A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Ah, I understand, Captain Lewrie,” the rector had said, “and I feel certain that, no matter their sins were scarlet, dying in service to King and Country, they were washed as white as snow by their dedication to Duty, and by the true Valour they evinced in their last instants. Heaven will be their reward, no matter how humbly born.”

  “Truly said, sir,” Lewrie had replied. “As for notifying their kin, I have already composed letters. ‘Tis my sad duty.”

  Half the morning gone, kicking his cooling heels waiting to be seen by that Flag-Captain, whilst Mr. Pendarves, Mr. Towpenny, and Mr. Garroway had been over the side on a catamaran, a floating work stage, surveying what they could above the waterline, the damaged gun-trucks being repaired with what stocks of seasoned timber they had in stores aboard Proteus, and the “divotted” artillery pieces dis-mounted, ready to be slung into the cutter and rowed ashore for exchange, should there actually be Dutch 12-pounders to exchange them for. Lewrie would not be picky; they could be tiger-mouthed Hindoo or Chinese guns, for all it would signify to him at that point!

  So much to do to put Proteus to rights, to care for his maimed sailors, one of whom, “Sam Whitbread,” was also Black, and what Dutch renters thought of that when he sought shore lodgings for them, well!

  Six, eight weeks, he said? Lewrie thought with a dismayed moan; Longer? Land of The Lotus Eaters, bedamned! And, the French. Could they have gotten strong, or bold, enough, to haunt Table Bay, despite what the local Navy officers think? I can’t sit idle, swingin round the anchors, if the Frogs think they can raid this close to home. For a bleak moment, he pictured that French squadron sailing right into the bay for a night raid on shipping, and with Proteus so lamed… !

  He thrust himself erect, determined to get a way on, to achieve something productive before sundown; though, what that was, he hadn’t a clue, at present. He paced back forward, but caught sight of Festival, anchored about a mile off, and now swarmed with barges and boats to unload her menagerie, scenery, and such for a long “run” of performances. Her main yardarm was dipping to sway out a sling which held a horse, a white horse, Eudoxia’s well-trained gelding.

  Hmm, he speculated; eight weeks or more, in a Paradise, even if it’s a deadly sort. With her ashore? Lord, give me strength!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Two days later, and the prospects for his frigate didn’t look so bleak. Requests for material assistance from the Indiamen that they’d convoyed this far had resulted in enough oak from their own, civilian, bosuns’ stores for new truck-carriages to replace the ones too smashed up to be repaired, and for repairs on those that could be salvaged.

  Out of gratitude that one, or all, of them hadn’t been taken by the French, perhaps, there had also come enough dried and seasoned fir or pine with which to fay the face of the sternpost and the lead edge of the rudder, enough elm for faying and soling, as well. With timber had come a few iron pigs that could become reinforcing strapping bands, enough bronze in-pig for a shoreside blacksmith to forge new gudgeons or pintles, and bolts. A personal meeting with salty old Capt. Cowles, the convoy commodore, and he’d sponsored a whip-round from the other Indiamen that had resulted in a flood of offerings worthy of a Cornucopia, a veritable Horn of Plenty.

  Had seven of his brave sailors now passed over? Were ten still lying wounded? For each man, mates and passengers had made up a small purse to cover their sick-berth fees, which Ships’ Surgeons and Mates would deduct from their pay, even if the Spithead Mutiny had ended the practice of wounded men’s pay being stopped ‘til they were healed, so they would not suffer financially. Dead men’s grave fees were paid to the parish, and a tolerable amount had been contributed to send on to their families, to augment the miserly pensions Admiralty granted. More was to go to providing fresh victuals for those who lingered in the rented cottage high up on the windy bluffs of the Lion’s Rump!

  Artillery, well…neither the stores ship nor the Prize Court storehouses had 12-pounders for exchange. They had some few 6-pounders and a pair of 9-pounders taken off Dutch merchantmen captured in port when Elphinstone had landed, and a pair of Dutch 18-pounders that had never been installed in the sea forts built to protect Cape Town; but, Lewrie was slavering, but wary, of how much recoil and weight that his decks, his bulwarks and his breeching cables could withstand, should he dare install those monsters and touch them off, fully charged!

  In the face of such freely-offered bounty, Lewrie had no choice but to reciprocate by dining-in Capt. Cowles, the masters and mates off the other Indiamen, and those passengers who had contributed. He had dreaded the expense, but, a local inn had done him proud off the local viands, and at a fairly decent price, too.

