The French Admiral Page 18

  “A tasty looking dish,” Avery said as the roasted bird was placed on the mess table alongside the fresh joint of beef that had also resulted from the trip ashore.

  “Wish you could have found some potatoes, though,” Carey said.

  “You ungrateful little whelp! I put my life on the line for this, and you want something else!”

  “I like potatoes with all this good gravy,” Carey said.

  “But it wasn’t much trouble, was it,” Forrester stated, unwilling to give Lewrie credit for his pains, even if he shared the resulting largesse. “I mean . . . you were escorted and all.”

  “But in the middle of Rebel country,” Alan reminded him. “Woods as like as not full of enemy scouts way beyond reach of the lines. Miles out in those dark woods like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  He laid it on thick, stressing the alien nature of the forests and the dangers even the skilled troops of the North Carolina provincials had worried about. As he talked, though, he took a breast and leg from the bird and a large slice of roast beef, dripping juices and piping hot, to leave the rest of the bird to them. They had wine, more pease pudding, and biscuits fresher than ship’s issue from the naval stores ashore. There were whole ears of boiled corn that even rancid ship’s butter could not ruin—as much as they liked for once. Carey’s face was glinting with the greases as he crammed himself full as only a perpetually hungry midshipman could when offered a decent chance. Even Forrester shut up and wolfed his victuals with more than his usual relish.

  Not wishing to spoil anyone’s supper (even Forrester’s) with the account of what he had seen in the farmhouse, he kept silent on that subject, trying to dismiss it from his own mind as much as he was able.

  “What smells of rough spirits in here?” he finally asked, wondering if anyone had been painting below decks in his absence.

  “Forrester’s face.” Avery smiled. “Still won’t come off, Francis?”

  “I am still laying for you, and I will have my revenge.”

  A day’s scrubbing with paint remover had not done much for the splendor of Forrester’s countenance.

  “When pigs can fly,” Avery grumbled through a particularly tasty bit of biscuit soaked in steak juices and mustard.

  “What’s for dessert?” Carey asked, leaning back from the table and displaying a belly taut as a drumhead. “Any apples left? Freeling?”

  “Apple dowdy, zur,” Freeling said, making even that welcome pronouncement like an undertaker’s greeting. “They wuz gone over, zo noothin’ ta dew but smoosh ’em un’ make a dowdy.”

  “How appetizing you make it sound,” Alan replied as a bowl of hot dowdy was put down before them. Half flour, some crushed biscuit, mashed apples with molasses, and a toasty crust that might have been also sprinkled with some sugar. Alan was sure that if Freeling had had a hand in it, the cores and stems and seeds were still there, along with the peels, but he was game enough for something sweet to sort out the odd bits.

  “Then yew wooden be warntin’ any, ah takes it, zur,” Freeling said mournfully, but with a glint to his eyes, which meant that he had been planning to eat what was left of it. Damned if he would!

  “Dish me a goodly portion,” Lewrie said, gleaming back at him. “A goodly portion, mind you, Freeling.”

  “Aye, zur.”

  When spooned out, it was evident that a fair measure of rum had made its way into the dowdy as well, which made them all smack their lips.

  “You know,” Alan began between heavenly bites, “I wish we could get together with those soldiers again and go back out to that farm on the Williamsburg road. There must be other farms that have been abandoned. I saw beans and potatoes going to waste in the fields, fodder for whatever stock that survived the looting around here. Must be orchards, too.”

  “Then they may as well be the Golden Apples used to lure Diana,” Avery said, frowning. “We will be at sea day after tomorrow after we refit. And I doubt if Captain Treghues would let us ashore for any more scavenging.”

  “Not us, perhaps, but if I know anything about those Chiswick brothers and their men, they’ll be scouting out there at first light for anything they can grab.” Alan laughed easily, now getting very tight in the middle and wondering if he had room for two more bites of the dowdy, even in such a noble effort as depriving Freeling of a single morsel. “I could send a letter ashore at first light and let them know we would pay well for anything they could bring us. They did invite me to dine with them, too.”

