The King`s Coat l-1

by Dewey Lambdin

  ‘Hell, it's yours, you parish waif, now have it off!" Bascombe took a serious swing at Lewrie and caught him on the side of the head. Alan shot a fist straight into his face and bloodied Bascombe's lips and nose, dropping the other boy to the deck. ’Damn you!" Bascombe wiped blood from his face on the shirt sleeve, got to his feet and ripped his waistcoat off, then the shirt, balled it up and threw it at Lewrie. "Here's your damned shirt, I hope you choke on it.’

  ’You'll hand it back to me clean, or I'll make it a gift. If the blood won't come out, then ~u'll have exactly one silk shirt-’

  ‘ 'Ere now, 'ere now," said Finnegan, one of the master's mates, as he came into the compartment. "Christ, wot a pack of yowlin' ram-cats; Mister Bascombe, I see summun tapped yer claret. N' nice Mister Lewrie alookin' like Goodyer's Pig'never well but when in mischief.' Wot is it, then, summat seryuss enough fer the captain, er does it stop' ere?’

  ‘Just a little wrestling match for a glass of flip, Mister FInnegan," Ashburn said. "Got out of hand.’

  ’Rip, ya say? I'll take a measure. Now let's git this cockpit stright fer eatin'," Finnegan ordered, knowing exactly what had happened, but relieved that he did not have to report it, which would reflect on his ability to supervise the midshipmen.

  Alan tossed Bascombe the shirt with a sly smile and watched as Bascombe dashed out of the compartment to fetch some seawater to stanch his nose and lips. ’You really know how to make friends, Lewrie," Ashburn said in a low voice after they had sat down away from the others. ’He took that shirt from my chest, didn't he? He'll not have my blessings to take what he wants, when he wants.’

  ’But you don't have to rub his nose in it," Ashburn replied. "There's no harm in him, he just had to look good to attend the Captain's gig this afternoon. I'd have loaned him one but all mine were dirty.’

  ’He could have asked.’

  ’He doesn't know you well enough to ask. Besides, your usual answer to sharing is 'no,''' Ashburn said. "My family could buy up yours a dozen times over, most like, but that don't make me as purse-proud as you! You haven't gone shares on anything in the mess yet.’

  ’It's still stealing," Alan insisted, blushing red. ’Not stealing… borrowing.’

  ’Aye, if the hands 'borrow,' they get flogged for it, but if we do, it's Christian charity," Alan said sarcastically. ’For your information, Harvey 's the son of a country parson. I doubt he's got two shillings to rub together and no hope of more. His father probably makes less than thirty pounds per annum. ‘

  ‘Shit," Alan said. "I didn't know. But what's mine is mine. I have to protect it. I don't have enough to keep a gentleman in the first place and my family won't part with another pence for me, not if it was for a coffin. Let's say the splendor of my kit was a very firm goodbye.’

  ’Just be civilized. Lewrie. You'll get by with us a lot better. Now Bascombe's going to get his own back on you and I don't know what he'll do, but it won't be hurtful… much. Don't take it to heart. We don't need a Scottish feud down here.’

  ’Damn you, Ashburn," Alan muttered. "You always find a way to make me feel like such a low bastard.. ‘. ’That's because you are. Mind now, I like you, Lewrie, I really do. You're a ruthless, uncivilized young swine, and I doubt you'll ever be buried a bishop, but you're an interesting person anyway. You'll go far in the Navy. Like me.’

  Supper was decent, since they were still close to shore and had the opportunity to send for fresh meat and vegetables. And when Ashburn raised the suggestion that they go shares on some cabin stores, Alan did offer to help out, so they would have some drinkable wine and some livestock of their own in the forecastle manger to delay the day when they would have to live totally on issue salt-meats.

  Before Lights Out at 9:00 P.M. Lewrie took some bum fodder in his hand and made a postprandial journey to the heads up by the beakhead under the jib-boom. At sea the heads would be scoured continually by the sea, but in harbor no waves reached high enough to relieve the odors, or remove their source. At least at sea, there would be no Marine sentry standing over him to prevent desertions over the bow, as one now patrolled in port.

