“Senhor, you weesh to enter the reever?” the man asked.
“I wish to know where the British fleet has gone, senhor, and how long ago was it that they sailed?” Lewrie shouted back to him.
“Three, four day ago, senhor,” the fellow said, scratching at his bearded cheek, and flicking ash from a crooked cigarro that he held between his teeth. “They take on wood, water, and meal, and go South. We have cattle and peegs, senhor,” the fellow tempted. “You weesh fresh meat? You trade us rum and brandy, yes?”
“No need, sorry,” Lewrie called back. “We have all we need at present. We are bound South to catch them up.”
“Ah, well,” the unkempt fellow said with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders in disappointment. “Go weeth God, senhor.”
“Get way on her if you please, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered as he stepped back from the bulwarks. “Shape course out to our charges and we’ll speak ’em t’see if they’ve enough supplies to last ’til Cape Town. It’s only a few hundred miles, now, God willing.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott replied, his face screwed up. “Lord, what a reek! Is all Africa this foul-smelling?”
“Cape Town wasn’t, as I recall,” Lewrie told him. “No worse than a small town in the country, back home. It’s the heat and rot in the jungles round this latitude, the smell of long-settled native villages, and the foul reek of the slave pens. Did you ever get close aboard a ‘blackbirder’, Mister Westcott? Once you do, you never can forget the odour of human misery. God knows how many in the barracoons will perish before the next slaver puts in … nor how many of the healthy chosen from that lot live t’see a vendue house in the Americas. Just get me away from all this … foulness, sir!”
* * *
Reliant closed Ascot close enough for Lewrie to converse with Lt. Thatcher with a brass speaking-trumpet and enquire about his dwindling supplies.
“I reckon that Cape Town is nigh twelve-hundred or more miles off, sir!” Lt. Thatcher shouted over. “After victualling at Funchal, we should have sufficient water and rations for another two months! The Army would wish to put in to get their mounts ashore and exercise them on dry land. Captain Veasey fears that by the time we join the other transports at Cape Town, his horses won’t be able to stand!”
“And how might they land them ashore?” Lewrie replied with the trumpet to his mouth. “Hoist ’em out over the side and swim them in, through shark-infested waters, and crocodile-infested river? We would have to anchor at least a mile out, and God only knows how many horses would get eaten, or drown.”
Lewrie could see Captains Veasey and Chadfield bristling with concern, a few feet away from Lt. Thatcher. The troopers of the 34th Light Dragoons aboard Ascot were more vociferous in their disappointment that they would hot be allowed off the ship for a day or two of ease, either, cat-calling and booing Lewrie’s decision.
What did they expect o’ San Salvador? Lewrie wondered; Black whores, rum, and roast beef? And the whores for free?
“We will crack on South, Mister Thatcher!” Lewrie shouted to him. “Steer Sou’-Sou’west, and follow me!”
“Very good, Captain Lewrie!” Thatcher replied, sounding a bit disappointed, himself.
Lewrie left the bulwarks and stowed the speaking-trumpet in the compass binnacle cabinet, then went to the windward side to take proper station as Reliant hauled up close to the winds to begin her seemingly endless beat to weather in chase of their perpetual Will-o’-the-wisp, Commodore Popham and his phantom invasion fleet. It was an hour later before the Trade wind whisked away the reek of San Salvador that seemed to cling to every fibre of the ship.
“I’ll be below,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch.
Once in his cabins, Lewrie tore off his neck-stock and drank a full tumbler of water, then asked Pettus for one of cool tea, sugared and lemoned. While that was being poured and mixed for him, he went in search of Toulon, but he was not in the starboard quarter gallery, nor on the bed’s coverlet, or the transom settee cushions.
“Here, Toulon. Here, lad,” Lewrie called out.
“’E’s unner th’ settee, sir,” Jessop told him. “’E come outta th’ quarter gallery f’r some water, an’ tried t’jump inta yer bed, but ’e couldn’t manage it, poor thing. ’E’s sulkin’ unner there, an’ won’t come out f’r nothin’ nor nobody.”
Lewrie knelt down by the collapsible settee which was lashed to the cabin’s interior planking. Sure enough, Toulon was there, curled up with his tail under his chin, and his paws tucked under his chest, nodding as if unwilling to sleep, but totally spent.
“Here, Toulon,” Lewrie softly coaxed. “Come on out to me. No? It’s alright, little man. Come on out.”
Toulon opened his eyes to weary slits, uttered an un-characteristic wee mew, then went back to drowsing. Damning his dignity, Lewrie got down on his stomach on the Turkey carpet and chequered canvas deck cover to reach in and stroke a finger under Toulon’s chin and along his jaws. The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, but made no move to come out. Lewrie reached in and took him by the scruff of the neck to drag him out, cradle him in his arm, and got to his feet. Lewrie sat down on the settee and held Toulon close with both arms, slowly petting and cooing to him, and his cat at last shifted to press closer to Lewrie’s chest and begin a faint, ragged purr.
“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door shouted, stamping boots and slamming his musket butt.
Burly Mr. Mainwaring bustled in at Lewrie’s order to enter, carrying his leather kit-bag. With him was one of the Surgeon’s Mates, Durbin.
“Your pardons if I do not rise, sirs,” Lewrie apologised, still cradling Toulon. “Sit, please. Cool tea, Mister Mainwaring?”
“Yes, thank you, Captain,” Mainwaring said, taking one of the collapsible chairs and indicating that Durbin should take the other. “I’ve a mind to purchase the makings and serve it out to the men on light duties or in sick-bay … does the Navy Board allow me the funds.
“As to the matter you mentioned the other day, sir, about your cat,” Mainwaring went on as Pettus fetched tea, “Durbin here, Lloyd and I, put our heads together as to how one might painlessly ease a cat from life and end its suffering, and Durbin came up with a solution. Pray do explain it to the Captain, Durbin.”
“Ehm, yes, sir,” the younger Surgeon’s Mate began, shifting in his chair and swiping a mop of dark hair back from his forehead, shyly cutty-eyed to be speaking with a senior officer. “Before I came away to join the Navy, Captain, I was studying to be a surgeon, in London. I apprenticed to an older fellow, worked with him and others at some of the poors’ hospitals … and, to make ends meet, I also assisted a ‘Pox’ doctor.” He looked shamed by that confession.
“Pricking with Cowpox against the Smallpox?” Lewrie asked. He had been inoculated long ago, himself, and wondered why Durbin would be shy about that good work. There were some pox doctors who made more than £50,000 a year!
“Not that sort of Pox, Captain,” Durbin said, blushing. “He and I administered the Mercury Cure for the venereal Pox. In his offices, at the better brothels?”
“Ah. Yes?” Lewrie replied, hiding a wince. The idea of having a metal clyster shoved up his penis for an injection of mercury, or a narrow rasp shoved up and jerked out to break the pustules—! Lewrie all but crossed his legs to avert even the thought of such! “But, what would that have to do with Toulon, here?”
“Well, sir,” Durbin hesitantly continued, “it was more the use of the clyster for other things, do you see. That, and laudanum.”