Chapter 6

Of all the luck,” Burgess Chiswick opined, draped across the transom settee in the officer’s wardroom, a warming mug of “flip” in one hand and a long church-warden clay pipe fuming in the other.

“Yes, wasn’t it,” Lewrie agreed in a sarcastic drawl.

“Sorry you missed us on the road, though,” Burgess went on, oblivious to Alan’s disgruntled feelings. “You must have been out of your lodgings like a race horse, soon as the letter came. We left London behind you. Went by Panton Street but they told us you’d already gone. Would have been nice to have coached down together.”

Alan had been barred from discussing the murderous incident on the road, so all he could do was nod in agreement.

“And then to find you’d stopped off at the farm and gone on,” Burgess told him, experimenting with blowing a smoke ring. “Caroline was very disappointed she’d missed you.”

“Was she well?” Alan asked, abandoning his put-upon sulking.

“My sister is very fond of you, Alan. As is mother. Thinks you hung the moon. Or at least helped out. She’s a fine young lady.”

“Well, that’s moot for three or four years, ain’t it?” Alan sighed.

“Hope you didn’t mind, but she adopted your cat.”

“She did?”

“Didn’t know you were fond of ‘em,” Burgess marveled. “Still, I can see the attraction. Affectionate old thing. Purred away like anything, soon’s she picked him up, and rode in her lap all the way to Guildford in the coach. Thought he’d be happier on the farm. And ... well, he’s a part of you, d’you see, Alan. She said to tell you she’d take good care of him until you got back.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s best,” Alan agreed, trying to picture anyone picking William Pitt up and trying to dandle him. “After a warship, he’d enjoy terrorizing a herd of sheep. Devilish good mouser.”

“More a lap-cat the last time I saw him,” Burgess chuckled.

Shoes thundered on the double companion-way ladders from the upper deck, and their attention was drawn to the newcomer. The sight drew both of them to their feet, for its novelty if nothing else.

A man stood there, a man with skin the color of a cup of cocoa. Fierce dark eyes glared under thick brows—the rest of the face was hidden behind a greying beard and a thick mustache that stood out stiff as the cat-heads up forward that held the ship’s anchors. The man was dressed in sandals over thick woolen stockings, loose knee-length trousers, a long-skirted coat that buttoned from waist to chin with a glittery multicolored silk sash about his waist, a burgundy colored old-style frock coat over that for warmth—and a turban.

“What the devil?” Burgess muttered.

“Namaste, sahib,” the apparition said, putting both mittened hands together and bowing slightly to both of them. “Meestair Twigg sahib, want speech with Elooy sahib.”

“I think that might be you, Alan,” Burgess told him.

“Yes, but who the devil’s this Twigg?” Alan wondered.

“My master, Elooy sahib. Kshamakejiye ... excuse me ... I am being Ajit Roy. You come, jeehan? Yes?”

“Yes,” Alan replied. “Is he ashore?”

“Naheen, sahib,” Ajit Roy told him, pointing upwards. “Is here on ship.”

“Keep the flip warm, Burgess,” Alan said to his companion. “And if I’m not back soon ...”

The servant padded back up the companion-way to the upper deck cabins under the poop, where the captain usually had his quarters. There were other cabins forward of his that Alan had thought might be reserved for passengers. Ajit Roy rapped on one door, and someone inside bade him enter. The servant swung the door wide and stepped aside to let Alan in.

It was a fairly spacious cabin, considering. About twelve precious feet long bow to stern, and ten feet abeam. Piled as it was with chests, it seemed more like a storeroom, though, or a rug merchant’s tiny stall. Or an opium den, Alan thought, sniffing the air.

“Achh-chaa, Roy-ji ... Kuchh der men vahpasahiye’.”

“Jeehan, Twigg-sahib,” Roy said, bowing himself out.

“Lewrie, I’m Zachariah Twigg,” said the man, who had been sitting on the bunk, as he unfurled himself to his full height. This Twigg was tall and lean, almost impossibly lean: all arms and legs. He was dressed all in black like some dominee.

“Your servant, sir,” Alan replied automatically, still befuddled, and thinking that he would most likely remain in that condition for some time to come.

“Sit,” Twigg commanded, pointing out a chair with the flexible tube he held in his hand. “Captain Ayscough has related to me the peculiar circumstances of your incident. I want to ask you more about it.”

“And you are, sir?” Alan demanded as Twigg perched himself cross-legged on the bunk again and began to draw from the tube, which Alan now saw was attached to a tall glass hubble-bubble pipe. In the faint gloom, illuminated by only a single lantern placed on one of the crates, Twigg resembled some kind of bird of prey. The face was all hollows—in his cheeks, behind his eyes, on either side of his temples. And his eye sockets were deep and pouchy. He wore his own hair, combed back thin and close to the skull, and a prominent peak jutted like a cape between receding temples. And Twigg’s nose was long, thin and narrow, like a raptor’s beak, until it reached the nostrils, where it flared out into a pad of flesh and cartilage an adult walrus could have envied.

