A King`s Commander

poured himself a glass of rhenish. The catling'd been lurking up there in the shadows, wary of intruders into 'his' territory. Arching and stretching, flexing sleepy claws as he craned his neck forward to touch noses, rub cheeks, and make lusty purring snorts of gap-mouthed adoration after a good nap.

Lewrie chucked him under his white chin, gave his white chops a thorough rub, then turned to head aft for the transom settee, to take his ease and sip his wine, where the opened sash-windows promised some fresh sea air. 'Come on, Toulon,' he coaxed. 'Playtime!'

'Mummer?' Toulon grumbled as he padded his fore end down the face of the wine cabinet, his haunches still atop, readying for a leap. And announcing his stunt, as an acrobat in a raree show might shout 'Hopa!' and clap his hands, to make the feat look more exciting.

Toulon sprang, a prodigious, steel-sinewed leap to the desk.

Unfortunately, the black-and-white catling landed on a sheet of folio paper atop that bee's-waxed and polished cherry surface. He and the paper skidded to starboard. And digging in his claws didn't help a bit! Laid over slightly 'downhill' from horizontal, on the larboard tack, the silky surface became a greased slipway.

Toulon sat down on his haunches, as if that might help. Surely, sitting still meant still, right? Then, he sailed off the desktop into space. And a very perplexed, and forlorn Toulon, with a contrite and reverent 'Motor?', asked his cat gods just what the odds were he'd not come another cropper. Or how large a fool he was going to look in a few seconds.

There was a bit of midair scrambling, trying to climb the sheet of paper's front end as it collapsed beneath him and went sailing off on its own course of perversely cruel abandonment.

'Urrff!.' he grunted as he landed, immediately slinking off to starboard, into the shadows where the brace of candles on the desk and the gently swinging pewter lanthorns overhead could not shed light on his humiliation.

'God, but you're such a bloody disaster!' Alan screeched with laughter, plunking down on the transom settee, too hugely amused to stand. Toulon was almost a yearling now, and still kitten- clumsy. And he'd been a most excruciatingly clumsy kitten to begin with, too!

Andrews his coxswain, and his cabin steward Aspinall, stuck their heads out for a second from the dining coach and small pantry. On the quarterdeck, the watch and the after-guard turned toward the open skylights over the great-cabins and marveled. What sort of a captain we got? they wondered. That wasn't a sound most associated with a sea officer!

'Come out of there, Toulon,' Lewrie coaxed, after he'd calmed, and had a sip or two more of his wine. He got down on hands and knees in front of the pewlike sofa, a crude oak construct shackled to the starboard bulkhead between a pair of nine-pounders. Spindle posts on the back, and openings around the corners, held ties for bright damask cushions that Caroline had made for him. 'Come on. Tis only your pride's hurt. I hope. Come out, poor puss. Towey?' Another thing Caroline had whipped together from scraps of colorful spun yarn; a rounded oval with ears and legs- Toulon 's favorite plaything.

Two chatoyant yellow orbs regarded him from beneath the sofa, slowly blinking. But mostly slit in mortification. 'Meek?' came a mournful little wren-peep. God, but he was so embarrassed!

Lewrie reached under to stroke him, to offer the plaything-but he was having none of that. Toulon folded his arms, tucked his front paws under his chest, and downturned his luxuriant whiskers.

'Moi,' he harrumphed testily, past somber jowls. Bugger off, you heartless bastard! 'Twasn't funny, Lewrie interpreted.

'Well, if you won't, you won't.' Alan sighed, getting to his feet. He got down his plain undress coat, threw it on, and stalked forward.

'Yer supper be ready not ten minute from now, sir,' Aspinall assured him quickly. 'Yer cook come t'tell me.' Aspinall was one of those unfortunate landsmen some regulating captain and surgeon of the press had passed, when they shouldn't have; a feeble-bodied city-bred footman, who'd lost his last employ. At least he knew enough about householdery to a gentleman for Lewrie to take him off the gangways, out of the waist, and apply his knowledge aft. Where he'd not rupture himself straining at braces and sheets. The lad was a slack, sunken-chested seventeen, ill-featured, but mannerly (mostly). At least, he had been, until he'd realized how grand his newfound stature was aboard a ship. A captain's servant ruled the roost over the stewards to lesser men.

