H.M.S. COCKEREL l-6

by Dewey Lambdin

  As if sensing that he had gone too far, Braxton stifled a belch-like flood of outrage which rose in his chest, and turned away.

  "Close-hauled, aye, aye, sir," Lewrie parroted, going amidships. "Bosun, hands to the braces! Hard-sheets! Lay her full-and-by!"

  He could see the French frigate from the deck by then, long and sleek, like a cut-down line-of-battle ship, a touch of poop, a bit of forecastle, with her courses well up over the horizon. She swung from dead on their bows to the starboard side, just forward of abeam as Cockerel turned nor'east They would slowly overhaul, and head-reach her on this course, though a couple of miles out of gunnery range. Or their own. Alan expected her to haul her wind any moment. Surely the French lookouts could see the squadron's threatening tops'ls by then.

  What a bloody wasted effort, Lewrie thought, his senses acute and calculating. He felt they should be hauling their wind, going for the Frog 5th Rate like a terrier, then nipping past her stern at close range. Give her a well-timed broadside, then dash on past to get at the merchantmen. Every ship in sight would share in the prize-money if one or all of them were taken. But Cockerel was the only frigate present-the rest were too far to the south, or far to the north of the squadron. Their misfortune, he smirked! Out of sight, out of the running. And that was what frigates were for.

  Cockerel barreled on, surging and slashing at the uncooperative sea, slowly head-reaching until the French warship was just a bit aft of abeam. They could turn now, go tearing down on her, and still pass within half a cable of her stern, if she held her course and did not shorten sail. Lewrie began to pat his foot in anxiety.

  "Excuse me, sir," he asked, going back to windward to join his captain. "Should we not allow her four-points-free, so we may fall to loo'rd, onto her, sir?"

  "It is my decision, sir. Now be still!" Braxton hissed, wheeling on him. "The squadron, sir, will daunt them. She'll haul wind, she can't trade fire with the liners. Attend to your duties, sir."

  "Sir, should she haul her wind, there's still the Indiamen-"

  "I gave you an order, Mister Lewrie!"

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "There, d'ye see, hah?" Braxton hooted with scorn suddenly. "She's falling off, at last. Turning to run! Now, Mister Lewrie… now you may haul our wind. Gybe, and steer sou'east."

  "Aye, aye, sir," he replied evenly.

  Damme, another puzzle, he carped! Should be due east, by God; go right for 'em! This'U put us the same distance from the Indiamen, or the frigate. What's Braxton playing at?

  "Bosun, prepare to wear to the starboard tack."

  "Wear, sir?" Bosun Fairclough gaped from the waist below him.

  "Aye, wear, Mister Fairclough," Lewrie repeated testily. "Stations for wearing ship! Main clew garnets… buntlines, there!" He called through the speaking trumpet. "Spanker brails, weather main and lee braces! Manned?"

  Hands darted to the pin rails and fife rails to undo belays on the running rigging, to tail on and prepare to take a strain once the lines were free of all but the last over-under hitch on belaying pins.

  "Come on, lads! Smartly, now!" he urged them. "Manned, damnyer eyes? Smartly, I said!"

  "Drive 'em, bosun! Smartly!" Braxton interrupted. "Lay on yer starters!"

  The hands were readying for a wear, but it was damn' slow work-handsome work-church work. Petty officers and midshipmen lathered the slow and the clumsy (and there were more than a few on the gangways who were suddenly struck clumsy, Lewrie noted!) with rope starters. The hands flinched, like flicked steers, as the starters cracked on their coats. But that didn't make them very much faster.

  "Oh, Christ…" Lewrie whispered, seeing the game for what it was at once. "Come on, lads! There's a fortune in prize-money downwind, so let's be at it! All manned? Haul taut! Ready about? Up mains'l and spanker! Clear away after bowlines! Brace in the after yards!" Lewrie turned to the senior quartermaster, and in a softer voice cautioned, "Handsomely does it. New heading, sou'east. Right! Up-helm, quartermaster!" "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Overhaul weather lifts! Man the weather braces! Rise fore-tack and sheet!"

  Cockerel fell off the wind, heeling harder to starboard, laying her shoulder to the sea, sloughing and snuffling foam as she lost way, and the sea gripped her more firmly. With the wind swinging rapidly onto her larboard quarter, growing finer and finer, Lewrie looked to the commissioning pendant aloft, then aft, judging the best moment to anticipate a stern wind. There!

  "Clear away head bowlines, lay the head-yards square! Shift over jib fore-sheets! Come on, smartly, now! Move!" he fumed at the crew, whose efforts had turned so ox-slow, so hen-headed awkward.

