Lewrie felt his ears reddening. He had blabbed, in letters, at least, to Lydia Stangbourne, Sir Hugo, his sons at sea, and one of his in-laws, Burgess Chiswick, and had nigh broken his neck running to the post office to retrieve them before they left the dockyard offices!
“If you’ve seen all you wish, milord, there are other matters pending,” the jovial Captain Niles prompted as yet another light rain began to fall.
“Oh aye, I’ve seen quite enough, Niles,” Lord Gardner told his aide. “Help me off this monstrosity before the weather turns even more nasty.”
That involved an embarrassingly awkward clamber out of the after cockpit of the French barge, down the slick slope of the upper deck and hull to the waterline, where a jolly-boat awaited to bear them the short distance to the dry stone cobbles and blocks of the upper end of the graving dock, where they could step onto dry land.
“Getting on for Autumn, Lewrie,” Lord Gardner said as he stumped his way towards the tall flight of stone steps that would take them to street level. “It will be October in a week, and the weather in the Channel might force Bonaparte to hold his invasion ’til next Spring.”
Where does the time go when we’re havin’ so much fun? Lewrie cynically thought.
“Now or never, perhaps, my lord?” Lewrie said with a grin.
“Pray God. By then, well,” Lord Gardner agreed. “Nettlesome as Bonaparte is, surely he’ll so worry some other continental powers that they form another armed coalition against him, forcing him to take his huge army off to defend his borders… or look to expand his empire somewhere else. All our fears may amount to nothing.”
“Good grief, what’s that about, I wonder?” Captain Niles said as the sound of a loud argument reached them. “Have they caught a French spy, or a nosy newspaper man?”
“Shoot either, on the spot, instanter!” Lord Gardner snarled.
As they reached the top of the stone stairs, they could see that the Marines had nabbed an intruder who’d found a way through the newly-erected wooden screen wall and sailcloth-curtained gate. The Marines had him pinned to the wall, surrounded with fixed bayonets on their levelled muskets.
“… bloody Hell do you mean I can’t enter, you puppy! I’m a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy, Captain Speaks, and I know that Captain Lewrie’s in there! I must speak to him, at once, and bedamned to you if you think…!”
“Oh, bloody Hell,” Lewrie groaned, sure he’d seen the last of the fellow.
“Speaks? Speaks? Who’s he, Niles?” Lord Gardner grumbled.
“The mysterious torpedo fellow, milord. The one in charge of testing those ‘Gosport wonders’?” Niles told his admiral. “It’s all very hush-hush.”
“There’s entirely too much of that going round!” Lord Gardner tetchily snapped.
Ain’t there, just! Lewrie silently agreed.
“There he is!” Speaks barked, pointing accusingly. “There’s the fellow I must see, damn your eyes, sir!” he railed at the young Marine officer in charge of the guard unit. “You did not stay on station as I ordered you, Lewrie! I should prefer charges!”
Get in line! Lewrie told himself.
“Niles… go tell that noisy jackanapes to stop his gob, or I’ll have him stood against the wall and shot, for entering a secret area! I can have him shot, can I not, sir?”
“Well, ordinarily no, milord, but… given the circumstances and the secrecy of our possession of the French devices…,”Captain Niles mused aloud, with a “sly-boots” grin.
“Go threaten him into next year!” Gardner demanded. “At once!”
Speaks’ll take his rebuke out on me, Lewrie mournfully thought; Ye’d think after bringin’ these things in, I’d get fresh orders, but… am I still his, damn his eyes?
CHAPTER FORTY
Captain Speaks refused to come aboard Reliant; he despised cats as sneaking, vicious Imps from Hades, the familiars of warlocks and witches. No, Lewrie had to go aboard Penarth, the bought-in collier, for his dressing-down, where Speaks’s own familiar, his loquacious parrot, ruled the after cabins. Speaks did not offer refreshments!
“Why did you not strictly obey my verbal orders, Lewrie?” the choleric fellow seethed, seated behind the wee desk, looking down his nose at Lewrie with the fierce air of a Lord Justice regarding an habitual criminal about to be sentenced to hang.
“You told me to go make a nuisance on the French coast, sir,” Lewrie calmly replied. “That we did, and in the process, we stumbled onto some secret French… devices, in a thick fog off Coutances, and took two of them and sank a third. I’d been apprised t’keep one eye out for ’em, and that, should I encounter any, I should-”
“Secret devices!” Speaks barked. “What sort of devices?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, sir,” Lewrie answered, finding it too tempting to keep to himself. “They’re secret. Very secret.”
“And just who the Devil, or when, were you ‘apprised,’ hah?”
“Just before we began experiments with Mister MacTavish’s cask torpoedoes, sir, as for the when,” Lewrie went on, seemingly seated at ease in a folding chair, clubman fashion, with one leg over the other. “As for who, sir… it was Mister James Peel of Foreign Office Secret Branch, with whom I’ve worked in the past, now and again. He had had correspondence from… sources in France alerting the government and Admiralty that they existed. I gathered that is his brief, sir… the recruiting and handling of intelligence sources.”
“Keel-haul the bastard! Keel-haul! Rwark!” from the parrot.
“And you deemed these… things you captured were more important than our secret work, Lewrie?” Speaks sneered.
“I did, sir,” Lewrie firmly stated.
“Your orders charged you to safeguard Penarth and her cargo of devices from capture by the French, ‘at all hazards,’ Lewrie! ‘At all hazards’! That phrase slip your mind, did it?” Speaks accused. “What do I find when I return to the rendezvous? Nothing! No one to safeguard this vessel or her vitally secret weapons, no aid in conducting fresh experiments, either, and no message left with the authorities at Guernsey explaining why you just up and left! And I couldn’t very well commandeer another warship from the blockading squadron and expose the secret of the torpedoes’ existence to just any damned fool!”
“Given the importance of my find, though, sir, I acted as I deemed best,” Lewrie insisted.
“Saucy rascal! Flog the bugger, too-wheep!” from the bird.
Christ, they’ve been together so long, they even think alike! Lewrie told himself. The parrot had an eerily impressive vocabulary, indeed!
“Forcing me to cancel experiments, and return to Portsmouth,” Captain Speaks said in a huff, “failing in my express orders from Admiralty. Experiments which have become even more vital than before, sir. Vital, I tell you! By God, I really should lay court-martial charges against you. Turn you over to Admiral Lord Keith, and let him deal with you. So you can explain to him why the weapons that he intends to employ might be wanting!”
Lord Keith commanded in The Downs, subordinate to Admiral Lord William Cornwallis of Channel Fleet, making Lewrie wonder why Speaks would prefer charges with him, instead of Cornwallis, or Admiralty directly. Weapons he intends to employ? Lewrie wondered.