"Must believe we're a French fraud," Lewrie agreed. "Mine arse on a bandbox, we've our Number aloft, already. Can you read his?"
"Er, aye, sor… sir," Larkin, the Bog-Irish by-blow, replied, drifting back into brogue as he always did when flustered. "She's ah, HMS Stag.. . Fifth Rate, thirty-eight-gunner, Captain John Philpott," Larkin stammered, fumbling through his bundle of lists and almost losing both his telescope overside and his grip on the shrouds.
"Last Stag would know, we're still in the Caribbean, sir," Lt. Langlie commented by Lewrie's side. "A good ruse for a French raider."
"Aye, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said. "Mister Larkin, hoist that we are ordered to join the escort. Perhaps the latest signals book'll convince them. 'Tis only three weeks old, after all."
"Aye aye, sir."
A long minute or two passed as Larkin and his "bunting tossers" made their hoist, which was acknowledged by Stag; then, they had more minutes to wait 'til Stag made a reply, for she had to pass the message back to the repeating sloop of war, which passed it to the trailing 74-gunner, which was obviously the flagship. More time was taken for the flagship to hoist a new order, which had to come down the chain to the sloop, to the frigate, to Proteus.
And, all during that time, the convoy was plodding along under reduced plain sail, bound roughly West, Sou'west, while Proteus still was on larboard tack, heading about Sou'east by East and drawing apart slowly.
"Wear her about to West, Sou'west, Mister Langlie," Lewrie told his First Officer. "Nothing more convincing than showing leery people your arse. Like a dog rollin' over on his back."
"Aye, sir. All hands! Stations to wear, ready…!"
"What did they ask that time, Mister Larkin?" Lewrie asked.
"Order, sir. 'Come Under My Lee,' the flag said t'do," Larkin puzzled out at last. "HMS Grafton, seventy-four. Captain Sir Tobias… Trey… Gwees? Triggers?"
"Truh-Gewz," Lewrie corrected him. "An old captain of mine, me lad. Damme, they didn't do him too proud, did they? Grafton was commissioned in 1771. Why she hasn't been hulked… or rotted apart…"
"Ready to wear, sir," Langlie reported.
"Very well, Mister Langlie. Once about, reduce sail so we may fall astern of Grafton yonder, then come up under her lee. With winds full astern, I s'pose he means come alongside her inshore beam. Might be, either'd do," Lewrie said with a shrug. "Mister Larkin, alert yon suspicious frigate that we're wearing about. Try not to make it look like an order to Captain Wilkinson, hmm?"
"Aye aye, sor," Larkin sheepishly replied.
"Wear about, then, Mister Langlie."
"Aye aye, sir."
Perhaps half an hour later, HMS Proteus had fallen far enough towards the tail-end of the trade to make a bit more sail so she could angle in towards HMS Grafton. When she was close enough, it was an easy matter to duck under her high, old-fashioned stern and make a brief dash before the sails were reduced once more, so that she ended up off the 74-gun ship's starboard quarter, about half a cable inshore of her.
Lewrie left the details to Langlie, busy with his telescope by the larboard bulwarks to study the people gathered on Grafton's quarterdeck. Officers, sailors of the afterguard, some gloomy-looking corn stalk of a fellow in drab, dark clothing, and… a woman? An officer, perhaps Grafton's First Lieutenant, lifted a brass speaking-trumpet to his mouth to shout across. The swash of the sea between the two ships, the wind, and the normal creaks and groans of Proteus's hull made what he shouted quite un-intelligible.
"Croror? Is'll pot?" Lewrie mimicked, cupping a hand behind an ear and shrugging at that worthy. "What the Devil does he mean by that, I ask you? Must be a Welsh insult," he japed to his own officers.
"Come… up… to.. .pistol… shod" Grafton's senior officer cried, again, all but screeching this time, and waving an arm to direct them to sidle up alongside Grafton, almost hull-to-hull.
"Ease a spoke or two o' lee helm, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said, tossing back his boat cloak so the single gold epaulet of his rank on his right shoulder could be seen, as Proteus tentatively angled a bit to larboard, closing the distance between the ships to about twenty or so yards. "Ah, there's the bugger," he muttered under his breath.
