"Nothing definite, no," Lewrie cryptically informed him. "Damn, lads! Give me space in which to walk, will you?" he said to his cats, which thought it their "duty" to closely escort him down the ladderway, weaving back and forth from one riser to the next. "Pray God they do not come immediately. No time for shopping, and my personal stores are in need of re-stocking, too. Quite unlike the wardroom's… hmm?"
"We're all quite… happy, sir," Langlie rejoined, laughing. "I vow the Purser's actually done us proud… for a change."
Lewrie quickly changed into dark blue slop-trousers, a worn old waist-coat, and his plainest, and heaviest, uniform coat, for the great-cabins were chilly, and the two cast-iron stoves did little to heat the space. Evidently, Aspinall hadn't slept in his quarters temporarily, or lavished Lewrie's limited supply of coal on himself whilst he was away-good, honest lad!
Bills, which Lewrie read over, then addressed to his solicitor in London, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy; official documents opened first, of course, but they were nothing demanding-most were fleet-wide announcements of changes in admirals', captains', and lieutenants' lists, some new soundings taken of far-flung coasts or harbours, of more interest to Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, than to Lewrie, right off.
Hardly any personal correspondence, though, Lewrie broodingly noted as he sat slumped at his desk in the day-cabin. A mocking note from his father, Sir Hugo, was the most recent, japing him on staying at his Madeira Club; something brief from Lord Peter Rushton, wishing him joy of his return to England-nigh indecypherable, of course, in his own hand. Peter might've included cheerful words of how he would do what he could in his cause in the House of Lords, since Lewrie did manage to make out a reference to having spoken with Mr. Twigg, but it was hard going without a magnifying glass and a Sanskrit or Arabic dictionary.
Slam! went the Marine sentry's musket butt on the deck without the great-cabins' main-deck doors. "First Off'cah, SAH!" he bellowed, all full of piss, vinegar, and temporary officialdom.
"Enter," Lewrie called out. Lt. Langlie ducked under the deck beams and door frame to come in, bearing a thick-ish bundle of paperwork, just as Aspinall bustled in a second or so behind him with his coffee-pot.
Two cups, and half an hour, later, and there was another twitter of calls from the gangway, the thud of a boat coming alongside, below the entry-port, in the midst of their reading and scribbling. Not one minute later, and Mr. D'arcy Gamble, their smartest and eldest Midshipman, was announced by the sentry, and entered the cabins.
"Captain, sir," Gamble reported with his hat under his arm. "A messenger from shore is come aboard with orders," he said, eyes bright with excitement for new adventures and new horizons.
"Have him in, then, Mister Gamble," Lewrie instructed.
"Aye aye, sir!"
A smartly-dressed and languidly-elegant older Midshipman entered next, all but yawning in boredom with his work-a-day duty, all but sniffing in disdain at such casually, comfortably garbed officers, so unlike himself.
"Captain Lewrie, sir?" he asked, as if he had to be convinced before he would turn over his precious documents to just any "hobble-de-hoy."
"Last time I looked, that would be me," Lewrie said from behind his desk, still seated, taking an instant dislike for the fellow, even if he did see a bit of himself, back when he'd been stuck ashore in the service of the Port Captain of English Harbour, Antigua. In younger days, when he'd appalled himself by actually wishing for another shipboard assignment despite his early loathing for a naval career, he had been just that supercilious, himself, to disguise his delight to be on a warship, even temporarily. "Orders, have you?"
"I do, sir," the young man replied, reaching into a tarred and waterproofed canvas haversack slung from one shoulder, and producing a ribbon-and-wax-sealed letter. "Just come from Admiralty, sir," Mr. Midshipman "Top-Lofty" formally intoned, as if uttering the magic word "Admiralty" made him a grander fellow.
Didn't beat 'em aboard by much, did I? Lewrie mused to himself as he stretched out a hand to accept them; Twigg must be working like a Trojan t'get me out of harm's reach.
"We done, Mister Langlie?" Lewrie asked his First Officer, who sat across from him, legs crossed, in one of Lewrie's leather-covered collapsing chairs, looking eager as a hound when the gun-cabinet was opened.
"Done to a turn, sir," Langlie replied, gathering up the last of his "bumf" into a neat pile; one copy for the ship, one copy for the yards.
