King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I’m certain they won’t, Sergeant … Thankee,” Lewrie replied, giving Skipwith’s shoulder a grateful squeeze. “You carry on with the undermining and shuffling, and I’ll search us out the opportunity. Do you tell ’em I’ll move Heaven and Earth to get their officer back.”

  “Aye, sir, I’ll pass that along, sir!”

  Pleasin’, Lewrie felt like humming to himself as he resumed his strolling, all but strutting with delight; it’s comin’ together, maybe as soon as tonight, once it’s dark as a boot? Sheerness, or seaward, that’s the question. Seaward, I’d prefer, but … inshore might have to suit. Look up Mr. Wyman, the middies … have ’em in for dinner, aha! Let ’em know we can now count on the Marines, make a final list of friends or foes … Hell’s Tinny Little Bells! As downcast, as shit-scared! as most of the people look this mornin’, we just might could pull it off tonight! Backed into a corner, damned by everyone from Land’s End to John O’ Groats … time runnin’ out on ’em … one word’d send ’em to their knees in gratitude, most-like. We could …

  Cheering interrupted him, making him snarl petulantly; a reedy, thin, distant cheering from down the line of anchored ships that began at the far end and swelled towards Proteus like the onset of a gale. He went to the bulwarks to see what nonsense had them going this time. Another parade of boats and bands?

  “Oh, Christ!” he gasped, espying a cloud of sail offshore. “A glass! Now!” he bade, turning his head to see Midshipman Sevier near the binnacle cabinet. “My glass, Mister Sevier, quickly!”

  Once he had it in his hand, he slung it over his shoulder like a carbine and scampered into the larboard mizzenmast shrouds ’til he was above the cat-harpings near the fighting-top.

  Dutch … French, he fretted, opening the tube out of its full extent. Panting a bit too, and damning the enforced idlness of these last few days; surely it wasn’t his fault that a brief ascent winded him! There! Enemy ships, come from the Texel before Admiral Duncan could take up his blockade … the van division of a feared invasion?

  No, they were beam-reaching off a Northerly, which would blow a “dead-muzzler” for the Texel’s narrow North shore exit, so they couldn’t be the Dutch Fleet.

  French then? No again, he grumbled. They’d have had to come up-Channel, first, weather the Straits of Dover, the Downs, and Goodwin Sands.

  Channel Fleet, itself, come to shoot the Nore ships into submission? Well, maybe, but the tail-end ships seemed as if they’d come from the North, scudding off the Northerly winds before they wheeled about in-line-ahead to follow the others which were coming in for the Queen’s Channel and the outer anchorage on a soldier’s wind.

  “Duncan!” he cried with glee. “The North Sea Fleet, ordered to the Nore to put the mutiny down! Someone found his nutmegs, at last! Now we’ll see something, by God!”

  He lifted his glass again, leaning back into the shrouds, with one arm cocked through the rat-lines, smug with victory, and pitying the poor fools who were cheering the sight of the arriving ships. In a half-hour, when they opened their gun-ports and ran out their batteries, they’d be laughing out the other side of their necks!

  “Ah …” He shuddered.

  Perhaps not.

  For atop the on-coming line-of-battle ships’ foremasts, he saw a dread, red plain-ness to the flags they flew. No royal cantons, no cross of St. George or St. Andrew …

  Plain, stark red battle flags—mutiny flags!

  Aye, the North Sea Fleet had arrived. In open rebellion!

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “A bloody, unmitigated damned disaster!” Lewrie fumed, pacing furibloody, unmitigated damned disaster!” Lewrie fumed, pacing furiously from starboard to larboard in the day-cabin of his quarters, while his remaining officers and midshipmen stood or sat.

  “Enough to make a man weep, sir,” Mr. Winwood spat, looking as close as he’d ever come to letting his despair overpower him. “Thirteen sail of the line they have now. Nigh on ten thousand seamen and marines in rebellion. Encouraged …” he trailed off in a sigh.

  “There’s been battles won with less,” Midshipman Catterall had the lack of tact to say almost under his breath, and even Mr. Adair’s warning elbow in his ribs only caused him to grunt and glower back in ill humor. He was senior midshipman, two years older than Adair, and the cock of the orlop cockpit; ever the nudger, not the nudgee.

  “Oh, yes, there have been, Mister Catterall,” Lewrie sniped back. “Thank you so much for bringing that historical fact to our attention!”

