H.M.S. COCKEREL

Hamilton one more time. Emulate some of those erotic Etruscan fragments they'd seen in their gallery of choice, the ones with the cavorting…

Well, maybe that's not a good idea, he sighed, leaving the chart: wondering again where his conscience was hiding, or if he, in truth, had one. Once was enough… took the edge off. Every six months'r so…?

His brief enthusiasm left him, and he shivered inexplicably to a brisk African wind on his left shoulder that gave no warmth.

Hellish gloomy damn' place, he concluded.

'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,' he muttered.

'Sir?' the senior helmsman inquired, shifting his quid to another cheek.

'Nothing,' Lewrie granted. 'Steady as she goes.'

Chapter 2

Perhaps it was just as well that Captain Horatio Nelson's sixty-four-gunned Agamemnon bore the word to Naples, Lewrie thought. With the French Mediterranean fleet captured in one fell swoop, all her proud, large line-of-battle ships in the bag, the more impressive British liners were freed to make the diplomatic calls about the region-those ships captained by men of greater stature and diplomatic experience.

Cockerel idled about in the Golfe du Lion for a few days to keep an eye on Marseilles, round Cape Cicie to the west, before that pointless task was undertaken by a small squadron of British 74's, and she returned to Toulon. There was nothing much to guard against, since only a scattered handful of French frigates and corvettes were still free to operate, and those few were alone, uncoordinated and fearful.

'You really can walk in their shade,' Lieutenant Barnaby Scott commented as they toured the basin a few days later.

Everywhere there was bustle. Proud French ships were being stripped of their guns and powder, rowing boats worked like a plague of water-beetles to carry captured supplies out to the Spanish and British ships. And a horde of curiosity seekers such as Lewrie and Scott had come ashore to gawp over all they'd won so easily, and crow with elation.

And from the moment their cutter had touched a quay, they'd been gawped at in turn, cheered by Royalist Toulonese, gushed over by women and men with white Bourbon cockades on their coats or their hats. Any restaurant would kick Frogs out to seat them and fete them, any desire they had was fulfilled (mostly), and they couldn't seem to buy a drink in the town- it was given with bubbly expressions of gratitude. 'Damn' friendly lot,' Barnaby Scott opined. 'For Frogs.' There was martial music, clattering hooves on cobblestones and the heavy drumming of field-artillery carriages and caissons as a Spanish half-regiment paraded by above the basin, on the main water street.

'S'pose we should be about our shopping,' Lewrie shrugged, still uneasy with the concept of friendly Frenchmen. Besides, ambling about by themselves, surrounded by convict labourers in their filthy slops and irons, surrounded by milling packs of truculent and beetle-browed French sailors who were most pointedly not wearing Royalist cockades, and who hawked and spat behind their backs, or muttered sneering words behind their hands as they passed… well, they might be disarmed and supposedly harmless, but Lewrie didn't want to take the chance of risking the drunkest or the surliest of them. No matter how near help, in the form of Royal Navy working parties or Marine sentries, might be.

On the northern shore of the basin's quays, it all spread out before them as they stopped and stood, gazing down upon the pool of water between the jetties and the warehouses, dry dock and arsenals: A host of docked warships, frigates, corvettes, gunboats, floating batteries (that looked more like ancient oared war galleys), 74's and 80's of the line, and two monstrous 120-gun ships of the 1st Rate, so huge they dwarfed all others, even British 1st Rates.

'Comfortin' to know we'll have use of all these,' Lewrie said on. 'Frogs build damn' good ships. Finer entries, leaner quick-work… sail faster than ours, and that's a fact. Always have.'

'Ah, 'tisn't the ship makes the difference, sir,' Scott scoffed, a trifle bleary from all the 'gratitude' he'd taken aboard.' Tis men who decide a battle. Frogs've never had the stomach for fighting, not at musket or pistol-shot, broadsides to broadsides. Lay off, so please you, and fire at your rigging! Pack o' spineless, snail-eatin' Mollies, they are. Frog-eatin' butt-fuckers. All they know how to do is mince!'

