THE GUN KETCH - Dewey Lambdin

"Well, half of 'em're cropsick as dogs at the moment," Lewrie shrugged. "They need something hot they may keep down. Or won'tclaw on the way back up! And what's the sense of thrashing to windward as if we were pursuing a prize? The tide'll turn, after all. But those new 'uns make an easy adjustment to the sea. Don't make 'em hate the life they signed on for so eagerly."

"Most captains would not consider such, sir."

"I had a few good teachers," Lewrie allowed. "As I'm sure you did."

"Aye, sir," Ballard grinned. "And how fares our live-lumber?"

"Wailing and spewing," Lewrie snickered uncharitably. "Praying for dry land, last I saw of 'em."

"And… and your good lady, sir?" Lieutenant Ballard asked carefully.

"Good Christ!" Lewrie cried. "I told her I'd be right back, and here it's been two hours at the least! Uhm, when I left her, she was suffering bad as the Townsleys, Mister Ballard."

"My tenderest respects to Mistress Lewrie, sir, and I pray that her seasickness will soon abate," Ballard offered.

"I'm certain she will be heartened by your kind concern, sir," Lewrie replied. "Stap me, two whole hours! She'll scalp me! But, I must confess, being on deck, being active, relieved some of my pangs, too."

"Uhm… and will Mistress Lewrie be… ah…?" Ballard squirmed.

"Oh," Alan snorted, "do I intend to cruise the West Indies with my wife aboard? Was that your question, Mister Ballard?"

"Your pardons, Captain, I mean no disrespect. It's just that the warrants, some of the turned-over hands were talking, and…"

"Do they disapprove?" Lewrie demanded.

"Your predecessor, Lieutenant Riggs, had no storm damage, sir," Ballard admitted. "He shammed it, and used Admiralty promissory notes in Lisbon and Nantes to stock his wine cellars. He was never without female companionship aft. A veritable parade of foreign morts, I'm told, sir. I gather that the people resented it, and feared you might be…"

"I'm not Augustus Hervey, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said, thinking even so that he'd made a fair beginning on that worthy's estimable record of over 200 women in a single three-year commission.

"Hardly a man may be, sir, and may still walk," Ballard found courage to jape with a droll, dry expression.

"Much as I might care for it, mind…" Lewrie laughed. "But, as you say, the hands would grow surly and insubordinate were I to parade what they want and can't have in their faces. I may not be an experienced captain yet But I do know better than that, sir!"

"I'm sorry if I discomfited you, sir. And I am of the same opinion as you, sir, and understand completely," Ballard said, even if he didn't yet understand what would compel a man to wed so early in a career, risk the loss of it. It had taken so much for him to even get to sea, and progress as far as he had, son of a Kentish innkeeper, a private school letter boy. Had it not been for a Navy captain who kept lodgings with them when he was ashore doinghis father a favor to take young Arthur on as a cabin servant, he might still be forrud garbed in slop-clothing, still a topman and Able Seaman, a mate at best!

"If you will allow me the deck, sir, you may see to your wife," Ballard extended as a peace-offering. "For this evening at the least, unless there's an emergency, you might…"

"No, Mister Ballard," Lewrie decided, finishing the last dregs of his coffee. "I'm no Augustus Hervey. Nor am I a Lieutenant Riggs. Call me, as stated in my Order Book, should circumstances merit. But I will take advantage of your kind offer and go below for awhile. God, over two hours! She'll have my liver! Good evening, Mister Ballard."

"And good evening to you, sir," Ballard replied, relieved. "And do convey my sympathies to Mrs. Lewrie."

"I will and thankee."

He's a raw 'un, no error, Ballard thought as Lewrie stumped down to the weather-decks. Means well. But not too well. Ain't playing a "Robin Goodfellow" to be popular with the hands, just taut but caring. So far.

Ballard should have envied Lewrie bitterly. He was taller and fairer, boyishly handsome, and came with an indolent courtier's repute; he'd not gained the sobriquet of "Ram-Cat" Lewrie for his choice of pet alone, Ballard grimaced! Womanizer, a brothel-dandy, he'd heard, with the confidence around women that Ballard lacked, the panache the Frogs called it to spoon them just shy of scandalous, and the devil-take-ye glint in his eyes to seem dangerous and desirable.

Yet he was a good sailor, and a married one!

Ballard should have resented Lewrie's rapid rise in the Service. Six years from gentleman volunteer to not only Commission Officer, but a captaincy in foreign waters! While it had taken young Arthur Ballard long nights of study, years of quiet observation to develop his skills with a stubbornly silent will to equal or best his contemporaries, and gain this first coveted slot as a first officer. Eleven years to his commission, to Lewrie's six! Why, he should have despised him for a whip-jack sham, a well-connected idler!

Oddly, he did not. Lewrie was too much of a puzzle to envy or despise. Trust? Ah, that might come as they progressed together. He already felt he might come to trust him. But it was early days.

The one thing that genuinely irked was the lovely Caroline who adored the fellow so enthusiastically, the sort of young woman Ballard had always most desired, but never seemed to find. And Lewrie had found her so effortlessly!

"Caroline," he whispered, testing her name on his lips.

"Say somethin', Mister Ballard, sir?" Neill the quartermaster inquired.

