"I am," Lewrie replied, at which discovery the strange Midshipman beamed, and reached into his coat to an inner pocket, from which he withdrew a folded-over sheet of paper. "Midshipman Hedgepeth, Captain Lewrie, of HMS Jamaica, out yonder?" the boy added, with a sweep of his hat towards the bay, and the anchored 64-gunner. "Captain Leatherwood extends to you his utmost respects, sir, and requests that you attend him aboard, at your earliest convenience. I gather, sir, that Proteus will join our ship to escort the East India convoy homeward? And…"
"Thank you, Mister Hedgepeth," Lewrie replied as he took hold of the letter, swallowing the impatience he felt with another intrusion into what was already a tempestuous day. "Since my own gig seems so readily available… surprise, that…" he added, lifting a leery eyebrow at Andrews, who stood beside the boat, "it seems I may manage mine own conveyance to see your captain, this minute. Do you wait a moment, though."
"Of course, sir," Hedgepeth said, doffing his hat once more as Lewrie brushed past him.
"You made quick work of it, Andrews," Lewrie said, standing at his gig's side. "Out to Proteus and back so soon. I said I'd engage a bumboatman…"
"Ah, beggin' yah pardon, Cap'm sah, but… we didn't go out to th' ship, sah, not egg-hackly …" Andrews waffled.
"And whyever did you net?" Lewrie harshly snapped.
"Dat Mizz Yew… de Russian gal, sah?" Andrews tried to explain, all but wringing his doffed straw hat in his hands. "She tell us it'd be bettah fuh Rodney was de circus surgeon t'see to 'im, Cap'm sah. We got 'im heah to de piers, but she an' dhem circus people jus' 'bout took Rodney, sayin' Navy Surgeons don' know nothin' 'bout men who got clawed up so bad, an' dheir 'saw-bones' handle such ever' day, sah."
"And you just… let 'em!" Lewrie barked. "Mine arse on a…!"
A good rant would have felt so damned fine, but right after he drew in a deep breath for his first "broadside," Lewrie shut his lips with an audible "plop."
When they had handed little Rodney down from that Boer waggon, the lad had been shirtless, for the first time in Lewrie's memory, and he had seen the old whip scars that his former masters, the Beaumans on Jamaica, had cut into him. And Lewrie had felt queasy to think that he would have had to, under the rigid requirements of the Articles of War when dealing with recaptured deserters, put Rodney to the gratings for several dozen lashes. He would have had no other choice, else his men would have gotten the idea that he was softer on his "Black Pets" than his other crewmen; that he could wink at desertion; that he was turning into a "Popularity Dick," or a soft touch! Lewrie couldn't think of a better way to split his crew into grumbling factions, and destroy what esprit they had. Without fear of consequences… without fear of him … he would lose all his authority, and his officers, warrants, petty officers, and midshipmen would lose theirs along with him.
Might be best, after all, Lewrie grimly told himself, knowing that allowing this to stand only delayed 'what he'd have to do.
"Uhm…" Lewrie grunted, instead. "Might be something to that, Andrews. I doubt either Mister Hodson, or Mister Durant, has ever run across a lion's clawing… and the sepsis sure to follow such. Very well, we'll leave him aboard the Festival… for a short time at the least… to see what their surgeon may do for him."
"Aye, sah!" his Cox'n cried with both relief and pleasure, and Lewrie could hear the tension whooshing out of his tense boat crew.
"Return to the ship," Lewrie ordered. "Jamaica's, gig may bear me out to her, and back aboard Proteus once we're done. My respects to Mister Langlie, and he is to see that our injured men in the cottage up above the bay, along with Mister Durant and his sick-berth attendants, are fetched back aboard."
"I tell him, sah," Andrews replied, knuckling his brow.