  “Uhm, sorry sir,” Catterall reddened, trying to pull his head in like a tortoise. He found something intricate in the Turkey carpet’s design to be fascinated by.

  The heart of Admiral Duncan’s North Sea Fleet, the bulk of his two-decker, 64-gun warships—Montagu, Belliqueux, Repulse, Standard, Lion, and Nassau, along with the Inspector sloop and the fireship Comet—had come in around 5:00 P.M. the previous afternoon. Captain William Bligh’s HMS Director had been part of that fleet, but had mutinied whilst anchored at the Nore, so no one expected that Admiral Duncan had much left to work with, if he still intended to blockade the Texel channels. If it came to a fight with Channel Fleet to put down this mutiny—if one could still call it a strictly naval mutiny and not a burgeoning revolution—it would be a close-run thing, even if Channel Fleet owned larger, more powerful 74s, 80s, and ships of the 1st and 2nd Rate, compared to the weaker, shallower draught 64s from Great Yarmouth, more useful near the Dutch shoals.

  If it came to a fight, Lewrie glumly suspected, it’d be no fight at all. Channel Fleet might have been saved from mutiny, most of the grievances satisfied. But would that be good enough for them to fire upon other British tars? Should that come, it’d surely be the end of the Royal Navy. Most-like, he imagined, the two fleets would meet and blend, overthrow authority again, and would then be fully provisioned, at sea! beyond the reach of reason. Not just the Royal Navy though, oh, no … perhaps it would be the tiny spark in the pan, like that one at Lexington in the lost American Colonies, that had begun the revolt against the Crown; and Britain would be torn asunder. Republicans and Jacobinist Levellers versus Royalists; hard-pressed as the commoners were by the demands of the war and the new taxes, it might be wealthy against poor too! The Irish, of course, encouraged to throw off the yoke of English occupation. Scotland too, uneasily forced into submission since the last rising of the clans in “The 45.”

  “There is the possibility the new arrivals are not victualled as well as the original mutinous ships, sir,” Mr. Coote offered in a hopeful gesture. “And with supplies now refused them … perhaps they cannot stay here at the Nore for very long.”

  “I rather doubt that, Mister Coote,” Lieutenant Wyman sighed, “though it is wishful. They were to all accounts provisioned for an extended spell of blockade duty off the Dutch coast. From what I heard from our rumourmill, they defected after receiving sailing orders to join Admiral Duncan. Meet him at some ‘rondy,’ somewhere off the coast …”

  Lt. Wyman did not wear disappointment well; he looked like he’d aged ten years in the last two days and was not as prone to appearing surprised or startled any longer. Most un-lieutenant-like, he slouched on the starboard-side upholstered settee with his legs out and his hands in his breeches pockets, like one of Hogarth’s sketches of an idle roisterer with a killing “head,” the morning after.

  “And where do they think they’d get provisions, with every port closed to ’em, Mister Coote?” Lewrie fretted. “Aye, most-like they are well-provisioned for up to six months at sea. Gawd … !”

  “Can’t last that long, can it, sir?” Midshipman Adair queried. “Else the wind shifts, sooner or later, and the Dutch get out to sea. The French Fleet at Brest bound for Ireland … we’ve been fortunate in the weather so far, sir.”

  “That’s so, sir.” The Sailing Master nodded, stuffing tobacco into his clay church warden pipe. “But a man who’d depend on weather for his salvation is the hugest sort of fool. I cannot but think that th
e Merciful Hand of Providence has controlled the contrary winds this long during our travails, sirs—to grant His most favoured nation a space in which to save ourselves. But such Divine Mercy is not forever.”

  “A tiny space,” Lewrie mused, mussing his hair as he came to a stop behind his desk, for a moment envying Mr. Winwood the comfort of his pipe and tobacco. He’d never taken up the custom, and the time he had been forced to smoke, with the Muskogee Indians during the Revolution, hadn’t exactly made him a devotee of the Noble Weed. “Is it not true, Mister Winwood, that ‘God helps those, who help themselves’? As you say, it’s only the fools who lift their hands in supplication, depending on the Lord, not their own efforts, to save their skins.”

