The King

doing things. A sneer here, a lifted eyebrow there and a heavy sigh or two of exasperation met any evolution that differed from merchantman practice.

Brainard was as roly-poly as a Toby jug, but held no cheer, and sheltered his past, and any conversation, behind an aloof air of duty. He was as weathered and dried as a piece of hawse-buckler leather, baked to a permanent brick color. So far, he had not been seen to imbibe anything but water or small beer, or crack the slightest smile in the mess. Indeed, it would have been hard to determine if he had any facial expressions at all, since he swathed himself in the heaviest grogram watchcoat even below decks where a small coal-fired stove attempted to warm the wardroom. It seemed a chore to remove his mittens so he could partake of his meals. And the one time Alan had peeked through the opened door of his cabin as one of the ship's boys cleaned it, the bunk had been mounded with no less than four blankets.

One thing Alan had learned in his Naval service, though, was that even the worst messmates could be abided. He hadn't expected the voyage would be all 'claret and cruising.' People gave others personal space, as much as was able, and ignored the worst offenders, limiting their exchanges to professional work.

Far enough off the coast now that England was an indistinct smear of headlands almost lost in low scudding clouds, the ship was going like a hobbyhorse in a playroom. Alan clung to the weather shrouds on the starboard side of the wide deck and began to wonder why he had thought Telesto a big ship. The open Atlantic rolled and heaved up in dully guttering hills before them, shrinking the massive ship to a toy that groaned and creaked as she rolled and pitched with a slow, ponderous gait. Soaring up as the scend of the sea deigned to raise her, cocking downward as the waves receded behind her. One moment Telesto was elevated high enough to expose miles and miles of ocean to Alan's view, the next sunk down into a trough, sliding forward as though she would butt into the next wave and shatter, but always riding up and away from danger. And at those times, he could see no farmer than the creaming tops of the wave-crests that hillocked like frothy ink on either beam as high as the weather deck.

'Going like a race horse,' he muttered aloud, feeling Telesto as she trembled up from keel to oaken decks below his shoes. She was, indeed, riding the sea and careering forward at a wonderfully prodigious pace.

'Mister Hogue?' he called for one of the master's mates in his watch who was secretly a senior midshipman enlisted in their adventure.

'Aye, sir?'

'Cast of the log, if you please. I doubt very much if we'll get a decent sight for our position today. And I'd not like to set her on Ushant before the voyage is even begun.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

Hogue came back several minutes later, his watchcoat and hat speckled with drops of seawater, and his mittens soaked. 'Nine and a quarter knots, sir,' Hogue said proudly. 'She's a fast 'un, no mistake about her, sir.'

'Indeed she is,' Alan said, grinning. He climbed up onto the mizzen shrouds for a better view with his telescope. 'I make that to be the high point just west of Looe, just aft of abeam now. Where would that put us, were you navigating, Mister Hogue?'

'Allow me to fetch my sextant, sir.'

Every time the ship rose up on a surging billow of ocean, they took a land sight, comparing compass bearings, trying to compute on a slate how far offshore they were, if the high ground west of Looe was known to be 387 feet high, and only subtended a degree or so above the indistinct horizon.

'Then on this course, allowing for Telesto making a certain amount of leeway to the suther'd, we'll fetch Lizard Point with at least ten miles of sea-room,' Alan stated finally.

'If the wind stays fair, sir,' Hogue commented, more sage than his scant eighteen years might allow. 'Bound to come more westerly as we leave the Channel.'

'A hard beat, then, but with the tidal flow, not against it, until at least midnight.'

'Else we'll have to tack and fight the tides, losing everything we've gained, sir,' Hogue warned. 'Inshore in the dark.'

'Thankee, Mister Hogue,' Alan said, rolling up the chart Mr. Brainard had left on the binnacle table.

And if that happens, Alan thought lazily, it'll not happen on my watch, thank the good Lord. He strolled back up to the windward side and took out his pocket watch to take a peek at the time. Three hours to go until his watch would be dismissed below.

He threaded an arm through the shrouds once again and shivered in his thick clothing. The wind was wet and a little raw, a live thing out at sea, a continual noise that a landsman would never notice above the murmurs of the ship.

If the winds did come more westerly, they could harden up to close-hauled and beat within six points of its origin, he decided: just enough to keep Telesto in mid-Channel, well clear of the Lizard, and a safe twenty leagues or so from the rocky coast of France. He debated with himself if it would be worth it to tack north'rd if it really came foul-embay themselves south of Falmouth, then tack once more due south to clear the Lizard?

He turned his face to the raw wind and felt its strength on either cheek, sniffing for the source of all that awesome power that moyed their ship. Still well north of west, and not so strong they'd have to take another reef aloft just yet.

A gaggle of passengers came boiling up from below, reeling in another bout of illness, and Alan smiled as they staggered down to the leeward side to spew. So far, his own stomach was showing its cast-iron consistency. And, he realized with a start, his sea legs were returning, those sea legs that in the beginning he had never even had the slightest desire to achieve. 'Not so bad once you're in,' he mused aloud. 'Like Young Jack told his first whore.'

Depriving and dull a voyage might be, but it was something he had become somewhat good at. His ability to shrug off the natural reaction to the ship's motion and spew his guts out, or reel like a sot as she pitched and rolled beneath him, was pleasing to his pride. As was his ability to decypher their rough position with the briefest of clues from the coast. And didn't Telesto ride well, he thought. She was a true thoroughbred, properly laden and ballasted, with as much canvas aloft as she could bear for the moment-slicing through those hum-mocking seas with a sure-footed nearness of motion that gave him a thrill of… dare he call it pleasure… with every swoop and rise?

'Damme, this feels good!' he declared to the winds and seas.

His first watch ended at four in the afternoon, and he headed below, face and hands raw with the wind and chill, eager for warmth, for a seat near the glowing stove and a glass of something cheerful. But he was delayed from those simple pleasures by the sight of Tom Wythy, their other 'owner.'

'A word with ye, Mister Lewrie?' the man beckoned. Since Wythy had been pretty much an unseen presence so far, it was more curiosity that led Alan aft to the doorway to the passage that led under the poop to the super- cargo cabins.

'Aye, sir?' Alan replied, and followed the rotund man into his cabin across the passageway from Twigg's. He hoped he'd get some liquid refreshment, at the least.

'Tot o' rum?' Wythy offered once the door was shut. Wythy took up most of the cabin-he was rounder and heavier than even Mr. Brainard the sailing master, his face hidden behind a thick greying beard, and that in an age when most fashionable men shaved closely. There was a red-veined doorknob of a nose, ruddy cheeks round as spring apples and bright, glittering eyes lost in the pudding face the beard most likely concealed.

'I've made some inquiries about yer little excitement,' Wythy told him, rubbing the side of that bulbous proboscis with the side of a thumb as thick as a belaying pin. 'Took this long t' get even a fast rider t' London an' back. An' I asked about ashore. That's what's kept me busy an' out o' sight so far, so this is our first opportunity to make our acquaintances. Hope ye'll forgive me that.'

'Of course, sir,' Alan told him. 'And what have you found?'

'Oh, we've stirred up an ant-hill, no error.' Wythy grinned, baring a rather sparse, but strong set of teeth-those remaining in his head, at least. 'Even caught us a French spy or two.'

'So it was the French, sir.' Alan enthused at the proof of a devilish conspiracy, the rum racing in his veins and warming his chill belly.

'Nothin' t' do with ye, sir,' Wythy informed him, turning the broad smile off. 'We