H.M.S. COCKEREL

the impressed apprentices' pay! He'd seen rivals in love, or those selfsame jilted young girls, get their own back by whispering the location of a prime hand. Unhappy wives could find a way to pack off the brute who beat them once too often. Relations, usually in-laws, could rescue their family's good name, and their daughter or niece, from a marriage or engagement to someone unsuitable, if he was sound enough to man the tops of a fighting ship, or pulley-hauley in the waist.

And there were the lads, bastards like himself, who'd proved to be an embarrassment. Putative fathers would bring them 'round, tip the recruiting officer the wink, and leave them gamely weeping as future cabin servants, powder-monkeys or landsmen. Mothers, who had too many mouths to feed as it was… widows who might get their new man to marry if the brat was gone!… or wives who wished to dally without testimony from sons to unwitting or absent husbands and fathers…

And, there were the raids on taverns, brothels and lodgings, like the one they'd pulled that night. That took a different 'gang,' with no need for Jolly Jacks and 'me-hearty' True-blue Hearts of Oak. Cudgels of oak, more like!

The brutal fact was that there were a myriad of landsmen, but no surplus of seamen, and it took at least a third to a half of a crew of a warship to be made up of seamen, if she had a hope of getting to sea and surviving once she'd made her offing. Englishmen would not tolerate conscription for any military service; that smacked of brutal central government oppression. The only way left was the 'Press. And only seamen were liable to be pressed… supposedly. Though many innocent civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time were swept into the tenders. Yet the 'Press was so opposed by local magistrates, and the courts deluged with wrongful-taking suits, the Impress Service so thinly manned, that they could never 'sweep the streets,' as the public's popular image held. It had to be done with craft and guile. With stealth and speed, in the dead of night.

'So you expect another raid soon, sir?' Lewrie asked at last.

'T'morro' night, I'd wager, soon'z Bridey whispers a few words in me shell-like ear, hee hee! An' ye done well, so I've a mind ye'll go on that'un, too.'

'Of course, sir,' Lewrie sighed. 'Uhm, have any letters come?'

'Nothin' from yer good wife t'day, Mister Lewrie,' his superior grunted. 'Aye, if a feller's goin' t'commit th' folly, then I give ye points f r good taste, me lad. She's a livin', breathin' angel, Mistress Lewrie is. Even finer'n all th' others I saw ye squirin' in th' West Indies. An' they was mighty fine.'

'I was hoping the Admiralty-?' Lewrie prayed.

'Nothin' from them, neither. Oh, I know ye b'long at sea, an' it rare breaks me heart t'see ye took so low, Mister Lewrie,' Lilycrop commiserated, topping up his ale. 'I've wrote meself. Locker, down t'th' Nore… Jackson an' Stephens, an' Admiral Hood, too. Nothin'z come back t'me, official, so far, neither. Did get wind o' somethin', though…' Lilycrop frowned.

'Yes, sir?' Lewrie sat up hopefully.

''Member how ye used t'speak about politics so glib, Lewrie?'

'Aye, sir?'

'Well, from what I gather, unofficial-like, 'tis petty politics holdin' ye back. Some rear admiral, name o' Sinclair?'

'Oh, shit. I knew he hated me more'n cold, boiled mutton.'

'And, there's another… some retired rear admiral. Not on any board, but he has lots of patronage an' influence… man ye crossed in the Bahamas, I hear tell.'

'Commodore Garvey?' Lewrie gasped. 'He's Yellow Squadron scum! How could he sway my appointment?'

'Aye, that's th' name,' Lilycrop nodded between healthy swigs. 'Rich as Midas, I hear, tied fall th' nabobs in th' City. Civilians don't know Yellow Squadron… nor what it means. They retire a fool'r a cheat, they bump him in rank, 'stead o' cashierin'r court-martiallin' th' bastard, an' he's Rear Admiral o' the Blue, respectable-lookin'z anythin'. Rumour is, ye exposed 'im, him an' a pack o' thieves, your last commission. An' now he's thick with th' thieves this side o' th' ocean who liked th' old way o' Bahamas dealin'. High-placed thieves, too. That means under-th'-table, petticoat talk… rich City society wives'n mistresses with th' ear o' Navy Board wives'n mistresses. I 'spect that's why ye sat these last years on th' beach t'begin with.'

