H. M. S. Cockerel, page 16
“Very good, Mister Lewrie, you may set your regular watch-bill.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mister Scott, you have the watch. Bosun, pipe the change of watch. Larboard division on deck, starboard division to be relieved.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Bosun Fairclough shouted back from the waist. He hauled out his silver bosun’s pipe and began a shrill on the “Spithead Nightingale.”
“Well done, Mister Fairclough!” Sir Thomas called down to him, after his pipe was done, and he’d bellowed his orders in a voice that could carry to windward in a full gale. “Still have it, I see.”
“Aye, Sir Thomas, an’ grand it be t’see ya once again, sir!”
“You were shipmates, Sir Thomas?” Lewrie asked, trying to find a polite way of mopping his streaming face with a handkerchief, after a long, trying morning of funk sweat.
“ Robust, when ‘Terrible Toby’ had his first warrant, and I was fourth officer, sir,” Sir Thomas chuckled. “I went shares to purchase his pipe. Damn’ good man, is ‘Terrible Toby.’”
“And still is, Sir Thomas,” Lewrie assured him.
“I am gratified to hear it, sir. What time do you make it?”
“Uhm . . . half-past noon, sir,” Lewrie replied, after producing his watch from a fob pocket in his breeches.
“My apologies for delaying the hands’ dinner, then. And ‘Clear Decks and Up-Spirits.’ Is your Captain Braxton one to ‘Splice the Main-Brace,’ Mister Lewrie?”
“No, Sir Thomas, he is not. So far, this passage, at least.”
Alan imparted that with a straight face, biting his cheek.
“Pity. I should not wish to call for anything your captain may not allow. But . . . they did well, I thought. Did they not, sir?”
“Very well, Captain Byard,” Lewrie agreed.
“Then it is my wish that you, this once at least, indulge me.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mister Fairclough . . . Mister Husie? Capt. Sir Thomas Byard commands we ‘Splice the Main-Brace’!”
That raised perhaps the first cheer ever heard aboard Cockerel. The daily rum issue would be full measure, with no deductions for men on punitive deprivement, no “sippers” or “gulpers” owed amongst them.
“Three cheer f’r th’ flag-cap’m, lads!” Fairclough demanded of them, and it was lustily answered: “Hip hip . . . hooray!”
Toady, Lewrie thought cynically. Still . . . maybe he thinks Sir Thomas’ll pluck him out of this damn ship. Hmm, might suit! Toby!
“You smile, Mister Lewrie?”
“Sorry, sir,” Alan sobered at once. “It’s just . . . hard to feature Mister Fairclough having a diminuitive of his Christian name.”
“Called him ‘Terrible,’ ’cause he was a holy terror. Eyes in the back of his head, bad as a master-at-arms, was Toby. Taut hand. Firm but fair, though, once he’d seasoned,” Sir Thomas reminisced with joy. “I seem to recall . . . one of our frigate captains told me of you, sir. I believe you have the good fortune to own an acquaintance with Keith Ashburn, of Tempest? ”
“Keith, sir?” Lewrie grinned completely, his first of the day. “Aye, Sir Thomas, I do. Pray, sir, do you meet with him in future, I would be much obliged should you be able to give to him my warmest and most heartfelt regards. And my congratulations he’s made ‘post.’”
“And his to you, sir, had it not slipped my mind until this instant,” Sir Thomas nodded. “I believe, further, that he told me you had a sobriquet of your own, sir. ‘Ram-cat’ Lewrie, you’re known as? How come you by that, sir?”
“Uhm . . . my choice of pet aboard ship, sir,” Alan fumbled, feeling that was the safest explanation.
“Ah, I see. Lady Byard’s fond of ’em. God knows why. Eat the dormice . . . heartbreak in the nursery, then! Give me a good hound any day,” Sir Thomas grumped. “Odd. Mister Lewrie, other than fresh meat on the hoof, forrud in the manger, I can’t recall any animals aboard. You do not, this commission, bring a pet with you?”
“Captain Braxton does not allow pets, Captain Byard.”
“Devil you say,” Sir Thomas snapped. “ Windsor Castle ’s loaded with ’em. I’ve a pup of my own, from the last litter. Just the one, o’ course, but . . . pets do wonders to improve the morale of the hands.”
