William Price and the Thetis 5

 

Chapter 5

 

The mixed fish, cooked in a roux sauce with butter, goats milk, and eggs, with fresh parsley from potted herbs around the hen house, went down well in flaky pastry that almost melted in the mouth. It was served with almost fresh peas; later, they would break into the barrels of salted string beans, sauerkraut, and canned vegetables, but for now, there were some fresh vegetables still. The roux was more delicately spiced than often, using fines herbs de Provence, according to MacReady, or a selection of herbs from Mrs. Captain’s pots, according to Seth. A second course of baked pears made the hard Conference pears, good keepers, but less palatable than many, a delicious treat, served with sweetened soft goat cheese, and scrolls of chocolate grated from the block of drinking chocolate on it.

“MacReady is a genius,” said Scully.

“He’ll help our crew to stay healthy in the tropics,” said William. “I let him show off, but generally, gentlemen, when you dine with me, it will be much what the crew eat, with some small treat.”

“The men are eating their pears, too, with a dash of evaporated milk,” reported Amelia. “They would not have stored much longer after a battle; bruises soon go bad, and even in sawdust, they were shaken about.”

“And if we’re ever without water, we’ve water in many of the canned fruit and vegetables, to keep us alive, at least,” said William. “A toast to canning!”

That was a toast gladly drunk.

“I think we’re all wondering who is to be sent back to England with the prize and the prisoner,” ventured Nat Erskine.

“I’m not sending it back to England,” said William. “I already wrote my orders and gave them to Colin, who will be captaining our new tender. It is not, after all, a lieutenant’s command, when we may be hoping to take bigger ones.”

“You’ve something in mind, sir,” said Colin.

“I want to cut out the whole pirate fleet from Grand Canary,” said William. “There are four more ships there, causing trouble to our Post Office ships.”

“And what of the prisoner, sir?” asked Ziv.

“I was going to send him back to England in irons on the first genuine Post Office packet we see heading north, and one of your marines, Ziv.”

“You can have the idiot whose idea it was to jump down and break his ankle, and cause that of his mate to be broken too, because he had some idea that they would float down like thistledown.  He’s as dreamy as a girl at her first Assembly ball, and he was wished on me from above.”

“We all know the feeling; and at least we are fortunate on this cruise to have no precious lovies who freeze in battle,” said William. Mr. Erskine was, in fact, something of a fire-eater, which was how come, Jeb had told William, Taffy had come to turn aside to help the Cosgrove brothers, leaving Erskine to his own devices. Well, that was good; a fierce fighter against slavers would be a good thing.

“Any news on Taff?” asked Gubbins. He was not as personally attached to the former poachers as some of the officers, but he knew them for fine seamen, and that the captain saw them as a steady cadre and something of a talisman.

“I think he’s going to make it; if he survives the night, he will probably live,” said Amelia. “He’s likely to be feverish, but I’ve enlisted Peacock to watch him constantly, and monitor his laudanum. Jackson is going to carve him a new arm, and though he won’t be able to do much with it, he’ll feel more balanced.”

“Good, for I want those four with Colin,” said William. “And Rob, you’ll be checking Colin’s figures as well as inventorying anything the damned pirate was carrying.”

“Already done that, sir,” said Bailey. “I have a written report.  He’d offloaded most of his valuable cargo, but he was holding onto a number of Indian muslins which had come round the horn, and he wasn’t sure what the value was. Nor have I, to be honest,” he added.

“What, not that fine stuff that’s see-through, with embroidery on it?” asked William. “That’s a good four hundred pounds a yard, if it’s the genuine thing from Dhaka.[1]”

“Dhaka! That was the name on the stamp,” said Bailey. “There were four… no, five bales of it.”

“Twenty yards to a bale, one hundred yards of muslin, forty thousand pounds,” said William.

William later described the silence as very loud.

“I make that around a hundred and twenty five pounds per man,” said Bailey. “And that’s before the head money of a fiver a time for well over a hundred, and the cost of the lugger.”

