quarterdeck in his scruffy uniform. 'Lay us on a course for Charleston, in the Carolinas. We have despatches for General Leslie.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' Monk replied, shambling his way to the charts. 'Here now, Quartermaster. Lay her due west fer right now. Hands ta the braces, smartly now. The flag's watchin'.'
'Charleston,' Avery said as they supervised their working parties for the mainmast braces. 'We put in there once, Alan. Damned fun place, it was.'
'I remember it so as well,' Alan replied, almost rubbing his hands in glee. Yes, he had remembered Charleston well, too. It was full of refugees from up-country, run to the port by their rebel cousins. Cornwallis and his troops had been there, and with them had come a great flock of camp followers, traders, whores, and ladies without their husbands. When he had been on the despatch schooner
'Be in soundin's by tamorrer forenoon, sir,' Monk said, after he had paced off the distance from their noon position with dividers on his charts.
'Alan, did you realize that tomorrow shall be my birthday?' David told him. 'And we are short of fresh meat. Now, if I talked nicely to the purser, he might find it in his heart to send me ashore with him… on King's business, of course!'
'And if you don't take me along with you, you're a dead man, David,' Alan warned him.
'Whyever should I do that?' David queried.
''Cause I know where the likely whores and widows are,' Alan reminded him with a simper.
'You've missed your calling.' David smiled. 'You'd make a devilish grand pimp.'
'You're not the first to think that,' Alan heartily agreed. 'And it's still early days in my career, isn't it? Now get onto Mister Cheatham before he picks somebody else. Tell him we both volunteer.'
The next morning
Cottle, Commander Treghues's coxswain, came up on deck in his best blue jacket with shiny brass buttons, his red-and-white-striped loose slop trousers clean, and his feet encased in new cotton stockings and freshly blacked shoes with silver buckles. The boat crew gathered round him and Cottle eyed them keenly so their appearance would not shame their captain or the ship when they went alongside the pier to carry Treghues to meet the port authorities with letters and documents.
'Hawse bucklers clear, sir,' Toliver, one of the bosun's mates reported after coming aft from the fo'c's'le. 'Best bower ready to drop, and a kedge ready in the stern.'
'Let her swing nigh stern-first ta the town afore ya let go that kedge, mind,' Monk said, almost as an afterthought. Charleston was a nasty harbor for all its size. On the way in, they had passed small islets and stretches of salt marsh where men were dredging for oysters only knee-deep in water, or loafing on sand spits that would be under water at high tide. 'Safe across the bar now, sir,' Monk told Treghues.
As if in confirmation, a hail from the leadsman in the foremast chains called out a safe depth of six fathoms. His next cast was half a fathom more, and everyone could breathe easily.
'Are we getting ashore?' Avery asked after he had come aft from his duties with the ship's boats.
'No one has told me anything of yet,' Alan said softly. 'But if Treghues is going ashore, we shall be here for a while at least. Surely, we would not pass up the chance for firewood and water.'
'Lord, it's hot,' Avery complained, plucking at his broadcloth coat and waistcoat. 'And you can smell the fever in those marshes.'
'In daytime, and with a sea breeze, we have nothing to fear,' Alan told him. He had suffered a serious bout of Yellow Jack aboard the
'Maybe it's the flies cause fevers,' Avery said.
'Don't be a superstitious ass,' Alan said, only half in jest.
'Maggots are created in rotting meat, and I've not heard much good about maggots,' Avery countered. 'Except for eating pustulence in wounds.'
'My God, but you're a cheerful creature this morning.' Alan exploded in a shuddery laugh.
'A little more attention to your duties there, young sirs,' Treghues said in passing, glaring at both of them evilly, with a lingering glance on Alan.
'Aye, aye, sir,' they answered dutifully.
''Bout a mile off the wharf now, sir,' Monk said, straightening from his latest calculation with his sextant.
'Short enough row,' Treghues said, not seeing the glum expressions of his boat crew, who faced a long, hot pull ashore. 'Take in tops'ls and round her up into the wind.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Even as she was making sternway to drop the kedge, Treghues's gig had been led around to the entry port, and Cottle had received his captain into her. Before the tops'l had been taken in aloft, their captain was well on his way ashore to deliver his messages and inquire about the whereabouts of the French.
'Bosun, lead the cutter round for the purser,' Lieutenant Railsford, the first officer (and only commissioned lieutenant) called. 'Mister Cheatham, you'll mind my own wants, I trust?'
'Indeed I shall, Mister Railsford,' Cheatham said.
'And I believe you mentioned the need for two of the young gentlemen to assist you?' Railsford went on, looking at his younger charges, and noting how well turned out Avery and Lewrie were in comparison to the rat- scruffiness of little Carey or the porcine Forrester. 'Can't let the image of
'Aye, aye, sir,' they both answered. The captain's clerk was asked to write out two leave tickets for them, giving them until the end of the first dogwatch around sundown in which to enjoy the pleasures of the town.
In a rush they scrambled down the battens and manropes to the barge to join Cheatham, and got the boat under way before anyone could change his mind about allowing them freedom from naval routine, even for a short while.
'It was good of the captain to allow me to celebrate my birthday, sir,' Avery said to Cheatham, once they were away from the ship's side and the boat crew was stroking lustily at the oars.
'Captain Treghues does not strictly know of it,' Cheatham said. 'But we had to go ashore to replenish and cannot sail until the ebbing of the evening tide, which Mister Railsford informs me shall not turn until near midnight.