'A little less of it, Mister Scott,' Lewrie cautioned. 'Those near us aren't mincing, exactly. Why don't you smile and nod?'

'Shit on 'em, sir,' Scott sneered. 'Shit on 'em! I was raised t'hate a Frenchman worse'n 'Old Scratch' himself. Hate 'em worse than Dons, when you get right down to it. Damme if I'll pander to any Frog, no matter he's licking mine arse to save his. Let 'em bring on their guillotines, I say! Cut the odds down for us first, and we'll sort out the survivors later. And spare the world any more of 'em.'

'I truly do despair of you, Mister Scott,' Lewrie replied sternly, not for the first time. Bluff, humorous and 'me-hearty' as Scott could be, he had a surly side when he'd been tippling. Which he did about as often as the unfortunate 'Little Left-enant Do-Little,' Banbrook, in the past month or so, Lewrie had begun to notice.

As that other unfortunate, Lieutenant Clement Braxton, had tried anew to ingratiate himself with his own messmates after his father's illness, it had been Scott who'd still have no truck with him. Which made it harder for the others to relent, to realise that the son was nothing like the sire, and accept his shy and clumsy offerings.

'I despair of the whole shitten mess, sir,' Scott gloomed, taken by a Blue-Devil mood of a sudden. 'Braxtons and Brax-tons, then even more Braxtons, generation unto generation, pestiferous as Frogs in-'

'Shut up,' Lewrie snapped.

'Sir?' Scott looked at him owlishly, like Falstaff called down by a drinking partner. But he did shut up, at least.

'If you cannot control yourself, sir, go back aboard.'

'You'd deny me a few hours of peace, of freedom from our tyrants, sir?' Scott wheedled, sounding genuinely hurt. 'Send me back to more-'

'Shut up, Mister Scott!' Lewrie snarled. 'I mean it. Aboard or ashore, there'll be no more of that talk. Sets yourself a bad habit. Carp all you like two years from now, when the commission's over, but manage yourself now, sir.'

'Mister Lewrie, you hate 'em as much as I do, as much as we both hate Frogs and Dons, I know it, so-'

'Sir, will you obey me?' Lewrie demanded, suddenly fed up with it; with Scott, with his impossible task. And begrudging his own few hours of freedom, interrupted by a maundering, half-drunken pest. Scott was, he'd imagined-'til now, at least-a kindred spirit. Cynical, sarcastic, wryly funny to talk to, a rakehell and a rogue. But no, Scott had a deeper, darker streak that he didn't much care for.

'Very well, sir,' Scott replied stiffly, drawing himself up to a full height, doffing his hat in salute. 'I'll say no more. I trust you may excuse me, then, sir? Since you find my company distasteful, I will spare you any further… I will take my leave, sir.'

'Very well, Mister Scott,' Lewrie sighed, wondering if he had not lost the man's respect, and his authority over him, as well as what had passed for a tentative beginning to a career-long friendship. He suspected that he had; Lieutenant Barnaby Scott was the sort who'd hold a grudge over a trifle such as this, drunk or sober. 'Keep yourself out of any trouble, Mister Scott. Your opinions anent Frogs, that 'd spare you no end of grief. And be back aboard by sundown.'

'Sir!' Scott said stiffly, almost clicking his shoe heels like a Prussian grenadier, and departing, a trifle unsteadily, parting a path through French citizens, subjects and sailors by his brusque mood and his daunting, damme-boy bulk and height.

'Shit, I give up!' Lewrie sighed in a bitter whisper. He'd just lost an ally in the wardroom, perhaps made a sullen enemy. It was as if Scott felt betrayed that Lewrie, who should have been on his side, had aided Clement Braxton's tentative essays at camaraderie, much as a jilted lover might turn