Dewey Lambdin - The King Страница 15

"It's five shillings a day for an officer, too, sir," Alan pointed out. "Who'd be in a hurry at that rate of pay?"

"Ha, you've a point, Mister Lewrie, 'deed you do. But we'll drive this ship like Jehu drove his chariot, weather permitting."

Telesto sometimes felt Navy in the way things were run even in harbor. But of an evening, she was as much a merchantman as any Indiaman. Ayscough and Choate, and Tom Wythy, the other partner, liked music, so Telesto had a good selection of bandsmen: fifers, fiddlers, drummers and the unheard of luxury of a bellows pump-organ-that mostly for the passengers' amusement. She also had six men in the crew who doubled as bagpipers, and most evenings would perform a concert on the upper gun deck up forward by the forecastle and the belfry. Alan wished they wouldn't, but Ayscough was some sort of Lowland Scot, and doted on them. It irritated Lewrie, and put the milk cow off production. The sheep, pigs, goats and chickens in the manger didn't care for them much, either.

As for passengers, there wasn't much joy there. Alan had fantasized about a few English females taking passage to India, but no such luck. Their forty or so paying guests were all solidly male, all fairly young and just a trifle seedy in appearance. Clerks and writers-to-be, young tradesmen who'd finished their apprenticeships and were heading out where the competition wasn't so fierce. Some men like Burgess of limited means who would take military service in "John Company" as subalterns. Not one sign of a "Mother Abbess" and her brood of whores to service all that emigre masculinity out in the Indies, either. God help him, they all looked so "skint" and short of money even a card game would be unproductive.

They warped Telesto away from the stone docks on 4 February, sent the temporary "wives" ashore the next day and put the crew back into discipline. Alan got to go ashore just the once, to pick up his last personal stores and purchases to com-pJete his kit, and almost drowned in the rough harbor waters out and back in a ship's boat under lug-sail that tried its best to capsize or pitch him out.

On the dawn of 7 February, the winds came fair, and the weather moderated. Telesto sailed.

"Anchor's in sight!" Alan bawled to the officers aft from his place on the forecastle.

"Heave and in sight!" Choate urged his crew on as they tramped in a circle round the massive capstan on the lower gun deck.

"Bosun, hands aloft there! Lay out and make sail!" Ayscough bellowed loud as a steer. "Mister Lewrie, hoist away jibs forrud!"

" Murray, hoist away, flying outer jib and fore topmast stays'l! Chearly, lads!" Alan ordered. "Anchor's awash! Ready with the cat to seize her up, there, larboard men."

Telesto paid off from her head-to-weather anchorage, free of the last link with the land. They backed her jibs to force her bows around to face the harbor entrance as the large spanker aft on the mizzen filled with air and made the noise of a gunshot. Canvas boomed and drummed and rustled in the middling winds. Standing rigging that held the masts erect and properly tensioned creaked and groaned as a load came on them. Blocks squealed and sang as hands on the gangways and upper decks hauled away on lifts, halyards and jeers to raise her massive yards up from their resting positions. Drummers drummed on snares and bass, fiddlers and fifers gave the tune and the pace and the hands chantied.

"We'll rant and we'll roll

like true British sailors,

we'll rant and we'll roll all across

the salt seas,

Until we strike soundings

In the Channel of Old England

from Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!

"Braces, there! Brace her in!" Ayscough almost howled. "Ease your jib sheets," Alan ordered. "Walk 'em to the larboard side, Murray. Trim for starboard tack."

"Aye, sir! Walk away wi' the larboard sheet!"

"So let ev'ry man raise up his full bumper,

let every man drink up his full glass.

For we'll laugh and be jolly,

and chase melancholy,

with a well-given toast to each true-hearted lass!"

"Anchor's catted, sir," one of the hands told him.

"Well, the cat. Ring up the fish," Alan said, leaning over to see how the hands over the side on the rails were doing after being dangled to seize the hook in the ring of the anchor to cat it. If nothing worse than a good soaking had occurred, it was a good day-handled badly, anchors could kill those poor men. Very few sailors of any navy knew how to swim, Alan Lewrie least of all, and going over the side for any task was enough to shrivel any seaman's scrotum. Those men came scrambling back up to the deck, up the heavy chain wale and beakhead rails almost on the waterline, soaked to the skin and turning blue from the frosty air and waters. One had to stay, hung in canvas hawse-breeches, to hook the fish onto an anchor fluke to swing it up parallel with the bulwarks. His bare legs trailed in the ship's now-apparent wake, and he shrieked as the icy waters surged as high as his waist.

"Oh, be a man. Spears!" Murray the fo'c'sle captain told him.

'"Nother dunkin' lahk 'at an' me man'ood'll be froze off!" the man shouted back. "Got it!"

"Haul away on the fish-davit! Ring her up!"

"Let fall courses! Starboard division, hands to the braces!" they ordered from back aft.

There was enough labor for a warship's crew of 650 men usually allotted to such a vessel. With the lower deck artillery mostly gone, Telesto had more a frigate's complement of 250, and everyone had to bear a hand to see her safely out of harbor. Had she truly been a civilian ship, she would not have carried 100 all told, and some of her men would already have been ruptured.

