Hostile Shores (46 page)

*   *   *

Eight Bells chimed at the belfry up forward in four twin taps, the last stroke lingering, as the Middle Watch ended and the Morning began. Lt. George Merriman relieved Spendlove, and groggy-sleepy men turned out from the gun deck below to replace the night watchstanders. Bosuns’ calls trilled orders, and the frigate rumbled to hundreds of feet as sailors rolled out of their hammocks to thud onto the planks, grumbled, and lashed up their bedding and hammocks into long sausages narrow enough to pass through the ring measures. Off-watch sailors went below to fetch their rolled-up bedding and bring them on deck to stow in the metal stanchions down both sail-tending gangways and the bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and the cross-deck stanchions at the front of the quarterdeck. Other hands were breaking out and rigging the wash-deck pumps for the usual morning’s cleaning with brooms and mops, and holystone “bibles” to scrub the decks snowy-clean.

“Deck there!” a lookout tried to shout down over the din. “Do ye hear, there? Chase is goin’ about! She’s stern-on!”

“Mister Spendlove … before we start swabbin’, I’ll have the ship put about to West-Nor’west,” Lewrie ordered.

“Aye, sir,” Spendlove replied, pausing to grin and ask, “So she really is inshore of us?”

“Aye, she is, and we may soon have her,” Lewrie told him. “Do be quick about it.”

“Aye, sir!”

The Third Officer, Mr. Merriman, had gone below for a brief nap after standing the Middle Watch, and perhaps a bite or two before returning to the deck prepared for possible action. Lt. Westcott, the First Officer, came up after four hours of sleep, along with Marine Lieutenant Simcock. The both of them were armed already, sporting their swords and braces of pistols. Simcock looked the freshest, for with no watchstanding duties to perform, he always had “all night in”.

“Where is she? Can we see her yet?” Simcock eagerly asked, all but bouncing on his toes to gain an inch or more of view to the West.

“Still hull-down to us from the deck, and only the lookouts can see her,” Lewrie told him. “She’s there, rest assured she is.” He had to speak loudly over the dins as the braces and sheets were manned and eased, as the helm was put over, and their frigate swung her bows onto the new course in pursuit of their stranger.

“Deck, there!” a lookout yelled down. “Chase is one point off the starb’d bows!”

“We
are
chasing her, now,” Lewrie told them with a laugh, “even if she doesn’t know it, yet. We can now call her a ‘Chase’. Once she spots us and tries to run … what will she be then, Mister Munsell?” he asked the nearest Midshipman of the Watch, who had been listening.

“An ‘Enemy Then Flying’, sir!” Munsell quickly piped up.

“Well, I for one wish she takes no notice of us ’til after the galley fires have been lit, and I can have a cup of strong coffee, or two,” Lt. Westcott said with a groan and a long, wide yawn.

“I fear we’ll be silhouetted against the dawn, perhaps even by the false dawn, long before that,” Lewrie commented as he looked up at the sails, almost lost in the darkness. “Today’s a Banyan Day, at any rate. The best we may expect’ll be small beer, cheese, and bisquit. Hot porridge’ll be out of the question.”

“Well, damme,” Westscott said, yawning again.

“Have a bad night of it, did you?” Lewrie asked in jest.

“Tossed and turned, even after a stiff brandy,” Westcott said with a shrug.

“That’s more due the Sailing Master’s snores,” Lt. Simcock told Lewrie. “I compare them to a beach full of sea lions, but Merriman’s of the opinion he sounds more like a whole warehouse full of rolling casks. Back and forth, rumble, rumble, rumble!”

“He’s the loudest in the Middle Watch,” Westcott said with a grimace, “right in the middle of my most vivid dreams!”

“Hmm, the lookouts aloft are most-like seeing our ghost by her taffrail lanthorns,” Lewrie speculated, looking up again at the masts. “It’s still too dark to see her sails. That puts her hull-up above the night horizon from them. That’d be … inside twelve miles of visibility, perhaps about eight.

“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie said, turning to the Officer of the Watch. “What is the last cast of the log?”

“Six knots, sir,” Spendlove answered.

“Very well. Let’s take one reef in the main course to slow us down a bit,” Lewrie ordered. “I’d like our stranger to only see our t’gallants by false dawn, which’ll be about an hour and a half from now. She just
might
think we’re a transport fetching re-enforcements, and come out to us.”

“Or, she might spook and run, sir,” Westcott cautioned.

