'And we didn't even get to the main courses, ah well,' Burgess replied, sobering at last as he sprang back from the rail to face him. 'In point of fact, here comes your soup and such.'
'Hate t'waste good victuals, but I must,' Lewrie told him, digging for his purse to repay him in part, but Burgess waved his offer away.
'I'll sample a bit of everything, and call it a feast,' Burgess told him. 'Perhaps we'll find time enough for a drink or two, before we sail?'
'Of course we shall,' Lewrie promised him, gathering up his hat and sword from their own abandoned table. 'Failing that, though, allow me to offer to treat you to yer first English supper, once we're back home. We'll go up to London and make a whole night of it, hey?'
'Come to think of it, we'll do both,' Burgess brightened. 'And, we may bore each other to tears with our war- stories.'
'Looking forward to it,' Lewrie promised as he clapped his hat on his head and squared it away. 'For now, though… adieu!'
He got to the red-shuttered tavern by the piers and began hunting for a rowboat to hire to take him out to Proteus, but, to his utter astonishment, found not one but two gigs waiting at the foot of the wooden stairs that led down to the floating landing stage: a strange gig painted green and picked out with white stripes with a Midshipman just debarking from it, and… his own gig, with his tars and Cox'n Andrews in it. The sight of it made him pause halfway down the narrow stairs as the Midshipman was coming up.
'Pardons, sir,' the lad said, backing down to the landing stage to make way for a senior officer. He doffed his hat as Lewrie finished his descent. 'Uhm… might you be Captain Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate, sir?'
'I am,' Lewrie replied, at which discovery the strange Midshipman beamed, and reached into his coat to an inner pocket, from which he withdrew a folded-over sheet of paper. 'Midshipman Hedgepeth, Captain Lewrie, of HMS Jamaica, out yonder?' the boy added, with a sweep of his hat towards the bay, and the anchored 64-gunner. 'Captain Leatherwood extends to you his utmost respects, sir, and requests that you attend him aboard, at your earliest convenience. I gather, sir, that Proteus will join our ship to escort the East India convoy homeward? And…'
'Thank you, Mister Hedgepeth,' Lewrie replied as he took hold of the letter, swallowing the impatience he felt with another intrusion into what was already a tempestuous day. 'Since my own gig seems so readily available… surprise, that…' he added, lifting a leery eyebrow at Andrews, who stood beside the boat, 'it seems I may manage mine own conveyance to see your captain, this minute. Do you wait a moment, though.'
'Of course, sir,' Hedgepeth said, doffing his hat once more as Lewrie brushed past him.
'You made quick work of it, Andrews,' Lewrie said, standing at his gig's side. 'Out to Proteus and back so soon. I said I'd engage a bumboatman…'
'Ah, beggin' yah pardon, Cap'm sah, but… we didn't go out to th' ship, sah, not egg-hackly …' Andrews waffled.
'And whyever did you net?' Lewrie harshly snapped.
'Dat Mizz Yew… de Russian gal, sah?' Andrews tried to explain, all but wringing his doffed straw hat in his hands. 'She tell us it'd be bettah fuh Rodney was de circus surgeon t'see to 'im, Cap'm sah. We got 'im heah to de piers, but she an' dhem circus people jus' 'bout took Rodney, sayin' Navy Surgeons don' know nothin' 'bout men who got clawed up so bad, an' dheir 'saw-bones' handle such ever' day, sah.'
'And you just… let 'em!' Lewrie barked. 'Mine arse on a…!'
A good rant would have felt so damned fine, but right after he drew in a deep breath for his first 'broadside,' Lewrie shut his lips with an audible 'plop.'
When they had handed little Rodney down from that Boer waggon, the lad had been shirtless, for the first time in Lewrie's memory, and he had seen the old whip scars that his former masters, the Beaumans on Jamaica, had cut into him. And Lewrie had felt queasy to think that he would have had to, under the rigid requirements of the Articles of War when dealing with recaptured deserters, put Rodney to the gratings for several dozen lashes. He would have had no other choice, else his men would have gotten the idea that he was softer on his 'Black Pets' than his other crewmen; that he could wink at desertion; that he was turning into a 'Popularity Dick,' or a soft touch! Lewrie couldn't think of a better way to split his crew into grumbling factions, and destroy what esprit they had. Without fear of consequences… without fear of him … he would lose all his authority, and his officers, warrants, petty officers, and midshipmen would lose theirs along with him.
Might be best, after all, Lewrie grimly told himself, knowing that allowing this to stand only delayed 'what he'd have to do.
'Uhm…' Lewrie grunted, instead. 'Might be something to that, Andrews. I doubt either Mister Hodson, or Mister Durant, has ever run across a lion's clawing… and the sepsis sure to follow such. Very well, we'll leave him aboard the Festival… for a short time at the least… to see what their surgeon may do for him.'
'Aye, sah!' his Cox'n cried with both relief and pleasure, and Lewrie could hear the tension whooshing out of his tense boat crew.
'Return to the ship,' Lewrie ordered. 'Jamaica's, gig may bear me out to her, and back aboard Proteus once we're done. My respects to Mister Langlie, and he is to see that our injured men in the cottage up above the bay, along with Mister Durant and his sick-berth attendants, are fetched back aboard.'
'I tell him, sah,' Andrews replied, knuckling his brow.
'Mister Hedgepeth?' Lewrie called, whirling about. 'Might you indulge me with a boat ride out to your ship?'
HMS Jamaica was a hard-worked ship and looked it as Lewrie was rowed to her starboard entry-port, noting the much-faded paintwork on her side, the dribbles of tar and oakum showing between the outermost planking of her gunwales and bulwarks. A laconic rural American would have said of her that 'she'd been rode hard, and put up wet,' Lewrie could imagine. If there had been shiny gilt to brighten her, it had been worn off long before; and it appeared that there wasn't enough of a supply of linseed oil, tar, or pitch to spruce up her hull to Navy standards, especially the standards of admirals closer to Europe. But, Lewrie also noted that Jamaica 's yards were mathematically squared, her standing and running rigging well set up and tautly blocked or belayed. Her gun-ports stood open for a cooling breeze on both decks, red paint faded, too, on the inboard faces, but the cannon muzzles' tompions were still bright, and every piece squatted in the same exact position as its mate. Up alongside, Jamaica 's boarding battens, main-chain platform, and dead-eyes for the main-stays were sound, and her man-ropes strung shallowly through the outboard ends of the batten steps were white and fresh, served with Turk's Head knots. The battens were clean, sanded, though the two-decker's waterline was a gently waving garden of weed, despite her coppering.
And, despite her obvious long and hard service, Lewrie could, on his way up to the starboard gangway, note that the smell of her that wafted from those opened gun-ports on both decks wasn't the reeky fug that one could expect aboard such a small line-of-battle ship, crewed by several hundred men pent in such close quarters for so long, either. Her captain surely put a great stock in cleanliness, Lewrie imagined.
He attained the gangway, taking the salute from clean and well-dressed Marines and sailors, from hands scattered about her decks who doffed shiny black tarred hats, pausing from their labours for a bit.
'Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate,' he said to a sober, gangly officer. 'Your captain requested me to attend him, and why waste time on notes back and forth.'
