H.M. Sloop Sophie off Barcelona
Sir, I have the honour to acquaint you, that the sloop I have the honour to command, after a mutual chase and a warm action, has captured a Spanish xebec frigate of 32 guns, 22 long twelve-pounders, 8 nines, and 2 heavy carronades, viz, the Cacafuego, commanded by Don Martin de Langara, manned by 319 officers, seamen and marines. The disparity of force rendered it necessary to adopt some measure that might prove decisive. I resolved to board, which being accomplished almost without loss, after a violent close engagement the Spanish colours were obliged to be struck. I have, however, to lament the loss of Lieutenant Dillon, who fell at the height of the action, leading his boarding-party, and of Mr Ellis, a supernumerary; while Mr Watt the boatswain and five seamen were severely wounded. To render just praise to the gallant conduct and impetuous attack of Mr Dillon, I am perfectly unequal to.
'I saw him for a while,' Stephen had said, 'I saw him through that gap where two ports were beaten into one: they were fighting by the gun, and then when you called out at the head of those stairs into the waist; and he was in front – black faces behind him. I saw him pistol a man with a pike, pass his sword through a fellow who had beaten down the boson and come to a redcoat, an officer. After a couple of quick passes he caught this man's sword on his pistol and lunged straight into him. But his sword struck on the breastbone or a metal plate, and doubled and broke with the thrust: and with the six inches left he stabbed him faster than you could see – inconceivable force and rapidity. You would never believe the happiness on his face. The light on his face!'
I must be permitted to say, that there could not have been greater regularity, nor more cool determined conduct shown by men, than by the crew of the Sophie. The great exertions and good conduct of Mr Pullings, a passed midshipman and acting lieutenant whom I beg to recommend to their Lord-ships' attention, and of the boatswain, carpenter,gunner and petty officers, I am particularly indebted for.
I have the honour to be, etc.
Sophie's force at commencement of action: 54 officers, men, and boys. 14 4-pounders. 3 killed and 8 wounded.
Cacafuego's force at commencement of action: 274 officers, seamen and supernumeraries. 45 marines. Guns 32.
The captain, boatswain, and 13 men killed; 41 wounded.
He read it through, changed 'I have the honour' on the first page to 'I have the pleasure', signed it Jno. Aubrey and addressed it to M. Harte, Esqr. – not to Lord Keith alas, for the admiral was at the other end of the Mediterranean, and everything passed through the hands of the commandant.
It was a passable letter; not very good, for all his efforts and revisions. He was no hand with a pen. Still, it gave the facts – some of them – and apart from being dated 'off Barcelona' in the customary way, whereas it was really being written in Port Mahon the day after his arrival, it contained no falsehood: and he thought he had done everyone justice – had done all the justice he could, at least, for Stephen Maturin had insisted upon being left out. But even if it had been a model of naval eloquence it would still have been utterly inadequate, as every sea-officer reading it would know. For example, it spoke of the engagement as something isolated in time, coolly observed, reasonably fought and clearly remembered, whereas almost everything of real importance was before or after the blaze of fighting; and even in that he could scarcely tell what came first. As to the period after the victory, he was unable to recapture the sequence at all, without the log: it was all a dull blur of incessant labour and extreme anxiety and weariness. Three hundred angry men to be held down by two dozen, who also had to bring the six-hundred-ton prize to Minorca through an ugly sea and some cursed winds; almost all the sloop's standing and running rigging to be set up anew, masts to be fished, yards shifted, fresh sails bent, and the bosun among the badly wounded; that hobbling voyage along the edge of disaster, with precious little help from the sea or the sky. A blur, and a sense of oppression; a feeling more of the Cacafuego's defeat than the Sophie's victory; and exhausted perpetual hurrying, as though that were what life really consisted of. A fog punctuated by a few brilliantly clear scenes.
Pullings, there on the bloody deck of the Cacafuego, shouting in his deafened ear that gunboats were coming down from Barcelona; his determination to fire the frigate's undamaged broadside at them; his incredulous relief when he saw them turn at last and dwindle against the threatening horizon – why?
The sound that woke him in the middle watch: a low cry mounting by quarter tones or less and increasing in volume to a howling shriek, then a quick series of spoken or chanted words, the mounting cry again and the shriek – the Irish men of the crew waking James Dillon, stretched there with a cross in his hands and lanterns at his head and his feet.
The burials. That child Ellis in his hammock with the flag sewed over him looked like a little pudding, and now at the recollection his eye clouded again. He had wept, wept, his face streaming with tears as the bodies went over the side and the marines fired their volley.
'Dear Lord,' he thought. 'Dear Lord.' For the re-writing of the letter and this casting back of his mind brought all the sadness flooding up again. It was a sadness that had lasted from the end of the action until the breeze had died on them some miles off Cape Mola and they had fired urgent guns for a pilot and assistance: a sadness that fought a losing battle against invading joy, however. Trying to fix the moment when the joy broke through he looked up, stroking his wounded ear with the feather of his pen; and through the cabin window he saw the tall proof of his victory at her moorings by the yard; her undamaged larboard side was towards the Sophie, and the pale water of the autumn day reflected the red and shining gold of her paintwork, as proud and trim as the first day he had seen her.
Perhaps it was when he received the first unbelieving amazed congratulations from Sennet of the Bellerophon, whose gig was the first boat to reach him: then there was
Butler of the Naiad and young Harvey, Torn Widdrington and some midshipmen, together with Marshall and Mowett, almost out of their minds with grief at not having taken part in the action, yet already shining with reflected glory. Their boats took the Sophie and her prize in tow; their men relieved the exhausted marines and idlers guarding the prisoners; he felt the accumulated weight of those days and nights come down on him in a soft compelling cloud, and he went to sleep in the midst of their questions. That marvellous sleep, and his waking in the still harbour to be given a quick unsigned note in a double cover from Molly Harte.
Perhaps it was then. The joy, the great swelling delight was certainly in him when he woke. He grieved, of course he grieved, he grieved bitterly for the loss of his shipmates – would have given his right hand to save them – and mixed in his sorrow for Dillon there was a guilt whose cause and nature eluded him; but a serving officer in an active war has an intense rather than a lasting grief. Sober objective reason told him that there had not been many successful single-ship actions between quite such unequal opponents and that unless he did something spectacularly foolish, unless he blew himself as high as the Boyne, the next thing that would reach him from the Admiralty would be the news of his being gazetted – of his being made a post-captain.
With any kind of luck he would be given a frigate: and his mind ran over those glorious high-bred ships -Emerald, Seahorse, Teipsichore, Phaлton, Sibylle, Sirius, the lucky Ethalion, Naiad, Alcmиne and Triton, the flying Thetis. Endymion, San Fiorenzo, Amelia… dozens of them: more than a hundred in commission Had he any right to a frigate? Not much: a twenty-gun post-ship was more his mark, something just in the sixth rate. Not much right to a frigate. Not much right to set about the Cacafuego, either; nor to make love to Molly Harte. Yet he had done so. In the post-chaise, in a bower, in another bower, all night long. Perhaps that was why he was so sleepy now, so apt to doze, blinking comfortably into the future as though it were a sea-coal fire. And perhaps that was why his wounds hurt so. The slash on his left shoulder had opened at the far end. How he had come by it he could not tell; but there it was after the action, and Stephen had sewn it up at the same time he dressed the pike-wound across the front of his chest (one bandage for the two) and clapped a sort of dressing on what was left of his ear.
But dozing would not do. This was the time for riding in with the tide of flood, for making a dash for a frigate, for seizing fortune while she was in reach, running her aboard. He would write to Queeney at once, and half a dozen letters more that afternoon, before the party – perhaps to his father too, or would the old boy make a cock of it again? He was the worst hand imaginable at plot, intrigue or the management of what tiny amount of interest they had with the grander members of the family – should never have reached the rank of general, by rights. However, the public letter was the first of these things, and Jack got up carefully, smiling still.
This was the first time he had been openly ashore, and early though it was he could not but be conscious of the looks, the murmurs and the pointing that accompanied his passage. He carried his letter into the commandant's office, and the compunction, the stirrings if not of conscience or principle then at least of decency, that had disturbed him on his way up through the town and even more in the anteroom, disappeared with Captain Harte's first words. 'Well, Aubrey,' he said, without getting up, 'we are to congratulate you upon your prodigious good luck again, I collect.'
'You are too kind, sir,' said Jack. 'I have brought you my official letter.'
'Oh, yes,' said Captain Harte, holding it some way off and looking at it with an affectation of carelessness. 'I will forward it, presently. Mr Brown tells me it is perfectly impossible for the yard here to supply half your wants -he seems quite astonished that you should want so much. How the devil did you contrive to get so many spars knocked away? And such a preposterous amount of rigging? Your sweeps destroyed? There are no sweeps here. Are you sure your bosun is not coming it a trifle high? Mr Brown says there is not a frigate on the station, nor even a ship of the line, that has called for half so much cordage'
'If Mr Brown can tell me how to take a thirty-two gun frigate without having a few spars knocked away I shall be obliged to him.'
