Jack made best use of the single moment that Captain Douglas had his back turned to him: to wince. He stood in the dark cabin of the Resolution, waiting for Douglas to come to the point, and to cease ranting. He had a desperate wish to kick the mutt that was eating his leg, but a visible kick of Douglas's prize hound would not earn him a return to rank of midshipman.

"Fifty men short of our complement, Aubrey," Captain Douglas murmured, still staring from the stern galley window out at their gentle wake. "A disaster, if we are to make immediate dispatch to Valencia tomorrow."

"Yes Sir," Jack squeaked, his eyes crossing and watering as the terrier's little teeth dug into his ankle and gnawed enthusiastically. 

"Orders handed at the eleventh hour, Cutters to be pursued - " Douglas sighed, leant against the window ledge. "It's a total shambles."

"A shambles, yes," Jack muttered with absent sycophancy, trying to wiggle the terrier off him. Williams had a very black and white view of life - things in its world were either edible, or inedible, and for some reason, it found him particularly succulent. A tear rolled, but he didn't dare wipe it away in case the movement made Douglas turn and catch him snivelling.

"Nothing for it, I suppose - we shall have to resort to the Impressment Service." Douglas spun around, sat heavily at his desk, and wrote out a docket for 50 men, fit and capable of reefing, splicing, and handing. He folded and sealed, handed the docket into Jack's trembling hand. Just as the Captain looked up, their eyes locked, and the Captain sat back, surprised. "Why ye bawling, Aubrey?"

"With respects, Sir, your dog is chewing me, and he ain't gentle."

"Williams!" The sharp bark made the dog leave Jack instantly, and bolt under the table in a cowering heap. Jack felt like doing precisely the same as he knuckled moisture from his eyes, but managed to compose himself in time to take his instructions like a man.

"Take the docket into Deal, and don't come back until you have 50 men conscripted. Is that in any way unclear?"

"Perfectly clear," Jack said, bowed slightly, and limped out and up the steps to the quarterdeck. He realised the lie in it as he clambered down the ladder. Nothing was clear.

How serious was Douglas about his failure to return? 

If he returned with 25 men only, because no more than 25 men were to be found - would he earn a thrashing at the capstan? He was relegated to a mere foremost hand. Douglas could well do that, if he wished without breaching any Articles of War. Would he be disbarred from returning to his rank as an officer? Or should he not return until he had 50 men with him, whether it was to be tomorrow, or the day after? His foot missed the bottom rung and shot down beneath him - it was stayed by a hand about his calf.

"Steady there, lad," the cox'n murmured, and hauled him into the boat.

"Thankee, Backson," Jack said breathlessly, and wondered how it came to be that he was so cow-footed these days. Six months spent at the heights of the cross trees of the topgallant mast ought to have made him more agile; six months since he'd been disrated, sentenced to isolation except at meals, forced to consider the error of his whoremongering ways for hiding girls in the cable tier...

"Girls," Jack thought sullenly. "Twas no more than one!"

"No more than one what?" Backson asked, and pushed off from the side of the Resolution.

Jack blinked, realised with a start that he had been thinking out loud. "Here's what it is, Backson, I was contemplating my career, and whether I will ever have one or not."

"Lad, there are older men than you who have never even made midshipman. You're a scrap yet - barely shaving."

"I'm fifteen," Jack corrected stiffly, but there was no resisting Backson's avuncular tone. He dropped the hauteur. "I daresay you are right in it, but I extremely regret my disrating. Not to speak ill of an officer, but I see our first lieutenant making decisions over the canvas spreads that pain me."

"And you wish to be in his shoes?"

"Not now, precisely, but with each day I spend, turned before the mast, the further away my future seems to move. I try to get back into the Captain's good graces, yet the harder I try, the more deplorable my behaviour seems to become."

"You may win a little favour if you travel out with the press gang, Jack. I presume that is a docket that you crush in your hand - "

"Lord!" Jack smoothed it out, wiped the sweat on the parched surface onto his shirt, and slipped it into a pocket to flatten it. An interesting notion - travel out with the press gang? Oversee them, so to speak? Jack raised his brows and considered this. It would be a notion that appealed far more than waiting at the dockside, anxious and unknowing, waiting for the press gang to return with their conscripts.

"It might give Douglas a sense of your ability to command, too," Backson mused, then shrugged. "Think on it, lad."

