Rybakov had expressed curiosity about Lewrie's Kentucky Bourbon whisky, and Lewrie had, in turn, had to taste several varieties of vodka, including a Polish version flavoured with buffalo grass. Neither had come away with a favourable opinion of the other's 'tipple.'
'And do you believe in this… cess of yours, Kapitan Lewrie?' Count Rybakov had finally asked.
'Believe?' Lewrie had gloomed. 'No, not really, my lord. That would make me a heathen, though I will admit that there've been times that the presence of seals made me wonder. Eerie as it is, whenever they've turned up, I've been… thankful for the warning. There's an host of mysteries that happen at sea, so…,' he had concluded with a shrug.
By the first bell of the Evening Watch, at 8:30 P.M., both of them were more than ready to turn in. Thankfully (again) Count Levotchkin had dined alone in his sleeping-space, had picked over the reconstituted 'portable' vegetable soup, the roast chicken and boiled potatoes and the last of the fresh-baked bread, and had washed it all down with more wine, more champagne, and at least half a bottle of vodka, and had babbled, muttered, fumed, and fussed himself to an early slumber matching their own, sparing everyone but for his manservant, Sasha.
Two Bells of the Forenoon chimed from the foc's'le belfry, a terse ding-ding, as Thermopylae sailed along with a steady breeze from the East-Nor'east on her larboard quarters, the snow gales gone, and replaced by a mostly cloudy morning, with only a brief glimmer of sunlight now and then. She was under all plain sail, with two reefs in her forecourse to aid the fore tops'l in lifting her bows, so she did not 'snuffle' too deeply, and slow her progress. Her main course was fully spread, a peaceful thing to an outside observer, for a main course sail would only be brailed up for combat, so it would not catch fire from the discharge of her own guns, if fully deployed. Not that it could not be fully reefed in a moment, should it prove necessary!
Lewrie looked up to assure himself that the anti-boarding nets were rigged, but not yet hauled aloft; and to assure himself that all yards had been re-enforced with chain slings to hold them aloft, should halliards and lifts be shot away, to keep them from plunging down to the deck and smothering the gun crews, cannon, and ports in canvas and rope rigging.
Looking forrud, then aft, he noted that their largest flags of the new Union pattern were flying; one from the truck of the foremast, and the largest aft from the spanker. The Danes could not mistake her nationality, nor accuse them of trying to sneak past Kronborg Castle by employing a dishonourable false flag.
'Eight knots, sir!' Midshipman Privette cried from the taffrail. 'Eight knots and an eighth, really!'
'Six knots over the ground, then,' Lt. Ballard commented as he rocked on the balls of his boots; more-like mooed in a grim-lipped way.
'Seventeen minutes,' Lewrie muttered under his breath. 'Very well, Mister Privette,' he called out in a louder voice, to an unsuspecting world the epitome of calmness.
'There's Elsinore, sir,' Capt. Hardcastle pointed out as the old royal residence of Danish kings loomed up on their starboard bows. 'Beyond, that'll be Kronborg Castle.'
'That's a fortress, by God?' Lewrie marvelled. 'I expected… something grimmer.'
Kronborg Castle, formidable though it must be, looked more like a fairy castle, the sort of thing illustrated in a children's book, or a large toy to spur the imagination of the kiddies in their playroom.
It had four large, square bastions, with stout walls spanning the distances between them, all of red brick, not granite or limestone. Lighter-coloured, window-like apertures below the bastions and along the walls revealed a lower-storey casemate. Yet Kronborg sprouted spires and towers more like those rising from Muslim mosques, like minarets, and every steep roof was of copper; mostly gone verdigris green, but here and there as bright as a new- minted penny!
It sat at the end of a long, low peninsula, atop a built-up earthen base, with shallow-angled embankments that led straight into the sea, to the beach, all covered in grass as green as the criquet pitch at Lord's, and, overall, looked more like the country mansion of some incredibly wealthy, and eccentric, viscount, earl, or duke!
'For what we're about to receive…' Mr. Simms, the senior-most Quartermaster at the double-helm, whispered the old saw for steeling oneself to stand manful under the enemy's first broadside.
'Receive, Hell, Mister Simms,' Lewrie scoffed. 'What, ye think it's Christmas?'
