Command

'If you should point out th' vessel concerned, I shall take it in hand immediately, sir.'

Outside, the midshipman rose to his feet. 'There she is, Mr Bowden,' Kydd said, with the slightest hint of a tremor in his voice. He gestured to a two-masted vessel at a buoy several hundred yards further up the harbour. 'Do ye go and warn the ship's company that I shall be boarding presently.'

'The brig, sir?'

'Never so, Mr Bowden,' Kydd said, with much satisfaction. 'A brig she may've been, but she has a commander, not a l'tenant, as her captain, and must be accounted a sloop—she is now a brig-sloop, sir, not your common brig- o'-war.'

Out of sight of his ship, Kydd paced along slowly, imagining the scurrying aboard as news spread of the imminent arrival of the new captain. Exaltation and excitement seized him: there would never be another moment like this.

It seemed an age before a punt arrived at the landing place. 'Couldn't find else,' mumbled a dockyard worker, inexpertly hanging on to a bollard. Another stood awkwardly at his sculls.

'Where's the ship's boat?' Kydd wanted to know. There had to be at the least a pinnace, cutter or gig in that class of ship.

'Ah, well, now, there's a bit o' trouble wi' that there—'

'And my boat's crew, damn it?'

The second threw his scull oar clattering into the bottom of the boat. 'D' ye want t' go to the barky or not, cock?'

Kydd swallowed his anger. 'I'll go,' he said. If he did not, then who knew when he might be able to later? He couldn't wait around so conspicuously on the waterfront—and he was damned if he'd be cheated out of his big moment. Trying to act in as dignified a manner as possible, he stepped into the flat-bottomed craft.

'Shovin' off, Mick,' the first said, and gave a mighty poke at the stonework, hoping to topple Kydd, but Kydd had foreseen the move and stood braced resolutely as the punt slid out towards the brig.

It would take more than the antics of these two dockyard mateys to affect Kydd's spirits. His eyes took in the vessel's lines hungrily as they neared her: a trim, bare-masted craft with an accentuated sheer and the sweetest miniature stern gallery. His heart went out to her—she was riding high in the water, her empty gun-ports and lack of any real rigging giving her a curiously expectant look. At the bow her white figurehead was a dainty maiden with streaming hair, and even before they had come up with her Kydd knew he was in love.

He straightened importantly. There were few crew visible on deck, but the punt was lower than Teazer's modest freeboard. His heart thudded, then steadied.

The punt spun about and approached. Bowden's anxious face appeared at the deck edge, then disappeared again; a pilot ladder slithered down just forward of the main-chains and dangled over the side. Normally a ship's boat would have the height to allow a simple transfer to the brig's deck but there was nothing for it. Cheated of his moment of grandly stepping aboard, Kydd grabbed the writhing ladder and heaved himself up with both hands.

A single boatswain's call trilled uncertainly as Kydd appeared, to find only a shame-faced Bowden plying the whistle, with three shuffling dockyard men he had obviously rounded up for the occasion. The salute pealed into silence and Kydd removed his hat, taken aback. 'No ship's company, sir,' Bowden whispered apologetically.

'We commission,' Kydd growled and strode to the centre of the quarterdeck, pulling out a parchment document and declaring in ringing tones to the empty deck that the latest addition to His Majesty's Navy was the brig-sloop Teazer, which was now officially under his own command.

He turned to Bowden and, glancing up at the bare, truncated masts, slipped him a roll of white silk. 'Be sure an' this gets aloft now.' It was a commissioning pennant and would fly at Teazer's mainmasthead day and night from this time on.

Bowden did his best; without upper masts there was only the mortise of the main topmast cap but soon all ashore with eyes to see could behold a borrowed frigate's long pennant floating bravely from the stumpy mainmast of HMS Teazer. She was now in commission.

Kydd looked up for a long moment. Then, reluctantly, he dropped his gaze to the deck: he was about to face the biggest challenge of his life. 'Mr Bowden, return to th' frigate and present my duty t' the captain and it would be a convenience should he sign off on my hands into Teazer. '

'Y-your hands, sir?'

'O' course!' Kydd said sternly, 'Sent fr'm the commander-inchief for duty in the Malta Service, by which he means ourselves and who other?' With reasonable luck, they could take their pick if they moved fast and have them entered before the proper authority came to claim them.

'Aye aye, sir. Er, how many shall I return with?'

A brig-sloop of this size would need somewhere between eighty and a hundred men. 'I'll take all the Tenaciouses, which are not so many, so say fifty more—as long as there's prime hands among 'em.'

Kydd knew he was being optimistic, but there had been genuine warmth in the frigate captain's congratulations that would probably translate to sympathy. And with men Teazer would come alive— boats could be manned, work parties mustered and the rhythm of sea life begun. His spirits rose. 'Oh, and be so good as t' give my compliments to th' commissioner's office and I should be pleased were they t' send word to m' standing officers that they're required aboard directly.' Every vessel had certain warrant officers standing by them, even out of commission, and no doubt they would be enjoying a peaceful time of it in some snug shoreside hideaway while the dockyard pressed on at its leisurely pace.

Bowden left in the punt and Kydd was on his own with just a pair of curious caulkers on the upper deck. Apart from the dismal thunks of a maul forward, the ship was an echoing cavern with little sign of life.

Now was the perfect time to make his acquaintance of the lovely creature. Teazer was a galley-built craft, one continuous deck running fore and aft, but then he noticed a singular thing— the even line of bulwarks ended in the after part all decked over. Closer to, he saw that in fact the top of a cabin was flush with the line of the bulwarks, which would make it only about chest-high inside. He pushed open the door gingerly —and nearly fell down the several steps that led to the cabin spaces, comfortably let into the deck a further few feet.