Текст книги "Hostile Shores"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The decks tilted a bit, first coming upright and level from the slight heel to starboard as HMS Reliant swung back towards her original course. Her hull slightly groaned at the easing, the myriad pulley-block sheaves squeaked and chattered, and the yard parrels squealed as braces and sheets were tailed on to swing the yards to angle the sails for a close reach, more up-wind. Once the yards were trimmed, and the fore-and-aft jibs and stays’ls were drawn tauter to cup that scant wind, the decks took on a slightly greater heel to starboard, but nothing as dramatic as they would be when going close-hauled on a stronger wind.
“Five and three-quarter knots, sir!” Midshipman Shannon cried from the stern, as if thrilled by the improvement. Casting the log was a minor chore, one that Shannon’s limited experience at sea rated him, so he would perform it as best he could ’til given a better one.
“Tastes a bit healthier, anyway, sir,” Lt. Westcott commented after a deep sniff, then flashed one of his brief grins. “It hardly smells like rotten eggs any longer. We’ll be in clear air any second now.”
“The enemy’s ceased fire,” Lewrie fretted, going to the break of the quarterdeck by the starboard ladderway to peer out.
“Saving shot and powder ’til he can see, again, most-like, sir,” Westcott said with a shrug, after following him over. “Same as us.”
“Aye, but did he haul off more Sutherly t’find us, or hope to work ahead of us and wheel round t’bow-rake us?” Lewrie wondered out loud. “Or, did he come back on the wind, and sail clear of all this on the same tack as ours?”
I’ll either see his stern, open for the raking, or his larboard guns, which are fresh and un-damaged, Lewrie thought; and the range greater than before. We now have the wind gage, and can fall down on him, at the very least. Which, dammit? Show yourself!
He was too impatient to pretend to be implacable, or properly stoic; he left the quarterdeck and went forward up the starboard gangway to the main mast stays for a better view, shouldering two Marines out of the way. “Mornin’, sir,” one of them whispered.
“Ah, good mornin’, Private Dodd,” Lewrie replied without looking at him. “Enjoyin’ sea life, are ye?”
“Aye, sir!” Dodd said with a twinkle. “Most exciting!”
“Speak only when spoken to, Dodd,” Lt. Simcock warned.
“Thought I did, sir!” Dodd answered, stiffening his posture.
“Leg up,” Lewrie demanded, taking hold of the thick and tarry stays to scramble to the top of the bulwarks and the filled hammock stanchions. He swung out-board and began to climb the rat-lines for an even better view, ’til he was half-way to the cat-harpings.
He was in clearer air! Swivelling his head round, Lewrie saw sparkling sea to windward, ahead, and astern. They had sailed above the pall of battle, into bright blue morning skies and innocently white clouds. The only blotches of sour yellow and dirty grey smoke were to leeward, to the South, and with the suspension of fire from either frigate, that bank of smoke was thinning, and slowly scudding away.
“Mastheads!” the main mast lookout in the cross-trees shouted. “Deck, there! Mastheads, one point ahead o’ th’ starb’d beam!”
There she is, by God! Lewrie silently exulted; Her mizen and spanker … her main, and main course? She’s almost stern-on!
He quickly scrambled down to the top of the bulwarks, pointing to leeward. “There she is, Mister Spendlove! Almost abeam, and her stern open to us! There she is, lads! See her? A bit more than one cable off, but she’s there! See her?”
Gun captains, officers, and Midshipmen ducked down to peer out the gun-ports, then stood back up, shouting fierce “Ayes!” of comfirmation, growling lusty eagerness.
“Aim small, then, fire as you bear, Mister Spendlove, you lads, and tear her heart out!” Lewrie urged them, clinging to the stays with one hand and jutting his other like a pointer at the foe.
“Cock your locks!” Spendlove shrilled. “Aim for her stern … crow levers, there! As you bear … slow and steady does it, now! As you bear … Fire!”
