Dawn came hazy, with a light fog up the estuary of the Gironde. The sea was slack and glassy, and the winds from out of the West were light, though steady. Right after breakfast and a shave, Lewrie bent Savage’s course inshore, the frigate enjoying the tops’l breeze, with her main course twice-reefed, and t’gallants and royals brailed up to the upper yards, but all stays’ls and jibs hoisted for quicker manoeuvring.
It was second-best uniform for Lewrie this morning, his plainer cocked hat on his head, without all the formal folderol of the previous evening’s supper. Though it was a cool morning, a touch shy of nippy, the breeze on Savage’s starboard quarters felt too humid to savour.
“Showers by the middle of the Day Watch, I would wager, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, gloomily pronounced as he peered, bird-quick, from each headland or sea mark to the next with his pocket compass, one of his new charts spread atop the binnacle cabinet. Though he did not pencil bearings on his chart, Winwood did mumble to himself as if memorising reciprocal courses. “Were I a wagering man, of course.”
Lewrie glanced astern to scan the skies for weather signs, but could not discover any cause for Winwood’s prediction. For the man’s nervousness, Lewrie could determine good cause; slap Winwood up against a strange new coast, hostile or no, and he would turn as skittery as a whore in church, for he had not yet known it, had the proper seaman’s distrust in twenty-year-old re-drawn and re-printed charts, and was just as responsible as his captain for the safe navigation of the ship. Miss just one shoal or rock that was marked on the charts, hit one that wasn ‘t; either way, his career was on the line, and, until Winwood was as conversant with their new area of operations as he was of his own palm lines, there would be no living with him, no cheer in his body.
Not that ponderous and cautious Mr. Winwood had ever been much for good cheer.
“Mister Mayhall reports six and a quarter knots, Captain,” Lt. Urquhart stiffly reported, doffing his hat by Lewrie’s side. “A light breeze, sir, even if it is on the quarter.”
“Good enough for now, Mister Urquhart,” Lewrie said. “No sense chargin’ in like a Spanish fightin’ bull. Sooner or later, they get stabbed by the matadors sword. Today’s a get-acquainted day, get the feel o’ things . . . meet up with the lighter ships, and their captains, anyway. And,” he quipped in a softer voice, inclining his head towards Mr. Winwood, “we must allow the Sailing Master t’get his feel for ev’ry wee pitfall. He’ll not sleep a wink ‘til he does.”
“Aye, sir,” Lt. Urquhart replied, with a brief, but shy, grin, as if he had to think about it before reacting.
Two of a kind, really, Lewrie thought as he took a sip of his coffee, then strolled over to the starboard mizen shrouds. Urquhart might as well have been Winwood’s bastard son, for all his humourlessness. Comes o’ tryin too hard? Lewrie speculated; or, is he just a sober-side from birth?
In their few weeks at sea, Lt. Urquhart so far had appeared as taciturn and serious as a Scottish Calvinist preacher. The man never slouched, never allowed himself more than four glasses of wine in the wardroom (so his cabin servant and personal cook, Aspinall, had heard from the officers’ mess servants), never took part in any of the high-cockalorum antics his fellow Lieutenants might stage, appeared to need no more than four hours sleep a night, and could always be found fully dressed and on the quarterdeck, sometimes for as little cause as when the nanny goat farted.
Was he competent? Yes, immensely so, and Lewrie could find no fault with how, during his London absences, Urquhart had seen to the ship’s fitting-out, storing, and re-arming. Was Urquhart the complete sailor man, a tarry-handed “tarpaulin man” with the addition of a gentlemanly education, manners, and dignity? Aye, he was. He just was not . . . Anthony Langlie, Lewrie could resignedly bemoan. Langlie, during their three years in Proteus . . . Lt. Knolles, his First Officer aboard HMS Jester . . . even Arthur Ballard when he had had the converted bomb-ketch Alacrity in the Bahamas. All of those officers had been young, though able, possessed of quick wit and good humour. Ballard, well . . . he had his ponderous moments, but sly and dry, and a good friend, as well.
Been spoiled, I s’pose, Lewrie thought with a sigh. All of his First Lieutenants since his first commands had felt more like helpful and supportive friends! Urquhart, though . . .
