The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Get off my ship, Sasha,” Lewrie growled, jabbing the bayonet at the man’s eyes, and swiping that smug look from his face at last, and putting anger and caution in its place. Lewrie forced him to the very lip of the entry-port, facing inwards as the others had done, for their descents. Sasha’s hands groped back behind him for the edge of the opened bulwark, fumbling on the cap-rails in search of the upper knots of the man-ropes. “I said . . . get off my ship!”

  Stamp forward with the left foot, reversing the musket to smash the brass butt plate into Sasha’s broad nose, making him “spout claret” in a fresh, red stream, and go cross-eyed!

  Before his hands could get a grip on the man-ropes, the stout rope stays of the main-mast shrouds, or the bulwarks, Sasha teetered on the lip of the entry-port, arms flailing backwards in circles for balance, one foot behind him hoping for something solid that was not there. He over-balanced and went over the side backwards, roaring like a bear that had lost its grip in a tall tree, and was crashing to earth through the branches. Head and shoulders down, boot heels brushing the hull, there was a meaty thud, then a great splash as Sasha hit the gig, then the icy sea.

  “Yob tvoyemat!” Count Levotchkin shrieked.

  “Oh, my Lord!” Lt. Eades croaked as he and many others dashed to the bulwarks to peer over. Lewrie took out his pocket handkerchief and swung the Marine’s musket barrel-down. He dipped the handkerchief into a gun-tub of slushy, half-iced-over water, and thorougly cleaned Sasha’s blood from the butt-plate and buttstock, then went to the Marine from who’d he’d taken it, and handed it back.

  “Thankee for the loan, Private . . . Leggett, is it?” he said in much calmer takings, almost as casually as if he’d merely taken it to inspect it, and had found no fault.

  “Uh, aye sir . . . Leggett, sir,” the stunned Marine stammered. “Uhm . . . thankee fer cleanin’ it, sir.”

  “Get him! There he is! Haul him in! Quick, there!” a babble of voices cried instructions and encouragements, to which Lewrie paid no heed as he rinsed his handkerchief in the frigid water butt. Once somewhat clean and wrung out, Lewrie looked up to see Lt. Ballard goggling at him, deeply frowning.

  “What, Mister Ballard?” Lewrie asked. “The son of a bitch tried t’murder me, at his lily-livered master’s orders. You’ve a problem with that?”

  “Where might one begin, sir?” Arthur Ballard gravelled, almost too disgusted to speak, his normally placid features a’twist in a grimace, and untypical emotion in his voice; as if he gazed upon a rotting pile of entrails and offal, aswarm with fat flies. “It was murder on your part, sir, and I—”

  “Arthur, he had it coming,” Lewrie pointed out.

  “Do not presume to . . . excuse me, sir,” Ballard said, choking back whatever objections he had before he became openly insubordinate to a senior officer. His face turned stony, his eyes indifferent and hooded. “I’ll say no more for now, Captain Lewrie,” he said, turning away to return to the quarterdeck from the gangway.

  “Bastard’s a goner, sir,” Lt. Farley came back from the bulwarks to report, with a hasty doff of his hat. “Bashed his head in when he struck the stempost of the gig, then went under. Drowned, it appears, sir. That, or the ice-cold water finished his business. Serves him right, might I say, sir. God only knows what treachery foreigners are capable of!”

  “Get your dirk back, Mister Tillyard?” Lewrie enquired, looking about the deck to his saviours. “Stout lad, and quick thinkin’, t’tug me out of his reach. Thankee.”

  “My pleasure, sir,” Midshipman Tillyard said, trying to come over all modest, as befitted British heroes.

  “Lieutenant Eades, sir . . . my commendations to Private Leggett, Sergeant Crick, and Private . . . him, there,” Lewrie continued with his praise. “Private Degan? Aye, and your quick actions sir. Lopped off his thumb, was it?”

  “Aye, sir,” Lt. Eades replied, more prone to preening than Tillyard, and all but buffing his fingernails on his red coat. “Fellow was perspiring, as cold as it is. I should have twigged to that, but put it down to his efforts to carry the last of our passengers’ dunnage.”

  “No matter, Lieutenant Eades . . . you did for him,” Lewrie said with a grin. “Thankee. Mister Ballard?”

  “Sir?” the First Officer replied from the quarterdeck, turning to face Lewrie with his hands behind his back.

