Текст книги "Hostile Shores"

Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

News of the grand victory off Cape Trafalgar was heartily welcome aboard Reliant, though tempered by a sense of grief that Nelson had been slain. The victory was given three cheers aboard the transports, too, and perhaps some soldiers of the 34th might have felt some sadness over the Admiral’s loss, but while Nelson had been a national hero, he had not been an Army hero, so it did not affect them as sorely. Now, if they had heard that Jim Belcher, Tom Cribb, or Daniel Mendoza, their favourite champion boxers, had died, they would have mourned.

What really made the Army officers unhappy was Lewrie’s estimate that their passage South would be much longer than the first leg from Portsmouth. Once round the same latitude of Cape Verde, they would lose the steady Nor’east Trade winds, and would face winds from the Sou’east, requiring all ships to make many tacks, going “close-hauled to weather”, to make ground. They found it hard to fathom that beating to weather would take one hundred and eighty or two hundred and ten miles veering back and forth to make sixty or seventy miles South each day. Making their passage even longer were the currents; there was an Equatorial Current that would be favourable all the way round the Western coast of Africa ’til the Ivory Coast, but then they would meet both the South Equatorial Current, which would smack them square on their bows, and the counter currents which could swirl them into the Gulf of Guinea, and be foul against them whenever their course had to be seaward, or waft them shoreward and onto the shoals. The quickest course, he told them, would lie closest to shore, emulating the ancient explorers such as Vasco da Gama. Further out to sea lay the Doldrums, the Horse Latitudes, where there were confusing, swirling currents, and no wind for weeks at a time; so named for the complete loss of horses carried by earlier expeditions, when the food and water ran out.

*   *   *

“I wonder what the soldiers will do when we cross the Equator, sir,” Lt. Westcott mused as the peaks of Madeira shrank and shortened astern. Westcott looked in merry takings, quite chipper in point of fact. A brief half-day ashore at Funchal, and a visit to that highly recommended brothel, had done him wonders.

“Have a group, ceremonial vomit, I’d imagine,” Lewrie chirped back, rocking on the soles of his boots with his hands clapped in the small of his back, and relishing the fresh breezes and the easy motion of their frigate. “Why change routine just because they’ll be crossing the line?”

“I was just wondering how they would welcome King Neptune and his Court aboard, sir,” Westcott said with a laugh.

“I doubt they’d do anything,” Lewrie mused, tickled by an image of riot. “Who’d enforce the rites? The transports are manned at the rate of five sailors and one ship’s boy per every hundred tons, plus the master, two mates, and perhaps five or six more petty officers. If they tried to initiate the soldiers, I expect they’d end with their throats cut. Speaking of, Mister Westcott … you have made plain to our ‘shellbacks’ that they’d best make their revels harmless, with no insults against any superiors?”

“I have, sir,” Westcott replied with a stern nod.

“Having been ‘anointed’ once, myself, and a ‘shellback’ several times over, I intend to stand and watch and enjoy the ceremony. But, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie teased with a leer. “You have not yet said if you have ever crossed the Equator. Have you, sir?”

“Ehm … I fear that my naval career has taken me no further South than Trinidad, sir,” Westcott hesitantly confessed.

“A ‘Pollywog’ are ye, sir?” Lewrie purred, leaning a tad closer to grin. “Oh, how jolly this will be!” Then, to Lt. Westcott’s consternation, Lewrie strolled off to the weather rails, his step jaunty, and humming a gay air. Now there was something to look forward to!

*   *   *

The first few days out of Funchal, they still had the Nor’east Trade winds, so the going was good as they sailed past the Spanish Canary Islands with the isles only fifty or sixty miles East of them.

The next few days were also passable as Lewrie led the convoy almost Due South across the Tropic of Cancer, the 20th Latitude, then down the wide strait between the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands and Cape Vert on the shoulder of Africa, where the Equatorial Counter Current, the swirling eddies off that, and the Sou’east Trades began to greet them.

Round the 10th North Latitude, though, the perverse Sou’east Trades forced them to stand Sou’-Sou’west, close-hauled towards eventual shoaling waters, which were badly or sketchily charted, and then all four ships would have to make a heart-breaking turn to the East-Nor’east and sail back towards Africa, losing ground ’til the shore could be seen from the cross-trees, and they would tack and bear off Sou’-Sou’west once more, and safely out to seaward. To make matters worse, it was growing hotter, even though they were well into early December, and the sun, so friendly round Madeira, began to feel brutal, and Surgeon Mr. Mainwaring had little in the way of balms to ease unwary sailors’ burns when they worked shirtless.

