King`s Captain

shoaling coast before he was caught on a lee shore at night. And it would be safer for the lugger to get into port before the rising, shifting wind raked up rollers over the bars, which might poop her.

The last boat-load, though… he simply had to stay on the gangway to watch Handcocks, Morley, and Rolston go, along with two more of the green-cockaded committeemen. Everyone did, it seemed. No sailor wore their red cockades any longer. Once Proteus had escaped for sure, her wake had blossomed with their discards, and their frigate's creamy stern-froth had resembled a sea-bride's train on a bloom-strewn church aisle.

Bales… he was still unable to call him Rolston! His ancient dislike of the boy he'd been so long ago had been dismissed from Lewrie's ken ages before… he despised the twisted, jealous, radical hell-spite the man had become in his latest guise.

'Once the boat's returned, Mister Wyman, ready the hands to recover the boats and stow them on the cross- deck tiers,' Lewrie said.

'Aye, aye, sir,' Lt. Wyman piped from the companionable dark. A number of hand-held muscovy-glass lanthorns along the rails threw amber-yellow moon-glades so the hands could see what they were doing, and Captain Vernish's lugger's lights competed to turn the patch of sea between them into a gently heaving, glittering sheet of molten gold.

Him and the others gone, Lewrie decided as the ringleaders got pushed to the open gate of the entry-port, then this ship'll be clean, untainted… like I told the hands, the slate erased. Then we make of her what she should be. What Proteus deserves to be, he mused.

Handcocks went down the battens, chains clinking at every step. Then Private Mollo, stripped of his red tunic, for he didn't deserve to wear a real Marine's jacket. Morley next, complaining and whining, as he descended to a sure death a few days or weeks away, once the Court Martial Jack was hoisted at the Nore.

The crew lined the larboard side, perched in the lower shrouds, or hung half-over the gangway bulwarks for a better view of the departure of their tormentors, their fallen heroes. A few of the stauncher loyalists hooted softly as they left, some of the particularly threatened or browbeat, but most were still just too numb-or too unsettled-to utter a peep.

'Go on then, ya bugger,' Corporal Plympton urged Rolston, the last of them. 'Think we got all night for th' likes o' you?'

Rolston would go game. He sneered a faint smile of disdain for the gathered seamen, chin-high and clearly disgusted, as if to wonder out loud why he'd ever thought he could make a revolution with such a poor grade of malleable clay, trying to stare individuals down, and make them duck and cringe in shame they'd failed him. Stiffly, he shuffled in leg and wrist chains, his back straight, as if he was determined to face his music with the innate superiority and courage of a Commission Sea Officer, a cultured, educated gentleman-which to his lights he'd always been-but for Admiralty's 'Guinea Stamp.' He twisted his neck, straining the cords of his throat like a man fighting a tightening noose, and his badly tied gag fell away.

'Damn the lot of you!' Rolston gravelled, silencing what half-hearted jeering there'd been. 'Faithless cowards. Weak as water. To think I believed you were men worth saving! But you never were. You will always be sheep… you'll always buss the rich folks' arses.'

He turned his back outwards, shuffled his feet so the chains on his ankles wouldn't tangle on the entry-port lip, took hold of the man-ropes, and began to descend, glaring fire-and-brimstone at them. Lewrie stepped closer to the port gate to make sure that Rolston was well and truly going away, happy to see the back of him.

Lewrie felt a brush along his right boot, heard a faint grumble in Toulon 's throat as he moaned and spat, as if even a cat could recognise evil when he saw it.

Clank-shuffle-thud… clank-shuffle-thud, Rolston jangled, taking his eyes off the unfaithful sailors to peer over one shoulder, to see where to place his feet below the gun-ports and wale; and men in the cutter were shuffling to make room for him on a centre thwart. He glared back up once he was sure of his footing, stepping down with an old sailor's expertise, now he'd found a rhythm.

'Oowww!' he yelped, of a sudden, and his hands on the man-ropes flew open, his eyes widening in surprise.

