CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“You’ve done a fine job of it, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie said after a tour of Harmony from bow to stern. “The ‘big turnip’s’ ready.”
“Oh yes,” Mountjoy drolly replied, with a roll of his eyes. “I have Captain Middleton, and every shipwright in the dockyards, angry with me, Hedgepeth grinding his teeth and growling like a cur every time I meet with him, Harmony’s cook ready to jump ship if we expect him to prepare rations for nigh two hundred men, and the ship’s mates cursing me for taking half their cabin space for the Army officers. If I’d ordered their women raped, and their children boiled alive, I don’t think I could have done better!”
“No matter, Mountjoy,” Lewrie told him, “change always bothers people, big changes irk them worse, but they’ll learn to cope. Make adjustments? And, you have your maps, and intelligence.”
Lewrie had taken Sapphire back to sea after their last meeting, and had stayed out for another month of cruising the coasts of Andalusia, doing more threatening and chasing than capturing and burning Spanish coasters and fishing boats. From Estepona to near Cartagena, there were no longer many Spanish mariners who would dare go too far out, lest el diablo negro got them.
In point of fact, Lewrie had to admit that he could not take all the credit. The brig-sloops and frigates of the Mediterranean Fleet were working close inshore of the provinces of Catalonia, Murcia, and the sliver of seacoast of Aragon, ranging further afield than the French naval bases of Marseilles and Toulon. Sapphire had run across several of them and had closed to briefly “speak” them, bantering as to who was poaching in whose territory. Most of it was good-natured.
And, he’d come across agent Cummings’s boat a couple of times, the last encounter a meeting far out at sea at Cummings’s summons of the faded red jib. He was bound for Valencia, but had garnered maps and notes on an host of possible objectives for Lewrie to rush back to Mountjoy at Gibraltar. The man’s personal reports painted a grim picture of want, poverty, and unemployment among the Spanish people as the government in Madrid slavishly enforced Emperor Bonaparte’s Continental System which closed all Europe to British trade and goods. He even went so far as to predict that if things did not improve for the Spanish people, there would be a rebellion, sooner or later. He had no trouble finding willing informants, and some who had asked for arms from the British.
To Lewrie’s lights, Thomas Mountjoy was looking a tad haggard, but that was to be expected. He had a lot on his plate lately, what with dealing with Harmony’s conversion, the yards, and the stores warehouses, looking under every rug on the Rock for spies and Dalrymple’s imagined rebellion, double-dealing smugglers, and sifting and sorting all the reports from his own agents to stitch together plausible and trustworthy assessments to send back to London, with only Deacon for help in the doing.
I could’ve stayed in port and helped, Lewrie thought; But, the ship would’ve gone t’rot. Better him than me!
“Now the transport’s about ready, you should get some sleep,” Lewrie offered to atone for his absence.
“Still too much to do,” Mountjoy countered. “I’ll only sleep deep when all the ingredients are in the pot, and you’re off for the first raid. Oh God … Hedgepeth.”
Harmony’s Master had come up on deck to take the air. He was, as Mountjoy had described him, a dour twist. He was long and lean, squinty-eyed, eagle-beaked, and only put in his dentures for dining, which turned his sour mouth inwards. He wore his hair, what was left of it, grey, long, and thin, and seemed to shave only once a fortnight. Hedgepeth was a proper “scaly fish”, a real “tarpaulin” man, seared the texture and colour of old deer hide gloves by decades at sea. He was the best that could be hired, in truth, but by God, he was a trial!
“Cap’m Lewrie … Mister Mountjoy,” he said in a deep, gravelly voice, turning the “Mister” into a speculation as to whether Mountjoy truly deserved it, touching the brim of a civilian hat.
“Captain Hedgepeth,” Lewrie greeted him with a doff of his hat. “The yard’s done a fine job of her, d’ye not think?”
“Only if yer damned Navy puts her back t’rights when yer done with her, Cap’m Lewrie,” Hedgepeth groused, “or she’ll never carry a decent cargo again. Might’s well turn her into an overnight packet on the Thames, with all them bloody cabins. Ship horses, maybe, for the stalls’re ready and waitin’, ain’t they.”
“I see the scrambling nets are aboard, sir,” Lewrie went on.
“For all they’re worth, aye,” Hedgepeth said, scratching at his whiskers. “Here now, ye puttin’ an Agent from the Transport Board aboard, who’ll tell me how t’scratch my own balls?”
“There will be Army officers aboard, of course, Captain, but their brief starts when they wade ashore in the surf,” Lewrie tried to explain. “I’m placing fifty of my hands aboard t’man the boats and steer ’em, and two of my senior Midshipmen. Normally, it’s one Mid per fifty men, but on-passage they’re to take orders from you. There will be an extra cook, which I’ll have to scrounge from the naval hospital, to assist yours, and my Jack In The Breadroom to stand in as a Purser. All will answer to you, sir.”
“All o’ that makes for one helluva crowd,” Hedgepeth said, taking a moment to spit over the quarterdeck bulwarks, “lubberly Redcoats heavin’ over the side, wanderin’ about in everyone’s way like so many stray hogs, and yer fifty sailors layin’ about idle. Shit!”
“Use ’em, watch and watch, Captain Hedgepeth,” Lewrie offered. “Cut your men’s workload ’til they have to man the boats. Sapphire’s your main defence should we run into trouble at sea, but you’d have armed soldiers, well-trained sailors t’fend off boarders, and a way to use your swivel guns to best effect.”
“We get into that much trouble, a Spaniard or Frog’d lay off and shoot us t’pieces ’fore they’d try t’board us,” Hedgepeth sourly pointed out. “Aye, we’ll play yer games, Cap’m Lewrie, though I don’t think much’ll come of it. Mister Mountjoy here’s payin’ the reckonin’. Ye know yer bloody boats’re too heavy t’hoist aboard, even with all yer Redcoats and tars heavin’. I tow all six like a string o’ ducklin’s, I doubt I’d make four or five knots.”
“Then I’ll just have to reduce sail and keep close to you,” Lewrie promised, trying hard not to sound impatient, but Lord, the man was surly!
“Fun t’watch, heh heh,” Hedgepeth said, with an open-mouthed laugh, which was not all that pretty. “Jolly!” he suddenly bellowed in a quarterdeck voice louder than Lewrie had ever heard. “Boil me up a pot o’ black coffee, Jolly, ye idle duck-fucker!”
The ship’s cook, a fellow nigh as old and ugly as Hedgepeth, popped his head out of the forecastle galley, shouting, “Beans grindin’ an’ th’ warter a’roilin’, sir!” Lewrie was amazed to see that Jolly had all his arms and legs. Most Navy cooks were Greenwich Pensioners and amputees, given an easy job instead of being discharged.
“We’ll take our leave, Captain,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat.
“Cap’m Lewrie … Mister Mountjoy,” Hedgepeth said, nodding and turning away with a twinkle in his eyes. “Heh heh heh.”
Once seated aft in his 25-foot cutter, and the oarsmen making way to the quayside to drop Mountjoy off, Lewrie turned back to look at Harmony, and the six large boats nuzzling her hull. “She’ll do, Mountjoy, she’ll do main-well,” Lewrie told him.
“What’s next?” Mountjoy wondered.
“See the hospital, get a cook,” Lewrie japed. “I’ll send my man, Yeovill, t’see if there’s anyone who can do a bit more than boil water.”
“Troops,” Mountjoy countered. “We’ve all the pieces in place, but for them, and without a committment from Sir Hew Dalrymple, we’re in a cleft stick. Two companies, right?”