Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

"Goddamme!" Lewrie shuddered as he read the name on the transom plate of the new ship. "Goddamn him!"

"What is it, sir?" Ballard asked.

"Here, see for yourself, Mister Ballard!" Alan said, shivering with dread, and strongly reconsidering an immediate resignation. "Why, the bastard!" Ballard yelped in outrage. There, in ornate, serifed letters, bright with gold leaf, was the new ship's name: Caroline!

"How dare he presume, sir!" Ballard growled, repulsed by such a boorish, flaunting deed, his prim sense of decorum scandalized! "Put your helm aweather, Mister Neill," Lewrie decided quickly. "New course due west. Steer up yon lugger's transom, but be ready to come about again to due north for the channel when I call."

"Sir?" Ballard queried, coming to his side. "Helm's aweather, sir. Comin' about t'due west, sir."

"You'll be using the larboard battery for the salute, Mister Fowles?" Lewrie called down to his master gunner in the waist below.

"Aye, sir. Ready any time you want, sir."

"Oh, sir," Lieutenant Ballard objected, but not too forcefully, as he got his quizzical, bemused look. "Surely not !" he tried to pout.

On their new course, they would ram Caroline in her very stern, or pass down her starboard side at close pistol-shot at best!

"Open your ports, Mister Fowles. Ready with the salute."

At half a cable's distance from a collision, Lewrie turned to the quartermaster. "Helm alee, Mister Neill. Nor'west."

Alacrity bore away upwind of the anchored Caroline, crossing her starboard quarter at a forty-five degree angle at one hundred yards!

"Fire your salute, Mister Fowles," Lewrie grinned.

BOOM! "If I weren't a gunner, I wouldn't be here. Number Two gun… fire!" Fowles paced out the stately measure, walking aft with the guns. BOOM! "I've left me wife, me home, and all that's dear. Number Three gun… fire!" BOOM!

Guests aboard the Caroline, and her mates, had cringed when they saw Alacrity bearing down on them. They'd laughed at Finney's japes against the Navy as he celebrated his victory. Then, here was the Navy bearing down upon them as if to ram and board her! Civilians dashed about in sudden terror as the first cannon fired its reduced powder charge. Women screamed, and the band came to a sudden gurgling halt! Crewmen ran for weapons, sure they were being fired at, or took themselves below for safety, as their mates bellowed for order on the quarter-deck. Hot powder smoke, rank with rotten-egg and hell-fires' stench, wafted over them as Alacrity cruised slowly by across their quarter like vengeance.

"Ah, there's our host," Lewrie chuckled.

John Finney came clawing his way through his terrified, darting guests to the rails, to stand head-taller than the rest, gaudy in pale silks and satins, his white-powdered tie-wig askew on his head, as he shook his fist at them and mouthed curses lost in the shouting, the screams, and the deafening gunfire.

"Helm down, Mister Neill. North for the channel," Lewrie said as the last shot of the salute belched forth and echoed off Caroline's hull. "Haul taut, forrud! Brace up, sheet home! Give us a tune, you men!"

The ship's idlers who played fiddle and fifes lurched into life, playing a gay pulley-hauley chantey, "Portsmouth Lass," the onlyone allowed in the Fleet, as Alacrity turned her stern to Caroline and steered away for the sea, her flags flying and her commissioning pendant streaming as saucily as some teasing, taunting coquette.

"Salute's done, sir," Fowles said after carefully counting his shots.

"I should certainly say it is, Mister Fowles!" Alan laughed.

Finney could be seen tearing the tie-wig from his head to throw it after them, screaming imprecations that were only thin howls under the chantey-tune, the hull's creaking, and the wake's bustling swash.

"He may play the hoary seaman, but he's a shopkeeper, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said loud enough for the afterguard to hear. "Just a jumped-up purser, and a 'Nip-Cheese' 'un, at that! Take that, you bastard! We'll have you yet!"

For a final fillip, Alan raised his right hand and presented an upright middle finger to Finney, a very English gesture of long usage.

To Alan's amazement, Lieutenant Arthur Ballard stepped to his side at the rails and did the same, as did the midshipmen, and Mister Fellows the sailing master!

The last Finney saw of Alacrity, as all but her lights faded into the rosy dusk, was her entire crew standing to attention as taut as Sunday Divisions, hands raised in scornful "salute"!

"Damme, Mister Keyhoe, there must be some correspondence!" he barked at his round little purser.

"Only pay vouchers, I fear, Captain," Keyhoe sighed, shrinking into his dark blue coat to escape Lewrie's wrath. "The paperwork that comes with Admiralty stores shipped down from Nassau in the packet."

"Did they at least send money for the hands, then?" Alan asked.

"Uh… nossir. The usual certificates, and those six months in arrears, as usual," Keyhoe had to confess.

"So the jobbers ashore'll buy 'em up, and the hands'll have a quarter to a half their true pay, aye," Lewrie almost kicked furniture in his anger.

"Hardly any pay, sir, once they settle their previous debts," Keyhoe muttered on. "Half of it pledged to me for slop-goods, tobacco and sundries. The rest with brothels and taverns ashore on every island hereabouts."

"Damme, this goes beyond punishment," Alan fussed. "This now begins to sound very much like vindictiveness! Bosun's stores?"

"None, sir," Keyhoe confessed.

"Powder and shot?"

"Again, none, sir. Just rum, wine, small beer, biscuit and salt-meat, Captain. Enough for another two months at full rations."

"And what about officers' pay, Mister Keyhoe?" Lieutenant Ballard inquired. "Certificates, too?"

"Aye, sir," Keyhoe huffed. "Had I a way to communicate with my agent in Nassau, I could offer two-thirds value on the certificates, so those vultures ashore don't skin 'em so bad, but I've no coin."

So you're the king-vulture and pocket it all when the ship pays off in 1789, Lewrie thought sourly. There was only one ship's purser he'd ever liked, Mr. Cheatham aboard the Desperate frigate during the war. And he'd kept a chary eye on him, too!

"Well, there'll be drink enough to keep our ship's people easy and groggy," Lewrie stated with a sadly bemused snort. "They'll not starve, but it's issue rations, and nothing fresh, 'less we continue to purchase for 'em when we buy wardroom stores. Damn Garvey!"

"Aye, sir," Ballard said. "But none of us…"

"I know, Mister Ballard, we're 'skint,' too!" Lewrie nodded in total frustration. "Very well. Working party, Mister Ballard. Warp the packet brig alongside and transfer cargo."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"And call away my gig. I'm going ashore," Lewrie decided of a sudden, feeling imprisoned on his own decks.

Alacrity had been in her new patrol area for six months. Long Island, Rum Cay, Conception and Watling's were sparsely settled, if at all, and the principal settlements were on Cat Island. In that remote corner of the southeast Bahamas, packet ships cameirregularly, most often quarterly. For Alacrity, they brought provisions and vouchers, but no mail, and no replies to Lewrie's letters to the Bahamas Squadron. As indolent and hand-to-mouth as life was in these islands, it sometimes felt as if the rest of the world had somehow ceased to be since they had attained them, as if all civilization had fallen. And hadn't bothered to tell them about it. There had been no summons to a Court of Inquiry into Walker's Cay. There had been no notice of a civil trial for damages laid by John Finney. And no answer to Lewrie's urgent requests for powder and shot, sailcloth, rope, tar, paint and nails with which to keep Alacrity in fighting trim and able to keep the sea. Live-firings to maintain the gunners' accuracy were a thing of the past, as was drill at small arms beyond swords and pikes, since dry-firing shattered the flints in their muskets and firelocks on the carriage guns.