King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Aye, he’s got some ‘splainin’ t’do!” Miss Nancy threatened.

  Damme, wonder why I ever thought she was toppable, Lewrie thought with a frisson of dread; now she looks like death’s head on a mopstick!

  “Let us in there, damn yer blood!”

  “Why … go right in, ladies,” Haslip snickered, half-bowing to them and doffing his tarred hat. “You go right in!”

  In the face of that, Lewrie retreated to the middle of his day-cabin as about ten women swished in like a Macedonian phalanx, bristly and out-of-sorts.

  “Arrr … some live better’n others, I do declare,” Old Trollop remarked, looking ’round at the furnishings. Lewrie kept a harder eye on the Lissome Daughter, who was picking things up and valuating them; books, plates, cups, spoons, napkin-rings … anything that wasn’t locked up or nailed down, and several others were coughing, strolling, and “shopping” too; a sure sign they’d practiced the shop-lifting “lay” a time or two together.

  “We’ll frisk you down when you leave, ladies,” Lewrie declared, “so you might as well leave my things be.”

  “Aye, an’ I’ll jus’ bet ye’d enjoy th’ pattin’ down,” Lissome Daughter tittered.

  “Depends on how you might enjoy it, young miss.” Lewrie grinned.

  “La, what a cheeky ol’ bugger ye are!” She coloured, swishing her skirts impishly. “Fetchin’, though …”

  “An’ take ’at spoon out your apron pocket,” Aspinall warned.

  “What do you wish of me?” Lewrie asked.

  “First of all, Cap’um … how ’bout ya trot out some grog? We’re dry as dust,” Miss Nancy demanded, “an’ them sailors o’ your’ won’t go shares no more.”

  “Ah.” Lewrie glowered. “That all?”

  “Nossir, it ain’t,” Old Trollop thundered. “We wants t’know what’s t’happen to us, dammit! What-all that speechifyin’ was about.”

  “Aye, does that mean they’ll hang us as traitors’n rebels if we stay out here?” Nancy frowned, hands on her hips in a full aggressive fishwife’s stance. “Mean, do we let ’em top us, we’re guilty of givin’ comfort an’ such, so we get took up for’t?”

  “Ah!” Lewrie glimmed, his eyes crinkling with un-looked-for inspiration. “Uhm, Aspinall … do you and Andrews fetch out the barricoe of wine from the lazarette … the, uhm … claret. Mister Padgett, may I prevail upon you to break out all my cups and glasses? I doubt I’ve seats for all of you ladies, but …” he said invitingly, waving a hand about the cabins.

  “Claret, well now!” Several oohed or ahhed. “Ain’ niver had a claret.” “Sure ye ain’t got no gin?” one of them had to carp though.

  They shoved dining table chairs out in the open, tried to shift his desk chairs but found they were “fiddled down”; filled the settee to starboard overfull, even perching on the arms, and clucked and put on airs as they got their glasses, mugs, or coffee cups filled from a hastily decanted pewter pitcher, getting “lordly” for lordly guzzle.

  Well, burgundy, Lewrie sniffed to himself, not good claret, and I doubt they’ll know the diff’rence. Gad, look at ’em slosh it back … that five-gallon barricoe’ll be gone in an eyeblink!

  “Now, ladies …” he began, accepting a sherry glass full of the wine himself—to be “chummy.” “I have to warn you … what our King said is that he no longer looks on this as a mutiny but as an armed rebellion against the Crown. And anyone who persists in it is labeled a traitor to King and Country from the moment it was read. Just like readin’ the Riot Act before the soldiers come to clear the streets … once you hear it you have no more excuses for creating a disturbance.”

  “God o’ Mercy, they’ll string us all up!” one of the older ones wailed into her hand, her fine “claret” forgotten and her eyes red.

  “Tosh, ya silly ol’ cow!” Nancy gravelled, tossing her chin and her hair. “Won’t hang poor whores, ’cept those that sided with rebels! Transport some maybe …” she said, level-headedly, “examples, like.”

  “Gawd, I don’t wanna go t’no New South Wales!” Lissome Daughter whined. “T’other end o’ th’ world, nigger savages an’ snakes … tigers an’ dragons! I seen ’em in a book, I did! Real dragons, with tongues o’ fire! An’ coal-black murderers wif pointy teeth too!”

  “Hmmph!” Lewrie heard Cox’n Andrews sniff in disdain. He gave him a shrug, to commiserate with him over the pig-ignorance of whores.

