A Jester’s Fortune

'T'surgeon, Mister Howse, sir…' Rees marveled. 'Wearin' a clean set o' breeches, I'm told, Cap'um. Clean t'rough scantlin's, an' t'second futtock, caromed off t'berth-deck wale, int' t'orlop, an' jammed int' a knee-timber. Blieve t'gent'man collected himself a wee splinter'r two, sir, but all's well.'

Lewrie found it very hard to hide a spiteful smile. He coughed to clear his throat and turned his gaze outboard. But he saw Rees in much the same predicament.

'Aye, Mister Rees, thankee for your report,' Lewrie said. 'Do you sound the well, though, just in case one lodged below.'

'I'm on it, sir,' Rees said, knuckling his brow and turning to go. Then here came Cony in his wake to make his report.

'Sir, we come through right fair,' he related. 'No riggin' in danger, no damage below th' waterline, no guns dismounted. I run into Mr. LeGoff, an' 'e toP me t'tell ya… three wounded. Marine Private Dykes… Landsmen Orick and Siler. 'T ain't too bad, consid'rin'. Be a few weeks o' light-duty, God willin', an' they'll be right as rain. Ord'nary Seaman Butturini, though, sir… well, 'e ain't got long.'

'One of our Maltese seamen, aye.' Lewrie sighed. It was such a short 'butcher's bill'; but any one was much too long. 'Didn't see much hope for him right off. I s'pose you've a bottle of rum handy?'

'Well, o' course, sir,' Cony said with a sad grin. 'I'm th' Bosun, ain't I?'

'Him and his mates… see he goes comfortable, if you would,' Lewrie told him. 'I'd be obliged.'

'Aye, sir. An' I'll tell th' sailmaker.'

'Right.' Lewrie nodded abruptly. It would be Mr. Paschal's duty to sew up a canvas shroud for Ordinary Seaman Butturini and be ready to stitch him into it, once he passed over; with a final stitch through the nose, so everyone would rest easy that he was really gone.

'Pity 'bout Mr. Howse, though, ain't it, sir?' Cony chuckled. ' 'Eard-tell Mr. Buchanon swore they wuz blood on th' wind. Didn't think h'it'd be his, though. Why, 'tis enough t'put th' fear o' God in a man, Cap'um Lewrie, sir! Which god, now…'

'Get along with you, Mister Cony,' Lewrie said with a smirk.

'Aye aye, sir.' Cony grinned, doffing his plain cocked hat.

There was muffled gunfire astern. Lewrie turned to see that French frigate, now being engaged by Lionheart and Pylades, two miles or more alee. That wouldn't last long, he thought. Nor would those two merchantmen, which were clawing their way eastward, into the teeth of the wind, but too heavily laden to escape. It had barely gone two bells of the First Dog Watch-half past four p.m. They'd be up with the merchantmen they were chasing a little after sunset, he reckoned; and Myrmidon level with hers a bit before. Prize-money, and a handsome letter to Jervis-then the Admiralty-from Charlton for a plucky afternoon's work. So promising a beginning, aye… yet…

A man had died. One of their Jesters had died. And what sort of foreboding omen was that? Alan wondered.

CHAPTER 3

They were two big, fine three-masted ships, almost large enough to be mistaken for 4th Rate 50-gunners or very large but older two-deck frigates, and their arrival in the Austrian port of Trieste, with the British ensign atop their mizzen masts, might have led an observer on shore to think them part of a powerful squadron at first glance. A closer inspection, though, would have shown the French Tricolour flag flown lower, from their stern gaffs. Led by a pair of sloops of war, followed by two unmistakably British frigates, the six vessels swept into harbour about midday, their eighth on-passage, after calling for pilots beyond the bar, then standing off-and-on until someone in authority woke up and took notice of their arrival.

'Sleepy damn' place,' Lewrie observed dryly, giving Trieste a good look-over once Jester had made-up to a permanent Austrian naval mooring, and had rowed out a single kedge to keep her from swinging afoul of the other ships in port.

