“Here, we shall face-off each the other,” Osmonde said. “This shall be good for you. I notice you are a wrist player. Do you good to learn to hack and slash, to strengthen your whole arm.”
“Seems such a … clumsy way, sir. And inelegant,” Lewrie said, taking up a middle guard.
“So shall your opponent be, should we ever be called upon to board a foe. Some common seaman,” Osmonde said, clashing blades with him. He began to backpedal Lewrie across the gangway with crashing blows, while continuing to speak as if he were seated in a club chair. “You shall advance so gallantly and with such grace as to make your old pushing school proud, and some hulking brute like Fowles there will chop you to chutney before you can shout ‘en garde.’”
Lewrie fetched up at the quarterdeck netting, backed into it by the fury of the attack and the weight of the opposing blade.
“The damned thing has no point worth mentioning, so quit trying to frighten me with it,” Osmonde said. “Try a two-handed swing if it helps.”
They went back down the gangway toward the bows, Lewrie still retreating, and his arms growing heavier by the minute.
“The idea is to hack your opponent down, not dance a quadrille with him,” Osmonde said, his swings remorseless and the flat of the blade he wielded bringing stinging slaps on Lewrie’s arms.
Lewrie tried to respond with some wittiness, but could not find his voice which was lost in a bale of raw cotton, so dry was he. He was nearing the foredeck, and planted his feet and began to swing back with both arms, clanging his blade against Osmonde’s.
His arms were so tired they felt nerveless, though engorged with blood and heavy. Each meeting of the blades made his hands sting, and he found it more difficult to keep a grip on the wooden handle. With an air of desperation, he thrust the curved hilt into Osmonde’s shoulder and shoved him back, then aimed a horizontal swipe at him with all his remaining strength that should have removed a month’s worth of the officer’s hair. But Osmonde’s blade was just suddenly there, and his own recoiled away with a mighty clang, almost torn from his grasp. And then Osmonde thrust at him, which he barely countered off to the right. Then Osmonde brought a reverse stroke back at him and when their blades met this time, Lewrie’s spun away from his exhausted grip. Osmonde laughed and tapped him lightly on the head with the flat of the sword.
“Not elegant, was it?”
“No … sir,” Alan replied between racking gulps of air.
“Humiliating experience?”
“Bloody right … sir.”
“Such language from a young gentleman, but better being humiliated than killed by someone with bad breath and no forehead. Fetch your cutlass and we’ll get some water.”
In warmer climes a butt of water was kept on deck with a square cut, or scuttled, into the upper staves so that a small cup could be dipped inside without spillage. It was too long in-cask, that water, and tan with oak and animalcules, but in Lewrie’s parched condition it was sparkling wine.
“Most men are afraid of blades, Lewrie,” Osmonde told him as he sipped at his water, making a face at the color and taste. “That’s why people were so glad that gunpowder and muskets and cannon were invented. You don’t have to get within reach of a blade or a point to get rid of the other bastard. I am glad to see you are not one of them.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lewrie replied. “I think.”
“Most men these days wear swords the way they wear hats.” Osmonde sighed, handing the cup back to Lewrie. “Or to give them a longer reach at the buffet table. Yet society, and the Navy, require us to face up to the enemy with steel in our hands. Fortunately for us, the Frogs and the Dons are a bunch of capering poltroons for all their supposed skills as swordsmen and swordsmiths. But there are a few men who are truly dangerous with a sword.”
“Like you, sir?” Alan grinned, hoping to flatter.
“Do not toady to me, Lewrie.”
“I was merely asking if you thought yourself dangerous, sir.”
“Yes, yes, I am. I am because I like cold steel,” Osmonde said with a casualness that sent a chill down Lewrie’s sweaty back. “I can shoot, I can fence prettily but I can also hack with the best of ’em. Axe, cutlass, boarding pike, take your pick. Ever duel?”
“Once, sir. Back home.”
“Ever blaze?”
“No, sir. Smallsword only. I pinked him.”
“Huzzah for you. How did you feel?”
“Well—”
“Was he skilled?”
“No, sir. He was easy to pink.”
“And you were properly brave.” Osmonde sniffed.
“Well…”
“You were both frightened. Hands damp, throat dry, trembling all over. Probably pale as death but you stood up game as a little lion, did you not?”
“Yes, I did, sir,” Alan said, getting a little tired of being humiliated.
“It was only natural. And until you are really skillful with steel you will always feel that way, trusting to luck and hoping the foe is clumsy. Like going aloft, which I sincerely thank God I do not have to do, one learns caution, but goes when called, by facing one’s fear and conquering it.”
“I think I see, sir.”
“Most likely you do not, but you shall someday. You do not know how many young fools have rushed blindly into danger and died for their supposed honor, or for glory. Those two have buried more idiots than the plague. Heroism cannot conquer all. You’ll run into someone better someday. Better to be truly dangerous and let them come like sheep to the slaughter. Let the other fool die for his honor. Your job is to kill him, not with grace and style, but with anything that comes to hand.”
“I suppose I’d live longer if I were that sort of man, sir?” Lewrie asked, not above placing his valuable skin at a high premium.
“Exactly. So I suggest you find the oldest and heaviest cutlass aboard and practice with that, until a smallsword or hanger becomes like a feather in your hand. Keep fitter than the other fellow. Not only will you tire less easily, but the ladies prefer a fit man.”
“Aye, sir,” Lewrie replied, now on familiar ground.
“Practice with all this ironmongery until they each become an instinctive part of you. I will let you know if you are slacking.”
“Aye, sir,” Lewrie said, not looking forward to it. It was a lot of work, and he had to admit that the sight of a pike head coming for his eyes was most unnerving. “I shall try, though the ship’s routine does take time from it. It must be easier to devote oneself to steel if one were a Marine officer, sir.”
“Tempted to be a ‘bullock,’ Mister Lewrie?”
“The thought had crossed my mind, sir.”
“Prohibitively expensive to purchase a commission, d’you know,” Osmonde said by way of dismissal. “Certain appearances to maintain in the mess, as well.”
“Well,” Alan said, turning to go as seven bells of the Forenoon watch rang out, and the bosun’s pipes sounded clear-decks-and-up-spirits for the daily rum ration. Osmonde’s Marine orderly was there with a small towel and Osmonde’s smallsword and tunic, as the Marine sniffed the air from the galley funnel.
“Bugger the snooty bastards, anyway,” Alan muttered, going below to his own mess, soaking wet from the exertion. He dropped off Lieutenant Kenyon’s hanger and vowed that before the voyage was over, Captain Osmonde would rate him as a dangerous man.
* * *
Days passed as Ariadne made her westing, running down a line of latitude that would take them direct to Antigua as resolutely as a dray would stay within the banks of a country lane. There were two schools of thought about that; it made navigation easier to perform, and could almost be done by dead reckoning with a quick peek at the traverse board to determine distance run from one noon to the next, but it was a lazy, civilian way of doing things. Or, it was quite clever, since lazy civilian merchant captains would do it, and that put Ariadne in a position to intercept enemy Indiamen, or conversely, those privateers who might be lying in wait to prey upon British ships. But since the ship had not distinguished herself in the past as a great fighting ship, the latter was a minority opinion. Gun drill and some live firings were practiced, but it was undertaken with the tacit assumption that Ariadne would never fire those guns in anger—spite or pique, perhaps, but not battle—and it showed.