The King's Coat

Chapter 4

Dawn was a rosy hint rising over the humps of the sea astern, lost in the grey gloom of another spring morning in the windswept North Atlantic. The taffrail lanterns and the candles in the wheel binnacle lost their strength, and one could begin to recognize people on watch by their faces instead of their voices. Like wraiths the ships in convoy began to loom as dark shadows ahead of them to leeward on either side of their bows now that another long voyage was almost over.

Alan clung to the starboard shrouds halfway up to the main top, shivering with chill and trying to steady a heavy telescope to count ships. Lieutenant Kenyon was below him at the quarterdeck ladder, his eyes flying from one vantage to the next, judging the strength of the wind, the set of the sails, Ariadne’s position to the rest of the convoy, a first reassuring sight of Dauntless out to leeward and far ahead of the convoy, eyeing his watch to see they were awake and alert. Lewrie wondered if he was making nautical plans for all eventualities … or merely sniffing the aromas that occasionally swirled back from the smoking galley funnel. Today was a meat-issue day following a Wednesday “Banyan Day” on which the crew was served beer, cheese, gruel, soup and biscuit.

Lewrie clambered down to the rail and jumped the last few feet to the deck. “Twenty-five sail to starboard, sir. Some very far out of position, but all taffrail lanterns burning.”

“Very good, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon replied, referring to his pocket watch. “Almost five bells. Prepare to rotate the watch.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Five bells did indeed chime from up forward—two pairs of quick chimes, and a last single one that echoed on and on. Or was it merely the sound of so many ships around them raising a chorus of bells later than Ariadne? Lewrie kicked awake one of the ratty little ship’s boys so he could turn the half-hour glass at the binnacle. Wash-deck pumps were stowed away—hands stood erect from buffing the deck with bibles and holystones to remove the filth of the day before—others boiled up from below with their rolled-up hammocks for stowing. The pipes shrilled for the lower deck to be swept clean. Pump chains clanked as the bilges were emptied of their accumulated seepage.

“Twenty-two ships to larboard and ahead, sir,” Midshipman Rolston reported to Kenyon, “and Dauntless is shaking out her night reefs, sir.”

That was the main wrench of being in Kenyon’s watch; having to share it with Rolston. Even after two round voyages Rolston still gave off a hatred so deep and abiding that he positively glowed, and Lewrie found himself walking stiff-legged about him, waiting for the knife in the back, or the studiedly awkward push at the wrong moment.

“Very good, Mister Rolston,” Kenyon replied. “My respects to the captain and inform him that all ships in convoy are in sight, spread out from the night, and that Dauntless is making sail.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Rolston answered, giving Lewrie a haughty look as if to say that he could never be entrusted with carrying a message aft to their lord and master, as Rolston could.

Alan’s belly rumbled.

“Hungry, Mister Lewrie?” Kenyon grinned.

“Always, sir.” He never got enough to eat, not like back home in London, and ship’s fare was plain commons. He could spend half the watch dreaming of all the spicy substance of the buffets he had seen at drums, the hour-upon-hour dinner parties of course after course, even the hearty filling nature of a twopenny ordinary, or the choices available at a cold midnight supper after the theatre. The midshipmen’s mess always exhausted their livestock quickly, and had to settle for biscuit hard as lumber and alive with weevils; joints of salt-pork or salt-beef that had been in-cask so long, one could carve them into combs; thick pea soup; cheeses gone rancid, and that only twice a week; an ounce of butter now and then; and a fruit duff only on Sundays. He no longer looked askance at the hands who offered him rats that had been caught and killed in the bread room. They were three-a-penny, fat as tabbies, and surprisingly tasty; “sea squirrel,” they called them.

Now that his once-fine palate had been jaded, he had to admit that the food wasn’t all that bad. He had seen coaching inns and low dives in the East End of London that served worse. It was the unremitting sameness of boiled everything. And once the gristle and bone had been subtracted, there was never enough on his plate to leave him comfortably stuffed.

“Captain, sir,” Lewrie whispered, catching sight of Captain Bales coming on deck from his great cabins aft. He and the mate of the watch, Byers, went down to leeward, leaving the starboard side of the quarterdeck for Bales to pace in solitary splendor. And after making his report, Kenyon joined them.

