Lewrie got to his feet and went to the starboard quarter gallery and brought Toulon back from his solitary roost. He sat him down on the desk between them, and stroked him to calmness as Toulon curled up into a pot roast; paws tucked under his chest and his tail round his hind legs. Toulon had not seen Mainwaring that much but for rare supper invitations with other officers, but he made no move to curry attention, nor did he shrink away as a “scaredy-cat” might. He just sat and blinked, eyes half-slit.
Mainwaring took a deep, pleasing sip of his cool tea, smiled in delight, then leaned forward to touch Toulon, giving him a closer examination. At last, he leaned back into his chair.
“Renal failure, of a certainty, Captain,” Mr. Mainwaring said. “The dullness of the eyes, the lack of body fat, and perhaps of some of his musculature? When one is starved, for whatever reason, fat is the first to go, before the body begins to use up the last source of nourishment, which are the muscles. Note that when I lifted a pinch of his skin, that it did not fall back into place at once, but stayed erect before slowing receding? No matter how much water it drinks, it is of no avail, for the kidneys no longer function.”
“If there was some way to force water into him…?” Lewrie asked with a fretful frown, stroking Toulon with one hand.
“Perhaps with a clyster up its rectum, sir,” Mr. Mainwaring speculated with his large head laid over to one side, “directly into the small intestines, where the water would be absorbed more quickly, but … that would only delay the matter, sorry to say.”
“Perhaps if he’s only running a temperature,” Lewrie said, with an eye on Mainwaring’s leather kit, which he’d brought with him.
“I am certain that it is, sir,” Mainwaring countered, “but, do cats or dogs have the same temperature as people? I could listen to his heart rate, but what is the normal pulse of a cat? How often to the minute is its rate of respiration? I am sure that there are game-keepers who know something of dogs, horse copers and grooms who know how to fleam a sick horse, what feed to provide, or aid the birth of a colt … or calf, or lamb, or whatever, but … it’s all beyond my experience, sir.”
“Is renal failure, and the wasting away, painful, d’ye think?” Lewrie asked, despairing. “He’s been a fine old cat, and I’d not let him suffer.”
“It could be,” Mr. Mainwaring said with an uncertain shrug. “Or, it could be that it will fall into a deep torpor and just pass away. I do recall barn cats in my childhood that limped off or just went off on their own, and the next we saw them, they’d died of old age or some disease. Perhaps you should just let him expire, on his own.”
“Or, find some way to help him along, painlessly, and without terrorising him,” Lewrie wished aloud. “I can’t put a pistol to his head. The crack of the priming’d frighten him.”
“Well, there’s smothering, or a quick wring of its neck, as one does fowl, or, tied up in a bread bag and dropped over—”
“All of which are violent, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie snapped. “Sudden, violent, and frightening. From the time he took hold of my coat sleeve and clambered up to my shoulder, Toulon’s known nothing but fun, play, affection, and trust, and to put him down as you suggest would be … he would die in fear, feeling betrayed. No! There must be another way.”
“Well, sir…,” Mainwaring said with a shrug.
“Sorry, Mister Mainwaring, but … I know I must seem overly sentimental,” Lewrie went on in a softer voice. “Toulon’s just a poor cat, after all, but he and Chalky yonder are great comforts, and companions. They’re all the … friends I may allow myself from out of the whole ship’s company. Losing one, or both, is a wrench. I must think that the crew would feel the same if Bisquit died.”
“I shall look into the matter, sir, and get back to you should I find a painless solution,” the Surgeon promised. “Thank you for the cool tea, Captain. It really is remarkably refreshing.”
“Carry on, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie said in dismissal as the Ship’s Surgeon departed. Once Mainwaring was gone, Toulon got to his feet and slowly padded over to the edge of the desk to Lewrie’s thigh and rested in his lap, to be gently stroked and petted. He stayed only a minute or two, then cautiously hopped down to the deck and went to his water bowl under the wash-hand stand for a lap or two, then he slowly stalked off for the starboard quarter gallery once more to take up his post atop the wooden crates and sea-chests.
Whatever shall I do with ye, poor thing? Lewrie mourned.
