Читать книгу HMS Surprise - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8

Chapter Two

To and fro, to and fro, from Cape Sicié to the Giens peninsula, wear ship and back again, all day long, week after week, month after month, whatever the weather; after the evening gun they stood out into the offing and at dawn they were back again, the inshore squadron of frigates watching Toulon, the eyes of the Mediterranean fleet, those line-of-battle ships whose topsails flecked the southern horizon, Nelson waiting for the French admiral to come out.

The mistral had been blowing for three days now and the sea showed more white than blue, with the off-shore wind cutting up little short waves that sent spray flying over the waist of the ship: the three frigates had reduced sail at noon, but even so they were making seven knots and heeling until their larboard chains were smothered in the foam.

The tediously familiar headland of Cape Sicié came closer and closer; in this sparkling clean air under the pure sky they could see the little white houses, carts creeping on the road up to the semaphore station and the batteries. Closer, almost within range of the high-perched forty-two pounders; and now the wind was coming in gusts off the high ground.

‘On deck, there,’ hailed the lookout at the mast-head. ‘Naiad’s showing a waft, sir.’

‘Hands wear ship,’ said the lieutenant of the watch, more from form than anything else, for not only did the Lively have a crew that had worked together for years, but also she had carried out this manoeuvre several hundred times in this very stretch of water and the order was scarcely needed. Routine had taken the edge off the Livelies’ zeal, but nevertheless the boatswain had to call out ‘Handsomely, handsomely, now, with that bleeding sheet’; for the crew had been brought to such a pitch of silent efficiency that the frigate ran the risk of darting her jib-boom over the taffrail of the Melpomene, her next ahead, whose talents and sailing qualities could not have recommended her anywhere.

However, round they went in succession, each wearing in the spot where her leader had turned; they hauled their wind and re-formed their rigid line, heading for Giens once more, Naiad, Melpomene, Lively.

‘I do hate this wearing in succession,’ said one thin midshipman to another thin midshipman, ‘It does not give a man a chance: nothing can you see, not a sausage, no not a sausage; nor yet a smell of one,’ he added, peering forward through the rigging and sails towards the gap between the peninsula and the island of Porquerolles.

‘Sausage,’ cried the other. ‘Oh, Butler, what an infernal bloody thing to say.’ He, too, leaned over the top of the hammocks, staring towards the passage; for at any moment now the Niobe might appear from her cruise, watering at Agincourt Sound and working back along the Italian coast, badgering the enemy and picking up what supplies she could find, and it would be the Lively’s turn next. ‘Sausage,’ he cried above the mistral, as he stared, ‘hot, crisp, squirting with juice as you bite ’em – bacon – mushrooms!’

‘Shut up, fat-arse,’ whispered his friend, with a vicious pinch. ‘The Lord is with us.’

The officer of the watch had moved away over to leeward at the clash of the Marine sentry’s salute; and a moment later Jack Aubrey stepped out of the cabin, muffled in a griego, with a telescope under his arm, and began to pace the quarterdeck, the holy windward side, sacred to the captain. From time to time he glanced up at the sails: a purely automatic glance – nothing called for comment, of course: she was a thoroughly efficient machine, working smoothly. For this kind of duty the Lively would function perfectly if he were to stay in his cot all day. No reproach was possible, even if he had felt as liverish as Lucifer after his fall, which was not the case; far from it; he and the men under his command had been in a state of general benignity these many weeks and months, in spite of the tedium of a close blockade, the hardest and most wearisome duty in the service; for although wealth may not bring happiness, the immediate prospect of it provides a wonderfully close imitation and last September they had captured one of the richest ships afloat. His glance, then, was filled with liking and approval; yet still it did not contain that ingenuous love with which he had gazed at his first command, the short, thick, unweatherly Sophie. The Lively was not really his ship; he was only in temporary command, a jobbing-captain until such time as her true owner, Captain Hamond, should return from his seat at Westminster, where he represented Coldbath Fields in the Whig interest; and although Jack prized and admired the frigate’s efficiency and her silent discipline – she could flash out a full suit of canvas with no more than the single quiet order ‘Make sail’, and do so in three minutes forty-two seconds – he could not get used to it. The Lively was a fine example, an admirable example, of the Whiggish state of mind at its best; and Jack was a Tory. He admired her, but it was with a detached admiration, as though he were in charge of a brother-officer’s wife, an elegant, chaste, unimaginative woman, running her life on scientific principles.

Cape Cépet lay broad on the beam, and slinging his telescope he hoisted himself into the ratlines – they sagged under his weight – and climbed grunting into the maintop. The topmen were expecting him, and they had arranged a studdingsail for him to sit on. ‘Thankee, Rowland,’ he said, ‘uncommon parky, hey? Hey?’ and sank down upon it with a final grunt, resting his glass on the aftermost upper deadeye of the topmast shrouds and training it on Cape Cépet: the signal-station leapt into view, bright and clear, and to its right the eastern half of the Grande Rade with five men-of-war in it, seventy-fours, three of them English. Hannibal, Swiftsure and Berwick: they were exercising their crews at reefing aboard the Hannibal, and quantities of people were creeping up the rigging of the Swiftsure, landmen under training, perhaps. The French nearly always had these captured ships in the outer Rade; they did it to annoy, and they always succeeded. Twice every day it vexed him to the heart, for every morning and every afternoon he went aloft to peer into the Rade. This he did partly out of professional conscience, although there was not the slightest likelihood of their coming out unless they had thick weather and such a gale of wind that the English fleet would be blown off station; and partly because it was some sort of exercise. He was growing fat again, but in any case he had no intention of getting out of the way of running up and down the rigging, as some heavy captains did: the feel of the shrouds under his hands, the give and spring of live rigging, the heave and swing on the roll as he came over into the top made him deeply happy.