  "Jaysis, bloody…!" the senior helmsman yelped suddenly, and Lewrie turned his head to see the huge double wheel's spokes spinning like a St. Catherine's wheel at a fair. The steering-tackle ropes bound 'round the wheel drum were sizzling and smoking as they unwound themselves! "No helm, sir, no helm!"

  "Avast, there!" he called, trying to head off disaster. "Back the foresheets, flat 'em in! Lee braces, bosun, main and…"

  Too late. Cockerel was across the eye of the wind, with her after and main yardarms angled to take a stern wind, the main and fore-courses smothered so far, but not for long. She carried a lot of weather-helm, and was going to round up. For a moment, her yards would luff ineffectually, then, as she swung her bows windward, they'll fill again-pressing against the masts and spars, snapping her upper masts like carrots, if they weren't quick about it!

  This ought to be damned int'restin', Lewrie thought, with what felt like a stupefied calmness; we're going to broach this barge!

  "Lee braces, damn you! Smartly! Let go weather braces!"

  With a tremendous whooshing sound, much like a gargantuan bird, the spanker filled and flew across the quarterdeck overhead, dragging the men of the starboard after-guard, tailing on what was now a weather sheet, in a tug of war they could never win.

  They let go, tumbling in a heap. They let go The spanker was a slightly older design, a loose-footed trapezoidal sail suspended from a light wooden gaff, with the after-most, lowermost corner, the clew, the attachment point for the sheets. With a sharp crack, the gaff yard met the much heavier mizzenmast cro'jack yard, which directed the set of the mizzen tops'l and spread its foot. The spanker gaff shattered, of course, dangling half the upper length of the spanker like a duck with a broken wing, which let it swing further out-board to tangle in the larboard mizzen stays! Taken by surprise, the larboard sheetmen of the after-guard stood slack-jawed, and slack-fingered, and let the larboard sheet snake over the side, along with the weather sheet!

  Both sheets, Lewrie goggled: both the bloody sheets?

  "Heavy-haul on the braces, fore, main and cro'jack!" he howled as Cockerel wallowed, now heeling to larboard. They could save their masts, if the bows could be got down. They could steer downwind without the rudder, for a time, if the hands were quick.

  But the deck was already inclined over twenty degrees of heel, and the men were laid back almost parallel to the gangways. It wasn't clumsy, semi-mutinous theatrics now. They began to slip and fall, to go sprawling on their backs, to slide to leeward into the bulwarks as their bare feet lost purchase; or were dragged towards the pin rails as they tried to hold on to the braces, by the enormous pressure of wind on the sails which exerted tons of pull on the lines.

  Cockerel groaned in outraged protest as she swung up a-weather, the wind rapidly clocking forward of abeam, laid over so far that water surged high as the gunports on the lee side, and the breeching ropes of the starboard battery sang a taut torment. Masts, spars, rigging, hull… her wail was a chorus of danger, and the sea surged hungrily.

  At least 'thout the spanker, Lewrie thought bitterly, we won't have weather-helm for long! Or masts, either, he concluded, hanging light-footed from the starboard mizzen stays by a death-grip.

  The flatted-in jibs and fore stays'ls saved her, pushing down her bows, keeping Cockerel from broaching, though she lay hard over on her larboard side for what s
eemed like forever, her rudder quite ineffective, even if it had been attached to something. Alan whined with a brief terror as he looked down at the hungry ocean, at the image of course-sail yards dragging wakes in the sea! The ship creaked and moaned, with ominous sloshes and thuds echoing from below on the orlop deck. Round-shot tumbled from their nests along the hatch rims or the rope shot-garlands to bowl down alee and thonkl into bulwarks.

  Then Cockerel rolled back upright, rebounding so quickly that she was flung hard up against the mizzen stays, even as she began to pay off the wind, at last. But she didn't come quite level after that; she was still alist to larboard. Cargo and ballast shifted, sure, Alan thought, as his feet at last found a place to stand, as he darted for the nettings overlooking the waist.

  "Bosun!" he bawled, "Get below and set relieving tackle to the tiller head! All hands, secure from Quarters! Mister Scott, take the foc's'le and foremast, set the sprit-s'l, fore-tops'l and forecourse for a run. Main-mast, mizzenmast, there! Topmen aloft! Trice up and lay out! Brail up all sail! Clew up now, Mister Porter, Mister Thorne. Clew up the mizzen t'gallant, main course, main tops'l and t'gallant! Spanish-reef 'em, for now! After-guard, mizzen tops'l braces!"

