Around Jester came to the starboard tack, shallow Langstone Harbor and Cumberland Fort abeam to larboard. Chuckling again, as she passed four knots. There was a bit more chop now, the promise of the Channel’s lumps to come. Current flowing one way, tide race opposed to it, and a southerly wind cross-patched atop it all, they would be careening and bounding like a coach on a winter-rutted road soon enough. If the wind stayed from the south, and they remained at east-southeast, close-hauled as dammit, right up against it.
Finally, St. Helen’s town, and its creek on their starboard quarter! The last spit of New Grounds abeam!
“Ring up anchors, Mister Knolles, we’ve no more need of ’em. Ring up and fish, then buckle the hawseholes. Idlers! A tune, there!” Commander Lewrie demanded, utterly relieved, now that he and his fine little ship were safely on their way to making their offing.
The fiddle screeched again, in harmony with a tuning box and a fife. “Heart of Oak,” they began, and everyone knew it by heart— the former Cockerel ’s, the fresh-caught merchant seamen from the press, the hands turned over from the guard ships, those that Howe hadn’t put to sea aboard his line-of-battle ships; the ships’ boys second class down from London and Mister Powlett’s Marine Society, the Marines, and the sailors lent to him off Nelson’s Agamemnon, off Victory and Windsor Castle to work her passage home; the midshipmen, of a certainty, and the brace of nine-year-old boys first class gentlemen volunteers who’d signed aboard as cabin servants to learn enough of the sea so they could become midshipmen someday themselves.
And the landsmen from the hulks and debtor’s prisons, the volunteers from some rendezvous tavern inland, the sprinkling of Maltese seamen hired out by the Grand Masters he’d ended up with—soon they all would learn it, and know it by heart.
Come cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer
to add something more to this wonderful year;
Add something, Alan vowed to himself. Something writ large. I’ve never known a peaceful commission, a voyage that was “all claret and cruising.” Trouble . . . well, damme, trouble has a way of findin’ me. This time, though . . . this time I’m all but a captain, on me own bottom with a ship and crew seasoned just enough for starters. And I’ll make ’em even better. God save me, but I love this ship! What she’s capable of, given half a chance. What I think this ship, and I, together, can accomplish. Father, Fate . . . the Navy, beat me into a sailor. Well then, so be it. A damn’ good’un, too, I believe, at last. And who’d have ever thought it!
To honor we call you, not press you like slaves,
Oh, yes, we do press! Pressed me, in my own way, he laughed.
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Free? he scoffed. Mostly, yes, I am. At last! To run a ship my own way. Take her in that Rebel John Paul Jones’s “harm’s way.” And win! Damme, that’s been my main fret—that I wanted this just as much as family . . . maybe more.
Heart of oak are our ships,
heart of oak are our men,
we always are ready;
steady, boys, steady . . .
Alan Lewrie had never been known as much of a singer, but this time he lolloped out the chorus in a bellow, along with the hands of the afterguard and the quarterdeck people.
We’ll fight and we’ll conquer, again and again!
A first lift of the bows to the Channel chops, a sluice of sea breaking over her forecastle. The rush of water creaming alongside of her impatient flanks. A sibilant, silken respiring, it was, of a live being made of oak and iron. Wind coming stronger aloft, keening among a maze of sheets, braces, jears, lifts and halliards, an Irish banshee’s crooning moan among the stays and shrouds, with frolicsome flutterings, as luffs and ratlines danced.
HMS Jester, eighteen-gunned Sloop of War had been reborn; and reborn English. And around her beak-head rails, and new figure-head of a gilt-crowned fool, an English Channel now christened her with salt.
“Offing enough, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie decided, one hour later. “Mister Knolles, come about to larboard tack, then make sail. Fore and main courses to the first reefs. Take in the main topmast, and the mizzen t’gallant, stays’ls.”
“Aye, sir . . . all plain sail. Bosun Porter? Ready about!”
More canvas—more speed; white-hued virginal canvas never exposed to weather except at sail drill during their working-up period of River Discipline. Course-sail brails undone, drawn down by their clews to sheet them home, with a wary portion gathered in reserve about the yards to the first line of reef points. Long yards creaking around to the best angle for a beam wind—a “soldier’s wind”—powerfully long English yards, and wider, fuller-cut sails than the more-timid French practice.