“Aye, but run to where, sir?” Lewrie posed, grinning. “South, I think. The winds are fair for Mar del Plata down the coast, or to Bahía Blanca, if she needs a hidey-hole. Perhaps that’s where she’s come from in the first place, and got word of our invasion overland. We knew almost nothing but rumours and fantasies about the Argentine before we invaded it, and the Plate Estuary’s a bad place to maintain warships, what with all the shoals and banks, as we’ve discovered.”

“Main mast captain and crew!” Spendlove was bellowing through a brass speaking-trumpet. “Trice up, lay out, and take one reef in the main course!”

Westcott and Simcock began to pace to kill the time, even if they were strictly not on watch, and could have gone below once the wash-deck pumps were stowed away. Westcott’s yawning had infected Lewrie, and, after a few more minutes standing stern and stoic by the forward windward corner of the quarterdeck, he felt his eyelids lowering and his head nodding. He shook himself several times to try and stay awake, but when he caught himself leaning on the bulwarks, with an arm threaded through the shrouds to stay upright, he surrendered to the moment. He called for his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair and had himself a sit-down, and allowed himself a little nap before the sun came up, and the game would be afoot.

“Think we’re in for a scrape this mornin’?” one of the Quartermasters on the helm, Baldock, asked Master’s Mate Hook.

“Sounds like it,” Hook whispered back.

“Cap’m don’t look worried,” Baldock said as he eased a spoke or two. “Might come out aright, then.”

“Wager ya he’s schemin’ on how t’beat ’em, this very minute,” Hook assured him with a grin. “Cap’m knows how t’win, and fight. Seen it before, when I was in the old
Proteus
with him, and God help Frogs, Dons, and Dutchies … any o’ the King’s enemies.”

Up forward, and un-heard by Baldock and Hook on the helm, the “fighting” Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, snorted as his chin drooped onto his chest.

*   *   *

Ting-Ting!
Ting!

“Umph.”

The striking of Three Bells of the Morning Watch pulled Lewrie from his nap with a grunt. He raised his head a few degrees and saw that the false dawn had crept up on
Reliant
from the East, astern of her, while he had drowsed. His ship was once more a solid thing from the bulwark beside him to the out-thrust tip of the jib-boom, though still an indefinite greyness.

He stood, and looked forward in search of the strange intruder, but she was still below the horizon from his vantage on the quarterdeck, as was the Plate Estuary and the Argentine coast. Far enough to sea beyond the jungles and the estuary, there was no hint of the daily fogs, either; what he could see of the sea’s horizon was as flat and sharp-edged as a table top. Closer to, the sea was not the ink-black of night, but had lightened to a slate grey, flecked here and there with lighter grey foaming wave crests, like dirty wash suds.

Aloft, the intricate maze of both standing and running rigging was a spider web done in charcoal, and the sails still colourless, almost indistinguishable from a rainy-day overcast. Even the bright red-white-blue commissioning pendant that streamed off towards the larboard bows might just as well been a long hank of rope.

“I miss anything?” Lewrie asked after he paced over to the iron hammock stanchions at the forward break of the quarterdeck to speak to Lt. Spendlove.

“No, sir,” Spendlove replied, “we’re standing on as before at about five knots. The lookouts report that the Chase is still burning her taffrail lanthorns, and that they can now make out her t’gallants.”

“Very good, carry on, sir,” Lewrie said, turning to note that Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, was now on deck. “Dawn, sir?”

“Full dawn at fifteen minutes after six, sir,” Caldwell said. “It is now half past five, and a bit.”

The decks had been washed, scoured, and were now almost dry. The wash-deck pumps had been stowed away, and only the duty watch was on deck. Lewrie caught the scent of burning firewood from the galley funnel.

“Larbowlines at their breakfast?” he asked.

“Hot porridge, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said.

“Let’s make sure the starboard watch division has their breakfast before we shut the galley down,” Lewrie said. “I suppose Mister Westcott has got his coffee, at last? Hah, good! Pass word for my steward. I could use a bowl of porridge, and a mug of coffee, too.”

Four Bells were struck at 6
A.M.
, as the skies astern lightened even more, and the indefinite greyness of the sails, the ship, and the sea took on vivid “early-early” colour, as if this day would come fresh-laundered after the worn drabness of the day before. The airs were cool and refreshing, the nippiness of night quickly forgotten as a breeze scented with deep-sea iodine and salt freshened. Inshore, in the estuary, there would be fogs and overcasts, but this far out to sea, the skies promised lots of sunshine and few clouds.

