Читать книгу The Surgeon’s Mate - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 10

Chapter Three

The Diligence tided it down the long harbour during the night, and before daybreak she was clear of the Little Thrumcap: by the time the dim sun began to whiten the eastern sky she had made a good offing, and with a moderate breeze on her starboard beam she was steering a little north of east under all plain sail, to leave Sable Island well to the south. Astern there was nothing to be seen: even if the weather had not been so hazy, she had long since sunk the high land of Cape Sambro. But six points on her starboard bow there lay a vessel dark against the light, a tall schooner, not five miles away. Not a sloop, not a man-of-war, but unmistakably a schooner: and in any case the Nova Scotia, given a whole tide’s start, was at least forty miles beyond the horizon.

She was lying there with no way on her, breasting the swell under her reefed fore-and-aft mainsail; yet it was clear that she was no fisherman, since she had no dories anywhere around her, and in any case no skipper making a voyage for cod would have brought a long slim rakish schooner with little room for his catch to a place where there were even fewer fish.

The second mate, who had the watch, saw her as soon as the lookout on the forecastle, and after one hard stare across the lightening sea he stepped below to the cabin, where the Captain and Jack Aubrey were eating steak. ‘I believe we have the Liberty to windward, sir,’ he said.

‘Is that so, Mr Crosland?’ said the Captain. ‘And how far off might she be?’

‘A matter of five mile, sir.’

‘Then bear up, Mr Crosland, and set the foretopgallantsail. I shall be on deck presently.’

Mr Dalgleish, the owner – literally the owner – of the Diligence, emptied his cup deliberately, took his spyglass from the rack, and walked up the companion-ladder, followed by Jack.

The stranger had already filled and worn on the same course, and as they watched, gazing over the starboard quarter, a signal broke out at her masthead: she fired a windward gun.

It was clear to Jack, as he considered her, that there was a strong possibility of her being an American privateer – no one else would lie there in the middle of the main shipping-lane between England and Canada – and he was not particularly surprised when Dalgleish, passing the telescope, said, ‘Yes. She is the Liberty; and I see Mr Henry has given her a new coat of paint. Tom,’ – to a nimble youth, his son – ‘jump to the masthead and tell me whether Mr Henry’s signal means anything or whether it is just another wicked falsehood. Mr Crosland, flying-jib…’

While Dalgleish was giving orders for more sail Jack studied the Liberty: a long low schooner painted black, about seventy-five feet in length and twenty in beam, a vessel of perhaps a hundred and fifty tons, built for speed. As far as he could see she carried eight broadside guns, probably twelve-pounder carronades, and something in the way of a bow-chaser. Her deck was crowded with men. She had set a square foretopsail and she was coming down goosewinged; but no schooner could show her best paces before the wind, goosewinged or not, and during his long study of her it did not appear to him that she gained much, if indeed she gained at all.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said a voice by his side.

‘Good morning, Mr Humphreys,’ said Jack rather coolly. Humphreys was the officer chosen to carry the duplicate dispatch rather than any of the master’s mates who had fought in the action with the Chesapeake. In the opinion of the service it was a vile job, designed to secure Humphreys’ advancement. There was no possible doubt of the Shannon’s officers being promoted, and Falkiner was in fact aboard the Nova Scotia, heading straight for a commander’s commission; but even so it was felt that one of the younger men should also have shared in the glory at home.

‘What do you see, Tom?’ called Mr Dalgleish.

‘Well now, Dad,’ said Tom, ‘I believe I make out a sail, hull-down, two or maybe three points abaft the beam. But it is cruel hazy there in the eye of the sun, and it may be an ice-mountain.’

‘What away to leeward, Tom?’

‘Nothing to leeward, Dad, bar a pod of whales – there she blows again! – and north I see clear to the horizon.’ A pause; and then from on high, ‘Harkee, Dad, that is a sail to wind-ward. A schooner, too.’

‘Thanks be,’ murmured the master of the packet; and turning to Jack he said, ‘I am right glad I said we should go south about Sable Island. With t’other beating up from leeward, they would have pinched us between them like…’ With one eye to his glass, and that glass trained on the Liberty, he sought for some likeness that might strengthen the idea of two vessels gradually closing in upon a third from either side over an enormous stretch of sea, found none, and repeated ‘Pinched us between them, like…’ his hand imitating the movement of a lobster’s claw.

‘You think they had intelligence of your sailing, then?’

‘Bless you,’ said Mr Dalgleish, ‘in Halifax you can scarcely piss against a wall, without the Yankees know next day. While we were waiting for the dispatches I was in the King’s Head – a roomful of people – and I just happened to remark that I should go south about as soon as I had the bag aboard, ha, ha!’

‘So you were not altogether surprised to find them waiting for you, on the southern course?’

