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“Strike the hoist for ‘Form Line Of Battle’, and replace it with … the small ships’ numbers, and ‘Secure From Quarters’ … followed by … ‘Will Enter Harbour’. Let’s send ’em back to port, before these new’uns get all the good anchorages.”
    “Aye, sir!”
    “Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie shouted down from the hammock nettings at the forward break of the quarterdeck. “Run in your guns, draw shot and charges, and secure.”
    Lewrie turned to Westcott next, who stood by with a bemused expression on his face, rocking on the balls of his booted feet.
    “Once we’re Southeast of the squadron’s line of sailing, we’ll come about to close alee of the first two-decker’s larboard side and I’ll report aboard her. Have a cutter brought round from being towed astern, and alert Desmond and my boat crew.”
    “Aye, sir,” Westcott said.
    “Just damn and blast that bastard, whoever he is, for waitin’ so late!” Lewrie fumed. “What the Devil did he think he was playin’ at? Is this his lame idea of a grand jape ? People could’ve gotten killed!”
    I could’ve been killed, more to the point! Lewrie seethed to himself.
    “I’m going t’give that clown a piece of my mind!” Lewrie declared, tugging his pistols from his coat pockets and looking round for Pettus or Jessop to take charge of them.
    “I do note, though, sir,” Lt. Westcott cautioned, “that he’s flying a broad pendant … the senior plain red one.”
    “At this moment, I don’t give a tinker’s damn!” Lewrie spat.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    “So, who the Devil’s this Lewrie chap, Meadows?” the Commodore of the new-come squadron asked of his Flag-Captain, the officer actually in charge of HMS Athenian, as he idly watched the frigate take in her main course to match speeds with his flagship, about fifty yards off the larboard side.
    “He’s listed in Steele’s as Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, sir,” Captain Meadows told the Commodore, Captain Grierson.
    “His fam’ly must be poor as church-mice, did they send their eldest to sea, hey?” Grierson scoffed in a lazy drawl. “What is the date of his Post-Captaincy?”
    “The Spring of ’97, sir,” Meadows supplied.
    “Ha! Good, then, I’ve two years’ seniority over him, whoever he is,” Grierson chortled.
    “Beg pardon for the intrusion on a private conversation, sir, but I have some information of him,” Athenian ’s First Lieutenant, one fellow by name of Hayes, spoke up.
    It was not as if Grierson’s and Meadows’s conversation was all that private, anyway, for Captain Grierson always spoke loudly, and Captain Meadows had been half-deafened by cannonfire since his days as a Lieutenant; neither could hold a private conversation.
    “Indeed, sir?” Grierson snapped, looking down his nose at the interloper as if a beggar had tugged at his sleeve for alms.
    “Captain Lewrie is known in the Fleet as the ‘Ram-Cat’, sir,” Hayes related as formally as he could; secretly, he did not care for their new Commodore. “For his choice of pets, and his repute for being aggressive. He is also known as ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie for opposing slavery, and liberating slaves from Jamaica to man his ship. He was tried for it, but acquitted. Wilberforce and his crowd are mad for him.”
    “Good God, Wilberforce!” Commodore Grierson spat in disgust, as did a great many of The Quality and men of business. “That earnest wee ass! He and his Kill-Joys, pah! They’ll be outlawing drink and horse racing, next! Anything else?”
    “There was some face-to-face bother with Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris in 1802, sir,” Hayes went on. “It’s said that ‘Boney’ set some of his agents to kill him, but murdered Captain Lewrie’s wife instead, so he’s been a widower for some time, and … it is also said that he does not have the most discriminating taste in women. There was talk of a divorced lady.…”
    “Perhaps his sobriquet of the ‘Ram-Cat’ is not about his