"I'll recompense you for…"
"No, 'twas his old'un, and part of the gift, since he's so fond of it," Desmond objected, "and the little fellow's already figured out the right place to make, isn't that clever?"
"Well, you give any of 'em a nice box o' sand or dirt, a little privacy, and that's pretty-much bred in the bone," Lewrie chuckled as the kitten dug his claws into the gilt-laced lapel of his dress coat and made loud sniffing noises. And purring fit to bust. "Don't know how Toulon'd like a playmate. He's set in his ways, but… I'm sure they'll take to each other."
Sooner or later, he silently hoped; please, Jesus!
"You like him, sir?" Desmond said as Lewrie pried the kitten off his coat and gently set him back in the hat-box. He put the cover on, and he and Lewrie stood back up.
"Absolutely delighted!" Lewrie lied most earnestly. "You could not have bought a better, were you rich as King Midas. You're a grand young lad, Desmond. I'm proud of you, for being so quick aboard your foe. Your uncle tells me you're shaping main-well as a gentleman-in-training… though more attention to your studies'd not go amiss!" he said, playfully making as if to tweak the boy's nose. He hadn't a clue about Desmond as a scholar, but such flummerous words always seemed to hit near the mark where midshipmen, and boys, were concerned. "Proud of your thoughtfulness, too, and your generosity."
"I call him Snowflake," Desmond proudly imparted.
"Well, early days… he might grow up t'be big as Toulon, and who ever heard of a champion, two-stone ram-cat named Snowflake, hey?" Lewrie chortled, then softened, in dread of hurting the lad's feelings. "Mean t'say… ye can't insult a proud, willful creature with a wrong name. Have to observe for a time, before the apt name comes. Might end up a Smudge, a Scamp, or a Rascal, you never can tell. Well… I must go, son. Thankee, again, and soon as I'm back, you'll come aboard and dine with me, and see how little No-Name fares, right?"
"I shall look forward to it… father!" the lad replied, with a covert wink before they did their appropriate goodbyes, dictated by Society and naval etiquette.
Another bloody cat, Lewrie told himself, settling in the stern-sheets of his gig with the hat-box in his lap; first of a curmudgeon's round dozen, like poor old Captain Lilycrop back in '82? Christ, just spare me! Still… the boy meant well by it. I'm sure he did.
CHAPTER THIRTY
HMS Proteus was driven like Jehu had driven his chariot, sails set "all to the royals," stays'ls bellied out between her masts everywhere even the tiniest zephyr of wind could be caught, cupped by heavy flax or cotton and used to impart power. Stuns'ls were boomed out on her course and tops'l yards, and the rarely employed sprits'l beneath her plunging jib-boom and bowsprit had been spread, now stiff with the furious boil and bluster of salt spray flung up from the cutwater and the frigate's fine entry.
Driven though he was, Lewrie did take time to thank Proteuss builders, the Nicholson yards at Frindsbury on the Medway, for "Frenchifying" her and improving on the numerous Thames class frigates. What he knew about ship design could fill a thimble, admittedly, and the new science of hydraulics, as the learned half-English half-Swede director of the Royal Dockyards at Karlskrona, Fredrick af Chapman, wrote of it, was quite beyond him. All he knew was that Proteus was swift.
His Surgeon's Mate, the scholarly French emigre Mr. Durant, once a university-trained Physician before fleeing the Terror in France, had taken time to read up on his new surroundings in all its contrary, esoteric mysteries, and was the only one who could explain it.
"T'ink of ze seawater as treacle, ze molasses, Capitaine" Durant said over supper in Lewrie's great-cabins, to enlighten his commanding officer's "darkness," exasperated at last, perhaps, by Capt. Lewrie's befuddled look. "Ze faster you go, ze more ze water is compressed by ze bows, but water, any liquid, you cannot compress, comprends? It bash back at you, it makes ze stone wall. You must cut ze water, never try to batter t'rough it. Ze ladle floats on treacle, you cannot submerge it easily. Ah, but ze knife blade, hawn-hawn!" he had triumphantly concluded, replete with that snorting nasal laugh to which Frogs seemed so damnably partial.
Proteus's fore-end frames stood narrower to her keel, sacrificing beaminess and storage capacity, surrendering just a bit of forward buoyancy, rising straighter and more vertically near her stem pieces to narrow her lowest forefoot and entry. Her planking had required more costly steaming and bending to create a rounder and more graceful arc, more of a hemispherical bow moulding than the usual nearly square-cut form. Nowhere near as fine as the bows of a cutter, gig, or fishing boat, for Nicholson's naval architects could but create a compromise… but a highly pleasing, and swift, compromise she was. So, HMS Proteus stood Sou-Sou'west from Antigua, determined to give French-held Guadeloupe a wide berth this time, and with the wind fine on her larboard quarter she was making nearly eleven and a half knots, still "battering" her way against those "treacly," glittering seas, not as fast as the Trades blew, but close, so that hands on deck could get a bit of cooling respite from the afternoon heat and savour the impatient keen and hum of the Trades in the rigging, the drumming and booming of her stout-planked hull as she met the long-set four- or five-foot seas, and the waterfall's, dragon's hiss, of her wake. "Sail ho!" a lookout in the main-mast cross-trees cried. "Two point off th' larb'd quarter! One… two… three sail, astern!"
"Astern of us?" Lt. Langlie said with a puzzled grunt. Lifting his brass speaking-trumpet to his lips, he shouted aloft, "Can you make them out?"
"Tops'ls, t'gallants an' royals t'th' first'un! T'gallants an' royals t'th' second…" the lookout shouted back. "Last'un, I kin see royals, only, sir! Two ships, an' a brig! First'un might be Sumter!"
"Mister Grace, my duty to the Captain, and inform him that the Americans might be out, astern of us, and following," Lt. Langlie said.
"Now now, lads… behave," Lewrie cajoled his cats. "No Name" was inside his hat box, forepaws, eyes, and muzzle peeking playfully at its rim, and madly scrambling to get out for the fifth time, trilling and mouse-squeaking. Toulon stood a foot or so aloof of the box, with his tail bottled up, ears laid flat, his back arched, and his fur stood on end. His comment to such mediations was a long, wrathful moaning, followed by a fang-baring hiss of equal duration, punctuated by a spit, and a testy chop-licking. "No Name," far from being daunted by such a welcome, seemed to regard Toulon's action as a delightful raree-show, and an invitation to play. "Christ Almighty, now…" Lewrie sighed. "Damme, I know he meant well, but… Aye, Mister Grace?"
"Mister Langlie's duty, sir, and I'm to tell you that the American squadron seems to be astern of us, sailing on our same course."
"Oh hell, this could get embarrassing," Lewrie muttered, contemplating what a horse-laugh the Yankee Doodles would have when they got wind of why he'd dashed out of English Harbour so frantically. "Aspinall, er… I'm going on deck. Do you try to keep the littl'un alive 'til I return."