A King`s Trade

right in wide and lazy yawings, with the convoy's stern lanthorns, now faint and far-off glows, to track by.

'Dammit to Holy Hell, what…?' Lewrie roared, about ready to strangle someone.

'No helm, sir!' Quartermaster Austen shouted back. 'No helm!'

'Christ shit on a biscuit,' Lewrie muttered. 'See to it, Mister Langlie!' he shouted back, though fearing the worst. That stern-rake surely had blown away steering tackle, smashed into the tiller-flat or the rudder, itself! Could relieving tackle be rigged and re-roved… else, Proteus would go from warship to drifting hulk in a twinkling. A helpless hulk, at the mercy of a pitiless Frenchman's guns!

The last gun in the larboard battery erupted, even though a hit was out of the question as Proteus fell off the wind. Only nine had fired, by Lewrie's count… even worse than he'd feared. On this wind and without steering, Proteus could do nothing but slump shoreward, her stern and weakened gun battery open to the foe.

Lewrie turned back to peer after the French corvette. Her wake still gave her position away, but she seemed farther away, not quite as long as she'd been before, perhaps, that creaming froth too short for a ship within four cables, he speculated. There came a bellowing up to windward, a series of gun flashes that revealed HMS Stag, which was on a course of about Nor'east, now, sailing to interpose herself between the convoy and the intruder. Moments later, far-distant HMS Horatius lit up the seas to the West with another full broadside of her own at something beyond her, silhouetting herself for several long seconds.

'Deck, there!' a main-mast lookout shouted down. 'Th' enemy's goin' about! Tackin'! Two point off th' larb'rd quar-ter!'

'Thank God for small mercies,' Lewrie whispered, no matter how ignominious it was to be 'rescued' by a sister ship. It felt much like playing the role of a breeding bull being saved from the terror of a vicious, marauding terrier by the arrival of a cow from his own herd!

Sure, I'll never hear the end of it, Lewrie bemoaned.

'Pardon, sir,' Lt. Langlie said, coming to his side and tapping the brim of his hat in salute. 'The Bosun's Mate has been below, with the Carpenter, Mister Garroway. Mister Towpenny reports that all the steering tackle is taut and sound, with no shot holes near the tiller head. He fears 'tis the rudder itself, sir.' 'Mast-head!' Lewrie barked aloft. 'Where away that corvette, now?' 'One point off th' larb'rd quar-ter, six cable'r more, sir!' an anonymous cry came back. 'Might jis' be past Stays, an' bound to th' Sou'west! Breakin' away, looks like, sir! Made a big, frothy patch!'

'Very well!' Lewrie shouted, then turned to his First Officer. 'In that case, get the way off her, 'fore we rip what little's left clean off, Mister Langlie. Bosun and Carpenter to the quarterdeck at once, and I'll have a battle lanthorn fetched with 'em. Order Mister Catterall to secure his guns, and stand ready to assist where he can.' 'Aye, sir.'

When a ship tacked, she slowed, wheeled 90 degrees or more, created a large patch of disturbed water, and fell off the wind for a spell before firming up on a new course; that was what the lookout had seen, that pale phosphorescent half-acre of foam of a ship gone about, daunted from her desires by the presence of two frigates, and unready to trust her luck against the second one. This brief fight was over.

As the guns were levered back to right angles to the hull, and swabbed clean, tompioned, and bowsed to the bulwarks, as freed sailors went aloft to take in the royals and t'gallants, and once more reduce the tops'ls, Lewrie, Mr. Towpenny, and Mr. Garroway went aft with the lanthorn and a coil of light rope to inspect the rudder.

'Sonofabitch… sorry, sir,' Towpenny gasped as the lanthorn bobbed, dangled, and swung, lowered halfway to the waterline under the frigate's counter. 'No wonder she's yawin' like she's drunk as Davy's Sow… th' lower part o' th' main piece's swingin' like a barn door!'

'Upper stock of the main piece is nigh shot clean through, sir,' the Carpenter also marvelled, ' 'tween the second and third pintles and gudgeons, and, I suspect the lowermost's been torn completely away.'

