To make up the lack of soldiers, Popham had invented the “Royal Blues”, stripping all his warships of most of their Marines and as many sailors as could be spared, to add another 340 men who would be landed ashore when the time came. After witnessing the size and power of General Baird’s army of five thousand in combat at Cape Town, though, Lewrie had his doubts what a force of around sixteen hundred could accomplish. It was seeming dafter and dafter!
“How much longer, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master, who had been scribbling on a chalk slate and humming happily to himself, with a now-and-again reference to one of his charts pinned to the traverse board by the compass binnacle cabinet.
“Hey, sir?” Caldwell responded, as if roused from a nap. “Oh, well I dare say that, should this wind continue in its present slant, and at its current strength, we should be entering the Río de la Plata Estuary around tomorrow’s dawn … with the sun astern of us once we alter course Westward, which will make any reefs or shoals easier to espy ahead of us, sir. Of which the Plate Estuary has an ominous plenty, that is.”
“You would feel much better did we reduce sail and post leadsmen in the fore chains, and lookouts at the fore top, sir?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh, very much better, sir!” Mr. Caldwell agreed quickly, with a broad, relieved smile plastered on his phyz.
“Well, so would I, frankly,” Lewrie told him, grinning. “I’ve not run aground in ages, and may be more than due. Though from what I gather from my charts, the Plate’s shoals are more sand and silt than rocks?” He knocked wood for luck on the starboard bulwark’s cap-rails.
“That is true, sir … in the main,” Caldwell replied, doing the same on the top of the binnacle cabinet.
Lewrie turned away and rocked on the balls of his feet, hands clasped in the small of his back and his head tilted up to savour the morning. It was a beautiful day, bright, glittering, and fresh-washed by light rain the evening before. They had left the oppressive heat of the Equator behind after falling South of Recife in Brazil, and the days had cooled to the low eighties since. In promise of their landfall, sea birds and shore birds seen close to shore swirled overhead in small flocks, some flitting or gliding between the masts and sails to delight the ship’s dog, Bisquit, and make Chalky, who was perched atop the cross-deck hammock racks, sit up and swivel his head skywards, with his whiskers standing out and his mouth making eager chitterings and longing trills.
Lewrie petted his cat, then paced forward up the starboard sail-tending gangway to the forecastle, idly thumping and tugging at the stays to determine their tautness. He made several circuits of the gangways, stepping up his pace on the later laps. Once back aboard from their African adventure, he made it a point to exercise as much as shipboard life allowed, cramped and constrained as that was. None of them had really been fit for long marches, or all the trotting and running that fighting alongside the Army had demanded. Sometime during the hands’ spell of cutlass drill, he would pair off against one or more of his officers on the quarterdeck with his hanger and practice swordplay ’til his tongue lolled out and his shirt turned damp. That was the most demanding exercise he could think of, and a fine precaution against getting too rusty to defend himself should they board an enemy and have to fight for their lives.
Bisquit came trotting up with his tail wagging as Lewrie made a last circuit, hopping and whining playfully. Lewrie allowed the dog to rise and place his paws on his chest to give him a good rubbing, before reaching into his coat pocket for what Lewrie suspected was Bisquit’s real purpose … he gave the dog a strip of biltong, a good, long, and thick-ish piece of salted, spiced eland.
“Permission to come to the quarterdeck, sir?” the Purser, Mr. Cadbury, requested at the foot of the larboard ladderway as Bisquit went off to chew his way to bliss.
“Aye, come up, sir,” Lewrie agreed as he went back to his proper post at the windward bulwarks.
“I was wondering what to do with these, sir?” Cadbury began as he drew an ornate rolled-up document from his coat.
“I thought we’d share ’em ’twixt my cabins and the officers’ quarter-galleries, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie said. “That’s what we decided.”
“Aye, sir, but they’re not exactly suitable for such uses, are they, sir?” Cadbury told him, rolling the document out to its full length. “Too stiff a paper stock, and one would have to peel all the seals off, first. Even quartered, they are too stiff.”
“Aye, nothing like a good, used newspaper for wipin’ one’s bum,” Lewrie said with a laugh. “They might even scratch one’s arse.”
HMS Narcissus had spotted a strange sail and had dashed off in pursuit several days before, returning with a small Spanish merchant brig as prize, and the envy of every bored officer and sailor in the expedition. She had been bound from Cartagena to Buenos Aires with a cargo of general goods from the Vice-Royalty of New Granada, in defiance of Spanish absolutism which forbade inter-colonial trade. Among her cargo were several dozen large chests sent out from Spain containing Papal Dispensations, hundreds upon hundreds of them, bearing the seals and signatures of various Romish cardinals and the Pope himself in far-off Rome. Captain Donnelly had sent several chests aboard each ship in the expedition, as a jape, with notes explaining that the florid documents were “Get Out of Hell Passes for The South American Sin Trade”, which local archbishops and bishops would sell, and parcel out to the many rural churches, were there any left, to forgive the mortal sins of wealthy country people. What sins they committed later would be their own lookout.
“It’s not just their stiffness, sir,” Mr. Cadbury suggested in a softer voice. “It’s our Irish lads, and our Catholic hands. Some of them came to me … your Cox’n Desmond among them … on the sly like, to wonder if they would be … put to a use that was dis-respectful. Mean to say, sir, with their Pope’s seal and signature upon them?”
“They ain’t Hindoos forced t’eat pork, Mister Cadbury, or one o’ their sacred cows,” Lewrie said, scowling.
So much for decent bum-fodder, he thought; And the Mids are runnin’ out o’ foolscap for their paperwork, too.
“Might any use upset them, though, sir,” Cadbury muttered on. “We can’t use them to light the galley fires, make up fresh cartridge for muskets and pistols … even tossing them overside might be deemed insulting.”
“Mean t’say we’re stuck with ’em?” Lewrie frowned.
“Very possibly, sir,” the Purser said with a grimace. “Though … some of the hands did express the desire to be issued one.”
“And very well they might,” Lewrie replied, chuckling. Tars of any religion, or no religion, were always in need of forgiveness for something. “Think we could sell ’em off? No, most of our lads don’t have two pence t’rub together. And we don’t have a chaplain aboard with the authority to sign ’em.”
“Well, perhaps a Protestant Church of England official doing the signing might not go down all that well, either, sir,” Cadbury said with a snicker of his own. “But, a Post-Captain could.”
“One without sin, sir?” Lewrie scoffed. “That’s a rare commodity hereabouts. Like the Devil baptisin’ new-borns!”
“I gather they would appreciate it, sir,” Cadbury prompted.
“Oh, very well,” Lewrie relented. “They’re useless to our purposes, and not worth a groat in prize-money, so I suppose no one’d miss a few. Get me a list of those desirin’ one and I’ll write down his name on ’em, no more. No sense in temptin’ Fate, tryin’ to act like a prelate.”
“Aye, sir,” Cadbury said, smiling to have the matter settled. “Though, once ashore in Buenos Aires, they might prove valuable. The local bishop would be glad to obtain them and sell to support him and his church. We might gain six pence to a shilling each, and God only knows how much they go for when he sells them.”