"Think I'll wait 'til supper for wine, today, Pettus," Lewrie decided as he dug in with his fork. His hunger was alive, clawing at his innards, but he forced himself to go slow, as he'd forced himself to come below, and pretend to ignore the boat, and the ice. One very good reason to dally over his victuals was the absence of both of the Russian counts, and their servants; they had dined earlier, together, with Count Levotchkin coming out of his self-enforced exile aft, and thus avoiding having to dine with Lewrie, in proper manner, for once. The brief spell of privacy, free of Rybakov's ever-cheerful prattle, was splendid!
"Did Nettles whip up anything for dessert, Pettus?" he asked, once the last morsel had gone down his gullet, and the last warm sip of rum-laced coffee had been drunk.
"Nought for dinner, sir," Pettus answered, removing his plate. "Said he's saving his best efforts for supper. But there's jam and extra-fine biscuit I could fetch out."
"Sounds fine," Lewrie told him, requesting a refill of coffee, minus the rum this time. All the while keeping one ear cocked for a call from the deck, the sound of the cutter bumping back alongside of the hull… and the ticking of the carriage clock that he kept on the side-board.
Fretting and frowning, now he was in private, Lewrie went over to his desk and pretended to immerse himself in the minutiae of ship's paperwork. Finally…
"Midshipman Plumb, SAH!" the sentry called.
"Enter!" Lewrie replied, a tad too eagerly and loudly, even to his ears.
"Mister Fox's respects, sir, and he says that the cutter is-" Plumb began.
"Tell Mister Fox I will come to the quarterdeck, Mister Plumb." Lewrie cut him off, going quickly for his furs.
He trotted up the gangway ladder to the starboard entry-port, where Capt. Hardcastle and Midshipman Tillyard stood over a large wooden bucket.
"Well, sirs?" Lewrie asked, striving for at least a shred of idle interest.
"It's rotten, sir," Hardcastle said, kneeling down to lift out a slab, about the size of a serving platter, and about eight inches thick. The edges crumbled at his touch. Lewrie reached out to touch it, giving it a squeeze. At first it felt solid enough, but even as he applied moderate pressure, he could feel it flaking away, as if he could compress it into a slushy snowball, did he try harder.
"Get a lot of it together, sir, and it'll slow a ship down," Hardcastle told him. "Where the floes are solid, not like these bits that've broken off, you'll still have unbroken ice, about three feet or more thick, though there'll be air bubbles underneath, where it'll be half the thickness. Where it'll first begin to break up, sir."
"I thought it would be flat and smooth, top to bottom," Lewrie speculated aloud, putting out both hands to take the slab from Captain Hardcastle. It was still quite heavy; though, as he turned it over, he saw that the bottom of the slab was pebbly and pitted. Without warning the slab broke in half, split right down the middle, and shattered on the oak decks of the starboard gangway. "Well, damn," he muttered.
"Up north on the Swedish coast, sir," Hardcastle told him, "up at Karlskrona, it'll still be solid, and three or four feet thick, as I said, but… won't be long before it's half that, and breaking up."
"And Kronstadt, and Reval?" Lewrie asked of the Russian ports.
"Two or three weeks behind the Swedes, sir," Hardcastle speculated with a grim expression. "It's melting fast, even so."
"Mister Fox? Get way on her again. 'All to the royals,' and wring the last quarter-knot from this wind, long as it lasts," Lewrie told him. "Soon as the cutter's back on the tiers."
"Aye-aye, sir."
Get these Russians ashore soonest, Lewrie grimly told himself as he kicked some larger chunks of ice down the gangway; Reconnoiter Reval, for certain-don't think we can get all the way t'Kronstadt if it melts out last-then dash back to Karlskrona t'smoak them out and… report to the Fleet… if we can get back past Copenhagen and the Narrows… if the Danes let us!