  “No large hopes for that with all the work we’ll be doing,” Forrester said, scooping his spoon around his bowl for the last crumbs and streaks and licking the spoon thoroughly. “But, if they could provide us with some fresh fruit and vegetables, I’d gladly go shares on it.”

  “Might be dear. They’re a famished lot,” Alan warned.

  “What else do we have to spend our money on?” Forrester countered. “What would they be worth—a peck or two of potatoes, some peas or beans and a keg of apples or something sweet? A pound altogether?”

  “The thought is intriguing,” Avery said, “else we’ll be back at sea with Graves and Hood, and God knows when we put into a port, again. This might be our last chance for weeks.”

  “I’d best write that letter now,” Lewrie said. “Even if I can’t accept their supper offer. Mind, now, I said I’d take them some wine. What do we have left?”

  “Four bottles of red, one of claret, but we were saving that.”

  “That’s good enough for soldiers, provincial soldiers at that,” Forrester sneered. “Let’s send them a half gallon of Miss Taylor for their swill.”

  “If we did that, we’d not survive our next reencounter with them,” Alan said. “They’d kill us on sight after one glass!”

  “Have to be the red, then.” Avery summed up: “Two bottles of the red . . . and the claret, too.”

  “Here, now,” Forrester protested.

  “A good trade, don’t you think? We could even get some meat on the hoof. Surely there is more where this livestock came from?”

  “Freeling, bring me ink and paper,” Alan said. “And some rum.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The next morning, the ninth of September, dawned with a light fog and a chill to the air, which none of the men were accustomed to after long service in the Indies. It was a welcome chill, though, for they would be put to very hard labor during the day, and under tropical conditions it would have wrung the sweat from them until they left as much water on the decks in their shadows as they could imbibe.

  Alan’s quickly penned letter went off with Weems, who wanted to secure some new cordage from the other ships in the anchorage, if there was some to spare. In his absence Toliver filled in, with Feather, the quartermaster’s mate, who had done the chore a dozen times in his career.

  First, the newly carved and formed trestletrees and cheek pieces were hoisted aloft into the maintop, to be lashed and bolted to the upper butt of the mainmast ready to receive the new topmast.

  “Ahoy, there!” Coke bellowed. “Ready ta tail on the yard purchase! Haul away handsomely, now! Mister Forrester, do ya ready yer people on the stay tackle as she leaves the deck.”

  Slowly, the fresh new mast rose from the horizontal until the butt end was all that kept it on deck. A party of men took up tension on the stay tackles to either side and aft to keep it from rolling, swinging, or dashing forward to do hurt to the doublings of the lower mainmast.

  “Haul away, my bully boys! Haul, boys, haul!” Coke ordered. “Now walk yer stay tackles forrard, handsomely now!”

  He was in his element and enjoying every minute of it, leaving even Railsford and Treghues on the sidelines to keep silent and only jump in if something untoward happened.

  “Up an’ down, Mister Coke!” Toliver cried, leaning down to eye the alignment of the topmast with the lower mast and lubber’s hole in the top.

  “Snub ya well yer preventers! Hoist away all aloft!”

  Up the new topmast went, on
e foot at a time until it threaded through the gap in the trestletrees and cheek pieces where it was to rest. The new foot piece was inserted, and the roving of the doubling bands was wrapped firmly about it, even as other hands began to set up the newly made upper shrouds. With everything torn away, it was a lot more labor to reset the topmast than the usual drill, for the fore and aft stays had also to be installed and then fiddled with until everyone in charge was satisfied with their tension and the upper mast’s angles.

  It was halfway into the forenoon watch before the old tops’l yard, now “fished” with one of the precious, seasoned stuns’l booms and lashed about like a giant splinted bone for rigidity, could be rerigged with all the blocks, sheaves, and hardware for the braces, clew-lines, halyards, and jears. They rove it to the top tackles first to be hoisted aloft to the top platform, then secured it to the new halyards and jears to hoist it firmly into its proper position so it could be overhauled for complete trim and reef control. Once in place, the sailmaker and his crew fed the resewn and patched original tops’l up through the lubber’s hole into the maintop where the sail handlers could bend it back onto the yard, apply new sheets to help draw it down to its full length, and then brail it up.

