Read Online A King's Commander by Dewey Lambdin - Free Book Online

grouse-wing beat aloft, a soft, suspiring whisper, as the luffs of fore and main square sails shivered a lazy furling down to the leeches. Headed!
    â€œDamn ’at boy,” Buchanon spat as he witnessed the wind’s death.
    â€œDamn’ quick response from old Aeolus.” Lewrie frowned, trying to be philosophical about it. Nothing good lasted forever, after all!
    The tiller ropes about the wheel-drum creaked as Spenser and a trainee were forced to ease her off the wind as it faded, as the ship sloughed and sagged to a closer, almost weary companionship to waves and sea. The apparent direction of the wind had veered ahead almost half-a-point, for ships working close to weather made half their own apparent wind, backing the true wind slightly more abaft at speed.
    â€œWest-nor’west, half north’z close as she’ll lay, sir,” the quartermaster said, with the frustrated air of a man who’d still won small on his horse that placed, but had lost almost as much on the one he’d backed to win.
    â€œWest-nor’west, half north it is, then, Spenser. Full-and-by,” Lewrie agreed, just as frustrated. He leaned into the orb of candlelight from the compass binnacle lanthorn. Both their faces were distinct in the growing gloom, as if separated from their bodies.
    Still, Alan supposed, with a petulant grunt; we’ll weather the Scillies, and Land’s End. Few leagues closer inshore, but . . .
    â€œGrand while it lasted, though, was it not, Mister Spenser?” Alan commented easily. “A glorious, dev’lish-fine afternoon’s sail.”
    â€œOh, aye . . . ’twoz, Cap’um,” the older man replied, his eyes all aglow deep under a longtime sailor’s cat’s feet and gullied wrinkles. With the sound of a gammer’s longing for a long-lost youthful love, he ventured to comment further. “A right rare’un, sir. Damn’ at lad.”
    â€œAnother cast of the log, if you please, Mister Hyde,” Lewrie called aft, stepping into the gloom. Eight Bells chimed up forward; the end of the Second Dog, and the start of the Evening Watch. “Mr. Buchanon, you have the watch, I believe, sir?”
    â€œAye, sir. Send th’ hands below, then?”
    â€œAye. Nothing more to savor tonight.” Lewrie sighed, moving to the windward bulwarks.
    â€œI’ll call, should . . .” Buchanon began, then wrenched his mouth in a nervous twitch, to keep from speaking aloud a dread that should best remain unspoken. Aeolus, Poseidon, Erasmus, Neptune, Davy Jones . . . by whatever name sailors knew them, the pagan gods of the wild sea and wind had, like e’en the littlest pitchers, exceedingly big ears! And like mischievous and capricious children, could sometimes deliver up from their deeps what sailors said they feared most.
    Uncanny, it was, though—whistling on deck usually fetched a surplus of wind, rather than the lack. Gales and storm that blew out canvas, split reefed and “quick-savered” sails from luff to leech in a twinkling, leaving nothing but braces and boltropes. Never a fade, though, never a dying away. Nor one so rapid.
    Perhaps tomorrow, Lewrie fretted; comeuppance comes tomorrow!
    â€œSir, we now log eight and one-quarter knots,” Hyde reported at last, sprinkled with spray and damp from the knot log’s line.
    â€œThankee, Mister Hyde.” Lewrie nodded, keeping his gaze ahead toward the west. Aye, we had ourselves a rare old thrash to weather, he thought; nigh two hours at ten to eleven knots! That’s at least twenty more sea miles made good, due west, till . . . damn that boy!
    At sundown, winds usually faded, replaced by night winds that might not be so stout, but usually remained steady in both vigor and direction. Clear weather winds did, at least.
    And pray Jesus, that holds true, he grimaced. Stays like this the rest of the night . . . fade around sunrise, of course, for a bit,