The Captain`s Vengeance

pulling the cork of his quarter-pint flask of whisky with his teeth and spitting it out overside. 'An' this ain't play- actin', not 'gainst th' sort o' people wot took th' prize ship an' marooned us, kindly beggin' yer pardon, an' all, Cap'm, sor. You're t'be a cashiered awf'cer, I'm t play an Irish ne'er-do-well, mebbe spent some time among th' Yankees an' caught 'at Democracy fever? Man like me'd never tug 'is forelock, nor scrape an' bow t'him wot just hired me on, d'ye see, sor?'

'I s'pose…' Lewrie muttered, heaving a bitter sigh and still highly irked for the vast gulf to be spanned 'twixt a Commission Sea Officer of the King and a common seaman. Even in a sham!

'Just till we're back aboard good ol' Proteus, Cap'm, sor, then I'm back in yer harness, like,' Jugg vowed, turning earnest. 'We step outta character, d'ye see my meanin', an' them pirates'll scrag us in a dark alley 'fore we kin say 'nay,' sor. Just playin' parts, we are.'

'Damme though, why do I think you enjoy it so bloody much?'

'Went t'plays in Dublin an' London, I did, sor,' Jugg happily told him with a droll grin. 'Some parts them actors played looked to be more fun than others, Cap'm, sor!'

'Christ! Just… don't develop bad habits you can't break later, Jugg,' Lewrie cautioned, unable to do much more to the man, not in public at least, not as long as they were stranded so far from the Navy's discipline.

'Oh, aye, and I won't, on me honour swear it, yer honour, sor!' Jugg vowed quite theatrically, dropping into a deeper 'Oirish' brogue. 'On me poor mither's eyes, i' 'tis. Faith… and arrah!' Jugg japed. 'An' an't these th' foinest sway-et cigaros, Mister Willoughby, and Oi thankee kindly fer 'em, and at'all and at'all.'

'Oh, stop yer gob,' Lewrie said, slumping in surrender, though ready to turn away, run to the nearest rail, and laugh in spite of all.

He took a puff on his cigaro, but it had almost gone out after being amateurishly neglected. Lewrie hadn't even been tempted to partake of tobacco since he'd hocked up half his lungs among the Muskogee Indians in '83, the last time he'd been involved in a similarly covert expedition. Jugg blew ash off the glowing tip of his own and offered it to relight Lewrie's.

He was bent over and sucking to reignite his when a boisterous pack of shoppers came tramping up the sets of stairs leading from the landing stage, and Lewrie turned his eyes to look at them.

'What the Devil?' he whispered, half coughing, for the pall of fresh smoke had been trapped beneath the wide, drooping front brim of his 'wide-awake' hat, making his eyes water.

'Yankees, sor,' Jugg muttered from the side of his mouth, 'an' a rare lot they are, sure.'

Outre might have been a better choice of words for the Yankees, rather than 'rare.' They were frontiersmen, of a certainty, clad in long-fringed hunting shirts of homespun cloth or supple, but stained, deerskin. They wore homespun trousers stuffed into the tops of knee-high boots, deerskin trousers laced inside calf-length moccasins, or loose and napping over ankle-high beaded moccasins. At every hip was a fighting knife that looked as if it had started life as a double-edged broadsword or Scottish claymore. Some wore nearly civilised coats and shirts, though none of those wore neck-stocks or cravats, and their headgear ran the gamut from tricornes to flat-brim farm hats, shapeless, spreading cone-topped slouch hats, cast-off Army cocked hats, Jacobin- type stocking caps, an assortment of ratty straw… 'things,' and several masked and tailed fur caps that departed life as honest and upstanding foxes, raccoons, and possums. One man, a particularly blank-looking and pimply malevolence whose eyes almost crossed, had on a black-and-white fur cap that fixed Lewrie's gawping (teary, blinking) attention.

'Whut?' the fur cap wearer truculently said, noticing that he was being ogled like a whirling Persian Dervish in Hyde Park. 'Air ye lookin' at me, mister?' Which growl brought the others to a halt.

'I, uh…' Lewrie spluttered back. 'I don't believe I've ever seen your species of hat, sir. It isn't… cat, is it?'

'Polecat!' the wearer of that hat snapped back, 'Ye wanna make some-thin' o' h'it?'

