Her Heart's Captain by Elizabeth Mansfield

Deck and gave the order to rig the Gratings. The Master-at-arms then read a Statement telling that this poor Devil had stolen some Rum from the Ship’s Stores and then had taken a swing at the Officer who’d come upon him. The Prisoner was asked if he had any reasonable Excuse. He shook his Head. The Captain then ordered three dozen Lashes .
    We all had to stand there and Watch. You call well Imagine my Feelings as I watched the Boatswain’s man carry out the Sentence with a Cat-o’-nine-tails. With each Blow, I imagined it might one day be me. I could hardly keep from Shuddering. After nine or ten Blows, the skin broke and the man began to Bleed. It was Horrible. After they took him down, the Surgeon gave him medical Treatment, and we were dismissed. I went Below and was Sick.
    Jenny felt sick herself. How had she ever believed that Captain Allenby was a kind and admirable gentleman? He was an inhuman beast. It was terrifying beyond measure to realize that her beloved brother had to live—especially in his tender years—under the governance of such a monster.
    Jenny and Lady Garvin were inconsolable. Robbie’s plight was never far from their minds. They waited with painful anxiety for the day they would see the boy again. When the ship returned to England, they would do everything they could to extricate the poor lad from his commitment to Captain Allenby’s service. Until then, however, there was nothing they could do but pray for his health and safety.
    Jenny offered her mother what little consolation she could, but Lady Garvin was disconsolate. For Jenny, the only consolation came from imagining herself in her brother’s straits. On some illogical level of consciousness, she permitted herself to believe that by suffering with him she was expiating her own guilt. Meanwhile, her former feelings of warmth for Captain Tristram Allenby darkened, festered and transformed themselves to a deep, implacable loathing.

Chapter Five
    More than six months passed before the Providential returned to Portsmouth, and it was November before Robbie was given leave. But he arrived home with the glad news that, since the ship was going into drydock at Buckler’s Hard, a shipyard near Southhampton, for repairs, it would be two months before he was due to ship out again.
    â€œShip out again?” his mother exclaimed, embracing him for the third time. “You’ll do no such thing.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about, Mama?” The boy squirmed out of her embrace. “I must ship out again. I’m in naval service now, you know, and have no choice.”
    â€œI don’t care. Your uncle must do something. I won’t have you going back to serve under that monster.”
    â€œOh, is that what’s troubling you? No need to raise a dust,” Robbie said. “Allenby’s a beast, of course, but I’m quite used to him. One learns to deal with that sort of thing, you know, in the Navy.”
    Jenny and her mother exchanged looks of relief as they accompanied the boy to the dining room. Taller and thinner than before, he seemed to have been starved on shipboard. He’d already informed them that he yearned for “a good landlubber’s dinner, with green vegetables, Cook’s rich mushroom soup, a thick slice of rare beef and every sort of cream and pastry you can find in the larder.” They watched him as he ate voraciously everything that Cullum laid before him. The boy talked all the while. He had a thousand adventures to relate. He told them about the friends he’d made, the fight with another midshipman who’d taken to bullying the others (which, he bragged, he’d won without half trying), the ports they’d called at and the sights he’d seen. He kept them enthralled for hours on end, and they didn’t even think of bed until well past midnight.
    When at last she retired for the night, Jenny had much to think about. Whatever her