What would he have done if he had not gotten into Kenyon’s watch? he wondered. The captain was so remote and aloof, and rarely seen. The first lieutenant, Mr. Swift, was a testy butler who always found a power of fault—no one could please him. The third officer, Lieutenant Church, was cold as charity and silent, while Roth, their fourth, and Lieutenant Harm, the fifth, were both full of harshly impatient bile. Kenyon was the only one he could remember who actually smiled now and then, who didn’t deal out floggings and canings and viper-tongued screeches against one and all. Kenyon went out of his way to teach, to admonish his failures as faults to be corrected and not catastrophes that called for humiliating tirades. He would go to the heads aft off the wardroom in the middle of the watch, leaving Lewrie and Byers alone on the quarterdeck, totally in charge of twelve-hundred tons of ship plunging along in the dark of night. While Kenyon did not court favorites, and disliked being toadied to, Lewrie had a sneaking feeling that Kenyon liked him. When his part of the watch stood on the quarterdeck, he got quizzed by the second lieutenant. And there was time to talk softly in the black hours of the morning; Alan found himself confiding in Kenyon, as he never could with the others, even Ashburn. Had it not been for the difference in rank, Kenyon could have become much like an older brother to him. He did not think Kenyon and Rolston shared the same regard.

“As soon as the hands have eat, we’ll endeavor to round up this flock of silly sheep once more, Lieutenant Kenyon,” he heard the captain say. It was the same each morning of every convoy; the masters of the merchant ships would never trust the station-keeping of their own kind and would scatter like chickens going for seed corn every night, which required Ariadne to spend half the day chasing after them, herding them back toward the pack and chivvying them into order. And merchant captains did not take kindly to sharp commands from the Navy. More than once they had fired a blank charge to draw a moody merchantman’s attention to their signals.

Under the captain’s sharp eye, Lewrie tried to appear busy. He went up into the larboard shrouds of the mizzen to use his telescope on the convoy, now that the gloom was being chased to the west by the watery rising sun behind them. He also noticed, with some amusement, that Lieutenant Kenyon was trying to appear intent on his duties as well.

He turned his glass on Dauntless. There were flags soaring up a halyard on her mizzen, and he dug into his pocket to consult a sheet of paper that contained the meager signals for day or night. “Strange sail … south!

“At last!” he crowed, leaping down and dashing to report to Lieutenant Kenyon. This close to New York, strange sail could be those Frenchies from their base in Newport, or rebel privateers. We’re going to see some action, he exulted.

“Strange sail, is it?” Captain Bales said, hearing the report. “Aloft with you to the maintop, Mister Lewrie, and spy them out!”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Mister Kenyon, my respects to the master gunner and I’ll have a signal gun fired to starboard. Day signal for the convoy to close up, followed by ‘strange sail to the south.’”

“Shall we beat to Quarters, sir?” Kenyon asked.

“No, let the hands be fed first. Time enough for that.”

Lewrie made it to the mainmast crosstrees to join the lookout already there, his heart beating from the exertion, and the excitement.

“Seen anything to the south?”

“No, sir,” the lookout replied. “Not yet, sir.”

Lewrie scrambled up onto the topmast cap and hugged the quivering t’gallant mast, unslinging his glass which had hung over his shoulder, as heavy as a sporting gun. He steadied his hands and peered to the south.

“Aloft there!” came a leather-lunged shout from the deck. “What do you see?”

“Not a bloody thing, damn yer eyes,” Lewrie muttered. “Tell him nothing yet.”

Lewrie went up higher, onto the t’gallant yard to sit astride the narrow spar. “Now, that’s more like it.”

In his glass, he could see a tiny sliver of a tops’l, with just the hint of a triangular sail right behind it. That might be a schooner or a brigantine. He scanned farther west behind that ship and found a pair of tops’ls, and then, bringing up the rear, three tops’ls close together; possibly a brig, and a full-rigged ship, their sails painted rose red as spring flowers by the dawn.

“Deck there!” he bawled. “Three strange sail to the south!”

“What?” Lieutenant Swift shouted back through a speaking trumpet.

Lewrie left the glass with the lookout and descended rapidly to the quarterdeck by way of a backstay.

“Three ships to the south and southwest, sir,” Lewrie said. “Due south a topsail and what looks to be a gaffsail together.”

“A brigantine or schooner.” Swift nodded impatiently. “Aye.”