The rest of the anchorage was coming into view, and with a frown Jack swung his glass to inspect the rival frigates: seven of them still, and only one had moved since yesterday. Beautiful ships: though in his opinion they over-raked their masts.

Now the moment was coming. The church tower was almost in line with the blue dome, and he focused with renewed attention. The land hardly seemed to move at all, but gradually the arms of the Petite Rade opened, and there was the inner harbour, a forest of masts, all with their yards across, all in apparent readiness to come out and fight. A vice-admiral’s flag, a rear-admiral’s, a commodore’s broad pennant: no change. The arms were closing; they glided imperceptibly together, and the Petite Rade was closed.

Jack shifted his aim until the Faro hill came into sight, then the hill behind it, and he searched the road for the little inn where he and Stephen and Captain Christy-Pallière had eaten and drunk such a capital dinner not so very long ago, together with another French sea-officer whose name he forgot. Precious hot then: precious cold now. Wonderful food then – Lord, how they had stuffed! – precious short commons now. At the thought of that meal his stomach gave a twinge: the Lively, though she considered herself the wealthiest ship on the station and conducted herself with a certain reserve towards the paupers in company, was as short of fresh provisions, tobacco, firewood and water as the rest of the fleet, and because of a murrain among the sheep and measles in the pigsty even her officers’ stores were being eked out with the wicked old salt horse of his ‘young gentleman’ days, while all hands had been eating ship’s biscuits for a great while now. There was a small shoulder of not altogether healthy mutton for Jack’s dinner: ‘Shall I invite the officer of the watch?’ he wondered. ‘It is some time since I had anyone to the cabin, apart from breakfast.’ It was some time, too, since he had spoken to anyone on a footing of real equality or with any free exchange of minds. His officers – or rather Captain Hamond’s officers, for Jack had had no hand in choosing or forming them – entertained him to dinner once a week in the gun-room, and he invited them quite often to the cabin, almost always breakfasting with the officer and midshipman of the morning watch; but these were never very cheerful occasions. The gentlemanly, but slightly Benthamite, gun-room were strict observers of the naval etiquette that prevented any subordinate from speaking to his captain without being spoken to first; and they had grown thoroughly used to Captain Hamond, to whose mind this was a congenial rigour. And then again they were a proud set of men – most of them could afford to be – and they had a horror of the ingratiating manoeuvres, the currying of favour that was to be seen in some ships, or any hint of it: once they had had an overpliable third lieutenant wished upon them, and they had obliged him to exchange into the Achilles within a couple of months. They carried this attitude pretty high, and without disliking their temporary commander in the very least – indeed they valued him exceedingly both as a seaman and a fighting captain – they unconsciously imposed an Olympian role upon him; and at times the silence in which he lived made him feel utterly forlorn. At times only, however, for he was not often idle; there were duties that even the most perfect first lieutenant could not take off his hands, and then again in the forenoon he supervised the midshipmen’s lessons in his cabin. They were a likeable set of youngsters, and even the Godlike presence of the captain, the severity of their schoolmaster, and the scrubbed, staid example of their elders could not repress their cheerfulness. Even hunger could not do so, and they had been eating rats this last month and more, rats caught in the bowels of the ship by the captain of the hold and laid out, neatly skinned, opened and cleaned, like tiny sheep, in the orlop, for sale at a price that rose week by week, to reach its present shocking rate of fivepence a knob.

Jack was fond of the young, and like many other captains he took great care of their professional and social education, of their allowances, and even of their morals; but his constancy at their lessons was not entirely disinterested. He had been a stupid boy at figures in his time, badly taught aboard, and although he was a natural-born seaman he had only managed to pass for lieutenant by feverish rote-learning, the interposition of Providence, and the presence of two friendly captains on the board. In spite of his dear friend Queenie’s patient explanations of tangents, secants and sines, he had never had a really firm grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry; his navigation had been a plain rule-of-thumb progress from A to B, plane-sailing at its plainest; but fortunately the Navy had always provided him, as it provided all other commanders, with a master learned in the art. Yet now, perhaps affected by the scientific, hydrographic atmosphere on the Lively, he studied the mathematics, and like some other late-developers he advanced at a great pace. The schoolmaster was an excellent teacher when he was sober, and whatever the midshipmen may have made of his lessons, Jack profited by them: in the evenings, after the watch was set, he would work lunars or read Grimble on Conic Sections with real pleasure, in the intervals between writing to Sophie and playing on his fiddle. ‘How amazed Stephen will be,’ he reflected. ‘How I shall come it the philosopher over him: and how I wish the old soul were here.’

But this question of whether he should invite Mr Randall to dinner was still in suspense, and he was about to decide it when the captain of the top coughed significantly. ‘Beg parding, your honour,’ he said, ‘but I think Naiad’s seen something.’ The Cockney voice came strangely from his yellow face and slanting eyes; but the Lively had been in Eastern waters for years and years, and her crew, yellow, brown, black and nominally white, had worked so long together that they all spoke with the accent of Limehouse Reach, Wapping or Deptford Yard.

High Bum was not the only man to have caught the flurry of movement on the deck of the next in line ahead. Mr Randall junior swarmed inwards from his spray-soaked post on the sprit-sail yardarm and ran skipping along the deck towards his messmates: his seven-year-old pipe could be heard in the top as he cried, ‘She’s rounding the point! She’s rounding the point!’