  It had turned out to be a “game supper.” The soup had been egg and guinea fowl, mainly, with some rice and fresh peas. Crisply fresh salad greens came next, then the vast assortment of meats brought in as removes, more guinea fowl or pheasant, even ostrich!; for venison there had been springbok or gemsbok, antelope and impala, even giraffe, for God’s sake! Then had come wild boar with mushrooms, followed by fish courses such as Cape salmon, thumb-thick shrimp as long as one’s whole hand done in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, chilies, bay leaves, and cloves! There had even been a kick-shaw made of crocodile!

  Local made-dishes such as bredies and boboties had made their appearance, the bredie a mutton stew stiff with pot vegetables, and the bobotie nearly the best mild curry of shredded lamb, fruit, and rice Lewrie had eaten in his life. Fresh breads, local wines, mounded rice pilafs or satays showing Javanese influences, and, to top all of that off (should anyone have had a cubic inch of stomach left for them), the desserts (besides fresh, whole fruits) had consisted of rich, cinnamon-laced milk tarts, a steamed brandy pudding as good as any to be found in England, or koeksisters, which were wee braided, doughy confections sopping with honey, spices, and heavy fruit syrups.

  Port, sweet biscuit, and nuts had seemed superfluous, and Lewrie was still belching, two days later.

  Now, though, Lewrie paused midships of the larboard gangway as the sound of cannon fire caught his attention. The convoy of Indiamen was setting sail to complete their long journeys to India or China, and HMS Grafton, Horatius, and the unfortunate HMS Stag, with the equally disappointed Capt. Philpott, were getting under way with them, the flagship firing a proper salute to Vice-Adm. Curtis’s flag as it went.

  I made the effort, Lewrie told himself, for he had sent an invitation to his shore supper to his fellow captains, and Treghues, too, but only Philpott and Graves had attended, Treghues had sent a stiff note of regret that Stern Duty would not allow for such idle socialising at such a moment. Poor, stiff-necked bastard, Lewrie bemoaned.

  Sir Roger being Sir Roger, that worthy had laughed that report Capt. Treghues had submitted, and sent on to London, to scorn, eagerly sharing his scorn among his coterie. It actually made Lewrie wince to see Treghues grasping at such a slender straw, to turn what had been a half-blind shambles into a signal victory…or, at least a thumping-good repelling of a back-stabbing French attempt on his convoy. What a misery Treghues might find his wartime career, of plodding to India and back with his guns rusting for want of use, and with never a foe strong enough to challenge him, Lewrie could not imagine. Didn’t want to imagine, for by comparison, he’d already had more than his share of a lively war, with the medals, rank, and “post” to prove it.

  Did Treghues hope that a report of any sort of action involving gunpowder, any sort of success against the French, might bring him to the Admiralty’s notice in a fresh, new light, which might earn him his promotion to real Commodore rank, command of a squadron in more active and important seas? Or, might a release from boresome convoy duties be the excuse he craved to land his dour wife ashore whilst he sailed “in harm’s way,” as that American pest John Paul Jones had termed it? No one, in Lewrie’s jaded experience, could tolerate such a tart and termagant mort like her for very long, not even if she came with access to the rents of an entire shire!
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  “Fa-are-well, and adieu, you-ou sour English sai-lor, fa-are-well, and adieu, you-ou arse-load of pain… !” Lewrie softly sang under his breath as he watched HMS Grafton curtsy and heel as she manned her yards to make more sail.

  Oh, a host of foreign “bye-byes”! Lewrie gleefully thought, as he tried to dredge up half-forgotten phrases from his experiences.

  Adios… came to mind, quickly followed by Vamanos!, which was more apropos. Auf Wiedersehen…au revoir, both of which he thought too polite by half; the catch-all Hindoo Namasté, good for welcome and departing; what had he heard at Naples, Genoa, and Leghorn in the Med? Ah, arrivederci!, that was it!

  Ave atque vale, from his schooldays Latin. He would have tried the Greek, but there was a language he never could get his wits about, for which failure his bottom had suffered at a whole host of schools.