Oh, sweet Jesus, yes! Lewrie thought as the enemy frigate came swimming from the thinning haze, becoming almost substantial, as the 18-pounders crashed and thundered below his feet, as a fresh, thick pall of smoke, bright amber stabs of explosions, left those cruel iron muzzles, and firefly sparks swirled in the new smoke. In the scant seconds between discharge and the masking of their target, he could see the Spanish frigate’s spanker boom shatter, her proud ensign go flying free of its halliards, and great holes and showers of broken stern windows be smashed into her transom!
“Pound her! Go, my bully lads, and murder the bastards!” he yelled over the last echoes of his guns. A loud cheer from his men rewarded his urgings. With help, he jumped down to the gangway and quickly made his way back to the quarterdeck, beaming fit to bust.
“We’ve got them now, sir!” Lt. Westcott chortled.
“Damned right we do! We stern-raked her, by God, and I think ev’ry shot went home!” Lewrie crowed with glee. “That’s a killing blow! Let’s see what Señor Spaniard does, now! Mister Spendlove?” he shouted to the waist. “Hold fire ’til you can see her, again!”
“Aye, sir!” came a disappointed reply. Spendlove’s, and everyone’s, blood-lust was up, now “gun-drunk” enough to want to continue battering the foe ’til they could see chunks flying off her and bodies hurled aloft.
“There she is, again!” Lt. Merriman urgently pointed out to the gunners. “Her mizen’s gone by the board! Huzzah!”
The Spanish frigate was well and truly stricken, with her mizen mast damaged belowdecks, perhaps half-severed by the weight of metal shot up her wide-open stern. It lay over to starboard at a drunken angle, leaned forward onto her main mast. Gallantly, someone was on his way up her main mast with a fresh Spanish flag, perhaps to nail it to the top-masts in defiance.
She had swung up onto the wind, or was trying to, making barely a ripple of wake, in an attempt to expose her larboard guns and continue the fight, but it was a slow, crippled manoeuvre.
“As you bear … Fire!” Spendlove was ordering again.
“Two points free, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Let us close the range and hammer her t’kindling.”
“Two points free, sir, aye!” Lt. Westcott echoed. “Helmsmen, up helm, and steer East by South.”
“She’s not gotten her larboard gun-ports open, yet!” Caldwell exclaimed, a second before sight of their foe was blotted out, again.
“Fine with me!” Lewrie said with a laugh.
When a ship was brought to Quarters, all interior partitions were struck, all mess-tables hinged to the overheads, leaving a long alley on her gun-deck. When she was stern-raked, there was nothing to prevent solid iron shot from ravening from her transom planking to her forecastle galley and livestock manger, snapping carline posts and dis-mounting guns, and massacring her sailors, wholesale. There was a very good chance that that stern-rake had killed and wounded so many of her crew that those still on their feet were too stunned for a proper response!
“There’s her larboard quarters!” Lt. Westcott shouted as the smoke thinned again, wafting down past the Spanish frigate. “Two, three … she’s opening her larboard gun-ports, now. About one hundred and fifty yards off?”
“As you bear … Fire!”
The Spanish frigate’s crippled mizen mast split, its top-masts splintering free from the thicker trunk of the lower mast, and tearing her main course and main tops’l apart like a butcher’s carving knife! The gallant fellow with the fresh flag was ripped free of her upper stays and was flung into the sea to her dis-engaged side!
“Does that constitute her striking, I wonder, sir?” Mr. Caldwell hooted.
Fresh gun flashes erupted down the enemy’s larboard side, and roundshot howled over Reliant’s decks, one or two slamming into the side with shuddering thuds.
“Beg pardon, sirs, but the Carpenter, Mister Mallard, says the waterline shot holes in the larboard side ’re mostly plugged,” a sailor reported, knuckling his brow. “When we come about, they didn’t suck water no more, but they’s still a foot and a half o’ water in the bilges, and he says t’tell ya the pumps’ll be needed t’be rigged and manned, soon.”
