Proteus's bastard Irish by-blow in shabby cast-off uniforms, all elbows and knees, but impish and cheerful despite a humble beginning. Hmm, perhaps too impish?
'Our number's received, sir!' Grisdale announced. 'New hoist… from Chatham , the flag. 'Come Under My Lee,' sir!'
'Very well, Mister Grisdale,' Lewrie replied. 'Pass word for the Cox'n to muster my boat crew, and get her spanking ready.'
'Aye aye, sir!'
And, which Midshipmen would be on watch when Savage came alongside HMS Chatham in an hour or so? Lewrie had to fret. He'd prefer to have Mr. Grace in charge of his launch, but such favouritism would not do, and would dispirit the others. He checked his pocket-watch, which Clotworthy Chute had recovered from that 'Three-handed Jenny' back in London. Hour and a hall, say, and the watch would still be Grisdale and Midshipman… Oh God, the only other choice was Carrington!
'When Desmond arrives, Mister Grisdale, he is to see the boat, and its crew, turned out in their best,' Lewrie added, before leaving the quarterdeck for his great-cabins.
With his fingers crossed!
'Ease helm, Mister Carrington!' Lewrie's Cox'n, Liam Desmond, harshly whispered as the neatly painted launch neared the main-chains of the towering HMS Chatham, which was still under way, and generating a substantial flurry of parted waters down its massive sides. 'Don't wanta git et by 'er wake, now, so… Jesus an' Mary!, ease…!'
The launch rose up on the out-thrust curl of the three-decker's wake. 'In oars larb'd!' Desmond barked as the launch, at too acute an angle, crossed the curl, tilted to larboard, rather precipitously in point of fact, and met the suck of the hull's turning, being drawn alongside. 'Bow man, hook on!' Desmond snapped, and the sailor kneeling right in the eyes of the launch's bow swung his long gaff at dead-eyes and blocks atop the chain platform, barely snagging its hook round a stout standing-rigging cable. A second later, the launch went Bonk! against Chatham's side, sucked in like iron filings to a magnet, and the bow man cried something much akin to 'Holy shite!' followed by 'Eeh!' as he tumbled off the bows to larboard, waist-deep in the ocean, and getting dragged at a rate of knots, a panicky death-grip upon the gaff's pole, and the snagged hook his only salvation.
The launch Bonked! again against Chatham, and both Jones Nelson and Patrick Furfy leaped to seize the fellow, one by the collar of his waist-length coat, the other by the waistband of his slop-trousers, before the launch, with only one bank of oars free to pull, began to fall astern for another try.
Cruel laughter could be heard from the quarterdeck, high above.
' 'Ang on, Grisham, 'ang on, now!' Furfy urged.
'Yer pullin' me trousers arf, ye daft…!'
'Shin up de pole, Grisham!' Jones Nelson said with a grunt.
'Draggin' th' 'ole bloody launch, ye…?' Grisham howled.
'Boat grapnel,' Desmond snapped, digging under the after-most thwart by the counter. 'Might ye please shift yer legs, Mister Carrington? Now, sir?' Desmond tumbled forward with the grapnel and a line, bounding from shoulder to shoulder, took Grisham's place in the bows, let out a dozen feet of line, swirled the grapnel over his head, and heaved, snagging another dead-eye. Furfy and Nelson shifted grips off Grisham to the rope, and pulled the boat back up near the main chains, making fast to a small wood-armed bollard atop the bow. Free of holding the weight of the launch, and with a second assist from Furfy upon the seat of his pants (a mighty heave and toss, that!), Grisharn scrambled onto the chain platform, freed his gaff from the shrouds, and pulled the launch to him, instead of the other way round.
'Oh, well done, Mister Carrington!' Lewrie snarled as he rose to totter amidships of the launch's larboard side. 'You and the Bosun must have a little discussion of your seamanship once we've returned aboard, hmm? In fact, I shall insist upon it.'
