The King's Marauder (15 page)

“I’ll be aft, Mister Harcourt,” he told the Second Lieutenant, who had the Day Watch.

“Very good, sir,” Harcourt replied, “I have the deck.”

Harcourt’s reply was a formality, perhaps too much so, stiffer and cooler than Lewrie liked. During their time in port, he had had his officers and Mids in to dine, to get to know them and take their measure, and he had noticed that Lt. Harcourt had held himself in a strict reserve, as if he privately resented the arrival of a new Captain and the loss of
Sapphire
’s first one. For certain, Westcott’s arrival as the new First Officer, which had kept him in his place as the Second Officer, was resented, Lewrie had surmised, and that senior Midshipman, Hillhouse…! They had both been in the same group at-table one night, and Lewrie
had
noticed some enigmatic shared looks between them, as if Harcourt and Hillhouse were allied in some way.

The Third Lieutenant, Edward Elmes, seemed a decent sort, as did most of the Mids, especially the younger ones, but a couple of the older ones, like Hillhouse, Britton, and Leverett, had struck Lewrie as much of the same frame of mind as Lt. Harcourt … a tad sulky and disappointed.

Thankfully, Lewrie had his “spies”. Pettus, Jessop, Yeovill, and Desmond and Furfy all berthed below among the common seamen, with their ears open, and he had Geoffrey Westcott in the wardroom to pick up on the mood of his officers. All were “Captain’s Men”, who could not pry too overtly, round whom disgruntled, larcenous, even mutinous sailors would not gripe or complain too openly, but, by just listening, the people of his entourage could glean information and pass on should it sound dangerous. Lewrie’s only lack was below in the Midshipmen’s mess, since he had brought no one beholden to his patronage or his “interest” aboard with him, and despised the practise of favouring young “cater-cousins” or the nepotism of placing one’s own sons in one’s vessel.

“’Vast there, damn yer eyes,” Lewrie snapped as Bisquit tumbled down from the poop deck, where he’d been barking and chasing after the many seagulls that wheeled and hovered out of his reach, and pressed his way past Lewrie’s legs into the great-cabins. The dog dashed about and made a rapid circuit of the day cabin, sending Chalky scrambling from the comfy settee cushions to the top of the desk, in a bristled-up and spitting huff. Bisquit trotted to the edge of the desk, snuffled at the cat, dangerously within clawing distance, and wagging his bushy tail in glad greetings, before padding to the middle of the canvas deck chequer to sit down, tongue lolling as if he was late to dinner.

“Ye know ye don’t belong in here,” Lewrie sternly said.

Bisquit whined and did a little dance with his front paws, with a grin on his face, his stand-and-fall ears perking up.

“Got spoiled ashore, sir,” Pettus said with fondness in his voice. “Allowed the run of your father’s house all winter when you were healing up? Warm fires, and treats in the kitchen, and he learned to go out to do his business. Jessop and I taught him. Put him out of the cabins, sir?”

Bisquit didn’t think that his case was made, for he whined some more and rolled over onto his back, wriggling back and forth to invite someone to come rub his belly.

“Oh, Hell,” Lewrie gave in, kneeling down to oblige the dog, sending Bisquit into paroxyms of delight. “You bloody pest. Aye, ye are, d’ye know that?” But he said it with a coo.

Yeovill came in with his food barge.

“Now just look what you started, Yeovill,” Lewrie accused with mock severity. “All your warm kitchen fires, and treats.”

“Me, sir?” Yeovill gawped. “Wasn’t just me, sir!” He peered about, as if looking for support from his co-conspirators. “But, ehm … should I put out an extra bowl, sir?”

“Aye,” Lewrie said with a sigh as he got back to his feet. “A few sausages cut up, to go with his gruel.”

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were “Banyan Days” when boiled salt meats were off the menu, replaced with oatmeal, cheese, bisquit, pease pudding, portable soup, butter, and beer. But, no one with a heart could begrudge Bisquit or Chalky their jerky, sausages or
pemmican.
Except for when Lewrie had supper guests, Chalky got his in a bowl at the foot of the dining table. Poor old Toulon, who had died the year before, had had his bowl there, too, but it proved to be too small for Bisquit. He got a chipped soup bowl on the deck to hold his food. After they’d eat, Chalky nervously peered down at the dog, let out a warning hiss, then did a prodigious leap far past him to bound into the starboard quarter gallery right aft and take a perch atop the stores packed in the un-used toilet. Bisquit padded about for a time before circling round on the Axminster carpet by the low, brass Hindoo tray table in front of the starboard-side settee and flopping down to take a nap.

