"Lewrie, you young scamp, sir!" Commodore Ayscough bellowed with glee as he came up to doff hats with him, then seize his paw and shake vigourously. "Look at the laddie, will ye all… a Post-Captain on his own bottom, just clanking with medals for bravery, ha ha!"
" 'Tis good to see you again, too, sir," Lewrie rejoined. "And, you a Commodore. Had Admiralty a parcel o' wit, you should've hoisted a broad pendant years ago."
"Aye, and if more cripples and wheezers meet their Maker, I'll make Rear-Admiral as they fall off Navy List," Ayscough whooped. "You are delivering orders, or are you to join my motley crowd, Lewrie?"
"To join, sir, and see if we may have a merry time with the foe over yonder," Lewrie told him, vaguely pointing off to the East, where the French Biscay coast could almost be made out in the quickly dying sunset. "As we did in the Far East."
"Toppin news!" Ayscough exclaimed. "The Frog shore is crawlin' with smugglers, spy boats, and all sorts of shippin', and too many of them still manage to get past us, thin as we are in these waters. How many guns is your Savage, and what's your weight of metal?"
When told that she mounted twenty-six 18-pounders, with a pair of 12-pounders for chase guns, and mounted eight 9-pounders and eight 32-pounder carronades, Ayscough was delighted.
" Chesterfield is a stout old barge, Lewrie, but a slow-coach," Ayscough grumbled as the music died, the side-party and Marines were dismissed, and they paced the length of the gangway. "Good for commanding a squadron, but not for helping at close inshore work, either. Rather have me a frigate like yours… keep me hand in, partake of a hot action now and then, but…," he said with a resigned sigh. "Now Lyme, there, is fine for the open sea, too, but a fourty-four-gun frigate can't pursue runners close enough ashore any more than can I. Her captain is already come aboard… solid fellow, is Captain Charlton."
"Captain Thomas Charlton, sir?" Lewrie gawped in surprise, and further pleasure. "I served under him in the Adriatic, sir, when he had Lionheart, back in '96! This really is an 'old boys' reunion."
" 'Deed it is," Ayscough chearly agreed. "Recall young Hogue, do you? Made Commander last year, and I made sure to request him when I got sailing orders. He's here into a brig-sloop, the Mischief. And a damned good choice o' name, too, for he's energetic and full of it… mischief, that is, ha ha!"
"I'd be delighted to see him again, too, sir," Lewrie declared. "I read of his posting, but haven't seen him since Telesto paid off in '84."
"See him soon enough," Ayscough promised, "soon as I despatch you and your fine frigate closer to the coast. Know how the Royal Navy works, Lewrie," Commodore Ayscough said with a wry scowl. "Decades of swallowin' ninny's shite, and only findin' a few truly good'uns here and there, so… when one finally has the seniority, and the active commission, one seeks out as many good'uns as one can get away with. What place and influence is worth, that… employ the best one discovered, and make fond daddies happy, to boot! Ah, here's Captain Charlton. I think you know our third guest, Charlton?"
"Good God above," Captain Charlton said, almost gasping in surprise as he strode up from aft and below to the gangway. "The last that I heard, Lewrie weren't you to be hung?"
"Decided t'steal away with a frigate and turn pirate out here, sir," Lewrie japed as they performed the same ritual; first a doff of their hats in formal salute then a hearty handshake.
"He'd have made a good one, as I recall from the Adriatic, sir," Charlton told Ayscough. "You must reveal all to me, to us, Lewrie. As we dine upon Commodore Ayscough's generosity."
"Speaking of, let us repair below, shall we, gentlemen? I promise you an excellent supper," Ayscough, as host, bade them.
And a most excellent supper it was, for Commodore Ayscough had always set a fine table, and was partial to his "tucker"; though how Ayscough could provide crisply fresh leafy greens for the salad course, and crisp-crusted, piping-hot bread-not maggoty and hard biscuit-after so long on-blockade, Lewrie could not fathom. Nothing fresh could survive the long voyage from England, even stowed aboard the swiftest packet.
There was a mincemeat pie, the inevitable "reconstituted" soup, of course, but the main course, instead of salt beef, salt pork, or a chicken from the forecastle manger, was lobster, served up surrounded by boiled shrimp, and even the clarified butter was fresh, not rancid from the tub on the orlop, and each diner got a small dish of a horseradish sauce vaguely reminiscent of the French-style d la mayonnaise, or a remouladel And the wines…! The bottles set out on the side-board all bore distinguished French vineyards' names and varieties not seen in England since the war had begun in 1793, but for a few cases brought in by Channel coast smugglers every now and then, and priced so dear that even the wealthy might take pause before purchasing some.
"How do you do it, sir?" Lewrie marvelled between bites, and a deep, appreciative sniff of his fresh-poured wine. "One'd think that, by the time you arrived on-station, such victuals'd have long ago run out."
"Get the bulk of it from the Frogs, Captain Lewrie," Ayscough gleefully told him. "S'truth! God, the look on your face!"
"French fishermen put out every morning to earn their livings," Capt. Charlton was glad to expound. "Does one of our cutters or brigs close them, these days, they've learned that their boats are too tiny for us to take as prize, so they no longer run in fear of us. British silver… a little British silver… goes a long way."
"For wine, fresh food, some of their catch, or… information," Commodore Ayscough cryptically said. "Give the Frogs this much… They still manage to mint solid coin after seven years of war, whilst we've had to resort to paper bank notes. Not great value to their coinage by this time, of course, what with all the… what do they call it, Captain Charlton?"
"Inflation, sir," Charlton supplied with a grin.
"And what a pot-mess their coinage is," Ayscough derisively grumbled.
"God knows what a denier is made of. Soft iron? But, three of them make a Hard, or twelve deniers make one sol, but you're still in the range o' ha'pence. Four Hards make one sou, twenty sous make one livre, six livres make one ecu, and you begin to talk of something in silver… four ecus makes what once was called a louis d'or, before they chopped poor King Louis's head off, that is, and you finally get to gold… 'bout the same as our guinea. All a jumble left over from the royal days, along with local-minted tripe, and how the Devil even the French keep track of values is a mystery to me! More bread, sirs?"