"Mister Hedgepeth?" Lewrie called, whirling about. "Might you indulge me with a boat ride out to your ship?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
H MS Jamaica was a hard-worked ship and looked it as Lewrie was rowed to her starboard entry-port, noting the much-faded paintwork on her side, the dribbles of tar and oakum showing between the outermost planking of her gunwales and bulwarks. A laconic rural American would have said of her that "she'd been rode hard, and put up wet," Lewrie could imagine. If there had been shiny gilt to brighten her, it had been worn off long before; and it appeared that there wasn't enough of a supply of linseed oil, tar, or pitch to spruce up her hull to Navy standards, especially the standards of admirals closer to Europe. But, Lewrie also noted that Jamaica 's yards were mathematically squared, her standing and running rigging well set up and tautly blocked or belayed. Her gun-ports stood open for a cooling breeze on both decks, red paint faded, too, on the inboard faces, but the cannon muzzles' tompions were still bright, and every piece squatted in the same exact position as its mate. Up alongside, Jamaica 's boarding battens, main-chain platform, and dead-eyes for the main-stays were sound, and her man-ropes strung shallowly through the outboard ends of the batten steps were white and fresh, served with Turk's Head knots. The battens were clean, sanded, though the two-decker's waterline was a gently waving garden of weed, despite her coppering.
And, despite her obvious long and hard service, Lewrie could, on his way up to the starboard gangway, note that the smell of her that wafted from those opened gun-ports on both decks wasn't the reeky fug that one could expect aboard such a small line-of-battle ship, crewed by several hundred men pent in such close quarters for so long, either. Her captain surely put a great stock in cleanliness, Lewrie imagined.
He attained the gangway, taking the salute from clean and well-dressed Marines and sailors, from hands scattered about her decks who doffed shiny black tarred hats, pausing from their labours for a bit.
"Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate," he said to a sober, gangly officer. "Your captain requested me to attend him, and why waste time on notes back and forth."
"Of course, Captain Lewrie," the man replied. "Welcome aboard, sir. Allow me to name myself. Suddarth… First Lieutenant." "Glad t'make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Suddarth." "I will inform Captain Leatherwood you've come aboard, sir. He is aft, at the moment…" Lt. Suddarth offered, but such task was not necessary, for his own captain emerged from his great-cabins beneath the poop to the aft end of the quarterdeck, still shrugging his way into a rather shabby undress coat and hat, without summons. Suddarth made the introductions as Leatherwood approached.
"Yer servant, sir," Lewrie said, doffing his hat in salute. "And welcome you are, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood genially said in reply, waving an arm aft in invitation. "Do join me in my cabins, where we may get down to business, sir."
Capt. Leatherwood's private quarters were a lot more spacious than Lewrie's, the painted canvas deck chequer as bright as the true tile that it imitated. Only 6-pounders marred its interior to give it a martial air. And, whilst his deal partitions and panelling gleamed with paint or polish, Leatherwood's furnishings were rather plain and spartan, and well-used. Instead of a formal interview with Leatherwood seated behind his desk, and Lewrie in a chair before it, he was led to a folding settee on the larboard side of the day-cabin, with Capt. Leatherwood taking a padded wood-frame chair on the other side of the ivory-inlaid low table between, which rested on a brass-trimmed ebony folding frame. The small carpets which livened both the day-cabin and the dining-coach were of a set, both of Hindoo manufacture, and most-likely bargains obtained in Bombay or Calcutta. Within a few breaths, a cabin servant in nattily tailored sailors' togs appeared with a tray that held a bottle of hock, and two short-stemmed glasses.
"I trust you don't mind hock, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood said with an easy smile on his weathered face, "but I've always been partial to white wines, 'stead of claret. This one's what the Germans call the spaetlese variety. A touch sweet, but spicy. And, we will not ask how it was exported past the French, hmm?"
"Honoured, sir," Lewrie replied as he accepted a glass and took an appreciative sip, liking it rather well. Appreciative, too, of Capt. Leatherwood's welcome. Many captains s
enior to him, he'd found, would play their little games of self-importance, forcing him to wait on the quarterdeck in foul weather, or stand and stew before their desks while they pretended to frown sternly over charts or paperwork, kneading their brows as if the war's turning hinged completely on them, alone. Others, Lewrie thought with a hidden grimace, who knew him, would act much the same, but their motive was mostly personal dislike!
Leatherwood looked to be a pleasant sort. He was about an inch taller than Lewrie, in his early fourties or so, sunburned to a mellow colour by years under tropic skies, care-worn and over-worked, but with merry brown eyes. He wore his own hair, with a short beribboned queue atop his collar, his hair salt-and-pepper and receding at his temples; slimly framed, and perhaps the victim of some tropic illness, for his uniform fit rather looser than his tailor might have originally sewed it.
"Quite good, and spicy," Lewrie adjudged.
