The fair copy of the Sophie's log was written out in David Richards' unusually beautiful copperplate, but in all other respects it was just like every other bog-book in the service. Its tone of semi-literate, official, righteous dullness never varied; it spoke of the opening of beef-cask no. 271 and the death of the loblolly-boy in exactly the same voice, and it never deviated into human prose even for the taking of the sloop's first prize.
Thursday,June 28, winds variable, SE,by S, course S5OW, distance 63 miles. – Latitude 42°32'N, longitude 4°17'E, Cape Creus S76°W 12 leagues. Moderate breezes and cloudy PM. at 7 in first reef topsails. AM d° weather. Exercising the great guns. The people employed occasionally.
Friday, June 29, S and Eastward… Light airs and clear weather. Exercising the great guns. PM employed worming the cable. AM moderate breezes and clouds, in third reef maintopsail, bent another foretopsail and close reefed it, hard gales at 4 handed the square mainsail at 8 more moderate reefed the square mainsail and set it. At noon calm. Departed this life Henry Gouges, loblolly-boy. Exercising the great guns.
Saturday, June 30, light airs inclinable to calm. Exercised the great guns. Punished Jno. Shannahan and Thos. Yates with 12 lashes for drunkenness. Killed a bullock weight 530 lb. Remains of water 3 tons.
Sunday, July 1. Mustered the ship's company by divisions read the Articles of War performed Divine Service and committed the body of Henry Gouges to the deep. At noon d° weather.
Ditto weather: but the sun sank towards a livid, purple, tumescent cloud-bank piled deep on the western horizon, and it was clear to every seaman aboard that it was not going to remain ditto much longer. The seamen, sprawling abroad on the fo'c'sle and combing out their long hair or plaiting it up again for one another, kindly explained to the bandmen that this long swell from the south and east, this strange sticky heat that came both from the sky and the glassy surface of the heaving sea, and this horribly threatening appearance of the sun, meant that there was to be a coming dissolution of all natural bonds, an apocalyptic upheaval, a right dirty night ahead. The sailormen had plenty of time to depress their hearers, already low in their spirits because of the unnatural death of Henry Gouges (had said, 'Ha, ha, mates, I am fifty years old this day. Oh dear,' and had died sitting there, still holding his untasted grog) – they had plenty of time, for this was Sunday afternoon, when in the course of nature the fo'c'sle was covered with sailors at their ease, their pigtails undone. Some of the more gifted had queues they could tuck into their belts; and now that these ornaments were loosened and combed out, lank when still wet, or bushy when dry and as yet ungreased, they gave their owners a strangely awful and foreboding look, like oracles; which added to the landmen's uneasiness.
The seamen laid it on; but with all their efforts they could scarcely exaggerate the event, for the south-easterly gale increased from its first warning blasts at the end of the last dog-watch to a great roaring current of air by the end of the middle watch, a torrent so laden with warm rain that the men at the wheel had to hold their heads down and cup their mouths sideways to breathe. The seas mounted higher and higher: they were not the height of the great Atlantic rollers, but they were steeper, and in a way more wicked; their heads tore off streaming in front of them so as to race through the Sophie's tops, and they were tall enough to becalm her as she lay there a-try, riding it out under a storm staysail. This was something she could do superbly well: she might not be very fast; she might not look very dangerous or high-bred; but with her topgallantmasts struck down on deck, her guns double-breeched and her hatches battened down, leaving only a little screened way to the after-ladder, and with a hundred miles of sea-room under her lee, she lay to as snug and unconcerned as an eider-duck. She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and travelled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between – a natural anemometer – and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon. With the greatest pleasure he saw that his forecast of her qualities as a sea-boat was fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed, 'She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.
'She – is – remarkably – dry.'
Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling. -
But the rising sun swallowed up the wind, and by half-past seven the next morning all that was left of the storm was the swell and a line of clouds low over the distant Gulf of Lions in the north-west; the sky was of an unbelievable purity and the air was washed so clean that Stephen could see the colour Of the petrel's dangling feet as it pattered across the Sophie's wake some twenty yards behind. 'I remember the fact of extreme, prostrating terror,' he said, keeping his eye on the tiny bird, 'but the inward nature of the emotion now escapes me.'
The man at the wheel and the quartermaster at the con exchanged a shocked glance.
'It is not unlike the case of a woman in childbirth,' went on Stephen, moving to the taffrail to keep the petrel in view and speaking rather more loudly. The man at the wheel and the quartermaster looked hastily away from one another: this was terrible – anybody might hear. The Sophie's surgeon, the opener (in broad daylight and upon the entranced maindeck) of the gunner's brainpan – Lazarus Day, as he was called now – was much prized, but there was no telling how far he might go in impropriety. 'I remember an instance…
'Sail ho!' cried the masthead, to the relief of all upon the Sophie's quarter-deck.
'Where away?'
'To leeward. Two points, three points on the beam. A felucca. In distress – her sheets a-flying.'
The Sophie turned, and presently those on deck could see the distant felucca as it rose and fell on the long troubled sea. It made no attempt to fly, none to alter course nor yet to heave to, but stood on with its shreds of sail streaming out on the irregular breaths of the dying wind. Nor did it show any answering colours or reply to the Sophie's hail. There was no one at the tiller, and when they came nearer those with glasses could see the bar move from side to side as the felucca yawed.