'Oh, in these sudden surprise attacks, you know however, all I can say is you will have to go to Malta for most of your requirements. Northumberland and Superb have made a clean sweep here.' It was so evidently his intention to be ill-natured that his words had little effect; but his next stroke slipped under Jack's guard and stabbed right home. 'Have you written to Ellis' people yet? This sort of thing' – tapping the public letter – 'is easy enough: anyone can do this. But I do not envy you the other. What I shall say myself I. don't know… 'Biting the joint of his thumb he darted a furious look from under his eyebrows, and Jack had a moral certainty that the financial setback, misfortune, disaster, or whatever it was, affected him far more than the debauching of his wife.
Jack had, in fact, written that letter, as well as the others
– Dillon's uncle, the seamen's families – and he was thinking of them as he walked across the patio with a sombre look on his face. A figure under the dark gateway stopped, obviously peering at him. All Jack could see in the tunnel through to the street was an outline and the two epaulettes of a senior post-captain or a flag-officer, so although he was ready with his salute his mind was still blank when the other stepped through into the sunlight, hurrying forward with his hand outstretched. 'Captain Aubrey, I do believe? Keats, of the Superb. My dear sir, you must allow me to congratulate you with all my heart – a most splendid victory indeed. I have just pulled round your capture in my barge, and I am amazed, sir, amazed. Was you very much clawed? May I be of any service – my bosun, carpenter, sailmakers? Would you do me the pleasure of dining aboard, or are you bespoke? I dare say you are – every woman in Mahon will wish to exhibit you. Such a victory!'
'Why, sir, I thank you most heartily,' cried Jack, flushing with undisguised open ingenuous pleasure and returning the pressure of Captain Keats' hand with such vehemence as to cause a dull crepitation, followed by a shattering dart of agony. 'I am infinitely obliged to you, for your kind opinion. There is none I value more, sir. To tell you the truth, I am engaged to dine with the Governor and to stay for the concert; but if I might beg the loan of your bosun and a small party – my people are all most uncommon weary, quite fagged out – why, I should look upon it as a most welcome, indeed, a Heaven-sent relief.'
'It shall be done. Most happy,' said Captain Keats. 'Which way do you go, sir? Up or down?'
'Down, sir. I have appointed to meet a – a person at the Crown.'
'Then our ways lie together,' said Captain Keats, taking Jack's arm; and as they crossed the Street to walk in the shade he called out to a friend, 'Tom, come and see who I have in tow. This is Captain Aubrey Of the Sophie! You know Captain Grenville, I am sure?'
'This gives me very great pleasure,' cried the grim, battle-scarred Grenville, breaking out into a one-eyed smile: he shook Jack by the hand and instantly asked him to dinner.
Jack had refused five more invitations by the time he and Keats parted at the Crown: from mouths he respected he had heard the words 'as neat an action as ever I knew', 'Nelson will rejoice in this', and 'if there is justice on earth, the frigate will be bought by Government and Captain Aubrey given command of her'. He had seen looks of unfeigned respect, good will and admiration upon the faces of seamen and junior officers passing in the crowded street; and two commanders senior to him, unlucky in prizes and known to be jealous, had hurried across to make their compliments, handsomely and with good grace.
He walked in, up the stairs to his room, threw off his coat and sat down. 'This must be what they call the vapours,' he said, trying to define something happy, tremulous, poignant, churchlike and not far from tears in his heart and bosom. He sat there: the feeling lasted, indeed grew stronger; and when Mercedes darted in he gazed at her with a mild benevolence, a kind and brotherly look. She darted in, squeezed him passionately and uttered a flood of Catalan into his ear, ending 'Brave, brave Captain – good, pretty and brave.'
'Thank you, thank you, Mercy dear; I am infinitely obliged to you. Tell me,' he said, after a decent pause, trying to shift to an easier position (a plump girl: a good ten stone), 'diga me, would you be a good creature, bona creatura, and fetch me some iced negus? Sangria colda? Thirst, soif, very thirst, I do assure you, my dear.'
'Your auntie was quite right,' he said, putting down the beaded jug and wiping his mouth. 'The Vinaroz ship was there to the minute, and we found the false Ragusan. So here, acqui, aqui is auntie's reward, the recompenso de tua tia, my dear' – pulling a leather purse out of his breeches pocket – 'y aqui' – bringing out a neat sealing-waxed packet
– 'is a little regalo para vous, sweetheart.'
Present?' cried Mercedes, taking it with a sparkling eye, nimbly undoing the silk, tissue-paper, jeweller's cotton, and finding a pretty little diamond cross with a chain. She shrieked, kissed him, darted to the looking-glass, shrieked some more – eek, eek! – and came back with the stone flashing low on her neck. She pulled herself in below and puffed herself out above, like a pouter-pigeon, and lowered her bosom, the diamonds winking in the hollow, down towards him, saying, 'You like him? You like him? You like him?'
Jack's eyes grew less brotherly, oh far less brotherly, his glottis stiffened and his heart began to thump. 'Oh, yes, I like him,' he said, hoarsely.
'Timely, sir, bosun of the Superb,' said a tremendous voice at the opening door. 'Oh, beg pardon, sir.
'Not at all, Mr. Timely,' said Jack. 'I am very happy to see you.'
'And indeed perhaps it was just as well,' he reflected, landing again at the Rope-Walk stairs, leaving behind him a numerous body of skilful, busy Superbs rattling down the newly set-up shrouds, 'there being so much to do. But what a sweet girl it is…' He was now on his way to the Governor's dinner. That, at least, was his intention; but a bemused state of mind, swimming back into the past and onwards into the future, together with a reluctance to seem to parade himself in what the sailors called the High Street, brought him by obscure back, ways filled with the smell of new fermenting wine and purple-guttered with the lees, to the Franciscan church at the top of the hill. Here, summoning his wits into the present, he took new bearings; and looking with some anxiety at his watch he paced rapidly along by the armoury, passed the green door of Mr Florey's house with a quick upward glance and headed north-west by north for the Residence.
Behind the green door and some floors up Stephen and Mr Florey were already sat down to a haphazard meal, spread wherever there was room on odd tables and chairs. Ever since coming back from the hospital they had been dissecting a well-preserved dolphin, which lay on high bench by the window, next to something covered by a sheet. 'Some captains think it the best policy to include every case of bloodshed or temporary incapacity,' said Mr Florey, 'because a long butcher's bill looks well in the Gazette. Others will admit no man that is not virtually dead, because a small number of casualties means a careful commander. I think your list is near the happy mean, though perhaps a trifle cautious – you are looking at it from the point of view of your friend's advancement of course?'
'Just so.'
'Yes… Allow me to give you a slice of this cold beef. Pray reach me a sharp knife – beef, above all, must be cut thin, if it is to savour well.'
'There is no edge on this one,' said Stephen. 'Try the catling.' He turned to the dolphin. 'No,' he said, peering under a flipper. 'Where can we have left it? Ah' – lifting the sheet – 'here is another. Such a blade: Swedish steel,no doubt. You began your incision at the Hippocratic point, I see,' he said, raising the sheet a little more, and gazing at the young lady beneath it.
'Perhaps we ought to wash it,' said Mr Florey.
'Oh, a wipe will do,' said Stephen, using a corner of the sheet. 'By the way, what was the cause of death?' he asked, letting the cloth fall back.
'That is a nice point,' said Mr Florey, carving a first slice and carrying it to the griffon vulture tied by the leg in a corner of the room. 'That is a nice point, but I rather incline to believe that the battering did her business before the water. These amiable weaknesses, follies… Yes. Your friend's advancement.' Mr Florey paused, gazing at the long straight double-edged catling and waving it solemnly over the joint. 'If you provide a man with horns, he may gore you,' he observed with a detached air, covertly watching to see what effect his remark might have.
'Very true,' said Stephen, tossing the vulture a piece of gristle. 'In general fenum habent in cornu. But surely,' he said, smiling at Mr Florey, 'you are not throwing out a generality about cuckolds? Do not you choose to be more specific? Or do you perhaps refer to the young person under the sheet? I know you speak from your excellent heart, and I assure you no degree of frankness can possibly offend.'
'Well,' said Mr Florey, 'the point is, that your young friend – our young friend, I may say, for I have a real regard for him, and look upon this action as reflecting great credit upon the service, upon us all – our young friend has been very indiscreet: so has the lady. You follow me, I believe?'
'Oh, certainly.'
'The husband resents it, and he is in such a position that he may be able to indulge his resentment, unless our friend is very careful – most uncommon cautious. The husband will not ask for a meeting, for that is not his style at all -a pitiful fellow. But he may try to entrap him into some act of disobedience and so bring him to a court-martial. Our friend is famous for his dash, his enterprise and his good luck rather than for his strict sense of subordination: and some few of the senior captains here feel a good deal of jealousy and uneasiness at his success. What is more, he is a Tory, or his family is; and the husband and the present First Lord are rabid Whigs, vile ranting dogs of Whigs. Do you follow me, Dr Maturin?'
