The King`s Coat

Ephegenie jogged along in convoy bound for Antigua, last in column behind the earlier prizes. Lights Out had been piped and the off-duty half-dozen had turned in, with room to swing a hammock for once in the echoing lower deck. Toliver had the watch as the stars came out in a sultry tropical night. It was getting on for hurricane season once more, but for now the sea was calm enough and the wind was steady.

Alan lounged in the master's cabin aft under the poop, on the transom settee by the stern windows, hinged open for a cooling breeze, and relishing command.

He had fetched the convoy just at the beginning of the Second Dog Watch, had gone close aboard Amphion and had shouted his news to Captain Merriam, explained that Desperate was dashing ahead to carry the news to Hood and that he was to join the convoy.

Alan burped gently, appreciating the supper he had eaten; boiled horse, more fresh bread, a good and filling pease pudding and a raisin duff their temporary cook had created.

He had opened a bottle of the French captain's own wine and was slowly sipping at the last of it, a most pleasant red from a St. Emilion vintner. They were reefed down for the night, with the main course taken in and the forecourse at two reefs, two reefs in the tops'ls as well and fair weather at least until morning.

Coin-silver lamps swayed over the desk at which he had dined, making the spacious cabin seem like a palace. There was a good carpet on the deck spread over painted canvas, the paneling was glossy white with much gold leaf and the furnishings were exquisitely carved and detailed. After a hammock it was going to be like sleeping in the Palace at Versailles, even if he was going to doss down on the settee, which was as wide and soft as any bed he had ever experienced. ’This is what I should have… to be rich enough to have fine things around me, a whole house in London this nice, a place in the country with a good stable of horses and if I do have to be aboard ship, to have all this room and finery.. ‘.

Which, of course, wasn't going to happen, he realized. Treghues would come out of his rantings and remember that he hated Alan worse than cold boiled mutton, and he would be casting about for another ship, this time without Sir Onsley's immediate influence. And there was always the possibility that he would be turned out of the Navy and sent home, or left to make his own way in the Indies. Ways could be found, reasons invented to ruin him, if Treghues really disliked him so much. Perhaps the best thing would be to go into another ship, where he could start fresh with no prejudice against him. Alan sat up and finished his wine, then walked out through the cabins for the quarterdeck, restless and worried. ’Evenin', Mister Lewrie,' Toliver said, knuckling his forehead. ’Evening, Mister Toliver. Everyone dossed down?’

‘Aye, sir. Watch-and-watch ta Antigua 's gonna be a bitch, sir, but we'll cope right enough. ’

‘Seems calm enough for now. Call me just before midnight for me to relieve you. I'm going to turn in.’

’Aye, sir.’

Alan went back aft. He blew out every lamp but one, shucked his clothes and found a clean linen sheet for a cover to make his bed. He also discovered the need to visit the quarter gallery.

Privacy for his bowels was another luxury to which he was unaccustomed, having to share the beak head roundhouse with the other inferior petty officers, or the open rail seats if he was caught short. But here, the French master had a cabinet much like a regular jakes back home in a round quarter-gallery right aft under the larboard taffraillantems, a spacious closet with a door he could shut, windows above the shoulder to provide a view of the sea, a small chest that held soft scrap-paper for cleanliness, a bucket of seawater for a steward to sluice down the seat and pipe which conveyed wastes overboard, even a small lamp if the former captain felt like reading.

Lewrie leaned his head back wearily, watching the starlight play on the sea, felt the ship ride beneath him with a steady, reassuring motion. He bumped his head gently on the deal panel behind him, to the rock of the sea.

It sounded hollow.

He squirmed about and rapped on the walls to either side. Solid. But right behind the necessary, it sounded hollow. Once finished with his needs he fetched his dirk and began to thump with the pommel at the partition behind the seat. There was more quarter-gallery below him for the officer's mess, set more forward than his but in the same turreted tower built into the side of the hull. His disposal chute would pass aft of their seats, partitioned off from view. Which meant that there was a room perhaps the size of the closet behind that hollow partition, above the wardroom 'necessary.’

He switched ends, probing between the deal planks with the point of his dirk, but with no success. He went back to the day cabin and lit another lamp to improve his vision.

To the inboard side of the closet there was a tiny nick in the deal next to the day cabin bulkhead, a fault in the wood and in the paint. Alan inserted his blade there, pressed down on it. There was a faint click that could have been the lamp swinging. But when he pried with his blade, the deal gave a little. He pried more, and it looked as if it might hinge outboard, but he could not get it to move. Finally he leaned against it, and felt something give, like a latch letting go.

The entire panel behind the jakes swung outboard, a square of perhaps three feet by three feet, its edges masked by the wainscoting. Inside was a stout lining of oak perhaps six inches thick. And in the space remaining there was an ironbound chest with a lock as large as a turnip hung on a hinged hasp.

Lewrie took hold of the handles and pulled it forward. It was fascinatingly heavy and gave off a faint metallic rustle. Lewrie staggered out of the quarter-gallery with the chest until he could drop the burden on the transom settee.

He rifled the desk and tried every key he found before discovering the one that fit the lock. There was a well- oiled clanking of the tumblers as the huge lock sprang open.

It was nearly as delicious an emotion to raise that lid as it was to lift a woman's skirt. Once inside, there was a wooden box on top that contained a fine set of dueling pistols, which he set aside. There were some letters, mostly personal from the late captain's family, some orders from the firm of Mulraix et Fils but nothing of any import that he could discover with his poor command of French. There was, however, a folded bit of canvas… and then-there was gold.

Bags of it, rolls of it, little wooden boxes full of it, with the amount and the denominations and nations of origin inked onto slips of paper tacked down to each parcel with wax or tied as labels to the bags.

There were Spanish pistoles, Spanish dollars, French livres and louis d' or, Dutch guilders and Danish kroner. And there were sovereigns, golden guineas, two-guineas, bright-shining 'yellowboys' in rolls and boxes and bags.

It was too much to be the late captain's working capital for the voyage. It was enough to purchase a dozen Indiamen! 'Merciful God in Heaven,' Lewrie whispered in awe, letting some loose coins trickle through his fingers. He was not sure of the value of the foreign coins in comparison to the guineas, but it seemed like an awful lot… a most temptingly awful lot! But sadly it was a devilishly heavy and unconcealable lot. He left the gold and went forward to the doors to the quarterdeck, listening to see if anyone had discovered him in the midst of his temptation.

The sight of all that gold made him open the master's wine cabinet and pullout a bottle of brandy. He poured himself a large measure with shaky hands and went back to the chest.

There was a paper inventory stuck at the back of the chest.

Altogether it seemed as if there might be over Ј80,000 there if the foreign coin had the same value as the guineas.

He let the heavy coins trickle through his hands again, and thought about it… damned hard.

It'd have lain there, undiscovered, except for me, he reasoned. Not on the manifest, not listed when we turned the ship over to the Prize Court. Some surveyor or shipyard worker would have found it, if they'd have found it at all. And none of this squadron would ever see a penny of it, and some silverbuttoned whip jack or lard-arsed landsman would go home richer than a chicken-nabob…

That settled in his mind, he counted up the number of inferior petty officers in Desperate, and in the squadron, that might share in this unbelievable bounty, and came up with roughly eighty men to share Ј10,000-Ј125 apiece. Fair wages, he decided, but not the financial security he was looking for.

There was absolutely no way he could get that chest off the prize, and ashore. Three men couldn't heft his sea-chest if he stored it in there. It would be years, perhaps, before he returned to England to payoff, and no way he could keep that much gold safely hidden for that long. No prize agent ashore could be trusted not to peek, and