The French Admiral

a direction and in such strength that would put lives at hazard to reef down aloft. Even marines and idlers knew better.

'Wimmen on a ship, Mister Monk,' the quartermaster whispered. 'I'd take a whistler any day.'

Alan didn't mind women aboard ship, especially the particular woman who had come to observe him in action, and he was pleased that he was showing well, being all nautical and tarry-handed, conversing as an equal with the first officer and the sailing master.

'Taut enough, sir?' Alan asked Railsford.

'Aye, Bosun, belay every inch of that!'

Alan turned as though to peer at the cape peninsula with one of the telescopes, and in so doing took a look at Caroline Chiswick. Her color was high, whether from emotion at being driven from Wilmington as a refugee or from the sea breeze, he could not say, but she was smiling, which was more than she had done in the last few days after being ensconced aft, and when he glanced at her, she gave him a wider smile, which he could feel all the way down to his toes. Pauper or not, she was an attractive diversion until he could get back to the West Indies.

The wind shifted once more, this time backing almost a point and a half, giving them a perfect breeze to make it out to sea past the last low islands. The first rollers in the open bay struck her and set her pitching her bows up and rolling to starboard.

'Hands make sail, Mister Railsford,' Treghues ordered. 'Plain sail, with two reefs in the tops'ls for now and two reefs in the courses. And I'll have the main topmast staysail run aloft to steady her helm.'

'Full an' bye'll get us our offin', sir,' Monk said, studying the long, whipping commissioning pendant aloft as a rough wind indication.

'Make sail and then we'll harden up and lay her close-hauled,' Treghues said. 'Mister Coke, better get some more buckets on deck. Our live lumber will be casting their accounts into the Atlantic, soon.'

'Aye, sir.' Coke glowered, thinking of the ruin of his pristine decks as their passengers began to spew.

Half an hour later, with Desperate in the lead to windward, the evacuation fleet stood out to sea headed roughly sou'-west to make an offing from that treacherous shore where the soundings were always wrong and they had enough sea room off a lee shore should the wind turn foul. The passengers were indeed having a rough time of it, losing their breakfasts over the side, or hugging the buckets. All the Chiswicks but Caroline went below to get out of the raw wind. Now free of duties until the day watch, Alan went to the windward rail to join her.

'This is quite exciting, Mister Lewrie,' she said, her face glowing in the breeze and her hair ready to escape from her pins. 'I never knew there was so much involved in sailing. All those men going aloft and walking on air, it seemed, to work on the sails! Do you do that?'

'I did, until my promotion,' Alan said.

'You have had a promotion,' she said. 'How wonderful for you.'

'I was a midshipman, have been for almost the last two years. In a way, I still am, but I was made acting master's mate the first week of November. Until then I spent half my life aloft.'

They chattered on until Treghues came back on deck, and Alan took her hand. 'If you wish to stay on this side of the deck our captain will oblige you, but I must go to loo'ard.'

'Why?'

'It's tradition. The windward side of the quarterdeck is for the captain alone, and the rest of the watch standers must go down to leeward.'

She accepted his hand and he led her down the slanting deck along the nettings at the front of the quarterdeck.

'You call it loo'ard once and leeward the next,' she said. 'I believe you are speaking a foreign language.'

The next half hour, until Treghues retired aft, they spent laughing as he explained a sailor's life, some of the pranks they played on each other, and the seeming nonsense of the seaman's vocabulary, until Alan noticed she was shivering in the wind, which had turned quite cold.

'You'll catch your death up here. You should go below and get warm. They'll be piping dinner soon, anyway,' he told her.

'Forgive me, Mister Lewrie, but I could not bear to do so. I have monopolized you, I fear, for purely selfish purposes, but I could not face another moment in the cabin. Getting away for a while has been most refreshing.'

'I'm sorry there is only you to… bear up under this burden on your family,' he said.

'I was raised to be self-reliant,' she said, her face growing pensive as she stared back toward the distant shore. 'All of us were. But lately, there has been so much duty, and no one to help me cope.'

'I know what that is.' Alan grinned. 'This promotion has piled a load on me, too.'

'The morning you came in answer to my note, I was ready to give way to despair. Without your timely assistance, we would still be looking for a ship. Thank you for taking charge as you did, Mister Lewrie. I appreciated that more than you could ever know.'

'I was glad to be of any help to you,' he said, turning gallant. 'Someone as young and pretty as you, Mistress Chiswick, should not have to bear such a heavy burden. There are gayer things to consider.'

'Why, thank you, Mister Lewrie.' She colored prettily. 'But surely such amusements as you suggest are only folly and frivolity. Perhaps in better times, but for now, we do what we must, and I would be an ungrateful daughter to even think of such things while my momma and daddy need me. Just as you must suspend your own amusements until the ship is tied up in some harbor, is that not so?'

'Yes, I suppose so.' He shrugged.

'Our journey began long ago, upriver,' she said, trying to be light about it but not able to hide the sadness in her. 'Now we're only on one stage of it and where we'll have to go from Charleston I don't know. Maybe back to England with our relatives in Surrey, as you suggested. Maybe the Indies, or Florida or Canada, or the Moon.'

'Then will you consider frivolous things?' he prompted, to get her out of her sad mood.

'I promise you I shall be nothing but frivolous,' she told him, smiling once more. But the shore was almost under the horizon, and the refugee fleet aft of them was in the way, so the smile didn't linger.

'If you would like to be alone with your feelings for a while, I could walk you aft,' Alan suggested, wondering why he was trying to cajole her when she seemed ready for a good cry.

'No, that's the last thing I need right now, I pray you,' she said quickly. 'Things come, things go, and you can't change that. But I will miss this country. A few more years and… do you remember seeing that very fine house on the way downriver, on the right? This side of the ship?'

'Just before we picked up the ships at Fort Johnston, yes.'

'The Orton house. We were ready to expand our house to copy it, just before all the troubles began.' Caroline smiled in fond memory. 'I don't think we could have ever really afforded it, but Momma was set on it after seeing an oil of it, and Daddy usually let her have her way in most things. It would have been a sign that we belonged here for good. Now I'm glad we didn't build on, it would have been too much to lose.'

'You lost a lot, so Burgess told me,' Alan said, trying to find a way to continue talking to her that didn't set off her bitter memories.

'Aye, we did, but not as much as others, more than some. If we had not declared for the Crown, in spite of how bad they tried to run the colony and how venal their appointed men were… well, it would have been a Tarleton or a Fanning that burned us out, anyway. Maybe God wants the Chiswicks back in England. Just the way that perhaps God wanted you to be a sailor.'

In spite of his best efforts, Alan had to break out into a fit of guffaws, which prompted Caroline to forget her musings and try to cozen the reason for his humor from him, which, naturally, improved her own.

'Do you mock the Good Lord, sir?' she said, pretending to frown.

'No, and I don't mock you, either, but the idea of me being meant for a sailor set me off. Sorry. I'll tell you about it someday, but it wasn't my first choice for a career.'

'Ah, second sons get no choice, do they?' She smiled, thinking she understood. 'What would you have been otherwise?'

'A man who sleeps late and dines well,' Alan told her.

'And a less somber one, I think.' She grinned as though they had shared a great secret. 'You really must