King`s Captain l-9

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Aye, aye, sir," Ludlow agreed. Or at least it sounded as if he agreed; grudgingly, did he, though?

  Then Lewrie met the ship's Surgeon, a Mr. Thomas Shirley, a gangly fellow in his mid-twenties, and his Surgeon's Mates; one was named Hodson, even younger and greener than Shirley, little better (he himself admitted) than an apothecary, in training as it were. Mr. Durant, though, was much older and boasted more experience. Had he been English-born, he might have held Shirley's berth. But Mr. Durant was йmigrй French. Landed like a gaffed fish on a strange shore, he'd wheedled a position from the Sick Hurt Board after two years of effort, the only way he had in a leery England to support his family, he sketched out for Lewrie's information, after trying the charity hospitals and private practice.

  "You escaped, sir?"

  "From Toulon, Capitaine," Durant admitted. "Quel tragique …"

  "Ah, I was there. Aye, it was, sir," Lewrie gloomed along with him. "We left at the same time, I should think. Night before…?"

  "Oui, Capitaine. An' I know of you," Durant said. "What you did for so many Royalists you sail away from zere. Merci, Capitaine. I promise you grateful service, oui!"

  "I count on it, sir," Lewrie replied.

  "You'll be going to your cabins now, sir?" Ludlow supposed. "Get settled in, sir?"

  "No." Lewrie frowned. "Might as well make the acquaintance of as many warrants as I can. Have the Bosun, his mate, the Master Gunner… the department heads, gather in the waist, Mister Ludlow."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Ludlow answered, sounding aggrieved? Lewrie had to think, again. What was the man's problem? Bit more o' that, and I will really give him a problem t'fret over!

  So while Andrews, Padgett, and Aspinall turned-to aft to erect his furnishings and possessions in the great-cabins, Lewrie descended to the gun-deck, admiring his lovely new artillery pieces. A crowd of older hands gathered 'round him. The Bosun was a Mr. Arthur Pendarves, a hawk-billed, sere fellow from Cornwall, who looked as if he'd spent most of his life squinting at wind and weather. As did his mate, Mr. Towpenny, a shorter, spritelier version from Bristol. Mr. Handcocks, the Master Gunner, a tall, lean, and balding fellow in his middle forties; and his mate, Mr. Morley, who was, again, younger. Mr. Garraway, their Carpenter; Mr. Reyne, the Sailmaker; Offley, the Armourer; the Yeomen of the Sheets, who served on the sail-trimming gangways, Betts and Robbins; the Yeoman of The Powder, who served in the magazine; a man named Kever, who looked as pasty as if he hadn't left the magazine since his teens; the three Quartermasters: Motte, Austen, and O'Leary; Hickey, a young apprentice Sailmaker's Mate; a whole slew of Quarter Gunners-Proteus was rated a full eight petty-officer gunners; Dowe, O'Hare, and Magee, who were the Quartermaster's Mates on the helm; the gloomy Mr. Neale, who was their Master At Arms and had probably been born gloomy; and a brace of Ship's Corporals-Burton and Ragster. And, of course, they all made the lame jape that that poor fellow was "Ragster-riches"!

  Nugent and Shoemake, the Master's Mates, Nugent being another Irishman. Lewrie was beginning to notice that they had more than their fair share of hands aboard from that unhappy and rebellious isle! And finally, the midshipmen-all bloody six of them.

  There were the young'uns-Midshipmen Elwes and Nicholas, both about fourteen or fifteen and seemingly sweet-natured and a tad shy. There was a Midshipman Sevier, who looked to be around eighteen, the sort who would bob and choke on even polite conversation. A slightly older, and very quick-witted, Mr. Adair, but, being a Scot, and well-educated in comparison to his English contemporaries, he would seem to be witty; a Mr. Catterall, who was now twenty-one, a blond-haired wag Lewrie could deduce at once-he was most notably from Lanes, for all his local accent; and finally, Mr. Midshipman Peacham, a tad older in his mid-twenties, a very tarry customer, but one unfortunate in "interest" or patronage so far. He was curtly polite, horny-handed; the type of senior midshipman Lewrie thought he could depend on from his first impression. Peacham looked the perfect image of a real tarpaulin man, of the most knowledgeable sort, and overdue for a lieutenancy.