‘No, sir, I was not. Not Liberty, at all events. Mr Henry there,’ – nodding over the miles of sea – ‘has laid for me many and many a time, hoping to come up from leeward – for she lies uncommon close to the wind, and sails uncommon swift – to carry us by boarding. Which was how she took Lady Albemarle and Probus, both neat, fast-sailing packets; to say nothing of other prizes. A pretty good seaman, Mr Henry: I knew him well before the war. He was a packet-captain too, before he took to privateering. But t’other, his friend, I am surprised to see. They never hunt in pairs unless there is a fat merchantman to be looked for; and there ain’t no merchantman, fat or thin, due to sail or to come in this fortnight and more. And a packet – why, ’tis a feather in their caps, to be sure, and one in the eye for King George, but it don’t hardly answer the expense, if you have something like a hundred men aboard, at American rates of pay, eating their heads off; to say nothing of the wear and tear and the risk of carrying away a spar. And to say nothing, neither, of the clawing you may get in the last moments before you board.’

‘I believe you could give him a rare old clawing, Captain Dalgleish,’ said Jack, looking at the brig’s array of carronades, five twelve-pounders to a side.

‘So I could,’ said Dalgleish, ‘and so I shall, if he comes alongside. But never you fear, Captain, we have the legs of her, before the wind; and I have not even set my studdingsails yet. With this nip in the air there is sure to be fog on the Middle Bank or the Banquereau; we will shake them off there, and carry on with our course as before, if they don’t give over first, as I dare say they will. A packet is no great prize; no cargo, and no market for the hull in the States; nothing worth cracking on for regardless all day, let alone by night, with all this summer ice coming down.’

After a silence Jack said, ‘Have you ever thought of the lame-duck caper, Captain Dalgleish? Starting your sheets a trifle – steering rather wild – slipping a drag-sail over the blind side – sending half your people below? If you could lure her up in the next hour or so, you could deal with her long before her friend came up. You could take the Liberty, as one might say, ha, ha!’

Dalgleish laughed, but Jack saw that he might as well have been whistling psalms to the taffrail: the master of the packet was quite unmoved, was perfectly satisfied with his role – a strong, self-reliant man, confident that his was the right conduct. ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘that would never answer with Mr Henry. I know him and he knows me; he would smell a rat directly. And even if he did not, Captain Aubrey, even if he did not, it is no part of my business to take the Liberty, as you put it so wittily. I am not a man-of-war, and my brig is not a man-of-war neither, but an unestablished temporary packet – temporary these last twelve years and more: a contract-vessel, as we say. For you gentlemen in the glory-line it is quite different: you are answerable to King George, whereas I am answerable to Mrs Dalgleish, and they see things in quite a different light. Then again, you can go to the dockyard and indent for half a dozen topmasts, any number of spars, nay, a whole new suit of sails, any day in the week you choose. But if I went to the Postmasters General and asked them for half a bolt of number three canvas, they would laugh in my face and remind me of my contract. And my contract is to provide a vessel at my own charges for His Majesty’s mails, and to carry them, as per contract, as fast as is consistent with their safety: for the mails are sacred, sir. The mails and dispatches are sacred: particularly this blessed dispatch about the victory.’ Here he looked significantly at Mr Humphreys, who gave a solemn nod; he did not say anything, however, for Jack was very much superior to him in rank, an awe-inspiring figure; and Humphreys, although he would not have relinquished it for the world, was conscious of his position, painfully conscious that he might be looked upon as a well-connected intruder, even perhaps as a scrub. ‘What is more,’ added Dalgleish, ‘this brig is my livelihood, and no one will give me another if she is taken.’

‘And a very handsome brig she is,’ said Jack. ‘I doubt I have ever seen finer lines.’ He could not dislike Dalgleish: although his whole being was alive with the prospect of an action, laid on with cunning, ending with extreme violence, and very probably the capture of the Liberty, he found the packet-captain’s calm, assured attitude convincing and indeed respectable.

He said as much to Stephen when they met in the middle of the morning for a private pot of coffee. ‘I never thought I should like a fellow who ran so openly – who ran like a hare, without beating about the mulberry bush, or making any bones about it, although he has a neat little broadside, quite enough to make the schooner cry peccavi if he knows how to ply it.’

‘Brother,’ said Stephen, ‘you speak of hares – of bones and mulberries – of a schooner, and I am none the wiser.’

‘Why, don’t you know we are being chased?’

‘I do not.’

‘Where have you been all the morning?’

‘I have been sitting with Diana. At one time I came on deck, but they were arranging the sails, and desired me to go below again; so seeing that you and Mr Dalgleish were in conversation I returned to her side.’

‘How is she?’

‘Utterly prostrated. She is without exception the worst sailor I have ever known.’

