Author's notes: This is an experimental piece of writing but I
am not sure if it has been done before. The idea is AK is standing on the deck
when he starts *daydreaming* about how great life would be if everything
started going his own way (commencing with a rather confident AK telling
Simpson off). I do hope you like it - enjoy!
The mouth of
the wind ravished Mr Kennedy’s neck with passionate, brutal kisses, while its
arms wrapped him in a tight embrace as its cold hands felt under his clothes
and stroked his soft torso, sending tingling sensations all over his body. But
Mr Kennedy didn’t mind, he pretended to enjoy standing very stiff, feeling the
wind numb him and painfully whisper in his ear.
As he stood stiff, he heard
the lithe figure of Simpson slithering behind him.
“KENNEDY” barked Simpson “you
are ordered to come with me below deck AT ONCE.”
Enraged, but unperturbed,
Kennedy fired back “You call me SIR! And you treat me with RESPECT! I will not
overlook that again, do you hear?!”
Simpson, flabbergasted by
Kennedy’s sudden burst of courage, visibly coward with fright. He began to
stammer, as he had made Kennedy stammer so many times before. “I…I don’t know
what to say…SIR. I….I meant no disrespect, SIR. I am an idiot Sir, I am very
very sorry.”
It gave Kennedy enormous
satisfaction to hear Simpson say those words and mean them without any sarcasm.
“Very well” said Kennedy. “I
shall come below decks at my leisure.”
“As you wish Sir” said
Simpson, and parted.
The next morning, Kennedy was
chosen as one of the select few to join Captain Pellew to an enormous breakfast
buffet consisting of every breakfast dish conceivable: eggs – scrambled,
boiled, poached, fried; cereal – oats, wheat, bran and rye; toast – with melted
cheese and tomato, with cinnamon, and jam, including fig jam, strawberry,
apricot, blackcurrant, raspberry and marmalade; fried meat include bacon, ham
and sausages; grilled vegetables including mushrooms and tomatoes; pancakes
with gold syrup and pancakes with honey; buttered scones and choc chip muffins;
hashbrowns and croissants; hot drinks including coffee, tea, cappuccino and hot
chocolate with marshmallows; freshly squeezed orange juice – the list of items
just went on and on. Hornblower was not invited as he was on continuous watch
for thirty-six hours for losing the Marie Galante at sea, and besides, he
wouldn’t appreciate such a breakfast, the hollow-cheeked, lanky-gaunt-anorexic
wretch, thought Kennedy to himself.
After breakfast it was time
for the shaving ritual. Kennedy and Hornblower went at the same time to the
twin wash-basin in the wardroom. Kennedy was a very skilled, multi-dextrous
shaver, carefully scraping the razor sharp blade over his sculpted face.
Hornblower was less skilled, and by the end of the ritual it was quite obvious
to the whole ship which of them looked like a vagabond who had had a bad
experience with the razor (judging by the amount of lavatory paper stuck to his
face) and which of them was a true blue-blooded gentleman.
Kennedy had the good fortune
of being asked by Pellew if he was up to the task of being part of a crew of
men who would fight an enemy vessel double the size of the British ship they
would be assigned.
“Certainly Sir” replied
Kennedy without any hesitation, and certainly without ever questioning his own
abilities.
So Kennedy was temporarily
transferred to the 9th Symphony to take part in the fight
against the French fighting vessel, the Republic.
The Republic was a
newly built ship with gleaming cast iron carronades peering through her
portholes. The 9th Symphony was less new, with all the creaks
and groans like an old familiar tune. But she was still seaworthy enough to do
battle with any enemy ship that dared cross her path, despite her being only a
thirty-six gunner ship in comparison to the double decked seventy-two gunner
ship the French were so fond of building.
Being only a little ship, the
9th Symphony could easily manoeuvre from one side of the
enemy to the other, to attack her on both her port and starboard side, while
the Republic had to laboriously swing round to get a good aim with her
cannons.
Midshipman Kennedy was put in
station of the guns, and he took to the task of giving the order to fire at the
enemy quite rapidly. It took a certain kind of skill and expertise to know
exactly when to fire at the enemy, and to return fire measure for measure.
After each fire the 9th
Symphony would circulate to the opposite side of the Republic, so
that the Republic had to complete a revolution in order to face her
enemy. With each revolution the Republic wound itself up like a clock,
coiling closer and closer to the Diamond Cut, the sharpest and most dangerous
harbour shoals in the area. The Republic had to be careful not to get
too close to the Diamond Cut, or it would surely have her bottom eaten out of
her. But it was a choice between either being wound up closer to the shoals or
allowing the enemy to fire on her unprotected side willy nilly. The Republic
chose to keep turning and use her powerful guns for which she had been
designed.
On the next revolution the 9th
Symphony swept dangerously close to the Diamond Cut, and attacked the Republic’s
starboard side, forcing the Republic to make an unprecedented
revolution of an unusually wide diameter. As bad luck would have it, a freak
change in wind knots caused a wave of tsunamic proportions to splatter the
massive Republic against the Diamond Cut; such was the force of the
action that her entire bottom was torn out and she stood by her bow and stern
pinned between the rocks. There was nothing the Republic could do now
except fire her remaining cannons on what was left of her top deck, in the hope
of keeping the enemy at a distance, but it may have well as lined itself up in
the firing squad. The 9th Symphony calmly came round to face
its enemy parallel, and unmercifully smashed her to pieces with colossal cannon
balls until there was nothing left except the tip of the bow and stern still
pinned to the rocks, like food remains stuck in one’s teeth.
Kennedy thoroughly enjoyed
basking in the glory of this great victory after that, for the London papers
were singing his praises, and they weren’t the only ones. Kennedy’s girlfriends
(for he had found himself in the favour of many more ladies than just one) were
most impressed that their Gallant Hero should have such worldly headlines
written about him, such as KENNEDY BATTLES CRUEL SEA in large bold font on the
front page, and then, underneath that in smaller font KENNEDY SAVES EVERY MAN
OVERBOARD. Indeed, no sooner had the 9th Symphony totally
obliterated the Republic than Kennedy dived straight into the perilous
water several times to save the survivors from both sides of battle.
For his exceptional bravery,
Kennedy was awarded a lion’s share of prize money that was captured, enabling
him to purchase a modest mansion in affluent Chelstertone Park in England. Not
long after that he was promoted to Lieutenant, and ceaselessly received praise
from Pellew and all the crew, including, most notably, praise from Hornblower.
He became a legend not only among his own crew, but also in centuries to come,
when enumerous books were written about him by famous authors in the league of
Plato, Shakespeare, and the like.
Kennedy mediated on all these
blissful possibilities as the wind picked up and was now forcibly trying to tug
his clothes away from him. “Mr Kennedy!” came a loud cry from one the
Lieutenants “those sand glasses need to be run against each other!”
“Aye aye Sir!” replied
Kennedy as he came out of his daydream, and promptly left the deck to find a
slate and a piece of chalk so that he would not lose his reckoning.