“The cats have more sense, ye know,” Lewrie told the dog. “They stay snug and dry below.”

“Enjoying their long naps,” Lt. Westcott commented with a grin as if he could relish an hour or two of idle snoozing. No one aboard had had much rest since Lewrie returned from London. To prove his sentiment, Westcott fought to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn.

“It appears we’re back in business, Mister Sprague,” Lewrie allowed once they had reached the bow hawses for a long look at the bowsprit and jib-boom rigging.

“Spick and span clean from keel to truck, again, too, sir,” the Bosun pointed out. He was a man who ever strove for order, neatness, and cleanliness, the hallmark of his exacting trade. “She don’t smell like a mud-flat any longer.”

Despite the orders which Lewrie had waved under everyone’s noses, there simply had been no space for them in a graving dock, so the frigate had been hauled over and her bottom cleaned, re-felted, white leaded, and re-coppered in places by a civilian contractor’s yard, on a sandy and muddy hard between the tides, and the reek of the beach, and white lead paint had been a long time departing her.

There had been planking in her “quick-work” badly in need of replacing, too. Some were riddled with teredo worms, and some gnawed thin from the inside, by rats that had the run of the orlop and bilges.

Once back on her bottom and upright, the contractor had suggested that their rat problem could be solved, at least temporarily, by the introduction of a pack of terriers, as many stray cats as could be had round the yard, and let them have the run of the ship for a few days … for which he would be paid, of course, a trifling fee.

“Saw more than one merchant ship and a sloop o’ war get sunk by her own vermin, sir,” the flinty shipwright had told them. “Starving rats’d eat anything, and usually gnaw through the hull planks down low where you can’t tell ’til the water’s pouring into the bilges.”

The ship’s boys had had a field day, following the terriers on their hunts, and collecting keg after keg of dead rats. They had hot been above doing slaughter of their own with hammers and middle mauls.

That vermin-free state would not last; it never would, of course. Ships stores, ration kegs, bales of clothing, and even gunpowder had to be brought back aboard from temporary storage at the warehouses at the naval dockyard, and even more stores sufficient for six months at sea, would bring pests with them, even was the ship anchored out and not right alongside a pier where rats would have easier access.

“How are the new hands fitting in?” Lewrie asked the Bosun.

“Them, God help us, sir?” Sprague said with a weary laugh of dismissal. “Two of the four Landsmen might as well be goony birds and the other two strike me as shifty … county Quota Men. The three rated as Ordinary are passable, but we only could scrape up two Able Seamen, One’s alright, but I’m keeping my eye on Shales, and so is the foremast captain. I expect he’s a ‘sea-lawyer’, sir.”

“No help for it,” Lewrie said with a sigh. The ship’s people had had to lodge ashore temporarily, and despite all the cautions that he, his officers, and petty officers had urged, despite all their watchfulness, eleven hands had deserted. Lewrie damned Lord Gardner’s office for issuing pay chits before the ship was fully back in commission and discipline. It made no sense to him that those eleven men would take “leg bail”, obtain a civilian’s “long clothing”, and run, sacrificing their claims to the substantial amount of prize-money that Reliant was due. And all of them had been aboard since May of 1803!

“For that matter, sir,” Westcott quipped, “how do you think our new Mid, Mister Shannon, is fitting in?”

“Oh, Lord,” Lewrie said, pulling a long face which made all of them chuckle. “No helpin’ that, either. He’s a young’un, no error.”

Midshipman Entwhistle had stood his oral exams before a board of Post-Captains while Reliant was on her beam-ends in the mud, and had been rated as Passed. Out of the blue, not a week later, he had been given orders into an 18-gun brig-sloop just fitting out and he, a newly “wetted down” Lieutenant and Commission Sea Officer, was gone, replaced with a twelve-year-old chub. There had been a tit-for-tat made; the Commissioner of the dockyards, Captain Sir Charles Saxton, Bart., had a distant nephew in need of his first posting, and Lewrie had a foul bottom, and no matter his urgent orders for the South Atlantic, things would go more swimmingly should Lewrie welcome the lad aboard.

Lewrie had to give Captain Saxton his due, though; the naval dockyard had stored all his goods without pilferage, and it all had been returned in fine shape, and no condemned casks of salt-meats had been substituted for their own. Reliant had gotten all the items that Lewrie had requested, even a more than ample supply of paint for sprucing up the ship! And that in a time when captains would be treated so parsimoniously that more than one had written Admiralty to ask which side of his ship he should re-paint!

Midshipman Richard Saxby Shannon, though all puppy-dog earnest and eager, was also all cunny-thumbs, so far, and was as gullible as the day was long, wide open to all of the traditional jokes that Mids played on each other, and even a new one that Lewrie had not heard of before—they had told him that after six months at sea, even had he yet to experience a girl, he would find himself in desperate need for release, in the form of manual stimulation, or “Boxing the Jesuit” in the dark. They had sent him to the Captain to be issued his Masturbation Papers so he would have official permission!

When Shannon had made his request in Lewrie’s day-cabin, with his hat under his arm and his “serious” face on, Lewrie had laughed himself sick, unable to reply, and, wheezing, had just shooed the lad out, and he could not stop laughing for another ten minutes!

“He’ll probably not even touch his crotch to change his under-drawers,” Lt. Westcott sniggered, smiling wickedly.

“Yes, well,” Lewrie said, after another brief laugh, “I think we’re ready for sea, as soon as the wind shifts favourably. I will be below. Carry on, Mister Westcott … Mister Sprague.”

*   *   *

“A cup of good, hot coffee, sir?” Pettus offered after he had hung Lewrie’s hat and undress coat up on pegs to dry, out of reach of the cats.

“Most welcome, thankee, Pettus,” Lewrie responded as he plucked an older, third-best uniform coat from the back of his desk chair and donned it. He sat down at his desk and went over the muster book once more to see if he fully agreed with the changes made in the assignments of hands to their various stations during the ship’s working. Men in each larboard and starboard watch had specific duties to perform when on passage, when hoisting the anchors or coming to anchor, when making sail or reducing them, when top-masts must be struck or hoisted up into place, when boats must be hoisted up and lowered overside or recovered, by day or night. Equally, each man was assigned specific stations and duties when the ship went to Quarters and it was all written down in a series of lists so that every niggling chore was covered and every slot filled by a warm body.

“Turning a bit nippy, this time of year, sir,” Pettus commented as he brought the coffee, “and a chilly damp. It will be good we are bound South.”

“Aye, with winter comin’ on, I’d expect even the heat near the Equator’d be welcome,” Lewrie agreed, stirring his mug after adding a large dollop of goat’s milk and two spoonfuls of fine white sugar.

“Midshipman Shannon, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door bawled.

Lewrie looked up over the rim of his mug to see Jessop making a tube of his right hand and pantomiming a jerk-off to Pettus.

“We’ll have no dis-respect for any Mid, Jessop,” Lewrie said, striving for sternness. “Stop that. Enter!”