The King`s Coat

the glim he looked as if he had tar and gunpowder pennanently ground into his wrinkles. 'God in Heaven,' Alan choked after a sip. He had ordered Cider-And in country inns and had usually gotten rum or mulled wine as the additive. Plus, he was never partial to gin, but he took another sip, grateful for the hot flush in his innards. ’Hear ya done somethin' right tonight, Mister Lewrie.’

’It was nice not to be caned or shouted at for a change, Mister Tencher,' Alan said, tears coming to his eyes from the fumes of the gin. ’No gunner's daughter fer you, eh?’

‘Until tomorrow.' Alan gave Tencher the ghost of a smile.

The man had run him ragged, trying to pound the art of handling artillery into him, and had had him caned more than once when he didn't have the right answer. He could not feel exactly comfortable with Tencher but he meant to be civil if the man was going to trot out free drink. ’Rolston should owe you a tot fer saving his life, ya know,' Tencher said. filling his own mug again and taking a deep quaff. ’Well, we shall see,' Alan said, forcing himself to choke down the rest of the mug. He knew that if he made it to his hammock without passing out he was going to be a lot luckier than he had any right to be. 'Thankee kindly, Mister Tencher, that was potent stuff. I shall sleep like a stone if they don't call all hands again.’

’Don't mention it.' Tencher winked. 'Earned it.’

Alan made his way out of the mess, clinging to the top of the half partitions toward the double ladders. Someone took him by the arm in the dark and spun him to a stop. ’Lewrie. ‘

‘Rolston?' he asked. thinking he recognized the voice. 'Think you're a clever cock, do you?' It was Rolston, alright. ’I'll not let you make me look ridiculous like that again-’

‘You don't need any help from me to be ridiculous.' Alan tried to judge just where Rolston's head might be so that when he hit him, as he felt he soon must. he could get in a good shot. 'I'll settle you.' Rolston's voice was shaking.

Alan could barely make out a face, but he knew the fellow must be almost weeping with rage by then. 'I'll square your yards for you for good and all-’

‘No, you won't,' Alan said, prying the hand from his arm and pressing it back away from him against Rolston's best effort with an ease he would not have had weeks before. 'And if you lay hands on me once more I'll kick your skinny arse up between your ears, right where it belongs.’

’Watch and see ifI don't get you, Lewrie.’

’Watch out for yourself.' Alan chuckled. 'I might not save your miserable life next time.. .farmer.’

Alan took a few cautious steps toward the coaming of the hatch, wary of a sudden shove from Rolston that could send him crashing to the hard deck below, ready to dive flat and let Rolston go arse-over-tit instead. But Mister Tencher came out of the mess area with his glim and a handful of scrap paper for a trip to the warrant officer's heads in the roundhouse before the focs'l, and Rolston had to turn on his heel and go forward to his own berth space. Alan, relieved, went below to his own, where he slid out of his wet dripping clothes and sat on a chest to towel himself down in the dark.

His skin was burning with saltwater rash and he could feel the chafe in crotch and limbs, where boils were erupting from the constant immersion and the sandpaper effect of wet wool. He rolled into his hammock nude, wearing a blanket wrapped about him like a cocoon. He tried to inventory what he had dry to wear but was so sleepy, exhausted, battered and drunk that he soon fell into a swoonlike sleep, dreaming once more of getting everyone who had been in any way responsible for his current predicament in the Navy all together in one place, and roasting them over slow fires.

Two days later, once the weather had moderated, they only found twenty ships of their convoy at first light. Perhaps fifteen more came straggling back into sight over the next few days. It was likely that the five missing merchantmen would never be seen by anyone again. At first Alan was a bit irked that no one said anything about his saving Rolston. then realized that it was just one of those things that was, after all, expected from a midshipman or a sailor, with no thanks needed or expected.

What a shitten outlook they have in this Navy, he sighed.

Dawn was a rosy hint rising over the humps of the sea astern, lost in the grey gloom of another spring morning in the windswept North Atlantic. The taffrail lanterns and the candles in the wheel binnacle lost their strength, and one could begin to recognize people on watch by their faces instead of their voices. Like wraiths the ships in convoy began to loom as dark shadows ahead of them to leeward on either side of their bows now that another long voyage was almost over.