  There was Eudoxia’s dosvidanya; there was what he had read in Captain Bligh’s book following the Bounty mutiny, that the Sandwich Islanders said… Aloha Oh-Eh; what the first explorers to the colony of New South Wales had heard the Aborigines shout at them on the beach of Sydney Cove… Warra-Warra! Later settlers—the willing, not the convicts—had learned that it was not a cry of welcome, but a wish for the strange new tribe to “Go Away!” How very apt!

  “Warra-Warra!”Lewrie softly called out, lifting one hand as if bestowing a blessing on HMS Grafton, though, did one look closely, one might have noticed that Lewrie’s index and middle finger of that hand were raised a bit higher than the rest, that hand slowly rotated, palm inwards, towards the end.

  Rudder, Lewrie reminded himself, turning away to deal with his greatest problem. He went to the starboard entry-port, clad in an old shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his rattiest, oldest pair of slop-trousers rolled to his knees above bare shins and shoes about to crack apart with age, mildew, and damp. Bareheaded, he tossed off a sketchy salute to the side-party and scampered down the battens and man-ropes to his gig, where Cox’n Andrews and only a pair of oarsmen awaited. They would not bear him far, just down the starboard quarter, then round the square-ish stern, where other people were already occupied.

  “Good morning, Mister Goosen,” Lewrie said to the Dutch ship chandler, who had contracted to do the survey. He was a square-built fellow in his early fifties, heavily bearded contrary to current fashion elsewhere, garbed much as Lewrie was, but for a wide straw hat on his pink and balding head. Reddish cheeks and nose, the sign of the serious toper …or, one who spent his days in the harsher African sun, and on the water, to boot.

  “Gut morning, Kaptein!” Goosen jovially replied from his boat, an eight-oared thing nearly fourty feet long, with both a false forecastle and imitation poop, that had once been as grand as an admiral’s barge, but had gone downhill rapidly in civilian hands. Goosen waved a wooden piggin at Lewrie, by way of greeting, then emitted a belch at him, which required a fist against his chest. “Cold, sweet lime water. Ver’ gut on hot days, Kaptein, but making die bilious,” he explained.

  “What have your divers discovered so far, sir?” Lewrie asked as he shared a look with the Bosun, Mr. Pendarves, who was sitting on the edge of his catamaran with his feet and shins in the water, alongside the damaged rudder.

  “Rudder iss fucked, Kaptein,” Goosen replied with an expression halfway ‘twixt a scowl and a grin. “Sacrificial fir baulks shattered, die main piece, uhm…iss die green-twig broke. Not clean broke but hang by shreds? Thin end, oop dahr, iss strained at both tiller-head holes, it flop too much after break happen. Be bitch to fix, oh ja.”

  “Come from too much helm effort, sir, th’ tiller-head holes,” Mr. Pendarves added, flapping his feet and shins in the harbour water. “Gudgeons an’ pintles ‘bove th’ waterline seem sound, but, th’ way she were swingin’ so free, I’ve low hopes ‘bout the two lowermost.”

  A pair of Oriental-looking sprogs came bursting to the surface in welters of foam, bobbing like corks for a moment before starting to paddle with their legs and wave their arms sideways to stay afloat. One swabbed water from his face and long hair, then kicked a few feet over to Goosen’s barge, took hold of the gunwale, and began a palaver in a tongue that was most-likely half-Dutch and half-Javanese, neither of which Lewrie could follow.

  Goosen listened, nodded here and there over the choicer bits, sucked his teeth and winced, then translated. “Kaffir say gudgeon at bottom of sternpost iss open. Iss bolted to sternpost, but die hole-for-pintle-part iss not hole, but like diss!” Goosen said, frowning, and holding up one hand, thumb and fingers forming a cylinder, before snapping them apart to make a wide U-shape.

  “And the lowermost pintle?” Lewrie prompted.

  “Iss half tore loose, Kaptein, wit’ pintle pin bent,” Goosen further translated, bending his forefinger into a crook to describe it. “Die bolts heff tore up rudder, too. Next-est to sternpost, be gone. Pintle fitting hang by last bolt, next-est to aft end.”

  “What in God’s name hit us, then?” Lewrie wondered aloud. “If the lowermost of the five sets of pintles and gudgeons are the thickest and heaviest-forged of all?”

  “Ah, but deepest part of main piece rudder taper thinnest, die wood be planed slimmest, Kaptein,” Goosen pointed out, with too much heartiness to suit Lewrie. “Bronze thickest, but bolts shortest, for die upper four pintles and gudgeons be expect to bear die most weight.”