‘Poor Diana,’ said Jack, shaking his head. But it was thirty years since he had felt a qualm of seasickness, and that only a slight one; his sympathy could be no more than remote and theoretical; and after a moment he went on, ‘Well, the fact of the matter is, that we sighted an American privateer, a schooner, at daybreak, five miles off, with another, hull-down, far to windward: Dalgleish bore up, and now we are running for it: like a hare, as I said. I dare say we are making close on eleven knots. Should you like to come on deck and see how things lie?’

‘If you please.’

At a casual glance the position seemed scarcely to have changed. The Liberty still lay on the packet’s starboard quarter, and far over the grey heaving sea the other schooner still bore east-south-east. But there was a different feeling aboard the Diligence, a greater tension, and Mr Dalgleish’s expression was more grave by far. The brig had already spread her studdingsails alow and aloft, and she was running beautifully, the water singing down her side so that there was a fine half-heard, half-felt urgent resonance in her hull. But the Liberty had spread much more canvas and she had gained perceptibly, while her distant consort had done better still; she was now hull up and she was about to cross in front of a long, indented iceberg that gleamed over there in the greyness like a close-packed squadron of ships of the line.

Dalgleish was talking to his first mate and to Mr Humphreys, who was now measuring the angle subtended by the pursuers with the utmost concentration. ‘I never saw Mr Henry so determined,’ said Dalgleish, turning to Jack. ‘He is cracking on as though sailcloth and spars were free. Or as if we were a goddam Spanish galleon. Pray take my spyglass, sir, and see what you make of t’other.’

Jack fixed the distant schooner, steadying his hand on the aftermost shrouds, and he studied her as she crossed in front of the ice. ‘She has spread drabblers,’ he observed, ‘boomed out on either side. I have never seen that before, with such a rig. She must be in a hell-fire hurry.’

‘I thought so too,’ said Dalgleish. ‘I thought I picked them up. In all the time I have commanded this packet, to and fro scores of times, I have never seen the like, since war was declared. A man would think we were ballasted with gold.’

Stephen watched some gannets fishing away to leeward – the white flash of their headlong plummeting dive, the splash – and he listened vaguely to the sailors. There was some question of the wind dropping, of its chopping round into the north-west – of the state of the barometer – of skysails and kites: nasty frail wasteful things, costing the eyes of your head, in Dalgleish’s opinion, and certain to carry away in this breeze – of a method, employed by Captain Aubrey in an emergency, of sustaining them by means of doubled travelling backstays, led through a block aloft, snubbed well aft, tended by a sharp hand, and only shifted at the last moment, if at all. He heard Dalgleish say ‘that unlike some packet-captains he was not above learning from gentlemen of the Royal Navy; that however old you were, you might still learn something new every day; and that he should try Captain Aubrey’s method.’

Here Stephen’s attention was wholly taken up by a school of whales, of right whales, that appeared on the larboard bow; he borrowed a telescope and watched them as their steady course converged with that of the brig – watched them until they were so close that the glass would no longer focus and he could distinctly hear not only their vast steaming spout as they surfaced but even the indraught of their monstrous breath. At some point he felt a change in the brig’s progress, a greater thrust that raised her general music by half a tone, and when he looked up he found that she had set flying kites, that the Liberty was distinctly farther off, and that all hands were very pleased with themselves.

‘Now we can eat our dinner in peace,’ said Dalgleish with great satisfaction. ‘A very pretty notion of yours, sir, very pretty indeed. But even so, I believe I shall set up a couple of beckets, with an in-and-out turn over the hounds…’

The whales had gone, in one of their long, mysterious travelling dives; the sailors were deep in their hooks and thimbles, the advantages and disadvantages of hooks and thimbles with a selvagee strop as opposed to lashing-eyes, where backstays were concerned; Stephen returned to Diana. He was a great believer in the alcoholic tincture of laudanum, and this time she had retained his draught long enough for it to have an effect: she lay there, exhausted, but at least no longer racked, in a state between sleeping and waking.

