A King`s Trade

more.

'Ready, ready… ease down the helm!' Catterall screeched, at last, loud enough for his trumpet-aided voice to carry all the way to the forecastle. Then, 'Helm alee!' after a last peek, a last breath.

Proteus swung up closer to the wind, fore-and-aft headsails now 'Flowing,' and, in such a brisk wind, the fore bowline kept fast, and the fore sheet 'checked' or 'braced to' in pilot boat fashion, as they would when short-tacking in a narrow channel. 'Rise, tacks and sheets!'

Tacking in such weather really wasn't recommended; steady winds and fairly smooth seas were best, but… wearing the frigate about off the wind could end with them scudded a mile or more West of where they had started, by the time they had described a full circle and pointed her bows Sou'-Soueast… and Selsey Bill even further out of reach on their larboard bows!

There was a heart-stopping moment when a series of combers met Proteus's bows with wet and hearty smacks, threatening to slam her to a full stop and put her 'in-irons,' unable to fall off to either beam, but the knacky Mr. Midshipman Gamble, on the forecastle, feeling what shift of wind that the men on the quarterdeck could not, ordered that the inner jib and foretopmast stays'l be flatted to larboard for a bit, which put just enough wind-pressure on her to force her over enough to cross over. Then, right-smoothly, the starboard sheets, the new lee sheets, he ordered belayed snug, and hauled in in concert with loosening the new, larboard, windward sheets, and hernias and tumbles among the foc's'le hands bedamned.

'Whew!' Lewrie, Winwood, and Lts. Langlie and Catterall all uttered, once Proteus recovered from her dramatic heel over to the starboard side, and she began to make way once more. 'Whew!' again a moment later, as a heavily-laden cargo ship actually altered course to miss them, and passed down their larboard beam with at least a quarter-cable between them. With her captain and first mate shaking their fists and cursing a blue streak, of course.

'Selsey Bill… again,' Lewrie muttered late that afternoon, as the headland loomed into sight once more. This time, after the turn of the tide, it was astern of them, for a wonder, could almost be said to be on their larboard quarter as Proteus angled in towards the coast on starboard tack, and readied herself to come about and hare off to mid-Channel. The winds, which had acted much like a gust-front preceding a storm, had moderated nicely, and the seas had flattened a bit, though they still broke green and white around her. When Lt. Adair, the Third Officer, directed the latest tack, the manoeuvre went off as smoothly as anyone could ask for, and the nearest other vessel that could cause a collision was at least three cables off.

'The wind seems to be backing, sir,' the Sailing Master opined, with a wary lift of his nose and a deep sniff at the apparent winds. 'More out of the Nor'east by East, now… well, perhaps a point shy of Nor'east by East, but trending that direction… it very well may be.'

'Making our best course up on the wind East by Sou'east, aye,' Lewrie decided, consulting that mental compass rose that he had been forced to memorise in his midshipman days, so he could 'box' it whenever a senior asked… usually with a rope starter in his hand if he got it wrong, and a Bosun's Mate waiting to wield it, and breathing hard in expectation of the joy that came with serving Mr. Midshipman Lewrie 'sauce' for his ignorance.

'About that, aye, sir… a point more Easterly, does the wind continue backing,' Mr. Winwood ponderously, cautiously agreed.

'A long board, this time, I think,' Lewrie further decided with a chart replacing the compass in his head. 'With wind and tide since the turn early this morning, Captain Treghues's trade would most-like have headed Sou'west, at first, once clear of Dover. Hug our coasts for safety from the Frog chasse-maries through the Straits, then take a slant South of West with the wind right up their skirts. Avoiding Dungeness, Beachy Head… I don't expect we'd see them too close in-shore.'

'Unless they haven't sailed at all, Captain,' Mr. Winwood said with a heavy frown. 'Did the East India Company wish to add one more ship or two to the trade, still lading in London, and now unable to get under way 'gainst a 'dead muzzier' up the Thames or Medway, sir?'

'The only joy we can take o' that, Mister Winwood, is in knowing there'll be fewer damn-fool merchant captains out t'ram us amidships,' Lewrie scoffed with a dry chuckle. 'That, and the chance to flesh out our cabin stores from the bumboats in The Downs. Even if those buggers would steal the coins from their dead mothers' eyes.'

