Free Under Enemy Colors by Sean Thomas Russell, Sean Russell, S. Thomas Russell

remaining so. If I can manage this tonight, tomorrow I shall feel no want of it.”
    “Do pardon my intrusion, Mr Barthe,” Hayden offered, and went immediately to his cabin, pulling the door to behind. Even as he did so, the image of Barthe appeared in the small opening, softly aglow in his night-shirt, eyes fixed upon the glass, hands laid gently on the table to either side, and on his face, a tormented resolve.

Six
    A sullen and sickly crew appeared the next morning, and Hayden put them to work. A frigate named for the goddess of order should make a better showing, he thought. His subsequent inspection of the ship, however, was enough to dishearten the most stolid officer. The bosun’s stores were in disarray. There was but one useable cable in the cable tier—the others having been allowed to rot. The quarterdeck leaked and required repitching, and there was everywhere a general want of cleanliness and order.
    The captain of the hold seemed to know his business, and smartly reported the state of their stores, though the reclusive purser did not know it himself. Hayden’s most disastrous find, however, was in the forward magazine. By the dim illumination, which came through a pane of glass in the light room, he examined the powder—but it was the smell of it that truly angered him.
    “Who is the gunner, Mr Landry?” Hayden asked. He’d met the man but the name now escaped him.
    “Mr Fitch is acting gunner, Mr Hayden.” Landry, who the day previous had been most obliging, was now sullen and resentful of Hayden’s presence, as though the first lieutenant interfered in the running of the frigate. Having been found with his ship in such disarray was perhaps at the root of it, but Hayden did not care for the man’s manner.
    “Would you call for him, Mr Landry?”
    Landry hesitated by the door a moment, as though he might refuse, but when Hayden turned and faced him, he touched his hat. Before he could comply, however, Lord Arthur, who had become Hayden’s shadow, interceded.
    “I’ll fetch him directly, Mr Hayden,” the boy offered, and was off at a run.
    Landry walked out onto the orlop, bent low, as though he would examine the cables.
    Hayden watched him, with more detachment than he would have expected of himself. He had known his kind before. Landry was a sad little fellow, he had decided, awkward and ungracious in both manner and address—the boy whom everyone picked on at school.
    A moment later the acting gunner, the bald and tattooed Mr Fitch, shuffled into the magazine, followed by the second lieutenant. He glanced nervously at Landry as he made his way down the three steps.
    “Is it not your duty, Mr Fitch, to keep this storeroom aired and dry at all times?” Hayden asked.
    The man did not answer but nodded dumbly.
    “Then how do you explain this?” Hayden reached into the powder barrel and removed a handful of tacky powder, which he let fall in doughy dollops back into the barrel. The acting gunner winced.
    “What became of the gunner whom you replaced?”
    “He died, Mr Hayden,” Landry offered. “The surgeon said his heart gave out. We slipped him over the side some weeks ago.”
    “You are relieved of your duties as gunner, Mr Fitch,” Hayden stated. “I will leave it for the captain to decide your fate when he returns.”
    “It was Captain Hart who appointed Fitch, Mr Hayden,” Landry said, eyeing him with poorly concealed hostility.
    “So I assumed, Mr Landry, but I will put another man in his place until the captain returns. We cannot have our powder thus neglected. Can we?” He gestured to the door. “You may go, Mr Fitch. Mr Landry will find you other duties. Count yourself lucky that I am not captain, here, for I would have you flogged this very day for negligence such as this.” The man made an awkward knuckle and then backed up the stairs, retreating into the dimness, the quick padding of bare feet marking his flight.
    Hayden turned to Landry. “Although there is little