Sea of Grey

back aboard, first, get the boats a'tow aft, then we'll discuss what gems you may have discovered. Enough of import to please Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and his staff-captain, one would hope?'

'Er, aye, sir!' Catterall replied, taken all aback for a moment to be the object of praise, instead of the odd grudging grunt of acceptance, and a muttered 'carry on.'

'No hope of salvage, though?' Lewrie had to ask.

'Smashed all to pieces up forrud, sir, her keel snapped in two abaft her forecastle, and half her knee timbers and planking spraddled or gone, to amidships. Just hangin' on the shoal, she was, sir. Sorry.'

'No need. She's out of business, and her crew's marooned ashore on a rarely visited island,' Lewrie said with a shrug. 'They can sail over to Charlotte Amalie and be interned, but it'll be months before an exchange can be arranged through the local French consul. The prize we took more than makes up for it. And… do you talk sweetly to Lieutenant Devereux, perhaps he'll gift you with one of the items he captured off her. 'Tis something you'll drool over, trust me.'

'Oh, ah… well, sir!' Catterall said, beaming at a good day's work, and glancing about greedily for a sight of the Marine officer.

The boarding party was coming aboard then, sailors and Marines tramping the starboard gangway and the after ladder to the waist, with their arms removed from bandoliers and baldrics, ready to be put back in the arms chests. They were crowing over their own deeds, getting chaffered by those who'd stayed aboard as to who had had the best adventure, or had accomplished the greater deed.

'You new men,' Lieutenant Langlie ordered, 'assist Mister Tow-penny at leading the boats aft to their towing painters.'

Lewrie was standing by the rails and nettings overlooking the waist, just about to clap his hands together with satisfaction, when he glanced down. One of his recently 'volunteered' hands, the one who went by George Gamble, looked up, aghast, his mouth dropping open and his tanned face paling in shock, darting a look at Mr. Towpenny, who stood on the inner edge of the starboard gangway over his head, still burdened with cutlass, pistol, and musket as part of the boarding party.

'Hennidge?' Mr. Towpenny exclaimed of a sudden, just as aghast. 'Martin Hennidge?' he added, this time scowling, the name spat out in loathing. His musket came up quickly.

Lewrie jerked his head back to look at Gamble, who started like a deer at a dog's barking, quickly lashing out to seize a musket from a seaman who'd been idling with a messmate, the butt on the deck, and one forearm draped casually over the muzzle as a hiking stick. Gamble scampered forward, musket at port-arms, and using it as a bludgeon to either hand to clear his way!

'Mutineer, sir!' Mr. Towpenny cried, putting his musket to his shoulder as if to aim. 'One of the Hermiones! Knew him years ago, I did… know him anywhere!'

'Proteuses, seize that man!' Lewrie barked.

'Keep back!' the fugitive sailor shrieked, spinning to face the crew and levelling his musket to point at them from his hip. 'Leave me be, or by Christ I'll shoot at least one o' ye! Keep back, I say!'

He swung the muzzle back and forth, frantically, daunting the few hands who had obeyed Lewrie's order. He climbed the larboard companionway ladder near the focs'le belfry to the gangway, near the larboard anchor cat- heads.

'Sir!' the seaman who had lost his musket called up. 'Sir! 'At musket ain't loaded!' Mister Catterall wouldn't let us back aboard wif one!'

Lewrie tipped the sailor a wink, drew his sword, and took off at a quick trot down the larboard gangway. 'Give it up, Gamble, or whatever your name is!' He forced himself to look stern and menacing, sure that the joke would soon be on their 'armed' mutineer.

Hennidge looked down to his piece, used one hand to make sure it was at full cock again, and raised it, aiming at Lewrie's heart.

'Won't be taken, I won't! Back, ya tyrant, or I'll kill you, if it's the last thing ever I do!' Hennidge cried.

'Murder another officer, would you?' Lewrie snarled, sword extended and almost within reach of the muzzle. 'There were ten slaughtered aboard Hermione … in their beds! Those not enough for you, Hennidge? Thrown overside, still alive but bleeding, even the wee midshipmen who pleaded for their lives. Have a hand in that, did you? Did you, you traitor?'

'An' all of 'em torturin' devils!' the man shot back, jabbing at Lewrie as if his musket had a bayonet to keep him back out of reach of his sword's tip. 'They all deserved what they got, and more! Officers, God above! You're all monsters! Navy, merchant…!'

'The Spaniards didn't treat ya right?' Lewrie taunted, parrying with his hanger, forcing the sailor backwards. 'No shower o' gold for handin' 'em a British frigate? No commission in their navy, no reward for you? Drop that musket… now! It's over. Nowhere to go…'

He grazed his sword blade down the musket barrel and forestock, threatening to slash the man's left wrist and fingers if he kept proper hold of it, forcing him back against the bulwarks, with no place to escape, sure that this made a great raree-show. 'Give up!' he roared in the man's face.

Leap and lunge! Left hand round the muzzle to lever it up and away, right fist smashing his hanger's hilt and curved hand-guard into Hennidge's nose, making it explode in crimson, eyes crossed in pain!

Left knee into the crutch as he bulled forward, for good measure!

Give, before ya get! Lewrie snickered to himself.

As Hennidge dropped to his knees, Lewrie stepped back a pace and yanked hard to tear the useless musket away. Hennidge found breath to howl, right hand still clawing to keep his weapon by the fire-lock and one finger inside the brass trigger-guard, and… BLAM!

'Holy shit!' Lewrie screeched, flinging away the hot muzzle from his left hand. 'You bastaren' he added, raising his sword and bringing the hard pommel down atop the man's head for sheer spite, as the spent powder smoke wreathed round his head and shoulders.

From sheer terror, Lewrie coshed him on the head again!

Sailors and Marines were beside him in an eyeblink to take hold of the mutineer and drag him toward the companionway to the gun-deck.

Fat lot of help you shits were! Lewrie fumed, gasping fit to a swoon, and his bowels dangerously loose; Unloaded, hey? Mine arse on a bandbox! Why, he could've… killed me! Aye, make a great show, now he's out cold! Pitch in, and look organised… if not brave!

'I'll have that sonofabitch in irons… double irons, at once, Mister Catterall!' Lewrie roared, once he'd got his breath back, picking on the first officer he spotted within easy reach. 'Someone check my cabins for the list of descriptions of Hermione mutineers we were told to look out for. See Mister Padgett, my clerk, quickly now!'

'No need, sir,' Mr. Towpenny assured him from the gun-deck. 'I knew him. You peel off his shirt, here, you'll find two tattoos. He had one on his left upper arm, a Killick Anchor atop a heart. Seen it often enough when we were in Queen Charlotte t'gether, sir. Over his right shoulder blade, there should be a Saint Paul 's Cross, in green ink… protection 'gainst drownin', the tattoo man in Plymouth told him, sir. He's Martin Hennidge, sure enough, I'll swear a Bible Oath to it at a court, Cap'um. And admire t'see him hang for his sins.'

Padgett came forward with the list, quickly raked out of the desk drawers aft in his cabins, and the written description, including tattoos, fit Gamble/Hennidge to a Tee.

Lewrie sheathed his hanger and stepped down to the gun-deck as Hennidge was sluiced with a bucket of sea- water and awakened, spluttering and moaning, already fettered and shackled to a 12-pounder shot.

'Sling his sorry arse below on the orlop,' Lewrie ordered in a mellower mood. 'Bread and water, only. Mister Langlie?'

'Here, sir.'

'Our prisoner, and his return to justice, is more important than continuing our cruise,' Lewrie instructed. 'Once well Sou'east of the island yonder, shape course for Kingston.'