The Baltic Gambit l-15

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Aye-aye, sir!"

  *"Droogoy shampanksa-yeh. Ya hachoo bolsheh. Davai!" = "Another champagne, Sasha. I want another, quickly!"

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  HMS Thermopylae passed the long, narrow point of the Skaw in a light snowstrom, and altered course for the Sound under reduced sail; even so, with the wind blustering and shifting to the Nor-Nor'west she still scudded along at a good eight knots, all that next day and night, with the wind from out of the Arctic pressing her onwards into a grey, swirling mystery, with the horizon blanketed out from view aloft from the mast-top-lookouts, or the extra lookouts posted in the bows. Icy-cold sailors manned the lead lines, casting from the foremast channels for the shoaling water that would warn them of their nearness to the East-West lying island of Laeso, which they hoped to pass well clear to the East'rd of it. But… in the swirling snow as thick as a fog in the Thames Estuary at times, then clearing for tantalising minutes before closing down again like heavy window drapes, the best warning of anything ahead was limited to mere hundreds of yards.

  Thermopylaesteered roughly Sou-Sou'east, by dead reckoning of course, as if in a phantasmical Christmas village. A ship sailing off the wind could rarely go any faster than the wind itself, so there was little of the usual keening and rushing from the running and standing rigging. In the smothering blanket of snow, even the usual sounds of the working hull, or the hiss-roar of her passage through the sea was muffled, and… the frigate was regularly dusted with fat and heavy wet flakes that softened her warlike nature. Even her brute-iron artillery bore an inch or more piled atop the barrels and wood carriages.

  "Best we don't let it pile up, Mister Ballard," Lewrie told his First Officer. "I'd admire did ye break out brooms and such, and sweep her down, every hour."

  "I will see to it, directly, sir," Lt. Ballard replied, gravely sombre and fo rmal, as usual.

  A snowball came flying aft from the starboard gangway, near the foremast stays, and splatted Midshipman Pannabaker square in the chest. Midshipman Plumb, their cheekiest, whooped with glee over his aim.

  "You may reply with one round, Mister Pannabaker," Lewrie said. "Mister Plumb, sir! Yes, you, sir! I saw that! Now stand still, and prepare to receive!"

  Pannabaker quickly stooped to scoop up a heaping handful, packing and shaping it round and round in his mittened hands, much like a gun-captain would select the roundest and smoothest round-shot from the shot-racks or rope garlands for his first long-range broadside. This "shot" would be a tad slushy, Lewrie noted, as Pannabaker drew back to throw. He got his fourteen-year-old cater-cousin, Plumb, just beneath the chin, nigh staggering him, and knocking his hat off.

  "The next throw'll put the thrower at the mast-top 'til I feel like lettin' him come down," Lewrie loudly warned. In a softer voice he said to Pannabaker, "Good shot, young sir," and tipped him a wink.

  "No bottom t'this line!" the starboard leadsman cried out as he began to haul in his icy-wet coils of line, and the plumb weight.

  As Lt. Ballard and the Bosun called for sweepers, Lewrie turned to walk to the large double-wheel, and the binnacle cabinet and chart pinned to the traverse board, where both Mr. Lyle, the Sailing Master, and Capt. Hardcastle fretted and "ahummed."

  "No landfall yet, sirs," Lewrie prodded them.

  "Nossir," Hardcastle commented, "and I'm not sure why. Even by both our dead reckonings, we should be close to Laeso, but…"

  "It might be prudent, sir, to alter course to East, Sou'east," Mr. Lyle suggested. "The Kattegat is both wide and deep enough for us to have sea-room all the way to the Swedish coast, which has enough depth for a Third Rate, quite close to shore. In that way, we could skirt well clear of this island, in all this snow."

  "Or, do like the Vikings did in their day," Hardcastle said as he pulled a large red calico handkerchief from a pocket and blew his nose quite loudly.

  "And what was it that the Vikings did, Captain Hardcastle?" Mr. Lyle asked, a dubious brow up in case he was being twitted.

  "Oh, they lowered their sail, slow-stroked the banks of oars, and put a fellow in the bows a'hollering 'Odin!' 'til they got an echo off the shore," Hardcastle told him with a grin.

  "Mister Ballard," Lewrie said, "bring us round two points more to the East. And Mister Pannabaker? Go below and pass word for the Master Gunner, Mister Tunstall. He is to fetch up a swivel, and powder charges only, to mount up forrud."

