I never realized that ships could be so beautiful, he thought. Hard work and ruptures, bad food and no sleep, so complex and nothing goes a day without needing fixing, but they can be so Goddamned lovely!
“We’ll be back aboard again, don’t you fret, sir,” Toliver told him, working on a quid of tobacco.
“Get the ship underway, bosun,” Lewrie ordered. “Quartermaster, lay her head sou-sou’west, half-south.”
“Hands ta the braces,” Toliver bellowed. They braced her yards around first, shorthanded as they were, then went aloft and shook out reefs in her courses and tops’ls. The convoy was ahead of them but not sailing fast. With all plain sail they could catch them up by nightfall.
Lewrie looked at his pocket watch. Eleven-thirty in the morning. Time to think about feeding the men some of that fresh horsemeat before it spoiled. He found a man that claimed he could cook, a former waiter at an inn who had been caught poaching on his squire’s lands.
“Boiled horse, an ammunition loaf of that fresh bread per man, an onion, watered wine, and an apple to polish it off,” Lewrie directed. “Same for me. I’ll take my dinner aft.”
“Rum issue, sir?” the cook asked.
“Mister Toliver.”
“Aye, sir?”
“Supervise the spirits issue, if you please. A pint of wine, if there’s no rum.”
“No rum, sir,” Toliver said, “I checked.”
“I’m sure you did.” Lewrie smiled slightly. “Carry on. And don’t give out more than a pint. And make sure the dinner wine is mixed six-to-one. I don’t want to have to flog anyone for drunkenness.”
“Aye, sir.”
The bosun’s call piped and Toliver shouted, “Clear decks an’ up spirits!”
“And Toliver?” Lewrie said, standing by the wheel with his hands in the small of his back, watching the luff of the main course, like a real watch-officer.
“Aye, sir?”
“Use the kid. Don’t spit tobacco on my decks.”
Chapter 15
Ephegenie jogged along in convoy bound for Antigua, last in column behind the earlier prizes. Lights Out had been piped and the off-duty half-dozen had turned in, with room to swing a hammock for once in the echoing lower deck. Toliver had the watch as the stars came out in a sultry tropical night. It was getting on for hurricane season once more, but for now the sea was calm enough and the wind was steady.
Alan lounged in the master’s cabin aft under the poop, on the transom settee by the stern windows, hinged open for a cooling breeze, and relishing command.
He had fetched the convoy just at the beginning of the Second Dog Watch, had gone close aboard Amphion and had shouted his news to Captain Merriam, explained that Desperate was dashing ahead to carry the news to Hood and that he was to join the convoy.
Alan burped gently, appreciating the supper he had eaten; boiled horse, more fresh bread, a good and filling pease pudding and a raisin duff their temporary cook had created.
He had opened a bottle of the French captain’s own wine and was slowly sipping at the last of it, a most pleasant red from a St. Emilion vintner. They were reefed down for the night, with the main course taken in and the forecourse at two reefs, two reefs in the tops’ls as well and fair weather at least until morning.
Coin-silver lamps swayed over the desk at which he had dined, making the spacious cabin seem like a palace. There was a good carpet on the deck spread over painted canvas, the paneling was glossy white with much gold leaf and the furnishings were exquisitely carved and detailed. After a hammock it was going to be like sleeping in the Palace at Versailles, even if he was going to doss down on the settee, which was as wide and soft as any bed he had ever experienced.
“This is what I should have … to be rich enough to have fine things around me, a whole house in London this nice, a place in the country with a good stable of horses and if I do have to be aboard ship, to have all this room and finery…”
Which, of course, wasn’t going to happen, he realized. Treghues would come out of his rantings and remember that he hated Alan worse than cold boiled mutton, and he would be casting about for another ship, this time without Sir Onsley’s immediate influence. And there was always the possibility that he would be turned out of the Navy and sent home, or left to make his own way in the Indies. Ways could be found, reasons invented to ruin him, if Treghues really disliked him so much. Perhaps the best thing would be to go into another ship, where he could start fresh with no prejudice against him. Alan sat up and finished his wine, then walked out through the cabins for the quarterdeck, restless and worried.
“Evenin’, Mister Lewrie,” Toliver said, knuckling his forehead.
“Evening, Mister Toliver. Everyone dossed down?”
“Aye, sir. Watch-and-watch ta Antigua’s gonna be a bitch, sir, but we’ll cope right enough.”
“Seems calm enough for now. Call me just before midnight for me to relieve you. I’m going to turn in.”
“Aye, sir.”
Alan went back aft. He blew out every lamp but one, shucked his clothes and found a clean linen sheet for a cover to make his bed. He also discovered the need to visit the quarter gallery.
Privacy for his bowels was another luxury to which he was unaccustomed, having to share the beakhead roundhouse with the other inferior petty officers, or the open rail seats if he was caught short. But here, the French master had a cabinet much like a regular jakes back home in a round quarter-gallery right aft under the larboard taffrail lanterns, a spacious closet with a door he could shut, windows above the shoulder to provide a view of the sea, a small chest that held soft scrap-paper for cleanliness, a bucket of seawater for a steward to sluice down the seat and pipe which conveyed wastes overboard, even a small lamp if the former captain felt like reading.
Lewrie leaned his head back wearily, watching the starlight play on the sea, felt the ship ride beneath him with a steady, reassuring motion. He bumped his head gently on the deal panel behind him, to the rock of the sea.
It sounded hollow.
He squirmed about and rapped on the walls to either side. Solid. But right behind the necessary, it sounded hollow.
Once finished with his needs he fetched his dirk and began to thump with the pommel at the partition behind the seat. There was more quarter-gallery below him for the officer’s mess, set more forward than his but in the same turreted tower built into the side of the hull. His disposal chute would pass aft of their seats, partitioned off from view. Which meant that there was a room perhaps the size of the closet behind that hollow partition, above the wardroom “necessary.”
He switched ends, probing between the deal planks with the point of his dirk, but with no success. He went back to the day cabin and lit another lamp to improve his vision.
To the inboard side of the closet there was a tiny nick in the deal next to the day cabin bulkhead, a fault in the wood and in the paint. Alan inserted his blade there, pressed down on it. There was a faint click that could have been the lamp swinging. But when he pried with his blade, the deal gave a little. He pried more, and it looked as if it might hinge outboard, but he could not get it to move. Finally he leaned against it, and felt something give, like a latch letting go.
The entire panel behind the jakes swung outboard, a square of perhaps three feet by three feet, its edges masked by the wainscoting. Inside was a stout lining of oak perhaps six inches thick. And in the space remaining there was an ironbound chest with a lock as large as a turnip hung on a hinged hasp.