Dewey Lambdin - The French Admiral

"Alan, did you realize that tomorrow shall be my birthday?" David told him. "And we are short of fresh meat. Now, if I talked nicely to the purser, he might find it in his heart to send me ashore with him… on King's business, of course!"

"And if you don't take me along with you, you're a dead man, David," Alan warned him.

"Whyever should I do that?" David queried.

"'Cause I know where the likely whores and widows are," Alan reminded him with a simper.

"You've missed your calling." David smiled. "You'd make a devilish grand pimp."

"You're not the first to think that," Alan heartily agreed. "And it's still early days in my career, isn't it? Now get onto Mister Cheatham before he picks somebody else. Tell him we both volunteer."

The next morning Desperate stood in toward Charleston, with the spires of the churches marking the safe passage as range marks. They had been painted black by the Rebel defenders in last year's siege, but if anything, they had stood out even more prominently than when painted white, so Desperate had no difficulty finding the channel. Alan was turned out in his best uniform, as was Avery, while Forrester and Carey were in their usual working rigs. A copy of de Barres' Atlantic Neptune was in Alan's hands, the sketch book of all major towns and headlands of the American coast. It had set him back seven guineas, but it had been worth it to show the sailing master and the others a keenness at the sea trade which he did not always exemplify. He tucked the book under his arm and plied his quadrant to measure the height of St. Michael's spire, which lay just above their bows. He took the height of Charleston Light to the stern and ascertained that they were in the right path for a safe passage over the bar between the forts. With some quick calculations on a slate, he could find a rough position on the small-scale harbor chart that Mister Monk had laid out on the traverse board, and it was pleasing to see that his guess was very close to Monk's quickly pencilled X.

Cottle, Commander Treghues's coxswain, came up on deck in his best blue jacket with shiny brass buttons, his red-and-white-striped loose slop trousers clean, and his feet encased in new cotton stockings and freshly blacked shoes with silver buckles. The boat crew gathered round him and Cottle eyed them keenly so their appearance would not shame their captain or the ship when they went alongside the pier to carry Treghues to meet the port authorities with letters and documents.

"Hawse bucklers clear, sir," Toliver, one of the bosun's mates reported after coming aft from the fo'c's'le. "Best bower ready to drop, and a kedge ready in the stern."

"Let her swing nigh stern-first ta the town afore ya let go that kedge, mind," Monk said, almost as an afterthought. Charleston was a nasty harbor for all its size. On the way in, they had passed small islets and stretches of salt marsh where men were dredging for oysters only knee-deep in water, or loafing on sand spits that would be under water at high tide. "Safe across the bar now, sir," Monk told Treghues.

As if in confirmation, a hail from the leadsman in the foremast chains called out a safe depth of six fathoms. His next cast was half a fathom more, and everyone could breathe easily. Desperate drew slightly less than three fathoms amidships when properly loaded and provisioned.

"Are we getting ashore?" Avery asked after he had come aft from his duties with the ship's boats.

"No one has told me anything of yet," Alan said softly. "But if Treghues is going ashore, we shall be here for a while at least. Surely, we would not pass up the chance for firewood and water."

"Lord, it's hot," Avery complained, plucking at his broadcloth coat and waistcoat. "And you can smell the fever in those marshes."

"In daytime, and with a sea breeze, we have nothing to fear," Alan told him. He had suffered a serious bout of Yellow Jack aboard the Parrot , and had picked up enough lore about tropical miasmas for a lifetime. "Our old sawbones assured us the feverish elements only rise at night, with the mists. Just pray the biting flies don't find us. Last time I was here, the wind was off the shore, and I thought I'd be eaten alive."

"Maybe it's the flies cause fevers," Avery said.

"Don't be a superstitious ass," Alan said, only half in jest.

"Maggots are created in rotting meat, and I've not heard much good about maggots," Avery countered. "Except for eating pustulence in wounds."

"My God, but you're a cheerful creature this morning." Alan exploded in a shuddery laugh.

"A little more attention to your duties there, young sirs," Treghues said in passing, glaring at both of them evilly, with a lingering glance on Alan.

"Aye, aye, sir," they answered dutifully.

"'Bout a mile off the wharf now, sir," Monk said, straightening from his latest calculation with his sextant.

"Short enough row," Treghues said, not seeing the glum expressions of his boat crew, who faced a long, hot pull ashore. "Take in tops'ls and round her up into the wind."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Desperate came about under reduced sails. The best bower dropped into the harbor and raised a circle of muddied silt on the surface as it bit into the mud of the bottom. She paid back from the light wind with a backed tops'l until snubbed by tension on her anchor cable. The stern kedge-anchor was let go, and hands at the capstan took her back up toward her bower until she was held with equal grip by both anchors, bow pointed outward from the town for her eventual departure.

Even as she was making sternway to drop the kedge, Treghues's gig had been led around to the entry port, and Cottle had received his captain into her. Before the tops'l had been taken in aloft, their captain was well on his way ashore to deliver his messages and inquire about the whereabouts of the French.

"Bosun, lead the cutter round for the purser," Lieutenant Railsford, the first officer (and only commissioned lieutenant) called. "Mister Cheatham, you'll mind my own wants, I trust?"

"Indeed I shall, Mister Railsford," Cheatham said.

"And I believe you mentioned the need for two of the young gentlemen to assist you?" Railsford went on, looking at his younger charges, and noting how well turned out Avery and Lewrie were in comparison to the rat-scruffiness of little Carey or the porcine Forrester. "Can't let the image of Desperate down now, can we? Mister Lewrie, you shall take charge of the cutter and assist the purser ashore. And since I believe that today is your birthday, Mister Avery, you have my permission for a short spell of shore leave. Mister Lewrie may join you in your celebrations, but they had best be damned short, if you get my meaning?"

"Aye, aye, sir," they both answered. The captain's clerk was asked to write out two leave tickets for them, giving them until the end of the first dogwatch around sundown in which to enjoy the pleasures of the town.

In a rush they scrambled down the battens and manropes to the barge to join Cheatham, and got the boat under way before anyone could change his mind about allowing them freedom from naval routine, even for a short while.

"It was good of the captain to allow me to celebrate my birthday, sir," Avery said to Cheatham, once they were away from the ship's side and the boat crew was stroking lustily at the oars.

"Captain Treghues does not strictly know of it," Cheatham said. "But we had to go ashore to replenish and cannot sail until the ebbing of the evening tide, which Mister Railsford informs me shall not turn until near midnight. Even immediate sailing orders could not rush us."

"Then we should be doubly grateful to you and Mister Railsford," Alan said with a smarmy smile of thankfulness.

"God, but you are sickening when you are in need of something," Cheatham said, but without any malice. He was not so much older than they, in his mid-twenties, and when not called by duty to be serious, could show a merry and waggish disposition. "I do not want to know what hellishness you had planned, Avery, but with Lewrie, you are in good hands for discovering it. Too good, in faith."