She murmured when he came in, and he told her about the whales. She did not seem to be with him, but nevertheless he added, ‘It also appears that we are being pursued by two privateers: remote and ineffectual privateers, however. Mr Dalgleish is quite happy; he is confident we shall shake them off.’ Diana made no reply. He contemplated her. Lying there flat in her cot, her damp hair straggling, her face green and yellow, set in incipient nausea and general suffering, beyond all care for appearances, she was not a pretty sight: no spectacle for an ardent lover. He tried to put a name to his feeling for her but he found no satisfactory word or combination of words. It was certainly not the passion of his younger days nor anything related to it; nor did it resemble friendship – his friendship for Jack Aubrey, for instance. Affection entered into it, tenderness, and even a kind of complicity, perhaps, as though they had long been engaged in the same pursuit. Possibly the same absurd pursuit of happiness. This evoked some memories too painful to dwell upon, and he continued in a low voice, not to wake her if she was asleep, ‘It seems that these schooners were lying on the course we were expected to take. They were to the south of some island, whereas the prudent Mr Dalgleish sailed to the north: their presence can hardly have been the effect of hazard.’ It might have been the effect of intelligent guesswork on the part of the Americans: or it might have been that the list of their agents in Canada was defective – he doubted that a man like Beck would have left any hole unstopped. Yet on the other hand there was Beck’s staff, and he was thinking about the drunken fellow at the ball when Diana suddenly spoke out of her apparent coma. ‘Of course it was not just chance,’ she said. ‘Johnson would do anything, spend anything, to get us back. He is perfectly capable of hiring privateers, whatever they cost: he would spend money like water, he would move heaven and earth to get hold of me. And my diamonds,’ she added. She turned uneasily, throwing the bedclothes about. ‘They are all I have,’ she muttered after a while: and then ‘I shall never escape from that dreadful man.’ And after still another pause ‘But he shall never have them, not as long as there is breath in my body. No, by God.’

Stephen observed that she was clasping the case tightly against her. He had always known that she valued them extremely, but to this extent … He said, ‘I really do not believe you need feel concerned. We are a great way ahead, and Mr Dalgleish, who knows these waters extremely well, assures me that we shall meet with fog upon the Banks: there they can neither see nor follow us. I shall be heartily glad of it. If there is anything I dislike more than violence on land, it is violence at sea; since the peril is even greater, and apart from that, it is always wet and very often cold.’ She had dropped into a heavy laudanum sleep; tears were still welling from behind her closed eyelids, but she herself was not there.

Almost certainly she was right, he reflected: Johnson was powerful, rich, and influential; his pride had been cruelly wounded and he was a revengeful man. Diana knew him intimately – who more so? – and she could not be mistaken in his temper. And surely it was significant that the privateers should let the Nova Scotia go by and pursue the Diligence alone? She might even be right about the necklace. It was a splendid bauble, so splendid that its central stone had a name, the Nabob or the Mogul or something of that kind; and he had noticed that even very wealthy men were extraordinarily attached to particular possessions. It was, after all, this attachment that gave their price to such diamonds as the Pitt, the Sancy, the Orloff … suddenly the name of Diana’s came to his mind: it was the Blue Peter, a pear-shaped stone of a most surprising colour, like a pale, pale sapphire but with much more life and fire. An impious sailor had taken it from a temple in the time of Aurangzeb and it had kept the name he gave it ever since, a name that Stephen particularly liked, for not only had it a fine round sound but it was also that of one of the few flags he could recognize with certainty, the flag that ships flew when they were about to sail, and it had the pleasing associations of fresh departure, new regions, new creatures of the world, new lives, perhaps new life.

As Mr Dalgleish had predicted, they ate their dinner in peace, with the packet drawing slightly ahead in spite of the slackening breeze and the pursuers no more than a very distant threat. And as he predicted there was fog on the Middle Bank. When Stephen came on deck he saw it a great way off as a smooth low curve on the northern horizon, like distant land: he also saw that there were at least four ships scattered about the sea, some no great way from the packet and moving slowly on the same northward course. For an instant it seemed to him that Mr Johnson had mobilized the greater part of the United States Navy and that the packet was surrounded; but then he noticed the haphazard appearance of the ships in question, the absence of gunports, the presence of a lateen on the mizzenmast, and although he was no great seaman he was convinced that these were not men-of-war. In any case no one seemed at all concerned – the Diligence was even exchanging civilities with the nearest – while Jack and Mr Dalgleish and the bosun were high in the rigging, like a group of apes, intent upon some immediate purpose of their own. ‘What is Captain Aubrey doing up there?’ he asked the second mate.

‘They are changing the beckets for grommets,’ said the second mate. ‘We should be man-of-war fashion from stem to stern, if Captain Aubrey had his way.’

‘He must take care of his arm. Shirtsleeves is madness in this biting cold: I have a mind to call out. However … Those – vessels over there, sir: a curious rig, is it not?’

‘They are bankers, sir, bankers out of Portugal: terranovas, as we call them. You will see plenty more of them on the bank. If you can see anything at all: it looks mighty thick over there, as the Owner said.’

‘Terranovas. I have heard of them. And that, I suppose, is the Newfoundland itself ?’