'That's a body on deck,' said Babbington, full of glee.
'It will be awkward lowering a boat in this,' remarked Jack, more or less to himself. 'Williams, lay her along, will you? Mr Watt, let some men stand by to boom her off. What do you make of her, Mr Marshall?'
Why, sir, I take it she's from Tangiers or maybe Tetuan – the west end of the coast, at all events…
'That man in the square hole died of plague,' said Stephen Maturin, clapping his telescope to.
A hush followed this statement and the wind sighed through the weather-shrouds. The distance between the vessels narrowed fast, and now everyone could see a shape wedged in the after-hatchway, with perhaps two more beneath it; an almost naked body among the tangle of gear near the tiller.
'Keep her full,' said Jack. 'Doctor, are you quite sure of what you say? Take my glass.'
Stephen looked through it for a moment and handed it back. 'There is no possible doubt,' he said. 'I will just make up a bag and then I will go across. There may be some survivors.'
The felucca was almost touching now, and a tame genet – a usual creature in Barbary craft, on account of the rats – stood on the rail, looking eagerly up, ready to spring.
An elderly Swede named Volgardson, the kindliest of men,
threw a swab that knocked it off its balance, and all the men along the side hooted and shrieked to frighten it away.
'Mr Dillon,' said Jack, 'we'll get the starboard tacks aboard.'
At once the Sophie sprang to life – bosun's calls shrilling, hands running to their places, general uproar – and in the din Stephen cried, 'I insist upon a boat – I protest…
Jack took him by the elbow and propelled him with affectionate violence into the cabin. 'My dear sir,' he said, 'I am afraid you must not insist, or protest: it is mutiny, you know, and you would be obliged to be hanged. Was you to set foot in that felucca, even if you did not bring back the contagion, we should have to fly the yellow flag at Mahon: and you know what that means. Forty mortal bloody days on the quarantine island and shot if you stray outside the pallisado, that is what. And whether you brought it back or not, half the hands would die of fright.'
'You mean to sail directly away from that ship, giving it no assistance?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Upon your own head, then.'
'Certainly.'
The log took little notice of this incident; it scarcely could have found any appropriate official language for saying that the Sophie's surgeon shook his fist at the Sophie's captain, in any case; and it shuffled the whole thing off with the disingenuous spoke felucca: and 1/4 past 11 tacked, for it was eager to come to the happiest entry it had made for years (Captain Allen had been an unlucky commander: not only had the Sophie been almost entirely confined to convoy-duty in his time, but whenever he did have a cruise the sea had emptied before him – never a prize did he take) …PM moderate and clear, up topgallantmasts, opened pork cask no. 113, partially spoiled. 7 saw strange sail to westward, made sail in chase.
Westward in this case meant almost directly to the Sophie's lee; and making sail meant spreading virtually everything she possessed – lower, topsail and topgallant studdingsails, royals of course, and even bonnets – for the chase had been made out to be a fair-sized polacre with lateens on her fore and mizen and square sails on her mainmast, and therefore French or Spanish – almost certainly a good prize if only she could be caught. This was the polacre's view, without a doubt, for she had been lying-to, apparently fishing her storm-damaged mainmast, when they first came in sight of one another; but the Sophie had scarcely sheeted home her topgallants before the polacre's head was before the wind and she fleeing with all she could spread in that short notice – a very suspicious polacre, unwilling to be surprised.
The Sophie, with her abundance of hands trained in setting sail briskly, ran two miles to the polacre's one in the first quarter of an hour; but once the chase had spread all the canvas it could, their speeds became more nearly even. With the wind two points on her quarter and her big square mainsail at its best advantage, the Sophie was still the faster, however, and when they had reached their greatest speed she was running well over seven knots to the polacre's six. But they were still four miles apart, and in three hours' time it would be pitch dark – no moon until half-past two. There was the hope, the very reasonable hope, that the chase would carry something away, for she had certainly had a rough night of it; and many a glass was trained upon her from the Sophie's fo'c'sle.
Jack stood there by the starboard knighthead, willing the sloop on with all his might, and feeling that his right arm might not be too great a price for an effective bow-chaser. He stared back at the sails and how they drew, he looked searchingly at the water rising in her bow-wave and sliding fast along her smooth black side; and it appeared to him that with her present trim the after sails were pressing her forefoot down a trifle much – that the extreme press of canvas might be hindering her progress – and he bade them take in the main royal. Rarely had he given an order more reluctantly obeyed, but the log-line proved that he was right: the Sophie ran a little easier, a very little faster, with the wind's thrust more forward.
The sun set over the starboard bow, the wind began to back into the north, blowing in gusts, and darkness swept up the sky from behind them: the polacre was still three-quarters of a mile ahead, holding on to her westward course. As the wind came round on to the beam they set staysails and the fore-and-aft mainsail: looking up at the set of the fore-royal and having it braced round more sharply, Jack could see it perfectly well; but when he looked down it was twilight on deck.
Now, with the studdingsails in, the chase – or the ghost of the chase, a pale blur showing now and then on the lifting swell – could be seen from the quarter-deck, and there he took up his stand with his night-glass, staring through the rapidly gathering darkness, giving a low, conversational order from time to time.
Dimmer, dimmer, and then she was gone: suddenly she was quite gone. The quadrant of horizon that had shown that faint but most interesting bobbing paleness was bare heaving sea, with Regulus setting into it.