“Very well, but tell him it may be a while yet before we can,” Lewrie told the man. “Tell him I know he’s doin’ his best.”
“Aye, sir,” the sailor said again, knuckling his brow before he dashed back to the waist, and the main hatchway which was guarded by a Marine.
“Ah, there’s yet another fresh flag,” Lt. Westcott announced. “It appears that Señor is a game one.” There was a new bright splash of colour exposed on the enemy’s foremast, near where the decapitated crucifix still swung wildly.
“As you bear … Fire! Slow and steady, brave lads!”
Bow chaser, 18-pounders, carronades, and quarterdeck 9-pounders crashed and boomed down Reliant’s side, as steady and regular as the ticks of a metronome. The range was close enough to marvel at planking and bits of bulwark being smashed in and sent flying in swirling clouds of paint chips and long-engrained dust and dirt. They could almost hear—or imagine that they could hear—the thuds, and the parrot-like Screech-Rawrks of stout oak being smashed in, as if the Spanish frigate was crying out in fresh agonies.
“Beam-on to us, at last,” Lewrie noted aloud. “No! Damn my eyes, but is she comin’ up hard on the wind?”
“Her rudder may be gone, sir!” Lt. Westcott whooped. “She’s not under control!”
“Now, she must strike her colours,” Lewrie insisted.
“As you bear … Fire!” Lt. Spendlove shouted, delivering yet one more crushing salvo, at a range of only one hundred yards.
“In the tops, there! Swivel guns!” Marine Lieutenant Simcock shouted to his Marines in the fighting tops with a speaking-trumpet, and both sailors and Marines opened fire with muskets and swivel guns to clear the enemy’s decks.
“Musket-fire … that’s iffy,” Westcott said with a wee laugh. “One can’t hit anything much beyond sixty yards, unless one fires a whole battalion volley.”
“Clear their tops!” Simcock yelled, spotting Spaniards aloft in the enemy frigate’s fore top, and what was not draped with ruin in her main top. The Marines along the starboard gangway took up the task, aiming upward and discharging their muskets.
“She’s falling off, again!” Mr. Caldwell shouted. “What sails they have left will carry her dead down-wind. We’ve got her, sure!”
“Now, she must strike!” Lewrie snarled. “Ow!”
Something smashed into his right leg, turning it dead-numb in a twinkling, with so much force that it was swept out from under him, spilling him on the quarterdeck on his face, and wondering how he’d got there.
“Oh Christ! Loblolly men to the quarterdeck!” someone cried.
He’d fallen so hard that the wind was temporarily knocked from him, had landed on his cheek and bitten his tongue, and his nose hurt like the very Devil.
Can’t hit shit over sixty yards, mine arse! he thought, before a sudden wave of pain came in such a rush that he couldn’t think!
“Smartly, now! Roll him over! A length of small line, now!” several voices were insisting.
Lewrie’s senses were swimming, and he felt faint, even before his head lolled over towards his injury, and he could see the spreading stains of blood on his breeches, at which he could but gaze, amazed, and suddenly frightened.
Someone was jerking something very tight round the top of his thigh. Someone else was feeling him over like a pickpocket in a great hurry. “Just that’un … must’ve broken his nose, or something,” he heard, sounding very far away and echo-y.
“Pass word to the Surgeon!”
Very roughly, and most un-dignified, Lewrie was shoved atop a mess-table carrying board, and bound up with ropes. He felt himself rising from the deck, fearing that his soul was fleeing his body for a second, before the urgent trot began … down the starboard ladderway to the waist, down the main hatchway to the gun-deck, down below to the orlop, and aft to the Midshipman’s cockpit, with each jogging and thump making his pains multiply, as if someone was jabbing his wound with hot, sharp pokers.
