Reefs and Shoals

Sewallis was certainly surprised, but so was his father. At their last supper at the George Inn in the Spring of 1803, as Lewrie had been fitting out Reliant, Sewallis had just turned sixteen, and had been dressed in his usual dark and sombre style; well-tailored and neat, with his hair brushed and combed in close order, and his complexion had been the sort sported by those who lived mostly indoors, in libraries and schoolrooms. Now, he looked…

He looks like the poorest Mid ever born, Lewrie told himself.

His errant eldest son’s uniform looked as if it had been plucked from a discard pile, or off the used rack, and had not been made from the best broadcloth to begin with. His white waist-coat and breeches were streaked with tar and slush stains. He’d done some growing, too, for his wrists showed below his coat cuffs, and the knee-buttons of his breeches were undone so his longer legs could bend without popping them off. Plain white cotton stockings, clunky and cracked shoes with dull pewter buckles, a linen shirt that was going pale tan…

Boy always was tight with his money, Lewrie thought for an awkward moment, groping for a way to begin.

“Well, lad… how d’ye keep?” Lewrie said at last, stepping up to shake his son’s free hand.

“Main-well, Father… sir,” Sewallis replied with only a faint smile on his face, as if unsure that one was allowed.

“It’s good t’see ye alive and well, I’m bound,” Lewrie went on. He went so far as to embrace him in a brief hug, and clap him on the back. “Christ, though, I’d’ve thought Captain Rodgers’d feed ye more victuals. Buyin’ ‘millers’ from the bread-room, are you, t’make ends meet?”

“The Captain feeds us quite well,” Sewallis replied, grinning. “I’ve tasted bread-room rat, but I’m not partial.”

“I’d just promised your captain a grand shore supper, and I intended t’sport you to one, too, but… you look in more need of one, first,” Lewrie declared. “And a spell at a good tailor’s, to boot,” he added, stepping back to give his son a head-to-toe examination. “The wear-and-tear o’ blockade duty’s not done your kit any good.”

“I… I did not imagine that continual sea-duty would require grand rig, sir… Father,” Sewallis flummoxed. “We’ve seen no need of silk shirts and such… no port calls.”

Didn’t know he could dissemble, or dance round the truth, quite so well, either, Lewrie thought; He can’t claim that I kitted him out so poorly, or that he did it on his own.

“ Told ye that ye needed better,” Lewrie lied to help him out. “The lad looks like Death’s-Head-on-a-Mopstick, hey, sir?” he asked as he turned to grin at Rodgers. “Ehm, I wonder if there was somewhere we could, ah…”

“Well…,” Benjamin Rodgers said, considering the matter. His great-cabins were his, not to be usurped, even by an old friend.

“No matter, we’ll go on deck,” Lewrie offered. “I won’t keep him from his duties long.”

“You’ll dine aboard with me, Alan?” Rodgers asked.

“My own cook’d be heart-broken if I let his efforts spoil,” Lewrie said, declining, “and, you’re short of champagne. Let me dine you out tomorrow afternoon, then I’ll be glad to accept your invitation. Once your stores are replenished, hey?” he added with a wink.

“Most suitable,” Rodgers agreed.

“Shall we go get snowed on?” Lewrie bade Sewallis.

* * *

The most exposed place to the raw weather was atop Rodgers’s great-cabins, on the poop deck aft of the mizen mast trunk; it would also be the last place Aeneas ’s crew would be found at that hour.

“What in the world got into your head, lad?” Lewrie demanded. “Damme, don’t ye know the penalty for uttering a forgery? They hang people for it! Had ye been discovered, you’d have sunk your brother’s repute in the Navy, along with yours. Lied to your captain, lied to Admiralty… a legal document, your-!”

“So, you’ve come to snatch me back, is that it, Father?” Sewallis interrupted, looking pinch-faced and miserable.

Lewrie glared at him, locking eyes with his son for a long bit. Sewallis must have gained some gumption in the Fleet, for the longer his father frowned, the firmer and more determined the son’s face became.

“No,” Lewrie relented, after another long moment. “It’s much too late for that. If I dragged you ashore by your ears, it would all come out, and you’d be in the ‘quag’ up to your neck. You could pass it off as a lark, back at your school, but… I doubt the authorities would think so. ‘Least said, soonest mended’. Or, as your granther says, ‘you’ve made your bed, and now must lie in it’.”

Sewallis did not say his thanks aloud, but his countenance brightened, and he nodded his head as he took in and released a long breath.

“Why the Devil did you do it?” Lewrie asked. “The one letter ye wrote me never explained.”

“For Mother,” Sewallis baldly stated. “I told you why I wished to serve, at that last supper we all had, the night before you sent Hugh aboard his ship. The Navy, the Army, in a line regiment or the Yeomanry militia. For a bit, I even considered finding a recruiting sergeant’s party, and going as a volunteer… or signing aboard for the first ship that would have me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lewrie blurted. “As a bloody soldier? Or a Landsman lubber? Were ye completely daft?”

Even my father wasn’t that cruel t’me.… I went to sea as a Midshipman! Lewrie recalled his “pressing” into the Fleet in 1780, so his grandmother Lewrie’s expected inheritance could be used to pay off Sir Hugo’s creditors, with him thousands of miles away and unknowing.

“I told you all, I wished to avenge Mother’s murder. I wanted to fight the French and make them pay,” Sewallis said with some heat.

“And, have you, so far?” Lewrie skeptically asked.

“Well, not so far,” Sewallis admitted with a shrug and a shy grin. “The cowards sit at anchor in Brest, and won’t come out to face us. Do they assemble in the outer road, we stand in within sight and they slink back to the inner, letting a good slant of wind go to waste. Then the Westerly gales come, and we have to stand off windward.”

He talks like a sailor, at least, Lewrie considered.

“Are you disappointed by life in the orlop cockpit?” he asked his eldest, as they paced from the taffrail lanthorns to the railings and ladders that led down to the quarterdeck and back.

“It’s much like school, really,” Sewallis told him, opening up, now that he was sure that he would not be exposed as a forger and sent ashore as a fraud. He even sounded “chirpy” and amused. “I was John New-come, but I’ve been that before. I’ve learned to shrug off all the japes, or find ways to get my own back, d’ye see, sir. I paid heed to the cautions you told Hugh, to ready him for sea, so…” He heaved off a shrug and another brief smile. “Like any dormitory, there will be dullards, clever ones, spiteful ones, bullies, and victims. I get by.”

That don’t sound rosy, Lewrie thought, frowning to imagine that Sewallis was too mild-mannered and reticent to stand up for himself.

“Any real problems? Anyone who gives ye special grief?”

“We have made our accommodations,” Sewallis cryptically replied, returning to his usually grave self. “Call it a truce, if you will, sir. There’s only the one-I name no names-but, he is beastly to one and all, to the ship’s people as well, and the Captain has his eyes upon him. He’s failed two Post-Captains’ Boards already, so he may not be long in the Navy,” Sewallis said with a wink.

“That, or the oldest Mid going,” Lewrie replied with a laugh. “I’ve met a man, fourty or more years old, and still a Midshipman. Stood your ground… faced him down, did ye?” Lewrie asked.

“Something like that, aye sir,” his son said, rather proudly.