'My God, I never thought…!' Alan exclaimed. Of course, the last few years ashore, I didn't give a further Navy career the time of day, he confessed to himself. Show up at my door, back when we'd first started, and I'd have run the bastard through who'd have sent me back to sea so quick!

But now there's a real war…! He sighed, squirming with impatience to do something more meaningful than coshing drunken sailors on the head and dragging them off by their ankles.

'Fear nought, me lad,' Lilycrop cautioned. 'Corral enough men, ye'll get yer ship. Look at Bracewaight. There's rumours he'd done an arrangement… he fetches in 200 seamen, they give him an active commission. One-handed'r no, he's still a dev'lish sharp scaly-fish, an' just as wasted here'z ye are. There's a midshipman, down t'th' Nore, braggin' that his hundredth recruit'11 fetch his lieutenantcy! 'Course, he's a high-up Dockyard sea-daddy f r a patron, I'm told.'

Two hundred pressed men, Lewrie almost gagged? At the rate I'm going, that'll take 'til next Christmas, and how long'll this war last?

And with just whom, exactly, did one make such a Devil's bargain?

He vowed to 'smoke out' Bracewaight at the first opportunity. And write yet another pleading, weekly letter to the Admiralty.

Chapter 4

Old Bridey, the Mother Abbess, must have had decades of hard begrudgements to work off (or far costlier damage done to her establishment), for the next few days, and nights, were filled with raids.

The Impress Service dealt with deserters, both those who ran deliberately and stayed away, and those who 'straggled.' There were some who'd run, intent upon life-long escape from Navy service. And there were some who volunteered over and over again, collecting the Joining Bounty, then taking 'leg-bail' to enlist under another alias. Their raids netted about a dozen of the worst offenders, and put the fear of capture in many others.

Then, there were the 'stragglers.' These were seamen who had missed their ship's departure, gone on unsanctioned 'runs ashore' on a whim, gone adrift from working parties intent on a stupendous drunk, a mindless rut, with no thought for the morrow. Or long-term sailors with good records who'd been granted shore leave, but had been robbed or otherwise 'delayed,' who had a mind to rejoin, and were anxious to go back aboard. Hands didn't exactly join the national war effort, didn't sign up to fight 'For King and Country'; they wanted to be aboard, and gave their primary loyalty to, specific ships and crews. Fellows from the same neighbourhood or village, the same shire, friends (or people they felt comfortable with). And the Impress Service was their clearinghouse.

Men who'd been put ashore sick or hurt into Greenwich Hospital, but had recovered, they were particularly vulnerable, for they owned pay certificates, or solid coin for once, and there were many jobbers and 'sharks' who preyed upon them to buy up their certificates for a pittance, then turn them in at the Pay Office for full value. And get the released hospitallers drank, penniless and desperate. Desperate enough to fear returning to the Fleet, and sign aboard a merchantman or privateer.

So some of their raids were in the nature of rescue missions to reclaim those befuddled men before worse befell them; the Navy 'getting its own back.'

Tonight it was to be deserters, the genuine articles this time, not stragglers, and the 'gang' was the round dozen of the toughest of hands. True deserters would face punishment, and would fight like a pack of badgers to stay free.

Their hideout was above an 'all-nations,' a dramshop serving a little bit of everything, at the back of a winding mews of dockyard warehouses. It was a mean and narrow building, dwarfed by the height of the warehouses, hard up against a blank brick wall which separated it from one of the worst 'Bermudas' of Wapping, a slum so gruesome and crime-ridden, and its lanes and alleys so convoluted, that their escape from any threat would be assured, if they had warning.

'One door art th' back, sir,' the crimp whispered in Lewrie's ear, his breath as foul as rotting kelp. 'Winders'z bricked up, 'cept fer that'un ye c'n see. Winder Tax,' he shrugged. 'But I'd s'pect 'ey got 'em one jus' boarded over, 'bove th' wall, sir.'

How Lilycrop, or Bridey, had talked the crimp into aiding them, Lewrie could not fathom. Crimps usually were in competition with the 'Press. The Navy had to use their own gangs, for locals stood a fair chance of being found