The King's Commission (20 page)
Read The King's Commission Online
Authors: Dewey Lambdin
“Me!?” Alan gaped, staring at him slack-jawed and trying to think of the proper commands.
“Yes, you, sir.”
“Bosun, pipe âall hands,' stations for getting under way.”
God, it was a mad-house on that single deck crowded already with guns and their assorted tackle, with all the running rigging in flaked heaps, the tops'l halyard men already snarling at the fo'c'sle captain and his crew for walking space, the hands
around the capstans and the nippermen ready with the messenger.
around the capstans and the nippermen ready with the messenger.
“Capstan's ready!” some kind soul shouted back, or Alan would have never thought of it.
“B ⦠bring to, the messenger!” Three and a half turns of the lighter line were wound about the capstan and the nippermen seized the lighter messenger line to the thicker cable.
Thank bloody Christ somebody knows what they're doing, for it sure ain't me! he thought as he saw men manning the bars, dropping them into the pigeon-holes, securing the drop-pins and breasting to the bars.
“Fleet the messenger!” And two men on each capstan plied their middle-mallets to force the turns of the messenger up the drum of the capstan to make room for the turns to come as they heaved in. Bloody hell, makes me wish I'd paid more attention to these things before! thought Alan.
“Heave around!” he shouted, trying to keep his voice from breaking. The pawls clanked slowly as the men walked about the drums of the capstans, chests pressing against the bars with their hands gripping the wood from below, thumbs turned outward to avoid injury.
“At long stays!” came a wail from the fo'c'sle.
“Heave chearly!” Alan encouraged them as the cable came in at a much steeper angle from the bottom.
“Short stays!”
“I'd not forget the dry nippers for the heavy heave,” Lilycrop said at his elbow suddenly as he held up the kitten to observe so much activity. “Ain't it a show, littl'un?”
“Do you wish to set sail at short stays, sir?” Alan asked.
“I leave it to you, Mister Lewrie. Proceed.”
God rot and damn the man! Alan thought, ready to weep. “Dry nippers, ready for the heavy heave! Surge ho!”
“Up an' down, sir!”
“Heave and pawl!”
Suddenly, the men at the capstan bars leaned forward and the pawls began to clank faster and faster. The anchor had broken free of the bottom and was on its way up, and the ship was under way under bare poles in the light wind in English Harbor. And just as suddenly, Alan Lewrie realized that it was an incredibly crowded English Harbor. There was an armed transport big as a bloody island astern, not one cable off, toward which they were slowly drifting, an anchored line of seventy-fours to starboard, and a line of warping posts to larboard, upon which some
newly repaired 3rd Rate line-of-battle ship was making her way toward the outer roads, and
Shrike
was in the way of her towing boats.
newly repaired 3rd Rate line-of-battle ship was making her way toward the outer roads, and
Shrike
was in the way of her towing boats.
“Hee hee!” Lilycrop laughed softly as he read the angry hoist from the post-captain whose way had been interposed. “He's not happy with us, I can tell you, Mister Lewrie!”
“Anchor's awash!”
“Heave and awash, then.”
“Cat's two-blocked, well the cat!”
“'Vast heaving,” Alan ordered. “Bosun, make sail, topmen aloft!”
It was really comfortable being a midshipman, even being a master's mate, Alan thought in despair as that armed transport loomed even larger as they made a slow stern-board down onto her.
“You'll not fuck up my transom paint, will you, Mister Lewrie?” Lilycrop asked as if he were out strolling Piccadilly or St. James's Park.
“I'll try not to, by God, sir. Loose foresails! Head sheets to starboard! Lead out tops'l sheets and halyards! Ready aloft? Lay out and loose!” Shrike obstinately refused to turn, still making her slow stern-board, and the loosed fore tops'l went flat aback, giving her even more impetus to ram that damned armed transport.
“Spare hands to starboard,” Lilycrop whispered sagely. “Run out number-one gun to starboard.”
Having no better idea in mind, Alan repeated the command, and he was amazed that the bows slowly inclined right as men and Marines and an artillery piece canted her deck slightly in the same direction.
