The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  I've six years in the Navy; why do I still feel like such a low fraud? he asked himself.

  He knew his own preferences for peacetime service would be to cruise like a hired yacht, sip claret and dine well, perhaps carry some doxy in his cabins for sport. Yet he wore the King's Coat, and perforce had to live what felt like a great sham; a sham which he was sure others would someday recognize.

  "Mister Fellows the sailing master, sir," Ballard said as Alan's senior mates gathered round. Fellows was short, wiry, ginger-haired, and seemed like a timorous store clerk. "Mister Harkin the bosun, sir." Harkin was built like a salt-beef barrel with arms as thick as hawsers, and a round hard face. "Mister Maclntyre the surgeon's mate. This is Mister Taft, the sailmaker, Mister Fowles the master gunner..."

  "Fowles?" Lewrie interrupted. "Ariadne, winter of '80. You were but an able seaman then. My first ship as a newly."

  "Aye, sir, I were. Thankee fer 'membrin' me, Cap'n, sir," the clumsy older salt bobbed happily. "An' that 'appy I be t' be a'servin' unner 'Ram-Cat' Lewrie, sir." The introductions finished, Lewrie plucked at his uniform. "I meant to pay my respects to the Port Admiral, else I'd have dressed more suitable for a first-day's inspection, men," he said with a small jape at himself. "Something less grand! So, I'll delay going over the ship from bilges to mast trucks until tomorrow at eight bells of the morning watch. At which time I will wear slop-clothing and put my nose into everything. So put right what you will, and have a list ready concerning any deficiencies you want corrected in your departments, or items still wanting, hey?" He gave them a warning, and time enough to present a going concern, sure there were glaring faults hereabouts in a ship fresh from the graving dock and careenage, with most of her furniture and fittings recently reloaded. "Mister Ballard, let us go aft. I assume the ship's books are in the great-cabins?"

  "They are, sir. This way, sir," Ballard replied gravely.

  "How many hands have turned over, Mister Ballard?" Alan asked as they descended to the waist from the quarter-deck for the hatch to the aft cabins.

  "At present, sir, there are thirty-six hands aboard, ordinary, able or landsmen. All but eleven may be rated seamen. The purser Mister Keyhoe has nine men away from the ship at present, to row him over to the dockyards. Alacrity came into port with fifty-five, ten short of her rated complement. Five were discharged, sprung or ruptured, three retired. But, there's a new frigate fitting out here, sir, and we lost eleven hands into her. The Port Admiral sent an officer aboard and got them to ... ahem ... volunteer for her," Ballard said with a wry pout.

  "Well, damn my eyes," Lewrie said with a weary disgust. There was no getting around the problem of manning the King's Ships. Seamen were always the rarity. One could bedazzle calf-heads at a rendezvous tavern to take the Joining Bounty with tales of far-off ports of call, and there were young lads aplenty who'd shun their farms to run off to the sea, boys enough with stars in their eyes to sign aboard as servants or powder monkeys. But, seamen...!

  In peacetime, the Impress Service could not press by force ashore, even if the regulating officers could find a bribable magistrate who would sign a permission. Even in wartime, the press could not take a man outside the ports, could not (in theory) press-gang civilian landsmen—only recognizable sailors. Alacrity could, should the need be direful, board arriving merchant vessels in the Channel, or in legal "soundings" of the British Isles and press seamen. But such men were resentful and mutinous, and Alan didn't much care for that solution. Neither did he care for the scrapings from debtors' prisons, those who knew nothing of the sea and only took tops'l payment to get out of gaol for their debts of less than twenty pounds.

  "We need twenty-nine more hands to make our rated sixty-five," Alan figured. "At least ten or twelve of those have to be able seamen. Let's be pessimistic and say ten. A dozen landsmen for waisters, and make what we may of them. Captain Palmer suggested a Mister Powlett' s Marine Society of London. Know much of it, Mister Ballard?"

  "Aye, sir," Ballard nodded. "They take poor's rate tykes off the streets, scrub them up and teach mem some knots and pulley-hauley. I do believe they teach them letters and figures, after a fashion, too, sir. Some practical boat work on the Thames..."

  "If they can read and write a little, they're miles better than most, then," Lewrie snorted. "He offered them in lieu of ordinary seamen. What think you of that idea?"

