Lt. Catterall, the Second Officer, their wryly waggish and sarcastic bear of a fellow, was licking his lips in avid expectation, his battered tin mug held out in two mittened hands like a dockside mendicant whining for alms. Wiry and slim Lt. Adair, long-ago a Midshipman when Proteus had first commissioned at Chatham, a less-demonstrative and better-educated young Scottish gentleman, waited his turn with a good grace, taking the time to thank Aspinall for his services. With Mr. Winwood and Midshipman Grace busy on the gangway, there was more than plenty for their resident lout, the thatch-haired and permanently unkempt little Bog-Irish Midshipman Larkin, and their new-come but much more salted "gift," Midshipman D'arcy Gamble, who had come aboard at the behest of Vice-Adm. Sir Hyde Parker back in the early spring after Lewrie, and Proteus, had gotten him a pot of Spanish silver from those French Creole pirates in Barataria Bay on the wild coast of Spanish Louisiana.

Lewrie hooked his left arm through the larboard mizen shrouds and cupped his everyday mug in both bare hands, sticking his snout into the rising steam,. sniffing deep before sipping. Did he gulp down the scalding coffee quick enough, he might temporarily dispel the chill he felt. Even with his undress uniform coat doubled over his chest, and the nine gilt buttons done up, even with his heavy grogram boat cloak draped over his shoulders and clasped at his throat, he shivered, for he had spent too much time in warmer climes, and had yet to be inured to North Atlantic, or British, weather. Even three months of a Nova Scotian late summer and early autumn hadn't quite done the trick.

Not for inuring, anyway, he silently scoffed, recalling long weeks spent swinging at anchor at Halifax, awaiting the yard's attentions after coming in with despatches. The boresome nature of a naval "village" of fewer than five thousand residents, the unending diet of cod, and moose…!