and sober as judges, so it was reported later. The Chaplain well…
He fell backwards, striking his head on the gunnel of the ship's boat. He sank out of sight at once, and his body was never found, and, while her first captain had managed to cling to the boarding batten steps, he had claimed that it felt as if the man-ropes had stung him or bit him as hurtful as wasps!
And, not a week after, said captain was found raving and crying in his nightshirt, dashing about the quarterdeck, or cowering in sheer terror in his cabins, swearing that Proteus had murdered his cousin, and was out to kill him, too! Were his family not rich, he could have ended up in Bedlam in London, supplementing his half-pay (it took rather a bit of doing for a senior officer to be struck off the Navy List for any cause other than dropping stone-cold dead in those days!) off the poking-stick and water-squirt concessions offered those who toured the place and wished to stir the inmates up from catatonia.
At that point, enter Capt. Alan Lewrie, lucky, again, to get himself such a fine, spanking-new frigate. Or, so he had thought, for not a fortnight later, Proteus had fallen down the snaking Medway to the Nore anchorage, right into the heart of the Mutiny! One mutineer in particular, whom Lewrie himself had recruited off the receiving ship (he'd turned out to be a former Midshipman Rolston back in 1780, when Lewrie first donned King's Coat as a 'Mid,' a little fiend who had been responsible for a sailor's death and broken to Ordinary Seaman), stoked Proteus's own rebellious cabal of mutineers, and had tried to arrange the murder of all her officers, warrants, and gentlemanly Midshipmen.
In the end, Capt. Lewrie, kept from being sent ashore as the other officers and captains were by the rebellious committee, had won enough loyal sailors and Marines to launch a rebellion of his own… with the rather embarrassing help from the roughly two dozen prostitutes fetched out to the ship by the bumboatmen-pimps, who'd usually serve as temporary 'wives' by sailors with money for their 'socket fees,' supporting them on shares of their rations, rum issues, and smuggled spirits. The mutineer committee had declared that all women must stay aboard the rebelling warships, long after the sailors' last coins had been, spent, so the doxies had been feeling a touch rebellious themselves!
Indeed, HMS Proteus was one of the few warships that had managed to escape, under fire from mutinous ships of the line, to join up with Adm. Duncan's much-reduced squadron, which kept watch on the Batavian Dutch Republic's coasts to daunt the Dutch Navy from leaving port to join with a French fleet… after dropping off the whores, and those mutineers they'd made prisoners. It had been reckoned notorious that Capt. Lewrie had sent letters to both Admiralty and Parliament asking that the women receive monetary rewards and letters of thanks for the patriotic and courageous aid they'd offered!
The Captain had also sent a note-of-hand to his London solicitor, ordering that each of the prostitutes be paid a more-than-decent sum 'for services rendered!' and what the Crown, Society, and Capt. Lewrie's wife thought of that, well…
And when that Rolston had died, now that was eerie, too…
A transfer from Proteus to a coaster they'd met, hired to take prisoners to the authorities at Sheerness; Rolston coming on deck in chains and shackles, cursing Lewrie for his luck-there it was, again-for how else could one explain how Rolston could swing his cutlass for a killing, beheading blow, but damme if the Captain hadn't deflected it with his tinpenny-whistle! and if the Good Lord, or the pagan sea-god Lir, hadn't been looking out for him, then please explain it!
Then, when Rolston had started down the boarding battens, with man-ropes in hand, damme if Proteus hadn't heaved a slow roll to windward, and Rolston had cried out, hands springing open as if something had stung his palms, and had fallen into a round pool of lanthorn light 'tween both vessels, surfacing one last time, and looking as if he was floating in a circle of odd yellow-green light, as if sinking into the very eye of a great sea-monster, then had seemed to be sucked down, and howling a final shriek of utter horror!
After a collective shudder of recalled awe, the bottle of port made another quick circuit of the table, all of them feeling as dry as dust, of a sudden.