“Aft of her two topsails … a brig most-like, sir. And three topsails to the southwest, perhaps a full-rigged ship.”

“Mister Swift, signal again to those damned merchantmen to close up,” Captain Bales said. “Then have Dauntless move to the southern corner.”

“Aye aye, sir. Mister Rolston, bring your signals, sir.”

Six bells of the watch chimed from the forecastle belfry—seven in the morning. The sound of the signal gun had brought everyone up from below out of curiosity. The other officers now congregated on the quarterdeck.

“Mister Lewrie,” said Kenyon, “where is your glass, sir?”

“I left it with the lookout at the crosstrees, sir, for him to see the better.”

“Good. You’d better take your portion of the watch below now. I doubt if you’d have much chance for breakfast if you waited ’til the end of the watch.”

“Aye, sir. Thank you.” But Alan only got as far as the wide companionway to the lower gun deck before the first lieutenant called for all hands to hoist more sail and shake out their night reefs to make more speed. With a sigh, he dashed back to the ratlines.

Ariadne turned due south away from the easternmost end of the convoy, which by now had seen the possibly hostile sails for themselves and were fleeing northwest away from them. Alan presumed that they would pose a threat, well up to windward and ready to dash down on the raiders as they tried to close. He was much too busy for many minutes to pay attention, as Ariadne also set her t’gallants for more speed.

But by the end of the watch, they were faced with a new alignment. The schooner furthest east was now behind the convoy, and had crossed Ariadne’s stern; while a fast privateer brig was dashing dead north for the convoy with the wind on her quarter; while the frigate-sized ship was challenging Dauntless for passage to the west of the convoy. Alan turned from the bulwarks and the hammock nettings, now full of tightly rolled and numbered hammocks which would act as a barrier for the Marines when action was joined within musket-shot. He saw some ship’s boys gathering with their drums and fifes and trumpets. The Ariadne was beating to Quarters, really stripping herself for a battle! He could see the captain on the quarterdeck, pacing back and forth by the foremost netting rail overlooking the waist of the ship, looking like a fat duck on his thin legs.

Alan took himself down to the waist, then down to the lower gun deck, which was his station at Quarters. The deck was rapidly being transformed, as mess tables were slung from the overheads, the hammocks already removed, as were the screens and partitions from the Marine and midshipmen’s berths. Chests and furniture were being carried below to the holds for safekeeping, and to lessen the danger of being shattered and turned into deadly clouds of wooden splinters.

The Ariadne was a 3rd Rate ship of the line, mounting a total of sixty-four guns, twenty-eight of them on her lower gun deck, massive thirty-two-pounder pieces that weighed over 5,300 pounds, fourteen to each beam. The ideal crew would be thirteen men to each gun, but since there was little likelihood of fighting on both sides at once, there were only three men on the disengaged side to starboard, while the bulk of the men slaved to prepare the larboard guns for action.

The deck was gloomy, for the gun ports were not yet opened, though the guns had been rolled back to the extent of their breeching ropes for tompions to be removed and to be loaded with cartridges and balls. Gun captains stood ready with powder horns, portfires with a burning length of a slow-match on one end and a pricker on the other to clear the vent of their gun and pierce the cartridge bag. Bundles of firing quills were ready to hand, goose quills filled with a fast-burning and fine-grained powder that had been soaked in wine (and supposedly a bit of gunner’s urine) that would be stuck down into the cartridge bags and lit off to transfer the spark that would fire the gun. Loaders rolled cannonballs from the thick rope shot-garlands or the shot racks around the hatches to find the roundest, most perfect iron balls, which would fly straight for long-range work. Rammer men plied their tools to tamp the cartridges down snug against the vents, then a hairy disc-shaped wad, a ball, and another wad. Other men stood by with crows and handspikes to shift the guns from left to right with brute force once they were drawn up to the sills and run out. Most of the gunnery crew stood by at the side-tackles and overhauled the train-tackles to haul those guns up to firing position. Lieutenants Roth and Harm had charge of the lower gun deck, though should they close to pistol or boarding range, Harm, as the fifth lieutenant, or lieutenant-at-arms, would go on deck to oversee the boarding parties which he had trained at musketry and the use of the pike and cutlass.

“Bout time, you,” Harm fairly spat at Lewrie.

