A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “A paint spill, sir?” Lewrie asked, looking at the weedy and wiry offending sailor, Twomey, who stood all but trembling under the Second Officer’s wrath.

  “Should be on charges, sir,” Hillhouse growled, “for clumsiness, and making a mess. I’ve sent for the Master at Arms.”

  “I heard,” Lewrie sternly said. “What happened, Twomey?”

  “Can o’ buff paint f’r th’ gunn’ls, sir,” Twomey stuttered, red in the face, “come up empty on a line wif th’ ol’ brush innit, an’ it snagged on th’ cap-rails an’ spilt a little. Sorry, sir.”

  There were a couple of splotches of buff paint on the white-sanded deck planks, and another where a stiff, worn-out brush had alit.

  “No need for Mister Baggett that I see, Mister Hillhouse,” Lewrie told him. “Send for a Bosun’s Mate, Nobbs or Plunkett, rather, and some paint thinner to take that up. That, or some of our issue wine, either’d do, hey? See you scrub it all up, Twomey.”

  “Aye, I will, sir, an’ thankee, sir!” Twomey said, head bobbing and grinning in relief that he’d escaped an appearance at a Captain’s Mast and a threat of punishment. And, the comparison of paint thinner to the quality of “Miss Taylor” or “Blackstrap”, the cheapest wines that the Navy supplied, had amused the fellow, too.

  “Carry on, all,” Lewrie said, turning away.

  “Ehm, if I may, though, sir?” Lieutenant Harcourt, the First Officer who had come to the commotion, bade.

  “Aye, Mister Harcourt?” Lewrie replied, knowing what was coming. He crooked a finger to lead Harcourt forward to the forecastle belfry and manger where they might not be overheard by the sailors. Noises from the beasts in the manger helped mask their words, and Lewrie had a hope that the farmyard smells from piglets, chickens, nanny goat, and kids might force Harcourt’s gripe to be a brief one.

  “Discipline, sir,” Harcourt began once they were near the manger, and Lewrie tried not to roll his eyes as Lieutenant Harcourt mounted his hobby horse once again. “The hands are going slack and truculent. If we were at sea…”

  “Which we are not, sir,” Lewrie was quick to point out. “And most-like we won’t be, ’til next Epiphany, at this rate.”

  “This sitting idle, sir, it isn’t doing the people any good,” Lieutenant Harcourt said. “We may have to take steps…”

  “Well, not idle, really,” Lewrie countered, striving for a calm tone, instead of grabbing Harcourt by his coat lapels and giving him a good shake. “We’ve been doing a lot of our own repairs, and that has kept ’em busy.”

  “For now, sir,” Harcourt insisted, “but, now the major work is done, it will be hard to come up with any sort of ‘make-work’ to keep their minds on their proper duties. Some shore liberty may help after that, but only for so long, and I fear that we may have to resort to the ‘cat’ or serious stoppages, soon.”

  “Shore liberty?” Lewrie scoffed. “They’d had one decent run ashore since we got here, and none of our previous prize-money’s come in yet. They’re as skint as church-mice, with not two pence to rub together, and can’t afford a good liberty. You know my policy about corporal punishment, sir. I’ll not flog our people without a just cause.”

  But you and Hillhouse would! he thought, a tad angrily.

  “Bread and water, no rum, no tobacco … those only go so far, sir,” Harcourt grumped, stiffening his posture.

  “I know,” Lewrie replied, growing a bit exasperated. “Come up with activities, contests, watch-against-watch t’keep ’em occupied. We can have ’em row or sail races with the cutters, competing choirs, choose the best dancers. Once the last piddlin’ chores are done, I’ll declare a ‘Make and Mend’ day, and ‘Splice the Mainbrace’. After that, we’ll re-establish cutlass, pike, and musketry drill, dry practice on the great guns, and those routines should take care of some of their idleness. It’s our job t’keep the people in good spirits, especially the job of my First Officer. Think what Westcott would’ve done and emulate his example.

  “But, only bring men up on charges that are deservin’ of the lash, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie sternly cautioned. “They ain’t a pack o’ raw lubbers, not the sort t’beat and bully into submission.”

  Harcourt scowled and pursed his lips as if he would say something, ducking his head as if being compared to Lieutenant Westcott was unfair.

  Or maybe you don’t compare, and know it, Lewrie thought.