'Masthead,' he hailed, 'what do you make of her?'
A long pause. 'Nothing, sir. She ain't there.'
Just so. What was he to do now? He wanted to think: he wanted to think there on deck, in the closest possible touch with the situation – with the shifting wind on his face, the glow of the binnacles just at hand and not the least interruption. And this the conventions and the discipline of the service allowed him to do. The blessed inviolability of a captain (so ludicrous at times, such a temptation to silly pomp) wrapped him about, and his mind could run free. At one time he saw Dillon hurry Stephen away: he recorded the fact, but his mind continued its unbroken pursuit of the answer to his problem. The polacre had either altered its course or would do so presently: the question was, where would this new course bring it to by dawn? The answer depended on a great many factors – whether French or Spanish, whether homeward or outward bound, whether cunning or simple and, above all, upon her sailing qualities. He had a very clear notion of them, having followed her every movement with the utmost attention for the last few hours; so building his reasoning (if such an instinctive process could be called by that name) upon these certainties and a fair estimate of the rest, he came to his conclusion. The polacre had worn; she might possibly be lying there under bare poles to escape detection while the Sophie passed her in the darkness to the northward; but whether or no, she would presently be making all sail, close-hauled for Agde or Cette, crossing the Sophie's wake and relying on her lateen's power of lying nearer to run her clear to windward and so to safety before daylight. If this was so the Sophie must tack directly and work to windward under an easy sail: that should bring the polacre under her lee at first light; for it was likely that they would rely on their fore and mizen alone – even in the chase they had been favouring their wounded mainmast.
He stepped into the master's cabin, and through narrowed, light-dazzled eyes he .checked their position; he checked it again with Dillon's reckoning and went on deck to give his orders.
'Mr Watt,' he said, 'I am going to put her about, and I desire the whole operation shall be carried out in silence. No calls, no starting, no shouts.'
'No calls it is, sir,' said the bosun, and hurried off uttering 'All hands to tack ship,' in a hoarse whisper, wonderfully curious to hear.
The order and its form had a strangely powerful effect: with as much certainty as though it had been a direct revelation, Jack knew that the men were wholly with him; and for a fleeting moment a voice told him that he had better be right, or he would never enjoy this unlimited confidence again.
'Very well, Assou,' he said to the Lascar at the wheel, and smoothly the Sophie luffed up.
'Helm's a-lee,' he remarked – the cry usually echoed from one horizon to the other. Then 'Off tacks and sheets'. He heard the bare feet hurrying and the staysail sheets rasping over the stays: he waited, waited, until the wind was one point on her weather bow, and then a little louder, 'Mainsail haul!' She was in stays: and now she was paying off fast. The wind was well round on his other cheek. 'Let go and haul,' he said, and the half-seen waisters hauled on the starboard braces like veteran forecastlemen. The weather bowlines tightened: the Sophie gathered way.
Presently she was running east-north-east close-hauled under reefed topsails, and Jack went below. He did not choose to have anything showing from his stern-windows, and it was not worth shipping the dead-lights, so he walked, bending low, into the gun-room. Here, rather to his surprise, he found Dillon (it was Dillon's watch below, certainly; but in his place Jack would never have left the deck) playing chess with Stephen, while the purser read them pieces from the Gentleman's Magazine, with comments.
'Do not stir, gentlemen,' he cried, as they all sprang up. 'I have just come to beg your hospitality for a while.'
They made him very welcome – hurried about with glasses of wine, sweet biscuits, the most recent Navy List -but he was an intruder: he had upset their quiet sociability, dried up the purser's literary criticism and interrupted the chess as effectually as an Olympian thunderbolt. Stephen messed down here now, of course – his cabin was the little boarded cupboard beyond the hanging lantern – and he already looked as though he belonged to this community:
Jack felt obscurely hurt, and after he had talked for a while (a dry, constrained interchange, it seemed to him; so very polite) he went up on deck again. As soon as they saw him looming in the dim glow of the hatchway the master and young Ricketts moved silently over to the larboard side, and Jack resumed his solitary pacing from the taffrail to the aftermost deadeye.
At the beginning of the middle watch the sky clouded over, and towards two bells a shower came weeping across, the drops hissing on the binnacles. The moon rose, a faint, lopsided object scarcely to be made out at all: Jack's stomach was pinched and wrung with hunger, but he paced on and on, looking mechanically out over the leeward darkness at every turn.
Three bells. The quiet voice of the ship's corporal reporting all's well. Four bells. There were so many other possibilities, so many things the chase could have done other than bearing up and then hauling her wind for Cette: hundreds of other things.
'What, what's this? Walking about in the rain in your shirt? This is madness,' said Stephen's voice just behind him.
'Hush!' cried Mowett, the officer of the watch, who had failed to intercept him.
'Madness. Think of the night air – the falling damos – the fluxion of the humours. If your duty requires you to walk about in the night air, you must wear a woollen garment. A woollen garment, there, for the captain! I will fetch it myself.'
Five bells, and another soft shower of rain. The relieving of the helm, and the whispered repetition of the course, the routine reports. Six bells, and a hint of thinner darkness in the east. The spell of silence seemed as strong as ever; men tiptoed to trim the yards, and a little before seven bells the look-out coughed, hailing almost apologetically, only just loud enough to be heard. 'Upon deck. Deck, sir. I think him vos there, starboard beam. I think.
