“Steerage way?” Lewrie asked the helmsmen.
“A bit, sir!” Quartermaster Baldock tentatively replied as he shifted the spokes of the forward-most of the twin wheels.
“A point up to windward, to get some drive from the jibs,” Lewrie ordered, pacing over to peer into the compass bowl, then look aloft at the commissioning pendant and how it was streaming.
Damme, that’s the end o’ that! he sadly thought as he watched his broad pendant come fluttering down the slackened halliard, that red bit of bunting with the white ball in the centre.
“Way, sir,” Baldock reported. “The rudder’s got a bite, now.”
“Steer for mid-channel, then, with nothing t’leeward,” Lewrie told him.
“Mid-channel aye, sir, an’ nothing t’leeward!” Baldock echoed.
“Hands to the braces!” Westcott was ordering, now that the topsails were fully spread, half-cupping the breeze. “Haul in the lee braces!”
Reliant was under way, free of the ground, with just enough of a drive to create the faintest bow wave under her forefoot and her cutwater, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. Before he would go to the windward rail, where a ship’s captain ought to be, he remained in the centre of the quarterdeck, looking shoreward. There were people there, on the piers and along Bay Street, waving goodbye. Some of them were women who waved handkerchiefs. Did some pipe their eyes in sadness?
Just after leaving Athenian and his last meeting with Grierson, Lewrie had announced to the crew that they would be sailing for home … where their pay chits would be honoured in full, and the shares in their ship’s prize-money would be doled out, he had reminded them, to make some of the dis-contented think twice about desertion. He had hoisted the “Easy” pendant and put the ship “Out Of Discipline” for a day and a night to let the whores and temporary “wives” come aboard, and even after full order was restored, he had granted shore liberty to each watch in turn so his sailors could stretch their legs ashore and lounge at their ease in the many taverns, rut in the brothels, and attend the “Dignity Balls” that the Free Blacks would stage. The Mulatto girls, the Quadroons and Octoroons, might be above being shopped by the pimps in the bum-boats like common doxies, but the fancily-dressed “Dignity Ladies”, for a discreet price, would make young sailormen feel as if they had discovered Fiddler’s Green, the sailors’ Paradise, where ale and spirits flowed freely, the music never ended, the girls were obliging and eager, and the publicans never called for the reckoning.
“Departing salute to the Governor-General, sir?” Lt. Westcott prompted.
“Aye, Mister Westcott, carry on,” Lewrie agreed, pacing over to the windward bulwarks where he belonged, and, as the gun salute boomed out in its slow measure, and the leeward side became wreathed in smoke, Lewrie doffed his hat to the women ashore, one memorable woman in particular whom he, in retrospect, had best never see again!
Once the last gun had been fired, Marine Lieutenant Simcock came to the top of the starboard ladderway. “Beg pardons, sir, but, given our departure for England, I wonder if ‘Spanish Ladies’ might be welcome.”
“A fine idea, Mister Simcock!” Lewrie heartily agreed. “Carry on and put a good pace to it, as you did before.”
“‘Fa-are-well, and a-dieu, to you fine Spanish la-adies, fa-are-well, and adieu, to you la-dies of Spain! Fo-or we’ve received orders to sail for Old England, but we hope very shortly to see you again! We’ll rant and we’ll roll, like true British sailor-men, we’ll rant and we’ll roll, all across the salt seas, ’til we strike Soundings in the Channel of Old England, then straight up the Channel to Portsmouth we’ll go!’”
Reliant’s sailors were bound for home. It was a beautiful morning of fresh-washed blue skies and white clouds, and the waters in the channel out to sea were clear enough to see schools of fish darting from the frigate’s shadow, the waters shading off to the most brilliant blue-green, bright jade green, and aquamarine. Now that the running rigging was belayed on fife and pin-rails, the excess flaked or flemished down, and the sails drawing well without tending, the crew could find time to sing, belting out the words with the joy of departing.
Older mast-captains and the younger and spryer captains of the tops had gathered in a group atop a hatch grating beneath the cross-deck timbers of the boat-tier beams in the waist, forming an impromptu chorus, swinging their arms as if their hands already held home-brewed ale mugs in their favourite old taverns.
“‘No-ow I’ve been a topman, and I’ve been a gunner’s mate, I can dance, I can sing, a-and walk the jib-boom! I can han-dle a cutlass, and cut a fine figure, whenever I’m given en-nough standing room!
“‘We’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailormen, we’ll rant and we’ll roar, both aloft and be-low! ’Til we sight Lizard, on the coast of Old England, then straight up the Chan-nel to Portsmouth we’ll go!’” that chorus roared, and the ship’s boys, the cabin servants who served as nippers and powder-monkeys, pranced and practiced their horn-pipes round the covered hatchway, and the very youngest raced round and shrieked with delight, with Bisquit in pursuit, or being the chased, it was hard to tell which.
“Let them rant, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as he joined Lewrie by the windward bulwarks.
“Aye, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied, a happy grin on his face, and his right hand beating the time on the cap-rails as he sang along now and then. “It’ll take half an hour more before we haul off Nor’west. They’ll play out long before then.”
He looked aft towards the larboard quarter to see Arawak Cay and the eastern tip of Long Cay well clear; off the starboard quarter stood the long spit of Hog Island. And framed between the taffrail lanthorns lay the harbour channel and the town of Nassau, glowing in an infinite variety of pastel paint on the walls, already shrinking away, the green hills of early Spring turning brown and dusty in the glare of late Summer.
“Mind, though,” Lewrie said, “does the wind give you an opportunity, I’ll have the fore course, main course, and t’gallants filled.”
“I don’t suppose it matters at this point, sir, what our duty will be once we leave the dockyards,” Westcott said with a shrug. “I only hope whatever we’re set to is as successful as our last.”
“Even if it ended badly,” Lewrie said, sighing and leaving the bulwarks to walk a few paces forward to look down into the waist at his singing and capering crewmen. “Damme, I’m going to miss Darling, Bury, and Lovett. We made a hellish-good team!”
“But, with any luck, sir, we’ll find another,” Westcott said with a hopeful tone.
“We’ll see,” Lewrie said, nodding. “We’ll see.”
BOOK ONE
KING:
Then forth, dear countrymen. Let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.
Cheerly to sea the signs of war advance.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
T HE L IFE OF K ING
HENRYTHEFIFTH,
ACT II, SCENE II, 189–192
CHAPTER TEN
Calling upon the Port Admiral of Portsmouth was always a dicey proposition. Admiral Lord Gardner was a lean and sour older fellow, “all sealing wax, stay tape, and buckram”, it was said of him (as well as his contemporary at Plymouth), who never seemed to have a good day, and God help the fool, or fools, who crossed him, disappointed, discomfitted, or disturbed him, for he never would suffer fools gladly. And this morning, he was looking particularly dys-peptic.