'I do indeed, sir, and am much obliged to you for your candour in telling me this: it confirms what was in my mind, and I shall do all I can to make him conscious of the delicacy of his position. Though upon my word,' he added with a sigh, 'there are times when it seems to me that nothing short of a radical ablation of the membrum virile would answer, in this case.'
'That is very generally the peccant part,' said Mr Florey.
Clerk David Richards was also having his dinner; but he was eating it in the bosom of his family. 'As everyone knows,' he told the respectful throng, 'the captain's clerk's position is the most dangerous there is in a man-of-war: he is up there all the time on the quarter-deck with his slate and his watch, to take remarks, next to the captain, and all the small-arms and a good many of the great guns concentrate their fire upon him Still, there he must stay, supporting the captain with his countenance and his advice.'
'Oh, Davy,' cried his aunt, 'and did he ask your advice?'
'Did he ask my advice, ma'am? Ha, ha, upon my sacred word.'
'Don't swear, Davy dear,' said his aunt automatically. 'It ain't genteel.'
'"La, Mr Richards bach," says he, when the maintop begins to tumble about our ears, tearing down through the quarter-deck splinter-netting like so much Berlin wool, "I don't know what to do. I am quite at a loss, I protest." "There's only one thing for it, sir," says I. "Board 'em. Board 'em fore and aft, and I give you my sacred word the frigate's ours in five minutes." Well, ma'am and cousins, I do not like to boast, and I confess it took us ten minutes; but it was worth it, for it won us as pretty a copper-fastened, new-sheathed xebec frigate as any I have seen. And when I came aft, having dirked the Spanish captain's clerk, Captain Aubrey shook me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes, "Richards," says he, "we ought all to be very grateful to you,"says he. "Sir, you are very good," says I, "but I have done nothing but what any taut captain's clerk would do." "Well," says he, " 'tis very well." ' He took a draught of porter and went on, 'I very nearly said to him, "I tell you what, Goldilocks" – for we call him Goldilocks in the service, you know, in much the same way as they call me Hellfire Davy, or Thundering Richards – "just you rate me midshipman aboard the Cacafuego when she's bought by Government, and we'll cry quits." Perhaps I may, tomorrow; for I feel I have the genius of command. She ought to fetch twelve pound ten, thirteen pound a ton, don't you think, sir?' he said to his uncle. 'We did not cut up her hull a great deal.'
'Yes,' said Mr Williams slowly. 'If she was bought in by Government she would fetch that and her stores as much again: Captain A would clear a neat five thou' apart from the head-money; and your share would be, let's see, two hundred and sixty-three, fourteen, two. If she was bought by Government.'
'What do you mean, Nunckie, with your if?'
'Why, I mean that a certain person does the Admiralty buying; and a certain person has a lady that is not over-shy; and a certain person may cut up horrid rough. O Goldilocks, Goldilocks, wherefore are thou Goldilocks?' asked Mr Williams, to the unspeakable amazement of his nieces. 'If he had attended to business instead of playing Yardo, the parish bull, he…
'It was she as set her bonnet at him!' cried Mrs Williams, who had never yet let her husband finish a sentence since his 'I will' at Trinity Church, Plymouth Dock, in 1782.
'0 the minx!' cried her unmarried sister; and the nieces' eyes swung towards her, wider still.
'The hussy,' cried Mrs Thomas. 'My Paquita's cousin was the driver of the shay she came down to the quay in; and you would never credit…'
'She should be flogged through the town at the cart's tail, and don't I wish I had the whip.'
'Come, my dear…'
'I know what you are thinking, Mr W.,' cried his wife. 'and you are to stop it this minute. The nasty cat; the wretch.'
The wretch's reputation had indeed suffered, had been much blown upon in recent months, and the Governor's wife received her as coldly as she dared; but Molly Harte's looks had improved almost out of recognition – she had been a fine woman before, and now she was positively beautiful. She and Lady Warren arrived together for the concert, and a small troop of soldiers and sailors had waited outside to meet their carriage: now they were crowding about her, snorting and bristling with aggressive competition, while their wives, sisters and, even, sweethearts sat in dowdy greyish heaps at a distance, mute, and looking with pursed lips at the scarlet dress almost hidden amidst the flocking uniforms.
The men fell back when Jack appeared, and some of them returned to their womenfolk, who asked them whether they did not find Mrs Harte much aged, ill dressed, a perfect frump? Such a pity at her age, poor thing. She must be at least thirty, forty, forty-five. Lace mittens! They had no idea of wearing lace mittens. This strong light was unkind to her; and surely it was very outrй to wear all those enormous great pearls?
She was something of a whore, thought Jack, looking at her with great approval as she stood there with her head high, perfectly aware of what the women were saying, and defying them: she was something of a whore, but the knowledge spurred his appetite. She was only for the successful; but with the Cacafuego moored by the Sophie in Mahon harbour, Jack found that perfectly acceptable.
After a few moments of inane conversation – a piece of dissembling which Jack thought he accomplished with particular brilliance, alas – they all surged in a shuffling mob into the music-room, Molly Harte to sit looking beautiful by her harp and the rest to arrange themselves on the little gilt chairs.
'What are we to have?' asked a voice behind him, and turning Jack saw Stephen, powdered, respectable apart from having forgotten his shirt, and eager for the treat.
'Some Boccherini – a 'cello piece – and the Haydn trio that we arranged. And Mrs Harte is going to play the harp. Come and sit by me.'
'Well, I suppose I shall have to,' said Stephen, 'the room being so crowded. Yet I had hoped to enjoy this concert: it is the last we shall hear for some time.'
'Nonsense,' said Jack, taking no notice. 'There is Mrs Brown's party.'
'We shall be on our way to Malta by then. The orders are writing at this moment.'
'The sloop is not nearly ready for sea,' said Jack. 'You must be mistaken.'
Stephen shrugged. 'I have it from the secretary himself.'
'The damned rogue… 'cried Jack.
'Hush,' said all the people round them; the first violin gave a nod, brought down his bow, and in a moment they were all dashing away, filling the room with a delightful complexity of sound, preparing for the 'cello's meditative song.
'Upon the whole,' said Stephen, 'Malta is a disappointing place. But at least I did find a very considerable quantity of squills by the sea-shore: these I have conserved in a woven basket.'
'It is,' said Jack. 'Though God knows, apart from poor Pullings, I should not complain. They have fitted us out nobly, apart from the sweeps – nobody could have been more attentive than the Master Attendant – and they entertained us like emperors. Do you suppose one of your squills would be a good thing, in a general way, to set a man up? I feel as low as a gib cat – quite out of order.'
Stephen looked at him attentively, took his pulse, gazed at his tongue, asked squalid questions, examined him. 'Is it a wound going bad?' asked Jack, alarmed by his gravity.
'It is a wound, if you wish,' said Stephen. 'But not from our battle with the Cacafuego. Some lady of your acquaintance has been too liberal with her favours, too universally kind.'
'Oh, Lord,' cried Jack, to whom this had never happened before.
'Never mind,' said Stephen, touched by Jack's horror. 'We shall soon have you on your feet again: taken early, there is no great problem. It will do you no harm to keep close, drink nothing but demulcent barley-water and eat gruel, thin gruel – no beef or mutton, no wine or spirits. If what Marshall tells me about the westward passage at this time of the year is true, together with our stop at Palermo, you will certainly be in a state to ruin your health, prospects, reason, features and happiness again by the time we raise Cape Mola.'
He left the cabin with what seemed to Jack an inhuman want of concern and went directly below, where he mixed a draught and a powder from the large stock that he (like all other naval surgeons) kept perpetually at hand. Under the thrust of the gregale, coming in gusts off Delamara Point, the Sophie's lee-lurch slopped out too much by half.
'It is too much by half,' he observed, balancing like a seasoned mariner and pouring the surplus into a twentydrachm phial. 'But never mind. It will just do for young Babbington.' He corked it, set it on a – rail-locked rack, counted its fellows with their labelled necks and returned to the cabin. He knew very well that Jack would act on the ancient seafaring belief that more is better and dose himself into Kingdom Come if not closely watched, and he stood there reflecting upon the passage of authority from one to the other in relationships of this kind (or rather of potential authority, for they had never entered into any actual collision) as Jack gasped and retched over his nauseous dose. Ever since Stephen Maturin had grown rich with their first prize he had constantly laid in great quantities of asafetida, castoreum and other substances, to make his medicines more revolting in taste, smell and texture than any others in the fleet; and he found it answered – his hardy patients knew with their entire beings that they were being physicked.
'The Captain's wounds are troubling him,' he said at dinner-time, 'and he will not be able to accept the gun-room's invitation tomorrow. I have confined him to his cabin and to slops.'
