Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"Sane people go West in weather like this," Lewrie muttered to himself, "and the wise stay in port 'til it moderates."

"Gained a bit, though, sir," Mr. Winwood, the Sailing Master, assured him after a long, gloomy peek at that "magnetic" headland with a heavy brass telescope to his eye. "Might've made three miles to the good, this last tack. Speaking of, though, sir…"

"Aye, thankee," Lewrie grumbled, turning to Lt. Catterall, the officer standing the Forenoon Watch. "Time to tack, I believe, sir!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Catterall bellowed back with great glee, turning to his helmsmen and lifting his brass speaking trumpet to roar, "Stations for Stays! Tail on, and prepare to come about to larboard tack!"

As he waited for sailors to ready themselves, Catterall clapped his raw hands together before him like a performing seal, all swaddled up in tarred canvas foul-weather clothing, then turned to address both Lewrie and Mr. Winwood. "Going like a thoroughbred at Derby, she is, sir! Damme, what fun!"

"God save us," Lewrie whispered to Mr. Winwood, "but he's ready for Bedlam. Certifiable!" He plastered a broad, agreeable grin on his phyz, though, and shouted, "Carry on!" to his manic Second Officer.

All hands, and all officers, too, up from naps in the gun-room, just to be on the safe side. Judging his moment very carefully, Lt. Catterall rose up on the balls of his feet, taking a deep suck of wind into his lungs, and turning just a tad blue as he held it for a long second or two, judging the scend of the sea, the pressure on the sails from the gusting winds, the wave-sets smashing against the starboard bows, and what they might be like halfway through the evolution… and, what gaps in that shoal of merchant traffic he thought he could thread Proteus through once she got a way back on, sailing nearly 140 degrees off her present course, and lay slow and loggish before the winds snatched her like a paper boat on a duck pond, and sent her tearing off once more.

"Ready, ready… ease down the helm!" Catterall screeched, at last, loud enough for his trumpet-aided voice to carry all the way to the forecastle. Then, "Helm alee!" after a last peek, a last breath.

Proteus swung up closer to the wind, fore-and-aft headsails now "Flowing," and, in such a brisk wind, the fore bowline kept fast, and the fore sheet "checked" or "braced to" in pilot boat fashion, as they would when short-tacking in a narrow channel. "Rise, tacks and sheets!"

Tacking in such weather really wasn't recommended; steady winds and fairly smooth seas were best, but… wearing the frigate about off the wind could end with them scudded a mile or more West of where they had started, by the time they had described a full circle and pointed her bows Sou'-Soueast… and Selsey Bill even further out of reach on their larboard bows!

There was a heart-stopping moment when a series of combers met Proteus's bows with wet and hearty smacks, threatening to slam her to a full stop and put her "in-irons," unable to fall off to either beam, but the knacky Mr. Midshipman Gamble, on the forecastle, feeling what shift of wind that the men on the quarterdeck could not, ordered that the inner jib and foretopmast stays'l be flatted to larboard for a bit, which put just enough wind-pressure on her to force her over enough to cross over. Then, right-smoothly, the starboard sheets, the new lee sheets, he ordered belayed snug, and hauled in in concert with loosening the new, larboard, windward sheets, and hernias and tumbles among the foc's'le hands bedamned.

"Whew!" Lewrie, Winwood, and Lts. Langlie and Catterall all uttered, once Proteus recovered from her dramatic heel over to the starboard side, and she began to make way once more. "Whew!" again a moment later, as a heavily-laden cargo ship actually altered course to miss them, and passed down their larboard beam with at least a quarter-cable between them. With her captain and first mate shaking their fists and cursing a blue streak, of course.

"Selsey Bill… again," Lewrie muttered late that afternoon, as the headland loomed into sight once more. This time, after the turn of the tide, it was astern of them, for a wonder, could almost be said to be on their larboard quarter as Proteus angled in towards the coast on starboard tack, and readied herself to come about and hare off to mid-Channel. The winds, which had acted much like a gust-front preceding a storm, had moderated nicely, and the seas had flattened a bit, though they still broke green and white around her. When Lt. Adair, the Third Officer, directed the latest tack, the manoeuvre went off as smoothly as anyone could ask for, and the nearest other vessel that could cause a collision was at least three cables off.

"The wind seems to be backing, sir," the Sailing Master opined, with a wary lift of his nose and a deep sniff at the apparent winds. "More out of the Nor'east by East, now… well, perhaps a point shy of Nor'east by East, but trending that direction… it very well may be."

"Making our best course up on the wind East by Sou'east, aye," Lewrie decided, consulting that mental compass rose that he had been forced to memorise in his midshipman days, so he could "box" it whenever a senior asked… usually with a rope starter in his hand if he got it wrong, and a Bosun's Mate waiting to wield it, and breathing hard in expectation of the joy that came with serving Mr. Midshipman Lewrie "sauce" for his ignorance.

"About that, aye, sir… a point more Easterly, does the wind continue backing," Mr. Winwood ponderously, cautiously agreed.

"A long board, this time, I think," Lewrie further decided with a chart replacing the compass in his head. "With wind and tide since the turn early this morning, Captain Treghues's trade would most-like have headed Sou'west, at first, once clear of Dover. Hug our coasts for safety from the Frog chasse-maries through the Straits, then take a slant South of West with the wind right up their skirts. Avoiding Dungeness, Beachy Head… I don't expect we'd see them too close in-shore."

"Unless they haven't sailed at all, Captain," Mr. Winwood said with a heavy frown. "Did the East India Company wish to add one more ship or two to the trade, still lading in London, and now unable to get under way 'gainst a 'dead muzzier' up the Thames or Medway, sir?"

"The only joy we can take o' that, Mister Winwood, is in knowing there'll be fewer damn-fool merchant captains out t'ram us amidships," Lewrie scoffed with a dry chuckle. "That, and the chance to flesh out our cabin stores from the bumboats in The Downs. Even if those buggers would steal the coins from their dead mothers' eyes."

"There is that, sir," Winwood agreed with a faint simper that, on him, was a sign of high amusement.

"Two hours more on larboard tack, I should think," Lewrie opined. "Tide's with us, the sea's flatter. We should fly over the ground like a Cambridge coach, thirty miles or more. Next tack… the middle of the First Dog, most-likely, then a short board at… Due North. With any luck at all, we'll fetch some coastal mark other than Selsey-bloody-Bill! Bognor Regis, perhaps? I'll be below 'til then, sir."

"Very good, Captain, sir."

Once in his quarters, Lewrie paused to warm his hands over the single coal stove he trusted to be lit, under way, and that one lashed down tautly, and secured in a deep "fiddle-box" filled with damp sand. Even with the sky-lights in the coach-top overhead closed, all the gun-ports lashed shut, and the sash-windows above the transom settee right aft closed, it was still grindingly, damply cool in his great-cabins.

Toulon and Chalky were curled up together in a snoring bundle on the starboard-side collapsible settee in the day-cabin, faces buried in each other's fur, and had even managed to burrow a bit under the light quilt that Aspinall usually spread over the settee's removable pad, to save the upholstery from a quarter-pound of hair… left daily.