"I will," Jack promised, but did not have to. He was quite convinced already that it was a fine plan.

"Fifty, boy? You'll bleed the town dry!" the irate pressmaster barked at him, his face a walnut of dislike. Jack squared his shoulders and tried to seem taller than his five feet and ten inches. He was tall, but not enormously broad.

"Those are my orders, sir."

"I doubt we have fifty men in Deal to press!"

"We'll have to find them," Jack asserted. "I intend to accompany the gang, assist." Jack stood stiffly and irritably as the master fell about laughing, tears flowing down weathered cheeks, bad teeth showing in a yellow slash of humour. Jack clenched his fists, twitched his jaw. "Are you shunning my assistance, sir?"

"Never in life..." the master gasped, and waved him towards the gang hut, further down the jetty. "Do your best, boyo!"

Jack strode to the hut, and was not met magnanimously.

"FIFTY?"

"Yes. Fifty." Jack fumed, not wishing to repeat this cycle of conversation. The gang - 20 of them present with no ships to tend in the Deal yard - abandoned their card games, slammed down their dice, and donned their coats and staffs. Jack's eyes widened at the size of the truncheons that were slipped into belts, the ropes that were looped over shoulders, the size of the feet that stamped from the door.

Registers were handed out - men without occupation, vagrants, criminals, and insanes. The list looked frighteningly short to Jack, and he could see wherein lay their discontent. He looked out wistfully at the Resolution, anchored four cable lengths from shore, and wondered if he had the audacity to return to the boat and politely explain the situation to Captain Douglas.

A difficult decision indeed. Would it appear worse to appear with a few men short of the complement - yet soon; or to appear early and encourage Captain Douglas to revise his estimations of what was feasible, and produce fewer men, later? He chewed his lip as he mulled this dilemma over, and damn near bit through it in shock as a heavy-set gangman slapped him vigorously from his reverie.

"Agh, Gods! Careful, damn you!"

"We'll not get a single man on the list if you stand staring out to the horizon like a bleeding portrait, mate. Move your grass-combing arse!"

Gusting hot fumes of rage through his nostrils, Jack pushed past, took a register from one of the less frowsty members, and headed them up the hill to the first region of Deal - Vagrant City.

Jack's luck was with him; the first three lanes were littered with filthy men who craved being taken off the streets, particularly with winter striding swiftly their way. Without the use of a single truncheon, without the least need for binding the un-cooperatives with rope and bearing them away, they had 30 men enlisted within two hours, and they had barely touched those that would have to be hauled from their families.

After another couple of hours, and another 15 men conscripted, some enlisted by him even, Jack felt considerably more heartened. Dusk fell slowly, in heaps of pink cloud, and he sat outside an Inn to enjoy it fully, cheerful and complacent, leaning back expansively upon an oaken bench.

Yet, noticing the name of the Inn, he was faced with another dilemma - according to the list he held he must press Josiah Barber, who resided within. He turned away from the sunset to look through the window, where a hunched gentleman could be seen raising a beam up to the ceiling with an impressive arrangement of pulleys.

Slowly, quietly, Jack approached the door and slunk in, to view for himself the excellent rope and knot work that the gentleman carried out so easily. The inn was in a sad state of disrepair - old and dusty, paint peeling, and much of the furniture in need of replacement. However, the love with which Josiah - if this man was Josiah - was refurbishing, repairing the dilapidated ceiling was quite enchanting. Jack sat down to admire the man as he worked, forgetting his purpose completely.

He even laid down his truncheon on the table next to him so he could sit and lean comfortably. He watched in awe, enjoying the smooth movements of agile hands, the intelligent pondering, and wondered if he would be berated by Captain Douglas for recommending him to fill the position of Master's mate. Of course, eventually, the man had to turn around - and when he did so, he flattened himself against the wall in horror, as if he were caught with a whore, and Jack were the angry wife.

"Don't you bleeding touch me! I paid my bills - wrote a draft at the bank! There ain't no reason for you to be haulin' me to no sponging house!"

Jack laughed gently, held his hands palm up to placate the man. "I'm not a tipstaff, Sir. I was cordially admiring your work with your pulleys."

"Oh!" the man relaxed against the wall as suddenly as if strings had been cut then stepped forward to extend a hand. "Will you be having a drink here, then?"