“Let us just say that Captain Ayscough answers to me. As do you, Lieutenant Lewrie,” Twigg told him with a brief, damnably brief, glint of humor. With the mouthpiece of the hubble-bubble pipe out of his mouth, the lips were caricature-thin, and pursed flat against each other in an expression of perpetual asperity. “I and my partner, Mister Wythy, are ship’s husbands, and the ... owners, let us say. We were the ones bought her, raised the capital, and bought the cargo. Should anyone ask, you were here to discuss lading with me, as the fourth mate of a trading ship ought. Now discover everything to me.”

It was not a request. Alan stumbled out the story of his attempted murder, and the reasons he and Ayscough thought might be behind it.

Alan supposed England had spies. Any sensible nation did, and he gathered that Twigg and his partner were the front men for the adventure, the plausible story that would hang together should anyone become inquisitive. The prime movers of this subterfuge.

“Doesn’t make any bloody sense.” Twigg snapped after a long silence. “Not to take anything away from your abilities, Lewrie, but you’re a rather small fish to fry, if someone was intent on delaying our departure. If it’s murder they’d stoop to, better me and Tom Wythy, or Ayscough himself. Better a fire in the hold than slay a junior officer. Might have even done us a favor. Given us time to find a more seasoned mariner than you. I’ve read your records, Lewrie. You’ve come up hellish fast, considering.”

“If I do not please you, sir, perhaps you should,” Alan snapped back. It ain’t like I’m talking to an admiral, he thought; he’s no patron of mine whose back I have to piss down. They can send another man down from the Admiralty and I can hide out in Wheddon Cross with granny for a while until Lord Cantner cools off. Boring as that would be. Maybe coach back to Guildford and stay with the Chiswicks.

“1 would, but for the fact that you rose without too much ‘interest’ from those above you,” Twigg allowed, acting as if he was amused by Alan’s irritation with his remarks. “You’re not the run-of-the-mill place-seeker, Lewrie. And you have this fascinating talent for snatching victory from the very maw of defeat. For survival. I value that, more so than I do dull-witted competence. It’s a talent rarer than pluck and daring, or bravery. Any fool can be brave.”

“I see, sir,” Alan said, wondering if he had been complimented or insulted. Either way, he was still part of this lunatick venture, it seemed, down for three years of naval service unless he begged to be dismissed.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this before we sail, at any rate.” Twigg shrugged, and sucked deeply on his hubble-bubble pipe, caving in those already cadaverous cheeks even more. “Stores to be loaded on the morrow. Furniture, light artillery, military supplies for East India Company. Luxury items for our people out there as well. I expect we’ll be awash in beer, ale and wine. You’ll see to keeping the crew out of it, that it’s locked up securely. Bring a fortune in Kalikatta once it’s landed.”

‘They can’t brew their own, sir?”

“Muslims won’t drink spirits of any kind. Hindoos have their own muck that’d flatten an Englishman, he were fool enough to partake.” Twigg frowned. “Water can’t be drunk in the East unless it’s been boiled and let cool in a clean vessel. Case of wine that’d cost you three shillings the bottle in London will go for five times that, and it’s safe to drink. I expect our cargo will pay for the purchase of Telesto, and her outfitting. First cargo to China with Bengali cloth and spices will defray the cost of our first year of operations.”

“My God,” Alan gaped, trying to total that sum in his head. A 3^rd Rate ship, even with half the artillery landed ashore, would go for at least twenty-five thousand pounds, and their profits would cover that?

I’ve been in the wrong bloody profession! he told himself.

“As Captain Ayscough instructed, not a word of this incident with your fellows in the wardroom. Show me your plan of lading after breakfast. I’ll have nothing broken, mind.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And keep in mind we’ll put in at Oporto or Vigo, maybe touch shore at Madeira as well, for passengers and more spirits. Save some cargo space in the deep hold for that. That’ll be all for now, Mister Lewrie. A pleasant night to you.”

“Er, aye, sir,” Alan was forced to say, rising to leave.

“Ajit?” Twigg called out.

“Jeehan, sahib?” the Indian servant said through the closed door.

“Idhar ahiye’! Mujhe’ sahib Wythy se’ baht karnee hai,” Twigg ordered. “Have an ear for languages, Mister Lewrie?”

“Not much of one, really,” Alan confessed, wondering if his lack of fluency in anything but English would suddenly, blissfully, disqualify him from this goose-brained voyage.

