Текст книги "Hostile Shores"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
The Dutch company that had tried to come up the hill to attack them were now trapped between Lewrie’s position and the British infantry who were now rampaging down the line of shallow trenches, looking for someone to shoot or bayonet. That company was now a herd of terrified men looking in all directions and looking for escape, which was now cut off. Their own retreating cavalry had delayed them too long.
“You, down there!” Lewrie shouted in his best quarterdeck roar. “Surrender to us!” He pumped both arms up several times. “Surrender! Bloody Hell, Mister Westcott. How did our old Master Gunner, Rahl, say it in German? That’s close t’Dutch, ain’t it?”
“Haven’t a single clue, really, sir,” Westcott said, shrugging.
“Soldaten!” Lt. Strickland yelled, raising his own arms as if giving up. “Haende hoch! Kapitulation! Hinlegen deine waffen!”
The Dutch soldiers dropped their muskets as if they were red-hot fireplace pokers, and littered the ground round them with shakoes, cartridge boxes, hangers, and equipment belts, and knelt with their hands high over their heads in a twinkling.
“What was all that, after soldaten?” Lewrie asked him.
“Told them to put their hands up, surrender, and drop their weapons,” Strickland said with a grin. “I had a German nanny,” he further explained, “and she was a right bitch.”
“Whatever, it worked,” Lewrie said. “D’ye think our own soldiers’ve lost their ‘mad’, or should we stay up here awhile more? I’d not like my men shot ’cause they’re not wearin’ red.”
“Oh, I think it’s safe enough now, Captain Lewrie,” Strickland allowed. “The rest of the Heavy Brigade is coming up in march order.”
Sure enough, the two attacking regiments had rushed on past the Dutch trenches and were moving down the East side of the Blaauwberg in skirmish order, their light companies firing at the fleeing Dutch survivors now and then. The other regiments of the Heavy Brigade were coming up towards the crest in columns-of-fours with their drums rattling the pace. Bandsmen and surgeons from the 38th and 93rd were busy picking among the few British casualties, or pilfering from the Dutch dead and wounded, on the sly.
“Canteens, sir.” Lt. Westcott pointed downhill to their prisoners. “We should go take possession of some, whilst we see to our own wounded.”
“Get them down so the Army surgeons can see to ’em, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “How many, Mister Westcott?”
“One hand dead, sir, two wounded,” Lt. Westcott told him as he took a deep drink from his wine bottle canteen. “Those two not badly, thank God. We’ve lost one Marine dead, and one wounded, as well. Durbin is tending them, but he will need assistance from the Army.”
Lewrie looked down-slope for a way to leave their knob. Horses and dead Dutch cavalrymen blocked the easiest way, many of the horses still screaming and thrashing.
“First off, Mister Westcott, have the lads shoot those poor horses, and see that all our muskets are empty,” Lewrie ordered. “If the Dragoons will … Ah, Mister Strickland!” he gladly said, spotting him. “If you’d be so good as to take charge of our prisoners, whilst we clear the way for our wounded? Good. Were any of your men hurt or killed?”
“No dead, sir, and only two lightly wounded. We came off rather easily, altogether,” Strickland reported, “though it seems that your men took the brunt of it, holding the centre of our line.”
“Once down with the nearest regiment, please direct their surgeon in our direction, sir, and we’ll try to move our wounded to them,” Lewrie requested. Strickland saluted and set off.
“Mister Rossyngton?” Lewrie called over his shoulder.
“Aye, sir?” the Midshipman replied.
“You’ve young and sturdy legs,” Lewrie said. “Do you run down to our waggon and order it up.”
“At once, sir!” Rossyngton said, doffing his hat and setting off at trots and bounds.
I just hope no one takes him for Dutch in his blue coat, and shoots him! Lewrie thought.
He went to where their Surgeon’s Mate, Durbin, was binding up his men’s wounds, and knelt and spoke words of assurance and thanks to them.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Durbin said, “but, do we take the blankets from the dead Dutchies’ bed-rolls, we can fashion ways to bear our men down the hill.”