“Deck, there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z doused ’er lights! One point orf th’ starb’d bows!”

Lewrie paced down to the helm, and the chart pinned to the traverse board. He picked up one of the Sailing Master’s brass dividers to measure off distances, then looked astern at the dawn. Mr. Caldwell shared a look with him, gazed sternward himself for a moment, and drew out his own pocket watch.

“Seven minutes ’til dawn proper, sir,” Caldwell adjudged.

“By the casts of the log, we’ve made up fifteen miles of Westing, and should be about twelve miles astern of our spook,” Lewrie determined. “She should be spottin’ us soon, now, if our top-masts are above the horizon … unless they’re blind as bats, o’ course.”

“There is a chance, sir, that they’re so used to peering shoreward that they may not take too many glances over their shoulders, and we could get very close before they spot us,” Caldwell offered.

“Well, that’ll never do,” Lewrie jovially objected. “I
want
us t’be seen, and draw her too far out for her to run for Mar del Plata or Bahía Blanca and get away.”

“Deck, there!” the mainmast lookout in the cross-trees yelled. “Th’ Chase’z goin’ about! ’Er bows’z pointin’ South, beam-onta us! She’s fine on th’ starb’d bow!”

“Should we alter course more Sutherly to cut her off, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked. “Make more sail, perhaps?”

“Hold course for a bit more, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Let’s see if she runs, or she comes about towards us. We’re loafin’ along like a transport, under reduced sail for the night, and on a rough course for enterin’ the Plate. Let’s see if she bites.”

“Deck, there! Chase’z
wearin’
about!” came a call from aloft. “Turnin’ Easterly!”

“Well, now!” Lewrie said, beaming with delight. “If the people have finished their breakfast, I’ll have the galley fires cast overboard, Mister Spendlove. Stand on for a bit more, like
we’re
blind as bats, ’til we can spot her sails above the horizon from the deck,
then
we can sham panic, and go about. Mister Westcott? I will fetch you the keys to the arms lockers, now. We’ll wait, though, to ‘Beat To Quarters’ ’til she’s much closer. Once I’m back on deck, you
can
begin to strip down the ship for action.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott crisply replied with a feral gleam in his eyes, eager for the fight to start.

Lewrie went to his cabins, unlocked his desk, and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers and crammed them into a side pocket of his coat. He went to his own weapons rack and strapped on his plain hanger sword, primed his pre-loaded double-barrelled Manton pistols, and stuck them down into his coat pockets, too.

“Is it beginning, sir?” Pettus asked.

“It appears t’be, Pettus,” Lewrie told his steward. “You and Jessop box up the last of my things, and see everything to the orlop, Chalky and the dog, too.”

“I been drillin’ with the other lads, sir,” Jessop piped up. “I can run powder cartridges from the magazines, good as any, now.”

Lewrie paused and cocked his head to look Jessop over; he had come aboard a twelve-year-old waif, and was now almost sixteen, and nigh a grown lad as much like the teenaged topmen who served aloft.

“Very well, Jessop,” Lewrie said with a stern nod. “You wish to do a man’s part, you have my leave t’do so.”

“Thank ye, sir!” Jessop cried, looking so happy that he could turn St. Catherine’s Wheels in delight.

“Luck to the both of you,” Lewrie bade them, stopping to give Chalky a parting petting. The cat was crouched atop his desk, curled up into a wary meat loaf shape, as if he sensed something ominous in Lewrie’s weapons, or the sight of the domed wicker cage that was used to bear him below and out of harm.

Lewrie got back to the quarterdeck and handed Lt. Westcott the arms locker keys. Westcott grimly nodded, then bellowed for word to be passed for the Master-At-Arms and the Ship’s Corporals to come to fetch them. With another nod to Bosun Sprague and his Mate, Wheeler, he gave permission for Quarters to be piped. Lt. Simcock’s Marine drummer and fifer began the Long Roll, then a gay martial air that drew off-watch hands back on deck. One of the ship’s boats was hauled from towing astern and filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, and quail from the manger, with the nanny goat and her kid, and several squealing piglets. HMS
Reliant
thundered and drummed to the sounds of deal-and-canvas partitions being struck down and carried to the orlop, of officers’ and seamens’ chests stowed below to turn all of her decks to long, empty spaces from bow to stern, filled only with guns.