"Mister Larkin!" Lewrie drawled in a loud voice. "No 'private Marines' on the quarterdeck except in battle, remember?"
"I'll see to him, sor… sir," their youngest Mid replied, as he came forward to doff his hat quickly, then scoop up the offending mongoose, clatter down the larboard ladderway to the waist, and shout for Sgt. Skipwith to come get his errant beastie. Again. Once it was safe to do so, Toulon and Chalky settled down on their haunches to judder their little jaws and utter "I'm-Going-To-Kill-It" mews.
"Such brave callings," Lewrie muttered with a smile as he clung to the larboard mizen stays to enjoy the refreshing breeze, his uniform coat discarded, along with his formal cocked hat, and waist-coat undone and flapping either side of his shirt.
"Thus!" Lt. Langlie cried as Proteus settled on a course a full point more Westerly, now they were clear of the larboardmost column of ships, and could begin to range outwards to scent for trouble skulking over the horizon in the West or Nor'west. Lewrie planned to stand out nearly six miles, before wearing and slanting back to the convoy. He paced down the slightly-slanting deck to amidships, by the binnacle and compass cabinet, and the double helm.
"Damn my eyes, Mister Langlie," Lewrie exulted, "but it feels so good t'be back at sea, does it not?"
"Indeed it does, sir," his First Officer happily agreed; and on the faces of the two Quartermasters manning the helm, brief smiles alit to say that it felt good to them, too, after so many weeks of drudgery in Table Bay, and too few chances for ease.
Making the Quartermasters smile, too, was the last full day of shore liberty that Lewrie had granted the crew after the Commodore's conference aboard the Earl Cheshire, before Capt. Leatherwood had put up the "Blue Peter" pendant, now two days past. Everyone had gotten a last chance for some deep drinking in Dutch Boer taverns, a last shot of "putting the leg over" some willing, or commercial, wench, and buying remembrances of Cape Town. That had resulted in rather a lot of small, jewel-like birds in woven cages, one grey parrot with a "salty" vocabulary, an odd, fox-faced little creature called a bushbaby that was already proving himself to be a very noisy pest, and a "gen-yoo-ine" African mongoose, adverted to its new owners as quicker, fiercer, and a lot cleverer than any Indian mongrel the Marines had. There would be a new contender for champion, in a few weeks, it seemed. At least Lt. Catterall and Bosun Pendarves had prevented the boarding of an entire troop of baby monkeys! The ship was crowded enough with new livestock for later consumption, up forward in the ship's manger; a whole new set of piglets, chickens, goats, and two small, scruffy, locally-obtained cattle, no bigger than some shaggy Scottish breeds. Two days North of Cape Town, they were out of the Variables and fully into the Sou'east Trades, skirting the edge of the great counter-clockwise swirl of the South Atlantic Current, which fed like a river into the Agulhas Current to whisk the convoy along. It was just about two thousand miles to St. Helena, but the Northward passage would be much quicker than the passage it had taken to get to the Cape of Good Hope; and every hour took them farther from threat of French raiders. Hopefully. Leatherwood had ordered Proteus out to sea with him, fully twelve hours before the convoy was to up-anchor on the next tide, for a good look-see over the waters near Cape Town, searching for a single scrap of suspicious sail on the horizons, and had found none, yet… like Capt. Leather-wood, Lewrie was now so infected by his nervousness that he felt as if he would not have an untroubled night's sleep 'til they anchored in James's Valley Harbour, either.
Where Proteus went from there, well… on a monthly rotation of home-bound and out-bound trades, there would be a convoy of Indiamen waiting at St. Helena; that convoy's escort force would split up, as his own had on the outward journey-the bulk of it sailing back to England to re-enforce the small escort that had fetched the homebound convoy that far. If there was a greater French threat on the Atlantic side of the Cape of Good Hope, there was a very good possibility that Proteus would be conscripted by the outbound convoy Commodore as part of his escort force. Just because Treghues had sailed away on his own did not mean that Lewrie and his frigate could consider themselves as "Independent," free to toddle back to Great Britain. There was no formal squadron or fleet assigned to convoy duties; warships got assigned that task "catch-as-catch-can," and Lewrie and Proteus had been caught! In truth, once repaired, should Lewrie cross hawses with Treghues, he'd still be under his orders, 'til officially reassigned by a Flag-Officer senior to Treghues.
And, should Proteus be forced to bolster an out-bound convoy, it was very likely that such a meeting would occur off the Southern coast of Africa, and Proteus would be forced to soldier on under that tetchy man's eye for years, much as Capt. Leatherwood and HMS Jamaica had been stuck on grueling convoy work, 'til the bottom threatened to fall off his ship!
For now, though, free of the land (where Lewrie just naturally found himself in trouble, more often than not) and with a single and specific task to perform, he could be happy enough. Twenty years he'd spent wearing "King's Coat," at sea and holding an "active" commission much longer than most of his contemporaries, and he'd always felt this way, this sense of relief and of new beginnings, these first few days after sailing, when the shoreline sank away, and there was nothing but the immensity of the oceans, and limitless horizons.
Boredom could come later, as it always did, but, for now, Lewrie was… happy. And would be happier still, if they attained harbour at St. Helena without incident!
"Is that gunfire?" the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, mused aloud, pausing in his perambulations along the starboard bulwarks. He lifted his nose as if he could smell the source of gunpowder. "My word…!"
All eyes swung to the convoy, the only ships in sight.
"Mister Larkin," Lewrie bade the Midshipman of the Watch. "Do you lay a glass on Jamaica , and tell us what you make out."
"Aye, sir!" Larkin responded, clambering up the starboard ratlines of the mizen stays with a telescope. "Signal, sir! 'Gun-Drill,' sir! She's workin' her great-guns, and so're th' Indiamen!"
"Ah!" Mr. Winwood said with a whoosh of a sigh.
"Why, those poor skinflints!" Lewrie chortled. "Forcin' 'John Company' captains t'blow away money! Tsk, tsk."
"Cut into their profits something sinful, that, sir," the First Officer snickered, along with the rest of the quarterdeck staff. "Do they keep at it much longer, there will be angry letters sent to Admiralty about it."
"Upset the passengers something sinful, too, sir," Mr. Winwood stated. "Imagine being shaken from their indolent torpors, the middle of their morning naps."
"Mister Langlie!" Lewrie called out. " Jamaica 's signal applies to us, as well. Let us hold live firing, from this instant to Seven Bells of the Forenoon. Our own guns, and crews, need the rust blown off."
"Aye aye, sir! Bosun, pipe 'All Hands'! Beat to Quarters!"
What a perfectly fine morning! Lewrie gladly thought as silver bosuns' calls piped, as a Marine drummer began a long roll, and hands came scampering up from below to man the guns, cast off, and begin to serve their pieces, as sea-chests and mess-tables were slung below to the orlop, deal and canvas partitions came slamming down, and hundreds of feet pounded on decks and ladderways.