Sea of Grey

Decks And Up Spirits' for the issuance of the rum ration.

'One bit of devilment at a time, if you please, Mister Devereux. I'm not as young as I once was, d'ye know,' Lewrie told him, grinning. 'Too much audacity at one sitting leaves me breathless these days.'

Lt. Langlie came up to join them, doffing his hat.

'Six Bells, sir. Permission to secure from arms drill?'

'Very well, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie replied, now properly stern. 'Make sure they're well cleaned and oiled before stowing. Does time permit, have the senior hands instruct the volunteers in basic knots.'

'Very good, sir,' Langlie replied, in his own properly crisp manner, yet sharing a meaningful glance with Devereux, as if they both were in on things.

'Anything else you wish, then, Mister Devereux?' Lewrie queried. 'A 'whore transport' to trail us about, perhaps?'

'A what, sir?' Devereux gawped, this time wholly surprised.

'Ask Andrews about it,' Lewrie suggested. 'It's an old tale. And you, Mister Langlie.'

'Sir?' Langlie paused, halfway to turning and saluting.

'You'd not turn up your nose at a personal, sporting, hunting fusil, I take it?' Lewrie grinned. 'What, the entire gun-room?'

'Well, uhm, ah…' Langlie flummoxed, sharing another glance with Devereux, as if to ask what trouble he'd gotten into, now.

'Damme, but I begin to fear we're a ship filled with conspirators from keel to truck.' Lewrie snickered.

'One might term it, ah… aspiring, Captain,' Langlie replied.

'Aspiring, hey? Hmmm… works for me. Carry on, Lieutenant Devereux. Mister Langlie, a word, sir.'

Devereux saluted and left, a bounce in his step, as if eager to inform the other officers that they'd be getting fusils, by hook or by crook. Langlie stood and waited, as a perpetually put-upon First Officer should, waiting for another heavy shoe to drop on his head.

'I am informed by the latest post that you and my ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, are in correspondence, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said. 'And I am also informed that my permission was granted. Exactly when did I allow such, Mister Langlie? Hmmm?'

'Why, uhm… at Chatham, sir!' Langlie said, reddening, and of a need, perhaps, to cough into his fist for cover. 'The last night we lay at anchor, when we dined your family aboard, and held the singing and such, sir? Sophie, uhm… Mistress de Maubeuge, the Vicomtesse, rather, said that she'd spoken to you about it, and had received your permission, so I assumed…'

'Sound a tad more French when she told you, did she?' Lewrie asked, still stern-faced.

'Well, as a matter of fact, aye, she did, Captain. A tad.'

'Do you have the pleasure of seeing her face-to-face again, do keep in mind that when she's scheming, she sounds more French than English,

Mister Langlie,' Lewrie informed him. 'I did not give her leave to write you.

'Oh God, I'm sorry, sir, I…!' Langlie exclaimed. 'I beg your forgiveness, and… I never meant to! That's what you meant about conspiring, just now.'

'Oh, hush, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie wearily told him, waving one hand dismissively. 'After knowing you for a year, I rather doubt you're the sort to trifle with the girl, or tarnish my family's reputation… assumin' such a thing's possible, these days.'

'Uhm, ah…' Langlie began to agree, then thought better of it. His mouth worked, as if trying to bite his tongue, or stifle a titter of amusement-the sort of laugh that would never do his career or his professional relationship any good.

'Uhm, yayss, quite,' Lewrie chuckled, archly sarcastic over his own repute. 'You wish to continue corresponding?'

'I do, sir.'

'And I'm to assume that Sophie is of the same mind? Despite the distance involved?' Lewrie asked. 'And the temptations of local beaus?'

'I may only gather… ah, assume, at present, sir, that she is not averse to receiving my letters,' Langlie stammered.

'Many a slip, 'twixt the crouch and the leap,' Lewrie allowed, slapping his hands together behind his back and gazing aloft. 'Well then, since you ain't poxed, drunk on duty, breakin' out in purplish spots, and can eat with a knife and fork, Mister Langlie… I'll let this stand. Just don't do anything momentous at long distance, d'ye hear me? God knows how long it'll be before we're back home again, and God only knows what home there'll be to welcome you, if there is a home at all.'

'Thank you, sir! Thank you so…!' Langlie cried.

'Carry on, Mister Langlie!' Lewrie insisted, shooing him away. 'Carry on.'

'Very good, sir,' he said, doffing his hat eagerly, clumsily, rapturously aquiver, and his face a perfect portrait of bliss.

'You may not thank me, later, d'ye know, sir,' Lewrie cautioned. 'The wife now despises the Navy worse than God despises the French, if such a thing is possible, and that'll put you right in the middle of it, right in the line of fire, d'ye see? You're asking for trouble, Mister Langlie.'

'I'll bear the risk, sir… gladly,' the young officer vowed.

'Then you're an idiot, God help you. Women, sir! Mine arse on a band-box!' Lewrie snorted. 'Oh, go shove on a rope or something, sir, do! Shoo! And quit that bloody… beaming!'

'Aye aye, sir!' Langlie said, doffing his hat, even making a wee bow in congй, absurdly formal aboard ship; and still grinning like the worst Lunatick in Bedlam, but almost back to a professional bearing.

Well, it's his poor arse, Lewrie decided to himself, pacing aft to his quarterdeck; he's been warned.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Puerto Rico, Lewrie thought, eying the landmass that had risen from the sea a little after Dawn Quarters; and the Mona Passage. Now what do we do? North-about Santo Domingo, or run back along the south shore, close in?

Out to the East'rd lay golden isles, the storied cays that had featured in his youth, the Danish Virgins and below them the beads-on-a-necklace of the Leewards, each a little gem, and this morning almost presaged by how the sea glittered gold, lapis, and sun-silvered.

Are they poxed, too? he asked himself; now it's Fever Season is there a safe lee shore anywhere in the West Indies?

Lewrie hung in the larboard mizen shrouds, just at the beginning of the cat-harpings, coat, hat, and neck-stock off, and savouring a cool morning breeze, the scent of salt and iodine, and a faint fishy tang of shorelines up to the Nor'east. He lowered his telescope and gazed down and in-board to Proteus's gangways and gun-deck, where sailors crowded round in untidy knots, some still licking their chops after a breakfast remnant, as they formed up by gun-crews a bit before the call was piped for drill on the artillery.

For a miraculous change, they looked healthy and fit again, the last ravages of the fevers left astern and ashore. There were formerly half-dead men who now strode about and joshed with their fellows; there were those who had never been infected, no matter how often they'd gone ashore or slept on deck for coolness when anchored; there were the local lads who might have suffered malaria or the Yellow Jack when babies and now were immune, as was he.

With a word, Lewrie could order the ship to beat up through the Mona Passage, round the eastern tip of Hispaniola, and re-enter her old patrol grounds to the north… with the fresh Nor'east Trades blowing so strong that feverish miasmas would always lie alee, and no one else might fall ill.

With a word, he could put Proteus about, turn his back on those golden isles of the