The cabin of a ship of the line and the cabin of a sloop of war differ in size, but they have the same delightful curves in common, the same inward-sloping windows; and in the case of the Desaix and the Sophie a good deal of the same quietly agreeable atmosphere. Jack sat gazing out of the seventy-four's stern-windows, out beyond the handsome gallery to Green Island and Cabrita Point, while Captain Christy-Palliиre searched through his portfolio for a drawing he had made when he was last in Bath, a prisoner on parole.
Admiral Linois' orders had required him to join the Franco-Spanish fleet in Cadiz; and he would have carried them out directly if, on reaching the straits, he had not learnt that instead of one or two ships of the line and a f rig-ate Sir James Saumarez had no less than six seventy-fours and an eighty-gun ship watching the combined squadron. This state of affairs called for some reflexion, so here he lay with his ships in Algeciras Bay, under the guns of the great Spanish batteries, over against the Rock of Gibraltar.
Jack was aware of all this – it was obvious, in any case – and as Captain Palliиre muttered through his prints and drawings, 'Landsdowne Terrace, another view – Clifton -the Pump Room -' his mind's eye pictured messengers riding at a great pace between Algeciras and Cadiz; for the Spaniards had no semaphore. His bodily eye, however, looked steadily through the window panes at Cabrita Point, the extremity of the bay; and presently it saw the topgallant masts and pendant of a ship moving across, behind the neck of land. He watched it placidly for some two or three seconds before his heart gave a great leap, having recognized the pendant as British before his head had even begun to weigh the matter.
He darted a furtive look at Captain Palliиre, who cried, 'Here we are! Laura Place. Number sixteen, Laura Place. This is where my Christy cousins always stay, when they come to Bath. And here, behind this tree – you could see it better, was it not for the tree – is my bedroom window!'
A steward came in and began to lay the table, for Captain Palliиre not only possessed English cousins and the English language in something like perfection, but he had solid notions of what made a proper breakfast for a seafaring man: a pair of ducks, a dish of kidneys and a grilled turbot the size of a moderate cartwheel were preparing, as well as the usual ham, eggs, toast, marmalade and coffee. Jack looked at the water-colour as attentively as he could, and said, 'Your bedroom window, sir? You astonish me.'
Breakfast with Dr Ramis was a very different matter -austere, if not penitential: a bowl of milkless cocoa, a piece of bread with a very little oil. 'A very little oil cannot do us much harm,' said Dr Ramis, who was a martyr to his liver. He was a severe and meagre, dusty man, with a harsh greyish-yellow face and deep violet rings under his eyes; he did not look capable of any pleasant emotion, yet he had both blushed and simpered when Stephen, upon being confided to his care as a prisoner-guest, had cried, 'Not the illustrious Dr Juan Ramis, the author of the Specimen Animalium?' Now they had just come back from visiting the Desaix's sick-bay, a sparsely inhabited place, because of Dr Ramis' passion for curing other people's livers too by a low diet and no wine: it had a dozen of the usual diseases, a fair amount of pox, the Sophie's four invalids and the French wounded from the recent action – three men bitten by Mr Daiziel's little bitch, whom they had presumed to caress: they were now confined upon suspicion of hydrophobia. In Stephen's view there was an error in his colleague's reasoning – a Scotch dog that bit a French seaman was not therefore and necessarily mad; though it might, in this particular case, be strangely wanting in discrimination. He kept this reflexion to himself, however, and said, 'I have been contemplating on emotion.'
'Emotion,' said Dr Ramis.
'Yes,' said Stephen. 'Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now, in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider – I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?'
'Never, my dear colleague: though Busbequius speaks of it,' replied Dr Ramis with great complacency.
'But it seems to me that emotion and its expression are almost the same thing. Let us take your cat: now suppose we shave her tail, so that it cannot shall I say perscopate or bristle; suppose we attach a board to her back, so that it cannot arch; suppose we then exhibit a displeasing sight – a sportive dog, for instance. Now, she cannot express her emotions fully: Quaere: will she feel them fully? She will feel them, to be sure, since we have suppressed only the grossest manifestations; but will she feel them fully? Is not the arch, the bottle-brush, an integral part and not merely a potent reinforcement – though it is that too?'
Dr Ramis inclined his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and lips, and said, 'How can it be measured? It cannot be measured. It is a notion; a most valuable notion, I am sure; but, my dear sir, where is your measurement? It cannot be measured. Science is measurement – no knowledge without measurement.'
'Indeed it can,' cried Stephen eagerly. 'Come, let us take our pulses.' Dr Ramis pulled out his watch, a beautiful Breguet with a centre seconds hand, and they both sat gravely counting. 'Now, dear colleague, pray be so good as to imagine – to imagine vehemently – that I have taken up your watch and wantonly flung it down; and I for my part will imagine that you are a very wicked fellow. Come, let us simulate the gestures, the expressions of extreme and violent rage.'
Dr Ramis' face took on a tetanic look; his eyes almost vanished; his head reached forward, quivering. Stephen's lips writhed back; he shook his fist and gibbered a little. A servant came in with a jug of hot water (no second bowls of cocoa were allowed).
'Now,' said Stephen Maturin, 'let us take our pulses again.'
'That pilgrim from the English sloop is mad,' the surgeon's servant told the second cook. 'Mad, twisted, tormented. And ours is not much better.'
'I will not say it is conclusive,' said Dr Ramis. 'But it is wonderfully interesting. We must try the addition of harsh reproachful words, cruel flings and bitter taunts, but without any physical motion, which could account for part of the increase. You intend it as a proof per contra of what you advance, I take it? Reversed, inverted, or arsy-versy, as you say in English. Most interesting.'
'Is it not?' said Stephen. 'My mind was led into this train of thought by the spectacle of our surrender, and of some others that I have seen. With your far greater experience of naval life, sir, no doubt you have been present at many more of these interesting occasions than I.'
'I imagine so,' said Dr Ramis. 'For example, I myself have had the honour of being your prisoner no less than four times. That,' he said with a smile, 'is one of the reasons why we are so very happy to have you with us. It does not happen quite as often as we could wish. Allow me to help you to another piece of bread – half a piece, with a very little garlic? Just a scrape of this wholesome, antiphiogistical garlic?'
'You are too good, dear colleague. And you have no doubt taken notice of the impassive faces of the captured men? It is always so, I believe?'
'Invariably. Zeno, followed by all his school.'
'And does it not seem to you that this suppression, this denial of the outward signs, and as I believe reinforcers if not actually ingredients of the distress – does it not seem to you that this stoical appearance of indifference in fact diminishes the pain?'
'It may well be so: yes.'
'I believe it is so. There were men aboard whom I knew intimately well, and I am morally certain that without this what one might call ceremony of diminution, it would have broken their .
'Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur,' cried Dr Ramis' servant. 'The English are filling the bay!'
'On the poop they found Captain Palliиre and his officers watching the manoeuvres of the Pompйe, the Venerable, the Audacious and, farther off, the Caesar, the Hannibal and the Spencer as they worked in on the light, uncertain westerly airs, through the strong, shifting currents running between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean: they were all of them seventy-fours except for Sir James' flagship, the Caesar, and she carried eighty guns. Jack stood at some distance, with a detached look on his face; and at the farther rail there were the other quarter-deck Sophies, all making a similar attempt at decency.
