hoisting 'Hold Church Service,' 'Location,' and 'Interrogative' flags.'
'Sir?' Mr. Midshipman Gamble dared ask, at last, with a look of a young man ready to be amused by his captain's wit, willing to be the goat who supplied the rhetorical question if the others wouldn't, but not exactly sure where his superior's jest was going.
'Stands for 'Oh God, Where Am I?,' Mister Gamble,' Lewrie quipped with a wry chuckle. 'Very well, Mister Langlie. Secure the sounding gear, get our frozen sailors in-board, and Aspinall?' he bade the lad, who still hovered nearby in his heavy wool-frieze boat, with his white apron dangling below its hem. 'A cup o' hot coffee for all who assisted the Sailing Master. Hands to the braces, and make her course Due South, Mister Langlie. Wear her about.'
'Aye aye, sir!'
Lewrie paced aft to the taffrails to get out of the way while the cross-cocked jibs and foresails were eased over to starboard, and the helm was put over, the hard-angled set of the principal sails was eased from trying to go 'full and by' too close to the winds, to loose-cupping what wind there was, as
He left the taffrails and paced up the starboard side of the quarterdeck, which was now the windward side, and a captain's rightful station alone, 'til he was by the mizen shrouds, hooked an arm through them, and oversaw without interfering in such a wonderous display of seamanship from all officers and hands, 'til the last brace, halliard, or jear was coiled, flaked down, and belayed on the pin-rails, and Mr. Langlie released all but the sailors in the Forenoon Watch from their stations. A quick cast of the knot-log proved that even on this light wind,
The next mid-day might prove them level with the Lizard; half a day's sailing after that might, if the winds remained out of the West or Sou'west, move them far enough below England's westernmost headland to turn East, and scud up the Channel to Portsmouth, there to deliver despatches from Halifax to the Port Admiral.
There to be stripped of his sword of honour and bound in irons, then hauled off to an ignominious Fate?
Liam Desmond on his uillean lap-pipes, the ship's fiddler, and a Marine fifer began to play a semi-lively old hymn. Unfortunately for Lewrie's already-fretful nerves, he recognised the title as 'I Want a Principle.' Damned if he didn't, though he might have left it a tad late!
He pursed his lips, frowned heavily, and headed below and aft. Aspinall was still tending to those in need of his coffee-pot; Lewrie tossed off his own boat cloak, hat, and undid his coat, then sat down at his desk and dug his personal log out of the centre drawer, dipped one of his precious steel-nibbed (captured) French pens in the ink, and noted the time and date of Soundings, of shaping a new course; catching up on what the half-a-gale had carried away, what sails had split, and had to be replaced, which Mr. Rayne, their Sailmaker, thought he could repair, and what the cost in materials would be when the time came to pay
'…
The root of his troubles, those 'volunteers,' a round dozen of them, who'd really been encouraged to meet his ship's boats one night in Portland Bight on
*'Amazing Grace,' also known in hymn books as 'New Britain,' was not set to the tune we know, 'Virginia Harmony,' until 1831.
Jamaica 's south coast, and escape a lifetime of slavery, chains, whips, and cruel misery, to join the Royal Navy under new aliases as 'free men.'
'…
CHAPTER TWO
Well, Nicely was a kindly sort, though a bit of a bull in the china shop, an aggressive, 'but me not buts' sort, so Lewrie had thought little odd about it, at the time. Capt. Nicely had played 'Dutch Uncle' to him since their first meeting at Port-au-Prince in 1797 and had supported his activities, dismissing the vituperative charges that the dyspeptic Capt. Blaylock had tried to lay against Lewrie for not breaking off his bombardment of the rebel-slave army besieging the port of Mole St. Nicholas and giving Blaylock his mooring to try
Ever the encouraging and supportive sort was Nicely, even when he'd as good as 'press-ganged' Lewrie into a knight-errant's crusade against those French Creole pirates who'd stolen one of Lewrie's prizes from the anchorage at Dominica, even when he'd usurped
But, no… Lewrie had blithely shrugged it off as just one more quirk of a neck-or-nothing man. After all, he'd