Reefs and Shoals (10 page)

The shrouds, the main portion of the standing rigging, ran from the outboard channel platforms down the sides of the ship, the thick and stout oak “anchors” that jutted out to ease the steep angle of support to keep the masts standing, and un-moving. Each thick rope shroud was further supported below the channel platforms by metal fittings bolted into the hull, called the chains. For each shroud there were two massive blocks, the dead-eyes, with lanyards running between them in four-part purchases. To ease or tighten the dead-eye lanyards, sailors had to go overside—the steeply angle
lee
side—where the heaving waves that creamed down
Reliant
’s flanks could surge up over the channels, turning every hand-hold or precarious foot-hold ice-slick with chill water. Even with the slackened starboard shrouds now eased by being on the lee side, it would require gruelling manual labour to set the tension to rights. For every man going over the side, there were two to anchor a shipmate with safety lines.

“Handsomely, now, lads, and have a care,” Lewrie urged them as the first clambered over the gangway bulwarks to work on the foremast shrouds. In better weather, they might have seen to all three masts at once, but not now.

Lewrie was shivering with cold, his clothing soaked with spray, and his face felt like a bad shave with a dull razor as the icy droplets kept stinging. Despite a wool scarf, cold water trickled under his tarred canvas coat, too, but he was determined to remain on deck as long as the work took; if the ship’s people were miserable, then he would be, too. At least he could comfort himself with the thought that he was on the gangway, not on the weather deck below, where the icy surging waters showered down each time the bows soughed deep into the sea, and left shin-high floods sluicing from beam to beam with each roll of the ship!

*   *   *

“Think that’s got it, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, at last, an hour later.

“Very well, Mister Westcott. Dismiss the working party below,” Lewrie replied. “Let ’em thaw out, and dry out, as best they can.”

“Aye, sir.”

Lewrie went back forward from the mizen stays, steeled himself, and waited for the hull to roll upwards before making a dash for the hammock nettings and stanchions at the break of the quarterdeck. Then it was a slow ascent, clinging to the nettings, to the weather side, where a captain was supposed to be. He hooked an arm to the shrouds of the main mast to stay upright as
Reliant
heeled far over to starboard with the next roll, and stood there, scowling at the fury of the sea, and wishing for a cup of something boiling hot; coffee, tea, or cocoa, it made no difference. Even hot water would suit, but with the ship pitching, heaving, and rolling so violently, everyone was on cold rations, for the galley fires could not be lit in such weather. Lewrie let out a long, deprived sigh.

Eight Bells chimed in four double-dings from the foc’s’le belfry up forward; it was 4
P.M.
, and the end of the Day Watch and the beginning of the First Dog. There were happy and relieved smiles upon every hand’s face, for they could go below for two hours. Far glummer were the faces of the men of the fresh watch, some of them the spare hands who had just gotten below for a few minutes, and would face two more hours of misery before the Second Dog Watch.

Lieutenant Spendlove was mounting to the quarterdeck to replace Merriman, so Lewrie timed a (fairly) level-deck dash down to the helm, and the binnacle cabinet as those worthies exchanged salutes.

“I relieve you, sir,” Spendlove was intoning.

“I stand relieved, sir,” Merriman answered. “Course, full and by to West-Nor’west. The last cast of the log showed five knots.”

“Gentlemen,” Lewrie intruded.

“Sir,” they chorused.

“I’ll go below with you, Mister Merriman, and leave the watch to you, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie told them. “Should the wind shift a touch more Sutherly, alter course as near as you’re able. If the wind veers ahead, summon me at once. Nicely done, by the way, Mister Merriman.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lt. Merriman said, grinning.

“Aye aye, sir,” from Spendlove.

*   *   *

Once below and aft, in the relative warmth of his great-cabins, Lewrie peeled off his hat and canvas coat, both stiff and soaked with half-frozen spray, and wound off the useless scarf. He hugged himself and shivered, blowing on his chilled fingers as he slid into the chart space to plot the last few hours’ progress, and the change of course.

“Might you care for something warming, sir?” Pettus asked. “I could heat up some of your cold tea over the candle warmer.”

