A Sea Unto Itself (17 page)

Later that evening, Charles sat at the table in his cabin with quill and paper before him, adding to the growing letter it was his custom to compose for his wife. He wrote several paragraphs most nights and would post the accumulation of his efforts whenever he came into a suitable port. He was in the midst of describing his encounter with the slave ships and his “recruitment” of some of their crews (in addition to slavery, Penny also did not approve of impressment), when Augustus silently placed a small glass of claret next to his elbow on the table. This was his servant’s signal that it was time for Charles to prepare for bed. Charles had learned that Augustus could move very quietly for a man of his size.

“Thank you,” he said, laying down the quill and stretching his arms. “I was just writing Mrs. Edgemont about our visit today.”

“Yes, Cap’n . . . ,” Augustus said hesitantly.

Charles guessed there was more, but his steward remained silent. “Out with it,” he said finally.

“Well, I was just wonderin’, if it weren’t no trouble . . .”

“Would you like me to write something for you?” Charles prompted. “I would be pleased to do so.”

Augustus smiled.

“A letter to Miss Viola?”

The man’s face turned even darker, something Charles would not have believed possible. “Oh, no, Cap’n, I could never. But mebby if you could just pass a word to her for Missus Edgemont to read out.”

“I think that could be arranged,” Charles said with a small laugh. “Tell me what you want to write.”

Augustus pursed his lips in concentration. “Just say that I be fit. I wish she be fit too.”

“That’s all?”

“That all I dare, Cap’n,” Augustus said solemnly.

Charles knew very well that Penny would relay everything that he wrote which even touched on Augustus’ situation. When he was alone again he revised his letter to add a few details, such as how “Augustus heroically accompanied the seaman below to fetch the muster book, and bravely returned.”

*****.

Charles Edgemont stood on his quarterdeck under a blazing sun next to Daniel Bevan. Both men’s eyes fixed on the canvas aloft, currently hanging lifeless like sagging window curtains in an airless room. Five days from Bunce Island, Cassandra made to the southwest dressed to her studdingsails and royals in hopes of picking up the Brazil Current to carry them south to the westerlies and thence on to Cape Town. For the moment she made no progress. The blue-gray sea lay smooth as a table top, quiet for the moment, vast and empty in every direction.

Charles placed his sextant carefully back into its case and snapped the latches closed. The noon sighting had shown them to be at the second degree of latitude north of the equator, near enough. The Brazil Current could not be expected until seven or eight degrees south, a distance of something like six hundred miles. A puff of a breeze started from the north, causing the sails to ruffle apathetically, then passed away as if it had never been.

“I do believe we’ve found the doldrums at last,” Bevan observed dryly.

“You’ve been this way before, haven’t you?” Charles asked. He himself had never crossed into the southern hemisphere, but often heard tales from those who had.

Bevan nodded, rubbing thoughtfully at his nose. “Once as a youngster in old Ajax. We called on Bombay. Took us weeks to get through as I recall. The return went easily enough though.”

Charles knew that crossing the doldrums—a band of often windless, but always unpredictable, seas reaching around the globe several degrees north and south of the equator—was an uncertain business. Hot, humid conditions predominated, sometimes overcast, sometimes in bright sunshine. It could be dead calm for days or weeks, pouring rain or stifling haze, or sudden squalls and violent wind shifts. He had heard it said that hurricanes were born in the doldrums.

“As we may be here for a bit,” Charles said, “I want to increase the time the men practice at the guns. Once each day, I should think. They still have a long way to come.”

“It’ll be hot work,” Bevan said.

“Increase the water ration. You may start after their breakfast. It’ll at least be a little cooler then.”

Bevan nodded and went forward.

Charles stayed where he was, watching a small knot of seamen on the forecastle in their off time. They were smoking pipes and talking among themselves. Cassandra was a crowded ship now that she had been brought up to her full complement. Every inch of berthing space below decks served for the men to hang their hammocks and there was no empty seating at the mess tables. It was a peculiar logic that governed their mood. The Americans proved a stubborn, defiant group determined to show they were the better seamen, and damn all to the others. The British, in their turn, would not be shown up. They left off quarreling among themselves and fell to their tasks aloft and at the guns with a will heretofore unknown. There were angry words between the two groups, as would be expected, and an incident or two of pushing. Charles ordered the sergeant at arms and boatswain’s mates to keep a tight rein, and handed down swift if, in Bevan’s estimation, relatively light punishments. His first thought had been to distribute the newly pressed men randomly among the gun crews to bring all up to strength. On second insight, he selected four of the guns with the slowest times, redistributed their crews, and assigned them to the Americans. The result gratified him. The two groups eyed each other closely, each determined to achieve a better performance than the other. She was not a happy ship, he knew; there were plenty of tensions, but so long as the men focused on their internal differences it was less likely they would turn on their officers.

Looking outward, Charles watched a stream of wind as it crossed the almost glass-smooth sea, ruffling its surface a pale matted blue as it passed. The track of the breeze was clear enough that he could predict to the moment when the sails cracked and bellied. Cassandra reluctantly gained way, her timbers groaning gently as she glided forward. Within the half hour the breath died away.

One watch had gone below to their dinner; the other lazed about on the deck in the waist or on the forecastle. Charles glanced upward to see if the single lookout posted in the mainmast tops was attentive to his duty. To his satisfaction, he saw that the man was standing erect on the platform, staring intently forward—not that Cassandra was in any danger of having an enemy warship swoop suddenly down on them. Unexpectedly, the sentry reached out for the topmast shrouds, then began to climb upwards. Charles watched curiously for a moment. He looked around the deck for someone he could send up to find out what had excited the lookout’s interest. His eyes settled on Aviemore. He didn’t want to send the youngest of his midshipmen aloft. The child capered around high in the rigging with such distracted abandon that Charles was sure he must eventually fall. He saw no one else suitable. “Mr. Aviemore,” he called.

