Hostile Shores (23 page)

Lewrie gave him a last stroke or two, then let Toulon be, with a faint and guilty hope that, did he check on him round suppertime, he might discover that Toulon had passed over peacefully.

He sat on the transom settee and pulled off his boots, took off his waist-coat and un-did his neck-stock, then rolled up his sleeves before rolling into his bed-cot atop the embroidered coverlet. He was almost asleep in moments, but was stirred awake by Chalky’s arrival. The younger white-and-grey cat hopped up and padded to Lewrie’s chest, to peer at him, nose-to-nose.

“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a sigh, rewarding Chalky with strokes down his back, ruffles of his chest fur, and “wubbies” on his cheeks and chops. Chalky flopped onto his side, extended his paws, and began to wriggle, eager for belly-tickling play. That could be a dangerous game for the unwary, for Chalky would nip and catch fingers between his paws, claws out.

“Must I?” Lewrie asked. “Oh, very well. I should find a pair o’ thick leather gloves t’play with
you
!”

It took a quarter-hour to wear Chalky out. Lewrie closed his eyes and tried to return to his nap, but no … Chalky got his wind back, hopped down, and returned with a ragged old knitted wool mouse.

“You really are a pest,” Lewrie muttered, rolling out of bed and giving up on his nap. At least he still had one cat who needed to be amused.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

San Salvador looked to be a pestilential place, a sprawl of low native huts and the reek of cow dung, sweat, and human ordure, commanded by a separate European quarter of tile-rooved stone buildings and barracks, and a small fort which overlooked a series of long and low-slung barracoons with iron-bound doors and a few barred windows, where captured Africans were held ’til a slave ship put in for human cargo. The river mouth ran the colour of red clay, splaying its dubious freshness far out in a delta-like fan off the coast, between gritty stone and sand beaches. The lush greenness of “deepest, darkest Africa” began almost half a mile further inland, beyond fields of millet and mealies, corrals of livestock, and paddocks for the unfortunate Portuguese who did business there. There was a three-masted slave ship anchored in the river mouth … but there was no fleet of British warships and transports.

Lewrie ordered a signal hoisted to his three charges for them to stand-off-and-on while
Reliant
closed the shore. As soon as the frigate altered course to stand in, a very shallow, crude boat put out for them, paddled by a crew of Africans wearing little more than sandals and what looked to be Red Indian–style breechclouts, with one European seated in the sternsheets. The boat came close aboard as Lewrie ordered his ship rounded up into the wind to fetch-to, so he could speak to the White fellow, a rumpled-looking man in off-white cotton canvas trousers and coat, with a wide straw hat on his head.

“
Senhor,
you weesh to enter the reever?” the man asked.

“I wish to know where the British fleet has gone,
senhor,
and how long ago was it that they sailed?” Lewrie shouted back to him.

“Three, four day ago,
senhor,
” the fellow said, scratching at his bearded cheek, and flicking ash from a crooked
cigarro
that he held between his teeth. “They take on wood, water, and meal, and go South. We have cattle and peegs,
senhor,
” the fellow tempted. “You weesh fresh meat? You trade us rum and brandy, yes?”

“No need, sorry,” Lewrie called back. “We have all we need at present. We are bound South to catch them up.”

“Ah, well,” the unkempt fellow said with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders in disappointment. “Go weeth God,
senhor.
”

“Get way on her if you please, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered as he stepped back from the bulwarks. “Shape course out to our charges and we’ll speak ’em t’see if they’ve enough supplies to last ’til Cape Town. It’s only a few hundred miles, now, God willing.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott replied, his face screwed up. “Lord, what a reek! Is all Africa this foul-smelling?”

“Cape Town wasn’t, as I recall,” Lewrie told him. “No worse than a small town in the country, back home. It’s the heat and rot in the jungles round this latitude, the smell of long-settled native villages, and the foul reek of the slave pens. Did you ever get close aboard a ‘blackbirder’, Mister Westcott? Once you do, you never can forget the odour of human misery. God knows how many in the barracoons will perish before the next slaver puts in … nor how many of the healthy chosen from that lot live t’see a vendue house in the Americas. Just get me away from all this … foulness, sir!”

*   *   *

Reliant
closed
Ascot
close enough for Lewrie to converse with Lt. Thatcher with a brass speaking-trumpet and enquire about his dwindling supplies.

