H.M.S. COCKEREL

Chapter 2

"Penny postman," Captain Braxton sneered in disgust once he had clambered back aboard. He bore more packets than those he'd taken with him when he'd departed to die summons of "Captain Repair on Board" from H.M.S. Victory. "Here, Mister Lewrie, these, I'm told, will come in handy for cooperation with our new… allies. See the officers of the watch and the midshipmen have 'em learned, quickly."

"Our new allies, sir?" Lewrie inquired.

"Signal books," Braxton harumphed sourly, "so we may talk with the Goddamned Dons!"

"We're allies with Spain… I see, sir," Lewrie replied lev-elly, though it was hellish hard to fathom how that had come about. After so many years of war, mistrust, condemning each other as either heretics to Catholicism or brisket-beating papist

devils.

For all we hate 'em, since Drake and Raleigh's days? The Armada and all, Lewrie thought? Englishmen burned at the stake, tortured by the Inquisition, hung as pirates… well, some of 'em were pirates, o' course…

"Is the ship ready in all respects for sea, Mister Lewrie?"

"Aye, sir," he was relieved to be able to announce.

"Then we shall weigh at once," Braxton ordained. "We're bound to Naples. Despatches for the British ambassador. Crack on all sail once round Europa Point, commensurate with the weather. Inform Mister Dimmock he is to plot us the most direct course, twixt Corsica and Sardinia."

"Aye, aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe 'All Hands'! Stations for weighing anchor and getting underway!"

And, he thought sadly, so much for even finding if we've any mail from home, or getting a chance to explore fabled Gibraltar!

It was a rough passage. Days of the Mediterranean 's usual fluky winds, glowering skies, wind and rain, at least once or twice a day, between tantalising glimmers of sunlight. Butting into Levanters with green seas breaking over their frigate's beakhead and forecastle, and seething in foaming off-white sheets of water on the gangways and gun deck, soaking through the planking joins, soaking through the gaps in pounded oakum insulation and tarred seams, to drizzle clammy and cold on swaying hammocked off-watch sleepers, or the mess tables when men fed. Even the wardroom was not spared. Everyone was chilled and miserable, with no chance to dry out bedding or a change of clothing from one watch to the next. And this was only late June!

Occasionally, though, the winds veered more abeam, the skies cleared somewhat, and the dank below-decks and upper works steamed in sunshine, and Cockerel laid so thick a mist about her from drying timbers that she fumed as if on fire. Then she could crack on eastward, her shoulder to the sea, and lope like the lean ocean greyhound that she was across what the classic poets called "a wine-dark sea," power and wind humming in the rigging, her quick-work hissing and drumming as she ploughed impatiently over wavecrests, furrowing ocean to a wide frothing swath on either beam.

That was the kind of sailing that sometimes made it all worthwhile, that furious bustling, that paean to Neptune singing aloft and the dun sails stretched taut as drumheads, perfectly angled-for a time, only a time on any wind and sea-a ship making the best of her way, on her best point of sail, quick-stirring and alive.

Welcoming, warmer (well, to be frank, downright hottish) was the Bay of Naples, where they dropped anchor a week later, in the lee, so to speak, of that fuming ogre of ill repute, Vesuvius, a stone-toss away from the ruins of ancient Roman Pompeii.

As something of a classical scholar in his pre-Navy days, at a myriad of schools (and were one exceeding charitable about those scholastic attainments, mind), Lewrie was entranced. Who'd have thought, he asked himself, that he would ever have a chance to actually see the places mentioned in his duL, bone-dry Latin recitations? That Roman imperial translations would ever be anything more than garbled verbs, incorrect genders and tenses… and canings on his bottom? Yet here he was… here it was, before his eyes, a city so Roman…! He half-expected it to be a phantasm, sort of like having an ancient statue in the entry hall become animate and begin carping about the temperature, it didn't seem real. All he had to do was wake, or blink…

Even before the best bower had been let go, and the kedge rowed out, even as they sailed into the Bay of Naples on a tops'l breeze, he thought the place magical, innately more inspiriting than any of the other places he'd seen so far in the Mediterranean. Anchored a bare quarter-mile offshore of the main harbour and the quays, Naples seemed to teem with an open, exuberantly cheerful, elbowing and dodging zest.

Fishing smacks, oddly rigged and exotic, looking as if they had not changed one iota since their like had been carved in Greco-Roman bas-reliefs, ghosted about Cockerel. At the quays, fantastic Arabic-looking merchantmen and coastal traders lay stern-to to the piers, almost ashore on the harbour-front roadways, sporting short masts and long lateener booms, garishly painted, with eyes below their bows to guide them

home.

Music, hubble-bubble, the screaks and clangs of wheeled commerce, and soft, liquid foreign jabber drifted offshore from the many open-air wine bars and cook shops, from chandlers' stores and warehouses.

