A King's Trade (40 page)

“Gut morning,
Kaptein
Lewrie!” Goosen bellowed ashore, flapping his wide-brimmed hat in the air. “You see, we heff boats! And, I am speaking vit' de leading
burghers
of Simon's Town, to assure them all you vish is de rudder, and they can keep the rest of the wreck, oh
ja!”

“Very good, Mister Goosen!” Lewrie shouted back, cupping hands to his mouth. “Can we board your boat and take a look at the rudder right away, sir?”

“Ah,
ja,
climb aboard!”

” ‘Tis big, aye,” Bosun Pendarves commented again, minutes later after the cutter had been secured under the
Lord Clive
's stern counter. The locally-hired Dutch crew—owner and helmsman, and two younger lads who seemed to bear an
uncanny
resemblance to Goosen and de Witt—found a quiet spot right-aft by the tiller and took themselves a well-earned nap, the doings of
rooinek
British sailors no concern of theirs.

Mr. Pendarves got out his long wooden ruler, and Mr. Garroway,
Proteus's
Carpenter, produced a long hank of knot-marked and ink-ruled twine. For long minutes they hemmed and ahummed over the great rudder, which hung as far
over as its gudgeons and faying pieces would allow, as if the last helm order had been to put it hard-over. Thankfully, it still seemed to be in one piece, above-water at least, and all pintles and gudgeons in reach had held firm through the grounding, and still supported the rudder without evident strain.

“Four foot even, I make it,” Bosun Pendarves announced, at last. “Four foot even allow th' hances, fore-and-aft. Oak main piece, fir sacrifice boards, an' all, Garroway. Did her builders follow ol' Navy fashion, that'd mean she'd widen t'five foot, seven inch at th' sole.”

“What d'ye make it, Buckley?” Garroway asked one of his junior mates, who had shinnied up the green-slimed main piece to the gallery above, where the upper stock entered the overhanging counter.

“Two foot, two inches wide, Mister Garroway,” the Carpenter's Mate called down. “Two foot, four inch, fore-and-aft. An' th' tiller mortices look sound, too. Nothin' sprung, f'um wot I kin see.”

“Means the main piece would taper to four inches wide, at the sole, then,” Garroway said with a satisfied grunt and nod. “We need a stock t'be one foot, six inches, the sole t'be three inches wide. We can plane that down, easy enough, hey?”

“Aye,” Pendarves agreed, lost in their own little arcane world. “We carry a stock o' one foot, eight inch, front t'back, an' planes an' adzes'll take care o' that. Whether she's wormed, though …” he said, finding a new fret to frown over, and digging into a canvas bucket full of odds and ends, then produced a small drill-auger with which to take a few sample bores from the exposed portion of the rudder's main piece.

“Taller than we need,” the Carpenter pointed out. “Shorten the stock, that's easy….”

“Cut new mortices for th' tiller bars, aye,” Pendarves agreed, “a'low th' old'uns. Make me calmer in mind, d'we do that. Stronger,” the Bosun muttered, happily drilling away. “Ship this size fits seven sets o' pintles an' gudgeons…
Proteus
fits five…so we'll haveta bore fresh bolt-holes, too, an' that makes me even gladder.”

“Strip the fir trailing-edge timber off, plane the main piece to a taper,” Garroway speculated, “and might lop a bit off the sole as well, so she's even with our sternpost.”

“Uhum,” Pendarves dreamily replied.

“Salvage the copper disks ‘tween pintles and gudgeon holes….”

“Goes without sayin'…

““Our old sternpost, though…”

“Aye, there's yer bugger.”

“Take a morticed block from this'un, and shiv it into ours, or… rip this bigger post clean off, trim it down, and replace ours, do ye think?” Garroway asked.

“Be a bitch, that, but… might be stronger, all in all! Aha!” Pendarves cried, sounding very pleased. He withdrew his drill-auger and carefully cupped a palm-ful of oak shavings…as bright, fresh, and worm-free as the best “seasoned in-frame” timber from an English dockyard. “Cap'm sir… I do allow we got ourselves a sound rudder!”

“Marvellous!” Lewrie crowed, all but ready to swing his hat in the air and cry, “Huzzah!” Though, after a long look up the rudder…

“How heavy d'ye think it is, though, Mister Pendarves?” he asked in a soberer voice. “And, how the Devil do we get the damned thing off in one piece?”

