“Not one?” Lt. Westcott asked with an amazed brow up.

“Let us just say that no one we encountered came up to congratulate us, or thank us, sir,” Lt. Spendlove told him in his usual serious mien.

“Were the ladies at least pretty?” Westcott pressed.

“Oh, sir,” Lt. Merriman said in mock sympathy, “had you been with us, you would have been mightily dashed. Anyone with a fetching young miss, and a tad of common sense, would keep them locked behind iron-barred windows and doors from los heréticos ingleses such as us.”

“Our sailors and private Marines might have seen one or two somewhat fetching doxies in the brothels,” Lt. Simcock teased, “but surely, one cannot expect gentlemen officers to stoop to entering establishments like that. Right, sir?”

Westcott delivered Simcock a very bleak expression. Westcott had proved himself such an ardent chaser of quim that he might’ve!

“Any of our people killed or wounded, Mister Spendlove? Any ‘run’?” Lewrie asked.

“Not a one, sir, and all are now safely back aboard,” the Second Officer reported in a brisker tone.

“Good,” Lewrie said, “for we may have need of them.”

“Sir?” Spendlove asked.

“Since you all set off on the sixteenth, there’s been hints of something on the horizon, out seawards,” Lewrie explained. “I spoke Diomede and Raisonnable now and again on our patrols off the mouth of the estuary, and we’ve all spotted a single set o’ t’gallants or royals lurkin’ out t’sea. Round dawn, round sunset, and whatever sorta ship it is, it scuttles off soon as we stand out to ‘smoak’ her. She may be a Spanish merchantman, fearful of enterin’, some neutral afraid of what we are … an American worried we might press some of her hands off her? Or, it could be a warship. She stands aloof, either way, and if she is a warship, there might be a fight in the offing.”

“Hmm, I see, sir,” Lt. Spendlove commented, turning even more sober. “It may be deemed unlikely that she is French. This side of the South Atlantic is too far from their usual haunts. Spanish? We saw none at Buenos Aires, and there was only one little four-gunned cutter in the port of Ensenada, further up the coast.”

“One can only hope,” Lewrie told him. “Very well, gentlemen. Congratulations on the victory, and I trust you enjoyed yourselves on detached duties. Welcome back aboard, and see to getting the hands settled back in. I will be below. Mister Westcott? See that those boats are led aft for towing, then get us under way, course Nor’east.”

“Aye, sir,” a dispirited Westcott glumly replied.

*   *   *

“We will not be getting any steers on the hoof, sir?” Yeovill asked Lewrie as he laid the mid-day meal an hour or so later. “From what I heard from the shore party, grilled beef steaks are available for a song at Buenos Aires. Mister Cooke and I were hoping.”

“No one’s offered us any, Yeovill, sorry t’say,” Lewrie told him as a roasted quail was put before him, accompanied with potato hash and boiled beans. Quail and rabbit appeared so often that he was growing heartily sick of them, and the very mention of those huge steaks almost made his stomach sit up and beg. “Perhaps Commodore Popham will take pity on the rest of us, his flagship at the least, and send a few down to us.”

“Your Cox’n and your boat crew told me they had quite a spree, sir,” Yeovill revealed.

“Aye, they were first to volunteer, weren’t they?” Lewrie recalled.

“Even returned with some money in their pockets, sir,” Lewrie’s cook commented as he presented the bread barge which held a few weevily and hard portions of ship’s bisquit.

“Loot, d’ye mean, Yeovill?” Lewrie snapped.

“Oh no, sir!” Yeovill said, snickering. “They said that they’d crammed their haversacks with some of those Papal Dispensations, and sold them to a couple of the churches near where they were barracked, temporarily … traded them in the taverns for wine and their meals.” With a wink and a leer, he further imparted, “They found them to be very useful with the Spanish doxies, too. Pleasures exchanged for written proof of salvation from past sins, sir? What poor whore wouldn’t be eager to make such a trade. A Spanish silver dollar apiece, I think was the going rate.”

“Why, the clever buggers!” Lewrie exclaimed.

“Desmond and Furfy said that even our Church of England sailors and Marines claimed to be good Catholics, so they could sign the names of the recipients, and make their, ah … exchanges, sir,” Yeovill said.

“Who would’ve thought they were that enterprising,” Lewrie marvelled with a shake of his head, and a brief chuckle.

O’ course, I’ll have t’take ’em down a peg, he told himself.

Filching those dispensations was a court-martial offence, worthy of at least a dozen lashes; profiting off the proceeds of their illegal sale might earn every sailor involved another dozen. He would have to take Desmond and Furfy aside and give them a good talking-to, warning them that they had best not try to work that sort of “fiddle” in the future, or they would stand before him at Captain’s Mast at the least, or be given over to a proper court at the worst.

Warn ’em t’pass word to their fellow profiteers, too, he thought; Before all hands turn so corrupted, they’ll be sellin’ whatever they can lay hands on, or treat ship’s stores, and spirits, like their own to take whenever they like!

After a bite or two of his dinner, though, Lewrie came to the sad realisation that discipline would demand a more public response, and a harsh warning to the ship’s crew … perhaps even some few of them flogged as examples? Reliant had become a fairly happy ship in the three years of her active commission, and it was a rare thing for Bosun Sprague and his Mate to “take the cat out of the bag” to administer a flogging on a malefactor. The sentence of a week’s reduction to bread and water, denied the twice-daily rum rations and tobacco, in most instances was thought more of a punishment belowdecks.

He took a sip of wine and looked down at his plate, the conundrum of how to maintain discipline making his meagre meal seem even more disappointing.

“A celebratory supper tonight, Yeovill,” Lewrie decided. “All officers, and the Mids who went ashore with the Army, Eldridge and Grainger, and I will ask the Sailing Master to take the watch during the meal. Any ideas? Besides quail or rabbit, that is?”

“We’ve a promising piglet, sir, and a sea-pie always goes down well,” Yeovill said after a long pause with his head laid over. “And, if I’m fortunate enough to catch a decent-sized fish, so long as we don’t go dashing at any great speed, I could bread and grill one … no promises on that head, though, sir. A good fish is ‘catch as catch can’.”

“I know that you will do your best,” Lewrie said, to cheer him up. “You always rise to the occasion.”

I’ll lay the problem of discipline, and punishment, if any, on them, and see what the best solution’ll be, he thought.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Yeovill’s “promising piglet” did not provide as large a roast as to feed seven diners sufficiently, nor was the sea-pie all that big, either, but Yeovill and Jessop had managed to land not one but two red snappers, which made for a supper bountiful enough to sate even the Midshipmen, who were perpetually hungry. For dessert, Yeovill had even conjured up heavily-vanillaed pound cake, with dollops of cherry preserves.

“One could say, sir, that it was not our men who committed the first violation, but the Narcissus, for taking chests of dispensations out of her prize and sharing them round the squadron,” Lt. Spendlove speculated in a grave manner, “thus abusing Article the Eighth.”

“I don’t think that’d cover it, though,” Lewrie said, shaking his head. “They have no value to us, so I doubt they’d be counted as goods worth a groat to a Prize-Court. No, it’s the principle of the thing.”