Sea of Grey

all else fails. A rogue on the run could live well, there. Wine's good… hmmm.

'I'll even throw in a cook, from my own stock,' Cashman cooed.

'Well, if we sent ship's boats inshore on a moonless night and kept Proteus hull- down…' Lewrie muttered. 'Hellish row, though. Like a cutting-out expedition? I'd never be able t'let 'em take shore liberty with the other hands, though.'

'Do ye think they'd want t'run the risk any more than you, hey? Those you get, the ones I said I sold, could've been sold to a trader from the Bahamas who took 'em away, so your name never appears in it. What d'ye say, Alan?'

'You know I'd have to sail off to Hell and gone, right after,' Lewrie pointed out. 'I wouldn't be here to second you when you duel Ledyard. Reprovisioned, I'd be gone for four or five months at the least, do I not run out of hands for prize crews.'

'Right, so I kill him first, then we steal his slaves,' Cashman merrily suggested. 'It'd make sense that they'd run, with him dead and no wife or heirs t'take 'em over, and God knows where they'd get sold after.'

'I'd be in port 'til you and he get retired, then you duel him, then we steal his slaves?' Lewrie scoffed. 'Captain Sir Edward bloody Charles won't let me linger a minute more than necessary.'

'So I get someone else t'be my second, I s'pose,' Cashman decided, disappointed. 'Wanted you there, t'savour the moment, if for no other reason, but perhaps it's best you were gone when it happens. Less way t'link your name, the slaves' disappearance, and all.'

'Hmmm…' Lewrie gnawed a cuticle more deeply, giving it another hard think. Perhaps it would be best, he thought, to be well to windward when the shit started flying. He and his clerk, Padgett, could do up freedmens' papers for his new 'volunteers'…

And it would be a grand jape on that ass Ledyard Beauman.

'What are the dues, d'ye think… to join the Slavery Abolition Society?' he said, offering his hand across the desk.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Hoy, the boats!' Lieutenant Langlie hissed into the darkness, as HMS Proteus fretfully rocked and rolled on the scend, three miles off Portland Point.

'Blackbirds,' Cox'n Andrews hooted back, and everyone gathered on the gangway let out a huge sigh of relief. Moments later the boats were thudding against the hull, and people were scampering up the man-ropes and boarding-battens, eyes and teeth gleaming in wonder and delight, reflecting the single lanthorn they'd dared display.

There were only eleven of them, ten youngsters and one thicker, older man with grizzled grey hair. They came with small packs of possessions bound up in cast-off pillowcases or shirts; barefoot, wearing ragged nankeen or sailcloth trousers worn gauzy-thin by work, loose and ending above the knees; topped with shapeless, stained pullover shirts without collars, just neck-holes, and equally frayed.

For a long moment, they just stood in stupefied wonder, taking in the height of the masts, the guns, the mazes of rigging, and most of all, the sea of white faces confronting them; shying into a tight group, elbow to elbow, as if this suddenly seemed like a bad idea and the price of freedom too high.

'Sure, and I hope one o' ye knows how t'cook!' Landsman Furfy cried, breaking their stricken tableau.

'Ah does,' the older man said. 'Gideon's me name.'

'Welcome aboard then, mate!' Furfy gushed, stepping forward to take him by the hand and pump it energetically. 'Shoulda seen what we been doin' with good rations, it'd sicken a goat!'

'You boys come on, now,' Morley, one of the Black seamen, urged, stepping forward and waving to the other half-dozen fellow Blacks among the crew to join him, making the newcomers nervously grin. 'Don't be standin' round. Cap'um wants ya t'see th' Surgeon's Mates, get bathed, an' into new clothes. Make yer marks an' sign ship's books?'

'Cold rations a'waitin',' another promised, 'then a bit o' kip in yer new hammocks. Last 'all-night-in' ye'll have.'

'Who de cap'um?' one of the newcomers asked, peering about.

'Him, dere… Cap'um Lewrie,' Morley pointed out.

Lewrie had thought it best to turn out in his newest uniform to welcome them aboard, to impress them from the first. He stood apart on the quarterdeck, hands behind his back.

The youngster came toward him, eyes alight as if he'd seen Jesus, and fell to his knees at his feet. 'T'ankee, massa, t'ankee!'

'Oh, for God's sake,' Lewrie muttered, wondering again if this was a bad idea, himself. 'Don't do that. Get up, man. I'm not your ' massa,'

I don't own you.'

No, the Navy does, and if that ain't a sort o ' slavery, I'll eat me hat, Lewrie had to think as he helped the youngster up.

'What's your name, young'un?'

'Calls me Cambridge, sah. Cambridge is all.'

'Your mother's choice?' Lewrie asked. 'Or your master's?'

'Nossah,' the teenager shyly grinned. 'Mama call me Noble.'

'Noble you'll be, then.'

'Noble Lah… Lewrie?' he carefully pronounced.

'God, no!' Lewrie had to bark in amusement. 'I'm in enough of a stink with my wife already. Uhm… Noble… Hood. Hood's a great admiral in the Navy, a knacky fighting man. Noble Hood.'

'Yassuh, Noble Hood,' the boy happily agreed.

'We'll let you choose new names, all of you,' Lewrie told them in a louder voice. 'Names that'll never fetch your old master's suspicion. Once on ship's books, with papers showing you as free men, you won't have to fear being taken. So think it over whilst you see the Surgeon's

Mates, Mister Hodson and Mister Durant. Then we'll fit up the wash-deck pump…'

That idea seemed to make them shy back together.

'All sailors do it when they sign aboard a new ship,' Lewrie explained patiently. 'Wash off the shore stinks and… get baptised in salt water, like a church baptism, when babies get named,' he extemporised quickly.

'Don't nobody baptise us, sah,' the older man, Gideon, said in a jocular tone. 'Dot fo' white folks.'

'Then it's about time, ain't it, sir?' Lewrie quipped.

'Did they not church you?' Mr. Winwood asked of a sudden, coming forward and sounding indignant. 'Did they not tell you of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, of being good Christians?'

'Preach at us, now an' then, sah,' one told him. 'Dey say dot we arter be good Christians, but…'

'Baptism and a washing, then,' Winwood enthused, clapping his hands at the prospect, 'to cleanse your souls as you take your free names… to wash slavery from you forever, and baptise you as sailors, the finest calling in the world. Recall…'twas sailors that Jesus first made his disciples, simple fishermen and sailors. Let me, sir?' he almost pled, turning to Lewrie. 'I'll attend to it.'

'It appears I've gained sailors, and you, converts, sir,' Lewrie chuckled.

'Pray God, sir, that I have… souls delivered up to the Lord.'

'I'll leave you to it, Mister Winwood. Soon as you may. We're almost on a lee shore, and need to get out to sea before dawn, before they clap us all in prison.'

'My word on't, Captain Lewrie,' Winwood fervently assured him.

'Mister Langlie? Run the ship's boats round astern. We'll tow them 'til after Dawn Quarters,' Lewrie ordered.