H. M. S. Cockerel (17 page)

“Bosun!” he bawled, “Get below and set relieving tackle to the tiller head! All hands, secure from Quarters! Mister Scott, take the foc's'le and foremast, set the sprit-s'l, fore-tops'l and forecourse for a run. Mainmast, mizzenmast, there! Topmen aloft! Trice up and lay out! Brail up all sail! Clew up now, Mister Porter, Mister Thorne. Clew up the mizzen t'gallant, main course, main tops'l and t'gallant! Spanish-reef 'em, for now! After-guard, mizzen tops'l braces!”

They'd have to have the foresails for drive, and a lifting effect, making the stern heavier for a repaired helm. The mizzen tops'l could serve for steering, of a rough and clumsy sort. The rest of her square sail would be drawn up by the clew lines toward the yards which hung them, baggy and bat-winged, toward the tips of the yardarms, close and snug inward toward the masts . . . Spanish-reefed.

He dared allow himself at last a deep, shaky breath and a look aloft. Well, that didn't help his nerves much, he thought, blaring his eyes in wonder—there were t'gallant and topmast shrouds flying free as the commissioning pendant up yonder, and the light upper masts were swaying a
lot
more than normal as
Cockerel
wallowed from side to side, her untended lift lines allowing the yards to droop a-cock-bill.

“What in the name o' God d'ye think yer playing at, sir!” the captain fumed as he made his way amidships of the quarterdeck. “Get the bloody hell outa my way, you brainless, cunny-thumbed . . . !” Captain Braxton screamed to all and sundry, shaking his fists as if he wished to bloody his knuckles on the quarterdeck gunners and after-guard.

“They're
firing
at us!” Midshipman Braxton shouted from aloft. “The French are firing at us, sir!”

The 5th Rate had rounded up abeam the wind, about four or five miles alee of
Cockerel.
The roar of her upper-deck guns could not be heard, of course, but they could see the puffs of gray-tan gunpowder erupt from her sides as the forty-four-gunned vessel delivered a slow, timed salute—a most mocking and derisory salute to their “seamanship”—before hauling her wind once more and loping away eastward to guard her convoy, which had used their entertaining diversion to sail away from harm, toward the Straits of Gibraltar.

Cackling their fool heads off, Alan thought miserably.

“Fowkner,” he called to a senior hand of the after-guard. “Get aloft. Get a line on the spanker gaff—what's
left
of it—and haul it clear of the shrouds. Boat hooks, you men. Get the spanker sheets in-board, and ready to lower away. Mister Spendlove? Inform one of the bosun's mates to fetch out one of the stun'sl booms and ‘fish' it to the broken spanker gaff.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“You, sir!” Braxton snarled, hatless, his fists balled for a fight still, as he came to his first lieutenant. “Of all the stupid, inept—!”

“Steering tackle parted, sir,” Lewrie tried to explain. “There wasn't much we could—”

“That you should have rerove completely before, you—!”

“Captain, sir,” Lewrie replied, “you were there when we overhauled it. You said yourself you were satisfied—”

“You disputatious dog, sir!” Braxton shot back. “Think I can't see your game? Think I'm blind, do you? How convenient the hands, of a sudden, were struck—”

“Captain, sir,” Mr. Dimmock interrupted from the other side, “I think a little calm is in order, sir. ‘Least said, soonest mended' and all that? The hands, ye know . . . won't
do,
in their hearing, sir.”

“I'll kindly thankee to keep out of this,
sir,
”
Braxton sneered. “I want your advice, I'll ask for it. Now, be silent.”

“No, sir,” Dimmock quailed, though determined to have his say, at last. “Not this time. You're saying Mr.
Lewrie put the people up to it, is
that
your meaning, sir? And I say that is wrong, sir. Were it not for
his
quick wits, we'd have rolled the ‘sticks' right out of her, sir. Frankly, Captain Braxton,
Cockerel
's
damn' lucky
somebody
kept their wits about 'em when perfectly sound steering- tackle ropes snapped, at the worst possible moment. Tackle you
did
inspect, sir.”

