“Clean hands and fingernails, Jessop,” Lewrie said, coming back from that rather sweet reverie.
“Right, sir … if I must,” the lad answered.
“Must and shall, you scamp,” Lewrie shot back, grinning. “For now, I think I’ll take a wee nap in a soft bed, for a change.”
“It does make a nice change, sir,” Pettus agreed. “Same as I’m looking forward to my hammock tonight, after all that hard ground, and all the bugs.”
“Sorry I put you through that,” Lewrie apologised, yawning.
“Oh no, sir!” his cabin steward exclaimed. “Why, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and I’m glad you took me along, for it was a grand adventure, and a rare thing to see! The beasts, the scenery, and the battle? Even if we didn’t see any elephants.”
“Well, I’m glad someone liked it,” Lewrie said with a laugh. “And, do we spend much time anchored in Table Bay, you may see your elephants yet. Wake me one hour before the supper. Here, Chalky! I need pesterin’!”
He rolled into his swaying bed-cot, plumped up the damp and mildew-smelling pillows, and was out to the world within a minute, oblivious to his cat’s wee mews for more attention. Chalky tried pawing, to no avail. Finally, he padded up to the pillows and lay down nose-to-nose and employed the intent, concentrated stare that made humans uncomfortable enough to wake. But no, even that did not work this time. Chalky gave up and slinked round to cuddle against his master’s chest, closed his eyes, and waited for later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Pettus, and the rest of Reliant’s crew, got to see their elephants, and a great many other beasts, on their shore liberties, and got a few hours of perfect ease in Cape Town’s public houses, eateries, and brothels. As important as Cape Town was as a mid-way stop-over point for the rich China and East Indies trade, though, it was not all that large a place, so liberty had to be rationed. At least half of General Baird’s five thousand soldiers garrisoned the fortresses with the rest out scouting and mapping at any given time, so they placed a heavy burden on the taverns, eateries, and whores, so shore liberty had to be given to only one watch of each ship in turn, to the two-decker warships first, which ate up several days before the frigates were allowed to send only half their crews ashore in rotation on any given day.
Officers were another matter, of course, since they did not stand Harbour Watches in port, and they were allowed ashore by their captains as often as they wished, barring demands of the service. It was safe enough to allow shore leave, even in what had been a hostile foreign harbour, for Cape Town and its environs were well-patrolled by the Army, and the terms of surrender offered to the Dutch were of so mild a nature that most locals simply shrugged their shoulders and submitted to new masters with little ill will.
The Dutch army of around five thousand men had lost seven hundred in killed and wounded, and perhaps two or three hundred more who had just ridden off and disappeared before the formal surrender; local militia men who would not leave their families and lands. What uniforms they had worn they had shed, and had melted back into the back country, some to hitch their waggons, gather their cattle, their horses, and their Hottentot slaves, and trek off for the wild frontiers of Cape Colony. The bulk of them, though, were offered return to Holland in British transports, at British expense, after giving their parole not to take arms against Great Britain ’til properly exchanged for British prisoners of equal rank. And, since the British Army and the Dutch Army had not faced each other in the field since the disastrous expedition into the Low Countries in 1798, those returnees would be twiddling their thumbs on parole for a long time to come!
Lewrie and his officers enjoyed their jaunts ashore, as well. There were hunting parties with proper tents and camp equipment, this time, and lots of game meat wolfed down round blazing campfires, with selected seamen accompanying them. They organised sports competitions, watch against watch, and ship against ship, in open fields out past Fort Knocke. Lt. Westcott sketched and painted everything in sight—when he wasn’t chasing quim—and Lt. Spendlove satisfied his curiosity about Africa’s exotic flora and fauna, whilst Lt. Merriman and Marine Lt. Simcock revelled in galloping rented horses ’til they and their mounts were worn quite out and soaked in sweat, returning to the ship still whooping their triumphs at races against the officers of the 34th or the 20th Light Dragoons, or the local equivalent of steeplechasing.
For a time, Lewrie hoped that he would be assigned to escort the Dutch back to Europe; in point of fact he was sure that Reliant would be given the task by the odd way that Commodore Popham looked at him whenever they met face-to-face. Popham was “hail fellow, well met” with almost everyone he dealt with, but Lewrie sensed a faint distaste towards him. The odd, lifted brow, the tongue-in-cheek comments anent his shore adventures, and the way Popham would cock his head and leer in his direction amongst the meetings and supper parties made Lewrie certain that Popham almost resented him for his favourable mentions in General Baird’s despatches to London!
Is he jealous, by God? Lewrie was forced to wonder; Did I shine too bright for his liking? Steal some of his lustre from his victory? Which made Lewrie recall Popham’s early comment about how someone in the Navy would, must, become as famous as the late Admiral Nelson—was Popham aspiring to that title, and worried that others might beat him to the punch? Whatever the reason, Lewrie got the impression that Popham would be happy to see him and Reliant gone.
It didn’t happen, though. The Dutch prisoners of war were put aboard the transports and sent off with hardly any escorts, leaving HMS Reliant swinging to her anchors, a condition which turned boresome after a fortnight or so. By the end of February, Lewrie was itching to get back to sea before his crew got too bored, sullen, and out of practice. All the competitions he could stage aboard, all the rowing races and sailing races he could arrange with the ship’s boats, had lost their appeal. Personally, he had re-read all his novels, and a few new to him borrowed from the wardroom, had written so many letters to Lydia, his sons, his in-laws, his daughter, his father, old friends from the Navy, fellow lodgers at the Madeira Club in London—even Peter Rushton and Clotworthy Chute—that he had nothing more to say!
When he asked Popham’s permission to patrol round Cape Agulhas and points East into the Indian Ocean, Popham had been more than eager to allow him, telling a gathering of his officers, “But, of course you may. After all, sirs, we know by now that we must keep Captain Lewrie amused, and spared anything humdrum, what? Haw haw!”
“Thank you, sir,” Lewrie had said, though thinking, Eat shit and die!
* * *
He took a month away from Cape Town and its delights, working his crew back to well-drilled competence at striking and re-erecting top-masts, at tacking or wearing about on a sudden whim, at taking in sail by reefing or striking or ugly and baggy “Spanish Reefs” to spill wind from courses and tops’ls by clewing them up into bats’ wings with their centres drawn against the yards and the outer corners resembling flabby sacks. And, of course there was arms drill almost every morning, with boarding pikes, cutlasses, and musketry fired at towed kegs well astern of a barge under sail. Even if the Ordnance Board didn’t care for the expense, Reliant went to Quarters at least four days a week to practice live-firing with the great guns, from quarterdeck 9-pounders to bow chasers, carronades, and her battery of 18-pounders, expending kegs of gunpowder and hundreds of flannel cartridge bags.
In his early, confused, and miserable days as a Midshipman in old HMS Ariadne, back in 1780, the one redeeming feature of his term of servitude had been when the ship had gone to Quarters and the lashings had been cast off the guns. The crashes, the leaping recoils, the thunderous rumble of carriage trucks as they were hauled back to be loaded, then run up to the ports once more, and the thick, rotten-egg stink of spent powder that be-fogged the decks had put him in heaven! The blasts which fluttered his innards always put him in mind of shuddery raptures! And to get off three rounds per gun in two minutes and hammer a patch of sea with concentrated broadsides, well!