"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Spendlove shouted from the taffrail.
Lewrie frowned, wondering if Captain Charlton would need their presence to finish off the frigate. Was he the overly cautious sort?
"Our number, sir!" Spendlove read off, stepping up onto the signal-flag lockers and balancing with one hand about the larboard lanthorn post. " 'Pursue Chase More Closely,' sir!"
"Well, right, then." Lewrie sighed in relief. They'd begin the cruise with prizes. Another good omen, he thought.
"More, sir!" Spendlove shouted. "She sends… 'Well Done,' sir! Our number, and 'Well Done'!" he concluded proudly.
"Mister Crewe, secure the guns," Lewrie instructed the Master Gunner from the forrud quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist and the still-smoking barrels. "And pass the word. The flag sends us a 'Well Done.' Pass the word for the Purser, too," he called down to the grinning, smoke-fouled sailors of his crew. "Small-beer to be served up, a mug a man. 'Tis thirsty work, beatin' the French, hey lads?"
That raised a cheer from them. There'd be prize money from a big French frigate. Hull and fittings, stores and guns might earn a total of Ј20,000, with them receiving an eighth-plus "head and gun money" for every seaman aboard, and each artillery piece. For battle, it had been relatively bloodless, too, barely a whit of what a real slaughter it might have been.
Mister Rees, their ship's carpenter, came up from the midships ladderway, brushing past the happy and relieved sailors, a look of some worry on his face, and Lewrie steeled himself for bad news.
"Hulled, sir," Mr. Reese reported at the top of the starboard quarterdeck ladder, doffing his knit cap. He was fairly young for his warrant, hawk-faced and eagle-beaked, but baked into premature middle age by a lifetime at sea, his dark Welsh complexion permanently bronze. "One int' yer great-cabins, sir, an' yer stern-lights all smash. One, alow that'un, Cap'um. Fish-room an' bread-room stores're scattered Hell t'breakfast… can't breathe down t'ere fer all t'biscuit-dust. Starb'd quarter scantlin's all smash, but nought below t'waterline. Forrud bulwark… but ye seen that'un, I guess, sir. A day's labour, in harbour, t're-plank, starb'd. Last'un, sir…" Rees said with a gleam in his eyes. "Clean puncture… t' rough t'surgery, sir."
"Good God, was anyone…?" Lewrie gawked. That was a shot in the orlop, below the waterline, even if…!
"T'surgeon, Mister Howse, sir…" Rees marveled. "Wearin' a clean set o' breeches, I'm told, Cap'um. Clean t'rough scantlin's, an' t'second futtock, caromed off t'berth-deck wale, int' t'orlop, an' jammed int' a knee-timber. Blieve t'gent'man collected himself a wee splinter'r two, sir, but all's well."
Lewrie found it very hard to hide a spiteful smile. He coughed to clear his throat and turned his gaze outboard. But he saw Rees in much the same predicament.
"Aye, Mister Rees, thankee for your report," Lewrie said. "Do you sound the well, though, just in case one lodged below."
"I'm on it, sir," Rees said, knuckling his brow and turning to go. Then here came Cony in his wake to make his report.
"Sir, we come through right fair," he related. "No riggin' in danger, no damage below th' waterline, no guns dismounted. I run into Mr. LeGoff, an' 'e toP me t'tell ya… three wounded. Marine Private Dykes… Landsmen Orick and Siler. 'T ain't too bad, consid'rin'. Be a few weeks o' light-duty, God willin', an' they'll be right as rain. Ord'nary Seaman Butturini, though, sir… well, 'e ain't got long."
"One of our Maltese seamen, aye." Lewrie sighed. It was such a short "butcher's bill"; but any one was much too long. "Didn't see much hope for him right off. I s'pose you've a bottle of rum handy?"
"Well, o' course, sir," Cony said with a sad grin. "I'm th' Bosun, ain't I?"
"Him and his mates… see he goes comfortable, if you would," Lewrie told him. "I'd be obliged."
"Aye, sir. An' I'll tell th' sailmaker."
"Right." Lewrie nodded abruptly. It would be Mr. Paschal's duty to sew up a canvas shroud for Ordinary Seaman Butturini and be ready to stitch him into it, once he passed over; with a final stitch through the nose, so everyone would rest easy that he was really gone.
"Pity 'bout Mr. Howse, though, ain't it, sir?" Cony chuckled. " 'Eard-tell Mr. Buchanon swore they wuz blood on th' wind. Didn't think h'it'd be his, though. Why, 'tis enough t'put th' fear o' God in a man, Cap'um Lewrie, sir! Which god, now…"
"Get along with you, Mister Cony," Lewrie said with a smirk.
"Aye aye, sir." Cony grinned, doffing his plain cocked hat.
There was muffled gunfire astern. Lewrie turned to see that French frigate, now being engaged by Lionheart and Pylades, two miles or more alee. That wouldn't last long, he thought. Nor would those two merchantmen, which were clawing their way eastward, into the teeth of the wind, but too heavily laden to escape. It had barely gone two bells of the First Dog Watch-half past four p.m. They'd be up with the merchantmen they were chasing a little after sunset, he reckoned; and Myrmidon level with hers a bit before. Prize-money, and a handsome letter to Jervis-then the Admiralty-from Charlton for a plucky afternoon's work. So promising a beginning, aye… yet…
A man had died. One of their Jesters had died. And what sort of foreboding omen was that? Alan wondered.
CHAPTER 3
They were two big, fine three-masted ships, almost large enough to be mistaken for 4th Rate 50-gunners or very large but older two-deck frigates, and their arrival in the Austrian port of Trieste, with the British ensign atop their mizzen masts, might have led an observer on shore to think them part of a powerful squadron at first glance. A closer inspection, though, would have shown the French Tricolour flag flown lower, from their stern gaffs. Led by a pair of sloops of war, followed by two unmistakably British frigates, the six vessels swept into harbour about midday, their eighth on-passage, after calling for pilots beyond the bar, then standing off-and-on until someone in authority woke up and took notice of their arrival.
"Sleepy damn' place," Lewrie observed dryly, giving Trieste a good look-over once Jester had made-up to a permanent Austrian naval mooring, and had rowed out a single kedge to keep her from swinging afoul of the other ships in port.
British ships, mostly, he noted. Trieste was Austria 's one and only naval base, home of their own small East Indies Trading Company to the Far East. But it was remarkably empty and inactive. Buoys dotted the glass-calm waters, but very few were taken, and the network of quays and warehouses were bare of bustle. He'd expected a busy seaport, just as full of commercial doings as Plymouth… damn, even a faded Bristol! Nowhere near a Liverpool, or the Pool of London, of course, but…!
There were damned few warships flying the horizontal red-white-red crowned flag of Austria, either. There was a trim little gun-brig sporting a commissioning pendant, a pair of feluccas, such as he'd come to know from his Mediterranean experience. There were even a brace of what looked to be xebecs, long, lean and low to the water, like Barbary Corsair raiders. What looked to be a 6th Rate frigate now careened on a mud flat, mastless and abandoned, half rotted to pieces. And there were galleys! Small galleys with only one short lateen mast, lateener-rigged, with spars as long as they were; with row-boxes built out like "camels" on either beam, and pierced for dozens of oars or sweeps on either side. There were even more ashore, run up on launch ramps, and partially sheltered from the weather by open-sided sheds, such as he'd read in Homer's Iliad was the Greek fashion, back in the ancient days of Athens' glory two thousand years or more before!