He went aft to stand by the sheltered double wheel, where four quartermasters threw their weight on the helm as Telesto butted her way through the off-shore Channel chop. There was now and then some hint of the Atlantic to come, a long roller cross-set to the chop. The wind, once out of shelter of the coast, was a live thing that tried to throw the ship's head down southerly for the coast of France, requiring those four men's strength to hold her course. Captain Ayscough took a last look around, nodded to the second officer, Mr. Percival, and took himself aft under the poop into the passageway to his great cabins right in the stem. Percival strolled up the canted deck from amidships to the windward rail, taking a look at the compass card and grunting his satisfaction in passing.
Alan didn't think he was going to like Percival. The man was one of those massive beasts, all chest and arms, with a neck like a breeding bull, and a heavy jaw. Percival had the brow ridge of a mountain gorilla, and looked to be the sort who could break oak beams with his bare hands.
He was certainly the sort of fellow who had grown up being the biggest and toughest of his playmates, the one who enjoyed being the top-dog in the pack, and would fight anyone to keep his status. In the last week, they had sparred, verbally so far. Even asking for the jam pot was a challenge to Percival's dominance.
"All prick and no personality," Alan muttered to himself, and one of the quartermasters grinned at the comment as he shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. "West sou'west, half west, as she goes."
"Aye, sir."
Other than Percival, the wardroom was a fairly decent gathering. There was Choate, bluff and steady, glad to have active employment now the war was over. He had a wife and family in Harwich, and was more in need of full pay than most. The third officer, Colin McTaggart, was one of Ayscough's prot6-ges, a slim and wiry young fellow of twenty-five or so. He had black hair as curly as a goat, dark eyes and a pug nose. Being a Scot, he was better educated than most young men who joined the Navy, and was enjoyable to converse with. So far.
To make room for their super-cargo (Twigg and his mostly unseen partner Tom Wythy) the sailing master, one Mr. Brainard, had been shifted below a deck to the officers' wardroom. He was another of those mysteries, like Ajit Roy- brought in on account of his familiarity with Asian waters. He _ was also, like Twigg and Wythy, civilian in origin, never having served in the Royal Navy. Brainard had a civilian's usual disdain for the Navy and its way of doing things. A sneer here, a lifted eyebrow there and a heavy sigh or two of exasperation met any evolution that differed from merchantman practice.
Brainard was as roly-poly as a Toby jug, but held no cheer, and sheltered his past, and any conversation, behind an aloof air of duty. He was as weathered and dried as a piece of hawse-buckler leather, baked to a permanent brick color. So far, he had not been seen to imbibe anything but water or small beer, or crack the slightest smile in the mess. Indeed, it would have been hard to determine if he had any facial expressions at all, since he swathed himself in the heaviest grogram watchcoat even below decks where a small coal-fired stove attempted to warm the wardroom. It seemed a chore to remove his mittens so he could partake of his meals. And the one time Alan had peeked through the opened door of his cabin as one of the ship's boys cleaned it, the bunk had been mounded with no less than four blankets.
One thing Alan had learned in his Naval service, though, was that even the worst messmates could be abided. He hadn't expected the voyage would be all "claret and cruising." People gave others personal space, as much as was able, and ignored the worst offenders, limiting their exchanges to professional work.
Far enough off the coast now that England was an indistinct smear of headlands almost lost in low scudding clouds, the ship was going like a hobbyhorse in a playroom. Alan clung to the weather shrouds on the starboard side of the wide deck and began to wonder why he had thought Telesto a big ship. The open Atlantic rolled and heaved up in dully guttering hills before them, shrinking the massive ship to a toy that groaned and creaked as she rolled and pitched with a slow, ponderous gait. Soaring up as the scend of the sea deigned to raise her, cocking downward as the waves receded behind her. One moment Telesto was elevated high enough to expose miles and miles of ocean to Alan's view, the next sunk down into a trough, sliding forward as though she would butt into the next wave and shatter, but always riding up and away from danger. And at those times, he could see no farmer than the creaming tops of the wave-crests that hillocked like frothy ink on either beam as high as the weather deck.
"Going like a race horse," he muttered aloud, feeling Telesto as she trembled up from keel to oaken decks below his shoes. She was, indeed, riding the sea and careering forward at a wonderfully prodigious pace.
"Mister Hogue?" he called for one of the master's mates in his watch who was secretly a senior midshipman enlisted in their adventure.
"Aye, sir?"
"Cast of the log, if you please. I doubt very much if we'll get a decent sight for our position today. And I'd not like to set her on Ushant before the voyage is even begun."
"Aye aye, sir."
Hogue came back several minutes later, his watchcoat and hat speckled with drops of seawater, and his mittens soaked. "Nine and a quarter knots, sir," Hogue said proudly. "She's a fast 'un, no mistake about her, sir."
"Indeed she is," Alan said, grinning. He climbed up onto the mizzen shrouds for a better view with his telescope. "I make that to be the high point just west of Looe, just aft of abeam now. Where would that put us, were you navigating, Mister Hogue?"
"Allow me to fetch my sextant, sir."
Every time the ship rose up on a surging billow of ocean, they took a land sight, comparing compass bearings, trying to compute on a slate how far offshore they were, if the high ground west of Looe was known to be 387 feet high, and only subtended a degree or so above the indistinct horizon.
'Then on this course, allowing for Telesto making a certain amount of leeway to the suther'd, we'll fetch Lizard Point with at least ten miles of sea-room," Alan stated finally.
"If the wind stays fair, sir," Hogue commented, more sage than his scant eighteen years might allow. "Bound to come more westerly as we leave the Channel."
"A hard beat, then, but with the tidal flow, not against it, until at least midnight."
"Else we'll have to tack and fight the tides, losing everything we've gained, sir," Hogue warned. "Inshore in the dark."
"Thankee, Mister Hogue," Alan said, rolling up the chart Mr. Brainard had left on the binnacle table.
And if that happens, Alan thought lazily, it'll not happen on my watch, thank the good Lord. He strolled back up to the windward side and took out his pocket watch to take a peek at the time. Three hours to go until his watch would be dismissed below.
He threaded an arm through the shrouds once again and shivered in his thick clothing. The wind was wet and a little raw, a live thing out at sea, a continual noise that a landsman would never notice above the murmurs of the ship.
If the winds did come more westerly, they could harden up to close-hauled and beat within six points of its origin, he decided: just enough to keep Telesto in mid-Channel, well clear of the Lizard, and a safe twenty leagues or so from the rocky coast of France. He debated with himself if it would be worth it to tack north'rd if it really came foul-embay themselves south of Falmouth, then tack once more due south to clear the Lizard?
He turned his face to the raw wind and felt its strength on either cheek, sniffing for the source of all that awesome power that moyed their ship. Still well north of west, and not so strong they'd have to take another reef aloft just yet.