Getting in was the easy part, he realised; getting out of the Baltic would be the really tricky part!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
What am I doin' up here? Lewrie asked himself for the tenth time in five minutes as he steadied his most powerful telescope on the rat-lines of the upper shrouds in the main-mast fighting top. Swaddled in his furs, he was certain he resembled a shaggy cocoon wherein a larva slept, glued to a sturdy twig; it was certainly cold enough for him to adhere to any metal, did he grasp any without his woolen mittens.
Going aloft had never been one of his favourite activities, not since his first terrors as a Midshipman, who was naturally expected to spend half his waking hours in the rigging, chearly "yo-ho-hoing" and scrambling about with the agility of an ape. Damn his dignity, but he had eschewed the backwards-leaning final ascent of the futtock shrouds, and taken the lubber's hole, instead of clinging upside down like a fly on the overhead. All to take a gander at Kronstadt.
He didn't know quite what he'd expected when first learning his destination; Arctic glaciers and the entire Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland completely covered with vast sheets of ice several yards thick; littered with upwellings of ice like a boulder field, or a plain full of Celtic dolmens, a titanic Stonehenge.
But the fact of the matter was that the Baltic Sea was fairly open, boisterous and rolling, as much an ocean as the Atlantic or the North Sea, with the ice confined to still, protected waters, harbours, and short friezes along the beaches.
Thermopylaehad scouted quite close to Reval, within a league of the naval port and its breakwater batteries, two days before, and had spotted the Russian navy preparing for war. They had counted the number of line-of-battle ships and frigates still locked in the ice, seen how many already had their masts set up and yards crossed, and the smoke from forges, barracks, shipwrights' manufacturies, and what both Count Rybakov and Capt. Hardcastle had identified as the bakeries and smoke-houses where rations were being prepared.
Even more ominously, they had all seen the hundreds, thousands of peasant workers out on the ice sheets afoot, chopping and chipping a channel wide enough for two large warships abreast, seen and heard the explosions as kegs of gunpowder were used to blast the thickest of the ice-or at least blow deep-enough craters, which the men with axes and shovels could attack, after.
Now, here was the principal naval harbour of Russia's Baltic Fleet, not three miles away, and it was the same story. Every now and then, an explosion spurted a dirty cloud of powder smoke aloft, along with a shower of ice chips (sometimes a serf along with it) behind the breakwater mole, or in the roads near the harbour entrance, the sound coming seconds later as a soft pillow-thump, and a tremor in the sea that thrummed through the frigate's bones. But, just as at Reval, no one had tried a shot at them from those heavy 42-pounder cannon along the mole, or the harbour entrance bastions… no matter how infuriated the Russians might be by the sight of a British frigate, all flags flying, lying just beyond maximum range. It was uncanny, as if stiff final diplomatic letters declaring a state of belligerence had to be exchanged first. Or whenever the Russians could finally get those ships of the line to sea, sail West, and announce a state of war with their first broadsides.
Lewrie tugged a mitten off with his teeth, reached into a pocket of his furs for pencil and paper, and quickly made notes on all he could see, then steeled himself for the descent to the deck once more.
Why am I doin' this? he asked himself again as he went through the lubber's hole, with his booted heels fumbling for firm purchase on stiff, icy rat-lines.
"Many ships, sir?" Lt. Ballard enquired, once he was down.
"Rum, first," Lewrie demanded. "Nigh-boilin', if God's just. Settle for tea or coffee, 'long as it's hot!" His teeth chattered and his words slurred from the stiffness of his jaws.
"Ah, that's better… thankee, Pettus," he said after a welcome swig of coffee from the ever-present black iron kettle. "The Russians' main fleet is back at Reval, Mister Ballard," he said, reading from his notes. "Here, I saw two un-rigged 'liners'… Third Rates, I make 'em. But there's nine frigates with their masts and yards set up, and what looks t'be five or six bombs, along with God knows how many floating batteries for harbour defence… useless at sea. Oh, there's several more Third Rates and larger in the graving docks, or on the stocks under construction… or would be, if it weren't so bloody cold… but the real threat's back West of here."