Braxton seethed, turned red as turkey wattles, but realised he was in the wrong place to shout the dread word “mutiny.” “How dare you, sir,
deign
to interfere!” he hissed, in a much more private, though much more threatening voice.

“There
may
be trouble 'mongst our people, sir,” Dimmock told him in a mutter, “but I may swear to you on a stack o' Bibles, 'tis none of Mr.
Lewrie's
doing.”

Dimmock had such a way of canting his accents, of laying stress on innocuous words, that his meaning was quite clear at that moment; and quite accusatory, too. Though were his statements recalled at any court martial, verbatim, they could sound quite innocent. He'd as much as implied that the source of the crew's unrest lay solely with Captain Braxton. He'd further implied that when
Cockerel
had come nigh broaching, her captain had uttered no orders for her salvation.

“You, as well, sir?” Braxton sniffed, raring back with outrage.

“Sir, you
can't
believe that. We're all as—”

BOOM! From windward.

Windsor Castle
had fired a forecastle chase gun to get
Cockerel
's
attention. She and the rest of the squadron were completely hull-up to them, and had been flying “Do You Require Assistance” for some minutes, until at last their admiral had become so exasperated at their lack of notice he'd ordered a gun touched off. The line-abreast warships were going to pass
Cockerel
close-aboard soon, as she staggered sou'east with the wind right up her stern, and they continued east-nor'east in chase of the French convoy. Some of them might have to alter course to avoid her, slowing that pursuit even more.

“From the flag, sir!” Midshipman Braxton screeched aloft. “‘Do You Require Assistance,' it reads, sir!”

“We can see
that
from the deck, damn you!” Lewrie hailed upward. “God help your slack arse,
Mister
Midshipman Braxton!” he vowed. He'd have the lad bent over a gun, should the Devil himself dare to cross him. “What reply do you wish to send, sir?” he asked the captain, in a more civil tone.

“No!” Braxton thundered. “We require no assistance!”

“Very well, sir. Mister Spendlove? You're free aft. Hoist a Negative.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Might ease the starboard mizzen tops'l braces, Mister Lewrie,” Dimmock advised, in his proper role of sailing master. “Haul taut on the larboard, and we may be able to pressure her 'round more east'rd.”

“Thankee, Mister Dimmock. Should I attend to that, sir?” Alan asked the captain.

Braxton's mouth worked in anger. To fly up as lubberly as some first-time lake sailor in a dinghy . . . to completely ignore a signal of their flagship . . . ! His abiding wish that
Cockerel
distinguish herself as the best frigate in the Fleet was in shambles.

“I have the deck, sir,” Braxton snarled at last. “Do you attend the purser below. We're alist, sir. Ballast has shifted, stores . . . I vow you've done quite enough for one day, sir.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie replied as chearly as he might.

“Whoo, neck-or-nothin' there, for a moment, hey, sir?” Banbrook the Marine crowed, fanning himself with his hat as he and O'Neal came up from the waist.

“On your way, see what's taking Mr. Fairclough so long to repair the steering tackle,” Braxton continued.

“I shall, sir,” Lewrie vowed, doffing his hat in salute.

“I say, Mister Lewrie, sir?” Banbrook nattered on, nearing their small gathering, completely unaware of any problems, now that the ship no longer appeared to be in danger of sinking.

“Might I suggest, Captain, sir, that the master-at-arms take a muster?” Lewrie dared to suggest. “Hard as we were slung about, it'd be a miracle were no topmen dashed over the side, sir.”

“Umph!” the captain grunted, calling for his son to attend to it.

“Then I shall go below, sir,” Lewrie said in parting.

“Uhm, Mister Lewrie, sir . . . 'bout the whore-transport?” Lieutenant Banbrook inquired breezily. “All these repairs and wot-not . . . does this mean we miss our turn with her, sir?”

Good God,
Lewrie thought, appalled; not
now,
you blitherin' . . . !

