Hostile Shores

The old black-and-white tom was on his right side, as if he was looking out at the horizon as it gently heaved and rolled. When Lewrie stroked his side, he didn’t even move, but just gave out a weary Mrr, a complaint that he had been sleeping and did not appreciate being wakened. Lewrie leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, stroking Toulon’s chops and cheeks.

“I always loved you, ye clumsy old thing,” Lewrie whispered, recalling his cat’s kittenhood, and his adjustment to life at sea. Once, Toulon had hopped atop a table, a freshly polished one, upon which a sheet of paper rested, and he could not quite understand why or how he had slid off when he was sitting perfectly still on top of it. That had driven him under the starboard-side settee, abashed, where Toulon could commune with his cat gods and live down his shame! Or, when in the North Sea in late 1801, Lewrie’s previous frigate, HMS Thermopylae, had been rolling just hideously, and Lewrie had been trying to shave, and Toulon had tried to get up to the water bowl on the wash-hand stand and had ended up with a tumble to the deck, and a face covered with soap foam! Once again, the dark under the settee had been a refuge.

Lewrie gave him a last stroke or two, then let Toulon be, with a faint and guilty hope that, did he check on him round suppertime, he might discover that Toulon had passed over peacefully.

He sat on the transom settee and pulled off his boots, took off his waist-coat and un-did his neck-stock, then rolled up his sleeves before rolling into his bed-cot atop the embroidered coverlet. He was almost asleep in moments, but was stirred awake by Chalky’s arrival. The younger white-and-grey cat hopped up and padded to Lewrie’s chest, to peer at him, nose-to-nose.

“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a sigh, rewarding Chalky with strokes down his back, ruffles of his chest fur, and “wubbies” on his cheeks and chops. Chalky flopped onto his side, extended his paws, and began to wriggle, eager for belly-tickling play. That could be a dangerous game for the unwary, for Chalky would nip and catch fingers between his paws, claws out.

“Must I?” Lewrie asked. “Oh, very well. I should find a pair o’ thick leather gloves t’play with you!”

It took a quarter-hour to wear Chalky out. Lewrie closed his eyes and tried to return to his nap, but no … Chalky got his wind back, hopped down, and returned with a ragged old knitted wool mouse.

“You really are a pest,” Lewrie muttered, rolling out of bed and giving up on his nap. At least he still had one cat who needed to be amused.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

San Salvador looked to be a pestilential place, a sprawl of low native huts and the reek of cow dung, sweat, and human ordure, commanded by a separate European quarter of tile-rooved stone buildings and barracks, and a small fort which overlooked a series of long and low-slung barracoons with iron-bound doors and a few barred windows, where captured Africans were held ’til a slave ship put in for human cargo. The river mouth ran the colour of red clay, splaying its dubious freshness far out in a delta-like fan off the coast, between gritty stone and sand beaches. The lush gree

Lewrie ordered a signal hoisted to his three charges for them to stand-off-and-on while Reliant closed the shore. As soon as the frigate altered course to stand in, a very shallow, crude boat put out for them, paddled by a crew of Africans wearing little more than sandals and what looked to be Red Indian–style breechclouts, with one European seated in the sternsheets. The boat came close aboard as Lewrie ordered his ship rounded up into the wind to fetch-to, so he could speak to the White fellow, a rumpled-looking man in off-white cotton canvas trousers and coat, with a wide straw hat on his head.

“Senhor, you weesh to enter the reever?” the man asked.

“I wish to know where the British fleet has gone, senhor, and how long ago was it that they sailed?” Lewrie shouted back to him.

“Three, four day ago, senhor,” the fellow said, scratching at his bearded cheek, and flicking ash from a crooked cigarro that he held between his teeth. “They take on wood, water, and meal, and go South. We have cattle and peegs, senhor,” the fellow tempted. “You weesh fresh meat? You trade us rum and brandy, yes?”

“No need, sorry,” Lewrie called back. “We have all we need at present. We are bound South to catch them up.”

“Ah, well,” the unkempt fellow said with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders in disappointment. “Go weeth God, senhor.”

“Get way on her if you please, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered as he stepped back from the bulwarks. “Shape course out to our charges and we’ll speak ’em t’see if they’ve enough supplies to last ’til Cape Town. It’s only a few hundred miles, now, God willing.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott replied, his face screwed up. “Lord, what a reek! Is all Africa this foul-smelling?”

“Cape Town wasn’t, as I recall,” Lewrie told him. “No worse than a small town in the country, back home. It’s the heat and rot in the jungles round this latitude, the smell of long-settled native villages, and the foul reek of the slave pens. Did you ever get close aboard a ‘blackbirder’, Mister Westcott? Once you do, you never can forget the odour of human misery. God knows how many in the barracoons will perish before the next slaver puts in … nor how many of the healthy chosen from that lot live t’see a vendue house in the Americas. Just get me away from all this … foulness, sir!”

*   *   *

Reliant closed Ascot close enough for Lewrie to converse with Lt. Thatcher with a brass speaking-trumpet and enquire about his dwindling supplies.

“I reckon that Cape Town is nigh twelve-hundred or more miles off, sir!” Lt. Thatcher shouted over. “After victualling at Funchal, we should have sufficient water and rations for another two months! The Army would wish to put in to get their mounts ashore and exercise them on dry land. Captain Veasey fears that by the time we join the other transports at Cape Town, his horses won’t be able to stand!”

“And how might they land them ashore?” Lewrie replied with the trumpet to his mouth. “Hoist ’em out over the side and swim them in, through shark-infested waters, and crocodile-infested river? We would have to anchor at least a mile out, and God only knows how many horses would get eaten, or drown.”

Lewrie could see Captains Veasey and Chadfield bristling with concern, a few feet away from Lt. Thatcher. The troopers of the 34th Light Dragoons aboard Ascot were more vociferous in their disappointment that they would hot be allowed off the ship for a day or two of ease, either, cat-calling and booing Lewrie’s decision.

What did they expect o’ San Salvador? Lewrie wondered; Black whores, rum, and roast beef? And the whores for free?

“We will crack on South, Mister Thatcher!” Lewrie shouted to him. “Steer Sou’-Sou’west, and follow me!”

“Very good, Captain Lewrie!” Thatcher replied, sounding a bit disappointed, himself.

Lewrie left the bulwarks and stowed the speaking-trumpet in the compass bi