Tunstall intoned, pacing slowly aft from the first discharged cannon. Boom! went the second, and Tunstall jerked his right hand, jutting out his middle finger to go alongside his index finger. 'I've left my wife, and all that's dear… number five gun… fire!' and ring finger joined its mates.
On down the deck he paced, chanting the old timing cadence lyrics over and over, with pinky, then thumb of his right hand extended. He clenched that fist and began on the left hand as he reached sixth through the tenth round of the salute, clenching the left fist at last and returning to the right, working his way right aft to the break of the quarterdeck, into that now-empty covered space where Lewrie's cabins usually stood. As soon as the fourteenth starboard-side cannon had discharged, Tunstall showed a remarkable turn of speed to dash forward to the re- loaded first gun of the salute. '… a gunner, I wouldn't be here… number one gun… fire!'
The final crash and bellow, the last gush of gunpowder, and the echo of salute faded away, ghosting with the haze of sickly yellow-white smoke that was whisked beyond the frigate's bows by the wind on their quarter.
'Re-load, Mister Tunstall!' Lewrie ordered in the sudden silence. 'Powder and shot… just in case!'
More flags were flying from Kronborg Castle's towers, plain red flags with a white cross extending to all four edges, offset towards the seam closest to the poles from which they flew. Thankfully, there was no smoke rising from the fort's chimneys to indicate that round-shot was quickly being heated.
Boom! came a far off bellow from the nearest square bastion and a matching eruption of spent powder smoke. Ten seconds later, there came a second. Lewrie tucked his tongue in one side of his mouth and listened for the deep wail of approaching iron, but heard none. With a quick glance about, he could not see any feathery water spouts from rounds fired short, or the skip of First Graze, and certainly not the Second-Graze, as if gun-captains were dapping a flat stone 'til it hit their intended target. Boom! came a third, followed ten seconds later, steady as a metronome on a young miss's harpsichord, or the clapping of a dancing master's hands, by a fourth, a fifth, a sixth…!
'They're returning our salute!' the Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, exclaimed. 'Well, just damn my eyes!'
'Well of course they are, Mister Lyle,' Lewrie hooted with glee. 'The Danes're a civilised lot. Can't just begin a war does your breakfast not suit! Takes reams o' scribblin', stern diplomatic overtures and warnin's. Like postin' the Banns, 'stead o' runnin' off t'marry. It's the done thing.'
'Eleven… and, twelve,' Lt. Ballard counted, but there were no more shots fired from Kronborg Castle. 'Twelve for a Post-Captain.'
'They didn't know the dignity of our honoured guests, Mister Ballard,' Lewrie replied, feeling like laughing out loud, snapping his fingers under Ballard's nose, and doing a little dance. 'How long at this speeed to Copenhagen, Mister Lyle?'
'Uhm… twenty more miles, sir,' Lyle answered after a moment. 'Say, uhm… does the wind stay out of the East-Nor'east… another three and a half hours. Four at the outermost, does it prove necessary to reduce sail, or work our way though any merchant traffic.'
'Just about my dinnertime, then,' Lewrie jested. 'Desmond! A lively tune, there! Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Ballard. I doubt we'll face anything to match us at sea… not 'til we near the Trekroner forts above Copenhagen. The Three Crowns' batteries. They'll know of our coming.'
'No rider can gallop that fast,' Anatoli Levotchkin scoffed, in better fiddle than when he first appeared on deck. Perhaps gunpowder agreed with him; he was back to a live-human pallor, and back to his usually haughty self, evincing an air of part disinterested boredom about the activities of the frigate's operation, and the gun salutes, and part simmering resentment-most of it directed at Lewrie, in sidelong sneers and slitted eyes.
'No galloper, no, my lord,' Lewrie countered, pointing ashore. 'They've a semaphore tower, which this minute is whirlin' away like a Dervish.'
'Ah,' Count Rybakov realised, chuckling, 'the wonders of technology.'
'Warnin' the Trekroner Fort above Copenhagen of our arrival,' Lewrie told him, 'which is reputed t'be even more formidable than the Kronborg. We'll take the Holland Deep, of course… you're familiar with Copenhagen, and the other narrows there? The Holland Deep lies on the Swedish side, with a very shallow Middle Ground, where I'm told many ships have gone aground, dividin' the narrows from the King's Deep, which might as well be Copenhagen's main harbour. We'll even sail to the East'rd of Saltholm Island, very far out of the reach of Danish artillery. Do they not have any warships ready for sea yet, we should be fairly safe.'
