Portoferrajo was a military engineer's dream, a small city at the tip of a long, rugged and narrowing peninsula, east of Gape D'Enola, with its harbour held on its southwest side, well sheltered and surmounted by more headlands, separate from the wider bay, as if held between a lobster's tough pincers. It bristled with forts.
Fortunately, Jester didn't have to enter the port proper, but sail up near the harbour moles near the Torre del Martello, where she discovered an old two-decker 74, and HMS Myrmidon, at anchor.
The old two-decker was en flute, most of her guns removed, so she could carry a full battalion of British troops. Which troops were still aboard her, Lewrie could see, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder upon her upper decks; with all her boats alongside but idle.
"Damned odd," Lewrie said aloud, once Lieutenant Knolles informed him that their ship was firmly anchored. "I'd think they'd be ready to go shooting their way ashore by now."
"Anything to get off that old scow, sir," Knolles replied with an agreeing grin. Troopers were more sanitary, less crowded than slave ships- but not by much-and a good officer wouldn't let his men be penned aboard one a second longer than necessary.
"Cutter's alongside, sir," Bosun Will Cony announced, knuckling his brow. "An' Mister Spendlove's mustered wi' yer Cox'n an' th' boat crew. Well-kep' lil ship-sloop, she is, sir."
Lewrie turned his gaze upon Myrmidon.
"Not half as handsome as our Jester, though, hey, Will-Mister Cony?"
He corrected quickly. Cony had begun as his hammockman when he was a midshipman during the American War, then his manservant, Cox'n, and senior hand during a whole host of adventures. And misadventures.
"Not 'alf, sir, but…" The thatch-haired fellow smiled back.
"But sleepy, damn em," Mister Buchanon, the laconic Sailing Master, observed in his West Country lilt. Sure enough, Myrmidon hadn't shown much interest in their arrival.
Lewrie felt an urge to get some of his own back, to make up for how badly he'd been caught wrong-footed the other day by Captain Charlton. He briefly considered having Mr. Midshipman Hyde hoist "Captain Repair On Board." This Fillebrowne, Lewrie had learned, was one of Hotham's Departure Promotions, hence about the least senior on Admiralty List, barely dry from being "wetted down." He'd have to take a preemptory summons from another warship, even one almost a sister to his own, as Holy Writ! Come aboard half shaved and half dressed?
I say "Leap!," you ask "How high?" on yer way up, Alan thought. Something to be said for a single shred of seniority, when I'm feelin' spiteful an' roguish, he mused most happily over the prospects. Or, better yet, oh dear Lord, yes!
"Bosun," he barked, giving Mr. Cony his due this time. "Trot out the jolly-boat and a crew for Mr. Spendlove. He's to go over to the transport and enquire what the delay in landing is. Respectfully, mind. I'll go aboard Myrmidon myself."
"Oh, aye aye, sir!" Cony grinned, knowing his captain's moods from a long, and entertaining, association. "Side-party! Muster on th' starb'd gangway fer th' cap'um!"
"Welcome aboard, sir," a harassed-looMng young Lieutenant said after he'd taken Myrmidons welcoming salute; a most impressive turnout, that, Lewrie noted. "I am Stroud, sir. First Officer."
"And your captain, Mister Stroud?" Lewrie posed, with an eyebrow cocked in what he felt was a most Charlton-esque demand.
"Uhm, sir, uh… Captain Fillebrowne is ashore, sir," Stroud stammered, having trouble sheathing his sword in fumbling nervousness. He was one of those frank, open, pudding-faced young fellows, a typical naval nonentity who had, most likely, clawed his way up the Navy's career ladder by sheer perseverance, not wit.
It was barely gone seven bells of the Morning Watch, about half past seven a.m. Jester had had a lucky slant of wind round the tip of the town and into the anchorage, making landfall at "first-sparrow-fart."
Lewrie made a production of extracting his watch from a waistcoat pocket, opening it with a flick of his thumb and peering at its face, as if to confirm the time, his eyebrow even higher.