“Let fall aloft! Hands to the braces!”
“Don't forget the bloody anchor, mind,” Lilycrop whispered once more, allowing the kitten to climb on his shoulder and tenuously balance.
“Man the cat and haul taut!”
“They've done that,” Lilycrop advised.
“Rig the fish! Quartermaster, how's her helm?”
“'Ard up ta larboard zurr, no bite. Nah, 'ere she coom, zurr.”
“Sheet home and hoist away tops'ls, lay aft to the braces, port head, starboard main, port cro'jack!”
“The anchor?” Lilycrop prompted. “And we don't have a cro'jack.”
“Man the fish, haul taut!”
Alan had a chance to glance around and his heart leaped into his mouth and he chilled all over. They had succeeded in getting her stem-board stopped, the bows around, but she was close enough to the transport to make out features of the people on her rails as
Shrike
began to go ahead slowly.
Shrike
began to go ahead slowly.
“Walk away with the fish! Brace up the head sheets! Ease the helm, quartermaster. Lay us to windward of those anchored seventy-fours.”
“Aye, zurr.”
“Well the fish, sir!”
“Belay, ring up the anchor, unrig the fish!”
Thank God, Alan could only gasp, and that to himself as he dug out a handkerchief to mop himself down. The ship was now under way, clear of that transport, away from that frustrated post-captain, well up to windward from the anchored ships of the line. The mess on the deck was being flaked down, the yards were braced up, the head sheets and spanker were trimmed up, and the bower was secured forward. But the ordeal was only beginning, for the exit from English Harbor to the outer roads and the open sea was a tortuous dog-legged channel framed by high hills and that meant capricious winds that could veer from one beam to another at a second's notice.
“I'd not like to get a nasty letter from his excellency Admiral Hood 'cause you forgot passin' honors to the flag, Mister Lewrie,” the captain said.
“Oh God,” was the last thing Alan remembered he said. The gun and flag salutes to Hood, to Comdr. Sir George Sinclair, the forts by the outer roads, the trip down the roads and out to sea, getting the courses on her, selecting a passage northabout to Antigua's lee for the Bahamas; it all passed in an unreal fog that he could never recall, even in later years, and every time he thought of it, his skin crawled.
He turned the watch over to the sailing master Mister Caldwell and went below to sponge himself down with a bucket of seawater and to don dry clothing, his previous garments wringing wet with perspiration.
“Passin' the word fer the first lieutenant!”
Oh God, here comes the axe, Alan thought with a heavy sigh. He went aft to the captain's cabins. Lieutenant Lilycrop was looking comfortable in old and patched slop trousers rolled up to the knees, a loose shirt without stock, and at the moment, no stockings or shoes, either.
“Sit ye down, Mister Lewrie. Sip o' somethin'? Black Strap? Miss Taylor? Got some right nice cider, all fizzy an' tangy.”
“Cider, sir,” Alan said, grateful for Lilycrop's obvious show of good cheer. Maybe I won't get a cobbing, he thought hopefully.
“Ah, good. Gooch? Cider for Lieutenant Lewrie, and small-beer for me. That'll be all, Gooch,” he added as the drinks were put out on the desk. They waited while Gooch finished his puttering and departed the cabins. Lilycrop picked up his mug of beer and took a sip; Alan tasted his cider. They sat and sipped and looked at each other for what felt like about a full watchglass.
Lilycrop belched loudly to break the silence. “Well now, this mornin', gettin' under way,” he said softly. “That wasâdammeâthat was
entertainin',
sir.”
entertainin',
sir.”
“I'm sorry, sir. I know I must have made a total fool of myself,” Alan confessed, burning with sudden shame. “'Twas a shambles.”
“I don't think âshambles' really does it justice, 'pon my soul, I don't,” Lilycrop told him sadly, but with a trace of a wry grin as if he truly did find some cruel amusement in Alan's discomfiture.
“I thought I had the ship ready to weigh, sir, but I never had a thought you'd trust me to take her out the first time and I wasn't ready,” Alan tried by way of explanation.