  “Soon as the gig’s back alongside, we’ll rig the boats for towing astern,” Lewrie instructed. “We’ve spent enough time close ashore what might soon become a hostile country. Once everyone is inboard, haul us in to short stays and get the ship under way. I wish us t’be as far west of Kronstadt as possible by the end of the First Dog.”

  “Very good, sir,” Lt. Ballard crisply replied, as though nought had passed between them.

  Lewrie went to the shoreward bulwark to watch the gig pull for the town. Count Rybakov sat sullen and slumped on a thwart, looking deeply sad. Count Levotchkin sat on another, with Sasha’s soggy body resting against his shins, and could have been weeping with his failure.

  Wish it’d been him, not his man, Lewrie thought, feeling that the affair ’twixt him and that young fool would have to be finished, sometime in the future. Without Count Rybakov around the next time, or someone else as level-headed, and there would be no stopping that arrogant shit.

  Lewrie raised his gaze. It was rapidly growing dark, as it did in such high latitudes; not even Five Bells of the Day Watch, and dusk was gathering, and with it, the cold and the wind. A wind from out of the Nor’east, a flesh-freezing wind from the North Pole, it felt like. An icy wind that perfectly matched Captain Lewrie’s mood.

  “Well, that was an exciting hour or so,” Lt. Farley muttered as he and the other officers conferred forward of the binnacle cabinet as Thermopylae sprinted Westward from the Gulf of Finland in the darkness. Lt. Farley was about to conclude his stint of watch-standing, and his good friend Lt. Fox was about to take over at the end of the Second Dog Watch. Lt. Eades was there, as well, for one of the gifts Count Rybakov had left behind was several boxes of cigars, which the Captain had passed on to the gun-room; though they couldn’t smoke them below.

  “Wonder who this Tess they spoke of is?” Lt. Fox said with a roll of his eyes. “A cut above your run-of-the-mill seaport doxy, I’m bound. One might say she comes highly recommended, what? A Russian aristocrat . . . and the Captain, hmm?”

  “Is he not married, though?” Lt. Farley pointed out.

  “When did that ever stop a fellow?” Lt. Fox chuckled back.

  “Now you are being crude, sir,” Lt. Ballard, standing with them, cautioned.

  “One may only hope, Mister Ballard,” the irrepressible Lt. Fox rejoined.

  “To be crude, sir?” Ballard snapped.

  “To wangle an introduction, sir,” Fox cheekily explained.

  “My word, but so far, this voyage has been bags more exciting than the whole past year, entire, under poor old Captain Speaks,” Lt. Farley said, changing the subject to something less risky.

  “Just going to say,” Lt. Fox was quick to agree, puffing happily on his cigar.

  “Uncanny, this,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, said by way of greeting, after a peek at the compass, and a report from the chip-log aft. “She’s clapping on seven and a half knots, even under reduced sail. By dawn, we should be well West of Reval, and exiting the Gulf of Finland. May we imagine that the Captain’s seals whistled up this fortunate wind for us, gentlemen? For I cannot think of a better, and at just the right time, too.”

  “Uncanny, indeed, Mister Lyle,” Marine Lieutenant Eades agreed. “So many things about this voyage have been.”

  “Just saying . . . ,” Lt. Farley stuck in.

  “Quick thinking, sir,” Lyle said to Eades. “Thought you’d hack that Russian in half, for a moment.”

  “Not for want of trying, Mister Lyle,” Lt. Eades was happy to explain, again. “That hide coat of his, though . . . might as well have been plate steel, like knights of old, else I would’v
e laid his backbone open.”

  “All over a whore,” Mr. Lyle sourly commented, “Well . . .” Lyle slyly added, quickly glancing between his fellow officers. “I believe Captain Lewrie’s name of ‘Ram-Cat’ in the Fleet is not for his choice of pets, alone, hmm?”

  “Must be hellish-fetching!” Lt. Fox most wistfully said.

  “Ahem!” from the brooding Lt. Ballard.

  “Your pardons, Mister Ballard,” Lyle said, “but I was merely speculating that our new Captain is a man of many parts.”

  “Just so, Mister Lyle,” Lt. Farley chimed in. “A man of many parts, indeed.”

  Lt. Arthur Ballard coughed into his mittened fist, and cleared his throat in a pointed way, to silence further speculations. Discussing rumours about senior officers was simply not done, not even in the privacy of the gun-room, for it led to insubordination and undermined a commanding officer’s authority, dignity, and proper discipline.