'I'll be on deck, till then,' Lewrie said, finishing his wine and setting the glass on the dampened tablecloth, which would keep most plates and such from slipping off in a moderate sea such as this evening's.

' Ill send yer… cox'n, t'fetch ya, sir,' Aspinall suggested with lidded eyes, and a jerk of his head to Andrews, the West Indies free black who'd popped up like a jack-in-the-box a scant week before sailing to sign aboard.

'If you would come tell me, Andrews?' Lewrie said to his man directly, bypassing the servant, who most likely resented having a Negro give him orders.

'Aye, sah,' Andrews allowed cheerfully, too experienced a man to take notice of the jealousies of a boy; and a fresh-caught 'newly' landsman, at that. It was a huge joke, to him.

Alan emerged on the gun deck from the door to his quarters in the substantial, but temporary, wood partitions. They'd come down in battle, struck to the orlop, and his cabin would be stripped of all finery and furnishings, to avoid the danger of splinters. A Marine private, one of the watch who'd stand guard over his privacy 'round the clock, presented his musket, and Lewrie touched the brim of his cocked hat in reply.

Up to the quarterdeck by the larboard, windward, ladder, to the further alarm of his watch-standers.

'Carry on,' he called to them affably. 'Just up for a breath of air,' he elaborated, as he paced to the windward mizzenmast stays. Lieutenant Knolles and Mister Wheelock, the master's mate, shuffled down deck to starboard, yielding the windward side to him, which was his by right, alone, whenever he was on deck.

There was very little left of the sunset his paperwork had kept him from relishing. Just a faint bricky trace of red and umber low on the Western horizon, with towering banks of slag-gray clouds spread to either side oн Jester s course, and but the slightest sullen primrose glade upon the waves over which the ship's jib boom and bowsprit rose and fell. A touch more wind on his cheek, perhaps a hatful, no more, and veering forrud by no more than half a point from abeam. Jester rose and fell more regularly, now, gently hobbyhorsing as the deeper water hinted the long-set rollers of the Atlantic to come, after the chops of the Channel closer inshore. England was an indistinct razor-thin ebony smudge to the north. France was below the horizon, lost in the companionable darkness. It was almost late enough for the lamps forrud at the forecastle belfry, by the watch, hour, and half-hour glasses and bell, and the large taffrail lanthorns, to appear cheerful and strong. A few faint stars, mostly astern above the lanthorns, were already out.

Lewrie paced slowly aft along the larboard bulwarks, skirting the slide-carriages of the newly installed carronades. 'Smashers'-eighteen-pounders-they were, short, pestle-looking cylinders of guns that threw heavy, solid iron shot, heavier than anything HMS Jester could ever mount as deck artillery. Though they didn't shoot quite as far as long guns, they dealt out horrific damage when they struck. And, so far (praise Jesus) only the Boyal Navy used them in any numbers. There were four on Jester's quarterdeck, and another pair forrud on the foc's'le, in lieu of

chase guns. Alan would have preferred two long six-pounders there, but the officials of the Ordnance Board at Gun Wharf had had only so much patience for the blandishments of a junior officer.

Lucky to keep the guns I have, Lewrie told himself, smiling in grim reverie. A full twenty guns made Jester a small frigate, under the new rating system, a post-captain's command; while an eighteen-ganned ship sloop was suitable to a newly promoted commander! They'd taken two away from him, with many 'tsk-tsks' over his affrontery, to show up in a vessel armed beyond his rank.

British sloops, be they brig, schooner, ketch, or three-masted ship-rigged vessels, were allotted six-pounders, and that, by God, was that. Sixth-Rate frigates got nine- or twelve-pounders, 5th Rates carried twelves, or more lately, eighteen-pounders. The French, though (most sensibly, Alan thought), armed their equivalent corvettes with les huit-livre canon- eight-pounders. And the Frog Avoirdupois Livre was just a trifle heavier than the English Pound Weight, so his eight-pounders were the equal of a British nine-pounder. The shot was almost the same diameter, perhaps a quim-hair (about one twenty-fifth of an inch) smaller, allowing a tad more obturation, or 'windage,' between shot and bore diameter.