“Aye, see to it,” Lewrie agreed.
That scavenging, and the slow procession of bearing both dead and wounded off the knob, was a gruesome ordeal. There were nearly fifteen or so dead horses which had to be bridged, and dead Dutchmen to be stepped and stumbled over, with here and there some few cruelly wounded, some still pinned under their dead mounts, who reached out with weak, bloodied hands, crying “Hilfe!” and “Wasser!” Sailors who were not carrying their mates bent down to give them a drink, a pat on the shoulder, but there was little they could do for them, not ’til all the British wounded had been seen to. That was the necessary triage following combat. Lewrie looked up to the morning sky and grimaced at the sight of hideous vultures already circling, and daring to swoop near the corpses round the Dutch trenches. The warm, coppery reek of spilled blood was almost as strong as the stink of voided men’s bowels and un-ravelled horse intestines.
At last, they got past the last of the Dutch casualties, and reached the South end of the Dutch trenches, where Army bandsmen were already carrying dead soldiers, British to one trench and Dutch to another, for a quick burial.
Lewrie stood and watched as Durbin had his two dead borne to the appropriate trench, and began to compose some final words in his head to see them off. He had left his Book of Common Prayer aboard ship, and would have to depend on an Army chaplain for the bulk of it. He was interrupted, though, by loud shouts, and turned about.
“You, there! You, sir!” a senior officer of cavalry shouted, coming on astride a glossy horse with a long riding crop in a gauntletted hand. “Come here at once, do you hear me? I’ve a bone t’pick with you!”
Damned if I ain’t gettin’ tired o’ bein’ shouted at! Lewrie fumed inside; From the Thirty-fourth? Their Colonel? Serve him sweetness and light, old son … sweetness and light. He put a faint smile on his face and raised a brow as if hailed by an old school chum.
“Good morning, sir!” Lewrie perkily said, doffing his hat. “I take it that you are Colonel Laird of the Thirty-fourth Light Dragoons? Sorry we have not yet made acquaintance. I am Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of the Reliant frigate, which escorted part of your regiment.”
“I know who you are, sir, and I am indeed Colonel of the Thirty-fourth Dragoons!” the livid fellow barked. “Those fools, Veasey and Strickland, have already informed me of your high-handed actions which instigated this idiocy!” he roared, sweeping a hand towards the carnage on the knob. “How dare you! Who gave you the right to order my officers about, deprive me of half a troop, and lead them into un-necessary peril, sir? Damme, had we gotten orders to charge this position, I would have been under-strength!”
“Captain Veasey, Leftenant Strickland, and I considered it a reconnaisance in force, since the knob was un-occupied, sir, so we came up to discover the enemy’s forces,” Lewrie replied as congenial and casually conversational as he could and still smile. “It worked, as you see.”
“Damn your eyes, sir!” Colonel Laird exploded, frightening his horse into shivers, circles, and flat-eared, eye-blared dread. “I’ll not have a bloody sailor, who knows nothing of proper military tactics, play ‘tin soldiers’ with my regiment! And, just what the Hell are you doing up here in the first place?”
“We’re part of the Naval Brigade that Commodore Popham offered to General Baird, sir, under the command of Captain Byng of the Belliqueux,” Lewrie sweetly answered, shifting the sling of his rifled musket on his shoulder. “We were landed to get the siege guns ashore, and re-enforce the guard on the baggage train. We came up alongside the train, sir.”
“The bloody baggage train is still far down bloody there!” Colonel Laird howled, pointing downhill to the West, where the regiments of the Light Brigade were now tramping up the slope to the crest of the Blaauwberg. “Damme if I do not settle you, this instant, Lewrie, for here comes General Sir David Baird. I will see you brought before a court! I will see you sacked!”
Colonel Laird snatched the reins of his horse and sped away at a brisk gait towards a clutch of senior officers at the head of the first regiment of the Light Brigade.
