Alan muttered curses at everything in general all the way along the starboard gangway, clinging to anything that looked substantial. Ream fetched a couple of hands along the way, and Alan took notice that Ream and both hands were also moving their lips in a canticle of woe and anger, probably directed at Alan, but he could have cared less at that point.
They reached the thick timbers that spanned the waist of the upper gun deck between the gangways and stood studying the lashings on the stored boats that were nestled fore-and-aft on the massive beams.
“Chafing,” Ream shouted into each ear, pointing at the ropes that were wearing away slowly before their eyes each time the ship did a particularly violent roll and pitch. “Tell the first lieutenant.”
Alan made his way back aft, getting freshly drenched in waves of spume and spray until he could stagger to the mizzen weather chains, where Swift stood, one arm hooked through the shrouds.
“Chafing, sir,” he shouted.
“Rolston!” Swift bellowed. “All hands on deck!”
Rolston’s mouth moved but no sounds were to be heard as he relayed the message, and in moments men began to boil up from below and muster on the upper gun deck below them.
“Rolston, take windward with Mister Kenyon,” Swift ordered. “And, Mister Lewrie, go to looard with Mister Church. Oakum pads and baggy-wrinkle on old lines, and new lashings doubled up.”
“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, knuckling his forehead. Shit, new words again. Baggy-wrinkle? Sounds like my scrotum about now.
He went forward with their little third officer and tried to explain what was desired to each man, but Church simply roared out one command, and everyone fell to with a sense of purpose that left Alan standing about.
“Go keep an eye on ’em,” Church barked, shoving Alan toward the boat-tiers. He realized that he would have to scramble out onto the timbers to the upturned boats, and that timber could not be more than two feet wide and deep, with absolutely no safety line of any kind.
He took a deep breath, waited until the ship rolled about as much upright as she was going to, and ran out onto one of the timbers. The ship slammed her bows into a wave as the stern lifted once more, the beakhead buried in foam, and she lurched as if she had been punched right in the mouth. The beam seemed to dance out from beneath him, but Alan was close enough to fling himself forward and grab onto one of the lashings that stood out from the nearest craft, the jolly-boat. One leg dangled into the waist, but he had made it by the merest whisker.
He scrambled up on top of the jolly-boat with the help of one of the older hands and clung to her keel with a death grip. The man smiled back at him, teeth gleaming white as foam in his face.
Don’t tell me this cretin enjoys this, Alan thought …
“New lashin’s first, er baggy-wrinkle, sir?” The man asked, coming close enough to carry the smell of his body.
Alan clung tight as Ariadne rolled once more to larboard. He felt more than heard the grating as more than two tons of wooden boat shifted against the tiers to the leeward side—the boat he was sitting on.
“New lashings!” he decided quickly, bobbing his head nervously.
“Aye aye,” the man yelled, then scrambled over to the next boat, with a grace that Alan could only envy, and shout something to the rest of his party, then hopped back over to Alan.
“How do we do it?” Alan asked when the wind gusted a little softer than normal. “I’m not too proud to ask.”
“Stap me if I know, sir, thought you did.”
And that’s the last time I am not too proud to ask, Alan promised himself as the man beamed his stupidity at him.
Alan bent over as far as he dared and studied the existing lashings, the way they threaded under the beams, crossed under like a laced-up corset and crossed over the boats.
“Give me a … bight on the forward timber,” Alan shouted. “Then make sure it’s wrapped snug in oakum or old canvas. Take it up and over the boat, under this beam we’re on, and on aft … then back forward, like … well, like a woman’s bodice is tied up, see? Double lashings this time.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Ship work on a heaving deck or shaky spar was, as Ashburn had prophesied, much like church work; it went damned slow. Alan inspected each point where the new ropes could rub on wood and had them padded and wrapped. He thumped on each bight until satisfied that they were as taut as belaying pins so there would be no play after they were finished. Lieutenant Church made his way out to him and gave him an encouraging grin, squatting on one of the boat-tiers.
Once his men had gotten the idea, Alan swung his way over to the centermost boats, the massive cutter and barge, to watch from another vantage point. He was feeling very pleased with himself, in spite of being wet as a drowned rat and aching in places where he hadn’t thought one could ache.
“Being useful?” Rolston shouted into his face, taunting him.
“Yes, damn yer eyes,” Alan shot back, and was disappointed that he had to repeat himself to be understood. His throat was almost raw with the effort of making himself heard.
“Church tell you to do that?” Rolston shouted back.
“Do what?”
“Rig new lashings before padding the old … that’s wrong.”
“What if the old ones part before you have new ones on?”
“They won’t part,” Rolston shrieked into his nose. But he didn’t look as confident as he had earlier, which prompted Alan to look at what his hands were doing. Rolston’s team was applying a single lashing without any padding or baggy-wrinkling, and were loosening the frayed lashings to pad them.
“Then what the hell are we doing out here?” Alan demanded. “Did Kenyon tell you to do it that way?”
Rolston looked away.
Alan made his way farther to starboard over the barge to the captain’s brightly painted and gilt-trimmed gig, which was being lashed down in much the fashion that Alan had thought correct, providing him with a tingle of satisfaction. He waved to Lieutenant Kenyon, who clambered out to join him. But once out there Kenyon took one look at the way the two heaviest boats were being treated and frowned.
“Rolston, you young fool,” he shouted. “Leave those lashings be!”
“Sir?” Rolston cringed, not able to believe he had done wrong.
At that moment Shirke came from aft to request some top-men to go aloft and secure a corner of the mizzen tops’l that had blown out her leeward leach line.
Alan looked at Rolston, gave him a large smile, then went back to his own hands, who were busily doing things all seamanlike.
He climbed over the keel of the biggest and heaviest boat, the barge, and was about to traverse the short distance to the jolly boat when he felt the barge shift underneath him. A frayed lashing gave way and came snaking over past his head with the force of a coach whip. It struck the jolly-boat and cracked like a gunshot, leaving a mark in the paint.
“Jump for it,” he yelled, wondering if he could do the same.
There followed a series of groans and gunshots as other lashings parted under the tremendous weight they had restrained, and he was on a slide along the timbers toward the jolly-boat as the barge came free.
One of his men had been sitting on the boat-tier between the two boats. He turned to look at the weight that was about to smear him like a cockroach between a boot and a floor, and screamed wordlessly. Alan leaped over him, one foot touching the man’s posterior, and flung himself across the keel of the jolly-boat. The man grabbed at him and hauled away, which pulled Alan down off the keel and down the rain-slick bottom of the upturned boat. Using Alan as a ladder, he got out of the way and disappeared over the far side.