  “Oh, worse than that.” Lewrie winced, almost sucking wind between his teeth, trying to recall all he’d seen in the Far East or in a recent account of the flora and fauna of that part of the world.

  “Lord, what’d be worse, sir?” Lissome Daughter blubbered.

  “Sea-snakes, long as this ship,” Lewrie intimated forebodingly. “Crawl right out of the water and swallow folk whole. Poisonous snakes, but with mouths that big, it doesn’t matter much, now does it. Snakes and scorpions on land, spiders big as soup plates … poisonous too, I read. Crocodiles fiercer than the ones in Egypt … plagues of flies as bad as the Bible. A lot of sickness. Can’t even wet your feet in any stream ’thout you get bit by something. Can’t sleep safe …”

  They sat gap-mouthed, looking physically ill.

  “An’ that whatchyacallem they read, h’it says if we be took with rebels, we’re rebels too, then?” the red-eyed one sniffled.

  “That’s what it meant, yes,” Lewrie sadly intoned. “Means any person who sells ’em anything, associates with ’em, or even knows who they are but doesn’t speak up, will be called a rebel too. Can’t hide ’em out from the law either. If you don’t stop others from helping them, that’s enough for a court to rule you guilty. Just like it urged me to do my utmost to quash them and take back this ship and return it to proper duty.”

  Proteus was shimmying now, heeling over a few degrees from upright as she paid off from the breeze under the barest amount of sail, making a queasy leeway, not yet under helm control.

  “Hoy, where they be takin’ us then?” Old Trollop barked, getting to her feet in a huff. “Dear God, not t’France, surely!”

  “No, just a bit across the Great Nore,” Lewrie patiently explained, putting on a sad smile to calm her. “Recall what that delegate said … about blockading London? They’re shifting ships so they have a line right across the Thames approaches. Further apart, d’ye see …”

  Further out from each other, he schemed hopefully, where they’d have to guess the range and would have to be quick off the mark to hit Proteus with their first un-organised broadsides, before she got far enough away to show them a clean pair of heels! Far enough that it would take too long for a re-enforcing boarding party to come help their mutineers, should they overpower them? Aha!

  “We didn’t want no part o’ this, Cap’um, sir!” Nancy insisted. “Kept us aboard, press-ganged! Wasn’t our doin’! You could speak up for us, couldn’t ye, Cap’um Lewrie?”

  “Kept us broke an’ poor as them, th’ shitten cheats!” one more spoke up sarcastically, one of the more pragmatic variety. “Here! We could go ‘board them new ships, ’long as this’n writes a letter to th’ magistrates, tellin’ ’em we’re innocent. ’Long as we’re kept out here, why can’t we turn a shillin’r two, I ask ye? We gotta eat!”

  “No visiting ‘tween ships,” Lewrie pointed out quickly. “That’s one of their rules. Besides … the way I hear it told, the North Sea ships came here to get paid, ’cause they’re stone-broke too!”

  “Ya mean they’re ‘skint’ too?” Nancy sneered. “Gawd, I just knew it. E’en with our gowns on, we’re just fucked, is all.”

  “Wouldn’t be th’ first time that ‘appened, Nancy,” Old Trollop hooted. “Wi’ half our trade ‘knee-tremblers’ in an alley! Cheap shits, too cheese-parin’ t’rent a room, an’ all that tar an’ splinters from crates’n barrels on me bum, come mornin’ …”

  No, he didn’t particularly wish to picture that—ever!

  “Gawd, whatever’ll we do then?” Lissome Daughter blubb
ed, tears streaking her face. “Hung or transported fer life. Oh, we’re jus’ whores, not like respectable folk, so they won’t care if they string us up by th’ dozen! After we done so much fer th’ Navy too!”

  “You can help me,” Lewrie suggested, “help me take the ship.”

  “Wot?”

  “Do something else for the Navy, ladies,” Lewrie muttered covertly, suddenly inspired as he paced out between them. “You know who the real hard-bitten mutineers are as good as us. You live a rough life … cheats who won’t pay first, pimps trying to recruit you, and take all your earnings … others of your sort who’d fight you for the good corners, the better taverns, right? Don’t you have to carry some … uhm, ‘persuaders,’ for your own protection?”

