H.M.S. COCKEREL

'Just arrived, so I've no idea yet. Time for tea, though, my lad?' Lewrie offered. 'Warm your ride in the 'rumble-tumble,' hey?'

But Lieutenant Hogue had no time. And, an hour later, there was one more old acquaintance; Railsford of the old Desperate, a captain now.

'Damn my eyes if it isn't Lewrie, ha ha!' Captain Railsford cried, pumping his hand vigorously. 'Heard about your last commission. The very merriest time you must've had in the Bahamas… all those pirates? Me? Hydra, down to the Nore. Finest frigate ever I laid my eyes upon. Damme, wish I'd known you were available, I'd have requested you. But, I already have a first lieutenant. And you are getting senior-ish.'

'Oh, well. I understand completely, sir,' Lewrie grinned back, though he was crestfallen. Another three years under Railsford, fine seaman, well-disposed friend and mentor, would have been a joy.

'And Captain Treghues, sir?' Alan asked, merely from curiosity.

'Inherited the title last year, I believe. Married well, too, into the Walpoles. Cadet branch, but…!' Railsford enthused. The Walpoles were one of the Great Families, who pretty much ran England through influence and married-in minions. 'Got a seat in Parliament out of it, too. Captain Lord Tobias Treghues, Baron. Sure to make rear-admiral soon, with those connexions.'

'Is he still…?' Lewrie simpered, screwing a knuckle to the side of his forehead.

'Occasionally daft as bats? Hmm, let's say, now he's risen so… a tad eccentric.' Railsford chuckled softly. 'And that only on odd humid days. Well, my fondest wishes for your continued good fortune, Lewrie… but I must dash. Write to me.'

An hour, another slow circumnavigation of the Waiting Rooms (and two cups of tea) later, still with no seat, he ran into another 'old shipmate,' of a sort.

'Sir George,' Lewrie said hesitantly, anxious though he was to see a familiar, if hated, face. Sir George Sinclair was now a rear-admiral. He turned a hostile, aquiline glare on the interloper who'd dare trifle with his valuable, and selective, attention.

'Alan Lewrie, Sir George. Desperate? Antigua… '80… '81?'

'Aye, yes.' Sir George replied frostily, his eyes glazing over with subh'me disinterest. 'I remember you.' It sounded more like a threat. 'Still at it, are we, Lewrie?'

Alan imagined he could hear talons being stretched, hard chitin claws being honed. 'Uhm, aye, sir.'

'And you recall my nephew, Forrester, do you not?'

Oh, damme! Lewrie sighed, defeated and eager to run. The round post-captain hovering over Sir George's shoulder was that selfsame porcine glutton, that bane of his midshipman days, Francis Forrester. He hadn't gotten any trimmer. But he was a post-captain, despite his being dense as a kerbstone. It helped Lewrie's flagging confidence to recall that his fellow midshipmen had once painted Forrester blue as a Druid, and pissed in his shoes at every opportunity. Forrester's expression, however, told Alan that his memory of his days in the cockpit berths was just as keen… if not quite so fond.

'Much senior, are you, Lewrie?' Forrester grunted.

'Bottom half, I would imagine, sir.' That 'sir' was wrung from him with the greatest chagrin. Last he'd seen of Francis, he'd been a paroled prisoner after Yorktown, exchanged on the Bonetta sloop to New York, his career in pieces. God, how he'd risen, though!

'Eminently employable, then,' Forrester beamed with sudden joy. 'Do you not think, uncle?'

'We shall keep you in mind, sir,' Sir George vowed.

Jesus, kill me now, and have done, Lewrie prayed! Anything but their clutches! Anything!

'There's Bligh!' someone breathed behind Lewrie's left shoulder, quickly followed by a stifled giggle of mirth. 'Poor old fellow,' someone else more charitable commented.

He was a little fellow, nothing like the tragic hero he'd been proclaimed when he'd first reached England after the Mutiny. Nothing like the ogre he'd lately been portrayed, either. Despite his recent, and calamitous, downfall in popular opinion, he still drew his throng of admirers. Lewrie joined them. It was a slow morning.