“Here’s a health to our captain, and the increasing health of our bank accounts,” said Scully.

This was also drunk enthusiastically.

“And without an admiral in sight, sailing under admiralty orders, that’s a quarter to the captain,” piped up Colin.

He would be getting more than a thousand pounds himself, to add to earlier prize money.

Colin had a very healthy sum in the funds.

“Haha, I want Colin’s job to cut out the prizes,” said Erskine.

“If all goes to plan, you and Scully will each be captains as we take them one at a time,” said William. “I’m sorry, but my choice for a tender captain is still a midshipman, and Colin is the most able. I need both the lieutenants I am permitted.”

“I’d happily cede my place to John, in battle,” said Colin. “He’s more knowledgeable.”

“That, I may well do, as you work well together,” said William. “And then he can put you in a prize.”

“Laudanum,” said Scully.

“And a reduced crew for the mortality,” said Colin.

“Oh, you were ahead of me there,” said William. “How to simulate black vomit?”

“Hot bricks wrapped in flannel to drive up his temperature, a little Naples yellow from a paintbox in his eyes, and if MacReady will burn me some bull’s blood and navy-bean soup for vomit,  with some soured milk in it for the smell, and we’ll do very well,” said Amelia.

“I don’t understand,” said Erskine, plaintively.

William hid a sigh.

“John Scully suggested using the erstwhile captain to make all seem normal and sail right amongst them, with Feltham drugged into insensibility with the simulated symptoms of yellow fever, which explains why the crew is so short,” he explained. “With Nancy-Beth under tow.  Pirates become pirates because they are greedy and want short term profits. They will see prize money and forget to look for a trap, so long as Feltham is alive, even if looking half dead.”

“I don’t know how you follow so much complexity with just a word or two,” marvelled Erskine.

“Practice,” said William.

“Isn’t Grand Canary Spanish?” asked Erskine. “Can we really attack shipping in the harbour of a friendly nation?”

“Why would we be telling them that we are attacking?” said William. “It’s technically an act of war that they should harbour pirates, but I suspect that it is a case of those who ask no questions, isn’t told a lie. So, equally, we will ask no questions, tell no lies, save those implied to the pirates, and if they have made no bones about a number of small ships sailing into their harbour, they can scarcely ask more when they sail out.”

“I suspect the pirates keep themselves to themselves, too,” said Scully. “And avoid annoying Spanish shipping.”

“That makes sense,” said William. 

“Only faint canaries,” said Amelia.

“John and I already had that conversation,” said William. “But with luck, the prizes should be ambrosial.”

“If this one is anything to go by,” said Amelia. “Are you going to annoy him by telling him how much the cloth is worth?”

William sniggered.

“I might, at that,” he said.  “Well, gentlemen, our cruise has begun well, and I will send the packages of cloth back to the prize commission with the head count of the enemy, and my report that I am keeping the ‘John and Betsy’ as a tender.” He nodded to Colin. “Take your dunnage on board the prize, and take command.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Colin, seriously.

The orders, ending ‘or answering to the contrary at your peril’ had not been as frightening as the first time he had received written orders to take command of a prize, but it still gave him a funny feeling in his belly, which of course, it was supposed to do, he reflected. As the senior officer on one of the King’s vessels, he had responsibility for its safety and that of all his crew.

 

It was a big responsibility, and Colin had to live up to it. And in the meantime, he had Jeb Walden and Pete Jackson, who had picked him half a dozen men. He stood on his own quarterdeck, getting the feel of the ship.

“Cast off from the ‘Thetis,’ if you please,” he said, proud that his voice did not tremble.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Walden. “Taff knows we’re here, and is proud of you for accepting command, you know,” he added. “If anyone can bring him about, it’s the Mrs. Captain.”

Colin reflected that Walden had been Amelia’s first ever patient, when he had fallen from aloft, in the taking of the ‘Mosquito’ being pursued by ‘Nancy Beth.’ And those nameplates were back on the ‘Thetis,’ and the ship’s company employed in making her look a trifle lubberly.

