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.

“Damn my eyes!” someone whispered loud enough to be heard, for there off the frigate’s larboard quarter, in the East, the sun burst like a bombshell above the horizon. It was weak, watery, and hazed by clouds, but the first up-most loom of the sun shone yellowish in promise of a clearing day! Everyone with a pocket-watch snatched it out quickly, to note the minute of the sun’s rising; Mr. Caldwell’s ephemeris had tables which could give them a clearer idea of their position.

With much hemming, hawing, and throat-clearing, the Sailing Master played “shaman” for a bit, consulting his ephemeris, scribbling with chalk on a small slate, uttering a “damn” or two when the damp slate and damp chalk refused to co-operate, then ordained that they were a full fifteen minutes of a degree further West than they had initially reckoned. “Now, perhaps the discrepancy is due to being further South than our Dead-Reckoning guesses, sirs,” Caldwell went on. “A decent shot at the sun at Noon Sights should reveal all,” he concluded as he made an X mark on the chart a tad West of their first estimate. It was only a few miles, but…

The rippling horizons were clear, and the disturbed seas were empty of threat. “Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered at last. “Have the galley fires be lit, and pipe the hands below to breakfast. I may dare to shave this morning.”

“Aye, sir.” Westcott replied. “And I must say, sir, that you would decently resemble a pirate, do you give the stubble another day or two more.”

“Arrh,” Lewrie sham-growled, returning to the starboard side, daring also to smile for the first time in days.


* * *

Conditions did not prove quite as hopeful as they might have wished, though. By the middle of the Forenoon Watch, fresh banks of grey clouds loomed up from the Nor’east, destroying any hope of a sun-sight. They were feeling the fringes of the benign, the dependable Nor’east Trade Wind, yet it only brought more gusts, and a raw and chill rain! The winds settled on Reliant ’s starboard quarter as she was driven South by West, ploughing and hobby-horsing through the swells. Lewrie at least had enough rainwater with which to sponge-bathe, for a rare once, and a ship steady enough under him to lather up and shave!

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