The French Admiral

we had to offer.'

'Very well, I shall take a look at your refugees,' Treghues said, rising from his desk and shrugging on a grogram watch coat over his uniform.

Once Treghues looked down over the rail at the bedraggled family seated in the cutter among their treasured possessions, dripping wet and freezing, he lurched into action. Stay tackle went over the side, and the dunnage went soaring aloft in parbuckles. Bosun's chairs were rigged to hoist the old man and his womenfolk into the air and deposit them on deck. Judkin, the captain's steward, and a wardroom steward were there in minutes with hot rum toddies. Treghues offered up the use of his day cabin aft for their comfort, while he would berth in the chart space. The carpenter began sawing and hammering to create new bed boxes, and the duty bosun's mate rushed aft with rope and tackle to rig them from the deckhead so the heel of the ship would not disturb their rest. The old man and his wife were tucked into the first beds finished, with warming pans and hot bricks wrapped in sailcloth to thaw them out from their sojourn on the chilly river.

'However do you do it, Mister Lewrie?' Railsford asked him mildly as Alan thawed his hands around a pewter mug of rum toddy on the quarterdeck once the cutter had been tied up alongside and its crew dispersed.

'Do what, sir?' Alan shivered, savoring the fumes rising from the mug.

'Go skylarking ashore and discover the most ravishing creatures, time after time, so I hear. That Miss Lucy Beauman on Antigua, for one, and now Miss Chiswick for another.'

'One does what one can for the young women of this world, sir,' Alan replied feeling just a little smug at Railsford's attitude and from the crew's reaction. They had taken the unfortunate Chiswicks into their care as gently as if they had been their own aged parents.

'You slyboots!' Railsford went on. 'Still, it was a decent act. So unlike the old Lewrie, I'd wager there was a different person masquerading as a master's mate.'

'I promised the Chiswicks I would look out for them, sir,' Alan said. 'Even a rake-hell may have a heart now and then.'

'Still, our rake-hell would not have had a heart if the girl was not so lovely.'

'Do you find her so, sir?' Alan grinned tightly, cocking a brow.

'A bit too tall for fashion, but that don't always signify.'

'Mister Lewrie?' Treghues called from the larboard quarterdeck ladder.

'Aye, sir.'

'That was a charitable thing you did, sir, bringing that family out here to Desperate. I'm told most of the shipping is filling up, and I have word from ashore that there are more people who wish to depart.'

'Aye, sir, people who could not rub shoulders with the rich and fashionable, who need their space,' Alan sneered. 'Or merchant captains who want five pounds a head for a two-day journey at best. They'd gouge the dead for a shovelful of dirt on their coffins.'

'And that,' Treghues stated primly, 'is why a gentleman, or one who has any pretensions to gentility, should never consider a career in Trade. It's all buying and selling and usury and following the dictates of Mammon to the exclusion of any decent sentiments. Easier a camel may pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man, or one who has traded in the misery of his fellow man, enter the kingdom of Heaven.'

But prize-money's just devilish fine, Alan thought cynically.

'I want you to go ashore again, Mister Lewrie.'

'Aye, sir?'

'Give my compliments to Major Craig and his staff. There are but the ships reserved for the troops and their equipment. If there are more loyal subjects who wish to embark, I shall find room for them in those merchantmen, if I have to do it with Peck and the marines to enforce it. And, since you have started the procedure, we shall take on as many who wish to go. Look especially for those poor and with few possessions who will not crowd us overly much. We may double up the wardroom and senior warrant berths. It has not been so long that you slept in a hammock, and as you say, it is only for the two days.'

'Aye, sir,' Alan said, trying to keep from screaming. Damme, I believe I have fucked up again. There won't be room below decks to swing a cat without getting fur in one's mouth at this rate.

On November 30th, only two days behind schedule, the flotilla of ships and coasters hoisted anchor and made their way slowly and carefully down the Cape Fear River on the very first of the ebb tide. To the chants of the leadsmen, they braved the shoals and eddies. Their passengers, and there were a lot of them by that time, crowded the decks to take their last looks at Wilmington. When Alan had a chance he took a look at the place, too. He had had fun there, and the next time he saw it there would most likely be a new flag flying over it, lost forever to the egalitarian notions of a jackass stubborn pack of rogues who had defied their King and had muddled their way to victory over one of the most powerful nations and the most powerful navy in the world. That most of their victories had been the result of even more incredible muddling on the part of the King's forces was hard to bear. What debt they would owe the French and Spanish, and what form of payment their insincere allies would demand, would possibly shatter the existing world order, placing both of the Indies in jeopardy. Until some damned Whig majority was voted in and brought the whole shameful thing to an end in a wave of weariness and self-abasement (but call it what it was, abject surrender), the war would probably stagger on, mostly to prevent the Frogs and Dagos from grabbing everything in sight. And if the Whigs cried penury for the huge debt run up by the war, they could walk off with everything England had, and leave her as helpless as the Danes, with few overseas possessions, little trade, and a Navy more suitable for a child's daydreams on a duck pond. Would the French be so encouraged by this that de Grasse would go home and put together the invasion force that succeeded in crossing the channel and recreating the Norman Conquest, Alan wondered?

'Ten fathom, ten fathom with this line!'

Alan drew his attention back to the ship and took a bearing on one of the tiny sandspits in midchannel. They would pass it safely to larboard, in a channel marked from their earlier ascension as better than fifteen fathoms. No danger.

The Chiswicks were on the taffrail, looking sternward at the land they would never see again either. The father was propped up on the flag lockers, his wife to one side and Mammy to the other to support him. Caroline wore her dark red traveling cloak with the hood thrown back, gripping the ornately carved taffrail with hands that looked kid-glove white, even at that distance. Alan had suffered in silence aboard Desperate before and had found solace aft out of everyone's way, gripping the rail in that way, so he could sympathize with her at that moment.

Once Wilmington had fallen out of sight astern and nothing was left but the barren narrow cape and the bleak salt-grass meadow shore, she came forward to about the larboard mizzen chains, more intent on the working of the ship than in pining away for the shoreline.

'Mister Lewrie, do ya see them marsh grasses yonder?' Monk asked.

'Aye, sir. Swirling,' Alan said. 'Wind's heading us a point. Hands to the lee braces, prepare to harden up! Quartermaster, stand by to give us a point free.'

'Clear ta starboard, iffen we do,' Monk grumped, staring with a telescope at the shore to their right. 'Half a mile afore we gets inta trouble over there.'

'Here it comes,' Railsford said, gripping the hammock nettings.

The wind ruffled cat's paws on the choppy waters, and Desperate leaned heavily as the gust hit them.

'Give us a point free!' Railsford called.

'Bosun, tail on the lee braces!'

'Don't forget the tops'l set,' Railsford cautioned.

'Tops'l braces, off belays and haul away!' Alan cried. 'How's her helm, quartermaster?'

'Worn't 'nuff fer a good bite at first, sir, but she's fine now,' the quartermaster said, as he and his mate spun the wheel gingerly a few spokes at a time to demonstrate better control with more flow on the rudder.

'We get headed like that again and we'll have to bear up sharp and tack her on a short board to larboard before we can come back onto the safe pass,' Alan griped.

'Somebody whistlin' on deck?' Monk asked, peering about to see if someone was violating one of the cardinal superstitions of a seafarer's life. Whistling on deck always brought the wind, usually from