"I'd admire that, too, sir," Alan truthfully said. "Aye, like the high old times."
"Here, this Fillebrowne," Rodgers puzzled, after another giant yawn. "Know much of him? One o' Hotham's 'newlies,' ain't he?"
"Well, sir…" Lewrie said, suddenly guarded. And feeling that flush of embarrassed irritation all over again! "But so is Charlton in a way." And, as the coach rattled and swayed over the poorly cobblestoned road, he related his first meeting with Fillebrowne at Elba, and what a first impression he'd formed. Without being too spiteful-sounding, he hoped!
"They come up so fast these days, Lewrie," Rodgers sighed, a fist over his mouth to cover another yawn. "So did we, come to think on't. Nicest, gentle-mannered Lieutenant in th' world, jumped out of th' gun-room or wardroom, onto his own bottom, well… there's always a few turn into th' worlds biggest bastards. Never know what a com-mand'll do to a fellow. And the newest, Lord… did ya ever note it? Get such big heads, 'tis a wonder there's a hat'd fit 'em! Scared o' makin' an error at th' same time, too. I'd expect Fillebrowne needs half a year o' command t'gain his confidence. That'll take all th' toplofty starch out o' th' lad. New shoes pinch sorest, 'til ya break 'em in. An' captain's shoes th' snuggest."
"I'd s'pose there's something in what you say, sir," Lewrie had to admit. Hadn't he been half terrified, his first day aboard Alacrity? Whole-terrified 'board Shrike, when he'd been jumped to First Officer, fresh from an Examining Board in '82, and knew just enough to be dangerous… but nothing near what a Lieutenant should?
Even if Fillebrowne had schemed, even murdered, to gain his promotion and his command, the sudden strain, the sense of isolation aft in the great-cabins and the immense, unpredictable and everlasting burden of total responsibility would turn a saint grumbly!
"Perhaps I should find him a kitten, sir," Lewrie chuckled in the dark interior of the coach. But Ben Rodgers wasn't listening to him any longer. He was awkwardly draped across the opposite leather seat, legs asprawl to either corner and his head tucked over sidewise like a pigeon would, to tuck his head under a wing to roost. Hat on sidewise, too, almost over his nose, and beginning to snore about as loud as an un-| greased bilge-pump chain.
"Oh, Christ!" Alan sighed, tweaking his nostrils shut as Ben Rodgers relieved his heavy Teutonic supper at last. A belch or two of stentorian loudness, that put a throaty gargle to his snores for a moment; then the sort of fart that'd make most producers sigh aloud with delight and pride. And make the rest envious.
"Dignity of command," Lewrie reminded himself in a soft voice, as Rodgers produced another that quite turned the air blue. The coach-horses couldn't do a finer! he thought. This'un now, was ripe and pungent beyond all imagining, making Lewrie grope for the sash-window's release strap to let it down so he could stick his head out!
His own supper sat heavy, his breeches as tight as a g utted tick, so.. well two can play this game, he thought. And Rodgers, lost in a creamy, Teasy, alcoholic stupour, had the gall to wriggle his nose at the result. But, he snored on, most thoroughly oblivious.
Well, damme, Lewrie thought; the nerve!
CHAPTER 4
"Let 'em go?" Lewrie ranted upon his quarterdeck, once he'd read the letter that Charlton had sent aboard. "Mine arse on a band-box, sir, but… let 'em go? Well, damme!"
The older midshipman from Lionheart, a fellow in his mid-twenties named Birtwistle, cringed and took half a step back from Lewrie's sudden fit of pique at that unwelcome news from the Venetians.
"Well, sir…" Birtwistle said with a shrug, when he could get a word in. "Since the captain only requested a ruling from the Doge and the authorities ashore, it isn't as if we're bound by it. We never turned the ships over to them, so they're ours to deal with as we like, the captain said to tell you, sir. B'lieve the letter goes on to say-"
"And what did the Doge and his senators say to that, Mr. Birtwistle?" ' Lewrie fumed.
"Didn't ask 'em, sir," Birtwistle grunted. "The captain said he thought they'd most-like be wringing their hands over it. But it'd be all they'd do. Captain Rodgers is to take charge of them, and sail them back under escort to Trieste and a real Prize-Court."
"Well, that's more like it," Lewrie sighed, at least a trifle mollified. "Thankee, Mister Birtwistle, for deliverin' this."
"Captain Charlton also sent this, sir…" Birtwistle said, as he reached into his uniform coat's breast-pocket to produce another of those letters. "I'm to wait for a verbal reply, sir."
Lewrie wrenched the letter open, expecting more bad news, but was delighted to find that Captain Charlton wished the pleasure of his company, along with one of his officers or midshipmen, to accompany him ashore that evening for another of those diplomatic suppers.
"Ah," Lewrie said, eyes crinkling in delight. "Very good, sir. Pray, do you render to Captain Charlton my utmost respects and thanks for the invitation, and I will fetch along my First Officer, Lieutenant Knolles. We'll be aboard Lionheart by the start of the First Dog."
"I'll tell him, sir," Birtwistle assured him, doffing his hat and making an escape before something else set Commander Lewrie off.
Let 'em go, mine arse! Lewrie groaned.
After a day of repair work, the squadron had sailed for Venice, on a beautiful morning with a brisk little Easterly gushing down off the Balkan mountains. Twenty miles out to sea, they'd stood, outside anyone's territorial claims. It wasn't much of a voyage; seventy or so sea-miles to the west. But they'd come across several merchant-ships and had been forced to overhaul them and speak them, anyway. Two had been British, one a Maltese. But the last two had made sail and run as soon as they'd spotted them, and it had taken half a day for the swifter Jester and Myrmidon to come up to musket-shot of them and fire a warning under their bows.
Fetched-to, and all else aluff, they'd boarded them, to discover that they were both "neutrals," one a Dane, the other Dutch. But once a good search had turned up more ship's papers, they'd found that both were French-chartered. And the Dutch ship was not a refugee, but one of those still working from a Batavian Republic port, which meant that she was from a French ally.
And she was crammed with tons of compass-timber, naval stores, masts and spars! The pitch, turpentine, tar and such was crammed below by the tun and cask, the spars atop that, the masts slung to either beam of her gangways and weather deck. The compass-timber, though, in the rough, was piled any-old-how, atop sawn oak plankings and baulks.
And rare, and valuable beyond belief to the French Navy! Just about to anyone's navy!
One could steam or bend straight-cut oak to some sort of shape, though it was costly. But to find the boughs, the butts of oak that were curved by nature, which could be adzed into the thick, stout oak beams that arced upward from the keel of a warship, which made first, lowermost futtocks, upper-deck tumble-homes, reinforcing bow or stern knees, well… it took over fifty acres of oak-trees to make a ship of the line, and not one tree in a thousand yielded proper compass-timber for all the sweet curves of a well-built ship.