"Just so, sir," Lewrie tiredly snickered back. "And whilst the Larboard Watch is ashore, Mister Langlie, you are going to become some sort of legend."
"Sir?"
"There's trade in smuggled rum and spirits aboard," Lewrie said, reaching into a waist-coat pocket to withdraw a hastily scribbled list he'd made at a harbour tavern while waiting for a hired boat to convey him back aboard. "Here are the likely places to look. This time, at any rate. You will also have a word with Mister Coote in the privacy of your mess, and inform him that that jack-a-napes clerk of his sells smuggled tobacco at half the official price. Bits and pieces cut off Mister Coote's supply… God knows what all else he deals in, but he stashes it in a false-side keg in the fishroom, under the tiller flat."
"My word, sir, how did you…" Langlie all but gasped, sitting up straighter.
"Jugg's chatty letters to his wife," Lewrie chuckled. "The man is also skimming off your wardroom's flour and corn-meal to fatten the rats they fight in the cable-tiers and the forrud orlop."
"Rat fights, sir?"
"Rat on rat," Lewrie said, beaming, "for want of terriers. Wagers are laid on 'em, and I'll not have it."
"Well, now that you mention it, sir, I had noticed a diminution in the number of rats aboard, lately," Lt. Langlie said, making notes of his own with a pencil stub and his ever-present pocket notebook. "Though I did put it down to the midshipmen's appetites."
"They don't have that Brutus look, do they?" Lewrie mused. "No 'lean and hungry' air."
"Probably purchasing the dead losers from the fights." Langlie laughed. "Aye, sir, I will see to all of it."
"Damme, the people will think you have eyes in the back of yer head, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie crowed. "That you're a dark, devilish wizard who knows all and sees all. Most-like ask you to take augury on chicken guts, next. Hold one of those Gothick… seances. Speak to the dead…"
"Only for people who could pay, I would, sir," Langlie replied.
"Speakin' of chickens…"
"Sir?" Langlie enquired, pencil poised.
"Haven't some of the chickens gone missing, lately?"
"Well, aye sir, and so they have. Forgive me, but I did suspect that your cats had, um…" Langlie said, squirming and blushing.
"It's the mongoose, more like," Lewrie offhandedly told him.
"Beg pardon, sir… mongoose, did ye say?" Langlie gawped in perplexity. It wasn't often that his efficient First Lieutenant wore a bewildered, nigh cross-eyed expression, but he produced a passable facsimile.
"Mongoose. The Marines' mongoose," Lewrie assured him. "Blue riband, champion Hindoo rat-killin' emigrant mongoose. From Trinidad, or so I learned. It's been beatin' the sailors' best rats, and they don't much care for it, so it's creating bad blood. Find it, Mister Langlie, run it to earth. It's probably been keepin' its hand in by practicing on creatures in the manger up forrud. That's where all our chickens have gone, I'd wager."
"Find a mongoose and get rid of it, sir… aye," Langlie said as he scribbled into his little book.
"Well, if all else fails, definitely put a stop to the fights and definitely spare our fowl," Lewrie breezed on. "Do the Marines put so much stock in the beast, well… I don't much care whether it serves as a mascot with a red riband round its neck, 'long as no one thinks t'bring snakes aboard for it to fight."
"I s'pose I'll recognise a mongoose when I see one, sir?"
"Like an ermine or a ferret." Lewrie chuckled. "Like an smallish otter, with a talent for killin' cobras and such."
"Ah!" Langlie rejoined. "I see, sir. I think. Perhaps we may declare it the ship's official ratter… so long as no more wagers'r made on its prowess?"
"That's what I like about you, Mister Langlie." Lewrie smiled. "Your flexibility in the face of un-looked-for adversity. I believe that'll be all for now, Mister Langlie. That should be enough on yer plate, for the nonce."
"Oh, agreed, sir. Agreed!" Langlie said, rising and departing.
CHAPTER TWO
HMS Proteus s return to English Harbour, Antigua, was actually not necessary, and mostly unproductive. The frigate's mail was still being held at Kingston, Jamaica, by the authorities of the West Indies Station, to which fleet she still putatively belonged, even after her long sojourn.
Thankfully, Lewrie's personal devils of late, Mr. Pelham and Mr. Peel, had long departed Antigua for other climes-all the way back to London, Lewrie fervently wished, so he could live his life free of their cynical machinations, ever more!
Antigua's Admiralty House atop Mt. Shirley held only one letter for him, and that from his new-found bastard son, Desmond McGilliveray, now a sixteen-year-old Midshipman aboard his uncle's (and the captain's) United States Navy Armed Ship, the Thomas Sumter. Desmond sounded as if he was thriving at his new profession, so eerily coincidental to Alan's own. Sumter had just embarked upon arduous and boresome escort duties to convoy a
trade" of Yankee merchantmen home and, most-like, would put back into her homeport of Charleston, South Carolina, for refitting and provisioning. Young Desmond chirped right-merry over the prospects of how much prize money might result from Sumter's-and her small squadron's-recent captures in the Caribbean: French merchant ships and several warships, too-ones that Lewrie had led them to, twice, using the reborn U.S. Navy as British cat's paws in Pelham's and Peel's scheme.
Desmond enthused how "half-seas-over" his hometown would be when they arrived with prizes in tow, how famous they might be once the news spread from Maine to Georgia, how eager he was to see his adoptive family once more. And, backhandedly, Desmond came close to boasting of a much better reception in Charleston society than he once had, strutting proudly in his uniform, a new-minted hero and promising gentleman seafarer. Which beat being shunned as a half-White, half-Muskogee Indian orphan all hollow, Lewrie sadly suspected.
Desmond happily enquired about Chalky, too; how large or playful the kitten had grown, etc. He'd been Desmond's gift, found shivering and cowering on the boat-tier beams of a French capture; rescued, then shyly presented to the father he'd never known, so heartbreakingly eager to please, to win Lewrie's affection, his claiming…
Lewrie looked over at the settee, where Chalky sprawled, teeth and little paws "killing" a cushion's tassel, and thought again, quite possibly for the thousandth time, that the lad had meant well, but…
His fears for Desmond's continued safety were allayed by news of Guillaume Choundas being detained on his parole aboard the USS Hancock, that monstrous frigate, which still cruised the Caribbean. Even so… did Choundas ever learn the boy's parentage, the seemingly indefatigable ogre might find a way to harm him, to get even with Lewrie. With a fond smile, Lewrie set Desmond's letter aside and pulled out the inkwell and one of his new-fangled, French-invented, steel-nib pens (one more parting gift from the lad off a defeated French corvette) to pen him a quick answer for mailing. After the British-American riots, when Proteus was last in English Harbour, he was pretty sure that the local authorities would wish them gone as soon as they'd wooded and watered. And not stand upon the order of their going, either! His working parties ashore were already limited to the docks area, and that under the wary guard of the local garrison! No, Proteus had already been absent long enough-it was time for a "fond" return to the bosom of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's fleet on Jamaica, and the "warm" ministrations of the fleet's Staff Captain, Sir Edward "Bloody" Charles.