'Do you think they will attack?' asked Captain Palliиre, turning to Jack. 'Or do you think they will anchor off Gibraltar?'
'To tell you the truth, sir,' said Jack, looking over the sea at the towering Rock, 'I am quite sure they will attack. And you will forgive me for saying, that when you reckon up the forces in presence, it seems clear that we shall all be in Gibraltar tonight. I confess I am heartily glad of it, for it will allow me to repay a little of the great kindness I have met with here.'
Thee had been kindness, great kindness, from the moment they exchanged formal salutes on the quarter-deck of the Desaix and Jack stepped forward to give up his sword:
Captain Palliиre had refused to take it, and with the most obliging expressions about The Sophie's resistance, had insisted upon his wearing it still.
'Well,' said Captain Palliиre, 'let it not spoil our breakfast, at all events.'
'Signal from the Admiral, sir,' said a lieutenant. 'Warp in as close as possible to the batteries.'
'Acknowledge and make it so, Dumanoir,' said the cap- tam. 'Come, sir: gather we rose-pods while we may.'
It was a gallant effort, and they both of them talked away with a fine perseverance, their voices rising as the batteries on Green Island and the mainland began to roar and the thundering broadsides filled the bay; but Jack found that presently he was spreading marmalade upon his turbot and answering somewhat at random. With a high-pitched shattering crash the stern-windows of the Desaix fell in ruin; the padded locker beneath, Captain Palliиre's best wine-bin, shot half across the cabin, projecting a flood of champagne, Madeira and broken glass before it; and in the midst of the wreckage trundled a spent ball from HMS Pompйe.
'Perhaps we had better go on deck,' said Captain Palliиre.
It was a curious position. The wind had almost entirely dropped. The Pompйe had glided on past the Desaix to anchor very close to the Fonnidable's starboard bow, and she was pounding her furiously as the French flagship warped farther in through the treacherous shoals by means of cables on shore. The Venerable, for want of wind, had anchored about half a mile from the Formidable and the Desaix and was plying them briskly with her larboard broadside, while the Audacwus, as far as he could see through clouds of smoke, was abreast of the Indomptable, some three or four hundred yards out. The Caesar and the Hannibal and the Spencer were doing their utmost to come up through the calms and the patchy gusts of west-north-west breeze: the French ships were firing steadily; and all the time the Spanish batteries, from the Torre del Almirante in the north right down to Green Island in the south, thundered in the background, while the big Spanish gunboats, invaluable in this calm, with their mobility and their expert knowledge of the reefs and the strong turning currents, swept out to rake the anchored enemy.
The rolling smoke drifted off the land, wafting now this way and now that, often hiding the Rock at the far end of the bay and the three ships out to sea; but at last a steadier breeze sprang up and the Caesar's royals and topgallants appeared above the obscurity. She was wearing Admiral Saumarez' flag and she was flying the signal anchor for mutual support. Jack saw her pass the Audacious and swing broadside on to the Desaix within hailing distance: the cloud around her closed, hiding everything: there was a great stab as of lightning within the murk, a ball at head-height reaped a file of marines on the Desaix's poop and the whole frame of the powerful ship shuddered with the force of the impact – at least half the broadside striking home.
'This is no place for a prisoner,' reflected Jack, and with a parting look of particular consideration at Captain Palliиre, he hurried down on to the quarter-deck. He saw Babbington and young Ricketts standing doubtfully at the hances and called out, 'Get below, you two. This is no time to come it the old Roman – proper flats you would look, cut in half with our own chain-shot' – for chain was coming in now, shrieking and howling over the sea. He shepherded them down into the cable-tier and then made his way to the wardroom quarter-gallery – the officers' privy: it was not the safest place in the world, but there was little room for a spectator between the decks of a man-of-war in action, and he desperately wanted to see the course of the battle.
The Hannibal had anchored a little ahead of the Caesar, having run up the line of the French ships as they lay pointing north, and she was playing on the Formidable and the Santiago battery: the Formidable had almost ceased firing, which was as well, since for some reason the Pompйe had swung round in the current – her spring shot away, perhaps and she was head-on to the Formidable's broadside, so that she could now only engage the shore-batteries and the gunboats with her starboard guns. The Spencer was still far out in the bay: but even so there were five ships of the line attacking three – everything was going very well, in spite of the Spanish artillery. And now through a gap in the smoke torn by the west-north-west breeze, Jack saw the Hannibal cut her cable, make sail towards Gibraltar and tack as soon as she had way enough, coming down close inshore to run between the French admiral and the land, and to cross his hawse and rake him. 'Just like the Nile,' thought Jack, and at that moment the Hannibal ran aground, very hard aground, and brought up all standing right opposite the heavy guns of the Torre del Almirante. The cloud closed again; and when at last it lifted boats were plying to and fro from the other English ships, and an anchor was carrying out; the Hannibal was roaring furiously at three shore-batteries, at the gunboats and, with her forward larboard guns and bow-chasers, at the Formidable. Jack found that he was clasping his hands so hard that it needed strong determination to unknot them. The situation was not desperate – was not bad at all. The westerly air had fallen quite away, and now a right breeze was parting the heavy powder-fog, coming from the north-east. The Caesar cut her cable, and coming down round the Venerable and the Audacious she battered the Indomptable, astern of the Desaix, with the heaviest fire that had yet been heard.-Jack could not make out what signal it was she had abroad, but he was certain it was cut and wear, together with engage the enemy more closely: there was a signal aboard the French admiral too – cut and run aground – for now, with a wind that would allow the English to come right in, it was better to risk wrecking than total disaster: furthermore, his was a signal easier to carry out than Sir James', for not only did the breeze stay with the French after it had left the English becalmed, but the French already had their warps out and boats by the dozen from the shore. -
Jack heard the orders overhead, the pounding of feet, and the bay with its smoke and floating wreckage turned slowly before his eyes as the Desaix wore and ran straight for the land. She grounded with a thumping lurch that threw him off his balance, on a reef just in front of the town: the Indomptable, with her foretopmast gone, was already ashore on Green Island, or precious near. He could not see the French flagship at all from where he was, but she would certainly have grounded herself too.
And yet suddenly the battle went sour. The English ships did not come in, sweep the stranded Frenchmen clean and burn or destroy them far less tow them out; for not only did the breeze drop completely, leaving the Caesar, Audacious and Venerable with no steerage-way, but almost all the surviving boats of the squadron were busy towing the shattered Pompйe towards Gibraltar. The Spanish batteries had been throwing red-hot shot for some time, and now the grounded French ships were sending their excellent gun-crews ashore by the hundred. Within a few minutes the fire of the shore guns increased enormously in volume and in accuracy. Even the poor Spencer, that had never managed to get up, suffered cruelly as she lay out there in the bay; the Venerable had lost her mizen topmast; and it looked as though the Caesar were on fire amidships. Jack could bear it no longer: he hurried up on deck in time to see a breeze spring up off the land and the squadron make sail on the starboard tack, standing eastwards for Gibraltar and leaving the dismasted, helpless Hannibal to her fate under the guns of the Torre del Almirante. She was firing still, but it could not last; her remaining mast fell, and presently her ensign came wavering down.