  He returned to the cold orlop deck that was buried in darkness, for after Lights Out, no glims could burn except where permitted by the ship's corporals. He found his hammock by touch, slipped out of his clothes and rolled in, drawing the blanket over him gratefully. ’Oh my God," he muttered, feeling the cold and sticky semifluid substance against his legs and buttocks. "They've shat in my hammock!" He raised a hand to his nose, expecting the worst, and detected a sweet odor tinged with sulfur. "My hammock is full of molasses." From the darkness came a furtive snigger. ’Bascombe, I swear to God I'll murder you," he shouted into the dark, bringing snorts of laughter from the others, and shouts from the senior warrants to shut up and let them sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Their last moming had dawned grey and miserable with a fine, misty rain that swelled the running rigging until it would have difficulty passing through the blocks and sheaves. But the wind had come around to the northwest, and Ariadne was in all respects ready for the sea. The ship was still about twenty-five men short of full complement but that could not be helped in wartime. Captain Bales evidently did not have private funds for recruiting at taverns, or for paying the crimps to deliver warm bodies with all their working parts in order who would wake and discover they were in the Fleet. He must have heaved a great sigh of relief that he was in shape to sail at all, for if a captain could not gather enough men to crew his ship out of harbor, he could lose his commission (and his full pay) and some other captain would be given a chance, while the failure went on the beach at half-pay, there to remain for the rest of his natural life. Those men he had gathered had been pummeled into some semblance of a crew, through fire drills, sail drills, gunnery exercises and the like.

  Alan had been disappointed that he had not been given a chance for a final run ashore. If the awful day had indeed arrived when he cut his last ties to the land, he at least wanted to remember it with a stupendous farewell, but it was not to be. The boats had been hoisted inboard and stored upside down on the boat-tier beams that spanned the center waist of the upper gun deck, so there was no excuse to be used for a last quart of ale, a last dinner or a last rattle. ’Anchor's hove short, sir," Lieutenant Church, their feisty little third lieutenant, called from the bows. "Up and down." "Get the ship underway, Mister Swift," Captain Bales said, looking like a hung-over mastiff in the dawn light. ’Hands aloft and loose tops'ls. Stand by to hoist fores'ls.’

  Lewrie joined a mob of topmen as they sprang for the shrouds and swarmed up the ratlines for the mizzen top. He was no longer dead with fear about going aloft; merely scared stiff.

  Off came the harbor gaskets. Hands tailed on the jears, hoisting the yards to their full erect positions on the masts. Others tailed on the sheets to draw down the sails as they were freed, while more men stood by the braces to angle the sails to the wind as they began to draw air and fill with pressure.

  There was a difference aloft. The masts were vibrating even more, the freed canvas was flapping and booming as the wind found it like a continual peal of thunder, rattling the yards and jerking them into an unpredictable motion that was like to shake hands out of the masts like autumn leaves. Then, as the topsails began to draw, the yards tilted as the ship paid off heavily to the wind, swinging through great arcs that brought cries of alarm from the newest hands, and made Lewrie moan in sheer terror as he tried to find his balance as footropes and secure holds began to slide from beneath him. The footrope he was on on the mizzen topsail yard was down at a forty-five degree angle, and new men were skittering it until it almost tucked under the yard in their panic. Senior topmen cursed them into stillness before they all tumbled to the deck.

  But the topsail was set, and no one was calling for the royals yet, so Lewrie could look forward and upward to the other masts to see hands working calmly, could look down to the huge capstan head on the upper gun deck, where a hundred me
n at the least trundled about in a small circle on the bars, and the clank of pawls filled the air, while on the forecastle, the strongest hands in the crew were walking away with the halyards for the stays ']s and jibs, while others of their kind drew on the sheets to bring control of the jibs, laid out almost level to the deck as they strained their great muscles to gain every inch of rope aft to the belaying pins.

  Ariadne was no longer sailing sideways from the wind after paying off from her head-to-wind anchorage, but beginning to make steerage way for the harbor mouth; she had changed from a helpless pile of oak and pine and iron to a ship. Admittedly, her crew's efforts must have raised some cruel amusement from more fortunate captains and officers, but she was under control, and unless taken suddenly aback from a capricious shift of wind, would make her way out of Portsmouth and past the Isle of Wight into the Channel without mishap. For a new crew made up of mostly landsmen, it was the best to be expected. ’Aloft there on the mizzen, set the spanker.’