British ships, mostly, he noted. Trieste was Austria 's one and only naval base, home of their own small East Indies Trading Company to the Far East. But it was remarkably empty and inactive. Buoys dotted the glass-calm waters, but very few were taken, and the network of quays and warehouses were bare of bustle. He'd expected a busy seaport, just as full of commercial doings as Plymouth… damn, even a faded Bristol! Nowhere near a Liverpool, or the Pool of London, of course, but…!

There were damned few warships flying the horizontal red-white-red crowned flag of Austria, either. There was a trim little gun-brig sporting a commissioning pendant, a pair of feluccas, such as he'd come to know from his Mediterranean experience. There were even a brace of what looked to be xebecs, long, lean and low to the water, like Barbary Corsair raiders. What looked to be a 6th Rate frigate now careened on a mud flat, mastless and abandoned, half rotted to pieces. And there were galleys! Small galleys with only one short lateen mast, lateener-rigged, with spars as long as they were; with row- boxes built out like 'camels' on either beam, and pierced for dozens of oars or sweeps on either side. There were even more ashore, run up on launch ramps, and partially sheltered from the weather by open-sided sheds, such as he'd read in Homer's Iliad was the Greek fashion, back in the ancient days of Athens' glory two thousand years or more before!

Scabrous, too, that half dozen afloat, as if ships' timbers were prone to leprosy; and like the xebecs, they were armed only at the bows with what he took for heavy artillery, and only empty swivel-gun brackets lining their sides. Except for small harbour-watch or anchor-watch parties, they were as abandoned as ships laid up in-ordinary, though their guns hadn't been landed.

To top it off, completing Lewrie's disappointment with his first sight of fabled Trieste, it was a grey and gloomy day, with low clouds clinging to the grim-looking surrounding hills, and barely a breath of wind once inside the breakwaters and moles.

Lionheart was last to come to anchor, to make-up to a red nun-buoy. She was doing it handsomely, reducing sail, brailing up, turning up, with 'buoy-jumpers' under her figurehead as she ghosted to a stop within feet of the buoy-and firing a Royal, 21-gun salute to Austria and her Emperor, Franz II, as she did it! Even as a boat was got down off the falls and rowed her kedge anchor-out astern.

Then they waited for a reply. Then waited some more. Every sailor in the squadron began to titter, speculate aloud and roll his eyes as they waited a long piece more.

Finally, some activity could be espied along the ramparts of a harbour fort. Half-dressed soldiers shrugging into coats and clayed belting, tossing shakoes to each other as if they'd picked up someone else's in their rush, or simply forgotten them. Muzzles emerged from a row of embrasures, and the first shot in reply bellowed out.

'An' here I always thought 'twas th' Spanish who were slipshod,' Mr. Buchanon snickered. ' 'Ese fellers put siesta t' shame, sir!'

'Delivered twenty-one… was received of…' Knolles chuckled, rocking on the balls of his feet as they counted them. 'Was that five and six, together? My wordl There's seven… well, come on, eight…'

'Of eleven,' Lewrie said after it appeared that the last shot had been fired. Or the gunners had fallen asleep from sheer boredom, he thought sarcastically. Since Captain Charlton did not fly a broad pendant of the blue from his masthead as even a Commodore of the Second Class, the fort had saluted with the number due a mere Captain… though a captain with four warships should have gotten thirteen, with or without broad pendant. That was simple logic. And good manners!

A rather ornate oared barge, fit for a full admiral, or Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty back home, at last appeared, stroking a leisurely way out from a stone quay to Lionheart. There was an officer in the stern-sheets, almost awash in gold-lace fripperies, wearing a dark blue coat, with pale blue cuffs and turn-backs, pale blue waist coat and breeches. Lewrie snorted with derision at the bouquet-sized egret plume arrangement on his cocked hat. 'Bout fifty birds perished for that, he thought with a dismissive shrug.

'Right, then, gentlemen,' Lewrie snapped. 'Bosun over-side to. square the yards, break out the brooms and