“I was at the masthead, sir.”

“Take station to starboard and stay out of the way. You might be good enough to run messages, if you’ve wit to remember them.”

Ariadne was allotted a complement of sixteen midshipmen, and it was galling to see the youngest and smallest boys getting assigned to the engaged side while Lewrie was rated more useless than even Striplin, an eleven-year-old who was not half the height of an average sailor. Harm and Roth, and their quarter-gunners in charge of four guns, had to put tools in the hands of some men, shove others out of the way of possible recoil, while Alan, who had found that gunnery exercise was one of his least hated duties, had to stand aside, silent and useless.

Once the lower gun deck was arranged to Roth’s satisfaction, the deck became fairly silent, and long minutes passed as Ariadne drew up to their foe.

Alan amused himself reciting the fourteen steps of gun drill he had memorized. He daydreamed about delivering brave messages to the quarterdeck, or having both officers shot dead before him … Please God, most especially Lieutenant Harm … and himself taking charge and performing some feat that would go down in glory. When that grew dull, and he realized that an immediate commission to lieutenant might not be in the cards, he worked on other remembrances and fantasies.

There was what he would have liked to have done with Harrison’s slim little West Country wife, her with her burring accent from Zedland. There was that last glorious night with the little chambermaid to be relished, or the lady at Vauxhall Gardens who had found him so pretty she had taken him home to her lodgings and half-killed him with kindness. Then there was a ball in the country, where he and his hostess had struck an arrangement after the host had drunk himself into a stupor. The crotch of his slop trousers became uncomfortably tight just remembering what a rogering buck he had used to be. If I don’t get ashore for some mutton in New York this trip, I don’t know what I’ll do …

After what seemed an age, little Beckett dashed down and spoke with Roth, who ordered the gun ports opened. As they hinged up out of the way, the deck became a painfully loud cavern as the heavy guns were run out to stick their black muzzles from the ports. Alan made his way to midships and knelt down to spy their target. It was the rebel privateer brig, tacking heavily to make a dash past Ariadne’s bows to get at her prey in the convoy!

“Stand by,” Roth called. There was a loud bang from the upper deck. “As you bear … fire!”

One by one, each piece discharged with a monumental blast that had Alan’s ears ringing most painfully, but it was glorious! So much noise, so much power, so much smoke and recoil and the great guns all rolling back to snub at the end of their groaning breeching ropes! He had not taken part in a live firing yet, merely drills, yet he knew at once that if he could play with cannon, he could make a career in the Navy and not half mind all the rest of the stupidity.

It did not appear, however, that Ariadne’s bite was quite as impressive as her bark. In point of fact, Alan could see quite a few tall splashes as heavy balls impacted with the sea. Some were far beyond the brig, having passed over her harmlessly, perhaps twitching a sail with the wind of their passage; some struck short, incredibly short, so close to Ariadne that he at first thought it was the enemy that had fired at them and missed! There were a few (frankly, more than merely a few) splashes far in front and far astern of the privateer brig where they may have killed an injudicious fish or two, but had no effect on their foe.

“Goddamn my eyes!” Roth called as loud as the broadside after the last thunder had died away. “What a pack of duck-fuckers. Try to keep your eyes open and aim at something this time. Swab out yer guns!”

Ariadne began a ponderous turn to starboard to keep the enemy on her beam and within the arc of her guns. Alan could see a gay flag on the privateer, a red-and-white-striped banner with a blue canton to the upper mast. They were almost close enough to discern a circle of tiny white stars on the flag as the guns were run out again.

“Point yer guns! Handspikes and crows, there!” Harm ordered, “Aim the goddamn things, now!”

They let loose a second broadside. It was about as effective as the first. Jesus, how can we miss at this range? Alan thought miserably. He spans two gun ports, so he must be no farther than three or four cables away from us. It’s impossible to miss!

And then the privateer brig sailed out of their gun ports to the north, outreaching the much heavier and slower Ariadne.

The hands labored at swabbing out their hot barrels, slipping in fresh cartridge bags, ramming home wads and fresh shot, then straining to roll the guns, squealing on their ungreased wooden trucks, back up to the sills.

Beckett appeared once more at Lieutenant Roth’s side. “The captain’s respects, Mister Roth, and you are to prepare to engage to starboard.”

