Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Rather succulent, aye" was Capt. Charlton's restrained praise. "Bit off," Ayscough commented, though he was spooning it up like a starved hound. "Haven't laid hands on any, as of yet, but I've heard there is an orange-flavoured brandy of French distillery, and I cannot help but think that the rob of oranges, combined with a fine and aged brandy, would be even better."

  "I could ask, once inshore, sir," Lewrie offered, intrigued by the novelty of such a liquour.

  "Inshore, aye," Ayscough said as the dishes were removed, the tablecloth was whipped away, leaving only a bowl of nuts and the port. "To business, if I may, gentlemen? Droop, kindly fetch me the charts, now the table's cleared, then leave us be for an hour or so."

  "Aye, sir," Ayscough's cabin servant replied.

  "We've three actual groupings of small ships standing blockade, the numbers varying due to refits, recalls, and new arrivals, such as your Savage, Lewrie." Ayscough sketched out on the chart, tapping one finger near Rochefort and the Ile d'Oleron. "Charlton here commands an assortment of brigs and cutters in this area, whilst down South, Captain Percy Lockyear keeps watch off Arcachon and its large basin. He has but a twenty-gunned older Sloop of War, Arundel, to support his smaller clutch of ships, suitable to the shoal conditions obtaining there. A nice fellow, is Lockyear. You're sure to like him, do you ever meet.

  "And I, 'til your timely arrival, do the best I can keeping an eye on the mouth of the Gironde, that leads to Bordeaux," Ayscough said with a self-disparaging tone. "Very wide entrance to the estuary, and sufficient depth of water rather far up, so Chesterfield can sail most of it, but for several forts sited on the tops of the headlands, which out-gun all of us, both in number of artillery pieces, and their weight of metal. Dammit, though… that's not what I am to do with my ship," Ayscough groused. "I am promised a second sixty-four to join me here, so I may employ two middlin' ships to re-enforce our lighter ships if they run into trouble… even if both of us would still be too slow to really catch anything incoming or outgoing."

  "Should the French come out in force, Lewrie," Capt. Charlton said with dry wit, "our brief is to harass if we may, or fall back upon Lord Boxham's line-of-battle ships and alert him, if we cannot."

  "Aye," Ayscough added with a guffaw. "Run screaming out to sea, like a pack of hysterical women!"

  "Well, perhaps not run, sir," Charlton rejoined with a twinkle. "Nor scream, ' either. It would be more of a purposeful lope, along with loud shouts of hue and cry, or 'tally-ho,' hmm?"

  "Oh, o' course, sir!" Ayscough chuckled. "Stout hearts, strong legs, and lusty voices. What I mean t'say, Lewrie, is that I can't exercise overall command of this coast, and have any fun at all, anymore.

  "That is why I will place you in command of the river mouth."

  "Me?" Lewrie gawped in surprise.

  Me? Are you daft? he thought, a tad dizzy at the prospect; wee little me, in command o' me own… squadron? Ye'd have t'be barkin' mad t' turn me loose!

  To that very instant, the most he expected to control was his frigate, his crew, and his penchant for strange and nubile quim! To acquire more responsibility than that, he had always supposed that he'd have to attain Ayscough's age, and that would be years in the future, but… well, he was a Post-Captain of More Than Three Years' Seniority, and times were hard. Even if he was less than a year in that rate.

  Could he have physically turned his head and gone cross-eyed to look at his pair of gilt-fringed epaulets denoting his rank, he would have, if only to confirm that he was, indeed, the Lewrie that Ayscough was talking about. He almost snickered out loud at how ludicrous such a posting sounded!

  "Hear, hear!" Charlton congratulated, taking the port bottle to top Lewrie up for the coming toast. "After all you did with independent action in the Adriatic, I can think of no one more suited to driving the French demented, and stopping the Gironde like a beer keg bung."

  "Well, I knew the Navy's short-handed these days, but. Lord!" Lewrie responded. "What do the French have, up in Bordeaux, then?"

  "I'll get to that," Ayscough told him, pouring himself a fresh glass, as well. "What you have to work with, first. There are five smaller vessels you will command, Lewrie. First are a pair of new-ish brig-sloops… our old compatriot Hogue's Mischief, of sixteen six-pounders, and Erato, with much the same armament. Then, there are the cutters… Argosy and Penguin mount eight guns, and Banshee, which is a hired merchant brig, and a little larger, mounts ten. Of course, all mount eighteen-pounder carronades in addition to their long pieces. If you think it best, further divide your forces into pairs, or two groups of three, should you deem such necessary. Daily stations, and patrolling areas, will be up to you, but…," Ayscough all but wheexed with amusement, "knowing you, I am certain that your penchant for cunning will harass the French to no end, and I may rest easy at night with you out there with your eyes wide open."