"Then perhaps Mister… whatever your name is…"
"Catlett, sir. Midshipman Cat…"
"… would be so good as to bear all these back ashore for us, hey, Mister Langlie? Kill two birds with one stone, seeing as how he is on his way, hmm?" Lewrie dismissively suggested, quite enjoying his brief bit of spite. "Anything else, Mister Catlett?"
"Uhm, nossir," the crestfallen Midshipman replied.
"Well, there you are, then!" Lewrie said with a bright grin as he indicated that Langlie should hand Catlett the paperwork. "Do stay dry as you can, on the row ashore! Wouldn't want 'em smudged!"
"Very good, sir," Catlett intoned, sketched a brief bow, then departed, escorted by an equally disappointed Mr. Gamble, who had been hoping for at least a hint as to their new duties, and destination.
"A 'no-sailor' tailor's dummy," Lt. Langlie softly commented in dismissal of their visitor. "He'll never see the outer channel marks. I'll go, sir, and allow you…"he offered, starting to rise.
"Stay, Mister Langlie," Lewrie objected, waving him back down. "This concerns you as much as it does me," he said, breaking the seal and unfolding the large sheet of paper. He laid it on the desk-top, smoothed the crisp folds flat, and hunched over it under the slightly swaying lanthorn for the best light.
Uhmum, Lewrie thought; "required and directed," and all that… "making the best of your way," uhmum, "with all despatch," he read to himself, frowning over the urgency implied by those stock Admiralty phrases. What in Blazes has Twigg talked 'em into? he wondered.
"Oh, buggery," Lewrie uttered at last. "Mine arse on a band-box! He's not gone barking mad, yet? Holy shit on a…" he griped.
"Sir?" Lt. Langlie hesitantly asked, his brow furrowed.
"Convoy duty, Mister Langlie," Lewrie told him, looking up and sitting back into his chair. "We're to make all haste up-Channel for the Goodwin Sands, meet up with a 'Trade' of East Indiamen, and escort 'em at least as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Saint Helena, Recife in Portuguese Brazil, to Cape Town."
" Africa, sir!" Lt. Langlie enthused. "I've never been there."
"Haven't missed much, then," Lewrie told him.
Africa ! Bloody Africa? Lewrie furiously thought; Is this some sort of galling jape on my predicament? Want me t'turn my Black tars loose, there? Recruit even more, do they, damn their eyes? And damn Twigg, too. It must've been him who suggested it, the sly…!
"Uhm, far be it from me to presume further, sir, but… who is not yet daft, did you say?" Langlie curiously asked.
"Captain Sir Tobias Treghues," Lewrie bleakly said, "Knight and Baronet. One of my old captains in the American war, when I was still a Midshipman aboard HMS Desperate. Prim as a dowager, 'til a Frenchie swotted him in the head with the hard end of a rammer, and turned mad as a March Hare… on his off days… so, God knows what he's like now. Depending on the temperature, the latitude or longitude, what he's eat for breakfast…"
"Grim, d'ye expect, then, Captain, sir?" Langlie asked.
"Far be it from me to slur senior officers, Mister Langlie…" Lewrie gravelled, though recalling that yes, yes he always had, "but, are his wits flown him for a week or two, he can turn into a spherical bastard… a bastard no matter which way ye look at him. Next week, you're in his good books, and couldn't do wrong if you rammed him, on purpose! The Navy must be hellish needful, if he still holds active commission. I'd have thought Captain Treghues had been dismissed, or 'yellow squadroned,' years ago, when he inherited his title and all."
Lewrie took note of Lt. Langlie's "bland" expressio
n; was that worthy trying to keep a straight face, or was he wondering whether his own captain was consistently "up to snuff"?
"Why, next you know, Mister Langlie, Admiralty might even be so desperate they'd offer me command!" Lewrie japed. "The damned fools."
His First Officer responded as junior officers should: grinning and issuing a silent chuckle over a senior's self-deprecating wit.
"Where stands the wind, then?" Lewrie snapped.
"An hour ago, 'twas a 'dead muzzier' from the South, sir, but I did feel a pinch of veer to it," Langlie answered. "By dawn, it could be more Sou'easterly."
"Damme, by dawn, there might be enough Easting for Treghues and his 'trade' to set sail," Lewrie gloomily speculated, conjuring up a sea-chart in the mind's eye. "We could make an offing, but it'd take days to beat up-Channel t'meet 'em. Off western Kent, at the very best if they can manage the narrow channel from out behind the Goodwin Sands. Lots of short-tacking close ashore for us, bags of sea-room for them, and I just know he won't keep his anchors, waiting for us to show up! Damn. Just damn my eyes!