"The Cape Squadron informs me that your frigate is free to join me," Leatherwood began, after a few sips of his own, and a shift in his chair to a more comfortable nigh-slouch. "Haven't much to spare, else. They also told me you've just finished some repairs? Ready for sea?"
"In all respects, sir," Lewrie assured him, giving Leatherwood a thumbnail sketch of the convoy battle, his rudder problems, his reduced and altered gun battery, along with being a few hands short.
"Sounds about as good as we can expect," Capt. Leatherwood said with a resigned grunt and nod. "I should have six hundred and fifty-odd aboard Jamaica , but what with sickness, accidents, and desertions, we're about fifty people short, as well. And, badly in need of refit. You noted my 'decorative water garden' as you came alongside, sir?"
"Your, ah… weed, sir?" Lewrie agreeably said.
"Damned tropics," Leatherwood said with a sigh. "The seas are so rich with marine growth, and whatever they feed upon, that I might as well have dunged and fertilised, deliberately. Four years, we have spent out here, Captain Lewrie. Saint Helena to Calcutta or Bombay, and back again, with but two careenings when we could be spared to fire and scrape her clean in all that time. Too few warships, too much of a threat from the French, too many convoys, and never enough time off.
"But, that's about to change!" Leatherwood perked up. "We are bound for home, at long last, to pay off. 'Twill be a slow passage, I fear… slow, but steady, as they say. Jamaica might attain a knot or two more than our Indiamen,
and that on a stout wind, mind. Your own quickwork, sir. You said you re-coppered at Halifax?"
"Last year, sir, that," Lewrie had to tell him, "so my one weed has grown apace, but, on our short test sail after the new rudder was in place, Proteus seems fairly fast, still. And, that new rudder is a tad broader than an English yard might install, so she's very quick on the helm… more manoeuvrable."
"Good," Leatherwood declared, sounding relieved. "For our slow plod North, I'll place you astern of the convoy, and will take the van position myself, do I not work out on a flank, now and again. You'll bear the onus, should the French have a go at us. With the winds from the Sou'east, and with the Agulhas Current shoving us along, even the Indiamen could make enough sail to out-foot a beam approach…"
"And, t'would be the rare Frog working far enough North to intercept us, or lie in wait, sir," Lewrie pointed out.
"Exactly, so the main threat will come from astern," Leatherwood said with a vigourous nod of his head. "The convoy Commodore tells me another ship will sail with us. What do you know of this Festival?"
"She will?" Lewrie exclaimed in surprise. "Makes sense, I do suppose, now they've rounded up their new menagerie of beasts. She's a circus ship, sir. Mister Daniel Wigmore's Travelling Extravaganza. Circus, theatrical troupe, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, acrobats, and clowns…? We escorted her here as part of my former convoy. Not the swiftest old tub, I fear, sir. Slower than an Indiaman by day, under all plain sail, and even slower at night. Lots of visiting aboard her on the way to the Cape -"
"Not in my convoy, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood interjected. "I want us as far North as we can manage, as quickly as we can manage, and there'll be no shilly-shally. I'll place her at the stern of the trade, and you can play whipper-in to keep her up with the rest."
The Frogs come after us, she'd be no loss? Lewrie thought; Just like the Russians… throw somebody off the back of the sled to delay the wolves? Spose so … compared to the wealth in the Indiamen, the Festival's not worth a groat. An amusing' prize, but…!
"I didn't much care to hear of the French having a go at your former convoy, so close to Cape Town, Captain Lewrie, 'deed I didn't," Capt. Leatherwood told him, looking pensive, and a bit fretful, setting his glass on the table between them to rub his horny hands together, a very sandpapery sound.
"The local commanders are of the opinion it was a fluke, sir," Lewrie told him, outlining the Flag-Captain's explanation that it might have been a clutch of warships on-passage simply "stumbling" on them.
"Told me much the same," Leatherwood grumbled. "And what did you think of that, Captain Lewrie?" he demanded right-sharp.
"Complete and utter horse-apples, sir," Lewrie deemed it with a derisive snort. "No one knows how many warships and privateers working out of Mauritius the French now possess. Don't know what's happening past Good Hope, but, if the Frogs have amassed enough strength, they could be thinking of raiding further afield. I believe that attack on my convoy was a test, sir. They know our monthly convoy schedules, by now. They most-like know how few ships we have on station, too. That has worried me, I'll tell you, Captain Leather-wood. And, I understand that you had a rough passage. Did you encounter any French ships?"