  "Whilst, pray God, the French do not get a wink of sleep, wondering what new devilment will befall them," Charlton seconded.

  "Hogue is senior, then?" Lewrie asked, knowing that even large one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged cutters were usually Lieutenants' commands.

  "Ah, no." Ayscough sobered, even looking a shade evasive for a second. "Commander James Kenyon in Erato is senior by a year."

  Lewrie's lips half-parted, and his face took on a stunned look.

  "Know him, do you?" Ayscough off-handedly enquired.

  "Second Lieutenant of my first ship in 1780, old Ariadne, sixty-four," Lewrie found wit to reply. That back-gammoning bastard's here? he thought, stupefied.

  "Took him long enough," Charlton said with a shrug at the fickle nature of Navy politics. "Must not have had a single decent patron for 'interest' or influence 'pon his career."

  "God pity you!" Ayscough commented with false sympathy. "First ship a doddering old sixty-four, and as feeble a sailer as this barge!"

  "Became the stores ship at Antigua, did she not?" Capt. Charlton asked, faintly frowning to recollect. "Seem to recall… no matter. Did I not have to hunt about and use up half my 'interest' and patronage, I'd gladly let Lyme become a stores ship or troopship, like the few of her sort still in commission, and trade up to a Third Rate."

  "And, toss Chesterfield into that pot, too, God willing," Commodore Ayscough quickly seconded. "Well, then! Here's a double toast, sirs. Success to Captain Lewrie… and confusion to the French!"

  "Hear, hear!" Charlton cried as they tipped their glasses back to "heel-taps." "We need a bowl of punch, by God!" Ayscough decided. "Droop! Fetch us the bowl and makin's for a good, stout punch!"

  "Come all ye bold heroes, give an ear to my song,

  and we'll sing in the praise of good brandy and rum.

  'Tis a clear crystal fountain good England con-trols.

  Give me the punch ladle, I'llfath-om the bowl!"

  Lewrie and Charlton sang along to Ayscough's rough, raspy lead, twice | through all verses before the ladle was first dipped, and cups were filled. Kenyon, my God! Lewrie grimly thought, no matter the good cheer; how am I t'deal with him, after all these years?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dawn came hazy, with a light fog up the estuary of the Gironde. The sea was slack and glassy, and the winds from out of the West were light, though steady. Right after breakfast and a shave, Lewrie bent Savage's course inshore, the frigate enjoying the tops'l breeze, with her main course twice-reefed, and t'gallants and royals brailed up to the upper yards, but all stays'ls and jibs hoisted for quicker manoeuvring.

  It was second-best uniform for Lewrie this morning, his plainer cocked hat on his head, without all the formal folderol of the previous evening's supper. Though it was a cool morning, a touch shy of nippy, the breeze on Savage's starboard quarters felt too humid to savour.

  "Showers by the middle of the Day Watch, I would wager, sir," the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, gloomily pronounced as he peered, bird-quick, from each headland or sea mark to the next with his pocket compass, one of his new charts spread atop the binnacle cabinet. Th
ough he did not pencil bearings on his chart, Winwood did mumble to himself as if memorising reciprocal courses. "Were I a wagering man, of course."

  Lewrie glanced astern to scan the skies for weather signs, but could not discover any cause for Winwood's prediction. For the man's nervousness, Lewrie could determine good cause; slap Winwood up against a strange new coast, hostile or no, and he would turn as skittery as a whore in church, for he had not yet known it, had the proper seaman's distrust in twenty-year-old re-drawn and reprinted charts, and was just as responsible as his captain for the safe navigation of the ship. Miss just one shoal or rock that was marked on the charts, hit one that wasn 't; either way, his career was on the line, and, until Winwood was as conversant with their new area of operations as he was of his own palm lines, there would be no living with him, no cheer in his body.

  Not that ponderous and cautious Mr. Winwood had ever been much for good cheer.

  "Mister Mayhall reports six and a quarter knots, Captain," Lt. Urquhart stiffly reported, doffing his hat by Lewrie's side. "A light breeze, sir, even if it is on the quarter."