The boy left off his daydreaming by the wheel to approach. “How may I be of assistance to you, sir?”

“A simple ‘yes, sir’ is sufficient, Mr. Aviemore. Where is Mr. Sykes?”

“I dunna know.”

“Mr. Hitch?”

Aviemore’s eyes brightened. “At his supper, I think,” he said, smiling triumphantly as if he had just passed some important examination.

Charles decided that the boy would have to do. “Get you carefully up the mainmast to inquire of the lookout if he has seen anything of interest. Take note of what he says. Afterward you will equally carefully return to me and report.”

Aviemore turned to run almost before Charles had finished speaking. The child scurried up the ratlines like a monkey, heaved himself out over the edge of the tops and onto the topmast shrouds. It made Charles tired just to watch. Near the crosstrees the youth encountered the lookout beginning to descend. The two, a hundred and twenty-feet above the deck, appeared to converse for the briefest of moments before the midshipman launched himself downward, hooking a leg and an arm onto the mainmast backstay to slide at breakneck speed to the deck. Charles was impressed in spite of himself.

“Sir, he says he seen two sail,” Aviemore squealed excitedly. “He says they’re the . . . , the . . .”

Charles could guess what they were. “French?” he prompted.

“Aye, the two same Frenchies what we done with t’other time. Eight leagues to the south; they’ve gotten afore us.”

“He’s certain that they are the same French frigate and line of battle ship?”

“I told you what he said,” Aviemore insisted impatiently. “The same what we saw t’other time.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. “Go sit down somewhere and catch your breath.”

“I ain’t lost it.”

“Go sit somewhere anyway.”

Charles leaned against the railing, tapping absently on its cap with his fingers. He found it interesting that the two French ships of war were following the same course as himself. That they had come this far south ruled out most destinations on the Atlantic coasts of South America or Africa. The Indian Ocean seemed most likely, probably to join the French squadron at Mauritius, but it was just possible they would continue due south to make for Cape Horn and the Spanish waters of the Pacific. If he could keep them in sight until exiting the doldrums he would know for sure and be able to report the fact at Cape Town.

It came to him that he might use the presence of the French, however distant, to his advantage. The minute the lookout went below, every man jack on board would know that the enemy, the same they had encountered south of the Canaries, lay just over the horizon. It was not impossible they had heard already. Scuttlebutt– fact, rumor, or purest invention spread like lightening below decks, often sparked by fatuous speculation. The simple fact that he had sent a midshipman aloft had probably started tongues wagging. It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to work them at the cannon and aloft in these circumstances. In fact, they would expect it. There was that, Charles reflected, and the unhappy experience of their earlier encounter with the frigate; the memory of it gnawed at him. He would like to even that score if the opportunity arose—it was now personal. He stopped his tattoo on the rail and crossed to speak with his first lieutenant. “Daniel, we will clear for action and exercise the men at the guns as soon as both watches are on deck. I expect to keep them at it for the remainder of the afternoon. We will begin again in the morning.”

Before long the deck sounded with grunts and shouts from the gun crews, the deep rumble of carriage trucks, and squeals of the axles as the two-ton cannon ran in and out the gun ports, and in and out again. Charles watched with satisfaction. The men swarmed around their weapons shirtless and barefoot, glistening with sweat as they struggled with the tackle. Some of the crews, he noted, were finding the knack of heaving together on their gun captains’ commands, while others remained uncoordinated and slower. The practice continued, with measured pauses for water and rest, until the top of the first dog watch, when he ordered the men released to their supper. In the evening, a relatively constant breeze started out of the west. The lines were immediately taken up and the sails braced to their best advantage. As the last of the daylight died, so did the wind.

The next day, and the day after, and the day after that were much the same. The men struggled with their ponderous weapons for two hours after their breakfasts and two hours again before the evening meal. Each crew went through the motions of cleaning, loading, running out, and simulating firing a half dozen repetitions, timed by a stopwatch. Then they were given leave for a drink of water and a short rest before doing it again. Slower and less adept gun crews were singled out for Beechum or Winchester to pace them step-by-step through the evolutions until each member understood when to pick up the relieving tackle, which hand to place over which, where his feet should be, and to anticipate the exact instant to throw his full weight in concert with his fellows. Charles set himself the task of observing the captains of each of the gun crews, ordering three to be replaced by more promising candidates.

The air tended more hazy than clear under increasingly overcast skies. Odd pieces of wind came over the water at disparate intervals and from unpredictable directions. The breezes were universally, and sometimes loudly, welcomed by the men on the gun deck for cooling their skins and because practice was interrupted while some were called away to tend the sails. Usually sluggish, sometimes brisk, the wind pushed Cassandra ever farther southward. On the third day, a blue-black storm reaching from sea surface to the heavens passed several miles to the north, of which only the muffled rumble of thunder, like a great ship’s distant broadsides, reached them.

Day by day, more of the two French warships’ masts became visible from the mainmast tops. Charles climbed to Cassandra's masthead himself and judged that they were not more than twenty miles away. It did not surprise him that his ship was closing. The English and French frigates could be expected to make about the same progress in the light intermittent airs, but the seventy-four, with all her mass to move, would be slower.