* * *
“Perhaps it would be best, sir, did we stand on on this tack at least ’til Noon, and make more Southing before we come about East-Nor’east,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, advised as he, Lewrie, and the First Officer, Mr. Westcott, convened in Lewrie’s chart space. “Do we close the shore, making a long board, we should fetch the coast below San Salvador, and enter port with the Sou’east Trades large upon our starboard quarters.”
“Which would beat fetching North of the port all hollow, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “We’d end up short-tacking off-and-on most of the day, else, just t’get level with the bloody place.”
“Sou’-Sou’west it will be, then, all through today and tonight, and ’til Noon Sights tomorrow,” Lt. Westcott said with a pleased nod. “Lieutenant Spendlove and I will be standing the Evening and Middle Watches, and thought to let the Mids of the watches have more responsibility … without any radical alterations of course, or the need to pipe ‘All Hands’. Loaf aft by the flag lockers? Let them run the ship on their own?”
“Just so long as the weather allows,” Lewrie cautioned. “Might you wish to borrow my penny-whistle? Or a book to read by the light of the taffrail lanthorns?”
“Don’t know about Spendlove, but I could do some sketchings,” Westcott said with a small laugh.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Lewrie told Westcott. “Do so. And I, on my part, will stay below as much as possible, t’give ’em a sense that they’re really runnin’ their watches. A good idea on your part, as well, Mister Caldwell, and we shall stand on ’til tomorrow’s Noon Sights before altering course. As shallow as the coast of Africa is, I’d not wish t’thrash about in short tacks t’fetch harbour. Is that all we have to discuss at the moment, gentlemen? Very well. We will stand on as we are, and I will have a wee nap, you poor, over-worked fellows.”
“Very good, sir,” Westcott said with a brief, savage grin.
Lewrie lingered in the small chart space after the others had left the great-cabins, puzzling over his copy of the chart of San Salvador which he’d purchased at Funchal, noting how far out one would have to anchor off most of the African shore in the Gulf of Guinea. He had seen woodcuts and paintings of the work of slavers who came for “Black Ivory”; but for the trading forts and barracoons which held the captive Africans established at the mouths of the great rivers, most of those infamous ships, even the middling-sized ones, anchored far out, and sent their boats in several miles. The local Africans had low-sided canoes for fishing, which barely drew a foot of water. Low tide produced beaches and flats nigh a half-mile deep, and one could wade another whole mile before the sea got up to one’s thighs! When the weather got up, the rollers and breakers were tremendous, flooding inward over those wide, shallow shoals.
San Salvador was on a minor river, its bay barely large enough to anchor the hundred-or-so ships under Popham’s command. Why would he choose the place to get firewood and water? Lewrie speculated; he would have avoided San Salvador like the plague!
Leaving the chart space, Lewrie headed aft towards his sleeping space, a wide-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot slung from the over-head deck beams. The bed-cot was a wooden box with stout heavy-weather canvas bottom and lining, a rigid hammock with a thin mattress of cotton batt. It looked very inviting, for the oppressive heat of the sun as they closed upon the Equator created a torpor that Lewrie could gladly sleep right through. Before throwing a leg over the edge and rolling in, though, he went aft to the starboard quarter gallery once more to check on Toulon.<
br />
The old black-and-white tom was on his right side, as if he was looking out at the horizon as it gently heaved and rolled. When Lewrie stroked his side, he didn’t even move, but just gave out a weary Mrr, a complaint that he had been sleeping and did not appreciate being wakened. Lewrie leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, stroking Toulon’s chops and cheeks.
“I always loved you, ye clumsy old thing,” Lewrie whispered, recalling his cat’s kittenhood, and his adjustment to life at sea. Once, Toulon had hopped atop a table, a freshly polished one, upon which a sheet of paper rested, and he could not quite understand why or how he had slid off when he was sitting perfectly still on top of it. That had driven him under the starboard-side settee, abashed, where Toulon could commune with his cat gods and live down his shame! Or, when in the North Sea in late 1801, Lewrie’s previous frigate, HMS Thermopylae, had been rolling just hideously, and Lewrie had been trying to shave, and Toulon had tried to get up to the water bowl on the wash-hand stand and had ended up with a tumble to the deck, and a face covered with soap foam! Once again, the dark under the settee had been a refuge.
