Reefs and Shoals

pardons for being so inattentive, Captain Lewrie,” the lad replied, all but wringing his hands. “Normally, we… but here’s the Captain, sir!”

HMS Lizard ’s Captain, Lt. Bury, appeared from an after hatchway between the transom and the helm, looking anxious… and guilty. He was also sopping wet, dressed in faded and stained old breeches, with the knee buttons open and no stockings on his lower legs. He had not had time to don a fresh shirt, tie a neck-stock, or find a waist-coat, and had hurriedly donned a plain undress coat that had seen better days. Lt. Bury also sported a straw hat, much like pilot Warrick’s, which he quickly doffed in salute.

“I beg your pardon, sir, I have no excuse,” he baldly said.

“Alan Lewrie, the Reliant frigate,” Lewrie told him, doffing his own hat in reply. “I’ve come to summon you from your duties here in Bermudan waters, Mister Bury. I am to lead a small squadron able to go into shoal waters, and hunt and harry French and Spanish privateers, off to the West, and am in need of vessels such as yours.”

Lt. Bury looked at him most solemnly, blinking his pale blue eyes a time or two, as if stunned by that announcement, or pondering whether such duty might cut into his soundings and fishing.

“We would be delighted, sir!” Bury said at last, beginning to display a slow, equally solemn grin. “Ehm… might I offer you some refreshments, Captain Lewrie?”

“Lead me to it, sir,” Lewrie agreed.

Down the steep ladderway through the square hatch they went, with Bury offering the usual caution to mind the overhead deck beams. His quarters were tiny, almost a cuddy. There was a transom settee beneath the stern sash windows, piled with books, piles of foolscap notes, and a wood-and-twine fishing net. There was an open chest of clothing, a wee desk hooked to the larboard side to serve as his day-cabin, a slung hammock (not a bed- cot) to starboard, and a wee dining table right forward with only six wobbly old collapsible chairs. The rest of the cabin was draped with things hung on pegs. Most of the deck was taken up by wooden tubs made from cut-down kegs. They were full of fish!

“Pardon the mess, sir, but even were I expecting company, there is only so much room,” Bury said, going to a wee wine-cabinet for two glasses, then fetching a bottle of hock from out of one of the tubs, where it was slightly cooled in water. “If you will take a seat, ah… there, Captain Lewrie,” he added, indicating a chair by the dining table. Lewrie sat down, noting that the top of the table bore a few odd, and wet… things.

“My viewing devices, sir,” Bury explained. “None of them all that effective so far, but one hopes to discover a solution someday.”

“Viewing devices?” Lewrie asked, picking one of them up. It was an odd sort of spectacles, with two round glass lenses set into a wood frame, each lens as round-about as a mug, with tarred canvas attached, much like an executioner’s hood, with some light line so that it could be bound behind the head and knotted.

“At first, I thought it possible to slip the hood over my head and bind the spectacles snug enough to allow me to float face-down in the water and see the marine life,” Lt. Bury slowly explained, “but I found that the salt water still gets into my eyes… and the tarred canvas makes it hard to draw a breath whenever I turn my face up to the surface, do you see. Now the other…”

This one was a rectangular box with an eight-inch piece of window glass set into it, without the canvas hood. Lewrie picked it up, eying it most dubiously.

“The box frame cannot be bound snug enough to my face to keep out the salt water, either, sir, though when I turn my head, I am able to draw breath,” Bury said with a shrug, and a look of disappointment that his inventions had so far not been of much avail. “For now, the bucket with the windowpane in the bottom works best, though after a minute or so, it fills with water and has to be emptied out, else the view is no better than peering down from above the surface, alas.”

Christ, who still says ‘alas’? Lewrie sourly thought.

“Just no way to tar it waterproof?” Lewrie idly asked, just to see what else Lt. Bury would say; he was an odd bird, indeed! “Maybe an iron or brass coal scuttle would work better.”

“Perhaps one might, sir, thank you,” Bury said, rising to the suggestion. “Now, the best solution might be to construct a glass ball, much like the one that Alexander the Great was reputed to use to look at the sea-bottom, though my readings of the classic histories shed no light on how to construct one.”

