The Wake of the Lorelei Lee

by L. A. Meyer

  My Sailing Master, Enoch Lightner, a white bandage over his sightless eyes, is seated at the foot of the table, and he sings out the next verse in his lusty baritone.

  Now, another winsome girl would not do us any harm,

  No, another winsome lass would not do us any harm . . .

  Arthur McBride, he who is Third Mate of the Cerberus, joins him, all the while leering at me over the rim of his wineglass.

  Aye, one more winsome girl would not do us any harm,

  And we’ll all hang on behind!

  The young Irish hound must know, given that both Jaimy and Joseph are here aboard, that he has absolutely no chance of getting into my knickers—or into my bed, for that matter—but he nevertheless gazes upon me with some heat as he sings the verse to finish up the song. I know that it was with great regret that he left his lovely and most attentive Chinese handmaidens behind him on Cheng Shih’s Divine Wind. Sorry, mate, but for you, once again, the hair shirt of the monk.

  I am not the only female aboard, because Ian McConnaughey sits midtable with his wife and my dear friend Mairead, in all her red-haired beauty, beaming at his side. ’Course Arthur McBride knows better than to try to touch her. In the past, he has never had such reservations about me even though for most of our acquaintance I have been his superior officer.

  Ah, yes, the Jacky Faber bed . . . It is right over there, nicely made up by my servant, Lee Chi, with the best of silks and fine cottons, and I have seen covert male glances stealing over to look at it. Don’t think I don’t see your eyes, or know your thoughts, you dogs.

  My Jolly Roger flag is draped at the foot of the bed and my gold-on-green silk Chinese dragon pennant floats over the top of it. I place my right hand on Jaimy’s as we all sing out the song, but I do not place my left hand on Joseph’s, even though I sort of want to. No, after all, we can’t have a jealous male duel right here right now, and over my silly self, now, can we . . . ?

  Complications, complications . . . Life used to be so simple . . .

  Although we left the shores of Australia weeks ago, we continue to celebrate our deliverance from captivity. That is, some of us do, anyway—myself and my officers, and James Emerson Fletcher, Captain of the Cerberus, with his crew of recently freed Irish lads, many of whom were former crew members of my first ship, the bold, sleek, and ultimately doomed Emerald. Joseph Jared, Commander of the third ship in our fleet, HMS Dart, a neat and trim thirty-gun sloop of war, joins us in this celebration, but he is not a recently freed convict. Oh, no. He is, in fact, in charge of the Royal Navy ship that was assigned to escort the East India Company’s ship Cerberus to New South Wales and then bring her back. Therein lies a further complication because the Cerberus is no longer in the possession of the East India Company but is being held now by James Emerson Fletcher and his crew of Irish rogues.

  It was what Mr. Yancy Beauregard Cantrell, renowned Mississippi gambler, used to call a “Mexican stand-off”. . . all participants involved standing with guns pointing at each other’s heads, waiting for someone to make the first deadly move. Something had to be done.

  I called a conference. When all were gathered in my cabin, I said, “Gentlemen, please, we must come to some sort of agreement. Captain Jared, you may speak first . . .”

  Jared stood and said, “Most of you are escaped convicts. I am honor bound to take you back . . .”

  That got him a low growl from those present, who did, after all, outnumber him in the way of armed ships.

  “. . . however, I am open to suggestions.” He sat back down.

  Then my good and very intelligent John Higgins, the very soul of reason, spoke up:

  “I know, Mr. Jared, how deeply you hold your concept of honor as a Royal Navy officer. However . . . consider this: Your initial duty was to escort the Cerberus to New South Wales, then back to England. Is that true?”

  Jared nodded. “That was our mission.”

  Higgins fussed with some papers on the tabletop and continued.

  “The Cerberus did, indeed, go to Australia and did discharge its cargo of felons as ordered. It is now ready to go back to England, under your protection, as per your original charter. So you have fulfilled your duty in that regard. Is that true?”

  Jared considered this, and then said, “True.”

  “Now, as to the Lorelei Lee . . .” Higgins continued, “I believe, Captain Jared, there is nothing in your orders concerning that particular craft. Is that right?”

  “Also true.”