'Aye, sir,' the dejected and red-faced Midshipman replied, for a 'discussion' with the Bosun would mean a dozen mighty whacks across his upturned bottom with a stiffened rope starter, his body bent over a cannon… Midshipman, the Honourable, Royce Carrington would 'kiss the gunner's daughter' for his ineptness, and his embarrassment to his ship, and his captain's dignity.
Waiting for the proper moment of the launch's lurches, and the ponderous slow roll of the flagship, Lewrie made a leap of his own for the boarding battens and man-ropes abaft the chains, scored his perch on the first try, and slowly scaled the long ascent to HMS Chatham's upper decks, past the closed lower gun-deck entry-port to the proper one, high above. After a deep, restoring breath, and a jerk upon the man-ropes, Lewrie sprang inboard, trying to look spry and unabashed.
'Welcome aboard, sir,' Chatham 's First Lieutenant said, hiding his smirk damned well, as did the other officers gathered on the gangway; but it was only the stone-faced sailors of the side-party and the Marines presenting arms in full kit who didn't look highly amused.
'Lewrie… HMS Savage, come to join the squadron, sir,' Lewrie gruffly replied, doffing his hat to the national flag and the Admiral's broad pendant, then the deck officers. 'I've despatches and mail with me, some of which I assume will be welcome. If you'll drop a line…'
'Indeed, Captain Lewrie,' the First Officer brightened, snapping fingers to summon one of the flagship's eighteen Midshipmen to see to it. 'My pardons, Captain Lewrie, but… though we have not met, your name is familiar to me.'
'L 'Uranie,' another officer prompted from the side of his mouth.
'But, of course, sir! A gallant action!' the First Officer said with a grin; though it did appear as if he might have made another connexion, had his junior not steered him away.
'Quite an arrival, sir! Most unconventional!' came a loud, and 'plummy,' upper-class voice, and a stout older man in the full dress uniform of a Rear-Admiral came plodding up, all smiles. With him was an older Post-Captain, most-like Chatham's, and a young Flag-Lieutenant. 'Lewrie, are you? Saw your appointment into Savage listed in the Marine Chronicle. Good God, sir!
That one of those Cuffies of yours?' he said, pointing overside at Jones Nelson. 'I can see why you, ah… obtained him. Strong as an ox, is he? Decorative addition to your boat crew, as well, I should think. Weren't you to stand trial, or be sued, or something? Last news from the London papers were simply full of it, haw haw!'
'Oh, that Lewrie!' was the expression on many nearby faces.
'King's Bench found the Jamaica trial colourable, milord, and put off the proceedings 'til all evidence is reviewed,' Lewrie had to say with a straight face, though fuming at such abrupt treatment from a senior officer. He should have been used to such, after his years serving under an host of insulting fools, and a fair number of people who might have had good cause to abuse him now and again, but by God it still irked!
Eat his shite, an' think it plum duff, aye! he grimly thought.
'The particulars are most-like featured in the latest papers I brought from England, milord,' Lewrie said with a seemingly uncaring, and unaffected, shrug and smile. 'Perhaps by Hilary, or Easter, Term.'
'Walk with me, Captain Lewrie,' the Rear-Admiral said, turning more business-like. 'A glass of something?'
'Nothing for me, milord.'
Lewrie's orders from Admiral Lord Bridport, commander of Channel Fleet, had told him to report himself and his frigate to Rear-Admiral Arthur Iredell, Baron Boxham, so he knew with whom he was strolling; even if that august worthy had yet to name himself, which was insulting enough, but to be walked up and down the quarterdeck instead of being welcomed into the great-cabins under the poop deck was even worse!
'We shall soon be coming about, so I will not keep you long,' Lord Boxham explained. 'Yonder to our lee lies France, at present not six leagues off, sir. My brief, for this particular squadron, is from fourty-six degrees latitude, or the north tip of the lie d'Oleron, all the way down to the latitude of Arcachon, to blockade a coastline that runs roughly one hundred and twenty sea-miles, and 'tis rare that all the liners of this squadron are together in one
