Hostile Shores

“It always pays t’keep mum about official business outside of work hours,” Lewrie congenially agreed, shrugging off the young man’s thanks. “His Majesty’s Government has an organisation to root out any enemy spies, or people who’d profit by givin’ ’em information. You’d be surprised how many they discover.”

The two clerks finished their teas, took their last puffs from the cheroot, and the one from the Hydrography Office pinched the lit end, stubbed and scrubbed it on the sole of his shoes, and stowed it away in a waist-coat pocket for later. A last “good day” and they went back inside to their scribblings and filings.

Now, let’s see if that gets me invited up to the Board Room, Lewrie thought, feeling particularly clever for a rare once; and urgent orders for a hull cleaning!

*   *   *

Business was suspended for the mid-day meal. Mr. William Marsden trooped down the stairs and breezed out the doors for his di

For six pence he got a pint of ale, a beef pasty which actually tasted like beef even if it was ground, half of a roast potato, and a glob of currant duff. Quite satisfied, and with no immediate sign of food poisoning, he returned to the Waiting Room a bit earlier than the rest, snagged an upholstered chair near the stairs, and scooped up a discarded copy of The Times to while away the rest of the afternoon.

Mr. Marsden returned, again acknowledging no one, and stomped up the stairs to his offices. By two in the afternoon, after another trip to the “necessary” and two more cups of courtyard tea …

“Captain Lewrie?” the “happy-making” clerk called out at last. “Captain Alan Lewrie? Is Captain Lewrie present?”

“Here, sir!” Lewrie replied, shooting to his feet.

“If you will follow me, sir?” the clerk bade. Smiling! That Lewrie took for a good sign.

*   *   *

“Ah, good afternoon, Captain Lewrie … Sir Alan, rather, I was not aware of your knighthood,” Mr. William Marsden said quite genially from behind his desk, waving a hand to steer Lewrie to a chair.

“Good afternoon to you, Mister Marsden,” Lewrie replied as he sat down and tugged at the set of his waist-coat. “Thank you very much for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Before having you in, I had my clerks look up your latest reports on your Bahamian doings, and the privateering situation which you were despatched to deal with,” Marsden said, carefully leafing through a file folder to scan the pertinent reports he’d sent in to Admiralty before leaving for home. “Settled most satisfactorily, it would seem … for the short term, at least. One may only hope that Captain Henry Grierson applies himself to the task with a determination equal to yours. It is quite disturbing, however, to read your last despatch in regards to his squadron’s arrival, and the panic that ensued. As for him ordering you to strike your flag and surrender the ships of your squadron to his command, I am most perplexed as to why he took that action. Do you have an explanation, Sir Alan?”

“He found me impertinent, Mister Marsden,” Lewrie baldly said, “for pointing out what a lame jape his arrival was, and insisted that his arrival made my squadron moot. Since he thought me so impertinent, he had enough Post-Captains to form a court, so…,” Lewrie said with a weary shrug, then added, “He’s distant kin to Lord Melville.”

“Ah,” Marsden replied with a knowing nod, and a grimace. “At any rate, your initial request for an interview involved a request for dockyard services, I believe?” Marsden went on, referring to a note scribbled on scrap paper by one of his clerks.

“Reliant was taken out of Ordinary in April of 1803, sailed in May when the war resumed, and has been in continuous service in West Indies or semi-tropical waters since, sir,” Lewrie explained. “She is badly in need of a hull cleaning. We’ve been able to keep up with the usual wear-and-tear, and rot, above the waterline, but she is weeded and slow. By next May, she should be due a total docking and re-fit, but … with a careening and cleaning, the replacement of any coppering that might have sloughed off, and some fresh white lead, she can still give good service beyond next May.”

“Extending your command into her, and your active commission,” Marsden sagely nodded, his face stony, giving nothing away.

“I will confess that I do wish to keep her, sir,” Lewrie told the sceptical fellow, “to keep my officers and crew together as long as possible. We’ve done grand things together, discipline is so good that we rarely ever have to resort to the ‘cat’, and have not had any desertions, even anchored in American harbours. We both know that that is damned rare, and did I have my choice, when the time comes for her to enter the dry dock, I would love to see us all turned over into a new ship, entire. My people are that good, sir!”

“The mark of a good captain,” Marsden said with another firm nod, then turned to Lewrie’s request. “You told one of my junior ink-spillers that you were familiar with Cape Town, Sir Alan?”

“I dare say that I am, sir!” Lewrie quickly assured him.

I do dare say, Lewrie told himself; I’d dare say anything to get what I need!

“A brief breaking of your passage at the ‘tavern of the seas’?” Marsden asked with faint good humour.

“I was part of the escort to a ‘John Company’ trade to China, a few years back, when I had the Proteus frigate, sir,” Lewrie eagerly laid out in hopes that he could convince Marsden that his experience was vital. “We tangled with a brace of French frigates as we stood off and on Cape Town in the night. We were stern-raked and had our rudder shot away, so we had to put in and try to find a replacement. We were there for more than a month, sir. Landed our badly wounded to a shore sick bay in a rented farmhouse halfway up the Lion’s Head, buried some ashore, and took a train of bullock waggons over to the beached wreck of an East Indiaman that mistook False Cape for the real’un in a gale, and hired local divers and artificers t’salvage her rudder before the wreckers at Simon’s Town got away with it.

“During all that, I got a chance to know the lay-out of Cape Town quite well, too,” Lewrie went on, “and hired a local hunter for a guide. We rode up North, into the hills above the lesser bays…”

For the life of him, he could not remember the names of all the places that those clerks had tossed out!

“… got familiar with the land about the town to the East and the South, as well, sir,” Lewrie said with a confident but false grin.

“How many forts protect Cape Town, sir?” Marsden shrewdly asked.

“I recall but two, sir,” Lewrie replied, “when I was last there, at least. And we had possession of the place. Had no dealings with our Army at the time, d’ye see.”

“Which is … Fort Knocke?” Marsden enquired, taking a moment to peer at another note on his desk. “However one says that. ‘Nok-ah’? ‘Ka-nok-ah’? Bloody foreigners!”

“Both are on the seafront, either side of the town, but I do believe that Fort … whatyecallit … is the one on the Eastern side of Cape Town, closest to the land approaches, sir.”

Lewrie tried to make it sound as if he knew what he was talking about; he hadn’t a bloody clue if that was right and crossed fingers for luck like the un-prepared student he had been at a succession of schools. The way Mr. Marsden peered at him without comment made him feel as if he’d break out in a funk-sweat.