Dewey Lambdin - The King Страница 18

"I'd admire some, yes sir."

"I'll send you a mug once my steward's brewed up a pot for me and Mister Brainard," Ayscough said as he was leaving. "Good thinking on the leadsmen and the overhead lookout, Mister Lewrie."

"Thankee, sir," Alan replied to the departing back. Ayscough was not lavish with his compliments. To earn even that slight, grudging notice was as much approval as most men would get from him in a full three years' commission. Indeed, a red-letter morning for him!

Low marshes. Swaying oceans of reeds straggling off to dryer ground. And heat. Harsh, crushing, damp heat worthy of a washerwoman's boiling, steaming tub of laundry water and the fire that stoked it, the sort of fire that could melt iron and forge artillery.

Once past the Hooghly Bar and into the river proper, Lewrie envied the hands aloft, up where the wind still rilled the sails. On deck, it was hot as the hinges of Hell, and the pounded tar between the deck planks softened and ran sluggish and shiny as treacle.

"My God!" he cursed, mopping his face with a sleeve. Under his cocked hat, his hair was plastered to his head with perspiration, and sweat glued his shirt and breeches to his body.

"Serge or broadcloth!" Brainard sniffed, taking a rest from dashing about the decks from one beam to another to take sights on distant spires or landmarks, from tasting and sniffing at what the waxed plumb of the sounding lines brought up. "You dress like you was paradin' on the Strand in all that heavy clothin', you'll be dead as mutton by sundown, mark my words, sir. Think you have to look like an officer all the time? Think the hands wouldn't recognize your phyz by now? Shuck or die."

"Gladly," Alan agreed, doffing his blue wool officer's coat and serge waist-coat. They collapsed in wet bundles on the baking deck where he threw them-almost left puddles, he imagined. He tore his neck-cloth loose as well. And almost shivered with relief as a puff of wind touched his skin.

"Once we're anchored, there's ten thousand good tailors ashore glad to run you up some lighter clothes. Duck or serge de Nimes. I prefer the lightest Madrassi cotton, meself. You and your man hire a darzee. Won't cost more'n a half a crown for him to run you up a coat. Waist-coat, too, if you really feel you need one. But I tell you I'd not wear one before sunset," Brainard cautioned.

Twigg and Wythy were on deck, taking their ease in canvas chairs atop the poop, screened from the sun by an awning below the boom of the spanker. The servant Ajit Roy was now bare from the knees down, clad in only a loose pair of pyjammy trousers, a sleeveless white cotton shirt that billowed free round his waist and his turban. He was trotting out fresh lemon-water, while another man they'd hired off a passing native boat, as flimsy an excuse for a craft as Alan had ever seen, worked the rope of a pankah to fan them and keep the flies off.

"We've made good progress, even so," Alan said, unbuttoning his shirt down to his navel to let the light winds play with him.

"Aye," Brainard sighed, wiping his own face. "Quarter-point to larboard on your helm, quartermaster. 'Less things have changed much, there's shoals yonder I'd admire we didn't strike. Ah, there! D'you see that lump of reddish rock yonder? Looks like a squashed anthill?"

"Aye, sir," Alan replied, raising a telescope. Just over the tops of the trees, he could barely make out something more substantial than the foetid coastal lowlands and marshes.

" Fort William. Be anchored by sunset, if the wind holds," the sailing master told him. "Pity the poor Frogs. Their Bengal trading factory is far up-river from ours. Chandernargore. Even worse a sail to get there. It's a wonder they kept it after the last war."

"Hello, here comes somebody," Lewrie said, pointing to a small ship that had appeared in mid-channel, shimmering like a mirage in the heat waves. "On her way down to the sea. What is she, sir? Venetian?"

"Ha, appears to be! Local built. Good God! Haven't seen a ship like that in a long time." Brainard laughed. "Most country ships out here are built outa good, hard teak wood. Lasts forever. Seen a well-cared-for ship last a century out here, whilst good English oak rots away in five years. She's like an old Venetian caravel, she is. Mighta been felucca or dhow-rigged once. See, below the crossed spars? How she carries fore'n'aft sails on lateeners? Good to windward this time of year. Probably started life as an oared galley God knows how long ago, and got rebuilt over the years."

"I don't recognize the flag, though, sir."

"Ah, hmm. House flag. Part Portugee, part Parsee. Sharp businessmen, they are. Sort of Arabs." Brainard sighed wistfully.

Old and shabby she might be, Alan thought, but she was definitely exotic. Exotic in the extreme, just like everything they had seen in the last two days on their slow passage up the Hooghly. There were people working in fields in turbans and dhotis. Oxdrawn carts with only one axle and squealing, un-greased wheels one could hear nearly a mile away, with loads piled prodigiously high swaying along slowly. Dak bungalows here and there, a day's slow bullock-cart travel apart.

Elephants bathing and splashing mud on their broad backs on the river bank, their mahouts watching for snakes and crocodiles. Women in sarees, long head-cloths or cotton shawls out pounding clothing on the banks. Occasionally around some larger town or village, there were men doing the same labor, the dhobees from a prosperous house.

