THE GUN KETCH

'Steady as you go, Mister Neill,' Ballard said, shrugging deep into his soggy grogram boat-cloak.

Caroline was asleep on the transom settee's pad, curled up hard against the stern timbers by an open sash window overlooking the wake, hugging her knees. Alan took the painted coverlet from the hanging-cot and folded it about her to ward off the chill of the stiff winds.

'Oh, you're back!' she groaned, weary as death, spent from all her wracking heavings. She reached out for him, weak as a kitten, as he got a damp cloth to wipe her face. She didn't sound accusatory, he noted with relief!

'I'm so sorry, Caroline, but that's a ship for you,' Alan lied. 'It took forever. A tug here, a pull there. Are you feeling perhaps the tiniest bit better, darling?'

'A bit,' she allowed. 'Now you're here. Just hold me, Alan.'

'Miss me?' he teased, easing down on the edge of the settee by her side as she rolled to him and embraced him.

'My love, I was much too… busy, to miss you,' Caroline sighed, amazingly able to jest even then. 'The fresh air helped best. Once I got the window open, and made my final offering to Neptune, I was dead to the world.'

'You should get into bed. Sleep's the thing for you now. The bedbox doesn't pitch or roll. Would you care for some brandy?'

'I do not trust myself,' she said after one quick peek at their hanging-cot, which swayed impressively. She rinsed her mouth with the brandy, but spit it out over the stern, not trusting her stomach with any fresh contents, either.

'You are so good to me,' she crooned sleepily, stroking his face as he came back to her side. 'I'm so sorry to be a burden, when I promised just this morning I'd not be.'

'You're no burden, love,' Alan smiled. 'Every sailor has to find his sea legs. You sleep, now. And you'll feel better in the morning.'

He reclined with her, stroking her hair until her breathing went slow and regular. Only then did he close his own eyes and nod off, his head pressed against hard oak, lulled and hobbyhorsed to sleep by the ship's motion.There was a rapping at the door.

'Unnh?' he groaned, starting awake from treacly sleep.

'Midshipman Parham, sir. The sailing master's respects, and he wishes to shake out the second reef in the main course and inner jib, Captain, sir.'

'Very well, Mister Parham,' Alan replied, reeling with weariness. 'I'll be on deck directly.'

Chapter 5

Once out of the Channel and around Ushant, Alacrity became a much happier, and tauter, ship. Seasickness abated, and the hands, back on their feet, were then brought to competence with drills and hard work.

Fire drills, boat launchings and recoveries, procedures for man-overboard rescues and working the ship became the day's chores. They tacked, they wore ship, spread or brailed up the tops'ls and royals, struck or hoisted the topmasts; they replaced entire suits of canvas. Cables for towing were laid out, then recovered, boarding nets were strung along the sides and hoisted from the yardarms, then lowered and stowed away. For the complete neophytes, and the newest midshipmen, the bosun and his mate conducted classes in knots and in long- and short-splicing, with the next day's exercises applying those newly won skills in practical uses. There was practice at musketry, at pistol shooting at towed targets, cutlass and pike drill under the first officer or the ship's corporal, a heavily scarred bruiser named Warwick. They learned to serve the great guns, the ship's ten iron six-pounders, two-pounder boat- guns, and swivels.

Discipline was brought to full naval standards gradually, once the hands gained some knowledge/Defaulters were allowed a chance to make honest mistakes with light punishment; stoppage of tobacco or the precious rum issue. Stiffened rope 'starters' used as horsewhips on the slow and clumsy were at first discouraged-Lewrie did not feel the sting of a starter in (he hands of a mate on some poor inexperienced landsman much of a goad to learning.