Captain O'Neal took Banbrook's arm to jerk him out of earshot, coughing fit to die—much too late, of course.

“The
what?
”
Captain Braxton roared, wheeling to look at Banbrook with a mixture of utter loathing and complete incomprehension on his phiz. “The bloody
what,
sir?”

“The whore-transport, sir,” Lieutenant Banbrook began gaily. “The one the wardroom told me about?”

A very tardy realisation struck the young Marine officer at last. “The one with the . . . uhm . . .” he stammered, blushing beet-red as he discovered himself the goat of their cruel jape. “Well, the . . . whores aboard? Who come alongside and . . . ?”

“Get off my deck! Get off my quarterdeck, you
useless
damn fool!” the captain screamed, again in full cry, and with a suitable target for his pent-up wrath. “I want this . . . tailor's dummy . . . under close arrest, Captain O'Neal! Under close arrest, sir!”

Time to bolt, Lewrie thought.

He made his way down a quarterdeck ladder, down the midships companionway hatch, safely out of screeching range, as the full fury of the captain's storm broke.

The first people he met as he attained the orlop deck were the ship's carpenter, Mister Dallimore, and his carpenter's crew, all of whom were hugging carline posts, and each other, sniggering and chortling.

“'Hore-ship, megawd!” one of them wheezed.

“T'ain't funny, damn yer eyes,” Lewrie snapped. “Look at this bloody mess, Mister Dallimore.”

Huge water butts, salt-rations barrels, beer kegs, piled ship's stores . . . half the well-ordered stowage on the orlop was now lumbered loose to larboard. They'd be half the watch shifting it, the waisters and idlers, such as Dallimore's people, and probably require Marines to pitch in, too, to shift ballast in the bilges.

“Aye, sir. Sorry, sir,” Dallimore tried to reply, though it was more like a strangling, sneezing sound.

“Get to work, there. Turn a hand, and stop that sniv'ling.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Lewrie stomped stiff-legged aft to the tiller head in the midshipmen's cockpit. The bosun and a few senior able seamen were finishing up the first vital part of the repairs, stringing a block-and-tackle series to the tiller head so
Cockerel
could be steered from the cockpit, with helm orders relayed down from the quarterdeck. Reroving new rope and long-splicing old would take longer, before the wheel would serve.

“Whip-staff an' windlass, Mister Lewrie, sir,” Fairclough told him, “but 'twill do f'r now. We've our rudder back.”

“Herdson, go on deck and inform the captain,” Lewrie ordered. “Aye aye, sir.”

“Buggered, sir,” Fairclough grunted, shifting his quid.

“When? How?” Lewrie demanded.

“Lookee 'ere, sir,” Fairclough whispered, drawing his attention to a squarish hole in an overhead deck beam, hard by where one of the turning blocks for the tiller ropes would pass. “Looks t'me, sir, if a rat-trail rasp'z drove in 'ere, it'd chafe th' steerin' tackle sore, Mister Lewrie, ever'time a spoke'r two was put over. There's frayin' on the lines, aye, but . . . ye can see where some'un couldn't wait, an' cut it.”

“Sometime after we went to Quarters, I suppose,” Lewrie sighed.

“Aye, sir, else the 'younkers'da seed it bein' done, and . . .” Fair-clough shrugged heavily, lifting thick brows in studied perplexity.

“And I didn't think they'd found leaders yet,” Lewrie muttered softly. “Looks like they have, though.”

“Aye, sir,” Fairclough agreed, sounding shifty and truculent.

Damme, Alan recalled suddenly—Dallimore and his crew—they had a tool box with 'em! Rasps, punches, hammers, saws . . . and draw-knives! And I'd wager it wasn't just Banbrook's lunatick gaff set 'em to laughing! The newcomers, the lubbers, the waisters . . . they'd never think of such a stunt. It was the
experienced
crewmen who'd know how to disable the ship, who'd know how to make the landsmen slip, fall, or look clumsy. Who'd know just how far they could go without really disabling
Cockerel,
or endangering her or themselves.