'Was he very much cut up?' asked Mr Daiziel respectfully. Mr Daiziel was one of the disappointments of Malta: everybody aboard had hoped that Thomas Pullings would be confirmed lieutenant, but the admiral had sent down his own nominee, a cousin, Mr Daiziel of Auchterbothie and Sodds. He had softened it with a private note promising to 'keep Mr Pullings in mind and to make particular mention of him to the Admiralty', but there it was – Pullings remained a master's mate. He was not 'made' – the first spot on their victory. Mr Dalziel felt it, and he was particularly conciliatory; though, indeed, he had very little need to be, for Pullings was the most unassuming creature on earth, painfully diffident anywhere except on the enemy's deck.
'Yes,' said Stephen, 'he was. Sword, pistol and pike' wounds; and probing the deepest I have found a piece of metal, a slug, that he had received at the Battle of the Nile.'
'Enough to trouble any man,' said Mr Dalziel, who through no fault of his own had seen no bloodshed whatever and who suffered from the fact.
'I speak under correction, Doctor,' said the master, 'but surely fretting will open wounds? And he must be fretting something cruel not to be on our cruising-ground, the season growing so late.'
'Ay, to be sure,' said Stephen. And certainly Jack had reason to fret, like everybody else aboard: to be sent to Malta while they had a right to cruise in fine rich waters was very hard, in any case, and it was made all the worse by the persistent rumour of a galleon earmarked by fate and by Jack's private intelligence for the Sophie – a galleon, or even galleons, a parcel of galleons, that might at this very moment be creeping along the Spanish coast, and they five hundred miles away.
They were extremely impatient to be back to their cruise, to the thirty-seven days that were owing to them, thirty-seven days of making hay; for although there were many aboard who possessed more guineas than they had ever owned shillings ashore, there was not one who did not ardently long for more. The general reckoning was that the ordinary seaman's share would be close on fifty pounds, and even those who had been blooded, thumped, scorched and battered in the action thought it good pay for a morning's work – more interesting by far than the uncertain shilling a day they might earn at the plough or the loom, by land, or even than the eight pounds a month that hard-pressed merchant captains were said to be offering.
Successful action together, strong driving discipline and a high degree of competence (apart from Mad Willy, Sophie's lunatic, and a few other hopeless cases, every man and boy aboard could now hand, reef and steer) had welded them into a remarkably united body, perfectly acquainted with their vessel and her ways. It was just as well, for their new lieutenant was no great seaman, and they got him out of many a sad blunder as the sloop made her way westwards as fast as ever she could, through two shocking gales, through high battering seas and maddening calms, with the Sophie wallowing in the great swell, her hea4 all round the compass and the ship's cat as sick as a dog. As fast as ever she could, for not only had all her people a month's mind to be on the enemy's coast again, but all the officers were intensely eager to hear the news from London, the Gazette and the official reaction to their exploit – a post-captain's commission for Jack and perhaps advancement for all the rest.
It was a passage that spoke well for the yard at Malta, as well as for the excellence of her crew, for it was in these same waters that the sixteen-gun sloop Utile foundered during their second gale – she broached to going before the wind not twenty miles to the south of them, and all hands perished. But the weather relented on the last day, sending them a fine steady close-reef topsail tramontana: they raised the high land of Minorca in the forenoon, made their number a little after dinner and rounded Cape Mola before the sun was half-way down the sky.
All alive once more, though a little less tanned from his confinement, Jack looked eagerly at the wind-clouds over Mount Toro, with their promise of continuing northerly weather, and he said, 'As soon as we are through the narrows, Mr Dalziel, let us hoist out the boats and begin to get the butts on deck. We shall be able to start watering tonight and be on our way as soon as possible in the morning. There is not a moment to lose. But I see you have hooks to the yards and stays already – very good,' he added with a chuckle, going into his cabin.
This was the first poor Mr Daiziel had heard of it: silent hands that knew Jack's ways far better than he did had foreseen the order, and the poor man shook his head with what philosophy he could muster. He was in a difficult position, for although he was a respectable, conscientious officer he could not possibly stand any sort of comparison with James Dillon: their former lieutenant was wonderfully present in the mind of the crew that he had helped to form – his dynamic authority, his immense technical ability and his seamanship grew in their memories.
Jack was thinking of him as the Sophie glided up the long harbour, past the familiar creeks and the islands one after another: they were just abreast of the hospital island and he was thinking how much less noise James Dillon used to make when he heard the hail of 'Boat ahoy' on deck and far away the answering cry that meant the approach of a captain. He did not catch the name, but a moment later Babbbington, looking alarmed, knocked on his door to announce 'Commandant's barge pulling alongside, sir.'
There was a good deal of plunging about on deck as Dalziel set about trying to do three things at once and as those who should dress the sloop's side tried to make themselves look respectable in a violent hurry. Few captains would have darted from behind an island in this way; few would have worried a vessel about to moor; and most, even in an emergency, would have given them a chance, would have allowed them a few minutes' grace; but not Captain Harte, who came up the side as quickly as he could. The calls twittered and howled; the few properly dressed officers stood rigid, bare-headed; the marines presented arms and one dropped his musket.
'Welcome aboard, sir,' cried Jack, who was in such charity with the present shining world that he could feel pleased to see even this ill-conditioned face, it being familiar. '1 believe this is the first time we have had the honour.'
Captain Harte saluted the quarter-deck with a sketchy motion towards his hat and stared with elaborate disgust at the grubby sideboys, the marines with their crossbelts awry, the heap of water-butts and Mr Daiziel's little fat meek cream-coloured bitch, that had come forward into the only open space, and that there, apologizing to one and all, her ears and whole person drooping, was in the act of making an immeasurable pool.
'Do you usually keep your decks in this state, Captain Aubrey?' he asked. 'By my living bowels, it's more like a Wapping pawnshop than the deck of a King's sloop.'
'Why, no, sir,' said Jack, still in the best humour in the world, for the waxed-canvas Admiralty wrapper under Harte's arm could only be a post-captain's commission addressed to J. A. Aubrey, Esqr., and brought with delightful speed. 'You have caught the Sophie in her shift, I am afraid. Will you step into the cabin, sir?'
The crew were tolerably busy as she made her way through the shipping and prepared to moor, but they were used to their sloop and they were used to their anchorage, which was just as well, for a disproportionate amount of their attention was taken up with listening to the voices that came out of the cabin.
'He's coming it the Old Jarvie,' whispered Thomas Jones to William Witsover, with a grin. Indeed, this grin was fairly general abaft the mainmast, where those in earshot quickly gathered that their captain was being blown up. They loved him much, would follow him anywhere; but they were pleasantly amused at the thought of his copping it, his being dressed down, hauled over the coals, taken to task a little.
'"When I give an order I expects it to be punctually obeyed," 'mouthed Robert Jessup in silent pomp to William Agg, quartermaster's mate.
'Silence there,' cried the master, who could not hear.
But presently the grin faded, first on the faces of the brighter men nearest the skylight, then on those within reach of their communicative eyes, meaning gestures and significant grimaces, and so forward. And as the best bower splashed into the sea the whisper ran 'No cruise.'
Captain Harte reappeared on deck. He was seen into his barge with rigid ceremony, in an atmosphere of silent suspicion, much strengthened by the look of stony reserve on Captain Aubrey's face.
The cutter and the launch began watering at once; the jolly-boat carried the purser ashore for stores and the post; bumboats came off with their usual delights; and Mr Watt, together with most of the other Sophies who had survived their wounds, hurried out in the hospital wherry to see what those sods in Malta had done to his rigging.
To these their shipmates cried, 'Do you know what?'
'What, mate?'
'So you don't know what?'
'Tell us, mate.'
'We ain't going to have no more cruise, that's what. We've had it,' says old Whoreson Prick, 'we've had our time.'
'We'm used it up, going to Malta. – Our thirty-seven days! - We convoy that damned lubberly packet down to Gib, that's what we do; and thank you kindly for your efforts in the cruising line. – Cacafuego was not bought in – sold to them bloody Moors for eighteen-pence and a pound of shit, the swiftest bleeding xebec that ever swam. – We come back too slow: "Don't you tell me, sir," says he, "for I knows better." – Nothing in the Gazette about us, and Old Fart never brought Goldilocks his step. – They say she weren't regular and her captain had no commission – all bloody lies. – Oh, if I had his cullions in my hand, wouldn't I serve him out, just? I'd…' At this point they were cut short by a peremptory message from the quarter-deck, delivered by a bosun's mate with a rope's end; but their passionate indignation flowed on in what they meant to be whispers, and if Captain Harte had reappeared at that moment they might have broken out in mutinous riot and flung him in the harbour. They were furious for their victory, furious for themselves and furious for Jack; and they knew perfectly well that their officers' reproaches were totally devoid of conviction; the rope's end might have been a wafting handkerchief; and even the newcomer Dalziel was shocked by their treatment, at least as it was delivered by rumour, eavesdropping, inference, bumboat talk and the absence of the lovely Cacafuego.