“Lewrie, supervise the larboard guns and see they’re secure,” Roth told him, leading all but three of the numbers from each hot gun over to starboard. Alan made sure that no cartridge bags had been pricked, that all vents were covered from sparks, and that the ports were securely closed, and the heavy guns were snubbed in place by the train and side-tackles with no chance to roll about and crush someone.

By the time he and the excess numbers had finished that chore, the starboard guns were speaking, rattling the fabric of the ship. He bent down to see out, and could not detect any improvement in their aim as they fired at a much smaller target, the privateer schooner, which was in the process of cutting out a slow merchantman. And by the time the most experienced gun captains and quartergunners had found their enemy’s range and had begun to slap balls close about her, she had danced out of reach and gun-arcs to rush down on another prize. Ariadne now turned about and chased after their earlier target, the brig. The men stood behind the guns in long swaying lines for what seemed like an hour. There were sounds of gunfire far off, light six- and nine-pounders, occasionally the deeper boom of a twelve-pounder. And then it was over; they were to secure from Quarters. Charges and balls were drawn, and the guns were securely bowsed down.

By the time the mess tables were being lowered between the guns, and all the other officers had left, Lewrie shrugged and went up on the upperdeck gangways. Down south to windward, or off to the southeast astern, stood the three raiders, safe as houses with Ariadne and Dauntless now far down to leeward to the north in pursuit of a panicky flock of merchantmen. The privateer ship had a fore-topmast missing and showed a few scars, but was still afloat. More to the point, five tubby merchant vessels that had lately been part of the convoy were also down to windward, prizes of the privateers.

Seven bells chimed from the belfry, and bosun’s pipes began to shrill. “D’ye hear there? Clear decks an’ up spirits!” the bosun shouted as loud as a gunshot. Eleven-thirty in the morning; as if to confirm it, Lewrie drew out his gold-damascened silver pocket watch and opened it.

So that was a battle, he thought. I can’t see anything we accomplished. If this is the glory of naval life, you can have this nautical humbug! How do you make all that prize money, or make a name for yourself, when you’re down below getting bored to death?

Lewrie took himself off to the cockpit for their issue of rum, then came back up to perform noon sights, which he got wrong, as usual, resulting in an hour of racing up and down the mainmast.

Later, at dinner, he noticed the many long faces around their mess table. Finnegan and Turner, Mr. Brail, the captain’s clerk, a couple of surgeon’s mates, Shirke, Chapman, Ashburn and himself. Bascombe was in the Day Watch. Except for the sound of cutlery, it was dead quiet.

Well, perhaps not too quiet; there was the sound of the master’s mates, Finnegan and Turner, as they chomped and chewed and gargled and hawked—both of them were what were termed “rough feeders.”

“Um … this morning,” Alan said, clearing his throat, which raised an involuntary groan from everyone as they thought of their poor performance. “What happened … exactly?”

“Nothin’ worth talkin’ about,” Finnegan mumbled.

“Bloody shambles,” Chapman said with a blank stare. For him to make a comment of any kind was rare.

“We weren’t handled at all badly,” Ashburn said between bites. “Placed right clever, if you ask me.”

“But the gunnery…” Alan prompted.

“Aye, that was awful,” Shirke said. “It’s like Harvey was telling us, we haven’t spent much time at gun drill.”

“We’ve drilled,” Turner said. “Jus’ never fired the damn things, ’cept fer salutin’ and pissin’ off merchant masters. Good gunners gone stale, new ’uns couldn’t hit a spit kid if it were tied to their mouths.”

“They were pretty fast, too. I expect that didn’t help,” Alan said.

“Dauntless did alright,” Keith Ashburn said. “Got hits on her foe, chased her off, and chased off that brig once it got past us. No one could have caught that schooner once she got past us, though. Lost five ships. Not a bad morning’s work for ’em, damn their eyes.”

“And there’s no way we could get them back?” Alan asked.

“Beat up to windward against more weatherly ships, and leave the rest o’ the convoy ta get took?” Finnegan shook his head. “Ye’re a young booby, ain’t ya? Wot it’s all about is, we got beat, see, younker? Them damned rebel Jonathans done beat us!”

