Press Gang that made a sailor of me, an accident, that, not in my usual nature. If it's peace, I don't intend to go to sea again."

"I'll write it for you right now," Lewrie said, going to what little was left of his desk in his day-cabin. There to find Whitsell, idly playing with Toulon and Chalky, and looking hang-dog miserable.

"C… could ye pen one fer me, too, sir?" Whitsell plaintively enquired. "I'll need a place, meself, without the Navy."

Wee Whitsell was an orphan, a street waif who'd been begging on the streets of Yarmouth when Captain Speaks's recruiting "rondy" in a pier-side tavern had scooped him up almost two years before. Whitsell had eat his best meals, his only regular meat, aboard ship, and had no prospects in civilian life except for poverty, starvation, and exploitation. "Aye, one for you as well, Whitsell," Lewrie promised.

"Back to Yarmouth, Will?" Pettus asked the lad.

"Well, I dunno…," Whitsell waffled, looking down at his scuffling shoes.

"Might come to Portsmouth with me," Pettus suggested, grinning. "A gentleman's servant, and a page or link-boy, together. Or Mister Nettles." "Nettles?" Lewrie asked, intent on his writing.

"He's a standing offer as head cook for a posting house in his old town, sir," Pettus told him. "In Ipswich. Nettles might have need of an assistant… an apprentice, Will. Learn to be what the French call a chef? It ain't a bad life, head of a grand kitchen, with grub on either hand, whenever you like, hey?"

"Aye, I'd like that!" Whitsell exclaimed, beaming with joy and avarice for hot vittles. "Ya kin stay warm in kitchens!"

"He'll be missed, by God," Lewrie told them. "I've never eat so well aboard any ship at sea in my life."

There came a rap on the deck outside his cabin door. Lt. Eades and his Marine detachment had departed days before, so one of the Ship's Corporals, either Duncan or Luck, now stood guard over his privacy.