So, too, did enticingly alien aromas of cooking, of unknown but beguiling, savoury spices and dishes he'd never tasted. He felt his saliva froth, after six months of plain-commons ship's fare. He could almost hear eggs sizzling as they first struck a hot pan, the succulent juices dripping from fresh meat onto coals… the cheery gurgle of wine, aromatic and purply red, as it was poured. Fresh wines that hadn't been jogged about on the orlop deck; and were Neapolitan wines cheap, well… they probably were still fresher and more appetizing than the wardroom's cheap clarets and bumboat ports from Lisbon, or the purser's thin and sour by-the-keg issue wines they'd been forced to buy-Black Strap (a bilious, tannery-tasting red) and Miss Taylor (a hocklike white that could stun barnacles). And they would be clearer than ship's wine, all cloudy with wave-stirred lees.

Food! Fresh, hot food! An entire new cuisine that had nothing to do with bland English ordinaries, something beyond the regimen of overboiled or overroasted salt meat, rank from a brine cask. Or the desiccated, reconstituted "portable" Navy soup!

"Boat, sir?" Mister Fairclough asked, breaking his gastronomic fantasies. "Row 'bout an' square th' yards, sir?"

"Aye, bosun. And keep the bumboats off us. Captain's gig?"

"Unner th' starboard main-mast chains, sir, ready t'go."

"Very well, carry on."

The local bumboats, aswarm already, hovering to either beam. The jobbers and pimps were shouting their wares, waving straw-covered jugs or long, thin stone bottles, bragging on their doxies, waiting for the "Easy" pendant to be hoisted.

And what fetchin' doxies, too, Lewrie thought, after a peek at his watch, and a frown at what might be keeping Captain Braxton below.

Bountiful, sloe-eyed, raven-tressed young girls in almost every boat… not an artificial blonde in sight! Smooth, dusky olive shoulders bared by low-cut peasant blouses, shapely (mostly) lower legs in view below the hems of bright-satin-shiny and elaborately embroidered skirts, clad in white cotton or silk hose. Some were tricked out with parasols, garish hats, tarted up in castoff sack gowns, but in hues never seen in staid old England. They waved, too, giggling and cooing at Cockerel's love-starved hands, hawking their own delights with all the open and amorous airs such as Lewrie imagined the ancient Romans might, at one of their pagan fertility festivals!

"Christ!" Lewrie moaned softly, in a half-strangled and heart-felt cheep of lust. And shuddering with how intense that sudden bout of lust felt! Six long months at sea, six long months apart from home and hearth, from bedding and…

No, I dasn't, he cautioned himself; I cannot! Seven years I'm wed, and damn' well, too. Father of three, for God's sake. Times are diff rent now, besides… I'm first officer, there's an example to set for… I'm an example to…

To just bloody whom? his passions countered querulously.

No, I'm past thirty, I'm past all that. The others'd talk, and it'd get back to… welL maybe it wouldn't. Ah, but the captain, damn 'is eyes! Hates me worse than cold, boiled mutton. I doubt he'd give me leave to set a single/oof ashore, this commission, just to be bastardly about it… Well, damme, where is the old turd, after all?

Captain Braxton had been on deck all during their foul weather, as spooky as St. Elmo's ghost in his white tarpaulins, a grim, brooding spectre, far aft of the helm. Fair weather times, though, and most happily the last day or two, he'd all but abandoned the quarterdeck to his juniors, which had made their brisk passage even more joyous. Pop his head up over the coaming of his private, after companionway ladder now and again, between day-sleeps to snore off his silent foul-weather vigils, perhaps… like his son Hugh coyly playing "Peep-Eye."

Yet the ship was anchored bow and stern, her sails furled, and the quarter-deck awnings were strung for cooling shade, and his boat was waiting, with still no sign of him. The glazed panels of the skylight coach-top aft of the wheel were still closed snug. It would be stuffy in the great-cabins, Lewrie knew for certain; stuffy as Sunday dinner with the in-laws. What could be keeping him?

"I wish to see the captain, Corporal Scarrett."

"Aye, sir," the Marine sentry nodded, slamming his musket butt on the deck and barking out, "Fuhst awf cer, SAH!"

No reply from within the gun-deck entry. Lewrie and Corporal Scarrett exchanged puzzled frowns.

"Captain, sir?" Lewrie called again. Still no answer. Lewrie opened the doorway and stepped into the shuttered gloom of the narrow passage between the chartroom and the dining coach.

"Mister Lewrie, really, sir…" Mister Boutwell, the captain's clerk, snapped fussily, as he came bustling forrud to confront him.

"Mister Boutwell, the ship is moored, and the captain's gig is in the water, ready to carry him ashore," Lewrie waved off impatiently. "He's despatches for the British Ambassador, letters to-"

"Ahem," Boutwell coughed into a plump fist. "Sir, how… Captain Braxton is not well."

Thankee, Jesus, Alan delighted to himself!

"You've summoned Mister Pruden, the surgeon?" he asked, though, with seeming, and becoming, sudden concern. "Is it… serious?"