“God, yes, Pettus, and thank yer kind soul!” Lewrie boomed out with a quick laugh. “How’s Jessop doin’?”

“Crop-sick as a hound, sir,” Pettus said with a shrug.

Lewrie looked aft, and found Jessop in pretty-much the same position he’d been in when he’d left to go on deck, hours before.

“Aye, some warmed-up tea, Pettus, with lots of milk and sugar.”

Lewrie returned to peering at the chart, speculating with brass dividers and parallel ruler that if they could maintain at least five knots over the ground for so many hours going West-Nor’west, the ship would have made … Pah! He tossed the tools aside in frustration, for that course would carry them further North into even colder seas, and gained them nothing to the West.

As much as he detested the idea, they would have to wear about once more, right at the time that the second rum issue of the day was doled out, in the midst of preparations for what meagre cold rations would be served. Before sunset would be best, but … it was better than standing on ’til they struck Iceland!

Lewrie managed to make his way aft to his hanging bed-cot, to check on the cats. “How ye copin’, lads?” he gently asked them.

He was answered by low moans and the flicks of bottled tails. They had not moved far from where he’d last seen them, either.

“Tea’s almost ready, sir,” Pettus informed him. “A few minutes more, and it’ll be nigh scalding.”

Thud!
came the Marine sentry’s musket butt on the deck without, and the cry of “Midshipman Munsell, SAH!”

“Enter!” Lewrie called out, the fingers of his right hand most firmly crossed against more bad news.

“Mister Spendlove’s duty, sir, and he says that the winds are veering ahead, West-Nor’west, to Half-North in gusts,” Munsell said, his teeth chattering.

“Steadying on West-Nor’west, or more Northerly, young sir?” Lewrie asked.

“Ehm, it seems to be shifting more and more Nor’westerly, sir,” Munsell speculated.

“Very well,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “I will come up. Give my compliments to Mister Spendlove, and inform him he’s to summon all hands and be ready to wear about.”

“Aye, sir.”

“The tarpaulins, Pettus,” Lewrie said, looking for his sodden scarf. Once dressed again, he took time to duck into the chart-space and stepped off six points of sail from their present course, then suddenly smiled. Six points off the relative wind would be Due West, did they continue sailing “full and by”, but … did they fall off to a “leading wind”, two more points, to West-Sou’west, he could ease the ship its tortuous twisting and pounding,
and
not only make bags of Westing, but much more progress to the South, as well, where surely the weather might be a
touch
more moderate!

It might be a tad warmner, too, by God!
Lewrie thought;
And we might not be blown ashore on Cape Finisterre, either!

Feeling more hopeful of their immediate prospects, he headed for the door, with but one longing look at the mug of tea on the warmer, which was beginning to steam most nicely.

Damn, and bloody damn!
he mourned.

CHAPTER NINE

The harsh Nor’westerly gales continued to blow fiercely for all that night after wearing, and all through the next day, allowing the frigate to trundle along “two points free” headed West-Sou’west, and making a goodly Westing, as Lewrie desired. The force of the gales was too great to bear more canvas than they already had spread aloft, and the great rolling of the troubled sea’s wavecrests still robbed wind each time that
Reliant
sagged down into the deep troughs, so it was still hard to exceed a snail-like five knots, but it was still progress.

It couldn’t last, of course. The Nor’westerly blew itself out, the storm driving it spending its wrath on the French and Spanish coasts as
Reliant
reeled onwards. To replace it came a fresh gale, this one from the West-Nor’west at first, requiring the tautening of sheets and braces a bit at a time ’til they were back on a beat to weather steering West-Sou’west, then ceding one point, then another, to Sou’west by South. If there was a moderation of the fierceness of wind and sea, it was only a matter of degrees, with only a slight rise in barometric pressure, and a fresh chalk mark on the neck of the liquid barometer perhaps a quarter-inch below the others. There had still been no sun sights, but the communal agreement on their Dead Reckoning had them near the 43rd line of latitude, and a safe one hundred miles West of Cape Finisterre.

