"Growl you may, but go ye must, Sewallis," Lewrie told him as he patted his back. "Hush, now. Young gentlemen don't cry\ Not in public, at any rate. Talk to your puppies, mayhap, when things are dreadful. They'll always cock an ear to you. That's why I have that damned Toulon. He's a good listener, in the main."

Sewallis, perhaps with good reason, had an abiding fear of cats. Old William Pitt, sensing his shy nature, had taken a perverse delight in tormenting him before he'd passed over. Sewallis's happiest words, all during Lewrie's too-short spell in harbor, had been about dogs; specifically the litter of setter pups a stray bitch had whelped in their barn. Toulon, not to be outdone by his noble predecessor aft in the great-cabins, had spent half of Sewallis's times aboard playing panther-about-to-pounce from any convenient high place, or edging in close to stare at him when the family had dined aboard.

"Daddy…!" Sewallis shivered, trying to form a thought that simmered in his little head, some last meaningful declaration.

"There, there, little lad," Alan said without listening as he let him go and stood up. "Mind your way down the battens, into the tender. You're big enough, now, not to need a bosun's sling."

"I'll see to 'em, sir," Maggie Cony suggested, with a knowing wink. "Will an' me c'n cosset 'em inta th' boat."

"Aye, thankee kindly, Ma… Mistress Cony," Lewrie amended.

Her and Cony's own git birthed, and back on her pins nigh on a year, she was a handsome young wench; thatchy-haired like her new husband, blue-eyed, with a face never meant for true beauty, but a strong, open and honest, and pretty, face after all.

"And I'll keep a weather-eye on 'em, sir," Maggie promised. "As Will is wont t'say."