'A busy morning, Captain Aubrey,' said Captain Palliere, catching sight of him.
'Yes, sir,' said Jack. 'I hope we have not lost too many of our friends.' The Desaix's quarter-deck was very ugly in patches, and there was a deep gutter of blood running along to the scupper under the wreckage of the poop-ladder. The hammock-netting had been torn to pieces; there were four dismounted guns abaft the mainmast, and the splinter-netting over the quarter-deck bowed and sagged under the weight of fallen rigging. She was canted three or four strakes on her rock, and the least hint of a sea would pound her to pieces.
'Many, many more than I could have wished,' said Captain Palliиre. 'But the Formidable and the Indomptable have suffered worse – both their captains killed, too. What are they doing aboard the captured ship?'
The Hannibal's colours were rising again. It was her own ensign, not the French flag: but it was the ensign reversed, flying with the union downwards. 'I suppose they forgot to take a tricolour when they went to board her and take possession,' observed Captain Palliиre, turning to give orders for the heaving of his ship off the reef. Some time later he came back to the shattered rail, and staring out at the little fleet of boats that were pulling with all their might from Gibraltar and from the sloop Calpe towards the Hannibal, he said to Jack, 'You do not suppose they mean to retake the ship, do you? What are they about?'
Jack knew very well what they were about. In the Royal Navy the reversed ensign was an emphatic signal of distress: the Calpe and the people in Gibraltar, seeing it, had supposed the Hannibal meant she was afloat again and was begging to be towed off. They had filled every available boat with every available man – with unattached seamen and, above all, with the highly-skilled shipwrights and artificers of the dockyard. 'Yes,' he said, with all the open sincerity of one bluff seaman talking to another. 'I do. That is what they are about, for sure. But certainly if you put a shot across the bow of the leading cutter they will turn round – they imagine everything is over.'
'Ah, that's it,' said Captain Palliиre. An eighteen-pounder creaked round and settled squarely on the nearest boat. 'But come,' said Captain Palliere, putting his hand on the lock and smiling at Jack, 'perhaps it would be better not to fire.' He countermanded the gun, and one by one the boats reached the Hannibal, where the waiting Frenchmen quietly led their crews below. 'Never mind,' said Captain Palliиre, patting him on the shoulder. 'The Admiral is signalling: come ashore with me, and we will try to find decent quarters for you and your people, until we can heave off and refit.'
The quarters allotted to the Sophie's officers, a house up at the back of Algeciras, had an immense terrace overlooking the bay, with Gibraltar to the left, Cabrita Point to the right and the dim land of Africa looming ahead. The first person Jack saw upon it, standing there with his hands behind his back and looking down on his own dismasted ship, was Captain Ferris of the Hannibal. Jack had been shipmates with him during two commissions and had dined with him only last year, but the post-captain was hardly recognizable as the same man – had aged terribly, and shrunk; and although they now fought the battle over again, pointing out the various manoeuvres, misfortunes and baffled intentions, he spoke slowly, with an odd uncertain hesitation, as though what had happened were not quite real, or had not happened to him.
'So you were aboard the Desaix, Aubrey,' he said, after a while. 'Was she much cut up?'
'Not so badly as to be disabled, sir, as far as I could collect. She was not much holed below the waterline, and none of her lower masts was badly wounded: if she don't bilge they will put her to rights presently – she has an uncommon seamanlike set of officers and men.'
'How many did she lose, do you suppose?'
'A good many, I am sure – but here is my surgeon, who certainly knows more about it than I do. May I name Dr Maturin? Captain Ferns. My God, Stephen!' he cned, starting back. He was tolerably used to carnage, but he had never seen anything quite like this. Stephen might have come straight out of a busy slaughterhouse.. His sleeves, the whole of the front of his coat up to his stock and the stock itself were deeply soaked, soaked through and through and stiff with drying blood. So were his breeches: and wherever his linen showed it, too, was dark red-brown.
'I beg pardon,' he said, 'I should have shifted my clothes, but it seems that my chest was shattered – destroyed entirely.'
'I can let you have a shirt and some breeches,' said Captain Ferris. 'We are much of a size.' Stephen bowed.
'You have been lending the French surgeons a hand?' said Jack.
'Just so.'
'Was there a great deal to do?' asked Captain Ferris.
'About a hundred killed and a hundred wounded,' said Stephen.
'We had seventy-five and fifty-two,' said Captain Ferris.
'You belong to the Hannibal, sir?' asked Stephen.
'I did, sir,' said Captain Ferris. 'I struck my colours,' he said in a wondering tone and at once began to sob, staring open-eyed at them – at one and then at the other.
'Captain Ferris,' said Stephen, 'pray tell me, how many mates has your surgeon? And have they all their instruments? I am going down to the convent to see your wounded as soon as I have had a bite, and I dispose of two or three sets.'
'Two mates, sir,' said Captain Ferris. 'As for their instruments I fear I cannot say. It is good in you, sir – most Christian – let me fetch you this shirt and breeches – you must be damned uncomfortable.' He came back with a bundle of clean clothes wrapped in a dressing-gown, suggested that Dr Maturin might operate in the gown, as he had seen done after the First of June, when there was a similar shortage of clean linen. And during their odd, scrappy meal, brought to them by staring, pitiful maidservants, with red and yellow sentries guarding the door, he said, 'After you have looked to my poor fellows, Dr Maturin – if you have any benevolence left after you have looked to them, I say, it would be a charitable act to prescribe me something in the poppy or mandragora line. I was strangely upset today, I must confess, and I need what is it? The knitting up of ravelled care? And what is more, since we are likely to be exchanged in a few days, I shall have a court-martial on top of it all.'
'Oh, as for that, sir,' cried Jack, throwing himself back in his chair, 'you cannot possibly have any misgivings – never was a clearer case of -'
'Don't you be so sure, young man,' said Captain Ferris.
'Any court-martial is a perilous thing, whether you are in the right or the wrong – justice has nothing much to do with it. Remember poor Vincent of the Weymouth: remember Byng – shot for an error of judgment and for being unpopular with the mob. And think of the state of feeling in Gibraltar and at home just now – six ships of the line beaten off by three French, and one taken – a defeat, and the Hannibal taken.'
This degree of apprehension in Captain Ferris seemed to Jack a kind of wound, the result of lying hard aground under the fire of three shore-batteries, a ship of the line and a dozen heavy gun-boats, and of being terribly hammered for hours, dismasted and helpless. The same thought, in a slightly different shape, occurred to Stephen. 'What is this trial of which he speaks?' he asked later. 'Is it factual, or imaginary?'
'Oh, it is factual enough,' said Jack.
'But he has done nothing amiss, surely? No one can pretend he ran away or did not fight as hard as ever he could.'
'But he lost his ship. Every captain of a King's ship that is lost must stand his trial at court-martial.'
'I see. A mere formality in his case, no doubt.'
'In his case, yes,' said Jack. 'His anxiety is unfounded – a sort of waking nightmare, I take it.'