  He shared a few words with them all, taking over an hour or more to do so. Though he doubted he'd be able to recall all those names by 4:00 a.m. when they rose to scrub decks and begin the ship's day, he was of the opinion that making the effort to reach out was the main thing. Not so chearly with them as to be taken for a "Popularity Jack," but it never hurt to try and size people up and make them realise that he was not a tacit, tyrannical Tartar either.

  "Well, gentlemen…" He shrugged at last. "I hope you will not take it to heart if I have to ask your names again over the next week. Too long aboard a smaller ship, where after a time one'd wish to see just one unfamiliar face. Until the morrow. Oh, Mister Pendarves?"

  "Aye, sir," the Bosun replied, perking up, yet looking guarded.

  "Once the hands have eat tomorrow, we'll look her over," Lewrie warned him. "Keel to trucks, and me in my worst slop-clothing. Then you may tell me what you lack, before we fall downriver."

  "Well, sir… hands for work'd be my mainest plaint, sir," Mr. Pendarves told him bluntly. "Recruit or press more hands, sir. We are in fair shape for stores and such, else. A tad light on rations… keep her draught light for the trip to the Nore, sir, where we'll stock, at Sheerness."

  "But given fair recruiting here at Chatham, a few more Able or Ordinary Seamen… and a week's 'River Discipline,' we could let slip, Mister Pendarves?" Lewrie pressed him for his opinion.

  "Aye, sir. Could." The Bosun shrugged, almost wincing.

  "But…" Lewrie queried closer, getting a bit fed up with all the tiptoe-y responses he'd gotten since he'd stepped aboard. "Might you think there's a reason not?"

  "Recruitin', sir," Pendarves muttered in a gruff voice, taking off his hat to stand like a supplicant labourer at the rear door of his master. "Warrants an' petty officers, some of their mates, an' friends… a first draught off th' receivin' ship. An' Cap'um Churchwell's men… that's all we have, sir. Doubt we find many more willin'; not here in Chatham, Captain. Cause o'…" Pendarves winced again at being on the spot, of being the one to bring bad news.

  "Oh, I see." Lewrie nodded, cocking his head to one side. "There is her… reputation to deal with."

  "Aye, sir… that'd be it, mainly." Pendarves flushed.

  "Many aboard wish they could turn over into a new ship, Bosun?"

  "Well, sir… there's more than a few Irish aboard… hands outa the West Country too, sir. An' I know it sounds daft, but…"

  "West Country yourself, I'd guess, Mister Pendarves?" Lewrie interjected and received a bob of the Bosun's head. "Welsh, Devonian, Cornish… men who think her cursed. Men who wish off her?"

  "Some, like I say, sir," Pendarves confessed.

  "Hmmm… how well did Captain Churchwell do at recruiting then?" Lewrie wondered.

  "Well… right awful, Captain." Pendarves grimaced for bearing even more bad news. "Onliest volunteers, d'ye see, were shipmates come aboard t'sail with old friends, sir. 'Pressed men, a few hands turned over from the hulks… Quota Men'n such. Cap'um Churchwell only tried but a few days 'fore he was, uhm… when the chaplain drowned. Give it up, I s'pose, right after, sir."

  "And the First Officer, Mister Ludlow?" Lewrie frowned. "Went ashore and tried too, did he? Afterwards? After Captain Churchwell departed?"

  "A day or two, sir, but… jacks see him comin', they'd scamper off 'fore he could trot out an ale!" Bosun Pendarves marvelled that British tars would refuse even free drinks, no matter could they sign up, or refuse to, at a 'rondy.' "Come back two days, since, an'…"

  Pendarves bit off any trace of criticism of an officer.

  "I see." Lewrie sighed, pacing about the deck, over to larboard to lay a hand on one of his new Blomefield Pattern 12-pounders, to lean a hip against the gun's cascabel and the swell of the breech. "Short of real sailors and too many landsmen lubbers. Can't crew her with a pack of know-nothings right out of gaol. Unless… unless Proteus is really a very lucky ship after all, Mister Pendarves."

/>   "Lucky, sir?" The Bosun came near to openly scoffing.

  "You're quite right, Bosun." Lewrie grinned, shoving off from his resting spot. "It sounds daft, doesn't it. Superstition or not, sailors believe in good and bad luck, don't they."

  "Well… aye, sir."

  "You and me, Bosun," Lewrie intimated, "we're seamen. We've seen things, heard things… odd, strange, unexplainable things…"

  And ain't it smug o' me, Lewrie chid himself, t'put us both on the same footing. He's more experience in his least finger than I'll ever…!

  "What's her name, Mister Pendarves?"