“You’ll pick it up. I just told Ajit to come here, that I wanted him to bring Wythy to talk with me. There’s enough bearers in Kalikatta who understand a little English, and if you pick up a word or phrase or two, you can stagger by. Bring this, fetch this, yes, no, too hot, too cold. You’ll sound like a monosyllabic barbarian to the Bengalis. But then, that’s pretty much what we are to them.”

“Kalikatta,” Alan assayed.

“Bengali name for Calcutta, up the Hooghly River. Where we’re going,” Twigg rasped out.

“I thought it was Calicut, sir. That’s how Captain Ayscough said it.”

“Then he’s as big a noddy as you are,” Twigg snapped.

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Namaste.”

“Um, right. Namaste.”

Whatever the hell that means, he pondered as he got out of Twigg’s sight as quickly as dignity allowed.

* * * *

Fortunately, in the next week, he had little to do with Twigg or his partner. He was busy being the most junior office aboard, working with the master’s mates and the purser in stowing cargo in the holds, and on the orlop deck above the bilges. Hundreds of kegs and tuns of spirits, salt-meats, crates of broadcloth and ready-made shirts and breeches. Uniforms for the East India Company’s native Bengali troops. Weapons and accoutrements. Books, and a printing press. Blank ledgers for the writers and clerks to fill up with numbers in their counting houses and trading factories. All those items of English life so sorely missed by the English in India, and the luxuries that made life worth living in an alien land.

And there were ship’s stores to be piled away as well, to feed and clothe the officers and crew. A second complete set of sails and spars, replacement masts, miles of variously sized cordage for the standing rigging and the running rigging by which the sails and yards were adjusted. Powder and shot for Telesto’s guns. Spare hammocks, bag after bag of ship’s biscuit, holystones to scrub the decks with. Pikes and muskets, bayonets and cutlasses to repel any pirates hand-to-hand.

It all had to be wedged in tighter than a bung in a barrel, and gravel ballast had to be packed in between the heaviest items lowest in the holds, cut firewood and kindling jammed between, so that nothing could shift an inch once Telesto was out at sea, pitching and tossing and rolling at the whim of the sea. Once out of harbor, it was life or death, and could not be redone if a storm overwhelmed them.

Alan had to admit Telesto was an impressive ship. Compared to any other he had served in, she was massive—1,585 tons of oak and iron, 180 feet long on the range of the gun deck, 155 feet long at the keel and in the hold, and that hold was 20 feet deep, and 50 feet wide at her widest point, with a pronounced tumble-home to her upper deck that narrowed the quarterdeck and poop. Broad and bluff in the bows, gently tapering narrower aft like the head and tail of a fish, that shape adjudged best by naval architects to swim the seas of the world. An eighty-gunned 3^rd Rate was the biggest ship in the Navy that could mount two decks of guns and not “hog” or strain down at both ends and break her back. The Royal Navy had not been lucky with them, since they were too light in the upper works to keep them from snapping like a twig in heavy seas, but Telesto was patterned upon the French Foudroyant after it was taken as prize in battle and had its lines taken off by the Admiralty to study and copy.

She was as long and beamy as a one-hundred-gunned 1^st Rate flagship of three decks, as if she had been “razeed,” shaved down by one deck to make her faster and lighter. And as with French ships, in Alan’s experience, she was a little finer around the cutwater at the bow, and in her entry. She promised speed, and with so much cargo aboard, would ride out a gale of wind without as much angle of heel as other ships, even counting the wide span of her yards and upper masts for propulsion.

New as Telesto was, her hull was still golden under the preserving oils, not yet baked almost black. Her two rows of gun-ports were painted with twin stripes of bright red paint. No one was going to spring good money to fancy her up like a flagship, so the usual gilt trim around the entry-port gates, beak-head, taffrail carvings and the walkways and windows of her three stern galleries had been omitted, and a light yellow lead paint had been substituted.

“She’ll fly like a seagull,” Artemus Choate, her first officer predicted happily. “You take passage on a ‘John Company’ In-diaman, it’s six knots when the sun’s up, and they reef in and wallow slow as church-work, sundown to sunrise. Don’t want to upset the passengers, I suppose.” The tow-headed man in his middle thirties grimaced at the habits of civilian seamen. “Four months to round Good Hope and another three to the Bay of Bengal, if the seasonal winds are with you.”

“It’s five shillings a day for an officer, too, sir,” Alan pointed out. “Who’d be in a hurry at that rate of pay?”

“Ha, you’ve a point, Mister Lewrie, ‘deed you do. But we’ll drive this ship like Jehu drove his chariot, weather permitting.”