  They'd have to have the foresails for drive, and a lifting effect, making the stern heavier for a repaired helm. The mizzen tops'l could serve for steering, of a rough and clumsy sort. The rest of her square sail would be drawn up by the clew lines towards the yards which hung them, baggy and bat-winged, towards the tips of the yardarms, close and snug inward towards the masts… Spanish-reefed.

  He dared allow himself at last a deep, shaky breath and a look aloft. Well, that didn't help his nerves much, he thought, blaring his eyes in wonder-there were t'gallant and top-mast shrouds flying free as the commissioning pendant up yonder, and the light upper masts were swaying a lot more than normal as Cockerel wallowed from side to side, her untended lift lines allowing the yards to droop a-cock-bill.

  "What in the name o' God d'ye think yer playing at, sir!" the captain fumed as he made his way amidships of the quarterdeck. "Get the bloody hell outa my way, you brainless, cunny-thumbed…!" Captain Braxton screamed to all and sundry, shaking his fists as if he wished to bloody his knuckles on the quarter-deck gunners and after-guard.

  "They're firing at us!" Midshipman Braxton shouted from aloft. "The French are firing at us, sir!"

  The 5th Rate had rounded up abeam the wind, about four or five miles alee of Cockerel. The roar of her upper-deck guns could not be heard, of course, but they could see the puffs of grey-tan gunpowder erupt from her sides as the forty-four-gunned vessel delivered a slow, timed salute-a most mocking and derisory salute to their "seamanship"-before hauling her wind once more and loping away eastward to guard her convoy, which had used their entertaining diversion to sail away from harm, towards the Straits of Gibraltar.

  Cackling their fool heads off, Alan thought miserably. "Fowkner," he called to a senior hand of the after-guard. "Get aloft. Get a line on the spanker gaff-what's left of it- and haul it clear of the shrouds. Boat hooks, you men. Get the spanker sheets in-board, and ready to lower away. Mister Spendlove? Inform one of the bosun's mates to fetch out one of the stun'sl booms and 'fish' it to the broken spanker gaff." "Aye, aye, sir."

  "You, sir!" Braxton snarled, hatless, his fists balled for a fight still, as he came to his first lieutenant. "Of all the stupid, inept-!"

  "Steering tackle parted, sir," Lewrie tried to explain. "There wasn't much we could-"

  "That you should have re-rove completely before, you-!" "Captain, sir," Lewrie replied, "you were there when we overhauled it. You said yourself you were satisfied-"

  "You disputatious dog, sir!" Braxton shot back. "Think I can't see your game? Think I'm blind, do you? How convenient the hands, of a sudden, were struck-"

  "Captain, sir," Mister Dimmock interrupted from the other side, "I think a little calm is in order, sir. 'Least said, soonest mended' and all that? The hands, ye know… won't do, in their hearing, sir."

  "I'll kindly thankee to keep out of this, sir," Braxton sneered. "I want your advice, I'll ask for it. Now, be silent."

  "No, sir," Dimmock quailed, though determined to have his say, at last. "Not this time. You're saying Mister Lewrie put the people up to it, is that your meaning, sir? And I say that is wrong, sir. Were it not for his quick wits, we'd have rolled the 'sticks' right out of her, sir. Frankly, Captain Braxton, Cockerel's damn' lucky somebody kept their wits about 'em when perfectly sound steering-tackle ropes snapped, at the worst possible moment. Tackle you did inspect, sir."

  Braxton seethed, turned red as turkey wattles, but realised he was in the wrong place to shout the dread word "mutiny." "How dare you, sir, deign to interfere!" he hissed, in a much more private, though much more threatening voice.

  "There may be trouble 'mongst our people, sir," Dimmock told him in a mutter, "but I may swear to you on a stack o' Bibles, 'tis none of Mister Lewrie's doing."

  Dimmock had such a way of canting his accents, of laying stress on innocuous words, that his meaning was quite clear at that moment; and quite accusatory, too. Though were his statements recalled at any court martial, verbatim, they could sound quite innocent. He'd as much as implied that the source of the crew's unrest lay solely with Captain Braxton. He'd further implied that when Cockerel had come nigh broaching, her captain had uttered no orders for her salvation.

  "You, as well, sir?" Braxton sniffed, raring back with outrage.

  "Sir, you can't believe that. We're all as-"

  BOOM! From windward.