  “You never can tell, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie genially added, smiling in hope that Harcourt might still measure up, “the yards may turn up a new mast for us, and we’ll be back at sea, where none o’ this matters!”

  “A thing devoutly to be wished, sir, aye,” Harcourt said, seeming to deflate like a bladder as he realised that his arguments would not avail.

  “And don’t let the Mids get so bored that they start usin’ the crew as objects of cruel amusement, either, sir,” Lewrie warned. “Do carry on, Mister Harcourt, and … be inventive, hey?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Lewrie had to admit that he had never really liked either Lieutenant Harcourt, or Hillhouse, who had been a senior Midshipman when he had read himself into command of Sapphire, replacing her former Captain.

  That sour, dyspeptic Tartar had been a harsh disciplinarian, opposed by a First Officer more like a “Popularity Dick”, and the ship had been divided into two factions, with Second Officer Harcourt and Midshipman Hillhouse of the Captain’s persuasion. Unfortunately, her Captain and First Officer had despised each other so hotly that they had resorted to a duel with pistols, wounding each other both in body and career.

  Westcott! Lewrie and Westcott had found a way to ameliorate the situation, knitting the crew and wardroom into a well-drilled and efficient, happy whole. Lots of action, prize-money, and pride in new-won prowess and the right to swagger when ashore had gone a long way towards accomplishing that.

  Now, though, so long as Sapphire sat idle, Lewrie doubted that even the sudden arrival of a whole year’s pay and prize-money on top of that would lift his sailors’ gloom. And Harcourt and Hillhouse were not helping, too set in their ways and dispositions, too eager to resort to corporal punishment before anything else had been tried!

  Lewrie thought to return to the larboard sail-tending gangway and make his way aft to the quarterdeck once more, but now Bosun Terrell was barking orders as a work-boat from the dockyards was coming alongside to larboard with fresh casks of water to fill Sapphire’s novel iron tanks. And the sight of the Purser, Mr. Cadrick, and his Jack-in-the-Breadroom, Irby, on the gangway with ledger books told Lewrie that there most-like were other boats behind the water hoy, laden with flour sacks, dried fruits for duffs, shore-baked bread, vegetables, and sides of slaughtered beef fetched from the Morrocan port of Tétuan to replace rock-hard salt-meats. Lewrie heaved a sigh and turned to go aft down the main deck.

  “’Ware, Cap’m!” a ship’s boy cried. “Oh…!”

  Lewrie was being butted on the shins!

  He looked down to discover a kid goat, lowering and shaking its wee head for another go at being a “billy” in training. As the kid launched itself, Lewrie bent and scooped it up, bleating and all four hooves frantically scrambling in sudden indignity, held it to his chest despite the rank odour, and handed it to the “duck fucker” in charge of the manger.

  “Sorry, sir, ’e jus’ got out, somehow!” the boy spluttered as he took the kid and held it, cradling it like a mis-behaving puppy.

  “No matter,” Lewrie said. “Leash him if ye have to. Mind, now,” Lewrie said in mock severity, “he keeps that up, and I might demand a roast kid for my supper. Love roast goat, I surely do!”

  The boy gulped and shoved the kid back into the pen with its nanny.

  Lewrie went on aft, laughing, and glad to find some amusement in a frustrating day, and went up the ladderway to the quarterdeck, where he was greeted by the ship’s mascot, a brown-and-white, black-muzzled dog named Bisquit.

  “Well, hallo, Bisquit, and where’ve you been hidi
n’?” he asked as he bent and ruffled his fur.

  Ship’s dog, mine arse! he thought.

  Bisquit had been smuggled aboard by the Reliant frigate’s Midshipmen when anchored at Nassau, New Providence in the Bahamas, an island mutt which had rapidly become the entire crew’s pet, but, when Reliant had paid off and no one else could take him along to their next ship, it was Lewrie who’d volunteered to take him along to his father’s farm at Anglesgreen in Surrey for that long winter to heal up from a wound he’d suffered during a battle with a Spanish frigate off Buenos Aires.

  Now, though the dog was still a friend to one and all, especially when there were goodies offered in the messes belowdecks, it was in Lewrie’s great-cabins where Bisquit got his main feeding, and a patch of carpet to curl up on. Lewrie’s cat, Chalky, was still not too sure of the arrangement, but the two had somewhat adapted to each other’s presence.

