The Invasion Year (50 page)

“Thank you, sir! See you in a fortnight at the latest!”

Penarth
sheeted home her fore-course and slowly began to draw away. Lewrie turned to his officers and Mids.

“Well, sirs? He said we should make a nuisance of ourselves, so let’s be about it. Mister Westcott, Mister Caldwell, we can be into the Gulf of Saint Malo by early afternoon. Shape a course,” he said. “Captain Speaks has let us off his leash for a few days. Let us make the most of it.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott wolfishly agreed.

“And get back to proper duties, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked.

“Doin’ what a frigates’s s’posed t’do, aye,” Lewrie said with a laugh, feeling immense relief. And feeling rather wolfish, himself!

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Making a nuisance of themselves in the Gulf of St. Malo was not as easy as it sounded, however.
Reliant
’s draught of almost eighteen feet limited where she could go, or dare go for only a few hours, due to the dramatic rise and fall of the tides, forcing her to venture no closer than two miles of the French coast, far beyond the Range-To-Random Shot of her 18-pounder guns.

Besides, other Royal Navy vessels were already in the Gulf and quite successfully making nuisances of themselves, vessels which drew much less water than she; the bulk of them were small and light single-masted cutters, backed up by brig-sloops or the rare three-masted full-rigged sloops, mostly lieutenants’ commands, with half-squadrons or flotillas led by commanders in their Sixth Rates. If
Reliant
did meet with a larger warship commanded by a Post-Captain, an offer of help was turned down, for the most part, since all the aid the Fifth Rate 38-gun ship could provide was more moral than substantial, too far offshore to back up the blockading patrols or operations unless a French frigate of her own weight of metal emerged … and so far none had. What opposition the French had sent out had been
chasse-marées, prames,
and
chaloupes,
the gunboats purpose-built to defend the armada of invasion vessels, and those not too often, either.

Some
people were having fun, though, swarming over the convoys of
péniches
and
caïques
trying to make their way to join the immense gathering at Boulogne, hugging the coast as close as the shoals, sand-bars, and rocks allowed, sneaking from port to port in short and breathless stages. More enterprising young officers were leading their men ashore at night to cut out barges, or set fire to them, and the very bravest would row up the creeks or rivers to block the many canals or raid the small riverside shipyards where the invasion fleet was being built. And
Reliant
could take no part in that.

After a few days of fruitless prowling, all Lewrie could do was shake his head, take a squint at Point de Grouin east of St. Malo, and order
Reliant
turned North for a return to Guernsey and the open waters of the Channel, wishing his more-active compatriots well, though he did in point of fact envy the Hell out of their shallower draughts, their opportunities, and even their lower ranks which could justify their active participation in such harum-scarums. If he could pinch
Reliant
into high-tide reach of the Normandy coast, he might find a chance for action off Granville, Coutances, Lessay, or Barneville-Carteret or some other inlet or fishing port along the way.

If someone did not beat him to it, first!

*   *   *

He did not know what awakened him, the coolness of the night or his cats. Lewrie had rolled into his hanging-bed-cot round midnight in all his clothes but his boots and coat, more for a long nap than anything else, too fretted by the wind and sea conditions to imagine that he would drop off so soundly or quickly. Just after Lights Out at 9
P.M.
the winds had nigh-died on them, and the sea had turned to nearly a flat calm, slowing the frigate to a bare three knots.

The air in the great-cabins was clammy and cool, and his first thought was to pull up the coverlet, or rise and close the upper halves of the sash-windows in the transom, as well as the propped-open windows in the overhead coach-top. Lewrie never left the lower halves open at night; did Toulon and Chalky prowl and play-fight in the dark, it was good odds that one, or both of them, would tumble out some dark night.

They were both with him in the bed-cot. Toulon, the older black-and-white, was puddinged up atop his hip, working his front paws and loudly purring. Chalky, the younger mostly white ram-cat, was in his face. When Lewrie opened one gritted eye, all he could see was warm fur, though he could feel Chalky’s pink nose and whiskers brushing at his own nose and eyes.

“What?” Lewrie grumbled in irritation to be wakened so early in the wee hours. “Can’t I have the last hour? We have t’play
now
?”

Far forward, a ship’s boy began to strike the watch-bells, and Lewrie let out a groan. It was Seven Bells of the Middle Watch, which ran from Midnight to 4
A.M.
While he usually wished to be awakened a few minutes before the change of watch, this was a bit too premature!

“Right, then,” Lewrie mumbled, gingerly shifting position and reaching out to pet both cats, yawning heavily and stretching to ease stiffness. With a frown, he became aware of how still the motion of the ship felt, of how faintly
Reliant
’s timbers groaned as they worked, almost as if she was securely moored in harbour. His ears caught the creaks, the squeaks of slack blocks, and the slatting of sails as if there was
no
wind, and he sat up quickly, worried that his frigate was becalmed off a hostile shore, possible prey to oared gunboats with those rumoured 24-pounders in their bows!

He rolled out of the bed-cot, found his boots by tripping over them, and groped about the top of the nearest sea-chest for his coat to don it and head for the deck. He startled the nodding Marine sentry who guarded his door, dashed up the ladderway to the quarterdeck, and looked about.

“Er, good morning, sir,” Lt. Merriman exclaimed, as startled as the sentry by Lewrie’s appearance. “I was just about to send for you, Captain. The wind has fallen away, the last half-hour, and I believe there’s a mist rising.”

“We still have steerage way, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked as he looked aloft for the commissioning pendant, the normal indicator of the apparent wind, but it was too dark to see it. Looking forward to the forecastle, not an hundred feet from where he stood, the lanthorn by the belfry looked fuzzy, too!