Jack stuffed his glass into the pocket of the grego Stephen had brought him, ran up to the masthead, twined himself firmly into the rigging and trained the telescope in the direction of the pointing arm. The first grey forerunners of the dawn were straggling through the drifting showers and low torn cloud to leeward; and there, her lateens faintly gleaming, lay a polacre, not half a mile away. Then the rain had hidden her again, but not before Jack had seen that she was indeed his quarry and that she had lost her maintopmast at the cap.
'You're a capital fellow, Anderssen,' he said, clapping him on the shoulder.
To the concentrated mute inquiry from young Mowett and the whole Of the watch on deck he replied with a smile that he tried to keep within bounds and the words, 'She is just under our lee. East by south. You may light up the sloop, Mr Mowett, and show her our force: I don't want her to do anything foolish, such as firing a gun – perhaps hurting some of our people. Let me know when you have laid her aboard.' With this he retired, calling for a light and something hot to drink; and from his cabin he heard Mowett's voice, cracked and squeaking with the excitement of this prodigious command (he would happily have died for Jack), as under his orders the Sophie bore up and spread her wings.
Jack leant back against the curved run of the stern-window and let Killick's version of coffee down by gulps into his grateful stomach; and at the same time that its warmth spread through him, so there ran a lively tide of settled, pure, unfevered happiness – a happiness that another commander (remembering his own first prize) might have discerned from the log-entry, although it was not specifically mentioned there: 1/2 past 10 tacked, 11 in courses, reefed topsail. AM cloudy and rain. 1/2 past 4 chase observed E by S, distance 1/2 mile. Bore up and took possession off, which proved to be L'Aimable Louise, French polacre laden with corn and general merchandise for Cette, of about 200 tons, 6 guns and 19 men. Sent her with an officer and eight men to Mahon.
'Allow me to fill your glass,' said Jack, with the utmost benevolence. 'This is rather better than our ordinary, I believe?'
'Better, dear joy, and very, very much stronger – a healthy, roborative beverage,' said Stephen Maturin. ' 'Tis a neat Priorato. Priorato, from behind Tarragona.'
'Neat it is – most uncommon neat. But to go back to the prize: the main reason why I am so very happy about it is that it bloods the men, as one might say; and it gives me room to spread my elbows a little. We have a capital prize agent – is obliged to me – and I am persuaded he will advance us a hundred guineas. I can distribute sixty or seventy to the crew, and buy some powder at last. There could be nothing better for these men than kicking up a dust on shore, and for that they must have money.'
'But will they not run away? You have often spoken of desertion – the great evil of desertion'
'When they have prize-money due to them and a strong notion of more to come they will not desert Not in Mahon, at all events And then again, do you see, they will turn to exercising the great guns with a much better heart do not suppose I do not know how they have been muttering, for indeed I have driven them precious hard But now they will feel there is some point in it If I can get some powder (I dare not use up much more of the issue) we will shoot larbowlines against starbowhnes and watch against watch for a handsome prize; and what with that and what with emulation, I don't despair of making our gunnery at least as dangerous to others as it is to ourselves And then -God, how sleepy I am – we can set about our cruising in earnest. I have a plan for nightwork, lying close inshore but first I should tell you how I think to divide up our time. A week off Cape Creus, then back to Mahon for stores and water, particularly water. Then the approaches to Barcelona, and coastwise… coastwise… 'He yawned prodigiously: two sleepless nights and a pint of the Aimable Louise's Priorato were bearing him down with an irresistible warm soft delicious weight. 'Where was I? Oh, Barcelona. Then off Tarragona, Valencia… Valencia… water's the great trouble, of course.' He sat there blinking at the light, musing comfortably; and he heard Stephen's distant voice discoursing upon the coast of Spain – knew it well as far as Denia, could show him many an interesting remnant of Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Visigothic, Arabian occupation; the certainty of both kinds of egret in the marshes by Valencia; the odd dialect and bloody nature of the Valencianos; the very real possibility of flamingoes.
The Aimable Louise's ill wind had stirred up the shipping all over the western Mediterranean, driving it far from its intended courses; and not two hours after they had sent their prize away for Mahon, their first fine plump prize, they saw two more vessels, the one a barca-longa heading west and the other a brig to the north, apparently steering due south. The brig was the obvious choice and they set a course to cut her off, keeping closest watch upon her the while: she sailed on placidly enough under courses and topsails, while the Sophie set her royals and topgallants and hurried along on the larboard tack with the wind one point free, heeling so that her lee-channels were under the water; and as their courses converged the Sophies were astonished to see that the stranger was extraordinarily like their own vessel, even to the exaggerated steeve of her bowsprit.
'That would be a brig, no doubt,' said Stephen, standing at the rail next to Pullings, a big shy silent master's mate.
'Yes, sir, so she is; and more exactly like us nor ever you would credit, without you seen it. Do you please to look in my spy-glass, sir?' he asked, wiping it on his handkerchief.
'Thank you. An excellent glass – how clear. But I must venture to disagree. That ship, that brig, is a vile yellow, whereas we are black, with a white stripe.'
'Oh, that's nobbut paintwork, sir. Look at her quarterdeck, with its antic little break right aft, just like ourn -you don't see many of such, even in these waters. Look at the steeve of her bowsprit. And she must gauge the same as us, Thames measurement, within ten ton or less. They must have been off of the same draught, out of the same yard. But there are three rows of reefbands in her fore tops'l, so you can see she's only a merchantman, and not a man-of-war like we.'