  "Good enough for now, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie said. "No sense chargin' in like a Spanish fightin' bull. Sooner or later, they get stabbed by the matador's, sword. Today's a get-acquainted day, get the feel o' things… meet up with the lighter ships, and their captains, anyway. And," he quipped in a softer voice, inclining his head towards Mr. Winwood, "we must allow the Sailing Master t'get his feel for ev'ry wee pitfall. He'll not sleep a wink 'til he does."

  "Aye, sir," Lt. Urquhart replied, with a brief, but shy, grin, as if he had to think about it before reacting.

  Two of a kind, really, Lewrie thought as he took a sip of his coffee, then strolled over to the starboard mizen shrouds. Urquhart might as well have been Winwood's bastard son, for all his humourlessness. Comes o' tryin' too hard? Lewrie speculated; or, is he just a sober-side from birth?

  In their few weeks at sea, Lt. Urquhart so far had appeared as taciturn and serious as a Scottish Calvinist preacher. The man never slouched, never allowed himself more than four glasses of wine in the wardroom (so his cabin servant and personal cook, Aspinall, had heard from the officers' mess servants), never took part in any of the high-cockalorum antics his fellow Lieutenants might stage, appeared to need no more than four hours sleep a night, and could always be found fully dressed and on the quarterdeck, sometimes for as little cause as when the nanny goat farted.

  Was he competent? Yes, immensely so, and Lewrie could find no fault with how, during his London absences, Urquhart had seen to the ship's fitting-out, storing, and re-arming. Was Urquhart the complete sailorman, a tarry-handed "tarpaulin man" with the addition of a gentlemanly education, manners, and dignity? Aye, he was. He just was not… Anthony Langlie, Lewrie could resignedly bemoan. Langlie, during their three years in Proteus … Lt. Knolles, his First Officer aboard HMS Jester.. . even Arthur Ballard when he had had the converted bomb-ketch Alacrity in the Bahamas. All of those officers had been young, though able, possessed of quick wit and good humour. Ballard, well… he had his ponderous moments, but sly and dry, and a good friend, as well.

  Been spoiled, I s'pose, Lewrie thought with a sigh. All of his First Lieutenants since his first commands had felt more like helpful and supportive friendsl Urquhart, though…

  Lewrie supposed he could put his moodiness down to all of that punch, port claret, and rhenish that he'd sloshed down with Ayscough and Charlton. It had been past eleven when he'd reeled his way aboard Savage, and barely managed to undress before sprawling into his swinging bed-cot, and falling asleep as if pole-axed, and had been roused, drooling onto his pillows, both by the Bosuns' calls for "All Hands," and the chimes of Eight Bells as the Middle Watch ended at 4 a.m. Well, all that, and the cats. Stocky Toulon, the black'un with white markings, and Chalky, the youngest with white fur and grey splotches, had pawed, leaped upon him with all four paws as close together as a quartet of coins abutted on a publican's bar counter, with loud and raspy "We're Starving!" squawls, and urgent digging at the bed linens right by his nose!

  Toulon had been "refugeed" from the port of Toulon; Chalky had been found by his bastard son, Desmond, the American Midshipman, aboard a French prize brig in the West Indies, and presented to him as a gift.

  They were both, therefore, French}. Perhaps they knew the smell of their homeland off to loo'rd, and wanted Lewrie to rise and take 'em on deck to share their furry rencontrel

  And, damned if they weren't poised atop the quarterdeck hammock nettings that very moment, peering forward towards the shore, sniffing the air, tails curling and jittering like they did when they saw a sea bird glide cross the decks, and sharing looks with each other, now and again.

  "Not thinkin' o' jumpin' ship, are ye, catlings?" Lewrie teased as he came to the forward end of the quarterdeck to give them a stroke or two. He was rewarded with head butts on his hand, some wee, trillish mews by way of greeting. "I'll brook no desertion, hear me plain?"

  "Deck, there!" a lookout atop the main-mast cross-trees called. "Fishin' boat t'larboard! Three points off th' larboard bows!"

  Lewrie wandered over to the top of the larboard gangway ladder as Lt. Urquhart and Mr. Winwood raised their telescopes to peer at the fishing boat, which was just beginning to emerge from the haze, and the low-lying skim of fog atop the estuary waters.

  "She appears to be un-armed, sir," Urquhart reported. "Only a few men on deck, with nets ready for streaming. Rather good-sized, I do allow, though, sir. 'Bout the length of a Port-Admiral's barge?"