  Back to the mast at the crosstrees, then straight down the mast to the spanker gaff. Experienced topmen walked out the footropes to free the big driver, which was furled on the gaff and would hang loose-footed to the boom that swept over the taffrail. Lewrie had to join them and lie on his belly over the gaff. By this time, his immaculate white waistcoat, working rig trousers and jacket cuffs were turning a pale tan from the linseed oil of the spars and streaked with the tar of standing rigging, even beginning to smell like rancid cooking fat and pick up grey stains from the galley slush skimmed off boiling meat that was used to coat the running rigging. It was almost impossible for a midshipman to stay clean and presentable on a ship, and he knew he'd have the hide off his harnmockman if the stains would not come out.

  Finally, they were called down to the deck, with Ariadne fully underway and clumping along like a wooden clog down the Channel coast. Lewrie mopped his face with a handkerchief and made his way to the starboard gangway to watch England drift by. It did not look as if any more would be demanded of him for a while, and he now had time to take note of his hunger pangs, and the soreness of his muscles from being so tense aloft. His hands were aching from the climb down a backstay, and were red from unused exertion, but beginning to toughen up. He could rub them together and feel the difference in them from a month before. He looked about him and took note that the ship was now organized-the monumental clutter and confusion of braces, halyards, sheets, clew lines and jears were coiled or flaked into order.

  The anchors were catted down up forward, the stinking anchor lines were stored away below in the cable tiers to drip their harbor filth into the bilges, wafting a dead-fish tidal smell down the deck. Except for the watch, the hands had been dismissed below. Those with touchy stomachs were being dragged to the leeward rails to "cast their accounts" into the Channel, and those that could not wait were being ordered to clean up their spew. He thought about going below out of the brisk wind and misty, cold rain, but the idea of hundreds of men who at that moment resembled "Death's head on a mopstick" down on the lower gun deck, and were being ill in platoons, dissuaded him. He was dizzy from the motion of the ship, a lift and twist to larboard, a plunge that brought spray sluicing up over the forward bulkhead, and a jerky roll upright that did not bring the deck level. ’Mister Swift, I'll have a first reef in the courses," Captain Bales said. Seconds later all hands were called, but the mizzenmast had no lower course, merely a cro'jack yard to lend power to the braces and hold the clews of the mizzen tops'l down, so he could sit this one out. He went aft to the quarterdeck and stood by the larboard rail with the afterguard should he be needed to trim the braces. He could see Ashburn standing with the first lieutenant, pleased as punch to be underway, who turned and gave him a wink when Swift was too busy to notice. Lewrie became fascinated watching the water cream bone white down the leeward side, just feet away from him with the ship at a good angle of heel. The hull groaned and creaked as before, but now Ariadne also made a continual hiss as she turned the ocean to foam, and made an irregular surf roar as she met an oncoming wave.

  There were ships coming up-Channel in a steady stream with the wind on their quarters, and Alan had to admit they made a brave sight to see, heeled over and rocking slowly, and he wondered if Ariadne made much the same picture to them. "Lewrie, quit skylarking and keep your eyes inboard," Lieutenant Harm snapped at him as he headed for the ladder down to the waist. Harm was making good on his promise to keep a chary eye on him, and being such a surly Anglo-Irish bog trotter, was eager to find any fault in him. ’Aye aye, sir," Lewrie answered brightly. Cheerfulness seemed to upset Lieutenant Harm very much, so Lewrie made it a point to be as happy and eager as possible around him. ’Mister Lewrie?" Lieutenant Swift called, "Come here. ’

  ‘Aye aye, sir?" Lewrie doffed his hat. ’I watched you on the mizzen. You did that right manfully enough, and you're too old to be wasted on the mizzenmast. See me in my quarters and I'll move you on the watch lists and quarter bills. I think we'll move one of the new lads to your place and you may serve on the mainmast.’

  ’Aye aye, sir." He secretly dreaded that, for the mainmast was much taller, had longer and heavier yards, carried the main course and the largest tops'l, was the place where studding booms had to be rigged in light airs, and meant a quantum leap in work. The mizzen was manned by the oldest topmen, or the very newest and clumsiest, the nearly ruptured and the ones with foreheads as big as a hen. Some elevenor twelve-yearold sneak was going to get a soft touch, and he was going to work his young ass off. Still, it did have advantages. He would no longer be in Lieutenant Harm's division or watch, but would get to serve under Lieutenant Kenyon, the second officer, who was considered much fairer and so much more polite. Lewrie went forward to the base of the mainmast, where Kenyon and a bosun's mate were chatting and pointing at something aloft. And when Alan told him of the transfer he welcomed him to the starboard watch most pleasantly. ’Very glad to have you with us, Mister Lewrie," Kenyon said. "Though I am sure you realize that much more work is involved. Still, I can use such a well-set-up young fellow like yourself.’