"Best pass the word to take in kedge anchors, Mister Langlie," Lewrie ordered. "We'll swing to our bowers 'til it looks as if we may fall down to Saint Helen's Patch, safely, then…"
"Aye aye, sir, directly," Langlie replied, getting to his feet, and tucking his discarded hat under his left arm.
"Pass word for Mister Winwood, as well, sir," Lewrie said as he strode to the chart-space up forward against the main-deck bulkheads. He stopped short, though, looking into Aspinall's tiny day-pantry and wondering just how much he had in the way of personal stores, and estimating how short-commons he'd be by the time they reached St. Helena Island, much less Cape Town! "And I'd admire did you pass the word for Mister Coote, to boot. I run out of wine, Mister Langlie, and I might turn as mean as Treghues can, hah?" he added, feigning surliness. "Tea and water, and I'll not be responsible for my actions. Aarr!" Lewrie concluded, in one of his patented "piratical" snarls.
"At once, sir!" Langlie answered, and departing the great-cabins right speedily, as if that snarled "Aarr!" was not meant in jest.
No time to go ashore for leisurely shopping for himself, Lewrie decided; jams and jellies, mustards, vinegars, cases and barricoes of spirits, personal livestock, fresh eggs… food for the cats!… it would all be "catch-as-catch-can," all done by the Purser in a slapdash, last-minute rush, with no allowance for suiting his tastes; even whisky might be hard to come by in English shops, much less good wines!
Books, to fill the many boresome hours and days to come, Lewrie bemoaned. Well, there were the few he'd managed to obtain in London. The Innocent Adultress, Venus in the Cloister, Cuckholdom Triumphant, and a compendium of testimonies from infamous adultery trials. Lewrie pawed over the volumes in the fiddle-racks above the chart table; hmm, he did have the newest Whoremonger's Guide to London, his sturdy Moll Flanders, a translated Les Liaisons Dangereuses that he'd acquired in the Bahamas in the '80s, his Fanny Hill, his Shamela, and a selection of other amusing Fielding or Smollett novels…
By God, what are these? he asked himself as he dug his newest novels from his still-packed valise, and came across his own copy of the latest New Atlantis, the very same guide he'd recommended to that seemingly upright Maj. Baird at the Madeira Club (and which wouldn't do him a bit of good at sea, would it?), and out spilled a loose pile of tracts! Penny one-sheets, folded-over four-sheets, even pamphlets and chapbooks… all, by their bold titles, declaring them to be of the most cautionary, uplifting, and "improving" sort of Evangelical Society flim-flam.
"Who the Blazes put these in here?" he muttered aloud, immediately suspecting Twigg, or one of his unofficial minions, who had slipped them in at Twigg's behest. Just one more jibing, mocking jape, on top of everything else, and secreted so their presence wouldn't ram it all home up his fundament 'til he was far out to sea!
Lewrie considered what to do with 'em; there was always a need for shredded paper in the cats' litter box; there was also need for a supply of scrap paper for his own quarter-gallery toilet, and he just might be able to save a crown or two from what the Purser was to buy ashore for him, or…
Leave 'em out in plain sight, does Treghues come aboard, Lewrie thought. Push 'em off on him, if he hasn't seen the latest issues, hah?
CHAPTER TEN
By dawn of the next morning, the winds had, indeed, come more out of the Sou'east, allowing HMS Proteus to up-anchor and short-tack down to St. Helen's Patch, nearer the main channel round the Isle of Wight. By mid-day, just about Four Bells of the Watch, the winds actually were coming off the distant North Sea and the Danish/German coast, and Proteus up-anchored once again, this time for good, and thrashed out an offing into the Channel.
As the last headland of the Isle of Wight slipped astern, Lewrie could admit to himself that it felt good to be back at sea… even if the weather conditions were pretty-much a pluperfect bastard! Thrice-reefed courses, tops'ls and t'gal-lants, with the royal spars and masts struck down, and HMS Proteus was still laid over twenty or twenty-five degrees, practically sailing on her lee shoulder, and green seas were shipping over the forecastle, jib-boom, and bowsprit with every plunge, sluicing down the main deck, wave-breaking round the companionway hatches, and gurgling out the lee scuppers like the town drains. The so-called "Chops of the Channel" behaved more like a series of granite terraces that the frigate clambered over, then skidded down, with many thumps and thuds, among the high-pitched whining of the Easterly wind tearing through the miles of rigging aloft, and standing upright on her quarterdeck took the skill of an acrobatic rider, with legs spread and each foot placed on the bare back of one of a pair of fractious, galloping horses… and headed for a series of log jumps.