'Now, Georgie,' the much better-dressed apparent leader of the gang cautioned as 'Cross-Eyes' thumped closer to Lewrie and the rest sidled behind him to watch the confrontation. He heaved a little sigh as if to say, 'here we-go again,' as he stayed by Georgie's side, as if to intervene… or referee should it come to blows.

'Polecat is what they call a… skunk?' Lewrie asked, determined to stand his ground and glad for all the weaponry that he bore, of a sudden.

'H'it is,' Georgie said, 'an' what o/h'it?'

With 'Georgie' only six feet away from him, Lewrie could note that the skunk's mask had been left on, as well as its long, bushy and luxuriant black tail with two white stripes. Tiny yellow glass beads had been sewn into the eye sockets, and the lips of its long, sharp muzzle had shrunk back from two rows of wee teeth, as if it still grinned.

'Don't they, ah… smell rather bad?' Lewrie enquired, taking what he hoped was a casual but expert puff on his cigaro.

'Yeah, 'ey do. So?' Georgie rumbled from deep in his throat.

'Well, I'd expect it took a deal o' work to skin and tan it,' Lewrie replied 'with studied nonchalance. 'Upwind all the time, I'd wager.' This close to him, the unforgettable odour of skunk, merely a slight tang of it, reawoke Lewrie's memory of the genuine, undiluted article, and he strove not to wrinkle his nose.

'Huh! Soaked h'it near two weeks in a cold, fast crick a'fore I could touch h'it,' Georgie boasted, partially disarmed from his anger.

'Wisht Georgie'd spent 'at long soakin' in wawter,' another of his buck-skinned companions hooted.

'Whyever did you kill it, if it took so long and smelt so bad?' Lewrie further enquired.

'H'it piss me awf!' Georgie said with an affronted snort. 'Got inna m'chicken coop, a'stealin' ay'ggs, an' 'en hayud th' gall t'spray at me. Huh! 'At's th' las' thayng he ever done.'

Lewrie couldn't tell which reek was worse, the skunk-fur cap or Georgie in general. Both shared a sour-corpse musk, mixed with wood smoke, crudely brain-tanned leather, old sweat and wet tobacco, sour-wet wool and felt, mud-soiled feet and toes, and scrofulous crotch and armpits. Taken altogether, the frontiersman was a positive melange of aromas and could have kept his cats, Toulon and Chalky, sniffing in sheer ecstacy for hours, their little jaws as agape as miniature lions to savour the subtlest effluvia!

'Stout fellow!' Lewrie exclaimed to further disarm him, holding out his unopened flask of whisky. 'Capital work!'

Georgie stared at him, glareful, as if wondering if he was being twitted, then at the offered flask, eyes aswim as if having trouble in focussing on anything that close. Georgie finally took the flask, bit down on the cork, pulled it with his brown teeth (those remaining, that is) and spat it to the deck. He shifted a quid of 'chaw-baccy' to the other side of his mouth, tipped the flask up, and drained it in two or three long gulps.

'I don't s'pose there's a market for skunk-fur caps,' Lewrie wondered aloud to the better-dresed fellow who seemed to be their leader. 'During the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin's coonskins were all the rage in Paris. The Frogs were mad for 'em.'

'No, I doubt they is.' The man chuckled as the tension evaporated. Georgie ripped off a stentorian belch, then beamed at Lewrie with a dank, quid-dribbly smile. 'You're a tradin' fellah, are you, Mister ah…'

'Alan Willoughby,' Lewrie said, extending his hand; and pleased that despite Peel's cynical sneer, he had no trouble recalling it.

'Jim Hawk Ellison,' the other said, shaking hands. 'We're down from Tennessee. Say 'thankee' for the whisky, Georgie.'

'Thankee, mister,' Georgie said, almost bobbing now.

'So, what line o' goods ya handle, then, Mister Willoughby?'

'Oh, this and that, what sells best upriver or on the eastern bank.' Lewrie shrugged off. 'We're asking about first, before we buy any goods, Jugg and I… This is Toby Jugg, one of my men. Say hello to Mister Ellison, Jugg,' he smirkily suggested, getting a bit of his own back after Jugg had twigged him.

'Mister Jugg,' Ellison offered. 'How do?'

'Mister Ellison, sor?' Jugg said, knuckling the wide brim of his hat first, then hesitantly taking Ellison's hand, as if that congenial social convention was only for gentlemen, outside his experience.

'British, and Irish, ya sound, sirs,' Ellison decided, his face tweaked up into a wry expression. 'A long way from