“Well said, Mister Lewrie. We shall make a tarpaulin sailor of you yet, though the bosun despairs of your ropework. You are not seasick yet?”
“Well … no, sir,” Alan replied, realizing with a shock that he wasn’t. He was clumsy as a new-foaled colt on the tilting deck, and he staggered from one handhold to another, but the ship’s motion did not affect him overly. All he had in his stomach was a raging hunger.
How disgusting, he thought; I’m getting used to this!
“When do I make the changeover, sir, from one watch to the other?”
“Ship’s day begins at noon, at the taking of the sights for our positions,” Kenyon said. “I’d suggest you go see Lieutenant Swift as soon as he’s had his breakfast. Then show up for the Second Dog Watch.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Oh, by the way, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon said, calling him back with a drawling voice. “We have a man missing from my division. He has run. Went out a gunport last night, probably. There’s a rumor he was smuggled money and some street clothing. Heard anything about it?”
“Who was it, sir?” Lewrie said, having a sneaking suspicion of exactly who it was, and where the money had come from.
“Harrison, one of my main topmen. Had a wife and family in the port, so I’m told.”
“He was in one of my boat crews, sir. Had to hunt him down about two weeks ago, but he swore he was only taking a piss behind some crates and barrels,” Alan carefully replied.
“Hmm, that was after you had stood the boat crew to a pint?”
“Uh, yes, sir, I did see a woman with two children but I didn’t connect them with him.”
“Well, you weren’t to know. What I regret is that he was no green hand, but a prime topman. He’s probably halfway inland by now. There are some hands in this ship you can trust with your life and your sister’s honor, and you’ll find out who they are quick enough. There are also some men I wouldn’t approach with a loaded pistol. Since you’ll be closer to them than I, it is up to you to discover the shirkers and the ones who work chearly.”
“Aye, sir.”
“You can’t treat them all like scum, Mister Lewrie, though they are halfway scum when we first get them. Neither can you be soft on ’em. Someday, you may have to order a great many men not only to do something dangerous, but maybe tell a whole crew to go die for you,” Kenyon went on at some length. “I do not expect my midshipmen to be popular with the men, nor do I wish them to be little tyrants, either. The men respect a taut hand, a man who’s firm but fair, and a man who’s consistent in his punishments and his praise, and in the standards he calls for. Don’t court favor; don’t drive them all snarling for your blood. If you are so eager to learn the faster, as you put it, there are good lessons to be had from the older hands. I suggest you find them.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie said with a hearty affirmative shake of his head, though he regarded it much like a lecture from a travelling Italian surgeon who might see salubrious benefits for mankind in the cholera.
“Now be off with you. I can hear the wolf in your stomach in full cry, Mister Lewrie.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
* * *
Ariadne butted her way through the Channel chop until she was out past Land’s End, and began to work hard in the great rollers of the unfettered Atlantic, and up into the Irish Sea to meet her duty.
It was not blockade work for her; that was for the largest 3rd Rates that mounted more guns. Since Ariadne was much older and lighter armed, her lot was convoy duties. She met her first convoy off the Bristol Channel; forty or so merchant vessels under guard by Ariadne and a 4th Rate fifty-gun cruiser named Dauntless, and if she was anything to go by, it was going to be devilish miserable work; Dauntless was sanded down to the bare wood on her bows, and her sides as high as the upper gun deck ports were stained with salt, and her heavy weather suit of sails was a chessboard of patches of older tan and new white.
After getting the convoy into a semblance of order, Ariadne took the stern position and let Dauntless lead out past Ireland for New York in the Americas. The weather was blowing half a gale when they began, and the bottom fell out of the glass within forty-eight hours. Ariadne rode like an overloaded cutter, pitching bow high, then plunging with her stern cocked up in the air, rolling her guts out and shipping cold water over the gangways by the ton. The hatches were battened down and belowdecks became a frowsty, reeking hell where it was impossible to get away from several nauseous stinks, impossible to cook a hot meal, impossible to sit down in safety, impossible to get warm or, once having been soaked right through on deck, to find a speck of dry clothing for days on end. Even in a hammock, one was slung about so roughly it was impossible to relax enough to really sleep. Gunnery exercises were cancelled, and sail drill became sail-saving, as lines parted, sails were torn or simply burst in the middle and flogged themselves to ribbons of flax or heavy cotton. With new rigging, it was a constant war to keep the tension necessary to support the masts as new rope stretched.
A watch could not pass without all hands being summoned to reef in or totally brail up the sails, cut away those that had blown out and manhandle new ones aloft and lash them to the yards and their controlling ropes.
“I want to die,” Alan kept repeating to himself as the afternoon wore on on their tenth day of passage. He was soaked to the skin, half-frozen, and his tarred canvas tarpaulin was turning into a stiff suit of waterlogged armor that he swore weighed twenty pounds more than when he had put it on. He had not eaten in three days and had lived on rum heated over a candle. He honestly could not have choked anything down that could possibly scratch on the way back up.
“I hate this ship,” he screamed into the wind, sure he could not be heard over the howling roar. “I hate this Navy, I hate the ocean. And I hate you, too. Rolston…”
Rolston stood nearby at the quarterdeck nettings, looking down at the upper gun deck, a slight smile on his cocky face.
“You love this shitten life, don’t you, you little bastard?” Only the wind heard him. The ship gave a more pronounced heave as a following wave smashed into the transom, rolled heavily to larboard, and Alan dropped to the deck, his feet ripped from beneath him. He slid like a hog on ice along the deck that ran with water until he fetched up against coiled gun tackle and thumped his shoulder into a gun-truck wheel.
“Goddamn it,” he howled, looking straight at Captain Bales by the wheel binnacle. Bales nodded at him with a vague expression, not knowing what the hell he had said.
“Resting?” Lieutenant Swift boomed near to him.
“‘No, sir,” he shouted back, hoping Swift hadn’t been close enough to hear what he had said, though a full flogging could not hurt much worse than being bounced around like this.
“Then get on yer feet,” Swift barked in a voice that could have carried forward in a full hurricane. Alan scrambled to obey and clung to the nearest pin rail, trying to rub his shoulder where he had smacked it.
“Go forward and check on the lashings on the boat tier,” Swift ordered.
“Aye aye, sir,” he screamed back, inches from the officer’s nose. “Bosun’s Mate!”
The duty bosun’s mate, Ream, could not hear a word he said, so he took advantage of the ship’s roll upright to dash over to him and cling to the man as the ship rolled to larboard once more and threatened to take him back where he had started.
“Come with me,” he yelled into the man’s cupped ear. “Boat tiers!”