‘Not exactly, sir. That is the bank; or rather the fog over the bank. But being there is nearly always a fog over the bank, we sometimes call the fog the bank, if you understand me.’ The second mate had a low opinion of Dr Maturin’s understanding – a man capable of confusing bonnets and drabblers could hardly be expected to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, chalk from cheese – but he was a good-hearted youth and he answered Stephen’s questions kindly: why the fog? why did it not blow away in this wind? why did the Portuguese congregate in it? In the simplest words he could find he explained that the Portuguese went where the cod were, and this year there were even more cod on the Middle Bank than on the Saint Pierre or even the Grand Bank itself: the Doctor knew what a cod was? A gurt fish with a barbel under its chin, that loved almost any bait you could name, but squid and caplin most. The Papists were obliged to eat it, dried and salted, on Fridays and all through Lent; they went to Hell else. That was why the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the French too in time of peace, came to the Banks every year: they being Papists, upon the whole. But there were Blue-Noses and Newfoundlanders too. They came where the cod were, and the cod were on the Banks, where the bottom of the sea rose up quite sudden, sometimes to fifteen fathom, no more – the second mate had seen ice-mountains grounded on them many a time – but usually say forty or fifty fathom. And the Portuguee would anchor and send away his little dories with a couple of men in them to fish with the cod-line. As a boy the second mate had been out with his uncle, a Blue-Nose from Halifax, and he had caught four hundred and seventy-nine codfish in eleven hours, some of them fifty pounds in weight. As to the fog, it was caused by the cold Labrador current setting south, then rising over the banks and meeting the warm air of the Gulf Stream – the Doctor had heard tell of the Gulf Stream? – and so brewing up a fog almost continual. Some days you would say the whole sea was steaming like a pot, it brewed so fast: and that was why the wind did not blow it away – it was brewed afresh continual. To be sure, there were some times in the year when the current set more easterly, and there was no fog; it might be clear as clear for days or even weeks; but for all that you always knew where the Banks were, even without taking soundings, because of the birds. There were always birds, particular birds, on the Banks, thick or clear.

‘What kind of birds?’ asked Stephen.

‘Murres, dovekies, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, sheerwaters, fulmars, skuas, all sorts of gulls, puffins, penguins –’

‘Penguins, my dear sir?’ cried Stephen.

‘That’s right, Doctor. A very old-fashioned bird, that can’t fly but only swim. Some call them garefowl, but we call them penguins. It stands to reason, if a bird can’t fly, it is a penguin: ask any whaler that has been far south.’

‘Does it stand about a yard high – black and white like a prodigious razorbill?’

‘That’s the very bird, sir; but it has a white patch between its bill and its eye.’

Without the shadow of a doubt this was the Alca impennis of Linnaeus, the Great Auk of some vulgar authors, a bird Stephen had longed to see all his life, a bird grown so rare that none of his correspondents but Corvisart had ever seen a specimen; and Corvisart was somewhat given to lying. ‘And have you indeed seen your penguin, sir?’ he asked.

‘God love you, many and many a time,’ said the young man, laughing. ‘There is an island up that away,’ – nodding towards Newfoundland – ‘where they breed by wholesale, and my uncle the Blue-Nose used to go there when he was fishing the Grand Bank. I went with him once, and we knocked them on the head by the score. It would have made you laugh, to see them standing there like ninepins, to be bowled over. We cut them up for bait, and ate the eggs.’

‘Blue-nosed hell-hound,’ said Stephen inwardly, ‘Goth, Vandal, Hun.’ Aloud, and with as much amenity as he could summon, he asked, ‘Is there any likelihood of seeing one on this bank?’

‘I dare say there is, Doctor, if you keep a sharp lookout. Do they interest you? I will lend you my glass.’

Stephen kept a sharp lookout, in spite of the cold that misted his telescope and deadened his blue extremities; and by the time the packet glided into the mist on the southern edge of the bank, far, far ahead of the schooners, he had seen not only murres and dovekies, but two great auks. The mist thickened; the Diligence was completely hidden from her pursuers; Mr Dalgleish took in his kites, royals, topgallants, courses, everything but the foretopsail lowered on the cap and a jib, just enough to steer by in that swirling obscurity; evening came on, and still Stephen stood there, shivering, in the hope of a third.

The Diligence ghosted along, her bell tolling continually, with double lookouts fore and aft, her best bower cleared away and poised a-cockbill from her starboard cathead, for as Mr Dalgleish said, he had no notion of carrying on by night with all these craft about and the danger of summer ice coming down. From far and near came the answering drums or whistles, and on every hand the howl of conchs from unseen dories. From white the fog grew grey and greyer still: the riding-lights and stern-lantern of a ship showed hazy gold two hundred yards away – a ship with a peculiarly thin and piercing whistle, worked by a crank.

‘Leviathan ahoy,’ hailed Mr Dalgleish.

‘What ship is that?’ asked Leviathan out of the fog.

‘Diligence, of course. William, what’s your ground?’

‘Thirty fathom.’

Mr Dalgleish put his helm a-lee. The packet made a smooth sweep, brought her head to the wind, took on a little sternway, and dropped her anchor. ‘Mr Henry is on the rampage again,’ he remarked in a strong but conversational voice.

‘Bugger him,’ said Leviathan, now on the packet’s starboard beam.

‘How does the cod come in, William?’

