Hostile Shores

“I’ll be below,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch.

Once in his cabins, Lewrie tore off his neck-stock and drank a full tumbler of water, then asked Pettus for one of cool tea, sugared and lemoned. While that was being poured and mixed for him, he went in search of Toulon, but he was not in the starboard quarter gallery, nor on the bed’s coverlet, or the transom settee cushions.

“Here, Toulon. Here, lad,” Lewrie called out.

“’E’s u

Lewrie knelt down by the collapsible settee which was lashed to the cabin’s interior planking. Sure enough, Toulon was there, curled up with his tail under his chin, and his paws tucked under his chest, nodding as if unwilling to sleep, but totally spent.

“Here, Toulon,” Lewrie softly coaxed. “Come on out to me. No? It’s alright, little man. Come on out.”

Toulon opened his eyes to weary slits, uttered an un-characteristic wee mew, then went back to drowsing. Damning his dignity, Lewrie got down on his stomach on the Turkey carpet and chequered canvas deck cover to reach in and stroke a finger under Toulon’s chin and along his jaws. The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, but made no move to come out. Lewrie reached in and took him by the scruff of the neck to drag him out, cradle him in his arm, and got to his feet. Lewrie sat down on the settee and held Toulon close with both arms, slowly petting and cooing to him, and his cat at last shifted to press closer to Lewrie’s chest and begin a faint, ragged purr.

“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door shouted, stamping boots and slamming his musket butt.

Burly Mr. Mainwaring bustled in at Lewrie’s order to enter, carrying his leather kit-bag. With him was one of the Surgeon’s Mates, Durbin.

“Your pardons if I do not rise, sirs,” Lewrie apologised, still cradling Toulon. “Sit, please. Cool tea, Mister Mainwaring?”

“Yes, thank you, Captain,” Mainwaring said, taking one of the collapsible chairs and indicating that Durbin should take the other. “I’ve a mind to purchase the makings and serve it out to the men on light duties or in sick-bay … does the Navy Board allow me the funds.

“As to the matter you mentioned the other day, sir, about your cat,” Mainwaring went on as Pettus fetched tea, “Durbin here, Lloyd and I, put our heads together as to how one might painlessly ease a cat from life and end its suffering, and Durbin came up with a solution. Pray do explain it to the Captain, Durbin.”

“Ehm, yes, sir,” the younger Surgeon’s Mate began, shifting in his chair and swiping a mop of dark hair back from his forehead, shyly cutty-eyed to be speaking with a senior officer. “Before I came away to join the Navy, Captain, I was studying to be a surgeon, in London. I apprenticed to an older fellow, worked with him and others at some of the poors’ hospitals … and, to make ends meet, I also assisted a ‘Pox’ doctor.” He looked shamed by that confession.

“Pricking with Cowpox against the Smallpox?” Lewrie asked. He had been inoculated long ago, himself, and wondered why Durbin would be shy about that good work. There were some pox doctors who made more than £50,000 a year!

“Not that sort of Pox, Captain,” Durbin said, blushing. “He and I administered the Mercury Cure for the venereal Pox. In his offices, at the better brothels?”

“Ah. Yes?” Lewrie replied, hiding a wince. The idea of having a metal clyster shoved up his penis for an injection of mercury, or a narrow rasp shoved up and jerked out to break the pustules—! Lewrie all but crossed his legs to avert even the thought of such! “But, what would that have to do with Toulon, here?”

“Well, sir,” Durbin hesitantly continued, “it was more the use of the clyster for other things, do you see. That, and laudanum.”

“Hmm?”

“The juice of the opium poppy, distilled if you will, into the drug laudanum, Captain, is quite addictive,” Mr. Mainwaring stuck in, “and, taken beyond moderation, so depresses the rate and depth of respiration and the beat of the heart that death will eventually result in those unfortunates who abuse it.”

“I’ve been administered small doses of laudanum to ease pain, after being wounded,” Lewrie slowly said, still without a clue as to where the men were going. “It tastes vile, even when mixed into brandy with sugar, or a dram of honey. You’d force laudanum down his throat with a clyster?”

“Ehm … not his throat, sir,” Durbin said in a small voice. “Up his anus, rather. That’s where the brothels come in, Captain, sir. While on the premises to inspect for, and treat, venereal Pox, the man I worked with would, ehm … help the ladies, and rather a great many of their clients, get drunk and woozy all the faster, with a mixture of laudanum and ardent spirits … gin, mostly … up their anuses and into the lower intestines, where the bulk of digestion takes place—”

“And, where the nutritional benefits of digestion reach the body and the blood stream more readily, sir,” Mainwaring supplied, to bring their discussion back to a less sordid tone. “To imbibe gin and laudanum the normal way by liquid ingestion, the effect desired might not become apparent for some time, but … injected into the lower intestines, the alcoholic spirits and laudanum take effect within minutes.”

“I’ve seen one … courtesan at one of the better houses in Panton Street, who weighed ten or eleven stone, take two drams of gin and a dram of laudanum, together, and become half-seas-over within five minutes, Captain,” Durbin promised. “With small glasses of brandy and champagne throughout the night, she could take on any number of clients. And, when she wished to sleep the night’s work off, my old patron would increase the laudanum a bit more, and she’d sleep ’til noon of the next day. A lot of the girls would do that … to get started and tolerate the work, and to sleep soundly after.

“After a time, I was allowed to service one house whilst my old patron would handle another, for more fees,” Durbin went on. “We’d make the rounds each night…’til he got too fond of the drug and took too large a dose and died.”

“So, the dose necessary to addle a woman of considerable weight would surely put your cat to sleep, painlessly and humanely, Captain,” Mainwaring assured him. “A moment or two of surprise, as the clyster is inserted, and then perhaps a state of inebriation which may be pleasureable to even a cat, followed by a … fatal lethargy.”

“But, you’re not sure,” Lewrie sceptically asked. “No one ever tried this. The brandy or gin might turn him rabid, ravin’ mad before the laudanum takes effect. I don’t know.…” Lewrie looked down as he stroked Toulon, who was looking up at him with wide eyes, as if he was aware that his demise was being plotted. Toulon was not struggling to escape, though. But, he had stopped purring, and the tip of his tail no longer slowly flicked. Lewrie felt a lump of grief in his chest.

“Well, sir … perhaps the laudanum only,” Mainwaring allowed. “If I may examine it, Captain?”

“Him,” Lewrie corrected. “Toulon.”

“Of course, Captain,” Mainwaring replied, pausing for a moment to be chided, then fell upon his best bedside ma