* * *

Alan saw New York again, but only from the anchorage at Sandy Hook. He got to go ashore, but only as far as the fleet landing with a cutter full of demoralized and sullen hands, who had to be watched constantly to keep them from drink or the many brothels. Fresh supplies had to be ferried out, more coal and firewood, fresh water, livestock and wine, and crates of fruit and vegetables. The bumboats were out, offering women, rum and gewgaws, but the ship was not allowed Out of Discipline. Only Bales and the purser actually got to step ashore for pleasure.

The officers sulked in their wardroom aft, lolling over long pipes and full mugs when there was no drill, exercise, or working party. The midshipmen and mates stood anchor watch in their stead for the humdrum task of waiting, envying the men in the guard boats who rowed about to prevent desertion, or watch against a hostile move. It was an unhappy existence. The ship lay at anchor for days, stewing in the blustery early spring rains and fickle winds, too wet to stay topside, and too warm and airless to stay below. Ariadne shifted her beakhead to point at the colony, then at England, groaning her way all about the compass. The seeming lack of purpose, and their recent poor showing, began to grate on everyone. People began to put in requests for a change of mess, a sure sign of trouble below decks. There were more floggings for fighting, more back-talking and insubordination, more slow work at tasks assigned. God knew where they got it, but lots of men were turning up drunk and getting their dozen lashes on the gratings every Forenoon watch.

If he didn’t have to set some sort of example, he wouldn’t have minded getting cup-shot himself, Alan decided. Here I stand, dripping wet, can’t see a cable, the food stinks, the people stink, and I still can’t get ashore for sport. Why can’t I help out on the press-gang or the patrol?

“What a nautical picture you make,” Keith told him as he climbed to the quarterdeck to join him. “Perhaps a watercolor is appropriate.”

“Water is the word,” Alan agreed, feeling the wet seeping down his spine under the heavy tarpaulin he wore.

“Mister Brail and the Jack In The Bread Room said we could buy fresh food from shore on the next trip for cabin stores. Any ideas?”

“A warm, dry whore for starters,” Lewrie muttered.

“Seriously,” Keith scoffed.

“Potatoes,” Lewrie said with some heat. “I’d love some boiled potatoes. And carrots with parsnip. Turkey or goose … coffee, wine.”

“That’s one meal. How about some onions?”

“Drag it back aboard and I’ll go shares. God, what a shitten life this is,” Alan mourned.

“It will get better once we’re back at sea. This idling is bad for us,” Keith said.

“What’s the bloody difference?” Lewrie eyed a passing barge with the spy glass. “Ahoy there!”

“Passing,” came the faint reply.

“Boredom and deprivation in port is pretty much like boredom and deprivation at sea, only not as noisy,” Lewrie griped.

“At least at sea, we’re too busy to care.”

“Of all the ships I had to be put on, why this one? Why not one that can shoot and do something exciting?”

“We’ll do better,” Ashburn promised firmly. “Now we see how bad we did, we’ve been working the gun crews properly.”

“Do you really believe that?” Alan drawled.

“Of course I do, I have to.”

“Is the rest of the Navy like this? Because if it is I’ll be glad to make my fortune as a pimp soon as we’re paid off.”

“That’s disloyal talk, Alan,” Ashburn told him.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Keith. You’re educated. You’ve been in a couple of ships now. Let’s just say I have a fresher outlook. Tell me if you’ve seen better ships. And don’t go all noble about it.”

“Alan, you must know that I love the Navy…” Keith began.

“Believe me, after listening to you for three months, I know.”

“It … Ariadne is not the best I’ve served in,” Keith muttered. “What’s your concern? You’re the one was dragooned here. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“All your talk about prize money and fame,” Alan said. “What do I have if this war ends? A small rouleau of guineas and that’s it. In peacetime, I’d end up selling my clothes in a year. I can’t go home, and without a full purse I can’t set myself up in any trade. I think I could make a go of this, miserable as it can be at times, if I were on another ship, one that could fight and shoot, and go where the prize money is.”

“Hark the true sailorman!” Keith was amused at Lewrie’s sudden ambitions, which made him sound like any officer or warrant that Ashburn had ever listened to. “Bravo! We’ll make a post-captain of you yet.”

