The King`s Commission - Dewey Lambdin

Treghues positively glowed at him. "You did good service today with the guns, and in carrying the boarding of our prize. And I mind you've been prize-master before, after that fight off St. Croix? See, you shall have those paroled French officers aboard, and I doubt they would stand for being guarded by a master's mate. That captain of theirs probably would be insulted with anything less than an earl for his gaoler."

Everyone chuckled appreciatively at Treghues' wit, and he had a small laugh himself, before a cough interrupted him and forced him to sit still until it had passed.

"You shall take a care not to lose my prize, though, young sir," Treghues cautioned with only a hint of humor, and Alan knew if he did, he would be hung from a yard-arm in tar and chains until his bones fell apart.

They sailed on the last day of January 1782, passing noith-about St. Kitts and to windward of the prowling but ineffective French fleet, Desperate repaired enough to accompany them as escort and surety that Capricieuse would make Antigua without mischief.

The weather was balmy and the Trades steady, and a carpenter's mate could have commanded the prize, Alan sneered to himself. With the quarterdeck people and the Marines armed to the teeth, and Desperate's guns not half a mile off at any time, the French gave them no trouble.

Captain de Rosset sulked in the officer's wardroom along with this surviving officers and senior warrants, and Alan made free with the captain's quarters as prize-master, lolling on fine cotton sheets and tippling the best wines and brandies he had tasted since he had left London two years before. De Crillart proved a cheerful companion once he had given his parole-he was only a year older than Alan but a droll wit, not given to too much sobriety about life in general, and unimpressed by life in the French Royal Navy as well. His family did not have connections good enough to gain him a commission in a good cavalry regiment, so the Navy was for him, though most people in France looked down on that Service as second to its magnificent Army. Minor nobility or not, the de Crillarts were a genteelly impoverished lot, and his purse had not run to the fineries of his marquis-captain, which while on passage he savored as much as Alan did, as his gaoler's guest.

One rather sodden night in the privacy of the cabins, Alan and de Crillart dined together, with Lewrie's hammockman, Cony, serving as waiter.

"To 'is Brittaneec Majesty, George the t'ird!" de Crillart proposed, raising his glass on high, which pronunciation of "third" sent Lewrie reeling with mirth.

"'E ees votre roy. What ees so foony?" de Crillart asked.

"Turd, you said," Alan explained between titters. "Nombre trois, in English, is third, not turd. Turd is merde. Dog merde, merde d'chien, merde d'chat, merde d'homme."

"Oh, pardon!" de Crillart gasped as it hit him. "Mon dieu!"

"We call him Farmer George, anyway," Alan went on. "Wants to be thought of as a country squire, when he can't even speak bloody English himself half the time. Vot, Gott in Himmel, eh vot?"

"To 'is Britanneec Majesty, George the… th… third!" the Frenchman managed this time. They drained their glasses, seated. "The King!" Alan echoed. "And to your king. To his Most Catholic Majesty…"

"Dat ees the Espagnole, Lewrie."

"Well, to Louis what's his number, then."

Then de Crillart had to propose a toast to Treghues, whose name he didn't even attempt to butcher, and Alan countered with one to his own captain, Marquis de Rosset, which drew a flash of anger from his supper guest before the young man drained his glass in a gulp.

"Not too fond of him, are you?" Alan surmised.

"'E ees the buffoon, eh?" de Crillart grimaced. "A fool."

"So is ours," Alan confided, leaning over the table.

Alan explained how Treghues had been addled by a rammer, cut at to relieve pressure on his brain, and what odd medicine he was taking. He also told of the escape from Yorktown, and what the rest of the Navy had thought of that.

"You were in Chesapeake?" de Crillart gasped happily. "Moi, aussi! Une fregate in York Reever? Formidable! Capricieuse aussi, le potence to keep you in, n'est-ce pas?"

"Sonofabitch! Really?" Alan barked. "Cony, he was there!"

"Oh, notre capitaine very anger you escape. After 'e swear no one get out. And how tres ironique, we fight at last. Capitaine de Rosset 'e… 'e 'ave great anger to pass you. I z'ink 'e 'ave need to be victorieuse, after York Reever." De Crillart shrugged.

"Ours, too," Alan agreed. "My God, Charles, look here. If we had had a different captain, we'd never have needed to have fought you, just kept you from getting into Basse Terre with that schooner. Treghues needed a victory to regain his bloody reputation!"

"And de Rosset need le combat to avenge ees criteecs! Merde, eef any ozzer capitaine 'ave Capricieuse, we sail avec no challenge!" de Crillart realized. "So many bon hommes are le mort for zees…"

"Touchy bastards," Alan supplied.

"Oui, toochy bastards."

After that mutual admission, their friendship grew firm, until by the time Desperate and her prize were under the guns of the hill forts in the outer roads of English Harbor, he was sorry to see the fellow have to go.