  "If they're not too young, they may make topmen, sir. And God knows, we may lash and drive anyone to knowledge, given even a slight spark of common sense to begin with, sir."

  "Damned right!" Lewrie chortled, having been driven and lashed himself to his lore. "Good Christ, what a brothel!"

  His great-cabins were empty of furnishings except for a double bed (a hanging-cot for two) and a few partitions, and the chart room desk and shelves. The black and white checkered sailcloth deck cover yawned vast. But the cabins were painted a showy French blue, picked out with gold-leaf trim, with borders, overhead deck beams, transom settee and window frames all painted a gaudy pinkish red!

  "Quite elegant, sir," Lieutenant Ballard said with a tiny smirk; just the slightest quirky lift of his mouth, and a crinkle to his eyes. "I am informed your predecessor Lieutenant Riggs adored his comforts more than most officers. You'll be wishing to repaint, of course, sir."

  "Damned right I do," Alan growled. He knew what the Navy thought of "elegant"! Any officer, unless he was so senior he no longer had to cater to anyone's opinion, was thought unmanly should he aspire to any degree of comfort or sophistication beyond bare-bones Spartan, living as hand-to-mouth as a lone gypsy on the Scottish border. "In the meantime, I would admire if you would arrange for my personal furniture to be fetched offshore. I'll sleep ashore for the nonce, at the George, until we put this right. And the painter will have to work around my things."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "The books, Mister Ballard?"

  "On the chart table, sir. I'll leave you to them, then."

  "Thankee, Mister Ballard, that'll be all for now."

  "Shall I have some coffee sent aft, sir? From the wardroom stores for now. As a welcome-aboard gesture, as it were, sir."

  "Thankee, again, Mister Ballard, aye."

  "Oh, whom should I ask for at the George, sir?" Ballard asked, pausing in his leave-taking.

  "Uhm... with Mistress Lewrie, Mister Ballard," Alan blushed, making the removal of his hat, taking a seat on the one stool remaining, and opening one of the ledgers a suddenly all-engrossing activity.

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard replied, lifting his brows in wonder.

  Damme, what have we here? Arthur Ballard asked himself after he gained the weather-decks. Mr. Fowles called him "Ram-Cat" Lewrie? Rare for an officer young as me to have a nickname already. Must be a holy terror! And married? Unless Mistress Lewrie is his mother... God no, who'd have his mother come to see him off! God in Heaven, a married officer, then?

  "Whew!" he whistled softly. "Mister Harkin, boat party! Take the cutter!"

  Chapter 2

  "How long before you're ready to sail, Alan?" Caroline asked, once they were tucked companionably into the high bedstead, and the last candle had been snuffed for the night.

  "Four days, I should think." He yawned. "She had at least a halfhearted refit before I got her. Coppering's good, hull's sound, and the bosun has most everything set to rights again. Once we're done loading stores. And our passengers."

  "Oh, God, your ... what did you call them ... live-lumber?" She snickered in the dark as she snuggled to him, as he put out an arm to receive her head on his shoulder.

  "More," he complained, putting his face to her sweet hair.

  "More? How?" she asked.

  "God knows, darling. There's that Trinity House master, Gatacre and his mapmaker. They're to swing hammocks in the wardroom. Six midshipmen in a draft for the Bahamas Squadron, and never one of them ever aboard a ship, hanging like bats from the overhead on the orlop, right-aft by the fishrooms. And this morning, the Port Admiral tells me I'm
to transport a chaplain and his wife and servants to Nassau, in my cabins. That means I'd have to feed and water them, out of my own purse, damme. I'll end up in a hammock in the chart-space if they keep shoving bodies at me! Least they could do is put plate aboard."

  "What's that?"

  "If you carry coin for the treasury, or solid pay out to a foreign station, you get a small percentage. No hope of that, though." He sighed. "Some Reverend Townsley and his lawful blanket."

  "Why, I met them, Alan!" Caroline exclaimed. "They're staying here at the George. Stiff company."

  "Must be a poor sort of hedge-priest if he has to take chaplain pay," Alan chuckled. "You never see reverends in wartime. Too busy at saving civilian souls of a sudden, don't ya know! What were they like?"

  "Snooty as earls." She shivered against him. "They're related to some captain... no, some comm-something..."

