"Once under our counter, we'll moor the barge snug against the stern," Lewrie went on with his explanation, wishing he could cross a finger or two, for the reality could not go as easily as his breezily glib exposition. "The long, thinner part is the upper stock, and that will slide up through a large hole under the transom. The bottom end will swing, even float, but, with the kedge capstan and the hoisting chains, we'll lift her 'til she's almost hangin' right, then use brute force, aloft and a'low, to get the bronze pins of the pintle fittings into the holes of the gudgeon fittings, and she'll ride all her weight on 'em, once we've let out slack on the hoisting chains and cables."
"You do speak Engliski, Alan?" Eudoxia asked with a crease in her forehead as she lowered the heavy glass. "Half of what you say is… shumashetshi… how you are sayink…?"
"Daft? Mad babbling?" Lewrie supplied with a snicker. "That's sailors for you. Our own language, even our own dictionary."
"Da… daft," Eudoxia said with a giggle, testing the word a few more times, and finding "daft" right pleasing.
"Lower away… handsomely!" Lt. Catterall bawled to the work-party, as the massive, and heavy, new rudder finally was swayed off the side of the pier, above the barge. He was echoed by Goosens, spouting a flood of Dutch, the local variety some called Afrikaans, Javanese, or Hottentot, for all Lewrie knew. Now and then came an English phrase having to do with "damn your eyes, don't sink my boat!" or some such.
"So…" Eudoxia further said, with a playful, teasing note to her voice as she stepped closer to hand him his telescope back. "You get the… rudder… on, you sail for England right away, Alan?"
"That'd be up to Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Curtis, Eudoxia. Once we're seaworthy again, he may tell us to escort that new-come convoy to Saint Helena, or all the way to the Pool of London, I truly don't know. It may take days to get us set-to-rights, proper, and they may sail without us, and we'll have to do a short patrol cruise round the Cape, instead, 'til Captain Treghues comes in with another homebound trade," he told her.
"Hmmm," was her pleased, purring comment to that news. "If you wait that long, we go shootink together? You give me tour on frigate?"
"Be delighted to, m'dear," Lewrie vowed, taking a second of his attention from watching the rudder being lowered into the barge, and, yes, with his cack-hand fingers crossed along the seam of his breeches. "A shore supper, what the Frogs call a 'pique-nique'… a basket of food and wine one eats outdoors, that is…"
"We shoot food, roast on sticks!" Eudoxia cheerfully enthused, all but bouncing on the toes of her moccesins. "Build fire, take big blanket… cut poles, and put up palatka, uhm, dammit… tend Hunt springbok, duck, and grouse…! Eat wit' fingers, get greasy…!"
Damme, but it does sound temptin'! Lewrie thought, one eye on the swaying rudder, one ear cast for Eudoxia's patter, the other ear cocked for pierside sounds, like snapping or groaning ropes, squeaky or jammed blocks in the hoisting tackle, trying to sort them out of a constant intrusion from the comings-and-goings of rowing boats along the pier from the newly-arrived Indiamen, and the clatter of coaches and carriages either dropping off passengers or arriving to pick them up. A tent. Hell yes! Night in the wilds, he fervidly imagined; one of those bomas du Toit mentioned, ring the camp with thornbush to keep lions out of the… what was it? Kraal, that's it! Kraal! Just me and her? He almost had to shake himself to stay focussed. Well, some natives t 'hew an' tote, but off in their own little… kraal, once the sun goes down, and…
"My word! Lewrie! It is you!" a sharp voice intruded.
"Uhm? Hah?" Lewrie gawped, whipping his head about to find a source, irked that his urgent attention on the doings with his rudder, and his fantasies, were so rudely interrupted at possibly the most inopportune instant. He espied a quartet of people just attaining a firm footing on the pier from the wooden stairs that led from the floating landing stage on the south side of the pier. There was an older Reverend in the all-black "ditto" and white bands that were Church "uniform" the world over, a stout woman of equal age in dark and drab grey silk, sporting a grim little bonnet atop her tautly drawn-back hair under a parasol worthy of a rainy funeral, a young lady gowned much the same who bore a fair sort of resemblance to the older people, though quite pretty, in a. prim way, and a sun-darkened man in the red and scarlet of an officer of the East India Company army, right down to the bright silver chain-mail epaulets on each shoulder, aiding the girl.
"Burgess Chiswick?" Lewrie yelped in glad surprise. "Damn my eyes, Burgess. Caroline just wrote me you were on yer way home! Give ye joy, lad! Give ye joy!" he whooped, forgetting everything else for a moment to step forward and offer his hand. "Ye'll pardon me, but I have a wee situation here, Burgess. M'new rudder. The Frogs shot the old'un off, a couple of weeks ago, just out yonder," he added, waving a hand seaward.
"Mother hasn't…?" Burgess uneasily asked him as he not only shook hands with him, but threw his arms about him, too.
"Caroline wrote that Mother Charlotte's poorly, but as of four months ago, was still with us, though as for autumn…" Lewrie told him, pounding him on the back. The diffident lad that Lewrie had met during the siege of Yorktown so long ago, who had seemed so ill-suited and sometimes naive for a soldier's life in the harshness of India, had turned into a well-weathered man, and a confident and seasoned veteran of nearly fourteen years of command in the field.
"Hellish-good t'see you, Burge!" Lewrie loudly told him.
"Ah, hum…" Burgess cautioned, with a subdued cough to remind Lewrie that he wasn't on his quarterdeck, that a churchman was nearby.
"Yer pardons," Lewrie said, blushing. "Oops! I'll see to the last of our lowering away, then…"
"Vast, the God-damned larboard snub-lines, ye idle duck-fuckers!" Lt. Catterall bellowed, all unknowing, fully into his task, and in ripe Catterall form. "Belay ev'ry inch of that shite!"
Eudoxia found that outburst hilarious, even if such Billingsgate language made her blush. She laughed right out loud, obliviously, and repeated the "duck-fucker" part to herself several times, savouring it in wicked glee. Lewrie could practically hear scandalised heads snapping from him, to the unseen Catterall below the edge of the pier, and to Eudoxia, could hear stiff faces crackling into scowls!
"Uhm, hah…" Lewrie mumbled, going to the edge of the pier to stand by the shear-legs. "Rev'rend on deck, Mister Catterall!" he said in warning.
"Arr, fook th' preacher!" Ordinary Seaman Slocombe growled back in a voice just loud enough to be heard.
"I've a'ready done that, 'usband," Landsman Sugden cackled in a female falsetto, providing the end of the old jape about the habits of some circuit-riding ministers, and their doings. "Now, 'e warnts ye t' kill 'im a chicken!"