Later, the starters could be plied more freely, if a man was truly shirking. Later, insubordination and the usual sins-drunk or asleep on watch-were awarded days of bread and water, along with a touch of the 'cat'; one dozen lashes for a first penalty, two dozen for the second. Back-talkers, mostly the landsmen who insisted on their God- given right as Englishmen to complain at brusque usage, were 'marlin-spiked' into silence, with a heavy iron marlin-spike bound between their teeth for a day. And the midshipmen suffered being bent over a gun barrel to 'kiss the gunner's daughter,' to be whipped on boyish bottoms rather than fully male backs, or suffered to be 'mastheaded,' consigned to the cross-trees aloft without food or water in all weathers and told to remain there, shivering and puking at the exaggerated motion of the ship, until Lewrie saw fit to relent. In a harsh age, Ballard and the warrants at first thought their new captain a little too mild, until they saw him administer captain's justice fair-handedly, and issue lashes with the cat-o' -nine-tails in the forenoon watches on those few truly recalcitrant or shifty.

They were fortunate in Alacrity-and Lewrie and Ballard thanked God for that good fortune-to have at least half the crew made up of seasoned people, to have had the men 'pressed' for them reasonably intelligent and healthy, that a fair portion of those pressed were volunteers. Times were hard ashore, what with Enclosure Acts, unemployment and low wages, so Navy pay was steadier and surer than day-laboring. And the Ј 14 12s. 6d. net pay for a raw landsman was half again as much as he could make as a civilian. Even figured at a parsimonious lunar month instead of the calendar month, with deductions of sixpence for Greenwich Hospital and one shilling for the Chatham Chest monthly, plus the purser's subtractions for tobacco, shoes, slop- clothing, plates, scarves, hats and sundries, it was a decent annual living.

Alacrity settled down to being a somewhat happy ship. Most of her people were young and full of energy, even after a full day's work or drill. In the short dog-watches of late afternoon, when the weather permitted, there were sports and competitions, watch against watch.

And there was music and dancing, with fiddles, fifes and drums, stacks of spoons slapped upon knees if nothing else for meter,English morris dancing, Irish jigs and Scots reels, along with hornpipes or West Indian dancing.

Sometimes, Midshipman Parham on fiddle, Bosun's Mate Odrado on a beribboned guitar of which he was especially proud, the carpenter's mate, a Swede named Bjornsen, on fife, and Caroline with her flute, would play concerts by the quarter-deck rails. The Reverend Townsley made hymn books available for those seamen who could read, and the crewmen would gather aft for a singalong, or stare rapt at drawing-room compositions they'd never heard before, their eyes alight to Bach, Purcell, Handel or other great composers. But then Caroline would insist on rollicking airs familiar from an hundred village greens or taverns, or plaintive ballads, sometimes tunes she'd grown up with among her North Carolina neighbors, and the hands would sing along lustily, all over the scales, but enjoying themselves greatly.

The Townsleys disapproved of some songs-but then, they disapproved of a lot of things. Divine Services could not be conducted on a daily basis, but only on Sundays after Divisions, and after the first one, Lewrie had suggested shorter sermons and more hymns. And when the second droned on long as the first, he'd ordered the bosun to pipe 'Clear Decks and Up-Spirits' to issue rum, ending services quite effectively!

The Townsleys sniffed prudishly at breakfasts, when Alan and Caroline emerged from their tiny cabins, flushed with excitement from making love. Once over her seasickness, Caroline began to enjoy voyaging, and both hanging-cot and transom settee provided ecstatic pleasures. The Townsleys, far past their own first remembrances of passion, coyly hinted that too much laughing, giggling and 'odd noises' in the night had disturbed their slumbers. Which hints only served to spur Lewrie and his enthusiastic young bride to even greater feats of passion, of an even noisier nature.

And the Townsleys were upset that Lewrie did not wish to break his passage in Vigo, Lisbon, or the Madeiras, but, with Gat-acre and his own sailing master John Fellows to assist, determined upon taking a faster route for the Bahamas, edging more westing to each day's run so that Alacrity was well out to sea and beyond the normal 'corner' at which most ships would turn west for the Indies off Cape St. Vincent.

He did it admittedly to save his fast-dwindling supply of wine and brandy, for the good reverend made more