"Uhm… fifteen, sir?" Midshipman Privette meekly piped up.
"I do believe that a Colonel does merit fifteen guns in salute, sir," Lt. Ballard gravely intoned, though there was, at last, some merriment in his dark eyes.
"Fifteen it is, then," Lewrie agreed, hoping that was the right number. "Mister Tunstall… fifteen-gun salute to the Colonel of the bloody fort! Soon as we're abeam!"
"Aye-aye, sir!" the Master Gunner cried back, beyond puzzled by then. To fire a salute with blank charges would be to cede the enemy first honours, the carefully aimed first broadside should the fortress open upon them.
"You will permit us to come to the quarterdeck, Kapitan?" Count Rybakov asked from the foot of the starboard gangway ladder. He had a somewhat sober Count Levotchkin with him, swaying like a scarecrow in a stiff breeze in a grain field, and looking pasty-sick.
"Safest place t'be, I'd imagine, my lord," Lewrie japed back. "As safe as any, should the Danes be surly this morning. If you will not go to the orlop, then, on your heads be it," he said, waving them up, too excited by what might come to pay them much mind.
"Forgive us our curiosity, should the Danes attempt to deny us passage, Kapitan, but…," Count Rybakov said with a deprecating shrug as he extended an expensive-looking telescope of his own, one chased in gilt, and its tubes overlaid with ivory. "Look there, Anatoli. Is it not fascinating? Shall we be among the living an hour from now, ha ha?"
"Oh, the Danes," Count Levotchkin said with a sickly sneer upon his face. At least some colour was coming back to his cheeks, from his first exposure to fresh air and the chill in nigh two days. "As dull as Hamburg traders, with no spines. They would not dare."
Damme, what's his coat and hat made of? Lewrie took a moment to ponder; Is that… seal skin? Dirty bastard. Must've taken four or more hides t'keep his skinny arse warm.
"They most-like will not, my lord," Lewrie said, his attention on Rybakov, not the whey-faced irritation. "Do ye look close, you'll see one of our packet brigs at anchor under the fort. Were the Danes of a mind t'shoot at us, they'd have given her twenty-four hours to be gone… or taken her as good prize."
"So the diplomats still correspond," Count Rybakov said, looking bemused, "and the Danish court and your Foreign Office still attempt to find a mutually pleasing compromise?"
"It very well could be, my lord," Lewrie said with an impish grin.
"Ready, sir!" Mr. Tunstall announced.
"Carry on, Mister Tunstall!" Lewrie shouted back.
"Number one gun… fire!" the Master Gunner barked, and an 18-pounder far up forward bellowed and jerked back to the limit of the breeching ropes. "If I weren't a gunner, I wouldn't be here… number three gun… fire!" Tunstall intoned, pacing slowly aft from the first discharged cannon. Boom! went the second, and Tunstall jerked his right hand, jutting out his middle finger to go alongside his index finger. "I've left my wife, and all that's dear… number five gun… fire!" and ring finger joined its mates.
On down the deck he paced, chanting the old timing cadence lyrics over and over, with pinky, then thumb of his right hand extended. He clenched that fist and began on the left hand as he reached sixth through the tenth round of the salute, clenching the left fist at last and returning to the right, working his way right aft to the break of the quarterdeck, into that now-empty covered space where Lewrie's cabins usually stood. As soon as the fourteenth starboard-side cannon had discharged, Tunstall showed a remarkable turn of speed to dash forward to the re-loaded first gun of the salute. "… a gunner, I wouldn't be here… number one gun… fire!"
The final crash and bellow, the last gush of gunpowder, and the echo of salute faded away, ghosting with the haze of sickly yellow-white smoke that was whisked beyond the frigate's bows by the wind on their quarter.
"Re-load, Mister Tunstall!" Lewrie ordered in the sudden silence. "Powder and shot… just in case!"