'Else she'd not sway like that, aye,' Mr. Towpenny spat. 'Fir baulks t'th' trailin' edge has been shot off, too. Hangin' on by less than a fingernail, she is, sir.' He shifted the lanthorn lower, and then slowly raised it, bumping up along the sternpost. 'Ah, 'tis bad. Horrid bad, that,' Towpenny sorrowfully commented with a wince, and a sucking hiss. 'Nigh shot through 'twixt the second an' third pintles, an' both fourth an' fifth torn free, too, sir. An' wot's left o' th' sternpost below th' waterline's anybody's guess. Bronze gudgeons, an' pintle arms…'

'Seasoned oak for a replacement…' Carpenter Garroway mourned. 'Fir's no problem, perhaps, but… there's no oak in Africa, is there?'

'Good, dense English elm f'r sole an' back, an' wot them balls did t'th' fayed triangle strips o' th' sternpost an' rudder, both…' Mr. Towpenny added.

'Could it be 'fished,' like a broken yardarm, Mister Towpenny?' Lewrie hopefully enquired, ready to all but cross his fingers behind his back. 'Some vertical iron strips, bolted through, 'stead of fore-and- aft strapping like the tiller head?'

'Might could try, Cap'm, but I'd not trust it in anythin' more than calm seas,' Towpenny said with a sad sigh. 'Do it get boist'rous, th' rollin' gits too heavy, she might snap like a fresh carrot, an' then where'd we be, sir? Nossir, we need a whole new main piece.'

'Any other wood besides English oak that might serve?' Lewrie asked him. Towpenny hoisted the lanthorn up to the taffrails, with a distant look on his grizzled face, waiting 'til the lamp was in-board before he spoke.

'Mahogany or teak, sir,' Towpenny speculated. ' 'Tis dense an' stiff enough, but th' findin'o' such, long an' broad enough… an' seasoned enough, not green, wellsir. That'd be a real poser, Cap'm.'

'Damn!' Lewrie spat, clapping his hands behind his back, pacing forward and away. There were Cuban-built Spanish ships fashioned from truck to keel of mahogany, and the envy of anyone who captured them, for they were incredibly strong and long-lasting. He'd seen merchant vessels in the Far East, 'country ships' in the local trade, made from teak, and they bore reputations for strength, too, but… India was a long way off, and without a rudder, they'd never get there to find the material necessary to fashion a new rudder! And, Lewrie rather doubted there were any Spaniards still in the Far East trade, who might put in at Cape Town and just happen to have a spare rudder gathering cob-webs in their bosuns' lockers!

He spun back around. 'I take it we've not enough seasoned oak of the proper size to fashion a new'un, either, Mister Towpenny?'

'Nossir, we've not,' the Bosun's Mate replied, after sharing a quick, silent conference with the Carpenter. 'Nothin' thick or long enough t'make new, Cap m.

'Well, damn my eyes,' Lewrie growled.

One good point, he thought, taking what wee scrap of fortune he could from raw-fortune; 'thout a rudder, surely to God, we'll not have t'go on to Bombay or Canton in Sir Tobias-bloody- Treghues 's company!

Assuming they survived 'til dawn, for Lewrie was reminded that Proteus, with the way now almost completely off her to save what was left of her shattered rudder, was still prey to the West wind and the Eastward-setting current. Mr. Winwood had thought them about twenty sea-miles offshore when the action had begun, and they had worn away to leeward and steered Nor'east for a time before coming back to Due North to follow the convoy, which might have resulted in their losing a mile or better shoreward… a high-cliffed, rocky shore where the bottom rose up steeply and quickly, and the waves crashed with a fury, even on the best days. There would be no chance to come to anchor as they drifted ashore with the sea-bottom so far below.

Neither could they come up to the wind close enough to attempt a tack, or even fetch-to, for God's sake! Such a swing might rip the tatters right off the sternpost. Besides, it took a sound rudder for fetching-to, to maintain her head when the fore-and-aft sails and the back-braced sails on the yards countered each other in a constantly- shifting balancing act! Are we fucked, or what? Lewrie miserably thought. 'Mister Langlie,' Lewrie called out. Aye, sir?

'I think it's time we fired some more of those signal rockets,' Lewrie said, admitting to himself that he could think of nothing else to do, for once. 'What is the number to convey 'Need Assistance'?' 'Five at once, sir,' Lt. Langlie quickly replied.

'Make up a sea-anchor, get it over the side; and we'll hope for the best, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said, glad that