A King's Trade (52 page)

Making the Quartermasters smile, too, was the last full day of shore liberty that Lewrie had granted the crew after the Commodore's conference aboard the
Earl Cheshire,
before Capt. Leatherwood had put up the “Blue Peter” pendant, now two days past. Everyone had gotten a last chance for some deep drinking in Dutch Boer taverns, a last shot of “putting the leg over” some willing, or commercial, wench, and buying remembrances of Cape Town. That had resulted in rather a lot of small, jewel-like birds in woven cages, one grey parrot with a “salty” vocabulary, an odd, fox-faced little creature called a bushbaby that was already proving himself to be a very noisy pest, and a “gen-yoo-ine”
African
mongoose, adverted to its new owners as quicker, fiercer, and a lot cleverer than any Indian mongrel the Marines had. There would be a new contender for champion, in a few weeks, it seemed. At least Lt. Catterall and Bosun Pendarves had prevented the boarding of an entire troop of baby monkeys! The ship was crowded enough with new livestock for later consumption, up forward in the ship's manger; a whole new set of piglets, chickens, goats, and two small, scruffy, locally-obtained cattle, no bigger than some shaggy Scottish breeds.

Two days North of Cape Town, they were out of the Variables and fully into
the Sou'east Trades, skirting the edge of the great counter-clockwise swirl of the South Atlantic Current, which fed like a river into the Agulhas Current to whisk the convoy along. It was just about two thousand miles to St. Helena, but the Northward passage would be much quicker than the passage it had taken to get to the Cape of Good Hope; and every hour took them farther from threat of French raiders. Hopefully. Leatherwood had ordered
Proteus
out to sea with him, fully twelve hours before the convoy was to up-anchor on the next tide, for a good look-see over the waters near Cape Town, searching for a single scrap of suspicious sail on the horizons, and had found none, yet…like Capt. Leatherwood, Lewrie was now so infected by his nervousness that he felt as if
he
would not have an untroubled night's sleep ‘til they anchored in James's Valley Harbour, either.

Where
Proteus
went from there, well…on a monthly rotation of home-bound and out-bound trades, there would be a convoy of Indiamen waiting at St. Helena; that convoy's escort force would split up, as his own had on the outward journey—the bulk of it sailing back to England to re-enforce the small escort that had fetched the homebound convoy that far. If there
was
a greater French threat on the Atlantic side of the Cape of Good Hope, there was a very good possibility that
Proteus
would be conscripted by the outbound convoy Commodore as part of his escort force. Just because Treghues had sailed away on his own did not mean that Lewrie and his frigate could consider themselves as “Independent,” free to toddle back to Great Britain. There was no formal squadron or fleet assigned to convoy duties; warships got assigned that task “catch-as-catch-can,” and Lewrie and
Proteus
had been caught! In truth, once repaired, should Lewrie cross hawses with Treghues, he'd still be under his orders, ‘til officially reassigned by a Flag-Officer senior to Treghues.

And, should
Proteus
be forced to bolster an out-bound convoy, it was very likely that such a meeting
would
occur off the Southern coast of Africa, and
Proteus
would be forced to soldier on under that tetchy man's eye for years, much as Capt. Leatherwood and HMS
Jamaica
had been stuck on grueling convoy work, ‘til the bottom threatened to fall off his ship!

For now, though, free of the land (where Lewrie just naturally found himself in trouble, more often than not) and with a single and specific task to perform, he could be happy enough. Twenty years he'd spent wearing “King's Coat,” at sea and holding an “active” commission much longer than most of his contemporaries, and he'd always felt this way, this sense of relief and of new beginnings, these first few days after sailing, when the shoreline sank away, and there was nothing but the immensity of the oceans, and limitless horizons.

Boredom could come later, as it always did, but, for now, Lewrie was…
happy. And would be happier still, if they attained harbour at St. Helena without incident!

“Is that
gunfire?”
the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, mused aloud, pausing in his perambulations along the starboard bulwarks. He lifted his nose as if he could
smell
the source of gunpowder. “My word…!”

