H.M.S. COCKEREL

sir. You understand, I have to make my own way in this. Come to mine own conclusions, not… well, not take the word of the first senior warrant I meet. I mean no offence, sir.'

'None taken, sir,' Dimmock muttered back, glancing about to see if they had been witnessed talking together too long, in too covert a confidence. 'I'll leave you to get squared away. At supper, though, tonight… I've a brace of French calvados. Apple brandy. Better'n any country applejack you ever swigged. My treat, to 'wet' you into the mess?'

'I should be delighted, Mister Dimmock, thankee.'

'And, sir…?'

'Aye?'

'We all tread wary, and watch our tongues,' Dimmock whispered, though he performed a hat-doffing salute and slight bow, with a smile on his phiz, as if he were imparting nothing peculiar. 'It isn't the hands alone who find the 'Stih' the safest way.'

'I will keep that in mind, Mister Dimmock. Later, sir.' Lewrie nodded his head in dismissal, clapped his hands in the small of his back, and paced. He looked below into the waist, where a bosun's mate was braiding a cat-o'-nine- tails, and a sailmaker's assistant was sewing up a small red-baize bag. They looked up at him, as if trying to read his soul, then looked away hurriedly when caught under his gaze. The harbour and anchor watch-standers on deck stood their posts rigid as carved wooden soldiers, stiff-backed and mute.

Those men hi working parties, swaying up tuns and kegs on the midships hull skids, heaving away on stay tackles, performed their labours with mere, unisoned grunts, instead of a pulley-hauley chanty or fiddle tune.

Three midshipmen were scaling the rigging of the mainmast, up by the cross-trees, ready to go further aloft. They looked down at him, pausing in their vigorous exercise. Two, fearful; one with the air of a leery customer in a poor tradesman's shop, who'd seen better goods elsewhere. Lewrie matched gazes with him, unblinking, until the lad's face suffused and he returned to his instructive 'play.'

Wull, stop me! Alan thought; what the Devil've I got meself into this time!

He turned to the nearest gangway ladder, to descend to the waist and make his way below through the nearest hatchway to the wardroom.

Perversely, he began to whistle a gay country air Caroline had played an hundred times, if she'd played it once, on her flute. One he had taught her.

It was familiar to all hands, making a few smile timidly.

The lyrics were hellish vulgar.

Chapter 2

Whack!

The bosun's mate ran the braids of the cat-o'-nine-tails through his fingers to unravel them, drew back, took a deep breath, and delivered his next stroke. ' 'Leven!' he grunted.

Landsman Preston shivered as with ague, vibrating to the lash of the cat, against the square-cut hatch grating to which he was tethered at wrists and ankles. The skin of his back crawled of its own, goose-pimpling as if to writhe away from the pain. There were red-hot weals diagonaled on his bare back, some broken open and beginning to seep a torrent of crimson tears which puddled in the small of his spine, down by the band of his slop-trousers- down by the leathern apron worn by men receiving punishment to protect their kidneys. Landsman Preston was gagged, too, with a leathern strop; something to bite on.

Preston flinched, hunching his flayed shoulders, as he heard Thorne, the burly bosun's mate, suck in his breath as he prepared to stroke again. In the awe-full silence he could be heard to groan.

Whack! Soggier, wetter, meatier, this time.

'Twelve!' Thorne barked, turning away to face the captain above, amidships of the quarter-deck nettings. 'Doz'n d'liv-ered, sir!' And Captain Braxton nodded grim approval as he looked down into the waist, with his officers a solid blue wall of agreement behind him, and the Marine contingent, in their best red 'lobster-back' coats, with their muskets at the Present at his feet, facing the ship's 'people' forrud.

'Another bosun,' Braxton snapped with a larboard leer to his lip.

Bosun's Mate Porter came forward, a younger, slimmer man, not as burly as Thorne. He took the cat-o'-nine- tails, knuckled a salute to the captain, and turned to lay on. Porter was a cack-handed man, so the dozen he'd administer would be crosswise to Thome's.

Porter shook the cat, shook his wrist to flex out any kinks. Shook the cat so blood already drawn wouldn't bind the strands with sticky sera. He took a deep breath, poised on the balls of his feet. Then, displeased with his placement, he took a half-step to his right, and faced a little away from the grating, to open his swinging room.

'B'oony henn!' Landsman Preston could be heard to say impatiently through his leather gag. 'Gi' on 'i eet!'

Seamen drawn up by watch divisions shuffled their feet, swayed, and tittered uneasily. Landsman Preston was a game cock, at least!

'Silence on deck!' Braxton shouted. 'Silence, the lot of you!' He turned a cold glare upon his first lieutenant, who should have been the first to cry for order. 'Carry on!'

Porter shook his wrist once more, drew back, and swung.

'One!' he called in a shuddery voice. 'One d'livered, sir!'

Then Two, then Three, in quick succession. Preston barely moved.

'Put yer back into it, bosun!' Braxton snarled. 'Don't dust him! 'Tis punishment he deserves, and punishment he shall have.'

'Aye, aye, sir. Sorry, sir.' Bosun's Mate Porter reddened.

Whack! Much harder this time, Porter almost going arse-over-tit with the effort he put into it. Preston leapt like a touched deer.

'Four! Four d'livered, sir!'

'Ahhh,' Landsman Preston moaned, leaning his head against the curved hatch grating which was bowsed upright to the larboard gangway. Perhaps he would not turn out game, after all.

Lewrie sneaked a glance at his Braxtons, father and son, captain and second lieutenant. Braxton the younger had brought Preston up on charges. He'd been owed 'gulpers' from Ordinary Seaman Gold's daily rum ration, and Gold'd thought his gulp was more than a tad healthy, so they had snarled at each other. Some elbowing and shoving, a word or two more spoken in anger over the mind-numbing rum, which was the only escape from their misery, their precious elixir. Now both were to be lashed-four dozen apiece.

Had Lewrie his druthers, he'd have given Gold an extra dollop to make it up, then deprived them both for a week, with a harsh talking to. Four dozen, he thought excessive, too. Their first fight or trouble, no knives drawn, not even fists swung, really. And Midshipman Spendlove had been there cat-quick, to bark them apart, thrusting his skinny body of authority between them. But Lieutenant Braxton had been certain they'd laid hands on him, ignoring his orders, no matter how accidentally, and had demanded swift and condign punishment. And, as in every instance, Captain Braxton had been more than quick to agree.

Since Cockerel had sailed in mid-April as one of the escorting frigates with Vice- Admiral Philip Cosby's small squadron of two ninety-eight-gun 1st Rates, three seventy-four-gun 3rd Rates and two other frigates, there'd been men at the gratings almost daily-sometimes in twos and threes-and the call for 'Hands Muster Aft to Witness Punishment' was now as routine to them as 'Clear Decks and Up Spirits.'

Lashes for fighting, as a new crew shook down. For Drunken on Watch, Asleep on Watch, Insubordination, Dumb Insolence… which meant they didn't understand a command, or hadn't sprung into action immediately. With more than half the crew complete novices at sea… well! Ignorance had become, it seemed, a punishable offence.

On the slow passage escorting the trade from England, past French Biscay ports, where lurked privateers and swift frigates, they had beaten Cockerel's crew into a shambling semblance of discipline, had flogged or terrified raw lubbers into some sort of seamen. Sail drill, boat drill, gunnery