"I still love ye t'death, Toulon," Lewrie commiserated, bending down to retrieve the hand towel and give the embarrassed cat a "wubbie" or two. He had to grin, for there had been scraped-off shaving soap on the towel, and Toulon had gotten some of it on his whiskers, which made him go slightly cross-eyed trying to see it and swipe it off, sitting up rabbit-fashion and whacking away with both paws.
Thermopylae rose up to a rare scending wave and heaved another slow roll to starboard, timbers, masts, and windward stays groaning in concert, and Lewrie half-staggered almost to amidships before catching himself. "Mine arse on a band-box!" he hissed under his breath, using one of his favourite expressions. That stagger involved some complicated foot stamping, which only drove the cat under the starboard-side settee, into relative darkness where Toulon could blink in shame and in umbrage, consulting his cat gods.
The larboard roll took Lewrie back to the wash-hand stand, where he took a firm grip with one hand and braced himself for another stab at shaving.
"Um… might you need me to do it for you, sir?" Pettus asked.
"No no, Pettus!" Lewrie countered with a false grin on his phyz, "Done for meself for years, in worse weather than this. Dined out on my dexterity!"
"If you say so, sir," Pettus replied with a dubious expression.
Once he'd scraped his whiskers as close as he dared, without cutting his own throat, Lewrie swabbed his face, tied his neck-stock, and donned his uniform coat. He made a careful way forrud to the dining-coach and his table, and his breakfast.
It was a Banyan Day, without any salt-meat issue, and after a miserable two months on blockade, a paltry and dull breakfast it was. There was oatmeal porridge, boiled up in water, not milk, and livened with a daub of rancid butter and a largish dollop of strawberry preserves. There was a slab of cheese from his own stores, not that crumbling, dry-as-sawdust Navy issue so beloved of the Victualling Board, but even that was beginning to go over, though showed no signs of red worms yet. And there was ship's biscuit. Lewrie had purchased extra-fine for himself, but it was tough going, even after being soaked in water for the better part of an hour before being served, and, did he wish to keep his remaining teeth, he'd chew it hellish-careful. There was coffee, at least, with sugar grated off a cone from his locking caddy, and sweet goat's milk from the nanny up forrud in the manger.
Lewrie turned his eyes towards the cats' dish at the far end of his table, where a reassured Toulon and a cocky Chalky were having their own porridge, laced with cut-up sausages and jerkied beef, and felt a trifle envious!
With his second piping-hot cup of coffee, Lewrie considered one more biscuit, and peered into the bread barge… just in time to see the weevils crawling out of the last piece. No thankee! he thought.
"I'll be on deck, Pettus," Lewrie said, shoving back from his plate and rising. "Shove me into my boat-cloak, and I'm off."
"Captain's on deck!" Midshipman Tillyard announced to one and all as Lewrie trotted up the larboard gangway ladder from the waist. "Morning, sir," Tillyard added, with a hand to his hat.
"And a dull'un, Mister Tillyard," Lewrie replied, his own right hand touching the front of his cocked hat. "Good morning to you, Mister Farley. Anything of interest to report?"
"Good morning, Captain. No, nothing of interest so far, sorry to say," the First Officer told him. Lewrie began to pace the windward side of the quarterdeck, with Farley in-board of him. "The mast-head lookouts have reported seeing some of those canal barges under sail behind the dikes, every now and then, but I can't imagine a way to get at them, not through those shoals, yonder."
"Seemed an organised sort o' thing?" Lewrie asked. "Or merely a civilian barge or two?"
"We've gathered they're singletons, sir, swanning along slowly in both directions," Lt. Farley said in answer as they reached the flag lockers and taffrail lanthorns right aft, forcing them both to turn inwards and reverse their course. "One or two with washing strung up, and women aboard, and not more than two of those could be described as being close together."
"Dull as Dutchmen," Lewrie decided aloud, with a sigh. "Unfortunately, sir," Lt. Farley agreed. "Dead-boresome," Lewrie said further. "Indeed, sir," Farley said with a nod.
"I'm so bored," Lewrie admitted. "A cutter could perform this duty better. A frigate's wasted on close blockade."
"I fear we all are, sir. Bored, that is," Farley told him. "Ah, about drill on the great-guns, sir… "
"Not with this bloody rolling, Mister Farley. Not today. We'd be safer at pike and cutlass work. And musketry, aye!" Lewrie said in suddenly brighter takings. "One hour o' cut an' thrust, then an hour o' musketry at a towed keg."
"Very good, sir," Lt. Farley said with a relieved grin.
"Deck, there!" a lookout on the main-mast cross-trees shouted down. "Cutter off th' larboard quarter, hull up, an' makin' signal!"
No more'n eight or nine miles off, Lewrie decided to himself as he turned to peer to windward. Even from the deck, he could faintly make out a dingy white triangle of sail-a set of triangular jibs and a gaff-rigged fore-and-aft mains'l barely peeking from behind the jibs-with a tiny splotch of colour at her mast-head that presumably was a national ensign. Perhaps the lookout had better eyes to espy the even tinier signal hoist from so far away.
"Aloft with you, Mister Pannabaker," Lt. Farley ordered one of the younger Midshipmen of the Forenoon Watch, "and mind you don't drop the glass."
"Aye, sir!" young Pannabaker, Thermopylae's cockiest "younker," piped up in reply, scrambling for a long telescope, then hopping atop the weather bulwarks for the mizer-mast shrouds. Quick as a cat, and as agile as an ape, he was at the mizen top, then to its cross-trees in a dozen eye-blinks.
"Come to spell us, one'd hope," Lewrie said with a yawn, rocking impatiently on the balls of his booted feet.
"She's the Osprey, sir!" Pannabaker shouted down in his thin and high voice. "This month's private signal, and 'Have Despatches,' sir!"
"Mister Tillyard, do you hoist Acknowledged' to Osprey, and I s'pose we'll just loaf along… as we're already doing… 'til she's close aboard." "Aye aye, sir."
"Hmm, sir," Lt. Farley commented, drawing Lewrie's attention to his First Lieutenant, whose face bore a pensive, wolfish grin. It was not the done thing to speculate, but…
"I'd not get my hopes up, Mister Farley," Lewrie had to say to him.
"The Baltic powers've had quite enough of us… The Dutch can't put a rowing boat regatta to sea… and, are the French out, I doubt they've business in the North Sea. One'd wish, but…," he concluded with a shrug.
"They also serve, who only stand and wait, I suppose, sir," Lt. Farley replied, seeming to slump into his tarpaulin coat. "Indeed," Lewrie said with a very bored grimace.
CHAPTER TWO
HMS Osprey was a saucy-looking little thing, a single-masted cutter that could spread a lone tops'l yard above her gaff mainsail if the wind was right. By the number of her closed gun-ports, she mounted no more than eight 4-pounders and was a Lieutenant's command. She might have been bright-painted, tarred, and oiled at one time, but one year in the sometimes boisterous North Sea had taken the shine off her. Now, shewas a dowdy scow, and even her sails had gone old-parchment brown. She drew alongside of Thermopylae about a cable to windward and sent her jolly-boat over with her despatches, under the command of one of her Midshipmen, and a boat crew of five.