Troubled Waters

folderol of the previous evening's supper. Though it was a cool morning, a touch shy of nippy, the breeze on Savage's starboard quarters felt too humid to savour.

'Showers by the middle of the Day Watch, I would wager, sir,' the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, gloomily pronounced as he peered, bird-quick, from each headland or sea mark to the next with his pocket compass, one of his new charts spread atop the binnacle cabinet. Though he did not pencil bearings on his chart, Winwood did mumble to himself as if memorising reciprocal courses. 'Were I a wagering man, of course.'

Lewrie glanced astern to scan the skies for weather signs, but could not discover any cause for Winwood's prediction. For the man's nervousness, Lewrie could determine good cause; slap Winwood up against a strange new coast, hostile or no, and he would turn as skittery as a whore in church, for he had not yet known it, had the proper seaman's distrust in twenty-year-old re-drawn and reprinted charts, and was just as responsible as his captain for the safe navigation of the ship. Miss just one shoal or rock that was marked on the charts, hit one that wasn 't; either way, his career was on the line, and, until Winwood was as conversant with their new area of operations as he was of his own palm lines, there would be no living with him, no cheer in his body.

Not that ponderous and cautious Mr. Winwood had ever been much for good cheer.

'Mister Mayhall reports six and a quarter knots, Captain,' Lt. Urquhart stiffly reported, doffing his hat by Lewrie's side. 'A light breeze, sir, even if it is on the quarter.'

'Good enough for now, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie said. 'No sense chargin' in like a Spanish fightin' bull. Sooner or later, they get stabbed by the matador's, sword. Today's a get-acquainted day, get the feel o' things… meet up with the lighter ships, and their captains, anyway. And,' he quipped in a softer voice, inclining his head towards Mr. Winwood, 'we must allow the Sailing Master t'get his feel for ev'ry wee pitfall. He'll not sleep a wink 'til he does.'

'Aye, sir,' Lt. Urquhart replied, with a brief, but shy, grin, as if he had to think about it before reacting.

Two of a kind, really, Lewrie thought as he took a sip of his coffee, then strolled over to the starboard mizen shrouds. Urquhart might as well have been Winwood's bastard son, for all his humourlessness. Comes o' tryin' too hard? Lewrie speculated; or, is he just a sober-side from birth?

In their few weeks at sea, Lt. Urquhart so far had appeared as taciturn and serious as a Scottish Calvinist preacher. The man never slouched, never allowed himself more than four glasses of wine in the wardroom (so his cabin servant and personal cook, Aspinall, had heard from the officers' mess servants), never took part in any of the high-cockalorum antics his fellow Lieutenants might stage, appeared to need no more than four hours sleep a night, and could always be found fully dressed and on the quarterdeck, sometimes for as little cause as when the nanny goat farted.

Was he competent? Yes, immensely so, and Lewrie could find no fault with how, during his London absences, Urquhart had seen to the ship's fitting-out, storing, and re-arming. Was Urquhart the complete sailorman, a tarry- handed 'tarpaulin man' with the addition of a gentlemanly education, manners, and dignity? Aye, he was. He just was not… Anthony Langlie, Lewrie could resignedly bemoan. Langlie, during their three years in Proteus … Lt. Knolles, his First Officer aboard HMS Jester.. . even Arthur Ballard when he had had the converted bomb-ketch Alacrity in the Bahamas. All of those officers had been young, though able, possessed of quick wit and good humour. Ballard, well… he had his ponderous moments, but sly and dry, and a good friend, as well.

Been spoiled, I s'pose, Lewrie thought with a sigh. All of his First Lieutenants since his first commands had felt more like helpful and supportive friendsl Urquhart, though…

Lewrie supposed he could put his moodiness down to all of that punch, port claret, and rhenish that he'd sloshed down with Ayscough and Charlton. It had been past eleven when he'd reeled his way aboard Savage, and barely managed to undress before sprawling into his swinging bed-cot, and falling asleep as if pole-axed, and had been roused, drooling onto his pillows, both by the Bosuns' calls for 'All Hands,' and the chimes of Eight Bells as the Middle Watch ended at 4 a.m. Well, all that, and the cats. Stocky Toulon, the black'un with white markings, and Chalky, the youngest with white fur and grey splotches, had pawed, leaped upon him with all four paws as close together as a quartet of coins abutted on a publican's bar counter, with loud and raspy 'We're Starving!' squawls, and urgent digging at the bed linens right by his nose!