Won’t be a one-leg! his mind jabbered; Won’t be made a cook! Oh God, I think I’m killed!
Hands were stripping off his coat, waist-coat, sword belt, and tearing at his neck-stock and breeches buttons. His boots were jerked off, making him cry out. And there was the Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, looming over him, with his leather apron liberally spattered with gore, blood to the elbows and his rolled-up shirtsleeves, looking like a demon straight from the bowels of Hell.
“Bite on this, sir,” Mainwaring said from very far away, and a saliva-slick twine-wrapped piece of wood was shoved into his mouth.
There were ripping sounds as his breeches and underdrawers got slitted away, then came a cool, wet splash of something on his leg, firm hands holding it, then a piercing, tearing, burning agony that he could not imagine.
Lewrie arched his back and bit down on the gag, roaring at the intensity of the pain … before he swooned, felt like he was falling down and down a deep, dark shaft, and he knew no more about it.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It could not be Heaven, so he could surely think it Hell.
He was vaguely aware of a raging thirst, but could not seem to get anyone to pay attention to his want of water, for all he thought he saw were un-caring wraiths that floated round him. He felt as hot as if he was immersed in a boiling pot, hot and feverish, and forever tipping forward head-over-heels as if hellish imps tilted his bed up to spill him on his face.
He thought he sweated, ravaged by something like Malaria or the Yellow Jack, or some other disease far much worse.
And there was the pain, sometimes a mere ache, sometimes so bad that he could imagine that wolves were devouring him alive, and he had to scream, but could not.
And, then, he felt cold, clammily cold, and very weak, but he could open his eyes, though fearing to, in dread of seeing a canvas shroud over his face. Something was up against his face, something … cold, wet, and furry?
“Chalky?” he croaked.
His cat squatted on his chest, his nose a mere inch from his.
“Ah, you’re awake, sir!” Pettus exclaimed. “Parched, I should not wonder. Cold tea, sir, brewed fresh this morning. Help me prop the Captain up, Jessop. Extra pillow from the transom settee, here.”
How’d they get so tall? Lewrie wondered as his damp pillow was plumped up and turned over, and two more from the settee were placed under his head. He reckoned that he was in his cabins, and slung in his hanging bed-cot, but the overhead looked very far away, and all his furnishings appeared gigantic in scale.
When the tea came, he finished a whole tumbler in seconds, and belched with contentment, though still thirsty. At least the litter-box taste and dryness in his mouth were gone. With that out of the way, he felt himself over, very gingerly, expecting the worst. There was his thigh, a great blob of batting where he’d been shot, and lots of bindings. Further down … all of his leg was still there! But … what was his groin doing with bandages? Had he been shot in the testicles, or lost his manhood?
“What … what’s this for?” he croaked in dread.
“Ehm … you’ve been quite out of it for several days, sir, so instead of trying to move you to your quarter-gallery, we had to put you in swaddles,” Pettus shyly explained. “Mister Mainwaring said we should re-sling your bed-cot lower to the deck, too, for when you can manage to get in and out of it. Be a while, yet, he said.”
“Sponge-bathed ya, too, sir,” Jessop told him, “’specially when ya were sweatin’ so bad. A hard fever, ya come down with.”
“I’ll not have it, I can manage…,” Lewrie said, flinging the covers off and attempting to rise, but lifting his wounded leg caused a fresh wave of pain that made him gasp and fall back limply and weak.
“We’ll get your strength back, sir,” Pettus assured him, “soon as you can sit up and take solid food.”
Lewrie suddenly realised that he was ravenously hungry, as if his body had gone out like an un-tended fireplace, and was coming to life again in fits and starts. While taking a second glass of cool tea, Pettus babbled on about the broths he’d been given, the eggs in wine, the heavily sugared brandy laced with laudanum for the worst of the pain, and the hot teas with powdered willow tree bark for when he didn’t sound as if he was suffering too badly.
