Текст книги "Hostile Shores"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
San Salvador looked to be a pestilential place, a sprawl of low native huts and the reek of cow dung, sweat, and human ordure, commanded by a separate European quarter of tile-rooved stone buildings and barracks, and a small fort which overlooked a series of long and low-slung barracoons with iron-bound doors and a few barred windows, where captured Africans were held ’til a slave ship put in for human cargo. The river mouth ran the colour of red clay, splaying its dubious freshness far out in a delta-like fan off the coast, between gritty stone and sand beaches. The lush greenness of “deepest, darkest Africa” began almost half a mile further inland, beyond fields of millet and mealies, corrals of livestock, and paddocks for the unfortunate Portuguese who did business there. There was a three-masted slave ship anchored in the river mouth … but there was no fleet of British warships and transports.
Lewrie ordered a signal hoisted to his three charges for them to stand-off-and-on while Reliant closed the shore. As soon as the frigate altered course to stand in, a very shallow, crude boat put out for them, paddled by a crew of Africans wearing little more than sandals and what looked to be Red Indian–style breechclouts, with one European seated in the sternsheets. The boat came close aboard as Lewrie ordered his ship rounded up into the wind to fetch-to, so he could speak to the White fellow, a rumpled-looking man in off-white cotton canvas trousers and coat, with a wide straw hat on his head.
“Senhor, you weesh to enter the reever?” the man asked.
“I wish to know where the British fleet has gone, senhor, and how long ago was it that they sailed?” Lewrie shouted back to him.
“Three, four day ago, senhor,” the fellow said, scratching at his bearded cheek, and flicking ash from a crooked cigarro that he held between his teeth. “They take on wood, water, and meal, and go South. We have cattle and peegs, senhor,” the fellow tempted. “You weesh fresh meat? You trade us rum and brandy, yes?”
“No need, sorry,” Lewrie called back. “We have all we need at present. We are bound South to catch them up.”
“Ah, well,” the unkempt fellow said with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders in disappointment. “Go weeth God, senhor.”
“Get way on her if you please, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered as he stepped back from the bulwarks. “Shape course out to our charges and we’ll speak ’em t’see if they’ve enough supplies to last ’til Cape Town. It’s only a few hundred miles, now, God willing.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott replied, his face screwed up. “Lord, what a reek! Is all Africa this foul-smelling?”
“Cape Town wasn’t, as I recall,” Lewrie told him. “No worse than a small town in the country, back home. It’s the heat and rot in the jungles round this latitude, the smell of long-settled native villages, and the foul reek of the slave pens. Did you ever get close aboard a ‘blackbirder’, Mister Westcott? Once you do, you never can forget the odour of human misery. God knows how many in the barracoons will perish before the next slaver puts in … nor how many of the healthy chosen from that lot live t’see a vendue house in the Americas. Just get me away from all this … foulness, sir!”
* * *
Reliant closed Ascot close enough for Lewrie to converse with Lt. Thatcher with a brass speaking-trumpet and enquire about his dwindling supplies.
“I reckon that Cape Town is nigh twelve-hundred or more miles off, sir!” Lt. Thatcher shouted over. “After victualling at Funchal, we should have sufficient water and rations for another two months! The Army would wish to put in to get their mounts ashore and exercise them on dry land. Captain Veasey fears that by the time we join the other transports at Cape Town, his horses won’t be able to stand!”
“And how might they land them ashore?” Lewrie replied with the trumpet to his mouth. “Hoist ’em out over the side and swim them in, through shark-infested waters, and crocodile-infested river? We would have to anchor at least a mile out, and God only knows how many horses would get eaten, or drown.”
Lewrie could see Captains Veasey and Chadfield bristling with concern, a few feet away from Lt. Thatcher. The troopers of the 34th Light Dragoons aboard Ascot were more vociferous in their disappointment that they would hot be allowed off the ship for a day or two of ease, either, cat-calling and booing Lewrie’s decision.
What did they expect o’ San Salvador? Lewrie wondered; Black whores, rum, and roast beef? And the whores for free?
“We will crack on South, Mister Thatcher!” Lewrie shouted to him. “Steer Sou’-Sou’west, and follow me!”