‘Tolerable, tolerable, Jamie,’ said Leviathan with a fruity chuckle. ‘No caplin, but they are taking squid. Send a boat over, and you shall have a bit of fish to your supper.’

The boat shoved off with the second mate and came back, laughing as it pulled across the steaming water, with two cod as long as a man and the second mate clasping a very large, very damp, dead, black and white bird to his bosom as he came up the side. ‘There, Doctor,’ he said, ‘they were going to use it for bait, but they have plenty of squid, and I thought it might please you.’ Mr Dalgleish’s predictions had been right up until this point; but over their supper of the best codfish in the world, gently poached in a bucket of sea-water, he foretold that Liberty and her consort would give over in the night; Mr Henry could not afford to stay out day after day with all those men aboard; a mere packet would not answer the outlay; he was not really a blue-water privateer but an offshore dasher, a snapper-up, and he would now be beating up for Marblehead as fast as he could fly, for the wind would not change until the moon began to wane. Mr Dalgleish was right about the wind: it hung in the south and west, bearing the Diligence cautiously across the Middle Bank, through hooting Spaniards, Portuguese, Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders in the dim daybreak and the pallid day itself. But he was wrong about Mr Henry. They were scarcely clear of the mist before the schooners were seen, unmistakable with their raking masts, but fortunately still well to the south.

‘Such obstinacy I have never seen,’ cried Mr Dalgleish; again he said that the packet might be ballasted with gold, the way they carried on; and again the Diligence fled northeast for the Misaine and the Artimon banks, under a great press of sail.

Yet whatever ruses Dalgleish might conceive, and he thought of many, the devilish Mr Henry divined them. When they cleared the Misaine, there he was again; and on the Artimon, in spite of a night’s lying to, the morning showed him stark and clear, within three miles. The only thing he could not do was to change the wind. It kept aft, so that the square-rigged Diligence had an advantage over the schooners. But it was an advantage that she maintained only by incessant attention to her trim every moment of the endless race – jibs, studdingsails and kites flashed in and out, and the meagre crew grew more and more exhausted, until Dalgleish determined to shape a course for the Grand Bank itself and its notorious, even thicker fog. And in the long haul eastward for the Grand Bank the advantage disappeared: with the wind a little abaft the beam the schooners sailed as fast as the brig in spite of the sheets hauled iron-tight aft and the owner at the wheel, trick after trick. They tore along, the three of them, their lee catheads rarely rising from the white racing water, their decks sloping like the roof of a house, the masts complaining, the wind sweeping in over the starboard rail, singing high and loud in the rigging, all tense and taut to the edge of the breaking-strain.

No fog on the Grand Bank: no refuge there. Birds by the hundred thousand, bankers by the score and countless dories hauling in the cod, but no fog. Some freak of the currents left the vast area as clear as the Mediterranean: and the moon was coming to the full – no refuge in the night either. Mr Dalgleish cursed the day he had not put into St John’s, Newfoundland, and he put the brig before the wind again, a strong, irregular, gusting wind. As he did so the fore-topmast gave a great rending creak and a lengthwise fissure appeared in its upper third. In such an eager chase they could not possibly lie to long enough to send up a spare, so they fished it at once with capstan-bars, wringing them tight against the wound with turn after turn of woolding; but a mast so badly sprung could not bear a great press of sail, and their advantage was gone. Now, even directly before the wind, the packet was on no more than equal terms in a light breeze; and when she had to reef her topsails the schooners gained.

So they ran, north and east – more north than east most of the time – through the clear light-blue day and the sparkling night, lit from horizon to horizon by an enormous moon. Jack and Humphreys, and Humphreys’ servant, an old Marine, had long since attended to the packet’s guns and small-arms, and they had put what few hands could be spared from the arduous driving of the brig through the great-gun exercise; but Jack had no illusions about the Diligence’s armament. With these poor little inaccurate short-range carronades her bark would be worse than her bite; and although the hands were good willing men, they were quite untrained and very few in number.

On Thursday night the breeze dropped almost to a calm, and from the dropping glass, the clouds astern, and the much greater swell there was a strong probability that the wind would veer into the west, if not well to the north of west, and blow very, very much harder. In the uncertain airs they caught the smell of ice; and towards the end of the first watch, when the moon was near its height, they saw a towering mountain, undermined by the warmer current, overturn completely, sending vast blocks flying into the sea, so that the spray flew high, a hundred feet and more, flashing in the moonlight; and some seconds later they heard the long deep thunderous crash, infinitely solemn and portentous.