“Or kill me first,” Alan said. But the fantasy was tempting. If I were a post-captain, wouldn’t that make all those bastards back home bite on the furniture? Now that would be a pretty crow pie …

* * *

Ariadne finally weighed and sailed, and it was back across the Atlantic to England with another convoy. Once home, she swung about her anchor in Plymouth, in Falmouth, in Bristol before shepherding more ships across the Atlantic to Halifax, Louisburg or New York, facing the same winds, the same seas, the same food and hours of gun drill and sail handling with the same work of replenishment and loading at each end, until Ariadne could have done it in her sleep. Some men died, fallen from aloft and vanished astern. Some sickened from the weather and came down with the flux. Some could not stomach the food, though it was more plentiful and regular than what they would have gotten in their country crofts, and more healthful than the dubious offerings of a slum ordinary.

Some were injured by cargo or gun carriages, and suffered amputation. Men were ruptured by heaving on lines or cables. Men went on a steady parade to the gratings. So many miles were rolled off astern across the ocean in all her moods and weathers. So many pounds of salt-beef, pork, biscuit, peas, and raisins and flour were issued. So many gallons of small beer, red wine and tan water were swallowed. It all blended into seven months of such a limitless, unremarked and pointless existence that hardly anything seemed to relieve it of its sameness.

There were some small delights, even so. He crossed swords at small arms drill with Lieutenant Harm and thoroughly humiliated him, to the clandestine joy of the other midshipmen (and most of the crew).

And there were moments of freedom, when the ship was moored so far out that rowing supplies out would have half-killed the hands, and Alan discovered the pleasure of sailing a small boat under a lugsail, racing other cutters to the docks on a day of brisk wind, then a quick quart for all hands before racing back.

With his new determination to succeed burning in him, he pored over all the books on the ship, and the only books were nautical in nature. It was impossible not to learn something. One can only practice a task so long without gaining the knowledge of how to do it, and more important, when, unless one were like Chapman. Do a bad knot, get a caning or a tongue-lashing, so one learns a world of useful knots. Do a bad splice and be called a booby by people who have your career in their hands, and one learns to do a good splice.

Execute the steps of gun drill so often, get quizzed on the amount of powder to be used in various circumstances until you’re letter perfect, and you no longer get abused. Go aloft until you know every reef cringle and clewgarnet, block and splinter of spars, and one finally is allowed a grudging competence to be able to fulfill one’s duty, from both the officers, and the senior hands.

Measure the sun at noon and work out the spherical trigonometry often enough and you soon learn what is right and what is wrong, whether you really like doing it or not, and navigation can become a tedious but useful skill, and not a horror of stupid errors and their price.

And with each slowly gained bit of knowledge, with each more seamanly performed chore, with each more day full of danger and challenge that was experienced, Lewrie noticed a change in the way he was treated. From the captain, from Kenyon certainly, old Ellison the sailing master, the mates, the bosun, the Marine captain, even from Mr. Swift, he found less harsh shouting or exasperated invective, fewer occasions to be bent over a gun “for his own good.” There was a gruff acceptance of him and his abilities, as though he and the blue coat were one, and he could do anything that any other blue coat on a blustery night-deck could do in their seagoing pony show, and his new anonymity was blissful.

And when he performed something so particularly well that even he knew it, there was now and then a firm nod, or a bleak smile, or even a grunt of approval that was as much a treat to his spirits as an hour with a wench with the keys to her master’s wine cabinet.

There were, too, the reactions of his fellow midshipmen to go by.

There was Ashburn’s bemused acceptance, Shirke and Bascombe’s sullen scowls of disdain at his progress. There were Chapman’s heavy sighs as he realized that he was being surpassed by yet one more contender for commission, and that his own chances were flying farther from his poor grasp every day. And there was the unspoken deference of the younger boys like Beckett and Striplin, who were already cowed by his size and seeming maturity, and now by his knowledge which had accrued faster than theirs.

Most especially, there was the hot glow of dislike that Lewrie felt whenever he was around Rolston that was so warming that he thought he could easily toast cheese on it. Ashburn had been the top dog in a blue coat, then Rolston, in the officers’ estimations. It was only natural that an older boy such as Lewrie, once he had attained Rolston’s level in skill and sea-lore, would be thought of as more competent by those worthies, which would automatically force their opinion of young Rolston down to third place, perhaps lower.

Much as it galled him, Lewrie realized his life had become more tolerable since he had, in the parlance, taken a round turn and two half hitches.

But that is not to say that he did not secretly loathe every bloody minute of it.