“Very good, Captain Lewrie!” Thatcher replied, sounding a bit disappointed, himself.
Lewrie left the bulwarks and stowed the speaking-trumpet in the compass binnacle cabinet, then went to the windward side to take proper station as Reliant hauled up close to the winds to begin her seemingly endless beat to weather in chase of their perpetual Will-o’-the-wisp, Commodore Popham and his phantom invasion fleet. It was an hour later before the Trade wind whisked away the reek of San Salvador that seemed to cling to every fibre of the ship.
“I’ll be below,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch.
Once in his cabins, Lewrie tore off his neck-stock and drank a full tumbler of water, then asked Pettus for one of cool tea, sugared and lemoned. While that was being poured and mixed for him, he went in search of Toulon, but he was not in the starboard quarter gallery, nor on the bed’s coverlet, or the transom settee cushions.
“Here, Toulon. Here, lad,” Lewrie called out.
“’E’s unner th’ settee, sir,” Jessop told him. “’E come outta th’ quarter gallery f’r some water, an’ tried t’jump inta yer bed, but ’e couldn’t manage it, poor thing. ’E’s sulkin’ unner there, an’ won’t come out f’r nothin’ nor nobody.”
Lewrie knelt down by the collapsible settee which was lashed to the cabin’s interior planking. Sure enough, Toulon was there, curled up with his tail under his chin, and his paws tucked under his chest, nodding as if unwilling to sleep, but totally spent.
“Here, Toulon,” Lewrie softly coaxed. “Come on out to me. No? It’s alright, little man. Come on out.”
Toulon opened his eyes to weary slits, uttered an un-characteristic wee mew, then went back to drowsing. Damning his dignity, Lewrie got down on his stomach on the Turkey carpet and chequered canvas deck cover to reach in and stroke a finger under Toulon’s chin and along his jaws. The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, but made no move to come out. Lewrie reached in and took him by the scruff of the neck to drag him out, cradle him in his arm, and got to his feet. Lewrie sat down on the settee and held Toulon close with both arms, slowly petting and cooing to him, and his cat at last shifted to press closer to Lewrie’s chest and begin a faint, ragged purr.
“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door shouted, stamping boots and slamming his musket butt.
Burly Mr. Mainwaring bustled in at Lewrie’s order to enter, carrying his leather kit-bag. With him was one of the Surgeon’s Mates, Durbin.
“Your pardons if I do not rise, sirs,” Lewrie apologised, still cradling Toulon. “Sit, please. Cool tea, Mister Mainwaring?”
“Yes, thank you, Captain,” Mainwaring said, taking one of the collapsible chairs and indicating that Durbin should take the other. “I’ve a mind to purchase the makings and serve it out to the men on light duties or in sick-bay … does the Navy Board allow me the funds.
“As to the matter you mentioned the other day, sir, about your cat,” Mainwaring went on as Pettus fetched tea, “Durbin here, Lloyd and I, put our heads together as to how one might painlessly ease a cat from life and end its suffering, and Durbin came up with a solution. Pray do explain it to the Captain, Durbin.”
“Ehm, yes, sir,” the younger Surgeon’s Mate began, shifting in his chair and swiping a mop of dark hair back from his forehead, shyly cutty-eyed to be speaking with a senior officer. “Before I came away to join the Navy, Captain, I was studying to be a surgeon, in London. I apprenticed to an older fellow, worked with him and others at some of the poors’ hospitals … and, to make ends meet, I also assisted a ‘Pox’ doctor.” He looked shamed by that confession.
“Pricking with Cowpox against the Smallpox?” Lewrie asked. He had been inoculated long ago, himself, and wondered why Durbin would be shy about that good work. There were some pox doctors who made more than £50,000 a year!
“Not that sort of Pox, Captain,” Durbin said, blushing. “He and I administered the Mercury Cure for the venereal Pox. In his offices, at the better brothels?”
“Ah. Yes?” Lewrie replied, hiding a wince. The idea of having a metal clyster shoved up his penis for an injection of mercury, or a narrow rasp shoved up and jerked out to break the pustules—! Lewrie all but crossed his legs to avert even the thought of such! “But, what would that have to do with Toulon, here?”