Telesto sometimes felt Navy in the way things were run even in harbor. But of an evening, she was as much a merchantman as any Indiaman. Ayscough and Choate, and Tom Wythy, the other partner, liked music, so Telesto had a good selection of bandsmen: fifers, fiddlers, drummers and the unheard of luxury of a bellows pump-organ—that mostly for the passengers’ amusement. She also had six men in the crew who doubled as bagpipers, and most evenings would perform a concert on the upper gun deck up forward by the forecastle and the belfry. Alan wished they wouldn’t, but Ayscough was some sort of Lowland Scot, and doted on them. It irritated Lewrie, and put the milk cow off production. The sheep, pigs, goats and chickens in the manger didn’t care for them much, either.

As for passengers, there wasn’t much joy there. Alan had fantasized about a few English females taking passage to India, but no such luck. Their forty or so paying guests were all solidly male, all fairly young and just a trifle seedy in appearance. Clerks and writers-to-be, young tradesmen who’d finished their apprenticeships and were heading out where the competition wasn’t so fierce. Some men like Burgess of limited means who would take military service in “John Company” as subalterns. Not one sign of a “Mother Abbess” and her brood of whores to service all that emigre masculinity out in the Indies, either. God help him, they all looked so “skint” and short of money even a card game would be unproductive.

* * * *

They warped Telesto away from the stone docks on 4 February, sent the temporary “wives” ashore the next day and put the crew back into discipline. Alan got to go ashore just the once, to pick up his last personal stores and purchases to com-pJete his kit, and almost drowned in the rough harbor waters out and back in a ship’s boat under lug-sail that tried its best to capsize or pitch him out.

On the dawn of 7 February, the winds came fair, and the weather moderated. Telesto sailed.

“Anchor’s in sight!” Alan bawled to the officers aft from his place on the forecastle.

“Heave and in sight!” Choate urged his crew on as they tramped in a circle round the massive capstan on the lower gun deck.

“Bosun, hands aloft there! Lay out and make sail!” Ayscough bellowed loud as a steer. “Mister Lewrie, hoist away jibs forrud!”

“Murray, hoist away, flying outer jib and fore topmast stays’l! Chearly, lads!” Alan ordered. “Anchor’s awash! Ready with the cat to seize her up, there, larboard men.”

Telesto paid off from her head-to-weather anchorage, free of the last link with the land. They backed her jibs to force her bows around to face the harbor entrance as the large spanker aft on the mizzen filled with air and made the noise of a gunshot. Canvas boomed and drummed and rustled in the middling winds. Standing rigging that held the masts erect and properly tensioned creaked and groaned as a load came on them. Blocks squealed and sang as hands on the gangways and upper decks hauled away on lifts, halyards and jeers to raise her massive yards up from their resting positions. Drummers drummed on snares and bass, fiddlers and fifers gave the tune and the pace and the hands chantied.

 

“We’ll rant and we’ll roll

like true British sailors,

we’ll rant and we’ll roll all across

the salt seas,

Until we strike soundings

In the Channel of Old England

from Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!

 

“Braces, there! Brace her in!” Ayscough almost howled. “Ease your jib sheets,” Alan ordered. “Walk ‘em to the larboard side, Murray. Trim for starboard tack.”

“Aye, sir! Walk away wi’ the larboard sheet!”

 

“So let ev’ry man raise up his full bumper,

let every man drink up his full glass.

For we’ll laugh and be jolly,

and chase melancholy,

with a well-given toast to each true-hearted lass!”

 

“Anchor’s catted, sir,” one of the hands told him.

“Well, the cat. Ring up the fish,” Alan said, leaning over to see how the hands over the side on the rails were doing after being dangled to seize the hook in the ring of the anchor to cat it. If nothing worse than a good soaking had occurred, it was a good day—handled badly, anchors could kill those poor men. Very few sailors of any navy knew how to swim, Alan Lewrie least of all, and going over the side for any task was enough to shrivel any seaman’s scrotum. Those men came scrambling back up to the deck, up the heavy chain wale and beakhead rails almost on the waterline, soaked to the skin and turning blue from the frosty air and waters. One had to stay, hung in canvas hawse-breeches, to hook the fish onto an anchor fluke to swing it up parallel with the bulwarks. His bare legs trailed in the ship’s now-apparent wake, and he shrieked as the icy waters surged as high as his waist.

“Oh, be a man. Spears!” Murray the fo’c’sle captain told him.

‘”Nother dunkin’ lahk ‘at an’ me man’ood’ll be froze off!” the man shouted back. “Got it!”

“Haul away on the fish-davit! Ring her up!”

“Let fall courses! Starboard division, hands to the braces!” they ordered from back aft.

