Sir Roger being Sir Roger, that worthy had laughed that report Capt. Treghues had submitted, and sent on to London, to scorn, eagerly sharing his scorn among his coterie. It actually made Lewrie wince to see Treghues grasping at such a slender straw, to turn what had been a half-blind shambles into a signal victory… or, at least a thumping-good repelling of a back-stabbing French attempt on his convoy What a misery Treghues might find his wartime career, of plodding to India and back with his guns rusting for want of use, and with never a foe strong enough to challenge him, Lewrie could not imagine. Didn't want to imagine, for by comparison, he'd already had more than his share of a lively war, with the medals, rank, and "post" to prove it.
Did Treghues hope that a report of any sort of action involving gunpowder, any sort of success against the French, might bring him to the Admiralty's notice in a fresh, new light, which might earn him his promotion to real Commodore rank, command of a squadron in more active and important seas? Or, might a release from boresome convoy duties be the excuse he craved to land his dour wife ashore whilst he sailed "in harm's way," as that American pest John Paul Jones had termed it? No one, in Lewrie's jaded experience, could tolerate such a tart and termagant mort like her for very long, not even if she came with access to the rents of an entire shire!
"Fa-are-well, and adieu, you-ou sour English sai-lor, fa-are-well, and adieu, you-ou arse-load of pain …!" Lewrie softly sang under his breath as he watched HMS Grafton curtsy and heel as she manned her yards to make more sail.
Oh, a host of foreign "bye-byes"! Lewrie gleefully thought, as he tried to dredge up half-forgotten phrases from his experiences.
Adios… came to mind, quickly followed by Vamanos!, which was more apropos. Auf Wiedersehen… au revoir, both of which he thought too polite by half; the catch-all Hindoo Namaste, good for welcome and departing; what had he heard at Naples, Genoa, and Leghorn in the Med? Ah, arrivederci!, that was it!
Ave atque vale, from his schooldays Latin. He would have tried the Greek, but there was a language he never could get his wits about, for which failure his bottom had suffered at a whole host of schools.
There was Eudoxia's dosvidanya; there was what he had read in Captain Bligh's book following the Bounty mutiny, that the Sandwich Islanders said… Aloha Oh-Eh; what the first explorers to the colony of New South Wales had heard the Aborigines shout at them on the beach of Sydney Cove… Warra-Warra! Later settlers-the willing, not the convicts-had learned that it was not a cry of welcome, but a wish for the strange new tribe to "Go Away!" How very apt!
"Warra-Warra!" Lewrie softly called out, lifting one hand as if bestowing a blessing on HMS Grafton, though, did one look closely, one might have noticed that Lewrie's index and middle finger of that hand were raised a bit higher than the rest, that hand slowly rotated, palm inwards, towards the end.
Rudder, Lewrie reminded himself, turning away to deal with his greatest problem. He went to the starboard entry-port, clad in an old shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his rattiest, oldest pair of slop-trousers rolled to his knees above bare shins and shoes about to crack apart with age, mildew, and damp. Bareheaded, he tossed off a sketchy salute to the side-party and scampered down the battens and man-ropes to his gig, where Cox'n Andrews and only a pair of oarsmen awaited. They would not bear him far, just down the starboard quarter, then round the square-ish stern, where other people were already occupied.
"Good morning, Mister Goosen," Lewrie said to the Dutch ship chandler, who had contracted to do the survey. He was a square-built fellow in his early fifties, heavily bearded contrary to current fashion elsewhere, garbed much as Lewrie was, but for a wide straw hat on his pink and balding head. Reddish cheeks and nose, the sign of the serious toper… or, one who spent his days in the harsher African sun, and on the water, to boot.
"Gut morning, Kaptein!" Goosen jovially replied from his boat, an eight-oared thing nearly fourty feet long, with both a false forecastle and imitation poop, that had once been as grand as an admiral's barge, but had gone downhill rapidly in civilian hands. Goosen waved a wooden piggin at Lewrie, by way of greeting, then emitted a belch at him, which required a fist against his chest. "Cold, sweet lime water. Ver' gut on hot days, Kaptein, but making die bilious," he explained.
"What have your divers discovered so far, sir?" Lewrie asked as he shared a look with the Bosun, Mr. Pendarves, who was sitting on the edge of his catamaran with his feet and shins in the water, alongside the damaged rudder.
"Rudder iss fucked, Kaptein," Goosen replied with an expression halfway 'twixt a scowl and a grin. "Sacrificial fir baulks shattered, die main piece, uhm… iss die green-twig broke. Not clean broke but hang by shreds? Thin end, oop dahr, iss strained at both tiller-head holes, it flop too much after break happen. Be bitch to fix, oh ja."
"Come from too much helm effort, sir, th' tiller-head holes," Mr. Pendarves added, flapping his feet and shins in the harbour water. "Gudgeons an' pintles 'bove th' waterline seem sound, but, th' way she she were swingin' so free, I've low hopes 'bout the two lower-most."
A pair of Oriental-looking sprogs came bursting to the surface in welters of foam, bobbing like corks for a moment before starting to paddle with their legs and wave their arms sideways to stay afloat. One swabbed water from his face and long hair, then kicked a few feet over to Goosen's barge, took hold of the gunwale, and began a palaver in a tongue that was most-likely half-Dutch and half-Javanese, neither of which Lewrie could follow.
Goosen listened, nodded here and there over the choicer bits, sucked his teeth and winced, then translated. "Kaffir say gudgeon at bottom of sternpost iss open. Iss bolted to sternpost, but die hole-for-pintle-part iss not hole, but like diss!" Goosen said, frowning, and holding up one hand, thumb and fingers forming a cylinder, before snapping them apart to make a wide U-shape.
"And the lower-most pintle?" Lewrie prompted.
"Iss half tore loose, Kaptein, wit' pintle pin bent," Goosen further translated, bending his forefinger into a crook to describe it. "Die bolts heff tore up rudder, too. Next-est to sternpost, be gone. Pintle fitting hang by last bolt, next-est to aft end."
"What in God's name hit us, then?" Lewrie wondered aloud. "If the lowermost of the five sets of pintles and gudgeons are the thickest and heaviest-forged of all?"
"Ah, but deepest part of main piece rudder taper thinnest, die wood be planed slimmest, Kaptein," Goosen pointed out, with too much heartiness to suit Lewrie. "Bronze thickest, but bolts shortest, for die upper four pintles and gudgeons be expect to bear die most weight."
"And the fourth set?" Lewrie further enquired, his hopes for a quick repair sinking.
"Bent," Goosen told him, making as if to wring out a wet towel. "Bad wrench, when rudder be shot. Pintle and gudgeon there both are wrench. When Frenchman dammitch rudder oop dahr, whole weight go on die next-est oop set. Gudgeon dahr be wrench almost out. Gon' need whole new rudder, oh ja! New pintles, gudgeons, bolts, nuts, top to bottom, ja!"