Hero.
'I also pray that this recent beau geste of yours is a sign of you turning from Folderol to Rectitude, that the Navy has forced you to so Discipline yourself in your professional and publick Life that some wee bit of that Discipline has, at last, trickled over into your private life, as well. Had you the ability to apply but a Tithe towards mastering your Amatory Nature, our Marriage would have remained a most Happy One, no matter now many years apart, nor how many thousand miles separate us. If only such were True I could own to Complete Approval and Adoration of an heroic Husband! Though, until such is proven to me, you will understand you have won but a Portion of my Praise, you Incomprehensible, Paradoxical, Ever-Amazing Man!'
Which was certainly a lot more warmth than he'd gotten from her past letters, Lewrie decided. Did all England hail him as 'Saint Alan the Emancipator'-and they forgot that horrid 'Black Alan' quickly, pray God!- Caroline might deign to accept him back, in public, at least. Were they cheered in the London theatres like Horatio Nelson, she might stand beside him in their private box, and even go so far as to wave and smile in appreciation with him… though Lewrie doubted if she'd be gazing up at him in mute adoration, exactly.
Most-like she'd keep her eyes out for the flirty orange-seller wenches, Lewrie grimly thought; and rip the lungs out of the first 'un who tried t 'hug me I Not that I can act'lly blame her…
Still, it was a start towards some sort of reconciliation, but only the iciest sort, and only if he came out his troubles smelling like Hungary Water. There was a chance they might reside under the same roof, again. In the same bedchamber, the same bed, well… he might have to hire-on a food-taster, and sleep with one eye open for a time.
'… Mother Charlotte is failing, Alan, and we despair that we may see her with us by Autumn,' Caroline related by long-distance, in her 'homebody' persona. 'We do hear, though, that, in Response to our informations sent to Burgess in India, he is now of a clear mind to throw up his Commission with the East India Company Army, now that he has achieved a Majority with the 19th Native Infantry, your father's old Bengali regiment, and, with the last remnants of the Tippoo Sultan Uprising quelled, in which Burgess informs us he has amassed quite the 'Chicken Nabob' fortune, it his greatest Wish to be home with our Dear Mother whilst she is still well. Who knows, perhaps his Fortune will prove even greater than the one you reaped in the…'
Beyond that news, there was only a formal close, and an almost jocular plea that he closely inspect any packages of gifts he sent for the children in future, and under no circumstances was he to send them anything living. A formal set-piece of a final sentence, worthy of a letter to a corn- merchant of long, but arm's-length, standing, and she signed herself rather coolly simply as 'Your Wife, Caroline.'
Lewrie determined to write her back, instanter, to strike while the iron was at least luke-warm. And, he'd write Sir Malcolm Shockley, too, and ask him to delve around Twigg's and the Abolitionists', true motives, and whether he really had been set up as a sacrificable cat's-paw!
It is sinkink?' Eudoxia asked with a puzzled look as she used his telescope to study Proteus as she sat at her anchors out in Table Bay.
'Everything we could shift is moved forrud,' Lewrie explained, 'to lift her stern as high out of the water as possible. The divers have hammered new gudgeons in place, underwater, and we've 'spliced' the sternpost above the water-line with the timber we fetched back from Simon's Bay. It just looks precarious.'
Precarious, indeed, for with all her artillery, round-shot, and victuals casks shifted up near the cable tiers, the frigate sat like a badly-anchored duck decoy on the water. Her bows were immersed as far as her lower gunwale timbers, the sea up almost as high as her hawse-holes and the lowermost beakhead rails, whilst Proteus's stern was up as if she was a live duck, ready to bob and feed off the bottom weeds of a pond. It even made Lewrie sweat to see it. But, without a dockyard and a graving dock, this was the best they could do.
Andries de Witt's multiple oxen team and his timber waggon had rumbled down to the piers with the new rudder, where Lt. Catterall and the Bosun, Mr. Pendarves, had erected a shear-legs to hoist it off the timber waggon's supports, then sway it out and down into a large barge… another of Mr. Goosen's 'quite reasonable' hirings. It was as ungainly and squat as a fat-bellied Dutch coaster in the Scheldte or the canals, nearly fifty-four feet long and over sixteen feet in beam, the scruffy sort of thing that usually bore cargo or an entire six months' supply of water in vast casks in her belly; low freeboard, fitted with a dozen sweeps… a cockroach scuttling 'cross a harbour in full daylight, and just about as handsome.
'Once under our counter, we'll moor the barge snug against the stern,' Lewrie went on with his explanation, wishing he could cross a finger or two, for the reality could not go as easily as his breezily glib exposition. 'The long, thinner part is the upper stock, and that will slide up through a large hole under the transom. The bottom end will swing, even float, but, with the kedge capstan and the hoisting chains, we'll lift her 'til she's almost hangin' right, then use brute force, aloft and a'low, to get the bronze pins of the pintle fittings into the holes of the gudgeon fittings, and she'll ride all her weight on 'em, once we've let out slack on the hoisting chains and cables.'
'You do speak Engliski, Alan?' Eudoxia asked with a crease in her forehead as she lowered the heavy glass. 'Half of what you say is… shumashetshi… how you are sayink…?'
'Daft? Mad babbling?' Lewrie supplied with a snicker. 'That's sailors for you. Our own language, even our own dictionary.'
'Da… daft,' Eudoxia said with a giggle, testing the word a few more times, and finding 'daft' right pleasing.
'Lower away… handsomely!' Lt. Catterall bawled to the work-party, as the massive, and heavy, new rudder finally was swayed off the side of the pier, above the barge. He was echoed by Goosens, spouting a flood of Dutch, the local variety some called Afrikaans, Javanese, or Hottentot, for all Lewrie knew. Now and then came an English phrase having to do with 'damn your eyes, don't sink my boat!' or some such.
'So…' Eudoxia further said, with a playful, teasing note to her voice as she stepped closer to hand him his telescope back. 'You get the… rudder… on, you sail for England right away, Alan?'
'That'd be up to Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Curtis, Eudoxia. Once we're seaworthy again, he may tell us to escort that new-come convoy to Saint Helena, or all the way to the Pool of London, I truly don't know. It may take days to get us set-to-rights, proper, and they may sail without us, and we'll have to do a short patrol cruise round the Cape, instead, 'til Captain Treghues comes in with another homebound trade,' he told her.
'Hmmm,' was her pleased, purring comment to that news. 'If you wait that long, we go shootink together? You give me tour on frigate?'
'Be delighted to, m'dear,' Lewrie vowed, taking a second of his attention from watching the rudder being lowered into the barge, and, yes, with his cack-hand fingers crossed along the seam of his breeches. 'A shore supper, what the Frogs call a 'pique-nique'… a basket of food and wine one eats outdoors, that is…'
'We shoot food, roast on sticks!' Eudoxia cheerfully enthused, all but bouncing on the toes of her moccesins. 'Build fire, take big blanket… cut poles, and put up palatka, uhm, dammit… tend Hunt springbok, duck, and grouse…! Eat wit' fingers, get greasy…!'
Damme, but it does sound temptin'! Lewrie thought, one eye on the swaying rudder, one ear cast for Eudoxia's patter, the other ear cocked for pierside sounds, like snapping or groaning ropes, squeaky or jammed blocks in the hoisting tackle, trying to sort them out of a constant intrusion from the comings-and-goings of rowing boats along the pier from the newly-arrived Indiamen, and the clatter of coaches and carriages either dropping off passengers or arriving to pick them up. A tent. Hell yes!