There was enough labor for a warship’s crew of 650 men usually allotted to such a vessel. With the lower deck artillery mostly gone, Telesto had more a frigate’s complement of 250, and everyone had to bear a hand to see her safely out of harbor. Had she truly been a civilian ship, she would not have carried 100 all told, and some of her men would already have been ruptured.

So it was half an hour before they had her put into proper order, with one reef in the courses on the lowest yards, one reef in the topsails, the royals raised at two reefs on the fore and main-mast, and the spritsail under the jib boom and bowsprit set to take advantage of the northerly wind. Gradually, the confusion shook down to a pull at this, a tug on that, and the rat’s nest of heavy running rigging was coiled up, flaked down, hung on rails in giant bights and out of the way. Already the galley funnel was smoking as the first meal at sea was being boiled in the steep-tubs.

“Starboard has the watch. Dismiss the larboard watch below!”

Alan gave everything a last once-over and went aft along the starboard gangway to the quarterdeck.

“Oh, for God’s sake, gentlemen, please!” he shouted to the passengers and landsmen of the crew, who were experiencing their first bout of seasickness as the ship began to feel the Channel morion. “If you have to spew, do it to larboard, over there. Downwind so it won’t blow back on you, hey? Downwind so I won’t have to send you over the side to scrub off your breakfasts. Oh, not on the deck, you oaf! Sorry, Burgess. Didn’t recognize you with your face that particular shade of green.”

“Oh, God, I’m so ill I think I could die,” Burgess wailed in his misery as Alan tried to help him to his feet.

“You won’t die of it,” Alan offered. “You only wish you could.”

“You heartless bloo ... bloo ... burgck!” Chiswick retched, and cast up more of his accounts on the starboard bulwarks.

“Were you ill when you sailed back from New York to Charleston? From Charleston to England?” Alan inquired.

“N ... no,” Burgess sighed as Alan led him to the larboard side of the ship, across the quarterdeck to the lee rail.

“Well, you’re going like the town drains now, I must say,” Alan said cheerfully. ‘Tell you what. Send down to the passengers’ mess. Get a brimming bumper of hot rum. Stay up here on deck. The cold air will brace you right up. For God’s sake, don’t watch the ocean close-aboard! Stare out at the horizon. Think pleasant thoughts,” he added in closing, unable to help himself and trying hard not to grin.

“Bastard!” Burgess hissed.

“I’m on watch, so I’ll leave you to it for now,” Alan sighed. “Steward?”

He went aft to stand by the sheltered double wheel, where four quartermasters threw their weight on the helm as Telesto butted her way through the off-shore Channel chop. There was now and then some hint of the Atlantic to come, a long roller cross-set to the chop. The wind, once out of shelter of the coast, was a live thing that tried to throw the ship’s head down southerly for the coast of France, requiring those four men’s strength to hold her course. Captain Ayscough took a last look around, nodded to the second officer, Mr. Percival, and took himself aft under the poop into the passageway to his great cabins right in the stem. Percival strolled up the canted deck from amidships to the windward rail, taking a look at the compass card and grunting his satisfaction in passing.

Alan didn’t think he was going to like Percival. The man was one of those massive beasts, all chest and arms, with a neck like a breeding bull, and a heavy jaw. Percival had the brow ridge of a mountain gorilla, and looked to be the sort who could break oak beams with his bare hands.

He was certainly the sort of fellow who had grown up being the biggest and toughest of his playmates, the one who enjoyed being the top-dog in the pack, and would fight anyone to keep his status. In the last week, they had sparred, verbally so far. Even asking for the jam pot was a challenge to Percival’s dominance.

“All prick and no personality,” Alan muttered to himself, and one of the quartermasters grinned at the comment as he shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “West sou’west, half west, as she goes.”

“Aye, sir.”

Other than Percival, the wardroom was a fairly decent gathering. There was Choate, bluff and steady, glad to have active employment now the war was over. He had a wife and family in Harwich, and was more in need of full pay than most. The third officer, Colin McTaggart, was one of Ayscough’s prot6-ges, a slim and wiry young fellow of twenty-five or so. He had black hair as curly as a goat, dark eyes and a pug nose. Being a Scot, he was better educated than most young men who joined the Navy, and was enjoyable to converse with. So far.

To make room for their super-cargo (Twigg and his mostly unseen partner Tom Wythy) the sailing master, one Mr. Brainard, had been shifted below a deck to the officers’ wardroom. He was another of those mysteries, like Ajit Roy— brought in on account of his familiarity with Asian waters. He _ was also, like Twigg and Wythy, civilian in origin, never having served in the Royal Navy. Brainard had a civilian’s usual disdain for the Navy and its way of doing things. A sneer here, a lifted eyebrow there and a heavy sigh or two of exasperation met any evolution that differed from merchantman practice.