  Windsor Castle had fired a forecastle chase gun to get Cockerel's attention. She and the rest of the squadron were completely hull-up to them, and had been flying "Do You Require Assistance" for some minutes, until at last their admiral had become so exasperated at their lack of notice he'd ordered a gun touched off. The line-abreast warships were going to pass Cockerel close-aboard soon, as she staggered sou'east with the wind right up her stern, and they continued east-nor'east in chase of the French convoy. Some of them might have to alter course to avoid her, slowing that pursuit even more.

  "From the flag, sir!" Midshipman Braxton screeched aloft. " 'Do You Require Assistance,' it reads, sir!"

  "We can see that from the deck, damn you!" Lewrie hailed upward. "God help your slack arse, Mister Midshipman Braxton!" he vowed. He'd have the lad bent over a gun, should the Devil himself dare to cross him. "What reply do you wish to send, sir?" he asked the captain, in a more civil tone.

  "No!" Braxton thundered. "We require no assistance!"

  "Very well, sir. Mister Spendlove? You're free aft. Hoist a Negative."

  "Aye, aye, sir!"

  "Might ease the starboard mizzen tops'l braces, Mister Lewrie," Dimmock advised, in his proper role of sailing master. "Haul taut on the larboard, and we may be able to pressure her 'round more east'rd."

  'Thankee, Mister Dimmock. Should I attend to that, sir?" Alan asked the captain.

  Braxton's mouth worked in anger. To fly up as lubberly as some first-time lake sailor in a dinghy… to completely ignore a signal of their flagship…! His abiding wish that Cockerel distinguish herself as the best frigate in the Fleet was in shambles.

  "I have the deck, sir," Braxton snarled at last. "Do you attend the purser below. We're alist, sir. Ballast has shifted, stores… I vow you've done quite enough for one day, sir."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Lewrie replied as chearly as he might.

  "Whoo, neck-or-nothin' there, for a moment, hey, sir?" Banbrook the Marine crowed, fanning himself with his hat as he and O'Neal came up from the waist.

  "On your way, see what's taking Mister Fairclough so long to repair the steering tackle," Braxton continued.

  "I shall, sir," Lewrie vowed, doffing his hat in salute.

  "I say, Mister Lewrie, sir?" Banbrook nattered on, nearing their small gathering, completely unaware of any problems, now that the ship no longer appeared to be in danger of sinking.

  "Might I suggest, Captai
n, sir, that the master-at-arms take a muster?" Lewrie dared to suggest. "Hard as we were slung about, it'd be a miracle were no topmen dashed over the side, sir."

  "Umph!" the captain grunted, calling for his son to attend to it.

  "Then I shall go below, sir," Lewrie said in parting.

  "Uhm, Mister Lewrie, sir… 'bout the whore-transport?" Lieutenant Banbrook inquired breezily. "All these repairs and wot-not… does this mean we miss our turn with her, sir?"

  Good God, Lewrie thought, appalled; not now, you blitherin'…!

  Captain O'Neal took Banbrook's arm to jerk him out of earshot, coughing fit to die-much too late, of course.

  "The what!" Captain Braxton roared, wheeling to look at Banbrook with a mixture of utter loathing and complete incomprehension on his phiz. "The bloody what, sir?"

  "The whore-transport, sir," Lieutenant Banbrook began gaily. "The one the wardroom told me about?"

  A very tardy realisation struck the young Marine officer at last. "The one with the… uhm…" he stammered, blushing beet red as he discovered himself the goat of their cruel jape. "Well, the… whores aboard? Who come alongside and…?"

  "Get off my deck! Get off my quarterdeck, you useless damn fool!" the captain screamed, again in full cry, and with a suitable target for his pent-up wrath. "I want this… tailor's dummy… under close arrest, Captain O'Neal! Under close arrest, sir!"

  Time to bolt, Lewrie thought.

  He made his way down a quarter-deck ladder, down the midships companionway hatch, safely out of screeching range, as the full fury of the captain's storm broke.

  The first people he met as he attained the orlop deck were the ship's carpenter, Mister Dallimore, and his carpenter's crew, all of whom were hugging carline posts, and each other, sniggering and chortling.

  " 'Hore-ship, megawd!" one of them wheezed.

  '"Tain't funny, damn yer eyes," Lewrie snapped. "Look at this bloody mess, Mister Dallimore."

  Huge water butts, salt-rations barrels, beer kegs, piled ship's stores… half the well-ordered stowage on the orlop was now lumbered loose to larboard. They'd be half the watch shifting it, the waisters and idlers, such as Dallimore's people, and probably require Marines to pitch in, too, to shift ballast in the bilges.