of 'rough love' for his troops. 'Though they're the usual scum who'd go for a soldier. Gutter sweepin's and harbour trash, e'en poorer a lot than you'd find in England, mind. Hard men, though. Tough enough to stick it, no matter what comes.'
'Met Ledyard,' Lewrie casually told him. 'Had a word or two.'
'Aye, and?' Cashman asked, one brow up.
'Kit, old son… I do b'lieve you're fucked.'
BOOK TWO
Quod genus hoc hominum? Quaeve hunc tarm barbara
What race
barbarous as to allow this custom? We are debarred
the welcome of the beach; they stir up war and forbid
us to set foot on the border of their land.
Publius Vergilius Maro 'Virgil'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That was the starboard watch's answer to his demands. They had commandeered the poor bum-boatmen who had rowed them offshore from town, had made the oars beat like birds' wings, raising bow waves and leaving creamy wakes. But once close-aboard
'Sounds very much like that bastard Irishman, Desmond,' Midshipman Adair commented.
'Aye, he's a fine voice, that 'fly' lad,' Lieutenant Catterall said.
'Let her take a glass often, there's nothing will soften
'Desmond!' Lewrie barked, leaning over the quarterdeck bulwarks in nothing more than breeches and a shirt, hastily pulled over but not stuffed in. 'You sing the
'Muster the Marines, sir?' Lt. Catterall asked.
'Lord, no, Mister Catterall,' Lewrie demurred, looking up from his pocket watch. 'Though from the look of 'em, a cargo sling'd suit. I doubt there's a full dozen who can still keep their feet.'
'Can you not keep order with your crew, sir?' an aggrieved post-captain aboard a two-decker moored nearby bellowed through a speaking-trumpet. 'Can you not, I will! You'll stop all that cater-wauling,, or I'll send over my Marines and deem it a mutiny t'be suppressed!'
The larboard watch, wakened from their innocent slumbers below, had come up on deck to jeer and hoot from the gangways, some with glee, and some sounder sleepers with anger and threats.
Lewrie could make out a spectral figure on the stern gallery of the 74-gun Third Rate, someone in a white nightshirt bearing a shiny brass speaking-trumpet that also caught the glinting moonlight.
'Damme, the man's even wearin' a tasselled nightcap,' Lewrie muttered with a groan, turning for his own speaking-trumpet. 'No need, sir! They'll be aboard, and quiet, shortly!' he shouted across.
Desmond was rushing the last verse, but the first bum-boat was alongside the entry-port, and those who could among them were scrambling up the man-ropes and battens, calling for rope slings or bosun's chairs to be rigged for the rest. The second and third boats stroked in close, in a shower of flung 'dead soldiers' that peppered the harbour waters like a 'short' broadside of roundshot; to bump into the first, the safety of the hired oars between bedamned, to use it as a landing stage over which they crawled or staggered, dragging the less sober from boat to boat.
'…
Now the idle larboard watch had taken up the chorus! Bosuns' calls across the water were shrieking urgently, and the two-decker's timbers drummed with bare feet as her crew was called out.
'Cast your accounts to Father Neptune overside,
Lewrie looked at his watch once more, sharing a glance with Midshipman Grace at the timing glasses. The sands in the half-hour and five-minute glasses were almost run out.
Even the paralytic were spurred by that threat; larboard hands were over the side in a twinkling to grab hold of the final 'corpses' and fling them upward from hand-to-hand, not waiting for the slings. A moment later and not one Proteus was left in the bum-boats; nothing remained but vomit, broken bottles, snapped oars, and the glowers from the Free Black boatmen.
'Officers, muster your divisions. Take the roll to see if any have run,' Lewrie told his lieutenants. 'Aspinall, are you here?'
'Aye, sir,' his manservant piped up, still wrapped in a blanket.
'Go fetch three shillings for each of the bum-boats from my desk, Aspinall,' Lewrie softly bade him. 'To pay for any damage or loss.'