Lewrie supposed he could put his moodiness down to all of that punch, port, claret, and rhenish that he’d sloshed down with Ayscough and Charlton. It had been past eleven when he’d reeled his way aboard Savage, and barely managed to undress before sprawling into his swinging bed-cot, and falling asleep as if pole-axed, and had been roused, drooling onto his pillows, both by the Bosuns’ calls for “All Hands,” and the chimes of Eight Bells as the Middle Watch ended at 4 A.M. Well, all that, and the cats. Stocky Toulon, the black’un with white markings, and Chalky, the youngest with white fur and grey splotches, had pawed, leaped upon him with all four paws as close together as a quartet of coins abutted on a publican’s bar counter, with loud and raspy “We’re Starving!” squawls, and urgent digging at the bed linens right by his nose!
Toulon had been “refugeed” from the port of Toulon; Chalky had been found by his bastard son, Desmond, the American Midshipman, aboard a French prize brig in the West Indies, and presented to him as a gift.
They were both, therefore, French! Perhaps they knew the smell of their homeland off to loo’rd, and wanted Lewrie to rise and take ‘em on deck to share their furry rencontre!
And, damned if they weren’t poised atop the quarterdeck hammock nettings that very moment, peering forward towards the shore, sniffing the air, tails curling and jittering like they did when they saw a sea bird glide cross the decks, and sharing looks with each other, now and again.
“Not thinkin’ o’ jumpin’ ship, are ye, catlings?” Lewrie teased as he came to the forward end of the quarterdeck to give them a stroke or two. He was rewarded with head butts on his hand, some wee, trillish mews by way of greeting. “I’ll brook no desertion, hear me plain?”
“Deck, there!” a lookout atop the main-mast cross-trees called. “Fishin’ boat t’larboard! Three points off th’ larboard bows!”
Lewrie wandered over to the top of the larboard gangway ladder as Lt. Urquhart and Mr. Winwood raised their telescopes to peer at the fishing boat, which was just beginning to emerge from the haze, and the low-lying skim of fog atop the estuary waters.
“She appears to be un-armed, sir,” Urquhart reported. “Only a few men on deck, with nets ready for streaming. Rather good-sized, I do allow, though, sir. ‘Bout the length of a Port-Admiral’s barge?”
“Your glass, sir,” Lewrie bade, and took a squint for himself. He saw a two-masted lugger, both her broad gaff-rigged sails and her single jib streaming slackly astern as she came into the wind, probably to lower her fishing nets before coming about to wallow inshore for the first of her morning’s trawls. Four, no, only five sailors in sight, and none of them showing any evident signs of alarm at the appearance of a “Bloody’s” frigate cruising up to Range of Random Shot.
“Hands to Quarters, Mister Urquhart,” Lewrie ordered, lowering the borrowed glass and handing it back over. “Carronades, quarterdeck nine-pounders, chase guns, and swivels only. No point in manning the eighteen-pounders for such a feeble target. Spare hands, and Mister Devereux’s Marines, for a boarding party.”
“Aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe ‘All Hands’ and ‘Quarters’!”
“S’pose I must pass the word for the Surgeon,” Lewrie chuckled. “I’m told my French is a horror, and Mister Durant was born speakin’ Frog.”
“Uhm, I am considered quite fluent in French, sir,” Urquhart almost timidly put forward, with a throat-clearing harrumph.
“Excellent, Mister Urquhart!” Lewrie cheered. “When closer to, call for them to fetch-to, and prepare t’be boarded. Have her captain come aboard so you can . . . interrogate him.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
A quarter-hour later, and both Savage and the French lugger were fetched-to into the light winds, no more than one hundred yards apart. Though Lewrie’s French was horrid, he could make out a few phrases of invective . . . “Damn you ‘Bloodies,’ we’re working here!” . . . “Death of my life, you put us in poverty!” . . . “Go and fuck yourself, you arrogant ‘beefsteak’ turds!”
They quieted though, and lapsed into surly silence, when cowed by the size of the boarding party, and the Marines with their bayonets and muskets. A brief inspection above and below decks, into the reek of the lugger’s hold, half-filled with sea water to preserve any catch ‘til they could be landed ashore, then Lt. Urquhart’s launch was coming alongside Savage with a lone Frenchman amidships, a wiry older man in loose pantaloons, bare feet, a filthy canvas fisherman’s smock, and a tasseled “Liberty” stocking cap upon his grizzled head.