By that point, the temperature
had
warmed a bit, so that the spray droplets that got flung like bird-shot stayed liquid, and the seas shipped over the bows were no longer icy. What sloshed or dripped below was no longer frigid misery, but cool, damp, soggy misery.

*   *   *

“Nine days … about nine hundred miles made good, sir,” Lt. Westcott commented as Lewrie came to the quarterdeck for the second time at Four Bells of the Morning Watch at 6
A.M.
Lewrie grunted his acknowledgement as he looked at the chart which Westcott had spread by the compass binnacle. “And it’s not raining, for a wonder.”

During the night, the seas had abated a bit, and the wind had backed more to the North, and had lost some of its fierce strength.

When Lewrie had first come up at 4
A.M.
, at the end of the Middle Watch, there had been a steady rain, driven by the wind at a slant to drum and hiss on every flat surface, sometimes thickening in squalls, then easing off to a sullen downpour.

“It’s easing, at last,” Lewrie replied after a long lookabout the ship, the sea state, and a deep sniff of the wind. “Our course?”

“Back to Southwest by South, sir, and the wind’s still backing. We could be heading Sou’west by the start of the Forenoon,” Westcott said with a brief, savage smile.

“A rough guess below,” Lewrie said, nodding in agreement with his First Officer. “I placed us about on the same latitude as Lisbon, or thereabouts. We might’ve made enough Southing to pick up a hint of the Nor’east Trades.”

“And if the weather continues to moderate, sir, we may even light the galley fires and have a hot meal!” Westcott enthused.

“Keep yer fingers crossed, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he paced over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck, hooked an arm through the shrouds, and leaned out for a better look at the sea. He saw hopeful signs. Though it was still blustery, the waves no longer towered over the ship. They were still steep, but spaced further apart in long rollers, cross-fretted and dappled with large white caps and white horses, and in the pre-dawn greyness, no longer seemed quite as green as they had the day before. The reek of storm-wrack and the smell of fresh fish was not as noticeable, either. The raw wind was tinged with iodine and salt.

Reliant
battered along “full and by”, but her motion was less tortured, her decks less canted to leeward, and her shoulder set more firmly without that sickening deep rolling or twisting. Aloft, what remained of the commissioning pendant shivered and fluttered less frantically, too.

Damme, it’s muggy!
Lewrie realised, taking off his tarpaulin hat and opening the tarred coat to let the wind in;
It’s becomin’
warmer,
at last!
He had not looked at the thermometer in his cabins, but it felt like it might even be near sixty degrees, or so.

“Dawn Quarters, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.

“Aye, carry on, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie agreed.

It was a habit long-engrained in him, in emulation of former captains more cautious than most, to go to Quarters before the false dawn ended, and the risen sun might reveal an enemy ship, or a possible prize, above the horizon.

A drummer began the Long Roll, the Bosun’s calls started the pipe to Quarters, and the off-watch crew came scrambling up from the mess deck. Lewrie passed the keys to the arms chests to one of the Midshipmen, should muskets, pistols, boarding pikes, and axes need to be issued. The on-deck lookouts quit their posts to go aloft to the fighting tops and the cross-trees for the furthest view as the guns were cast loose and the ports opened, the tompions in the muzzles removed, the flintlock strikers fitted above the touch-holes, powder charges fetched up from the magazines, and roundshot from the shot racks and rope shot-garlands selected by gun-captains.

“Sunrise should be when, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master, once the bustle quieted.

“My best guess would be twenty minutes past six
A.M.
, sir,” Mr. Caldwell crisply answered, “though without a firm position of latitude and longitude, all I may swear to will be … soon.”

Lewrie smiled at him, then pulled out his pocket-watch to see the minutes tick by; eighteen minutes past, then the estimated twenty, then twenty-five. The false dawn grew lighter, revealing more of the ship from bow to stern, the night-softness more stark. The horizon that could be seen from the deck expanded from a mile or two to five or six miles, and the sea began to take colour, the white caps and white horses, and the foaming wavecrests turned paler, rather than a dish-water grey. The sea became a steely blue-grey, almost a normal hue for deep ocean, and the line of the horizon was no longer the heaving, rolling waves close aboard, but a real, far-off line.