"I would love to," Jack said sadly, shaking the coarse, papery palm. "A small ale would flood down right precious at the moment, but I have no money."

The man gave him a jovial wink and dashed behind his serving bar. I'd say a kindly lad like you might have a beer without the fee, just don't tell the missus, eh?"

Jack beamed lovingly at the man as his free refreshment was pushed towards him over the top of the bar. "Thank you kindly, sir."

"Josiah, lad. So... you here with that there ship?" A stubby finger was pointed out of the window and onto the darkening sea where the Resolution bobbed on the wash. It was an uncomfortable reminder to Jack as to the purpose of his visit, and he put the beer down, not quite sure that it was the polite thing, drinking freely from the gentleman that he was about to prise from his homestead. He must work up to this carefully, with consideration. Not say anything too rash. Nothing to scare the man away.

"I'm here with the press gang, sir," he admitted, and before he could continue, his drink was flung into his face, a wiry arm appeared in a flash, a fist - was it a fist? - hit his jaw and he crashed to the floor, giddy and unseeing. Thick-soled boots of uneven height bounded past his nose, and Josiah became a dot on the horizon. Jack's vision reeled away from him, and his last thought before his head hit the floor afresh, was how useful Josiah would have been in a battle.

"Come on..." Tiffany patted the slack cheek again, and this time saw some movement in the pale eyelashes. She slowed the patting down to a light stroke. The boy's head and shoulders lay in her lap. The door was wide open, and her father was nowhere to be seen.

She held the side of a cooled pewter mug to the bruise upon the boy's jaw, and raked her fingers through the thick buttery hair with lasciviousness that surprised her. Or, perhaps not.

He was a handsome young colt - maybe 17 or 18 - with the gleaming tanned skin of a boy at sea. The eyelashes unlocked slowly, revealing bright blues and snowy whites. He blinked a time or two, and his gaze locked upon her bosom, bare inches from his nose. He pinkened delightfully.

"Well, hello," she giggled as he tried valiantly hard to wrench his gaze from her bosom. She snuggled him closer, feeling very much like being a tease. "What happened to you?"

"There was a man..." he began drowsily, and winced in recollection. "Oh Lord, what a fool! There was a man - Josiah, that's it - and he asked me my business. I told him I was with the press gang, and the fellow knocked me on the head and fled!"

"My father is afraid of the sea," The boy openly gaped, trying to take in the enormous improbability of this statement. "Some men are, you know."

"They are?"

"Oh, indeed!" 

She rippled her fingertips lightly over his shirt buttons, slipping them open as easy as kiss-my-hand. They crumbled away under her touch, exposing him slowly and gently. She peeled the shirt away from him on either side, catching her breath.

He was slender, yet beautifully defined and toned. His chest and shoulders would add inches as he aged, but the makings for a fine and imposing physique were there, creamy and dusted with gold. Her hand landed lightly on his firm stomach, her thumb stroked the tiny patch of hair sprouting at the centre of his chest with her thumb. He lifted his head slightly, and watched the trailing caress. His neat lips were slightly parted, his eyes wide - his whole face a picture of tremulous awe.

"Men are afraid of all kinds of funny things."

"Miss, you're undressing me," Jack gazed up at the maiden that cradled him, and felt her relaxed grey eyes fling arrows of reassurance at him.

"You're covered in beer," she soothed, and picked up a cloth that had been languishing in a bowl at her side. "You can't go back to your ship all sticky, can you now? Whatever will your Captain say?"

Jack drew a sharp intake of breath as the cloth stroked a trail from the centre of his chest to the hem of his breeches. She was not, he noted, aiming for the beer stains upon him.

"H-he wouldn't be pleased," he admitted - but nor would his Captain be pleased if he were to be late, with the clear evidence of coltish abandon crystallising upon his breeches. He struggled slightly to sit, but the girl pressed him back, scrubbing gentle circles around his left nipple. His breath quickened.

"Well, then we must tidy you a little." 

Jack moaned and dropped his head back into her lap. The coarseness and warmth of the cloth, as it lavished friction and care upon his nipple, stirred up a tide of sensations in his chest that bolted directly to his loins. He felt the swelling there, the stickiness upon the tip of his rising bolt. The girl's chuckle floated into his ear - a breeze of honey that cloyed his intelligence, muddled his brain.