“Ehm … our waggon is coming up, sir,” a cautious Midshipman Warburton announced, daring a grimace of worry. “Should I see our wounded into it when it arrives, sir?”
“Do so, Mister Warburton,” Lewrie told him, “and break out the spare scuttle-butt. Our people will have need of replenishing their water bottles when the waggon’s up.”
“Warm work, indeed, sir,” Warburton commented, then went to his work.
“Mister Westcott, let’s see to collecting those canteens from the Dutch prisoners,” Lewrie ordered.
“Aye, sir,” his First Officer replied.
Minutes later, and Westcott was back, to whisper, “Trouble’s coming, sir,” as General Baird, Brigadier Beresford, and their staff came over. Lewrie tried not to wince, for that supercilious officer they’d met by the baggage train was with them, as was Colonel Laird.
He set his shoulders, un-slung his champagne bottle canteen, and took a sip to moisten his suddenly dry mouth, wondering if he really was “in the quag” up to his neck, this time.
“He’s drunk, by God!” Colonel Laird exclaimed. “That explains his actions, Sir David! Just as Mortimer here saw earlier. They all are! See those wine bottles, sir?”
“Good morning, sir,” Lewrie said, ignoring that rant, doffing his hat to the senior officers with more deference. “I would offer you some of our water, General Baird, but I fear it comes from our butts aboard Reliant, and is rather stale, by now,” and went to explain again how they had had to improvise before coming ashore.
General Baird took the offered bottle just long enough for a quick sniff, wrinkling his nose. “Well, I do remember how foul water becomes, after a few months in cask, Captain Lewrie,” he said in a rather kindly way. “What happened up here? Colonel Laird seems to think that you have acted rashly with some of his troops.”
“In point of fact, sir, it was a co-operative endeavour that could not have succeeded without the participation of the Thirty-fourth, and the skill and experience of Leftenant Strickland and his half-troop,” Lewrie replied.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lewrie saw disaster looming, of a sudden, and he tried not to quail. His sailors had approached the Dutch prisoners and had gotten their wood canteens, here and there in exchange, but mostly by appropriation by the victors. Patrick Furfy and a few others were looking just too damned sly-boots as they took sips, sniffed with sudden delight, and tipped the canteens back for deeper quaffs. It wasn’t just British soldiers and sailors who were mad for drink, any sort of alcoholic guzzle; the Dutch soldiers were just as guilty, and had filled their canteens with rum, brandy, or the national “treasure”, gin!
Trust Furfy t’find it, and get howlin’ drunk! Lewrie winced.
Ignoring that, while twitching the fingers of his left hand to Westcott to see to the problem, he genially laid out the situation, the possibilities, and what actions they had taken.
“Just as the shrapnel shells began to burst over ’em, sir,” he related, “we opened upon ’em. They had about five or six hundred men in all, and they pulled one infantry company out of line, and a troop of dis-mounted cavalry, t’deal with us, weakening the line. You can see the results, sir.”
“So, you did not play too high a hand, Captain Lewrie?” Baird asked, nodding his head in appreciation.
“Captain Veasey let Leftenant Strickland take half a troop, sir, and it was he who led the way and set us in our defensive positions, and instructed us both in how to receive cavalry and in how to deliver rolling volley fire, sir. In point of fact, it was more my lending him my men to his command than t’other way round.”
“Well, he is to be commended, then,” General Baird decided, “as is your regiment, Colonel Laird.”
“But, Sir David—!” Laird spluttered, red in the face, nigh puce with indignation.
General Baird grimaced at Laird’s overly-familiar use of his Christian name. “Sir Alan is to be commended, as well, Laird,” he said, stiffening his back, and making it quite clear that Laird was over-reaching. “Rest assured that your regiment, your junior officers, and Sir Alan will be mentioned favourably in my reports to Horse Guards, and Admiralty,” he added, with a brief grin and nod in Lewrie’s direction. “Will that be all, Laird?”
“Uhm, well…,” the deflated, frustrated Colonel managed to gravel out.