“Captain, may I name to you Captain Jules Papin,” Lt. Urquhart gravely and punctiliously announced. “Capitaine Papin, permettei~moi de vous presenter notre Capitaine de Vaisseau, Alan Lewrie, de le frigate Sauvage.”
“Capitaine Papin,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat. “Bon matin, m’sieur.”
“Hawh!” the Frenchman growled back, scratching at his unshaven grey week’s worth of stubble. “Bon, mon cul! Ou est le rum? Have rum?”
“Ah, hum “was Urquhart’s stricken comment, his face reddening.
“Aspinall,” Lewrie called over his shoulder. “A bottle o’ rum and glasses for our guest. “You speak a little Anglais, Capitaine}”
“ Un peu, mais oui,” the grizzled, fish-scale-speckled old man gravelled back. “Mus’ parler tongue of thief an’ invader, if I cannot bataille . . . fight, hein} ‘O w you t’ink ze pauvre homme make living if keep from ze fish, hein? Firs’, cutter nous arrete . . . stop us, jus’ in river, zat damn’ Argosy. Zen, mort de ma view, is Erato brig, zen, et voila, maintenant you’ damn fregate! Zut alors, I be full ze fish by now!”
“Rum’s up, sir,” Aspinall said, appearing with a new bottle of Jamaica’s best, and a pair of glasses. He poured for Papin first, and began to pour for Lewrie, but the Frenchman eagerly tossed the contents of his glass back like the experienced toper he looked to be, and gulped it all down his gullet in one swallow, making Papin wheeze, wince, then grin and shake his head in appreciation of raw, un-watered rum. And he thrust his glass out for a refill!
“I am delighted to hear that my . . . our other ships are alert and doing their proper duty, Capitaine,” Lewrie told the Frenchman as he took a cautious sip of his own rum, stifling a wince and a belch as the fiery spirit slid down his throat and hit his already-unsettled innards. Hair o’ the dog mine arse! Lewrie thought.
“What you wish?” Papin impatiently snapped, after his glass was replenished. “Fish?Quel dommage, M’sieur Capitaine, I have none, for you’ pirates do not give me peace to fish! Langoustes et crevettes? A lobster or . . . shrimp? Small boats close inshore have zose, not moi! Champagne, wine, eau-de-vie, ze brandy?Argosy an’ Erato. Zey buy all I had, avant vous. Damn you’ language! Before you, I say! You wish? Take you’ damn’ big fregate to shoal waters, run agroun’, an’ break you’ back!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, mon vieux” Lewrie casually shrugged off. “Mister Urquhart, his boat clean of arms and contraband?”
“Completely, sir,” Urquhart gravely replied. “Nothing but clasp knives for sailors’ work aboard, and no goods beyond their dinners and such, either, sir.”
“Very well, then,” Lewrie said, turning back to Papin. “Sir, I will trouble you no longer. You are free to go about your fishing.”
“No good zat do, now, zis late in morning, pawh!” Papin growled, looking at Aspinall and the rum bottle, and his newly emptied glass in expectation of a “stirrup cup,” and licking his lips.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Lewrie allowed. “Convey Capitaine Papin to his boat, urn . . . Tappilation des votre bateau, Capitaine?” he asked, making Papin wince again, this time over Lewrie’s lack of grammar, and his outlandish accent. “The Marie Doux, is it?Sweet Marie} Thankee. I shall know you and your boat in future. Perhaps . . .”
Lewrie gave the man a sly look, nodded to Aspinall to pour him a third glass of rum, and posed the question.
“I would appreciate an occasional bottle or two of good wine . . . perhaps a case at a time, as would my wardroom officers, I’m certain, Capitaine Papin,” he posed. “And, as you say, lobsters and shrimp, a parcel of mussels or clams, are not your normal catch, but you could, are you reasonable, obtain such from the smaller boats to sell me. A decent brandy, hmm? American corn whisky, if you could get it, haw!” Lewrie concluded with a scoffing laugh at such an out-of-the-ordinary wish, as if asking for a slice of cheese off the moon.