To make matters even dicier, every bloody merchantman or naval vessel that had been stranded in every harbour east of Portsmouth had used the wind shift to make their offings, too, and scud downwind for the Atlantic. Trades, convoys, squadrons, whole fleets, or individual ships ordered somewhere round the world could be muzzled in port for weeks before the winds shifted, allowing them out, and it seemed as if half the Royal Navy and all the Merchant Service, from coasting smacks to Indiamen, had set sail that morning.
All bearing Westward, in gaggles and streams, a positive flood of hard, unyielding, impatient shipping, their captains and masters in such a hurry they'd not give opposing traffic a single inch more than absolutely necessary to avoid collision as Proteus short-tacked against the flood, seemingly the only ship headed East that vile morning.
To make matters a tad worse, Proteus had to tack rather a lot; if Treghues and his trade had already sailed, they would not venture too far Sutherly, else they'd end up wrecked on the rocks and shoals of the Channel Islands or the French coast, or run the risk of privateers operating out of Normandy or Breton harbours, so Lewrie could not let himself stray too much to the South. No, he must remain in the Northern half of the Channel, slicing 'cross the hawses of hundreds of those "running," "both sheets aft" merchantmen on the larboard tack, and the starboard gun-ports almost in the water for a time, then come about in a flurry and thrash Nor'east 'til the Kentish coast was almost in sight from the deck, making civilian captains and watch-standing officers and mates curse him on starboard tack, too!
To make things just a wee bit worse on top of all that, squalls and patches of nigh-blinding rain came swooping down-Channel, now and again, driven by the "fortuitous" wind shift so beneficial to Commerce-squalls which perfectly blotted out both Proteus and whatever high speed, Couldn't-Get-Out-Of-Their-Own-Way traffic bearing down on them.
And, as the final fillip of Fate, there were the damned tides in the Channel, which perversely seemed yoked to the winds like a pair of surly oxen. The tides had turned an hour or so before, right after HMS Proteus had cleared Selsey Bill, and going like a racehorse. But, for the next few hours, until the tides turned, all of their efforts to go East, no matter how close their frigate lay to the eye of the wind as she bashed "full and
by," no matter how manfully Proteus struggled up to windward, damned if there wasn't Selsey Bill off their bows at the end of every starboard tack inshore in search of Treghues's convoy!
"Sane people go West in weather like this," Lewrie muttered to himself, "and the wise stay in port 'til it moderates."
"Gained a bit, though, sir," Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, assured him after a long, gloomy peek at that "magnetic" headland with a heavy brass telescope to his eye. "Might've made three miles to the good, this last tack. Speaking of, though, sir…"
"Aye, thankee," Lewrie grumbled, turning to Lt. Catterall, the officer standing the Forenoon Watch. "Time to tack, I believe, sir!"
"Aye aye, sir!" Catterall bellowed back with great glee, turning to his helmsmen and lifting his brass speaking trumpet to roar, "Stations for Stays! Tail on, and prepare to come about to larboard tack!"
As he waited for sailors to ready themselves, Catterall clapped his raw hands together before him like a performing seal, all swaddled up in tarred canvas foul-weather clothing, then turned to address both Lewrie and Mr. Winwood. "Going like a thoroughbred at Derby, she is, sir! Damme, what fun!"
"God save us," Lewrie whispered to Mr. Winwood, "but he's ready for Bedlam. Certifiable!" He plastered a broad, agreeable grin on his phyz, though, and shouted, "Carry on!" to his manic Second Officer.
All hands, and all officers, too, up from naps in the gun-room, just to be on the safe side. Judging his moment very carefully, Lt. Catterall rose up on the balls of his feet, taking a deep suck of wind into his lungs, and turning just a tad blue as he held it for a long second or two, judging the scend of the sea, the pressure on the sails from the gusting winds, the wave-sets smashing against the starboard bows, and what they might be like halfway through the evolution… and, what gaps in that shoal of merchant traffic he thought he could thread Proteus through once she got a way back on, sailing nearly 140 degrees off her present course, and lay slow and loggish before the winds snatched her like a paper boat on a duck pond, and sent her tearing off once more.
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