Brainard was as roly-poly as a Toby jug, but held no cheer, and sheltered his past, and any conversation, behind an aloof air of duty. He was as weathered and dried as a piece of hawse-buckler leather, baked to a permanent brick color. So far, he had not been seen to imbibe anything but water or small beer, or crack the slightest smile in the mess. Indeed, it would have been hard to determine if he had any facial expressions at all, since he swathed himself in the heaviest grogram watchcoat even below decks where a small coal-fired stove attempted to warm the wardroom. It seemed a chore to remove his mittens so he could partake of his meals. And the one time Alan had peeked through the opened door of his cabin as one of the ship’s boys cleaned it, the bunk had been mounded with no less than four blankets.

One thing Alan had learned in his Naval service, though, was that even the worst messmates could be abided. He hadn’t expected the voyage would be all “claret and cruising.” People gave others personal space, as much as was able, and ignored the worst offenders, limiting their exchanges to professional work.

Far enough off the coast now that England was an indistinct smear of headlands almost lost in low scudding clouds, the ship was going like a hobbyhorse in a playroom. Alan clung to the weather shrouds on the starboard side of the wide deck and began to wonder why he had thought Telesto a big ship. The open Atlantic rolled and heaved up in dully guttering hills before them, shrinking the massive ship to a toy that groaned and creaked as she rolled and pitched with a slow, ponderous gait. Soaring up as the scend of the sea deigned to raise her, cocking downward as the waves receded behind her. One moment Telesto was elevated high enough to expose miles and miles of ocean to Alan’s view, the next sunk down into a trough, sliding forward as though she would butt into the next wave and shatter, but always riding up and away from danger. And at those times, he could see no farmer than the creaming tops of the wave-crests that hillocked like frothy ink on either beam as high as the weather deck.

“Going like a race horse,” he muttered aloud, feeling Telesto as she trembled up from keel to oaken decks below his shoes. She was, indeed, riding the sea and careering forward at a wonderfully prodigious pace.

“Mister Hogue?” he called for one of the master’s mates in his watch who was secretly a senior midshipman enlisted in their adventure.

“Aye, sir?”

“Cast of the log, if you please. I doubt very much if we’ll get a decent sight for our position today. And I’d not like to set her on Ushant before the voyage is even begun.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hogue came back several minutes later, his watchcoat and hat speckled with drops of seawater, and his mittens soaked. “Nine and a quarter knots, sir,” Hogue said proudly. “She’s a fast ‘un, no mistake about her, sir.”

“Indeed she is,” Alan said, grinning. He climbed up onto the mizzen shrouds for a better view with his telescope. “I make that to be the high point just west of Looe, just aft of abeam now. Where would that put us, were you navigating, Mister Hogue?”

“Allow me to fetch my sextant, sir.”

Every time the ship rose up on a surging billow of ocean, they took a land sight, comparing compass bearings, trying to compute on a slate how far offshore they were, if the high ground west of Looe was known to be 387 feet high, and only subtended a degree or so above the indistinct horizon.

‘Then on this course, allowing for Telesto making a certain amount of leeway to the suther’d, we’ll fetch Lizard Point with at least ten miles of sea-room,” Alan stated finally.

“If the wind stays fair, sir,” Hogue commented, more sage than his scant eighteen years might allow. “Bound to come more westerly as we leave the Channel.”

“A hard beat, then, but with the tidal flow, not against it, until at least midnight.”

“Else we’ll have to tack and fight the tides, losing everything we’ve gained, sir,” Hogue warned. “Inshore in the dark.”

“Thankee, Mister Hogue,” Alan said, rolling up the chart Mr. Brainard had left on the binnacle table.

And if that happens, Alan thought lazily, it’ll not happen on my watch, thank the good Lord. He strolled back up to the windward side and took out his pocket watch to take a peek at the time. Three hours to go until his watch would be dismissed below.

He threaded an arm through the shrouds once again and shivered in his thick clothing. The wind was wet and a little raw, a live thing out at sea, a continual noise that a landsman would never notice above the murmurs of the ship.

If the winds did come more westerly, they could harden up to close-hauled and beat within six points of its origin, he decided: just enough to keep Telesto in mid-Channel, well clear of the Lizard, and a safe twenty leagues or so from the rocky coast of France. He debated with himself if it would be worth it to tack north’rd if it really came foul—embay themselves south of Falmouth, then tack once more due south to clear the Lizard?

He turned his face to the raw wind and felt its strength on either cheek, sniffing for the source of all that awesome power that moyed their ship. Still well north of west, and not so strong they’d have to take another reef aloft just yet.