The Niobe appeared as though by magic from the midst of the overlapping Hyères islands, tearing along under courses and topsails and throwing a fine white bow-wave. She might be bringing something in the way of food, something in the way of prizes (all the frigates had agreed to share), and in any case she meant a break from this extreme monotony; she was heartily welcome. ‘And here’s the Weasel,’ piped the infant child.

The Weasel was a big cutter, the messenger that plied all too rarely from the fleet to the inshore frigates. She too would almost certainly be bringing stores, news of the outside world – what a happy combination!

The cutter was under a perfect cloud of sail, heeling over at forty-five degrees; and the squadron, hove-to off Giens, cheered as they saw her fetch the Niobe’s wake and then cross to windward, with the obvious intention of making a race of it. Topgallants and an outer jib broke out aboard the frigate, but the fore-topgallant split as it was sheeted home, and before the agitated Niobes could bunt up the Weasel was on her starboard beam, wronging her cruelly, taking the wind right out of her sails. The Niobe’s bow-wave diminished and the cutter shot past, cheering madly, to the delight of one and all. She had the Lively’s number flying – orders aboard for Lively – and she came down the line, rounding to under the frigate’s lee, her enormous mainsail flapping, cracking like a shooting-gallery. But she made no motion towards launching a boat: lay there with her captain bawling through the wind for a line.

‘No stores?’ thought Jack in the top, frowning. ‘Damn this.’ He put a leg over the side, feeling for the futtockshrouds: but someone had seen a familiar purple bag handing up through the cutter’s main-hatch, and there was a cry of ‘Post’. At this word Jack leant out for the backstay and shot down on deck like a midshipman, forgetting his dignity and laddering his fine white stockings. He stood within a yard of the quartermasters and the mate of the watch as the two bags came jerking across the water. ‘Bear a hand, bear a hand there,’ he called out; and when at last the bags were inboard he had to make a strong effort to control his impatience while the midshipman passed them solemnly to Mr Randall, and while Mr Randall brought them across the quarterdeck, took off his hat, and said, ‘Weasel from the flag, sir, if you please.’

‘Thank you, Mr Randall,’ said Jack, carrying them with a fair show of deliberation into his cabin. Here he raped the seals of the post-bag with furious haste, whipped off the cord and riffled through the letters: three covers directed to Captain Aubrey, H.M.S. Lively, in Sophie’s round but decided hand, fat letters, triple at the very least. He thrust them into his pocket, and smiling he turned to the little official bag, or satchel, opened the tarred canvas, the oiled-silk inner envelope and then the small cover containing his orders, read them, pursed his lips and read them again. ‘Hallows,’ he called. ‘Pass the word for Mr Randall and the master. Here, letters to the purser for distribution. Ah, Mr Randall, signal Naiad, if you please – permission to part company. Mr Norrey, be so good as to lay me a course for Calvette.’

For once there was no violent hurry; for once that ‘jading impression of haste, of losing not a minute, forsooth’ of which Stephen had complained so often, was absent. This was the season of almost uninterrupted northerly winds in the western Mediterranean, of the mistral, the gargoulenc and the tramontane, all standing fair for Minorca and the Lively’s rendezvous; but it was important not to arrive off the island too soon, not to stand off and on arousing suspicion; and as Jack’s orders, with their general instructions ‘to disturb the enemy’s shipping, installations and communications’ allowed him a great deal of latitude, the frigate was now stretching away across the Gulf of Lyons for the coast of Languedoc, with as much sail as she could bear and her lee rail vanishing from time to time under the racing white water. The morning’s gunnery practice – broadside after broadside into the unopposing sea – and now this glorious rushing speed in the brilliant sun had done away with the cross looks and murmurs of discontent of the day before – no stores and no cruise; these damned orders had cheated them of their little cruise at the very moment they had earned it, and they cursed the wretched Weasel for her ill-timed antics, her silly cracking-on, her passion for showing away, so typical of those unrated buggers. ‘Was she had come along like a Christian not a Turk, we should have been gone halfway to Elba,’ said Java Dick. But this was yesterday, and now brisk exercise, quick forgetfulness, the possibility of something charming over every fresh mile of the opening horizon, and above all the comfortable pervading sense of wealth tomorrow, had restored the Lively’s complacency. Her captain felt it as he took a last turn on deck before going into his cabin to receive his guests, and he felt it with a certain twinge of emotion, difficult to define: it was not envy, since he was wealthier than any group of them put together, wealthier in posse, he added, with a habitual crossing of his fingers. Yet it was envy, too: they had a ship, they were part of a tightly-knit community. They had a ship and he had not. Yet not exactly envy, not as who should say envy … fine definitions fled down the wind, as the glass turned, the Marine went forward to strike four bells, and the midshipman of the watch heaved the log. He hurried into the great cabin, glanced at the long table laid athwartships, his silver plates blazing in the sun and sending up more suns to join the reflected ripple of the sea on the deckhead (how long would the solid metal withstand that degree of polishing?), glasses, plates, bowls, all fast and trim in their fiddles, the steward and his mates standing there by the decanters, looking wooden. ‘All a-tanto, Killick?’ he said.

‘Stock and fluke, sir,’ said his steward, looking beyond him and signalling with an elegant jerk of his chin.