Capt. Sir Tobias Treghues, Baronet, had thrown back the wings of his own cloak, to display his pair of epaulets, with his chin high, as if he'd smelled something rank. Treghues had always been lean and tall, and so he still was, though his aristocratic face was thinner in the cheeks than Lewrie recalled, and there was a hint of the beginning of a gotch-gut 'tween groin and chest that strained his pristine white waist-coat, the sign of good living, Lewrie surmised, once Treghues had inherited his father's estates and title… though Lewrie also could recall that Treghues was the first son from a poor holding, forced to sea to earn the better part of his living.
Lewrie lifted his cocked hat to doff it in salute, and after a moment, Treghues lifted his in response, revealing that his formerly dark brown locks had receded above his temples, and were now streaked like a badger's pelt with grey.
"Captain Alan Lewrie, is it?" Treghues shouted across, after he had replaced his hat on his head. "Will wonders never cease!"
"To the life, sir!" Lewrie shouted back, wondering what sort of answer one could really make to that opening sally. He would have said that it was good to see Treghues, again, but didn't have a clue whether the man was in the proper half of his wits to accept it.
"You are late, sir!" Treghues primly said.
"Only got our orders yesterday, sir, and had to wait on the wind in Saint Helen's Patch!" Lewrie replied, his own hands cupped to make a trumpet. "I thought I'd catch you up, at sea, once the wind arose from the East." I'm tryin' t'be jolly, he told himself.
"You should deal with your signals midshipmen, Captain Lewrie!" Treghues instructed. "They are… slack in their duties!"
"Dead downwind of you, sir, all signals were edge-on to us!" he explained, "The leading seventy-four did not repeat them!"
"Just like the old days!" Treghues seemed to scoff at that. "As I recall, you always had glib and ready answers!"
And bugger you, too, ye prim turd! 'Lewrie silently fumed.
"Take station out yonder, sir!" Treghues cried, pointing off to the Southwest corner of the convoy. "Tell Captain Hazelhurst, of the Chloe sloop, that he is to re-position himself ahead and to larboard of Horatius!"
"Just asking, sir, but my orders did not list all the ships in the escort!" Lewrie yelled over to him. "May I assume Horatius is the van sevety-four?"
"Aye, she is!" Treghues shouted, sounding both impatient and petulant together. "You will learn them soon enough! Make all haste to your proper station, Captain Lewrie! It is growing dark, sir!"
"Aye aye, sir!" Lewrie replied, doffing his hat once more, in sign of departure; and, hopefully, that his "joyful" rencontre with a shipmate of old was mercifully at an end.
"Clew up, Mister Langlie… Spanish Reefs, to slow us. Helmsmen, helm hard up and slew a knot or two off us," Lewrie snapped.
Proteus swung wide away, acting as if she'd been stung by the flagship. Course sails were briefly gathered up in their centres to spill wind, until she'd fallen far-enough astern of Grafton to avoid a collision when she swung Sou'-Sou'easterly, putting the wind on her larboard quarter to fall down towards the distant sloop of war, clews freed, and her course sails now drawing taut and full.
"Me pardons, sor," Midshipman Larkin meekly muttered, wringing his hands over his supposed faults. "But I really couldn't read 'em."
"No one could," Lewrie gently told him. "Not your fault."
"Uhm, not a horrid beginning, was it, Captain?" Langlie queried in a soft voice at his captain's elbow. "After what you said of…"
"But not a good'un, either, Mister Langlie," Lewrie resignedly replied, turning to look astern at the flagship in the gathering dusk. "I fear this'll be a hellish-long voyage. And feel twice as long."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Signal from the flag, sir… our number!" Midshipman
Gamble sang out, with a heavy brass day-glass to one eye.
"Damn it!" Capt. Alan Lewrie spat, and thumped a fist on the cap-rail of the larboard quarterdeck bulwark for good measure, bleakly muttering under his breath, "What the bloody flamin' Hell does he want this time?" Before turning to face Midshipman Gamble he took a moment to re-collect the proper nautical stoicism, heaving a deep sigh.
"Aye, Mister Gamble?" Lewrie enquired, with what a disinterested observer might mistake for bland and idle curiosity. His play-acting was wasted on Midshipman Gamble, for that young worthy had clapped the telescope back to one eye, and had screwed the other shut, intent upon the distant HMS Grafton's hoists. Lewrie was, therefore, allowed to scowl, taking note that the First Lieutenant, Mr. Langlie, and Bosun Pendarves, with whom he was discussing the renewal of chafing gear to save the currently-strung running rigging, both lifted their eyes in sympathy, and pointedly looked away.
