The King`s Commission

enough for a duchess and taking her hand.

'If you wish, sir,' she replied in a voice so soft and meek he almost had to ask her to repeat herself. So she's one of those that'll play the virgin, is she? he thought. This could be interesting.

'Sport?' Shirke suggested after picking Hespera the blonde.

'Oh, let's sup first,' Alan said, and Dolly relaxed from a sudden stiffness at his side as he led her to the wine- table. 'Take a pew, my dear. God knows what we're eating tonight, but it'll not be short commons. I hope you brought a bounteous appetite.'

'I did indeed, sir,' she replied, taking a glass of champagne.

'Oh, h'ain't never 'ad bubbly wine afore!' Hespera giggled loud when she took a sip of wine across the table. 'H'it tickles me nose!'

'That's not all we'll tickle before the night's through, I'll wager!' Billy Mayhew promised his choice, which made them all roar with laughter.

The supper was more than palatable. There was a poached local fish the servitors called grouper, firm as lobster and just as succulent, served with a melted butter and lime sauce. That had been preceded by a green salad and ox-tail soup. The fish was followed by some small wild fowl, then a domestic goose. Then a smoking joint of beef which was not as stringy and lean as most island cattle. And with it all, there was hot and crusty bread, small potatoes roasted and boiled, native chick peas and broad beans, young carrots in butter and parsley.

Washed down, of course, with several bottles of hock with the fish and fowl, captured or smuggled burgundy with the beef, and more champagne when things got slow between courses.

For those with a sweet tooth, a servant wheeled in a huge raisin and citrus-fruit duff, soaked so long in brandy it was a threat to sobriety of itself, and that was followed, once the cloth was removed, by a fairly fresh cheese, apples, extra-fine sweet biscuit, and port or brandy.

'Drinking games!' Ashbum announced, climbing back onto his chair and striking a pose like a ship's figurehead. 'Electra, name me a ship's mast.'

'I don't know nothin' 'bout ships,' the girl pouted.

'Wrong answer. Drink a full bumper in punishment! Drink, drink, drink!' he shouted, and they took up the chorus while the girl tipped her wine glass back and poured the stuff down like water, and gave her a great cheer when she showed 'heel-taps' and nothing left, and they pounded their approval on the table and stamped their feet as loud as a thirty-two-pounder gun being trundled across a wooden deck.

'Alan, sing us a song!' Keith shouted. 'A good, dirty one!'

'I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, Keith,' Alan complained. 'Look, this is all very well for you, but I have to report to my ship early tomorrow, clear-eyed and somewhat sober, if I know what's good for me.'

'Wrong answer! Drink!' Keith ordered, and Alan remembered once again what he had forgotten in long absence; Keith Ashburn was the sort of take-charge bastard who had to have control over everything.

Wine was slopped into his glass from long-range, and some of it got onto Dolly's gown. She half-rose to complain, then took her napkin and tried to sponge it out quickly, while Alan stood and, to the thump of fists and feet, and the encouraging shouted chorus, tipped his wine up and drained it, displaying it was empty by balancing it upside down on his head.

'Song, song!' Mayhew called. 'Girls, sing us a song! Serenade us before we strum and serenade you, ha ha!'

During the dinner, Alan had learned that Dolly was, until three months before, the proper, if somewhat youngish wife of an officer of the infantry named Capt. Roger Fenton. He had left her with no debts when he was carried off by a fever soon after their arrival in the islands, but he had left her no money, either, and so far, there had been no word in answer to her tearful letters back to England to his last living relatives. She did not have the money to pay for a passage back home, and was, no matter how she might try to economize, quickly running out of money, and faced penury in the near future.

'Heart of oak are our ships

heart of oak are our men,'

'No, no, that's not the way it starts!' Shirke corrected Hespera after she tried to sing.

'Would there be some of that sparkling wine left, please?' Doily asked Alan, her voice almost lost in the sudden din.

'Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer

to add something more to this wonderful year;

To honor we call you, not press you like slaves,

for who are so free as the sons of the waves?'

'What?' Alan had to shout back at her.

'I've heard sparkling white wine may remove stains,' Dolly said near his ear. 'Would there be some left, please?'

'Oh, certainly. Make free,' Alan said, snaking a half-used bottle off the sideboard. He handed it to her, and was amazed to see that her eyes were full of tears.

'Heart of oak are our ships,

heart of oak are our men,

we always are ready;

steady, boys, steady;

We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again!'

'What's wrong?' Alan asked, leaning closer.

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' a servant called from the door. 'And yer ladies, if ya will! We call this tavern the Old Lamb fer a reason, ya know! Would ya please 'old down the noise, sirs, they's other patrons complainin', an' one of 'em's our magistrate!'

'It is my last good gown, Mister Lewrie,' Dolly informed him, 'I have had to sell the rest, and now it's spotted, and…'

'We'll buy you another,' Alan assured her. 'Your guinea from this evening could fill a whole wardrobe.'

'We ne'er see our foes but we wish 'em to stay,

They never see us but they wish us away;

If they run, why we follow, and run 'em ashore,

For if they won't fight us, we cannot do more.

Heart of oak are our ships,

Heart of oak are our men.'

'I mean it, gentlemen! We run a clean, sober, house! Any more noise an' they'll call the watch on you'ns!' the man shouted in parting and slammed the door. Shirke heaved a breadbasket at the door in salute.

'Keith, for God's sake,' Alan intervened before they tried to start another verse. 'You're going to get us arrested. And I don't think we paid that much for the bloody rooms, to let us caterwaul to our hearts' content.'

'Yes, Keith, let's have a little dec… hie… decorum or what the devil you c… call it,' Mayhew managed to say. 'Potty old men with cudgels always put me off my stroke.'

'Let's build a galley, then!'