God save her; in my house? Part o' my family? He shuddered suddenly. Poor little mort! Nigh a daughter, to the likes o' me?
"Good-bye!" he called down, once Caroline was safely settled on a thwart amidships of the sturdy buoy-tender. "Write often, as will I! All of you! You mind what I say, Sewallis?" he cried, meaning to offer the lad a crumb at the last, to atone. "I wish to hear all about your progress. And your puppies! They should be good hunters, by the time I'm back, hey?"
"Uhm, excuse me, sir, but…" Lieutenant Knolles interrupted with a sorrowful cough into his fist. "There's a veer to the wind, and…"
"I saw, Mister Knolles," Lewrie replied from the corner of his mouth, still posed at the bulwarks with a gay grin plastered on his "phyz" for his family. "Hands to stations, then. Heave us in to short stays."
A Marine drummer began a roll. A fiddle screeched as one of the idlers tried his tuning and sought the proper key. Spithead nightingales began to peep, as newly warranted Boatswain Porter and his Bosun's Mate Will Cony, both off that ill-starred Cockerel frigate, piped the commands for stations for leaving harbor, and up-anchor.
A precious, breathless moment more, as the buoy-tender's oarsmen stroked the boat away, clear of Jester's side. "Give way, together!" her midshipman called from the stern sheets and tiller-bar. One moment more to lift his cocked hat in salute to kith and kin, then put it firmly back upon his head and turn, dismissing them, as he must, and stride purposefully to the center of the quarterdeck.