More flutings and keenings aloft, more moans and whisperings. Jester began to bound over the sea, her wake-breath sonorous yet insistent. As Commander Lewrie left his quarterdeck, at last satisfied, to go below, he could almost believe he could hear her singing to herself—a chorale of freedom and power.
While around her forefoot and cutwater, around her transom post, that chuckling, gurgling rush . . .
HMS Jester, he could almost conjure, was laughing softly with delight, as she stood out to sea. Stood out to find the war.
C H A P T E R 2
Jester’s first sunset spent upon the sea, a rare and rosy-hued wonder to the west, the end of a pleasant and bracing late May day of sailing. Lewrie had no time to go on deck to appreciate it, however; he was concluding the last of his voluminous paperwork with his clerk and the purser.
“I think that should be all for today, at least, Mister Mountjoy.” He sighed, after looking over the last revisions to what was now the thrice- amended watch-and-quarter bills, and the sheaf of instructions to guide quarterdeck watch-standers as to his personal idiosyncrasies, his Order Book. “A fair copy of watch-and-quarter bills for Knolles, Mister Buchanon, Bosun Porter and Cony, and the purser here, by, oh . . . say, four bells of the forenoon. Order Book by the beginning of the First Dog Watch, tomorrow.”
“So sorry, sir, but that would be . . .?” Thomas Mountjoy asked, a quizzically amused, and sheepish, grin on his face (which seemed so far his only expression) becoming even more pronounced.
“Umphh,” commented Mister Giles, the purser, from the offhand side of the well-polished cherry-wood desk at which they sat in Lewrie’s day-cabin. But Giles was, even for one as young as his hapless captain’s clerk, a “scaly fish,” with years at sea, to Mountjoy’s “new-come.”
“Ten in the morning for the watch-bills, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie explained patiently. “And four p.m. for the Order Books.”
“Ah! Comes the dawn, so to speak, sir!” Mountjoy japed, with a theatrical overplay of voice and phyz. “So much to take in, d’ye see. I should have thought, though . . . once away from all those pettifogging shore officials, there’d bit a bit less, uhm . . . correspondence.”
Alan hoped he wouldn’t be sorry that he’d done his solicitor a favor, in taking his ne’er-do-well younger brother aboard. He needed a clerk, and when offered . . . Perhaps he’d agreed too readily!
But, he’d been fit and full of cream at the moment; and full of himself with being confirmed, fresh from Coutts’s and the deposit of his officially honored prize-money certificates, smug with his acclaim in the London Gazette that had made much ado over his most recent action in the Mediterranean, which had won him Jester, and having saved those Royalist French émigrés— men, women, and children doomed to slaughter on the spot, or beneath the guillotine, had he not been victorious.
And, full of a rather good claret, he recalled, at Matthew Mountjoy’s office. This younger Thomas, though, was a hopeless legal student, a “Will He—Nill He” sort only playing at reading law around Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and so easily drawn from his studies! Might a gallant captain—to wit, Lewrie!—prevail upon the Admiralty, and obtain Thomas an appointment? Take him to sea, away from venal amusements . . . why, he could clerk, continue to read his law, profit financially,
and return a man, with more self-discipline, hmm?
Daft, Alan thought, studying Mountjoy. He’s the forehead of an addled hen, and that, in the clouds! Writes a fair hand, though . . . He puffs and pants his way through, but gets there, in the end. Mountjoy had at least appareled himself for sea (with some delight). He wore a dark blue plain undress coat, waistcoat, and breeches; though he clung to land in his choice of hats—a tall, tapering, narrow-brimmed high-crowned civilian style. He’d made sartorial concessions to the fleet, while, it seemed, not one whit of effort to accommodate himself to its lore and lingo.
“Should’ve thought, ’fore joining, sir,” Giles snickered, removing his square-lensed brass spectacles to polish on his handkerchief. “’Cause once back in the pettifoggers’ reach, a man’d think the Papist Inquisition’s got him, if his accounts and books don’t make sense. Oh, whoa-up, there, young sir. That book’d be one o’ mine. The green’un, there, I believe?”