A little South of the 5th North Latitude, on a shoreward tack, they raised Cape Palmas, the Southwestern limit of the Western bulge of the African continent, and stood away Sou’-Sou’west once more.

At least the next time they had to tack shoreward, there would be hundreds of miles of sea-room before they fetched the coast again, deep into the Gulf of Guinea.

A day or two more and they would cross the Equator, where the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, and his mates and some of the other older, saltier hands would hold court. They were already cackling among themselves and rubbing their hoary palms in glee.

It was then that Pettus, over breakfast, pointed out to Lewrie that Toulon was not acting his normal self.

“Toulon? What’s wrong with him?” Lewrie asked. His older cat had been all laps and affection the last week. He looked to the foot of his dining table, where Toulon and Chalky sat by their food bowls.

“He doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite, sir. At first, I took no notice, but now?” Pettus said, pointing down-table.

Yeovill had whipped up the last of the eggs purchased at Funchal in an omelet, a third of it laced with dried sausage bits and shreds of bacon just for the cats. Chalky was nibbling away at his bowl, but Toulon was just hunkered down over his, paying no heed to the welcoming aromas, and just staring off into the middle distance, eyes half-slit as if he was napping. And, when Chalky had polished off his own bowl and nudged Toulon aside to wolf down his as well, Toulon paid no heed. He had never been the assertive cat, but allowing himself to be robbed?

Lewrie left his plate, and his chair, to go to the other end of the table and stroke Toulon. “What’s wrong, littl’un? What’s put you off your victuals? Are ye feelin’ ill?”

Toulon looked up at him, made a meek little Mrr, and licked at Lewrie’s hand. Lewrie pulled out the chair at that end of the table and sat down to gather Toulon into his arms, where the cat went willingly, starting to purr.

“My Lord, he’s light as a feather!” Lewrie exclaimed. “Ye can feel his ribs, and his backbone. Here, Toulon, have a wee bite or two. Come on, now.” Lewrie dug into the food bowl for a tiny morsel of sausage and put it under Toulon’s nose, but he would have none of it.

Jessop had come to the end of the table to watch.

“’E’s been pissin’ a lot, too, sir,” Jessop informed him, “an’ ’ardly ever in their sand box. Seems all ’e warnts t’do is sleep, an’ drink water. Won’t play like ’e usedta.”

“Whenever you’re on deck, sir, he’s most likely to be found in the starboard quarter gallery,” Pettus contributed, “napping atop the crates and chests, so he’s level, with the windows. I thought that he was just watching sea birds.”

Lewrie cradled Toulon, stroking his cheeks and chops with one finger, and Toulon tilted his head to look up and meet Lewrie eye-to-eye, slowly and solemnly blinking. He might be softly purring, but his tail tip did not move.

Lewrie sat him back on the table right over his food bowl, now all but empty after Chalky’s raid, got to his feet, and went for the door to the ship’s waist. Coatless and bareheaded, he mounted to the quarterdeck. Lt. Spendlove, the officer of the watch, began to move leeward to cede the weather rails to his captain, but Lewrie stopped him with a question. “Have you seen the Surgeon, Mister Spendlove?”

“At breakfast, sir,” Spendlove replied, knuckling the brim of his hat in salute. “I believe he is forrud, holding the morning sick call. Shall I pass word for him, sir?”

“No, I’ll go forrud,” Lewrie told him, and went back to the deck to make his way to the forecastle. Bisquit the ship’s dog darted out of his cobbled-together shelter under the starboard ladderway and came bouncing to join him, prancing for attention, Lewrie took time to give Bisquit some pets and “wubbies” before reaching the forecastle.

HMS Reliant was a modern ship. Her sick-bay was not below in the foetid miasmas of the orlop, but right forward, where the warmth from the galley fires could keep patients comfortable in cold weather, and still provide fresher air during their recovery. In battle, surgeries and the treatment of wounded men would still take place on the orlop, in the Midshipmen’s cockpit, but after as many wounded as could be accommodated under the forecastle would be moved there.

“Good morning, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie began.

“Ah, good morning, Captain,” Mr. Mainwaring cheerfully replied. He was a burly, dark-haired, and swarthy-complexioned man, with hands and fingers more suited to a blacksmith or butcher, but he had turned out to be a skilled and able surgeon for all that.