“I reckon that Cape Town is nigh twelve-hundred or more miles off, sir!” Lt. Thatcher shouted over. “After victualling at Funchal, we
should
have sufficient water and rations for another two months! The Army would wish to put in to get their mounts ashore and exercise them on dry land. Captain Veasey fears that by the time we join the other transports at Cape Town, his horses won’t be able to
stand
!”

“And how might they land them ashore?” Lewrie replied with the trumpet to his mouth. “Hoist ’em out over the side and swim them in, through shark-infested waters, and crocodile-infested river? We would have to anchor at least a mile out, and God only knows how many horses would get eaten, or drown.”

Lewrie could see Captains Veasey and Chadfield bristling with concern, a few feet away from Lt. Thatcher. The troopers of the 34th Light Dragoons aboard
Ascot
were more vociferous in their disappointment that
they
would hot be allowed off the ship for a day or two of ease, either, cat-calling and booing Lewrie’s decision.

What did they expect o’ San Salvador?
Lewrie wondered;
Black whores, rum, and roast beef? And the whores for
free
?

“We will crack on South, Mister Thatcher!” Lewrie shouted to him. “Steer Sou’-Sou’west, and follow me!”

“Very good, Captain Lewrie!” Thatcher replied, sounding a bit disappointed, himself.

Lewrie left the bulwarks and stowed the speaking-trumpet in the compass binnacle cabinet, then went to the windward side to take proper station as
Reliant
hauled up close to the winds to begin her seemingly endless beat to weather in chase of their perpetual Will-o’-the-wisp, Commodore Popham and his phantom invasion fleet. It was an hour later before the Trade wind whisked away the reek of San Salvador that seemed to cling to every fibre of the ship.

“I’ll be below,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch.

Once in his cabins, Lewrie tore off his neck-stock and drank a full tumbler of water, then asked Pettus for one of cool tea, sugared and lemoned. While that was being poured and mixed for him, he went in search of Toulon, but he was not in the starboard quarter gallery, nor on the bed’s coverlet, or the transom settee cushions.

“Here, Toulon. Here, lad,” Lewrie called out.

“’E’s unner th’ settee, sir,” Jessop told him. “’E come outta th’ quarter gallery f’r some water, an’ tried t’jump inta yer bed, but ’e couldn’t manage it, poor thing. ’E’s sulkin’ unner there, an’ won’t come out f’r nothin’ nor nobody.”

Lewrie knelt down by the collapsible settee which was lashed to the cabin’s interior planking. Sure enough, Toulon was there, curled up with his tail under his chin, and his paws tucked under his chest, nodding as if unwilling to sleep, but totally spent.

“Here, Toulon,” Lewrie softly coaxed. “Come on out to me. No? It’s alright, little man. Come on out.”

Toulon opened his eyes to weary slits, uttered an un-characteristic wee
mew,
then went back to drowsing. Damning his dignity, Lewrie got down on his stomach on the Turkey carpet and chequered canvas deck cover to reach in and stroke a finger under Toulon’s chin and along his jaws. The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, but made no move to come out. Lewrie reached in and took him by the scruff of the neck to drag him out, cradle him in his arm, and got to his feet. Lewrie sat down on the settee and held Toulon close with both arms, slowly petting and cooing to him, and his cat at last shifted to press closer to Lewrie’s chest and begin a faint, ragged purr.

“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door shouted, stamping boots and slamming his musket butt.

Burly Mr. Mainwaring bustled in at Lewrie’s order to enter, carrying his leather kit-bag. With him was one of the Surgeon’s Mates, Durbin.

“Your pardons if I do not rise, sirs,” Lewrie apologised, still cradling Toulon. “Sit, please. Cool tea, Mister Mainwaring?”

“Yes, thank you, Captain,” Mainwaring said, taking one of the collapsible chairs and indicating that Durbin should take the other. “I’ve a mind to purchase the makings and serve it out to the men on light duties or in sick-bay … does the Navy Board allow me the funds.

“As to the matter you mentioned the other day, sir, about your cat,” Mainwaring went on as Pettus fetched tea, “Durbin here, Lloyd and I, put our heads together as to how one might painlessly ease a cat from life and end its suffering, and Durbin came up with a solution. Pray do explain it to the Captain, Durbin.”

“Ehm, yes, sir,” the younger Surgeon’s Mate began, shifting in his chair and swiping a mop of dark hair back from his forehead, shyly cutty-eyed to be speaking with a senior officer. “Before I came away to join the Navy, Captain, I was studying to be a surgeon, in London. I apprenticed to an older fellow, worked with him and others at some of the poors’ hospitals … and, to make ends meet, I also assisted a ‘Pox’ doctor.” He looked shamed by that confession.