They would come upon the Canary Islands in a day or so, and hopefully Taffy would be well enough to come aboard, and make his pithy and helpful comments, and Colin would be in charge of keeping the pirate, Feltham, under sedation, and looking ill. His own shipmates would be using soot in lard as greasepaint, to add shadows under their eyes and under the cheekbones, and flour to make them pale, to make the story of black vomit more believable.

Colin adored the play-acting in the missions he had been on with William Price.

 

oOoOo

 

William might have welcomed the arms of his wife after a battle, and before getting ready to throw his men into a heavily risky venture, but she had set up a bunk on the orlop, to be near both Taffy and Smitty. Emma Green and Molly Grierson were sleeping together in one bunk near her, ready to assist as surgeon’s mates as needed. Amelia hated losing any patient, especially not one of what she considered her poacherly cupids, who had assisted her William. She slept in her clothes and made the rounds every three hours. Smitty had complained of blurred vision, but reported that she only had one flame on the candle in her lamp this time, when she looked in on him, so it might be assumed his vision was returning to normal. Taffy was asleep in Peacock’s arms, and he seemed to be breathing normally. Amelia said a brief prayer of thanks; she would have expected him to have died quietly under his drugged sleep by now if he was going to die. His duties, if he survived, were to look as ill as he was, and be a spokesman for, supposedly, Feltham, being quite capable of looking villainous. With cloths stuffed in his sleeve, and in a glove sewn to it, in the half-light of below decks, Taff would enjoy making horrible vomiting noises and feign being sick into a utensil, as one of the officers. Amelia blushed and smiled as she remembered how William had retaliated to her suggesting, a few days ago, that if they had any more ruses de guerre, he should change the name of the ship to ‘The Globe Theatre’ and call the company, ‘Price’s strolling players.’

They did actually have some genuine grease paint for things like bruises and wounds, but all they needed to do was to look a bit gaunt and weak.

And the women must stay out of sight, below.

She wondered what William’s plans were, and dismissed such queries, since William would have no firm plans until he saw the dispositions of the other pirates.  She suspected that the idea was to approach quietly by night, and secure or kill as many as possible, sleeping in their hammocks; and then sail out ship by ship as each was taken. It was a bold, even crazy plan, and relied heavily on the pirates being lax.

But then, that was the reason men chose piracy, or highway robbery; they wanted fast rewards for relatively little work. And the sort of people who wanted fast rewards for relatively little work were lazy, and ill disciplined.  And they tended, too, to chose their own captains, so no captain had the authority of the whole naval board behind him to flog a man for endangering his crew by sleeping on duty. She had thought naval discipline appalling at first, but was coming to realise that, when applied properly by a merciful but not spineless captain, it was a way of saving the most lives in the long run.  There had been one flogging, right before they had spotted the ‘John and Betsy,’ and that had been a man who had thought it funny to rouse the watch below and see them start to muster before realising that it was not yet time to get up. He had been giggling up to the point that William had asked him if he would still be laughing when the sail handlers, too tired to do their jobs properly, killed him by falling on him from aloft; and whether he was going to compensate their widows and orphans.

He had ordered two dozen, and then made the flogged man race up and down the ratlines, stopping only when he was stumbling with fatigue and pain.

The point had been made by a harsher punishment than it would have been with a nominal dozen lashes, and though she knew William had hated doing it, it was for the sake of his men as a whole, and the rest of the crew appreciated it too.

Amelia drifted off to sleep, and awoke to see Peacock’s grinning face.

“Taff wants to know if ʼe gets eggs for breakfast for being ill, and a swig o’ medicinal brandy,” he said.

“He’ll get an egg caudle with brandy in it,” said Amelia. “And plenty of cream and sugar.”

“Fanks,” said Peacock.

Amelia shook her head, and laughed. If Taff was scrounging, he was going to be just fine.

 

---

[1] This is not a mistake or exaggeration. Dhaka muslin came from one village only, and cannot be replicated today. The finest could cost more. Wearing a gown of Dhaka muslin was the Regency equivalent of a Dior original.