“Those knees, sir,” Westcott went on. “With so many warships ordered round ’92 and ’93, and so many merchant ships being built, to replace losses, the Chatham yards had them forged by way of an experiment, and the class designer, Mister Hounslow, thought them a grand idea. They make her much stiffer, less prone to work her timbers in a heavy seaway. In point of fact, I heard that there is new talk of building ships with complete iron frames, with the hull planking to be bolted on, later. I asked the other watch officers and the Bosun how she held up in the North Sea and the Baltic and they were very happy with her … in that regard, at least.”

“What didn’t they like, then?” Lewrie asked.

“She’ll go, sir … ponderously,” Westcott said with a laugh. “She’ll set her shoulder and sail stiff, but I doubt if we’ll ever see her make much more than nine or ten knots, and that in a whole gale with the stuns’ls rigged, and all to the royals.”

“Well, maybe we can plod at the French,” Lewrie joshed.

“When we do come to grips, at least we have the artillery for a smashing good blow,” Westcott pointed out, “though, her former Captain only excerised with the great guns once a week, and was a pinch-penny when it came to expending shot and powder at live-firing, sir. We’re changing that, and once we get to sea, I’d like live-firing once each week.”

“You and I, both, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie heartily agreed with that plan. From his earliest days, he had been in love with the roar and stink of the guns, from the puniest 2-pounder swivel guns to the 18-pounders of his last commands. He had ordered gun drill held three times in the week he’d been aboard, and could not wait to be out of harbour where he could see his lower-deck 24-pounders, upper-deck 12-pounders, and all those 24-pounder carronades be lit off.

“Boat ahoy!” Midshipman Harvey called out from the quarterdeck, attracting Lewrie’s and Westcott’s attention.

“Mail and messages for Sapphire!” a thin wail came back.

“Keep some fingers crossed, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he eagerly scampered up the ladderway to the quarterdeck. “If it ain’t your tailor’s bills, or your landlady’s love letters, we might have orders!”

Once upon the quarterdeck, Lewrie spotted an eight-oared cutter beetling cross the Great Nore’s light chops bound for his ship’s starboard side. The oarsmen and Cox’n were sailors in Navy rig, and a Midshipman sat in the stern sheets with a large white canvas sack slung cross his chest. It looked very promising and it was all that Lewrie could do to disguise a nigh-boyish sense of anticipation.

It seemed to take ages for the cutter to bump alongside the ship and for the Midshipman to make his way up the battens to the entry-port and to the quarterdeck.

“Good morning, all,” the newcomer gaily announced himself to the Midshipmen of the watch, as if he did not see a Post-Captain on deck.

“Something for me?” Lewrie snapped, stepping forward.

“Your pardons, sir,” the Mid said with a gulp. “Orders and mail for Sapphire, sir. If you would be so good as to sign for them, sir?”

Lewrie quickly scribbled his name on a chit with the new Mid’s stub of a pencil, then took possession of the canvas sack. From that first hail and reply, idle hands and off-watch men had perked up their ears and drifted aft nearer the quarterdeck in curiosity and longing to hear from wives, girlfriends, and family.

Lewrie would have liked to dig into the sack that instant and snatch out his own correspondence, but that would be appearing too eager. He nodded to the cutter’s Mid and turned to go aft into his cabins to sort things out, calling aloud for word to be passed for his clerk, Faulkes. Once ensconsed in privacy, though, he opened the sack and dumped the contents on his desk. “Aha!” he cheered to see a thick packet addressed, to him from Admiralty, thickly sealed with blue wax and bound in ribbon. “And pray God, not the Baltic!” he added softly.

The sudden pile of letters, and the crinkly sound of heavy official bond paper being folded open, attracted Chalky like the sudden appearance of a flock of gulls in the cabins, and he sprang atop the desk to scatter and strew them to the deck, slipping and sliding on the letters that remained, unsure of which of those on the deck he’d pounce upon first. Chalky let out a puzzled Mrr!, then a louder Meow! and dove off the desk to plow into a shallow pile like a boy hurling himself into a mound of autumn leaves.

“Ha … ‘provide escort for troop ships now lying at the Nore’,” he read. “Oh, shit … ‘four ships named in the margin to Gibraltar to re-enforce the garrison, then report your ship to Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple, Gov.-Gen’l of Gibraltar, and RN Commissioner of Dockyards, as available for duty, notwithstanding other duties which you will find in a separate correspondence marked “Most Secret And Confidential” you may be asked to perform from time to time’ … what the Devil?”

He rooted round the loose letters on the desk but could not find anything with that mark, or the more usual “Captain’s Eyes Only”. Faulkes entered the cabins and stopped short at the sight of the mess.

“Ah, Faulkes!” Lewrie brightened, “do sort through all that lot on the deck, will you? There’s one official meant for me, but Chalky’s got it at the moment.”

“Ehm, yes, sir,” Faulkes said, kneeling to gather up as many as he could to sort through them. “This must be it, sir.… ow! It’s not yours. Let go the ribbons, Chalky.” He got back to his feet and handed the letter to Lewrie, then knelt again to begin piling the rest into proper order, sorting official correspondence into one pile, personal letters into another, and Lewrie’s other mail into a third.

“Carry on, Faulkes,” Lewrie said, rising and going to his dining coach for a bit more privacy, for this folded-over, wax-sealed letter was from the Foreign Office, and it was not only marked “Most Secret And Confidential” but “Captain’s Eyes Only”, as well. There was only one branch of His Majesty’s Foreign Office that had ever sent Lewrie a scrap of correspondence; Secret Branch, old Zachariah Twigg’s set of spies, secret agents, forgers, and associated cut-throats and assassins, and a most un-official battalion of strong-arm muscle.

“Mine arse on a band-box,” he muttered to himself as he closed the double doors of the dining-coach, sat himself down at the table, and placed the letter before him. He stared at it for a long moment, and even found himself wiping his hands on his trouser legs in dread, for nothing good had ever come of his association with that crowd.

Off and on since 1784, Lewrie had been roped into several nefarious and neck-or-nothing Secret Branch schemes or covert actions; in the Far East between the wars, in the Mediterranean when he’d had the Jester sloop, during Britain’s involvement with the bloody ex-slave rebellion on Saint Domingue, now Haiti, even posing as a civilian merchant marine mate in search of work up the Mississippi, to hunt down Creole pirates in Spanish-held New Orleans. He had been Twigg’s gun-dog, a none-too-bright but useful tool, and frankly, had always felt a most disposable asset if Twigg had felt that necessary. God, but they were a ruthless, faithless lot!

Zachariah Twigg was long-retired, perhaps had even joined the Great Majority by now, but his cheerfully devious protégé-henchman, James Peel, was still in play. “’Tis Peel, sir … James Peel’.” The last he’d seen of Peel was late in 1804, after Lewrie’s secret experiments with catamaran torpedoes had proved a bust. Peel had come to cozen him into writing a letter of forgiveness to one of those Creole pirates, a young woman who’d shot him full in the chest once with a Girandoni air-rifle (and thank God the air-flask was spent!), Charité Angelette de Guilleri, the worst-named girl he’d ever met, who had taken part in hunting him and his wife, Caroline, down after they’d been warned to flee Paris in 1802. That beautiful, beguiling, but dangerous bitch had been in the party that had shot Caroline in the back and killed her, and she’d wanted his forgiveness?