  As the process was being repeated to begin swaying up the new topgallant and royal masts to their own trestletrees, cheek pieces, and waiting doubling bands, one of the men on the tops’l yard gave a shout and pointed out to seaward. Lewrie was higher than he at the topmast crosstrees, which had just been correctly cross-tensioned by the shrouds, and he turned carefully on his precarious and half-finished perch to see what the excitement had been about.

  The morning haze had burned off with the heat of the autumn sun, though the day was still pleasantly cool, which made for almost ideal viewing conditions. As Alan shaded his eyes against the morning sun in the east, he could barely make out an unnatural-looking cloud on the seaward horizon, somewhere just inshore of the Middle Ground and the main ship channel into the bay, he suspected. Certainly it could not be a ship in the passage—that was near forty miles off, below the horizon.

  “Riyals an’ t’gallants!” the impromptu lookout declared firmly.

  “Looks to be only a cloud to me,” Alan said, with a shrug.

  “’Tis ships, Mister Lewrie, sir,” the man insisted.

  “Might be Iris and Richmond, then,” Alan said. “They were out to pick up all the buoys the Frogs left when they cut their cables a few days back.”

  “Mebbe our fleet acomin’ back fer us, sir,” the man went on, nodding his head with the rightness of that thought. “See, sir, that gunboat of our’n out there is headin’ out ta check on ’em.”

  Alan looked closer in. Perhaps ten miles off, almost under the horizon herself, there was a ketch-rigged patrol craft that had come down from higher up the bay at dawn after taking or burning almost every boat or watercraft still on the upper reaches of the Chesapeake, so it would be impossible for the French over on the James to amass any shipping that could threaten the army on the York. Symonds’s small flotilla had not left a rowing boat for the Rebels to use above their anchorage.

  “Aloft there!” Coke’s voice boomed. “Stand by yer top tackles ta take the topgallant mast!”

  “’Old yer water, Norman, ’old yer water, damn ye,” the carpenter griped, still rasping that last little bit of smoothness between the assembled trestletrees which would receive and hold the butt of the topgallant.

  “Go down and tell the captain there are unidentified ships in the bay, and that one of our gunboats is investigating,” Alan said to the seaman who had made the first sighting.

  “Oh, Lor’, Mister Lewrie, I couldn’t do that, sir!” he pleaded.

  Cool day or not, the work was hard enough, and with so few people aloft Alan had had to do some of it instead of merely supervising, so he turned on the man quickly. “Damn you, go on deck and report to the captain as I instructed you, or the bosun’ll have the hide off you tomorrow forenoon!”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the man replied, trying to hide his worries about how he might be received by their captain in whatever mood God had seen fit to give him at that moment. Just by trying to weasel out of going he had come close to insubordination and back talk, which could cost him a full dozen at the gratings from a cat-o’-nine-tails. He swung out of the rigging with lithe skill and scrabbled down a newly rigged and tarred backstay to the deck before Alan could think of another word to say.

  “Haul away on the top tackles,” Coke commanded, and the blocks began to roar and squeal as the topgallant began to make its way up the mast.

  There was enough to do to take everyone’s mind off the sighting in the next hour, and the seaman reported back quickly and fell to work with a will, evidently glad to have survived speaking to a quarterdeck officer instead of Treghues directly. Anyway, it was no concern of theirs as long as Desperate was not ready for sea in all respects. Had the strange cloud been a host of angels come ready for Armageddon, they would have had to wait until the bosun had the ship restored to “Bristol Fashion.”

  By the time the fore and aft stays had been rigged for proper tension on the topgallant mast and its yard had been hoisted aloft to be refitted, the seaman had a higher perch over the bluffs and trees of the York peninsula and the outlying islands, almost into Lynnhaven Bay itself, and once more he called out for attention to seaward.

  “Now what?” Alan frowned as he balanced on the foot-rope of the topgallant yard to aid in brailing up the new sail to the spar.

  “Take a look now, Mister Lewrie, sir,” the man said, trying to keep vindication from his tone, though it was a given that the man had been right, had known it all along and was pointedly not calling all officers and midshipmen fools for ignoring him.