So it was half an hour before they had her put into proper order, with one reef in the courses on the lowest yards, one reef in the topsails, the royals raised at two reefs on the fore and main-mast, and the spritsail under the jib boom and bowsprit set to take advantage of the northerly wind. Gradually, the confusion shook down to a pull at this, a tug on that, and the rat's nest of heavy running rigging was coiled up, flaked down, hung on rails in giant bights and out of the way. Already the galley funnel was smoking as the first meal at sea was being boiled in the steep-tubs.

"Starboard has the watch. Dismiss the larboard watch below!"

Alan gave everything a last once-over and went aft along the starboard gangway to the quarterdeck.

"Oh, for God's sake, gentlemen, please!" he shouted to the passengers and landsmen of the crew, who were experiencing their first bout of seasickness as the ship began to feel the Channel morion. "If you have to spew, do it to larboard, over there. Downwind so it won't blow back on you, hey? Downwind so I won't have to send you over the side to scrub off your breakfasts. Oh, not on the deck, you oaf! Sorry, Burgess. Didn't recognize you with your face that particular shade of green."

"Oh, God, I'm so ill I think I could die," Burgess wailed in his misery as Alan tried to help him to his feet.

"You won't die of it," Alan offered. "You only wish you could."

"You heartless bloo… bloo… burgck!" Chiswick retched, and cast up more of his accounts on the starboard bulwarks.

"Were you ill when you sailed back from New York to Charleston? From Charleston to England?" Alan inquired.

"N… no," Burgess sighed as Alan led him to the larboard side of the ship, across the quarterdeck to the lee rail.

"Well, you're going like the town drains now, I must say," Alan said cheerfully. 'Tell you what. Send down to the passengers' mess. Get a brimming bumper of hot rum. Stay up here on deck. The cold air will brace you right up. For God's sake, don't watch the ocean close-aboard! Stare out at the horizon. Think pleasant thoughts," he added in closing, unable to help himself and trying hard not to grin.

"Bastard!" Burgess hissed.

"I'm on watch, so I'll leave you to it for now," Alan sighed. "Steward?"

He went aft to stand by the sheltered double wheel, where four quartermasters threw their weight on the helm as Telesto butted her way through the off-shore Channel chop. There was now and then some hint of the Atlantic to come, a long roller cross-set to the chop. The wind, once out of shelter of the coast, was a live thing that tried to throw the ship's head down southerly for the coast of France, requiring those four men's strength to hold her course. Captain Ayscough took a last look around, nodded to the second officer, Mr. Percival, and took himself aft under the poop into the passageway to his great cabins right in the stem. Percival strolled up the canted deck from amidships to the windward rail, taking a look at the compass card and grunting his satisfaction in passing.

Alan didn't think he was going to like Percival. The man was one of those massive beasts, all chest and arms, with a neck like a breeding bull, and a heavy jaw. Percival had the brow ridge of a mountain gorilla, and looked to be the sort who could break oak beams with his bare hands.

He was certainly the sort of fellow who had grown up being the biggest and toughest of his playmates, the one who enjoyed being the top-dog in the pack, and would fight anyone to keep his status. In the last week, they had sparred, verbally so far. Even asking for the jam pot was a challenge to Percival's dominance.

"All prick and no personality," Alan muttered to himself, and one of the quartermasters grinned at the comment as he shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. "West sou'west, half west, as she goes."

"Aye, sir."

Other than Percival, the wardroom was a fairly decent gathering. There was Choate, bluff and steady, glad to have active employment now the war was over. He had a wife and family in Harwich, and was more in need of full pay than most. The third officer, Colin McTaggart, was one of Ayscough's prot6-ges, a slim and wiry young fellow of twenty-five or so. He had black hair as curly as a goat, dark eyes and a pug nose. Being a Scot, he was better educated than most young men who joined the Navy, and was enjoyable to converse with. So far.

To make room for their super-cargo (Twigg and his mostly unseen partner Tom Wythy) the sailing master, one Mr. Brainard, had been shifted below a deck to the officers' wardroom. He was another of those mysteries, like Ajit Roy- brought in on account of his familiarity with Asian waters. He _ was also, like Twigg and Wythy, civilian in origin, never having served in the Royal Navy. Brainard had a civilian's usual disdain for the Navy and its way of doing things. A sneer here, a lifted eyebrow there and a heavy sigh or two of exasperation met any evolution that differed from merchantman practice.

Brainard was as roly-poly as a Toby jug, but held no cheer, and sheltered his past, and any conversation, behind an aloof air of duty. He was as weathered and dried as a piece of hawse-buckler leather, baked to a permanent brick color. So far, he had not been seen to imbibe anything but water or small beer, or crack the slightest smile in the mess. Indeed, it would have been hard to determine if he had any facial expressions at all, since he swathed himself in the heaviest grogram watchcoat even below decks where a small coal-fired stove attempted to warm the wardroom. It seemed a chore to remove his mittens so he could partake of his meals. And the one time Alan had peeked through the opened door of his cabin as one of the ship's boys cleaned it, the bunk had been mounded with no less than four blankets.