Dewey Lambdin - The Captain`s Vengeance

"My condolences, sir," Lewrie soberly said.

"For 'the Wine Keg'?" Nicely scoffed.

"No, for you, sir," Lewrie amended, "I s'pose you had to give up Obdurate to take this, well… call it a promotion, at the least."

"Aye, I did, dammit," Nicely groused, seating himself once more. "Best two-decker on the West Indies Station, if I do say so myself… and I do! Staff drudgery, well… something I'd been fortunate enough to miss, 'til now. Sir Hyde gave me no choice in the matter, just said I was best for the post, how career-enhancing it'd be, and all of that flummery, then gave Obdurate to one of his favourite frigate Captains. Then gave said frigate to a junior Captain, shuffled another junior off a leaky sloop of war, promoted a brig-sloop Commander into her, made a Lieutenant into Commander for the brig-sloop… made a Midshipman into a Lieutenant in his flagship's wardroom as a replacement." Nicely had a bleak look out his windows at real ships at anchor, looking famished. "Interest and favour… or they all owe the Admiral money. Or he owes their families. But you know how the Navy works."

Lewrie refilled his coffee, stinting on the sugar this time.

What could be said? he wondered to himself; Shouldn't have joined if ye can't take a joke? It's a cruel old world, and that's its way?

"Didn't bury Captain Charles here, Lewrie," Nicely further griped. "Lumbered the old fellow into a beef barrel and filled it up with accidentally salted and condemned rum, then shipped him to his loving family in England. B'lieve it or not, sir, he actually had one!"

Lewrie could not keep his sniggering to himself at that news.

"Speaking ill of the dead?" Nicely chid him. "You heathen!"

"Springs to mind, sir… how apt it was to pickle him." Lewrie chortled, setting his cup down before he spilled or broke it as a wave of titters took him. "And, was there a tinge of saltwater in his keg, that's the closest he'd been to the genuine article in years!"

"If you can't say something good about the dead, say not a word, 'twas the old adage," Nicely replied, grinning himself, though.

"He's dead… good." Lewrie snickered.

"Aye, well… I doubt the rum was necessary. Sir Edward was a fair way towards pickling himself long before his 'casking,' damn his jingle-brained ways to hell. As much 'Miss Taylor,' 'Black Strap,' and rum went missing from stores, all with Sir Edward's signature affixed, 'tis a wonder he drew a waking breath, much less a sober one," Nicely confided. "One'd suspect malfeasance in office, selling it off by the odd hundred gallons to shore merchants, but no, I suspect he drank it. You cannot imagine what a bloody pot-mess this office was, and how much labour it's taken just to get it caught up!

"And the sorriest thing, Lewrie," Capt. Nicely continued, "is just how little work is necessary, now it's all tiddly and clackin' along like a hallway clock. I am bored, Lewrie, bored to tears. There are too many hours in the day. And damn you for havin' so much fun at sea… even if you didn't know where you were going or where you were when you got there!"

"My sincerest condolences, again, sir," Lewrie offered with his right hand over his heart and his eyes downcast, for a sober moment.

"Know what you're thinkin'… 'so long as it ain't me,' hey?"

"Something very like that, in truth, Captain Nicely," Lewrie had to admit.

"Yes, well…" Nicely gruffly said, shrugging. "Finish your coffee, Lewrie, and we'll coach down to the hospital. You've a little surprise in store."

"Sir?" Lewrie asked as Nicely flung on his sword belt, his ornate uniform coat, and got his hat down from a bookshelf. "The hospital, do you say?"

"Can't get your rich prize ship back for you, but we did recover your missing crewmen, picked 'em up from-"

"They're alive, sir?" Lewrie gawped, springing to his feet.

"Aye… most," Nicely said, with a brief moue of chagrin.

"And a Quartermaster's Mate name of Toby Jugg, too, sir?" Lewrie pressed. "He was recovered, as well?"

"B'lieve that was one of the names, Captain Lewrie. Why?"

" 'Cause he just may be the bastard who arranged her taking!"

"Well, let's go sort it out, then," Nicely said, leading the way towards the double doors. A stringy-pale and much harassed Lieutenant came barging in, shuffling a loose stack of papers and muttering under his breath.

"Fidditch!" Nicely barked, almost startling the poor young man out of a year's growth, making him go ashen, cutty-eyed, and fumble-fingered. "Whistle up me coach, Mister Fidditch, there's a good 'Ink-Sniff… you poor, put-upon 'catch-fart'!"

"Aye, aye, sir… directly!"

"Good lad, really," Nicely commented as they drum-echoed their boots down that long, cool hallway, "not a dab o' 'interest' with Admiralty in the world, though. And I need someone to abuse, damme!"

G od bless ye, Cap'm Lewrie, sir!" Bosun's Mate Towpenny cried in delight as Lewrie entered their ward in the naval shore hospital on the Palisades peninsula. "Saw good ol' Proteus come in, we did, Cap'm, an' I told 'em t'wouldn't be long before we got reclaimed!"

Towpenny waved a hand at the large open windows that faced the harbour approaches, the louvred "Bahamian" storm shutters propped high to provide shade yet still allow fresh air to circulate. The windowpanes were small, though reasonably clear and clean; the lower halves of the sashes, quite tropically "homey"-but for the iron bars that kept "grateful recipients of His Majesty's care" from deserting as soon as they were ambulatory!

Lewrie took a quick census, his eyes darting about the room and plucking names from memory. Towpenny, Able Seaman Ahern, the teenaged topman, Willy Toffett, Able Seaman Luckaby… Midshipman Mr. Burns was not there, but most-like in a "gentleman's" ward, and… Quartermaster Jugg? His eyes blared and his lips parted in astonishment to see Toby Jugg sitting on a cot near one of the windows!

What the Devil's he doin' here? Why didn't he run if he…

"Ah… sorry it took a while, Mister Towpenny… lads," he managed to say, gulping down his shock after a moment. He strode about the room, clapping them all on the back, even the reluctant-looking Jugg, to congratulate them on their survival; squeamish, though, as he looked into Jugg's eyes and patted his shoulder with false bonhomie.

Squeamish, too, ready to clap a hand over his nose, as the reek of the hospital caught up with him; an age-old reek of blood, pus, and vomit, of fever-sweat and flesh rot. God, how many thousands had died here in the tropics of fevers, with battle wounds the rare cause!

It would be days, Lewrie had been told, before his hands could be released even on light duties after their ordeal. All were badly sunburned, some peeling in raw-beef sheets, their lips dryly cracked, exposed skin spotted with lanced and draining saltwater boils. Able Seaman Ahern was the worst off, still bedridden. He'd drunk seawater.

"Now, lads, just what the Devil happened to you?" Lewrie at last demanded, taking a seat on a cot and fanning away the heat.

" 'Twas two hours into th' Middle Watch, sir," Towpenny said, by way of a beginning. "Mister Burns, Toffett here, and Ahern over yonder, was the watchstanders, th' rest of us caulkin' below. 'Coordin' to what they've told me, th' first thing they knowed, there come a wee thumpin'… of boats comin' alongside, sir, then nigh on two dozen pirates got on deck, and-"

"Blink of an eye, an' they was just there, sir!" Willy Toffett declared. "Knives an' cutlasses t'our throats, and 'twas nothin' that we could do, e'en t'cry out. Three or four t'each of us, Cap'm, sir."