After the Battle

That doesn' matter! As long as they be doin' their duty, doesn' matter if they go callin' themselves Chicken Friar if they want." He snapped at the marine and glanced towards Chase.

"They didn' go much ter land anyhow." Else probably many wouldn't have returned.

"Yes, it matters. It matters a bloody lot. An' that's why you'm here, like that, to learn it for yourself. So you can find that pride inside yourself the way the rest of us have. The way even a pressed man like Samuels is learnin' to."

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Only at this rate it's goin' to take forever, if it happens at all."

He stepped round the boy to where Cob Chase had turned away in despair. "I dunno, mate. Seems them officers want a miracle, that's all I can say."

If it happens at all. Thompson was dead-on there. Chase shrugged half-heartedly.

"More'n likely. Cap'n wants him t'be taught, an' I'll try, but there's no teachin' a blockhead. Best I can do is keep him alive 'til we get t'Lisbon. Bet he'll run anyway."

"I can hear what yer sayin'." The boy said stiffly and rubbed his shoulders gently. He wanted to be a midshipman again. It hurt how he could do nothing no matter whom he spoke to. Being a sailor was both a terrible and a humiliating thing. None of which he wanted to experience. Be proud of his ship? Sure he would be glad to lie, to return and be the cold hearted officer of before, but the damned captain did not allow him that. The cursed captain made him a sailor and now he stood and scampered around there and felt tired already. Because unlike before, he had to do a lot more work.

He looked over his shoulder. "So? We ain't seen anythin' to show you care what we think of you."

He turned back to the topman. "Don't reckon he unnerstands half of what we'm on about, anyways. He ain't bin on a ship the men was expected to be proud of." He shrugged, shaking his head. "Best way of teachin' him is just by bein' what we are, I reckon, an' lettin' him see it ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of."

He sighed. "Hope he don't run, though. I'd hate to have to try to put a ball in him if he legs it."

"Huh." Chase grunted, noncommittally. He was finding less and less reason to be truly interested in teaching De Guarde beyond what he'd been ordered.

"Can't help it if he don't wanna learn. Rather not see him catch a ball, really, but there's no tellin' him he's a fool."

With that, Chase heading back toward the busily-working rope splicers. De Guarde could follow or not as he pleased, but he was rated Able now. If he stepped out of line the boatswains' mates would catch him up.

He turned back to the lad.

"Can't teach you pride. Startin' to wonder if'n you'll ever learn it f'r y'rself anyways. But you keep all-on goin' on about duty. An' you've got duties to this ship as a seaman... an' if you don't do 'em, you'll end up feelin' someone's starter soon enough. Me, I've got me own duties, an' so's Cob Chase, so that's what we'm about."

He shrugged. "When you'm ready to learn properly, find one of us."

There was nothing else to say on the matter as far as he was concerned. And it would have been Green's turn to stand sentry on the Captain's cabin, only he wasn't here to do it He turned to head below to get his red jacket back on and collect his musket from the arms locker.

The nerve of the two men to speak of him as if he were not present. They weren't even trying to pretend to be kind now that he wasn't a midshipman. The boy felt anger boil in him as they called him everything from a fool to a possible deserter and they had, with all words taken into account, pointedly ignored his presence.

Not untill later when Thompson addressed him. Yet his words weren't kind, not something the youth wished to hear.

He hadn't expected it from Thompson, which he was learning just then, hurt. He looked angrily, with a sense of betrayal in his eyes, at the marine and turned, scampering after Chase.

He seated himself down beside the ropes, took a bone needle and began busily working on the task of splicing. Even Thompson thought of him as one who would desert. He chewed at his lower lip, not wanting to look towards Chase, nor towards the marine. Just that piece of rope and himself. He felt alone and wished that they were permitted to head below and out of sight.

John looked up as they returned. "Ye teach him anything, ye reckon? or is he...worse...as a sailor than as a middie?"

it wasn't right to see that lack of spark in anyones eye, not when they were on a ship like this, and especially not when they'd had such a good couple of days. Not that he rated loosing mates highly, but they'd be happy too, to see what they'd acheived.

"Teach him?" Chase asked, a trace of unusual bitterness in his voice. "Good luck teachin' him. Aye, he's a proper landsman. Worse, really."

He grabbed a heavy bracing rope and went brusquely to work, forming it into another eye loop.

He was angry, hurt and confused... and decided his best bet was to be somewhere nobody need speak to him. Standing sentry on the captain's cabin would be perfect, the way he was feeling.

He headed below, pulling his red coat out of his sea-chest and replacing his drill jacket with it, folding the white canvas jacket and putting it away. He pulled his hat and crossbelts out and slammed the lid shut with unusual venom.