'Are we going to take her?'
'I doubt that'd be too good to be true, sir: but maybe we shall.'
'The Spanish colours, Mr Babbington,' said Jack; and looking round Stephen saw the yellow and red break out at the peak.
'We are sailing under false colours,' whispered Stephen. 'Is not that very heinous?'
'Wicked, morally indefensible?'
'Bless you, sir, we always do that, at sea. But we'll show our own at the last minute, you may be sure, before ever we fire a gun. That's justice. Look at him, now – he's throwing out a Danish waft, and as like as not he's no more a Dane than my grandam.'
But the event proved Thomas Pullings wrong. 'Danish prig Clomer, sir,' said her master, an ancient bibulous Dane with pale, red-rimmed eyes, showing Jack his papers in the cabin. 'Captain Ole Bugge. Hides and peeswax from Dripoli to Parcelona.'
'Well, Captain,' said Jack, looking very sharply through the papers – the quite genuine papers – 'I'm sure you will forgive me for troubling you – we have to do it, as you know. Let me offer you a glass of this Priorato; they tell me it is good of its kind.'
'It is better than good, sir,' said the Dane, as the purple tide ran out, 'it is vonderful vine. Captain, may I ask you the favour of your positions?'
'You have come to the right shop for a position, Captain. We have the best navigator in the Mediterranean. Killick, pass the word for Mr Marshall. Mr Marshall, Captain B – the gentleman would like to know what we make our position.'
On deck the Clomers and the Sophies were gazing at one another's vessels with profound satisfaction, as at their own mirror-images: at first the Sophies had felt that the resemblance was something of a liberty on the part of the Danes, but they came round when their own yeoman of the sheets and their own shipmate Anderssen called out over the water to their fellow-countrymen, talking foreign as easy as kiss my hand, to the silent admiration of all beholders.
Jack saw Captain Bugge to the side with particular affability; a case of Priorato was handed down into the Danish boat; and leaning over the rail Jack called after him, 'I will let you know, next time we meet.'
Her captain had not reached the Clomer before the Sophie's yards were creaking round, to carry her as close-hauled as she would lie on her new course, north-east by north. 'Mr Watt,' observed Jack, gazing up, 'as soon as we have a moment to spare we must have cross-catharpings fore and aft; we are not pointing up as sharp as I could wish.'
'What's afoot?' asked the ship's company, when all sail was set and drawing just so, with everything on deck coiled down to Mr Dillon's satisfaction; and it was not long before the news passed along from the gun-room steward to the purser's steward and so to his mate, Jack-in-the-dust, who told the galley and thereby the rest of the brig – the news that the Dane, having a fellow-feeling for the Sophie because of her resemblance to his own vessel, and being gratified by
Jack's civility, had given word of a Frenchman no great way over the northern horizon, a deep-laden sloop with a patched mainsail that was bearing away for Agde.
Tack followed tack as the Sophie beat up into the freshening breeze, and on the fifth leg a scrap of white appeared in the north-north-east, too far and too steady for a distant gull. It was the French sloop, sure enough: from the Dane's description of her rig there was no doubt of that after the first half hour; but her behaviour was so strange that it was impossible to be wholly persuaded of it until she was lying tossing there under the Sophie's guns and the boats were going to and fro over the lane of sea, transferring the glum prisoners. In the first place she had apparently kept no look-out of any kind, and it was not until no more than a mile of water lay between them that she noticed her pursuer at all; and even then she hesitated, wavered, accepted the assurance of the tricolour flag and then rejected it, flying too slowly and too late, only to break out ten minutes later in a flurry of signals of surrender and waving them vehemently at the first warning shot.
The reasons for her behaviour were clear enough to James Dillon once he was aboard her, taking possession: the Citoyen Durand was laden with gunpowder – was so crammed with gunpowder that it overflowed her hold and stood in tarpaulined barrels on her deck; and her young master had taken his wife to sea. She was with child -her first – and the rough night, the chase and the dread of an explosion had brought on her labour. James was as stout-hearted as the next man, but the continuous groaning just behind the cabin-bulkhead and the awful hoarse, harsh, animal quality of the cries that broke out through the groaning, and their huge volume, terrified him; he gazed at the white-faced, distracted, tear-stained husband with a face as appalled as his.
Leaving Babbington in sole command he hurried back to the Sophie and explained the situation. At the word powder Jack's face lit up; but at the word baby he looked very blank.
'I am afraid the poor woman is dying,' said James.
'Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' said Jack hesitantly; and now that he could put a meaning to the remote, dreadful noise he heard it far more clearly. 'Ask the Doctor to come,' he said to a marine.
Now that the excitement of the chase was over, Stephen was at his usual post by the elm-tree pump, peering down its tube into the sunlit upper layers of the Mediterranean; and when they told him there was a woman in the prize, having a baby, he said, 'Aye? I dare say. I thought I recognized the sound,' and showed every sign of returning to his place.
'Surely you can do something about it?' said Jack.
'I am certain the poor woman is dying,' said James.
Stephen looked at them with his odd expressionless gaze and said, 'I will go across.' He went below, and Jack said, 'Well, that's in good hands, thank God. And you tell me all that deck cargo is powder too?'