  "P… Proteus, sir," the Bosun answered with a slight pause, as if afraid to say it aloud.

  "Her figurehead, sir…" Lewrie all but winked. "Proteus, the Roman shepherd of the sea… Greeks called him Nereus, but either name meant the same sea-god. A divine oracle, he was. And there he is… in his chariot he drove 'cross the wide world's oceans, drawn by dolphins and… seals, Mister Pendarves. Seals!"

  "Like L… uhm, ah…," Bosun Pendarves flummoxed, afraid to say that fearsome name from his boyhood tales either.

  "Funny thing about Proteus, or Nereus, or whatever he went by. A man wished his prophecies, he had to find him first. Then he had to wrestle him, hold him so he couldn't get away. Proteus changed his shape… he could become any living thing in the sea, d'ye see, sir?" Lewrie intimated further, almost crooning as he spun his tale. "Turned into little things so, he could swim out of your grasp. Turned into whales and sharks or ferocious sea-dragons to frighten you into letting go. You had to let him run through his gamut of creatures… last of all, he was a seal… and then a man, sir," Lewrie elaborated, not sure from his ancient readings, not sure if he wasn't spinning a huge lie he'd be caught in by Pendarves and the others later for lack of lore.

  "Like a, uhm…" Pendarves goggled, eyes blared in wonder by then, to hear the ancient tales retold in a slightly different version, to hear an officer relate them, as if he too believed! "Like he was a… selkie, sir?"

  "Very like a selkie, Mister Pendarves." Lewrie beamed, as his Bosun caught on, feeling a dread, eldritch chill ascend his spine, no matter if he was lying and manipulating or not! "So… how close do you think they really came… when they chose her name? Merlin, that would've suited her, hey? But then Admiralty changed things at the last second and took that back. But that Celtic or Gaelic sawyer and his wee lad… what'd he say to her, Bosun?"

  Lewrie leaned close, hissing his words in a harsh whisper, for security against being too manipulative; after all, he'd seen enough aboard Jester of a pagan sea-god's ways to tread more than a touch wary. And he never. wished his beliefs… or his seeming beliefs… to be bandied about.

  "And then… the touch of that lad's merest hand and… down the ways she went, groaning over it… but going," Lewrie purred seductively. "Did they bless her… the right way? The old, lost way? Did she accept the name Proteus as a huge jape on everyone, in spite of them? Take water and swim the world's oceans and bedamned to 'em, Mister Pendarves? Knowing that Proteus, Nereus, or… Lir, it makes no diffrence, for they're all the same long-lost, forgotten sea-god?"

  There, he'd invoked it, feeling another shiver of awe-fear!

  But his tarry-handed, stout-thewed Bosun had wavered away to the thick base of the main-mast, hard by the break of the quarterdeck. Pendarves laid a hand on the mast's anti-boarding pike beckets (never the mast itself, for that was bad luck!) almost reverently. He gazed up its height, the convoluted maze of rigging and spars, then down at the white-planed and sanded deck planks-and began a crafty smile.

  "It could be as you say, sir," Pendarves said at last, swallowing as if he had a massive lump in his throat. "That'd mean she ain't a cursed ship."

  "Nothing we could print on the recruiting handbills," Lewrie agreed, "but could say on the sly at the 'rondys'… you and some of the other respected senior hands. West Country men, hmm?"

  "Aye, sir." Pendarves grinned wider, brightened by the prospect of a "run" ashore in the pubs.

  "I'll see you in the early-early then, Mister Pendarves," Lewrie said in dismissal. "We'll give this new ship of ours a thorough inspection. Warn the others so they'll not show too badly. But not so much warning they think they can pull the wool over my eyes… hmm?"

  A good beginning, Lewrie rather smugly deemed it, after doffing his hat and ascending the larboard ladder to his quarterdeck for a moment of reflection before taking a look at his new great-cabins.

  As long as I've not gone and doomed my arse, he thought; being too damned boastful or… sacrilegious?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  P roteus rounded up, coaxed, (or flat-out lied to) another fourteen seamen or lubbers from Chatham, volunteers who were of a mind to take to the sea. It was a pitiful result, for all of Lewrie's, Ludlows's, and Pendarves's efforts at recruiting ashore. They were still shy of the ninety-one seamen allotted, about a dozen shy of the twenty-two servants (who could quickly learn the seamen's trade) recommended for a vessel of their size and gun-power. Then the pool of possibles had dried up, turning further recruiting I work into frustrating futility.