  “Want a sausage, do ye, Bisquit? Thought you would!” Lewrie teased as he headed for his cabins, and the dog frisked alongside him, tail whisking and looking up adoringly. Of course he’d like a sausage; he even knew the word! And when Lewrie dug into his stash of wee sausages and jerked meat strips, an entire hundredweight that he kept well-stocked, Chalky came begging for one, too, though he took his atop the dining table where Bisquit would not grab it.

  After some petting for both of them, they settled down and he went aft to the doors to his stern gallery, where that little breeze might mitigate the lingering stinks, but there was no shade to be had, and Lewrie merely stood by the doors, looking outwards, again.

  Lewrie had allowed himself one of those wee sausages, too, and idly chewed the last of it, pondering a run ashore, after all, though he felt a minor pang of guilt that he could afford to do so when his sailors could not, not ’til some prize-money trickled in.

  He thought again of the seafood restaurant, and began to yearn for lobster and drawn butter, scallops, shrimp, and mussels in white wine sauce, with piping-hot fresh bread rolls. He tempted himself with an image of a cool ale to begin with, then a whole bottle of some white wine like the vinho verde he’d discovered at Lisbon. A green salad with oil and vinegar … yum! He thought that there might even be some sparkling white wines from Spain available, now that the trade cross the fortified Lines was so open, and the great expanse of dead ground ’twixt British and Spanish ramparts had been turned into grazing land for Spanish livestock!

  Some company during his repast? Pescador’s was a favourite of the subaltern officers, the young sparks of the Gibraltar garrison, where they brought the fetching morts “under their protection”, most of whom were “no nicer than they had a right to be”. An hour or so of harmless flirtation with the ones un-accompanied?

  Christ, I show up in full dress, with sash and star, and both my medals, and they learn I’m Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, I might have t’beat ’em off with a rope starter! he thought with a silent laugh.

  But, no. There was no real point in it.

  He had sadly shed one mistress, and would not be at Gibraltar long enough to take on another. And besides, the older he got, the less he was entranced by the whores, no matter how fetching. That was too anonymous, too commercial, and over the years since his late wife had passed away, he had found himself more in “serial monogamy” than mindless rutting.

  Geoffrey Westcott would have laughed such pickiness to scorn! But then, Westcott had never met a mort that he wouldn’t try to put the leg over.

  “Ehm, sir,” Pettus, his cabin steward, intruded on his thoughts. “Would you like some cool tea with lemon and sugar, sir?”

  “Aye, Pettus, I would at that,” Lewrie said, turning his attention back in-board, and espying his desk in the day cabin. He heaved a great, put-upon sigh as he went back to his desk and the un-finished letter of recommendation for Hillhouse.

  What can I say of his good qualities? he wondered as he sat down; That he’s a skilled seaman, and he can eat with a knife and a fork? I know, I’ve seen him do it!

  And if Admiralty lost patience and decided to de-commission his ship, there might be an host of Midshipmen and petty officers in need of praise to keep their rates and budding careers alive.

  “Where the Devil was I, then?” Lewrie muttered, picking up his pen and dipping it in the ink-well.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’ll have t’give Yeovill my congratulations,” Lewrie said as he polished off the last scrumptious bites of his breakfast.

  “Why’z ’at, sir?” Tom Dasher, his new cabin servant, asked as he poured Lewrie a fresh cup of coffee.

  “Not a bit of his cooking tasted or smelled like tar or paint thinner,” Lewrie japed.

  “Well, it’s been two days since all that work wuz over, sir,” Dasher told him with a puzzled shrug.

  “Maybe all the stinks just stuck in my nose, then,” Lewrie allowed as he spooned cream and sugar into his coffee and stirred.

  “Can’t notice nothin’, Cap’m,” Dasher said after a deep sniff to test the air. “Th’ ship smells th’ same’z all’ays.”

  “Aye, doesn’t she,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “The nostalgic perfumes of a life at sea, ahh! Farts, sweat, bilges…”

  Dasher glanced over at Pettus in confusion, looking for guidance, but Pettus could only give him a wee grin and a negative shake of his head. Dasher took Lewrie’s empty plate and utensils and went to join the cabin steward.

  “What’s he goin’ on about?” Dasher whispered. “Ain’t no perfume that I kin smell. Th’ ship smells right bad, if ya takes time t’notice. Not’z bad as some places I been, but right ripe.”

  “For me, Dasher, I preferred the tar, paint, and thinner,” Pettus said in like manner, winking. “Those odours covered the usual ones.”

