“It did?” Lewrie said in wonder. “I didn’t keep track. Secure the guns, see that the hands have a turn at the scuttle-butts, then let’s take in the bower, make sail, and fall down on the kedge.”

“Aye, sir, I’ll see to it,” Lt. Westcott promised.

“Mister Yelland, still with us?” Lewrie asked, turning round to survey the quarterdeck.

“Here, sir,” the Sailing Master said. “My congratulations to you, sir.”

“Mine to you, sir,” Lewrie replied, shrugging off the compliment with a weary modesty. “I wonder, sir … might you have a flask on you?”

“Just rum, sir,” Mr. Yelland said, sounding apologetic.

“I think we’ve earned ourselves a ‘Nor’wester’ nip, don’t you, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie asked.

“Why, I do believe we have, sir!” Yelland cried, breaking out into a wide smile as he handed over his pint bottle.

*   *   *

“There is a hoist from Admiral Hood’s flagship, sir!” one of Undaunted’s Midshipmen announced to the officers on her quarterdeck. “It is … Sapphire’s number, and … Well Done, no … spelled out … Bravely Done!”

“And so it was,” Captain Chalmers said with a vigourous nod of his head, “though I do wish that Captain Lewrie had summoned us to aid him.”

HMS Sapphire was standing out from her close approach to the shore, gnawed and evidently damaged, but putting herself to rights even as she made a bit more sail. Captain Chalmers could hear the embarked soldiers and transport ship sailors raising cheers as the old 50-gunner Fourth Rate passed through their anchorages. Ship’s bells were chimed in salute, clanging away tinnily like the parish church bells of London. Chalmers’s own crew was gathered at the rails waiting for their chance to cheer, her, too. He looked round cutty-eyed to seek out Midshipman Lewrie, and found him up by the foremast shrouds, safely out of earshot.

“Pity that the ‘Ram-Cat’ is such a rake-hell of the old school,” Chalmers imparted to his First Officer in a close mutter. “He don’t even have a Chaplain aboard! From what I’ve heard of him, it’s doubtful if one could even call him a Christian gentleman. A scandalous fellow, but a bold one. Runs in the family, I’ve heard.”

“Surely not in his son, sir,” the First Officer said.

“Perhaps we’ve set him a finer example, and altered the course of his life,” Chalmers said, congratulating himself for being one of the principled, respectable, and high-minded sort.

Then, as HMS Sapphire began to come level with Undaunted, about one cable off, Captain Chalmers doffed his hat, waved it widely, and began to shout “Huzzah!”, calling for his crew to give her Three Cheers And A Tiger!

Scandalous reprobates still had their uses.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Night on the open sea, as dark as a boot, with the Westerlies keening in the rigging, and HMS Sapphire plunging and hobby-horsing under reduced and reefed sail. The clouds overhead were thick, and there was no moon. Captain Alan Lewrie was on deck, bundled up in his boat cloak, with a wool muffler round his neck, and his oldest hat on his head, peering into the darkness to count the many glowing taffrail lanthorns of the transports ahead of his ship to make sure that none of them were veering off, or lagging. There were even more astern, a second convoy low on the Southern horizon, with its own escorts over-seeing its safety. And, far out on the Northern horizon, beyond his own group, hull down and barely guessed at, there were even more, their night-lights winking as the sea surged ships atop the long rollers, then dropped the trailing ships into the deep troughs. All bound for some port in England.

He paced about, from the windward side which was his, alone, by right, to the helmsmen at the massive double-wheel, then down to leeward for a bit, where the officer of the watch, Lt. Elmes, stood.

Looking forward along the length of his ship, he could see a wee glow from the lanthorn at the forecastle belfry, and the ruddy square glows of the hatchways that led down to the upper gun-deck.

England, my God, he wearily thought. He had no idea if Percy Stangbourne had survived the last French assaults, and wondered what would happen when he mailed that promised packet of letters for him. Most of the army was off and away, large clutches of ships sailing as they were filled and sorted into convoy groups. There were still ships waiting at Corunna for the rear-guard, for the men who spiked the guns and despoiled what was left in the depot that could not be carried away. He had no idea what their fate might be.

At least the people are in good takings, he noted as the sound of music came wafting up from below through those hatchways. “Spanish Ladies,” “The Jolly Thresher,” “One Misty, Moisty Morning” were being sung in hearty bellows. The crew was happy; they would be in England soon.

He frowned, feeling very glum, as he speculated if he would be going back to Spain, to Gibraltar, or Lisbon anytime soon. Would Thomas Mountjoy still have need of him and his ship, or would he and Sapphire be sent halfway round the world to do something else? And, there was Maddalena to gloom about. If there was no return to Gibraltar, they would never see each other, again, and he would have to send her a very sad letter and a note of hand with which to support her ’til she managed to find someone else who would see to her up-keep.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he growled.

To make things worse, the musicians below struck up a new tune, and a strong tenor voice, he thought it might be Michael Deavers from his boat crew, began to sing “Over the Hills and Far Away.”

He only could recall the few lines that Captain Chalmers had sung, even though he had tried to play the tune on his penny-whistle that afternoon.

“‘And I would love you all the day … all the night we would kiss and play, if to me you would fondly say, over the hills and far a-way,’” he mouthed along under his breath, humming the tune at the rest. “Oh, damn, but I’m sorry, girl,” he whispered. “Minha doce … meu amor.”

Over the hills and far away.

AFTERWORD

Napoleon Bonaparte, self-crowned Emperor of The French, must’ve been very bored when he decided to overthrow the Spanish Bourbon king and conquer the Iberian Peninsula. Oh, there was still England to be invaded (he hadn’t completely given up on the scheme) but he’d beaten everybody else in Europe, had Russia cowed and allied (sort of) with his Empire, and ruled the roost from the Atlantic to the Germanies, Poland (still beholden to Russia, anyway), and most of Italy.

There was Portugal, long a friend of England, that must have her ports closed and all her trade with Great Britain shut down, to complete the implentation of his Berlin Decrees and establish his Continental System to destroy British–European trade and bankrupt his last enemy. Fine and dandy, but, why Spain?

After all, Minister Manuel Godoy had cozened his country into an alliance with France in late 1804, had handed over good warships, money, food, and access to Spain’s overseas colonial ports, not that the French were in a position to take advantage of that after losing control of the seas after the Battle of Trafalgar. Spain was supine, a lick-spittle ally, and as said in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy … “mostly harmless.” Napoleon was allowed to march an army through Spain into Portugal and conquer, but occupied cities in the North and centre of Spain. Did he really imagine that by conquering Spain he also gained every Spanish colony in the world, including the Phillipines in the Pacific? Or, was Spain merely a stepping-stone to grander ambitions, like seizing both Gibraltar and Ceuta, then crossing into North Africa, marching East to Egypt (again!) and even to British-held India? You have to give it to him; the little bastard dreamed big!