“That’s one of Mister Mainwaring’s grandmother’s folk remedies, sir, but it certainly eased you,” Pettus said. “You don’t remember any of that?”
“Not a bit,” Lewrie replied, shaking his head.
“Good for breaking fevers, Mister Mainwaring said, and you had a bad’un … it only broke last night, and you slept deep, at last,” Pettus said. “He’ll look in on you, soon as he finishes the morning sick call, and tends to the other wounded lads.”
“How long?” Lewrie managed to ask.
“Soon, sir,” Pettus assured him with a grin.
“No … how long have I been like this?” Lewrie insisted.
“Why, nigh on a week, sir,” Pettus told him.
Boots stamped and a musket butt slammed the deck outside of the cabin doors as the Marine sentry announced, “First Off’cer an’ th’ Captain’s cook, SAH!”
“Enter,” Pettus granted for Lewrie, and Lt. Westcott and Yeovill came breezing in, peering aft at the bed-cot, looking anxious.
“Ah, you’re awake at last, sir!” Westcott exclaimed, breaking out in a broad grin of relief as he came to the bed-cot. “We’ve been quite worried about you.”
“We won, didn’t we, Mister Westcott? We’ve a prize?” Lewrie demanded, suddenly noting that Reliant was at sea and under way, with the hull gently groaning and the overhead lanthorns gently swaying.
“Well, of course we won, sir,” Westcott said with a surprised laugh. “She struck her colours not five minutes after you were borne below to the Surgeon. A prize? Well, not exactly.”
“What?” Lewrie managed to ask.
“Recall, she was flying her main course, instead of brailing it up against the risk of fire?” Westcott explained with a grimace. “Our stern-rake must have dis-mounted a loaded gun or two, or there were some powder cartridges lying loose; something sparked off and flashed her main course alight, all that mess of her torn main tops’l and the tangle of her mizen top-masts that had fallen forward on her main top? Damned near the blink of your eye, and she’s ablaze, with no hope of saving her.
“Her captain ordered her abandoned, and her colours struck, but they couldn’t haul their boats up from towing astern quickly enough, so there were few survivors,” Westcott went on. “We picked up some who could swim to us, and a few more when we got our boats over to her.
“Her captain…,” Westcott mused for a moment before continuing. “The poor bastard stayed on his quarterdeck to the end, then he put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out, can you imagine?”
“Mad as a March Hare,” Lewrie said with a grunt.
“She was the San Fermin … one of their minor saints … and had been over on the Pacific side for about three years,” Lt. Westcott said. “She finally was recalled to Spain, put into Bahía Blanca after rounding the Horn, for supplies, and heard of our invasion, one of her surviving officers told me. She really needed a major re-fit, but her captain, Don Francisco Montoya-Uribe, felt his highest duty would be to stay and attack any transports that came in, or engage one of our warships, to whittle down the odds before a relieving squadron turned up, after he learned how few we were.
“The poor sods didn’t even know about Trafalgar ’til we told them, sir,” Westcott marvelled, “and they still can’t quite believe it!”
“Honourable … for a Don,” Lewrie commented. “Very proud lot.”
“It’s a wonder they put up as good a fight as they did, sir,” Westcott said, shaking his head in awe. “Half her original crew had taken ‘leg-bail’ to seek their fortunes, looking for silver and copper, and got replaced with local criollos or starving Indios. Her captain had hardly any funds for her up-keep, or his crew’s pay half the time, and their Ministry of Marine sent money out only when they remembered to, so she wasn’t much of a happy ship. I gather that her Captain Montoya kept them together with kindness.”
“That’s a new’un,” Lewrie said with a scowl.
“The survivors gave the impression that they liked him, sir, even if he was dull, scholarly, a tad shy, and soft-spoken,” Westcott told him. “An hidalgo from an ancient family, but poor as church-mice. Honourable to the end, they said. They pitied him, I think.”
