A King`s Trade

'Of course, Captain Lewrie,' the man replied. 'Welcome aboard, sir. Allow me to name myself. Suddarth… First Lieutenant.' 'Glad t'make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Suddarth.' 'I will inform Captain Leatherwood you've come aboard, sir. He is aft, at the moment…' Lt. Suddarth offered, but such task was not necessary, for his own captain emerged from his great-cabins beneath the poop to the aft end of the quarterdeck, still shrugging his way into a rather shabby undress coat and hat, without summons. Suddarth made the introductions as Leatherwood approached.

'Yer servant, sir,' Lewrie said, doffing his hat in salute. 'And welcome you are, Captain Lewrie,' Leatherwood genially said in reply, waving an arm aft in invitation. 'Do join me in my cabins, where we may get down to business, sir.'

Capt. Leatherwood's private quarters were a lot more spacious than Lewrie's, the painted canvas deck chequer as bright as the true tile that it imitated. Only 6-pounders marred its interior to give it a martial air. And, whilst his deal partitions and panelling gleamed with paint or polish, Leatherwood's furnishings were rather plain and spartan, and well-used. Instead of a formal interview with Leatherwood seated behind his desk, and Lewrie in a chair before it, he was led to a folding settee on the larboard side of the day-cabin, with Capt. Leatherwood taking a padded wood-frame chair on the other side of the ivory-inlaid low table between, which rested on a brass-trimmed ebony folding frame. The small carpets which livened both the day-cabin and the dining-coach were of a set, both of Hindoo manufacture, and most-likely bargains obtained in Bombay or Calcutta. Within a few breaths, a cabin servant in nattily tailored sailors' togs appeared with a tray that held a bottle of hock, and two short-stemmed glasses.

'I trust you don't mind hock, Captain Lewrie,' Leatherwood said with an easy smile on his weathered face, 'but I've always been partial to white wines, 'stead of claret. This one's what the Germans call the spaetlese variety. A touch sweet, but spicy. And, we will not ask how it was exported past the French, hmm?'

'Honoured, sir,' Lewrie replied as he accepted a glass and took an appreciative sip, liking it rather well. Appreciative, too, of Capt. Leatherwood's welcome. Many captains senior to him, he'd found, would play their little games of self-importance, forcing him to wait on the quarterdeck in foul weather, or stand and stew before their desks while they pretended to frown sternly over charts or paperwork, kneading their brows as if the war's turning hinged completely on them, alone. Others, Lewrie thought with a hidden grimace, who knew him, would act much the same, but their motive was mostly personal dislike!

Leatherwood looked to be a pleasant sort. He was about an inch taller than Lewrie, in his early fourties or so, sunburned to a mellow colour by years under tropic skies, care-worn and over-worked, but with merry brown eyes. He wore his own hair, with a short beribboned queue atop his collar, his hair salt-and- pepper and receding at his temples; slimly framed, and perhaps the victim of some tropic illness, for his uniform fit rather looser than his tailor might have originally sewed it.

'Quite good, and spicy,' Lewrie adjudged.

'The Cape Squadron informs me that your frigate is free to join me,' Leatherwood began, after a few sips of his own, and a shift in his chair to a more comfortable nigh-slouch. 'Haven't much to spare, else. They also told me you've just finished some repairs? Ready for sea?'

'In all respects, sir,' Lewrie assured him, giving Leatherwood a thumbnail sketch of the convoy battle, his rudder problems, his reduced and altered gun battery, along with being a few hands short.

'Sounds about as good as we can expect,' Capt. Leatherwood said with a resigned grunt and nod. 'I should have six hundred and fifty-odd aboard Jamaica , but what with sickness, accidents, and desertions, we're about fifty people short, as well. And, badly in need of refit. You noted my 'decorative water garden' as you came alongside, sir?'

'Your, ah… weed, sir?' Lewrie agreeably said.