A gaggle of passengers came boiling up from below, reeling in another bout of illness, and Alan smiled as they staggered down to the leeward side to spew. So far, his own stomach was showing its cast-iron consistency. And, he realized with a start, his sea legs were returning, those sea legs that in the beginning he had never even had the slightest desire to achieve. “Not so bad once you’re in,” he mused aloud. “Like Young Jack told his first whore.”

Depriving and dull a voyage might be, but it was something he had become somewhat good at. His ability to shrug off the natural reaction to the ship’s motion and spew his guts out, or reel like a sot as she pitched and rolled beneath him, was pleasing to his pride. As was his ability to decypher their rough position with the briefest of clues from the coast. And didn’t Telesto ride well, he thought. She was a true thoroughbred, properly laden and ballasted, with as much canvas aloft as she could bear for the moment—slicing through those hum-mocking seas with a sure-footed nearness of motion that gave him a thrill of ... dare he call it pleasure ... with every swoop and rise?

“Damme, this feels good!” he declared to the winds and seas.

* * * *

His first watch ended at four in the afternoon, and he headed below, face and hands raw with the wind and chill, eager for warmth, for a seat near the glowing stove and a glass of something cheerful. But he was delayed from those simple pleasures by the sight of Tom Wythy, their other “owner.”

“A word with ye, Mister Lewrie?” the man beckoned. Since Wythy had been pretty much an unseen presence so far, it was more curiosity that led Alan aft to the doorway to the passage that led under the poop to the super-cargo cabins.

“Aye, sir?” Alan replied, and followed the rotund man into his cabin across the passageway from Twigg’s. He hoped he’d get some liquid refreshment, at the least.

“Tot o’ rum?” Wythy offered once the door was shut. Wythy took up most of the cabin—he was rounder and heavier than even Mr. Brainard the sailing master, his face hidden behind a thick greying beard, and that in an age when most fashionable men shaved closely. There was a red-veined doorknob of a nose, ruddy cheeks round as spring apples and bright, glittering eyes lost in the pudding face the beard most likely concealed.

“I’ve made some inquiries about yer little excitement,” Wythy told him, rubbing the side of that bulbous proboscis with the side of a thumb as thick as a belaying pin. “Took this long t’ get even a fast rider t’ London an’ back. An’ I asked about ashore. That’s what’s kept me busy an’ out o’ sight so far, so this is our first opportunity to make our acquaintances. Hope ye’ll forgive me that.”

“Of course, sir,” Alan told him. “And what have you found?”

“Oh, we’ve stirred up an ant-hill, no error.” Wythy grinned, baring a rather sparse, but strong set of teeth—those remaining in his head, at least. “Even caught us a French spy or two.”

“So it was the French, sir.” Alan enthused at the proof of a devilish conspiracy, the rum racing in his veins and warming his chill belly.

“Nothin’ t’ do with ye, sir,” Wythy informed him, turning the broad smile off. “We winkled a brace o’ informers out o’ the woodpile, but that was more serendipity. Ye’ve been a bad boy, Mister Lewrie, ‘deed ye have. A very bad boy.”

“Was it anyone I told, sir?” Alan cringed, waiting for the thunderstorm of rage he imagined would follow.

“I was thinkin’ more o’ yer taste for married flesh, Mister Lewrie, not yer indiscretion,” Wythy said, glaring at him. “Imagine it for a moment. Us expectin’ the worst. Word o’ our venture leakin’ to our foes ‘cross the Channel. No end o’ shite-storm as our people trace back every man in the know, ye included, t’ see if someone’s blabbed in his cups’r whispered in the wrong wench’s ear.”

“But I knew nothing to ‘blab’ before stepping on board, sir,” Alan replied, springing to his own defense out of long-established habit. He’d gotten rather good at it—had to have gotten good at it—since he’d been breeched. “Sir Onsley only said Burgess Chiswick would be going to the Far East on some vital mission but I had no idea I had any part of it until the old fool .. . until I received my letter from the Admiralty. And I didn’t connect my appointment into this ship with him until Chiswick came aboard, either, sir.”

“Ah, but yer patron, Sir Onsley could,” Wythy hissed evilly. “What’s more natural among gentlemen in their clubs’n t’ answer an inquiry ‘bout where ye are, lad? Under the rose, as it were. Well, let me say, yer former patron. Sir Onsley’s stock ‘round Whitehall’s not so high anymore. Find another, ‘s my advice t’ ye.”

“But ...”

“Had ye not been swivin’ with another man’s wife, he’d not have set henchmen on ye to kill ye,” Wythy drummed out, beating Lewrie on the head and shoulders with harsh words. “We’d not have turned all the south of England arsey-varsey lookin’ fer spies, not have spent over a thousand pounds o’ Crown money to do it, either. Had ye the slightest bit o’ sense, ye’d never been caught tuppin’ her in the first place!”