“All this way,” Lewrie sadly bemoaned, “all this time, and not a groat t’show for it. Our own losses, our damage?”
“Dis-mounted guns back on their carriages, the shot holes along the waterline plugged, scantlings re-planked, painted, and tarred over,” Westcott ticked off, more business-like. “We’ve still rope and canvas fotherings over them, but there is a slow seepage the Carpenter still can’t find, but an hour on the pumps twice a day keeps around six or seven inches of water in the bilges. We’ve used up all our stores of lumber, and had to borrow from Diadem. Left the prisoners with them, too, so Captain Downman is less than pleased with us.”
“Casualties?” Lewrie asked.
“Seven dead, right off, and two more who died of wounds, sir,” Westcott told him. “I’ll bring you the muster book when you’re up to it. Eighteen wounded, counting yourself, but there are only two who are really bad off, Surgeon Mainwaring says. Your stroke-oar, Furfy, got quilled with wood splinters, and a knock on the head, so he’s laid up in the foc’s’le sick-berth for a week, with another week on light duties.”
“He’ll relish that, I’d wager,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “Bed-rest, no chores, and he still gets his rum and beer rations. God, my manners, Mister Westcott! Drag up a chair and sit!”
Pettus had already fetched one from the dining coach. “Thank you, sir. That close to the galley heat, Furfy and the others will be as snug as bugs as we drop down to pick up the cold, hard Westerlies round the Fourties.”
“Good morning, Captain, sir!” Lewrie’s cook, Yeovill, cheerily intruded, “You will be taking breakfast today, some solid food?”
“God, yes!” Lewrie enthused.
“Thick, sweet cocoa to start, sir,” Yeovill said, handing him a large china mug, “scrambled eggs, a rice pudding for later, and I whipped up a batch of hot water-drop cornmeal fritters. The Surgeon is of a mind that your victuals had best be soft and bland for a few days, sorry.”
“Damn his eyes,” Lewrie groused. “Aye, bring it on, even if it is pap. We’re fallin’ down to the Fourties, Mister Westcott?”
“Already about two hundred miles Sou’east of the Plate Estuary, sir, and I expect Noon Sights will place us near the Fourty-third Latitude. We’re bounding along quite nicely, bound for Cape Town. Then England,” Westcott added, looking pleased.
“God, at last!” Lewrie said with a gladsome sigh. “Commodore Popham released us?”
“With urgent despatches to General Baird at the Cape, requesting immediate re-enforcements, and his latest reports to Admiralty,” Westcott said, still grinning almost impishly as he added, “I might have given the Commodore the impression in my report that we had taken more damage than was the case, along with how long Reliant has been in commission, and was overdue paying off?”
“Happens even in the best of families,” Lewrie said, grinning in turn. “Even Nelson was prone to exaggeration.”
Pettus was fussing about, tucking a napkin into Lewrie’s shirt collar, and fluffing the pillows again. Lewrie tried to use his hands and elbows to scoot up higher in the bed to a half-way sitting position, but he could manage only an inch or so, and the leg wound awoke in fresh pain, making him suck air and wince.
“God, I’m weak as a kitten,” Lewrie said through gritted teeth, freezing in place to let the pain subside. Westcott, Pettus, and young Jessop took him by the armpits and dragged him up, making things even worse, bad enough for Lewrie to growl at them.
“Your cocoa, sir,” Yeovill announced, “a refill?”
“Aye,” Lewrie agreed, once his leg quit screaming and merely ached. “Whew! The Commodore wants more troops, instanter, does he? Any idea what’s happening up at Buenos Aires?”