  “And the fourth set?” Lewrie further enquired, his hopes for a quick repair sinking.

  “Bent,” Goosen told him, making as if to wring out a wet towel. “Bad wrench, when rudder be shot. Pintle and gudgeon there both are wrench. When Frenchman dammitch rudder oop dahr, whole weight go on die next-est oop set. Gudgeon dahr be wrench almost out. Gon’ need whole new rudder, oh ja! New pintles, gudgeons, bolts, nuts, top to bottom, ja!”

  Tell me something we didn’t know! Lewrie sourly thought, musing on that sad news and looking away, up the shattered sternpost and the rudder to the square overhang of the transom. He had to smile, nonetheless, for the sash-windows of his great-cabins were open, and both of his cats were posed in them, paws resting on the sills, intrigued by such a rare sight below.

  “We’ve received enough iron and bronze to have new pintles and gudgeons fashioned ashore,” Lewrie stated, looking back at the sweaty Dutchman. “If our own armourer cannot do the work, that is. New oak, of this size… ? Or, is there some sturdy local tree that might serve just as well, hereabouts, Mister Goosen?”

  “Local timber? Pah!” Goosen countered with a humourless laugh. “Die verdammte African termite eat gut timber, quick as goat eat paper, Kaptein! Unt oop in mountains… die Cederburg, Hex Mountains, die Drakensberg, iss only pine grow tall unt straight,” he said, waving a hand at the far distant blue ranges surrounding Table Bay. “Termite, he bad as ship-worm. All rotten, in a few year, oh ja.”

  “Well, damme,” Lewrie sourly said.

  “Other African tree,” Goosen morosely went on, “if sound, not full of termite, not grow thick unt straight, unt iss only good for die knees, fashion pieces. Before you rooineks come, I can get fine, big wood from Rotterdam…Hamburg oak, English oak, compass oak, unt Americanischer white oak, gut for ship repairs, but now …” he said with a fatalistic shrug. “Ashore, heff many blacksmither, carpenter, but…little to work wit’, you see.”

  “Then we’re stuck here ‘til an Indiaman comes back with a hunk of teak or mahogany,” Lewrie spat. As he mused over that, even more of Goosen’s Javanese divers bobbed to the surface from their mysterious work below the hull, gasping for air and laughing together, which did little for Lewrie’s sour mood, either.

  How long can they hold their breath? he asked himself, for he was sure that they’d been down long before he’d been rowed round the stern. “We can’t wait that long, Mister Goosen,” he said, trying not to sound like he was pleading. “Surely, there must be something…”

  Lewrie rather doubted he and his officers could invent enough make-work aboard an idled, crippled ship for two whole months of
dull thumb-twiddling to keep the crew from going dull or querulous. And, if their last shore liberty was anything to judge by, his only other option was to keep them penned aboard ship, else Cape Town would end in splintered ruins long before a replacement rudder turned up!

  “Wahl…” Goosen drawled, with a cagey stroking of his beard. “Table Bay iss bad anchoring, Kaptein Leew…Loo… myhneer. Unt, worser iss False Bay, other side of peninsula, below Simon’s Town. I know of a fresh wreck, dahr. One of your rooinek Indiamen, drove in by bad wind to first-est shelter. Her kaptein mistake Cape Hanglip as Good Hope, at last see Simon’s Town, unt try steer there, but hit die Whittle Rocks, for iss too far North of best-est course to round die Noah’s Ark Point. Drive ashore to save what he can before she sinks? Ver’ gut work, dat, for he miss Roman’s Rock unt hard shoal, then go aground on sand beach North end of Simon’s Bay.”

  “A wreck,” Lewrie said, most dubiously.

  “Drive ashore bows first-est, Kaptein!” Goosen hooted in glee. “Stern, sternpost, unt rudder still in six, eight feet of water, oh ja! Was three, four month ago, middle of winter. Die burghers down dahr get much work for to salvage… much booty, for it three days before rooinek soldiers, or your navy, get there to stop them, haw haw haw! Almost nobody drown, for rooinek kaptein iss die slim kerel…crafty fellow, see? But, ship is total loss.”

  “God A’mighty, Cap’m sir,” Mr. Pendarves exclaimed, “her rudder must be s’ big, ye could whittle a barge out’n it! There’s some o’ it still sound oak, sure!”