“Oh, so sorry, Mister Giles.” Mountjoy gaped, looking sheepish and hopelessly muddled anew, as he gathered up all his untidy piles of rough drafts, books, and forms. “But they do appear all of a hellish piece, so far, sir.”
Alan suspected that Thomas Mountjoy was too hen-headed to come in from out of a driving rain, a harmless but will-less mote who would waft through Life on the first wind that found him.
Giles, though . . . Same age, same build, same ink-stained stricture to his career; but there, all semblance ended. Giles had come up from the orlop first jack-in-the-bread-room, then assistant and clerk to some purser, apprenticed since his early teens to a dour, penny-pinching trade far longer than Mountjoy, all ledgers and finger cramp; fretting over ha’pence per gallon and stone, Lewrie shouldn’t wonder, since his voice broke.
He played the cynical, “wise beyond his years” wizard with his records and sums, an able and efficient administrator down from the Victualing Board at Somerset House, though he sang his “old tarpaulin man” song a bit too often for Lewrie’s taste. Confident in his first warrant on his own, wry and acting just a touch “fly,” as if it were all a nudging, wink-tipping, cheese-paring game; he reminded his captain of an East End confidence man, with his three walnut shells, and a single pea on a blanket, and suspected Giles had had mentors who’d been real “Captain Sharps,” archetypical “Nip-Cheeses”— and quite possibly crooks!—as his teachers.
Sadly, Lewrie could dismiss Mountjoy should he not work out, but he was stuck with Giles. Mountjoy served at the captain’s pleasure, paid the same as a midshipman (which wasn’t much worth bragging about!) and had no protected status. Giles, though, had an Admiralty Warrant, after performing Mountjoy’s job for at least a year aboard another ship, in addition to his long period of training in dispensing food, drink, clothing, and sundries. Should Jester pay off after a three-year commission, officers and crew would depart, while the purser, gunner, boatswain, cook, and a few others with senior warrant would remain aboard to await a new captain and crew. Or should she be laid up in-ordinary, Giles would live aboard, at full pay. Like the Church, it was a lifetime living.
A good purser went far toward developing a reasonably happy ship; a dishonest one could ruin even the best. Giles could be the sort who could, with dexterous and creative ledgering, “make dead men chew tobacco,” and continue to purchase china mugs, plates, slop clothing, hats, shoes, and . . . and, well—plug or twist tobacco, long after they’d been discharged-dead, discharged, or run!
So far, Alan had kept a wary eye on Giles and his ledgers, and could find nothing out of the ordinary, insisting to see, and help account for, the quality and quantity of everything that had come aboard, which Giles would issue in future.
Giles had become even more “salty,” more affably wise. But also more amenable and agreeable, as if he’d taken Alan’s warning to heart, and realized that he’d met his equal. And would settle for legitimate profits. God knew, that was enough for most pursers, when the Admiralty paid for sixteen ounces, and let him issue at twelve to the pound; and that at twenty-eight days the lunar month, not thirty or thirty-one to the calendar month. Giles should have quite enough profit, thankee!
“Right, then . . .” Lewrie said, by way of dismissal.
Giles, more used to a captain’s ways, rose at once. Mountjoy, however, cast a disappointed (and hopeful-but-sheepish, it went without saying) glance over Lewrie’s shoulder to the wine cabinet behind him, where rested a likely looking wide-bottomed porcelain decanter and some upturned glasses, before getting the hint.
Buy your own bloody drink, Alan scowled silently; that’s what your Navy pay’s for! And that remittance your brother gave you, so you could go a gentleman. Another sad shock for young Mountjoy when he’d first come aboard—that he’d not lodge in the great-cabins and share meals and wine with his “employer” after-hours. He berthed on the rancid, fetid orlop deck, with the surgeon’s mate and midshipmen.
Young, Lewrie thought, once they’d gone. Thank God, ’cept for the few like Mountjoy, the fresh-caught landsmen, and the youngest of the ship’s boys, we’re mostly experienced. His proportion of seamen, ordinary or able, was higher than usual, thanks to generosity back in the Mediterranean. Recruiting had gone extremely well, too, and now he had enough strong backs among the landsmen to do the dumb-ox work of pulley-hauley. And a positive glut of ship’s boys, who were young enough to learn the seaman’s trade; quite unlike landsmen, who stayed at the rate for years, too old and set in their civilian ways to alter.