  “Well, then, this is Faber Shipping Worldwide’s modest proposal: That we all proceed back to European waters. Once there, the Lorelei Lee will go back to her home port of Boston, and the Cerberus and the Dart will go into British waters and any disputes between their respective captains will be settled there, and in an honorable fashion.”

  Higgins again paused and looked about. He cleared his throat.

  “Ahem. There are further considerations: It is a long way back to England, and we are a formidable force—three swift ships, trained crews, and sixty-two guns, with powder and ball to match. It is to be expected that we will encounter many French and Spanish ships, and we are still at war with those nations . . . Prizes, Sirs . . . many rich prizes . . .”

  There was a low growl of avarice all around the table, and the deal was done.

  It was an uneasy truce, but, for now, it seems to be holding. Mr. Joseph Jared will have to make a decision when we get back to European waters—one of those “friendship versus duty” decisions—and I, for one, am not looking forward to the outcome.

  Complications, complications . . .

  “What means song, Memsahib? Who is Sahib Nelson and why do you sing of his dear blood?”

  I look down into the deep dark eyes of Ravi, my little East Indian boy, gazing up at me. He is dressed in the white loincloth in which I first met him back on that street in Bombay. He holds a tray of full wineglasses, and eager hands reach out to grab their stems as he passes them around.

  Grateful for a moment to deflect the ardent adult male gazes aimed in my direction, I direct my full attention to Ravi. I run my hand through his black locks and beam my present contentment down upon the little fellow. I am back in command of my lovely Lorelei Lee, Jaimy and all my friends are about me, and all’s right with my watery world, for now. So why not live in the moment, I say. I want to throw my booted foot up on the table in sheer exuberant contentment, but I don’t do it, being sort of a lady, and all.

  “Well, young Sahib Ravi, it was like this,” I say, scooping up the last glass on his tray and lifting it to my lips. “Several years ago there was a great naval battle off Cape Trafalgar, on the coast of Spain. It was between us Brits, with assorted Scots, Welsh, and Irishmen, against the might of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. Over seventy warships were involved. All the men at this table were there and qualified to wear this medal—”

  “Wasn’t my fault you dumped me off back in London before the big fight!” laments Mairead, tossing her copper locks about in mock resentment. “Or I’da had a foine medal, too, like the one you wear, you brazen hussy!”

  Laughter all around.

  I grin and look down at the Trafalgar medal that rests on the chest of my navy blue lieutenant’s jacket, gold braid all around. True, I did get one of the medals that were struck to commemorate that great event, despite my being female, thanks to the efforts of Captain Trumbull, the officer who had relieved me of command of the HMS Wolverine.

  “Yes, Mairead,” I say. “And had you been on board, I’m sure the French would have been vanquished all the sooner!”

  More laughter, but I’m not altogether kidding. Mairead is a fiery, fierce thing, and she would have given her best had she been there. I know it.

  “Anyway, Ravi,” I continue when the place subsides a bit. “This here gent”—and I pick up the medal and show him the man depicted there in profile—“was Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, of the Royal Navy, and he led our fleet to victory that day against supe
rior odds.” I put the medal back flat upon my chest. “Had he not done so and we had been defeated, then Napoleon could have freely landed his troops on the east coast of England. At the best, there would have been many very bloody battles, and at the worst, we would all now be wearing French uniforms and Boney would be seated in Windsor Castle.”

  That gets a low growl from the Brits present.

  “So, Ravi, to continue . . . At the end of the great battle, there was a French marine high up in the rigging of a French First-Rate man-of-war, and he shot down upon the officers who stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory and wounded Lord Nelson most severely.”

  Ravi’s eyes grow wider and wider.

  “And then, Missy Memsahib?”

  “And then his men carried him down to his bed and laid him upon it, and there he died in great pain from a bullet in his spine, his last words being ‘Come kiss me, Hardy, if you love me,’ Captain Hardy being the commander of his flagship and his longtime friend, y’see.”

  “Very sad, Miss, but does not explain song,” says the persistent Ravi.

  “I’m getting to that, boy, just hold on. Ahem . . . So then, what to do with Lord Nelson’s body? The naval officers present thought long and hard about it. He was much too important to be simply tossed over the side like any ordinary dead seaman. After all, he had saved Mother England herself, so it was decided that his body should be placed in a large cask and that cask be filled with rum to preserve his honored remains.”

