“Aye, sir,” Jessop answered, still looking a bit too gleeful for Lewrie’s liking.

Midshipman Shannon entered and marched to the front of Lewrie’s desk at what the lad obviously thought was a properly rapid military pace. “Mister Eldridge’s duty, sir, and I am to tell you that there is a boat approaching,” he rattled off, chin up, stiff as a soldier at “Guards Mount,” and staring over Lewrie’s shoulder at the middle distance.

“Very well, Mister Shannon, and thankee,” Lewrie replied. “Any idea of its passenger, or passengers?”

“Ehm … Mister Eldridge did speculate that it might bear an Admiralty messenger, sir,” Shannon answered, looking as if a question had thrown him off-script and nigh clueless in how to respond.

“Fine, we’ll soon see. You may go, Mister Shannon,” Lewrie bade.

“Aye aye, sir!” Shannon barked, just as loud as the sentry, and all but stamping his boots.

“Just a thought, Mister Shannon,” Lewrie said before the lad could stumble through an attempt at an about-face. “In the Navy, there is no need to emulate the Household Foot Guards, or our own Marines, for that matter. All that shouting and stamping about just frightens my cats.”

“Ehm … I was told…,” Shannon gulped, turning red.

“I would not believe all that I was told by your fellow Mids,” Lewrie cautioned, “recent pranks included, hmm?”

“Very good, sir,” Shannon replied, taking on normal posture. With a brief, shy, and much-relieved smile, he saw himself out.

“Lord, what a younker, sir,” Pettus said once he was gone.

“Believe it or not, Pettus, I’ve seen worse,” Lewrie laughed.

A few minutes later, after Lewrie had placed cheque marks beside the names of some hands whom he thought too weak, or too dense, to do the tasks assigned them, he could hear the calls of the “Spithead Nightingales” as someone was piped aboard the ship. In expectation of a visitor, he set aside the lists and waited for his Marine sentry to do his duty, which came a moment later. “Messenger t’see th’ Cap’um, SAH!”

“Enter,” Lewrie bade.

An older Midshipman from the Port Admiral’s office entered, with a canvas despatch bag hung over one shoulder. “Orders from the Port Admiral, Captain Lewrie, sir. And, Captain Niles also thought that your latest mail should be delivered aboard, as well,” the Mid said.

“Most welcome, and thank you,” Lewrie said with a happy smile as he accepted the packet of letters, and his orders. “Do I need to sign for them?” he asked, waving the slim envelope.

“No, sir,” the Midshipman said with a grin, and bowed himself out. As soon as he was gone, Lewrie broke the wax seal and opened the brief order. He already had orders from Admiralty to sail as part of Commodore Popham’s expedition, “with all despatch” and “making the best of his way”, and was just waiting for a favourable slant of wind for departure so he could fulfil Admiralty’s parlance for cracking on all sail to the royals and blowing out half his heavy-weather canvas for maximum speed. What could Lord Gardner have to say about it?

“Oh Christ,” Lewrie groaned. “Play escort?”

There were, several hired-in merchant vessels also waiting for a change in wind direction which carried a part of Popham’s expeditionary force, a troop transport, and a pair of horse transports bound for Madeira, the assembly point in the neutral Portuguese Azores Islands, and carrying two troops of the 34th Light Dragoons.

So much for “with all despatch”, Lewrie desponded; If they can make eight knots in a ragin’ gale, I’m a Turk in a turban!

He cast a longing look at the thick packet of personal mail, but got to his feet and went aft to the windows in the transom. As Lord Gardner had written, those transports were anchored near Southsea Castle … but then, so were many other vessels. Through the misty haze and sullen rain he could make out one ship which flew a large, plain blue broad pendant, the sign of the naval officer appointed by the Transport Board to be the Agent Afloat.

Bugger it, Lewrie thought; I’m goin’ t’get wet … wetter.