  Alan leaned into the yard to free his hands to shade his eyes once more, and this time he stiffened with intense interest. “Stap me!” he said.

  The strange cloud was a lot closer now, well inside the Middle Ground, high enough up over the horizon to reveal the graceful curving shapes of royals, topgallants, and a hint of tops’ls. The little gunboat was coming up over the horizon ahead of the cloud, as if she were leading. The cloud had split, part of it advancing toward the mouth of the York.

  “Deck there!” Alan bawled. “Send up a telescope! Ships in sight!”

  “Hood an’ Graves?” the carpenter asked from the crosstrees below them. He was not as spry as he had been in his youth, and going aloft was no longer one of his required duties, so he was taking no chances on any unsafe handhold over one hundred feet above the deck.

  “Can’t tell, Chips,” Alan replied.

  “Musta caught up with them Romish bastards an’ give ’em a good drubbin’. Mebbe run ’em halfway back ta Brest!” The carpenter chortled. “Now we kin go back over ta the James an’ shoot the Frog sojers ta shit.”

  If it was indeed the return of the British fleet, Alan realized it would be late in the day before they made their stately way into the fleet anchorage in the York, and nothing could change that, so there was no reason to be impatient. On land or at sea, things moved at their own speed, which was usually damned slow, like a four-hour dinner party. Patience was one of the prime virtues of the age, so Alan felt no hectic desire to have that telescope within the next blink of an eye. He was getting anxious, however; that old shivery, prickling feeling was back, plucking at his heart strings and knotting up cold in his innards.

  It could be Graves and Hood, he told himself as he steeled himself to show outward calm. If de Grasse decided to sheer off now, he’s landed his troops and guns. I’ve not heard the Frogs really ever risk too much with their fleets. But Graves was such a tremulous poltroon t’other day, he more like simply turned about and let them go in peace. Best, in the long run. He’s finally here, and he can seal the bay. Even a halfwit can accomplish that.

  “Glass, sir,” a nimble young topman offered, panting from his long climb to the topgallant yard with the telescope. Alan slung it over his shoulder like
a musket and scaled up to the cap of the topgallant mast for a better vantage. Hugging the mast, he drew out the tube to its full extension and steadied himself for a look-see.

  The first thing that caught his eye was the little ketchrigged gunboat, now heading straight for the mouth of the York and the passage between the two outlying shoals. She was flying all the sail she could safely carry still hull down. Beyond her, only royals and topgallants were showing—ships of some kind. It was still too far to make out any identifying details, but there were at least eight to ten large ships headed for the York—they overlapped so much it was hard to get an accurate count. He swiveled to look over at Lynnhaven Bay and saw another pack of sails headed in for the old French anchorage, merely a gentler hint of ships, since they were much further away from him, even with Desperate anchored the most easterly of the ships in the base. But he could make out two ships closer to him, two ships that he took to be Iris and Richmond. Was it his imagination, or were they also headed in to join their sister ships in the York? Bows on to him, they were now.

  “Pass the word to the deck,” he suddenly said. “At least ten sail of the line bound for the York, and an unknown number of sail headed for Lynnhaven Bay. No identification yet.”

  While he clung to his perch, topmen came up around him to haul up the royal mast and the light royal yard, to secure them into position and link the braces to the lower yards and drop new rope down to the deck and the handling tackle.

  By eleven-thirty in the morning, Desperate was a whole ship once more. The lifting lines were flaked down or coiled away for future need, and the crew dismissed to their rum ration and the prospect of hot food. Alan could have joined them, but he remained in the rigging, now almost to the peak of the royal mast so that nothing on the peninsula would block his view, not the bluffs around the town and harbor and not the lower land out near the islands and shoals. There was a meal on the mess table for him, but he could not go below without knowing for sure, so he remained out of a perverse sense of duty, swaying back and forth as the ship gently heaved and rolled and the masts slowly spiraled against the bright blue sky. He would have to go down soon, for Treghues still insisted on him and Avery coming to his cabins and reading aloud from the Old Testament; after the paint incident, they were all there now.