" calligraphy, MacDougall told him glad tidings.

Sir, I take pen in hand to deliver unto you the most amazing turn of events, of which I but lately heard; events sure to elicit within you the greatest Joy and sense of Relief, for, your former Accuser, Mr. Hugh Beauman, is no more. The packet in which he and his Wife and Coterie embarked for Portugal to escape the Folly of their Suit against you missed the landmarks when attempting to enter the Tagus River and the port of Lisbon in a great Gale in late January, just weeks after your Acquittal, and was driven aground not half a mile from shore, with great loss of Life, principal of whom was Mr, Hugh Beauman himself.