“Barely, sir,” Lt. Merriman replied. “Mister Grainger just had a cast of the log, and it showed a bit over two knots.” Merriman went on to state that the wind was still out of the West, but fading. His cross-bearings on the lights of Granville off their starboard quarter, and the lights of Coutances on their starboard bows placed the frigate roughly six miles off the French coast, with Coutances and its inlets about eight miles ahead.

“Ah! Good morning to you, sir … Mister Merriman,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, said as he clattered up the ladderway to the quarterdeck.

“Did Merriman send for you, sir?” Lewrie asked.

“No, sir, I woke on my own, and something, just didn’t feel right. Just afore Seven Bells was struck,” Caldwell said.

“How odd. Me, too,” Lewrie said, wondering if after all of his twenty-four years in the Navy, he had finally gained a sea-sense.

“Misty,” Caldwell commented, lifting his chin to sniff. “There will be a fog, I fear, sir. Perhaps even a shift of wind.”

“I will confess my lack of experience in the Channel environs, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said, “but, in
your
experience, is this millpond sea, scant wind, and fog normal?”

“All together, sir? Damned rare, I warrant. Even eerie!” Mr. Caldwell told him, his head cocked to one side in frustration.

“Wind’s
died,
” Lt. Merriman pointed out as the main course sail ahead of them went limp, and the spanker overhead sagged, with its long boom creaking. Lewrie could barely feel even the faintest breath of it on his cheek—they
were
becalmed!

“No helm, sir!” Mr. Baldock, Quartermaster of the Watch on the double wheel, announced. “She ain’t bitin’ no more.” To prove that, he spun the wheel to either side, which did nothing to shift the compass as
Reliant
coasted along on course, slowing, shedding the inertia that her long hull imparted.

“Oh!” Lt. Spendlove exclaimed as he came to the quarterdeck to relieve Merriman, a few minutes before Eight Bells. “Good morning to you all. Egad, sirs, a flat calm, is it?”

“And a fog, Mister Caldwell assures us, soon to come,” Merriman told him with a grimace.

“We’ll dispense with scrubbing decks, gentlemen,” Lewrie said, striving to put a calm face on things. “We will go to Quarters right after the people’s bedding is stowed. When the galley’s got breakfast ready, we’ll let the hands below by watches, but keep the guns manned. We’ll
not
be surprised by something Froggish at short range, right?”

If Caldwell’s right, and there
is
a fog,
Lewrie thought;
if it’s a good thick’un, we can’t see them, but maybe they won’t see us!

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After an hour or so, the winds returned, the faintest zephyr off the land, sometimes from the East, then backing into the Sou’east for a few minutes, allowing
Reliant
to stir, to ghost ahead on her former course of Due North, barely fast enough for the rudder to bite. It was a land-breeze, for the sea was much cooler, and shed its gathered heat more quickly than did the shores, the rocky hills, and the land of France. And even before the land-breeze arose, had come the fog, and it was as thick as a hand-before-your-face London “pea-souper.” Before the sun had risen, the fog had become so thick that the belfry lanthorn and its crispness had been turned to a vague blob of light, and even the larger taffrail lanthorns right aft on the quarterdeck had gone feeble.

Lewrie had gone below long enough to scrub up, fetch the keys to the arms chests and his own weapons—find his hat and boat-cloak—then returned to the deck, to slouch in his collapsible canvas sling-chair, now and then peering aloft at the commissioning pendant, now all but lost in mist, not darkness. Now and again, once the sun was up, a bank of fog would roll over the ship, a bank so thick that he couldn’t make out the forecastle, much less the jib-boom!

He breakfasted later than the hands, taking only a bowl of oat-meal with strawberry jam and mug after mug of coffee, with goat’s milk and sugar, and a fairly fresh piece of ship’s bisquit or two soaked for long minutes in the coffee to make them soft enough to chew. And, he fretted over his ship’s vulnerability, the lack of speed with which to flee, the thickness of the fog from which gunboats could come with not half a minute’s warning.

Lewrie
tried
to be the sort of captain that the Navy demanded: cool, serene, and stoic in the face of danger. But that sort of pose was not in his nature, never had been in the past, and, he freely admitted to himself, might never be in future. He
had
to rise at last and pace the quarterdeck, hands clasped in the small of his back, hidden by the folds of his boat-cloak so no one could see them being wrung. Up the windward side, which was his alone by right and long tradition, cross the forward edge of the quarterdeck by the stanchions and nets now full of rolled-up bedding and hammocks, then aft down the lee side right to the taffrails, flag lockers, and the now-extinguished lanthorns before beginning another circuit. He paused and looked aloft, again.

“Ha!” Lewrie barked. He could see the commissioning pendant as it lazily curled, could make out the maze of rigging, sails, yards, and top-masts once more. He could even see the tip of the jib-boom. Aft, he could see the two barges and both of
Reliant
’s cutters under tow. A half-hour before, all he could see was the towing lines, stretching out into nothing!

“It seems to be thinning, at last, sir,” Lt. Westcott said as Lewrie joined him by the helm. With the ship at Quarters, Spendlove and Merriman were at their posts in the waist, surpervising the guns.

“About bloody time, too,” Lewrie said with relief and evident enthusiasm. “Ye can see out-board a long musket shot or better. Any idea where we are now, by dead reckoning, Mister Westcott?”

“Uhm, about here, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, stepping forward to the chart pinned to the traverse board. “Coutances should be abeam of us to windward…”

“Windward, mine arse,” Lewrie japed. “
Zephyr
-ward, more like.”

“With this land-breeze and ebbing tide carrying us, I have no idea how
far
off the coast we are, sir … sorry,” Westcott added as he traced their course with a forefinger. “Our last sure cross-bearings put us six miles off, and I’d imagine that we’ve made enough lee-way to estimate that we might be eight miles off, by now.”