King`s Captain

and break up. But instead… away she goes, smooth as any launch as ever I did see.'

'Ah, well!' Lewrie felt reason to say with a relieved chuckle, yet a bit of a shiver. 'And here I thought you were about to say how she crushed him and his boy… drew blood on her naming day. Wheew!'

'Ah, but the sawyer and his son, sir… they're Irish!' Proby most ominously pointed out, hunched up in his cloak as if he was fearful of sitting too erect. 'Irish, d'ye see. Seen many an odd thing in my time concerning the launching of ships. Most go smooth as silk and no problem, 'cause they're just a 'thing' at that moment and don't get their soul 'til after they've been in saltwater for a spell. Now and then, though, there are the blood-drinkers. A sloop of war once mashed three men when she veered off the straight-and-narrow on her way in, and God help every man-jack who served aboard her, 'til she ran aground five years later and drowned her entire crew off the Hebrides. There's a two-decker 64 from this dockyard that's cost the careers of four captains by now, and she's… I'll not call down bad luck by naming her… had more strange accidents and deaths among her crew than any other of her type. Man-a-month dying, last I heard of her. Even Bellerophon, sir… blowing a perfect gale the night before her launching. Came to see if the shores would hold 'til morning, and there she was afloat… Launched herself, d'ye see? Christened her myself, after the fact. I think she was so eager to swim, Captain Lewrie, that she wouldn't wait. Aye, the 'Billy Ruff n' had an odd birthing, sir. But for the life o' me I cannot recall an event stranger than Proteus, not in years!'

'Well, that's coincidence, surely…' Lewrie objected. 'That she came from the same yard. And the matter of the sawyer…'

'Like she approved of Merlin, though the Church wouldn't, then balked at being Proteus' Proby rhapsodised, as if in awe of the odd. 'And only a Gaelic blessing made her accept it… groaning over it but going in, at last… at the touch of a mere lad.'

'Well, since then at least there's been no sign…' Lewrie said. He thought sign too close to portent, and after a slight cough, amended that to, 'There's been no troubles in her or with her?'

Proby shrugged, as if forced to say it, like a reluctant witness giving damning testimony against a friend.

'There is the matter of her previous captain.'

'Aye?' Lewrie posed, wondering if his leg was being pulled.

'Captain The Honourable William Churchwell. Man in his earliest four-ties, as best I could judge, sir,' Proby went on. 'A bit of the Tartar, or so I gathered from others, a real taut-hand. But a most experienced officer. Dined with him several times, once he'd come down to read himself in command-Just after she went into the graving dock for her coppering. A most righteous man too, Captain Lewrie, brought up strict in the Church, and… for a Sea Officer… a very proper and sober Christian. Would have the hide off a seaman did he hear even a slight blasphemy or profane oath. Rare in the Navy, his sort.'

Bloody right they are, Lewrie thought, keeping a non-committal glaze to his features; a sea-goin' parson. Damn' rare breed those… thankfully!

'Abstemious too, sir. Rarely touched more than a single glass of wine an entire meal, sir, and could only be pressed by the convivial folk to a rare second. Seen it myself,' Proby related. And they both shook their heads in wonder at Captain Churchwell's contrary nature; it was a rare gentleman who'd put away fewer than two bottles of wine a day__it was the expected thing, part of a gentleman's ton.

The coach slowed, rocking on its leather straps as it came to a stop just by the King's Stairs, which led to a boat-landing. They alit, which activity delayed the rest of Proby's tale. Below the stairs lay a gaily painted ten-oared barge, Commissioner Proby's own, flying his personal flag; and hard by, a more plebeian hired cutter occupied by Aspinall, Andrews, and Padgett, laden with cabin-stores and furnishings, and Toulon in his wicker travelling basket.

'Ah, there she is, Captain Lewrie,' Proby said, filled with pride of his latest creation for the Royal Navy. 'A beauty, is she not?'

'All ships are, sir… but aye! This 'un…!' Lewrie swore, at his first sight of her. 'She's lovely!'

