Blaylock had tried to lay against Lewrie for not breaking off his bombardment of the rebel-slave army besieging the port of Mole St. Nicholas and giving Blaylock his mooring to try his hand at it. Nicely's dislike for Blaylock might have had a hand in it, for they'd heartily despised each other as hotly as the Devil hates Holy Water since their Midshipmen days.

Ever the encouraging and supportive sort was Nicely, even when he'd as good as "press-ganged" Lewrie into a knight-errant's crusade against those French Creole pirates who'd stolen one of Lewrie's prizes from the anchorage at Dominica, even when he'd usurped Proteus right out from under him to be Nicely's "squadron of one" to chase them into Spanish Louisiana, then sending Lewrie up the Mississippi in civilian guise to hunt them on their home ground, shivering and farting with dread, and…

But, no… Lewrie had blithely shrugged it off as just one more quirk of a neck-or-nothing man. After all, he'd survived it, barely, and the expedition had fetched them all ?200,000 to share, gained all participants-the leaders most especially-plaudits in London papers, and the gratitude of their superiors for a job well done. As for Capt. Nicely, it had gotten him out of the dry and thankless post of Staff Captain, ashore in Admiralty House on Kingston Harbour 's Palisades, and gotten him back afloat in command of a mighty 44-gun frigate. And, let Nicely hoist a broad pendant as commander of a wee squadron-even if said broad pendant still bore a white ball to show Nicely was not yet a Commodore, due a Flag-Captain to run her.

Better yet, HMS Proteus had received orders assigning her, and her suddenly moderately-wealthy captain, to be part of that squadron of two frigates, a sloop of war, and two armed brigs, which would soon sail off on a new expedition to prowl the coasts of French Guiana and the Dutch isles off the shoulder of South America and the Spanish Main.