Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"Bwooharharhar!" along with the odd snort, cackle, and wheeze.

"Well, h'it 'appen, Cap'm Lewrie," Wigmore explained. "Now, I'm 'at sorry we lost one o' yer sailor boys, an' 'at lit'l Rodney feller like t'got et by 'at mama lion, but 'e'll most-like 'eal up an' serve ye good'z h'ever, oncet…"

"But that isn't the point, is it, Mister Wigmore?" Lewrie said with a wintry crackle to his voice. "You had your way, how many more of my hands would you have lured away? By God, sir! I should string you to a hatch-grating and have you flogged 'til your backbone is exposed! A fubsy such as you, the 'cat' would pare your flesh like it'd cut fresh, soft cheese! Mine arse on a band-box, I should!"

Wigmore paled, blinking rapidly in dread; unable to look Lewrie in the eye, he turned to heed Burgess Chiswick, who was rattling that veranda railing with his laughs. Wigmore tried to smile it away.

"Nivver do h'it h'agin, sir, swear h'it!" Wigmore tumbled out. "Point taken, Cap'm Lewrie. Make h'it up t'ye, h'if I could. Biood-money! I could pay… I'm told yer fond o' playful, furry critters, sir. 'Ow 'bout a mongoose! 'Ey's Hell on rats, an' cute as anythin'!"

To which offer, Lewrie could not help but hide a grin, try to maintain fierceness, but said, his own lips quivering with amusement, "No thankee… have one!" He stood, suddenly, scaring the man. "Oh, drink yer damned beer, Wigmore. But, do you come sniffing round any of my sailors, again, I'll come after you myself with a cat-o'-nine-tails!" he warned.

Leaving the man in a speechless, hang-jawed sweat, Lewrie went to join Burgess Chiswick at the railings, about ready to cackle, too.

"Nothin' queer 'bout Antonio, my Lord!" Burgess was still weakly wheezing to himself. "Oh, Alan, did ye ever hear the like?"

"Oh, probably," Lewrie muttered, still fuming. "One gets about. Who knows… worse things happen at sea. Burgess, my apologies, but I must cut things short. Things t'see to aboard ship, you understand."

"And we didn't even get to the main courses, ah well," Burgess replied, sobering at last as he sprang back from the rail to face him. "In point of fact, here comes your soup and such."

"Hate t'waste good victuals, but I must," Lewrie told him, digging for his purse to repay him in part, but Burgess waved his offer away.

"I'll sample a bit of everything, and call it a feast," Burgess told him. "Perhaps we'll find time enough for a drink or two, before we sail?"

"Of course we shall," Lewrie promised him, gathering up his hat and sword from their own abandoned table. "Failing that, though, allow me to offer to treat you to yer first English supper, once we're back home. We'll go up to London and make a whole night of it, hey?"

"Come to think of it, we'll do both," Burgess brightened. "And, we may bore each other to tears with our war-stories."

"Looking forward to it," Lewrie promised as he clapped his hat on his head and squared it away. "For now, though… adieu!'

He got to the red-shuttered tavern by the piers and began hunting for a rowboat to hire to take him out to Proteus, but, to his utter astonishment, found not one but two gigs waiting at the foot of the wooden stairs that led down to the floating landing stage: a strange gig painted green and picked out with white stripes with a Midshipman just debarking from it, and… his own gig, with his tars and Cox'n Andrews in it. The sight of it made him pause halfway down the narrow stairs as the Midshipman was coming up.

"Pardons, sir," the lad said, backing down to the landing stage to make way for a senior officer. He doffed his hat as Lewrie finished his descent. "Uhm… might you be Captain Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate, sir?"

"I am," Lewrie replied, at which discovery the strange Midshipman beamed, and reached into his coat to an inner pocket, from which he withdrew a folded-over sheet of paper. "Midshipman Hedgepeth, Captain Lewrie, of HMS Jamaica, out yonder?" the boy added, with a sweep of his hat towards the bay, and the anchored 64-gunner. "Captain Leatherwood extends to you his utmost respects, sir, and requests that you attend him aboard, at your earliest convenience. I gather, sir, that Proteus will join our ship to escort the East India convoy homeward? And…"

"Thank you, Mister Hedgepeth," Lewrie replied as he took hold of the letter, swallowing the impatience he felt with another intrusion into what was already a tempestuous day. "Since my own gig seems so readily available… surprise, that…" he added, lifting a leery eyebrow at Andrews, who stood beside the boat, "it seems I may manage mine own conveyance to see your captain, this minute. Do you wait a moment, though."

"Of course, sir," Hedgepeth said, doffing his hat once more as Lewrie brushed past him.

"You made quick work of it, Andrews," Lewrie said, standing at his gig's side. "Out to Proteus and back so soon. I said I'd engage a bumboatman…"

"Ah, beggin' yah pardon, Cap'm sah, but… we didn't go out to th' ship, sah, not egg-hackly …" Andrews waffled.

"And whyever did you net?" Lewrie harshly snapped.

"Dat Mizz Yew… de Russian gal, sah?" Andrews tried to explain, all but wringing his doffed straw hat in his hands. "She tell us it'd be bettah fuh Rodney was de circus surgeon t'see to 'im, Cap'm sah. We got 'im heah to de piers, but she an' dhem circus people jus' 'bout took Rodney, sayin' Navy Surgeons don' know nothin' 'bout men who got clawed up so bad, an' dheir 'saw-bones' handle such ever' day, sah."

"And you just… let 'em!" Lewrie barked. "Mine arse on a…!"

A good rant would have felt so damned fine, but right after he drew in a deep breath for his first "broadside," Lewrie shut his lips with an audible "plop."

When they had handed little Rodney down from that Boer waggon, the lad had been shirtless, for the first time in Lewrie's memory, and he had seen the old whip scars that his former masters, the Beaumans on Jamaica, had cut into him. And Lewrie had felt queasy to think that he would have had to, under the rigid requirements of the Articles of War when dealing with recaptured deserters, put Rodney to the gratings for several dozen lashes. He would have had no other choice, else his men would have gotten the idea that he was softer on his "Black Pets" than his other crewmen; that he could wink at desertion; that he was turning into a "Popularity Dick," or a soft touch! Lewrie couldn't think of a better way to split his crew into grumbling factions, and destroy what esprit they had. Without fear of consequences… without fear of him … he would lose all his authority, and his officers, warrants, petty officers, and midshipmen would lose theirs along with him.

Might be best, after all, Lewrie grimly told himself, knowing that allowing this to stand only delayed 'what he'd have to do.

"Uhm…" Lewrie grunted, instead. "Might be something to that, Andrews. I doubt either Mister Hodson, or Mister Durant, has ever run across a lion's clawing… and the sepsis sure to follow such. Very well, we'll leave him aboard the Festival … for a short time at the least… to see what their surgeon may do for him."

"Aye, sah!" his Cox'n cried with both relief and pleasure, and Lewrie could hear the tension whooshing out of his tense boat crew.

"Return to the ship," Lewrie ordered. "Jamaica's, gig may bear me out to her, and back aboard Proteus once we're done. My respects to Mister Langlie, and he is to see that our injured men in the cottage up above the bay, along with Mister Durant and his sick-berth attendants, are fetched back aboard."