On the Banks the Diligence had shipped ice fenders, spars over the bows to deaden the shock of drifting ice; but they also deadened her fine point of speed, and since the springing of the mast they had been taken in, the more so as she was now out of the ordinary track of summer ice. ‘Unnatural,’ was Mr Dalgleish’s only comment as he ordered them to be shipped again: a necessary move, though possibly fatal from the point of view of capture, since any of these jagged blocks, almost entirely beneath the surface, scarcely to be seen, could pierce through a ship’s bows even if she were only running at five knots, let alone the breakneck fourteen and two fathoms the packet had attained; and there were at least three more icebergs in their field of vision, gleaming to northwards.

Dalgleish had scarcely left the deck since the full hard chase began; he was unshaved; he looked very old and very tired; and now, with the prospect of a wind that must favour the privateers, he seemed almost crushed. But there was a fine gleam in his red-rimmed eye on Friday morning, when a sail appeared in the east, a blazing golden east, with the high nimbus blushing flamingo-red and every promise of a hearty blow. Stiffly he climbed to the crosstrees with his telescope, and when he came down he said to Jack, ‘It sounds wicked to say so, but I believe she may be our salvation. Take my spyglass aloft, sir, and see if you think the same.’

Jack mounted to the masthead like a boy – a heavy boy – and from there, since the rising sun made it difficult to see the stranger, he first studied the Liberty and her companion, the one a little abaft the beam and the other on the packet’s quarter. They had come up during the night, and although they were still far beyond the extreme range of long gunshot they had already felt the first gusts from the north-west that came with the sun; they knew what o’clock it was; and both had cleared away their bow-chasers: as far as he could judge, Mr Henry’s was a long brass nine-pounder; and a very deadly weapon that could be, in good hands. Then he turned to the stranger, now clear of the blinding glare. She was a ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack: she was deep-laden, fat-bellied, certainly a merchantman of considerable size and value, and at this stage of the war certainly a British ship: and in her leisurely comfortable way, under courses and reefed topsails, she was steering a course that would lead her straight into the jaws of the privateers. They had only to shift their helms a little and they would take her on either side, board her and carry her before she was awake.

But they would have to change course quite soon. On her present tack, and with the strengthening, veering breeze, the merchantman would be to windward of them before long; and then, however close they could lie, they would surely lose her.

Those on board the packet watched with the closest attention. Three bells: four bells: not a telescope but what was trained on the Liberty, to catch the first sign of her bearing up for the merchantman. In the clear light they could see her people, Mr Henry among them no doubt, lining the starboard rail – it was black with men – and staring out at the stranger, the answer to a privateer’s most fervent prayer. She for her part seemed still asleep. She stood on and on, as though into an empty sea. Jack had often seen an indifferent lookout kept in merchantmen, but never anything to equal this. ‘Give her a gun,’ he said in strong indignation. ‘With your permission, sir, I will give her a gun.’

‘Give her a dozen, if you like, Captain Aubrey,’ said Dalgleish with a bitter laugh. ‘But believe me, she’s in no danger. Mr Henry don’t mean to touch her.’

Jack gave her two, happy to warm the carronades: he was almost sure that Dalgleish was right – so fine a seaman, so keen a privateer as Mr Henry, would never have let those precious miles go by, glass after glass, not with such a prize in view. No: he preferred the packet to the merchantman, and presently the guns would be used in earnest. At the first report Stephen ran up on deck: the situation was clear enough to the most unskilful eye, with the schooners manoeuvring like racing-yachts in the veering breeze, and in any case the first mate made it plain in one coarse phrase. After the second gun he stepped across to Jack and said, ‘What may I do?’

‘Go down to the magazine and fill powder with Mr Hope,’ said Jack. ‘And then you can fight this carronade with me.’

Some minutes passed. The merchantman woke up, replied with a single gun, displayed her colours, lowered them in salutation, and hoisted them again. The privateers at once replied with a leeward gun apiece, and showed British colours. Jack gave her the remaining carronades of the starboard broadside: surely that must make them see that something was amiss? The well-remembered powder-smell eddied about the deck; the stumpy guns ran smoothly in and out; their breechings gave a comfortable twang. He and his mates reloaded with grape and round-shot.

The merchantman shook the reefs out of her topsails and stood on, as into the bosom of her friends. The Diligence had early thrown out a signal warning her of her danger, but she seemed to make nothing of it; and in fact she was in no danger at all.

The privateers might look wishfully at her, but it was now certain that the packet was their quarry, the packet alone. They had hauled their wind and they were forereaching on the Diligence diverging from the stranger’s course; the crucial moment had almost passed, and presently the stranger would cross their wake into safety.

‘Never say die,’ said Dalgleish with a ghastly smile; he gave orders for topgallants and royals in spite of the wounded mast, and took the wheel himself, luffing up as close as ever she would lie and then easing off a trifle. He loved the Diligence and he knew her through and through; he called for all that she could give, and she answered superbly. But once the breeze had steadied and the chase had settled down to this new phase it was apparent that she could not possibly outsail the schooners on the wind: nor could she put before it now, since the change had set the privateers to leeward before ever they left the merchantman. They were coming up hand over fist, making a good seven knots to the packet’s six; and by about noon the chase must end in a trial of force. The mails had already been brought on deck, and there they lay, three long, thin leather portmanteaux, each lashed to two pigs of iron so that they would sink when they were heaved overboard at the last moment.