"Portoferrajo in the business of early -rising, Mister Stroud?" he asked, masking the cruel glee he felt. This was even better than catching this Fillebrowne with his hair mussed or with shaving soap round his ears! The fellow'd slept ashore the previous evening, Alan was dead certain. "Or is your captain?" he asked in a lazy drawl.
"I sent a boat, sir," Stroud replied, sounding about as miserable as he looked under Lewrie's withering, knowing glare. "Soon'z we saw you rounding the point, er, Commander…?"
"Lewrie, sir. Alan Lewrie. HMS Jester," he informed him as archly as he might. From long and embarrassing remembrance of being the butt of such doings in the past, his "arch" was worthy of a round of applause from the theatregoers in Drury Lane. "It really is too bad, Mister Stroud. I bear despatches from Admiral Jervis and Captain Thomas Charlton, who is, I am given to believe, standing off-and-on the western shore this very instant, ordering Myrmidon to put out to sea and join him instanter." Stroud, a much-put-upon junior officer, winced as if someone had just trod on his feet. "I sent a boat, sir," he insisted for a second time. "Captain should be returning…"
Stroud's face lit up like sunshine after a quick peek shoreward, turning Lewrie's attention to a gig that was rowing so quick, on a beeline to Myrmidon, that it looked as if all the Hounds of Hell were at her heels. "That'll be our captain, sir," Stroud said, and slunk off out of throwing range, should the confrontation come to it; safely behind the fully accoutred Marines of the side-party. Marines who, Lewrie noted, were so bemused by the impending disaster as to go red in the face and sneak cutty-eyed looks at each other. Whether for a martinet's comeuppance or in commiseration for a good captain who was about to be caught with his breeches down, Lewrie didn't know.
"Ahoy, the boat!" Myrmidon's Bosun shouted the obligatory challenge. "Myrmidon!" The bow-man shouted back with leather-lunged demand, thrusting a hand aloft to show four fingers, no matter how often this ritual would be performed or how familiar her own gig and captain were to them.
There came the thud of the gig against the hull planking, then a soft curse as the bow-man missed the main-chains with his first try with his boat-hook. The rasp of steps on well-sanded boarding-batten timbers, a faint squeak as the pristine white man-ropes, most neatly served with decorative Turk's Heads, took a load, and twisted in the entry-port dead-end holes.
As Commander Fillebrowne's hat came level with the top batten of the entry-port, bosun's calls trilled, muskets were presented and the Marines stamped their booted feet in unison. Swords flashed with damascened dawn light on glittering silver fittings, and Myrmidon's people came to attention, bareheaded, facing starboard.
The officer who appeared on the gangway, doffing his hat to the crew, was not quite what Alan had expected. That he would be younger, in point of fact even younger than himself, didn't come as too much of a surprise. Service aboard a flagship, under the fond care of his doting "sea-daddy" and commander of the fleet, was an achingly envied shortcut to the usual years of plodding that most captains-to-be suffered; the sinecure of the very well connected-or immensely talented and promising, Lewrie reminded himself-was allowed to barely an hundredth of the Navy's junior officers.
No, the fact that Fillebrowne was so disarmingly not abashed by a career-ender for most others, was in fact all but smirking, was the shocker!
Fillebrowne was about Lewrie's height, though leaner, and a touch more elegant, even as hurried and disheveled as he looked. He sported rich, chestnut hair and dark blue eyes. Hair most unseamanlike, that; he'd lopped off the usual plaited long queue at the nape of his collar to wear it blocked over the gold lace, and had shorn it short enough to brush forward over his ears and temples, to lie upon his brow, like the style featured on the busts of Apollo-like Roman youths. It was a modern affectation of the youngbloods, the bucks-of-the-first-head back home, he'd learned from Charlton. Who'd been just about as leery over this new fad as Lewrie was. Fillebrowne was a damned handsome beast, too!