“Then do you take your regiment forward of the Heavy Brigade and scout by troops for the main Dutch force, sir,” General Baird ordered. “Find them, and report back, leaving a screen.”
“Yes, sir, at once,” Laird said, his chin tucked hard into his stiff collars, and spurred away.
“Just what are you doing so far forward, Captain Lewrie?” the General enquired once Laird was gone.
“Guarding the baggage train, sir, and getting shoved out of the line of march,” Lewrie explained with a shrug, “and made our own way.”
“Then do you wait ’til the baggage train is over the Blaauwberg and fall in with it,” Baird directed. “It may be best did you remain with it, the rest of the way, you know. I expect a hard battle with the Dutch before the day is out, and your wee lot would be of little help. You were lucky once,” Baird said, with a brow up.
“Once is quite enough, thankee, sir,” Lewrie replied, feeling sheepish.
Baird and his party wheeled away and clopped off, over the crest and downhill to the East, leaving Lewrie to finally let out a long-pent whoosh of relief.
Hah! Cheated Death, and Ruin, again! he told himself.
“Furfy!” he called out. “You men with him? The First Officer will be smellin’ those canteens ye pilfered. If there’s spirits in ’em, best pour it out, now. The Bosun’s Mate brought a ‘cat’ ashore with him, don’t ye know.”
“Breakin’ me heart, arrah,” Furfy muttered, sorrowfully turning his new Dutch canteen bung-down and spilling its contents on the dust of Africa.
“When the waggon’s up, we’ll re-fill with water,” Lewrie told them all, “but, we’ll also break open the cask of small beer.”
“Huzzah!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Hoy, the boat!” Midshipman Munsell hailed the barge as it approached.
“Reliant!” Cox’n Liam Desmond shouted back from the bows and showed four fingers to indicate the size of the side-party required to receive the frigate’s commanding officer back aboard. Sailors scrambled to toe the line of deck planks, and Bosun Sprague piped a long call as the barge came alongside and Captain Lewrie ascended the boarding battens to the entry-port, still laden with weapons. Once at the top and in-board on the starboard gangway, Lewrie doffed his hat to one and all, beaming fit to bust. Lt. Spendlove was his usual rather serious self, but could not hide a grin. Lt. Merriman, of a more cheerful nature, was almost chortling.
“Welcome back aboard, sir,” Spendlove intoned. “And, might I enquire how things went ashore, sir?”
“Just topping bloody capital, Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie said in high spirits. “Mister Merriman? Did things go well aboard? I see the French didn’t turn up. Well, hallo, Bisquit!” he cried, kneeling down as the ship’s dog pranced about in tail-wagging glee. “Here, I brought ye a fine new bone, and some biltong, to boot! It’s a stout impala bone, and the biltong’s hartebeest. Ain’t that tasty? Aye! No fear, there’s two hundredweight comin’ aboard.”
He got back to his feet and began to shed his Ferguson and the Girandoni air-rifle, and his pistols, piling all that ironmongery on the binnacle cabinet.
“Things went very well, sir,” Lt. Spendlove reported. “We’ve been anchored here in Table Bay two days now, ever since word came of the Dutch surrender. I saw to our old water butts getting emptied and scrubbed out, and fresh shore water taken aboard.”
“Very good, sir,” Lewrie said with a glad nod. “We were told of one Dutch warship, over in False Bay. What of her?”
“The Bato, sir, sixty-eight,” Lt. Merriman said. “Commodore Popham sent one of the other frigates round to see to her, but the Dutch burned her to the waterline before she could be made prize. We heard there was a battle, but so far no one’s told us anything. May we prevail upon you—?”
“Over supper tonight, once Pettus and Yeovill get me set back up,” Lewrie promised. “Aye, there was, and the Army went through the Dutch like a dose o’ salts. We had a grand view of it. And, a grand time ashore, too. Now Cape Town’s ours, and the Army garrisons it, I have hopes our people will be allowed shore liberty for a rare once. No risk of ’em takin’ ‘leg bail’ in a foreign country, hey?”