Liam Desmond on his lap-pipes, with the ship's fiddler and the Marine fifer, struck up a jaunty reel, and, of a sudden Thermopylae's crew began to clap, cheer, and dance about the decks; from relief that Kronborg had not opened fire on them, perhaps; from 'by Jingo' pride that perhaps the Danes did not dare match their weight of metal versus a British frigate… their frigate!
Some men, now freed from the secured guns, scampered atop the starboard sail-tending gangway to mock and jeer the Kronborg, now receding astern, to shake their fists and hoot belated bravery. And some began to bark, to extend their arms stiffly out in front of them, and clap their hands together, palms turned outward, in emulation of the Laeso Island seals… along with those who hoisted index and middle fingers of their right hands in the age-old 'Fuck you mate!' gesture.
'Uhm, Mister Ballard,' Lewrie called for his First Officer.
'Sir?' Ballard replied, looking a bit piqued by such a crude display. Exuberant enthusiastic displays of emotion had never been to his taste; there was no fear that Lt. Arthur Ballard would ever become a 'Leaping Methodist.' He was a staid High Church man.
'Let's let 'em have about a minute more o' that, then rein 'em back to discipline,' Lewrie ordered. 'I will be below.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
'Good cess, indeed,' Count Rybakov whispered to himself, shaking his head in genial wonder. Such an odd thing, he thought, that a single eerie incident could be the making of this mercurial Angliski Kapitan. So new to this ship, and its crew, which could have resented his arrival, and his new ways of doing things, yet… could it be that the Laeso seals had blessed him in command? For it appeared that the seals' fey actions, combined with the peaceful passing of Kronborg Castle and its gigantic cannon-so easily explainable to civilised, rational people who understood the diplomatic niceties and the mores of behaviour between nation-states-had won Lewrie the trust and affection of his men. 'A good cess, indeed, ah ha!'
'What is… cess?' Count Anatoli Levotchkin asked, snapping in impatience with the foolish antics of peasants, and quietly approving of Lt. Ballard and the officers and Midshipmen as they called the men back to duty, and to stop all that noise.
'Something British, Anatoli,' Rybakov told him. 'Said of a man with more luck than usual… luck awarded by God, well… an ancient god… upon one of his champions, his blessed. Kapitan Lewrie here, his men believe, has received a good cess from the seals we encountered… who came at the bidding of an ancient Irish sea god, to welcome him. To bless his new ship, and his voyage. Our voyage.'
'Superstitious nonsense!' Anatoli gravelled. 'These Angliski sailors are as stupid as our serfs. Seeing signs and portents in the yolks of eggs, or imagining that their grandfathers live on in the body of a light-furred wolf! Before we leave this ship, that bastard will have no luck left. I must see to it,' Levotchkin insisted with his chin lifted in long-simmering anger.
'Then, I think, Anatoli, that you will be the one to die, all for your lust for a whore,' Rybakov warned him with sadness. 'A whore whom anyone can have. As your elder kinsman, I stand for your father and mother, and warn you to let it go! Once our mission is finished, you will have a golden future ahead of you. Do not throw it away for so little. The world is full of pretty whores, if they are what you desire. Though I wish you aspired to better things.
'Think long and hard, Anatoli,' Rybakov pressed, his pleasant and merry face grim, and inches from the younger's, 'for I do believe that Kapitan Lewrie's cess will prevail.'
'Now who is the superstitious one?' Count Levotchkin rejoined with a sneer of cold amusement, taking one step backwards and striking a noble stance. 'He has wronged me, and insulted me, and I will not abide it. He must die. I have sworn it. If anything counts as a blessing, uncle, the Holy Mother of Kazan will uphold me against any pagan god. I am a loyal son of the true Church, while this Lewrie is of the degraded Protestant Church of England, which we both know is a joke even to the British, observed only once or twice a year, by rote. I doubt Lewrie even adheres to that! He is as faithless as the Tsar!'
'Anatoli…!' Rybakov barked, a hand raised in warning. 'This must not be done. Before you try, I will ask the Kapitan to put you in irons and chain you below. I will keep the keys until we set foot ashore… all the way to Saint