“I quite agree, Sir Thomas,” Alan answered quickly.
“I also note . . .” the flag-captain said, pulling at his nose once more, “your crew labours in dead silence. E’en now . . . yonder. Now they’re queued up for their grog, they’re quiet as mice. Why?”
“Captain’s orders, sir. He prefers it that way.”
“Good practice, perhaps . . . no bawling aloft and back. A twitch of a halliard is good as a bellow. ’Specially in a raw-blowing gale, a tug on a brace is as good as a wink. Yet . . . any skylarking allowed, sir? ‘Make and Mend’? ‘Rope-Yarn’ Sundays? Hornpipes in the Dogs?”
“Uhm . . . the captain is not completely satisfied with them yet, Sir Thomas,” Lewrie squirmed, trying to find a safe answer, yet a way to impart some clue—and wishing, not for the first time, that a junior officer could just blurt out raw truth to a senior. “One may not presume to speak for one’s commanding officer, sir, toward his motives, but . . . we’re a new crew, with most of them landsmen and lubbers. And it may be that Captain Braxton is more used to a well-drilled ‘John Company’ crew. They have not yet met his high standards, Captain Byard.”
“Raw men, that obtains in every ship in the Fleet, Mister Lewrie,” Sir Thomas scoffed. “I cannot guess your captain’s standards, either, but . . . were I a younger man, entrusted with such a smart frigate, I’d be over the moon that my crew had shaken down so nicely in such brief practice.”
That did not require an answer, until Sir Thomas pressed him to give an opinion; all Alan could do was nod enthusiastically.
“Well, hard as I pressed, I can find no fault in Cockerel, sir. She’s weathered my scrutiny smart as paint. All of you did.”
“Thankee kindly for your good opinion, Sir Thomas.”
“Keep it up, though,” Byard warned in a softer, more intimate voice. “I don’t need tell you my admiral’s . . . wroth with you.”
“Me, sir?” Oh, damme!
“With Cockerel, I should have said,” Byard expanded. “A convoy . . . a deuced rich Frog convoy, and all that prize money, lost? And a French national ship allowed a laugh at the Royal Navy’s expense. More to the point, sir, at Admiral Cosby’s expense, d’ye see.”
“I should imagine so, Sir Thomas,” Alan nodded somberly.
“Deaf, dumb and blind, swanning about like a fart in a trance, and cunny-thumbed seamanship . . . dear Lord, sir!” Sir Thomas winced, as if recalling his vice-admiral’s tirade of the day before.
It cheered Lewrie to imagine that tirade, though; surely Captain Braxton had spent the past six hours in a living Hell, and had gotten at least the afterglow of all that rancour heaped upon his head, soon as he’d gained Cosby’s great-cabins.
“Had this ship not performed so well this morning, well, then . . . heads would have rolled, sir, indeed they would have.”
Good God, I saved the bastard from dismissal, Alan wondered? Or did I save myself? No heads to roll, no brutal shaking up, then? What a bleak idea. More of the bloody same! With official sanction!
“Order your officer of the watch to close Windsor Castle, Mister Lewrie,” Sir Thomas instructed. “Put us under her lee once more, and I shall take my leave of you.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mister Scott! Stations for wearing ship. Close the flagship, in her lee.”
“Very good, sir,” Scott rejoined, then began bawling orders.
“That will give me a few minutes to speak with ‘Terrible Toby.’ Before I do, though . . .” Sir Thomas concluded with a searching glance.
“Aye, Sir Thomas?”
“Is there anything pertinent I might be remiss in asking, sir? Any matter you’d care to impart concerning Cockerel? ”
Oh, Christ, Lewrie sagged in bewilderment; I can’t! One simply can’t; it’s not on. That’s insubordination, disloyalty. He seems as if he sees what’s going on, but . . . ! It’s not a direct order to tell him, it’s only a request. God, make it order!
“I . . . there is nothing which strikes me at present, Sir Thomas,” he was forced to intone, though keeping his eyes level and un-blinking as he locked gazes with the flag-captain. And hoping the misery and the lack of enthusiasm in his voice might make the first shoe drop.
“I see,” Byard harrumphed softly. Neither disappointed nor disapproving, but with no hint of approbation for loyalty, either.
Leaving Lieutenant Lewrie to wonder just exactly what the Hell “I See” really meant.