"Welcome back aboard, sir!" Stroud gushed, interposing between them before Lewrie could even raise a hand. "Sir, this is Commander Lewrie, HMS Jester. With immediate orders, sir."
"Commander Lewrie, sir, how do you do? Commander Fillebrowne. But then, you already know that, I must assume. Your servant, sir. Orders, did you say, Mister Stroud? Then I must also assume it means an immediate departure. Pipe 'Stations for Getting Under Way,' Mister Stroud, then report to me aft, once we are ready in all respects."
Damn' smooth, Lewrie thought; a languid tone, a hint of deviltry behind his smile, with his eyes twinkling like the cat that lapped the cream pot! And that bloody "Ox-mumble," like someone'd sewed his bloody jaws shut! Lewrie was more than ready to take a great dislike to this idle fop, who sounded as if his papa owned half a shire, with more titles to choose from than a dog had fleas!
"My abject apologies, Commander Lewrie, for not being aboard to receive you properly," Fillebrowne smarmed on, "but I had a pressing engagement ashore. Will you take a quick cup of coffee with me, sir? Tea? Whilst you discover to me the nature of these mystifying orders?"
With a graceful wave of one hand, a faint touch near Lewrie's arm that invaded his personal space without actually touching-which was an absolute taboo for proper English gentlemen, to actually touch each other unless it was a handshake or they'd known each other for years-Fillebrowne tried to propel Lewrie aft, towards the portal to his great-cabins. As it ordering him to join him aft, as if Lewrie were his junior!
"There'll be no time for that, sir," Lewrie snapped, turning mulish and stubborn, almost ready to plant his feet before allowing himself to be moved. "Your ship has been detached from the Fleet to a new squadron, under Captain Thomas Charlton. He's on his way here right now, and we're to meet with him off to the west, soon as-"
"Old Thomas?" Fillebrowne smiled. "How wonderful!"
Damme, I should have known, Lewrie chid himself; junior or no, I'll have to watch this bastard. He's more lines out than a raveled fothering-patch! Wonder who he doesn't know?
"-as soon as you can scrub her rouge off yer ears, Commander Fillebrowne," Lewrie concluded, putting a telling shot 'twixt his wind and water. "Costly piece, was she?"
Oh, God, that was a good'un, Lewrie exulted to himself; reproof, and a caution 'bout "costly." As in, costly to one's career. His own eyes twinkled, in spite of his best efforts to appear stern.
"Not tuppence, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne confessed, quite proudly. "I never pay. Not when there's so many obligin' sorts for free. Must confess I'm much obliged to you for arriving with new orders. Now I may escape this witch's cauldron, without a political scalding."
"Well connected, was she?" Lewrie enquired, thinking that some aristocratic papa would come looking for Fillebrowne with sword in his hand, and family honour and Mediterranean vendetta in his heart.
"God, no, sir, nothing like that." Fillebrowne chuckled. "A vintner's 'grass widow.' Quite tasty morsel, with him off to prune a vine or two on Mount Orello. Nossir, I refer to the lashes Old Jarvy would put on me once he learned the locals don't want us here."
"That's why our troops are still aboard the transport, then?" Lewrie asked, arching a brow again at how nonchalant Fillebrowne was.
"Damme, will you look at that!" Fillebrowne snapped, leaning back with his hands on his hips to peer aloft at the commissioning pendant, which had gone fretful and all but slack. "It's happened just about every bloody morning since we came to anchor here. Winds off the sea die, and these hills block the land breeze 'til two bells of the Forenoon, or so. It appears I can offer you that coffee, after all, sir." Fillebrowne sighed exasperatedly. "I'll scrub off her rouge, aye, and her perfume, and have time for a shave, into the bargain. Better yet, have you eat your breakfast yet, sir?"
"A moment," Lewrie decided. Oxonian fop or not-a shameless rake-hell rogue-Fillebrowne at least sounded like a sailor, not some Whip-Jack sham. He crossed to the entry-port to look down on his boat crew. "Andrews?"