‘You are very welcome, gentlemen,’ said Jack, turning in the direction of the chin. ‘Mr Simmons, please to take the end of the table; Mr Carew, if you will sit – easy, easy.’ The chaplain, caught off his balance by a lee-lurch, shot into his seat with such force as almost to drive it through the deck. ‘Lord Garron here; Mr Fielding and Mr Dashwood, pray be so good,’ – waving to their places. ‘Now even before we begin,’ he went on, as the soup made its perilous way across the cabin, ‘I apologise for this dinner. With the best will in the world – allow me, sir,’ – extracting the parson’s wig from the tureen and helping him to a ladle – ‘Killick, a nightcap for Mr Carew, swab this, and pass the word for the midshipman of the watch. Oh, Mr Butler, my compliments to Mr Norrey, and I believe we may brail up the spanker during dinner. With the best will in the world, I say, it can be but a Barmecide feast.’ That was pretty good, and he looked modestly down but it occurred to him that the Barmecides were not remarkable for serving fresh meat to their guests, and there, swimming in the chaplain’s bowl, was the unmistakable form of a bargeman, the larger of the reptiles that crawled from old biscuit, the smooth one with the black head and the oddly cold taste – the soup, of course, had been thickened with biscuit-crumbs to counteract the roll. The chaplain had not been long at sea; he might not know that there was no harm in the bargeman, nothing of the common weevil’s bitterness; and it might put him off his food. ‘Killick, another plate for Mr Carew: there is a hair in his soup. Barmecide … But I particularly wished to invite you, since this is probably the last time I shall have the honour. We are bound for Gibraltar, by way of Minorca; and at Gibraltar Captain Hamond will return to the ship.’ Exclamations of surprise, pleasure, civilly mixed with regret. ‘And since my orders require me to harry the enemy installations along the coast, as well as his shipping, of course, I do not suppose we shall have much leisure for dining once we have raised Cape Gooseberry. How I hope we shall find something worthy of the Lively! I should be sorry to hand her over without at least a small sprig of laurel on her bows, or whatever is the proper place for laurels.’

‘Does laurel grow along this coast, sir?’ asked the chaplain. ‘Wild laurel? I had always imagined it to be Greek. I do not know the Mediterranean, however, apart from books; and as far as I recall the ancients do not notice the coast of Languedoc.’

‘Why, it has been gathered there, sir, I believe,’ said Jack. ‘And it is said to go uncommon well with fish. A leaf or two gives a haut relievo, but more is deadly poison, I am told.’

General considerations upon fish, a wholesome meat, though disliked by fishermen; Dover soles commended; porpoises, frogs, puffins rated as fish for religious purposes by Papists; swans, whales and sturgeon, fish royal; an anecdote of a bad oyster eaten by Mr Simmons at the Lord Mayor’s banquet.

‘Now this fish,’ said Jack, as a tunny replaced the soup-tureen, ‘is the only dish I can heartily recommend: he was caught over the side by that Chinaman in your division, Mr Fielding. The short one. Not Low Bum, nor High Bum, nor Jelly-belly.’

‘John Satisfaction, sir?’

‘That’s the man. A most ingenious, cheerful fellow, and handy; he spun a long yarn with hairs from his messmates’ pigtails and baited the hook with a scrap of pork-rind shaped like a fish, and so caught him. What is more, we have a decent bottle of wine to go with him. Not that I claim any credit for the wine, mark you; it was Dr Maturin that had the choosing of it – he understands these things – grows wine himself. By the bye, we shall touch at Minorca to pick him up.’

They should be delighted to see him again – hoped he was very well – looked forward much to the meeting. ‘Minorca, sir?’ cried the chaplain, however, having mulled over it. ‘But did we not give Minorca back to the Spaniards? Is it not Spanish now?’

‘Why, yes, so it is,’ said Jack. ‘I dare say he has a pass to travel: he has estates in those parts.’

‘The Spaniards are far more civilised than the French in this war, as far as travel is concerned,’ observed Lord Garron. ‘A friend of mine, a Catholic, had leave to go from Santander to St James of Compostella because of a vow – no trouble at all – travelled as a private gentleman, no escort, nothing. And even the French are not so bad when it comes to men of learning. I saw in The Times the Weasel brought that a scientific cove from Birmingham had gone over to Paris to receive a prize from their Institute. It is your scientific chaps who are the ones for travelling, war or no war; and I believe, sir, that Dr Maturin is a genuine smasher in the scientific line?’

‘Oh indeed he is,’ cried Jack. ‘A sort of Admiral Crichton – whip your leg off in a moment, tell you the Latin name of anything that moves,’ – his eye caught a brisk yellow weevil hurrying across the table-cloth – ‘speaks languages like a walking Tower of Babel, all except ours. Dear Lord,’ he said, laughing heartily, ‘to this day I don’t believe he knows the odds between port and starboard. Suppose we drink his health?’

‘With all my heart, sir,’ cried the first lieutenant, with a conscious look at his shipmates, all of whom shared it more or less, as Jack had noticed at their first appearance in the cabin. ‘But if you will allow me – The Times, sir, that Garron refers to, had a far, far more interesting announcement – a piece of news that filled the gun-room, which has the liveliest recollection of Miss Williams, with unbounded enthusiasm. Sir, may I offer you our heartiest congratulations and wish you joy from all of us, and suggest that there is one toast that should take precedence even over Dr Maturin?’

Lively, at sea Friday, 18th

Sweetheart,

We drank your health with three times three on Monday; for the fleet tender brought us orders while we were polishing Cape Sicié, together with the post and your three dear letters, which quite made up for our being diddled out of our cruise. And unknown to me it also brought a copy of The Times with our announcement in it; which I had not yet seen, even.