Alan clung to the starboard shrouds halfway up to the main top, shivering with chill and trying to steady a heavy telescope to count ships. Lieutenant Kenyon was below him at the quarterdeck ladder, his eyes flying from one vantage to the next, judging the strength of the wind, the set of the sails, Ariadne's position to the rest of the convoy, a first reassuring sight of Dauntless out to leeward and far ahead of the convoy, eyeing his watch to see they were awake and alert. Lewrie wondered if he was making nautical plans for all eventualities… or merely sniffing the aromas that occasionally swirled back from the smoking galley funnel. Today was a meat-issue day following a Wednesday 'Banyan Day' on which the crew was served beer, cheese, gruel, soup and biscuit.

Lewrie clambered down to the rail and jumped the last few feet to the deck. 'Twenty-five sail to starboard, sir. Some very far out of position, but all taffrail lanterns burning.’

’Very good, Mister Lewrie,' Kenyon replied, referring to his pocket watch. 'Almost five bells. Prepare to rotate the watch. ‘

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Five bells did indeed chime from up forward-two pairs of quick chimes, and a last single one that echoed on and on. Or was it merely the sound of so many ships around them raising a chorus of bells later than Ariadne? Lewrie kicked awake one of the ratty little ship's boys so he could turn the half- hour glass at the binnacle. Wash-deck pumps were stowed away-hands stood erect from buffing the deck with bibles and holystones to remove the filth of the day before-others boiled up from below with their rolled-up hammocks for stowing. The pipes shrilled for the lower deck to be swept clean. Pump chains clanked as the bilges were emptied of their accumulated seepage. ’Twenty-two ships to larboard and ahead, sir,' Midshipman Rolston reported to Kenyon, 'and Dauntless is shaking out her night reefs, sir.’

That was the main wrench of being in Kenyon's watch; having to share it with Rolston. Even after two round voyages Rolston still gave off a hatred so deep and abiding that he positively glowed, and Lewrie found himself walking stiff-legged about him, waiting for the knife in the back, or the studiedly awkward push at the wrong moment.

’Very good, Mister Rolston,' Kenyon replied. 'My respects to the captain and inform him that all ships in convoy are in sight, spread out from the night, and that Dauntless is making sail.’

’Aye aye, sir,' Rolston answered, giving Lewrie a haughty look as if to say that he could never be en1rusted with carrying a message aft to their lord and master, as Rolston could.

Alan's belly rumbled. ’Hungry, Mister Lewrie?' Kenyon grinned. ’Always, sir.' He never got enough to eat, not like back home in London, and ship's fare was plain commons. He could spend half the watch dreaming of all the spicy substance of the buffets he had seen at drums, the hour-upon-hour dinner parties of course after course, even the hearty filling nature of a twopenny ordinary, or the choices available at a cold midnight supper after the theatre. The midshipmen's mess always exhausted their livestock quickly, and had to settle for biscuit hard as lumber and alive with weevils; joints of salt-pork or salt-beef that had been in-cask so long, one could carve them into combs; thick pea soup; cheeses gone rancid, and that only twice a week; an ounce of butter now and then; and a fruit duff only on Sundays. He no longer looked askance at the hands who offered him rats that had been caught and killed in the bread room. They were three-a-penny, fat as tabbies, and surprisingly tasty; 'sea squirrel,' they called them.

Now that his once-fine palate had been jaded, be had to admit that the food wasn't all that bad. He had seen coaching inns and low dives in the East End of London that served worse. It was the unremitting sameness of boiled everything. And once the gristle and bone had been subtracted, there was never enough on his plate to leave him comfortably stuffed. ’Captain, sir,' Lewrie whispered, catching sight of Captain Bales coming on deck from his great cabins aft. He and the mate of the watch, Byers, went down to leeward, leaving the starboard side of the quarterdeck for Bales to pace in solitary splendor. And after making his report, Kenyon joined them.