"Take Station… Alee, no… Ahead," Mr. Gamble interpreted, after a quick peek at the sheaf of unique signals that Capt. Treghues had composed whilst they were hammering their way Sutherly across the dangerous Bay of Biscay, just in case the French raiders had managed to snag a copy of that month's code book. To simply obtain their copy of the convoy's code had required them to go close-aboard Grafton and put a boat down to fetch them; into Proteus's captain's hand, only, in the middle of a roaring Westerly winter gale! Once soaked to the skin and nigh-drowned, Lewrie had clambered up Grafton's side to the entry-port whilst the line-of-battle ship had ponderously rolled, pitched, heaved, and even seemed to "wiggle," only to be greeted by the First Lieutenant who had given him the signals, wrapped in oil-skin, then sent right back into his swooping boat, with nary a sign of Treghues to be seen! Lewrie didn't imagine that Capt. Treghues had meant for him to perish… but, the sight of his demise might have fetched their senior officer up from below to do a little "what a pity" horn-pipe!
"… five miles leeward of convoy, sir," Mr. Gamble concluded. "Crack on sail, Mister Langlie, all to the royals," Lewrie said. "Very good, sir," Langlie replied. "More chafing gear, Mister Pendarves, once we're settled down. For now, I'd admire did you pipe 'All Hands.' "
"And here we go, again," Lewrie muttered, turning to stomp aft and peer 'cross the quarterdeck at Grafton, now up on their starboard bows, and about five miles distant. Could he really shoot fire from his eyes like an ancient Greek god, the flagship would explode before he blinked, all his problems immolated in a towering ball of flames.
It had been like this for weeks, going on for the better part of two months since the rendezvous in mid-Channel. Did the shallows or rocky shoals of the Breton coast need scouting for fear of lurking Frog warships or privateers, one could count on Proteus to do it; were any of the towering East Indiamen dawdling astern or straying too far away, the safest wager would be that Grafton would hoist their number as the ship to dash off and play "whipper-in." Did one of their merchantmen lose spars or sails in the generally horrid weather in the Bay of Biscay or off the equally-belligerent Spanish coasts, it was usually HMS Proteus, and Lewrie, given the task of giving her both close escort and succour, to the point that Lewrie's carefully hoarded supply of bosun's stores, sail canvas, light upper mast, and yardarm replacements had been sorely depleted… and would any of the other warships among the escort force whip round a share-out? Hell no, of course.
In point of fact, the only signal that Grafton had not hoisted was "Captain Repair On Board," and an invitation to supper, as was made to every other warship captain, and even to some of the "better-behaved" Indiamen.
The third time I blink, she blows to smithereens, Lewrie fantasised, and feeling a bit of disappointment when Grafton did not, after a last shutting and snapping-open of his eyes.
Their trade was now well South of the Tropic of Cancer, steering mostly Sou'-Sou'west with the weakening Nor'east Trades fine on their larboard quarters, to churn out enough Southing in mid-Atlantic so the Westward-flowing Equatorial Current did not slosh them too far over to the New World and onto the shoulder of South America, where they could end embayed against the coasts, and hit bows-on by the Sou'east Trades. It was theoretically possible to shave the Cape Verde Islands without being forced too far West, then do a long and labourious tacking course direct to St. Helena, if the weather allowed, though that would require fighting the Equatorial Current and the Trades all the way.
Anything t'make this hellish voyage shorter, pray Jesus! Lewrie fervently prayed, and quite often, at that.
The easier way, so their Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, insisted, would be to let the current and winds waft them West'rd, as far South as the bleak and lonely St. Paul 's Bocks, then haul their wind to fall down upon Cape St. Boque for a landfall, and coast South to Becife, in neutral Portuguese Brazil. But, somehow Lewrie just knew by then that Capt. Sir Tobias Treghues, Bart., would demand that they do things his way… the hard way. He was charged with convoying the Indiamen to St. Helena, and by God, that's where he'd escort them.
Besides, heading over to Recife would require that their trade would have to run down the coast of Brazil, then down the hostile shore of the Spanish possessions, 'til they could strike the strong Easterly winds round the 40th Latitude, "The Roaring Fourties," using them to be gusted over to the Southern tip of Africa, and exposed along their way to the odd Spanish or far-roaming French warships or privateers.