  “You served under him before, Mister Ballard?” Lyle continued, undaunted. “I thought you said you had. Dear God above, has he always been so . . . bold?”

  That was a safer word than the one Lyle had first composed.

  “Gentlemen,” Ballard said in the darkness, turned away from the dim illumination in the compass binnacle, so they did not see how his face clouded. “I will say this and no more, and let there be an end to such.” He paused for a long moment, carefully choosing his words, so he would not be guilty of the same violation. “Captain Lewrie has ever had a . . . mercurial streak. You, sirs, have no idea of how many parts is Captain Lewrie made.”

  *Pachtee vryemya= almost time.

  *ya idysodar charochko = (roughly) you son of a whore mother.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Uncannily, the winds, perhaps the sea gods, turned perverse to Thermopylae once clear of the Gulf of Finland. A Sou’Westerly gale sprang up and blew for days of spitting snow, sleet, icy rains, and stinging spray, forcing the frigate to tack away Sutherly to claw off the maze of isles and shoals of southwest Finland; “short-boarding” to the West-Nor’west for a single watch, to gain enough sea-room for a “long Board” on the opposite tack round South by East for two watches, each leg bashed out “close-hauled” under reduced sail, with the coasts of the Russian-occupied provinces of Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland a dreaded risk before the bows. Even after the storm blew itself out, they still relied on Dead-Reckoning, with no clear idea of where they were, and the sun hidden behind a continual low overcast. Even Capt. Hardcastle, experienced as he was in the Baltic, could not even hazard a guess. And when all concurred that they might be near the 56th line of latitude, and could finally steer West, a Westerly wind arose that smacked them square in the face, forcing them to short-tack their way along the 56th Latitude (perhaps), with the rocky coast of Sweden off their starboard side . . . somewhere out there in the haze and morning fogs.

  To everyone’s amazement, the wind at last went round to the Nor’west and the skies cleared, so that, a little after dawn of the twenty-eighth of March, they found themselves within two leagues of a tiny archipelago of wee, barren islets off Sweden. Capt. Hardcastle was beside himself in joy, for he recognised them.

  “We are at the Sou’east corner of Sweden, sir!” Capt. Hardcastle exclaimed, “just about to enter the Hanö-Bukten. That means we’re not fifteen miles from the main channel to their naval port of Karlskrona!” he said with an urgent jab at the chart pinned to the traverse board.

  “Let’s stand in closer ashore, then, Mister Ballard, and ‘smoak’ ’em out,” Lewrie exulted. “Do what we came for, by God!”

  Which they did, fetching-to within two miles of the entrance to look the place over with their strongest telescopes, discovering that the Swedes, too, had readied their fleet for war, with masts set up and yards crossed, with sails bent on. Well, part of their fleet, for they could only espy ten ships of worth that appeared ready for sea, none of the powerful First or Second Rates, with all but one looking as short and bluff as older Third Rate 64s, and three of the readied ships were frigates!

  “Don’t seem to have their hearts in it, do they, sir?” Lewrie commented to Lt. Ballard after he’d come down from the fighting top of the main-mast. “The Swedes could’ve put over twenty-five ships to sea, were they of a mind. So I heard from earlier accounts of naval action in the Baltic.”

  “I’m sure I do not know why so few, sir,” Ballard replied, his lips pursed. He showed a remarkable lack of curiosity in the matter. “I suppose we should be grateful.”

  “They’re still iced in,” Lewrie informed him.

  “Good, sir,” from Ballard.

  “No one’s blastin’, burnin’, or, choppin’ them a channel out,” Lewrie further said. “Must be a lack o’ peasants, yonder.”

  Arthur Ballard nodded, feeling prompted to respond somehow.

  “A lot of ice-skatin’ bears in the entrance channel, though.”

  “Sir?” Lt. Ballard asked with a raised brow, as if he’d only been half-listening.

  “Never mind, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie said with a wave of his hand, though he was fuming inside. “Do you launch the cutter and send them to the edge of the ice, for samples. Perhaps Captain Hardcastle may employ his expertise with such, and tell us how much longer they will be cooped up in harbour.”

  “Very good, sir!” Ballard said, perking up with a clear order, and a duty to perform.

