“Aye, sir,” the sailor said again, knuckling his brow before he dashed back to the waist, and the main hatchway which was guarded by a Marine.

“Ah, there’s yet another fresh flag,” Lt. Westcott announced. “It appears that Señor is a game one.” There was a new bright splash of colour exposed on the enemy’s foremast, near where the decapitated crucifix still swung wildly.

“As you bear … Fire! Slow and steady, brave lads!”

Bow chaser, 18-pounders, carronades, and quarterdeck 9-pounders crashed and boomed down Reliant’s side, as steady and regular as the ticks of a metronome. The range was close enough to marvel at planking and bits of bulwark being smashed in and sent flying in swirling clouds of paint chips and long-engrained dust and dirt. They could almost hear—or imagine that they could hear—the thuds, and the parrot-like Screech-Rawrks of stout oak being smashed in, as if the Spanish frigate was crying out in fresh agonies.

“Beam-on to us, at last,” Lewrie noted aloud. “No! Damn my eyes, but is she comin’ up hard on the wind?”

“Her rudder may be gone, sir!” Lt. Westcott whooped. “She’s not under control!”

“Now, she must strike her colours,” Lewrie insisted.

“As you bear … Fire!” Lt. Spendlove shouted, delivering yet one more crushing salvo, at a range of only one hundred yards.

“In the tops, there! Swivel guns!” Marine Lieutenant Simcock shouted to his Marines in the fighting tops with a speaking-trumpet, and both sailors and Marines opened fire with muskets and swivel guns to clear the enemy’s decks.

“Musket-fire … that’s iffy,” Westcott said with a wee laugh. “One can’t hit anything much beyond sixty yards, unless one fires a whole battalion volley.”

“Clear their tops!” Simcock yelled, spotting Spaniards aloft in the enemy frigate’s fore top, and what was not draped with ruin in her main top. The Marines along the starboard gangway took up the task, aiming upward and discharging their muskets.

“She’s falling off, again!” Mr. Caldwell shouted. “What sails they have left will carry her dead down-wind. We’ve got her, sure!”

“Now, she must strike!” Lewrie snarled. “Ow!”

Something smashed into his right leg, turning it dead-numb in a twinkling, with so much force that it was swept out from under him, spilling him on the quarterdeck on his face, and wondering how he’d got there.

“Oh Christ! Loblolly men to the quarterdeck!” someone cried.

He’d fallen so hard that the wind was temporarily knocked from him, had landed on his cheek and bitten his tongue, and his nose hurt like the very Devil.

Can’t hit shit over sixty yards, mine arse! he thought, before a sudden wave of pain came in such a rush that he couldn’t think!

“Smartly, now! Roll him over! A length of small line, now!” several voices were insisting.

Lewrie’s senses were swimming, and he felt faint, even before his head lolled over towards his injury, and he could see the spreading stains of blood on his breeches, at which he could but gaze, amazed, and suddenly frightened.

Someone was jerking something very tight round the top of his thigh. Someone else was feeling him over like a pickpocket in a great hurry. “Just that’un … must’ve broken his nose, or something,” he heard, sounding very far away and echo-y.

“Pass word to the Surgeon!”

Very roughly, and most un-dignified, Lewrie was shoved atop a mess-table carrying board, and bound up with ropes. He felt himself rising from the deck, fearing that his soul was fleeing his body for a second, before the urgent trot began … down the starboard ladderway to the waist, down the main hatchway to the gun-deck, down below to the orlop, and aft to the Midshipman’s cockpit, with each jogging and thump making his pains multiply, as if someone was jabbing his wound with hot, sharp pokers.

Won’t be a one-leg! his mind jabbered; Won’t be made a cook! Oh God, I think I’m killed!

Hands were stripping off his coat, waist-coat, sword belt, and tearing at his neck-stock and breeches buttons. His boots were jerked off, making him cry out. And there was the Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, looming over him, with his leather apron liberally spattered with gore, blood to the elbows and his rolled-up shirtsleeves, looking like a demon straight from the bowels of Hell.

“Bite on this, sir,” Mainwaring said from very far away, and a saliva-slick twine-wrapped piece of wood was shoved into his mouth.

There were ripping sounds as his breeches and underdrawers got slitted away, then came a cool, wet splash of something on his leg, firm hands holding it, then a piercing, tearing, burning agony that he could not imagine.

Lewrie arched his back and bit down on the gag, roaring at the intensity of the pain … before he swooned, felt like he was falling down and down a deep, dark shaft, and he knew no more about it.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It could not be Heaven, so he could surely think it Hell.

He was vaguely aware of a raging thirst, but could not seem to get anyone to pay attention to his want of water, for all he thought he saw were un-caring wraiths that floated round him. He felt as hot as if he was immersed in a boiling pot, hot and feverish, and forever tipping forward head-over-heels as if hellish imps tilted his bed up to spill him on his face.

He thought he sweated, ravaged by something like Malaria or the Yellow Jack, or some other disease far much worse.

And there was the pain, sometimes a mere ache, sometimes so bad that he could imagine that wolves were devouring him alive, and he had to scream, but could not.

And, then, he felt cold, clammily cold, and very weak, but he could open his eyes, though fearing to, in dread of seeing a canvas shroud over his face. Something was up against his face, something … cold, wet, and furry?

“Chalky?” he croaked.

His cat squatted on his chest, his nose a mere inch from his.

“Ah, you’re awake, sir!” Pettus exclaimed. “Parched, I should not wonder. Cold tea, sir, brewed fresh this morning. Help me prop the Captain up, Jessop. Extra pillow from the transom settee, here.”

How’d they get so tall? Lewrie wondered as his damp pillow was plumped up and turned over, and two more from the settee were placed under his head. He reckoned that he was in his cabins, and slung in his hanging bed-cot, but the overhead looked very far away, and all his furnishings appeared gigantic in scale.

When the tea came, he finished a whole tumbler in seconds, and belched with contentment, though still thirsty. At least the litter-box taste and dryness in his mouth were gone. With that out of the way, he felt himself over, very gingerly, expecting the worst. There was his thigh, a great blob of batting where he’d been shot, and lots of bindings. Further down … all of his leg was still there! But … what was his groin doing with bandages? Had he been shot in the testicles, or lost his manhood?

“What … what’s this for?” he croaked in dread.

“Ehm … you’ve been quite out of it for several days, sir, so instead of trying to move you to your quarter-gallery, we had to put you in swaddles,” Pettus shyly explained. “Mister Mainwaring said we should re-sling your bed-cot lower to the deck, too, for when you can manage to get in and out of it. Be a while, yet, he said.”

“Sponge-bathed ya, too, sir,” Jessop told him, “’specially when ya were sweatin’ so bad. A hard fever, ya come down with.”

“I’ll not have it, I can manage…,” Lewrie said, flinging the covers off and attempting to rise, but lifting his wounded leg caused a fresh wave of pain that made him gasp and fall back limply and weak.

“We’ll get your strength back, sir,” Pettus assured him, “soon as you can sit up and take solid food.”