"Whilst, pray God, the French do not get a wink of sleep, wondering what new devilment will befall them," Charlton seconded.
"Hogue is senior, then?" Lewrie asked, knowing that even large one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged cutters were usually Lieutenants' commands.
"Ah, no." Ayscough sobered, even looking a shade evasive for a second. "Commander James Kenyon in Erato is senior by a year."
Lewrie's lips half-parted, and his face took on a stunned look.
"Know him, do you?" Ayscough off-handedly enquired.
"Second Lieutenant of my first ship in 1780, old Ariadne, sixty-four," Lewrie found wit to reply. That back-gammoning bastard's here? he thought, stupefied.
"Took him long enough," Charlton said with a shrug at the fickle nature of Navy politics. "Must not have had a single decent patron for 'interest' or influence 'pon his career."
"God pity you!" Ayscough commented with false sympathy. "First ship a doddering old sixty-four, and as feeble a sailer as this barge!"
"Became the stores ship at Antigua, did she not?" Capt. Charlton asked, faintly frowning to recollect. "Seem to recall… no matter. Did I not have to hunt about and use up half my 'interest' and patronage, I'd gladly let Lyme become a stores ship or troopship, like the few of her sort still in commission, and trade up to a Third Rate."
"And, toss Chesterfield into that pot, too, God willing," Commodore Ayscough quickly seconded. "Well, then! Here's a double toast, sirs. Success to Captain Lewrie… and confusion to the French!"
"Hear, hear!" Charlton cried as they tipped their glasses back to "heel-taps." "We need a bowl of punch, by God!" Ayscough decided. "Droop! Fetch us the bowl and makin's for a good, stout punch!"
"Come all ye bold heroes, give an ear to my song,
and we'll sing in the praise of good brandy and rum.
'Tis a clear crystal fountain good England con-trols.
Give me the punch ladle, I'llfath-om the bowl!"
Lewrie and Charlton sang along to Ayscough's rough, raspy lead, twice | through all verses before the ladle was first dipped, and cups were filled. Kenyon, my God! Lewrie grimly thought, no matter the good cheer; how am I t'deal with him, after all these years?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dawn came hazy, with a light fog up the estuary of the Gironde. The sea was slack and glassy, and the winds from out of the West were light, though steady. Right after breakfast and a shave, Lewrie bent Savage's course inshore, the frigate enjoying the tops'l breeze, with her main course twice-reefed, and t'gallants and royals brailed up to the upper yards, but all stays'ls and jibs hoisted for quicker manoeuvring.
It was second-best uniform for Lewrie this morning, his plainer cocked hat on his head, without all the formal folderol of the previous evening's supper. Though it was a cool morning, a touch shy of nippy, the breeze on Savage's starboard quarters felt too humid to savour.
"Showers by the middle of the Day Watch, I would wager, sir," the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, gloomily pronounced as he peered, bird-quick, from each headland or sea mark to the next with his pocket compass, one of his new charts spread atop the binnacle cabinet. Though he did not pencil bearings on his chart, Winwood did mumble to himself as if memorising reciprocal courses. "Were I a wagering man, of course."
Lewrie glanced astern to scan the skies for weather signs, but could not discover any cause for Winwood's prediction. For the man's nervousness, Lewrie could determine good cause; slap Winwood up against a strange new coast, hostile or no, and he would turn as skittery as a whore in church, for he had not yet known it, had the proper seaman's distrust in twenty-year-old re-drawn and reprinted charts, and was just as responsible as his captain for the safe navigation of the ship. Miss just one shoal or rock that was marked on the charts, hit one that wasn 't; either way, his career was on the line, and, until Winwood was as conversant with their new area of operations as he was of his own palm lines, there would be no living with him, no cheer in his body.
Not that ponderous and cautious Mr. Winwood had ever been much for good cheer.
"Mister Mayhall reports six and a quarter knots, Captain," Lt. Urquhart stiffly reported, doffing his hat by Lewrie's side. "A light breeze, sir, even if it is on the quarter."
"Good enough for now, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie said. "No sense chargin' in like a Spanish fightin' bull. Sooner or later, they get stabbed by the matador's, sword. Today's a get-acquainted day, get the feel o' things… meet up with the lighter ships, and their captains, anyway. And," he quipped in a softer voice, inclining his head towards Mr. Winwood, "we must allow the Sailing Master t'get his feel for ev'ry wee pitfall. He'll not sleep a wink 'til he does."
"Aye, sir," Lt. Urquhart replied, with a brief, but shy, grin, as if he had to think about it before reacting.
Two of a kind, really, Lewrie thought as he took a sip of his coffee, then strolled over to the starboard mizen shrouds. Urquhart might as well have been Winwood's bastard son, for all his humourlessness. Comes o' tryin' too hard? Lewrie speculated; or, is he just a sober-side from birth?
In their few weeks at sea, Lt. Urquhart so far had appeared as taciturn and serious as a Scottish Calvinist preacher. The man never slouched, never allowed himself more than four glasses of wine in the wardroom (so his cabin servant and personal cook, Aspinall, had heard from the officers' mess servants), never took part in any of the high-cockalorum antics his fellow Lieutenants might stage, appeared to need no more than four hours sleep a night, and could always be found fully dressed and on the quarterdeck, sometimes for as little cause as when the nanny goat farted.
Was he competent? Yes, immensely so, and Lewrie could find no fault with how, during his London absences, Urquhart had seen to the ship's fitting-out, storing, and re-arming. Was Urquhart the complete sailorman, a tarry-handed "tarpaulin man" with the addition of a gentlemanly education, manners, and dignity? Aye, he was. He just was not… Anthony Langlie, Lewrie could resignedly bemoan. Langlie, during their three years in Proteus … Lt. Knolles, his First Officer aboard HMS Jester.. . even Arthur Ballard when he had had the converted bomb-ketch Alacrity in the Bahamas. All of those officers had been young, though able, possessed of quick wit and good humour. Ballard, well… he had his ponderous moments, but sly and dry, and a good friend, as well.
Been spoiled, I s'pose, Lewrie thought with a sigh. All of his First Lieutenants since his first commands had felt more like helpful and supportive friendsl Urquhart, though…
Lewrie supposed he could put his moodiness down to all of that punch, port claret, and rhenish that he'd sloshed down with Ayscough and Charlton. It had been past eleven when he'd reeled his way aboard Savage, and barely managed to undress before sprawling into his swinging bed-cot, and falling asleep as if pole-axed, and had been roused, drooling onto his pillows, both by the Bosuns' calls for "All Hands," and the chimes of Eight Bells as the Middle Watch ended at 4 a.m. Well, all that, and the cats. Stocky Toulon, the black'un with white markings, and Chalky, the youngest with white fur and grey splotches, had pawed, leaped upon him with all four paws as close together as a quartet of coins abutted on a publican's bar counter, with loud and raspy "We're Starving!" squawls, and urgent digging at the bed linens right by his nose!