“Welcome back aboard, Mister Westcott … Mister Simcock,” Lt. Spendlove said in greeting as the other two officers gained the deck. “I gather we missed a grand adventure?”
“Didn’t you just!” Westcott hooted in glee. “Camping out in the open, sleeping rough, getting in some grand hunting and shooting? Campfires, roast game meat by the pound, as much as a man could cram down every night, and not an ounce of salt-meat junk boiled once we set foot ashore! Washed down with small beer or rooibos each night!”
“It’s a native bush the Khoikhoi … what people call the Hottentots nowadays … brew up,” Lewrie supplied, “and it makes a grand substitute for tea.”
“There will be several pounds of it coming aboard, so you may try it,” Westcott assured them. “With sugar, it’s delicious.”
“We even had a chance t’have our laundry done, as will you all once you get ashore,” Lewrie told them. “And hot fresh water to bathe in, too.”
“And are the Dutch laundresses handsome, Mister Wescott?” Merriman teased.
“Handsome, sturdy, blond, and most obliging,” their ever-randy First Officer said with a devilish grin.
The second barge was coming alongside with half of the Marines aboard. Pettus and Yeovill had accompanied Lewrie in the first, and Lewrie felt that he could quit the deck and retire to his cabins.
“Warn Mister Cooke that there will be lashin’s of fresh game meat comin’ aboard later for the hands’ supper for him to roast,” Lewrie said to Spendlove. “Onions, fresh fruits, potatoes, God knows what-all. I will be below.”
Once Lewrie was in his great-cabins, Chalky sprang off the bed and ran to him, tail high and meowing loudly in complaint. Lewrie scooped him up and carried him to the desk in the day-cabin to give him all the “wubbies” the cat demanded, at least ’til all the greetings had been made, and Chalky began to nip and swat at his fingers in lively play.
“Has Chalky behaved himself, Jessop?” Lewrie asked his cabin servant. “More to the point, have you been behaving yourself?”
“He missed ya somethin’ fierce, sir, slinkin’ about lookin’ for ya,” Jessop replied, “an’ meowin’ right pitiful. An’ aye, sir. I behaved. Might ya care for somethin’ t’drink, sir?”
“A Rhenish’d be welcome,” Lewrie said, going to the settee on the starboard side to put up his booted feet and slouch into the cushions. “Aah!” he said with pleasure to have something soft under his backside, at long last, and to rest his tortured feet.
“Lord, who’d be a soldier,” he said with a long sigh, after a first deep sip of his wine, and laid his head back and closed his eyes.
* * *
With their dead interred alongside the few slain from the two attacking regiments of the Heavy Brigade, Lewrie led his party and the trundling waggon down from the Blaauwberg to the interior, following a long, snaking column of infantry, cavalry, and the field artillery, and the dust clouds which all those booted feet, hooves, and wheels roiled up. That journey was like an ant descending the inside of a gigantic punch bowl, for, once past the coastal mountain chain, they caught sight of even more rugged, taller, and more impressive mountains and buttes that seemed to ring the plains on every hand.
The plains themselves rolled gently, sprinkled with knobs or kloofs of up-thrusting bare rock. On those plains they encountered their first farmsteads, with houses and barns and outbuildings made of stone and stuccoed stark white, surrounded by orchards and grain fields, paddocks and pastures filled with reddish cattle, all miles apart from each other, and too far away from the line of march for any foraging for fruit or the odd chicken.
At least they were at the head of the baggage train, half of which had yet to descend the Blaauwberg, and close up with the trundling gun-carriages, limbers, and caissons. They even had time to stop and dole out the first rum ration of the day at half-past Eleven of the morning before being overtaken.
An hour or two later, urgent bugle calls stopped the columns and shook both brigades out into lines, and the artillery left them almost at the gallop. Lewrie spotted a low rise off to their left and directed his men to go there.
