A King's Trade Page 12

  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 thefiddle-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’gallants, 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 p
aper boat on a duck pond, and sent her tearing off once more.

  “Ready, ready…ease down the helm!” Catterall screeched, at last, loud enough for his trumpet-aided voice to carry all the way to the forecastle. Then, “Helm alee!” after a last peek, a last breath.

  Proteus swung up closer to the wind, fore-and-aft headsails now “Flowing,” and, in such a brisk wind, the fore bowline kept fast, and the fore sheet “checked” or “braced to” in pilot boat fashion, as they would when short-tacking in a narrow channel. “Rise, tacks and sheets!”

  Tacking in such weather really wasn’t recommended; steady winds and fairly smooth seas were best, but…wearing the frigate about off the wind could end with them scudded a mile or more West of where they had started, by the time they had described a full circle and pointed her bows Sou’-Soueast…and Selsey Bill even further out of reach on their larboard bows!

  There was a heart-stopping moment when a series of combers met Proteus’s bows with wet and hearty smacks, threatening to slam her to a full stop and put her “in-irons,” unable to fall off to either beam, but the knacky Mr. Midshipman Gamble, on the forecastle, feeling what shift of wind that the men on the quarterdeck could not, ordered that the inner jib and foretopmast stays’l be flatted to larboard for a bit, which put just enough wind-pressure on her to force her over enough to cross over. Then, right-smoothly, the starboard sheets, the new lee sheets, he ordered belayed snug, and hauled in in concert with loosening the new, larboard, windward sheets, and hernias and tumbles among the foc’s’le hands bedamned.

  “Whew!” Lewrie, Winwood, and Lts. Langlie and Catterall all uttered, once Proteus recovered from her dramatic heel over to the starboard side, and she began to make way once more. “Whew!” again a moment later, as a heavily-laden cargo ship actually altered course to miss them, and passed down their larboard beam with at least a quarter-cable between them. With her captain and first mate shaking their fists and cursing a blue streak, of course.

  “Selsey Bill… again,” Lewrie muttered late that afternoon, as the headland loomed into sight once more. This time, after the turn of the tide, it was astern of them, for a wonder, could almost be said to be on their larboard quarter as Proteus angled in towards the coast on starboard tack, and readied herself to come about and hare off to mid-Channel. The winds, which had acted much like a gust-front preceding a storm, had moderated nicely, and the seas had flattened a bit, though they still broke green and white around her. When Lt. Adair, the Third Officer, directed the latest tack, the manoeuvre went off as smoothly as anyone could ask for, and the nearest other vessel that could cause a collision was at least three cables off.

  “The wind seems to be backing, sir,” the Sailing Master opined, with a wary lift of his nose and a deep sniff at the apparent winds. “More out of the Nor’east by East, now…well, perhaps a point shy of Nor’east by East, but trending that direction…it very well may be.”

  “Making our best course up on the wind East by Sou’east, aye,” Lewrie decided, consulting that mental compass rose that he had been forced to memorise in his midshipman days, so he could “box” it whenever a senior asked…usually with a rope starter in his hand if he got it wrong, and a Bosun’s Mate waiting to wield it, and breathing hard in expectation of the joy that came with serving Mr. Midshipman Lewrie “sauce” for his ignorance.

  “About that, aye, sir… a point more Easterly, does the wind continue backing,” Mr. Winwood ponderously, cautiously agreed.

  “A long board, this time, I think,” Lewrie further decided with a chart replacing the compass in his head. “With wind and tide since the turn early this morning, Captain Treghues’s trade would most-like have headed Sou’west, at first, once clear of Dover. Hug our coasts for safety from the Frog chasse-maries through the Straits, then take a slant South of West with the wind right up their skirts. Avoiding Dungeness, Beachy Head…I don’t expect we’d see them too close in-shore.”

  “Unless they haven’t sailed at all, Captain,” Mr. Winwood said with a heavy frown. “Did the East India Company wish to add one more ship or two to the trade, still lading in London, and now unable to get under way ‘gainst a ‘dead muzzler’ up the Thames or Medway, sir?”

  “The only joy we can take o’ that, Mister Winwood, is in knowing there’ll be fewer damn-fool merchant captains out t’ram us amidships,” Lewrie scoffed with a dry chuckle. “That, and the chance to flesh out our cabin stores from the bumboats in The Downs. Even if those buggers would steal the coins from their dead mothers’ eyes.”

  “There is that, sir,” Winwood agreed with a faint simper that, on him, was a sign of high amusement.

