Troubled Waters

frigate, yonder.'

'Four pence apiece, sirs,' the bargee said, horny and grubby hand out to receive their coin, no matter how short a trip it would be. Once paid, he nodded to his assistant, who cast them off and shoved on the landing stage, then whirled to hoist the single lug-sail.

'A pretty thing,' Lewrie said in seeming disparagement. 'French, ye know.'

'She's absolutely beautiful, sir,' Lt. Urquhart replied, gazing at her with delight, despite the reception he would most-like receive for reporting aboard so late in the morning.

'Note her bows, though, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie went on as if to point out her flaws. 'Much too fine. Fast, aye, but perhaps with less buoyancy than ye'd need t'ride a heavy sea, when it ships over the bow. She'll bury her 'nose,' like as not. And the Frogs don't space their hull timbers close, or thick, enough t'take heavy poundin'. She'll flex, in a full gale, and flll herself with scantling timber in a fight, without close-spaced, stout bracing. Kill a lot of men?'

'If Captain Lewrie has no qualms about her, sir, well…,' Lt. Urquhart declared, before catching himself at being too argumentative with a strange

Post-Captain. 'After all, sir, do not our own naval architects take off the lines of the newest French National Ships that we are able to capture, and emulate them? Better to serve aboard such a frigate than one of those much weaker and lighter-timbered new brig-sloops, sir,' he added, with an attempt at a disarming smile.

'Like Lucifer said in Dante's poem, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie quickly riposted. ' 'Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven'? I assume by your age, and the condition of your sea-chest, that you are to be her First?'

'Aye, sir… my first such commission,' Lt. Urquhart proudly stated.

'Oo's fer 'is Savitch barkee, then, sirs?' the boatman at the tiller asked as his sole assistant handed the launch's lug-sail as the boat swung up to approach the frigate's starboard entry-port.

'Both of us,' Lewrie told him with a taut grin of mischief.

'Boat ahoy!' came a shout from the quarterdeck.

'Savitch!' the assistant in the bow shouted back, showing four fingers as well to indicate that a Post-Captain was coming aboard.

'Oh, my soul!' Lt. Urquhart whispered. His eyes blared in alarm as he swivelled about on his thwart to look at Lewrie.

'Told'you Lewrie was a scoundrel, Mister Urquhart,' he grinned.

CHAPTER TWO

After that shocking chance meeting, Lt. Edward (or Ed'ard) Urquhart had had a rather trying day. His proper reporting aboard was not so bad, nor was his reception in Capt. Lewrie's great-cabins, where he had been offered a glass of cool tea with lemon and sugar, been told he would be one of the rare 'Johnny New-Comes' aboard Savage, after most of the officers and crew of Lewrie's old ship, HMS Proteus, had volunteered to turn over into this new frigate… a great honour to Lewrie, to elicit such loyalty. But for those of warrant or petty officer rank who pretty much stayed with one ship, commission after commission, such as the Bosun and his Mate, Cooper, Sailmaker, Master Gunner, and lived aboard even when a warship was laid up in-ordinary, HMS Savage was now manned by officers and hands who had 'rubbed together' for three years, and would squint with chary eyes at an interloper, 'til they had had a chance to take his measure.

Capt. Lewrie had informed him that he detested tyrannical, 'flogging' officers, and had found that his 'people' had never been of the insubordinate sort; that the necessity for corporal punishment was rare aboard, and that he'd found 'firm but fair' treatment from solidly experienced officers, not Tartars, worked better than anything else.

Lt. Urquhart had heard scads about Capt. Alan Lewrie from his fellow officers, not just from the newspapers and such. He was not as famed as the gallant Pellew, or Collingwood, not quite the nationally cheered Nelson, but he had a reputation as a fighter, so Urquhart had come aboard feeling rather fortunate to have a chance to serve under a man who had a fairly well-known name in the clannish family of fellow Royal Navy officers. Capt. Lewrie was also possessed of a repute that was, well… colourful, to put it charitably.

Lt. Urquhart beheld a man in his mid- to late thirties who owned a charming and easy smile; a captain who 'wore his own hair' 'stead of a wig, whose hair was mid-brown, where the sun had not lightened the shade to light brown, and the merriest blue eyes surrounded by laugh lines and the crow's-feet of perpetual sea-squinting-though they did, when Lewrie turned more serious about professional matters, seem to go frostier and greyer. Lewrie was three inches shorter than Lt. Urquhart's own six feet even, a fellow who might weigh eleven or twelve stone, with a fit build, without the beginnings of a senior Post-Captain's pot belly, bred of higher pay, prize-money, or private means natural to the typical squirearchy background of most captains his age; born of the ability to purchase more wine, brandy, and rich viands, consumed alone in a ship-captain's traditional aloofness from others aboard; from the richness of suppers shared with fellow captains and foreign dignitaries when 'showing the flag,' with junior officers and Midshipmen on a weekly rotation when at sea, where one was forced to show off open-handed hospitality, even a touch of splendour, from one's own purse.

Or, as Edward Urquhart had always suspected, from sheer boredom to fill the lonely, aloof hours spent so often alone at-table in one's great-cabins. Or the gluttony that followed years of plain commons!

Capt. Lewrie had done most of the talking, asking the usual questions about Urquhart's previous service, and Urquhart had responded as firmly as he could without veering off into too many inessential digressions. After that disastrous first meeting ashore, he had a false impression to correct, an urgent need to please and to reassure his new captain that he would be a worthy addition; and, the hope that he fit in.

It did not help Lt. Urquhart's efforts that Lewrie's two cats, a stout black-and-white one named Toulon (and where had that odd name come from? he wondered) and a mostly white younger one named Chalky (much more obvious, that'un), had come trotting to the desk in the day-cabin from the transom settee where they had been sunning themselves, and had discovered that they simply adored the new First Officer, the scent of his fresh-blacked Hessian boots, the leather scabbard of his sword, the tails of his uniform coat, then the suitability of his lap! From whence they had explored his coat lapels, shirt collar, and neck-stock, and had even gone so far as to nuzzle and paw at his hair!

Lt. Urquhart, it was sad to say, was a huntin' dog man, and had no use for cats, except for killing stable rats.

'We're fresh from the graving clocks, and expect the barges and water hoys alongside this morning, Mister Urquhart,' Capt. Lewrie had concluded, rising to his feet to most charitably walk Urquhart to the exit door, which had required Urquhart to rise as well, giving him a chance to peel the two wee beasts off- gently, rather than following his instinct to seize them by their scruffs and hurl them from one end of the great-cabins to the other. 'I expect you'll be hard-pressed to see all loaded by sunset. We've a well-drilled and experienced crew, so the work should go orderly, and your fellow officers, whom I expect you'll soon meet, know what they're about, so it shouldn't be all that demanding, really. Welcome aboard, and I'm looking forward to having you as First Officer, sir.'

Well, it hadn't gone that smoothly. Urquhart suspected that he was on trial by every leery Man-Jack, Midshipman, and officer. Everybody had seemed to suffer from sudden ignorance of ropes, blocks, and such, requiring him to see to everything. The 'test,' if testing it was, had felt more tongue-in-cheek than mutely insubordinate, and Lt. Urquhart had swallowed his spleen and patiently endured it… mostly.

By the end of the day, at Eight Bells of the Day Watch and the start of the usually idle First Dog, the holds had been filled. Water butts stowed and firmly wedged in, then filled with fresh water pumped from the ungainly hoys; great casks of salt-meats treated much in the same manner. Chests and bags of fresh-baked biscuit, a vast array of