But the next day, when he went down with Mr Daiziel to see the Sophie's crew in their disaffected church and to tell them of the flag of truce from the Rock, it seemed to him a little more reasonable – less of a sick fantasy. He told the Sophies that both they and the Hannibals were to be exchanged – that they should be in Gibraltar for dinner – dried peas and salt horse for dinner, no more of these foreign messes – and although he smiled and waved his hat at the roaring cheers that greeted his news, there was a black shadow in the back of his mind.
The shadow deepened as be crossed the bay in the Caesar's barge; it deepened as he waited in the antechamber to report himself to the Admiral. Sometimes he sat and sometimes he walked up and down the room, talking to other officers as people with urgent business were admitted by the secretary. He was surprised to receive so many congratulations on the Cacafuego action – it seemed so long ago now as almost to belong to another life. But the congratulations (though both generous and kind) were a little on the cursory side, for the atmosphere in Gibraltar was one of severe and general condemnation, dark depression, strict attention to arduous work, and a sterile wrangling about what ought to have been done.
When at last he was received he found Sir James almost as old and changed as Captain Ferris; the Admiral's strange, heavy-lidded eyes looked at him virtually without expression as he made his report; there was not a word of interruption, not a hint of praise or blame, and this made Jack so uneasy that if it had not been for a list of heads he had written on a card that he kept in the palm of his hand, like a schoolboy, he would have deviated into rambling explanations and excuses. The Admiral was obviously very tired, but his quick mind extracted the necessary facts and he noted them down on a slip of paper. 'What do you make of the state of the French ships, Captain Aubrey?' he asked.
'The Desaix is now afloat, sir, and pretty sound; so is the Indomptable. I do not know about the Formidable and Hannibal, but there is no question of their being bilged; and in Algeciras the rumour is that Admiral Linois sent three officers to Cadiz yesterday and another early this morning to beg the Spaniards and Frenchmen there to come round and fetch him out.'
Admiral Saumarez put his hand to his forehead. He had honestly believed they would never float again, and he had said as much in his report. 'Well, thank you, Captain Aubrey,' he said, after a moment, and Jack stood up. 'I see you are wearing your sword,' observed the Admiral.
'Yes, sir. The French captain was good enough to give it back to me.'
'Very handsome in him, though I am sure the compliment was quite deserved; and I have little doubt the court-martial will do the same. But, you know, it is not quite etiquette to ship it until then: we will arrange your business as soon as possible – poor Ferris will have to go home, of course, but we can see to you here. You are only on parole, I believe?'
'Yes, sir: waiting for an exchange.'
'What a sad bore. I could have done with your help -the squadron is in such a state… Well, good day to you, Captain Aubrey,' he said, with a hint of a smile, or at least a lightening in his expression. 'As you know, of course, you are under nominal arrest, so pray be discreet.'
He had known it perfectly well, of course, in theory; but the actual words were a blow to his heart, and he walked through the crowded, busy streets of Gibraltar in a state of quite remarkable unhappiness. When he reached the house where he was staying, he unbuckled his sword, made an ungainly parcel of it and sent it down to the Admiral's secretary with a note. Then he went for a walk, feeling strangely naked and unwilling to be seen.
The officers of the Hannibal and the Sophie were on parole: that is to say, until they were exchanged for French prisoners of equal rank they were bound in honour to do nothing against France or Spain – they were merely prisoners in more agreeable surroundings.
The days that followed were singularly miserable and lonely – lonely, although he sometimes walked with Captain Ferris, sometimes with his own midshipmen and sometimes with Mr Daiziel and his dog. It was strange and unnatural to be cut off from the life of the port and the squadron at such a moment as this, when every able-bodied man and a good many who should never have got out of their beds at all, were working furiously to repair their ships – an active hive, an ant-hill down below, and up here on these heights, on the thin grass and the bare rock between the Moorish wall and the tower above Monkey's Cove, solitary self-communing, doubt, reproach and anxiety. He had looked through all the Gazettes, of course, and there was nothing about either the Sophie's triumph or her disaster: one or two garbled accounts in the newspapers and a paragraph in the Gentleman's Magazine that made it seem like a surprise attack, that was all. As many as a dozen promotions in the Gazettes, but none for him or Pullings and it was a fair bet that the news of the Sophie's capture had reached London at about the same time as that of the Cacafuego. If not before: for the good news (supposing it to have been lost – supposing it to have been in the bag he himself sank in ninety fathoms off Cape Roig) could only have come in a dispatch from Lord Keith, far up the Mediterranean, among the Turks. So there could not be any promotion now until after the court-martial – no such thing as the promotion of prisoners, ever. And what if the trial went wrong? His conscience was very far from being perfectly easy. If Harte had meant this, he had been devilish successful; and he, Jack, had been a famous greenhorn, an egregious flat. Was such malignity possible? Such cleverness in a mere horned scrub? He would have liked to put this to Stephen, for Stephen had a headpiece; and Jack, almost for the first time in his life, was by no means sure of his perfect comprehension, natural intelligence and penetration. The Admiral had not congratulated him: could that conceivably mean that the official view was…? But Stephen had no notion of any parole that would keep him out of the naval hospital: the squadron had had more than two hundred men wounded, and he spent almost all his time there. 'You go a-walking,' he said. 'Do for all love go walking up very steep heights – traverse the Rock from end to end -traverse it again and again on an empty stomach. You are an obese subject; your hams quiver as you go. You must weight sixteen or even seventeen stone.'
'And to be sure I do sweat like a mare in foal,' he reflected, sitting under the shade of a boulder, loosening his waist-band and mopping himself. In an attempt at diverting his mind he privately sang a ballad about the Battle of the Nile:
We anchored alongside of them like lions bold and free. When their masts and shrouds came tumbling down, what a glorious sight to see!
Then came the bold Leander, that noble fifty-four, And on the bows of the Franklin she caused her guns to roar;
Gave her a dreadful drubbing, boys, and did severely maul;
Which caused them loud for quarter cry and down French colours haul.
The tune was charming, but the inaccuracy vexed him: the poor old Leander had fifty-two guns, as he knew very well, having directed the fire of eight of them. He turned to another favourite naval song:
There happened of late a terrible fray, amp;gun upon our St James's day, With a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, Thump, thump a thump, thump.
An ape on a rock no great way off threw a turd at him, quite unprovoked; and when he half rose in protest it shook its wizened fist and gibbered so furiously that he sank down again, so low were his spirits.
'Sir, sir!' cried Babbington, tearing up the slope, scarlet with hailing and climbing. 'Look at the brig! Sir, look over the point!'
The brig was the Pasley: they knew her at once. The hired brig Pasley, a fine sailer, and she was crowding sail on the brisk north-west breeze fit to carry everything away.
'Have a look, sir,' said Babbington, collapsing on the grass in a singularly undisciplined manner and handing up a little brass spyglass. The tube only magnified weakly, but at once the signal flying from the Pasley's masthead leapt out clear and plain – enemy in sight.
'And there they are, sir,' said Babbington, pointing to a glimmer of topsails over the dark curve of the land beyond the end of the Gut.
'Come on,' cried Jack, and began labouring up the hill, gasping and moaning, running as fast as he could for the tower, the highest point on the Rock. There were some masons up there, working on the building, an officer of the garrison artillery with a splendid great telescope, and some other soldiers. The gunner very civilly offered Jack his glass: Jack leant it on Babbington's shoulder, focused carefully, gazed, and said, 'There's the Superb. And the Thames. Then two Spanish three-deckers one's the Real Carlos, I am almost sure: vice-admiral's flagship, in any event. Two seventy-fours. No, a seventy-four and probably an eighty-gun ship.'
