The captain smiled at her a second time, with nearly as great an effect. “You honor me.” He took her hand in his and, bowing low above it, touched it to his lips, then as he straightened said, “I’ll try to see he’s not debauched. We are a fairly sober crowd, but we’ve been known to keep our conversations going into the next morning, so if I don’t have him back by midnight, don’t be too alarmed.”

She promised not to be. “I trust you’ll take good care of him.”

Why she would believe that, having only met the man, I wasn’t sure, but Captain Gordon had the sort of presence that persuaded people he was someone they could trust.

He looked at me with eyes that told me little, and said, “Get your hat.”

* * *

Steell’s tavern was crowded, and Gordon attracted attention. So many men turned from their talking to greet him or shake his hand that it took us some few minutes to press our way through to the back, where Pat Steell himself looked up with pleasure from drying a jug. “Why, Captain Gordon! It did take ye long enough to come this little distance up the road from Leith. How many days now since the Royal William came to anchor?”

“I arrived on Monday, but the wind made it impossible to come to shore,” said Gordon, leaning over to make himself heard above the noise of nearby conversation. “And my ship’s not named the Royal William any longer, Pat, not since the Union, just as I’m no longer commodore of our Scots navy, for we have no navy anymore. Our ships are now joined with the English into one great British navy, and the English did already have a Royal William, so my own ship is renamed the Edinburgh, and flies a Union Jack in place of our old Scottish flag.” His face showed his opinion of the change.

“Aye, well,” said Steell, “’tis just a name.”

“’Tis just our independence,” Gordon countered, but he stopped short of an argument. Instead he drew a paper from the pocket of his coat and passed it to the tavern owner. “Can you post this up for me? I’m having placards printed but they’ll not be ready till tomorrow morning, and there may be men in here tonight who take an interest.”

I could see it was a notice, lettered in a neat hand, that invited sailors to come serve Her Majesty at Leith aboard the Edinburgh.

Steell said, “Then it’s true? I heard this afternoon ye had some trouble, but I swore I’d not believe it. Never Captain Gordon’s men, that’s what I said—they’d never mutiny.”

Gordon grinned. “I thank you for your confidence, but aye, not too long after I did come ashore today, one hundred of my men escaped the ship in boats and are run off. It will take time to round them up, if we can even find them. In the meantime, we can search for men to take their place.”