Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle. Cheryl Cooper

her sigh, and, inexplicably, he felt paralyzed. Forcing his hopeful gaze to the floor, he dropped his arms to his sides and mumbled, “Good night” before leaving her to return, with reluctance, to his routine existence outside the canvas curtain.

      4:00 p.m.

      (Afternoon Watch, Eight Bells)

      OCTAVIUS LINDSAY BEGRUDGINGLY dropped his trousers and lowered his half-numb backside onto the seat of the heads in the farthest forward part of the Isabelle, behind the remains of her once-proud figurehead. “I don’t see why I cannot use the officers’ private toilets,” he shouted to the master-at-arms, who stood arms akimbo next to Octavius’s stone-faced marine sentry on the foredeck.

      “There’ll be no special treatment fer condemned prisoners on this ship,” the master-at-arms bellowed back, following up his words with a great guffaw that was so loud it pierced the ubiquitous din of banging hammers.

      “I’ll remind you that at the present I am not a condemned prisoner. I am an officer and therefore shall be deserving of a just hearing,” said Octavius in a voice rife with indignation. He settled his eyes on the swirling water that slapped the sides of the Isabelle far below his bare feet and muttered, “And I have been treated most abominably.”

      Hoots and jeers dropped down upon Octavius’s ears like an icy rain from the shrouds, sails, and yardarms far above his head.

      “I don’t see no officer. I kin only see some poor lubber with his breeches down round his ankles.”

      “What d’ya know! His Lordship’s arse ain’t all spotted like his mug is.”

      “Well, I vum. It looks much like mine.”

      “And I bet a month’s worth o’ pay Mr. Lindsay is cravin’ a look at yer fleshy backend.”

      “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

      With hunched shoulders, Octavius bit his lip and silently put to memory the faces of the seamen hurling insults at him. If he were fortunate enough to get an opportunity, he would dispatch each and every one of them. He gleaned tremendous enjoyment from imagining his bloody revenge with sword and pistol and bare hands. Gone was the blubbering idiot he had succumbed to in front of Captain Moreland and Commander Austen. It had been foolish of him to fall apart that way and run off at the mouth. Well, there would be no more of that. Octavius squared his shoulders in his torn, ruffled shirt and sat up higher on the heads. He felt no remorse whatsoever for his actions against that woman. In fact, she deserved a good roughing up. “I bet her ladyship won’t be quite as high and mighty the next time she lays eyes on me.”

      “Hurry up with yer business, Lord Lindsay. The sooner yer done, the sooner we kin string ya up.”

      Octavius smirked while the sailors enjoyed a hearty laugh. I’ll deal with the devil before any of your kind get the pleasure of seeing me dangling from the yard, he swore to himself, scanning the blue-green seas for the sails of a Yankee warship.

      Sooner or later, one was bound to find them.

      10:00 p.m.

      (First Watch, Four Bells)

      FLY QUIT THE WARDROOM TABLE, where he had arranged for two senior officers to remain in his stead and continue the interrogation of the last few men taken from the Liberty while he went above deck for some air. But as he made his way to the nearest ladder, he slowed his step to listen in on the conversation between the captain of the marines and a man who had given his name as Silas Pegget, a man whose cheeks had a curious network of deep scars upon them.

      “Your papers, please, Mr. Pegget.”

      “I haven’t any, sir.”

      “Tell me then … what is your place of birth?”

      “New Bedford, Massachusetts, sir.”

      “And that of your parents?”

      “Wolverhampton … England.”

      “How long have you been employed with the American navy?”

      “Just over two years.”

      “You look to be over thirty.”

      “Aye, sir. I’m thirty-three.”

      “New Bedford has for some time been an important trade port. Were you a whaler at any time?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Perhaps you were in the merchant trade?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Then what did you do before joining the navy?”

      “I worked in the post office,” said Silas Pegget, adding, after a fit of sneezing and wiping his craggy face with a ragged bit of cloth, “from the time I was … fifteen, sir.”

      While the captain of the marines continued his questioning, Fly shook his head in frustration. At times, it was an exercise in futility, trying to determine those who were legitimate citizens of America and those who most likely had – at some point in their career – sailed with the British Navy, regardless of whether or not the individual in question possessed papers.

      Fly slowly ascended the ladder to the weather decks, which he found deserted at this late hour, save for the men who silently stood watch on the fo’c’sle deck and high in the masthead lookouts, keeping their eyes peeled for movement on the vast horizons, and Morgan Evans’s carpenters, who had forfeited sleep to continue toiling and mending wherever they could, using as little lantern light as possible. Spying Gus Walby crossing the quarterdeck, Fly asked him to check below for any lights left burning by the exhausted crew members who now slept, but who, only an hour before, had been entertaining themselves with song and dance and other forms of revelry. He then considered himself officially off duty, and made his way to the poop deck. There he stripped off his uniform coat and sat down next to Leander on the bench that was carved beneath the taffrail, in the fluttering presence of the British ensign.

      “Imagine finding you here, old fellow,” Fly remarked. Noticing the mug in Leander’s right hand, he added, “Drinking grog no less. Are you drunk yet?”

      Leander gave his friend a half-smile. “No, but I intend to be before long.”

      “Let me join you then. Who is filling your mug?”

      “Biscuit. He’s somewhere in the shadows, no doubt hiding a mug of his own.”

      “Biscuit!” Fly called out.

      Like a red squirrel peeking out of his tree hole to sniff about for predators, Biscuit’s flaming orange head appeared on the ladder between the poop and the quarterdeck. “Aye, Mr. Austen?”

      “Come here with your grog can. I insist you fill up Dr. Braden’s mug and one for me as well.”

      There was a slight sway in Biscuit’s stride as he crossed with his tray of refreshments to the back of the deck where the two men sat. His checkered shirt was unbuttoned lower than usual, exposing thick tufts of red chest hair, and in his reddish whiskers were bits of pastry, leftovers from the piece of pie he had just devoured.

      “Your breath is foul,” said Fly while the cook poured their drinks.

      “Ach, I kin explain, sir. Ya see, I was bakin’ some o’ me sea biscuits down below and as ya know, they taste well on account o’ thee rum I puts in ’em.”

      “Ahh!” said Fly. “So then it was one shot in your bowl, one shot in your hole, was that it? And here I understood Captain Moreland was withholding your rum rations for your display in the mess with our lady guest a few days back.”

      “He threatened to, Mr. Austen,” said Biscuit, balancing his tray with one hand and scratching his hairy chest with the other, “but luckily for we nefarious perpetrators, he didna follow through with it. Ya see, Morgan almost drowned and Magpie lost his eye, and since I’m thee indispensable cook, Jacko and thee boys did thee holystonin’ part o’ thee punishment. But not a one o’ us lost our grog.”

      “You