Hands and officers young enough, full of piss and vinegar—and ambition—to know what could be done. And not so old they’d turned mossy-backed old turtles, with their heads and legs drawn up in snappish old age, too frightened of departing from The Way Things Had Always Been Done, with a thousand excuses as to why a feat could not be accomplished.
“Maiwee?” Toulon the ram-kitten inquired from atop Alan’s wine cabinet, as he poured himself a glass of rhenish. The catling’d been lurking up there in the shadows, wary of intruders into “his” territory. Arching and stretching, flexing sleepy claws as he craned his neck forward to touch noses, rub cheeks, and make lusty purring snorts of gap-mouthed adoration after a good nap.
Lewrie chucked him under his white chin, gave his white chops a thorough rub, then turned to head aft for the transom settee, to take his ease and sip his wine, where the opened sash-windows promised some fresh sea air. “Come on, Toulon,” he coaxed. “Playtime!”
“Mummer?” Toulon grumbled as he padded his fore end down the face of the wine cabinet, his haunches still atop, readying for a leap. And announcing his stunt, as an acrobat in a raree show might shout “Hopa!” and clap his hands, to make the feat look more exciting.
Toulon sprang, a prodigious, steel-sinewed leap to the desk.
Unfortunately, the black-and-white catling landed on a sheet of folio paper atop that bee’s-waxed and polished cherry surface. He and the paper skidded to starboard. And digging in his claws didn’t help a bit! Laid over slightly “downhill” from horizontal, on the larboard tack, the silky surface became a greased slipway.
Toulon sat down on his haunches, as if that might help. Surely, sitting still meant still, right? Then, he sailed off the desktop into space. And a very perplexed, and forlorn Toulon, with a contrite and reverent “Mowr?”, asked his cat gods just what the odds were he’d not come another cropper. Or how large a fool he was going to look in a few seconds.
There was a bit of midair scrambling, trying to climb the sheet of paper’s front end as it collapsed beneath him and went sailing off on its own course of perversely cruel abandonment.
“Urrff!” he grunted as he landed, immediately slinking off to starboard, into the shadows where the brace of candles on the desk and the gently swinging pewter lanthorns overhead could not shed light on his humiliation.
“God, but you’re such a bloody disaster!” Alan screeched with laughter, plunking down on the transom settee, too hugely amused to stand. Toulon was almost a yearling now, and still kitt
en-clumsy. And he’d been a most excruciatingly clumsy kitten to begin with, too!
Andrews, his coxswain, and his cabin steward, Aspinall, stuck their heads out for a second from the dining coach and small pantry. On the quarterdeck, the watch and the after-guard turned toward the open skylights over the great-cabins and marveled. What sort of a captain we got? they wondered. That wasn’t a sound most associated with a sea officer!
“Come out of there, Toulon,” Lewrie coaxed, after he’d calmed, and had a sip or two more of his wine. He got down on hands and knees in front of the pewlike sofa, a crude oak construct shackled to the starboard bulkhead between a pair of nine-pounders. Spindle posts on the back and openings around the corners, held ties for bright damask cushions that Caroline had made for him. “Come on. ’Tis only your pride’s hurt. I hope. Come out, poor puss. Towey?” Another thing Caroline had whipped together from scraps of colorful spun yarn: a rounded oval with ears and legs—Toulon’s favorite plaything.
Two chatoyant yellow orbs regarded him from beneath the sofa, slowly blinking. But mostly slit in mortification. “Meek?” came a mournful little wren-peep. God, but he was so embarrassed!
Lewrie reached under to stroke him, to offer the plaything—but he was having none of that. Toulon folded his arms, tucked his front paws under his chest, and downturned his luxuriant whiskers.
“Moi,” he harrumphed testily, past somber jowls. Bugger off, you heartless bastard! ’Twasn’t funny, Lewrie interpreted.
“Well, if you won’t, you won’t.” Alan sighed, getting to his feet. He got down his plain undress coat, threw it on, and stalked forward.
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