  “Well, there are some believers, sir,” Winwood winced, “not in the Established Church, of course, who hold that is the Almighty truly ‘almighty, ’He can do anything, even for the weakest and most powerless. It has been my experience though, sir, that … was a man adrift at sea in a small boat amid a raging gale, the Good Lord might look down more kindly on the sort who’d strive in league with Divine Assistance, not lay whimpering in the bilge, sir. Though I must confess the Bible is replete with examples of the utterly hopeless being salved at the last moment, through no action on their part but deep, abiding faith and a fervent prayer.” He puffed away quite contentedly, wreathing himself in aromatic blue fumes, after delivering what to Lewrie sounded mightily like a paradox: “This, but on the other hand … .”

  “Take the case of Abraham, sir, and the offering of his beloved son on the altar in the desert wilderness …” Mr. Winwood began to expound.

  “You’ve prayed fervently on this, I take it, Mister Winwood?” Lewrie asked him.

  “Well … aye, sir!” Winwood admitted, as if surprised that anyone might suspect that he had not.

  “And I take it that all of you gentlemen, as Christian, English gentlemen, have prevailed upon the Good Lord for guidance and succour, for victory over our foes, and a way out of our … wilderness?”

  “Oh, of course, sir,” they mumbled back, as if by rote, though looking a bit cutty-eyed that they had perhaps not, but were making the “proper” noises.

  “Then we cannot fail.” Lewrie thinly smiled, tossing in a stab at “Hardy, Noble Christian Gentleman” himself. “And, with Divine aid, we will retake Proteus … God willing,” he piously concluded.

  And thus endeth the epistle, he sourly thought, having no time for Winwood’s parson-like pontificating: or is it “here endeth”?

  Damme I must pay more attention next time I’m in church!

  “But … how, sir? Now that …” Lieutenant Wyman waffled.

  “Aye, they’re encouraged, Mister Wyman”—Lewrie grinned at him—“I’ll grant you, for the nonce. I doubt though that these new-come ships are as radical as some. They’ve not been cut off from news from London and know of the Royal Pardon and the Acts. Their arrival here at the Nore is, I suspect, a temporary thing … their way of assuring themselves they’re included in the terms, showing support for the Nore sailors who might appear to be excluded for the moment.”

  Don’t know that at all, he admitted to himself; whistling past the graveyard … spinnin’ fairy-shite!

  “Doubt there’s been much communication ’tween Great Yarmouth and the Nore either … they haven’t had a chance to take their measure of our mutineers. Once they see what a pack of radicals they are, there’s more than a good chance it’ll make ’em queasy. We’re still anchored out in the seaward row, close to the Queen’s Channel. The new-comers are crowded in on either end. We’re still dealing with the two ships anchored closest to us. And one of those came within a quim-hair of overpowering their mutineers. Now granted, the other one fired into us, but … if we continued sail-drill, making up to short stays before backing and filling, we can lull them to think nothing of it, just as we originally planned. We’ve most of the Marines on our side now … ready to act the next time.”

  “Sir, are you sure they’re still with us now the mutiny’s reenforced and their spirits lifted?” Mr. Coote worried aloud.

  “A day or two’s excitement,” Lewrie said dismissively, hoping that he was right, feeling forced to be optimistic, if only to prevent his officers from sinking into the “Blue Devils.” “A day or two more and they’ll be back to their doubts and mis-givings, thinking of the courts-martial and gibbets. Here’s what we should rumour about: The North Sea Fleet is here so they can be included in the Spithead terms and nothing more. There’s no contact allowed with them either, so our hands won’t know the diff’rence.”

  “But they would, sir,” Mr. Adair plumbed the fault to it quite quickly, “the Fleet Delegates will swear they’re in agreement with all their terms.”

  “Unless they already are, sir,” Midshipman Catterall gloomily pointed out.

  “You are quite the font of cheer, Mister Catterall,” Lewrie said rather frostily, delivering a withering glower. “Right, then … we say they’ve been deceived, now they’re here, ’cause they’ve no wish to be against Crown and Country or be part of a Floating Republic forever! They’re ready to sail to aid Admiral Duncan, even if the delegates, in the pay of foreign powers, wish to prevent it. Plausible?” he asked.

  “And our people are already leery of the Fleet Delegates, and their radical insolence to authority, sir!” Midshipman Adair excitedly chimed in. “Why, they already take half what they say with a handful of salt! North Sea ships, and ours, deceived … !”

