Lewrie? Where the Devil have you sprung from?' Capt. Thomas Foley of HMS Elephant, the Third Rate 74 that flew Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson's flag, exclaimed in wonder as HMS Thermopylae's captain gained the starboard gangway and took his salute. 'Greenland, by the look of it,' Foley wryly commented as he took in Lewrie's swaddling furs. 'I was amazed, when you made your private signal and number… joining us from the South?'
'Captain Foley, sir,' Lewrie replied with a sheepish smile, and doff of his cocked hat, which was one of the few items visible marking him as an officer of the Royal Navy; or an Englishman, for that matter. 'Just returned from a reconnaisance of the Russian and Swedish harbours, sir. And, some diplomatic tosh. The Admiral is aboard Elephant? Last I heard at Yarmouth Roads, he was to have a First Rate.'
'Shifted his flag to a vessel of lesser draught, for this Danish business, sir,' Foley said, thankfully feeling not a whit insulted that Lewrie might be making a back-handed disparagement of his ship.
'I must report to him, Captain Foley. Is he busy?' Lewrie asked.
'Frightfully,' Foley replied, 'Lord Nelson even now is dictating the orders for our attack on the Danes.'
'Then I don't s'pose what we'll face once we've settled them is done matters that much at the moment,' Lewrie said, slumping with disappointment. He'd imagined a grand welcome, with hearty congratulations all round, a toast drunk in his honour, perhaps even some light applause upon his dashing entrance and his less-than-dire discoveries. 'D'ye think I should call upon Sir Hyde?' he asked, wondering if he'd get a better reception there. After only getting a new active commission by 'the skin of his teeth,' Lewrie had hoped that his duties up the Baltic might turn at least a few heads, and restore his reputation with Admiralty.
'Oh, Lord, don't do that, Lewrie!' Capt. Foley cynically scoffed. 'Admiral Parker has quite enough on his plate, at the moment, worrying about the Danes! I gather,' Foley said, leaning closer to impart his inside information, 'that whenever the subject of the Russians arises, Sir Hyde is like to come down with the ague, and the vapours.'
'Hmm?' Lewrie gawped, his head cocked over in confusion.
'In any event, it would take you the better part of the night to reach HMS London,' Foley breezed off, 'for Admiral Parker, with eight ships of the line, is now anchored off the Northern end of the Middle Ground, above Copenhagen and the Three Crowns fortress. Lord Nelson, with Rear-Admiral Graves in Defiance, command here. We're to sail in against the Danes and take them on from the South, as soon as we get a favourable slant of wind. We've twelve of the line, altogether, with Captain Riou and the frigates and lesser ships. Best we forward your written report to Sir Hyde, and your frigate remain here, sir. Every warship is welcome, and, I am bound, that Captain Riou will find your Fifth Rate and its artillery doubly welcome.'
'I have a copy for Admiral Parker with me,' Lewrie told Foley, groping into the canvas despatch bag slung over his shoulder. 'If you would be so kind as to have it sent on, Captain Foley. I've another for Lord Nelson, though none for Rear-Admiral Graves.'
'You'll need your orders from Lord Nelson, in any event, sir,' Capt. Foley decided, summoning a lieutenant to his side, and ordering that he should signal an officer from one of the lighter vessels to come aboard and bear the report to the Vice-Admiral. 'Will you come aft with me to Lord Nelson's quarters for something warming, sir?' Foley kindly offered, once that business was done.
'Most thankfully, sir,' Lewrie eagerly responded.
In HMS Elephant's great-cabins under the poop deck, Lewrie was shown into 'the presence' of Vice-Admiral of the Blue Lord Nelson who, at that moment, was lying in his bed-cot, propped up by several pillows and dictating to several clerks and lieutenants, all scribbling away as he spoke. A cabin servant with unruly black hair and pug-face features was scuttling round like a mother hen, offering another quilt to spread atop the other bed covers, and Nelson's chequered overcoat. Hot drink steamed on a brazier, for the side-board, and every stick of furniture but for the bed-cot and some portable writing desks had been struck to the orlop already. And, in contrast to Lewrie's frigate, where those Franklin stoves had been re-rigged and stoked, now she was securely at anchor, Elephant's great-cabins were perishing cold, and but dimly lit.
'Captain Lewrie, of the Thermopylae frigate, is come, my lord,' Foley said in a soft voice, unwilling to intrude too loudly.
