“A rough guess below,” Lewrie said, nodding in agreement with his First Officer. “I placed us about on the same latitude as Lisbon, or thereabouts. We might’ve made enough Southing to pick up a hint of the Nor’east Trades.”
“And if the weather continues to moderate, sir, we may even light the galley fires and have a hot meal!” Westcott enthused.
“Keep yer fingers crossed, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said as he paced over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck, hooked an arm through the shrouds, and leaned out for a better look at the sea. He saw hopeful signs. Though it was still blustery, the waves no longer towered over the ship. They were still steep, but spaced further apart in long rollers, cross-fretted and dappled with large white caps and white horses, and in the pre-dawn greyness, no longer seemed quite as green as they had the day before. The reek of storm-wrack and the smell of fresh fish was not as noticeable, either. The raw wind was tinged with iodine and salt.
Reliant battered along “full and by”, but her motion was less tortured, her decks less canted to leeward, and her shoulder set more firmly without that sickening deep rolling or twisting. Aloft, what remained of the commissioning pendant shivered and fluttered less frantically, too.
Damme, it’s muggy! Lewrie realised, taking off his tarpaulin hat and opening the tarred coat to let the wind in; It’s becomin’ warmer, at last! He had not looked at the thermometer in his cabins, but it felt like it might even be near sixty degrees, or so.
“Dawn Quarters, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.
“Aye, carry on, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie agreed.
It was a habit long-engrained in him, in emulation of former captains more cautious than most, to go to Quarters before the false dawn ended, and the risen sun might reveal an enemy ship, or a possible prize, above the horizon.
A drummer began the Long Roll, the Bosun’s calls started the pipe to Quarters, and the off-watch crew came scrambling up from the mess deck. Lewrie passed the keys to the arms chests to one of the Midshipmen, should muskets, pistols, boarding pikes, and axes need to be issued. The on-deck lookouts quit their posts to go aloft to the fighting tops and the cross-trees for the furthest view as the guns were cast loose and the ports opened, the tompions in the muzzles removed, the flintlock strikers fitted above the touch-holes, powder charges fetched up from the magazines, and roundshot from the shot racks and rope shot-garlands selected by gun-captains.
“Sunrise should be when, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master, once the bustle quieted.
“My best guess would be twenty minutes past six A.M., sir,” Mr. Caldwell crisply answered, “though without a firm position of latitude and longitude, all I may swear to will be… soon.”
Lewrie smiled at him, then pulled out his pocket-watch to see the minutes tick by; eighteen minutes past, then the estimated twenty, then twenty-five. The false dawn grew lighter, revealing more of the ship from bow to stern, the night-softness more stark. The horizon that could be seen from the deck expanded from a mile or two to five or six miles, and the sea began to take colour, the white caps and white horses, and the foaming wavecrests turned paler, rather than a dish-water grey. The sea became a steely blue-grey, almost a normal hue for deep ocean, and the line of the horizon was no longer the heaving, rolling waves close aboard, but a real, far-off line.
“Damn my eyes!” someone whispered loud enough to be heard, for there off the frigate’s larboard quarter, in the East, the sun burst like a bombshell above the horizon. It was weak, watery, and hazed by clouds, but the first up-most loom of the sun shone yellowish in promise of a clearing day! Everyone with a pocket-watch snatched it out quickly, to note the minute of the sun’s rising; Mr. Caldwell’s ephemeris had tables which could give them a clearer idea of their position.
With much hemming, hawing, and throat-clearing, the Sailing Master played “shaman” for a bit, consulting his ephemeris, scribbling with chalk on a small slate, uttering a “damn” or two when the damp slate and damp chalk refused to co-operate, then ordained that they were a full fifteen minutes of a degree further West than they had initially reckoned. “Now, perhaps the discrepancy is due to being further South than our Dead-Reckoning guesses, sirs,” Caldwell went on. “A decent shot at the sun at Noon Sights should reveal all,” he concluded as he made an X mark on the chart a tad West of their first estimate. It was only a few miles, but…
The rippling horizons were clear, and the disturbed seas were empty of threat. “Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered at last. “Have the galley fires be lit, and pipe the hands below to breakfast. I may dare to shave this morning.”
“Aye, sir.” Westcott replied. “And I must say, sir, that you would decently resemble a pirate, do you give the stubble another day or two more.”
“Arrh,” Lewrie sham-growled, returning to the starboard side, daring also to smile for the first time in days.
Conditions did not prove quite as hopeful as they might have wished, though. By the middle of the Forenoon Watch, fresh banks of grey clouds loomed up from the Nor’east, destroying any hope of a sun-sight. They were feeling the fringes of the benign, the dependable Nor’east Trade Wind, yet it only brought more gusts, and a raw and chill rain! The winds settled on Reliant ’s starboard quarter as she was driven South by West, ploughing and hobby-horsing through the swells. Lewrie at least had enough rainwater with which to sponge-bathe, for a rare once, and a ship steady enough under him to lather up and shave!
CHAPTER TEN
It was two more wary days of scudding South by West ’til the sky showed even a hint of blue, still mostly lost in blankets of clouds-clouds paler and whiter than any they had seen since leaving Portsmouth, which at least were promising. Gradually, ragged holes and clear-sky streaks appeared in those clouds, like ripped and torn curtains, or an old blanket that the rats and moths had been feeding upon. Shadows appeared, and here and there round the ship, in large patches, waves glittered in actual sunlight!
Lewrie was aft in his great-cabins, as the Forenoon of the third day of their South by Westing wore on, pacing to peek out the transom sash windows, then go forward to the door to the weather deck to stick his head out and scan the sky. The ship’s drummer and fifers began to “play” the rum cask up at Seven Bells, and it began to look promising, at last. His sextant and Harrison’s chronometer were safely stowed in their protective boxes in the chart-space, and he gave them an intent look. Hoping for the best, he clapped his hat on his head and picked the boxes up by their brass carrying handles.
“Cap’m’s on…!” the Marine sentry cried, for the tenth time since Lewrie’s first peek, turning his head to see if Lewrie would appear for real this time. “Cap’um’s on deck!” he cried in full.
Lewrie trotted up the windward ladderway to the quarterdeck, to discover that the Sailing Master, his officers, and Mids had brought up their own sextants, slates, and paper scraps for reckoning.
“Damned nice,” Lewrie said, after a good look about and a sniff of the wind. The Trades no longer gusted, but were steady, and this late morning’s temperature, while still nippy, was pleasant enough to be stood without shivering. “Good Lord, what’s that in the sky?” he japed. “What should we name it? Should we worship it, d’ye wonder?”
“There’s still thin clouds and haze, sir, but… we’ll soon see,” Lt. Merriman said.
“Close enough for naval work,” Lt. Westcott snickered.
They compared chronometers, then waited for the last grains of sand to trickle through the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour glasses at the forecastle belfry, bringing their sextants up to their eyes as ship’s boys turned those glasses, and chimed the first stroke upon the ship’s bell. Then, as Lt. Spendlove relieved Lt. Merriman, they wrote down their sights and began their calculations. A few minutes later, the officers covened to compare, results, which caused smiles all round, and a communal gathering by the now-ragged chart.