'Read your book, sir,' Lewrie toadied, all but simpering. 'God, I wish I'd but known you might be here this very day, sir… I'd have fetched it along so you might have inscribed it.'

'Kind of you to say so, sir. Quite,' Captain Bligh replied, a trifle dubiously, a trifle shyly, half-expecting he was being made the butt of a jape.

'Bad timing, I gathered, sir,' Lewrie went on. 'Having to wait so long at Otaheiti for the breadfruit plants' growing season. Well, what crew wouldn 't go stale on one, I ask you.'

'Delivered properly this time, sir,' Bligh declared, firmer in his convictions, now that he saw he still had some admirers. 'In Providence, a proper ship, an Indiaman.'

'Pity, though,' Lewrie shrugged, 'Captain Edwards and Pandora. Had their Lordships ordered things the other way 'round… you to go pursue your mutineers, Edwards to fetch the breadfruit…'

Captain Edward Edwards, a taut hand if ever there was one, who made Bligh's easygoing (though unpredictable) ways seem like a saint in comparison, had apprehended several mutineers left behind when the Bounty sailed off for parts unknown. But Edwards had piled Pandora on the coral reefs of Endeavour Straits, and had lost her.

'I predicted dire consequences, ya know,' Bligh almost preened by then, feeling more comfortable among sycophantic curiosity seekers. 'Told 'em Edwards did not know the navigation of Flinders Passage in the reefs, of Endeavour Straits. Excuse me, sir… but you are…?'

'Lewrie, sir. Alan Lewrie.'

'Ah, yes. Well, thankee for your kind opinion, sir. Thankee kindly,' Bligh bobbed with a shy smile.

'I suppose you must be going, sir, I will delay you no longer. Off to a new command, I trust?' Lewrie fawned.

'Good day, sir,' Bligh snapped suddenly, turned on his heel, and departed in a frosty, insulted huff.

'Bloody hell!' Alan muttered to himself in confusion.

'I shouldn't worry over it much,' an unfamiliar lieutenant told him in a whisper. 'The court martial only hanged three out often and let the rest off, lenient as possible, didn't they, now. Read Edward Christian's Minutes of the Court Martial, and the scales will balance. Fletcher Christian's brother, don't ye know?' the man sniggered. 'The First Lord, Lord Chatham… I'm told he's issued word he'd only award Bligh with a ship should Hell freeze over. Won't even give him the time of day, is the rumor! No berth to be had with him. Thank the Good Lord.'

'So I've…' Lewrie sighed with a wry grin at his toadying.

'Right. Pissed down his back for nought,' the other chortled.

'An occupational hazard of ours, though. Is it not, sir?' he posed with a sardonic Lift of one brow, to cover his chagrin over being so toadying. And so obvious at it.

'Oh, it is, indeed, sir!' the other officer agreed heartily, equally taken by the drollery of it all. 'Hypocrisy in the service of one's career is no vice at all. One must simply be aware of when, and most importantly, to whom, one is the canting toad. Will you take tea with me, sir?'

By late afternoon, the Waiting Room was just as crowded, though at least a third of its denizens, who hid their impatience (or their dismay) behind poses of bemused boredom, stoic sternness or glum patience, were new arrivals. And Lewrie's name still had not been called. Fearing he'd miss his grand moment to ascend to the Board Room, or at least receive his orders in writing from a harried clerk, he had not even dared take time away to dine, not even as far as the inner courtyard, where one might buy dubious victuals off vendors' carts beyond the curtain wall and portal. His innards were growling by then, much as they had when he was an underfed midshipman. And the gallons of tea he had taken aboard! When a secretary at last announced that the day's business was at an end, he forgot dignity, and notions of rank, to outrun half a dozen dozy post-captains to 'the jakes,' where he passed water prodigiously as a cart horse, for a rather long time.

Tomorrow, he told himself, as he plodded, swell-footed after standing since breakfast, for Whitehall Steps and a boat back to his lodgings. Tomorrow'll be my day.