A King's Trade (17 page)

“At once, sir!” Langlie answered, and departing the great-cabins right speedily, as if that snarled “Aarr!” was
not
meant in jest.

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?

B
y 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 paper 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.”