He asked Pettus for his grogram cloak and worst hat, turned the personal mail over to his clerk, Faulkes, for distribution, and sent Jessop out on deck to pass word for his boat crew to assemble.

“I’ll be back later, before Seven Bells, I hope,” Lewrie said to Pettus. “Have Yeovill keep my dinner warm. I have to see a man about a horse.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Though he was irked at Lord Gardner’s meddling, and the necessity of rowing over in the rain to meet with the masters of the vessels he was to escort, Lewrie was a tad curious. He had dealt with civilian convoys in the past, but had never seen troop ships or the specialised “cavalry” ships.

Before 1794, the Navy Board had done the hiring of ships to bear soldiers, artillery, ammunition, and supplies overseas. In 1794, a six-man Transport Board had been established to handle the task. The Navy Board had been, and most-likely still was, rife with corruption, so it was good odds that the new Transport Board would be no more honest, but somehow the job had to be done on those so-far rare occasions when the small British Army went overseas, mostly to the East or West Indies, or to garrisons in Canada, Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean.

“Arrah, now there’s a homey smell,” Cox’n Liam Desmond said in appreciation after a deep sniff of the wind. “Horses, barns filled with hay an’ straw … all that’s needin’ is a warm peat fire on such a day as this. Ahh!”

“That, an’ a pint of stout right under yer nose whilst yer warmin’ at that fire, Liam,” Patrick Furfy, the stroke-oar, said with a wistful sigh of missed pleasures.

“Make for the one flying the blue pendant,” Lewrie bade them.

There were three ships in all, according to Lord Gardner’s set of orders: the Ascot, the Marigold, and the Sweet Susan. The one with the blue pendant turned out to be the Ascot, the only one named in any connexion with horses or horse races, and she was the troop transport.

Lewrie was welcomed aboard her, not piped, by an Navy officer, a much older Lieutenant with a slight limp who named himself as Thatcher.

“You are the Agent Afloat?” Lewrie asked.

“I am, sir,” Thatcher glumly told him, “and the only naval officer aboard any of the ships. You are to be our escort, the one named in Lord Gardner’s orders? Happy to meet, you, Captain Lewrie. This may take a while, so why don’t you call your boat crew up so they can take shelter from the rain, and we can go aft. Look out!”

“What?” Lewrie gawped, just before Thatcher snatched him by the arm, clear of a charge by an angry ram.

“What the bloody Hell’s that?” Lewrie snapped.

“The mascot of the Thirty-fourth Light Dragoons, sir,” Thatcher spat in a weary tone. “Cornet Allison? Come fetch your bloody … beast!”

A lad of sixteen or so, resplendent in the silver-trimmed, blue-cuffed short red coat, dark blue breeches, and high, knee-flapped boots of a cavalry regiment, and with a leather-visored helmet bristling fore and aft with black fur plumes, came to stumble after the ram, take him by the collar and one large curved horn, to lead him away.

“Sorry, Leftenant Thatcher, sir,” Cornet Allison added and shifted his grip on the ram so he could raise his right hand and press it palm outward to the visor of his helmet in salute to Lewrie. “I was sure he was tethered, but—”

“Make sure he’s tethered,” Lt. Thatcher insisted. “Else, we’ll find what fresh mutton tastes like.”

“Yes, sir,” Cornet Allison assured him, then pulled a face. “I so wish that we’d voted for a mastiff, or a greyhound, but the Colonel insisted, and so … Come on, you,” he said to the ram, trotting it to the far side of the deck.

“It has no name, d’ye see, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Thatcher said. “The Colonel of the Thirty-fourth, Colonel Laird, also insists that it is always referred to as the Regimental Ram. Though most of the troopers call it ‘that vicious bastard’. ‘Cantankerous’ is a mild word to describe its temperament, and there’s not a soldier aboard that hasn’t been rammed when he wasn’t expecting it. Will you join me for a coffee, sir?”