Hmm, sounds like most marriages! Lewrie had cynically thought.

Priscilla adored baring her body, being outlandishly nude and posing most fetchingly a’sprawl and inciting. Her “lawful blanket” might never worship at her firm and perky breasts, the insides of her thighs, or at “the wee man in the boat”, but by God Lewrie had been more than glad to attend “services” there! And the rewards of such ardent adoration had been nigh to Paradise itself!

What a waste of a good woman, Lewrie told himself as he mused over his last cup of coffee; Wouldn’t trust her outta sight, but—

The Marine sentry at his door stamped boots, banged his musket on the deck, and cried, “First Officer, SAH!”

“Enter,” Lewrie replied, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.

Lt. Westcott entered, his hat under his arm. “The ship is in all respects ready for sea, sir. We stand ready to pipe ‘Stations To Weigh’, whenever you wish.”

“Very well, Mister Westcott, I will come to the quarterdeck,” Lewrie said, rising and snagging his hat off the sideboard, where it was temporarily safe from his cats, who were still busy at their bowls at the other end of the table. “I am sorry I had to call you back to the ship by midnight.”

“Well, sir,” Westcott confided with a faint grin, “all that was needed to be said had been said. Some tears and lamentations, but I doubt such sentiment will last all that long once we’re gone. Dare I enquire of your last night ashore, sir?”

“We’re much in the same boat, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said. “I would say that I regret parting from the lady’s company, but, sooner or later, there’d be her husband t’deal with. At least you have the good sense to get involved with a free lass. Can’t imagine where my mind went!”

Most of a night on the side portico of her house, in the dark, rowin’ just the two of us over t’Hog Island with a basket and a blanket … thumpin’ about in a closed coach out to East End Point, Lewrie reminisced as they strolled out onto the weather deck and up the starboard ladderway to the quarterdeck; and last night, for hours and hours? That’s where my mind, and good sense, went! It’s just as well we’re sailin’ far away, ’fore her husband gets an inklin’ and calls me out. Killin’ him in a duel—for her honour, hah!—would be just too much.

“Good morning, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said to the Sailing Master, who was already on deck by the compass binnacle cabinet with all his navigational tools laid out. “Where away the wind?”

“Fresh out of the East-Nor’east, sir, and fair for a beam reach out the channel,” Caldwell told him with a satisfied grin. “You will wish to depart up the Nor’west Providence Channel, once we’ve made our offing, sir?”

“Aye,” Lewrie replied, looking up at the commissioning pendant to judge the direction of the wind for himself. “Out into the Florida Straits, reach the Gulf Stream, and shave close enough to the Grand Bahama Bank to keep well off the American coast. With any luck, we’ll pick up an East-Sou’easterly breeze that will allow us to avoid the Hatteras Banks, and get well out into the Atlantic.” He knocked wood on the binnacle cabinet. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

Lieutenants Spendlove and Merriman greeted him with cheery good mornings in return, and a doff of their hats.

“Just as we break the anchor free, I’ll have the spanker, the tops’ls, and inner, outer, and flying jibs hoisted,” Lewrie decided. “Once we’ve made our offing into deep water, and hauled off Nor’west, we’ll see to the courses and t’gallants.”

“Aye, sir,”

“And … when the anchor’s free, we’ll strike the harbour jack and my broad pendant,” Lewrie further instructed. “I’m sure that that will please our Commodore to no end, hey?”

Sour smiles were shared by all.

“Hands to the capstan, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Let’s have a tune t’spur ’em on.”

“Bosun!” Westcott cried to the waist. “Hands to the capstan! Strike up ‘Portsmouth Lass’!”

Bisquit the dog dashed round the waist ’til he discovered that he was both ignored and underfoot, and slunk his way up to the quarterdeck to squat behind the cross-deck hammock nettings, looking about for a friendly face and a reassuring pat. He came to sit by Lewrie after a minute or two.

“Short stays!” Midshipman Munsell shouted from the bows.

“Stamp and go for the heavy haul!” Lt. Westcott bellowed.

“Up and down!”

“Bosun Sprague! Pipe the topmen aloft!” Westcott ordered. “Lay aloft, trice out, and man the tops’ls!”

Blocks squealed as the lift lines dragged the tops’l yards up from their rests. Lighter blocks joined the chorus after the harbour gaskets were freed and hands on deck drew down the canvas to the wind.

“Anchor’s free!” Munsell cried.

“Hoist away all jibs! Hoist away the spanker!”

HMS Reliant began to shuffle uncertainly, heeling a tiny bit to leeward as the canvas aloft began to catch wind, paying off free ’til the fore-and-aft sails were sheeted home. She then started to inch forward, stirring her great weight.

“Steerage way?” Lewrie asked the helmsmen.

“A bit, sir!” Quartermaster Baldock tentatively replied as he shifted the spokes of the forward-most of the twin wheels.

“A point up to windward, to get some drive from the jibs,” Lewrie ordered, pacing over to peer into the compass bowl, then look aloft at the commissioning pendant and how it was streaming.

Damme, that’s the end o’ that! he sadly thought as he watched his broad pendant come fluttering down the slackened halliard, that red bit of bunting with the white ball in the centre.

“Way, sir,” Baldock reported. “The rudder’s got a bite, now.”

“Steer for mid-channel, then, with nothing t’leeward,” Lewrie told him.

“Mid-channel aye, sir, an’ nothing t’leeward!” Baldock echoed.

“Hands to the braces!” Westcott was ordering, now that the topsails were fully spread, half-cupping the breeze. “Haul in the lee braces!”

Reliant was under way, free of the ground, with just enough of a drive to create the faintest bow wave under her forefoot and her cutwater, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. Before he would go to the windward rail, where a ship’s captain ought to be, he remained in the centre of the quarterdeck, looking shoreward. There were people there, on the piers and along Bay Street, waving goodbye. Some of them were women who waved handkerchiefs. Did some pipe their eyes in sadness?

Just after leaving Athenian and his last meeting with Grierson, Lewrie had announced to the crew that they would be sailing for home … where their pay chits would be honoured in full, and the shares in their ship’s prize-money would be doled out, he had reminded them, to make some of the dis-contented think twice about desertion. He had hoisted the “Easy” pendant and put the ship “Out Of Discipline” for a day and a night to let the whores and temporary “wives” come aboard, and even after full order was restored, he had granted shore liberty to each watch in turn so his sailors could stretch their legs ashore and lounge at their ease in the many taverns, rut in the brothels, and attend the “Dignity Balls” that the Free Blacks would stage. The Mulatto girls, the Quadroons and Octoroons, might be above being shopped by the pimps in the bum-boats like common doxies, but the fancily-dressed “Dignity Ladies”, for a discreet price, would make young sailormen feel as if they had discovered Fiddler’s Green, the sailors’ Paradise, where ale and spirits flowed freely, the music never ended, the girls were obliging and eager, and the publicans never called for the reckoning.

“Departing salute to the Governor-General, sir?” Lt. Westcott prompted.

“Aye, Mister Westcott, carry on,” Lewrie agreed, pacing over to the windward bulwarks where he belonged, and, as the gun salute boomed out in its slow measure, and the leeward side became wreathed in smoke, Lewrie doffed his hat to the women ashore, one memorable woman in particular whom he, in retrospect, had best never see again!