  Aye, they allowed—yes, they did. Coshes, leather sacks full of lead balls, Dago or Spanish knives that flipped open, or wickedly sharp shaving razors. Lissome Daughter brought forth a pair of hatpins and rewarded him with a happy nod of understanding. Lewrie rewarded her with a beamish leer and a sly-boots chuckle. Lissome Daughter sprang to her feet and walked right up to him, all smiles.

  “Lor’, Cap’um Lewrie, sir!” she gushed, throwing her arms about him, going on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Feller smart’z you, a fine gentleman, I just knew you’d find a way t’save us!”

  “Well, thankee, uhm … don’t b’lieve I ever caught your name … ?” Lewrie blushed, quite happy to return her warm, promising embrace.

  “Sally Blue, sir,” she giggled, swaying back and forth as if it was a dance. “Sally fer me name … an’ Blue fer me eyes.”

  “Well, uhm … well, pleased to make your acquaintance, Mistress. Sally Blue, rather. Well, uhm …” he flustered, wishing he was alone with her, and the rest shooed out to commit mayhem that instant. She took the hint and flounced quite coquettishly back to her wine glass, with a practiced but fetching gleam in those blue eyes of hers.

  “Now give ’im ’is bloody watch’n chain back, Sally,” Mistress Nancy wryly sniggered. “Gawd! Men’s brains … !” They all shrieked.

  All Lewrie could do was shrug haplessly as Sally Blue returned his watch to him. He felt like patting himself down, just to see what else her clever fingers had pilfered. The coy little minx!

  “So yer sayin’ …” Miss Nancy puzzled, after draining off her wine and beckoning Aspinall for a refill. “With us, you’d have more’n enough t’overpower Bales an’ his lot, that right?”

  “Assumin’ they keep their brains where it seems I keep mine,” Lewrie confessed with a disarming, sheepish grin, “aye.”

  “So do we come over all lovey-dovey an’ swoggle ’em, you’d clap ’em in irons an’ take your ship back,” the buxom lass conspired. “Keep some of ’em below … an’ busy long ’nough …”

  “Exactly, Nancy. To a Tee.” Lewrie smiled.

  “Then ya put us ashore, ’cause we ain’t gonna stay out here not a minute after,” Nancy declared for them all, turning to see them agree with her, “not with ev’ry hand turned against us if we stay longer than we have to.

  “We take her back, Nancy,” Lewrie promised. “I’ll see that you all get ashore and back to your own beds. Back to making money. With a letter to Admiral Buckner, praising you for what you did for me, with all your names on it. Why, you might even be called heroines! Get your names in the paper, thanks of the Admiralty, the King …”

  That would mean sailing in towards Sheerness. He regretted it, but if that’s what he had to do to gain allies …

  “Fiddler’s Pay,” Old Trollop snorted in derision. “Thanks an’ wine, an’ then … get out th’ door. Hmmph!”

  “Aye, Cap’um Lewrie …” Nancy smirked at him. “That’s all well an’ good, but … times is hard, an’ money’s short. So … what’s in it for us?”

  Uh-oh! He flinched.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The mutinous ships at the Nore were now arrayed in a single long line, right across the navigable waters of Queen’s Channel and Thamesmouth, with a half-mile separation between ships. Proteus hadn’t gone very far, and was in fact now directly North of Minster and Cheyney Rock Oyster Ground; and when the ebb ran, she streamed back from her anchor into the Queen’s Channel, into deep water, with her stern half facing the inviting escape route into the North Sea. Several smaller warships patrolled the inner and outer face of that barricade to stop and inspect the papers and cargoes of every vessel that tried to sail up or down the great river. So far, McCann’s ravings hadn’t come true; no provisions from civilian merchantmen had been removed and shared out to those ships short of supplies. Of course, Lewrie was now beginning to understand, just like there were tyrants, and then there were tyrants, there were delegates, and then there were delegates, and McCann didn’t speak for them all—thank God.

  Proteus began her ship’s routine at daybreak, with the hands up to scrub decks and stow bedding. There would be no more drills though; Bales had had enough of those and was leery of any more sail-making.

  After the decks were spotlessly sanded and sluiced to pristine white, perhaps as a way to regain the crew’s lost enthusiasm for the evolving mutiny, Seaman Bales decreed a day of “Rope-Yarn” sloth and led them into the requisite morning “three hearty cheers” before dismissing them for their breakfasts and got back what sounded a bit like proper elan in their open-throated response.

  “Rope-Yahn, sah.” Andrews smiled, ducking back into the cabins. “Evahbody gon’ caulk or idle.”