'Shit!' Softly, from the bow-man in the cutter when he let his boat-hook slip off the dead-eyed shrouds on the main-chain platform and the cutter began to drift free, though its stern was still secure to a painter. He stabbed out and down… and missed!

Rolston stabbed out too, got his right hand around a man-rope, with a petulant frown and child-like purse of his lips at almost falling, getting dunked, eyes slit upward to see if anyone had dared kick him or prick him.

Then Proteus heaved a bit, as a rogue swell lifted her, rolled to larboard as if bowing alee. Below, the oarsmen were dipping their free-side oars at Andrew's direction to stroke her back to the hull where the bow-man could hook on once more, but it was as if everyone had caught a cramp as their looms tangled in confusion. Proteus… a few degrees from horizontal, and Rolston's feet went out from under him as if the battens were slick with tallow or hoared with sea-ice!

He dangled by that one hand, swinging his feet for a place to stand, swinging his left arm to a grip on the left- hand man-rope, then the right one below his precarious grip.

'Aahhh…!' he yelped again, as the seamen on the bulwarks and shrouds gasped or moaned with alarm. Bosun's Mate Towpenny scrambled past Lewrie to the top step of the battens to reach down, when no one else looked like they'd help him. 'Well, damme…!'

Toulon moaning and spitting, bottled up and arch-backed. Leaping atop the bulwarks before Lewrie and balancing easy on four close-placed paws.

'Ahhhf' Rolston cried again, his right hand flying open as if he'd grasped a red-hot poker. And fell, his yelp of pain and incredulity turning to a thin, disbelieving scream. He plunged into the gilt-lit sea in a huge eruption of foam and spume, like a moth seared from the air into a blossom of yellow flame-points in a chandelier! Down Rolston went into the gap 'twixt ship and cutter, oarsmen and bow-man swinging oars out to probe for him underwater, for him to grab, should he meet up with one.

As the splash plume subsided like a guttering candle flame, the mutineer corked back to the surface, as most divers must at least once, hands stretched high as if in supplication. He heaved a great gasp of air, even as another wide welter of spray erupted 'round him-as if a beast had risen from the great deeps, expelling its whale-breath after an abyssal sounding.

'Nnoo!' Rolston screamed, disbelieving, accusing eyes locked on Lewrie, above him, cut off suddenly as he was dragged back down in an eyeblink by the weight of his shackles and chains.

'Holy…!' Lewrie gasped, feeling his nape hairs bristle with a sudden terror. He barely heard the shocked tumult that gusted through his sailors, barely heard the long, eerie moan from his cat, right by his left elbow, over the distant, rushing ringing in his ears.

All that remained was a spreading, fading grey-white target of roiled water, with a bull's-eye of the palest, winking lanthorn-amber… like a sea-beast's eye, that faded away to ripples.

Lewrie turned to see many of his hands crossing themselves or standing gape-mouthed in awe… looking at him. There were whispers… soft, sibilant sighings and almost-words he strained to fathom that came on the fickle night wind.

'Ah… hmm, then,' Lewrie finally managed to say, removing his hat to swipe at his hair, that felt clammy and suddenly cold on that night wind from a gush of funk-sweat.

'Reckon he's a goner, sir,' Lt. Wyman ventured to say, breaking the spell.

'Very well, Mister Wyman. Let's be about it then. Finish the ferrying, quick as you can, Andrews; then we must get underway. This wind is backing,' Lewrie ordered, clapping his hat back on and placing his hands square in the middle of his back. 'Take the ship's boats in tow for the nonce. Ready to make our offing, are you, Mister Win wood?'

'Aye, sir, but… some of the people are saying the most blasphemous, un-Christian things, sir. Pagan sea-gods and vengeance…'

'I'm sure 'tis nothing of the sort, Mister Winwood,' Lewrie said, sure he was lying through his teeth.

'We should put a stop to it, sir, at once!' Winwood insisted, as prim as a slapped vicar. 'The simple minds of your common sailor, and so many superstitious Irish aboard, why…