He would not press his luck a second time; he and his sailors and Marines would be mere witnesses. And, once settled at their ease on the rise, what a grand view they had! It was like lead soldiers on the children’s room carpet as five thousand British soldiers formed long lines, with the drums rolling and the regimental bands playing, the bright colours waving, and the elegantly uniformed cavalry trotting or cantering to either flank.
They had found the Dutch, and they would make a fight of it, at last. Everyone with a pocket telescope stood and fidgeted with anxiety and excitement, and the Midshipmen counted the Dutch artillery and made estimates of enemy strength.
Five thousand Dutch soldiers, at least a third to a half of them cavalry or dis-mounted dragoons, or mounted infantry, and there were at least twenty Dutch field pieces, arrayed in line of battle the equal of British strength, but that made no difference. Bugles, drums, martial airs, and skirling bagpipes blared, the British guns barked, bucked, and roared, and Col. Shrapnel’s deadly bursting shot decimated the Dutch as both British brigades marched up to the range of musketry and began the continuous rolling volleys at three rounds a minute from each man. The British Army was the only one in Europe to practice regular live-fire musketry, and that steady hail of lead melted the Dutch away. Then the bright winks of sun on steel could be seen as the regiments fixed bayonets, the roars from the throats of five thousand men could be heard as the regiments were loosed at the charge, and it was over. The Dutch broke, turned their backs to their foe, scrambled for their horses, abandoned most of their guns, and ran, or surrendered in place!
Once their cheers had died down, and the last hat recovered after being flung aloft in triumph, Lewrie led his party forward, eager for loot and souvenirs … and some spare Dutch horses to ride. They found plenty of all their wants: shakoes and hats, brass plaques from enemy cross-belts, more wood canteens, spare wool and cotton stockings from spilled and abandoned packs, extra blankets and groundcloths for bedding, and farm lads from the crew managed to round up and calm enough horses for all officers and Midshipmen to ride. Even so, Lewrie and his men were pikers when it came to looting compared to the soldiers of the British Army, and their appalled officers’ attempts to quell the looting of the Dutch baggage train and stores of wine and spirits let Lewrie and his men make their pickings without notice.
The Army camped on the near banks of the Salt River for the night to await the arrival of the siege artillery, and Lewrie laid out their own separate camp, cautioned his men to take sticks and beat the ground from the centre outwards to drive away any snakes, saw firewood gathered and Yeovill put to work with a cookfire before he, Lt. Simcock, and Lt. Westcott rode out to do some hunting. They came back with three native antelopes, grysboks, and a bushbuck, had them butchered, the hides and offal thrown into the river so predators would not raid their camp at night, and spitted them on frames made from Dutch muskets and barrels. With cheese, ship’s bisquit, small beer or rooibos tea, everyone deemed it a feast, and every man rolled into his bedding round the campfires that night feeling stuffed and sated, most of them who were not poachers back home in England tasting their very first game meat!
The rest had been anti-climactic, a stroll through a parkland. The siege guns came up, the army marched on Cape Town, and word came that the Dutch governor of the Cape, Van Prophelow, would negotiate. In sign of that, he allowed Fort Knocke to be occupied, and Lewrie’s party could boil up salt rations in the shelter of the fort’s courtyard, marvelling at the number and great calibres of the guns mounted there. On the morning of the 10th of January, Van Prophelow formally surrendered, and the enemy general they had defeated, Jannsens, who had retreated with the remnants of his army to Holland’s Hottentot Kloof, surrendered as well.
They were idle all the next day, but took part in the victory parade into Cape Town itself on the 12th, found that all the taverns and eateries that Lewrie fondly remembered were open for business, and that Dutch beers flowed freely at the cost of only a few pence.
Lt. Westcott did ask if Lewrie also knew the locations of the best brothels, but that knowledge was ten years out of date, and he would have to fend for himself!
If there was anything to mar their merry jaunt, it was a confrontation with Captain Byng of Belliqueux, who was irked that he’d been counting on all landed sailors and Marines to help get the siege guns and carriages ashore, and Lewrie had run off on his own to play a game of soldiers, very loosely mis-interpreting his orders!