“Ze ‘Merican whisky, ze . . . bourbon, m’sieur}” Papin said with almost a wink, slyly scratching at his week’s worth of grey stubble as if considering such a request, and what he might charge for it. “Mais oui, Capitaine Le . . . Luur . . . m’sieur. Ze ‘Merican ships still come to Bordeaux . . . get pas’ you’ blockade, all ze time, hawn! You wish ze whisky, peut-être ze ‘Mericans sell a moi. Ze res’, is tres easy to sell you. Non ze bank note! Mus’ ‘ave silver coin.”
“Uhm . . . chickens?” Midshipman Mayhall muttered nearby. “Eggs?”
“Ze lad wish ze fresh omelette, oui}” Papin asked with a greasy laugh of his own. “Difficile, m ‘sieurs, for ze gendarmerie punish ze smuggler ‘oo trade with you ‘Bloodies.’ See ze livestock be loaded on boat, et voila, I am lose my boat, and be in ze prison. Peut-être, ze small parcels, hein} Non ze cow and sheep, hawn hawn hawn!”
“Lots of American ships up-river, are there, sir?” Lewrie asked, trying to sound off-handed and not too interested.
“Ze few, Capitaine,” Papin replied, a sly smile on his face, and a brow cocked as if they were getting to the main trading points. “You wishing to know when zey sail, hein} Ze . . . information}” he added in a much softer, conspiratorial voice. “Peut-être you wish to know of ze forts, ze navire de guerre} Warships?”
“Hmm,” Lewrie replied in like voice, daring another sip of his rum, finding it easier on his stomach this time, and taking another. “That might prove . . . useful. For such, of course, one must expect to be rewarded.”
“Oh, mais oui, Capitaine Lurr . . . m’sieur, hawn hawn!” Papin chuckled, in the fashion of a pimp or tout who’d just landed a customer to enter his brothel. “I ‘ave nozzing to tell you now, but . . . !”
“Oh, but surely our ships will meet again, Capitaine Papin . . . soon,” Lewrie said to that, a smug and satisfied grin on his face as they all but clasped hands and shook on the bargain. “Care for another glass of rum, sir?”
“Give me ze bottle,” Papin insisted. “I curse you.”
“Eh, what?” Lewrie asked, suddenly befuddled.
“Mes hommes see us,” Papin said with a shrug as he accepted the re-corked bottle and tucked it into the large cross-wise pocket of his rough smock. “Zut alors, I curse you, I look like patriot. Zey will non mind I sell food an’ drink, but ze information? Non!”
“Ah,” Lewrie said with a nod. That was all he had time for, for Papin suddenly went into a ranting screech, like to pull his hair out, stamping about the quarterdeck, hocking up a glob of spit as he cried “Jamais!” or “Never!” . . . along with a rich store of invective about the English, poverty, Lewrie’s doubtful ancestry, the piratical Royal Navy, syphilitic kings and queens, the Battles of Agincourt and Crécy, the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake, that thieving foutre Henry the Fifth, the English language, Anglican Protestant heretics, invaders and chicken thieves, and the filthy English habit of bathing too often! He concluded with a dramatic, arms-akimbo, aggressive stance so he could hock up another large glob of spit, and shout “Pawh!”
“Does this mean we won’t get any fresh cheese?” Mayhall asked in a wee voice, which quite destroyed the spirit of the thing.
“Cheese, oui . . . plus tard. Later,” Papin rasped from a corner of his mouth, looking like an actor whose grand soliloquy had been interrupted and ruined by an unruly drunk in the cheap seats.
“Au revoir, Capitaine Papin,” Lewrie said, not sure whether to applaud, or laugh. “ ‘Til we meet again. A tout â I’heure.”
With a final, broad obscene gesture, Papin went to the entry-port and scampered down the battens and man-ropes as agile as an ape.
“See him back to his boat, Mister Urquhart, and recall our men,” Lewrie ordered. “And have someone swab . . . that, up.”
“Secure from Quarters, sir?” Lt. Adair, the Second Officer, asked.
“Half the quarterdeck nine-pounders, and the carronades, aye,” Lewrie decided. “I don’t see any boats as large as Papin’s out this morning, so the swivels, and muskets, would suit just as well.”
