King`s Captain

Chatham, Captain. Cause o'…' Pendarves winced again at being on the spot, of being the one to bring bad news.

'Oh, I see.' Lewrie nodded, cocking his head to one side. 'There is her… reputation to deal with.'

'Aye, sir… that'd be it, mainly.' Pendarves flushed.

'Many aboard wish they could turn over into a new ship, Bosun?'

'Well, sir… there's more than a few Irish aboard… hands outa the West Country too, sir. An' I know it sounds daft, but…'

'West Country yourself, I'd guess, Mister Pendarves?' Lewrie interjected and received a bob of the Bosun's head. 'Welsh, Devonian, Cornish… men who think her cursed. Men who wish off her?'

'Some, like I say, sir,' Pendarves confessed.

'Hmmm… how well did Captain Churchwell do at recruiting then?' Lewrie wondered.

'Well… right awful, Captain.' Pendarves grimaced for bearing even more bad news. 'Onliest volunteers, d'ye see, were shipmates come aboard t'sail with old friends, sir. 'Pressed men, a few hands turned over from the hulks… Quota Men'n such. Cap'um Churchwell only tried but a few days 'fore he was, uhm… when the chaplain drowned. Give it up, I s'pose, right after, sir.'

'And the First Officer, Mister Ludlow?' Lewrie frowned. 'Went ashore and tried too, did he? Afterwards? After Captain Churchwell departed?'

'A day or two, sir, but… jacks see him comin', they'd scamper off 'fore he could trot out an ale!' Bosun Pendarves marvelled that British tars would refuse even free drinks, no matter could they sign up, or refuse to, at a 'rondy.' 'Come back two days, since, an'…'

Pendarves bit off any trace of criticism of an officer.

'I see.' Lewrie sighed, pacing about the deck, over to larboard to lay a hand on one of his new Blomefield Pattern 12-pounders, to lean a hip against the gun's cascabel and the swell of the breech. 'Short of real sailors and too many landsmen lubbers. Can't crew her with a pack of know-nothings right out of gaol. Unless… unless Proteus is really a very lucky ship after all, Mister Pendarves.'

'Lucky, sir?' The Bosun came near to openly scoffing.

'You're quite right, Bosun.' Lewrie grinned, shoving off from his resting spot. 'It sounds daft, doesn't it. Superstition or not, sailors believe in good and bad luck, don't they.'

'Well… aye, sir.'

'You and me, Bosun,' Lewrie intimated, 'we're seamen. We've seen things, heard things… odd, strange, unexplainable things…'

And ain't it smug o' me, Lewrie chid himself, t'put us both on the same footing. He's more experience in his least finger than I'll ever…!

'What's her name, Mister Pendarves?'

'P… Proteus, sir,' the Bosun answered with a slight pause, as if afraid to say it aloud.

'Her figurehead, sir…' Lewrie all but winked. 'Proteus, the Roman shepherd of the sea… Greeks called him Nereus, but either name meant the same sea-god. A divine oracle, he was. And there he is… in his chariot he drove 'cross the wide world's oceans, drawn by dolphins and… seals, Mister Pendarves. Seals!'

'Like L… uhm, ah…,' Bosun Pendarves flummoxed, afraid to say that fearsome name from his boyhood tales either.

'Funny thing about Proteus, or Nereus, or whatever he went by. A man wished his prophecies, he had to find him first. Then he had to wrestle him, hold him so he couldn't get away. Proteus changed his shape… he could become any living thing in the sea, d'ye see, sir?' Lewrie intimated further, almost crooning as he spun his tale. 'Turned into little things so, he could swim out of your grasp. Turned into whales and sharks or ferocious sea-dragons to frighten you into letting go. You had to let him run through his gamut of creatures… last of all, he was a seal… and then a man, sir,' Lewrie elaborated, not sure from his ancient readings, not sure if he wasn't spinning a huge lie he'd be caught in by Pendarves and the others later for lack of lore.

'Like a, uhm…' Pendarves goggled, eyes blared in wonder by then, to hear the ancient tales retold in a slightly different version, to hear an officer relate them, as if he too believed! 'Like he was a… selkie, sir?'

'Very like a selkie, Mister Pendarves.' Lewrie beamed, as his Bosun caught on, feeling a dread, eldritch chill ascend his spine, no matter if he was lying and manipulating or not! 'So… how close do you think they really came… when they chose her name? Merlin, that would've suited her, hey? But then Admiralty changed things at the last second and took that back. But that Celtic or Gaelic sawyer and his wee lad… what'd he say to her, Bosun?'

Lewrie leaned close, hissing his words in a harsh whisper, for security against being too manipulative; after all, he'd seen enough aboard Jester of a pagan sea- god's ways to tread more than a touch wary. And he never. wished his beliefs… or his seeming beliefs… to be bandied about.

'And then… the touch of that lad's merest hand and… down the ways she went, groaning over it… but going,' Lewrie purred seductively. 'Did they bless her… the right way? The old, lost way? Did she accept the name Proteus as a huge jape on everyone, in spite of them? Take water and swim the world's oceans and bedamned to 'em, Mister Pendarves? Knowing that Proteus, Nereus, or… Lir, it makes no diffrence, for they're all the same long-lost, forgotten sea-god?'

There, he'd invoked it, feeling another shiver of awe-fear!

But his tarry-handed, stout-thewed Bosun had wavered away to the thick base of the main-mast, hard by the break of the quarterdeck. Pendarves laid a hand on the mast's anti-boarding pike beckets (never the mast itself, for that was bad luck!) almost reverently. He gazed up its height, the convoluted maze of rigging and spars, then down at the white-planed and sanded deck planks-and began a crafty smile.

'It could be as you say, sir,' Pendarves said at last, swallowing as if he had a massive lump in his throat. 'That'd mean she ain't a cursed ship.'

'Nothing we could print on the recruiting handbills,' Lewrie agreed, 'but could say on the sly at the 'rondys'… you and some of the other respected senior hands. West Country men, hmm?'

'Aye, sir.' Pendarves grinned wider, brightened by the prospect of a 'run' ashore in the pubs.

'I'll see you in the early-early then, Mister Pendarves,' Lewrie said in dismissal. 'We'll give this new ship of ours a thorough inspection. Warn the others so they'll not show too badly. But not so much warning they think they can pull the wool over my eyes… hmm?'

A good beginning, Lewrie rather smugly deemed it, after doffing his hat and ascending the larboard ladder to his quarterdeck for a moment of reflection before taking a look at his new great-cabins.

As long as I've not gone and doomed my arse, he thought; being too damned boastful or… sacrilegious?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Proteus rounded up, coaxed, (or flat-out lied to) another fourteen seamen or lubbers from Chatham, volunteers who were of a mind to take to the sea. It was a pitiful result, for all of Lewrie's, Ludlows's, and Pendarves's efforts at recruiting ashore. They were still shy of the ninety-one seamen allotted, about a dozen shy of the twenty-two servants (who could quickly learn the seamen's trade) recommended for a vessel of their size and gun-power. Then the pool of possibles had dried up, turning further recruiting I work into frustrating futility.

It didn't help their cause, Lewrie most-sourly thought, that the mutinies at Portsmouth and Plymouth were still going on. News had come that retired Admiral Lord Howe-'Black Dick, the Seaman's Friend'-would be coaching down to Portsmouth and Spithead to negotiate an end to it, giving hopes of a final settlement. But desperate as England was for closure, most men of a mind to volunteer were holding out 'til the settlement had been reached and what demands the illegal working-men's guilds and underground