I had invited most of the gun-room to dinner, and that good fellow Simmons brought it out, desiring to drink your health and happiness and saying the handsomest things about you – they had the liveliest recollection of Miss Williams in the Channel, all too short, were your most devoted, etc., very well put. I went as red as a new-painted tompion and hung my head like a maiden, and upon my honour I was near-hand blubbering like one, I so longed for you to be by me in this cabin again – it brought it back so clear. And he went on to say he was authorised by the gun-room to ask, should you prefer a tea-pot or a coffee-pot, with a suitable inscription? Drinking your health recovered me, and I said I thought a coffee-pot, begging the inscription might say that the Lively preserved the liveliest memory. That was pretty well received, and even the parson (a dull dog) laughed hearty in time, when the bonne mot was explained to him.

Then that night, standing in with a fine topgallantsail breeze, we raised Cape Gooseberry and bore away for the signal-station: we landed a couple of miles from it and proceeded across the dunes to take it from behind, for just as I suspected its two twelve-pounders were so placed that they could only fire out to sea or at the most sweep 75° of the shore, if traversed. It was a long grind, with the loose sand flying in the wind they always have in these parts filling our eyes and noses and getting into the locks of our pistols. The parson says that the Ancients did not notice this coast; and the Ancients knew what they were about, deep old files – one infernal dust-storm after another. But, however, we got there at last, steering by compass, without their smoking us, gave a cheer and carried the place directly. The Frenchmen left as we came in, all except a little ensign, who fought like a hero until Bonden collared him from behind, when he burst into tears and flung down his sword. We spiked the guns, destroyed the semaphore, blew up the magazine and hurried back to the boats, which had pulled along, carrying their signal-books with us. It was a neat piece of work, though slow: if we had had to reckon with tides, which there are none of here, you know, we should have been sadly out. The Livelies are not used to this sort of caper, but some of them shape well, and they all have willing minds.

The little officer was still in a great passion when we got him aboard. We should never have dared to show our faces, says he, had the Diomède still been on the coast; his brother was aboard her, and she would have blown us out of the water; someone must have told us – there were traitors about and he had been betrayed. He said something to the effect that she had gone down to Port-Vendres three days or three hours before, but he spoke so quick we could not be certain – no English, of course. Then, something of a cross-sea getting up as we made our offing, he spoke no more, poor lad: piped down altogether, sick as a dog.

The Diomède is one of their heavy forty-gun eighteen-pounder frigates, just such a meeting as I have been longing for and do long for ever more now, because – don’t think badly of me sweetheart – I must give up the command of this ship in a few days’ time, and this is my last chance to distinguish myself and earn another; and as anyone will tell you, a ship is as necessary to a sailor as a wife, in war-time. Not at once, of course, but well before everything is over. So we bore away for Port-Vendres ( you will find it on the map, down in the bottom right-hand corner of France, where the mountains run down to the sea, just before Spain) picking up a couple of fishing-boats on the way and raising Cape Béar a little after sunset, with the light still on the mountains behind the town. We bought the barca-longas’ fish and promised them their boats again, but they were very glum, and we could not get anything out of them – ‘Was the Diomède in Port-Vendres? – Yes: perhaps. – Was she gone for Barcelona? – Well, maybe. – Were they a pack of Tom Fools, that did not understand French or Spanish? – Yes, Monsieur’ – spreading their hands to show they were only Jack-Puddings, and sorry for it. And the young ensign, on being applied to, turns haughty – amazed that a British officer should so far forget himself as to expect him to help in the interrogation of prisoners; and a piece about Honneur and Patier, which would have been uncommon edifying, I dare say, if we could have understood it all.

So I sent Randall in one of the barca-longas to look into the port. It is a long harbour with a dog-leg in it and a precious narrow mouth protected by a broad mole and two batteries, one on each side, and another of 24-pounders high up on Béar: a tricky piece of navigation, to take a ship in or out with their infernal tramontane blowing right across the narrow mouth, but an excellent sheltered harbour inside with deep water up to the quays. He came back; had seen a fair amount of shipping inside, with a big square-rigged vessel at the far end; could not be sure it was the Diomède – two boats rowing guard and the dark of the moon – but it was likely.

Not to bore you with the details, dear, dear Sophie, we laid out five hawsers an-end with our best bower firm in gritty ooze to warp the frigate out in case the high battery should knock any spars away, stood in before dawn with a moderate NNE breeze and began hammering the batteries guarding the entrance. Then when there was plenty of light, and a brilliant day it was too, we sent all the ships’ boys and such away in the boats, wearing the Marines’ red coats, pulling up the coast to a village round the next headland; and as I expected, all the horse-soldiers, a couple of troops of ’em, went pounding along the winding coast road (the only one) to stop them landing. But before daylight we had sent off the barcalongas, crammed with men under hatches, to the other side of Béar, right inshore; and at the signal they dashed for the land close-hauled (these lateens lie up amazingly), landed at a little beach this side of the cape, jumped round to the back of the southern battery, took it, turned its guns on the other over the water and knocked it out, or what the frigate had left of it. By now our boats had come flying back and we jumped in; and while the frigate kept up a continual fire on the coast road to keep the soldiers from coming back, we pulled as fast as we could for the harbour. I had great hopes of cutting her out, but alas she was not the Diomède at all – only a hulking great store-ship called the Dromadaire. She gave no real trouble, and a party took her down the harbour under topsails; but then an unlucky gust coming off the mountains and being an unweatherly awkward griping beast, very much by the head, she stuck fast in the harbour-mouth and bilged directly, on the mole. So we burnt her to the water-line, set fire to everything else except the fishing-boats, blew up the military works on either side with their own powder, and collected all our people: Killick had spent part of his time shopping, and he brought soft tack, fresh milk, butter, coffee, and as many eggs as he could get into his hat. The Livelies behaved well – no breaking into wine-shops – and it was pretty to see the Marines formed on the quay, as trimly squared as at divisions, although indeed they looked pitiful and lost in checkered shirts and seamen’s frocks. We returned to the boats, all sober and correct, and proceeded to the frigate.

