Any threat to slave economies would mean utter ruin to their fortunes. Sadly, among those silently jeering men were several senior officers of his own service; most-like muttering "that bloody bastard, Lewrie"-there were more than a few who'd formed that opinion of him during his twenty-year naval career!

Closer to, though, was a shivering clutch of "Saint Giles Blackbirds," Negro sailors off merchant ships docked, or frozen in, in the Pool of London. Freemen, or slaves who had been successful in running away to sea, thousands of miles from the warmth of their islands in the Caribbean, half starved on bad victuals, cheated of their due pay by skinflint captains, "crimped off" at the end of their voyages to the Impress Service without ha'pence of their wages by some captains even cleverer, they huddled in the slums of St. Giles a clan apart, waiting for an outbound vessel to sign them aboard once more; and, living hand to mouth and begrudging every meal at a two-penny ordinary, every pot of ale or beer in the meantime.

"You show 'em, sah! You whup dem slavah mens!" they dared cry out. "Ya git anuddah ship, sah, ah'll take yah Joinin' Bounty, sah! De Good Lord bless ya, Cap'm Lewrie!"

Lewrie turned aside to go to them, the crowd parting before him like the Red Sea had for Moses, and shook hands with as many as were in reach; though he felt like snarling to hear the simpering and cooing of the "Respectable," and superior, sort among the Abolitionists, who kept the objects of their Cause at arm's length, and patted themselves on the back for their Doing of Good Works… of the Drawing Room variety, and would never even think of going down to St. Giles… or of deeming those "Blackbirds" real people.