'Yes, sir. The whole thing is mad.'
'Mr Day – Mr Day, there. Do you know the French marks, Mr Day?'
'Why, yes, sir. They are much the same as ours, only their best cylinder large grain has a white ring round the red : and their halves weigh but thirty-five pound.'
'How much have you room for, Mr Day?'
The gunner considered. 'Squeezing my bottom tier up tight, I might stow thirty-five or six, sir.'
'Make it so, then, Mr Day. There is a lot of damaged stuff aboard that sloop – I can see it from here – that we shall have to take away to prevent further spoiling. So you had better go across and set your hand upon the best. And we can do with her launch, too. Mr Dillon, we cannot entrust this floating magazine to a midshipman; you will have to take her into Mahon as soon as the powder is across. Take what men you think fit, and be so good as to send Dr Maturin back in her launch – we need one badly. God love us, what a terrible cry! I am truly sorry to inflict this upon you, Dillon, but you see how it is.'
'Just so, sir. I am to take the master of the sloop along with me, I presume? It would be inhuman to move him.'
'Oh, by all means, by all means. The poor fellow. What a – what a pretty kettle of fish.'
The little deadly barrels travelled across the intervening sea, rose up and vanished into the Sophie's maw; so did half a dozen melancholy Frenchmen, with their bags or sea-chests; but the usual festive atmosphere was lacking -the Sophies, even the family men, looked guilty, concerned, apprehensive; the dreadful unremitting shrieks went on and on; and when Stephen appeared at the rail to call out that he must stay aboard, Jack bowed to the obscure justice of this deprivation.
The Citoyen Durand ran smoothly through the darkness down towards Minorca, a steady breeze behind her; now that the screaming had stopped Dillon posted a reliable man at the helm, visited the little watch below in the galley and came down into the cabin. Stephen was washing, and the husband, shattered and destroyed, held the towel in his drooping hands.
'I hope… 'said James.
'Oh, yes: yes,' said Stephen deliberately, looking round at him. 'A perfectly straightforward delivery: just a little long, perhaps; but nothing out of the way. Now, my friend' – to the captain – 'these buckets would be best over the side; and then I recommend you to lie down for a while. Monsieur has a son,' he added.
'My best congratulations, sir,' said James. 'And my best wishes for Madame's prompt recovery.'
'Thank you, sir, thank you,' said the captain, his eyes brimming over again. 'I beg you to take a little something – to make yourselves quite at home.'
This they did, sitting each in a comfortable chair and eating away at the hill of cakes laid up against young hasty's christening in Agde next week; they sat there easily enough, and next door the poor young woman slept at last, her husband holding her hand and her crinkled pink baby snorting at her bosom. It was quiet below, wonderfully quiet and peaceful now; and it was quiet on deck with the following wind easing the sloop along at a steady six knots, and with the rigorous barking precision of a man-of-war reduced to an occasional mild 'How does she lie, Joe?' It was quiet; and in that dimly-lighted box they travelled through the night, cradled by the even swell: after a little while of this silence and this uninterrupted slow rhythmic heave they might have been anywhere on earth – alone in the world – in another world altogether. In the cabin their thoughts were far away, and Stephen for one no longer had any sense of movement to or from any particular point – little sense of motion, still less of the immediate present.
'It is only now,' he said in a low voice, 'that we have the opportunity of speaking to one another. I looked forward to this time with great impatience; and now that it is come, I find that in fact there is little to be said.'
'Perhaps nothing at all,' said James. 'I believe we understand each other perfectly.'
This was quite true; it was quite true as far as the heart of the matter was concerned; but nevertheless they talked all through their remaining hours of harboured privacy.
'I believe the last time I saw you was at Dr Emmet's,' said James, after a long, reflective pause.
'No. It was at Rathfarnham, with Edward Fitzgerald. I was going out by the summerhouse as you and Kenmare came in.'
'Rathfarnham? Yes: yes, of course. I remember now. It was just after the meeting of the Committee. I remember
You were intimate with Lord Edward, I believe?'
'We knew one another very well in Spain. In Ireland I saw less and less of him as time went on; he had friends I neither liked nor trusted, and I was always too moderate – far too moderate – for him. Though the dear knows I was full enough of zeal for humanity at large, full enough of republicanism in those days. Do you remember the test?'
'Which one?'
'The test that begins Are you straight?'
'lam.'
'How straight?'
'As straight as a rush.'
'Go on then .'
'In truth, in trust, in unity and liberty.'
'What have you got in your hand?'
'A green bough.'
'Where did it first grow?' 'In America.'
'Where did it bud?'
'In France.'
'Where are you going to plant it?'
'Nay, I forget what follows. It was not the test I took, you know. Far from it.'
'No, I am sure it was not. I did, however: the word liberty seemed to me to glow with meaning, in those days. But even then I was sceptical about unity – our society made such very strange bedfellows. Priests, deists, atheists and Presbyterians; visionary republicans, Utopists and men who merely disliked the Beresfords. You and your friends were all primarily for emancipation, as I recall.'
'Emancipation and reform. I for one had no notion of any republic; nor had my friends of the Committee, of course. With Ireland in her present state a republic would quickly become something little better than a democracy.
The genius of the country is quite opposed to a republic. A Catholic republic! How ludicrous.'
'Is it brandy in that case-bottle?'
'It is.'