“How are things this morning?” Lewrie asked.

“Tolerable, sir,” Mainwaring told him, “I’ve one bad tooth that needs pulling, some saltwater boils to lance, and more men with sunburn. Collins, yonder, I’ve put on light duties for three days, after he pulled some muscles at pulley-hauley.”

“Fetchin’ up fresh water casks, was it, Collins?” Lewrie asked.

“Aye, sir, it was,” the young fellow shyly admitted, grinning.

“Enjoy it while you can, Collins,” Lewrie said, then turned to the Ship’s Surgeon. “When you’re done here, Mister Mainwaring, I’d admire did you attend me in my cabins.”

“Shouldn’t be more than an hour, sir, then I am at your complete disposal,” Mainwaring agreed, turning back to the bare buttocks of one sailor bent over a rough wood table, waiting for the jab of a lancet.

“Wonder if t’ Cap’um’s askin’ f’r t’ Mercury Cure,” one sailor whispered in jest once Lewrie was gone. “Mad as ’e is over quim, it’s a wonder ’e ain’t been Poxed yet. Has the lucky cess, ’e does.”

“Now, we’ll have none of that, Harper,” Mr. Mainwaring chid him. “There’s your boils to be seen to, next, hmm?”

“It’d be Mister Westcott, more in need than Cap’um Lewrie,” one of the others snickered.

“Now, now,” Mainwaring cautioned again, trying to appear stern; though his mouth did curl up in the corners in secret amusement.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at Lewrie’s doors cried, stamping his boots and musket butt on the deck.

“Enter,” Lewrie called back. “All went well, sir?” he asked as Mainwaring stepped inside and approached the desk in the day-cabin.

“Quite well, sir,” the Surgeon replied. “What may I do for you, Captain Lewrie? Some malady that ails you?”

“It is a rather odd request, but I wonder if you might be able to use your general knowledge of anatomy to aid me.”

“Indeed, sir?” Mainwaring said, a bit perplexed.

“A glass of wine, sir?” Lewrie said, pointing to a chair before his desk in invitation.

“Ehm … I’ve been told by the others in our mess that your cool tea is quite refreshing, Captain,” Mainwaring said with a hopeful grin. “I would prefer to sample that, have you any brewed.”

“Always,” Lewrie said with his own grin. “Pettus, a glass of tea for the both of us.” Once the Surgeon was seated, Lewrie went on. “It is not my health that is in question, Mister Mainwaring. It’s my cat.”

Mainwaring pulled a dubious face, mugging in surprise. He had been a Navy Surgeon long enough to know that most ship’s captains were possessed of some eccentricities, and some of them daft as bats.

“Bless me, Captain … your cat, did you say?” Mainwaring said. “I fear that I know next to nothing of dogs or cats. I doubt if anyone does, really. What symptoms does it present?”

Lewrie laid out the moroseness, the sudden lack of appetite and the sudden weight loss, the incontinence, and thirst. Mainwaring sat and hmmed, nodding sagely here and there.

“And how old is it, sir?” Mainwaring at last enquired.

“Over eleven,” Lewrie told him. “I got him as a kitten in the Fall of ’94, just as we were evacuating Toulon during the First Coalition. That’s how he got his name. That, and him, were calamities.”

“Well, off-hand, I’d say that it is suffering renal failure,” Mainwaring supposed, “a malady which comes to man and beast in their dotage. The kidneys stop working, for one reason or another, and the sufferer wastes away, becoming enfeebled. There’s little that I may do for it, sir … little that even a skilled, university-trained physician may do for a man in such a situation.”

“I see,” Lewrie said, crestfallen. “He’s dyin’, d’ye mean. I’d hoped…”

Lewrie got to his feet and went to the starboard quarter gallery and brought Toulon back from his solitary roost. He sat him down on the desk between them, and stroked him to calmness as Toulon curled up into a pot roast; paws tucked under his chest and his tail round his hind legs. Toulon had not seen Mainwaring that much but for rare supper invitations with other officers, but he made no move to curry attention, nor did he shrink away as a “scaredy-cat” might. He just sat and blinked, eyes half-slit.

Mainwaring took a deep, pleasing sip of his cool tea, smiled in delight, then leaned forward to touch Toulon, giving him a closer examination. At last, he leaned back into his chair.