Lewrie gave him a last stroke or two, then let Toulon be, with a faint and guilty hope that, did he check on him round suppertime, he might discover that Toulon had passed over peacefully.
He sat on the transom settee and pulled off his boots, took off his waist-coat and un-did his neck-stock, then rolled up his sleeves before rolling into his bed-cot atop the embroidered coverlet. He was almost asleep in moments, but was stirred awake by Chalky’s arrival. The younger white-and-grey cat hopped up and padded to Lewrie’s chest, to peer at him, nose-to-nose.
“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a sigh, rewarding Chalky with strokes down his back, ruffles of his chest fur, and “wubbies” on his cheeks and chops. Chalky flopped onto his side, extended his paws, and began to wriggle, eager for belly-tickling play. That could be a dangerous game for the unwary, for Chalky would nip and catch fingers between his paws, claws out.
“Must I?” Lewrie asked. “Oh, very well. I should find a pair o’ thick leather gloves t’play with you!”
It took a quarter-hour to wear Chalky out. Lewrie closed his eyes and tried to return to his nap, but no … Chalky got his wind back, hopped down, and returned with a ragged old knitted wool mouse.
“You really are a pest,” Lewrie muttered, rolling out of bed and giving up on his nap. At least he still had one cat who needed to be amused.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
San Salvador looked to be a pestilential place, a sprawl of low native huts and the reek of cow dung, sweat, and human ordure, commanded by a separate European quarter of tile-rooved stone buildings and barracks, and a small fort which overlooked a series of long and low-slung barracoons with iron-bound doors and a few barred windows, where captured Africans were held ’til a slave ship put in for human cargo. The river mouth ran the colour of red clay, splaying its dubious freshness far out in a delta-like fan off the coast, between gritty stone and sand beaches. The lush greenness of “deepest, darkest Africa” began almost half a mile further inland, beyond fields of millet and mealies, corrals of livestock, and paddocks for the unfortunate Portuguese who did business there. There was a three-masted slave ship anchored in the river mouth … but there was no fleet of British warships and transports.
Lewrie ordered a signal hoisted to his three charges for them to stand-off-and-on while Reliant closed the shore. As soon as the frigate altered course to stand in, a very shallow, crude boat put out for them, paddled by a crew of Africans wearing little more than sandals and what looked to be Red Indian–style breechclouts, with one European seated in the sternsheets. The boat came close aboard as Lewrie ordered his ship rounded up into the wind to fetch-to, so he could speak to the White fellow, a rumpled-looking man in off-white cotton canvas trousers and coat, with a wide straw hat on his head.
“Senhor, you weesh to enter the reever?” the man asked.
“I wish to know where the British fleet has gone, senhor, and how long ago was it that they sailed?” Lewrie shouted back to him.
“Three, four day ago, senhor,” the fellow said, scratching at his bearded cheek, and flicking ash from a crooked cigarro that he held between his teeth. “They take on wood, water, and meal, and go South. We have cattle and peegs, senhor,” the fellow tempted. “You weesh fresh meat? You trade us rum and brandy, yes?”
“No need, sorry,” Lewrie called back. “We have all we need at present. We are bound South to catch them up.”
“Ah, well,” the unkempt fellow said with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders in disappointment. “Go weeth God, senhor.”
“Get way on her if you please, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered as he stepped back from the bulwarks. “Shape course out to our charges and we’ll speak ’em t’see if they’ve enough supplies to last ’til Cape Town. It’s only a few hundred miles, now, God willing.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott replied, his face screwed up. “Lord, what a reek! Is all Africa this foul-smelling?”
“Cape Town wasn’t, as I recall,” Lewrie told him. “No worse than a small town in the country, back home. It’s the heat and rot in the jungles round this latitude, the smell of long-settled native villages, and the foul reek of the slave pens. Did you ever get close aboard a ‘blackbirder’, Mister Westcott? Once you do, you never can forget the odour of human misery. God knows how many in the barracoons will perish before the next slaver puts in … nor how many of the healthy chosen from that lot live t’see a vendue house in the Americas. Just get me away from all this … foulness, sir!”
* * *
Reliant closed Ascot close enough for Lewrie to converse with Lt. Thatcher with a brass speaking-trumpet and enquire about his dwindling supplies.