“Only what Captain Downman told me, sir, and it doesn’t sound all that good,” Westcott said, frowning as he sat back down. “Troops from the Montevideo garrison and local volunteers are getting over to Buenos Aires at night in fishing boats, in the shallows where Popham can’t get at them. He’s only Encounter and her boats and crew, and she can’t swim that high up the estuary. They’re joining up with volunteers under Sobremonte, the Viceroy of La Plata, and a man by name of Pueyrredón. There’s a Frenchman, Liniers, commanding them, too, and the Commodore’s sure that it’s all a nasty Napoleonic plot. General Beresford beat about fifteen hundred of them, but that was on the defensive, and he’s unable to chase them down and drive them off.
“The city isn’t safe at night, so all Beresford can do is to patrol,” Westcott growled, “maybe dig some entrenchments, and wait for the shoe to drop. It sounds rather grim, in all.”
“Popham still has five transports,” Lewrie said, frowning at that news. “If it’s that bad, he should pull Beresford’s men out, fall down to Point Quilmes, take ’em off the Cuello’s banks, and sail back to Montevideo, before he loses the whole lot.”
“And admit defeat, sir?” Westcott snickered. “Fail, and admit rashness and bad judgement, more to the point? After his glowing reports, and that open letter to the London merchants, I can’t see him withdrawing.”
“Here’s breakfast, sir!” Yeovill sang out, placing a plank over Lewrie’s lap to span the bed-cot, upon which was a plate of eggs and a basket of fritters. “You’ll be happy to know, sir, that Mister Mainwaring said you could take as much red wine as you wished, as it’s grand for building up the blood and your strength.”
“Whisky?” Lewrie hopefully asked.
“With sugar and raw eggs, and medicine, only at bed-time, he said, sir,” Yeovill informed him.
“Damn his eyes a second time,” Lewrie grumbled, taking a first, delicious bite of eggs and a fritter that dripped fairly fresh butter.
“He saved the bullet for you, sir. Interested?” Yeovill asked.
“Christ, no!” Lewrie barked. “That’s … ghoulish!”
“Nothing to be done for your breeches. sir,” Pettus told him, “but, if you don’t mind that the tail of your silk shirt is shorter, it’s quite serviceable.”
“It’ll be a while before I’ll need either, but thankee kindly, Pettus,” Lewrie said with a smile.
“We’ve still some of those fresh-casked Argentine beef steaks, sir,” Yeovill happily babbled on. “You’ll be ready for some of them in a week or so.”
“And, once we anchor at Cape Town, there’ll be all manner of fresh wild game meat,” Westcott added, sounding wistful.
“I hope I’m able t’totter, by then,” Lewrie said, “and not end up a gimp.”
“Well, time heals all wounds, sir,” Westcott teased, “both the physical and the wounds of the heart. Mister Mainwaring is sure that you’ll recover fully. He took great care, he said, to extract every thread of cloth, and a few wee slivers that the bullet nicked off your thigh bone. You just rest easy and take your time, sir, and we’ll have you dancing by the time we get to Table Bay!”
“Well, if Mister Mainwaring insists on bed-rest!” Lewrie said with another wide grin. “After all, the ship is in the best of hands.”
“Thank you for saying that, sir,” Westcott said, bowing his head for a moment. “Long naps, catch up on your reading, amuse your cat, and enjoy a sea voyage, sir, with nought to do but plan what you will do when we get back to England. At any rate, our part in Commodore Popham’s fiasco is over and done, and we’re well shot of all that.”
Lewrie’s jaw dropped as he peered owlishly at Westcott.
“Geoffrey … did you have t’say ‘well shot’?” he asked.
“Oh Lord, my pardons, sir, I—!”
Lewrie could keep his stern expression for only so long, then began to laugh out loud. “Well shot, mine arse! Hah!” which set Westcott to relieved nervous laughter, and amused the others, too.
Damme, but it hurts t’laugh so hard! Lewrie thought, wincing and yet unable to stop or calm his cackling.
“Yeovill, ye say I’m allowed red wine?” he asked. “Well, pour me a mug. I have it on the best authority that I’m well-shot, and prescribed it! I might even have earned it. Well-shot, my God!”