  "Aye-aye, sir," Midshipman Pannabaker replied, eyes wide in wonder at what his captain might have in mind. As he dashed for the starboard gangway ladder to the main deck, he almost collided with Count Rybakov, swathed in his heaviest furs, scarf, gloves, and felt hat.

  "Permission to take the air on the quarterdeck, Kapitan Lewrie?" he asked.

  "Come up, my lord," Lewrie bade him with a grim smile, intent on peering forrud, as if he could squint hard enough to pierce the swirls of snow… and wondering who aboard had the stoutest lungs, should they be reduced to crying "God Bless King George!" from the bows before Mr. Tunstall was ready.

  "A thick day, my lord," Lewrie commented to Rybakov.

  "Oh, this is nothing, compared to a Russian winter, Kapitan," Count Rybakov said with a laugh and a deprecating shrug. "There, the winds howl days on end, and the snow comes down so quickly that a man who stands still for a minute or two can be buried in it, ha ha! Uhm, do you think it would permissible for me to smoke, Kapitan?" Rybakov asked, reaching deep into a side pocket of his sleek fur coat to pull out a cigar.

  "Don't think there's much of a fire risk today, my lord. Do go ahead," Lewrie told him.

  "You will join me, Kapitan Lewrie?" Rybakov offered.

  "Never developed the habit, thankee," Lewrie replied, watching as Mr. Tunstall, with two more gunners and a powder monkey, emerged from the midships companionway ladder with a swivel, stanchion mount, and gun tools. Rybakov snapped bare fingers to summon his manservant, Fyodor, who produced a tinder-box, flashed the flint to raise sparks 'til the rag took light, then offered it to the tip of his master's cigar. Once it was afire, Fyodor bobbed a bow and scampered away.

  "You will sound for the shore of Laeso Island, yes?" Rybakov enquired, happily puffing away and producing a flavourful cloud of tobacco smoke that only slowly drifted forward towards the cross-deck quarterdeck nettings and hammock storage. "The Baltic is quite often foggy, in all seasons, so I recognise what you intend."

  "Louder than shoutin' 'Odin,' as Captain Hardcastle tells me the Vikings of old did, my lord," Lewrie agreed.

  "Who became the Russ, Kapitan," Rybakov breezily babbled on, "for it was Vikings who entered the rivers from the Baltic and founded my country, who brought the trade goods from all round the world which they sailed."

  "Mister Tunstall's duty, sir, and he says he is ready to fire," Midshipman Pannabaker reported. "Uhm… at what, sir?"

  "At the snow off the starboard bows, Mister Pannabaker," Lewrie told him. "Slow and steady, and he's to listen close for an echo off the land. A round every two minutes, tell him, with my compliments."

  "Oh. Aye-aye, sir," Pannabaker said, whirling away, still befuddled, to bear the order to the Master Gunner.

  "Once Mister Tunstall is ready to fire, Mister Ballard," Lewrie further instructed, "have the Bosun pipe the 'Still' so there will be no extraneous noises."

  "Very good, sir," Ballard answered, sounding even stiffer than normal; as if he wished to sniff at the oddness.

  Damme, he's a good friend… was, Lewrie thought with a brief flush of irritation; so what's bitin' him?

  "Ready, sir!" Tunstall cried aft.

  "Bosun, pipe 'Still,' " Lt. Ballard snapped, and the crew froze in place, eyes turned aft in query as Mr. Dimmock tweetled the short call, which was a rarity aboard Thermopylae. Other ships in the Navy might be run by martinets who demanded utter silence during every evolution and manoeuvre, with twitched lines and single-note peeps from bosuns' calls to relay orders, but, so far, Thermopylae had not been one of them. Not under good old Capt. Speaks (God bless him)
and not under their new captain, who was beginning to win them over.

  "Carry on, Mister Tunstall," Lewrie ordered.

  The swivel gun barked like a lap dog in the relative silence, huffing a thick cloud of yellow-grey powder smoke over the starboard cat-heads, the aftermath seeming to roll off into soft, steady snow like a departing spook. But there was no echo.

  "I have taken charge of all our firearms, Kapitan Lewrie," the genial older aristocrat told him in a stage whisper, leaning close to wreathe both of them in cigar smoke for a second.

  "Good" was Lewrie's muttered comment.

  "My apologies… rifled duellings pistols," Count Rybakov went on, face twisted with a grimace of distaste, and an exaggerated shiver. "I did not know. Such is… pah!"

