The King

Chapter 5

They waited, and they watched.

In fact, once Telesto was totally unloaded and riding high in the water, there was very little else to do. Whampoa Reach was the place to idle from September to March. Their cargoes of tea were not in Canton for quick loading; they had to come down from the hinterland. What they had purchased were only sample packs of the year's pickings. The lacquerware, furniture and china had to be manufactured during the winter season, then loaded lot by lot. It took Chinese laborers time to weave nankeen cloth, silks, ribbon and fancy goods. Wallpapers had to be made first, then meticulously, and slowly, printed by Asian methods, or painted by artists by hand with their bamboo pens and brushes.

'Rope-Yarn Sunday, thank God,' Alan muttered to himself as he emerged on the quarterdeck. It had rained during the night, and the masts, sails and rigging overhead dribbled fat, cool drops of water from aloft as if it rained still. There was a slight fog over the Pearl River and Whampoa Reach, a fog that amplified the creaking of the myriad of vessels as timbers and planking settled anew, as rigging slacked tension and the masts worked against themselves. As thigh-thick mooring cables groaned against the hawsehole timbers, and tinny watch-bells tinkled like a forest of windchimes, all set on chronometers that would never agree with each other.

Telesto had been a scene from the ancient Egyptian Pyramids the day before. Gun- drill, repel boarders drill, striking the upper masts and yards down to the lower fighting tops and gantlines, only to hoist them aloft once more and re-set the standing rigging. Starboard watch against larboard watch. Anything to keep the men from going stale with idleness.

Today, though. Today was 'Rope-Yarn Sunday,' a day to celebrate idleness, a day of make-and-mend. Bedding and hammocks could be aired and re-sewn. Personal clothing could be washed and darned. Those intent on their carvings, their scrimshaw, ship-models and hobbies could indulge themselves. There would be music, a time for dancing, napping or pleasant conversation. Sailors could 'caulk or yarn' to their heart's content if they stayed aboard, or go ashore and sample the dubious pleasures of Hog Lane once again.

A member of the sailmaker's crew would get rich today; he had found a source for sheep-gut, and would exhaust his stock of condoms among his shipmates. After the first few days, and the first hands had wept in agony each time they made water off the beakhead up forward, the surgeon had made a good living, too. Fifteen shillings per sufferer was the tariff for the good doctor to administer the mercury cure. A sheep-gut condom, sewn up by a trusted shipmate, was only eight shillings, which left money for enough rum to allow a man to forget Telesto for a while. And avoid the pox!

'Morning, Mister Lewrie, sir,' young Hogue, the master's mate said, doffing his hat in greeting. Hogue looked ill enough to be already counted among the dead. He'd been one of the surgeon's first customers, and the mercury cure was no stroll in the park on a sunny day. He'd lost fifteen precious pounds, had gone by turns white as a ghost or grey as old linen, and even now, freed from his sickbed, looked about as cadaverously deceased as Zachariah Twigg.

'Anything stirring, Mister Hogue?' Alan asked.

'Nothing yet, sir. Though 'tis hard to tell with this fog.'

'Let's be at it, then,' Alan sighed. He handed Hogue a large mug of sweet, hot tea, taking in exchange a brass-bound telescope as large as a swivel-gun, and they mounted to the poop deck above the captain's great- cabins, went aft to the taffrails over the stern and lashed the telescope to the barrel of a swivel-gun to steady it.

Alan swept back the sleeves of his fiery red silk dressing gown and bent to study their quarry, La Malouine, as they did every morning.

Naming that ship La Malouine was about as top-lofty as calling Tom Turdman's scow, the flagship of Dung Wharf, HMS Victory, Alan thought sourly. La Malouine had turned out to be a rather old, rather shabby East Indiaman. In fact, she was so old, she still sported a lateen yard for a spanker on the mizzenmast over the poop, rather than a more modern gaff-rig. Inquiries had revealed that she was of about nine hundred tons burthen, short, bluff and beamy as a Dutchman's wooden shoe, and had been a familiar sight in the Far East for years. She had at one time (long before he was born, Alan suspected) been a Compagnie des Indies vessel, but had been discarded and gone independent once newer construction became available. As her Adriatic oak had succumbed to rot and teredo worms, she'd been re-scantlinged with teak until she could truly be said to consist of teak almost totally. Teak lasted damn-near forever, even in the tropics, and, with new coppering on her quick-work below the waterline, La Malouine might aspire in future to that full century of service Mr. Brainard had spoken of.

Her home port was Pondichery on the southeast Indian coast. Her master, M. Jacques Sicard, was a delightful little gotch-gut with a waggish sense of humor, a sharp nose for trade and a repute as a moderately honest man.

'Bloody waste of time,' Alan grumbled, standing back up to sip his own tea.

'Seems to be, sir,' Hogue agreed glumly. He gave a great yawn from being up all night in the middle watch to spy on their neighbor. Being newly returned among the healthy didn't help, either.

'Anything occur during the night?' Alan inquired, setting his mug down and taking a fast-paced stroll round the confines of the poop deck, swinging his arms to dispel the sluggish night-humors from his blood. Hogue almost had to trot to keep up with him.

'There was some visiting, sir. Off a couple of French ships,' Hogue related, puffing a little. 'Music and dancing. Some breastbeating saint's day, I think. St. Vitus, by the looks of it. But all quiet by ten of the clock. I say, sir…'

'Oh, sorry, Mister Hogue,' Alan relented, slowing his pace as Hogue almost sagged to his knees. 'I forgot you're light-duties yet. Still, nothing better than to be up and stirring. Good for you.'

If left to himself, Alan Lewrie would be anything but up and stirring at that ungodly hour, and well he knew it. But there were certain platitudes naval officers were supposed to mouth to juniors, certain examples to set for their edification.

'Aye, sir,' Hogue replied, looking a trifle dubious under his firm nod of agreement.

'A captain of Marines once told me to stay fit,' Alan related. 'Aboard ship, if one's aft on the quarterdeck, it's too easy to go soft and potty. Gets you killed in a fight. Never gets you the ladies,' he concluded with a knowing wink.

'After the mercury cure, sir, I hope I never cross the hawse of another woman in my life!' Hogue groaned.

'Nonsense. Just fother a patch over your hull before you hoist battle flags, Mister Hogue. See Archibald and buy yourself an eight-shilling condom. Good as any from the Green Canister in Half Moon Street back home.'

'Well, 'cept for being poxed to her eyebrows, she was a cunning little wench, sir,' Hogue had to admit, albeit sheepishly.

After four more circumambulations of the deck, they returned to the telescope and made a great dumb-show of studying all the ships within sight through the thinning fog, always coming back to La Malouine. Nothing stirred but the crewmen of her night anchor-watch. Alan saw a French master's mate take off his hat, scratch his scalp and give out a great yawn so wide it was almost painful to watch, which made his own jaws ache at first, then yearn to gape in boredom as well.

'Doesn't much resemble a pirate, does she, sir?' Hogue whispered as he sat down on one of the signal-flag lockers to enjoy his tea.

'Can't imagine her catching an Indiaman, much less cowing one with her little battery,' Alan agreed. They'd been rowed past the ship several times on errands or visits to other vessels farther down the Reach. La Malouine mounted eight-pounders fore and aft as chase-guns, and iron twelve-pounders on either beam-only sixteen of those in total, too. There were no secret lower-deck gun ports such as Telesto had, either. And La Malouine's waterline was so bearded with marine growth the tendrils seemed to wave at them in passing, no matter that she was coppered