Toulon had been 'refugeed' from the port of Toulon; Chalky had been found by his bastard son, Desmond, the American Midshipman, aboard a French prize brig in the West Indies, and presented to him as a gift.

They were both, therefore, French}. Perhaps they knew the smell of their homeland off to loo'rd, and wanted Lewrie to rise and take 'em on deck to share their furry rencontrel

And, damned if they weren't poised atop the quarterdeck hammock nettings that very moment, peering forward towards the shore, sniffing the air, tails curling and jittering like they did when they saw a sea bird glide cross the decks, and sharing looks with each other, now and again.

'Not thinkin' o' jumpin' ship, are ye, catlings?' Lewrie teased as he came to the forward end of the quarterdeck to give them a stroke or two. He was rewarded with head butts on his hand, some wee, trillish mews by way of greeting. 'I'll brook no desertion, hear me plain?'

'Deck, there!' a lookout atop the main-mast cross-trees called. 'Fishin' boat t'larboard! Three points off th' larboard bows!'

Lewrie wandered over to the top of the larboard gangway ladder as Lt. Urquhart and Mr. Winwood raised their telescopes to peer at the fishing boat, which was just beginning to emerge from the haze, and the low-lying skim of fog atop the estuary waters.

'She appears to be un-armed, sir,' Urquhart reported. 'Only a few men on deck, with nets ready for streaming. Rather good-sized, I do allow, though, sir. 'Bout the length of a Port-Admiral's barge?'

'Your glass, sir,' Lewrie bade, and took a squint for himself. He saw a two-masted lugger, both her broad gaff- rigged sails and her single jib streaming slackly astern as she came into the wind, probably to lower her fishing nets before coming about to wallow inshore for the first of her morning's trawls. Four, no, only five sailors in sight, and none of them showing any evident signs of alarm at the appearance of a 'Bloody's' frigate cruising up to Range of Random Shot.

'Hands to Quarters, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie ordered, lowering the borrowed glass and handing it back over. 'Carronades, quarterdeck nine-pounders, chase guns, and swivels only. No point in manning the eighteen-pounders for such a feeble target. Spare hands, and Mister Devereux's Marines, for a boarding party.'

'Aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe 'All Hands' and 'Quarters'!'

'S'pose I must pass the word for the Surgeon,' Lewrie chuckled. 'I'm told my French is a horror, and Mister Durant was born speakin' Frog.'

'Uhm, I am considered quite fluent in French, sir,' Urquhart almost timidly put forward, with a throat-clearing harrumph.

'Excellent, Mister Urquhart!' Lewrie cheered. 'When closer to, call for them to fetch-to, and prepare t'be boarded. Have her captain come aboard so you can… interrogate him.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

A quarter-hour later, and both Savage and the French lugger were fetched-to into the light winds, no more than one hundred yards apart. Though Lewrie's French was horrid, he could make out a few phrases of invective… 'Damn you 'Bloodies,' we're working here!'… 'Death of my life, you put us in povertyl'… 'Go and fuck yourself, you arrogant 'beefsteak' turds!'

They quieted though, and lapsed into surly silence, when cowed by the size of the boarding party, and the Marines with their bayonets and muskets. A brief inspection above and below decks, into the reek of the lugger's hold, half-filled with sea water to preserve any catch 'til they could be landed ashore, then Lt. Urquhart's launch was coming alongside Savage with a lone Frenchman amidships, a wiry older man in loose pantaloons, bare feet, a filthy canvas fisherman's smock, and a tasseled 'Liberty' stocking cap upon his