  "Your glass, sir," Lewrie bade, and took a squint for himself. He saw a two-masted lugger, both her broad gaff-rigged sails and her single jib streaming slackly astern as she came into the wind, probably to lower her fishing nets before coming about to wallow inshore for the first of her morning's trawls. Four, no, only five sailors in sight, and none of them showing any evident signs of alarm at the appearance of a "Bloody's" frigate cruising up to Range of Random Shot.

  "Hands to Quarters, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie ordered, lowering the borrowed glass and handing it back over. "Carronades, quarterdeck nine-pounders, chase guns, and swivels only. No point in manning the eighteen-pounders for such a feeble target. Spare hands, and Mister Devereux's Marines, for a boarding party."

  "Aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe 'All Hands' and 'Quarters'!"

  "S'pose I must pass the word for the Surgeon," Lewrie chuckled. "I'm told my French is a horror, and Mister Durant was born speakin' Frog."

  "Uhm, I am considered quite fluent in French, sir," Urquhart almost timidly put forward, with a throat-clearing harrumph.

  "Excellent, Mister Urquhart!" Lewrie cheered. "When closer to, call for them to fetch-to, and prepare t'be boarded. Have her captain come aboard so you can… interrogate him."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  A quarter-hour later, and both Savage and the French lugger were fetched-to into the light winds, no more than one hundred yards apart. Though Lewrie's French was horrid, he could make out a few phrases of invective… "Damn you 'Bloodies,' we're working here!"… "Death of my life, you put us in povertyl"… "Go and fuck yourself, you arrogant 'beefsteak' turds!"

  They quieted though, and lapsed into surly silence, when cowed by the size of the boarding party, and the Marines with their bayonets and muskets. A brief inspection above and below decks, into the reek of the lugger's hold, half-filled with sea water to preserve any catch 'til they could be landed ashore, then Lt. Urquhart's launch was coming alongside Savage with a lone Frenchman amidships, a wiry older man in loose pantaloons, bare feet, a filthy canvas fisherman's smock, and a tasseled "Liberty" stocking cap upon his grizzled head.

  "Captain, may I name to you Captain Jules Papin," Lt. Urquhart gravely and punctiliously announced. "Capitaine Papin, permettei-moi de vous presenter notre Capitaine de Vaisseau, Alan Lewrie, de le fregate Sauvage."

  "Capitaine Papin," Lewrie said, doffing his hat. "Bon matin, m'sieur." "Hawh!" the Frenchman growled back, scratching at his unsha
ven grey week's worth of stubble. "Bon, mon cul! Ou est le rum? Have rum?"

  "Ah, hum" was Urquhart's stricken comment, his face reddening.

  "Aspinall," Lewrie called over his shoulder. "A bottle o' rum and glasses for our guest. "You speak a little Anglais, Capitaine?"

  " Un peu, mais oui," the grizzled, fish-scale-speckled old man gravelled back. "Mus' parler tongue of thief an' invader, if I cannot bataille… fight, hein} 'Ow you t'ink ze pauvre homme make living if keep from ze fish, hein} Firs', cutter nous arrete… stop us, jus' in river, zat damn' Argosy. Zen, mort de ma view, is Erato brig, zen, et voild, maintenant you' damn fregatel Zut alors, I he full ze fish by now!"

  "Rum's up, sir," Aspinall said, appearing with a new bottle of Jamaica 's best, and a pair of glasses. He poured for Papin first, and began to pour for Lewrie, but the Frenchman eagerly tossed the contents of his glass back like the experienced toper he looked to be, and gulped it all down his gullet in one swallow, making Papin wheeze, wince, then grin and shake his head in appreciation of raw, un-watered rum. And he thrust his glass out for a refill!

  "I am delighted to hear that my… our other ships are alert and doing their proper duty, Capitaine," Lewrie told the Frenchman as he took a cautious sip of his own rum, stifling a wince and a belch as the fiery spirit slid down his throat and hit his already-unsettled innards. Hair o' the dog mine arse! Lewrie thought.

  "What you wish?" Papin impatiently snapped, after his glass was replenished. "Fish? Quel dommage, M'sieur Capitaine, I have none, for you'pirates do not give me peace to fish! Langoustes et crevettes? A lobster or… shrimp? Small boats close inshore have zose, not moil Champagne, wine, eau-de-vie, ze brandy? Argosy an' Erato. Zey buy all I had, avant vous. Damn you' language! Before you, I say! You wish? Take you' damn' big frigate to shoal waters, run agroun', an' break you' backl"