"In the spirit of mutual cooperation with our new… allies," Lewrie muttered. "We promised to obtain European ships with artillery, and so we did, Mister Spendlove. There was no safe harbour where we'd be able to break out or shift cargo-without revealing our arrangement with the Serbian pirates, mind-so it was best that we let this Mlavic person have her and sail her back to the isles of Palagruza. Far from sight of prying eyes, d'ye see."
"Seems a pity, sir." Spendlove shrugged, seeming to buy Lewrie s glib explanation at face value. "Not like giving up an outward-bounder, full of compass-timber and such. Just our bad luck, I s'pose, to fetch an inward-bound vessel. Rich as they've been laden…"
Christ! Lewrie quailed, stiffening bolt-upright and sucking in some air involuntarily, no matter how rigid he should have held himself before his crew. French gold, from their government for purchasing naval stores! Her captain's personal pelf! Her working capital, to pay her many needs, to victual her or make the odd repairs on the round voyage!
He idly (as idly as his murderously angry fingers would allow!) took a squint through the various documents he held. He'd sent Spendlove and Andrews below to her master's great-cabins straightaway, to delve about and turn up these lists, her log and such, but he hadn't time to scan them thoroughly before his confrontation with Dragan Mlavic.
He suddenly felt very ill. And snookered. And stupid, into the bargain, when he read that the Ministry of Marine had consigned twelve thousand livres in gold to be used for the purchase of seasoned Adriatic oak for naval construction. One locked and wax-sealed reinforced chest, to be safeguarded at all peril, signed over to a capitaine …!
Oh, who gives a good goddamn to whom! he fumed, looking up and out toward Jester, thankful that his gig was now stroking into her lee, where the wave-motion wasn't so boisterous, for he surely felt the need to spew, by then… to "cast his accounts to Neptune"! He eyed the boat and found no locked and wax-sealed bound chest. Mlavic had it, damn his eyes! Damn his scurvy, poxy bloodl
Manfully fighting the almost irresistible urge to moan, curse or scream aloud, he looked down at the bundle he held once more. There was a small sheaf of notes in a spidery hand, a daily accounting list in the rough, to be transferred to a proper account book later. A ledger that was most-like still aboard the brig, or in her Purser's or First Mate's tender care. Another bloody 3,247 or so livres of working capital, less I what they'd paid some Marseilles chandlers, less a pilot's fees…!
And what's so bloody wrong with tears, I ask you! Lewrie thought, I stone-bleak at what he'd lost; by God, I've been robbed! Diddled! That's why Mlavic wished to have her, to winkle us off so quick! He suspected I… and got me so "rowed" I'd not think to…!
"Not a total loss, sir," Spendlove told him as the bow-man took a first stab at the starboard main-chains with his boat-hook. His heel thumped on a bag that lay under his thwart. The bag rustled nicely… could he also conjure a faint chinking sound, a muted metal jingling?
"Aye, sah, foun' ya some cawfee beans, nigh on fo' poun'," his coxswain assured him between orders to the crew to toss their oars and such. "Frenchies allus have de bes' when it come t'cawfee."
"Ah. Coffee. I see," Lewrie replied, summoning up some gratitude; or something that sounded approximate. "Well, thankee, Andrews. Mister Spendlove. Thankee right kindly."
"Some odds and ends, too, sir," Spendlove preened, proud of his scrounging abilities. "Goose quills, right-hand bent. Fresh ink, and some fine vellum paper…"
"Thoughtful of you both," Lewrie expounded as he stood to make his way to the gunn'l for a well-timed leap to the damp, weed-green and slick bottom steps of the boarding battens. "I'm grateful for your concern."
The bag did hold coffee beans, and odds and ends; sadly, it held no coins. Lewrie set the ink-bottle and new quills on his desktop, put fifty-odd sheets of vellum in a drawer.
"Do you stow these away in the pantry, Aspinall," he directed.
"Aye, sir. Oh, toppin', sir! Fresh beans. Like a cup, sir? I could have some ground an' brewed in ten minute.'
"Not at the moment, Aspinall, thankee," Lewrie sighed. "Perhaps later. No relish for it now."
"Right, then, sir," the lad chirped, going forrud and humming to himself in right good cheer, Toulon prancing tail-high with him.
Goddammit! Lewrie cringed to see anyone happy about anything at that instant! He spread the various documents across the desk and picked through them slowly, catching only a faint impression of import here and there, for his mind was awhirl with other things. Revenge, to be factual! '
Fool me once, shame on you, he glowered; right then, you fooled me, Mlavic. Not the half-wit you look, are you? Fool me twice, well, I doubt it. Make the bugger pay, I will! Wipe that crafty peasant sneer off his brutish phyz… swear t'God I will, 'fore we're done!
Something at last leapt out at him, in his distracted state. A fine sheet of vellum in its own right, folded over into an envelope and still sticky with broken wax seals, which clung to the rest.
There was the crash of a musket-butt without the gun-deck doors, the sound of idle boots being stamped together. "First off cer, SAH!" his Marine sentry bellowed.
"Enter."
"Excuse me, sir, but… on which course should I get the ship under way?" Lieutenant Knolles enquired, looking a touch anxious.
"Ah," Lewrie said, feeling a new flush of anger at himself then. "Sorry, Mister Knolles, for being remiss. I was too rapt in these documents we took from the prize. Looking for an answer to that very question. Our pirates? Where away?"
"Worn off the wind, sir, and steering Nor'east," Knolles said.
"And we're fetched to on larboard tack, hmm… get steerageway to the Sou'west, then return to our original course, Sou'east or so, on starboard tack. Close-hauled, as before."
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles replied chearly, before turning to go.
Damme, another happy sod! Lewrie groaned, sitting down. Well, ain't ignorance just bliss. Ignorance of how much we let slip through our ignorant little fingers! And thank God for small favours we've seen the last of Mlavic and his cutthroats this voyage! Can't wait t'rush home to his master, Petracic, and show off his pretty new toys!
"God, I absolutely despise this!" he whispered to the empty cabins. "Mlavic, Petracic, the bloody need of 'em…!"
He hunched forward over the desk, bear-shouldered and miserable. He unfolded the vellum letter further, peeling another sheet away from [the remnants of a wax patch. Labouriously, for his French wasn't that good, either, he made out that he had the second page of a two-page set of instructions from the brig's former ship s-husbands and owners, for her now-former master. Cautions, warnings, a pithy bit here and there, though framed in a tortuous sea-lawyerese, on how her captain had best proceed in the service of both profit and patrie.
"… 'be advised that a British squadron is now known to be found in the Adriatic,' " he murmured half aloud. "And, it took you that long t'puzzle that out? No idea of numbers… no idea of operating areas, so… 'sellers' agents have opened marts in those ports'… damme, what the hell does that mean… susdit? Susdit? Never bloody heard of it." He suddenly felt the lack of a French dictionary.
He rose from his chair and went forward, out to the gun-deck and up the windward ladder to the quarterdeck.
"Cap'um on deck!" Midshipman Spendlove warned the watch.
"Mister Spendlove, how's your Frog?" he demanded.
The lad shrugged. "Tolerable, sir, I s'pose."