'The answer to that last part of the test was In the crown of Great Britain, by the way. The glasses are just behind you. I know it was at Rathfarnham,' Stephen went on, 'for I had spent the whole of that afternoon trying to persuade him not to go on with his shatter-brained plans for the rising: I told him I was opposed to violence – always had been – and that even if I were not I should withdraw, were he to persist with such wild, visionary schemes – that they would be his own ruin, Pamela's ruin, the ruin of his cause and the ruin of God knows how many brave, devoted men. He looked at me with that sweet, troubled look, as though he were sorry for me, and he said he had to meet you and Kenmare. He had not understood me at all.'
'Have you any news of Lady Edward – of Pamela?'
'Only that she is in Hamburg and that the family looks after her.'
'She was the most beautiful woman that ever I saw, and the kindest. None so brave.'
'Aye,' thought Stephen, and stared into his brandy. 'That afternoon,' he said, 'I spent more spirit than ever I spent in my life. Even then I no longer cared for any cause or any theory of government on earth; I would not have lifted a finger for any nation's independence, fancied or real; and yet I had to reason with as much ardour as though I were filled with the same enthusiasm as in the first days of the Revolution, when we were all overflowing with virtue and love.'
'Why? Why did you have to speak so?'
'Because I had to convince him that his plans were disastrously foolish, that they were known to the Castle and that he was surrounded by traitors and informers. I reasoned as closely and cogently as ever I could – better than ever I thought I could – and he did not follow me at all. His attention wandered. "Look," says he, "there's a redbreast in that yew by the path." All he knew was that I was opposed to him, so he closed his mind; if, indeed, he was capable of following me, which perhaps he was not. Poor Edward! Straight as a rush; and so many of them around him were as crooked as men can well be – Reynolds, Corrigan, Davis
Oh, it was pitiful.'
'And would you indeed not lift a finger, even for the moderate aims?'
'I would not. With the revolution in France gone to pure loss I was already chilled beyond expression. And now, with what I saw in '98, on both sides, the wicked folly and the wicked brute cruelty, I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to ref уrm parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind – it is my own truth alone – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have -for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.'
'Patriotism will not do?'
'My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.'
'Yet you stopped Captain Aubrey playing Croppies lie down the other day.'
'Oh, I am not consistent, of course; particularly in little things. Who is? He did not know the meaning of the tune, you know. He has never been in Ireland at all, and he was in the West Indies at the time of the rising.'
'And I was at the Cape, thank God. Was it terrible?'
'Terrible? I cannot, by any possible energy of words, express to you the blundering, the delay, the murderous confusion and the stupidity of it all. It accomplished nothing; it delayed independence for a hundred years; it sowed hatred and violence; it spawned out a vile race of informers and things like Major Sirr. And, incidentally, it made us the prey of any chance blackmailing informer.' He paused. 'But as for that song, I acted as I did partly because it is disagreeable to me to listen to it and partly because there were several Irish sailors within hearing, and not one of them an Orangeman; and it would be a pity to have them hate him when nothing in the manner of insult was within his mind's reach.'
'You are very fond of him, I believe?'
'Am I? Yes; perhaps I am. I would not call him a gremial friend – I have not known him long enough – but I am very much attached to him. I am sorry that you are not.'
'I am sorry for it too. I came willing to be pleased. I had heard of him as wild and freakish, but a good seaman, and I was very willing to be pleased. But feelings are not to command.'
'No. But it is curious: at least it is curious to me, the mid-point, with esteem – indeed, more than esteem – for both of you. Are there particular lapses you reproach him with? If we were still eighteen I should say "What's wrong with Jack Aubrey?"
'And perhaps I should reply "Everything, since he has a command and I have not,"' said James, smiling. 'But come, now, I can hardly criticize your friend to your face.'
'Oh, he has faults, sure. I know he is intensely ambitious where his profession is at issue and impatient of any restraint. My concern was to know just what it was that offended you in him. Or is it merely non amo te, Sabidi?'
'Perhaps so: it is hard to say. He can be a very agreeable companion, of course, but there are times when he shows that particular beefy arrogant English insensibility… and there is certainly one thing that jars on me – his great eagerness for prizes. The sloop's discipline and training is more like that of a starving privateer than a King's ship. When we were chasing that miserable polacre he could not bring himself to leave the deck all night long – anyone would have thought we were after a man-of-war, with some honour at the end of the chase. And this prize here was scarcely clear of the Sophie before he was exercising the great guns again, roaring away with both broadsides.'
'Is a privateer a discreditable thing? I ask in pure ignorance.'
'Well, a privateer is there for a different motive altogether. A privateer does not fight for honour, but for gain. It is a mercenary. Profit is its raison d'кtre.'
'May not the exercising of the great guns have a more honourable end in view?'
'Oh, certainly. I may very well be unjust – jealous -wanting in generosity. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. And I willingly confess he is an excellent seaman.'
'Lord, James, we have known one another long enough to tell our minds freely, without any offence. Will you reach me the bottle?'
'Well, then,' said James, 'if I may speak as freely as though I were in an empty room, I will tell you this: I think his encouragement of that fellow Marshall is indecent, not to use a grosser word.'
'Do I follow you, now?'
'You know about the man?'
'What about the man?'
'That he is a paederast?'
'Maybe.'