“Well, sir,” Durbin hesitantly continued, “it was more the use of the clyster for other things, do you see. That, and laudanum.”
“Hmm?”
“The juice of the opium poppy, distilled if you will, into the drug laudanum, Captain, is quite addictive,” Mr. Mainwaring stuck in, “and, taken beyond moderation, so depresses the rate and depth of respiration and the beat of the heart that death will eventually result in those unfortunates who abuse it.”
“I’ve been administered small doses of laudanum to ease pain, after being wounded,” Lewrie slowly said, still without a clue as to where the men were going. “It tastes vile, even when mixed into brandy with sugar, or a dram of honey. You’d force laudanum down his throat with a clyster?”
“Ehm … not his throat, sir,” Durbin said in a small voice. “Up his anus, rather. That’s where the brothels come in, Captain, sir. While on the premises to inspect for, and treat, venereal Pox, the man I worked with would, ehm … help the ladies, and rather a great many of their clients, get drunk and woozy all the faster, with a mixture of laudanum and ardent spirits … gin, mostly … up their anuses and into the lower intestines, where the bulk of digestion takes place—”
“And, where the nutritional benefits of digestion reach the body and the blood stream more readily, sir,” Mainwaring supplied, to bring their discussion back to a less sordid tone. “To imbibe gin and laudanum the normal way by liquid ingestion, the effect desired might not become apparent for some time, but … injected into the lower intestines, the alcoholic spirits and laudanum take effect within minutes.”
“I’ve seen one … courtesan at one of the better houses in Panton Street, who weighed ten or eleven stone, take two drams of gin and a dram of laudanum, together, and become half-seas-over within five minutes, Captain,” Durbin promised. “With small glasses of brandy and champagne throughout the night, she could take on any number of clients. And, when she wished to sleep the night’s work off, my old patron would increase the laudanum a bit more, and she’d sleep ’til noon of the next day. A lot of the girls would do that … to get started and tolerate the work, and to sleep soundly after.
“After a time, I was allowed to service one house whilst my old patron would handle another, for more fees,” Durbin went on. “We’d make the rounds each night…’til he got too fond of the drug and took too large a dose and died.”
“So, the dose necessary to addle a woman of considerable weight would surely put your cat to sleep, painlessly and humanely, Captain,” Mainwaring assured him. “A moment or two of surprise, as the clyster is inserted, and then perhaps a state of inebriation which may be pleasureable to even a cat, followed by a … fatal lethargy.”
“But, you’re not sure,” Lewrie sceptically asked. “No one ever tried this. The brandy or gin might turn him rabid, ravin’ mad before the laudanum takes effect. I don’t know.…” Lewrie looked down as he stroked Toulon, who was looking up at him with wide eyes, as if he was aware that his demise was being plotted. Toulon was not struggling to escape, though. But, he had stopped purring, and the tip of his tail no longer slowly flicked. Lewrie felt a lump of grief in his chest.
“Well, sir … perhaps the laudanum only,” Mainwaring allowed. “If I may examine it, Captain?”
“Him,” Lewrie corrected. “Toulon.”
“Of course, Captain,” Mainwaring replied, pausing for a moment to be chided, then fell upon his best bedside manner. He checked the dullness of the cat’s eyes, listened to the heart and respiration with a long horn, felt the temperature of Toulon’s nose, then sat back down in his chair and took a sip of cool tea. “I fear that … he … does not display any sign of improvement, Captain. He has been sleeping most of the day and night? Apart from everyone? A bad sign. Do you wish to wait ’til he is even more lethargic, we may, though I do not know if his fatal condition pains him now, and may get worse the longer we delay. As I said, no one I am aware of knows the first thing about the physiology of cats and dogs.”
No longer being pawed at by Mainwaring’s large hands, Toulon stopped fretting and snuggled down, eyes shut and his head nodding as if he would fall asleep right there in Lewrie’s arms. His breath was faint.
“Perhaps … perhaps, it would be best did we proceed, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie sadly, slowly agreed.
“A towel, sir,” Durbin softly suggested, getting to his feet. “Something to swaddle him during the procedure?”