The cloth relaxed upon his chest as she released it, and he felt her fingertips walk over his stomach. He raised his lips to hers without thinking about it. Her mouth was warm and encouraging, and he felt the euphoric rush of being taught - guided along. Just as her tongue trailed a lazy path over his palate, tickling him behind the teeth, a warm palm caressed his rigid length, squeezing gently up and down the shaft, coaxing more wetness from him as the coarse hopsack material stroked and teased him. The delicate pressure around his manhood wrenched a lust-glutted moan from his throat, and he pulled back from the kiss, panting, panicking.

"You have raised your topgallants, I see," she giggled, and slipped her fingers through the braiding that kept his breeches closed. The cool flesh of her fingers met the scalding flesh of his cock; her spare hand moved to his exposed nipple, and the short, neat nails raked lightly over the taut, hot, and pebbled surface. Jack's eyes watered, his whole body vibrated with pleasure at this double assault upon him.

"I... ain't feeling very tidy," he confessed, and the girl just laughed at him - a pure tinkling sound bubbling from a merry, wide mouth. She stroked the palm of her hand to his head, and rubbed the slick, sensitive dome carefully. "I- Oh GOD!" Any sense that he had compiled, any line of reasonable enquiry - her name, perhaps? - fell cleanly through the back of his head.

"What were you going to say?"

Her words bypassed his brain, travelling straight to the core of need throbbing within his bollocks. He was hot, and close - dangerously close - his thighs tightened like strained spars, his shoulders clenched - please God, not yet - not yet!

"Glmphmmh," Jack babbled, his eyes about as wide as they would go. With one flick of her thumb over the tip of his pee-post, he was quite undone. His roar of shame and ecstasy was muffled as she closed her mouth over his, and he erupted voluminously into his breeches. His hips left the floor, his arms - hard and trembling - braced him against the throbbing tide of delight that pumped, that continued to pump, and would not ease, even as she moved her hand down his shaft and stroked him gently, exacerbating his sensitivity...

The final burst faded slowly, and she moved down with him, licking him with her kisses as his arms gave way. The girl pulled a strand of sodden hair from his face, and kissed his brow. His loins continued to throb, he was blazing hot between his legs, and he felt as if he'd been keelhauled.

"I was going to say... I..." What in the name of the good Lord does one say? His sense of duty weighed upon him heavily, his negligence and departure from the press gang smote him all of a sudden, like a second blow to the head. "I need to... impress Josiah Barber," he added miserably, and waited for the slap to the face for his gracelessness, his abruptness, and his dismissal of her ravishment. Her lip wobbled dangerously for a brief moment, and he feared a tide of tears upon him - a far more dangerous deluge of salt than the sea could ever present - but she tipped her head back and laughed uproariously.

Jack sat up and frowned in confusion as he tied the braiding fast about his loins once again. He made short work of buttoning his shirt, tucked them into his breeches, and combed his fingers through his hair.

"What's amiss?" he asked eventually, as she recovered herself.

"I was very impressed, sir," she giggled, and Jack rolled his eyes in good humour, standing, extending his hand to pull her upright. His eyes made a swift dart to the window, and he froze.

"Fuck!" he blurted, and the girl followed his gaze.

"Oh goodness," she chuckled, and did something that laid him quite completely by the lee. She took his hand, pulled it down, forcing him to bow, and dropped a neat curtsey at the band of ten or so unwashed men applauding and whooping just outside the inn window. He obeyed numbly, standing scarlet and humiliated as the men continued to rouse outside, mock smooching, clapping, and grinning hugely. A couple of grubby upturned thumbs wiggled in the air, weathered eyes winked lewdly. She walked to the door, reaching it before Jack could stop her, unlatched it and let them flood in like a riptide of indecorous cackling and nudging.

"Who'd 've thought he had it in 'im, eh?"

"Well, I doubt his got much left in 'im now!"

More raucous laughing, much back-slapping, and the news that Josiah had been apprehended in a safe house further down by the docks, and that they had the full complement - all he needed to do was to go down and arrange the boats to transfer the enlisted men to the ship. Jack grinned in relief - this one weight lifted, he could focus, instead, on the camaraderie of the gang, the congratulations, and the pleasured heaving of the girl's bosom as she giggled at their happiness and coarseness. An unusual girl, Jack considered, he'd never met her like. A grin spread over his face as he mused that he rather liked her like. A warm girl, but not at all unhappy to be fruity.