"Aye, sah," the onetime Jamaican house servant, who'd traded actual slavery by running away from his masters and accepted informal servitude in the Royal Navy, replied, looking up with a sunny smile.
"Row back to Jester and instruct the First Lieutenant to stand ready to hoist anchor and set sail as soon as the wind returns. Then come back here and wait for me."
"Aye aye, sah. Up, me bucks. Unship ya oahs…"
"B'lieve I will take that coffee, Commander Fillebrowne," Lewrie agreed, sharing a smile with his host. A smile of discovery, Lewrie realized ruefully.
The bastard's me-he all but gasped to himself-if you took off five years and kept me a bachelor! Or not, he further qualified.
"Bloody awful place, Elba," Fillebrowne drawled as he grimaced so his cabin servant could shave a spot under his jaws. "The Dons hold Porto Longone, on the sou'east coast. Governor-general and all, since the oared galley days. Matter of fact, the Frogs took it once, but Don Juan of Austria-won Lepanto, you'll recall?-got it back for Spain. The Medicis held Portoferrajo till the War of Austrian Succession, when the last'un died, and Austria got this port. Easy, there, Gwinn! I'm too young and pretty to die of a cut throat. And what'd the ladies do without me, I ask you?"
"Pardon, sir." His manservant chuckled. "I wouldna wish to deprive nobody."
"Rest of the island's supposedly Tuscan, under the Princes of Piombino. But they'll dance to any strong party's tune. They've a government here, too. Of a sort," Fillebrowne rattled on. Fearful of a cut throat or marred handsomeness or not, he was cheerfully at a thick slice of toast and jam between razor swipes.
"Didn't we almost buy the damn place, back in '86?" Alan asked between bites of his own and swigs of piping-hot strong coffee-the sort he really liked, and which few Englishmen seemed to brew, if one didn't clout them alongside their skulls to remind them every so often. "Same as we almost got Minorca and Corsica?"
"There was talk of it, sir," Fillebrowne agreed, with a more cautious nod as Gwinn laid on with his razor afresh. "But, again, the French- Louis the Umpteenth… the one got guillotined?-scotched it. They've always had their eyes on this place. Why, I can't-"
"So, in spite of their jealousies, all three parties have banded together to reject a British garrison?" Lewrie surmised.
"Well, sir… as for the Spanish, I doubt anyone's bothered to tell them yet," Fillebrowne hooted in derision, flinging off Gwinn's towel and rubbing his fresh-shaved chin. He came to the sideboard to pour himself more coffee. "Poor old buggers haven't a clue which day it is, 'less it's a festival on their church calendar! And nobody is telling the Boncampagni family, either. They're the Tuscan royalty on the island- whelp out the new Prince of Piombino every generation. Long as the peasants aren't revolting and the iron mines make money for them, they couldn't give a tinker's damn. No, it's the Austrians. Baron Knesevich, the stubborn old bastard, he's their governor-general. He's the one holds the whip-hand round here. And he doesn't want a British garrison, 'less there's certain 'guarantees.' "
"And we must be so very kind to the Austrians, mustn't we, Commander Fillebrowne?" Lewrie singsonged a sneer. "Wouldn't do for them to be upset with us, God forbid."
"Might take their toys and go home," Fillebrowne grunted, digging into his half-completed breakfast dishes with almost a carnal abandon. "And we'd have no one left to play with. Mean t'say, sir, are we actually allies, or not?"
"There's Spain, like to come in against us… and why they were ever with us, I still can't fathom," Lewrie wondered aloud. "This Baron Knesevich could use the help, should a Spanish squadron show up with reinforcements for their garrison. Or the Tuscans send one before we do, to enforce what passes for their neutrality."
"Like I said, sir"-Fillebrowne shrugged, with knife and fork at poise position over a chop-"if he'd stood us off another day, I'd have to be the one to sail back to San Fiorenzo and tell Old Jarvy. And you can imagine the filleting I'd get as the result of that. Senior Navy officer on the scene? Pity you even came to anchor, too, sir. That makes you senior man, temporarily."
