February-March 1781-Recovering on Antigua, then staff-serf to Rear Adm. Sir Onsley Matthews. Met, wooed and fell in thrall with the admiral's niece, Miss Lucy Beauman. Fought a duel for her honor (her family was awfully rich), killed his opponent, and was posted to sea before he could say "Jack-Ketch."

April 1781 to present-Midshipman into HM Frigate Desperate, 6th Rate, twenty guns, Comdr. Tobias Treghues (one of God's own cuckoos). Several successful raiding cruises, raid on the Danish Virgin Islands, many prizes taken. Battle of The Chesapeake, Siege of Yorktown (from which he escaped, or we wouldn't be following his career any longer, would we?). Evacuation of Wilmington, North Carolina, November 1781 (see The French Admiral). Made acting master's mate, confirmed in December 1781.

One might just mention in passing a smallish theft from a captured French prize, a trifling sum, really, of, oh, some two thousand guineas, more ren contres with young ladies of the willing or commercial persuasion just to keep his hand (so to speak) in, and one surprisingly chaste bout of amour with a penniless young Loyalist, a Miss Caroline Chiswick. Chaste perhaps because he had served ashore with her two Tory soldier-brothers and knew what he could expect if he ever ran into them in a dark alley; chaste perhaps because there's damned few places to put the leg over even the most obliging female aboard a man o' war; or chaste perhaps because he had seen The Light, become a better person for his service in the Navy, and really did like her and through her found a new respect for Womankind and-but no, we have deduced a pattern here, and a man's usually true to his nature when the blood's up, damme if he ain't.

One more annoyingly minor matter of biographical minutia before we proceed to the flashy stuff (and I promise broadsides before you can promise broadsides before you can say "Jack-Ketch").