  "Commodore?" Alan asked suspiciously. "That was it A Commodore Garvey, out in the West Indies."

  "Oh, stap me, he's commanding the Bahamas Station!" Alan cried. "They could ruin me if I treat 'em less than royal. Gawddd!"

  "We took tea together this afternoon," Caroline said. "He said your commodore already had his wife, son and daughter out there. The son's in the Navy, too. A midshipman, I think he told me. Or maybe he'd just made lieutenant. I forget. They're a formidable pair. And with two wagonloads of goods. So they couldn't have left a poor parish," she decided. "Unless they looted it on their way out."

  "Two wagonloads, Lord," Alan groaned. "Where'll I stow it all? Maybe I should just give 'em my cabins for the entire voyage. And I'll leave 'em blue and rose, too. That ought to be grand enough for 'em."

  "I think they're lovely."

  "The Navy wouldn't. I should have painted earlier. Let them describe their quarters to Commodore Garvey once they get to Nassau, he'll think me a primping dancing-master."

  "I still say they looked elegant," Caroline decided aloud. "Found lodgings yet?" he inquired. "There's little time left."

  "I know, my love!" She sighed as she burrowed deeper into him with sudden ardor. "I've seen several. I'll take care of it, never fear. Oh, God, this is going to be so hard, to watch you sail away, and here I am, in Portsmouth, where I don't know a soul! Four days?" She wailed softly.

  "Four days we should make the most of," Alan muttered, running a hand over her hip and thigh, delighting in her shivers of expectation. That night in Petersfield, they'd left a candle burning in their eagerness, and she'd come to him with a robe on, not a bedgown. A robe which slid down her shoulders and parted to reveal a girlish slimness, a veritable feast of creamy skin andproud young, close-set breasts, a taut, flat belly trimmed by riding, and long, incredibly fine and tapering smooth legs. He still had not gotten over the wonder of being with anyone so delectable, of her being his to caress and stroke into passion at a whim.

  Like Venus on the half-shell, he exulted silently, like Aphrodite rising from the waves ... but even better!

  "You don't think me gawky and spindle-shanked?" she teased him as he nuzzled her graceful neck. "You don't prefer more roundness?"

  "God, Caroline, you're the loveliest woman ever I did see!" he told her truthfully. She rolled on top of him to kiss him, to receive his kisses as his hands slid down to her firm little buttocks to draw the bedgown higher.

  She uttered a thrilling little laugh as he found her hips, as his fingertips brushed her bare flesh.

  She sat up astride of him to lift the bedgown over her head, raising her arms high and inclining her head with her hair loose and long like a silvery shimmer in the almost-dark. His hands rose to take possession of her firm breasts and she leaned into his palms for support, and excitement.

  "Rough hands," she whispered, taking one so she could kiss it. "A sailor's hands. Rough from all those ropes and things."

  "Too rough on you?" he grunted in rising ardor.

  "Never a bit of it, my love," she chuckled again, softer. "I know it's not seemly, but I want you to teach me something new, Alan."

  "Wanton jade!" he teased, sitting up a little to nuzzle at her nipples, which had gone puckery-hard from his caresses.

  "Your wanton jade!" she promised, going goose-pimply with rising delight. "Only yours, darling. Make me yours again."

  He drew her down to him, enfolding her in his arms so they were drawn against each other, her knees up by his chest, and one hand of his stroking the softest, most intimate of her flesh.

  "Oh, God, but making love is so..." she moaned, near to transport. Her hips were moving now against his hand, her upper body rocking slowly left and right. She began to slide off to draw him over, but he stopped her. "Come to me, now," she implored.

  "Right where you are, love," he grinned.

  "Oh, yes!" she sighed, gasping as she felt his member brushing her. She slid down just a trifle, rose up on her palms as he fitted himself to her and thrust upwards with gentle but insistent pressure.

  Down a little more she slid, then gave out with an inarticulate groan of surprise and pleasure as he slid deep.

  "Riding St. George," he exulted as she made more happy groaning sounds, each ending in a rising note.

  "The dragon spitted, 'pon his lance below ... ohh!" she laughed.

  "Sit up, darling," he coaxed. "Sit up, Caroline!"