All eyes swung to the convoy, the only ships in sight.

“Mister Larkin,” Lewrie bade the Midshipman of the Watch. “Do you lay a glass on
Jamaica,
and tell us what you make out.”

“Aye, sir!” Larkin responded, clambering up the starboard ratlines of the mizen stays with a telescope. “Signal, sir! ‘Gun-Drill,' sir! She's workin' her great-guns, and so're th'
Indiamen!”

“Ah!” Mr. Winwood said with a whoosh of a sigh.

“Why, those poor skinflints!” Lewrie chortled. “Forcin' ‘John Company' captains t'blow away money! Tsk, tsk.”

“Cut into their profits something sinful, that, sir,” the First Officer snickered, along with the rest of the quarterdeck staff. “Do they keep at it much longer, there will be angry letters sent to Admiralty about it.”

“Upset the passengers something sinful, too, sir,” Mr. Winwood stated. “Imagine being shaken from their indolent torpors, the middle of their morning naps.”

“Mister Langlie!” Lewrie called out.
“Jamaica's
signal applies to us, as well. Let us hold live firing, from this instant to Seven Bells of the Forenoon. Our own guns, and crews, need the rust blown off.”

“Aye aye, sir! Bosun, pipe ‘All Hands'! Beat to Quarters!”

What a perfectly fine morning! Lewrie gladly thought as silver bosuns' calls piped, as a Marine drummer began a long roll, and hands came scampering up from below to man the guns, cast off, and begin to serve their pieces, as sea-chests and mess-tables were slung below to the orlop, deal and canvas partitions came slamming down, and hundreds of feet pounded on decks and ladderways.

The wind was fresh, the South Atlantic was a sparkling blue under an azure sky framed by high-piled white clouds, and soon, the guns would be bellowing.

The reek, the roar, the hull-shaking explosions, and the squeal of recoiling carriages, the gushes of spent powder, all of it pleased Capt. Alan Lewrie. The live firing would make him happy, too. Even more so…

At least Admiralty lets me have powder and shot for free!
he could gloat.

O
h, it had been a grand day at sea! Even after gun-drill, the rum issue, and the crew's noonday mess, Lewrie had ordered an hour and a half of small arms practice with boarding pikes and cutlasses to whet the rust off those skills, too, after so much harbour sloth. By the end of the First Dog Watch, as the sun was sinking into the West in a spectacular red, amber, and pink glory,
Proteus
's people were spent—wearily, but garrulously happily so, if the lack of horn-pipe dancing, but the cheerful songs and music, were anything to go by. Even if the horizon to the East and Sou'east gloomed up darker than the usual sunset greys, down-sun. The farther one sailed North along the coast of Africa, once past the arid regions that bordered the Dutch settlements, the more often rain squalls were commonplace. A passage close to shore took a vessel through a zone termed “The Rains,” after all.

Mr. Winwood stood on the quarterdeck at the change of watch at six of the evening, hands clasped behind his back, and sniffing at the air again, much as he had at mid-morning when seeking the source for gunpowder, and frowning sternly.

“A squally night, Captain,” Winwood slowly pronounced, at last. “A rising wind, and heavy rain, this evening. Rains which might continue through mid-morning, tomorrow, I do avow, sir. Can you not get a whiff of it on the wind?”

“It is muggier, and cooler,” Lewrie agreed, noticing a hint of fresh water in his own nostrils as the Trades gusted slightly. As it grew dark,
Proteus
had ceased her wearing from one flank of the trade to the next, and had fallen in
three miles astern of the convoy, with the two columns of ships equidistant from each bow, and steering Nor'west with the wind right astern; yet even with her sailing no faster than those winds could blow, now and then a stronger gust caught up with them to presage a stormy night. Just as well, Lewrie decided, that it was the convoy's practice to reduce so much sail at dusk, this particular dusk especially, for it could be a rough night.