But now the fort up on Cape Béar was playing on the frigate, so she had warped out; and a couple of gunboats came down the coast to get between us and her. They were peppering us with grape from their 18-pounders, and there was nothing for it but to close them; which we did, and I have never been so surprised in my life as when I saw my launch’s crew just as we were about to board the nearest. As you know, they are mostly Chinamen or Malays – a quiet civil well-behaved set of men. One half of ’em dived straight into the sea and the rest crouched low against the gunwale. Only Bonden and Killick and young Butler and I gave something of a cheer as we came alongside, and I said to myself, ‘Jack, you’re laid by the lee; you have gone along with a set of fellows that won’t follow you.’ However, there was nothing for it, so we gave our sickly cheer and jumped aboard.

He paused, the ink drying on his pen: the impression was still immensely strong – the Chinese swarming over the side at the last second to avoid the musketry, silently tackling their men in pairs, one tripping him up, ignoring blows, the other cutting his throat to the bone, instantly leaving him for the next – systematic, efficient, working from aft forward, with nothing but a few falsetto cries of direction: no fury, no hot rage. And immediately after the first assault, the Javamen shooting up the other side, having dived under the keel, their wet brown hands gripping the rail all along the gunboat’s length: Frenchmen shrieking, running up and down the slippery deck, the great lateen flapping to and fro; and still that silent close-work, knife alone, and cords – a terrible quiet eagerness. His own opponent in the bows, a thickset determined seaman in a woollen cap, going over the side at last, the water clouding red over him. Himself shouting ‘Belay that sheet, there. Down with her helm. Prisoners to the fore-hatch,’ and Bonden’s shocked reply. ‘There ain’t no prisoners, sir.’ And then the deck, bright, bright red in the sun: the Chinamen squatting in pairs, methodically, quickly stripping the dead, the Malays piling the heads in neat heaps like round-shot, and one routing in the belly of a corpse. Two men at the wheel already, their spoil next to them in a bundle: the sheet properly belayed. He had seen some ugly sights – the slaughter-house of a seventy-four during a hard-fought fleet engagement, boardings by the dozen, the bay of Aboukir after the Orion blew up – but he felt his stomach close and heave: the taking was professional, as professional as anything could be, and it sickened him with his trade. A strong impression: but how to convey it when you are no great hand with a pen? In the lamplight he stared at the gash in his forearm, fresh blood still oozing through the bandage, and reflected; all at once it occurred to him that of course he had not the slightest wish to convey it; nor anything like it. As far as dear Sophie was concerned life at sea was to be – why, not exactly an eternal picnic, but something not altogether unlike; occasional hardships, to be sure (shortage of coffee, fresh milk, vegetables), and guns going off now and then, and a clash of swords, but without any real people getting hurt: those that happened to die did so instantly, from wounds that could not be seen; they were only figures in the casualty-list. He dipped his pen and went on.

But I was mistaken; they boarded over both sides, behaved remarkably, and the work was over in a few minutes. The other gunboat sheered off as soon as the Lively, shooting very neat with her bow guns, sent a couple of balls over her. So we took the boats in tow, joined the frigate, made sail in double-quick time, recovered our hawsers, and stood out to sea, steering ESE½E; for I am afraid we cannot drop down to Barcelona after the Diomède, as that would get us far to the leeward of Minorca and I might be late for my rendezvous, which would never do. As it is, we have time and to spare, and expect to raise Fornells at dawn.

Dearest Sophie, you will forgive these blots, I trust; the ship is skipping about on a short cross-sea as we lie hove-to, and most of the day I have spent trying to be in three places at once if not more. You will say I ought not to have gone ashore at Port-Vendres, and that it was selfish and unfeeling to Simmons; and indeed generally speaking a captain should leave these things to his first lieutenant – it is his great chance for distinguishing himself. But I could not quite tell how they would behave, do you see? Not that I doubted their conduct, but it seemed to me they were perhaps the kind of men who would fight best in a defensive battle or a regular fleet action – that perhaps they lacked the speed and dash for this sort of thing, for want of practice – they have done no cutting-out. That is why I carried it out in broad daylight, it being easier to see what goes wrong; and glad I am I did, too, for it was nip and tuck at moments. Upon the whole they all behaved well – the Marines did wonders, as they always do – but once or twice things might have taken an awkward turn. The ship was hulled in a few places, her foremast wounded in the hounds, her cross-jack yardarm carried away, and her rigging cut up a little; but she could fight an action tomorrow, and our losses were very slight, as you will see from the public letter. Her captain suffered from nothing but extreme apprehension for his personal safety and the total loss of his breakfast-cup, shattered in being struck down into the hold on clearing for action.

But I promise not to do so again; and this is a promise I dare say Fate will help me keep, for if this wind holds, I should be in Gibraltar in a few days, with no ship to do it from.

Do it from, he wrote again; and leaning his head on his arms he went fast asleep.

‘Fornells one point to the starboard bow, sir,’ said the first lieutenant.