Bury looked sad that he could not conceive a way, either, as he took a morose sip of his wine.

“Have t’be a big’un,” Lewrie commented, “else you run out of enough air.”

Is he daft as bats? Lewrie asked himself, half appalled.

“Perhaps a helmet of some kind, that could be strapped under the armpits to keep it in place, with soldered and tarred glass panes set into it,” Bury enthused a tad, “with a flexible canvas hose led to the surface to renew one’s air, sir? I’ve sketches, but…” Bury broke off with a sigh, and took another abstemious sip of his hock.

Must live on his Navy pay, Lewrie thought, after a sip of his own, for the hock was really the usual thin and slightly sour purser’s issue white wine, dismissed as “Miss Taylor”.

“When you’re not… studying sea-life,” Lewrie posed, “what is Lizard up to?”

“We patrol about fifty or so miles offshore, sir,” Bury said, “doing circumnavigations of the islands. The brig- sloops, able to be on station longer, usually scout an hundred or more miles beyond our range. Several laps, if you will, before putting back in to victual.”

“Sounds dreadful boresome,” Lewrie commented.

“Oh, it is, sir,” Bury agreed, lighting up in agreement. “We rarely see anything but for vessels bound to or from Bermuda, and with so little trade hereabouts, there’s not much to entice French or Spanish attention. And when not patrolling, there are my secondary duties of hydrography-taking soundings, up-dating the old charts, and making new ones from scratch. Trying to mark the known channels, but I’ve run into a lot of opposition to that, sir.”

“The local pilots,” Lewrie said, nodding in understanding.

“At any rate, I’ve no funds for such, and my letters to Admiralty go un-answered on that head, sir,” Bury said, looking miserable, again. “I’ve tried using painted empty wine bottles, bound with tarred line to stones for the most hazardous spots, such as the narrows through the White Flats, which you just entered, sir, but… damned if they don’t disappear a day or two later… completely.”

“I knew officers in the Bahamas who tried to erect buoys and range-line pilings,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “Soon as they sailed away, the local wreckers and salvagers tore ’em down, so they could keep their livelihoods.”

“Much of the same thing, sir,” Lt. Bury sadly agreed.

He seemed completely at ease to sit there and dry out in his wet clothing, with his shins bare. Lewrie pegged Bury as one inch taller than his own five feet nine inches, very slimly and wirily built. With his straw planter’s hat set aside, Bury wore his pale blond hair as short as a fellow who feared bugs in his wig, snipped to within a quarter- inch of his scalp. He had a round head, but a long, lean horse face, a prominent upper lip that dwarfed the lower, and a receding, weakish chin. He didn’t look like the sort to serve in the Royal Navy; he was more the don or tutorial type, more suited to the library. Could he count on him, Lewrie wondered?

A fish flopped in one of the tubs, drawing their attention.

“They don’t live long, poor things,” Bury mourned, “and it is a pity, but… at least I’ve been able to dissect them once they pass, and make coloured sketches of their anatomy. I’ve amassed quite a lot of interior drawings, as well as to-the-life paintings of them as they would appear in the water. Would you like to see some of them, sir?”

Hell, no! Lewrie thought.

“Aye, I would,” he lied, instead, steeling himself to display great interest, and cautioning himself not to yawn, or let his eyes glaze over.

“Damme, Mister Bury, they really are remarkable,” Lewrie had to admit after a few minutes, though Bury’s explanations of what the fish were named, both in local argot, dry scientific Latin classification, and general terms went right past his ears, heard and flown in an instant. “You should get together with my First Officer, Mister Westcott. He’s a dab-hand artist, and draughtsman. The two of you could produce good, up-dated charts to send to Admiralty, and copies for our use while here. Have you always been interested in marine life?”

“Since I was a wee lad, sir,” Bury shyly confessed. “We lived near Plymouth, close enough to go down to the water and the beaches to fish almost daily. There, and the fish-markets, well… I always was curious about what it was like under the sea, and how they lived before being landed.”

“You eat ’em, too? You don’t feel…?” Lewrie posed.

“A good fish is more toothsome to me than roast beef, sir,” Bury said, coming close to laughing in real