“Deck, there!” a foremast lookout shrilled. “Flagship's lightin' ‘er lanthorns! Convoy's lightin' ‘eir lanthorns!”

“Thankee, aloft!” Lt. Adair shouted back through his brass speaking-trumpet.

“Mister Adair,” Lewrie said, “light our own taffrail lanthorns, foc's'le lanthorns, and binnacle cabinet. Be sure all masthead fusees and signal rockets are near to hand, as well.”

“Very well, sir. Permission to call masthead lookouts down to the deck, Captain?” Adair responded.

“Not ‘til we've reefed down for the night,” Lewrie told him as he paced aft to take a peek into the binnacle cabinet, to see that the proper course was being steered. “Pipe ‘All Hands On Deck' to reduce sail.” Even as he ordered that, another much cooler gust came sweeping up from astern and to the starboard quarter. “Additionally, sir, I'll have ‘quick-savers' rigged on the fore course, and all three tops'ls, and… should any lurking Frog upset things, make certain that ‘quick-savers' are borne aloft to the tops for rigging on the main course, and the t'gallants. Just in case,” he said with a shrug.

“Aye aye, sir.”

Quick-savers “crow-footed” over the faces of the squares'ls to keep them from blowing out into tatters in a hard blow were a last-ditch re-enforcement of ropes to gird the sails' canvas.

With “growl ye may, but go ye must” groans,
Proteus's
achy crew went aloft to perform their duties, knowing that soon, once this last hard chore was over, they'd be piped below to their suppers; a little after that, “Down Hammocks” would be piped, and half of them could turn in for a few hours of sleep.

“Aye, t'will be a wet and windy night,” Mr. Winwood prophecied.

By the time sail was taken in for the night, and the precaution of the “quick-savers” had been rigged or stored aloft for future use, it was already raining, and the evening had gotten darker. Squalls of rain swept like curtains over the convoy from the East-Sou'east to the West-Nor'west, even blotting out HMS
Jamaica
and the lead ships of the short columns for brief moments. The seas were rapidly making up, and
Proteus
began to ride them in a more lively manner, performing a long, slow pitching motion, along with a leeward roll. The nearest ship to them, the
Festival
off their starboard bows, was pitching as well, and heeling her larboard shoulder to the seas; they could witness her taffrail lights swing down left from horizontal in slow arcs, and see her forecastle belfry lamp rise up above the taffrail lanthorns for a bit, then sink ponderously below them and out of sight as the old merchantman made heavy work of the night. Beyond her, other pairs of taffrail lights wanly glimmered, as the other six Indiamen struggled to remain on course to the Nor'west, and in line-astern of each other, trusting to “follow the leader” like sheep following the bellwether, and hoping that the lead ships knew what they were about.

Another half-hour and it would be the end of the Second Dog, and the watch would change once more, this time for a full four hours, which would let Lewrie go aft and below to his own supper. For now, he stood in tarred tarpaulins on the quarterdeck, stifling inside the supposedly impermeable hooded canvas coat, with wetness trickling down the back of his neck, and his old slop trousers soaked from mid-thigh down to his boots. He would dine alone this night, saving himself a few shillings by not entertaining officers, warrants, or midshipmen. Meagre though a typical solitary supper usually was—reconstituted “portable” soup, the last of his fresh shore greens for a salad, toasted stale rolls of what had been fresh bread, and a rice-and-biltong stew—he found it hard to wait that long. He wanted to be
dry,
to open a bottle of that
spaetlese
German hock he'd found at the last minute in Cape Town, then soak those stale rolls into the soup and slurp up something
warm,
for the rain was a chill soaker, when it was whipping ‘cross the decks!

And it did not help that the last savoury smoke from the galley funnel got swirled as far aft as the quarterdeck, bringing lip-smacking aromas of boiled pork to him, along with the sound of fiddle, fife, or Liam Desmond's uillean lap-pipes, and the rough good humour of sailors hunched over mess-tables, half “groggy” from the last rum issue.