Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(56)

Fortunately, his father was also a fair and industrious man, having studied widely abroad and now compiling the first dictionary of the Norwegian language. And Henrik, his second son, had apparently inherited his sire’s talents and tastes for scholarship. Originally bound for the university in Padova, the arrival of Grantville had caught both Henrik’s interest and imagination. Like many other adventurous sons (and no small number of daughters) of European noble houses, he had gone there to read in the up-time library, augmenting that education with classes and seminars at the nearby University of Jena. It was perhaps predictable that he was assigned as Eddie’s adjutant and staff officer, as much because of Christian’s keen interest in the young Norwegian as Bjelke’s own unfulfilled desires to pursue a military career. He had ultimately done so quite successfully in the up-time world of Eddie’s birth, rising to become the head of the Danish Admiralty.

However, Bjelke’s familiarity with things nautical had been a later-life acquisition. For the moment, it was clearly a mighty struggle for him just to maintain the at-sea posture that was the down-time equivalent of “at ease” in the presence of a superior officer with whom one had familiarity (and with whom the difference in rank was not too profound). Eddie discovered he was inordinately cheered by Rik’s unsteadiness. At last! someone with even less shipboard experience than me! He gestured to the rail.

Bjelke gratefully accompanied the young up-timer to the rail, but stared at it for a moment before putting his hand upon it. The “rail” was actually comprised of two distinct parts, one of iron, one of wood. The iron part consisted of two chains that ran where the bulkhead should be, each given greater rigidity by passing tautly through separate eyelets in vertical iron stanchions. Those stanchion were form-cut to fit neatly into brass-cupped holes along the bulwark line, and thus could be removed at will.

However, mounted atop those stanchions, and stabilizing themselves by a single descending picket that snugged into a low wooden brace affixed to the deck, was a light wooden rail. Each section of the rail was affixed to its fore and aft neighbors by a sleeve that surrounded a tongue-in-groove mating of the two separate pieces, held tight by a brass pin that passed through them both at that juncture. Henrik tentatively leaned his weight upon it. It was quite firm. “Ingenious,” he murmured admiring the modular wooden rail sections and ignoring the chain-and-stanchion railing. “Your work, Commander?”

Eddie shrugged. “I had a hand in it.”

Bjelke smiled slowly. “Modesty is rare in young commanders, my elders tell me, but is a most promising sign. I am fortunate to have you as a mentor, Commander Cantrell.”

Eddie kept from raising an eyebrow. Well, Henrik Bjelke had certainly revealed more than a little about himself, and his role vis-a-vis Eddie, in those “innocent” comments. First, the young Norwegian obviously knew the ship upon which this vessel had been heavily based—the USS Hartford of the American Civil War—since he was not surprised by the presence of what would otherwise have been the wholly novel chain-and-stanchion railing arrangement, which reduced dangers from gunwale splinters and, in the case of close targets, could be quickly removed to extend the lower range of the deck guns’ maximum arc of elevation. However, Bjelke had pointedly not been expecting the modular wooden rail inserts that Eddie had designed for greater deck safety when operating on the high seas. That bespoke a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the ship’s design origins, even for a clever young man who’d spent more than a year in the library at Grantville.

Secondly, Bjelke confidently identified the innovation as Eddie’s, which suggested that he’d been well-briefed about the technological gifts of the young American. Which went along with the implication that his elders considered Cantrell a most promising officer.

And that likely explained the third interesting bit of information: that Henrik Bjelke had not been encouraged to look at this assignment as merely a military posting, but as an apprenticeship of sorts.

And all those nuances, having a common emphasis on familiarization with up-timers and their knowledge, seemed to point in one direction: straight at His Royal Danish Majesty Christian IV.

Eddie had to hand it to his half-souse, half-genius regal father-in-law: USE emperor and Swedish sovereign Gustav Adolf might be running around physically conquering various tracts of Central Europe, but Christian had launched his own, highly successful campaign of collecting and captivating the hearts and minds of persons who were poised to become high-powered movers and shakers of the rising generation. His son Ulrik was betrothed to Gustav’s young daughter. His daughter Anne Cathrine was married to the most high-profile war-hero-technowizard from now-legendary Grantville. And now, he had added sharp-witted Henrik Bjelke to the mix.