And what they make of that, the Lord only knows! Lewrie told himself as he stood by the starboard entry-port waiting for a cutter.
"The Abolitionist Society!" Capt. Cowles snickered at his side in the companionable darkness, looking out on the riding lights of the convoy that glittered on a slow-heaving dark ocean. "My God, Lewrie, but you're a proper caution, hee hee!"
BOOK III
"Fornix tibi et unctu popina
incutiunt urbis desiderum, video, et quod
angulus iste feret piper et tus ocius uva,
nec vicina subest vinum praebere tuberna
quae possit tibi, nec meretrix tibicina, cuius
ad strepitum salias terrae gravis."
'"Tis the brothel, I see, and greasy cookshop
that stir in you a longing for the city, and
the fact that that poky spot will grow pepper
and spice, as soon as grapes, and that there is
no tavern hard by that can supply you with wine
and flute-playing courtesans to whose strains
you can dance and thump the ground."
Horace, Epistles I, xiv, 21-26
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lanndd… Hhoo!" the lookout on the mainmast cross-trees high aloft shrilled. And this time it wasn't false. Dark cloud-heads that loomed over the horizon could appear solid, and they had been mistaken several times for the tall mountains of St. Helena… just as thunder heads earlier in the voyage had been mistaken for the lonely St. Paul 's Rocks, for Cape Roque. One particularly-solid and seemingly-unmoving storm ahead of the trade's course on-passage for Recife had resembled an island so much that Grafton had despatched HMS Chloe to "smoak" it out, sending her dashing ahead of the convoy, as if Capt. Sir Tobias Treghues might gain undying fame by discovering one of the "long lost" isles described in early Spanish sea-charts, sometimes reported by seafarers ever since… just as "High-Brazil" and its archipelagos were once cartographers' rumours, yet never found where others had reported them. She'd returned hours later, empty-handed.
These hills and mountains were real, though, at long last. They solidified as the convoy butted its slow way towards them against both Trades and current; other clouds scudded behind them as they got near, and even at ten miles rough details of rocks and bluffs and greenery (such as it was) could be discerned on barren, windswept St. Helena.
"Almost done," Lewrie whispered to himself with mounting, yet wary, enthusiasm, as he studied the isle from a perch on the foremast fighting top. "Almost there!"
Soon to be free of Sir Tobias and Lady Treghues? Pray Jesus! A break in their long, very long passage, and the bulk of the escorting warships would turn about for home. And, was God just, Proteus would be one of them.
One more circus performance, then …! Lewrie thought as he put his brass telescope to his eye. It was land, by God; it had to be St. Helena, and not another of those portable mysteries, for this was even in the correct latitude and longitude, for a wonder.
Though he still despised clowns and mimes worse than he ever did cold, boiled mutton, Capt. Alan Lewrie had come to rather like circuses and such. Or, rather, certain circus folk.
Recife had been a friendly port, a wondrous place to break their passage, go ashore, and stretch their legs. Well, for "John Company" sailors and paying passengers, for Navy officers or working-parties under the ships' pursers to fetch supplies… but not for Jack tars.
Treghues had ordered his squadron anchored farther out, so that even the strongest swimmers might be daunted from hopes of desertion, with armed and fully-kitted Marines posted at entry-ports, sterns, and bows, round the clock. Once re-victualled, and glutted with firewood and fresh water, Treghues had allowed the "Easy" pendants hoisted, the warships put "Out of Discipline" for two whole days and nights; aboard-ship liberty, not shore liberty, so the local bumboats could swarm out with their wares-shoddy slop-clothing, cheap shoes, exotic parrots and monkeys for sale, fruits and ades, smuggled spirits… and whores.
What had then ensued had not been a pretty sight, and Treghues and his wife and chaplain had taken shore lodgings to spare their finer sensibilities the sights and sounds of the wild ruts that had followed.
Any sailor with the "blunt" could hire a doxy for a tumble, for an hour or so; those who could afford more could declare to the watch officers that his chosen wench was his "wife," with whom he'd share his food (and whatever extra he could buy from the bumboatmen) and his rum issue with her, plus a fee to her and her "agent" for her loaned charms.
The Surgeon, Mr. Hodson, and his Mate, the exiled former French physician, Mr. Maurice Durant, made what attempt they could to determine the women free of venereal, or other communicable, diseases. The Bosun and his mates, the Master-At-Arms, and his Ship's Corporals searched incoming goods, and the whores' underskirtings, for contraband liquour, but that was a losing proposition, and small bottles of local rum or arrack always got past them.
Watches would still be stood in harbour, and the cry to rouse a division, a watch, usually was no longer "Wakey wakey, lash up an' stow" but "Show a leg, show a leg." Hairy-legged men got chivvied out of a hammock; smooth and (mostly) hairless female legs were allowed to sleep in! Everyone got as drunk as they could afford, danced as exuberantly and sang as loud as they could holler, and coupled in hammocks, or on the deck between the guns, whenever they felt the itch, with a blanket hung from the deck-head for only the slightest modicum of privacy. It sometimes required the Master-At-Arms, the Bosun, and those Marines who weren't whoring or talking-in-tongues-drunk to break up fights over a woman, a parrot, puppy, or kitten, a dram of rum or a suspect run of the cards, dice, or backgammon.
Lewrie slept aboard, but wisely took his gig ashore right after breakfast, and didn't return 'til after Lights Out round nine o'clock. What he hadn't seen he wouldn't have to punish, and would usually hold a rather lenient Captain's Mast, unless relatively innocent sins turned into crimes against the Articles of War.
The Portuguese were neutral in the war against France, and the people of Recife were friendly towards most visiting seamen. Without wartime taxes, and with the higher value of the Pound Sterling, he had gone on a frenetic shopping spree. Fresh, low-tide sand by the barrel for the cats' "necessary"; jerked meats and sausages for their feeding; hard-skinned citrus fruits by the bushel, cocoanuts for their novelty; both local and imported wines to restore his wine-cabinet and his lazarette stores; fresh ink and paper, new batches of candles and oils to fill his lanthorns; a new shirt or two; Christmas presents to ship to Caroline and his children, Sewallis, Hugh, and Charlotte, for he'd not had enough time to do so in London or Portsmouth, and here it was not only past Christmas, but almost two months into both the new year of 1800 and a new century as well!
Lewrie had bought a personal store of Jesuits' Bark, cinchona, just in case of Malaria breaking out after a shore call, along with a box of citronella candles in tiny wooden tubs, that Mr. Durant found useful to defeat the sickening tropical miasmas that had engendered an outbreak of Yellow Jack aboard Proteus when first in the Caribbean in '97. And, when they were anchored near shore, the candles seemed to shoo away the pesky mosquitoes, too, allowing one to sleep at night without diving completely under the bed-covers.