“Well, hmmm …” from both Pendarves and Garroway.

I
knew
it couldn't be this easy!
Lewrie told himself.

Indeed, it wasn't. First off, Mr. Goosen's Javanese divers had to swim down to survey that part of the rudder that lay underwater, and in what condition the unseen pintles and gudgeons were. The locals had already taken the long, straight tillers, so temporary new ones had to be cut so they could
turn
the rudder while it hung at its precarious angle. Uncontrolled, when they attempted to hoist it free of the gudgeons, its great weight could crush or kill someone.

Hoisting chains had to be rigged from above, thick cables run from the chains to the after capstan, and new bars fashioned to insert into it, for the local Boers had taken those, as well.

The sacrificial trailing-edge pieces of fir had to be stripped off to lighten it, the hard and water-resistant elm dowel pins saved for later use, and that took many dives by the Javanese, too, so they could hammer them out while several feet down and holding their breath.

The triangular strips of “bearding” elm from the centreline of the sternpost, and the forward edge of the rudder, also had to be removed with care, so they could employ them on
Proteus,
too.

Involving even more diving (and Lewrie's money), a hole had to be drilled through both the leading edge and trailing edge of the rudder's sole, and ropes threaded through them, led up either side of the stern to the jeer bitts, and belayed. When that massive weight was hoisted free, there had to be some way of controlling its swinging, and half of Lewrie's working-party would be tailing
onto those lines while another half would be breasting to the new capstan bars. And, as Mr. Goosen explained, trying to drill underwater was a long, laborious process, where one turn on a drill-auger could rotate the worker off his feet, unless anchored with a weight on the bottom, and loops of line where he could snag his toes.

Naturally, all that took
days
longer than Goosen had estimated, with a resultant increase in the final cost, as did the cost of keeping Mr. de Witt's waggons, beasts, and
kaffir
workers idly waiting for the rudder to be recovered, and trekked back to Cape Town.

As frustrating as the delay was, Lewrie found that camping out on the bluffs could be enjoyable…so long as precautions were made against snakes, spiders, scorpions, and other nasty native buggers. Simon's Bay and False Bay were wide and yawningly empty and the surf was calm on all but the worst days. A firm, stiff wind swirled in, cooling even the hottest part of the day, and, all-in-all, Lewrie found the climate near the 40th Latitude so mild and in-vigourating, the sound of the surf raling on the beach so pacific, and the dawns so cool and bracing, that Lewrie began to think of the Cape as a prickly sort of Paradise.

Late each afternoon, after the Javanese divers were exhausted, and the sunlight on the waters slanted at too great an angle for them to see what they were doing, all work ceased but for camp chores, and experiments by sailors off
Proteus
at fishing, halving off in watch-versus-watch to stage a football match on the hard-packed lower beach, or lounging about like the aforesaid “Lotus Eaters” after a refreshing dip in the surf, themselves… careful to keep an eye out for sharks, which were reputed to teem in southern African waters, and were of an especially vicious, man-eating nature…or snoozing in the shade of a tent fly ‘til mess chores summoned them.

Lewrie had his horse, and had fetched along his lighter fusil musket. For a “piddling fee,” Andries de Witt offered him the loan of a young Boer by name of Piet du Toit as a hunting guide, and Lewrie got into the habit of riding out into the countryside each afternoon with the lanky thatch-haired Boer, in search of game.

Settled as the lower Cape below the Cederburgs and Drakensburgs were, as neatly Dutch-orderly as the farmland appeared, game was still plentiful, and with the larger predators driven out by years of “pest” or trophy hunting, decent-sized herds of ungulants had prospered with the lions' absence, and every day ended with something for the pot.

Piet du Toit wasn't the most talkative fellow, but he did enjoy pointing out a few cautions on their rides: how to spot puff adders or black mambas; how to scan trees very warily for the slim, green, tree-dwelling
boomslang
that was so poisonous; both versions of cobras to avoid, the Cape cobra that bit and chewed its venom into a wound, and the
rinkhals
that could spit death into one's eyes a goodly distance.