  “Captains is odd, I heard,” Dasher grinned. “Perfume, my arse.”

  “At least you got a good one for your first ship, lad,” Pettus assured him. “I’ll finish up here, you go make the bed.”

  There was a sharp rap of a musket butt on the quarterdeck, and a stamp of boots. “Midshipman Holbrooke t’see the Cap’m, SAH!” cried the Marine sentry at the great-cabin door.

  “Enter,” Lewrie called back, and one of the ship’s newest Mids came in with his hat under his arm.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but the dockyard has hoisted a Post Boy flag, and a signal, Have Mail,” Holbrooke said, almost squirming with delight, in hopes that he might have word from home.

  “And you wish to dash off and fetch it, Mister Holbrooke? See if someone’s written you?” Lewrie teased. It had been a grand breakfast, and he was feeling more chipper than he had in weeks.

  “Ehm, aye, sir!” Holbrooke agreed.

  “Very well,” Lewrie told him, “pass word for Crawley’s boat crew, and they’re to man the second cutter to see you ashore to the Post Office and back. I and my clerk, Mister Faulkes, will sort it all out.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Holbrooke said with a beaming grin, and dashed back to the quarterdeck, bawling for Crawley and his gang.

  “Hmm,” Lewrie mused, sipping his coffee. His chipper mood had vanished, in dread that Admiralty in London might have sent him the bad news of Sapphire’s fate, at last. Or, he and Faulkes would have to reject some letters and send them back to their sources, re-opening fresh sorrows. Once in port at Gibraltar, Lewrie had written to the families of those members of the crew who had been killed in battle, or had succumbed to their wounds, but it was good odds that before news of their battle had reached England, wives, sweethearts, parents, or children of the dead had written their loved ones, all un-knowing; before the paper accounts, before Lewrie’s condolences had reached them.

  Damn the uncertainty of postal deliveries, he thought.

  “More coffee, sir?” Pettus asked.

  “Ah, no, Pettus,” Lewrie decided, getting to his feet. “I think I’ll go sit on the poop deck and await the mail.” Before leaving his cabins, he picked up an un-finished novel from the settee, in hopes he could use that as a carefree prop to di
sguise his worries.

  Lewrie plunked himself down in his collapsible deck chair and tried to lose himself in the book, but it was hard going amid all the bustle of manning the second cutter and the boat crew shoving off, the stamp of feet both shod and bare, and the clash of steel on steel as the crew began an hour of cutlass drill, and the calls for First Position … Third in Two Motions … Balance Step … Extension, Slash co-mingled with the seduction of the dairy maid in the milking barn.

  It was even noisy enough that Bisquit came to the poop deck to lay his head in Lewrie’s lap for a second or two, get some reassuring pats, then curled up on the deck in his shadow. Lewrie found himself taking peeks at his pocket watch and watching the slow progress of the cutter to the landing stage by the dockyards, its long idleness, then its slow return to the ship.

  Finally, as the cutter thumped against the hull below the larboard entry-port, Lewrie dog-eared his place in the book, rose, and went down to the quarterdeck to re-enter his cabins where he could pose as dis-interested on the starboard side settee.

  “Midshipman Holbrooke, with a mail sack, SAH!” the Marine sentry called out, with a note of wistful longing in his voice that one of the letters might be for him.

  “Enter!” Lewrie bade, and got to his feet as Holbrooke came in, making a show of dog-earing his book once more and setting it aside. “Much of it, is there, Mister Holbrooke?”

  “A fair amount I would judge, sir, though not all that heavy,” the Mid told him, making a moue of dis-appointment that the mail sack was not bulging, or almost too heavy to carry in one hand.

  “Well, we’ll see to it, nonetheless,” Lewrie told him, taking charge of the sack and dropping it on his desk in the day-cabin. “You may go, Mister Holbrooke, and thankee. We’ll have it sorted and ready for dispersing by Noon. Pass word for Mister Faulkes to come aft.”

  “Aye, sir,” Holbrooke replied, obvously wishing that he could help tear into it and snatch out anything addressed to him instanter.

  Whilst waiting for Faulkes to turn up, Lewrie opened the sack and pored through the loose pile of letters, looking for anything that seemed official. The Marine sentry announced Faulkes, at last, and Lewrie snapped his “Enter!” almost-absentmindedly, intent on his own search.