'After that, we played the Dutch a merry jape, sir,' Lt. Devereux of the Marines told Urquhart. 'We spent weeks close inshore of the Texel, hoisting false flag signals to the fleet they feared was just over the horizon, and pretending to reply to questions… even if Admiral Duncan had barely a handful of old sixty-four gunners present, 'til the Nore Mutiny was settled, and he was re-enforced.'
Urquhart certainly knew what had happened, once the winds had come fair; the Dutch fleet had sailed, but had been caught upon a lee shore and nearly annihilated, and Proteus, it seemed, had played her own significant part in the battle, engaging a larger Dutch frigate and forcing her to strike after a boarding action. Capt. Lewrie had been seriously wounded in the arm, but had lived. His uncanny luck had held once more, for his arm had not required amputation, as most broken-bone wounds would have done. And that was why the gold medal for the Battle of Camperdown hung on his chest alongside the one for Cape St. Vincent!
Lewrie… Mistress Theoni Connor… Hyde Park… the Captain and his wife, yes! Urquhart suddenly recalled. A hero with his arm in a sling, a wife with a furled umbrella employing it like a sword after seeing her man's mistress and bastard by-blow at close quarters, making Lewrie hop, duck, and back up briskly! There'd been many salacious snickers in his favourite coffee-house when that tale had been told! He hid his smile as the others touched upon Lewrie's doings in the West Indies, and Lt. Urquhart once more went wide-eyed.
An outbreak of Yellow Jack, that was why Lewrie had needed the dozen Blacks so badly. Was it before, or after, the Captain's friend had duelled Ledyard Beauman and slain him, when the Captain had had to shoot Beauman's second, too? No matter; that was one reason there was so much bad blood. Against the French, though… Proteus had swept the north coast of St. Domingue (what the rebel ex-slaves were now calling Haiti) of any shipping larger than a canoe; had captured American arms smugglers; captured, sank, or burned French merchantmen and privateers; had crippled that Choundas fellow's big, proud frigate as they had already related, and had put paid to that cruel fiend, too!
'And weren't there seals barking,' Lt. Adair said, with a face full of wonder (and rather red with claret and port), 'the night that our boats went ashore to fetch out our Black fellows? Seals in the West Indies have been hunted nigh to extinction, but I swear I heard them, and their splashings, to boot.'
'Some of the lads…,' Mr. Coote, the Purser, who had spent the last hour entire in contented and companionable, nodding silence, said. 'They swore they saw seals in the water, and even I thought I saw one head, and disturbance in the water. I certainly am sure that I heard them. Mister Langlie's boat crews… our former First, sir… vowed that seals swam to either side of their boats on the way back aboard.'
'Saint Nicholas Mole,' Lt. Devereux reminded them.
One of ex-slave General Toussaint L'Ouverture's armies tried to oust the British Army garrison at the port on the northwest coast, and Proteus had caught a signal asking for help, and had sailed into the roadstead. Close ashore, with the fighting lines hidden in dense forests, Lewrie had sent a signalling party ashore to aid the Army and wig-wag. With their frigate's guns at extreme elevation, Proteus had fired both solid round-shot and bags of grape-shot, adjusting according to the shore party's signal flags, and allowing their own troops to fall back behind a screen of plunging shot and re-form their lines, and, in the process, decimating the slave army. With springs on her cables, Proteus had swung in a wide arc, firing off nearly all of her grape-shot, cartridge flannels, and a whole tier of powder casks from morning 'til sunset, saving the port, and the British garrison in the process!
'And those French Creole pirates,' Lt. Adair suggested with a wry shake of his head. 'Had we been quicker about it, there'd have been nigh a million pounds sterling in silver captured, not a mere two hundred thousand!'
' Barataria Bay, d'ye mean?' Lt. Urquhart cried. 'Aye, I read of that'un!' Courageous sea-fights, prize-money, and slews of captured enemy specie brought in had ever caught his eye in the Marine Chronicle … especially since Lt. Urquhart had never even come within hailing distance of anything so adventurous, or profitable… yet. Though, under Capt. Alan Lewrie, it sounded better odds that he could be part of such glorious doings. And reaping the monetary benefits.
'Mad as hatters, the lot of them,' Lt. Gamble said with a sniff. 'Rich, bored young grandees, none older than
