the blue.
'Rabbit?' Alan gaped, now fully awake. 'I would think hunting in this rain would be terrible.'
'Set some snares back on t'other side of the hills, sir,' Cony said.
'A poacher on two continents are you, Cony?'
'Aye, sir. You'd have to share with the hairy gentleman, but 'tis a fine, fat rabbit.'
'And I expect you have a second laid by for your own breakfast?' Alan teased.
'That I do, sir,' Cony replied without shame, showing the natural guile of the admitted scrounger and woodsman.
'In that case, it sounds hellish good.'
'Tis on the spit at this minute, sir.'
Alan nodded his thanks and Cony slipped out of the dugout, leaving Alan to finish his burnt-bread imitation coffee, which was at least hot enough to get him started for another morning of drudgery. He dressed quickly and threw a tarpaulin watch coat over his shoulders for a rain cover and went outside to inspect his battery and the redan.
The cook fire was burning for the men's morning meal and the iron pots were simmering up gruel and chunks of salt meat. The artillerymen and Jagers had individual squad fires burning. The smoke lay close and heavy to the ground like a morning mist. The rain no longer poured down in buckets, but now drizzled endlessly and miserably from a pewter sky. Only half the open fields could be seen below them, and the far woods were lost in fog or mists.
'Mornin', Mister Lewrie, sir,' Knatchbull the quarter-gunner said as he emerged from the dugout.
'Morning, Knatchbull. How do the hands keep?'
'Damp right through, sir,' the man replied, knuckling his forehead in rough salute. 'We could use some sailcloth er tarpaulin, sir, ta kivver up the sleepin' spaces.'
'I shall request of some after breakfast,' Alan said, studying the small tents the Jagers and the army artillerists had erected. 'Perhaps some tents would keep the rain off. How about our guns?'
'I'm that worried 'bout the breechin' ropes, sir,' Knatch-bull said. 'Iffen ya could take a squint, sir. Them posts we sunk ta serve ta attach the breechin' ropes an' side tackles an' sich're in mud now.'
'Are they shifting?'
'Not so's ya'd notice, Mister Lewrie, but they will iffen ya sets light ta a powder charge ta fire a gun.'
'I doubt if we could find a dry cartridge this morning, anyway.'
'Aye, sir, sich a day it is.'
'Guten morgen, herr mittschiffesmann Lew-rie,' van Muecke dribbled. 'Eine schreckliche tag, nicht wahr?'
'It is when I have to decipher that,' Alan mumbled under his breath, but saying out loud, 'Good morning to you, Mister von Mooka.'
'Muecke,' the soldier corrected. 'Fon Mehr-keh, verstehe?'
'Whatever.' Alan shrugged and waved it off with a hopeless grin. 'Any sign of the enemy this fine morning?'
'Nein, mein herr. Ich habe… I have der scouts aus also.'
'Powder dry?'
'Jah, oder zuh primings sind… sput!'
If he does that one more time he'll hit my coffee, Alan thought, protecting his mug from the small shower of spit that had accompanied the sound effect of a squibbed priming.
'My hammock man Cony has a rabbit for us to share, Mister… Fon Mee-key. We shall have a decent breakfast, at any rate.'
'Ah, eine rappit? Eine hase? Wunderbar!'
Alan wandered off to the forward artillery piece of the redan to look over the bleak countryside, shivering slightly. It had seemed like summer over the last week, not as fierce as the Indies, but warm enough during the days. Now, with the rain coming down as though it would never cease and the fogs blanketing those sharp hills and tree tops, it felt more like true autumn, more seasonal for the last of September it also made those far hills and trees seem more forbidding than before, more wild and uncivilized. Every good Englishman that got a plot of ground, an estate, or a farm spent countless hours shaping and weeding, cutting back thickets and removing underbrush, reforming Nature into gentle and civilized gardens and fields as orderly as a Roman villa. It was Man in charge of Nature, announcing his sovereignty and superiority over the dumb beasts and the wildness. But here, there was so much Nature, it was inconceivable that anyone could even begin to make a dent on it, and it made Alan feel puny and insignificant. And there were thousands of miles of this sort of wilderness stretching off to the Piedmont and beyond, into God knew what sort of savage remoteness, a country that might just stretch to Asia; limitless as a map of Russia, as wide as the mighty Atlantic Ocean and just as trackless and harsh, deluding the traveler with its lush or rugged beauties, just as the sea deluded the unwary.
'God, get me out of this beastly place!' Alan softly said. 'It's driven the Rebels mad, every one of 'em, and it's out t'get me!'
After half the hare for breakfast, Alan had his mount saddled and took a long ride to the north to seek out supplies for his battery.
He came down off the front slope and rode at the edge of the hill line into the next cul-de-sac north, perhaps a quarter mile, seeking the small draw at its north end for passage through the convoluted terrain.
'Halt, who goes thar?' a voice challenged from the mists 'A damned wet sailor!' he called back, after he had gotten over his sudden fright. Under his tarpaulin coat he had his pair of pistols, the ones bought nearly two years before in Portmouth, but they had lain unused except for a cleaning and toiling; midshipmen could not wear their own iron except for a useless dirk, and once battle was joined he had never had a chance to go below for them. They were still next to useless under the folds of the tarred coat, but he had reached for them.
'Watch wot yer adoin' with yer hands, thar, sailor,' the invisible watcher shouted back. 'Ride up an' be reco'nized!'
'Ride up where, damn you?' he said. In reply, a soldier got to his feet from the bushes not thirty paces away to his right, holding a rifle at full cock and ready to fare.
How can a man in a red coat be so invisible? Alan marveled, reining his horse about to walk up near the man. He thought that he recognized the uniform. 'North Carolina Volunteers?'
'That we are. Now, what in hell're you?'
'Midshipman Alan Lewrie, from the redan to the south.'
'Open that coat an' let's see yer true colors.' Alan unlaced the coat and pulled it back to reveal the navy uniform, the white collar tabs of a midshipman and the anchored buttons.
'Guess yer wot ya say ya are. Where ya agoin'?'
'To find some tents for my men and tarps for my guns.'
'Gonna ride through that thar draw, wuz ya?'
'I am an officer,' Alan reminded the man, stretching his rank, and snippish at the casual affront to his 'dignity.'
'I kin see that.' The man nodded in agreement, lowering his rifle and taking it off cock. He began to wrap an oily handkerchief about the firelock and frizzen to keep his priming dry. 'But ya ride up thar an' somebody'd put a ball in yer boudin's afore ya could say Jack Sauce!'
'Then how am I to get through the draw… private?' Alan asked, his blood rising.
'Get on down an' I'll lead off.'
Alan had to dismount and squelch through the wet grass and mud behind the soldier, who did not give him a backward glance until they were almost in the notch of the draw.
'Corp'ral o' the guard, thar! Gotta horse an' rider with me!'
More men popped up from the thickets and Alan was waved on past.
'Mister Lewrie,' someone called. 'Come to accept our invitation?'
'Ah, Burgess Chiswick!' Alan grinned, happy to see someone that he knew. 'On my way past, really.'
'Surely your errand is not so important you could not break your passage, as I believe you sailors say, and have a cup of coffee with us.'