More flags were flying from Kronborg Castle's towers, plain red flags with a white cross extending to all four edges, offset towards the seam closest to the poles from which they flew. Thankfully, there was no smoke rising from the fort's chimneys to indicate that round-shot was quickly being heated.
Boom! came a far off bellow from the nearest square bastion and a matching eruption of spent powder smoke. Ten seconds later, there came a second. Lewrie tucked his tongue in one side of his mouth and listened for the deep wail of approaching iron, but heard none. With a quick glance about, he could not see any feathery water spouts from rounds fired short, or the skip of First Graze, and certainly not the Second-Graze, as if gun-captains were dapping a flat stone 'til it hit their intended target. Boom! came a third, followed ten seconds later, steady as a metronome on a young miss's harpsichord, or the clapping of a dancing master's hands, by a fourth, a fifth, a sixth…!
"They're returning our salute!" the Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, exclaimed. "Well, just damn my eyes!"
"Well of course they are, Mister Lyle," Lewrie hooted with glee. "The Danes're a civilised lot. Can't just begin a war does your breakfast not suit! Takes reams o' scribblin', stern diplomatic overtures and warnin's. Like postin' the Banns, 'stead o' runnin' off t'marry. It's the done thing."
"Eleven… and, twelve," Lt. Ballard counted, but there were no more shots fired from Kronborg Castle. "Twelve for a Post-Captain."
"They didn't know the dignity of our honoured guests, Mister Ballard," Lewrie replied, feeling like laughing out loud, snapping his fingers under Ballard's nose, and doing a little dance. "How long at this speeed to Copenhagen, Mister Lyle?"
"Uhm… twenty more miles, sir," Lyle answered after a moment. "Say, uhm… does the wind stay out of the East-Nor'east… another three and a half hours. Four at the outermost, does it prove necessary to reduce sail, or work our way though any merchant traffic."
"Just about my dinnertime, then," Lewrie jested. "Desmond! A lively tune, there! Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Ballard. I doubt we'll face anything to match us at sea… not 'til we near the Trekroner forts above Copenhagen. The Three Crowns' batteries. They'll know of our coming."
"No rider can gallop that fast," Anatoli Levotchkin scoffed, in better fiddle than when he first appeared on deck. Perhaps gunpowder agreed with him; he was back to a live-human pallor, and back to his usually haughty self, evincing an air of part disinterested boredom about the activities of the frigate's operation, and the gun salutes, and part simmering resentment-most of it directed at Lewrie, in sidelong sneers and slitted eyes.
"No galloper, no, my lord," Lewrie countered, pointing ashore. "They've a semaphore tower, which this minute is whirlin' away like a Dervish."
"Ah," Count Rybakov realised, chuckling, "the wonders of technology."
"Warnin' the Trekroner Fort above Copenhagen of our arrival," Lewrie told him, "which is reputed t'be even more formidable than the Kronborg. We'll take the Holland Deep, of course… you're familiar with Copenhagen, and the other narrows there? The Holland Deep lies on the Swedish side, with a very shallow Middle Ground, where I'm told many ships have gone aground, dividin' the narrows from the King's Deep, which might as well be Copenhagen's main harbour. We'll even sail to the East'rd of Saltholm Island, very far out of the reach of Danish artillery. Do they not have any warships ready for sea yet, we should be fairly safe."
Liam Desmond on his lap-pipes, with the ship's fiddler and the Marine fifer, struck up a jaunty reel, and, of a sudden Thermopylae's crew began to clap, cheer, and dance about the decks; from relief that Kronborg had not opened fire on them, perhaps; from "by Jingo" pride that perhaps the Danes did not dare match their weight of metal versus a British frigate… their frigate!
Some men, now freed from the secured guns, scampered atop the starboard sail-tending gangway to mock and jeer the Kronborg, now receding astern, to shake their fists and hoot belated bravery. And some began to bark, to extend their arms stiffly out in front of them, and clap their hands together, palms turned outward, in emulation of the Laeso Island seals… along with those who hoisted index and middle fingers of their right hands in the age-old "Fuck you mate!" gesture.