“A restraining towel, yes,” Mainwaring agreed, finishing his cool tea before rising, himself. “Perhaps at your dining table, sir?”
“Dram and a half, sir?” Durbin asked his superior.
“Hmm, best make it a full two,” Mainwaring proposed. “Prepare the clyster.”
Pettus fetched a used towel and laid it on the dining table. Lewrie carried Toulon to the table and gently sat him down on it, then folded the towel round him, petting and softly cooing affection to keep the cat calm. Pettus and Jessop came close to witness, with Jessop holding Chalky in his arms to keep him from interfering.
Surgeon’s Mate Durbin produced the clyster, a metal cylinder about six inches long with a plunger at one end, and a long, narrow, and hollow metal tube, no wider than a goose quill, at the other. He withdrew the plunger and laid it aside, put a finger over the end of the tube, and presented it to Surgeon Mainwaring, who carefully measured out 120 minims, or two fluid drams, into a graduated glass tube, then poured the laudanum into the clyster. Durbin re-inserted the plunger for him, still holding a finger over the needle’s opening to prevent spillage.
“I will take it now, Durbin,” Mainwaring said, placing his own finger over the needle’s aperture, allowing a drop or two to dribble out. “Even the tiniest bolus of air would impede the efficacious administering of the dose, do you see, Captain.”
“Umhum,” Lewrie replied, his heart in his throat.
“If you will hold him firmly, now, Captain, I will begin,” the Surgeon said, leaning down over the end of the table.
Toulon emitted a loud, outraged yeowl as the needle went up his anus and its contents were injected with a push of the plunger, and it was all Lewrie could do to hold him still in the folds of the towel.
“You tell him, Toulon,” Lewrie cooed, his eyes turning hot and moist as he tried to calm his cat. “I’d be at his throat with claws out if someone did that t’me, too! Hush, now. Hush, little man, it’s done. If God’s just, there’s a Fiddler’s Green for you, too, with all the mice and birds ye wish t’chase, milk pools, and all the fish and sausages ye’d ever want. Other cats t’play with … perhaps even old Pitt. Ye might get on with him. Hush, now. Go t’sleep, and dream a happy cat’s dreams. I always loved ye, d’ye know that, Toulon?”
“’Is fav’rite people, too, sir,” Jessop said in an awed whisper, “an’ ’im be there a’waitin’ on yer when ye goes t’Heaven yerself.”
“I pray so, Jessop,” Lewrie managed to choke out, “I surely do pray so.”
Toulon did calm down, muttering a bit and going limp after a minute or so. His front paws twitched as if he was having a chase dream, and his jaws chittered silently as he did when seeing a bird.
They all waited for a full five minutes, in silence. Toulon seemed completely asleep, with no response when Lewrie folded back the towel and gently stroked and caressed his fur. Chalky was having no part of it, mrring and wriggling out of Jessop’s grasp to run aft and fuss and groom.
“If I may, Captain,” Mainwaring said, at last. He bent down to press an ear to Toulon, gently rolling him onto one side. He used his amplifying horn device, a stethoscope he termed it, to listen even more carefully for a full minute more before leaning back and digging into his bag for a small mirror and a lancet.
“There is no sign of respiration, Captain,” Mainwaring said as he looked at the mirror. “I can no longer discern a heart beat, nor a bit of fog on the mirror.”
Lewrie thought it rather gruesome, but Mainwaring lifted a paw to expose the sensitive pads and made a first light jab with the lancet, then a stronger second. Lastly, he pricked Toulon on his nose, with no response.
“I believe I may state in perfect conviction that he is gone, sir,” Mainwaring said with a slight nod of satisfaction. “I am sorry for your loss. He was dear to you, and a great companion.”
“Thank you, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie managed to say, with a curt nod. “Pettus, will you go pass word for the Master Gunner and the Bosun? I will need a nine-pounder roundshot and a baize bag.”
“Yes, sir,” Pettus muttered, wiping his eyes as he left.