  “Indian way much neater. Build fire, then poof.”

  “I know, Ravi, but that is not our way,” I continue. “And so it was done—Nelson’s body was stripped down and placed in the cask, and the barrel was filled to the top with the best rum the ship had onboard, and HMS Victory headed back to England, bearing its sad burden.”

  “And so that is end of story, Missy?” asks Ravi. I can tell he is not totally satisfied with my explanation.

  “Well, not quite, Ravi,” I say. “There was one problem with the cask into which Nelson was put. There was a small spigot at the bottom . . .”

  Snorts of suppressed laughter all around.

  “So?” asks Ravi, mystified.

  “So, my beautiful little boy.” I chortle, gathering up the lad and hugging him to me. “When the ship got to England and the funeral was prepared and the cask was opened”—a bit of a pause here—"and when the cask was opened . . . the body of Lord Nelson was still in there”—another pause—“but the rum was not!”

  Roars of laughter fill the cabin. Well told, Jacky!

  “But what happened to it?” asks my innocent little lad.

  “Uh . . . the Victory’s sailors had snuck down in the dark of night and opened the spigot to pour themselves cups of the rum, and they drank it till it was all gone.”

  Ravi pulls away from me, aghast. “But that is disgusting!”

  I pull him back to me, shaking with laughter. “If you think that is disgusting, Ravi, then you do not know British sailors!”

  More gales of raucous laughter.

  “And so you see, little one, a cup of Nelson’s blood is another way of saying ‘a cup of rum.’ And sometimes having a bit of a drink is called ‘tapping the Admiral’! Now go do your job and fill more cups with Nelson’s blood and pass them around!”

  Ravi, thoroughly revolted, I am sure, to the depths of his Hindu soul, scurries off to do his duty. I turn back to the . . . situation . . . at hand. We are essentially becalmed and so I have no real reason to deny Jaimy my bed this evening, and oh, I do so want it to be so . . . But what of Jared? What of discipline?

  Complications, complications . . .

  While I’m dwelling on how I’m going to deal with this, I notice that Lee Chi, who is usually a cheerful sort of Chinese eunuch, is uncharacteristically nervous. He has been serving the food under Higgins’s watchful eye, but he has also gone to the door several times to peer out, coming back each time looking more worried. He was given to me by the Chinese pirate Cheng Shih, who had, well . . . ahem . . . taken a bit of a shine to me when I was her prisoner on our way down to Botany Bay. Quite a bit of a shine, I recall with a slight blush coming to my cheeks.

  It sure is hot in here, I’m thinking as I stick my finger in my collar and pull it away from my neck. I rather regret being dressed in my naval finery—heavy jacket, lacy shirt, tight britches, and black boots. But I do like to show off, especially with Jaimy by my side, and it’s my duty as Grand Mistress of the Proceedings to look good and to sparkle and to be gay and so lend joy to all at my table.

  I notice Lee Chi whispering something to Ravi, who has just come back into the cabin, and I break off telling a humorous story and motion for the lad to bring his tray to my side.

  “What’s up, Ravi?” I say, cutting my eyes to the Chinaman, who stands nervously in a corner. “What’s wrong with Mr. Lee?”

  “Sahib Lee teach me some of his words . . .”

  “Yes, dear, go on,” I say.

  “He say tai means ‘big’ . . .”

  I nod at that, anxious to get back into the high hilarity of the evening, however hot it is growing in here.

  “. . . and phoon means ‘wind.’”

  “So?”

  I look up at Lee Chi and he points outside and says one word.

  “Typhoon.”

  Uh-oh . . .

  Buy the Book

  Visit www.hmhco.com or your favorite retailer to purchase the book in its entirety.

  Visit www.hmhco.com to find all of the books in the Bloody Jack series.

  About the Author

  L. A. MEYER (1942–2014) was the acclaimed writer of the Bloody Jack Adventure series, which follows the exploits of an impetuous heroine who has fought her way up from the squalid streets of London to become an adventurer of the highest order. He and his wife, Annetje, operated an art gallery near their home in a small fishing village on the coast of Maine until 2013. Visit his website at www.jackyfaber.com.