The mood of the ship had been sombre, the crew on the gun-deck singing to the accompaniment of fiddle and fife, or the strains of Liam Desmond's uilleann lap-pipes; "Admiral Hosier's Ghost," "The False Young Sailor," "Spanish Ladies," "One Morning in May," all the lachrymose and sad dirges they knew. Oh, Desmond had struck up some lively tunes, but it hadn't sounded as if they rise to them, not full-voiced and eager as they usually might. There was no rhythmic thud of dancing to the horn-pipes, chanteys, or "stamp and goes."
Wonder if there's any horn-pipes of gloom? Lewrie had wondered.
Supper with Count Rybakov had been a sullen affair, too; thankfully without Count Levotchkin's presence, for both of them had more on their minds than sparkling and witty conversation. Count Rybakov had pressed him for more lore about selkies, Lir, and the particular instances when seals had appeared to him, but that subject was simply too eerie a matter on the possible eve of battle. The highlight, if one could call it that, occurred when Rybakov had expressed curiosity about Lewrie's Kentucky Bourbon whisky, and Lewrie had, in turn, had to taste several varieties of vodka, including a Polish version flavoured with buffalo grass. Neither had come away with a favourable opinion of the other's "tipple."
"And do you believe in this… cess of yours, Kapitan Lewrie?" Count Rybakov had finally asked.
"Believe?" Lewrie had gloomed. "No, not really, my lord. That would make me a heathen, though I will admit that there've been times that the presence of seals made me wonder. Eerie as it is, whenever they've turned up, I've been… thankful for the warning. There's an host of mysteries that happen at sea, so…," he had concluded with a shrug.
By the first bell of the Evening Watch, at 8:30 P.M., both of them were more than ready to turn in. Thankfully (again) Count Levotchkin had dined alone in his sleeping-space, had picked over the reconstituted "portable" vegetable soup, the roast chicken and boiled potatoes and the last of the fresh-baked bread, and had washed it all down with more wine, more champagne, and at least half a bottle of vodka, and had babbled, muttered, fumed, and fussed himself to an early slumber matching their own, sparing everyone but for his manservant, Sasha.
Two Bells of the Forenoon chimed from the foc's'le belfry, a terse ding-ding, as Thermopylae sailed along with a steady breeze from the East-Nor'east on her larboard quarters, the snow gales gone, and replaced by a mostly cloudy morning, with only a brief glimmer of sunlight now and then. She was under all plain sail, with two reefs in her forecourse to aid the fore tops'l in lifting her bows, so she did not "snuffle" too deeply, and slow her progress. Her main course was fully spread, a peaceful thing to an outside observer, for a main course sail would only be brailed up for combat, so it would not catch fire from the discharge of her own guns, if fully deployed. Not that it could not be fully reefed in a moment, should it prove necessary!
Lewrie looked up to assure himself that the anti-boarding nets were rigged, but not yet hauled aloft; and to assure himself that all yards had been re-enforced with chain slings to hold them aloft, should halliards and lifts be shot away, to keep them from plunging down to the deck and smothering the gun crews, cannon, and ports in canvas and rope rigging.
Looking forrud, then aft, he noted that their largest flags of the new Union pattern were flying; one from the truck of the foremast, and the largest aft from the spanker. The Danes could not mistake her nationality, nor accuse them of trying to sneak past Kronborg Castle by employing a dishonourable false flag.
"Eight knots, sir!" Midshipman Privette cried from the taffrail. "Eight knots and an eighth, really!"
"Six knots over the ground, then," Lt. Ballard commented as he rocked on the balls of his boots; more-like mooed in a grim-lipped way.
"Seventeen minutes," Lewrie muttered under his breath. "Very well, Mister Privette," he called out in a louder voice, to an unsuspecting world the epitome of calmness.
"There's Elsinore, sir," Capt. Hardcastle pointed out as the old royal residence of Danish kings loomed up on their starboard bows. "Beyond, that'll be Kronborg Castle."
"That's a fortress, by God?" Lewrie marvelled. "I expected… something grimmer."
Kronborg Castle, formidable though it must be, looked more like a fairy castle, the sort of thing illustrated in a children's book, or a large toy to spur the imagination of the kiddies in their playroom.
It had four large, square bastions, with stout walls spanning the distances between them, all of red brick, not granite or limestone. Lighter-coloured, window-like apertures below the bastions and along the walls revealed a lower-storey casemate. Yet Kronborg sprouted spires and towers more like those rising from Muslim mosques, like minarets, and every steep roof was of copper; mostly gone verdigris green, but here and there as bright as a new-minted penny!
It sat at the end of a long, low peninsula, atop a built-up earthen base, with shallow-angled embankments that led straight into the sea, to the beach, all covered in grass as green as the criquet pitch at Lord's, and, overall, looked more like the country mansion of some incredibly wealthy, and eccentric, viscount, earl, or duke!
"For what we're about to receive…" Mr. Simms, the senior-most Quartermaster at the double-helm, whispered the old saw for steeling oneself to stand manful under the enemy's first broadside.
"Receive, Hell, Mister Simms," Lewrie scoffed. "What, ye think it's Christmas?"
"Ship off the star-board bow, d'ye hear there?" a lookout in the main-mast cross-trees shouted down. "She be a brig! Anchored by the fort!"
Everyone with access to a telescope raised it to look the brig over, Lewrie included. She lay quite near the shore, about a quarter-mile off from a substantial stone quay and landing, anchored from the bows and a single kedge astern, and though there was a thin skein of smoke from her, it was a single source, not the general haze arising from burning slow-match.
"Galley smoke, I make it, sir," Lt. Ballard said.
"Ah ha!" Lewrie exclaimed as a fluke of wind close inshore at last swung round to match their own, baring the nature of the flag at her stern. "The 'Post-Boy,' by God! One of our mail packets!"
Sure enough, the brig flew a red flag with a Union insignia in the canton, and the bulk of the fly covered by a large white square, in which a post-boy with a long trumpet astride a galloping horse was depicted.
"We're still talkin' with the Danes, it seems," Lewrie explained to the quarterdeck. "Mister Fox, Mister Farley!" he shouted down to the waist over the hammock nettings. "Draw shot from the starboard battery, quick as you can! Mister Tunstall… prepare to fire a salute to the castle. How many guns… anyone?" he asked, in a quandary.
"Twenty-one for their king, sir?" Midshipman Sealey, their eldest, guessed with his fingers crossed.
"I doubt he's there in the castle," Lewrie chuckled. "And their Crown Prince ain't, either."
"There's a Colonel Stricker, in command of Kronborg Castle, sir," Capt. Hardcastle supplied. "What'd a Colonel rate?"