"When in trouble, when in doubt-" Lewrie began to quote the old lower-deck adage.
"-hoist your main, and fuck-off out." Fillebrowne ended it for him with a wicked grin. "Aye, sir, exactly."
"Leaving the colonel of that infantry battalion, and the captain of the transport-" Lewrie again began.
"-holding the most honourable bag, so to speak, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne interrupted again, with a devilish grin and wink.
"And that, as soon as 'dammit,' " Lewrie concluded.
"Now you've delivered these orders to me, sir," Fillebrowne asked as he wiped his lips and chin, "would it be telling, were you to let me know where it is we're going, under old Thomas?"
"The Adriatic, sir," Lewrie informed him. " Trieste, the Ionian Islands. Maybe even Venice."
" Venice, my word, sir!" Fillebrowne gasped in sudden delight, his face lighting up a like a child's at a country fair. "The architecture! The music, the sculptures and the paintings!"
"The what?" Lewrie asked, rather surprised by Fillebrowne's odd first choices for enthusiasm.
"Tintoretto, Canova, Titian… that whole talented Dago lot, sir."
"And Casanova, sir?" Lewrie smirked, thinking that he had formed an accurate first impression of his man.
"Well, that, too, o' course, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne told him with a man-of-the-world shrug. "Once you get the Carnival costume, or her seed-pearled gown off, though, Venetian mutton is sure to be the same as Portsmouth mutton. God only made so many types, didn't He, sir? Your pardons for saying so, sir, but you've gained your name in the Fleet-the 'Ram-Cat'-for your fondness for the fair sex, not so?"
"I will own to my share of youthful.. uhm," Lewrie replied with a worldly shrug of his own, quite at ease with Fillebrowne-and more than a bit pleased to note how far his repute had spread.
"So you surely do agree, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne said with a teasing note in his voice, "that, as an experienced 'fancier,' as it were, you've found that all cats are grey in the dark?"
"Hah!" Lewrie laughed with a bark. "Mind now, sir, a touch o' scent and a thorough wash helps. Her own teeth… or the lack."
"Mhmmm," Fillebrowne cooed appreciatively. "I look forward to Venice 's wives and daughters as much as any of my lower-deck people. Though it may go against my grain, perhaps even the hired courtesans. The art, though… the opportunities do intrigue, however."
"A collector, are you, Commander Fillebrowne?" Lewrie asked.
"Runs in the family, so to speak, sir." Fillebrowne chuckled as he poured them more coffee, not waiting for his manservant Gwinn to do the honours. "Done the Grand Tour nigh like a religious rite, time out [of mind, as it were. Victims of the usual shammed masterpieces the mountebanks fob off on unwitting English visitors. Shame of it was so great, my grandfather actually studied up before he did his Tour, so he wouldn't be cheated or embarrassed to shew his acquisitions off back home to his friends. My father and his uncles, and hence my elder brothers and I, have become rather astute collectors. Missed my shot at a Grand Tour… Navy career and all. This war, now! Limited as I was board the flagship, even so I've been able to glean a few small but precious, and genuine, articles to ship home. From the French emigres. Going for a song. Damned rare things they came away with, I can tell you, sir! Then it was sell up or starve, thankee!"
"Aye, I've seen some of that," Lewrie agreed casually.
"Lovely thing about a war, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne said breezily, stirring sugar into his coffee; a rather fine set of ornate French cups, and baroquely overelaborate coin-silver spoons, Lewrie observed, seeing them with a fresh eye. "Prize-money, loot and plunder-illiterate soldiery coming away with jewelry fit for a duchess, bartering it away for a tuppence, or drink. A necklace, do you imagine, sir, ancient beyond belief, made by Benvenuto Cellini, famous for its craftsmanship, not merely its weight in emeralds, and I got it for three hundred pounds, sir? And bedded its owner, to boot?"
"Well, hmm…" Alan began to say, suddenly put off a tad by Fillebrowne's boast. And by the venal look in his eyes.
