Lewrie took a quick census, his eyes darting about the room and plucking names from memory. Towpenny, Able Seaman Ahern, the teenaged topman, Willy Toffett, Able Seaman Luckaby… Midshipman Mr. Burns was not there, but most-like in a "gentleman's" ward, and… Quartermaster Jugg? His eyes blared and his lips parted in astonishment to see Toby Jugg sitting on a cot near one of the windows!
What the Devil's he doin' here? Why didn't he run if he…
"Ah… sorry it took a while, Mister Towpenny… lads," he managed to say, gulping down his shock after a moment. He strode about the room, clapping them all on the back, even the reluctant-looking Jugg, to congratulate them on their survival; squeamish, though, as he looked into Jugg's eyes and patted his shoulder with false bonhomie.
Squeamish, too, ready to clap a hand over his nose, as the reek of the hospital caught up with him; an age-old reek of blood, pus, and vomit, of fever-sweat and flesh rot. God, how many thousands had died here in the tropics of fevers, with battle wounds the rare cause!
It would be days, Lewrie had been told, before his hands could be released even on light duties after their ordeal. All were badly sunburned, some peeling in raw-beef sheets, their lips dryly cracked, exposed skin spotted with lanced and draining saltwater boils. Able Seaman Ahern was the worst off, still bedridden. He'd drunk seawater.
"Now, lads, just what the Devil happened to you?" Lewrie at last demanded, taking a seat on a cot and fanning away the heat.
" 'Twas two hours into th' Middle Watch, sir," Towpenny said, by way of a beginning. "Mister Burns, Toffett here, and Ahern over yonder, was the watchstanders, th' rest of us caulkin' below. 'Coordin' to what they've told me, th' first thing they knowed, there come a wee thumpin'… of boats comin' alongside, sir, then nigh on two dozen pirates got on deck, and-"
"Blink of an eye, an' they was just there, sir!" Willy Toffett declared. "Knives an' cutlasses t'our throats, and 'twas nothin' that we could do, e'en t'cry out. Three or four t'each of us, Cap'm, sir."
"Not a sound did they make, sir," Towpenny started again, after bestowing a sour who's-tellin'-this? glare at young Toffett. "First I knowed, there were three on me, draggin' me out me cot. We'd took over th' wardroom cabins, d'ye see…"
A brief lark, a few days' luxury, that; to loll in private, in a small canvas-and-deal partition chamber normally reserved for officers or merchantmen's mates, in substantial bed-cots, not hammocks, with elbow room to yawn and stretch, not the fourteen to eighteen inches per man of swaying room on the gun-deck. Convenient to the weather decks, with fresh bedding and linens, real chairs and a glossy table at which to dine… as temporary civilian gentlemen of "the Quality."
"Black or dark grey boats and oars, dark clothin', and all done 'thout a sound above a whisper, sir," Towpenny related, still so impressed by their discipline that he shook his head in wonder, two months later. "Time they got us all bound, gagged and blindfolded, sir, and manacled down in the after hold, they'd got a way on her so quick they must've cut the anchor cables."
"Who were they, Mister Towpenny?" Lewrie pressed. "Privateers or pirates?… French or Spanish?" he asked, eying Jugg askance.
"Claimed t'be French privateers, sir," Towpenny related, "but we heard as much Spanish palaver as we did Frog, so we weren't sure, even at th' last. A day'r two outta Dominica, they fetched us up, we seen their schooner, the Reunion , they called her, but-"
"A big two-master she woz, sir!" Toffett stuck in, bouncing on his cot to add his share of their harrowing tale. "Masts, sails, and upperworks grey as dusk, Cap'm. Black-hulled, though. Black as them devils' hearts!" the young
topman spat.
"Red gunn'ls an' boot-top stripe, too, don't forget, hey," Able Seaman Luckaby added through cracked and puffy lips.
"Reviv, or summat like that, woz wot I heard'm call her," Ahern croaked from a raw throat, propped up on one elbow. " Two names that bitch had. You heard it, right, Jugg? Wot woz it ye said?"
"The Revenant," Jugg gruffly supplied in a growl, seated apart on his cot by the windows, still. "Means 'The Ghost,' I think."
"Aye, sir," Ahern snarled. "A ghost she were, right enough."
"And it was reported that, ah… you went ashore by yourself to the Dominica Court 's office, Jugg?" Lewrie asked, raising a hand to quell the indignantly excited babble. "I was told you were the one to ask permission to sail the prize over to Antigua?"
"Nossir, tweren't me," Jugg objected, his first sign of animation. He left off paring slices of anti-scorbutic apples that he ate off his knife blade to defend himself. " 'Twas one o' them pirates wot took Mister Towpenny's coat an' hat an' went ashore! Real tall, lean older man, wot spoke English right good…"
"Spanish an' French, just as easy" got tacked on.
" 'At's th' way o' h'it, sir!"
"Axed our names at th' point of a dagger, 'ey did!"
"I see," Lewrie said, after a long and leery pause to mull that over. It would seem that all his preconceptions about the taking of the prize had been as wrong as his guesses as to where she'd gone and might have been recaptured!
Damme, though, Lewrie thought; Jugg's still lookin' as shifty-eyed as a pickpocket. I still think he knows more than he's telling/ Old shipmates of his, did it? Did he recognise anyone or …
Lewrie frowned, realising that, for now, he would have to take their collective word for it. Even Jugg's.
"What happened after that?" Lewrie asked, instead.
"Once we sailed, sir, they kep' us in irons down on th' orlop," Willy Toffett eagerly took up the tale. "Sometimes, they'd remember t'feed us an' give us water, sometimes not. Change out our shites or force us t'make in our clothes, the-!"
"Like we woz nothin', 'ey did!" Ahern snarled from his bed-cot. "Like we'd be dead as th' rest, when 'ey got round to it!"
"Four, five days, 'twas rare quiet, sir," Mr. Towpenny related in a weary voice. "Felt like we were sailin' Large, the winds on the starboard quarter most th' time, bound mostly Westerly, Cap'm. Fifth or sixth day, we heard 'em clearin' for action, an' we were hopin' it was one o' ours, but… she turned out t'be a Spaniard, and she got took right quick. Wot'd they say 'bout her, Jugg? You savvied 'em."
"That she woz a Spanish cutter, mebbe a guarda costa or a kendo' movement ship, anyways," Jugg warily supplied, arms crossed on his deep chest. "Made 'em right happy, by th' sounds of it."
"Smelled like a slaver, t'me," Mr. Towpenny objected.
"Hush, 'at woz th' first'un," Ahern quibbled, "a slaver, sure! Can't mistake th' stink. 'Twoz th' second prize, woz th' guarda costa. Took…"
"… a day'r two later, sir!" Toffett chirped up. "First, she woz a black-birder, certain! Wot'd ye say, Toby?… She woz outta th' Spanish Main? Puerto Cabello?"
" Havana," Jugg gravelled. "Bought slaves at Havana t'sell down to Puerto Cabello, wot I could make out them sayin', Willy."
"Murderin' bastards," Ahern added, with a faint shudder of what he'd heard, even if he hadn't seen it. "Gawd, but there was a power o' murderin', both times, sor!"
"Murder?" Lewrie asked, appalled.
"Both times, 'ey'd start a'killin' folk, sir," Seaman Luckaby explained, black-visaged in anger.