  “That’s the spirit!” Lewrie nodded with pleasure. He had put a bit of iron back in their spines and had cobbled together new reasons for his ship’s hands to despair once more. “Thank you, gentlemen. I think we should begin spreading our ‘moonshine.’ And about time for us to conduct sail-making drill, hmm? I’ll be on the deck later to see how it goes. Both the sail-drill … and our rumour-mongering.”

  Once they had departed though, he flung himself into his desk chair with a fretful sigh and rang a tiny bell for his steward.

  “Any coffee left on the candle warmer, Aspinall?”

  “’Nough for a cup, at least, sir. Comin’ right up.”

  Aspinall delivered the cup, atop a new sennet place mat, as intricate as Holland lace.

  “Nice work, that … complex,” Lewrie idly congratulated him.

  “Aye, sir. Some o’ the Irish lads’re teachin’ me their Gaelic knots,” Aspinall proudly admitted. Under Andrews’s and others’ tutelage, Aspinall had become quite good at decorative rope-work, fashioning some brooches, bracelets, even rings, as well as place mats and such. “Some of ’em still know their old ways … what they call Celtic. I’ll pare a bit more sugar for ya, sir. Won’t be a tick.”

  Lewrie studied his mug, the coin-silver, engraved present from his former Jesters, while Aspinall scraped at the bee-hive-shaped lump of sugar in the small pantry. Hmmm …

  He stared at the engraving, setting it down to rotate it, with a thoughtful expression; admiring the profile of Jester rushing along with all plain sail set, a bone in her teeth, led onward by that mysterious forearm and sword, with the dolphins and seals dancing …

  “Aspinall …” he mused aloud.

  “Sir?”

  “You associate much with our new-come Irish, do you?”

  “Some, sir.”

  “Are many of them in on the mutiny, d’ye think?” Lewrie asked.

  “Not that many, sir,” Aspinall discounted. “Most of ’em are as poor as church-mice … just wantin’ decent wages and a chance to get by, sir. Not much work in Ireland, troubles and risin’s, and most of ’em wishin’ a wide berth o’ those, like Desmond and Furfy. Count them with any education on the fingers o’ one hand, sir. A chearly lot, I must say, though, for all that … singin’ and hornpipin’ at the drop o’ your hat, sir? Full o’ grand stories too, sir … why, Irishmen could talk the birds from the sky and not repeat themselves for three days runnin’, sir!”

  “You ever tell them stories, Aspinall? They pump you for info
rmation?” Lewrie pressed.

  A captain’s steward could be an unwitting font of intelligence for the disgruntled; some stewards traded on their access.

  “Lord, sir … get a word in edgewise! Aye, some. ’Bout how we had a lucky ship, sir … and you, a lucky captain.”

  “Ever tell them all about Jester?” Lewrie pressed, getting inspired at this welcome news, “and the strange … fey things we saw?” He swiveled the mug about and pointed at the dolphins and seals and the sea-god’s arm, tapping his finger by them. “And how much do they know about Proteus? They came aboard after Chatham. They may not know all her short history … her launching, the change of her name, the Irish sawyer and his boy who convinced her to take water?”

  “Dribs an’ drabs, here an’ there, I s’pose, sir,” Aspinall said with a shrug.

  “That Proteus was an ancient sea-god, Aspinall.” Lewrie smiled. “A very old, shape-changing sea-god. This ship murdered a Protestant, Anglo-Irish vicar. Drove an Anglo-Irish captain ashore, mad as a hatter. But so far …” he added, rapping his knuckles for luck, “she has nothing against me. For I’ve seen an old sea-god. Jester and me, we were a lucky ship, together. A blessed ship, Aspinall. But, by whom?”

  “By ’at ole Lir, sir?” Aspinall replied.

  “And Lir’s an Irish sea-god, Aspinall.” Lewrie nodded happily. “Lir … Proteus … same old gentleman. Cleared her hawse, Proteus did, so I’d come aboard her as captain.”

  God, I am such an egotistical bastard! he silently grimaced to himself; and a damned liar too!

  “Oh, I think I get yer meanin’, sir!” Aspinall grinned slyly.

  “A proud, willful ship, a living ship she is,” Lewrie said. “Too proud to let herself be shamed by serving an Anglo-Irish captain. Too proud and haughty to be involved in something shameful either! And … too savage in her anger ’gainst anyone who’d let her be shamed … in his name! Vengeful, arrogant, blood-thirsty … a ship to serve chearly … in his name.”