“I believe I may state in perfect conviction that he is gone, sir,” Mainwaring said with a slight nod of satisfaction. “I am sorry for your loss. He was dear to you, and a great companion.”
“Thank you, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie managed to say, with a curt nod. “Pettus, will you go pass word for the Master Gunner and the Bosun? I will need a nine-pounder roundshot and a baize bag.”
“Yes, sir,” Pettus muttered, wiping his eyes as he left.
* * *
The towel was sacrificed for a winding cloth, the requested baize bag, quickly sewn together out of the red baize usually used to hold a defaulter’s “cat-o’-nine-tails”, was three times normal size, as if Bosun Sprague knew its purpose beforehand, and Jessop added one of Toulon’s favourite old woven wool toys before Lewrie drew and tied the bag shut, and went out on deck to the waist, then up the ladderway to the quarterdeck. He threaded his way aft through the Afterguard and watchstanders, surprised by the presence of not only the men of the watch but most of the hands who were at that hour off watch on deck and along the sail-tending gangways. Officers, Mids, and petty officers doffed their hats as he passed. It was impossible to keep secrets from any ship’s company; they all knew of the Surgeon’s speculations and the fact that the Captain had requested his help to ease his pet’s passing.
Lewrie got to the taffrails right aft and took off his own hat, laid it down atop the flag lockers, and stood bareheaded with the bag cradled in both arms.
“I’m sorry, Toulon,” he whispered, “but it had to be done, and I meant for you t’go easy. I loved you from the first sight of you, and always will.” A captain’s stern dignity be-damned, Lewrie lifted the bag to bestow a last kiss on the baize, then extended his arms over the stern. “Goodbye, littl’un. See you in Heaven.”
He let go of the bag and watched it drop into the white trail of the frigate’s wake, where it made a small splash before sinking to the deeps.
The ship’s fiddler and the Marine flutist began “Johnny Faa”!
They tryin’ t’break my heart? Lewrie thought, unable to turn to face forward without showing his sudden tears. He had not heard “Johnny Faa” since he had given his old Cox’n, Matthew Andrews, a sea burial after conquering the French frigate, L’Uranie, ages before, and the sadness of that tune always made him brokenly mournful.
At last, Lewrie pulled a handkerchief from a coat pocket, blew his nose, and dabbed his eyes before shoving it back away and clapping his hat on his head to turn away from the taffrails and face his crew.
He got to the forward edge of the quarterdeck, and was amazed to see all hands standing with their hats off. No one had ordered it, but they had done it. Doffing his hat to them, he called out, “Thank you, lads. Thank you,” then made a slow way down to the waist and to the doors to his great-cabins, nodded to his Marine sentry, and went inside.
* * *
Lewrie stayed aft and below the rest of the afternoon, going to the quarterdeck for a breath of fresher and cooler air round the middle of the Second Dog Watch. Though there was no point in doing so, he did go aft to the taffrails for a while, looking far astern. Bisquit, now allowed the liberty of the quarterdeck, joined him and sat down atop the flag lockers, nuzzling for attention and pets, and Lewrie rewarded him before returning to his cabins for a silent and bleak supper. There was only one feeding bowl at the foot of the dining table for Chalky, who seemed oblivious that his long-time friend was no longer present. Once fed, the younger cat came to be petted, arching under Lewrie’s hands and rubbing his cheeks on his fingers before flopping on his side to play.
And that night, long after Lights Out when Lewrie was in bed, sleeping atop the coverlet in his underdrawers for coolness, he came awake. The hanging bed-cot was swaying gently to the roll of the ship, a motion which always calmed him and lulled him to deep sleep, but … he felt as if Chalky had leapt from the deck to the bed, and was walking and brushing up his legs and chest. Lewrie opened one eye and reached out to stroke Chalky, but there was no cat there.
He sat up on an elbow and looked round in the deep gloom of the cabins. There was Chalky, curled up at the foot of the bed with his head resting across Lewrie’s ankle! He lay back down on the pillows and was almost drifted off once more, but, there was the feeling of a cat padding up behind his back, this time, and he sat up once more in a start. Chalky woke, still draped over his ankle, yawned widely, and sat up to give out a low, challenging Mrrr! with tail thrashing. In the faintest light of pre-dawn, Chalky’s eerie green chatoyant eyes were fixed intently on nothing, just to the starboard side of the bed, then to the overhead, as if fearfully watching something that drifted away!
Chalky finally hopped over Lewrie’s legs and came to Lewrie’s face, nuzzling for a hand and looking over his shoulder to larboard.
“Don’t you go dyin’ on me, now, Chalky,” Lewrie whispered as he stroked and calmed him. “I wouldn’t know what t’do with both you and Toulon hauntin’ my cabins.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was almost Christmas Eve before Reliant’s little convoy finally caught sight of tops’ls and t’gallants on the Southern horizon, a wide smear of weathered tan or ecru canvas that spread from three points off the larboard bows to three points off the starboard. When the cry of “Sail Ho!” came, Lewrie was in the middle of shaving, and he dashed to the quarterdeck with a towel still round his neck and the thin foam of shaving soap still on his face.
“It would appear that there are at least seventy ships, sir,” Lt. Spendlove, the officer of the Forenoon Watch, eagerly reported. “I believe I can make out their fores’ls … fore topmast stays’ls … lying to the right, so they must be making the long board Sou’-Sou’west, the same as us, sir!”
“Hmm, that’ll make for a long stern-chase, then,” Lewrie speculated aloud. “As we close with them, we’ll fall into their wind shadow and be blanketed. They’re hull-down under the horizon, so we’re about twelve or more miles alee of ’em, but it may be dusk before we come to hailing distance. Mast-head!” he shouted aloft. “Any signals yet?”
“Just now, sir!” Midshipman Munsell cried down. “It is ‘Query’!”
“Very well. Mister Spendlove, have our number hoisted, and in this month’s private signals book, add ‘Come To Join’.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Spendlove said, turning aft to relay the order to Midshipman Rossyngton at the taffrails, flag lockers, and signals halliards.
“Caught them up at last, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as he mounted to the quarterdeck, with Lt. Merriman right behind him, and both of them as hastily half-dressed as Lewrie.
“It appears so, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him with a grin.
“Do we know which ships Commodore Popham commands, sir?” Lt. Merriman asked, with his own telescope glued to one eye.
“I think I recall that he has the Diadem, sixty-four,” Lewrie said, off-handedly stroking a raspy cheek in thought and finding that his fingers came away soapy. “He’s the Raisonnable and Belliqueux as well, also sixty-fours. There’s sure t’be frigates and such, but at the moment the names escape me. Oh, there’s the Diomede, one of the old two-decker fifty-gunners. Diadem, Diomede? Easy to get them confused.”
“As a trooper, sir?” Lt. Merriman further asked.
“As far as I know, Diomede’s still rated as a warship,” Lewrie said with a shrug. Fifty-gunned two-deckers had been a failed experiment, much cheaper to build, crew, and maintain than 64s or 74s, but unable to match weight of metal with larger ships even in their brief hey-day. There weren’t more than a dozen 50s left, and most of them had been converted to troop transports, and the few remaining in the Navy as ships of war were found only in the farthest corners and backwaters of the world, where the stoutest opposition they might meet would be frigates, sloops of war, or brigs and light privateer vessels.