In fact, their treatment was even shabbier than rumour had it. The Sophie's commander and her surgeon sat in the cabin amidst a heap of papers, for Stephen Maturin had been helping with some of the paper work as well as writing returns and letters of his own, and now it was three in the morning: the Sophie rocked gently at her moorings, and her tight-packed crew were snorting the long night through (the rare joys of harbour-watch). Jack had not gone ashore at all – had no intention of going ashore; and now the silence, the lack of real motion, the long sitting with pen and ink seemed to insulate them from the world in their illuminated cell; and this made their conversation, which would have been indecent at almost any other time, seem quite ordinary and natural. 'Do you know that fellow Martinez?' asked Jack quietly. 'The man whose house the Hartes have part of?'
'I know of him,' said Stephen. 'He is a speculator, a sort of would-be rich man, the left-handed half.'
'Well, be has got the contract for carrying the mails – a damned job, I'm sure – and has bought that pitiful tub the Ventura to be the packet. She has never sailed six miles in an hour since she was launched and we are to convoy her to the Rock. Fair enough, you say. Yes, but we are to take the sack, put it aboard her when we are just outside the mole and then return back here directly, without landing or communicating with Gibraltar. And I will tell you another thing: he did not forward my official letter by Superb, that was going down the Mediterranean two days after we left, nor by Phoebe, that was going straight home; and I will lay you any odds you choose to mention that it is here, in this greasy sack. What is more, I know as certainly as if I had read it that his covering letter will be full of this fancied irregularity about the Cacafuego's command, this quibble over the officer's status. Ugly hints and delay. That is why there was nothing in the Gazette. No promotion, either: that Admiralty wrapper only held his own orders, in case I should insist upon having them in writing.'
'Sure, his motive is obvious to a child. He hopes to provoke you into an outburst. He hopes you will disobey and ruin your career. I do beg you will not be blinded with anger.'
'Oh, I shan't play the fool,' said Jack, with a somewhat dogged smile. 'But as for provoking me, I confess he has succeeded to admiration. I doubt I could so much as finger a scale, my hand trembles so when I think of it,' he said, picking up his fiddle. And while the fiddle was passing through the two feet of air from the locker to the height of his shoulder, purely self-concerned and personal thoughts presented themselves to his mind, scarcely in succession but as a cluster: these weeks and months of precious seniority slipping away – already Douglas of the Phoebe, Evans on the West Indies station, and a man he did not know called Raitt had been made; they were in the last Gazette and now they were ahead of him on the immutable list of post-captains; he would be junior to them for ever. Time lost; and these disturbing rumours of peace. And a deep, barely acknowledged suspicion, a dread that the whole thing might have gone wrong: no promotion: Lord Keith's warning truly prophetic. He tucked the fiddle under his chin, tightening his mouth and raising his head as he did so: and the tightening of his mouth was enough to release a flood of emotion. His face reddened, his breath heaved deep, his eyes grew larger and, because of the extreme contraction of their pupils, bluer: his mouth tightened still further, and with it his right hand. Pupils contract symmetrically to a diameter of about a tenth part of an inch, noted Stephen on a corner of a page. There was a loud, decided crack, a melancholy confused twanging, and with a ludicrous expression of doubt and wonder and distress, Jack held out his violin, all dislocated and unnatural with its broken neck. 'It snapped,' he cried. 'It snapped.' He fitted the broken ends together with infinite care and held them in place. 'I would not have had it happen for the world,' he said in a low voice. 'I have known this fiddle, man and boy, since I was breeched.'
Indignation at the Sophie's treatment was not confined to the sloop, but naturally it was strongest there, and as the crew heaved the capstan round to unmoor they sang a new song, a song that owed nothing whatever to Mr Mowett's chaste muse.
The cross-legged fifer on the capstan-head lowered his pipe and sang the quiet solo part:
Then the deep cross rhythmical bellow again
James Dillon would never have allowed it, but Mr Daiziel had no notion of any of the allusions and the song went on and on until the cable was all below in tiers, smelling disagreeably of Mahon ooze, and the Sophie was hoisting her jibs and bracing her foretopsailyard round. She dropped down abreast of the Amelia, whom she had not seen since the action with the Cacafuego, and all at once Mr Daiziel observed that the frigate's rigging was full of men, all carrying their hats and facing the Sophie.
'Mr Babbington,' he said in a low voice, in case he should be mistaken, for he had only seen this happen once before, 'tell the captain, with my duty, that I believe Amelia is going to cheer us.'
Jack came blinking on deck as the first cheer roared out, a shattering wave of sound at twenty-five yards' range. Then came the Amelia's bosun's pipe and the next cheer, as precisely timed as her own broadside: and the third. He and his officers stood rigidly with their hats off, and as soon as the last roar had died away over the harbour, echoing back and forth, he called out, 'Three cheers for the Amelia!' and the Sophies, though deep in the working of the sloop, responded like heroes, scarlet with pleasure and the energy needed f or huzzaying proper – huge energy, for they knew what was manners. Then the Amelia, now far astern, called 'One cheer more,' and so piped down.
It was a handsome compliment, a noble send-off, and it gave great pleasure: but still it did not prevent the Sophies from feeling a strong sense of grievance – it did not prevent them from calling out 'Give us back our thirty-seven days' as a sort of slogan or watchword between decks, and even above hatches when they dared – it did not wholly recall them to their duty, and in the following days and weeks they were more than ordinarily tedious.
The brief interlude in Port Mahon harbour had been exceptionally bad for discipline. One of the results of their fierce contraction into a single defiant ill-used body was that the hierarchy (in its finer shades) had for a time virtually disappeared; and among other things the ship's corporal had let the wounded men returning to their duty bring in bladders and skins full of Spanish brandy, anisette and a colourless liquid said to be gin. A discreditable number of men had succumbed to its influence, among them the captain of the foretop (paralytic) and both bosun's mates. Jack disrated Morgan, promoting the dumb negro Alfred King, according to his former threat – a dumb bosun's mate would surely be more terrible, more deterrent; particularly one with such a very powerful arm.
'And, Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will rig a proper grating at the gangway at last. They do not give a damn for a flogging at the capstan, and I am going to stop this infernal drunkenness, come what may.'
'Yes, sir,' said the lieutenant: and after a slight pause, 'Wilson and Plimpton have represented to me that it would grieve them very much to be flogged by King.'
'Of course it will grieve them very much. I sincerely hope it will grieve them very much. That is why they are to be flogged. They were drunk, were they not?'
'Blind drunk, sir. They said it was their Thanksgiving.'
'What in God's name have they got to be thankful about? And the Cacafuego sold to the Algerines.'
'They are from the colonies, sir, and it seems that it is a feast in those parts. However, it is not the flogging they object to, but the colour of the flogger.'
'Bah,' said Jack. 'I'll tell you another man who will be flogged if this goes on,' he said, bending and peering sideways through the cabin window, 'and that is the master of that damned packet. Just give him a gun, Mr Daiziel, will you? Shotted, not too far from his stern, and desire him to keep to his station.'
The wretched packet had had a miserable time of it since leaving Port Mahon. She had expected the Sophie to sail straight to Gibraltar, keeping well out in the offing, out of sight of privateers, and certainly out of range of shore batteries. But although the Sophie was still no Flying Childers, in spite of all her improvements, she could nevertheless sail two miles for the packet's one, either close-hauled or going large, and she made the most of her superiority to work right down along the coast, peering into every bay and inlet, obliging the packet to keep to the seaward of her, at no great distance and in a very high state of dread.
Hitherto, this eager, terrier-like searching had led to nothing but a few brisk exchanges of fire with guns on shore, for Jack's harsh restrictive orders allowed no chasing and made it almost certain that he should take no prize. But that was an entirely secondary consideration: action was what he was looking for; and at this juncture, he reflected, he would give almost anything for a direct uncomplicated head-on clash with some vessel about his own size.
So thinking he stepped on deck. The breeze off the sea had been fading all the afternoon, and now it was dying in irregular gasps; although the Sophie still had it the packet was almost entirely becalmed. To starboard the high brown rocky coast trended away north and south with something of a protrusion, a small cape, a headland with a ruined Moorish castle, on the beam, perhaps a mile away.
'You see that cape?' said Stephen, who was gazing at it with an open book dangling from his hand, his thumb marking the place. 'It is Cabo Roig, the seaward limit of Catalan speech: Orihuela is a little way inland, and after Orihuela you hear no more Catalan – 'tis Murcia, and the barbarous jargon of the Andalou. Even in the village round the point they speak like Morescoes – algarabia, gab ble-gabble, munch, munch.' Though perfectly liberal in all other senses, Stephen Maturin could not abide a Moor.
'There is a village, is there?' asked Jack, his eyes bright ening.
'Well, a hamlet: you will see it presently.' A pause, while the sloop whispered through the still water and the landscape imperceptibly revolved. 'Strabo tells us that the ancient Irish regarded it as an honour to be eaten by their relatives – a form of burial that kept the soul in the family'
' he said, waving the book.
