A scarf tore all his face.
'We will alter course to Sou'east, and make more sail,' Lewrie directed. 'All plain sail, first, then 'all to the royals,' perhaps.'
'Directly, Captain,' Lt. Fox crisply replied. 'Bosun, pipe 'All Hands,' then 'Stations To Come About.' '
By mid-day, as the last of Eight Bells chimed, they stood with sextants and slates ready, hoping for a peek at the sun, but that orb refused to appear clearly, veiling itself as a bright, vague smudge in a sky solidly clouded over. The best they could do was agree that the various chronometers still kept the same time, within half a minute of each other, and that it was Noon, indeed, when the day officially began aboard a ship at sea; not at Midnight, but at Noon Sights.
'At least we see Bornholm, sir,' Lt. Farley said, lowering his telescope after a peek over the larboard beam, 'and can reckon by its presence just where we are. Its southernmost tip, yonder, 'twixt… ah, Aakirkeby and, ah… Nekso? And who picks the names for foreign towns, I ask you? Can't pronounce the half of 'em,' he muttered.
'Do you concur, Captain Hardcastle?' Lewrie asked the civilian merchant master.
'That it be, sir,' Hardcastle told them, chuckling. 'Bless me, sirs, but you think they're hard to say, you ought to see how they're spelled in Swedish or Danish! All sorts of umlauts and hyphen strokes through the odd vowels. In Russian waters, it's even worse, for they use the Cyrillic alphabet… the old Greek, and thank God for Anglicised British charts.'
'Ice!' cried a main-mast lookout from the cross-trees. 'Do ye hear, there? Broken ice, two points off the larboard bows! A mile or more off!'
'You still wish to examine the ice, Captain Hardcastle?' Lewrie asked him.
'We must, sir,' Hardcastle assured him.
'Mister Fox, we'll fetch-to, and lower a boat for Captain Hardcastle. Pass word for my Cox'n and boat crew,' Lewrie ordered.
Thermopylae had been able to post about six or seven knots on the Sutherly winds, but now it was tossed away as the helm was put over and the sails trimmed to turn the frigate's bows about, into the wind, with squares'ls backed to check her forward motion, and with fore-and-aft sails cupping and drawing wind to counter any sternward drive. A rowing boat, the cutter, was seized up, and, with the employment of the main course yard for a crane, hoisted off the cross-deck boat-tier beams and carefully lowered overside, then manned below the starboard entry-port. Captain Hardcastle and Midshipman Tillyard joined the boat crew and began to row off towards the ice floes, now clearly visible from the decks. Lewrie paced the quarterdeck, from taffrail to the hammock nettings, and back again, stopping now and then to peer out and drum impatient mittened fingers on the cap-rails, knowing that such was as slow as 'church work,' as the saying went.
'Pardons, sir,' Midshipman Plumb said by his side.
'What?' Lewrie impatiently snapped.
'Uhm… your man, Pettus, begs tell you that your dinner is ready, sir,' the boy reported, looking a tad daunted.
'My pardons, Mister Plumb,' Lewrie apologised, 'but the state of the ice in the Baltic matters a great deal for Admiral Parker, and Admiral Nelson, and I'm anxious t'know what they discover,' he added, jutting an arm at the slowly moving cutter. 'Dinner, d'ye say? Hmm.'
Proper Post-Captains did not fret; not where people could see them, they didn't. They were to show the world glacial serenity, even in hurricanes, he chid himself.
'Mister Fox, you have the deck,' Lewrie called out over his shoulder as he tramped for the larboard gangway. 'I will be dining in my cabins, 'til the boat returns. Send word when it does.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
'A nice slab of last night's sea-pie, sir,' Pettus told him as he helped him disrobe his winter garb. 'Pity the Russian gentlemen didn't fancy it much, but more for you, there is. A scalding-hot soup… beef broth, diced onion, melted cheese and crumbled biscuit, and Nettles fried you some lovely potato patties, with lots of crumbled bacon. The cats have got their share of that, sir, no fear.' Pettus cheerfully chattered away as Lewrie sat down at the table. A moment later, and there was a rum-laced, sweetened, and milked mug of coffee before him; even if it was goat's milk. 'Wine, too, sir?'