'Argonauta,' said one of the masons.
'Another three-decker. And three frigates, two French.'
They sat there silently watching the steady, calm pro. cession, the Superb and the Thames keeping their stations just a mile ahead of the combined squadron as they came up the Gut, and the huge, beautiful Spanish first-rates moving along with the inevitability of the sun. The masons went off to their dinner: the wind backed westerly. The shadow of the tower swept through twenty-five degrees.
When they had rounded Cabrita Point the Superb and the frigate carried straight on for Gibraltar, while the Spaniards hauled their wind for Algeciras; and now Jack could see that their flagship was indeed the Real Carlos, of a hundred and twelve guns, one of the most powerful ships afloat; that one of the other three-deckers was of the same force; and the third of ninety-six. It was a most formidable squadron – four hundred and seventy-four great guns, without counting the hundred odd of the frigates – and the ships were surprisingly well handled. They anchored over there under the guns of the Spanish batteries as trimly as though they were to be reviewed by the King.
'Hallo, sir,' said Mowett. 'I thought you would be up here. I have brought you a cake.'
'Why, thankee, thankee,' cried Jack. 'I am devilish hungry, I find.' He at once cut a slice and ate it up. How extraordinarily the Navy had changed, he thought, cutting another: when he was a midshipman it would never in a thousand years have occurred to him to speak to his captain, far less bring him cakes; and if it had occurred to him he would never have done so, for fear of his life.
'May I share your rock, sir?' asked Mowett, sitting down. 'They have come to fetch the Frenchmen out, I do suppose. Do you think we shall go for 'em, sir?'
'Pompйe will never be fit for sea these three weeks,' said Jack dubiously. 'Caesar is cruelly knocked about and must get all her new masts in: but even if they can get her ready before the enemy sail, that only gives us five of the line against ten, or nine if you leave the Hannibal out – three hundred and seventy-six guns to their seven hundred odd, both their squadrons combined. We are short-handed, too.'
'You would go for them, would not you, sir?' said Babbington; and both the midshipmen laughed very cheerfully.
Jack gave a meditative jerk of his head, and Mowett said, 'As when enclosing harpooners assail, In hyperborean seas the slumbering whale. What huge things these Spaniards are. The Caesars have petitioned to be allowed to work all day and night, sir. Captain Brenton says they may work all day, but only watch and watch at night. They are piling up juniper-wood fires on the mole to have light.'
It was by the light of these juniper fires that Jack ran into Captain Keats of the Superb, with two of his lieutenants and a civilian. After the first surprise, greetings, introductions, Captain Keats asked him to take supper aboard – they were going back now – only a scrap-meal, of course, but some genuine Hampshire cabbage brought straight from Captain Keats' own garden by the Astraea.
'It is very kind of you indeed, sir; most grateful, but I believe I must beg to be excused. I had the misfortune to lose the Sophie, and I dare say you will be sitting on me presently, together with most of the other post-captains.'
'Oh,' said Captain Keats, suddenly embarrassed.
'Captain Aubrey is quite right,' said the civilian in a sententious voice; and at that moment an urgent messenger called Captain Keats to the Admiral.
'Who was that ill-looking son of a bitch in the black coat?' asked Jack, as another friend, Heneage Dundas of the Calpe, came down the steps.
'Coke? Why, he's the new judge-advocate,' said Dundas, with a queer look. Or was it a queer look? The trick of the flames could give anyone a queer look. The words of the tenth Article of War came quite unbidden into his mind: If any person in the fleet shall cowardly yield or cry for quarter, being convicted thereof by the sentence of a court-martial, shall suffer death.
'Come and split a bottle of port with me at the Blue Posts, Heneage,' said Jack, drawing his hand across his face.
'Jack,' said Dundas, 'there is nothing I should like better, upon my oath; but I have promised Brenton to give him a hand. I am on my way this minute – there is the rest of my party staying for me.' He hurried off into the brighter light along the mole, and Jack drifted away: dark steep alleys, low brothels, smells, squalid drinking-shops.
The next day, under the lee of the Charles V wall, with his telescope resting on a stone, and with a certain sense of spying or eavesdropping, he watched the Caesar (no longer the flagship) being eased alongside the sheer-hulk to receive her new lower mainmast, a hundred feet long and more than a yard across. She got it in so quickly that the top was over before noon, and neither it nor the deck could be seen for the number of men working on the rigging.
The day after that, still from his melancholy height, full of guilt at his idleness and the intense, ordered busyness below, particularly about the Caesar, he saw the San Antonio, a French seventy-four that had been delayed, come in from Cadiz and anchor among her friends at Algeciras.
The next day there was great activity on the far side of the bay – boats plying to and fro among the twelve ships of the combined fleet, new sails bending, supplies coming aboard, hoist after hoist of signals aboard the flagships; and all this activity was reproduced in Gibraltar, with even greater zeal. There was no hope for the Pompйe, but the Audacious was almost entirely ready, while the Venerable, the Spencer and, of course, the Superb, were in fighting trim, and the Caesar was so near the final stages of her refitting that it was just possible she might be fit for sea in twenty-four hours.
During the night a hint of a Levanter began to breathe from the east: this was the wind the Spaniards were praying for, the wind that would carry them straight out of the Gut, once they had weathered Cabrita Point, and waft them up to Cadiz. At noon the first of their three-deckers loosed her foretopsail and began to move out of the crowded road; then the others followed her. They were weighing and coming out at intervals of ten minutes or a quarter of an hour to their rendezvous off Cabrita Point. The Caesar was still tied up alongside the mole, taking in her powder and shot, with officers, men, civilians and garrison soldiers working with silent concentrated earnestness.
At length the whole of the combined fleet was under way: even their jury-rigged capture, the Hannibal, towed by the French frigate Indienne, was creeping out to the point. And now the shrill squealing fife and fiddle broke out aboard the Caesar as her people manned the capstan bars and began to warp her out of the mole, taut, trim and ready for war. A thundering cheer ran all along the crowded shore, from the batteries, walls and hillside black with spectators; and when it died away there was the garrison band playing Come cheer up my lads, 'tis to glory we steer as loud as ever they could go, while the Caesar's marines answered with Britons strike home. Through the cacophony the fife could still be heard: it was most poignantly moving.
As the Caesar passed under the stern of the Audacious she hoisted Sir James's flag once more and immediately afterwards heaved out the signal weigh and prepare for battle. The execution of this was perhaps the most beautiful naval manoeuvre Jack had ever seen: they had all been waiting for the signal, they were all waiting and ready with their cables up and down; and in an unbelievably short space of time the anchors were catted and the masts and yards broke out in tall white pyramids of sail as the squadron, five ships of the line, two frigates, a sloop and a brig, moved out of the lee of the Rock and formed in line ahead on the larboard tack.
Jack pushed his way out of the tight-packed crowd on the mile-head, and he was half-way to the hospital, meaning to persuade Stephen to mount the Rock with him, when he saw his friend running swiftly through the deserted streets.
