17th July: The vile tempest

Thompson tried not to sigh. "Is the surgeon's mate there, even?" Somebody would be better than nobody, of course. "How many fingers'm I holdin' up?" he asked, showing three fingers. He'd seen various surgeons do this after someone knocked their heads - bumping hard into a deck beam, for instance - though he had no real idea what it was supposed to tell the surgeon.

James Studied the hand than fairly quickly he answered. "Three. " He held his hand up to mimic Thompson's indicating that that was the number he meant. He was not quite sure why he was asked that. He had hit his head, not gone blind!

MacTavish looked slightly angry:

"Not that I have seen him. He's probably dealing with more important stuff like some officer's upset stomach! Shall I go look again, corp?"

He clapped Gunn on the shoulder.

"Very good! And all teeth, tongue and cheeks in the right place still as well?"

"Got my tongue?" Gunn blinked at MacTavish uncertain whether he did not understand what he meant to say, whether he generally just did not understand him or whether this was really as it had been asked. Did he have his tongue? Of course he did, he just spoke! Did he have his teeth? Aye, all present so far, none knocked out. Cheeks were ther most certainly in the right place as well and he could not imagine where else they could have been. "Um......yes?" It was more a question than an answer.

"Officer present, lad," Thompson told MacTavish, glancing in Mr Sewell's direction. "Good lad, Gunn," he added.

If it was up to him, he'd have the men soused under the wash-deck pump before clapping them in irons, but that would be on a fine day and he wasn't an officer anyway. Taking them up on deck in this storm would be to risk them and the men with them.

"Put 'em in irons, sir?" he asked the officer anyway. They could always throw a couple of buckets of water over them, regardless, if they didn't get a soaking from the rain coming through the boat tier.

MacTavish immediately closed his mouth and tried to look innocent. Sewell nodded.

"Irons, yes - but not all together. We need to find who hit Gunn. Seperate the weakest and Hodgins - in whose division are they? Do you know?"

"I think they'm all new lads, sir. Don't know whose division they ended up in, or if they even ended up all together under the same officer." How would he know what division a sailor was in anyway? Officers - all the same. They always thought folks knew everything, didn't they.

Though of course, now that he was an NCO, it was probably a reasonable assumption on Mr Sewell's part.

"I c'n see if one of the middies knows, sir?"

"Do that. They stole from the ship, assaulted a guard on duty and were found drunk - I can only hope that they weren't on duty, too."

Sewell snorted unhappily. He did not like it when sailors were misbehaving. While his rank and station demanded a certain hardness, he had never liked to watch somebody punished.

"Aye, aye, sir!"

The first step in working out where the idiots belonged was to work out who they were, of course. He hoped the duty midshipman would be able to help him with both of those tasks as he headed back up into the wind and rain topside to find Mister Bailey.

Bailey observed the struggle at the very top of the mast. One of the ropes had come loose, part of the tail had decided to manage to loosen itself just as well and though it was not yet fully unfurled, it threatened to do so eventually.

Seamen had been sent to the top to prevent this from happening just moments ago.

There was no rest for the wicked, apparently; Mr Bailey was peering into the lashing rain, intent on something aloft.

"Sir? Could I borrow when you'm done, sir?" the Corporal asked, almost bellowing the question in the tearing wind. "We'm got ourselves a pretty pickle 'tween decks, sir!"

"I'll come.. give me a moment here. That thing needs to be secured.. with ... I'll come." Bailey nodded towards Thompson then briefly turned to him. "What is it about?"

Thompson tightened his grip on the lifeline. "Them drunk sailors, sir - they'm all new men. Reckoned you could help find whose division they'm in, sir!"

"Oh. Alright. I will be down presently." The midshipman answered. The problem had nearly been solved and the little form somewhere close up there had slipped and managed to regain it's grip again clambering after the rest.

Bailey would soon follow Thompson below.

"Thank you, sir!" Thompson bawled back, clapping a hand to his hat to prevent the wind lifting it from his head. He'd done the old Marines' trick of adding a strap to it that ran under his queue, which stayed tucked up inside the hat in fine weather. Even with the strap, though, this wind was likely to have his hat away if he didn't hold onto it.

He nodded to the lad, being unable to salute, and turned to head back down, holding tight to the rail as the ship's wild motion threatened to throw him off the ladder.

When he saw the corporal coming down again, Sew stoically waited for a report. MacTavish, more excitable and burning to get into a decent brawl with the drunkards, shifted his weight like a boxer.
"And, corp?", he asked, not quite managing to take his cue from his officer.

"Mister Bailey's goin' to be down in a moment to help figure whose divisions they'm in, sir," Thompson said. "Might need help to get 'em to the irons, but I don't see as they'm goin' to wake up before Mister Bailey's had a chance to take a look at 'em," he added.

Sewell nodded, indicating that this was satisfactory.

"If they do, it's four drunken sailors against three marines - fair enough odds. Gunn, is your head well enough to stand sentry for another half an hour? Then go and relief Whyte - he can learn a bit from this. Thompson, you think you need more men to move them?"

"Me, MacTavish, Whyte... A couple more wouldn't go amiss, I think, sir." They might even need two Marines per drunken sailor, if they were completely senseless.

"Then go and get them."

Sewell slowly folded back his cuffs.

"And bring a few buckets of water. They can very well walk themselves down to the hold."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Nothing would please him more than to rouse those drunk sots with a couple of well-placed buckets of water.

he saluted and made his way to the Marines' berths. "Branning, Shriver, Mallory," he said, selecting the tallest, strongest Marines he could of those off-duty - and wondering when Mallory had been spelled at the pump. He was thankful he had been.

"Don't worry about your kit," he said, noticing Branning going for his cross-belts. "We've got some drunk sailors to rouse; we need some buckets o' water."

Sewell meanwhile waited for Bailey and Whyte to appear - as a precaution, he slipped into a position that allowed him to see the most likely way up should the drunks wake up prematurely and try to vanish, and put that shark he was still lobbing around onto the surgeon's table. He reckoned the man might be interested in it anyway, should he ever reappear.

Whyte was not a happy camper. He had scampered in the direction he'd been told to, to see the officer. Gunn had been a bit worse for wear when he came, and it may have piked his interest but just not enough that he'd want to go inspect what it was all about. Neverless he had to go, grumpy or not. He even saw Bailey on the way down and heading in the same direction. He'd wondered what it was all about. He hoped they would keep out of the wave's way. He did not particularly fancy getting drenched to the bone and then some.

Bailey had gone ahead of him now, and so the two arrived only moments from each other. "Sir!" He said quickly, upon seeing Sewell, and straightened.

Thompson and his three 'volunteers' arrived a moment later. All four of them were carrying a couple of buckets of water, trying to keep the contents from slopping too wildly. Shriver, of course, was complaining, but Thompson paid him no attention - the man was always complaining.

"You didn't say as how many buckets you wanted, sir," he said, grinning at the thought of what was going to happen next.

"Whyte." Sewell nodded in aknowledgement. "Mr. Bailey. Thompson has informed you about the situation?"
MacTavish, coming back with a huge bucket full of cold sea water, grinned at Whyte as he heaved his dripping burden over to him. When Thompson reappeared, he shared the same grin with the other marines - all of them. This was marines against sailors, so for now they were all his friends.
Sewel counted, then waved to Whyte. "Get one too - six should do it."