"Tiffany lass, you're a shameless hussy" one gangman creaked affectionately, and she beamed with pride, a wide smile that Jack returned in kind.

"TIFFANY!"

The shrieking, eldritch voice pierced the cheer of the jolly gathering as keenly and sharply as a bayonet through a studdingsail. 

"'Scuse me! Excuse me gentlemen..." a small woman, carrying a flat-iron stomped her way through the cheerful throng, her rudely thrusting elbows giving the lie to the words of courtesy. She stopped before Jack, and he took a discreet step back, but it was not he that she wished to berate. The woman dealt a sharp cuff around Tiffany's head.

"Mama!"

"Don't you 'mama' me, you useless bint!" 

A finger, with huge washerwoman knuckles waved before the girl's face, inches from her nose. "No 'elp in the laundry, no help with your poor father, putting that big beam up all on his own, and now you open up shop and let these poor gents stand about with no drink!"

"Actually, Madam - "Jack stepped forward, and was halted in his tracks by a glare of obsidian hostility.

"You keep out of this!"

Jack blinked - that finger was now stabbing at the tip of his own nose - then calmly took a step to the side. He couldn't stand about while that poor girl was publicly berated - it'd be un-gentlemanly. The gang - the cowards - had retreated towards the door, and resumed their position, watching the proceedings through the window.

"Madam," he began firmly, "We are not here to drink. Do not blame our lack of refreshment upon your daughter. She had no choice but to let us in."

"So what's yer business?" she barked, and Jack steeled himself. 

"We're here to press your husband. He is at the docks already. He ran. We would've preferred that - "

"PRESS MY HUSBAND?" she shrieked "You can't press Josiah! He's a cripple!"

Jack's mind rewound to the brief blurry moments where he'd been hit, hit the floor, indeed - seen those oddly-heighted shoes - but also remembered, quite clearly, that Josiah had covered a great deal of ground in a small space of time, making his escape.

"With respects, Madam, he did not seem overly encumbered when he raced for the hills. He hits hard, he can reef and splice, and we need him on - " 

A little late, he saw the rabble outside the window. Squinting, he watched them wave their hands - No no no! - gesture their thumbs across their throats, mouth desperate don't's at him. His gaze shot back to the woman, and he felt the crunch of the iron upon his shoulder before he saw it move.

The shock threw him backwards - there was a distant impact.

He dropped utterly unconscious to the floor.

Captain Douglas watched with staggered approval as five boats neatly queued at the side of the Resolution, and streams of men teemed over the side onto the poop, the aftdeck, and the quarterdeck, quietly and neatly. He leant over to the purser.

"I cannot see in this light. How many, do you say?"

"The full 50, sir. Quite astonishing. A remarkable feat." 

Douglas felt the slightly reproving eyes of the purser upon him, could smell a quiet comment being tightly held behind the man's lips. 

"What is it?" he asked eventually - exasperated.

"Aubrey's a young 'un, Sir. Never served with the press before - doesn't know the etiquette. The rules, if you know what I mean."

Douglas felt the chiding deeply. Indeed - he should have warned the lad. Fifty actually means 30. Increase your requirements by 60% when pressing at the dockyard, and you will press the number of men that you actually require.

"I didn't realise that he would take me so literally," he mumbled, slightly ashamed, but looked away smartly. "But I am delightfully surprised in him. He'll make an officer yet, no doubt."

The waves of disapproval eased slightly, and he stepped cleanly out of their range, noticing two men pull a third over the side of the boat as he did so. 

"Send word for the ship's surgeon if you please - and with the Captain's compliments, could he attend to an injury on deck." 

Douglas walked over to the side, and assisted the bosun and cox'n in easing the sluggish fellow over the side. His arm was in a sling.

The face beneath the pale hair was quite utterly pale.

"Backson, what happened to him?"

"He was flattened, sir." Douglas casually smacked a smirking youth around the side of the head, and helped to press Aubrey up the side of the boat, keeping him upright.

"Hit by a woman with a flat iron. She didn't want her husband going to sea, Sir."

Douglas took the boy's chin in his hand and tilted the head up. The eyes were unfocussed, but open. 

"Excellent work, son," he said warmly. 

"Thank you, Captain" came the rather hoarse reply, trailing off as Aubrey's legs tried to give way once again.

"Welcome back, Mr. Midshipman Aubrey."