'Has she got out of the mole?' cried Stephen, at a considerable distance. 'Has the battle begun?' Reassured, he said, 'I would not have missed it for a hundred pounds: that damned fellow in ,Ward B and his untimely fancies -a fine time to cut one's throat, good lack a-day.'
'There's no hurry – no one will touch a gun for hours,' said Jack. 'But 1 am sorry you did not see the Caecar warping out: it was a glorious sight. Come up the hill with me, and you will have a perfect view of both squadrons. Do come. I will call in at the house and pick up a couple of telescopes; and a cloak – it grows cold at night.'
'Very well,' said Stephen, after a moment's thought. 'I can leave a note. And we will fill our pockets with ham: then we shall have none of your wry looks and short answers.'
'There they lay,' said Jack, pausing for breath again. 'Still on the larboard tack.'
'I see them perfectly well,' said Stephen, a hundred yards ahead and climbing fast. 'Pray do not stop so often. Come on.'
'Oh Lord, oh Lord,' said Jack at last, sinking under his familiar rock. 'How quick you go. Well, there they are.'
'Aye, aye, there they are: a noble spectacle, indeed. But why are they standing over towards Africa? And why only courses and topsails, with this light breeze? That one is even backing her maintopsail.'
'She's the Superb; she does so to keep her station and not over-run the Admiral, for she is a superb sailer, you know, the best in the fleet. Did you hear that?'
'Yes.'
'It was rather clever, I thought witty.'
'Why do they not make sail and bear up?'
'Oh, there is no question of a head-on encounter – probably no action at all by daylight. It would be downright madness to attack their line of battle at this time. The Admiral wants the enemy to get out of the bay and into the Gut, so there will be no doubling back and so that he wilt have sea-room to make a dash at them: once they get well into the offing I dare say he will try to cut off their rear if this wind holds; and it looks like a true three-day Levanter. Look, there the Hannibal cannot weather the point. Do you see? She will be on shore directly. The frigate is making sad work of it. They are towing her head round. Handsomely does it – there we are – she fills – set the jib, man – just so. She is going back.'
They sat watching in silence, and all around them they could hear other groups, scattered all over the surface of the Rock – remarks about the strengthening of the wind, the probable strategy to be observed, the exact broadside weight of metal on either side, the high standard of French gunnery, the currents to be met with off Cape Trafalgar.
With a good deal of backing and filling, the combined fleet, now nine ships of the line and three frigates, had formed their line of battle, with the two great Spanish first-rates in the rear, and now they bore away due westwards before the freshening breeze.
A little before this the British squadron had worn together by signal, and now they were on the starboard tack, under easy sail. Jack's telescope was firmly on the flagship, and as soon as he saw the hoist running up he murmured, 'Here we go.'
The signal appeared: at once the press of canvas almost doubled, and within a few minutes the squadron was racing away after the French and the Spaniards, dwindling in his view – growing smaller every moment as he watched.
'Oh God, how I wish I were with them,' said Jack, with a groan of something like despair. And some ten minutes later, 'Look, there's Superb going ahead – the Admiral must have hailed her.' The Superb's topgallant studdingsails appeare4 as though by magic, port and starboard. 'How she flies,' said Jack, lowering his glass and wiping it: but the dimness was-neither his tears nor any dirt on the glass – it was the fading of the day. Down below it had already gone; a tawny late evening filled the town, and lights were breaking out all over it. Presently lanterns could be seen creeping up the Rock to the high points from which perhaps the battle might be seen; and over the water Algeciras began to twinkle, a low-lying curve of lights.
'What do you say to some of that ham?' said Jack.
Stephen said he thought ham might prove a valuable preservative against the falling damps; and when they had been eating for some time in the darkness, with their pocket-handkerchiefs spread upon their knees, he suddenly observed, 'They tell me I am to be tried for the loss of the Sophie.'
Jack had not thought of the court-martial since early that morning, when it became certain that the combined fleet was coming out: now it came back to him with an extraordinarily unpleasant shock, quite closing his stomach. However, he only replied, 'Who told you that? The physical gentlemen at the hospital, I suppose?'
'Yes.'
'Theoretically they are right, of course. The thing is officially called the trial of the captain, officers and ship's company; and they formally ask the officers if they have any complaints to make against the captain, and the captain whether he has any to make against the officers; but obviously in this it is only my conduct that is in question. You have nothing to worry about, I do assure you, upon my word and honour. Nothing at all.'
'Oh, I shall plead guilty at once,' said Stephen. 'And I shall add that I was sitting in the powder-magazine with a naked light at the time, imagining the death of the King, wasting my medical stores, smoking tobacco and making a fraudulent return of the portable soup. What solemn nonsense it is' – laughing heartily – 'I am surprised so sensible a man as you should attribute any importance to the matter.'
'Oh, I do not mind it,' cried Jack. 'How you lie,' said
Stephen affectionately, but within his own bosom. After a longish pause Jack said, 'You do not rate post-captains and admirals very high among intelligent beings, I believe?
I have heard you say some tolerably severe things about admirals, and great men in general.'
'Why, to be sure, something sad seems to happen to your great men and your admirals, with age, pretty often: even to your post-captains. A kind of atrophy, a withering-away of the head and the heart. I conceive it may arise from…
'Well,' said Jack, laying his hand upon his friend's dimly-seen shoulder in the starlight, 'how would you like to place your life, your profession and your good name between the hands of a parcel of senior officers?'
'Oh,' cried Stephen. But what he had to say was never heard, for away on the horizon towards Tangiers there was a flash flash-flash, not unlike the repeated dart of lightning. They leapt to their feet and cupped their ears to the wind to catch the distant roar; but the wind was too strong and presently they sat down again, fixing the western sea with their telescopes. They could distinctly make out two sources, between twenty and twenty-five miles away, scarcely any distance apart – not above a degree: then three: then a fourth and fifth, and then a growing redness that did not move.
'There is a ship on fire,' said Jack in horror, his heart pumping so hard that he could scarcely keep the steady deep-red glow in his object-glass. 'I hope to God it is not one of ours. I hope to God they drown the magazines.'
An enormous flash lit the sky, dazzled them, put out the stars; and nearly two minutes later the vast solemn long rumbling boom of explosion reached them, prolonged by its own echo off the African shore.
'What was it?' asked Stephen at last.
'The ship blew up,' said Jack: his mind was filled with the Battle of the Nile and the long moment when L'Orient exploded, all brought back to him with extraordinary vividness – a hundred details he thought forgotten, some very hideous. And he was still among those memories when a second explosion shattered the darkness, perhaps even greater than the first.
After this, nothing. Not the remotest light, not a gun-flash. The wind increased steadily, and the rising moon put out the smaller stars. After a while some of the lanterns began to go down; others remained, and some even climbed higher still; Jack and Stephen stayed where they were. Dawn found them under their rock, with Jack steadily sweeping the Gut – calm now, and deserted – and Stephen Maturin fast asleep, smiling.
Not a word, not a sign: a silent sea, a silent sky and the wind grown treacherous again – all round the compass. At half-past seven Jack saw Stephen back to the hospital, revived himself with coffee and climbed again.