“You’ve a name for scraping, Lewrie, so I can understand why you dashed off for more derring-do, but you can’t have fun all the time,” Byng had chid him, and that not all that sternly, “now and then, you must join in at the onerous pulley-hauley with the rest of us!”
* * *
That reverie made Lewrie smile, and Chalky’s arrival in his lap, then onto his chest, made him open his eyes. He took another sip of wine, and then it was back to routine. Yeovill was announced and given leave to enter the cabins to make the arrangements for the supper for all officers and Mids not on Harbour Watch that evening. Guinea fowl from shore would be one course, ham for another, some fresh-caught yellowtail would be the fish course, and beef steaks would complete it. There would be baked rolls, boiled maize and garden peas, snap beans and sauteed onions, and dessert would be strawberries and cream over pound cake.
“Am I allowed ashore with the Purser tomorrow, sir, I can have a wider selection,” Yeovill boasted, as if his best efforts would not be up to his standards that evening. “What little I saw in the local markets today, well! What a selection of East Indian spices, and the sauces the Malays and Hindoos who live hereabouts make!”
“Aye, it appears that Cape Town ain’t just the ‘tavern of the seas’, but the pantry as well,” Lewrie agreed. “Carry on, Yeovill, and surprise me tomorrow night.”
“Do my best, sir!” he promised.
A Marine sentry guarded his cabin door again, and that worthy stamped boots, slammed his musket on the deck, and shouted, “First Officer, SAH!”
“Enter,” Lewrie called out, sitting up a bit more.
Lt. Westcott entered, looking natty and clean in his freshly-laundered clothing, but with his inevitable sheaf of paperwork.
“A glass of something for you, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked.
“A Rhenish, if you’d be so kind, sir,” Westcott said, baring one of his brief, savage grins. Lewrie waved him to a seat by the settee. “I have made a tentative change or two to the muster book, sir, to compensate for the men Discharged, Dead. Our wounded are at present being tended ashore by the Army surgeons, but look fair to heal up and return to us … if only on light duties for a week or so afterwards. Mister Mainwaring will surely request a chance to go ashore and see to them.”
“He’ll also wish t’palaver with strange, new ‘saw-bones’,” Lewrie said with a snicker. “Must be a lonely lot, a surgeon on a warship, with no contact with others in his trade for months and months on end. And, I’m certain that Mainwaring will also wish to re-stock his dispensary ashore. He’ll be free to take a boat with the Purser, any time he wishes, tell him.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, nodding as he ticked off one item of his report. “Ehm … once we’ve re-stocked the ship, there will be the matter of liberty. Will it be shore liberty, or should we put the ship Out Of Discipline for a day or two, and let the doxies and bum-boatmen aboard, sir?”
“I’ll speak with Commodore Popham tomorrow on that subject,” Lewrie promised. “As I said earlier, now we own the Cape Colony, and our troops garrison and patrol the town, shore liberty should be of as little risk of desertion as any island port.”
He stifled a sudden yawn, a real jaw-cracker.
I might not stay awake long enough t’dine my guests in! Lewrie thought; Go face-down in the soup if I do? The last few days’ve been a lot more strenuous than I thought. Damme, am I gettin’ … old? A nap ’twixt now and then is definitely in order!
“All the hands have settled back in, sir,” Westcott told him, “though the people left aboard are jealous. There’s quite a trade in looted items for cash, or promised shares in the rum ration.”
“No one managed t’smuggle any new pets aboard, did they? No bush-babies, mongooses?” Lewrie asked.
“Mongeese, sir?” Westcott said with a smirk. “No, sir, we saw to that. We’ll have to keep a sharp eye, though, when the bum-boatmen traders come out to the ship … with or without the whores. In the markets we saw, there were quite a lot of colourful caged birds. Do we allow the men shore liberty, they’ll surely try to come back with something amusing.”
