Dewey Lambdin - H.M.S. COCKEREL

"What say we let 'ese litt'lest beggars go, Mister Lewrie?" the bosun almost begged. "Coupla cabin boys, 'eir sort'd not be missed f r long, no with s'many volunteers. We take 'em in, sir, all they get is caned, then discharged, anyways. T'other tykes, well…"

"Aye, bosun, turn 'em out," Lewrie decided, unable to look the quivering, fearful children in the eyes. "Tongue-lash before they go, though. Put some fear o' God in 'em. But we take the rest with us."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Lewrie went to the last, unconscious, civilian by the cot. He rolled him over with his foot, hoping for signs that he might yet be a seaman, subject to impressment. And his pitifully weak writ.

"Well, damme!" he gasped, as if butted in the solar plexus. It had been years! 1780, if it was a day! That last bitterly cold morning when the naval captain and his brute of a coxswain had come for him, in his father's house in St. James', to drag him off as an unwilling midshipman. There, lying at his feet in enforced "repose," was the bane of his adolescent life. Even with a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, a livid bruise on his cheek and blood matted in his lank, sweaty blond hair, the bastard appeared to be sneering, in truncheon-induced sleep! No, there was no mistaking the rail-thin, haughty, thoroughly despicable face of his half brother Gerald Willoughby. His backgammoning, windward-passage-preferring, butt-fucking sodomite Molly of a half brother.

"Oh, God… thankee, just!" Alan whispered with sudden glee-How many nights he'd swung in his hammock aboard Ariadne, his first ship, with silent tears of rage coursing his cheeks, wasting all that precious sleep with schemes of revenge on all who had connived to push him off, a hopeless, clueless victim, to sea.

His father, for Alan's inheritance he'd hoped to steal; their solicitor Pilchard, who'd forged and swindled in the cause; his icily beautiful half sister Belinda, who'd lured him to her bed so he could be discovered "raping" her; even the parish vicar who'd been duped into being witness to his alleged crime.

Most especially, this taunting, cruel, sneering, trouble-making, back-stabbing, lying, canting, sneaking, arrogant swine!

Lewrie's ardour had at last cooled, though he had relished news of them. By '86, off for the Bahamas, he'd almost put them out of mind. He did learn, though, that Pilchard had been arrested long before, for forgery, theft and huge debt; and if he hadn't done a "Newgate hornpipe" on the gallows, then he was a prime candidate for the first convoy to New South Wales, now England had once more a place for those doomed to be "transported for life."

Belinda… their mutual father'd robbed her and Gerald of their dead mother's inheritance, too; run through every penny, and hadn't got his hands on Alan's, so they'd been turned out, penniless. He'd heard she made her living on her back. He'd even seen her listed in the new gentleman's guide to Covent Garden whores… a high-priced courtesan, in the latest edition.

Gerald, well… they didn't publish guides for what he did. He had survived, after a fashion; toadying, fawning, conniving and scheming to ingratiate himself with every member of his peculiar "tribe" in London, to sponge off others' largesse, so he could still make a grand show about town in the latest fashion, in the best circles. As long as he allowed other men of his stripe to ride him.

Lewrie almost giggled as he took in how low Gerald had fallen in the years since he'd last heard of him. A stupendous comedown, if this establishment was the best he could afford to frequent. Or the meanest strait he'd been reduced to, as a market for his fading wares. Getting buggered for sixpence, instead of guineas.

There was a carefully folded pile of civilian long clothing he took to be Gerald's. Lewrie knelt to examine them. He still sported silk stockings, yes, but they were raveled above the knees and darned where they'd run. His shirt boasted a puffy lace jabot, but the rest, which the waist-coat would hide, was a faded, much-mended horror from a rag-picker's barrow. The seat of his pale blue velvet breeches was worn shiny, his once-elegant satin waistcoat had patches of bullion and silver embroidery missing. And his hat! Gerald had been rather keen on fashionable hats. Gerald's wine-coloured beaver was greasy with too much past sweat, table oils, hair dressing, and stained by overlong exposure to the elements.

Alan poked about until he found Gerald's carefully hidden purse, a worn-bare, figured-silk poke. It held a mere two shillings eleven pence. Prompted by past remembrance, he dug into a cracked shoe, delving into Gerald's favourite hidey-hole, and found… a single crown. And this was the top-lofty bastard who'd feared going out of an evening unless he could sport at least fifty pounds! He'd thought it ungentlemanly!

Lewrie stood up suddenly as the lank bastard groaned and rolled his head, exposing teeth grayed by the mercury cure for pox. He spun on his heel and fled the room, before Gerald awoke.

"Bosun," he called, trying to keep his rising malevolent grin in check. "Bosun Tatnall?" "Sir," that worthy grunted.

"Seems to me there's nought we may do to shut this horror down. Nothing official, that is, but…" Alan began, biting his cheek.

"Burn h'it t'th' groun', sir, that'd suit," Tatnall scowled. "Probably a dozen more like it in spitting distance. But, we could do some real good this night, even so," Lewrie went on. "Can't stay open without its owner, or its star performer up yonder," Lewrie joshed, almost elbowing the man in confidential camaraderie. "Do you not think that old tripes-and-trullibubs would make a fine volunteer, bosun? Once you convince him that joining's a sight better than being hanged for a bugger?"