"Steady as you go, Mister Neill," Ballard said, shrugging deep into his soggy grogram boat-cloak.

Caroline was asleep on the transom settee's pad, curled up hard against the stern timbers by an open sash window overlooking the wake, hugging her knees. Alan took the painted coverlet from the hanging-cot and folded it about her to ward off the chill of the stiff winds.

"Oh, you're back!" she groaned, weary as death, spent from all her wracking heavings. She reached out for him, weak as a kitten, as he got a damp cloth to wipe her face. She didn't sound accusatory, he noted with relief!

"I'm so sorry, Caroline, but that's a ship for you," Alan lied. "It took forever. A tug here, a pull there. Are you feeling perhaps the tiniest bit better, darling?"

"A bit," she allowed. "Now you're here. Just hold me, Alan."

"Miss me?" he teased, easing down on the edge of the settee by her side as she rolled to him and embraced him.

"My love, I was much too… busy, to miss you," Caroline sighed, amazingly able to jest even then. "The fresh air helped best. Once I got the window open, and made my final offering to Neptune, I was dead to the world."

"You should get into bed. Sleep's the thing for you now. The bedbox doesn't pitch or roll. Would you care for some brandy?"

"I do not trust myself," she said after one quick peek at their hanging-cot, which swayed impressively. She rinsed her mouth with the brandy, but spit it out over the stern, not trusting her stomach with any fresh contents, either.

"You are so good to me," she crooned sleepily, stroking his face as he came back to her side. "I'm so sorry to be a burden, when I promised just this morning I'd not be."

"You're no burden, love," Alan smiled. "Every sailor has to find his sea legs. You sleep, now. And you'll feel better in the morning."

He reclined with her, stroking her hair until her breathing went slow and regular. Only then did he close his own eyes and nod off, his head pressed against hard oak, lulled and hobbyhorsed to sleep by the ship's motion.There was a rapping at the door.

"Unnh?" he groaned, starting awake from treacly sleep.

"Midshipman Parham, sir. The sailing master's respects, and he wishes to shake out the second reef in the main course and inner jib, Captain, sir."

"Very well, Mister Parham," Alan replied, reeling with weariness. "I'll be on deck directly."

Chapter 5

Once out of the Channel and around Ushant, Alacrity became a much happier, and tauter, ship. Seasickness abated, and the hands, back on their feet, were then brought to competence with drills and hard work.

Fire drills, boat launchings and recoveries, procedures for man-overboard rescues and working the ship became the day's chores. They tacked, they wore ship, spread or brailed up the tops'ls and royals, struck or hoisted the topmasts; they replaced entire suits of canvas. Cables for towing were laid out, then recovered, boarding nets were strung along the sides and hoisted from the yardarms, then lowered and stowed away. For the complete neophytes, and the newest midshipmen, the bosun and his mate conducted classes in knots and in long- and short-splicing, with the next day's exercises applying those newly won skills in practical uses. There was practice at musketry, at pistol shooting at towed targets, cutlass and pike drill under the first officer or the ship's corporal, a heavily scarred bruiser named Warwick. They learned to serve the great guns, the ship's ten iron six-pounders, two-pounder boat-guns, and swivels.

Discipline was brought to full naval standards gradually, once the hands gained some knowledge/Defaulters were allowed a chance to make honest mistakes with light punishment; stoppage of tobacco or the precious rum issue. Stiffened rope "starters" used as horsewhips on the slow and clumsy were at first discouraged-Lewrie did not feel the sting of a starter in (he hands of a mate on some poor inexperienced landsman much of a goad to learning.

Later, the starters could be plied more freely, if a man was truly shirking. Later, insubordination and the usual sins-drunk or asleep on watch-were awarded days of bread and water, along with a touch of the "cat"; one dozen lashes for a first penalty, two dozen for the second. Back-talkers, mostly the landsmen who insisted on their God-given right as Englishmen to complain at brusque usage, were "marlin-spiked" into silence, with a heavy iron marlin-spike bound between their teeth for a day. And the midshipmen suffered being bent over a gun barrel to "kiss the gunner's daughter," to be whipped on boyish bottoms rather than fully male backs, or suffered to be "mastheaded," consigned to the cross-trees aloft without food or water in all weathers and told to remain there, shivering and puking at the exaggerated motion of the ship, until Lewrie saw fit to relent. In a harsh age, Ballard and the warrants at first thought their new captain a little too mild, until they saw him administer captain's justice fair-handedly, and issue lashes with the cat-o' -nine-tails in the forenoon watches on those few truly recalcitrant or shifty.

They were fortunate in Alacrity-and Lewrie and Ballard thanked God for that good fortune-to have at least half the crew made up of seasoned people, to have had the men "pressed" for them reasonably intelligent and healthy, that a fair portion of those pressed were volunteers. Times were hard ashore, what with Enclosure Acts, unemployment and low wages, so Navy pay was steadier and surer than day-laboring. And the Ј 14 12s. 6d. net pay for a raw landsman was half again as much as he could make as a civilian. Even figured at a parsimonious lunar month instead of the calendar month, with deductions of sixpence for Greenwich Hospital and one shilling for the Chatham Chest monthly, plus the purser's subtractions for tobacco, shoes, slop-clothing, plates, scarves, hats and sundries, it was a decent annual living.