* * *
The towel was sacrificed for a winding cloth, the requested baize bag, quickly sewn together out of the red baize usually used to hold a defaulter’s “cat-o’-nine-tails”, was three times normal size, as if Bosun Sprague knew its purpose beforehand, and Jessop added one of Toulon’s favourite old woven wool toys before Lewrie drew and tied the bag shut, and went out on deck to the waist, then up the ladderway to the quarterdeck. He threaded his way aft through the Afterguard and watchstanders, surprised by the presence of not only the men of the watch but most of the hands who were at that hour off watch on deck and along the sail-tending gangways. Officers, Mids, and petty officers doffed their hats as he passed. It was impossible to keep secrets from any ship’s company; they all knew of the Surgeon’s speculations and the fact that the Captain had requested his help to ease his pet’s passing.
Lewrie got to the taffrails right aft and took off his own hat, laid it down atop the flag lockers, and stood bareheaded with the bag cradled in both arms.
“I’m sorry, Toulon,” he whispered, “but it had to be done, and I meant for you t’go easy. I loved you from the first sight of you, and always will.” A captain’s stern dignity be-damned, Lewrie lifted the bag to bestow a last kiss on the baize, then extended his arms over the stern. “Goodbye, littl’un. See you in Heaven.”
He let go of the bag and watched it drop into the white trail of the frigate’s wake, where it made a small splash before sinking to the deeps.
The ship’s fiddler and the Marine flutist began “Johnny Faa”!
They tryin’ t’break my heart? Lewrie thought, unable to turn to face forward without showing his sudden tears. He had not heard “Johnny Faa” since he had given his old Cox’n, Matthew Andrews, a sea burial after conquering the French frigate, L’Uranie, ages before, and the sadness of that tune always made him brokenly mournful.
At last, Lewrie pulled a handkerchief from a coat pocket, blew his nose, and dabbed his eyes before shoving it back away and clapping his hat on his head to turn away from the taffrails and face his crew.
He got to the forward edge of the quarterdeck, and was amazed to see all hands standing with their hats off. No one had ordered it, but they had done it. Doffing his hat to them, he called out, “Thank you, lads. Thank you,” then made a slow way down to the waist and to the doors to his great-cabins, nodded to his Marine sentry, and went inside.
* * *
Lewrie stayed aft and below the rest of the afternoon, going to the quarterdeck for a breath of fresher and cooler air round the middle of the Second Dog Watch. Though there was no point in doing so, he did go aft to the taffrails for a while, looking far astern. Bisquit, now allowed the liberty of the quarterdeck, joined him and sat down atop the flag lockers, nuzzling for attention and pets, and Lewrie rewarded him before returning to his cabins for a silent and bleak supper. There was only one feeding bowl at the foot of the dining table for Chalky, who seemed oblivious that his long-time friend was no longer present. Once fed, the younger cat came to be petted, arching under Lewrie’s hands and rubbing his cheeks on his fingers before flopping on his side to play.
And that night, long after Lights Out when Lewrie was in bed, sleeping atop the coverlet in his underdrawers for coolness, he came awake. The hanging bed-cot was swaying gently to the roll of the ship, a motion which always calmed him and lulled him to deep sleep, but … he felt as if Chalky had leapt from the deck to the bed, and was walking and brushing up his legs and chest. Lewrie opened one eye and reached out to stroke Chalky, but there was no cat there.
He sat up on an elbow and looked round in the deep gloom of the cabins. There was Chalky, curled up at the foot of the bed with his head resting across Lewrie’s ankle! He lay back down on the pillows and was almost drifted off once more, but, there was the feeling of a cat padding up behind his back, this time, and he sat up once more in a start. Chalky woke, still draped over his ankle, yawned widely, and sat up to give out a low, challenging Mrrr! with tail thrashing. In the faintest light of pre-dawn, Chalky’s eerie green chatoyant eyes were fixed intently on nothing, just to the starboard side of the bed, then to the overhead, as if fearfully watching something that drifted away!
Chalky finally hopped over Lewrie’s legs and came to Lewrie’s face, nuzzling for a hand and looking over his shoulder to larboard.
“Don’t you go dyin’ on me, now, Chalky,” Lewrie whispered as he stroked and calmed him. “I wouldn’t know what t’do with both you and Toulon hauntin’ my cabins.”