“Spoiled, indeed,” Lewrie commented to Pettus, as his steward served him a steaming-hot cup of tea with goat’s milk and sugar. “Do you keep an eye on him, though, if he looks in need of … going.”

“Yes, sir,” Pettus said with a sly look. “Hear that, Jessop?”

“Aye, I do,” the servant said with a much-put-upon sigh.

*   *   *

Try as he might to stay aft in his cabins and write letters or read, and appear calmly confident—he thought of practicing upon his penny-whistle, but that was out, for every tootle made Bisquit howl along!—there was no helping it. Lewrie went back on deck by Six Bells of the Day Watch, had his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair fetched to the poop deck, and spent the last hour of that watch, and the first hour of the First Dog, pretending to loll unconcernedly, or pace about
without
appearing to fret, as his little convoy made its slow way down-Channel. The following winds from the Nor’east remained steady, and the Channel, which could be a right bitch three days out of five, stayed relatively calm, with only long rollers and waves no greater than four or five feet high, in long sets.

Even in a time of war, with French merchant trade, and the trade of her allies, denied passage, the English Channel was still one of the busiest bodies of water in the known world. It was also a body of water where French and Dutch privateers preyed upon the great convoys bound out overseas, or returning with their riches. Lewrie had cautiously ordered that his charges would hug closer to England than to the middle, just in case, but then so did every other ship with a master with a lick of sense. If the enemy could not pounce upon rich prizes fresh from India or the West Indies, they’d settle for vessels from the coasting trade, or the many fishing craft, which made the waters even more crowded. Fortunately, the Nor’east wind precluded vessels bound up-Channel for the Dover Straits from making much progess close-hauled, forcing them further out from the coast to make their tacks in more-open water, and this day’s traffic was mostly out-bound off the wind, so
Sapphire
and her convoy went with the flow, their own advance blunted for half the day by the stiff currents up-Channel.

Lewrie waited ’til the second rum issue of the day had been doled out, folded up his chair and bound it to the bulwarks, then went down to the quarterdeck. Lt. Elmes had the watch, and was standing by the starboard bulwarks, peering shoreward with his telescope when Lewrie appeared.

“Your pardons, sir,” Elmes said, surrendering his spot to his Captain, who owned the windward side of the quarterdeck when he was up.

“No matter, Mister Elmes,” Lewrie genially told him. “Is that Beachy Head yonder?”

“Aye, sir,” Elmes answered with a smile. “Three points off the starboard bows, and about eleven or twelve miles off.”

“A long, slow passage, so far, aye,” Lewrie commented, trying to spot the first glow of the lights that marked it. He looked aloft and forward at the set of the sails and how they were drawing, to the long, gently-fluttering commissioning pendant to gauge the strength of the winds, and found that the beginning of sunset in the West was going reddish.

“Sign of a calm night,” Lewrie said, rapping his knuckles on the bulwark’s cap-rail for luck. “
If
the wind holds out of the Nor’east,
if
the seas don’t get up, and the French keep to their side of the Channel t’night. Eleven or twelve miles, d’ye say?”

“Aye, sir,” Lt. Elmes agreed.

Lewrie looked round the deck and found the Sailing Master, Mr. George Yelland, making his way up a ladderway to the quarterdeck, his coat off, and his head bare in an idle, Dog Watch casualness.

“Ah, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out. “A lovely early evening, hey? You will be using your sea cabin tonight?”

“Thought I might, sir, just in case.” Yelland told him.

“Let’s take a peek in the chart space, if you don’t mind, sir. I’m thinking that it may be necessary t’come a point more Westerly, so we don’t get trampled by a home-bound trade in the middle of the night,” Lewrie suggested. “Hug the coast a
tad
closer?”

Once in the chart space, the Captain’s clerk’s former office, and a small lanthorn lit, they both pored over the charts.

“Uhm…” Yelland mused, sucking on his teeth in thought. “We could espy Saint Catherine’s Point light round midnight, aye, sir, if we alter course. With any luck at all, we
might
be in sight of Portland Bill by dawn, and about twelve or so miles off.”

“At which point, we’ll alter course to West by South, Half-South or West-Sou’west, depending on wind and weather,” Lewrie decided, “and clear Start Point and Prawle Point by a wider margin.”

