“Hang it,” Lewrie whispered to the cat, who looked up at him. “I think she’s come t’love me, Toulon. And, I think I feel the same!”
BOOK TWO
KING:
On, on, you noble English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,
Fathers that like so many Alexanders
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
T HE L IFE OF K ING
HENRYTHEFIFTH,
ACT III, SCENE I, 17–21
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The passage to Madeira was an odd one, quite unlike the last that had taken Reliant to Bermuda and the Bahamas in January of 1805. While the prevailing Westerlies in the Bay of Biscay were gusty, they did not vary more than 20 degrees either side of Due West, quite unlike the howling storms and mountainous seas that had raged against their frigate before. The wind direction did not swing capriciously to smack them on the bows and force them to make long boards just to avoid being driven into the rocky angle of the French and Spanish coasts, or force them onto Portuguese shoals. Once out at sea, beyond the Scilly Isles and Cape Ushant, a few days of close-reaching gained them bags of sea-room and hundreds of miles of safety margin from the risk of lee shores. Striding along Sou’-Sou’west or South by West upon a roughly beam wind and a beam sea, even the three clumsy transports could keep up with their escorting frigate, and reel off a satisfactory eight or nine knots from one Noon Sight to the next, making a goodly way.
Those beam seas and winds were rough on the troopers of the 34th aboard Ascot, for she would wallow and reel, heeling over to larboard before coming back upright to do it over and over again, as steadily as a clock, sending those lubbers to the lee rails to “cast their accounts to Neptune” on deck, or into buckets below if they could reach one in time. That gave Reliant’s seasoned and strong-stomached tars perverse pleasure, and a cause for jeering following each meal served aboard the Ascot.
The horses were another matter.
No matter how narrow the stalls were arranged aboard the horse transports to cut down on room to stagger, the continual rolling and wallowing, and the groaning of the hulls as they worked over the sea, quite un-settled the poor beasts. Some would panic and rear, frightened by the noise and motion, would break their forelegs and have to be put down. As strong and swift as they were, able to live twenty or more years, horses’ digestive systems were incredibly touchy, subject to twisted bowels, the strangle, or colic. At least once every two or three days, a horse would die, and be hoisted out of the holds, swayed out overside, and disposed of.
There were, perhaps, no other people on earth more fond of the horse than the English. From the meanest, poorest ship’s boy to the officers aft, horses were a part of their lives, for pleasure riding and hunting among the better-off, essential to the livelihood of the cottager farmer, the coachman, the street vendor or waggoner, or the punter at the races. Every loss of a horse turned Reliant’s sailors glum and quietly sad. Below over their meals, almost every Man Jack had an idea of how those poor beasts should have been handled, or treated; if he’d been over there, they’d not have died, by God!
The other oddity of the voyage to the Azores was the rare empty-ness of the ocean. The Bay of Biscay should have teemed with merchant traffic, with British ships outward bound, neutral American ships headed to Europe, and French and Spanish merchantmen hoping to sneak their way past the Royal Navy’s blockade, rare they were, though.
But, except for one trade of two-dozen East Indiamen bound North for English ports under a strong escort, one fast Liverpool slaver that flew past them on the first leg of the infamous Triangle Trade to pick up a cargo of “Black Ivory”, and one slow Portuguese ship headed to the Azores which they briefly spoke then left wallowing and plodding far astern, they had the sea to themselves.
Lewrie and his officers were relieved by that lack, though yet a touch uneasy. The Bay of Biscay ports were home to many French privateers which sallied from Brest, Quimper, Quiberon, L’Orient, St. Nazaire, La Rochelle, and the mouth of the Gironde river. And, there was still that large French fleet under Admiral Villeneuve to worry about. Villeneuve had been the bug-a-bear when Reliant was in the Bahamas in the Spring and Summer, when it had been rumoured to be down South in the Windward or Leeward Islands. That fleet’s sailing surely had drawn off the British blockading squadrons in the Bay of Biscay, as it had Nelson’s fleet, allowing French National Ships, their frigates and corvettes, a chance to put out and prey upon British commerce, too. Yet, there had been no sign of that threat, either.
So, it was with a great sense of relief when the cloud-shrouded peaks of the Azores loomed up on the Sou’west horizon, and those peaks became solid as they drew nearer to the island of Madeira. There was even joy as they rounded the Sou’east cape and could espy the port of Funchal and its wide, open roadstead, where they could meet up with the rest of the expedition, and turn their charges over to Commodore Popham, then come to anchor, and a quiet and peaceful, motionless rest.
* * *
“Well, where the Devil are they, then?” Lt. Westcott asked no one in particular as they beheld the roadstead … a very empty roadstead.
“Senhor?” the local pilot said, turning his attention from the approaches to the bay to Westcott. “The English expedition fleet? It has sailed, perhaps a week ago. They did not stay long.”
“For where?” Lewrie asked the pilot.
“South, Senhor Capitáo, is all I know of them,” the pilot said with a shrug.
“Perhaps we should continue on right away, sir,” Westcott suggested to Lewrie. “If we’re a week behind, and they’ll be needing our cavalry. To come all this way, yet miss out!”
“Miss out on the action, and the excitement, ye mean,” Lewrie replied with a smile. After three years or so, he knew Westcott’s need for any relief of boredom; combat, or women. “No, the beasts aboard the transports are runnin’ short on water, oats, hay, and straw, and a good place t’dump the stable sweepin’s. Our compatriots in the Army had planned to replenish here, counted on it, really. I fear we have no choice. We’ll stand in and anchor, and see t’their needs.”
“The stable sweepings, sir?” Westcott posed with a brow up.
“The Azores are rocky. They need all the manure they can get,” Lewrie told him, chuckling. “They might consider our arrival a gift from Heaven.”
“Rocky, and dry, Senhor Teniente,” the pilot chirped up, beaming wide. “Has been a drought for many years, and we do not have the pastures for enough animals. My mother’s gardens need more water and fertiliser. One point to starboard, Senhor Quartermaster,” he added, to the senior rating on the helm.
“Do you happen to know if there is a British Consul in town?” Lewrie asked their pilot.
“Oh, sí, Senhor Capitáo,” the perky fellow quickly supplied. “He is Senhor Gilberto Gilbao, a big merchant in Funchal.”