'Ship off the star-board bow, d'ye hear there?' a lookout in the main-mast cross-trees shouted down. 'She be a brig! Anchored by the fort!'
Everyone with access to a telescope raised it to look the brig over, Lewrie included. She lay quite near the shore, about a quarter-mile off from a substantial stone quay and landing, anchored from the bows and a single kedge astern, and though there was a thin skein of smoke from her, it was a single source, not the general haze arising from burning slow-match.
'Galley smoke, I make it, sir,' Lt. Ballard said.
'Ah ha!' Lewrie exclaimed as a fluke of wind close inshore at last swung round to match their own, baring the nature of the flag at her stern. 'The 'Post-Boy,' by God! One of our mail packets!'
Sure enough, the brig flew a red flag with a Union insignia in the canton, and the bulk of the fly covered by a large white square, in which a post-boy with a long trumpet astride a galloping horse was depicted.
'We're still talkin' with the Danes, it seems,' Lewrie explained to the quarterdeck. 'Mister Fox, Mister Farley!' he shouted down to the waist over the hammock nettings. 'Draw shot from the starboard battery, quick as you can! Mister Tunstall… prepare to fire a salute to the castle. How many guns… anyone?' he asked, in a quandary.
'Twenty-one for their king, sir?' Midshipman Sealey, their eldest, guessed with his fingers crossed.
'I doubt he's there in the castle,' Lewrie chuckled. 'And their Crown Prince ain't, either.'
'There's a Colonel Stricker, in command of Kronborg Castle, sir,' Capt. Hardcastle supplied. 'What'd a Colonel rate?'
'Uhm… fifteen, sir?' Midshipman Privette meekly piped up.
'I do believe that a Colonel does merit fifteen guns in salute, sir,' Lt. Ballard gravely intoned, though there was, at last, some merriment in his dark eyes.
'Fifteen it is, then,' Lewrie agreed, hoping that was the right number. 'Mister Tunstall… fifteen-gun salute to the Colonel of the bloody fort! Soon as we're abeam!'
'Aye-aye, sir!' the Master Gunner cried back, beyond puzzled by then. To fire a salute with blank charges would be to cede the enemy first honours, the carefully aimed first broadside should the fortress open upon them.
'You will permit us to come to the quarterdeck, Kapitan?' Count Rybakov asked from the foot of the starboard gangway ladder. He had a somewhat sober Count Levotchkin with him, swaying like a scarecrow in a stiff breeze in a grain field, and looking pasty-sick.
'Safest place t'be, I'd imagine, my lord,' Lewrie japed back. 'As safe as any, should the Danes be surly this morning. If you will not go to the orlop, then, on your heads be it,' he said, waving them up, too excited by what might come to pay them much mind.
'Forgive us our curiosity, should the Danes attempt to deny us passage, Kapitan, but…,' Count Rybakov said with a deprecating shrug as he extended an expensive-looking telescope of his own, one chased in gilt, and its tubes overlaid with ivory. 'Look there, Anatoli. Is it not fascinating? Shall we be among the living an hour from now, ha ha?'
'Oh, the Danes,' Count Levotchkin said with a sickly sneer upon his face. At least some colour was coming back to his cheeks, from his first exposure to fresh air and the chill in nigh two days. 'As dull as Hamburg traders, with no spines. They would not dare.'
Damme, what's his coat and hat made of? Lewrie took a moment to ponder; Is that… seal skin? Dirty bastard. Must've taken four or more hides t'keep his skinny arse warm.
'They most-like will not, my lord,' Lewrie said, his attention on Rybakov, not the whey-faced irritation. 'Do ye look close, you'll see one of our packet brigs at anchor under the fort. Were the Danes of a mind t'shoot at us, they'd have given her twenty-four hours to be gone… or taken her as good prize.'
'So the diplomats still correspond,' Count Rybakov said, looking bemused, 'and the Danish court and your Foreign Office still attempt to find a mutually pleasing compromise?'
'It very well could be, my lord,' Lewrie said with an impish grin.
'Ready, sir!' Mr. Tunstall announced.
'Carry on, Mister Tunstall!' Lewrie shouted back.
'Number one gun… fire!' the Master Gunner barked, and an 18-pounder far up forward bellowed and jerked back to the limit of the breeching ropes. 'If I weren't a gunner, I wouldn't be here… number three gun… fire!'