'Lewrie? That scoundrel?' Lord Nelson exclaimed in his squeaky high voice, peering querulously at the new arrivals with his one good eye, and a slim, almost girlish hand over the blind one, as if it yet pained him. 'Yours is the Fifth Rate that came to anchor just after full dark, sir?'
'It is, my lord,' Lewrie replied. 'Fresh come from the Baltic.'
'The Russians?' Nelson snapped, looking ill and impatient. 'You were the one Lord Saint Vincent ordered to scout them out? How many?'
'One First Rate, three Second Rates, and twelve Third Rates, at Reval, along with three more I took for Sixty- Fours or lesser, sir,' Lewrie rattled off from memory. 'Nine frigates, two Third Rates still stripped to a gant-line, and bomb vessels at Kronstadt, my lord. And, as of a week ago, still iced in… though the Russians have thousands of people choppin', burnin', and blastin' a single channel. It's the same with the Swedes at Karlskrona, my lord. Three frigates, only one Third Rate, and six Sixty-Fours or Fifty-Eights with their masts set up and yards crossed… and they're still iced in, too.'
'Ah!' Lord Nelson said with a long, pleased sigh, reclining on the pillows and looking up at the overhead with a smile.
If he ain't half-dead a'ready, he's doin' a hellish-good imitation, Lewrie thought as he undid his fur coat. In his brief experience with Nelson in the Mediterranean in '95 and '96, at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in '97, the man had always struck him as a frail sort, as pale and wan as a consumptive most of the time; he was barely a couple of inches over five feet tall, damned near as short as the Reverend William Wilberforce, and it was only combat, or the prospect of coming action, that livened Nelson up like an old horse 'feagued' with a plug of ginger up its fundament to fool an unwary buyer.
'Some more hot tea a'comin', sir,' the ill-featured manservant fussed, all but lifting his master's shoulders and putting the mug to his lips like an invalid. He cast Lewrie a ferocious scowl, as if he had barged his way into the privacy of the sick-bed. 'Nigh-boilin hot from the brazier, sir. Drink it down now, 'fore it cools.'
Damme, it must be a midget reunion, Lewrie thought, figuring the cabin servant was not a quim-hair taller than Nelson.
'A copy of Captain Lewrie's written report has just this minute been sent along to Vice-Admiral Parker, my lord,' Captain Foley said.
'Oh Lord, that'll put the wind up him,' Nelson moaned between sips of his steaming-hot tea.
Don't I get any? Lewrie silently groused; It's freezin' in here.
'Sir Hyde simply will not contemplate their existence,' Nelson petulantly griped. 'Or, that meeting them in battle and defeating them is the principal aim of this expedition, of our orders! It was all I could do to convince the man to enter the Sound at all, and dare the guns of Kronborg Castle. For days, we dithered, Sir Hyde thinking we should come at Copenhagen through the Great Belt passage, which would have taken weeks. Most dilatory, when the main thing is to go right at them, before any of the Baltic powers get their entire fleets out to sea, and combined.'
'Now, don't fret yourself, sir,' the wee manservant gently chid him, 'for we're here, and ready t'settle the Danes'is hash.'
'Thomas, you cosset me like a mother cat with her kittens,' the Vice-Admiral said with a fond smile, relenting from his brief rant; a rant that had put colour in his cheeks. 'Thomas Allen, Lewrie, my long-time 'man,' ' Nelson explained. 'Tea for Captain Lewrie, Thomas.'
'Aye, sir,' Allen said, though he still kept a wary eye on the Eskimo-looking interloper.
'Your weight of metal, Lewrie,' Nelson demanded, looking healthier than he had a couple of minutes before.
'Thermopylae's an eighteen-pounder Thirty-Eight, my lord,' Capt. Lewrie crisply responded. 'Where do you wish us?'
'Under Captain Riou, to re-enforce his group of frigates,' Lord Nelson replied. 'His Amazon is also a Thirty- Eight. Simply one Hell of a fellow, is Riou, and a man after mine own heart! I've put Blanche, under Captain Hamond, Captain Sutton and Alcmene, Captain Bolton and his Arrow, and Captain Devonshire's Dart under Riou's command, along with the Fox and Otter cutters, to assist the 'liners' assigned to the van of the line. A brace of Thirties, a Thirty-Six and a Thirty-Two… now a pair of Thirty-Eights, as well, adding your frigate to the Amazon.