  “Two hours more on larboard tack, I should think,” Lewrie opined. “Tide’s with us, the sea’s flatter. We should fly over the ground like a Cambridge coach, thirty miles or more. Next tack…the middle of the First Dog, most-likely, then a short board at…Due North. With any luck at all, we’ll fetch some coastal mark other than Selsey-bloody-Bill! Bognor Regis, perhaps? I’ll be below ‘til then, sir.”

  “Very good, Captain, sir.”

  Once in his quarters, Lewrie paused to warm his hands over the single coal stove he trusted to be lit, under way, and that one lashed down tautly, and secured in a deep “fiddle-box” filled with damp sand. Even with the sky-lights in the coach-top overhead closed, all the gun-ports lashed shut, and the sash-windows above the transom settee right aft closed, it was still grindingly, damply cool in his great-cabins.

  Toulon and Chalky were curled up together in a snoring bundle on the starboard-side collapsible settee in the day-cabin, faces buried in each other’s fur, and had even managed to burrow a bit under the light quilt that Aspinall usually spread over the settee’s removable pad, to save the upholstery from a quarter-pound of hair…left daily.

  After two and a half years and a bit in commission, HMS Proteus was getting a little “ripe,” despite the continual efforts expended to dispel the odours of a working vessel; they smoked her with smouldering bunches of tobacco, scoured with vinegar monthly, swept down the lower decks daily, and both swabbed and holystoned weekly, but… one could not put upwards of 150 men and boys aboard in such a confined space as the gun-deck and officers’ quarters, keep six months of perishables on the orlop and in the holds, without the reek of overripe cheeses, the faint carrion-in-brine smell of salt-beef and salt-pork kegs, the salt-fish right aft on the orlop, or the stinks of the livestock up forward in the manger below the forecastle from filtering into every nook and cranny, from seeming to soak into the very fibre of the ship, and her bulwarks, beams, and frame. Add to that her “ship’s people,” who went without bathing for a week at a time, unless caught in a heavy rain on deck, who must fart, and belch, and sneak a pee in the holds or cable tiers when caught short when the beakheads were too far to walk. Not to mention the muddy fish-reek of the cables themselves.

  At sea, Lewrie got to the point where he hardly noticed it, but a few days ashore, even in such a rancid place as London with all her garbage middens and hordes of people, and the change was noticeable in the extreme. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  There was no steaming pot of coffee or tea, so Lewrie remained wrapped snug in his boat cloak and sat down at his desk, under a swaying coin-silver oil lamp that was putting out its own contribution to the ambient effluvia, and looked over the last bits of mail that had come aboard just before they departed from St. Helen’s Patch.

  His ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, once French royalty but now penniless and orphaned, had written him a chatty letter, describing how his father Sir Hugo had furthered her introductions in London Society, with the promise of sending him a new oval pocket portrait that “Granpère” had commissioned. Once she had moved away from Anglesgreen—she and his wife Caroline had had a major falling-out, with Caroline even suspecting Sophie and her “faithless, adulterous pig of a husband” with being lovers, if not fellow conspirators to conceal his overseas amours, for a time—Sir Hugo had taken her in, and, to everyone’s s
urprise, had developed quite an avuncular affection for Sophie and her welfare, and her future as an emigré. Now, he positively doted on the girl as she blossomed into a ravishingly-attractive young lady, expressing that he felt beyond “grandfatherly,” perhaps had even attained “paternal” sentiments! Lewrie still suspected the old rantipoler’s intentions.

  There was a letter from his wife, too, in answer to his brief note hastily scribbled at the Guildford posting-house. Caroline was appreciative of what the so-far small share of his Caribbean silver paid out to him had bought to improve their house and middling tenant farm. Lord, it was dry and stand-offish, though, all sums of profits from the farm, and lists of outlays made, with a pointed direction for him to write his children at their new public school, at the least, if such a chore wasn’t beyond his ability, before he sailed. And, what was this, she had asked, about rumours of some criminal deed he’d done on Jamaica? What new shame had he brought on his family name; not that it was all that good to begin with…damn him. Had he no consideration for his children’s futures, for his long-suffering wife’s repute?

  There was an encouraging letter from the Trencher family, wife, father, and daughter, which expressed their wishes for his safety and continued success. They didn’t have that much new to say about defending his “good name,” but assured him that their continual prayers were with him. Their daughter Theodora had offered to send him a package of goods for the betterment of his crew: pocket-bibles, New Testaments, and chapbooks of the newest, most inspiring hymns… along with reams of tracts fresh from the printers, of course.

  Lewrie looked up from re-reading that letter, speculating most idly (of course) on what sort of figure Theodora Trencher might boast, feeling even a tad risable at the fantasy …’til he saw the framed portrait of his wife Caroline that hung on the bulkhead facing him in the dining-coach. Odd…he’d never noticed the leeriness the artist had captured in her expression, before!