The King's Marauder by Dewey Lambdin

even so. How did she come to need a First and a Captain both, sir?”
    “I’ll tell ye over dinner,” Lewrie promised. “That’ll be something for you and your new girl to celebrate tonight, hey?”
    “The idea of my sailing away might prove … useful, aye, sir!” Westcott said with a laugh and a wink. “Melts many a girlish heart. And … other things.”
    “I’ll have t’get a note to Pettus, Yeovill, Desmond, and Furfy, with a note of hand, for them t’pack up instanter,” Lewrie deliberated, thinking of all he still would need to purchase in London while awaiting their arrival. “It’ll take me the better part of ten days to a fortnight before I can read myself in.”
    “As soon as I receive my commission documents, sir, I can coach down to the Nore and lay the ground for your arrival,” Westcott offered. “I don’t have all your encumbrances, and could set out Monday.”
    “If you can tear yourself away from all your passionate leave-takin’s that early, I’d be deeply in your debt, Geoffrey,” Lewrie said in gratitude. “Aye, that’d work out best.”
    “Once I’ve seen the First Secretary, is there any reason for us to linger in this ‘Pit of Despair’, sir?” Westcott japed.
    “Christ, no!” Lewrie hooted. “I’ve a favourite eatery over in Savoy Street, off the Strand, a truly grand place. When you are done with Mister Marsden, we’ll whistle up a coach and celebrate!”
    “Be right with you, then, sir,” Westcott heartily agreed. “See you in the courtyard, then we’ll hoist sail and get out of here!”

BOOK ONE
    Britons, you stay too long;
    Quickly aboard bestow you,
    And with a merry gale
    Swell your stretch’d sail
    With vows as strong
    As the winds that blow you.

    “T O THE V IRGINIAN V OYAGE ”
    M ICHAEL D RAYTON (1563–1631)

CHAPTER EIGHT
    She’s a ship, an active commission, and earns me full pay again, Lewrie had to remind himself as his hired boat approached HMS Sapphire, moored at least two miles from shore in the Great Nore at Sheerness.
    She was 154 feet on the range of the deck and 130 feet along her waterline, just a few feet longer than his last Fifth Rate frigate, but she was so damned tall with that upper deck stacked atop the lower one!
    The hired boat was bound on a course to pass before Sapphire ’s bows, veer to the right in a large circle, and come alongside her starboard entry-port, but Lewrie looked aft to the tillerman and expressed a wish to cross under her stern, instead, so he could give her a good look-over before boarding.
    “She’s a clean’un, she is, sir,” a younger boatman who handled the sheets of the boat’s lugs’l commented. “Shiny’z a new penny.”
    “Aye, she is,” Lewrie grudgingly had to agree.
    Sapphire ’s hull was painted black, sometime recently, at that, for the gloss had not yet faded. Her two rows of gun-ports showed a pair of buff-coloured paint bands, what was coming to be known as the “Nelson Chequer”, and her waterline at full load sported a thin red boot stripe just above the inch or two of her coppering that was exposed. White-painted cap-rails topped her bulwarks and trimmed her beakhead rails.
    Sapphire ’s figurehead was the usual crowned lion carved for any ship not named for some hero from the classics; a male lion done in tan paint, with a bushy mane streaked with brown and black highlights, red-tongued and white-fanged, with only its crown gilded. The lion’s front paws held a bright blue faceted ball against its upper chest, a gemstone that some shore artist had flicked with streaks of silver and white in an attempt to make it appear to shine. It looked fierce enough, but for its odd blue eyes!
    Several of the ship’s boats were floating astern in a gaggle, bridled together and bound to a tow rope, to soak their planking lest the wood dried out and allowed leaks. There was a wee 18-foot cutter or gig, a 25-foot cutter, a 29-foot launch, and a 32-foot pinnace, all painted white with