"Cool tea, sir?" his cabin servant, Aspinall, enquired after he had helped him out of his coat, sword and baldric, and hat.

"That'd be handsome, Aspinall, aye," Lewrie replied, tearing at his neck-stock and opening his shirt collar. "Why, hello, catlins… my littles! And what've you two imps been up to, hey?"

There were many glad trills and meows of welcome, much butting of heads on his Hessian boots; perhaps a tad too much standing on hind legs and whetting claws in bienvenue at his white canvas breeches. Those mischievous looks from both Toulon, the stout and well-muscled black-and-white ram-cat, and Chalky, the grey-smudged white yearling torn only half Toulon's heft, warned Lewrie that they'd be scaling up his thin shirt in their need to be newly adored.

"Miss me, did you?" Lewrie cooed to them, a hand for each, once he attained the chair behind his desk. "Damn my eyes, ye don't nip at me, Chalky! Hand that feeds, and all that? You'll get your 'wubbies,' no fear o' not."

"Yer tea, sir," Aspinall announced after several long minutes of discrete observation, as he sensed the cats' enthusiasms begin to flag. " Bridgetown didn't have no ice, though, sir. All used up for the season, I reckon. Cool from th' orlop, though, sir."

"Massachusetts Yankee ice never gets this far south" was Lewrie's surmise as he accepted the coin-silver commemorative tankard that the crew of his previous ship, the Sloop of War Jester, had given him just before they'd paid off at Portsmouth, and paced aft.

"Er… no luck, then, sir?" Aspinall dared to ask, when ship's officers would not. Lewrie flung himself onto the hard settee lashed to the starboard side, almost sprawled with one leg up.

"Not the answers I was looking for, Aspinall, no," Lewrie said, busying himself with taking another sip.