“There do seem to be a fair number in the offing, Captain,” Lt. Adair pointed out.
“Christ, we stop and search ‘em all, we’ll be at this ‘til sundown,” Lewrie said with a scowl. “No, we’ll not waste our time on ‘em. We’ll hunt up Argosy and Erato first, and get the lay of the land from their captains, before we try on anything else. After all,” he said with a chuckle, “they’re the ones t’do the stopping and searching. We are here t’back them up.”
“Odd fellow, this Papin, sir,” Lt. Adair commented, as close as he could come to initiate a discussion of what had just transpired. “I . . . pardons, sir, but I would not trust him with much. He’s French!”
“Well, as Commodore Ayscough and Captain Charlton told me last night, Mister Adair,” Lewrie responded, quite pleased with his initial dealings with the French fishermen, “a great deal of useful information is had from the locals, once cordial relations are established by dint of paying good prices for their catches, then for their smuggled goods. The old Directory of Five in Paris, now Bonaparte, are bankrupting the country with their endless wars upon the rest of Europe. Their trade with the rest of the world is cut to the bone . . . our doin’, that . . . and, I doubt ev’ry Frog is in love with the Revolution. This Papin, some of his fellow captains, may prove extremely informative.”
Some shillings here, a guinea or so there, and these impoverished Frogs ‘11 most-like sell their dead mothers’ hair! Lewrie cynically thought; fed up with war and shortages . . . sons conscripted, or already dead or crippled on battlefields from here to the Alps . . . why wouldn’t they play spy, if there’s some money in it, and get a bit o’ their own back on the damned fools in Paris?
He was quite pleased with himself, all but rocking on the balls of his feet and whistling a merry tune. Oh, perhaps Papin couldn’t deliver the best information, but surely he could come through on the wine, cheese, eggs, fresh-baked baguettes and boules . . . the bourbon whisky? If not Papin, some other of these fishermen, in almost daily contact with British warships, could. A cornucopia of fresh seafood, surely!
Newspapers! Lewrie thought of a sudden, feeling remiss that he had not mentioned them. French newspapers, half lies though they might be, could still provide a treasure trove of information; mostly unintentinally, for not every paper could he pored over by government censors.
“Uhm, sir . . .,” Lt. Adair spoke up again, all but muttering confidentially, “I noted that, whilst that Papin fellow was doing his rant and dance, he, well . . . from the first moment he came aboard, he kept darting rather shrewd eyes about our ship. Counting our guns and such? And, we haven’t seen a single other fishing boat as large as his quite this far out near the mouth of the Gironde. Perhaps there are others, but . . . why would this fellow dare the blockade, sir? Might Papin be spying for his own Navy, sir? Or, passing information to us as quick as he passes observations to shore? Playing both ends against the middle?”
“Oh, fu . . . !” Lewrie began to blurt with a yelp of dismay, but quickly substituted “Mine arse on a band-box!” instead. The son of a bitch was spyin on me? he had to recognise.
“Didn’t notice his demeanour,” Lewrie huffed, “and thankee for keepin’ your own eyes on him, Mister Adair. And, for your suspicions. Papin may be only the first middlin’-sized boat we’ve come across. It may be that others sail out this far on a regular basis. We’re so new t’these waters, we’ve no idea, at present. We find Erato or Mischief, one of the cutters or sloops, and speak their captains, we’ll have a better idea of what t’look out for . . . and who . . . Whom, rather.”
“Well, there is that, sir,” Adair replied, unsure whether to be eased of his suspicion, or not.
“Rather like Mister Winwood and his fear of where the driftwood logs lurk on the tides hereabouts, Mister Adair,” Lewrie tried to make a jest of it. “ ‘Til he’s secure in his mind, he’ll spend all night on deck, lookin’ out-board for shipkillin’ trees.”
Adair doffed his hat and returned to his duties, leaving Lewrie to pace the length of the quarterdeck nettings and railings, hands in the small of his back, head down, and his neck burning in embarrassment.
Spied on? he chid himself; just let the bastard aboard t ‘see any thing he wished? Gawd, which o’ these Frogs can ye trust? This whole endeavour could turn out t’be a rare shitten business!