'Think I'll wait 'til supper for wine, today, Pettus,' Lewrie decided as he dug in with his fork. His hunger was alive, clawing at his innards, but he forced himself to go slow, as he'd forced himself to come below, and pretend to ignore the boat, and the ice. One very good reason to dally over his victuals was the absence of both of the Russian counts, and their servants; they had dined earlier, together, with Count Levotchkin coming out of his self-enforced exile aft, and thus avoiding having to dine with Lewrie, in proper manner, for once. The brief spell of privacy, free of Rybakov's ever-cheerful prattle, was splendid!
'Did Nettles whip up anything for dessert, Pettus?' he asked, once the last morsel had gone down his gullet, and the last warm sip of rum-laced coffee had been drunk.
'Nought for dinner, sir,' Pettus answered, removing his plate. 'Said he's saving his best efforts for supper. But there's jam and extra-fine biscuit I could fetch out.'
'Sounds fine,' Lewrie told him, requesting a refill of coffee, minus the rum this time. All the while keeping one ear cocked for a call from the deck, the sound of the cutter bumping back alongside of the hull… and the ticking of the carriage clock that he kept on the side-board.
Fretting and frowning, now he was in private, Lewrie went over to his desk and pretended to immerse himself in the minutiae of ship's paperwork. Finally…
'Midshipman Plumb, SAH!' the sentry called.
'Enter!' Lewrie replied, a tad too eagerly and loudly, even to his ears.
'Mister Fox's respects, sir, and he says that the cutter is-' Plumb began.
'Tell Mister Fox I will come to the quarterdeck, Mister Plumb.' Lewrie cut him off, going quickly for his furs.
He trotted up the gangway ladder to the starboard entry-port, where Capt. Hardcastle and Midshipman Tillyard stood over a large wooden bucket.
'Well, sirs?' Lewrie asked, striving for at least a shred of idle interest.
'It's rotten, sir,' Hardcastle said, kneeling down to lift out a slab, about the size of a serving platter, and about eight inches thick. The edges crumbled at his touch. Lewrie reached out to touch it, giving it a squeeze. At first it felt solid enough, but even as he applied moderate pressure, he could feel it flaking away, as if he could compress it into a slushy snowball, did he try harder.
'Get a lot of it together, sir, and it'll slow a ship down,' Hardcastle told him. 'Where the floes are solid, not like these bits that've broken off, you'll still have unbroken ice, about three feet or more thick, though there'll be air bubbles underneath, where it'll be half the thickness. Where it'll first begin to break up, sir.'
'I thought it would be flat and smooth, top to bottom,' Lewrie speculated aloud, putting out both hands to take the slab from Captain Hardcastle. It was still quite heavy; though, as he turned it over, he saw that the bottom of the slab was pebbly and pitted. Without warning the slab broke in half, split right down the middle, and shattered on the oak decks of the starboard gangway. 'Well, damn,' he muttered.
'Up north on the Swedish coast, sir,' Hardcastle told him, 'up at Karlskrona, it'll still be solid, and three or four feet thick, as I said, but… won't be long before it's half that, and breaking up.'
'And Kronstadt, and Reval?' Lewrie asked of the Russian ports.
'Two or three weeks behind the Swedes, sir,' Hardcastle speculated with a grim expression. 'It's melting fast, even so.'
'Mister Fox? Get way on her again. 'All to the royals,' and wring the last quarter-knot from this wind, long as it lasts,' Lewrie told him. 'Soon as the cutter's back on the tiers.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
Get these Russians ashore soonest, Lewrie grimly told himself as he kicked some larger chunks of ice down the gangway; Reconnoiter Reval, for certain-don't think we can get all the way t'Kronstadt if it melts out last-then dash back to Karlskrona t'smoak them out and… report to the Fleet… if we can get back past Copenhagen and the Narrows… if the Danes let us!
Getting in was the easy part, he realised; getting out of the Baltic would be the really tricky part!
