"Schto?" Eudoxia gaped, leaning away in her saddle. "Wit' air rifle? I am seeink one, in gunshop in Portugal, but never am shoot!"
"I'd let you," Lewrie teased back.
"Ooorah!" she whooped, startling both horses. "Uhm, skolka vremene, pardon… how long it take you to be goink to this Simon's Bay?"
"Two days each way," Lewrie said, unconsciously gritting teeth at the thought that horses would have been much faster. "Perhaps two or three more to fetch what we're after, so… call it almost a week, together. Oh, but you'll be off hunting, by then, I'd expect."
"Nyet, "Eudoxia said with a silvery laugh. "No, Kapitan. Men go hunt, but sailors and girls stay in Cape Town. We do circus, but soldiers have seen, Gallandya… Dutch peoples have seen, and plays in Engliski make no sense to them, so… we are finish performances. Mister Vigmore puttink hunt t'gether. Kapitan Veed lookink after us 'til they come back, ponyemayu} See? Poppa say huntink lion in wild Africa no place for girl, hah! Say I stay on ship wit' Kapitan Veed, but Moinya, big sweety," she said, patting her gelding's neck in affection, "mus' not go stale, mus' ride him, every day. Moinya is for to say in Engliski 'Lightning,' da}"
"And a cracking-fine horse I'm sure he is," Lewrie praised her, "one worthy of his name. So… when does the hunting party leave?"
"Oh, not for week, at least, Kapitan Lewrie," Eudoxia told him, with a mischievious glint in her large amber eyes almost as playful as his own, and prettily lowering her lashes at him. "Vigmore is talk to… Boers, what you call them… trekboers, who are knowink country, ev'ry stitch! Havink waggon trains like yours, wit' ox teams, wit' a band of Black drivers, like yours, too! Mister van der Merwe, one is called, he havink cutest little Black fellows who drive his oxes! I am thinkink they call them… Hottentots! Like doll peoples!"
"Well, we should be back, by then," Lewrie off-handedly said. "Perhaps we could… once my ship is repaired, o' course, ride out to the back-country and have ourselves a shooting contest."
"Oh, would be bolshoi! Would be grand, Kapitan Lewrie! And… may-be…" Eudoxia posed girlishly, shyly, all but biting her lower lip and drawing out that tentative, suggestive word, "you showink me grand Engliski frigate, da} Then, we have shootinks. Race horses or hunt little beasts, not lions! Take picnic basket…"
"Why, what a delightful idea, and thankee for suggestin' that!" Lewrie cried, his baser humours well-stirred, by then. And, with yer pesky poppa off gettin bit half t'death by flies, too! he thought in glee; And, damn my eyes, but, for playacting so doe-eyed innocent, /swear there's an eager vixen in her nature!
"We're to 'break our passage' at an inn that our guide, Mister Goosen, knows, up ahead, Mistress Eudoxia," Lewrie further suggested. "Care to ride with us and dine with us?"
"Oh, so sorry, Kapitan" Eudoxia said with sudden pout, "but, I am promisink Poppa I not ride far, give hour I must return. Spasiba, for invitation, but I mus' go. I makink it up to you, in a few days?" she hinted with an enticing chuckle, in a throaty, promising way.
"Then I will be looking forward to that most eagerly, Mistress!"
"Pooh, Kapitan." Eudoxia pouted some more. "Mistress Eudoxia, always Mistress. So stuffy, da? Is Eudoxia, please? You are Alan, not Kapitan. Beink very good, maybe I sayink 'tiy,' not 'viy. 'How you say… un-formal? Unner-stan'?"
"Completely," Lewrie told her with glad leer, stunned by that allowance, and half-strangled by the implication.
"Dosvidanya, Alan," she cooed, leaning over from her saddle to plant a chaste kiss on his cheek and put a hand in the small of his back. Before he could respond in kind, though, she gave out a whoop and put spurs to her horse. She whipped away, to go cantering down the length of Lewrie's motley caravan to its very head, spin round before the ox team of the first waggon, and come galloping back along the far side of it towards town. " Sh-chastleevavapooti! Paka! Have good trip, Alan! See you!"
God in Heaven! Lewrie thought; And just how long'1l it take for Wigmore and her poppa t'hunt down their lions, elephants, and such?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Well, h'it's a big bugger… h'ain't it?" one of the sailors commented with a scowl on his face as they contemplated the wreck of the Indiaman.
"Big as a bloody three-decker," Bosun Pendarves agreed, looking up at her from a few yards away, hands on his hips and goggling at her ruined hull which towered over them. "Bigger'n a Third Rate, anyways."
The East Indiaman, once named the Lord Clive, lay rolled over on her starboard side, with her bows driven into the knee-deep shallows and her forefoot, cutwater, and bluff bows now half-sunken into the soft sand of the beach, while the rest of her extended out into the water of the bay, her stern underwater up to the counter under the stern walks that her best-paying passengers had enjoyed. Local scavengers had salvaged most of her forward hull planks already, those they could reach without a boat, so her ribs, frames, knees, and carline posts showed in the gaps they'd torn, clear from her larboard side to starboard, where crushed frames could be seen, after her grounding on the Whittle Rocks.
Even as Mr. Andries de Witt's caravan was unpacking and setting up camp on the low bluffs above the beach, die-hard local Boers sawed and pried on her forward half, even redoubling their efforts before the new-come "interlopers" could decide to run them off.
"Damned shame," Lewrie said to the Bosun as he joined him beside the wreck, looking up at her great bulk. "What d'ye make her, Mister Pendarves? One hundred eighty feet on the range of the deck? Perhaps fourty-eight feet abeam?"
"Summat near that, aye, Cap'm," Pendarves said with a sage nod. "Big as an eighty-gunner, or a Sir William Slade-designed seventy-four o' th' Large Class. Bigger'n th' Common Class for certain, sir."
"She'll have one hell of a rudder and sternpost, then," Lewrie surmised. "Might take a deal of cutting and trimming down."
"Aye, sir, but we'll do 'er, long as it's in decent condition."
"Ah, here come our boats, I believe," Lewrie pointed out, as a group of three rather large cutters came near them, from the docks at Simon's Town. Mr. Goosen stood in the bows of the lead boat, waving.
Talk about your book-ends, Lewrie thought with a scowl of his own, as he walked down to the hard-packed sand of the lower beach; Both of 'em bad bargains… crooked as a dog's hind leg. Still, reminding himself that beggars can't be choosers, he waved and smiled in similar enthusiastic fashion to greet Goosen's arrival.
"Ach, dere be Goosen!" Andries de Witt cried from his left side.
Book-ends, indeed; both were squat, solid, and stout, both florid of face and balding, and both sported beards so thick they looked like a brace of "owls in an ivy bush." All Lewrie could normally make out of their features were thick and meaty lips-which they licked with sly relish whenever he enquired about costs-and pale blue eyes.