A rare Buddhist priest in a saffron robe and his begging bowl. More often Hindu priests. A local rajah or rich trader with his procession of loaded gharies, his retinue of gaudily dressed mercenary soldiers on horseback. Curtained sedan chairs borne by sweating lower-caste men that might contain a babu, a fat native clerk, or a patchouli-scented courtesan. And once, to Burgess Chiswick's delight, a column of infantry on the march. Exotic, they were, too, to one used to the sight of an English regiment. Red coats, white pyjammy trousers, white cross-belts, sandals and kurtaa shirts. Brown Bess muskets held at shoulder arms, cocked hats with neck-cloths bouncing against their necks to keep off the fierce sun and not a stitch more of European clothing on their backs. But they were well-closed-up and marching to fifes and drums, their English officers riding stocky native horses with their bearers trotting alongside.

And India did smell, as Ayscough had said: smelled powerfully. Flowers, green sap, perfume and spice-cooking aromas that made the driest mouth water. And rot and corruption, too. There was nothing about the place that could be considered a halfway measure. It was a place of strong, almost violent contrasts, and they hadn't even set foot ashore yet to discover one percent of them. Try to acclimate on the last stretch of the voyage as they could, the first sight of Calcutta set everyone's mind into a hopeless spin.

The harbor and the city banks were as busy as the Pool of London, with hundreds of ships anchored, everything from stately "John Company" Indiamen to ancient copies of galleons, from the largest to the smallest riverine trading ships. Hide-built coracles and rowing boats worked in a plague from the ghats built up along the river bank. Warehouses and docks stretched as far as the eye could see, with reddish Fort William brooding over it all, and behind the ghats there were pleasure gardens as gay as Covent Garden or Ranelagh, spacious as St. James' or Hyde Park, where in one moment rich men rode in their carriages or strolled slowly, and the next, a lower-caste mehtar would dash by carrying his bucket of excrement to be dumped. Behind the European quarter, the cantonment where it was adjudged safe to live, there were native quarters, teeming with life crowded elbow to elbow from sunrise to sunset, except in the hottest parts of the day. Sacred cows strolled oblivious through the greenest, lushest cricket pitch anyone had ever laid eyes on while the players waited for their bearers to shoo them away, gently and without offense. Native markets hummed and buzzed with commerce, and smoke rose from cooking fires, fires where brass and bronzeware was molded and hammered, where hides were tanned or clothes washed. It was all of London crammed into half the area, still huge enough to daunt almost all of them from going ashore into such an exotic alienness.

They found a safe anchorage where Telesto would have room to moor, and dropped the best bower anchor. The sails were clewed up to the yards, then brailed up and secured with harbor gaskets for the first time since Capetown. Yards lowered slowly, and squared away Navy fashion. A stream anchor was lowered from the stern and rowed out to keep her from swinging afoul of another ship. The sun awnings were rigged across the decks, and, unlike Navy fashion, would be left deployed day and night, instead of being taken in each day at sundown, for they provided some protection from the rains that would come during this season.

"Very well, Mister Choate. Dismiss the hands," Ayscough said after the last bit of tidying and straightening had been,done to his, the bosun's and the first officer's satisfaction.

"Um, the matter of shore leave, sir," Choate ventured. "Firewood and water first, Mister Choate. Ready the ship for sea should it become necessary, then we'll consider it," the captain grunted, though his own nose was twitching to get ashore.

"Bosun, watering party!" Choate yelled.

"Excuse me if I suggest something," Twigg interrupted, coming down from his regal perch on the poop deck with his servant in tow. "You'll want to rinse out the ship's water barrels, of course. I'd suggest boiling water for that."

"Er, they are a bit foul, sir, even being sluiced at Capetown not so long ago," the purser chuckled. "A bit on the tan side, our water is."

"Yes, see to it. And from my prior experience, all the water we take aboard should be boiled first. Else it'll come out of this river," Ayscough harrumphed. They had all seen the garbage floating in the Hooghly, the excrement dumped, thankfully downstream from the city and their anchorage.

"You read my mind, sir," Twigg replied with a slight bow and a twitch of those tight lips of his. "Further, though. It is my experience in Asian waters that thin gauze should be procured for insect netting, if not for each hand to swath about his hammock, then at least for the hatches that lead below. I do not know why, nor do any physicians of my past acquaintance, but the incidence of malaria is much reduced if this is done."

"As long as it does not come out of ship's funds, though…" the purser objected. "Why, the Navy Board's…"

"Silence," Twigg snapped, raising a hand in warning. "And I tire of reminding you, sir, that I and Mister Wythy are funding this vessel? You may not care about the health of the men in your charge, but I do. If only for the inability to find trained seamen enough in India to replace the ones who die. And die they will, in job lots, no matter what precautions we may take." • "I merely meant…" the purser stammered on, red-faced.

"I'll speak to you in my cabins later, Mister Abernathy," the captain snapped. "Do what… our owners suggest."