“Renal failure, of a certainty, Captain,” Mr. Mainwaring said. “The dullness of the eyes, the lack of body fat, and perhaps of some of his musculature? When one is starved, for whatever reason, fat is the first to go, before the body begins to use up the last source of nourishment, which are the muscles. Note that when I lifted a pinch of his skin, that it did not fall back into place at once, but stayed erect before slowing receding? No matter how much water it drinks, it is of no avail, for the kidneys no longer function.”

“If there was some way to force water into him…?” Lewrie asked with a fretful frown, stroking Toulon with one hand.

“Perhaps with a clyster up its rectum, sir,” Mr. Mainwaring speculated with his large head laid over to one side, “directly into the small intestines, where the water would be absorbed more quickly, but … that would only delay the matter, sorry to say.”

“Perhaps if he’s only running a temperature,” Lewrie said, with an eye on Mainwaring’s leather kit, which he’d brought with him.

“I am certain that it is, sir,” Mainwaring countered, “but, do cats or dogs have the same temperature as people? I could listen to his heart rate, but what is the normal pulse of a cat? How often to the minute is its rate of respiration? I am sure that there are game-keepers who know something of dogs, horse copers and grooms who know how to fleam a sick horse, what feed to provide, or aid the birth of a colt … or calf, or lamb, or whatever, but … it’s all beyond my experience, sir.”

“Is renal failure, and the wasting away, painful, d’ye think?” Lewrie asked, despairing. “He’s been a fine old cat, and I’d not let him suffer.”

“It could be,” Mr. Mainwaring said with an uncertain shrug. “Or, it could be that it will fall into a deep torpor and just pass away. I do recall barn cats in my childhood that limped off or just went off on their own, and the next we saw them, they’d died of old age or some disease. Perhaps you should just let him expire, on his own.”

“Or, find some way to help him along, painlessly, and without terrorising him,” Lewrie wished aloud. “I can’t put a pistol to his head. The crack of the priming’d frighten him.”

“Well, there’s smothering, or a quick wring of its neck, as one does fowl, or, tied up in a bread bag and dropped over—”

“All of which are violent, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie snapped. “Sudden, violent, and frightening. From the time he took hold of my coat sleeve and clambered up to my shoulder, Toulon’s known nothing but fun, play, affection, and trust, and to put him down as you suggest would be … he would die in fear, feeling betrayed. No! There must be another way.”

“Well, sir…,” Mainwaring said with a shrug.

“Sorry, Mister Mainwaring, but … I know I must seem overly sentimental,” Lewrie went on in a softer voice. “Toulon’s just a poor cat, after all, but he and Chalky yonder are great comforts, and companions. They’re all the … friends I may allow myself from out of the whole ship’s company. Losing one, or both, is a wrench. I must think that the crew would feel the same if Bisquit died.”

“I shall look into the matter, sir, and get back to you should I find a painless solution,” the Surgeon promised. “Thank you for the cool tea, Captain. It really is remarkably refreshing.”

“Carry on, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie said in dismissal as the Ship’s Surgeon departed. Once Mainwaring was gone, Toulon got to his feet and slowly padded over to the edge of the desk to Lewrie’s thigh and rested in his lap, to be gently stroked and petted. He stayed only a minute or two, then cautiously hopped down to the deck and went to his water bowl under the wash-hand stand for a lap or two, then he slowly stalked off for the starboard quarter gallery once more to take up his post atop the wooden crates and sea-chests.

Whatever shall I do with ye, poor thing? Lewrie mourned.

*   *   *

“Perhaps it would be best, sir, did we stand on on this tack at least ’til Noon, and make more Southing before we come about East-Nor’east,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, advised as he, Lewrie, and the First Officer, Mr. Westcott, convened in Lewrie’s chart space. “Do we close the shore, making a long board, we should fetch the coast below San Salvador, and enter port with the Sou’east Trades large upon our starboard quarters.”

“Which would beat fetching North of the port all hollow, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “We’d end up short-tacking off-and-on most of the day, else, just t’get level with the bloody place.”

“Sou’-Sou’west it will be, then, all through today and tonight, and ’til Noon Sights tomorrow,” Lt. Westcott said with a pleased nod. “Lieutenant Spendlove and I will be standing the Evening and Middle Watches, and thought to let the Mids of the watches have more responsibility … without any radical alterations of course, or the need to pipe ‘All Hands’. Loaf aft by the flag lockers? Let them run the ship on their own?”

“Just so long as the weather allows,” Lewrie cautioned. “Might you wish to borrow my penny-whistle? Or a book to read by the light of the taffrail lanthorns?”