'I have proof positive. I had it in Cagliari, if it had been necessary. And he is enamoured of Captain Aubrey -toils like a galley-slave – would holystone the quarter-deck if allowed – hounds the men with far more zeal than the bosun – anything for a smile from him.'
Stephen nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'But surely you do not think Jack Aubrey shares his tastes?'
'No. But I do think he is aware of them and that he encourages the man. Oh, this is a very foul, dirty way of speaking… I go too far. Perhaps I am drunk. We have nearly emptied the bottle.'
Stephen shrugged. 'No. But you are quite mistaken, you know. I can assure you, speaking in all sober earnest, that he has no notion of it. He is not very sharp in some ways; and in his simple view of the world, paederasts are dangerous only to powder-monkeys and choir-boys, or to those epicene creatures that are to be found in Mediterranean brothels. I made a circuitous attempt at enlightening him a little, but he looked very knowing and said, "Don't tell me about rears and vices; I have been in the Navy all my life."'
'Then surely he must be wanting a little in penetration?'
'James, I trust there was no mens rea in that remark?'
'I must go on deck,' said James, looking at his watch. He came back some time later, having seen the wheel relieved and having checked their course; he brought a gust of cool night air with him and sat in silence until it had dispersed in the gentle lamp-lit warmth. Stephen had opened another bottle.
'There are times when I am not altogether just,' said James, reaching for his glass. 'I am too touchy, I know; but sometimes, when you are surrounded with Proddies and you hear their silly, underbred cant, you fly out. And since you cannot fly out in one direction, you fly out in another. It is a continual tension, as you ought to know, if anyone.'
Stephen looked at him very attentively, but said nothing.
'You knew I was a Catholic?' said James.
'No,' said Stephen. 'I was aware that some of your family were, of course; but as for you… Do you not find it puts you in a difficult position?' he asked, hesitantly. 'With that oath… the penal laws…
'Not in the least,' said James. 'My mind is perfectly at ease, as far as that is concerned.'
'That is what you think, my poor friend,' said Stephen to himself, pouring out another glass to hide his expression.
For a moment it seemed that James Dillon might take this further, but he did not: some delicate balance changed, and now the talk ran on and on to friends they had shared and to delightful days they had spent together in what seemed such a very distant past. How many people they had known! How valuable, or amusing, or respectable some of them had been!
They talked their second bottle dry, and James went up on deck again.
He came down in half an hour, and as he stepped into the cabin he said, as though he were catching straight on to an interrupted conversation, 'And then, of course, there is that whole question of promotion. I will tell you, just for your secret ear alone and although it sounds odious, that I thought I should be given a command after that affair in the Dart; and being passed over does rankle cruelly.' He paused, and then asked, 'Who was it who was said to have earned more by his prick than his practice?'
'Selden. But in this instance I conceive the common gossip is altogether out; as I understand it, this was the ordinary operation of interest. Mark you, I make no claim of outstanding chastity – I merely say that in Jack Aubrey's case the consideration is irrelevant.'
'Well, be that as it may, I look for promotion: like every other sailor I value it very highly, so I tell you in all simplicity; and being under a prize-hunting captain is not the quickest path to it.'
'Well, I know nothing of nautical affairs: but I wonder, I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money – to mistake the real motives… To pay too much attention to mere words, and -,
'Surely to God you would never call me rich?'
'I have ridden over your land.'
'It's three-quarters of it mountain, and one quarter bog; and even if they were to pay their rent for the rest it would only be a few hundred a year – barely a thousand.'
'My heart bleeds for you. I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage. How does it arise? But to return – surely he is as brave a commander as you could wish, and as likely as any man to lead you to glorious and remarkable actions?'
'Would you guarantee his courage?'
'So here is the true gravamen at last,' thought Stephen, and he said, 'I would not; I do not know him well enough. But I should be astonished, astonished, if he were to prove shy. What makes you think he is?'
'I do not say he is. I should be very sorry to say anything against any man's courage without proof. But we should have had that galley. In another twenty minutes we could have boarded and carried her.'
'Oh? I know nothing of these things, and I was downstairs at the time; but I understood that the only prudent thing to do was to turn about, to protect the rest of the convoy.'
'Prudence is a great virtue, of course,' said James.
'Well. And promotion means a great deal to you, so?'
'Of course it does. There never was an officer worth a farthing that did not long to succeed and hoist his flag at last. But I can see in your eye that you think me inconsistent. Understand my position: I want no republic – I stand by settled, established institutions, and by authority so long as it is not tyranny. All I ask is an independent parliament that represents the responsible men of the kingdom and not merely a squalid parcel of place-men and place-seekers. Given that, I am perfectly happy with the English connexion, perfectly happy with the two kingdoms: I can drink the loyal toast without choking, I do assure you.'
'Why are you putting out the lamp?'
James smiled. 'It is dawn,' he said, nodding towards the grey, severe light in the cabin window. 'Shall we go on deck? We may have raised the high land of Minora by now, or we shall very soon; and I think I can promise you some of those birds the sailors call shearwaters if we lay her in towards the cliff of Fornells.'
Yet with one foot on the companion-ladder he turned and looked into Stephen's face. 'I cannot tell what possessed me to speak so rancorously,' he said, passing his hand over his forehead and looking both unhappy and bewildered. 'I do not think I have ever done so before. Have not expressed myself well – clumsy, inaccurate, not what I meant nor what I meant to say. We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth.'