'Mr Mowett, pray be so good as to fetch me my glass. I beg your pardon, dear Doctor: you were telling me about Strabo.'
'You may say he is no more than Eratosthenes redivivus, or shall I say new-rigged?'
'Oh, do, by all means. There is a fellow riding hell for leather along the top of the cliff, under that castle.!
'He is riding to the village.'
'So he is. I see it now, opening behind the rock. I see something else, too,' he added, almost to himself. The sloop glided steadily on, and steadily the shallow bay turned, showing a white cluster of houses at the water's edge. There were three vessels lying at anchor some way out, a quarter of a mile to the south of the village: two houarios and a pink, merchantmen of no great size, but deeply laden.
Even before the sloop stood in towards them there was great activity ashore, and every eye aboard that could command a glass could see people running about, boats launching and pulling industriously for the anchored vessels. Presently men could be seen hurrying to and fro on the merchantmen, and the sound of their vehement discussion came clearly over the evening sea. Then came the rhythmic shouting as they worked at their windlasses, weighing their anchors: they loosed their sails and ran themselves straight on shore.
Jack stared at the land for some time with a hard calculating look in his eye: if no sea were to get up it would be easy to warp the vessels off – easy both for the Spaniards and for him. To be sure, his orders left no room for a cutting-out expedition. Yet the enemy lived on his coastwise trade -roads execrable – mule-trains absurd for anything in bulk -no waggons worth speaking of – Lord Keith had been most emphatic on that point. And it was his duty to take, burn, sink or destroy. The Sophies stared at Jack: they knew very well what was in his mind, but they also had a pretty clear notion of what was in his orders too – this was not a cruise but a piece of strict convoy-work. They stared so bard that the sands of time ran out. Joseph Button, the marine sentry whose function it was to turn the half-hour glass the moment it emptied and to strike the bell, was roused from his contemplation of Captain Aubrey's face by nudges, pinches, muffled cries of 'Joe, Joe, wake up Joe, you fat son of a bitch,' and lastly by Mr Pullings' voice in his ear, 'Button, turn that glass.'
The last tang of the bell died away and Jack said, 'Put her about, Mr Pullings, if you please.'
With a smooth perfection of curve and the familiar, almost unnoticed piping and cries of 'Ready about – helm's a-lee – rise tacks and sheets – mainsail haul,' the Sophie came round, filled and headed back towards the distant packet, still becalmed in a smooth field of violet sea.
She lost the breeze herself when she had run a few miles off the little cape, and she lay there in the twilight and the falling dew, with her sails limp and shapeless.
'Mr Day,' said Jack, 'be so good as to prepare some fire barrels – say half a dozen. Mr Daiziel, unless it comes on to blow I think we may take the boats in at about midnight. Dr Maturin, let us rejoice and be gay.'
Their gaiety consisted of ruling staves and copying a borrowed duet filled with hemidemisemiquavers. 'By God,' said Jack, looking up with red-rimmed streaming eyes after an hour or so, 'I am getting too old for this.' He pressed his hands over his eyes and kept them there for a while: in quite another voice he said, 'I have been thinking about Dillon all day. All day long I have been thinking about him, off and on. You would scarcely credit how much I miss him. When you told me about that classical chap, it brought him so to mind… because it was about Irishmen, no doubt; and Dillon was Irish. Though you would never have thought so – never to be seen drunk, almost never called anyone out, spoke like a Christian, the most gentleman-like creature in the world, nothing of the hector at all – oh Christ. My dear fellow, my dear Maturin, I do beg your pardon. I say these damned things… I regret it extremely.'
'Ta, ta, ta,' said Stephen, taking snuff and waving his hand from side to side.
Jack pulled the bell, and through the various ship-noises, all muted in this calm, he heard the quick pittering of his steward. 'Killick,' he said, 'bring me a couple of bottles of that Madeira with the yellow seal, and some of Lewis' biscuits. I can't get him to make a decent seed-cake,' he explained to Stephen, 'but these petty fours go down tolerably well and give the wine a relievo. Now this wine,' he said, looking attentively through his glass, 'was given me in Mahon by our agent, and it was bottled the year Eclipse was foaled. I produce it as a sin-offering, conscious of my offence. Your very good health, sir.'
'Yours, my dear. It is a most remarkable ancient wine. Dry, yet unctuous. Prime.'
'I say these damned things,' Jack went on, musing as they drank their bottle, 'and don't quite understand at the time, though 1 see people looking black as hell, and frowning, and my friends going "Pst, pst", and then I say to myself, "You're brought by the lee again, Jack." Usually I make out what's amiss, given time, but by then it's too late. I am afraid I vexed Dillon often enough, that way' – looking down sadly – 'but, you know, I am not the only one. Do not think I mean to run him down in any way – I only mention it as an instance, that even a very well-bred man can make these blunders sometimes, for I am sure he never meant it -but Dillon once hurt me very much, too. He used the word commercial , when we were speaking rather warmly about taking prizes. I am sure he did not mean it, any more than I meant any uncivil reflexion, just now; but it has always stuck hard in my gullet. That is one of the reasons why I am so happy…'
Knock-knock on the door. 'Beg pardon, your honour. Loblolly boy's all in a mother, sir. Young Mr Ricketts has swallowed a musket-ball and they can't get it out. Choking to death, sir, if you please.'
'Forgive me,' said Stephen, carefully putting down his glass and covering it with a red spotted handkerchief, a bandanna.
'Is all well – did you manage…?' asked Jack five minutes later.
'We may not be able to do all we could wish in physic,' said Stephen with quiet satisfaction, 'but at least we can give an emetic that answers, I believe. You were saying, sir?'
'Commercial was the word,' said Jack. 'Commercial. And that is why I am so happy to have this little boat expedition tonight. For although my orders will not allow me to bring 'em off, yet I have to wait for the packet to come up, and there is nothing to prevent me from burning 'em. I lose no time; and the most scrupulous mind could not but say that this is the most uncommercial enterprise imaginable. It is too late, of course – these things always are too late – but it is a great satisfaction to me. And how James Dillon would have delighted in it! The very thing for him! You remember him with the boats at Palamos? And at Palafrugell?'
The moon set. The star-filled sky wheeled about its axis, sweeping the Pleiades right up overhead. It was a midwinter sky (though warm and still) before the launch, the cutter and the jolly-boat came alongside and the landing-party dropped down into them, the men in their blue jackets and wearing white armbands. They were five miles from their prey, but already no voice rose much above a whisper – a few smothered laughs and the clink of weapons handing down and when they paddled off with muffled oars they melted so silently into the darkness that in ten minutes Stephen's straining eyes lost them altogether.
'Do you see them still?' he asked the bosun, lame from his wound and now in charge of the sloop.
'I can just make out the darkie the captain's looking at the compass with,' said Mr Watt. 'A little abaft the cathead.'
'Try my night-glass, sir,' said Lucock, the only midshipman left aboard.
'I wish it were over,' said Stephen.
'So do I, Doctor,' said the bosun. 'And I wish I were with them. 'Tis much worse for us left aboard. Those chaps are all together, jolly like, and time goes by like Horndean fair. But here we are, left all thin and few, nothing to do but wait,
and the sand chokes in the watch-glass. It will seem years and years before we hear anything of them, sir, as you will surely see.'
Hours, days, weeks, years, centuries. Once there was an ominous clangour high overhead – flamingoes on their way to the Mar Menor, or maybe as far as the marshes of the Guadaiquivir: but for the most part it was featureless darkness, almost a denial of time.
The flashes of musketry and the subsequent crackle of firing did not come from the small arc on which his stare had been concentrated, but from well to the right of it. Had the boats gone astray? Run into opposition? Had he been looking in the wrong direction? 'Mr Watt,' he said, 'are they in the right place?"
'Why, no, sir,' said the bosun comfortably. 'And if I know anything of it, the captain is a-leading of 'em astray.'
The crackling went on and on, and in the intervals a faint shouting could be heard. Then to the left there appeared a deep red glow; then a second, and a third; and all at once the third grew enormously, a tongue of flame that leapt up and up and higher still, a most prodigious fountain of light – a whole ship-load of olive-oil ablaze.
'Christ almighty,' murmured the bosun, deep struck with awe. 'Amen,' said one among the silent, staring crew.
The blaze increased: in its light they could see the other fires and their smoke, quite pale; the whole of the bay, the village; the cutter and the launch pulling away from the shore and the jolly-boat crossing to meet them; and all round behind, the brown hills, sharp in light and shade.
At first the column had been perfectly straight, like a cypress; but after the first quarter of an hour its tip began to lean southwards and inland, towards the hills, and the smoke-cloud above to stream away in a long pall, lit from below. The brilliance was if anything greater, and Stephen saw gulls drifting across between the sloop and the land, all heading for the fire. 'It will be attracting every living thing,' he reflected, with anxiety. 'What will be the conduct of the bats?'
Presently the top two-thirds was leaning over strongly, and the Sophie began to roll, with the waves slapping up against her larboard side.