  "Oh, it's so... oh, yes!" She bit her lip, rolled her head to either side. He took her hands and held them tight, their fingers entwined fiercely. Hips rocking, upper body swaying, her head far back and her throat bared to the ceiling in her ecstasy, she met his movements, anticipated and amplified them. "Oh, so completely... so deeply! Jesus, I'll surely die of more! Ahh-hahhh!"

  "Then I think we'll die together," Alan panted, swooning, with the entire world reduced to the friction of moist flesh, and his own release building like the pressure from a powder charge in gun's barrel. Time slowed down, time had no meaning, the planet and its tawdry doings ended beyond what they could touch, feel, or hear. And then she broke, weeping with release, crying out as if given a tiny glimpse of paradise, and he took hold of her slim hips and firm little bottom, and drove upwards, reveling in the creaking of ropes that supported their mattress, the pump-washer sound of their two bodies fused, her astonished further cries as she collapsed on top of him with her breasts brushing his chest, and then the far-away groan he shouted to the night as his groin and his brain exploded into royal fireworks.

  Neither of them had an ear for the irritated thumping of the lodgers next door. Not the first time that night, nor the second.

  "It's so unfair," she whispered much later, after their third congress of the night, just before well-earned sleep.

  "What is?" Alan mumbled, his mind reeling.

  "That we, at last, know joy of each other for such a short time before we must part," she sighed, snuggling down inside his embrace, one thigh across his exhausted lap and her long hair draped over his chest. "I wish you could smuggle me aboard your ship and take me wherever you go. To know so much pleasure from your dear hands, Alan. And then to be deprived for three whole years!"

  "It's a hellish wrench for me, too, darling girl," he admitted, eyes shut and almost glued together for want of sleep.

  "If only we had longer, a year or more, so I might have grown accustomed," she wished. "Or does it ever cease to be such a wonder? Will making love with each other be forever this new and daring, dear?"

  "With our enthusiasm, I'd wager deep on forever," he chuckled as he stroked her long, smooth back.

  "Spinsters succumb to the green sickness," Caroline muttered.

  "Now what would you know of that?" he chid her gently.

  "Fall ill and die for lack of it!" she laughed. "And their only cure is ... this. Now I know how marvelous it is, I'll be taken to my bed for want of more! We both will. You'll sail back from the West Indies and find me wasted away to nothing, from want of you, and nought a cure for me but your rapt... attentions! None but your kisses and caresses will save me."

  "Then I wish us
a very long recovery," he rejoined.

  Several long minutes passed as Lewrie began to breathe deep on the verge of slumber, then:

  "Alan?"

  "Ahmm," he uttered.

  "I can't go home to Anglesgreen."

  "Uhmm, I know."

  "And I don't know a soul in Portsmouth," she went on softly.

  "Uhmmhmrn."

  "Reverend Townsley is taking his wife out there. And your superior thinggummy in Nassau ... he has his wife and daughter with him already. There're so many Loyalist families settling in the Bahamas. With their wives and children. We once considered Eleuthera, ourselves."

  "Hmm?"

  "Why could you not take me with you?" she queried hopefully.

  "Oh, Caroline, it's heat and flies, bad as India," he grumbled, wakened enough to counter her. "Mosquitoes, roaches big as ..."

  "As if in North Carolina I'd never seen a palmetto bug," she scoffed. "That was a polite way of saying a 'cockroach' big as your thumb!"

  "There's fever, Caroline. Yellow Jack and malaria. Cholera now and again. Poxes that no one even knows what to call by name!" he objected. "No, dear, dear as I desire you with me, I cannot. I love you too much to subject you to such risk!"

  "I've been inoculated against smallpox. We had physicians good as London," she pressed, though in a soft, almost wheedling tone as she stirred her body against his. "I've seen Yellow Jack before. I might have had it when I was little. I can't remember."

  "You don't know what you ask, Caroline," he groused, sitting up in bed, now arguably awake, though the hour was late and he had to rise at first light. "Caroline, believe me when I tell you that I love you to distraction. Frightened as I was of marriage, more than most bachelors, believe that, too ... life with you is a joy beyond all imagining. And it will be in future. But if we're to have that future, you must be here for me to come home to. If I lost you out there, I'd ... were I selfish enough to take you with me and something happened to you, I'd wish to die, too!"