B o o k I V
Quae classe dehinc effusa procorum bella!
Ah, what wars shalt thou see when the
suitors pour forth from the Fleet!
Argonautica
Book I, 551–552
Valerius Flaccus
C H A P T E R 1
It was surprisingly cool in the Mediterranean. So cool that charcoal braziers and a goodly supply of fuel had to be taken aboard once Cockerel had victualled at Gibraltar. Though the fires had to be extinguished at 9:00 p.m. each evening, along with all glims or lanthorns, their meek efforts did transform the wardroom to a fair measure of comfort, after a four-hour watch in a raw, chill wind.
Fluky, too, the Mediterranean was, compared to other oceans Lewrie had experienced. First of all, there were no tides to reckon with, which could be a blessing. Otherwise, though, he thought it a perverse bitch of a sea; there were perils enough in the irregular and unpredictable changes of currents that could put them miles out of any reliable “fix” of their position. And the winds were wickedly fickle, backing or veering as confusingly as the Bahamas in high summer. The frigate might beam-reach east with the wind steady to larboard in the forenoon watch, yet be taken aback by a capricious shift, and end the day beating close-hauled on starboard tack to make the same easting.
The beaches they saw when close inshore on patrol were pebbly, rock strewn, with only a thin rime of sand beach, and many anchorages were treacherous, rocky-bottom holding grounds—or the worst sort of semi-liquid mud that swallowed anchors, but gave no secure purchase to the flukes.
And there were the dread Levanters—brisk easterlies arising off Turkey, that could roar down in a twinkling with no high-piled bit of storm-cloud warning. At least the Siroccos out of Moorish Africa down south, which could arise just as quickly, were prefaced by bluffs of hazy, sand-coloured cloud fronts, which appeared as substantial as an arid landfall’s mountains.
Positively frigid, not cool, was the most apt word for the ship’s mood, though. Following the crew’s brief moment of rebellion, and Captain Braxton’s return from the flagship with his face suffused as a strangled bullock, floggings had abated, though not ended. Some men still had to go to the gratings for real, not imagined, offences. When they did go, their alloted number of lashes still remained high. But Lieutenant Braxton walked smaller, and morosely bitter, about the other commission and warrant officers, no longer the raging pit bull. Neither did the younger Braxton midshipmen tear through the ship, cackling with glee in their hunt for victims, though victims they still discovered, among the foolhardy and the stupid.
What was most surprising to all was the sea change in Captain Braxton. He was rarely seen on deck, and kept to his great-cabins for the most part. Most mystifyingly, those abundant occasions which had summoned him forth in the past, fretful to supervise the least evolution, looming ominously over junior officers and hands alike until they were done to his satisfaction—those he now waved off, and left to his subordinates, unless it truly was serious enough to endanger the ship.
When Lewrie reported to him now, Captain Braxton seemed careworn and spent, as if command of a King’s Ship was something with which he could no longer be bothered. Their relationship, never of the best, had degenerated to a stiff, icily formal and punctilious politeness. A rigid nicety between two men of the merest acquaintance, both with the manners of lords, an observer unfamiliar with the situation might have concluded. Yet Lewrie could sometimes espy the quick-darting resentment of old in his glare, hear the tiniest rasp of abhorrence in the man’s tone—as if Captain Braxton were biding his time, waiting for some unguarded moment when he could drop his sham of formal politeness, and get his own back.
And the hands . . . well, they were as efficient as ever they had been, on their best days, that is. They still performed their labours in silence. Yet, in the second dogs before sunset, on the mess deck, some now dared to jape and raise their voices to a somewhat normal level. Lewrie was pleasantly surprised, now and then, to hear the scrape of a fiddle, the peeping of a flageolet, a chorus of rough male voices harmonising over an old song, or a single shaky tenor lilting rhapsodic. Below decks—never on the weather deck— Cockerel sometimes softly trembled to the stamp of bare, horny feet, as old hands taught new hands the way to do a true tar’s hornpipe.
Each Sunday after divisions inspections and a perfunctory Divine Service, there was now—if only because the flagship decreed it—a “Make and Mend” in the day watches (weather and duties permitting) and once a month in the dreary three months which had followed, there had been ordained a “Rope-Yarn Sunday,” a whole day in which the crew caulked or yarned, slept or chatted, repaired clothing and hammocks, carved snuff boxes and brooches out of dried chunks of salt meat (which took a high gloss and lasted long as most woods!), made ship models, or intricately woven twine articles—coin purses, belts and bracelets, brooches, rings and knife lanyards.