Mr Watt broke from his long state of wonder to give the necessary orders, and coming back to the rail he said, 'They will have a hard pull, if this goes on.'
'Could we not bear down and pick them up?' asked Stephen.
'Not with this wind come round three points, and those old shoals off of the headland. No, sir.'
Another group of gulls passed low over the w2ter. 'The flame is attracting every living thing for miles,' said Stephen.
'Never mind, sir,' said the bosun. 'It will be daylight in an hour or two, and they will pay no heed then, no heed at all.'
'It lights up the whole sky,' said Stephen.
It also lit up the deck of the Formidable, Captain Lalonde, a beautifully built French eighty-gun ship of the line wearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Linois at the mizen: she was seven or eight miles off shore, on her way from Toulon to Cadiz, and with her in line ahead sailed the rest of the squadron,. the Indomptable, eighty, Captain Moncousu, the Desaix, seventy-four, Captain Christy-Palliиre (a splendid sailer), and the Muiron, a thirty-eight gun frigate that had until recently belonged to the Venetian Republic.
'Let us put in and see what is afoot,' said the admiral, a small, dark, round-headed, lively gentleman in red breeches, very much the seaman; and a few moments later the hoists of coloured lanterns ran up. The ships tacked in succession with a quiet efficiency that would have done credit to any navy afloat, for they were largely manned from the Rochefort squadron, and as well as being commanded by efficient professional officers they were filled with prime sailormen.
They ran inshore on the starboard tack with the wind one point free, bringing up the daylight, and when they were first seen from the Sophie's deck they were greeted with joy. The boats had just reached the sloop after a long wearisome pull, and the French men-of-war were not sighted as early as they might have been: but sighted they were, in time, and at once every man forgot his hunger, fatigue, aching arms, and the cold and the wet, for the rumour instantly filled the sloop – 'Our galleons are coming up, hand over fist!' The wealth of the Indies, New Spain and Peru: gold ingots by way of their ballast. Ever since the crew had come to know of Jack's private intelligence about Spanish shipping there had been this persistent rumour of a galleon, and now it was fulfilled.
The splendid flame was still leaping up against the hills, though more palely as dawn broke all along the eastern sky; but in the cheerful animation of putting all to rights, of making everything ready for the chase, no one took notice of it any more – whenever a man could look up from his business his eyes darted eager, delighted glances over the three or four miles of sea at the Desaix, and at the Formidable, now some considerable way astern of her.
It was difficult to say just when all the delight vanished: certainly the captain's steward was still reckoning up the cost of opening a pub on the Hunstanton road when he brought Jack a cup of coffee on the quarter-deck, heard him say 'A horrid bad position, Mr Dalziel,' and noticed that the Sophie was no longer standing towards the supposed galleons but sailing from them as fast as she could possibly go, close-hauled, with everything she could set, including bonnets and even drabblers.
By this time the Desaix was hull-up – had been for some time – and so was the Formidable: behind the flagship there showed the topgallants and topsails of the Indomptable, and out to sea, a couple of miles to windward of her, the frigate's sails nicked the line of the sky. It was a horrid bad position; but the Sophie had the weather-gage, the breeze was uncertain and she might be taken for a merchant brig of no importance – something a busy squadron would not trouble with for more than an hour or so: they were not in very grave earnest, concluded Jack, lowering his glass. The behaviour of the press of men on the Desaix's fo'c'sle, the by no means extraordinary spread of canvas, and countless indefinable trifles, persuaded him that she had not the air of a ship chasing in deadly earnest. But even so, how she slipped along! Her light, high, roomy, elegant round French bows and her beautifully cut, taut, flat sails brought her smoothly over the water, sailing as sweetly as the Victory. And she was well handled: she might have been running along a path ruled out upon the sea. He hoped to cross her bows before she had satisfied her curiosity about the fire on shore and so lead her such a dance of it that she would give it up – that the admiral would eventually make her signal of recall.
'Upon deck,' called Mowett from the masthead. 'The frigate has taken the packet.'
Jack nodded, sweeping his glass out to the miserable Ventura and back beyond the seventy-four to the flagship.
He waited: perhaps five minutes. This was the crucial stage. And now signals did indeed break out aboard the Formidable, signals with a gun to emphasize them. But they were not signals of recall, alas. The Desaix instantly hauled her wind, no longer interested in the shore: her royals appeared, sheeted home and hoisted with a brisk celerity that made Jack round his mouth in a silent whistle. More canvas was appearing aboard the Formidable too; and now the Indomptable. was coming up fast, all sails abroad, sweeping along with a freshening of the breeze.
It was clear that the packet had told what the Sophie was. But it was clear, too, that the rising sun was going to make the breeze still more uncertain, and perhaps swallow it up altogether. Jack glanced up at the Sophie's spread: everything was there, of course; and at present everything was drawing in spite of the chancy wind. The master was at the con, Pram, the quartermaster, was at the wheel, getting everything out of her that she was capable of giving, poor fat old sloop. And every man was at his post, ready, silent and attentive: there was nothing for him to say or do; but his eye took in the threadbare, sagging Admiralty canvas, and his heart smote him cruelly for having wasted time -for not having bent his own new topsails, made of decent sailcloth, though unauthorized.
'Mr Watt,' he said, a quarter of an hour later, looking at the glassy patches of calm in the offing, 'stand by to out sweeps.'
A few minutes after this the Desaix hoisted her colours and opened with her bow-chasers; and as though the rumbling double crash had stunned the air, so the opulent curves of her sails collapsed, fluttered, swelled momentarily and slackened again. The Sophie kept the breeze another ten minutes, but then it died for her too. Before the way was off her – long before – all the sweeps that Malta had allowed her (four short, alas) were out and she was creeping steadily along, five men to each loom, and the long oars bending perilously under the urgent, concentrated heave and thrust, right into what would have been the wind's eye if there had still been any blowing. It was heavy, heavy work: and suddenly Stephen noticed that there was an officer to almost every sweep. He stepped forward to one of the few vacant places, and in forty minutes all the skin was gone from his palms.
'Mr Daiziel, let the starboard watch go to breakfast. Ah, there you are, Mr Ricketts: I believe we may serve out a double allowance of cheese – there will be nothing hot for a while.'
'If I may say so, sir,' said the purser with a pale leer, 'I fancy there will be something uncommon hot, presently.'
The starboard watch, summarily fed, took over the labouring sweeps while their shipmates set to their biscuit, cheese and grog, with a couple of hams from the gun-room – a brief, uneasy meal, for out there the wind was ruffling the sea, and it had chopped round two points. The French ships picked it up first, and it was striking to see how their tall, high-reaching sails sent them running on little more than an air. The Sophie's hard-won advance was wiped out in twenty minutes; and before her sails were drawing the Desaix already had a bow-wave, whiskers that could be seen from the quarter-deck. Sophie's sails were drawing now, but this creeping pace would never do.
'In sweeps,' said Jack. 'Mr Day, throw the guns overboard.'
'Aye aye, sir,' said the gunner briskly, but his movements were strangely slow, unnatural and constrained as he sprung the capsquares, like those of a man walking along the edge of a cliff, by will-power alone.
Stephen came on deck again, his hands neatly mittened. He saw the team of the starboard brass quarter-deck fourpounder with crows and handspike in their hands and a common look of anxious, almost frightened concern, waiting for the roll: it came, and they gently urged their gleaming, highly-polished gun overboard – their pretty number fourteen over the side. Its splash coincided exactly with the fountain thrown up not ten yards away by a ball from the Desaix's bow-chaser, and the next gun went overboard with less ceremony. Fourteen splashes at half a ton apiece; then the heavy carriages over the rail after them, leaving the slashed breeching and the unhooked tackles on either side of the gaping ports – a desolation to be seen.
He glanced forward, then astern, and understood the position he pursed his lips and retired to the taffrail The lightened Sophie gathered speed minute by minute, and as all this weight had gone from well above the water-line she swam more upright – stiffer to the wind
The first of the Desaix's shot whipped through the topgallantsail, but the next two pitched short. There was still time for manoeuvre – for plenty of manoeuvre. For one thing, reflected Jack, he would be very much surprised if the Sophie could not come about twice as quickly as the seventy-four 'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will go about and back again. Mr Marshall, let her have plenty of way on her.' It would be quite disastrous if the Sophie were tO miss stays on her second turn: and these light airs were not what she liked – she never gave of her best until there was something of a sea running and at least one reef in her topsails.
'Ready about… 'The pipe twittered, the sloop luffed up, came into the wind, stayed beautifully and filled on the larboard tack: her bowlines were as taut as harpstrings before the big seventy-four had even begun her turn.