  ’Aye, Mister Kenyon. And I may learn the faster," Alan answered, thinking that it never hurt to piss down a superior's back. Actually, he would be working much the same duties in any watch or subdivision on deck or aloft, for the watches rotated equally each four hours, using the much shorter Dog Watches in late afternoon to make sure that the same men did not have to work two nights running, and everyone turned up at 4:00 A.M. to begin the ship's working day, washing and scraping decks and standing dawn Quarters, so there wasn't much to choose, really. ’Well said, Mister Lewrie. We shall make a tarpaulin sailor of you yet, though the bosun despairs of your ropework. You are not seasick yet?" ‘Well… no, sir," Alan replied, realizing with a shock that he wasn't. He was clumsy as a new-foaled colt on the tilting deck, and he staggered from one handhold to another, but the ship's motion did not affect him overly. All he had in his stomach was a raging hunger.

  How disgusting, he thought; I'm getting used to this! "When do I make the changeover, sir, from one watch to the other? ‘

  ‘Ship's day begins at noon, at the taking of the sights for our positions," Kenyon said. "I'd suggest you go see Lieutenant Swift as soon as he's had his breakfast. Then show up for the Second Dog Watch.’

  ’Aye aye, sir.’

  ’Oh, by the way, Mister Lewrie," Kenyon said, calling him back with a drawling voice. "We have a man missing from my division. He has run. Went out a gunport last night, probably. There's a rumor he was smuggled money and some street clothing. Heard anything about it?’

  ‘Who was it, sir?" Lewrie said, having a sneaking suspicion of exactly who it was, and where the money had come from. "Harrison, one of my main topmen. Had a wife and family in the port, so I'm told. ’

  ‘He was in one of my boat crews, sir. Had to hunt him down about two weeks ago, but he swore he was only taking a piss behind some crates and barrels," Alan carefully replied. "Hmm, that was after you had stood t
he boat crew to a pint?’

  ‘Uh, yes, sir, I did see a woman with two children but I didn't connect them with him. ’

  ‘Well, you weren't to know. What I regret is that he was no green hand, but a prime topman. He's probably halfway inland by now. There are some hands in this ship you can trust with your life and your sister's honor, and you'll find out who they are quick enough. There are also some men I wouldn't approach with a loaded pistol. Since you'll be closer to them than I, it is up to you to discover the shirkers and the ones who work chearly.’

  ’Aye, sir.’

  ’You can't treat them all like scum, Mister Lewrie, though they are halfway scum when we first get them. Neither can you be soft on 'em. Someday, you may have to order a great many men not only to do something dangerous, but maybe tell a whole crew to go die for you," Kenyon went on at some length. "I do not expect my midshipmen to be popular with the men, nor do I wish them to be little tyrants, either. The men respect a taut hand. a man who's firm but fair, and it man who's consistent in his punishments and his praise, and in the standards he calls for. Don't court favor; don't drive them all snarling for your blood. If you are so eager to learn the faster, as you put it, there are good lessons to be had from the older hands. I suggest you find them.’

  ’Aye aye, sir," Lewrie said with a hearty affirmative shake of his head, though he regarded it much like a lecture from a travelling Italian surgeon who might see salubrious benefits for mankind in the cholera. ’Now be off with you. I can hear the wolf in your stomach in full cry, Mister Lewrie. ’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Ariadne butted her way through the Channel chop until she was out past Land's End. and began to work hard in the great rollers of the unfettered Atlantic, and up into the Irish Sea to meet her duty.

  It was not blockade work for her; that was for the largest 3rd Rates that mounted more guns. Since Ariadne was much older and lighter armed. her lot was convoy duties. She met her first convoy off the Bristol Channel; forty or so merchant vessels under guard by Ariadne and a 4th Rate fifty-gun cruiser named Dauntless, and if she was anything to go by, it was going to be devilish miserable work:; Dauntless was sanded down to the bare wood on her bows, and her sides as high as the upper gun deck ports were stained with salt, and her heavy weather suit of sails was a chessboard of patches of older tan and new white.