He'd probably waved goodbye to his chance of writing home, but he'd rather not have to go asking that stiff-necked arrogant boy to do him a favour, paid for or not. The only thing De Guarde seemed to be proud of was his total lack of understanding.

He collected his musket and stalked on deck, his usually cheerful face set in a forbidding scowl.

John raised his hands in mock shock. "I won't be trying ter teach him anything, Chase. I reckon he don't like me more than he don't like you." He looked down. The accusations of no pride had rankled, though now he had heard de Guardes confusion of taking pride and doing your duty he wasn't as surprised.

"I just don't know how to show him the meaning of pride...not pride in his voice, or powers, but pride in...the ship herself."

Chase scoffed. "Dunno why I tried. Best I can do is keep the lads from havin' at him. There's no showin' him nothin', he's too thick."

John nodded. "He'll learn, or else he'll be learned. Tis the most he can hope for....and he'll bounce back, I wouldn't worry."

Westdale was right, of course. Shrugging, Chase concentrated on his work and didn't bother to pursue that particular angle of conversation.

"Need any help, lads?" Billy asked, seating himself next to Westdale. "Listen, I just heard...!" He paused and was surprised to see De Guarde there. He had certainly heard those rumors, and apparently they were true. He nodded at the lad and continued. "I just heard about the captain takin' a slice from the Frenchies. What happened?"

Oh yes, that. "He did, sure," Chase answered. "Couldn't stop it meself, but I knocked that Frog about fer it."

He jabbed his bone needle into the strands of the rope. "Don't need help, 'less y'wanna help run up this riggin' once it's set t'rights."

"Can do that, sure. Mostly came to talk about the captain," he admitted with a grin. Then he frowned. "Took a clouting to me head, else I shoulda been there! I tried." He swore quietly, stabbing a needle into his leather sail palm. He nearly apologized to Mister De Guarde, before remembering that he was seaman De Guarde now. "But he's all sewed up now, eh? No danger? Ol' Catchy wouldn't let me see him."

John looked up too, "He was fine when I left him- but the doctor had ter tie him up good afore he'd let him come back over here."

He grinned back, pleased the clout over his head had done no apparent harm to Billy. The shadow of pressing his hands into a mans guts would pass, he knew, and there was no better way than keeping busy. His grin turned retropsective. Busy was all they'd be with de Guarde about now.

"When you left him? You was there?" Billy looked at Westdale with wide-eyed concern. He had a proprietary concern for the captain's well-being, and boarding another ship was almost like being in a boat. As coxswain, Billy ought to keep his captain safe. "Donny Pringle said he seen the captain's guts coming out, sliced open from here to here. Is that true?"

John shrugged, honesty winning through. "I was on deck when he went down...ran to him like everyone else did. I just got there first." He eyed the supposed placing of the guts and grinned. "Nah, his guts didn't spill that far- though he'd lost some blood afore he went down, so that coulda been some of it."

He kept his hands working more out of habit than the wish to be told off, a talk being welcome after the complete isolation of waiting for Crozier to turn up.

"So then what happened?" Billy demanded, anxiety in his voice.

John shrugged. "The doctor turned up, and got me to keep holding it for a bit longer, till he could get some other stuff done...he made him keep talking, and all." John flushed a bit at that- something he'd forgotton to make the Captain do though he'd seen it done many a time.

"Then he got him onto a stretcher and all stitched up, afore letting him come back here." He leaned back to demonstrate the cut on his own body. "See, it was about here he got cut.... so plenty of blood. But ye can see he's not as bad off as many others."

"You kept holding what?" Billy demanded again. "And no, I can't see, because I ain't seen him at all, have I? They made him go sleep in his cabin, not to be disturbed."

The boy was close enough to hear snippets of conversation yet had just enough distance that he didn't look intrusive sitting there. It wasn't that he cared how the sailors felt, but what they did say before the conversation thankfully strayed from him, felt hurtful. And he shouldn't have cared, seeing as they were bloody sailors and wanted to yell at them sending them to be flogged, but with his current position he learnt, he had to suck it up and stay quiet.

None of the other sailors approached him with any helpful or about any words really. He spliced another rope, and leaned over her giving it all his attention. He didn't care if he had angered Chase. It was the man's obligation to teach him, help him, and he was a sailor. Yet when he thought of Thompson his mind was as spliced as the rope and unlike the one he was working on, he could not bind the ends with himself.

He hated it but didn't yet dare step out of line. And hoped that perhaps the officers would see his efforts with the rope and decide he had enough. Which at the same moment he knew wouldn't happen. He straightened out slowly and after he tested the next piece of rope he placed in the pile with those that were mended. He reached for the next, ignored a sailor who'd taken hold of it first and pulled it close to him. "Chase.." He said then, knowing the man could hear him. And then changed his mind on what he wanted to say.