“I reckon that Cape Town is nigh twelve-hundred or more miles off, sir!” Lt. Thatcher shouted over. “After victualling at Funchal, we should have sufficient water and rations for another two months! The Army would wish to put in to get their mounts ashore and exercise them on dry land. Captain Veasey fears that by the time we join the other transports at Cape Town, his horses won’t be able to stand!”
“And how might they land them ashore?” Lewrie replied with the trumpet to his mouth. “Hoist ’em out over the side and swim them in, through shark-infested waters, and crocodile-infested river? We would have to anchor at least a mile out, and God only knows how many horses would get eaten, or drown.”
Lewrie could see Captains Veasey and Chadfield bristling with concern, a few feet away from Lt. Thatcher. The troopers of the 34th Light Dragoons aboard Ascot were more vociferous in their disappointment that they would hot be allowed off the ship for a day or two of ease, either, cat-calling and booing Lewrie’s decision.
What did they expect o’ San Salvador? Lewrie wondered; Black whores, rum, and roast beef? And the whores for free?
“We will crack on South, Mister Thatcher!” Lewrie shouted to him. “Steer Sou’-Sou’west, and follow me!”
“Very good, Captain Lewrie!” Thatcher replied, sounding a bit disappointed, himself.
Lewrie left the bulwarks and stowed the speaking-trumpet in the compass binnacle cabinet, then went to the windward side to take proper station as Reliant hauled up close to the winds to begin her seemingly endless beat to weather in chase of their perpetual Will-o’-the-wisp, Commodore Popham and his phantom invasion fleet. It was an hour later before the Trade wind whisked away the reek of San Salvador that seemed to cling to every fibre of the ship.
“I’ll be below,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch.
Once in his cabins, Lewrie tore off his neck-stock and drank a full tumbler of water, then asked Pettus for one of cool tea, sugared and lemoned. While that was being poured and mixed for him, he went in search of Toulon, but he was not in the starboard quarter gallery, nor on the bed’s coverlet, or the transom settee cushions.
“Here, Toulon. Here, lad,” Lewrie called out.
“’E’s unner th’
settee, sir,” Jessop told him. “’E come outta th’ quarter gallery f’r some water, an’ tried t’jump inta yer bed, but ’e couldn’t manage it, poor thing. ’E’s sulkin’ unner there, an’ won’t come out f’r nothin’ nor nobody.”
Lewrie knelt down by the collapsible settee which was lashed to the cabin’s interior planking. Sure enough, Toulon was there, curled up with his tail under his chin, and his paws tucked under his chest, nodding as if unwilling to sleep, but totally spent.
“Here, Toulon,” Lewrie softly coaxed. “Come on out to me. No? It’s alright, little man. Come on out.”
Toulon opened his eyes to weary slits, uttered an un-characteristic wee mew, then went back to drowsing. Damning his dignity, Lewrie got down on his stomach on the Turkey carpet and chequered canvas deck cover to reach in and stroke a finger under Toulon’s chin and along his jaws. The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, but made no move to come out. Lewrie reached in and took him by the scruff of the neck to drag him out, cradle him in his arm, and got to his feet. Lewrie sat down on the settee and held Toulon close with both arms, slowly petting and cooing to him, and his cat at last shifted to press closer to Lewrie’s chest and begin a faint, ragged purr.
“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door shouted, stamping boots and slamming his musket butt.
Burly Mr. Mainwaring bustled in at Lewrie’s order to enter, carrying his leather kit-bag. With him was one of the Surgeon’s Mates, Durbin.
“Your pardons if I do not rise, sirs,” Lewrie apologised, still cradling Toulon. “Sit, please. Cool tea, Mister Mainwaring?”
“Yes, thank you, Captain,” Mainwaring said, taking one of the collapsible chairs and indicating that Durbin should take the other. “I’ve a mind to purchase the makings and serve it out to the men on light duties or in sick-bay … does the Navy Board allow me the funds.
“As to the matter you mentioned the other day, sir, about your cat,” Mainwaring went on as Pettus fetched tea, “Durbin here, Lloyd and I, put our heads together as to how one might painlessly ease a cat from life and end its suffering, and Durbin came up with a solution. Pray do explain it to the Captain, Durbin.”
Hostile Shores Page 17