The swing began, however; the Desaix was in stays; her yards were coming round; her checkered side began to show; and Jack, seeing the first hint of her broadside in his glass, called out, 'You had better go below, Doctor.' Stephen went, but no farther than the cabin; and there, craning from the stern-window, he saw the Desaix's hull vanish in smoke from stem to stern, perhaps a quarter of a minute after the Sophie had begun her reverse turn. The massive broadside, nine hundred and twenty-eight pounds of iron, plunged into a wide area of sea away on the starboard beam and rather short, all except for the two thirty-six pound balls, which hummed ominously through the rigging, leaving a trail of limp, dangling cordage. For a moment it seemed that the Sophie might not stay – that she would fall impotently off, lose all her advantage and expose herself to another such salute, more exactly aimed. But a sweet puff of air in her backed headsails pushed her round and there she was on her former tack, gathering way before the Desaix's heavy yards were firmly braced – before her first manoeuvre was complete at all.
The sloop had gained perhaps a quarter of a mile. 'But he will not let me do that again,' reflected Jack.
The Desaix was round on the starboard tack again, making good her loss; and all the while she fired steadily with her bowchasers, throwing her shot with remarkable accuracy as the range narrowed, just missing, or else clipping the sails, compelling the sloop to jig every few minutes, slightly losing speed each time. The Formidable was lying on the other tack to prevent the Sophie slipping through, and the Indomptable was running westwards, to haul her wind in half a mile or so for the same purpose. The Sophie's pursuers were roughly in line abreast behind her and coming up fast as she ran sloping across their front. Already the eighty-gun flagship had yawed to fire one broadside at no unlikely distance; and the grim Desaix, making short boards, had done so on each turn. The bosun and his party were busy knotting, and there were some sad holes in the sails; but so far nothing essential had been struck, nor any man wounded.
'Mr Dalziel,' said Jack, 'start the stores over the side, if you please.'
The hatch-covers came off, the holds emptied into the sea – barrels of salt beef, barrels of pork, biscuit by the ton, peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, vinegar. Powder, shot. They started their water and pumped it overboard. A twenty-four pounder hulled the Sophie low under the counter, and at once the pumps began gushing sea as well as fresh water.
'See how the carpenter is doing, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack.
'Stores overboard, sir,' reported the lieutenant.
'Very good, Mr Dalziel. Anchors away now, and spars. Keep only the kedge.'
'Mr Lamb says two foot and a half in the well,' said the midshipman, panting. 'But he has a comfortable plug in the shot-hole.'
Jack nodded, glancing back at the French squadron. There was no longer any hope of getting away from them close-hauled. But if he were to bear up, turning quickly and unexpectedly, he might be able to double back through their line; and then, with this breeze one or two points on her quarter, and with the help of the slight following sea her lightness and her liveliness, why, she might live to see Gibraltar yet She was so light now – a cockleshell – she might outrun them before the wind, and with any luck, turning briskly, she would gain a mile before the line-of-battle ships could gather way on the new tack To be sure, she would have to survive a couple of broadsides as she passed through… But it was the only hope; and surprise was everything
'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will bear up in two minutes' time, set stuns'ls and run between the flagship and the seventy-four. We must do it smartly, before they are aware.' He addressed these words to the lieutenant, but they were instantly understood by all hands, and the topmen hurried to their places, ready to race up and rig out the studdingsail booms. The whole crowded deck was intensely alive, poised. 'Wait… wait,' murmured Jack, watching the Desaix coming up wide on the starboard beam. She was the one to beware of: she was terribly alert, and he longed to see her beginning to engage in some manoeuvre before he gave the word. To port lay the Formidable, overcrowded, no doubt, as flagships always were, and therefore less efficient in an emergency. 'Wait… wait,' he said again, his eyes fixed On the Desaix. But her steady approach never varied and when he had counted twenty he cried 'Right!'
The wheel span, the buoyant Sophie turned like a weathercock, swinging towards the Formidable. The flagship instantly let fly, but her gunnery was not up to the Desaix's, and the hurried broadside lashed the sea where the sloop had been rather than where she was: the Desaix's more deliberate offering was hampered by the fear of ricochets skipping as far as the admiral, and only half a dozen of her balls did any harm – the rest fell short.
The Sophie was through the line, not too badly mauled – certainly not disabled; her studdingsails were set and she was running fast, with the wind where she liked it best. The surprise had been complete, and now the two sides were drawing away from one another fast – a mile in the first five minutes. The Desaix's second broadside, delivered at well over a thousand yards, showed the effects of irritation and precipitancy; a splintering crash forward marked the utter destruction of the elm-tree pump, but that was all. The flagship had obviously countermanded her second discharge, and for a while she kept to her course, close-hauled, as though the Sophie did not exist.
'We may have done it,' said Jack inwardly, leaning his hands on the taffrail and staring back along the Sophie's lengthening wake. His heart was still beating with the tension of waiting for those broadsides, with the dread of what they might do to his Sophie; but now its beat had a different urgency. 'We may have done it,' he said again. Yet the words were scarcely formed in his mind before he saw a signal break out aboard the admiral, and the Desaix began to turn into the wind.
The seventy-four came about as nimbly as a frigate: her yards traversed as though by clockwork, and it was clear that everything was tallied and belayed with the perfect regularity of a numerous and thoroughly well trained crew. The Sophie had an excellent ship's company too, as attentive to their duty and as highly-skilled as Jack could wish; but nothing that they could do would make her move through the water at more than seven knots with this breeze, whereas in another quarter of an hour the Desaix was running at well over eight without her studdingsails. She was not going to trouble herself with setting them: when they saw that -when the minutes went by and it was clear that she had not the least intention of setting them – then the Sophies' hearts died within them.
Jack looked up at the sky. It looked down on him, a broad and meaningless expanse, with stray clouds passing over it – the wind would not die away that afternoon: night was still hours and hours away.
How many? He glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes past ten. 'Mr Daiziel,' he said, 'I am going into my cabin. Call me if anything whatever occurs. Mr Richards, be so good as to tell Dr Maturin I should like to speak to him. And Mr Watt, let me have a couple of fathoms of logline and three or four belaying-pins.'
In his cabin he made a parcel of his lead-covered signal-book and some other secret papers, put the copper belaying-pins into the bag of mail, lashed its neck tight, called for his best coat and put his commission into its inner pocket. The words 'hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril' floated before his mind's eye, wonderfully clear; and Stephen came in. 'There you are, my dear fellow,' said Jack. 'Now, I am afraid that unless something very surprising happens we are going to be taken or sunk in the next half hour.' Stephen said, 'Just so,' and Jack continued, 'So if you have anything you particularly value perhaps it would be wise to entrust it to me.'
'They rob their prisoners, then?' asked Stephen.
'Yes: sometimes. I was stripped to the bone when the Leander was taken, and they stole our surgeon's instruments before he could operate on our wounded.'
'I will bring my instruments at once.'
'And your purse.'
'Oh, yes, and my purse.'
Hurrying back on deck, Jack looked astern. He would never have believed the seventy-four could have come up so far. 'Masthead!' he cried. 'What do you see?'
Seven ships of the line just ahead? Half the Mediterranean fleet? 'Nothing, sir,' answered the look-out slowly, after a most conscientious pause.
'Mr Dalziel, should I be knocked on the head, by any chance, these go over the side at the last moment, of course,' he said, tapping the parcel and the bag.
Already the strict pattern of the sloop's behaviour was growing more fluid. The men were quiet and attentive; the watch-glass turned to the minute; four bells in the afternoon watch rang with singular precision but there was a certain amount of movement, unreproved movement up and down the fore-hatch – men putting on their best clothes (two or three waistcoats together, and a shoregoing jacket on top), asking their particular officers to look after money or curious treasures, in the faint hope they might be preserved – Babbington had a carved whale's tooth in his hand, Lucock a Sicilian bull's pizzle. Two men had already managed to get drunk: some wonderfully hidden savings, no doubt.
'Why does he not fire?' thought Jack. The Desaix's bow-chasers had been silent these twenty minutes, though for the last mile or so of their course the Sophie had been well within range. Indeed, by now she was in musket-shot, and the people in her bows could easily be told from one another: seamen, marines, officers – one man had a wooden leg. What splendidly cut sails, he reflected, and at the same time the answer to his question came: 'By God, he's going to riddle us with grape.' That was why he had silently closed the range. Jack moved to the side; leaning over the hammock-netting he dropped his packets into the sea and saw them sink.
In the bows of the Desaix there was a sudden movement, a response to an order. Jack stepped to the wheel, taking the spokes from the quartermaster's hands and looking back over his left shoulder. He felt the life of the sloop under his fingers: and he saw the Desaix begin to yaw. She answered her helm as quickly as a cutter, and in three heartbeats there were her thirty-seven guns coming round to bear. Jack heaved strongly at the wheel. The broadside's roar and the fall of the Sophie's maintopgallantmast and foretopsail yard came almost together – in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie's bell; and then a silence. The greater part of the seventy-four's roundshot had passed a few yards ahead of her stem: the scattering grape-shot had utterly wrecked her sails and rigging – had cut them to pieces. The next broadside must destroy her entirely.
'Clew up,' called Jack, continuing the turn that brought the Sophie into the wind. 'Bonden, strike the colours.'