“One hopes, though, that our enemies show enough courage to try us at ‘close pistol-shot’,” Westcott jibed.
“Hmm … only a Frog seventy-four would dare,” Lewrie mused. “And, what are the chances of one o’ them turnin’ up?”
Sapphire slowly returned to normal routine. The gun-ports were shut, flintlock strikers removed and returned to storage, crow levers, swabs, and rammers stowed, the guns swabbed down to remove powder smut, the tompions re-inserted, and the guns run up to the port sills to be bowsed and lashed secure. Sailors gathered round the water butts on both gun decks to slake their great thirsts, then lowered their mess tables from the overheads, fetched their stools from the orlop, and took their rests.
Pettus came up from deep below, as well, with Chalky in his usual wicker cage, and Bisquit on a leash. Once in the waist, he let the dog go, and Bisquit, who was always frightened by the great dins of the guns, whined, whimpered, and dashed about to try and take assurance from one and all. When the ladderway was clear, he trotted to the quarterdeck, tail held low and tucked, to yelp, whine, and make a Yeow sound at Lewrie and Westcott, pressing hard up against their legs to get pets, flopping to the deck planks to get his belly rubbed, and for Lewrie’s hand to find that sweet spot that made one of his hind legs twitch. After a few minutes, Lewrie stood back up and Bisquit got to his feet, too, to place his paws on Lewrie’s waist-coat for a thorough head and neck rub, his tail whisking quickly, again, and erect once more.
“Mister Elmes, you have the watch?” Lewrie asked.
“Aye, sir,” Elmes replied,
“I’ll go aft, then,” Lewrie said. “And once again, my compliments on damned good practice with the great guns.”
“Aye, sir, and thank you, sir,” Elmes said, greatly pleased.
* * *
“Tea, sir?” Pettus asked as Lewrie cast off his hat, coat, and sword belt. Lewrie cocked an ear to hear Six Bells of the Forenoon Watch being struck up forward at the forecastle belfry; eleven of the morning, and half an hour before the first rum issue of the day for the ship’s crew.
“I b’lieve I’ll have a goodly glass o’ that white wine, instead,” Lewrie decided, “the one that’s been coolin’ in the water tub.”
I think I’ve earned it, this morning, he told himself as he sat down at his desk in the day-cabin and got out a sheet of paper to begin a letter to his eldest son, Sewallis, who was still aboard HMS Aeneas under his old friend, Benjamin Rodgers, on the Biscay blockade.
“Interesting thing, sir,” Pettus prattled on as he pulled the cork from a bottle of a tasty, if smuggled, sauvignon blanc. “As we were coming up from the orlop.”
“What’s that, Pettus?” Lewrie asked, opening an ink bottle and dipping the tip of his steel-nibbed pen.
“The ship’s people, sir,” Pettus said. “They were in glad takings … happy, and pleased with themselves … of a job well done?”
“Aye?” Lewrie prompted, waiting for more.
“Joshing and grinning, laughing out loud?” Pettus said further as he held up a wineglass to the light from a swaying lanthorn to check for smuts. “One could almost say that they’re in much the same spirits as the people in your previous ships, sir.”
“Well, that’d be gratifyin’,” Lewrie said. “We’ve had too much division over Insley, or Gable’s, followers.”
“Fact, sir,” Pettus said, pouring a glass and stowing the wine bottle back in the cooling tub. “’Twixt your putting that Clegg to the gantlet, and their gunnery this morning, I do get the feeling that our Sapphires are won over, sir. More … shipmate-y?”
“Good God, is that a word?” Lewrie joshed as Pettus fetched him his wine.
“If it isn’t, it should be, sir,” Pettus slyly replied.
Lewrie took a first sip, finding the wine savoury. He would have begun his letter, but Chalky was over his fright, and found that he could keep his master from drinking and writing both, as he leapt into Lewrie’s lap to sniff at the glass and demand pets … now!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Out past the Lizard, then Land’s End, and past Soundings, the Atlantic had become a much emptier sea, and, as Sapphire’s convoy had altered course South for the transit of the Bay of Biscay, the sight of other ships had become even rarer. That was not to say that they sailed in complete isolation.
Now and again, the lookouts would disturb the day’s routine at the slightest hint of what might be another ship’s tops’ls, t’gallants, or royals peeking over the horizon, paler wee shapes more substantial than a phantom imagined from a combination of light and shade in the colours of cloudbanks rising on the Westerly winds. From the cross-trees of the mainmast, a sharp-eyed lookout could see out to twelve miles in all directions on a good day, and a ship of decent size for an Atlantic crossing, hull down but with all the sails of her upper masts standing, could be espied another two or three miles beyond that.
While the ships of the convoy went about their drills, swabbing, sail trimming, they might look warily over their shoulders whenever a strange sail was sighted, and would remain wary ’til whoever it was had passed on on a diverging course, and slipped back below the horizon upon their own innocent occasions.
Now and then, a strange sail might take half the day to emerge over the horizon, only five or six miles off, and on a reciprocal course; neutrals, mostly, Swedish, Danish, Prussian, or Russian merchantmen making their way home from the Mediterranean or Africa. They would dip their flags and pass on, growing smaller and smaller ’til only their upper-most sails were visible, then to disappear.
All those contacts, the solid and the spurious, were of great concern to Lewrie and his officers, for clever Frenchmen could fly a false flag to delude their prey ’til the last moment. He found himself on deck with a telescope, and fingers crossed for luck, quite often, for many a cautious hour ’til he could let out a long-pent breath of relief, and turn to pleasanter things.
Worse, perhaps, were the nights when only a pair of weak taffrail lanthorns could be made out. At night, lookouts were called down from the cross-trees, and the lookouts of the Evening and the Middle Watches were posted at bow and stern, on deck, where their range of view was much reduced, which meant that those enigmatic passing ships were much closer, and their identities could not be determined.
In the first week on passage, they had seen American merchant ships, too, crossing astern, or far ahead of Comus in the lead of the long column. Lewrie knew that they were bound for France, and should be stopped and inspected for contraband. That was Orders In Council, and the list of contraband goods expanded faster than breeding rabbits, but … Lewrie let them pass unmolested. There were whole fleets of Royal Navy frigates and “liners” much closer to the Yankees’ destinations which could fulfill that office, and he had a convoy to guard at all hazards. If he hared out of line and went after them, he’d leave the convoy on their own for a few hours, or order them all to fetch-to and idle ’til he’d boarded and inspected the suspect vessel, then get them back into order and under way, again, wasting good weather and a good wind.
Besides, he rationalised to himself, he wasn’t sure that his lumbering two-decker 50 could catch a swift Yankee merchantman if her master felt like making the pursuit a long stern-chase! The Americans built very fast ships! Being out-footed and out-sailed would just be too embarassing.
More cheering and reassuring, though, were their encounters with British convoys. One day during the second week at sea, there was an East India Company “trade” of at least sixteen tall and grand Indiamen, so big that they could easily be mistaken for Third Rate ships of the line. Those merchantmen were escorted by two frigates and a 74-gunner. Despite the war, the convoy system managed to maintain monthly departures and arrivals, spanning the East and the West Indies, North America, South America, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic. Six months or better out from Canton in China, or Calcutta or Bombay, they were in the home stretch with all their wealth assured safe docking in the Pool of London.