‘Very good,’ said Jack in a low voice. His head was aching as though it might split and he was filled with gloom which so often came after an action. ‘Keep her standing off and on. Is the gunboat cleaned up yet?’

‘No, sir. I am afraid she is not,’ said Simmons.

Jack said nothing. Simmons had had a hard day yesterday, barking his shins cruelly as he ran up the stone steps of Port-Vendres quay, and naturally he was less active; but even so Jack was a little surprised. He walked over to the side and looked down into their prize: no, she most certainly had not been cleaned. The severed hand that he had last seen bright red was now blackish brown and shrunken – you would have said a huge dead spider. He turned away, looked aloft at the boatswain and his party in the rigging, over the other side at the carpenter and his mates at work on a shot-hole, and with what he meant to be a smile he said, ‘Well, first things first. Perhaps we shall be able to send her away for Gibraltar this evening. I should like to have a thorough look at her first, however.’ This was the first time he had ever had to reproach Simmons even by implication, and the poor man took it very hard; he hobbled along, just keeping pace with his captain, his face so concerned that Jack was about to utter some softening remark when Killick appeared again.

‘Coffee’s up, sir,’ he said crossly; and as Jack hurried into his cabin he heard the words ‘stone cold now – on the table since six bells – told ’im again and again – enough trouble to get it, and now it’s left to go cold.’ They seemed to be addressed to the Marine sentry, whose look of shocked horror, of refusal to hear or participate in any way, was in exact proportion to the respect, even to the awe, in which Jack was held in the ship.

In point of fact the coffee was still so hot that it almost burnt his mouth. ‘Prime coffee, Killick,’ he said, after the first pot. A surly grunt, and without turning round Killick said, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting another ’ole pot, sir.’

Hot and strong, how well it went down! A pleasurable activity began to creep into his dull, torpid mind. He hummed a piece of Figaro, breaking off to butter a fresh piece of toast. Killick was a cross-grained bastard, who supposed that if he sprinkled his discourse with a good many sirs, the words in between did not signify: but still he had procured this coffee, these eggs, this butter, this soft tack, on shore and had put them on the table the morning after a hot engagement – ship still cleared for action and the galley knocked sideways by the fire from Cape Béar. Jack had known Killick ever since his first command, and as he had risen in rank so Killick’s sullen independence had increased; he was angrier than usual now because Jack had wrecked his number three uniform and lost one of his gloves: ‘Coat torn in five places – cutlass slash in the forearm which how can I ever darn that? Bullet ’ole all singed, never get the powder-marks out. Breeches all a-hoo, and all this nasty blood everywhere, like you’d been a-wallowing in a lay-stall, sir. What Miss would say, I don’t know, sir. God strike me blind. Epaulette ’acked, fair ’acked to pieces. ( Jesus, what a life.)’

Outside he could hear pumps, the hose carrying across, and the cry of ‘Wring and pass, wring and pass,’ that meant swabs were going aboard the gunboats; and presently, after Killick had displayed his yesterday’s uniform again, with a detailed reminder of its cost, Mr Simmons sent to ask whether he had a moment.

‘Dear me,’ thought Jack, ‘was I so very unpleasant and forbidding? Ask him to step in. Come in, come in, Mr Simmons; sit down and have a cup of coffee.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Simmons, casting a reconnoitring look at him. ‘Wonderful odour, grateful to the mind. I ventured to disturb you, sir, because Garron, going through the cabin of the gunboat, found this in a drawer. I have not your command of French, sir, but glancing through I thought you ought to see it at once.’ He passed a broad flat book, its covers made of sheet-lead.

‘Hey, hey!’ cried Jack, with a bright and lively eye. ‘Here’s a palm in Gilead, by God – private signals – code by numbers – lights – recognition in fog – Spanish and other allied signals. What does bannière de partance mean, do you think? Pavillon de beaupré, that’s a jack. Misaine’s the foremast, though you might not think it. Hunes de perroquet? Well, damn the hunes de perroquet, the pictures are clear enough. Charming, ain’t they?’ He turned back to the front. ‘Valid until the twenty-fifth. They change with the moon, I suppose. I hope we may profit by it – a little treasure while it lasts. How do you come along with the gunboat?’

‘We are pretty forward, sir. She will be ready for you as soon as her decks are dry.’ There was a superstition in the Navy that damp was mortal to superior officers and that its malignant effects increased with rank; few first lieutenants turned out before the dawn washing of the decks was almost finished, and no commander or post-captain until they had been swabbed, squeegeed and flogged dry. The gunboat was being flogged at this moment.

‘I had thought of sending her down to Gibraltar with young Butler, a responsible petty-officer or two, and the crew of the launch. He did very well – pistolled her captain – and so did they, in their heathen fashion. The command would do him good. Have you any observations to offer, Mr Simmons?’ he asked, seeing the lieutenant’s face.

‘Well, sir, since you are so good as to ask me, might I suggest another crew? I say nothing whatsoever against these men – quiet, attentive, sober, give no trouble, never brought to the gangway – but we took the Chinamen out of an armed junk with no cargo, almost certainly a pirate, and the Malays out of a proa of the same persuasion, and I feel that if they were sent away, they might be tempted to fall to their old ways. If we had found a scrap of evidence, we should have strung ’em up. We had the yardarm rigged, but Captain Hamond, being a magistrate at home, had scruples about evidence. There was some rumour of their having ate it.’

‘Pirates? I see, I see. That explains a great deal. Yes, yes; of course. Are you sure?’

