Yelland looked to the commissioning pendant high aloft, then to the thin clouds that crowned the heights of the Rock, squinting in thought. “I cannot recommend a closer approach to Cabreta Point than two miles, sir,” he said at last, “which is very close to the usual entry to the bay.”

Lewrie paced aft a few steps to the double wheel helm, and the compass binnacle cabinet under the poop, to double-check their course. He then took a long look at the chart, pinned to the traverse board. The convoy still sailed in column on East by North, with a gentle wind from out of the West-Nor’west.

“Mister Yelland, I’d admire did we alter course a point to larboard. Do you concur?” he asked.

“Hmm,” that worthy silently mused for a long moment. “That puts us into the variable currents, but we’d have to abandon the main current within a few more miles, sir. And, closer to where we may safely go about North, into the bay. Aye, sir.”

“Signal to all ships, Mister Carey,” Lewrie called out to the signals Midshipman on the poop deck. “Alter Course In Succession, One Point To Larboard.”

“Aye, sir!”

An hour and a bit more, and I’m shot of all this shit at last, he told himself; If we can’t make a showy entrance, then we’ll make a safe one … and our prize can make up for “flashy”.

He found himself crossing the fingers of his right hand, most “lubberly” with his hand in a trouser pocket. He would not anticipate fresh victuals, clothing, or bedding washed in fresh water for a change, nor a long stroll ashore, nor a meal and a mild drunk in one of Gibraltar Town’s many taverns. To do so might jinx it, yet!

*   *   *

Once safely anchored by bow and stern, Lewrie had to keep mental fingers crossed against possible disaster, for the bay and the anchoring grounds were not the most secure sort of sea bottom, and Gibraltar was infamous for gales that seemed to whip up out of nowhere, sending many a ship ashore to pound themselves to pieces on the rocks. Lewrie had ordered 9-pounder guns dis-mounted and used as weights to keep the anchor cables from straining in a sudden blow, to keep the flukes of the anchors from dragging free.

He’d had sailcloth awnings rigged over the poop deck and the quarterdeck and forecastle, too, for protection from the harshness of the sun, and the rare rains. It might have been late Spring back in England, but it was already a warm Summer in these latitudes. There was no protection from the warmth, though, when he took the 25-foot cutter ashore to the town quays, wearing his best-dress uniform made of wool broadcloth, long stored away at the bottom of one of his sea-chests. That required the sash and star of his knighthood, since he would be reporting his presence to the local senior Navy officer, the Governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple, and, most likely, the spy-master Thomas Mountjoy. He also took his sack of laundry, leaving it to Pettus to find a washerwoman.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Lewrie commented as the cutter neared the quays. “Almost typical Spanish, or Italian.”

“Seems all soldiers, sir,” Pettus said, taking the view in and sounding a bit disappointed to see so many troops strolling the quayside streets, some of them Provost men on patrol. Gibraltar Town had no civilian mayor, but a Town Major.

“Some of ’em drunk’z Davy’s Sow,” Liam Desmond pointed out as he tweaked the tiller. “Ease stroke.”

“That sounds promisin’,” Patrick Furfy snickered, turning on his thwart to steal a quick peek ashore, a huge grin on his face.

“Wimmen,” Desmond added, looking expectant and hopeful.

Gibraltar Town appeared a jarring, civilian appendage to the Rock, for everywhere Lewrie looked, there were row upon row of troop barracks, storehouses, and a very busy parade ground, perhaps the largest flat place available. Regimental bands were at practise in a cacophony of tunes, and soldiers “square-bashed” by companies, scattered from one end of the parade ground to the other. Not all that far off to the Northern end of Gibraltar, where the land narrowed to a long and skinny neck, were the immense fortifications. Walls with parapets on several levels, bristling with cannons of all calibres, with loopholes for musketry, the famous towers and redoubts known to all Englishmen as the Devil’s Tower and the Round Tower, where British Marines, grossly out-numbered, had fought off the Spanish and the French during the War of The Spanish Succession in 1704, they all gave the impression of a titanic giant’s castle. From up there came the faint crackling-twig sound of musket volleys as some regiment or other practiced live-firing. The Lines, as the fortifications were known, would be defended as stoutly should the Spanish come against them again, as they had been in 1704.

Desmond conned the cutter alongside a large floating catamaran landing stage. Starboard side oars were tossed, the new bow man, Deavers, got his gaff hooked to a bollard, and the cutter glided to a stop alongside the landing stage. Desmond whipped a light line round a second bollard near the stern, and Lewrie and Pettus prepared to dis-embark.

“You first, lad,” Lewrie had to prompt his cabin-steward. He had mostly gotten used to the Navy’s ways, but needed reminding that senior officers were “first in, last out”.

There was a wide gangway leading to the top of the stone quay, but it was immediately swarmed by several men and women, all shouting their wares, some in broken English or heavy foreign accents, as bad as the London barkers who stood outside their masters’ shops to hawk their goods.

“Vino! Blackstrap, two pence a pint!”

“Preeties’ girl een town, all kind! Young, clean!”

“Orange, leemon, pomegraneta, fresh from Tetuán!”

“Scatter, you! Keep the gangway clear, there!” a Sergeant of the Provosts bellowed, waving his halberd to shoo the hawkers off.

“Two pence th’ pint, arrah, Liam!” Furfy chortled.

“Sorry, lads, back to the ship,” Lewrie told them. “I’ll take a bum-boat back, later. But, there will be shore liberty!”

That mollified them, somewhat.

“I’d best ask that Sergeant if he knows a good laundry, sir,” Pettus decided.

“Aye, do so,” Lewrie agreed.

“Captain Lewrie!” someone called from the head of the gangway. “Hallo to you, sir!”

“Mister Mountjoy!” Lewrie replied, looking up and recognising his old clerk. “Have you come to collect me, right off?”

Lewrie shooed Pettus up the gangway, quickly following, to take Mountjoy’s outstretched hand.

“Thought it best, sir,” Mountjoy said. “My word, but it’s good to see you, again. It’s been what, six years, since I saw you off to the Baltic, at Great Yarmouth?”

“About that, aye,” Lewrie said, recalling how Mountjoy had saddled him with those two Russian aristocrats to be landed as near to St. Petersburg as possible, after scouting the thickness and breadth of the winter ice in Swedish and Russian naval harbours before Admirals Sir Hyde Parker and Horatio Nelson sailed for Denmark, and the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. The mad Tsar Paul had pressured Sweden and Denmark into his bellicose League of Armed Neutrality, ready to close the Baltic to British trade, seizing hundreds of British merchant ships and marching their crews off to Siberia. It could not be stood while England was still at war with France and her allies, resulting in a massive naval expedition to destroy the League’s navies, hopefully one at a time before the ice melted.

That arrogant, skeletal sneerer, Zachariah Twigg, had been in charge of Secret Branch then, and the nobles had been sent on with a hope that they could aid the rumoured assassination plot against the Tsar. They arrived in St. Petersburg a touch too late to take part, and the youngest one had tried to have Lewrie killed, all for the affections of a Panton Street whore.

“Now, what may I help you with, sir?” Mountjoy offered.