Free Hostile Shores by Dewey Lambdin

particular heed; there was no applause. Indeed, conversations seemed to cease!
    Finally, he shot his cuffs, settled his waist-coat and fiddled with his neck-stock, took a deep breath, plastered a benign grin on his phyz, and went inside to check his hat, then name himself to one of the liveried “catch farts”, who passed his name on to the major-domo with the long and heavy cane.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of His Majesty’s Ship Reliant !” the old functionary called out.
    “Huzzah!” someone called out. “The hero of the hour!”
    “Oh, bravely done!” Priscilla ringingly declared, and began to clap her hands, which prompted others to join in.
    The fierce scowl on Commodore Grierson’s face was priceless, no matter how much bad blood was engendered, and Lewrie secretly delighted in it, even if it cost him later.
    *   *   *
    Nassau Town was not like London; its Society consisted mostly of commoners, albeit successful ones. A gala gathering such as this supper ball in England would never allow people engaged in “Trade” to attend! Nassauans could not even be described as Squirearchy who owned land and lived off gentlemanly farm incomes, cottagers’ rents, and shares in the Three Percent Funds. For the most part, the largest plots of land that Nassau’s upper crust owned were the town lots on which their houses sat, where their goods warehouses were situated, or their stores did business.
    Lewrie suspected that Commodore Grierson had a low opinion of people engaged in Trade, lumping them in with pie men, knife grinders, or green grocers and store clerks, and could not fathom the conversations over the supper table, the pre-dinner socialising, or at the edges of the dance floor about profit-and-loss, new markets, and opportunities.
    He looks damned uncomfortable and mute! Lewrie thought; They’ll give up on him altogether and talk past him in half an hour!
    Lewrie, for his part, simply had a grand time, even if he was seated at least eight people away from the promising Priscilla. There was his rash sortie to be congratulated for. There was his destruction of so many French and Spanish privateers, the very bane of mercantile and maritime trade, and his re-capture and return to their owners of several prize vessels.
    How had he won his knighthood? Lewrie gave them the Battle of the Chandeleur Islands off Spanish Louisiana in 1803. He had to tell them of his medals, of course, though Lewrie could (modestly!) relate that he had been present at the Battle of the Chesapeake during the American Revolution, had gotten trapped at the siege of Yorktown yet had escaped the night before the surrender, had been at St. Kitts when Admiral Hood had stymied de Grasse, had stumbled into the Glorious Fourth of June in 1794 while being chased by two French frigates and had ended up driven towards the lee of the French line of battle, and been with Nelson at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
    “I was forced to go with him!” Lewrie chortled. “I had Jester at the time, a sloop below the Rates, near Nelson’s ship at the rear of Admiral Sir John Jervis’s line, and Nelson swung out of line to wheel about, all by himself. Had I not hauled my own wind, he would have rammed me. He shouted over, ‘Follow me, Lewrie, we’re off for glory!’ and so I went. His ship, mine, and one or two others who followed traded fire with the Santissima Trinidad, the largest warship in the world, a four -decker with one hundred and twenty guns! Huge cannon balls went whizzing by, but we weren’t hit, and I doubt we even marred her paint, but it took ’em five minutes or better to re-load! After that, he went on to win his first honours.”
    “You know the estimable Admiral Nelson, Sir Alan?” an older matron gushed.
    “We’ve met several times, ma’am, it is my honour to say,” Lewrie told her. Even if he is a glory-seekin’, press-hungry, temperamental arse! he thought.
    First at Grand Turk Island in