Havoc`s Sword

'Cover most 'andsome, Cap'um Lewrie!' Edgemon swore. 'Thankee right kindly. Alluz knew you'd make a right-tarry awf'cer, sir.'

Oh, don't trowel it on! Lewrie thought, though smiling all the while-the way I remember it, you despaired I'd ever master running bowlines!

'I'll take, oh… one five-gallon barricoe, myself,' Mr. Peel stated. 'That'd be eight, did you say?'

'Ten, sir,' Edgemon slyly said, tipping his former 'favourite' midshipman a sly wink. Peel rolled his eyes, but paid as well.

'Mister Peel's treat, lads,' Lewrie lied to his boat-crew. 'He thought you looked half-strangled, sittin' out in the sun so long.' As extra piggins were fetched and filled from the hand-cart, the three requisite barricoes were laid between the thwarts of Lewrie's gig.

'Do I owe more?' Peel whispered to Lewrie as they stood in what little shade there was, apart from the boat-crew. 'And why say it was done in my name, Captain Lewrie?'

'You're not Navy, Mister Peel,' Lewrie said in an equally soft snicker. 'There's only so much jollity 'twixt a captain and his hands that is allowed, else he appears t'be playin' favourites, or goes too slack and 'Popularity Dick.' Then he erodes his own authority. Done in your name, though, and nought o' mine… d'ye see? What a civilian does, ignorant o' Navy ways, don't signify, for you ain't in the line of command, Mister Peel.'

'You cannot seem to care for their comfort or welfare, sir?'

'Care, aye, Mister Peel. But cosset or pamper? Never.'

'You'll recompense me my two shillings, then, Captain Lewrie?' Peel snickered. ' 'Twas in a good cause, after all,' he pointed out.

'Should o' bid quicker, Mister Peel,' Lewrie chuckled back with sly glee. 'You can't keep up with risin' prices, that's your own lookout. Ahh! That was refreshing! Let's get under way. Coming, sir?'

'Aye… coming,' Peel said, snorting at his 'diddlement.'

'Coming… so is Christmas,' Lewrie said with a laugh.

Peel was, indeed, sitting in the shade of the quarterdeck awning with his bare feet stuck into a wide-ish pan of cool seawater, sleeves rolled to the elbow and shirt opened to mid-chest, when Captain Lewrie came on deck, again, at the first challenging shout from the midshipman of the harbour watch, the unfortunate Mr. Burns. A rowing boat was at the starboard entry-port, and Peel sat down his mug of ginger beer.

'Boat ahoy!' Burns croaked, his pubescent voice cracking. 'Who goes there?'

'Hoy, the ship!' an equally teenaged voice cried back. 'Barge to the United States Armed Ship Thomas Sumter, with an invitation for your captain and officers!'

'Mister Burns?' Lewrie snapped from behind the gawky scarecrow, making him almost leap out of his shoes in sudden alarm.

'Boat coming alongside, sir,' Burns stammered. 'From the, uhm… that Jonathon ship lying over yonder, with an invitation, sir.'

'Let 'em lay alongside and come up, Mister Burns,' Lewrie decided. 'Since they're almost hooked onto the main-chains already!'

'Uhm, aye, sir!' Burns parroted, gulping in dread before going to the entry-port to converse with the barge. 'Mister Pendarves, man side-party for a Lieutenant! Turn out the duty watch.'

'And we'll discuss your nodding off right after, Mister Burns,' Lewrie said, glowering. 'You, Mister Pendarves the Bosun, his strong right arm, and the 'gunner's daughter,' for being so remiss.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Burns miserably said, his lower lip quivering.

'Hmm… quite the uniform, sir,' Peel took note with a smirk, as he came to Lewrie's side. 'All the 'go,' is it? Of your own devising, I trust?'

'It was!' Lewrie snapped back, trying to ignore him.

His experiment with light cotton uniform coats instead of hard-finished wool in the tropics had been an utter failure. The dark blue coats had dyed waist-coats, shirts, breeches' tops, and anything else they brushed against, including upholstered great-cabin furniture; and the gold-lace pocket trimmings and ornate cuff detailings, even detachable gilt epaulets, had turned a suspiciously bright greenish tinge at the edges. Now, with most of the offending dye leached from them (and the major damage done to his wardrobe) Lewrie was left with a brace of coats of a disturbing light blue, which could still bleed faint tints if caught on deck in a driving rain. It was use them or admit to one and all his serious error, so Lewrie perversely clung to them, though their use was severely limited to clear-weather days far from shore or those rare days at anchor when he had no shore calls to make, and expected none in return.

'And you paid your tailor, in full, I s'pose, before uhm…?' Peel whispered in mocking amusement.

'Yess!' Lewrie hissed back, disgruntled. 'Oh, dear,' Peel commiserated.

Whatever surly rebuke Lewrie had in mind was squelched by the arrival of an officer at the lip of the entry-port, saluted by a small side-party requisite for the welcome of a Lieutenant, whichever navy claimed him… excluding the French, of course.

Lewrie had thought he had seen the uniforms of the new American Navy when he had been dined aboard USS Hancock, but this fellow looked like a relic of their defunct Continental Navy, which Lewrie could but briefly recall from one brisk encounter in his midshipman days in '82.

White stockings, dark blue breeches, dark blue coat with bright red turnback lapels and cuffs, a red waist-coat with gilt edging; and doffing a very old-fashioned tricorne hat to the saluting sailors and Marines as the bosun's calls shrilled and twittered.

'Permission t'come aboard, sirs,' the strange officer called.

'Permission granted,' Lewrie allowed with a 'captainly' grunt.

'Allow me t'name myself t'you, sir,' the man went on, sweeping his hat low in a greeting bow, though with a confused look on his phyz. 'Lieutenant Ranald Seabright, of the United States Armed Ship Thomas Sumter. I bring an invitation from Captain Douglas McGilliveray to your captain, and such officers as he may wish t'bring, to dine aboard the Sumter this ev'nin', sir. Might I enquire if your captain is now aboard?'

'One of the Charleston McGilliverays, is your captain?' Lewrie asked, stepping forward with a surprised grin.

'He is, indeed, sir,' Lt. Seabright declared, taken aback, perhaps, by the sky-blue apparition before him. 'And you are, sir?'

'Alan Lewrie, captain of his Britannic Majesty's frigate, the Proteus, sir,' Lewrie told him, doffing his own hat and making a bow.

'Oh! D'lighted t'make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie, sir,' Seabright said, in what Lewrie recognised as a Low Country Carolinas accent; Seabright's 'sir' was more akin to 'suh.'

Damme, Lewrie thought, still eying the old-fashioned uniform in

some suspicion as to whether the United States Navy actually had one.. or did they let their officers wear whatever was handy; Last time, that Captain Kershaw and most of his officers were from the Carolinas. Are there any Nor'east Yankees at sea?

Lt. Seabright, though, was eying his own uniform coat with just as much dubious suspicion, as if of half a mind that Lewrie was 'having him on,' and the nape of his neck was actually turning red.

'He really is, ye know,' Peel said, tongue-in-cheek.

'Once made the acquaintance of a Mister McGilliveray,' Lewrie said, 'one of your merchant adventurers among the Indians to the West. Might your captain be kin, d'ye think, Mister Seabright?'

'Certain of it, sir!' Seabright replied, more at ease suddenly. 'That's exactly what my captain's people did, before the late war.'

'Then I shall accept Captain McGilliveray's kind invitation in good expectation of resuming, as well as making, the acquaintance. Urn, how many of my officers, Mister Seabright?' Lewrie asked, still trying to dredge up the