“You wouldn’t wheel us all about and challenge them, would you, sir?” Knolles asked with one brow up.

“Might depend on the odds, hey?” Lewrie joshed.

They spent the better part of the next hour enjoying their meal, right through the berry and cream cobbler, port, and sweet bisquits, sketching plans against every contingency. By the time Pettus poured them coffee, and Jessop cleared the table, they had filled two sheets of paper with their thoughts.

“Now, the only thing left is to introduce you to the masters of our transports, Knolles, and convince them that daring, and fraud, is their best bet,” Lewrie concluded. “I bought them Blue Ensigns, just in case.”

“I rather thought you already had, sir,” Knolles said, grinning.

“Shall we go, then? We’ll take my launch,” Lewrie offered.

On the quarterdeck, waiting for Lewrie’s boat crew to bring the launch round from astern, Bisquit came frisking up, whining and yowing for attention. Lewrie dug into his coat pocket for a strip of Indian-style pemmican, which made the dog blissful.

“What do you feed your Tyge, Captain Knolles?” Lewrie asked.

“Table scraps, cook extra, sir,” Knolles told him.

“Before we sail, have your Purser go ashore to Rutledge’s,” Lewrie suggested. “He has preserved, dried meats. American-styled jerky strips, pemmican with grains and dried fruits pounded in, and an host of wee sausages. Bisquit here, and Chalky, thrive on ’em. And they come in handy when I feel peckish ’tween meals, too. I’ve laid by a couple of hundredweight.”

“You think of everything, sir,” Knolles said. “But then, you always did.”

“I did?” Lewrie said, pulling a wry, dis-believing face. “You do me too kind, sir! Think of everything? Hah!”

BOOK TWO

Your course securely steer,

West and by South forth keep!

Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals

When Eolus scowls

You need not fear

So absolute the deep.

“TO THE VIRGINIAN VOYAGE”

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sunday’s weather was foul, but the winds came fair for sailing that Monday, and Lewrie at last got his small convoy to sea, beating out into the North Sea for a time to make a wide offing from the coast before turning South, then Sou’west to stand into the Channel and its chops well clear of Dover and the Goodwin Sands.

It was not an auspicious beginning, though. The masters of the transports, already leery of Lewrie’s dispositions, and loath to agree with the Navy—they were civilians, after all!—brought the expression about herding cats to mind, along with many a stifled curse. Comus led, followed in some sort of order by two of the transports in trail, sort of. Warships sailing in column were used to trimming and adjusting sail to maintain separation, and had large crews to perform the work. The thinly-manned transports, though, were either too slow or too quick, barging up alarmingly close to the ship ahead before taking in a reef, or too slow off the mark to spread more sail or shake out a reef, in danger of having the ship astern of them ploughing up their transoms!

“Two columns perhaps, sir?” Lt. Westcott muttered to Lewrie after Sapphire’s topmen and line-tenders had clewed up the main course once more. “A nice, tidy square formation?”

“Nice? Tidy? Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie growled, just about ready to howl in frustration. “The cunny-thumbed, clueless…!”

A single cable’s separation didn’t look as if it would work. He considered having a signal bent on to change it to two cables, allowing 1,440 feet between ships.

One’d think seven hundred and twenty feet’d be all the room in the world, but … no! Lewrie thought; The cack-handed … bastards! And we’re barely into the Channel, yet!

“Cast of the log, sir,” young Midshipman Ward reported to Westcott. “Seven and a half knots.”

“Just blisterin’ speed, by Gad,” Lewrie sneered. “Even we are able t’rush up and trample somebody. No, Mister Westcott, I’m not yet ready t’give up. If the winds hold direction, they just might catch on how to do it by the time we’re off the Lizard.”

Midshipman Ward was a youngster; he couldn’t help but grin, and let out a stifled titter.

“Ain’t funny, lad,” Westcott glumly told him.

“Sorry, sir,” Ward replied, only slightly abashed, moving away.

“What’s worrisome to me, sir, is what happens when the weather turns foul, and we have to go close-hauled,” Westcott went on. “They just might end up weaving Westward on opposing tacks, like so many wandering chickens. And, they’re civilians. They won’t tack, they’ll wear from one tack to the other, like they usually do, with so few hands aboard. That’ll be fun to watch. In a morbid way.”

“This’ll turn into a smaller version of our infamous ‘sugar trade’ a few years ago, is that what you’re sayin’, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie muttered to him, groaning in sour remembrance. That had been a disaster, from Jamaica through the Florida Straits then North ’twixt the Hatteras Banks and Bermuda, especially when ships bound for ports in the United States had tried to leave the seaward side of the convoy, through the lee columns!

“Just keeping my fingers crossed, sir,” Westcott gloomily said. “And trusting that the transports’ masters are professional seafarers.”

Then God help us all, Lewrie thought in dread.

*   *   *

They did begin to get the hang of it, after a few more hours, with a steady following wind, and a less-than-boisterous sea to steady all ships, making between seven or eight knots. By Two Bells of the Day Watch, one in the afternoon, Lewrie felt confident enough that he could cease trotting up and down the ladderways from the quarterdeck to a better view from the poop deck and back again over and over. He went to the forward edge of the quarterdeck and saw Yeovill coming aft from the galley with his covered brass food barge, and decided that he would go aft and eat his delayed dinner.

“I’ll be aft, Mister Harcourt,” he told the Second Lieutenant, who had the Day Watch.

“Very good, sir,” Harcourt replied, “I have the deck.”

Harcourt’s reply was a formality, perhaps too much so, stiffer and cooler than Lewrie liked. During their time in port, he had had his officers and Mids in to dine, to get to know them and take their measure, and he had noticed that Lt. Harcourt had held himself in a strict reserve, as if he privately resented the arrival of a new Captain and the loss of Sapphire’s first one. For certain, Westcott’s arrival as the new First Officer, which had kept him in his place as the Second Officer, was resented, Lewrie had surmised, and that senior Midshipman, Hillhouse…! They had both been in the same group at-table one night, and Lewrie had noticed some enigmatic shared looks between them, as if Harcourt and Hillhouse were allied in some way.

The Third Lieutenant, Edward Elmes, seemed a decent sort, as did most of the Mids, especially the younger ones, but a couple of the older ones, like Hillhouse, Britton, and Leverett, had struck Lewrie as much of the same frame of mind as Lt. Harcourt … a tad sulky and disappointed.

Thankfully, Lewrie had his “spies”. Pettus, Jessop, Yeovill, and Desmond and Furfy all berthed below among the common seamen, with their ears open, and he had Geoffrey Westcott in the wardroom to pick up on the mood of his officers. All were “Captain’s Men”, who could not pry too overtly, round whom disgruntled, larcenous, even mutinous sailors would not gripe or complain too openly, but, by just listening, the people of his entourage could glean information and pass on should it sound dangerous. Lewrie’s only lack was below in the Midshipmen’s mess, since he had brought no one beholden to his patronage or his “interest” aboard with him, and despised the practise of favouring young “cater-cousins” or the nepotism of placing one’s own sons in one’s vessel.