  And damn yer eyes, Arthur Ballard! Lewrie thought, highly irked, and just about ready to call his conduct Mute Insubordination; What’s got into him? he asked himself for the thousandth time.

  From then on, the fickle weather and winds turned more benign. As they stood away from Karlskrona, the Westerlies backed Nor’westerly, so they could run with the wind on Thermopylae’s starboard quarter to sail South of Bornholm Island. And, once they had Bornholm abeam, the winds swung right round to the North, allowing them a long beam reach towards Denmark, even close-reaching at West by North, then “beating” to weather at West-Nor’west as they closed the coast, and the sun made its appearance just often enough over the next four days to give them a much more accurate position to plot, each Noon.

  Towards sundown of that last evening, both Mr. Lyle and Capt. Hardcastle could agree that the land that smeared the forrud horizon was the point below Kioge Bay, a large anchorage below Copenhagen.

  So now we’ll see if the war’s started while we were away, Lewrie grimly told himself, lowering his telescope and compacting it, segment by segment, with slow clicks; and if we’ll get out of the Baltic, back to the Fleet . . . wherever the Devil they are . . . in one piece!

  “Time to tack, sir?” the Sailing Master prompted.

  “Aye,” Lewrie decided aloud. “Though there’s not much room for us to make a board over towards Sweden. We’ll not weather the Holland Deep on short tacks. Might have to come to anchor and wait for a wind shift.”

  “Don’t see us towing the ship up the Sound with our boats, aye, sir,” Mr. Lyle said with a glimmer of dry humour, hands in the small of his back and rocking on his shoe heels. “Not if the Danes object to us tweaking their noses a second time. Perhaps Captain Hardcastle’s two-knot current to carry us along, but against a Northerly—”

  “Deck, there!” a lookout shouted down through cupped hands with a phlegmy rasp from too many days of foul weather, and evenings below decks in damp, sodden clothing, clammy bedding, and the close, airless fug of close quarters. “Ships, ahead! War-ships! Three points off the starb’d bows! Anchored, with ridin’ lights an’ taffrail lanthorns lit!”

  “God help us, if the Danes have got their ships out,” Mr. Lyle whispered, scrambling for a telescope.

  “Mister Furlow?” Lewrie called for one of the Midshipmen of the watch. “Aloft with you, and report.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Furlow replied, dashing for the weather shrouds of the main-mast. Lewrie extended his own glass and crossed over to the starboard side, to the mizen-mast stays, and clambered atop one of the quarterdeck carronades,
then to the top of the bulwarks, with one arm lopped through the stays. Yes, there were ships to the North near what he took for the entrance to the King’s Deep, East of Amager Island and perhaps sheltering under the Danish batteries there. One or two of them stood out like whales compared to the rest; big, towering three-deckers of the First or Second Rates; most definitely warships.

  No, Lewrie told himself; not under Amager Island. They’re just off the lower tip of the Middle Ground, outside the reach of the guns ashore. Whose, dammit? Do the Danes have that many? Do they own any First Rate three-deckers?

  “Sir!” Midshipman Furlow shouted down from his perch atop the cross-trees, above the main mast fighting top. “Our flags, sir! Blue Ensign on the biggest, Red on another! They’re our fleet, sir!”

  “Very good, Mister Furlow!” Lewrie shouted upwards, collapsing his telescope again, and hopping down as spryly as he suddenly felt. “Mister Ballard, Stations to come about to the larboard tack, and we will short-tack to join our ships, yonder. Have my gig and boat crew ready, soon as we come to anchor. I’ll row over to the flagship and report.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Lewrie? Where the Devil have you sprung from?” Capt. Thomas Foley of HMS Elephant, the Third Rate 74 that flew Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s flag, exclaimed in wonder as HMS Thermopylae’s captain gained the starboard gangway and took his salute. “Greenland, by the look of it,” Foley wryly commented as he took in Lewrie’s swaddling furs. “I was amazed, when you made your private signal and number . . . joining us from the South?”

  “Captain Foley, sir,” Lewrie replied with a sheepish smile, and doff of his cocked hat, which was one of the few items visible marking him as an officer of the Royal Navy; or an Englishman, for that matter. “Just returned from a reconnaisance of the Russian and Swedish harbours, sir. And, some diplomatic tosh. The Admiral is aboard Elephant? Last I heard at Yarmouth Roads, he was to have a First Rate.”