“Don’t know about Spendlove, but I could do some sketchings,” Westcott said with a small laugh.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Lewrie told Westcott. “Do so. And I, on my part, will stay below as much as possible, t’give ’em a sense that they’re really runnin’ their watches. A good idea on your part, as well, Mister Caldwell, and we shall stand on ’til tomorrow’s Noon Sights before altering course. As shallow as the coast of Africa is, I’d not wish t’thrash about in short tacks t’fetch harbour. Is that all we have to discuss at the moment, gentlemen? Very well. We will stand on as we are, and I will have a wee nap, you poor, over-worked fellows.”

“Very good, sir,” Westcott said with a brief, savage grin.

Lewrie lingered in the small chart space after the others had left the great-cabins, puzzling over his copy of the chart of San Salvador which he’d purchased at Funchal, noting how far out one would have to anchor off most of the African shore in the Gulf of Guinea. He had seen woodcuts and paintings of the work of slavers who came for “Black Ivory”; but for the trading forts and barracoons which held the captive Africans established at the mouths of the great rivers, most of those infamous ships, even the middling-sized ones, anchored far out, and sent their boats in several miles. The local Africans had low-sided canoes for fishing, which barely drew a foot of water. Low tide produced beaches and flats nigh a half-mile deep, and one could wade another whole mile before the sea got up to one’s thighs! When the weather got up, the rollers and breakers were tremendous, flooding inward over those wide, shallow shoals.

San Salvador was on a minor river, its bay barely large enough to anchor the hundred-or-so ships under Popham’s command. Why would he choose the place to get firewood and water? Lewrie speculated; he would have avoided San Salvador like the plague!

Leaving the chart space, Lewrie headed aft towards his sleeping space, a wide-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot slung from the over-head deck beams. The bed-cot was a wooden box with stout heavy-weather canvas bottom and lining, a rigid hammock with a thin mattress of cotton batt. It looked very inviting, for the oppressive heat of the sun as they closed upon the Equator created a torpor that Lewrie could gladly sleep right through. Before throwing a leg over the edge and rolling in, though, he went aft to the starboard quarter gallery once more to check on Toulon.

The old black-and-white tom was on his right side, as if he was looking out at the horizon as it gently heaved and rolled. When Lewrie stroked his side, he didn’t even move, but just gave out a weary Mrr, a complaint that he had been sleeping and did not appreciate being wakened. Lewrie leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, stroking Toulon’s chops and cheeks.

“I always loved you, ye clumsy old thing,” Lewrie whispered, recalling his cat’s kittenhood, and his adjustment to life at sea. Once, Toulon had hopped atop a table, a freshly polished one, upon which a sheet of paper rested, and he could not quite understand why or how he had slid off when he was sitting perfectly still on top of it. That had driven him under the starboard-side settee, abashed, where Toulon could commune with his cat gods and live down his shame! Or, when in the North Sea in late 1801, Lewrie’s previous frigate, HMS Thermopylae, had been rolling just hideously, and Lewrie had been trying to shave, and Toulon had tried to get up to the water bowl on the wash-hand stand and had ended up with a tumble to the deck, and a face covered with soap foam! Once again, the dark under the settee had been a refuge.

Lewrie gave him a last stroke or two, then let Toulon be, with a faint and guilty hope that, did he check on him round suppertime, he might discover that Toulon had passed over peacefully.

He sat on the transom settee and pulled off his boots, took off his waist-coat and un-did his neck-stock, then rolled up his sleeves before rolling into his bed-cot atop the embroidered coverlet. He was almost asleep in moments, but was stirred awake by Chalky’s arrival. The younger white-and-grey cat hopped up and padded to Lewrie’s chest, to peer at him, nose-to-nose.

“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a sigh, rewarding Chalky with strokes down his back, ruffles of his chest fur, and “wubbies” on his cheeks and chops. Chalky flopped onto his side, extended his paws, and began to wriggle, eager for belly-tickling play. That could be a dangerous game for the unwary, for Chalky would nip and catch fingers between his paws, claws out.

“Must I?” Lewrie asked. “Oh, very well. I should find a pair o’ thick leather gloves t’play with you!”

It took a quarter-hour to wear Chalky out. Lewrie closed his eyes and tried to return to his nap, but no … Chalky got his wind back, hopped down, and returned with a ragged old knitted wool mouse.

“You really are a pest,” Lewrie muttered, rolling out of bed and giving up on his nap. At least he still had one cat who needed to be amused.