In his journeys up and down he came to know- every wind in the path, and the rock against which he leaned was as -familiar as an old coat. It was when he was going up after tea on Thursday, with his supper in a sailcloth bag, that he saw Daiziel, Boughton of the Hannibal and Marshall bounding down the steep slope so fast that they could not stop: they called out 'Calpe's coming in, sir,' and blundered on, with the little dog running round and round them, very nearly bringing them down, and barking with delight.
Heneage Dundas of the fast-sailing sloop Calpe was an amiable young man, much caressed by those who knew him for his shining parts and particularly for his skill in the mathematics; but never before had he been the best-loved man in Gibraltar. Jack broke through the crowd surrounding him with brutal force and an unscrupulous use of his weight and his elbows: five minutes later he broke out again and ran like a boy through the streets of the town.
'Stephen,' he cried, bursting open the door, his shining face far larger and higher than usual. 'Victory! Come out at once and drink to a victory! Give you joy of a famous victory, old cock,' he cried, shaking him terribly by the hand. 'Such a magnificent fight.'
'Why, what happened?' asked Stephen, slowly wiping his scalpel-and covering up his Moorish hyena.
'Come on, and I will tell you as we drink,' said Jack, leading him into the street full of people, all talking eagerly, laughing, shaking hands and beating one another on the back: down by the New Mole there was the sound of cheering. 'Come on. I have a thirst like Achilles, no, Andromache. It is Keats has the glory of the day – Keats has borne the bell away. Ha, ha, ha! That was a famous line, was it not? In here. Pedro! Bear a hand there! Pedro, champagne. Here's to the victory! Here's to Keats and the Superb! Here's to -Admiral Saumarez! Pedro, another bottle. Here's to the victory again! Three times three! Huzza!'
'You would oblige me extremely by just giving the news' – said Stephen. 'With all the details.'
'I don't know all the details,' said Jack, 'but this is the gist of it. That noble fellow Keats – you remember how we saw him shoot ahead? – came up with their rear, the two Spanish first-rates, just before midnight. He chose his moment, clapped his helm a lee and dashed between 'em firing both broadsides – a seventy-four taking on two first-rates! He shot straight on, leaving his smoke-cloud between 'em as thick as peasoup; and each, firing into it, hit the other; and so the Real Carlos and the Hermenegildo went for each other like fury in the dark. Someone, the Superb or the He nenegildo, had knocked away the Real
Carlos' foretopmast, and it was her topsail that fell over the guns and took fire. And after a while the Real Carios fell on board the Hermenegildo and fired her too. Those were the two explosions we saw, of course. But while they were burning Keats had pushed on to engage the San Antonio, who hauled her wind and fought back like a rare plucked 'un; but she had to strike in half an hour for, do you see, Superb was firing three broadsides to her two, and pointing
'em straight. So Keats took possession of her; and the rest of the squadron chased as hard as ever they could to the north-north-west in a gale of wind. They very nearly took the Formidable, but she just got into Cadiz; and we very nearly lost the Venerable, dismasted and aground; but they got her off and she is on her way back now, jury-rigged, with a stuns'l boom for a mizenmast, ha, ha, ha! – There's Dalziel and Marshall going by. Ahoy! Daiziel ahoy! Marshall! Ahoy there! Come and drink a glass to the victory!'
The flag broke out aboard the Pompйe; the gun boomed; the captains assembled for the court-martial.
It was a very grave occasion, and in spite of the brilliance of the day, the abounding cheerfulness on shore and the deep chuckling contentment aboard, each post-captain put away his gaiety and came up the side as solemn as a judge, to be greeted with all due ceremony and led into the great cabin by the first lieutenant.
Jack was already aboard, of course; but his was not the first case to be dealt with. Waiting there in the screened-off larboard part of the dining-cabin there was .a chaplain, a hunted-looking man who paced up and down, sometimes making private ejaculations and dashing his hands together. It was pitiful to see how carefully he was dressed, and how he had shaved until the blood came; for if half the general report of his conduct was true there was no hope for him at all.
The moment the next gun sounded the master-at-arms took the chaplain away, and there was a pause, one of those great lapses of time that presently come to have no flow at all, but grow stagnant or even circular in motion. The other officers talked in low voices – they, too, were dressed with particular attention, in the exact uniform regularity that plenty of prize-money and the best Gibraltar outfitters could provide. Was it respect for the court? For the occasion? A residual sense of guilt, a placating of fate? They spoke quietly, equably, glancing at Jack from time to time.
They had each received an official notification the day before, and for some reason each had brought it with him, folded or rolled. After a while Babbington and Ricketts took to changing all the words they could into obscenities, secretly in a corner, while Mowett wrote and scratched out on the back of his, counting syllables on his fingers and silently mouthing. Lucock stared straight ahead of him into vacancy. Stephen intently watched the busy unsatisfied questing of a shining dark-red rat-flea on the chequered sailcloth floor. -
The door opened. Jack returned abruptly to this world, picked up his laced hat and walked into the great cabin, ducking his head as he came in, with his officers filing in behind him. He came to a halt in the middle of the room, tucked his hat under his arm and made his bow to the court, first to the president, then to the captains to the right of him, then to the captains to the left of him. The president gave a slight inclination of his head and desired Captain Aubrey and his officers to sit down. A marine placed a chair for Jack a few paces in front of the rest, and there he sat, his hand going to hitch forward his non-existent sword, while the judge advocate read the document authorizing the court to assemble.
This took a considerable time, and Stephen looked steadily about him, examining the cabin from side to side: it was like a larger version of the Desaix's stateroom (how glad he was the Desaix was safe) and it, too, was singularly beautiful and full of light – the same range of curved stern-windows, the same inward-leaning side-walls (the ship's tumblehome, in fact) and the same close, massive white-painted beams overhead in extraordinarily long pure curves right across from one side to another: a room in which common domestic geometry had no say. At the far end from the door, parallel with the windows, ran a long table; and between the table – and the light sat the members of the court, the president in the middle, the black-coated judge-advocate at a desk in front and three post-captains on either side. There was a clerk at a small table on the left, and to the left again a roped-off space for bystanders.
The atmosphere was austere: all the heads above the blue and gold uniforms on the far side of the shining table were grave. The last trial and the sentence had been quite shockingly painful. – -
It was these heads, these faces, that had all Jack's attention. With the light behind them it was difficult to make them out exactly; but they were mostly overcast, and all were withdrawn. Keats, Hood, Brenton, Grenville he knew: was Grenville winking at him with his one eye, or was it an involuntary blink? Of course it was a blink: any signal would be grossly indecent. The president looked twenty years younger since the victory, but still his face was impassive and there was no distinguishing the expression of his eyes, behind those drooping lids. The other captains he knew only by name. One, a left-handed man, was drawing – scribbling. Jack's eyes grew dark with anger.
The judge-advocate's voice droned on. 'His Majesty's late Sloop Sophie having been ordered to proceed and whereas it is represented that in or about 40'W 370 40' N, Cape Roig bearing… 'he said, amidst universal indifference.