" Venice, now, sir!" Fillebrowne schemed on, oblivious. "The French, I'm certain, will try for Corsica again this year. March on Piedmont, perhaps? Lots of wealthy and titled refugees forced to run because of it. The French Royalists will head as far as their legs, and their hoarded 'pretties,' will carry 'em. Florence, I'd expect. And Venice. Far as possible from danger. Before the Austrians beat the Frogs silly, I anticipate Venice will be flooded with valuables. All up for sale at penny to the pound. A buyers market, and mine, I hope," Fillebrowne concluded with a raptorial smile of avarice. "That'll set my brothers back on their ears, when they see what they missed! With cargo space unlimited now, think of the sculptures."
Lewrie cocked a wary brow over that, and could not keep a frown of faint distaste from his features. Here he'd been, almost coming within a hair oiliking Fillebrowne for his brazen and open "damme-boy" air of the practiced rakehell since it in many ways reflected his own rather casual outlook on Life. But then had come the piggish eyes and the crafty, calculating look of a "Captain Sharp," who would profit on others' sufferings. And do it as cold as charity.
Lord knows I'll never be promoted to saint, Lewrie thought in disgust; no one'll bury me a bishop. But practiced sinner such'z I am, I don't think I'd be that glad to cheat people. Hope I wouldn't, at least!
There was, too, his long, though admittedly never looked-for, service in the Navy. He'd been beaten, and he'd learned, since being all but press-ganged as a midshipman sixteen years before. The Navy, the ship and beating the foe came first, last and always-even to a poor example of seaman such as himself. Fillebrowne was pleased to have command of a warship so he could buy bigger articles and store them on the orlop? Amass untold, but heavy, wealth to carry home, because it was impossible to ship such things, let them out of his sight, to be broken or lost, until Myrmidon paid off?
Mean t'say, he told himself with a deeper scowl; every man has to have a hobby! I've my penny-whistle and the occasional quim, but not this. Swagger, cajole, toady and smarm as manly and "bully-buck" as Fillebrowne might, he wasn't Lewrie's type, after all. Underneath all that "hail fellow, well met" bonhomie was a scheming, heartless swine, no matter his patrons, his rapid rise, his possible talents as a Navy officer, or his ancestors. An egotistical, self-absorbed bastard! A one even bigger than I, Lewrie had to admit, weighing his own faults (and they were legion) in the balance, and happily finding himself to be damned near blameless in comparison.
"Well," Lewrie said with a cough, gazing up toward the coachtop skylights for any sign of a breeze, so he would have a good excuse to depart.
Fillebrowne had run down like a cheap pocket-watch, realising that his enthusiastic rant about collecting, and his schemes, had come too close to a home-truth; that he'd said too much, revealing all those wrong things he'd usually squirrel away from proper gentlemen. Lewrie saw a quick glint of anger on his phyz.
"Found some rather good bargains at Corsica, too," Fillebrowne told him more coolly, his plumby "Ox" or Etonian sounding sneer-lofty, from clenched jaws. "Quite a trade in secondhand, at San Fiorenzo or over at Leghorn. I'm certain you've seen some of them, sir. Even fetched them off from Toulon yourself, sir? After Admiral Hood's evacuation? Some rather rare, precious and darling pieces 'mongst the first wave of йmigrйs? Quite delightful finds, they were."
Lewrie felt the fist in his lap, out of sight, tighten suddenly, and his ears went red with anger.
Who on Corsica had turned into the biggest broker of furniture, statuary, art, dresses and jewelry, who might Fillebrowne have dealt with, but Phoebe Aretino? Where else'd a body go to hunt up bargains?
By God, did he… did she…? During? 'Course not, she wasn't that huge a whore, ever! After, sure. After she caught me at Leghorn, and came back to San Fiorenzo. For spite. And you'd throw that in my face, you smirkin' shit? That you've bedded my ex-mistress? In that house I rented for her? On that duke s bed I paid for?