“Lord Cantner?” Alan burst out in a near-screech of surprise.

“Aye,” Wythy snarled. “Funny what a man’ll stand for, long’s he don’t have t’ be confronted direct. Funny the things a man’ll stoop to once he is. Two brace o’ murderers, one pair t’ Wheddon Cross if ye’d gone there. T’other pair ye and yer man did for, all scum from a rookery who smuggled brandy an’ lace for your Lord Cantner from the Continent. Seamen, might o’ been in league with Frogs who supplied ‘em. First pair come t’ Plymouth an’ nosed about, asking a lot o’ questions. Even tried t’ sign aboard this ship. Hah, ye didn’t know that, did ye, now? Lucky we were a full complement when they did. Couple o’ people in the pay o’ the French got wind o’ it. Began t’ wonder what so many Navy hands were doin’ signin’ aboard Telesto. Never had a clue, ‘less ye hadn’t stirred up the waters, Mister Lewrie. Well, we stopped their bloody business. Stopped the business o’ those hired killers, too. Dead bodies floatin’ in a seaport town’r nothin’ much t’ get exercised about.”

“Jesus.” Alan gulped at the calmness with which Wythy spoke of having four human beings dispatched. He took a pull on his tot of rum.

“One o’ our people had a little chat with yer Lord Cantner as well,” Wythy went on. “Pity ye ain’t back in London t’ console the poor widow. She’s become a dev’lish wealthy widow, of a sudden.”

“You ... you had him killed?” Alan shuddered.

“Expired on his own, damn his blood!” Wythy spat, as though he would have relished throttling the old colt’s-tooth. “Right in the middle o’ bein’ told we had him dead t’ rights for attempted murder. An’ how vexed the Crown’d be with him. Apoplexy, they say.”

“God’s teeth!” Lewrie chilled, raising his tot to drain it dry. Well, at least that was behind him. He’d not have to fear any more attempts on his life from Lord Cantner, anyway, though he wasn’t sure as to Wythy’s or Twigg’s intentions. “Hold on, now, sir. You said that you made inquiries. Did you ask of the Chiswick family? Did you pester them? Did you harm them in any way? By God, if ...”

“Discreet inquiries, nothin’ more,” Wythy assured him. “I’m told the lass’s prettier’n springtime. Soft on her, are ye? Well, she an’ her family weren’t run through the Star Chamber. And, ye’ll be happy t’ know that little servin’ wench isn’t truly ‘an-kled.’ My word, but ye’re a busy boy, ain’t ye, now, Mister Lewrie? But d’ye see just how much trouble that wayward prick o’ yer’n has caused us?”

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, as abashed as a first-term student.

“And ye’ll not breathe a bloody word more’n ‘pass the port’ t’ anyone, long’s yer aboard this ship. Long as this venture lasts, eh?”

“Indeed not, sir,” Alan said, meek as a pup.

“And ye’ll not go dippin’ yer wick ‘less I or Zachariah Twigg give ye leave, now, will ye, Mister Lewrie.” It was not a question.

“I should think,” Lewrie had to grin, getting his spirit back, “that that would not be a problem for the next six months, Mister Wythy.”

“ T’isn’t funny, boy. Ye have need o’ swivin’ once we’re in Calcutta, with our leave, mind ye, ye’ll cleave yer tongue t’ the roof o’ yer mouth,” Wythy whispered. “ ‘Cause if ye can’t, if we ever suspect ye of any indiscretion that’d jeopardize this expedition, ‘r risk men’s lives, then God have mercy on yer miserable soul! Do we understand each other . . . Mister Lewrie?”

“Aye, sir!” Alan answered quickly, suddenly realizing just how dangerous this mission was. “Indeed we do, sir! I give you my solemn oath we do.”

Christ, would these ghouls kill me? Yes, I think they just might! Goddamn me, what sort of a pack of monsters have I been caged up with? These ... these blackamoors work for the Crown?

“Good. Ye may go, then. By the way ...”

“Yes, Mister Wythy?” Lewrie said, damned eager to get out of the door, but held mesmerized like a bird by a snake.

“Seems that Lord Cantner might o’ died happy in one respect,” Wythy allowed. “The latest jape runnin’ round his circle back in London’s how he finally fathered an heir, and the effort killed him.”

“Lady Delia?”

“Bakin’ some young buck’s bastard, aye,” Wythy noted, grinning briefly.

“Seems to be a lot of that going ‘round, sir.” Alan grimaced. “May I go, sir? Is that all you wish of me for now?”

“Aye, Mister Lewrie, that’ll be all,” Wythy said, retrieving the glass from Alan’s nerveless hand. “And I do mean all!”