'That man loves his-trade,' thought Stephen. 'But what a wretched voice. It is almost impossible to be understood. Gabble, a professional deformation in lawyers.' And he was reflecting on industrial disease, on the corrosive effects of righteousness in judges, when he noticed that Jack had relaxed from his first rigid posture: and as the formalities went on and on this relaxation became more evident. He was looking sullen, oddly still and dangerous; the slight lowering of his head and the dogged way in which he stuck out his feet made a singular contrast with the perfection of his uniform, and Stephen had a strong premonition that disaster might be very close at hand. – The judge advocate had now reached '… to enquire into the conduct of John Aubrey, commander of His Majesty's late sloop the Sophie -and her officers and company for the loss of the said sloop by being captured on the third instant by a French squadron under the command of Admiral Linois', and Jack's head was lower still. 'How far is one entitled to manipulate one's friends?' asked Stephen, writing Nothing would give H greater pleasure than an outburst of indignation on your part at this moment on a corner of his paper: he passed it to the master, pointing to Jack. Marshall passed it on, by way of Daiziel. Jack read it, turned a lowering, grim face without much apparent understanding in it towards Stephen and gave a jerk of his head.
Almost immediately afterwards Charles Stirling, the senior captain and president of the court-martial, cleared his throat and said, 'Captain Aubrey, pray relate the circumstances of the loss of His Majesty's late sloop the Sophie.'
Jack rose to his feet, looked sharply along the line of his judges, drew his breath, and speaking in a much stronger voice than usual, the words coming fast, with odd intervals and an unnatural intonation – a harsh, God-damn-you voice, as though he were addressing a most inimical body of men – he said, 'About six o'clock in the morning of the third, to the eastward and in sight of Cape Roig, we saw three large ships apparently French, and a frigate, who soon after gave chase to the Sophie: the Sophie was between the shore and the ships that chased her, and to windward of the French vessels: we endeavoured by making all sail and were pulling with sweeps – as the wind was very light to keep to windward of the enemy; but having found notwithstanding all our endeavours to keep to the wind, that the French ships gained very fast, and having separated on different tacks one or the other gained upon each shift of wind, and finding it impracticable to escape by the wind, about nine o'clock the guns and other things on deck were thrown overboard; and having watched an opportunity, when the nearest French ship was on our quarter, we bore up and set the studdingsails; but again found the French ships outsailed us though their studdingsails were not set: when the nearest ship had approached within musket-shot, -I ordered the colours to be hauled down about eleven o'clock a.m., the wind being to the eastward and having received several broadsides from the enemy which carried away the maintopgallantmast and foretopsail yard and cut several of the ropes.' -
Then, though he was conscious of the singular ineptitude of this speech, he shut his mouth tight and stood looking straight ahead of him, while the clerk's pen squeaked nimbly after his words, writing 'and cut several of the ropes'. Here there was a slight pause, in which the president glanced left and right and coughed again before speaking. The clerk drew a quick flourish after ropes and hurried on:
Question by the court Captain Aubrey, have you any reason to find fault with any of your officers or ship's company?
Answer No. The utmost endeavour was used by every person on board.
Question by the court Officers and ship's company of the Sophie, have any of you reason to find fault with the conduct of your captain?
Answer No.
'Let all the evidence withdraw except Lieutenant Alexander Dalziel,' said the judge-advocate, and presently the midshipmen, the master and Stephen found themselves in the dining-cabin again, sitting perfectly mute in odd corners, while from the one side the distant shrieking of the parson echoed up from the cockpit (he had made a determined attempt at suicide) and from the other the drone of the trial went on. They were all deeply affected by Jack's concern, anxiety and rage: they had seen him unmoved so often and in such circumstances that his present emotion shook them profoundly, and disturbed their judgment. They could hear his voice now, formal, savage and much louder than the rest of the voices in the court, saying, 'Did the enemy fire several broadsides at us and at what distance were we when they fired the last?' Mr Daiziel's reply was a murmur, indistinguishable through the bulkhead.
'This is an entirely irrational fear,' said Stephen Maturin, looking at his wet and clammy palm. 'It is but one more instance of the… for surely to God, surely for all love, if they had wished to sink him they would have asked "How came you to be there?" ? But then I know very little of nautical affairs.' He looked for comfort at the master's face, but he found none there.
'Dr Maturin,' said the marine, opening the door.
Stephen walked in slowly and took the oath with particular deliberation, trying to sense the atmosphere of the court: he thus gave the clerk time to catch up with Dalziel's evidence, and the shrill pen wrote:
Question: Did she gain on the Sophie without her studdingsails set?
Answer: Yes.
Question: by the court Did they seem to sail much faster than you?
Answer: Yes, both by and large.
Dr Maturin, surgeon of the Sophie, called and sworn. Question: by the court Is the statement you heard made by your captain respecting the loss of the Sophie, correct as far as your observation went?
Answer: I think it is.
Question: by the court Are you a sufficient judge of nautical affairs to know whether every effort was used to escape from the force that was pursuing the Sophie?
Answer: I know very little of nautical affairs, but it appeared to me that every exertion was used by every person on board: I saw the captain at the helm, and the officers and ship's company at the sweeps.
Question: by the court Was you on deck at the time the colours were struck and what distance were the enemy from you at the time of her surrender?
Answer: I was on deck, and the Desaix was within musket-shot of the Sophie and was firing at us at the time.
Ten minutes later the court was cleared. The dining-cabin again, and no hesitation about precedence in the doorway this time, for Jack and Mr Daiziel were there: they were all there, and not one of them spoke a word. Could that be laughter in the next room, or did the sound come from the wardroom of the Caesar?
A long pause. A long, long pause: and the marine at the door.
'If you please, gentlemen.'
They filed in, and in spite of all his years at sea Jack forgot to duck: he struck the lintel of the door with a force that left a patch of yellow hair and scalp on the wood and he walked on, almost blinded, to stand rigidly by his chair.
The clerk looked up from writing the word Sentence, startled by the crash, and then looked down again, to commit the judge-advocate's words to writing. 'At a court-martial assembled and held on board His Majesty's Ship Pompйe in Rosia Bay… the court (being first duly sworn) proceeded in pursuance of an order from Sir James Saumarez Bart. Rear-Admiral of the Blue and… and having examined witnesses on the occasion, and maturely and deliberately considered every circumstance…
The droning, expressionless voice went on, and its tone was so closely allied to the ringing in Jack's head that he heard virtually none of it, any more than he could see the man's face through the watering of his eyes. -
'… the court is of the opinion that Captain Aubrey, his officers and ship's company used every possible exertion to prevent the King's sloop from falling into the hands of the enemy: and do therefore honourably acquit them. And they are hereby acquitted accordingly,' said the judge-advocate, and Jack heard none of it.
The inaudible voice stopped and Jack's blurred vision saw the black form sit down. He shook his singing head, tightened his jaw and compelled his faculties to return; for here was the president of the court getting to his feet. Jack's clearing eyes caught Keats' smile, saw Captain Stirling pick up that familiar, rather shabby sword, holding it with its hilt towards him, while with his left hand he smoothed a piece of paper by the inkwell. The president cleared his throat again in the dead silence, and speaking in a clear, seamanlike voice that combined gravity, formality and cheerfulness, he said, 'Captain Aubrey: it is no small pleasure to me to receive the commands of the court I have the honour to preside at, that in delivering to you your sword, I should congratulate you upon its being restored by both friend and foe alike; hoping ere long you will be called upon to draw it once more in the honourable defence of your country.'
The End