Much as he'd like to smash the man's face in, he took a sip of coffee to temporise. Win a mistress, lose a mistress, he thought; and then she's somebody else's, 'cause she's not the sort to go without a man. Needs a man in her life, that's her way. He warned himself not to be jealous over her. But he couldn't help it. Knowing there'd be others after him, intellectually, was one thing; but to have it all but said to his face by the fellow who'd done it, to gloat and to row him beyond all temperance, well, that was quite another story!
"Ahem," Lewrie said as calmly as he could. "Thankee for a fine sec-, ond breakfast, Commander Fillebrowne. But I fear I must be returning aboard Jester. Should that land breeze come, I'd regret any delay in using it, or keeping Captain Charlton waiting too long."
"Of course, I quite understand, sir," Fillebrowne replied, as they both rose, "one captain to another, hmm? A moment, and I'll get my coat and hat to see you off, properly."
All but simperin' at me, Alan fumed silently; smug hound! " Venice, I'm told, isn't noted for its cuisine, surprisingly," Fillebrowne prated on as they left the great-cabins, to the thuds of musket butts and the scurry to reassemble the side-party on the gangway, "but do we get our run ashore, I'd be honoured to sport you and your first officer a shore-supper, with me and mine. Become more familiar with each other and our ways, should our two vessels come to be paired?
Bags of shallow water in the Adriatic, where our two frigates could not dare, hmm?"
"An excellent suggestion, Commander Fillebrowne," Alan agreed unwillingly, forced to be pleasant in public.
Quite the practice I'm gettin', he thought sourly, that recent breakfast turning to ashes in his innards; lies to Charlton over his bloody whist, and now to this!
"It will be a red-letter day for Mister Stroud, d'ye see, sir." Fillebrowne chuckled. "After all, he has so few chances to meet men such as yourself. Such a famous officer. The 'Ram-Cat,' hey, sir?"
Damn yer blood, you… Lewrie thought.
"I must own to being a bit in awe of you, myself, sir," Commander Fillebrowne told him further, seemingly all earnest. Betrayed, though, by the tiniest hint of drollity at the corners of his eyes; all but taunting. The sort of insubordinate air that could get a common seaman triced up and lashed!
"Now you do me too much honour," Lewrie replied, doffing his hat to the salutes, the long, warbling calls of bosun's pipes, with his teeth on edge in a humourless smile. "Sir," he spat in warning. "Too, too much, indeed," he drawled, his eyes gone from merry blue to Arctic grey, as cold and menacing as a drawn sword blade.
Fillebrowne doffed his own hat, caught that subtle sea-change as he lifted his head from a departing nod and paused for a second, as if suddenly wary that he'd bitten off a tad more than he could chew. He scrubbed that smirk from his face and turned sombre.
Eat a hatful of shit and die, ya bastard! Alan devoutly wished as he scampered down the boarding-battens to his cutter.
"Shove off, Andrews," he hissed.
"Aye, sah," his Cox'n replied crisply, knowing the signs of a man contemplating mayhem. This was quite unlike the usual easygoing way of his captain. He smelled trouble in the offing.
May take more time to make up my mind 'bout Charlton, Lewrie fretted stonily, till we've served together a watch or two. But you, me lad, I can read you like a book already. That's the last time you ever dare sneer at me, no matter how clever an' subtle you think yerself! What was it Choundas threatened at Balabac? "I'll rip off your head an' shit in yer skull"? Cross me, Commander Fillebrowne. Cross me, I dare you!
"Smahtly!" Andrews bawled at his oarsmen. "Put ya backs inta it!"
Lewrie looked up at him, met his eyes. Andrews cocked his head and raised a questioning brow, and Lewrie rolled his eyes in a silent reply, made a sour grimace as he pursed his lips as if he wished to spit something over the side.
"Winds comin, sah," Andrews offered hopefully. " 'Bout tahm." "A-bloody-men, Andrews," Lewrie grunted. "A-bloody-men!"