"Sirs, Admiral Duncan would fight you for a rowboat!" Lewrie proudly boasted, happy to have been even for a short time a part of the man's fleet. Though how long that would last was open to question, he took time to fret. After his row with his wife in Hyde Park with both Lord Spencer and Mr. Nepean watching…

"The proper place for frigates is not in the line, sirs," Lewrie continued, striking a lighthearted air, "but out in clear air, where one repeats signals for other ships to see, or stands by to assist any disabled ships of the line. Had I not made an error, we'd have been merely awed witnesses, but… we'd gotten too far ahead and Circe was crowding us, sailing on starboard tack cross our stern, and all of the cutters and such crowded us, as well. Did the Admiral wish us to break the Dutch line and fight on their landward side, we should have broken through with him. But for the wind, that had blown all the powder smoke alee of us, towards the shore. I should have borne away… and stayed up to windward but that became impossible. I could not cut through the liners without disrupting what order they had, either, so there was nothing for it but to come about on a beam wind, and sail on a reach. By then, however, 'round half past noon, Admiral Onslow was engaged over here, cuttin' through the Dutch line, and slicing off the last three ships. So I rather, um… stumbled my way to glory. If glory it was, gentlemen," he allowed with a wry expression.

Aye, come over all modest-like! he thought; more becoming to a tale, than boasting. But, he chid himself once more, I was a damned fool! And the after-action report he'd written Admiralty had been one of his rather more creative endeavours, to disguise idiocy!

"His usual custom, since boyhood," Sir Hugo supplied, though he wore a proud grin.

Lewrie reshuffled the order of the walnuts and such, recalling the smoke and haze, the low, scudding clouds of a raw, grey day, turned in an instant to a pea-soup fog, a reeking, hammered, echoing mist, as Proteus had reached West towards Onslow, just out of effective range of the Dutch liners in the middle, before putting about to sail back East towards Duncan, who by then (at a quarter 'til one) was also firing as fast as his gunners could load and run out.