“She was ready to weigh, I'll give you that,” Lilycrop agreed. “But your choice of timin', and the way you parroted the commands like you'd read 'em out of a book, 'thout understandin' a word you were sayin' ⦔
“It was the first time I was ever allowed to weigh anchor and take a ship out, sir,” Alan said, trying to defend himself.
“God help me, then, what's the Navy thinkin' of, to send me a newly so unprepared,” Lilycrop spat, that wry grin now gone. “As for givin' you the deck, how am I to find out what sort of sailor you are if I don't test your abilities? Why the hell are you wearin' the coat of a commission officer if you have to be warned to be ready for any eventuality? You should know to be prepared.”
“I don't know, sir,” Alan said in a hoarse whisper.
“You come from money?”
“No, sir, not really.”
“Got relatives to give you interest an' place?”
“No, sir.”
“But you made master's mate, an' then lieutenant, in a little over two years,” Lilycrop carped on petulantly. “Done some brave things, by your record, been in some fights, brought up like a hot-house rose on blood an' thunder and not proper shiphandlin'. I know there's a war on, but even so, I'd not like to think that a panel of hard-nosed post-captains would pass a total fool an' then shove you into such a responsible position 'thout they saw somethin' in you worth promotion.”
“One would hope they knew what they were doing, sir,” Alan said, hanging onto that scrap of legitimacy.
“You're not somebody's favorite protégé, are you?”
“Um, I exchange letters with Sir Onsley Matthews, sir, and Lord and Lady Cantner, but no one of note locally.”
“So if I tossed you back for the fish to play with, nobody'd have my head for it, would they now?” Lilycrop demanded.
“No, sir,” Alan had to admit, his eyes stinging at the thought of being turned out of his first posting as a commission officer within a week as an incompetent. Damme, he thought, I don't love the bloody Navy any more today than I did a month ago, but I'll be damned to hell if I'll suffer that humiliation. At least, God, let me leave this shitten mess with my credit intact, with my pride still attached.
“If it is your intention to ask for a replacement, sir, I shall understand, but dammeâ” Alan could not go on without breaking down as the sick shame of it overwhelmed him and his stomach fermented.
“Well, I have no intention of doin' so at present,” Lilycrop told him. He belched once more, drained his beer and padded in his bare feet to the pantry, where he fetched out a squat, leather-covered bottle of brandy. “You've been prize-master in that frigate your captain took, prize-master in another ship last year, and you managed that well enough, as the records say, âquite resourcefully.' You've stood in charge of a quarterdeck as master's mate.”
“There is that, sir.”
Lilycrop sipped from the neck of the brandy bottle as he paced about his day cabin, pausing to pet the odd cat. He peered into Alan's mug of cider and topped off what little was left with a liberal potation of brandy, then sat down behind his desk once more, feet up on the top.
“I come up from powder-monkey,” Lilycrop informed him. “Then boy servant, midshipman and master's mate. Spent ten years a passed midshipman an' only made lieutenant after
Pondichéry under Pocock in '61, an' that was more due the death rate in India. Beyond Navy pay, I've not got the means to even burn good candles 'stead of rush dips. I should despise your fortunate young arse, sir.”
Pondichéry under Pocock in '61, an' that was more due the death rate in India. Beyond Navy pay, I've not got the means to even burn good candles 'stead of rush dips. I should despise your fortunate young arse, sir.”
“Aye, sir,” Alan nodded, looking down and sniffing the brandy fumes, unable to face the man.
“But fifty years in the Fleet has taught me one thing, boy. The Navy don't let politics interfere when it comes to promotin' fools or gettin' rid of 'em. The rest of our society is trash, spendin' and gettin', schemin' and back-stabbin' but by God, sir, the Navy is one of the few institutions the Anglo-Saxon race ever produced that kept its hawse clear of most of that, 'cause if we go under someday an' put the titled gentlemen back in charge with the
real
sailors on the orlop, then England is gonna end up some Frog king's playground.”
real
sailors on the orlop, then England is gonna end up some Frog king's playground.”
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