  "Explains my lucky shot," Lewrie said, grimly shrugging, trying to make light of it, though appalled, as was Count Rybakov, Lt. Eades, and every other man aboard who aspired to the title "gentleman." The Code Duello of every civilised country (even the Irish) where honour was defended with swords or pistols, abhorred rifled weapons as a sign of a coward seeking unfair advantage. There were gunsmiths in England who would rifle the back three or four inches of an eight-inch barrel for a customer, deep enough so that even a man's seconds or the judges were fooled… usually only one of a matched pair, with the coward armed for accurate murder, and his unsuspecting foe reduced to the limited accuracy of a proper smooth-bore. It wasn't strictly against the law-yet-but it was the social ruin of any so-called gentleman who tried.

  "I do not wish to admit my family produces a coward…"

  "Then say no more of it, my lord," Lewrie whispered back. "Do recall the old British adage… 'The least said, the soonest mended.' "

  "Spassiba, Kapitan Lewrie," Count Rybakov replied. "Thank you."

  "Ready again, Cap'm sir!" Tunstall shouted.

  "Fire away, Mister Tunstall, and everyone perk yer ears up!"

  The 2-pounder swivel gun yapped again, wreathing Tunstall and his assistants in a slow-moving belch of sour, rotten-egg stench. The report rolled away, fading, fading like a hard-sought whisper, and…

  Thum-umum came the faint reply.

  "There, sir!" Lt. Farley said in a harsh, urgent whisper, one hand cupped behind his right ear, and pointing off about three points off the starboard bows. "Seemed to come from there."

  "A point more Easterly, Mister Ballard," Lewrie snapped. "Fire another, Mister Tunstall, quickly!"

  "Bottom at twenny fathom!" the starboard leadsman cried. "Twenny fathom t'this line, there!" which produced a brief scramble over the chart, Mr. Lyle and Capt. Hardcastle almost knocking their heads together to trace the fathom lines for the closest to "twenty."

  Bark! from the swivel gun. A shorter pause this time, then the slightly louder Thum-um echoing back.

  "More like four points off the starboard bows this time, sir!" Lt. Farley cheered. "Hark," he added, head cocked in confusion. "Do I hear…?"

  "Seals, Mister Farley!" Lewrie, face split in a broad grin even as an eldritch shiver went up and down his spine. "The barking of seals."

  "Eastern-most tip of Laeso, then, sir," the Sailing Master was first to tumble out, "for most of the island's shore is steep-to, and the eastern tip is the onliest place where the twenty-five fathom line lies close ashore."

  "Shallows to rock and sand beaches, it does, sir," Hardcastle was quick to add, "and with so few poor fisherman livin' on the isle, 'tis always been a haunt for seals."

  "Haunt, indeed, sir," Lewrie said, snatching up a day glass from the binnacle cabinet and stepping to the starboard bulwarks. "Damme, but I like seals," he added, lifting the telescope to his right eye. As if on orders from on high, from Lir, the old Celtic sea god and the ancient pagan pantheon, the snow squall thinned of a sudden, revealing a rocky, low-lying shore, bleak and snow-dusted, with only a few dark green patches of pine and stunted bush. And a dark taupe beach filled by sleek dark-furred seals, ripple-running on fins into the sea.

  "Thir-ty fath-om, there!" the leadsman hallooed, unmistakable relief in his voice. "Thir-ty fathom t'this line!"

  "Secure, Mister Tunstall," Lewrie shouted forward, shuddering with secret delight, and laughing. "We've found our unknown island."

  "Wouldn't have believed it, had I not just seen it," Lt. Farley could be heard to mutter, and shared a meaningful glance with the others on the quarterdeck, behind Lewrie's back. Small as his entourage was when he'd come aboard, as Irish and myth-ridden as Liam Desmond and Patrick Furfy were (and as inclined to talk about the new captain's exploits), the arcane details of Capt. "Ram-Cat" Lewrie had been passed in whispers belowdecks; first among the hands, then filtered aft among the Warrants and officers. Lewrie and seals, selkies and the blessing of his doings by their appearances, such as the time he stole all those Black slaves in the West Indies, and the seals had swum out alongside the liberated, and their liberators; the warnings that had come to Commander Lewrie about the Serbian pirates in the Adriatic; the geas, the good cess that West Country and Irish sailors said had been bestowed upon a lucky ship, a lucky captain, and his defence of the right.

  "The captain's seals," Midshipman Pannabaker managed to squeak from a tight throat as the seals flooded like a dark brown carpet into the faint surf, and swam swiftly out towards Thermopylae, small heads bobbing up then diving under, uttering hound-like harks, some of them leaping clear of the water like flying fish, and it was so uncanny he felt like tearing up. Were they summoned to us? he had to wonder.