"Well, sir… 'tis hardly a matter for a ship's surgeon, Mister Lewrie," Boutwell countered, blocking his way as Alan tried to get past him, laying a civilian-soft writer's fist on his chest.

"Unhand me, sir!" Lewrie hissed. "Damn your blood, what ails him that's not serious enough for the surgeon, but keeps him from his duty? I have to see for myself. To ascertain how bad it is, and how long he may be incapacitated."

"Really, Mister Lewrie…" Boutwell whined, all but wringing his hands as Lewrie shouldered him aside. He, in desperation, seized Lewrie's arm to impede him.

"I warned you to keep your hands off me, sir!" Lewrie snapped, though stopped for another moment. "I'm an English gentleman, and a sea officer. People've been flogged for less. 'Specially aboard this ship! Now, what ails him, sir?"

"Uh…" Boutwell deflated, withering in stature, without the partition to the day cabin. "Sir, Captain Braxton served many years in the Far East. There, I fear, he once contracted malaria. It comes upon him now and again, as an ever-recurring fever. Once took, you know… of course, you do, Mister Lewrie! You were in the East, too. You've seen how it takes a man."

"I have to see him, Mister Boutwell," Lewrie insisted. "Fever or no."

"Very well," Boutwell surrendered, opening the partition door.

A foetid, sick-bed odour struck his senses at once. There lay Captain Braxton, swaddled in every blanket he possessed, tucked in as snug as a baby's swaddles in the thick coverlet, with his dark blue watchcloak and foul-weather tarpaulin atop. Shivering like a drowning victim fresh plucked from an icy shipwreck. His steward was setting out a fresh cedar bucket by the side of the hanging cot, and grimacing manfully as he lifted the used one at arm's length to dump its gruesome contents out the transom sash window, the only one that was left open, and that only for the length of his duty. A sea-coal fire was fuming in a brazier nearby, making the great-cabin's bed space a breath from Hell itself.

"M… more coals!" Braxton managed to say between chattering teeth. "Bloody Jesus, I'm so cold!"

"Sir?"

"W… what… Devil you want, s… sir! Ge… get out! This instant!" Braxton growled from wobbly jaws.

"Mister Boutwell, I must insist the surgeon see him," Lewrie sighed, though not without a measure of secret glee. If Braxton got sick enough, and if official notice of his condition was taken among higher authorities, surely he'd be relieved of his command! Another promising officer, a commander, say, or one of Hood's admiral's flag-captains, would suddenly be "on his own bottom," in a fine frigate!

"He's had the headaches, the sweats yet, Mister Boutwell?" Lieutenant Lewrie inquired.

"Last evening, sir," the clerk informed him. "And you did not think to inform me then, sir?" Lewrie chid him sternly. "Damme, we're talking about a King's Ship, sir. Had we been brought to action by a French vessel, run into another gale… and us, unknowing…! You carry personal, family loyalty too far, sir. You are not an officer who may make such a decision."

"Lieutenant… the second officer bade me-" "And he has no right to conceal anything from me either, sir! An offence worthy of a court martial, I'm bound."

"Mister Lewrie, this mustn't… I mean, surely, you cannot think of…" Boutwell pleaded, though on very shaky ground, now that tables had turned on him. "You have your diff rences, but for God's sake…,!"

"T… toddy!" Braxton whinnied from deep within his covers, oblivious to their spat. "Hot!"

His steward ran to fetch a toddy, stirring in powdered quinine, "Jesuit's Bark," the rob of lemons, hot water… and a goodly dollop of brandy. Eager as Captain Braxton wished to seize it and drain it, his hands shivered so badly his steward had to prop him up and almost spoon it down him, ounce at a time. Lewrie noted that there were several empty bottles loose atop the wine cabinet in the day cabin. The doors stood open, revealing a suspicious scantity. The captain had depleted his personal stores in private, thinking to ward off, or burn out, any onset of fever.

Barrel fever, more like it, Lewrie thought disgustedly. Hearty as he liked his spirits, good as any English gentleman, the sight of a fellow who should know better, gunn'l's awash, was repulsive.

"He'll not cure himself with spirits, Mister Boutwell," Lewrie told the cringing clerk. "You take that right away from him, now, and you will admit the surgeon, at once. Thank God we're in port, and if anybody knows malaria, it's Dons and Dagoes. We may have to send for a physician from shore, if he gets bad enough, and well you know it. Either that or he dies, if Mister Pruden's physick fails us. Quinine and hot water, only. Sugar it to make it palatable, if you must, but no more brandy, nor any other drink. Get out those despatches. They have to go ashore, and they're late enough already."

"You will not…?" Boutwell asked hopefully.

"Let him get back on his feet first, sir, if he will," Lewrie sighed, "but we must deal with your conniving and Lieutenant Braxton's lack of sense later. Now, fetch me those despatches."

"Yes, sir," Boutwell cringed.

"That's 'Aye, aye, sir,' Mister Boutwell! Even the Marines say it. You've been aboard ship long enough to learn our ways, surely."

"Aye, aye, sir," Boutwell parroted meekly, worriedly.