  It didn't help their cause, Lewrie most-sourly thought, that the mutinies at Portsmouth and Plymouth were still going on. News had come that retired Admiral Lord Howe-"Black Dick, the Seaman's Friend"-would be coaching down to Portsmouth and Spithead to negotiate an end to it, giving hopes of a final settlement. But desperate as England was for closure, most men of a mind to volunteer were holding out 'til the settlement had been reached and what demands the illegal working-men's guilds and underground organisations and the penny-tract writers were making to tack onto the settlement with the Fleet were inciting even more truculence and resistance to taking the Joining Bounty, when it might be worth more in a fortnight, when shipboard conditions and rations might be better!

  There was nothing for it but to work what few they had into the basic stages of "River Discipline" and hope for the best. The Impress Service could not help them, and Lewrie's old captain, Lilycrop, wasn't the Reg. ulating Captain of the Deptford recruiting district any longer, so Lewrie was reduced to shaking the staleness off his few experienced hands and drilling a semblance of nautical lore into his wooly-headed new-comers so they could get downriver to Sheerness in one piece.

  Sheerness and the Nore was where they'd find sailors; at least more warm bodies who could be driven or bullied into something nigh to sailors The receiving hulks and out-dated, line-of-battle ships there were crammed full of them. Admiral Buckner, the officer commanding at the Nore, had written back claiming that his static flagship, Sandwich, had a crew of nine hundred with an additional five hundred "volunteers" aboard. As soon as Proteus arrived, he'd be more than happy to ease his over-crowding.

  Getting there to lay hold of them though…!

  Proteus would have to work her way down the crowded, teeming, bendy Medway, a river simply heaving with brisk tidal flows, cross-swept by perverse winds from over marshes and lowlands, flanked by reeking mudflats and shoals, and the navigable channel reduced to a cart-path by the rapid ebbs, which narrow navigable channel was then even more crowded by a myriad of sailing barges, scows, fishing boats and coasters, tenders, merchant vessels, and other warships, all seeking the same precious, safe, and scant ribbon of deep water.

  Proteus could run ashore, take the ground and be stuck for days on the shoals or mudflats, or half-wreck herself in collision with some other vessel, most especially one of those bastardly civilian captains of a towing scow with a long string of barges astern of him, who seemed to derive their sole pleasure in life from making things difficult for everybody else. Or collecting high damages from the smash-ups!

  Lewrie dreaded the necessity, but finally had to admit that he had no other choice. It was sail-and risk his ship and career upon the vagaries of the river and its traffic-or admit defeat.

  He had his Sailing Master in and swotted up every text he possessed which might offer a clue as to how he might pull this off without th
at career-ending disaster he feared so much.

  "Nought to fear, sir," Mr. Winwood assured him, though looking a trifle askance at just how tarry-handed his new captain really was… "Know the Nore like the back o' me hand. And the river pilotsil see us safe, sir."

  A last supper aboard, with his officers invited to dine in the great-cabins with his wife, children, and ward; he'd borrowed furniture from the officers' gunroom to seat everyone.

  And for a man nigh to sweating pistol-balls (or at least fine buckshot by then!) it had turned off quite convivial and a most musical evening. He'd learned by then in his life how to disguise his trepidations and sure-to-God knew how to be witty and amusing. With Caroline and her flute, he and his more-modest flageolet, they had had a round of tunes with their after-supper brandy, and Lieutenant Wyman had produced his violin, at which he was better than passing-fair. Lieutenant Langlie of the romantic locks also proved himself to be a vocalist of some ability. And while Sophie was deprived of her harpsichord, she had sung along in an angelically high voice. With her eyes ashine in admiration of someone other than the beastly Harry Embleton for once, for several, in point of fact. Young Lieutenant Wyman's musical ability and his infectiously amusing air; Lieutenant Langlie's voice and his bronzed features-even a brace of the older midshipmen! For their last time together, it had really been quite gay, and Lewrie and Caroline had shared pleased glances that things had gone so well regarding Sophie and her brief exposure to a wider world and the variety of young men her age in it! Sewallis, Hugh, and Charlotte had even (mostly) behaved well!

  Though, Lewrie felt like gritting his teeth and at times allowing himself a snarl or two, it was mostly pleasant. Even with all his professional concerns weighing on him, the new ship and crew so demanding of his time and interest, Lewrie had reached that moment he always reached, the one which always made him feel so inhuman, so disconnected from what real people should feel… and so guilty for his lack.