“At least Hercules got t’take on his twelve labours one at a bloody time!” Lewrie fumed, sagging lower in his dining chair.
One bell was struck by a ship’s boy up forward at the belfry; half past eight in the Forenoon Watch, and the time that Lewrie had appointed for his officers and senior mates to muster in the waist for his inspection. He rose and placed the thick packet of orders in his day-cabin desk, then shrugged into a well-worn grogram overcoat to go out on deck.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said to one and all.
“Good morning, sir,” was returned in a rough chorus, punctuated by yawns from some who had been up since the 4 A.M. change of watch which roused all hands to lash up and stow, swab and sweep decks, and partake in breakfast. Reliant ’s three Lieutenants, Geoffrey Westcott, Clarence Spendlove, and George Merriman, looked blearier than most; officers stood no watches when anchored in port, and they’d most-like returned aboard the evening before just in time for their supper, then shared a bowl of hot punch, liberally laced with spirits, before a late retiring, sitting up in the dark after Lights Out at 9 P.M. to “fathom” the bowl’s depths.
“Damn my eyes, no one’s curious?” Lewrie teased.
“Well, sir…” Lt. Merriman said, sharing a glace with the rest, and making a speculative grin.
“We’re bound for warmer weather,” Lewrie told them. “If we survive the winter voyage to get there, that is. It’s the Bahamas, for us, Bermuda, and the coast of Spanish Florida.”
“Bermuda,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, said. “Brr!”
“It’s in the mid-Atlantic,” Lt. Spendlove pointed out. “It cannot be a cold place, can it?”
“Ah, but Bermuda is surrounded by miles and miles of banks and shoals, coral reefs, and submerged rocks, sir,” Harold Caldwell contradicted with a gloomy look. “There’s been ships wrecked twenty miles or more from there, in what they took for deep, open water. Captain, sir, I’ll be needing the use of a boat to go ashore to obtain charts, for I have none but the sketchiest and oldest at present. In point of fact, I’ve never been to Bermuda, but I’ve heard tales. Brr, I say, for good reason.”
Who at Admiralty hates me that damned bad? Lewrie asked himself.
“Neither have I, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie admitted. “When you do seek the latest charts, pray obtain a set for me. Part of our new orders directs us to survey and make soundings while we’re there, do we have time to spare for it. They mention the principal harbours and a bay or two, not the distant approaches, but…” He ended with a shrug.
“My mates, Nightingale and Eldridge, could stay aboard for your inspection, sir,” Caldwell said, “whilst I could go ashore now.”
“Very well, Mister Caldwell. Mister Warburton?” Lewrie called out to the senior Mid on the quarterdeck above them. “A boat for the Sailing Master.”
“Aye, sir!”
“Well, shall we begin, sirs?” Lewrie posed to them. “And, as we look things over, let’s make lists of anything needful before sailing. Start at the bows, shall we?”
“Aye, sir,” the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, agreed with a firm nod. “I think you’ll find the ship in top form and well-stocked for sea, so far as my department goes.”
“But not your private rum cache, hey, Mister Sprague?” Lieutenant Westcott, the First Officer japed.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Mister Westcott, sir,” Sprague replied with a twinkle in his eyes, “when ev’rybody knows it’s Mister Cooke what hides rum in his galley.”
“Then we’ll look over the galley damned close,” Lewrie quipped. “ And the nooks and crannies in the carpenter’s walks.”
That made the Bosun swallow hard, and look a tad guilty!
CHAPTER SIX
“The other side of the ocean?” Lydia sadly mused once Lewrie told her of his orders. “Oh, God.”
“We both knew it was bound t’come,” Lewrie said, taking her by the hands as they sat together on a settee in her lodgings.
“I’d hoped…” she said, looking down for a moment. “Foolish me. I did know you’d have to sail away sooner or later, but I hoped…” She shrugged and seemed to be biting the lining of her cheek for a second as she looked back up. “I’d hoped that you’d be assigned to the blockade, like your friend Captain Rodgers. Somewhere closer, and come back every few months to… what do you call it? Re-victual? I should have known better,” she sighed, slumping.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, believe me,” Lewrie said, putting an arm round her shoulders. “You’ve quite spoiled me.”
“Have I?” Lydia skeptically asked, bracing back from him.
“Utterly and completely,” Lewrie assured her. “I should have known better, myself. Just as soon as I begin t’feel pleased, old Dame Fortune will kick me up the arse. She always has.”
Lydia relaxed her arms and sank into his comforting embrace.
“You may not be the only one that Dame Fortune picks on, Alan. Here I finally meet a man whom I think I can trust, and the Navy will send him halfway round the world, for years on end,” she mourned. “I will feel so alone, again, with you gone.”
“I’ve grown hellish fond of you, too,” Lewrie whispered in her sweet-smelling hair. “But, t’wish me on the blockade, after all that Benjamin Rodgers told us of it, well…!”
“It will be warmer, where you’re going?” she asked.
“Much warmer, even in January,” Lewrie told her. “The Bahamas and Bermuda, I expect, are vivid green and surrounded by blue-green seas. In the old days, we sailed little Alacrity over waters so gin-clear, or the palest blue, and could see the bottom and fish swimming, ten fathoms down, as clear as day.”
“It sounds like the fabled Land of the Lotus Eaters,” Lydia commented, chuckling,
“Isles of the dead-drunk rum-pots, more like,” Lewrie japed.
“Even so, they sound heavenly,” Lydia said, then looked up at him sharply. “Take me with you.”
“What?” Lewrie gawped.
“I’ve learned enough of the Navy and ships to know that some captains take their wives with them, even in wartime,” Lydia animatedly said. “God knows, I brought half a year’s worth of gowns and such when I came down to Portsmouth. I could be packed and aboard by the end of the day!”
“Lydia, I can’t,” Lewrie told her, though wishing he could.
“Did not your wife sail with you to the Bahamas when you were first there?” she pointed out, cocking her head to one side.
“To be settled in a house ashore, in peacetime,” Lewrie said. “We’ll be up against French and Spanish privateers, might even cross hawses with some of their frigates, and I can’t put you at such risk. Besides, there’s…”
“If I accept the risks, then why not?” she pressed.
“There’s the matter of Reliant ’s people, Lydia,” Lewrie continued in a sombre but soothing tone. “They can’t take their wives and sweethearts with them, and for them to see their captain enjoying the privilege they can’t… rubbing it in their faces everytime you took the air on the quarterdeck? The Navy won’t even give them shore liberty, unless it’s a damned small island, and there’s an Army garrison t’help round ’em up do they run… take ‘leg-bail’. The best we can do for ’em is to put the ship Out of Discipline for a few days in port and let the… women of the town come aboard. Some of ’em might even really be wives, but that’s a rare ease. You wouldn’t wish to see it. When you toured Reliant last summer, she was in full discipline.”
“Whores, do you mean,” Lydia said with a scoffing smirk.
“Aye, whores,” Lewrie admitted. “And, finally… there are some captains who’d take their wives to sea, even in wartime, but… they’re wives, not lovers. Admiralty has a ‘down’ on that.”