'There is that, sir,' Winwood agreed with a faint simper that, on him, was a sign of high amusement.

'Two hours more on larboard tack, I should think,' Lewrie opined. 'Tide's with us, the sea's flatter. We should fly over the ground like a Cambridge coach, thirty miles or more. Next tack… the middle of the First Dog, most- likely, then a short board at… Due North. With any luck at all, we'll fetch some coastal mark other than Selsey-bloody-Bill! Bognor Regis, perhaps? I'll be below 'til then, sir.'

'Very good, Captain, sir.'

Once in his quarters, Lewrie paused to warm his hands over the single coal stove he trusted to be lit, under way, and that one lashed down tautly, and secured in a deep 'fiddle-box' filled with damp sand. Even with the sky- lights in the coach-top overhead closed, all the gun-ports lashed shut, and the sash-windows above the transom settee right aft closed, it was still grindingly, damply cool in his great-cabins.

Toulon and Chalky were curled up together in a snoring bundle on the starboard-side collapsible settee in the day-cabin, faces buried in each other's fur, and had even managed to burrow a bit under the light quilt that Aspinall usually spread over the settee's removable pad, to save the upholstery from a quarter-pound of hair… left daily.

After two and a half years and a bit in commission, HMS Proteus was getting a little 'ripe,' despite the continual efforts expended to dispel the odours of a working vessel; they smoked her with smouldering bunches of tobacco, scoured with vinegar monthly, swept down the lower decks daily, and both swabbed and holystoned weekly, but… one could not put upwards of 150 men and boys aboard in such a confined space as the gun-deck and officers' quarters, keep six months of perishables on the orlop and in the holds, without the reek of overripe cheeses, the faint carrion-in-brine smell of salt-beef and salt-pork kegs, the salt-fish right aft on the orlop, or the stinks of the livestock up forward in the manger below the forecastle from filtering into every nook and cranny, from seeming to soak into the very fibre of the ship, and her bulwarks, beams, and frame. Add to that her 'ship's people,' who went without bathing for a week at a time, unless caught in a heavy rain on deck, who must fart, and belch, and sneak a pee in the holds or cable tiers when caught short when the beakheads were too far to walk. Not to mention the muddy fish-reek of the cables themselves.

At sea, Lewrie got to the point where he hardly noticed it, but a few days ashore, even in such a rancid place as London with all her garbage middens and hordes of people, and the change was noticeable in the extreme. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

There was no steaming pot of coffee or tea, so Lewrie remained wrapped snug in his boat cloak and sat down at his desk, under a swaying coin-silver oil lamp that was putting out its own contribution to the ambient effluvia, and looked over the last bits of mail that had come aboard just before they departed from St. Helen's Patch.

His ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, once French royalty but now penniless and orphaned, had written him a chatty letter, describing how his father Sir Hugo had furthered her introductions in London Society, with the promise of sending him a new oval pocket portrait that 'Granpere' had commissioned. Once she had moved away from Anglesgreen-she and his wife Caroline had had a major falling-out, with Caroline even suspecting Sophie and her 'faithless, adulterous pig of a husband' with being lovers, if not fellow conspirators to conceal his overseas amours, for a time-Sir Hugo had taken her in, and, to everyone's surprise, had developed quite an avuncular affection for Sophie and her welfare, and her future as an emigre. Now, he positively doted on the girl as she blossomed into a ravishingly-attractive young lady, expressing that he felt beyond 'grandfatherly,' perhaps had even attained 'paternal' sentiments! Lewrie still suspected the old rantipoler's intentions.

There was a letter from his wife, too, in answer to his brief note hastily scribbled at the Guildford posting- house. Caroline was appreciative of what the so-far small share of his Caribbean silver paid out to him had bought to improve their house and middling tenant farm. Lord, it was dry and stand-offish, though, all sums of profits from the farm, and lists of outlays made, with a pointed direction for him to write his children at their new public school, at the least, if such a chore wasn't beyond his ability, before he sailed. And, what was this, she had asked, about