They ran across a bewildering array of beasts, such as rhebok, reedbok, red hartebeest, steenbok, and klipspringer, wee duikers, and grysbok, larger elands, and impalas, and God only knew what-all. Piet du Toit boasted that this was nothing, for north beyond the Cederburg Range, out in the Great Karoo savannahs and
vlies,
there were
bigger
creatures: kudu and wildebeest, Cape buffalo, giraffes, hippos, and rhinoceros, warthogs, zebras, and elephants, and, the kings of all, the lions! Du Toit would go there, he swore, once he found a properly sweet wife, and amassed enough money for waggons, oxen, horses, guns, and
kaffir
slaves. He'd find a well-watered spot, break ground with the plough, and start raising his herds and flocks, and if that land played out, or he got bored, there'd always be something even grander to see, a week's trek farther along. Town life was
so
boresome, and confining! No place to raise a brood of a dozen children.

The bird life was equally fascinating to Lewrie, both the ones worth shooting and those too grand to eat, for the countryside teemed with them, too. Ostriches and tall, dignified secretary birds, Kori bustards that looked too big to fly, but did, cattle egrets, and red oxpeckers, hornbills, storks, ibises, a dozen varieties of eagles, hawks and owls, kites, buzzards, falcons, kestrels, and goshawks.

On the gentler side, there were hoopoes and louries, the lilac-breasted rollers, bee eaters, glossy and plum-coloured starlings, the waxbills that came in either yellow, blue, or violet, red bishops and jewel-like sunbirds, and the maricos that came in their own palette of vivid colours.

For shooting, there were red-eyed doves, laughing doves, ring-necked Cape turtledoves, and Namaqua doves; helmeted guinea fowl, crested francolins, and sandgrouse, moorhens, Egyptian geese, yellow-bill or white-faced ducks, Cape teals, even flamingos (which only the richest ancient Romans had eaten) that ended on Lewrie's plate, though young du Toit was the better shot with a double-barreled fowling gun, nailing three for each one that Lewrie brought down.

There were anteaters and honey badgers, or
ratels
as the Boers called them, mongooses, and four kinds of smaller hunting cats: civets and genets, which
were closer to mongooses than true cats; servals, and caracals…and jackals and Cape foxes, and bat-eared foxes, and if Lewrie ever wished to take a
real
hunting trip, he could bring back pelts and masks from leopards, cheetahs, and lions…for a reasonable fee, of course. Piet du Toit swore he could outfit him with anything he wished…tentage, bearers and cooks, body-servants, waggons, spirits, and gunpowder. Even a string quartet, if he wished!

“Some people I know have hired a guide, and gone on an inland hunt,” Lewrie remarked one afternoon as they watered their horses by a small stream. “Those circus folk, who staged those shows.”

“Those stupid
rooineks?”
du Toit harshly laughed, between bites off a strip of
biltong,
a sun-dried meat of unknown source. “The
gut
God help them,
myhneer,
for they go vit' Jan van der Merwe.”

“B'lieve that was the name they mentioned, aye,” Lewrie slowly allowed, his curiosity up and stirring. “Why? What's wrong with this… van der Merwe?”

“Machtig, myhneer…
what is
right?”
du Toit scoffed back with sour mirth.

“A sham, is he? A ‘Captain Sharp'?” Lewrie asked further.

“Don't know this
Kaptein
Sharp
kerel
you speak of,
myhneer,
A sham? Oh,
ja.
Jan van der Merwe is, what you call, a
joke?
He could get lost in a field of mealies… cannot trail smoke back to a campfire! Once, he think he tame hyenas, thinking they are just another kind of big puppy-dog, haw haw! Those circus people mean to hunt out in the
vlies,
they have no need of guide to
find
game. Just ride far enough, they will see
thousands
of beasts an
hour!
Only need
kaffirs
to butcher and skin, drove oxen to bring back pelt and ivory, set up the camps, and cook, you see?
Any
fool can boss camp
kaffirs…
know just enough Bantu to tell them what to do. Ha! Van der Merwe cannot speak proper
Dutch,
much less…”

“They were, ah…more of a mind to
capture
animals than hunt for trophies,” Lewrie explained. “To add to their menagerie and such? Real zebras, ‘stead o' tarted-up donkeys, elephants to ride and train to do tricks, lion cubs to raise…”

“African
elephant?” du Toit gasped in true shock, raising his voice higher than his usual cautious field-mutter. “African elephant is not like the Indian,
myhneer!
Try to train them, they stomp you in ground, then mash you to
soup!
Sad-tempered beasts, good only for the shooting, and ivory. And, anyone think to steal cubs from a pride of
lions,
they end up eaten to the bone, and their bones
cracked!
Bones end as play-things for those
cubs!”