Alan Lewrie #09 - King's Captain by Dewey Lambdin

Author:Dewey Lambdin [Lambdin, Dewey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dewey Lambdin
Published: 2010-04-16T09:39:40+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

His first instinct was to beat to Quarters, to load and run out his artillery, raise the anti-boarding nets, open the arms chests, and prepare his crew to defend the ship until they could get sail on her and escape the anchorage.

But so far Proteus had spent most of her time in "River Discipline" at the rawest basics—knots, tracing the rigging, the making or tending of sail, anchor and cable work, striking and raising top-masts, or hoisting boats off the cross-deck beams, lowering them overside, and then recovering them, along with some practical oar-work about the harbour or mooring. Until he had formed a full crew, he hadn't planned on telling-off gun crews, so only the seamen with previous experience were adept at gunnery practice. That would have been part of this new week's curriculum, he'd hoped. Now, though . . .

Short of rations, water, firewood, powder, and shot, Proteus had only one chance of being swept up in mutiny: flee at once, escape the Nore, and try to make good her lacks at another Royal dockyard!

"Mister Pendarves?" he shouted. "Mister Devereux?"

"Here, sir," the marine officer called back from the quarterdeck, already immaculately turned out in full kit.

"Turn out your Marines, sir, at once!" Lewrie snarled. "Armed, mind . . . to the teeth!"

"Captain?" the Bosun queried from below in the waist.

"Bosun, pipe 'All Hands.' Muster hands to man the capstan, then prepare to make sail!" Lewrie called down to him. "We're leaving harbour quick as we can. If you have to cut the bower and kedge away, so be it."

Pendarves's silver call began to peep and shrill, joined by the sounds from his junior, Towpenny's. Feet, shod or bare, began to drum on the oaken decks as the crew responded to their summons, racing from below to mill and bleat in confusion. Some knew the call and went to their proper stations at once. Others, the fresh-caught landsmen, had the civilian penchant for chattering about it before being collared by the yeomen or detail "captains"; berated, shoved, fisted, or "started" to their proper positions. Spry young topmen clambered aloft, up the rat-lines and out over the futtock shrouds to the fighting tops, beyond to the tops'l yards to scoot out precariously on the foot-ropes to loose harbour gaskets and brails to free sails.

Lewrie took time to have another gander round the anchorage. A cutter was stroking for Proteus's larboard entry-port, filled with seamen from HMS Sandwich, whose rigging was filled with cheering sailors. .

"Glass, Mister Nicholas," Lewrie demanded of the sweet-natured fourteen-year old midshipman who was near the binnacle cabinet darting eyes about in wide-eyed wonder, as Devereux's drummer began a long roll and a fife joined the urgent shrieks of the bosun's calls. The lad fetched him a telescope.

"Damme, not a night glass, Mister Nicholas!" Lewrie howled with impatience, after one look through the telescope, which, unlike the day glasses, turned everything upside-down and backwards.

"Here, sir?" Midshipman Elwes Fetched a substitute, having seen Nicholas's mistake and corrected it.

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