With such until-then unknown ease, they should have seemed a happier lot, now they were treated like an experienced and trusted ship’s company. But they were not. Their grudge against the Navy, and the captain, was by then too deep. The damage done could not be undone in three months, and their resentment would continue to fester. They would serve the ship, yes . . . but nothing could make them glad about it.
As first lieutenant, Alan was alarmed by their continuing bad mood, almost as much as he had been by their earlier, bitter silence. A crew could be cowed into trembling obedience for only so long before an explosion occurred; they had proved that! Yet a crew allowed too much indiscipline by a slack captain was just as bad, and would result in much the same sort of explosion, if they thought they could get away with anything that entered their heads. Look at Bligh after his long idle months at anchor at Otaheiti, Lewrie thought!
Whatever had transpired aboard Windsor Castle, whatever reason for Captain Braxton’s indifference, and the sudden abatement of his too-harsh taut-handedness, this particular stewpot, lidded too long, had been relieved much too quickly. It had not boiled over, thanks be to God . . . but it still could.
For Braxton’s recent aloofness from the ship’s company, and the seeming disdain he now had for how his juniors ran Cockerel, was sign to the crew that they had won some sort of victory over him. Let them think they had the upper hand, even for a moment, and they would lose respect for all authority.
Even a junior such as Lewrie knew that a man could not command a King’s Ship inconsistently, blowing cool one day and hot the next, being harsh and tyrannical one moment and gentle and considerate as a mother with her babe another day. It sowed confusion and disrespect. At the moment, though, Cockerel ’s captain pretended to command, and the crew pretended to obey him.
Leaving Lewrie and the rest in a worse predicament as the only enforcers of authority, the ones who were forced to use the lash and restrictions to prevent the men from believing that their lot could be changed.
Sadly, Alan concluded that the tiny, too-clever “mutiny-ette” should have been the entire raucous show, complete with brass bands and fireworks, a real cutlass-waving rebellion. Or it should never have happened at all. At least, the first instance would have been put down from without, Braxton court-martialed and found responsible, and no matter the blight on one’s career, it would have been over and done with, and he would be in another ship, the hands parcelled out—those not hung in tar and chains from Gibraltar gibbets until their bones fell apart—to other ships as well, where they would find new captains who weren’t brutes, and would finally discover what pleasure it could be to serve under someone firm, but fair.
In the second instance, though, there had been no way to avoid it happening, not with—
“Oh, the Devil with it,” Lewrie muttered sadly, taking stock of the world, far aft by the taffrails once again. “Thankee, Jesus! We need a little help here. ’Cause just when I think it can’t get any darker, here we are . . . in the darkest!”
C H A P T E R 2
Penny postman,” Captain Braxton sneered in disgust once he had clambered back aboard. He bore more packets than those he’d taken with him when he’d departed to the summons of “Captain Repair on Board” from H.M.S. Victory. “Here, Mister Lewrie, these, I’m told, will come in handy for cooperation with our new . . . allies. See the officers of the watch and the midshipmen have ’em learned, quickly.”
“Our new allies, sir?” Lewrie inquired.
“Signals books,” Braxton harrumphed sourly, “so we may talk with the Goddamned Dons!”
“We’re allies with Spain . . . I see, sir,” Lewrie replied levelly, though it was hellish hard to fathom how that had come about. After so many years of war, mistrust, condemning each other as either heretics to Catholicism or brisket-beating papist devils.
For all we hate ’em, since Drake and Raleigh’s days? The Armada and all, Lewrie thought? Englishmen burned at the stake, tortured by the Inquisition, hung as pirates . . . well, some of ’em were pirates, o’ course . . .
“Is the ship ready in all respects for sea, Mister Lewrie?”
“Aye, sir,” he was relieved to be able to announce.
“Then we shall weigh at once,” Braxton ordained. “We’re bound to Naples. Dispatches for the British ambassador. Crack on all sail once round Europa Point, commensurate with the weather. Inform Mr. Dimmock he is to plot us the most direct course, twixt Corsica and Sardinia.”