At least the weather's warmer, Lewrie could console himself.
Though it was mid-December, and the Atlantic was still a lively place, and the skies were rarely completely clear enough for reliable sun or star sights, the seas were a cheerier blue, and the rising and setting of the sun each day was dramatically and colourfully tropical. Equally dramatic were the height of the waves and the spacing between their sets that they encountered, which made both deep-laden Indiamen and sleek men o' war wallow, soar, and snuffle atop them.
One blessing to that moderation in the weather was that Lewrie no longer had need of his coal stove for heat during the days, but for the rare night when the wind had a nip to it after sundown, and most times, one of Caroline's quilts, and the cats, made his swaying bed-cot snug and cozy.
God, but the thought of even an extra week, an extra day, more in Treghues's company was enough to curdle his piss, and even the sudden turn of speed that Proteus was now displaying could not cheer him, even were they ordered to take station a blessed five sea-miles ahead and apart. And, Lewrie dourly speculated, once at St. Helena, they'd take aboard wood and water, then turn the bulk of the escort force on a course for England, leaving but one ship of the line and perhaps no more than two lighter ships to see them all the way to Cape Town; and there was the strong possibility (a hellish-gloomy one!) that Treghues would choose his frigate to be his goat. Had not Twigg as much as said that he was on his way-all the way!-to Africa? And, had that perversely mischievious man sent a letter to Treghues of Lewrie's need to be far away from England, perhaps had intimated the why of it, and had chortled over the thought of a primly-outraged Treghues deciding to make Lewrie's life under his authority a living Hell? He wouldn't put such dastardy beyond Mr. Zachariah Twigg… damn him!
"And… belay ev'ry inch of that!" Lt. Langlie bellowed, satisfied with the set and angle of the sails, at last, bringing Lewrie back to a somewhat pleasing reality. HMS Proteus now had a "bone in her teeth," her cutwater, forefoot, and bows smashing a mustachio of white foam below her bowsprit and jib-boom, the seas creaming either side of her hull, and spreading a wide, white highway in her wake. In comparison to the plodding merchantmen and other escorts bound closely to them, Proteus seemed the only vessel under way, with the slow ships looking as if they merely tossed and wallowed in place. The convoy's best speed-the speed of the slowest to which all the others conformed-was no better than five or six knots, while Proteus was in her element with the Trades on her best point of sail from nigh-astern. A quick cast of the log showed her already making nine knots, easily able to better that at the next cast, and attain ten
or better. East India Company captains were even more conservative than most civilian merchant masters; they had priceless cargoes to safeguard, and paying passengers (some of them rich, titled, and well-connected, and Members of The Board, to boot!) who demanded coddling, so "dash" simply wasn't in their Sailing Directions. They plodded mostly under "plain sail" in daylight, and dramatically reduced canvas after sundown, and drove him to testily impatient, leg-jiggling fits.
Savour it, savour it, Lewrie chid himself, determined to take as much fleeting joy of their temporary freedom as possible.
"Will ye take a cup o' tea, sir?" Aspinall enquired, making his rounds aft from the galley with his ever-present steaming pot.
"Tea'd be capital, Aspinall, just capital!" Lewrie replied with relish, allowing his body to loose the Treghues-inspired tension of his back, neck, and jaws. Once he'd gotten a battered tin cup of tea in his hands, he turned aft to look astern, going so far as to slouch like the veriest lubber against the bulwarks. The freshness of the stern winds kissed his cheeks; and, there was the gladsome sight of HMS Grafton as she slowly dropped astern, going hull-down in Proteus'?, wake.
"Mister Langlie?" Lewrie announced in a quizzical tone, and with his head cocked to one side.
"Love a cup, sir," the First Lieutenant replied, mistaking that quizzical tone as an invitation, and grinning cheerfully wolfish.
"Oh, that, too, but…" Lewrie added, "once we're the requisite five sea-miles alee of Horatius yonder, instead of reducing sail again, I think we should weave a zig-zag course under full sail. We could cover a wider swath of ocean that way."
"Of course, sir," Langlie said, holding a cup for Aspinall as he poured it brimful. "Ah, thankee kindly!"
"And, before Bosun Pendarves overhauls the chafing gear, let us also see to the dead-eyes. On this tack, we may re-tension the shrouds on the lee side, first, then wear and tighten the starboard shrouds as they become the lee stays."
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