“Looks good to me, sir,” Yelland agreed, tentatively making a few pencil marks on the chart.

Christ, does he ever have a wash?
Lewrie asked himself. Their Sailing Master’s body odour was almost as rank as the smells from his clothing. Lewrie dreaded spending too much time in the chart space, conferring with Yelland, in future. Not with the door shut, anyway.

He stepped back onto the quarterdeck and into the fresher air, clapped his hands in the small of his back and rocked on the balls of his boot soles, allowing himself a brief moment of feeling pleased.
Comus
out ahead had lit her taffrail lanthorns for the night, and the transports astern of her were doing the same. The column was ragged, not the beads-on-a-string perfection of a seasoned naval column, with some transports off each of
Comus
’s stern quarters, or HMS
Sapphire
’s stern quarters, but they looked to be only one cable, or a bit more, apart and managing decently enough.

This may not be as bad a prospect as I feared,
Lewrie thought.

“Beg pardon, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, coming up from the waist with a sheet of paper in his hand. “Defaulters, I’m afraid. Damned near a dozen for Captain’s Mast in the morning.”

That was more than they had seen in a month aboard their old ship, and in the
Reliant
frigate, most of the sailors brought up on charges had been guilty of minor or trivial misdeeds, punished with deprivations less than the use of the cat-o’-nine-tails.

“How many serious defaulters?” Lewrie asked with a gloomy sigh.

“One fist-fight, one pissing on the lower gun deck, two quarreling or showing dis-respect to a Midshipman or petty officer, one who was trying to pilfer some jam from the galley, and the rest are either drunk, or drowsing on duty, sir.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Lewrie gravelled. “So much for a happy ship. Gun drill, weather permitting, in the Forenoon. Live powder and shot, for a change, then I’ll hold Mast after Noon Sights.”

“Very good, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a rueful look, and a heavy, commiserating shrug.

Then again, things may
not
turn out well,
Lewrie thought.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The winds swung more Northerly for a day or two, allowing their column to make their way West-Sou’west, almost on a beam wind, which was grand for the soldiers cooped up in the transports to accustom them to a ship’s motions, giving them their “sea legs”. It was good for maintaining the proper order of sailing, too, as they stood out beyond the Lizard and into the open Atlantic. Both
Comus
and
Sapphire
wreathed themselves in spent powder smoke for at least one hour each Forenoon to bring their gun crews back up to scratch, Lewrie’s hands most especially. For a warship in commission the better part of a year, her gunners were very rusty, and initially slow to run out and fire, or reload, nowhere near Lewrie’s, and Westcott’s, exacting standards. Westcott confided that the other officers had commented that former Captain Insley had been more than frugal with the expenditure of shot and powder, perhaps in worry that Admiralty might send him a harsh note for wasting too much of the stuff.

In the beginning, it seemed that the roars and explosions from the muzzles was so alien and terrifying a din that the guns crews were addled by it, stunned into confusion, and the proper steps of drill blasted from their heads, standing round stupefied, or fumbling like complete new-comes at their first exposure, without a clue as to how to perform the simplest task, afraid of their great charges.

It took a whole week before the 12-pounders on the upper gun deck and the 24-pounders on the lower gun deck could run in, load, run out, and fire somewhat co-ordinated broadsides. Aiming was what worried Lewrie after that. If he ordered the launch or pinnace away to tow an empty cask—on a
very
long tow-line!—it was good odds that his gunners would sink the boat! The best he could do was to fire off a 6-pounder and order a broadside fired at the feather of spray where the roundshot struck the sea, at once, and hope for the best. And that proved to be a very
ragged
second-best, with roundshot soaring off half a mile beyond, and raising splash pillars along half the length of the convoy.

Lieutenant-Colonel Fry had much better luck with his musketry, dumping empty kegs overside and having his Fusiliers volley at them in ripples of platoon fire. Of course, his soldiers were not expected to hit anything much beyond seventy-five yards!

Lewrie would have kept them at it more often, but for the wind and weather. Further out in the Atlantic, as they strove to attain at least the 15th Longitude, the winds came more and more Westerly, and at least twice a day all ships had to wear about from one tack to the other, then make long boards for at least six hours, making progress Westward on larboard tack, steering Nor’west, then wear about to sail on starboard tack to the Sou’-Sou’west to make progress Sutherly.