  Lewrie lowered the telescope and compacted it back into itself, stuck it in a pocket of his fur coat, then leaned on the bulwarks most lubberly-like, as Thermopylae cleared Laeso by a wider and wider margin. And still the seals came on, off the starboard quarter, almost to amidships off the beam, with a stronger few swimming and leaping almost against the bows and the outer edge of the bow wave and wake. Sailors now released from the "Still" crowded the gangways to peer down at the seals, who now raised a chorus of barks that put everyone in mind of a pack of pups glad to see their owner return up the cottage lane, after a day's absence at his labours. Great brown eyes wetly ashine under long lashes peered up at the frigate, whiskers on muzzles twitched in what seemed like joy as they barked. And, most eerily, a few of them half-rolled onto their sides to wave flippers at them!

  All eyes went to the new captain, who was smiling fit to bust as he waved back to them! A long moment more, and Thermopylae began to out-distance them and leave them behind to gambol and leap in their wake, and the seal pack turned away towards their rock beach. A gust of icy Arctic wind arose, keening in the rigging as the frigate, now on a broad reach instead of a "landsman's breeze" from right aft, like the shriek of fast flying spirits. The rising wind brought a blizzard of thicker, fatter, softer snowflakes that blotted out the decks for another long minute, and, when it thinned, and the gust faded, there were no seals to be seen! As if they'd never been. Their barks from the beach on Laeso could still be heard, but…

  "Give it one turn of the half-hour glass, Mister Ballard, then come about to Sou-Sou'east again," Lewrie ordered, still half lost in reverie, and pleasure. "There's still the small isle of Anholt ahead, but we should be able to leave it well clear off our starboard. It is much smaller, is it not, Mister Lyle? Captain Hardcastle? Easier to miss, pray God?" Lewrie japed, in happy takings of a sudden after days of tension and reined-back strife. "The Sound, and the Narrows, round dawn tomorrow, do you gentlemen believe?"

  "Aye, sir," Mr. Lyle said, while Capt. Hardcastle could only nod and gulp, still too awed to trust his voice, and Lewrie turned away to pace over to the larboard rails, now the windward side, and his alone for as long as he was on deck.

  "Seals don't do that," Hardcastle muttered. "I been past Laeso hundreds of times, and whenever the seals are present, they usually go ashore, t'get away from a ship passing too close to them."

  "This was a rare occurrence, gentlemen?" Count Rybakov enquired, having enjoyed the seals' appearance as only a pleasing happenstance.<
br />
  "Oh, rare, aye!" Capt. Hardcastle quickly affirmed. "Drawn out by the Captain, and his good cess."

  "By Kapitan Lewrie?" Rybakov said, puzzled, with his brow knitted. "And what is this… cess?"

  "A good-luck blessing, so the tale goes," the Sailing Master began to relate, though sounding dubious. "A funeral at sea, aboard the Captain's first command, in '94…"

  "Hundreds of miles offshore in the Bay of Biscay, just after the Battle of the Glorious First of June," Capt. Hardcastle stuck in, more superstitious than Lyle. "Seals came alongside, from nowhere, 'tis told by his Cox'n, and… took back the soul of the only lad killed… a selkie, and one of theirs, cursed by Lir, the old Celtic sea god who turned folks into seals 'cause they denied him, and doomed to live in the sea 'til they scream t'be people, again, Swim ashore and shed their hides on stormy nights, then live as men, or women, 'til they scream for a return to the sea, 'til the end of time."

  "Seals seem to turn up in Captain Lewrie's career, and some deem their appearances most fortunate," Mr. Lyle faintly scoffed. "Likely, it is only coincidence, sir. Coincidence, and myth-making about a man who has had extreme good fortune, by superstitious sailors."

  "Uncanny luck," Hardcastle insisted. "One can't deny that. The hands… do they believe their captain is blessed, his ship, and his crew that serves him shares in the blessing, well… who's to talk 'em out of that, I ask you, Mister Lyle? Might as well say that Nelson is just having a string of dumb luck, and will let them down, soon as they put their trust in him, hah!"

  "Hardly the same thing, sir," Mr. Lyle said with a sniff.

  "Well, it is nice to imagine that the appearance of those seals, whatever the reason for it, harbingers a successful voyage for us," the bemused Count Rybakov said with a cheerful shrug.

  "Pray God, indeed, sir," Capt. Hardcastle agreed.

  "Ah, but to which god?" Mr. Lyle said with a mild snicker. "The Great Jehovah, or old Lir?"