“Pricking with Cowpox against the Smallpox?” Lewrie asked. He had been inoculated long ago, himself, and wondered why Durbin would be shy about that good work. There were some pox doctors who made more than
£
50,000 a year!

“Not
that
sort of Pox, Captain,” Durbin said, blushing. “He and I administered the Mercury Cure for the
venereal
Pox. In his offices, at the better brothels?”

“Ah. Yes?” Lewrie replied, hiding a wince. The idea of having a metal clyster shoved up his penis for an injection of mercury, or a narrow rasp shoved up and jerked out to break the pustules—! Lewrie all but crossed his legs to avert even the thought of such! “But, what would that have to do with Toulon, here?”

“Well, sir,” Durbin hesitantly continued, “it was more the use of the clyster for
other
things, do you see. That, and laudanum.”

“Hmm?”

“The juice of the opium poppy, distilled if you will, into the drug laudanum, Captain, is quite addictive,” Mr. Mainwaring stuck in, “and, taken beyond moderation, so depresses the rate and depth of respiration and the beat of the heart that death will eventually result in those unfortunates who abuse it.”

“I’ve been administered small doses of laudanum to ease pain, after being wounded,” Lewrie slowly said, still without a clue as to where the men were going. “It tastes vile, even when mixed into brandy with sugar, or a dram of honey. You’d force laudanum down his throat with a clyster?”

“Ehm … not his throat, sir,” Durbin said in a small voice. “Up his anus, rather. That’s where the brothels come in, Captain, sir. While on the premises to inspect for, and treat, venereal Pox, the man I worked with would, ehm … help the ladies, and rather a great many of their clients, get drunk and woozy all the faster, with a mixture of laudanum and ardent spirits … gin, mostly … up their anuses and into the lower intestines, where the bulk of digestion takes place—”

“And, where the nutritional benefits of digestion reach the body and the blood stream more readily, sir,” Mainwaring supplied, to bring their discussion back to a less sordid tone. “To imbibe gin and laudanum the normal way by liquid ingestion, the effect desired might not become apparent for some time, but … injected into the lower intestines, the alcoholic spirits and laudanum take effect within minutes.”

“I’ve seen one … courtesan at one of the better houses in Panton Street, who weighed ten or eleven stone, take two drams of gin and a dram of laudanum, together, and become half-seas-over within five minutes, Captain,” Durbin promised. “With small glasses of brandy and champagne throughout the night, she could take on any number of clients. And, when she wished to sleep the night’s work off, my old patron would increase the laudanum a bit more, and she’d sleep ’til noon of the next day. A lot of the girls would do that … to get started and tolerate the work, and to sleep soundly after.

“After a time, I was allowed to service one house whilst my old patron would handle another, for more fees,” Durbin went on. “We’d make the rounds each night…’til he got too fond of the drug and took too large a dose and died.”

“So, the dose necessary to addle a woman of considerable weight would surely put your cat to sleep, painlessly and humanely, Captain,” Mainwaring assured him. “A moment or two of surprise, as the clyster is inserted, and then perhaps a state of inebriation which may be pleasureable to even a cat, followed by a … fatal lethargy.”

“But, you’re not sure,” Lewrie sceptically asked. “No one ever tried this. The brandy or gin might turn him rabid, ravin’ mad before the laudanum takes effect. I don’t know.…” Lewrie looked down as he stroked Toulon, who was looking up at him with wide eyes, as if he was aware that his demise was being plotted. Toulon was not struggling to escape, though. But, he had stopped purring, and the tip of his tail no longer slowly flicked. Lewrie felt a lump of grief in his chest.

“Well, sir … perhaps the laudanum only,” Mainwaring allowed. “If I may examine it, Captain?”

“Him,” Lewrie corrected. “Toulon.”

“Of course, Captain,” Mainwaring replied, pausing for a moment to be chided, then fell upon his best bedside manner. He checked the dullness of the cat’s eyes, listened to the heart and respiration with a long horn, felt the temperature of Toulon’s nose, then sat back down in his chair and took a sip of cool tea. “I fear that … he … does not display any sign of improvement, Captain. He has been sleeping most of the day and night? Apart from everyone? A bad sign. Do you wish to wait ’til he is even more lethargic, we may, though I do not know if his fatal condition pains him now, and may get worse the longer we delay. As I said, no one I am aware of knows the first thing about the physiology of cats and dogs.”