‘I have no doubt of it myself, both from the circumstances and from remarks that they have let fall since. Every second vessel is a pirate in those seas, or will be if occasion offers, right round from the Persian Gulf to Borneo. But they look upon things differently there, and to tell you the truth, I should be loath to see High Bum or John Satisfaction swinging in a noose now; they have improved wonderfully since they came among us; they have given up praying to images and spitting on deck, and they listen to the tracts Mr Carew reads them with proper respect.’

‘Oh, now, there’s no question,’ cried Jack. ‘If the Judge Advocate of the Fleet were to tell me to hang an able seaman, let alone the captain of the maintop, I should tell him to – I should decline. But, as you say, we must not lead them into temptation. It was only a passing thought; she might just as well stay in company. Indeed, it would be better. Mr Butler shall have her, though; pray be so good as to pick a suitable crew.’

The gunboat stayed in company, and at dusk the Lively’s launch pulled round under her stern on its way inshore, towards the dark loom of the island. Mr Butler, pacing his own quarterdeck, ordered the salute in a voice that started deep and shot up into a strangled, blushing squeak, his first experience of the anguish of command.

Jack, wrapped in a boat-cloak, with a dark-lantern between his knees, sat in the stern-sheets, filled with pleasurable anticipation. He had not seen Stephen Maturin for a vast stretch of time, made even longer by the grinding monotony of the blockade: how lonely he had been for the want of that harsh, unpleasant voice! Two hundred and fifty-nine men living in promiscuity, extreme promiscuity for the lower-deck, and the two hundred and sixtieth a hermit: of course it was the common lot of captains, it was the naval condition, and like all other lieutenants he had strained every nerve to reach this stark isolation; but admitting the fact made precious little odds to what it felt like. No consolation in philosophy. Stephen would have seen Sophie only a few weeks ago, perhaps even less; he would certainly have messages from her, possibly a letter. He put his hand secretly to the crinkle in his bosom, and lapsed into a reverie. A moderate following sea heaved the launch in towards the land; with the rhythm of the waves and the long even pull and creak of the oars he dozed, smiling in his almost sleep.

He knew the creek well, as indeed he knew most of the island, having been stationed there when it was a British possession; it was called Cala Blau, and he and Stephen had often come over from Port Mahon to watch a pair of red-legged falcons that had their nest on the cliff above.

He recognised it at once when Bonden, his coxswain, looked up from the glowing compass and gave a low order, changing course a trifle. There was the curious peaked rock, the ruined chapel on the skyline, the even blacker place low on the cliff-face that was in fact a cave where monk-seals bred. ‘Lay on your oars,’ he said softly, and flashed the dark-lantern towards the shore, staring through the darkness. No answering light. But that did not worry him. ‘Give way,’ he said, and as the oars dipped he held his watch to the light. They had timed it well: ten minutes to go. Not that Stephen had, or by his nature ever could have, a naval sense of time; and in any event this was only the first of the four days of rendezvous.

Looking eastwards he saw the first stars of the Pleiades on the clear horizon; once before he had fetched Stephen from a lonely beach when the stars were just so. The launch lay gently pitching, kept just stern-on by a touch of the oars. Now the Pleiades had heaved clear, the whole tight constellation. He signalled again. ‘Nothing more likely than he cannot strike a light,’ he thought, still without any apprehension. ‘In any case, I should like to walk there again; and I shall leave him a private sign.’ ‘Run her in, Bonden,’ he said. ‘Handsomely, handsomely. No noise at all.’

The boat slipped over the black, starlit water, pausing twice again to listen: once they heard the snort of a seal breaking surface, then nothing until the sand grated under her bows.

Up and down the water-line of the half-moon beach, with his hands behind his back, turning over various private marks that might make Stephen smile if he missed this first rendezvous: some degree of tension, to be sure, but none of the devouring anxiety of that first night long ago, south of Palamós, when he had had no idea of his friend’s capabilities.

Saturn came up behind the Pleiades; up and up, nearly ten degrees from the edge of the sea. He heard stones rattle on the cliff-path above. With a lift of his heart he looked up, picked out the form moving there, and whistled low Deh vieni, non tardar.

No reply for a moment, then a voice from half-way up, ‘Captain Melbury?’

Jack stood behind a rock, took a pistol from his belt and cocked it. ‘Come down,’ he said pleasantly; and directing his voice into the cave, ‘Bonden, pull out.’

‘Where are you?’ whispered the voice at the foot of the cliff.

When Jack was certain that there was no movement on the path above he stepped from the rock, walked over the sand, and shone his light on a man in a brown cloak, an olive-faced man with a fixed, wary expression, exaggerated in this sudden light against the darkness. He came forward, showing his open hands, and said again, ‘Captain Melbury?’

‘Who are you, sir?’ asked Jack.

‘Joan Maragall, sir,’ he whispered in the clipped English of the Minorcans, very like that of Gibraltar. ‘I come from Esteban Domanova. He says, Sophia, Mapes, Guarnerius.’

Melbury Lodge was the house they had shared; Stephen’s full name was Maturin y Domanova; no one else on earth knew that Jack had once nearly bought a Guarnerius. He un-cocked the pistol and thrust it back.

‘Where is he?’

‘Taken.’

‘Taken?’

‘Taken. He gave me this for you.’

In the beam of the lantern the paper showed a straggle of disconnected lines: Dear J – some words, lines of figures – the signature S, tailing away off the corner, a wavering curve.

‘This is not his writing,’ whispering still in the darkness, caution rising still over this certainty of complete disaster. ‘This is not his hand.’

‘He has been tortured.’