Tall, erect, trig, and proud, glistening with newness, her tarred and painted sides shining and reflecting back the prismatic light flash of river water, HMS Proteus was indeed a lovely, new-cut precious gem of the shipbuilders' arcane science. Her bowsprit and jib-boom were steeved slightly lower than most frigates he'd seen, the way he liked 'em, for that meant larger heads'ls with more draw, closer to the deck, and more ability to go like a witch to windward. Her entry was not an apple-cheeked bulb from the waterline up, but angled slimmer and tapering narrower, to merge far before her cutwater in an aggressive, out-thrust extension of her sprit and head timbers, her cut-water angled a few degrees more astern than was customary to give her grace. Even at a quarter-mile's distance, without a glass, Lewrie could discern Frenchness in her pedigree, with a touch of stocky English usage aft, where she widened and flared for accommodation space and storage as far forrud as possible. He knew, just from looking at her, that her forecastle could be burdened by a pair of 6-pounder chase-guns and a pair of 24-pounder carronades, and still have the buoyancy and form to her front third to ride up and over even the tallest storm-wave without ploughing under, like a ship with a too-fine entry might.

Tumble-home inward from the chain-wale and gunwale, narrowing to save top-weight, all neatly proportioned like a surface-basking whale, broken by the row of gun-ports and the upper gunwale, which was painted a rather pretty buff tan. There was the glitter of gilt paint 'round her larboard entry-port, which at that angle as she lay bows upriver, streaming from a permanent moor, faced them; gilt glitters too, further aft where the quarter galleries jutted out from her curved sides and nearly upright stern timbers. A commissioning pendant swirled and curled high aloft, a small ensign in the eyes of her bows-a harbour jack-and the Red Ensign of a ship yet to be assigned to a particular squadron or fleet, an 'independent ship,' now and then outfurled to a lazy breeze. And all as pristine-new as the ship herself.

'I thought you would not mind did we use my barge to take you out to her 'stead of requesting of her to send over your gig,' Mr. Proby said, after taking a long, satisfying gander of his own.

'Thankee, Mister Proby, that's most accommodating of you, and I would be honoured,' Lewrie said, unable to tear his gaze from her, in a lust to be abroad and too impatient to wait for a boat to row shoreward to fetch him… like a parcel.

My frigate! he exulted, even if she was accursed; my frigate, my first frigate! The freedom, the power… those guns of hers! God help me, but I do love 'em. Ships and guns… and the reek o' both!

'Andrews?' he called over to the hired boat. 'I'll go in the barge. Do you see my dunnage to the larboard port?'

'Aye, aye, Cap'um!' his Cox'n shouted back.

They descended the King's Stairs, got into the barge, and were shoved off. It was after Proby's Cox'n had a way on her, and steering clear of shore, before Proby continued his tale.

'Ah, Captain Churchwell,' Proby sighed, toying with the lapels of his cloak. 'He and his chaplain came ashore to dine with me that last evening. And as sober a lot as ever you could wish for, Captain Lewrie.'

'The last evening? You don't mean t'say…?'

'Saw him to his gig, just there at the King's Stairs, as we did just now in my coach,' Proby gloomed, turning a weathered face downriver to keep an eye on the ships in his charge, the refits and all of the new construction still skeleton-like on the slipways; and to get a whiff of ocean, Lewrie suspected.

'And not a half-hour later, his chaplain was dead. Drowned.' Proby sighed.

Well, a chaplain, that's no loss, Lewrie thought most sourly; a reverend on a ship's a bit gloomy-makin' anyway. Haven't seen one of 'em worth a tuppenny shit, and most vessels sail without 'em.

'How terrible!' he felt compelled to gasp though.

'Dead calm, just at slack water it was, sir,' Proby said, with another dis-believing shake of his head. 'Not a breath of wind stirring, and no cause for Proteus to roll or toss. Side-party up on her gangway ready to render honours.

'It might have been someone on the main deck took a poke with something through the scuppers, but no one could recall seeing hands on deck that late at night, other than the side-party up above