"Captain Lewrie, I was hunted here," Leatherwood declared with a fierce scowl, his first sign of displeasure. "It wasn't too bad at first, 'til I lost the services of my companion frigate off Ceylon to a 'blow.' I was almost of a mind, to turn back, since we were still in Indian waters, for we began to see strange tops'ls on the horizon, as far North as within an hundred leagues of Cape Comorin. Avoided them, or they avoided us, then crossed hawses with a Bombay Marine brig, and thank the Good Lord her captain agreed to see us below Madagascar, even if that was far from his usual cruising grounds.
"Should have turned back, for certain, when three of our Indiamen got into their foul water casks, and sickness broke out aboard them. That'll be the last time 'John Company' masters try pocketing the few pence difference 'twixt the prices British chandlers, and native chandlers, charge for fresh water!" Leather-wood told Lewrie with a humourless bark. "Not that Hooghly , the Bombay Marine brig-o' war, would've been much real help, if the French had been determined. Her guns were only six-pounders, and half-rusted, at that. Half a dozen British officers and senior hands aboard, her crew but two-thirds' normal complement, and most of them exiled European drunks, ne'er-do-wells, some low-caste Hindoos, or Lascars from God knows where. Might daunt the local native pirates in scabby dhows and such, but not quite the thing to go against a French National Ship, or privateer. Stayed with us to about five hundred miles East of Cape Agulhas, then had to turn back, and we had to supply shot and powder in the first place, then water and foodstuffs, the second, so they could make it back to India without starving!"
"And you saw more strange sail, sir?" Lewrie worriedly asked.
"Almost daily, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood told him, summoning his cabin-servant for a refill of their glasses. "I thought to employ a ruse. The master of the Lord Stormont agreed to hoist a Navy Ensign and play-act the part of a Third Rate seventy-four at the convoy's van, whilst I brought up the rear, and put Hooghly to work on the seaward side. On the down-wind run, Jamaica had a bit of 'dash.' "
"Perhaps Lord Stormont could play the same part for us, sir," Lewrie suggested. "My brother-in-law is one of her passengers, and he might even like it."
"I count on it, though, towards the end, after Hooghly departed, the strange sail pressed closer," Leatherwood explained, "and I'm not sanguine that they didn't finally get close enough for a good look, a
nd saw through my ruse, so it might not work a second time, if the French that haunted us decide to lurk off Cape Town, waiting for us to continue our passage.
"Frankly, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood gravelled, "I doubt I'll get a wink of sleep 'til we're above the Tropic of Capricorn."
"We've had no fresh reports of any French cruising this side of the Cape, sir. Not lately, at least," Lewrie told him, about ready to chew on a thumbnail in fret. "Aye, did they follow you… Was Vice-Admiral Curtis's staff any more forthcoming?"
"Lewrie, I very much doubt those worthies would know where, and in what strength, the French are 'til they sail round Green Point some night, and sink, take, or burn all the shipping in Table Bay!" Capt. Leatherwood exclaimed. "We've a hellish task ahead of us. Yet, from what I've learned of you from the old newspapers, with Proteus aiding me, I might manage at least a cat-nap or two before we come to anchor in James's Valley on Saint Helena."
"You do me too much honour, sir," Lewrie rejoined, torn 'twixt the expected modesty and the desire to preen, which he hadn't had much a chance for, lately. "Proteus and I shall hold up our end, sir. And, after the shameful way the French mauled us, my people will relish a chance for a slugging match against them, should it come to that."
"All I may ask," Leatherwood said, pleased with the answer and looking relieved. "Well, then! 'John Company's' Commodore is meeting on the Earl Cheshire with all captains and masters, tomorrow morning, at Four Bells. With any luck, they'll feed us… though I'm not sure I would yet drink their water, hey, Captain Lewrie? Following that, do you look for me to hoist the 'Blue Peter'… the day after I expect, is the weather fair, and the winds sufficient."
"Very well, sir," Lewrie agreed. "Just one thing, sir?"
"Aye?"
"Is it possible you bought this excellent German wine here at Cape Town, sir, I'd be much obliged did you give me a course to steer by, so I could lay in some for myself."
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