They parted with many cries of "bonne chance" and promises to keep in touch, and then the world settled down to a long string of boredom once more. Alan stayed aboard Capricieuse for weeks as prize-master. Sir George Sinclair was out with some of his Inshore Squadron, so only Prize Court officials and the Dockyard Superintendent were available to upset their lives. Some more repairs were made, with little help with spares from the dockyard unless heavy bribes were offered, but there were too few hands from shore to take over charge of her as she was laid up in-ordinary awaiting her fate. Desperate swung at her anchors, too, repaired as well as could be managed under the circumstances, her burst gun replaced, but with no orders to either join Sir George their commodore, or return to St. Kitts.

Alan was loafing under the quarterdeck awnings, tasting the last of his morning tea, when a frigate came in from St. Kitts noisily saluting the flag and the forts.

"Hold up on inspection for a moment," Alan ordered. "Tell the corporal to let his men stand easy while I read her hoists."

Laboriously, in the limited code flags, the arriving frigate spelled out the baleful news that the fort on Brimstone Hill had fallen, and the French now owned the island. Hood and the fleet would be arriving late in the afternoon, after abandoning the anchorage during the preceding night and getting clean away, leaving de Grasse befuddled.

"So that's all we get, sir?" the senior quartermaster asked him as Alan put the glass away into the binnacle rack. "No more ships took?"

"If there were, we weren't in sight to share the prize-money."

Any allied ship within spy-glass distance, even if all the view she had was tops'Is above the horizon, could claim shares in any action that resulted in prize-money, so taking Capricieuse within sight of all the line-of-battle ships in Hood's fleet wouldn't provide enough silver per survivor to make a decent meal in a three-penny ordinary, even counting the head money bonus per man in the crew of the prize.

"Might get a plug o' baccy at best, sir," the quartermaster spat in disgust, and Alan knew it was going to be a grueling inspection that the quartermaster was about to visit on his small crew.

"We may only hope for advancement from this," Alan comforted, hoping mere was indeed advancement. He had gotten used to having that large frigate under his sole control, of being an acting lieutenant even for so short a period.

"Politics," Alan griped, once more a master's mate back in the dreary misery of the midshipmen's mess in the cockpit. "Petticoat influence. Family connections."

"Don't take it so hard, Lewrie," Sedge told him. Sedge could talk, since he had been confirmed as sailing master in Desperate. "We get a new captain out of it, and you should be glad for Mister Railsford."

Hood had conferred with the Prize Court and instructed them to purchase Capricieuse into the Royal Navy. Treghues had been made post-captain into the prize, and Railsford, as the senior lieutenant of such a magnificent seizure, had been promoted to Commander into Desperate.

This also allowed Hood and his flag-captain to do favors for some of their patrons' protйgйs, or promote some of their own. Two young men had gone into Capricieuse as lieutenants of a coveted frigate instead of loafing as very junior officers in a line-of-battle ship. More midshipmen had to be appointed into both ships, more junior and senior warrants transferred, giving promotion to them and their replacements aboard their old ships, more master's mates made of promising midshipmen.

"There's always an examining board," Sedge yawned as he told his family now in New York of his luck, by letter. "You've had over two years as midshipman or master's mate. Ask of Railsford and he'll recommend your name if they seat a board soon."

Alan doubted that possibility very much, for there was also the niggling requirement that one had to have been entered in ship's books for six years of sea duty. And from what he had learned from others who had gone for oral examination before a panel of captains, it was more fun to be flayed raw, with the chances of promotion by that route about as sure as the proverbial camel passing through a needle's eye.

Altogether, Alan was getting very fed up with Sedge. He had started out as a graceless lout, and he was rapidly turning into an insolently superior and graceless lout.

"Well, I shall shift my dunnage aft. Good luck to you, Mister Lewrie," Sedge drawled in his nasal Jonathon twang, which sound was also a rasp on Alan's soul.

"And you too, sir," Alan was forced to say to his new sailing master. "May you have joy of your promotion and the pleasures of the wardroom." Damn his blood! Alan added to himself with some heat.

The new master's mate and new midshipman off Barfleur were in the process of unpacking and stirring around the cockpit, so Alan took himself on deck to get away from them.

With all the ships back in harbor, it was a damned busy place with rowing boats working like a plague of water-bugs at all hours and a constant stream of flag signals from shore or the flagship.

"Mister Lewrie, one o' them boats is fer us, looks like," Cony told him, pointing off to larboard.

"Right. Mister Toliver, gather up your side-party. It looks as if the new first lieutenant may be coming aboard at last. Cony, run aft and inform Commander Railsford."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Once within hailing distance, Toliver the bosun's mate leaned over the entry port and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Ahoy, there!"

"Aye aye!" the bowman in the boat shouted back, putting up two fingers in the air to show that a commission officer was aboard and was for them.

"Sergeant, muster Marine party and side-men fer a lieutenant!"

Alan paced back to the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist while Marines and seamen formed up to welcome their new first officer, and Alan hoped that he was as equitable a man as Railsford had been in that position. He had seen just a glimpse past the oarsmen to an officer in the stern-sheets, a tanned face under a cocked hat with a dog's vane and buttoned loop of gold lace, a slightly shabby coat bespeaking an officer of lengthy sea duty, and probably bags of experience, a real tarpaulin man.