“Carry on, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie said in dismissal as the Ship’s Surgeon departed. Once Mainwaring was gone, Toulon got to his feet and slowly padded over to the edge of the desk to Lewrie’s thigh and rested in his lap, to be gently stroked and petted. He stayed only a minute or two, then cautiously hopped down to the deck and went to his water bowl under the wash-hand stand for a lap or two, then he slowly stalked off for the starboard quarter gallery once more to take up his post atop the wooden crates and sea-chests.
Whatever shall I do with ye, poor thing? Lewrie mourned.
* * *
“Perhaps it would be best, sir, did we stand on on this tack at least ’til Noon, and make more Southing before we come about East-Nor’east,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, advised as he, Lewrie, and the First Officer, Mr. Westcott, convened in Lewrie’s chart space. “Do we close the shore, making a long board, we should fetch the coast below San Salvador, and enter port with the Sou’east Trades large upon our starboard quarters.”
“Which would beat fetching North of the port all hollow, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “We’d end up short-tacking off-and-on most of the day, else, just t’get level with the bloody place.”
“Sou’-Sou’west it will be, then, all through today and tonight, and ’til Noon Sights tomorrow,” Lt. Westcott said with a pleased nod. “Lieutenant Spendlove and I will be standing the Evening and Middle Watches, and thought to let the Mids of the watches have more responsibility … without any radical alterations of course, or the need to pipe ‘All Hands’. Loaf aft by the flag lockers? Let them run the ship on their own?”
“Just so long as the weather allows,” Lewrie cautioned. “Might you wish to borrow my penny-whistle? Or a book to read by the light of the taffrail lanthorns?”
“Don’t know about Spendlove, but I could do some sketchings,” Westcott said with a small laugh.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Lewrie told Westcott. “Do so. And I, on my part, will stay below as much as possible, t’give ’em a sense that they’re really runnin’ their watches. A good idea on your part, as well, Mister Caldwell, and we shall stand on ’til tomorrow’s Noon Sights before altering course. As shallow as the coast of Africa is, I’d not wish t’thrash about in short tacks t’fetch harbour. Is that all we have to discuss at the moment, gentlemen? Very well. We will stand on as we are, and I will have a wee nap, you poor, over-worked fellows.”
“Very good, sir,” Westcott said with a brief, savage grin.
Lewrie lingered in the small chart space after the others had left the great-cabins, puzzling over his copy of the chart of San Salvador which he’d purchased at Funchal, noting how far out one would have to anchor off most of the African shore in the Gulf of Guinea. He had seen woodcuts and paintings of the work of slavers who came for “Black Ivory”; but for the trading forts and barracoons which held the captive Africans established at the mouths of the great rivers, most of those infamous ships, even the middling-sized ones, anchored far out, and sent their boats in several miles. The local Africans had low-sided canoes for fishing, which barely drew a foot of water. Low tide produced beaches and flats nigh a half-mile deep, and one could wade another whole mile before the sea got up to one’s thighs! When the weather got up, the rollers and breakers were tremendous, flooding inward over those wide, shallow shoals.
San Salvador was on a minor river, its bay barely large enough to anchor the hundred-or-so ships under Popham’s command. Why would he choose the place to get firewood and water? Lewrie speculated; he would have avoided San Salvador like the plague!
Leaving the chart space, Lewrie headed aft towards his sleeping space, a wide-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot slung from the over-head deck beams. The bed-cot was a wooden box with stout heavy-weather canvas bottom and lining, a rigid hammock with a thin mattress of cotton batt. It looked very inviting, for the oppressive heat of the sun as they closed upon the Equator created a torpor that Lewrie could gladly sleep right through. Before throwing a leg over the edge and rolling in, though, he went aft to the starboard quarter gallery once more to check on Toulon.
The old black-and-white tom was on his right side, as if he was looking out at the horizon as it gently heaved and rolled. When Lewrie stroked his side, he didn’t even move, but just gave out a weary Mrr, a complaint that he had been sleeping and did not appreciate being wakened. Lewrie leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, stroking Toulon’s chops and cheeks.
“I always loved you, ye clumsy old thing,” Lewrie whispered, recalling his cat’s kittenhood, and his adjustment to life at sea. Once, Toulon had hopped atop a table, a freshly polished one, upon which a sheet of paper rested, and he could not quite understand why or how he had slid off when he was sitting perfectly still on top of it. That had driven him under the starboard-side settee, abashed, where Toulon could commune with his cat gods and live down his shame! Or, when in the North Sea in late 1801, Lewrie’s previous frigate, HMS Thermopylae, had been rolling just hideously, and Lewrie had been trying to shave, and Toulon had tried to get up to the water bowl on the wash-hand stand and had ended up with a tumble to the deck, and a face covered with soap foam! Once again, the dark under the settee had been a refuge.
Lewrie gave him a last stroke or two, then let Toulon be, with a faint and guilty hope that, did he check on him round suppertime, he might discover that Toulon had passed over peacefully.
He sat on the transom settee and pulled off his boots, took off his waist-coat and un-did his neck-stock, then rolled up his sleeves before rolling into his bed-cot atop the embroidered coverlet. He was almost asleep in moments, but was stirred awake by Chalky’s arrival. The younger white-and-grey cat hopped up and padded to Lewrie’s chest, to peer at him, nose-to-nose.
“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a sigh, rewarding Chalky with strokes down his back, ruffles of his chest fur, and “wubbies” on his cheeks and chops. Chalky flopped onto his side, extended his paws, and began to wriggle, eager for belly-tickling play. That could be a dangerous game for the unwary, for Chalky would nip and catch fingers between his paws, claws out.
“Must I?” Lewrie asked. “Oh, very well. I should find a pair o’ thick leather gloves t’play with you!”
It took a quarter-hour to wear Chalky out. Lewrie closed his eyes and tried to return to his nap, but no … Chalky got his wind back, hopped down, and returned with a ragged old knitted wool mouse.
“You really are a pest,” Lewrie muttered, rolling out of bed and giving up on his nap. At least he still had one cat who needed to be amused.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
San Salvador looked to be a pestilential place, a sprawl of low native huts and the reek of cow dung, sweat, and human ordure, commanded by a separate European quarter of tile-rooved stone buildings and barracks, and a small fort which overlooked a series of long and low-slung barracoons with iron-bound doors and a few barred windows, where captured Africans were held ’til a slave ship put in for human cargo. The river mouth ran the colour of red clay, splaying its dubious freshness far out in a delta-like fan off the coast, between gritty stone and sand beaches. The lush greenness of “deepest, darkest Africa” began almost half a mile further inland, beyond fields of millet and mealies, corrals of livestock, and paddocks for the unfortunate Portuguese who did business there. There was a three-masted slave ship anchored in the river mouth … but there was no fleet of British warships and transports.
Lewrie ordered a signal hoisted to his three charges for them to stand-off-and-on while Reliant closed the shore. As soon as the frigate altered course to stand in, a very shallow, crude boat put out for them, paddled by a crew of Africans wearing little more than sandals and what looked to be Red Indian–style breechclouts, with one European seated in the sternsheets. The boat came close aboard as Lewrie ordered his ship rounded up into the wind to fetch-to, so he could speak to the White fellow, a rumpled-looking man in off-white cotton canvas trousers and coat, with a wide straw hat on his head.