  “Aha,” Lewrie sighed, looking glum. It was perfect, the enforced half-mile separation, the crew restive and gnawing on their worries, and now idled for the day. Plenty of reason for any sharp-eyed watcher to nod off and let his guard down, plenty of time for his new “vanguard” of prostitutes to insinuate themselves with the diehards and dis-arm them … one way or another. He looked at Wyman, Winwood, and his midshipmen, who were aft to breakfast with him. There would never be a better chance, not in a month of Sundays, yet …

  He fretted his mouth, gnawed at his lips in indecisiveness. It could still fail, go horribly wrong, and more innocent men be killed or injured, more loyal hands hurt and let down by a second failure. After scheming for so long, feverish for an opening, if they tried again and were beaten again, there’d never be another hope of salving Proteus.

  What they pay detached captains for, he writhed in silent agony; be king and foreign minister and God all rolled up into one, with yer head on the choppin’ block if you’re wrong! Come on, ya damn’ fool! A bit o’ backbone … a pinch o’ wits! Say something. They’re waitin’.

  “Forenoon … or wait ’til the First Dog,” Lewrie muttered just to fill the echoing void, to temporise a bit more while his creaky wit churned. “Try to sail past the guns of the rest … with frigates and a sloop of war patrolling inshore? I fear it’ll have to be mid-morning, gentlemen. No chance to retrieve Lieutenant Devereux and Mister Langlie ’til this is done and we can put back in for ’em.”

  “But do we proceed, sir?” Lt. Wyman dared press.

  “Aye, we do.” Lewrie sighed, feeling like it was wrung from him on an inquisitor’s rack. “Alert Sergeant Skipwith and Mistress Nancy. Charge your pistols and hide them on your persons. Swords might alert them. Let’s say, uhm … six bells of the Forenoon. With a Rope-Yarn Day, they’ll begin queuing up forrud before the rum-cask comes up in no particular order. With nothing more’n grog on their minds, we must hope. Six Bells, gentlemen. Aye … let’s proceed with it.”

  Gawd! he shivered as they departed, flopping half-limp into his desk chair; I’m trustin’ to luck, Marines who can play-act innocent, and a pack o’ whores! But he opened the mahogany box on the desktop and extracted two long-barreled, single-shot pistols to clean them and charge them, and check their flints and mechanisms. Andrews set to at his second set of double-barrel Mantons, and Aspinall and Padgett got busy with Padgett’s two small, single-barrel pocket pistols.

  “You hear me shout, Andrews, you come running with my hanger,” Lewrie bade him.
“Your spare cutlass, since you know how to use it. I will trust you, Aspinall, to guard my back with one pistol, and you to my other hand, Mister Padgett. Close-in belly shots, no tricky work.”

  “Aye, sir.” Padgett nodded in his lugubrious, quiet way, with a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead already and his long, clerkish, ink-stained fingers juddering a little in fearful foreboding.

  Daft! Lewrie deemed it; bloody, ragin’ daft! Still, by 11:00 A.M. there’d be some fewer mutineers aboard. Mr. Handcocks and Morley would be aboard Sandwich for the daily wrangle, and they’d take a boat-crew with them, about half of those the diehards. Six or seven less for them to overpower, so … Christ, so hellish daft!

  Half-hour to go to the appointed time for the uprising. Lewrie posing at music by the taffrails, since it was a dry day with no rain, some sunshine, and a bit of wind. Wind square out of the North, about perfect for a ship bound out so she could beam-reach at first to deep water, then haul off to Large or Fair down the Queen’s Channel. Bosun Pendarves had been told off to take and hold the forecastle with some few trusty men, to cut the anchor cable and hoist the inner and outer jibs, so Proteus would bear off to her larboard, South-facing side, and drift. Mr. Towpenny and a few more would hoist the spanker from the mizzen to get some drive on her. Let fall the fore and main-course to hang loose-braced and baggy for speed and not worry about the tops’ls or t’gallants ’til they’d gotten the last of the mutineers subdued.

  With a brace of long-barrel pistols shoved down into the back of his breeches under his uniform coat, sitting on the flag lockers wasn’t the most comfortable thing he’d ever done, as he tootled away on that tin-whistle of his. Louder than his usual wont, to sound casual, and harmless. “Derry Hornpipe,” “Portsmouth Lass,” “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” … he ran through his repertoire (and a damn’ thin’un it was!) of the old, old airs, the Celtic, Gaelic, West Country tunes he knew.