"Oh, aye, sir!" Tatnall agreed heartily. "An' if th' bugger tries 'is ways 'board ship, they'll flay 'at maggoty flesh off n 'is bones! Cut a feller soft'z 'im like fresh cheese, 'ey would, sir!"

"Pity about that shop door below, too, bosun. When we left it, it was locked, but 'tis a rough location, after all. Pity some criminals from the stew broke in and drank him dry." "Oh, aye, sir!" Tatnall concurred again. "A hellish pity!" "I'll speak to that crimp of ours. He must have friends who'd savour a bottle or two," Lewrie snickered. "Take our deserters and the owner to the tender. I'll deal with our crimp, and catch you up later."

"I'll see to 'em, sir, never ya fear."

And I wonder if that crimp knows where a good tattoo artist may be found this time o' night, Lewrie wondered to himself, hellish happy with the evening's outcome, after all.

Bound and gagged, blindfolded, both muffled and disguised by a filthy sheet, Gerald Willoughby could but grunt, squeal and attempt to curse as the tattooist plied his skills at Bridey's knocking-shop. The old drab had bales of castoff slop-clothing to garb Gerald in, and the crimp delighted in his smart, newly exchanged gentleman's togs.

The tattooist did complain, though, as he laboured over Gerald's pale, hairless and shallow chest, as the whores hooted encouragement to him, at the poor state of his "canvas," at the boot-blacking he had to use; at the weak light and the watching crowd as he strove to complete his masterpiece.

It was rather good, though, considering how Gerald behaved, how violently he struggled against every quill prick, the liberal tots they poured down his maw. The rum won out. Towards the end, his thrashings abated, and he rambled gagged snatches of song, before his lights at last went out, and he began to snore.

And once he was thoroughly comatose, Lewrie, the chuckling crimp and their unwitting accomplice Will Cony, delivered Gerald Willoughby, Esquire, into the gentle ministrations of the Deptford district 'press tender. There to sleep off his monumental drunk-there to be sweetly wafted down-river to the Nore as an impressed sailor-there to awaken with a shriek of horror to a new Me and trade.

Lewrie was mortal certain Gerald no longer had a single influential or fashionable patron who might spring to his aid, so there could be no hope of rescue from without. And from within, Gerald, garbed in slop-clothing, and sporting an especially fine (though new) chest tattoo of a rope-fouled anchor, listed as taken by an Impress officer by the name of Brace-waight, could protest until his face turned blue that he wasn't a sailor, to no avail whatsoever. No, his only hope of escape would be to declare himself for what he was.

But, once 'pressed, he fell under the harsh strictures of the Articles of War, most especially Article the Twenty-Ninth:

If any person in the Fleet shall committ the unnatural and detestable Sin of Buggery or Sodomy with Man or Beast, he shall be punished with Death by the sentence of a Court Martial

Oh, it would be a fine and manly, though austere, life Gerald would be entering, Lewrie thought smugly. Wind, rain, the perils of the sea, foul food, rancid reeks, stern discipline, days aloft on the yards dependent on fickle footholds, the risks of battle. Flogging.

And the weeks and months spent cheek-to-jowl with hundreds of fit, healthy, lithe young men, cooped up on the gun decks, swaying in a narrow hammock, with not one whit of privacy-living as celibate an existence as so many damned monks!

Or else, of course.

"Post nubila-Phoebus, Cony," Lewrie informed his man. "My thought for the day. 'After clouds-sunshine'!"

"Iff n ya say so, sir," Cony replied, trying to shelter under a scrap of canvas in the bumboat, as Portsmouth Harbour seethed at the lash of a sullen April rain shower.

Bare days after his antic over his half brother Gerald, there had at last come a packet from the Admiralty. Perhaps Rear-Admiral Sir George Sinclair had turned his toes up, or sailed. Perhaps some rumour of Garvey's past dealings in the Bahamas had come to light at last. Or, more likely perhaps, his and Captain Lilycrop's almost weekly letters to far and near had become such a nuisance to some overworked clerk- whatever, Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, RN, was ordered to make his way to Portsmouth instanter and report aboard the Cockerel frigate, a 32-gunned vessel of the 5th Rate currently fitting out, as her first officer.

Even the gloom of a drizzly day could not dampen his appreciation of his new ship as they neared her, nor could spume, mist nor rain detract from Cockerel's aggressively angular and martial appearance.

Her lower hull above the waterline was a glossy ebony, as were her bulwarks. Her gunwales were, however, buff-coloured, and gleamed with the sheen of prized ivory, slick-ened by the rain. The yards on her three towering masts were neatly squared away, of a golden buff from linseed oil or fresh paint where the wooden spars were bared to the gloom; courses, tops'ls, royals and t' gallants all in perfect alignment with each other a'span the decks, and lift lines tugged until each spar lay perfectly horizontal. And not a brace, parrel, halliard or jear hung slack, not a clew, brail or lift line varied from purposeful, straight-line perfection.

There were touches of red and gilt about the transom and the taffrails, the quarter-galleries, windows and ports, and the lanterns aft. There was lavish gilt about the entry port. And what Lewrie could espy of the figurehead, an irate, wing-fanning rooster wearing a golden fillet crown, and the beakhead rails, was liberally coated with gilt paint as well.