'Damned tropics,' Leatherwood said with a sigh. 'The seas are so rich with marine growth, and whatever they feed upon, that I might as well have dunged and fertilised, deliberately. Four years, we have spent out here, Captain Lewrie. Saint Helena to Calcutta or Bombay, and back again, with but two careenings when we could be spared to fire and scrape her clean in all that time. Too few warships, too much of a threat from the French, too many convoys, and never enough time off.

'But, that's about to change!' Leatherwood perked up. 'We are bound for home, at long last, to pay off. 'Twill be a slow passage, I fear… slow, but steady, as they say. Jamaica might attain a knot or two more than our Indiamen,

and that on a stout wind, mind. Your own quickwork, sir. You said you re-coppered at Halifax?'

'Last year, sir, that,' Lewrie had to tell him, 'so my one weed has grown apace, but, on our short test sail after the new rudder was in place, Proteus seems fairly fast, still. And, that new rudder is a tad broader than an English yard might install, so she's very quick on the helm… more manoeuvrable.'

'Good,' Leatherwood declared, sounding relieved. 'For our slow plod North, I'll place you astern of the convoy, and will take the van position myself, do I not work out on a flank, now and again. You'll bear the onus, should the French have a go at us. With the winds from the Sou'east, and with the Agulhas Current shoving us along, even the Indiamen could make enough sail to out-foot a beam approach…'

'And, t'would be the rare Frog working far enough North to intercept us, or lie in wait, sir,' Lewrie pointed out.

'Exactly, so the main threat will come from astern,' Leatherwood said with a vigourous nod of his head. 'The convoy Commodore tells me another ship will sail with us. What do you know of this Festival?'

'She will?' Lewrie exclaimed in surprise. 'Makes sense, I do suppose, now they've rounded up their new menagerie of beasts. She's a circus ship, sir. Mister Daniel Wigmore's Travelling Extravaganza. Circus, theatrical troupe, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, acrobats, and clowns…? We escorted her here as part of my former convoy. Not the swiftest old tub, I fear, sir. Slower than an Indiaman by day, under all plain sail, and even slower at night. Lots of visiting aboard her on the way to the Cape -'

'Not in my convoy, Captain Lewrie,' Leatherwood interjected. 'I want us as far North as we can manage, as quickly as we can manage, and there'll be no shilly-shally. I'll place her at the stern of the trade, and you can play whipper-in to keep her up with the rest.'

The Frogs come after us, she'd be no loss? Lewrie thought; Just like the Russians… throw somebody off the back of the sled to delay the wolves? Spose so … compared to the wealth in the Indiamen, the Festival's not worth a groat. An amusing' prize, but…!

'I didn't much care to hear of the French having a go at your former convoy, so close to Cape Town, Captain Lewrie, 'deed I didn't,' Capt. Leatherwood told him, looking pensive, and a bit fretful, setting his glass on the table between them to rub his horny hands together, a very sandpapery sound.

'The local commanders are of the opinion it was a fluke, sir,' Lewrie told him, outlining the Flag-Captain's explanation that it might have been a clutch of warships on-passage simply 'stumbling' on them.

'Told me much the same,' Leatherwood grumbled. 'And what did you think of that, Captain Lewrie?' he demanded right-sharp.

'Complete and utter horse-apples, sir,' Lewrie deemed it with a derisive snort. 'No one knows how many warships and privateers working out of Mauritius the French now possess. Don't know what's happening past Good Hope, but, if the Frogs have amassed enough strength, they could be thinking of raiding further afield. I believe that attack on my convoy was a test, sir. They know our monthly convoy schedules, by now. They most-like know how few ships we have on station, too. That has worried me, I'll tell you, Captain Leather-wood. And, I understand that you had a rough passage. Did you encounter any French ships?'

'Captain Lewrie, I was hunted here,' Leatherwood declared with a fierce scowl, his first sign of displeasure. 'It wasn't too bad at first, 'til I lost the services of my companion frigate off Ceylon to a 'blow.' I was almost of a mind, to turn back, since we were still in Indian waters, for we began to see strange tops'ls on the horizon, as far North as within an hundred leagues of Cape Comorin. Avoided them, or they avoided us, then crossed hawses with a Bombay Marine brig, and thank the Good Lord her captain agreed to see us below