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gangways, out of the waist, and apply his knowledge aft. Where he’d not rupture himself straining at braces and sheets. The lad was a slack, sunken-chested seventeen, ill-featured, but mannerly (mostly). At least, he had been, until he’d realized how grand his newfound stature was aboard a ship. A captain’s servant ruled the roost over the stewards to lesser men.
    â€œI’ll be on deck, till then,” Lewrie said, finishing his wine and setting the glass on the dampened tablecloth, which would keep most plates and such from slipping off in a moderate sea such as this evening’s.
    â€œI’ll send yer . . . cox’n, t’fetch ya, sir,” Aspinall suggested with lidded eyes, and a jerk of his head to Andrews, the West Indies free black who’d popped up like a jack-in-the-box a scant week before sailing to sign aboard.
    â€œIf you would come tell me, Andrews?” Lewrie said to his man directly, bypassing the servant, who most likely resented having a Negro give him orders.
    â€œAye, sah,” Andrews allowed cheerfully, too experienced a man to take notice of the jealousies of a boy; and a fresh-caught “newly” landsman, at that. It was a huge joke, to him.
    Alan emerged on the gun deck from the door to his quarters in the substantial, but temporary, wood partitions. They’d come down in battle, struck to the orlop, and his cabin would be stripped of all finery and furnishings, to avoid the danger of splinters. A Marine private, one of the watch who’d stand guard over his privacy ’round the clock, presented his musket, and Lewrie touched the brim of his cocked hat in reply.
    Up to the quarterdeck by the larboard, windward, ladder, to the further alarm of his watch-standers.
    â€œCarry on,” he called to them affably. “Just up for a breath of air,” he elaborated, as he paced to the windward mizzenmast stays. Lieutenant Knolles and Mister Wheelock, the master’s mate, shuffled down deck to starboard, yielding the windward side to him, which was his by right, alone, whenever he was on deck.
    There was very little left of the sunset his paperwork had kept him from relishing. Just a faint bricky trace of red and umber low on the Western horizon, with towering banks of slag-gray clouds spread to either side of Jester ’s course, and but the slightest sullen primrose glade upon the waves over which the ship’s jib boom and bowsprit rose and fell. A touch more wind on his cheek, perhaps a hatful, no more, and veering forrud by no more than half a point from abeam. Jester rose and fell more regularly, now, gently hobbyhorsing as the deeper water hinted the long-set rollers of the Atlantic to come, after the chops of the Channel closer inshore. England was an indistinct razor-thin ebony smudge to the north. France was below the horizon, lost in the companionable darkness. It was almost late enough for the lamps forrud at the forecastle belfry, by the watch, hour, and half-hour glasses and bell, and the large taffrail lanthorns, to appear cheerful and strong. A few faint stars, mostly astern above the lanthorns, were already out.
    Lewrie paced slowly aft along the larboard bulwarks, skirting the slide-carriages of the newly installed carronades. “Smashers”— eighteen-pounders—they were, short, pestle-looking cylinders of guns that threw heavy, solid iron shot, heavier than anything HMS Jester could ever mount as deck artillery. Though they didn’t shoot as far as long guns, they dealt out horrific damage when they struck. And, so far (praise Jesus) only the Royal Navy used them in any numbers. There were four on Jester ’s quarterdeck, and another pair forrud on the foc’s’le, in lieu of chase guns. Alan would have preferred two long six-pounders there, but the officials of the Ordnance Board at Gun Wharf had had only so much patience for the blandishments of a junior officer.
    Lucky to keep the