Such as the fact that the few ships of the Venetian Navy were laid up in harbour or drawn up on the strand for storage, and were as rotten as any he'd seen in the famed Arsenal at Venice itself. The sole officer of their navy couldn't put together a harbour-watch for a single galley or small xebec, though he still indented for their pay, ration allocations and funds for upkeep. And a fine living he had of that charade, too!
Even if there had been a military garrison worth the name, when he'd strolled on those land-side walls, Lewrie had found the artillery scattered at the embrasures almost "Will He, Nill He," many of them empty. The guns were so long unused that the carriages were half eaten by termites, as worm-holed as cheese; the guns themselves were gleaming under fresh black paint or soot blacking. But under the disguise they were almost rusted immovably to the stone ramparts!
And even the provveditore's residence had turned out to be quite small-most pointedly not the impressive palazzio down one of the main collonaded streets, which gaped empty and run-down. To save money, or to pocket the difference, Lewrie suspected, the provveditore rented a place just barely suitable. He hadn't even owned his own plates or glassware, but had had to send out to his landlord for extra to feed a foreign visitor! t
How could anyone let himself slip so deep in sloth and graft, and become so corrupt he'd threaten the safety of such a blissful island? Lewrie asked himself with mounting anger. Such a lovely place, so strategic! And he actually spat upon the stones of the quay.
"Very well, then, young sirs," Lewrie decided, after taking one last, longing look to fix Corfu Town in his memory. "Let's get back aboard Jester. I wish to clear harbour by sundown."
Hyde and Spendlove lagged behind their captain on the way to the waiting boats, taking what brief joy they could of an idle quarter hour ashore after unending months at sea. Even the sight of the Frenchmen who cursed them-the recent captives or the ones off the anchored merchantman or the foreign sailors in France's pay-couldn't dissuade them from sighing with a longing of their own to be let free for a spell of idleness, shore-cooked foods, strange new wines and those alluring girls!
" 'Tain't like him, by God, it ain't," Hyde muttered to his compatriot. "Deuced bloody odd, Clarence. I expected him to sleep ashore this evening. Do you get my meaning?" he drawled suggestively.
"Must be something which comes with middle age, Martin," Mister Spendlove whispered back with a sneaky grin. "After all, he's thirty-three and a bit, now. Past it, d'ye expect?"
"God save us if that's true," Hyde breathed softly, casting such an aching glance at another angelic Corfiot chit in the doorway of some dockside chandlery. "And here we are, with so few years left to us 'fore we suffer the same affliction."
"And so few opportunities," Spendlove agreed with a faint moan. "Why, ever since he saw off that kept mutton o' his, that Aretino creature, he's lived the life of a bloody saint!" Hyde carped. "And so have we! Least, when he still had all his humours-"
" 'Fore he spent 'em… spending with the ladies," the seventeen-year-old Spendlove japed.
"Were he off carousing, then there was a chance we'd be free to, aye." Hyde sighed in the very heat of an eighteen-year-old's frustration; that of a callow, brimful of "vital humours" cully. "Let me tell you, Clarence, 'tis been so long, I've… considered, mind… considered taking up 'Boxing the Jesuit.' Just to ease myself, d'ye see."
"Considered," Spendlove posed, tongue-in-cheek. He had ears.. • he'd heard Hyde's hammock-ropes squeak against the end-rings, late in the evening after Lights Out, as Hyde amused himself. Eased himself; though wasting one's limited and fixed allocation of humours led to lunacy and consumption like laxity of wit, body and spirit, too soon in life. Such as Captain Lewrie's new state. "With real girls…"
"Oh, you vile young seducer, you!" Hyde scoffed. "You scourge of a thousand chambermaids! As it you could advise me, 'bout women!"
"Not for want of experience, sir!" Spendlove shot back, louder. After all, had there not been a willing young tavern girl at San Fiorenzo Bay, at that little waterfront osteria, hard by the boat-landing? And had there not been both a boardinghouse chambermaid, and an actual whore at Leghorn, where even the dead could "put the leg over" a fetching mort for the price of a scone? No, Clarence Spendlove didn't think his few years on this mortal coil had been a complete waste of chances.
"You, Clarence? Little 'hop o' my thumb'?" Hyde went on, louder as well. "You've not a jot on the experiences I've had. Can't serve aboard Jester this long, without. Can't serve under the 'Ram-Cat'-"
"Sshh!" Spendlove cautioned.
"You wish to be just like him… when you grow up, that is," Hyde shot back, a bit more quietly.
"And who wouldn't, I ask you?" Spendlove shot back, ignoring his own warning. "Least, the early years, mind. 'Fore-"
"You gentlemen done skylarking?" their captain snapped from the edge of the dock, ready to enter his gig. "Shake a leg, then."
"Well, erm…" Hyde replied. "Don't we both, rather. Before we get too long in tooth for it."
CHAPTER 5
The squadron lay at rest, once more anchored in the mill-pond-quiet port of Trieste. On this visit, with the coming of summer, it was a much nicer-seeming place, no longer buried under gloomy skies, with all that drizzly, seeping rain and misty fogs. Securely anchored in an allied harbour, behind a breakwater fortified and armed against a raid, and with a walled town that was well patrolled by Austrian soldiers or city watchmen, Captain Charlton had allowed as how the crews could be let ashore, watch by watch, for some precious shore liberty. Those steady warrants and hands, of course. With not one man per ship able to speak German, it would be almost impossible for anyone to change his clothes and desert. And they had cause for celebration, after a month or more on patrol down south.
Pylades and Jester had managed to fetch in four prize-ships, and had been forced to burn three more, swept up farther south of the Ionian Isles; outbound carrying cargoes of timber and naval stores. Lionheart and Myrmidon had had a less productive patrol-they'd only brought in a pair of ships. Over on the Italian side of the straits, or the Adriatic Sea, it had been rare to run into a merchant vessel with improper, Colourable, papers and manifests. They'd encountered far more Neapolitans, Papal State, Venetian, or neutral traffick. They'd stopped thirty or more ships, and, while there had been some they'd suspected of being engaged in smuggling for France, their papers had either been legitimate and unimpeachable-or the very best forgeries they'd ever seen. More cautious than Rodgers and Lewrie, perhaps, they'd been
forced to allow them to proceed on their voyages. Better that than being hauled into an Admiralty Court for unlawful seizure and sued to their eyebrows!
"Uhm…" Lewrie smiled with pleasure. "Sprightly, indeed, sir. And rather spicy, too. Hint of floral, to the nose? What did you say it was, again, sir?"
"A gewurztraminer, Commander Lewrie." Charlton beamed back at him, quite pleased that his officers liked his wine selection. "That is, I am told, German for 'spiced'… getourz. Not too sweet on your palates, gentlemen?"
"Not at all, sir!" Commander Fillebrowne was quick to reassure his superior. "My word, sir, you must tell me the name of the shop you got it from. Have to have a case'r two of this aboard. Tastier than a proper port. Lighter, too," Fillebrowne toadied on.