Hour after hour they ran over the grey heaving sea. Heavy cloud gathered in the west, obscuring the whole horizon; both swell and wind increased, and many and many a time the hands glanced up at the fished topmast. In spite of the strong woolding they saw the hideous cleft gape and close on the heavier rolls. The bosun clapped on more bands, but even so Dalgleish could not tack against a head-sea to get more to windward of the schooners, not with a mast so wounded; and wearing would deliver him right into their hands.

‘I will leave the glory-side to you, sir,’ he said to Jack, his eye fixed on the maintopsail’s weather-leech. ‘Once they open fire I mean to bear up sharp and steer between them.’ There was a savage look on his grey, lined, hairy face as he added, ‘We will touch them up handsome, if it is the last thing we do.’

Jack nodded: it was the only course open to them, short of striking, and although the probability of success in broad daylight was almost infinitely remote it was better than a tame surrender: anything was better than that.

Methodically he and Humphreys and their small party cast loose the carronades on the larboard side, fired them off and reloaded: Jack loved a clean, heated gun with fresh powder in it. He fired the last, and as it leapt in on the recoil a great howling roar from aft made him jerk round. Men were capering about the deck, clawing one another on the back, bawling and cheering. Someone let go the maincourse bowline with a run. The Diligence paid off and the Liberty appeared broad on the beam; her foremast was gone, broken off short at the partners, and together with its vast spread of sail it was lying over her starboard bow. As he looked her maintopmast followed it, and the schooner shot up into the wind, her slack mainsail beating madly.

But here was Dalgleish’s furious voice, damning them all for lubbers, roaring, ‘Royal halliards, royal halliards, let fly! Tom and Joe, round in those fucking weather braces. Clew up, there, forward. Bunt-lines, bunt-lines, you poxed set of whoreson sods. Start them, Mr Harvey. Kick the buggers, oh! You, Joe, will you start that bloody sheet before I break your head?’

A wild turmoil, in which Jack received two kicks and one blow from a rope’s end – the first since his voice had broken – and the Diligence was under plain sail, the strain on her wounded mast reduced, order restored. Mr Dalgleish handed over the wheel, and he and Jack inspected the Liberty at their leisure: she had run straight on to ice with all her force, impaling herself and, since she was already very much by the head, apparently shearing away her stem below the waterline. Her people were trying to get her boats over the side, and the other schooner was standing towards her, directly away from the packet, losing an hour’s gain in five minutes.

After another board northwards the packet put before the wind and the schooners dropped astern. ‘Will the single vessel continue to pursue us, do you think?’ asked Stephen.

‘No, sir,’ said Dalgleish, yawning. ‘You can go to your cot and sleep easy: I am sure I shall. She will cram all Mr Henry’s men aboard, if she possibly can – look at the vast number of them going across, for God’s sake – there is a silly bugger has thrown himself into the sea, ha, ha, ha! It is as good as a play. Then she will go home. And a weary time they will have of it, beating to the westward day and night; they will be eating their belts and their shoes before they see Marblehead again, with all those hands aboard, and no stores saved out of the Liberty.’

‘There is something in the misfortunes of others that does not altogether displease us,’ said Stephen, but nobody heard him in the general cry of ‘There she goes’ as the now distant Liberty slipped beneath the grey surface of the ocean.

‘No, sir,’ said Mr Dalgleish again, ‘you can sleep easy now. And so can Mrs – so can your betrothed, your financy. I forget the lady’s name. I hope she has not been disturbed by all the banging and calling out.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Stephen, ‘but I will go down and see.’

He was mistaken. Diana was very much disturbed indeed. The first discharge of artillery had wiped out her already waning seasickness; she had misinterpreted the later gunfire and the uproar on deck, and Stephen found her dressed, sitting on a locker with a cocked pistol in either hand, looking as fierce as a wild cat in a trap.

‘Put those pistols down at once,’ he said coldly. ‘Do not you know it is very rude to point a pistol at a person you do not mean to kill? For shame, Villiers. Where were you brought up?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, quite daunted by his severity. ‘I thought there was an action – that they had boarded.’

‘Not at all, not at all. The most inveterate privateer, the Liberty, has undone herself entirely; she ran upon ice and sank not five minutes since; and the other, loaded like Noah’s ark, is going home. Give you joy of your escape, my dear. You are looking better, I find,’ he said, taking her pulse. ‘Yes: you are far better. Should you like to take some fresh air, and see the discomfiture of our enemies?’

Stephen led her on deck, a deck still full of wild hilarity – no sense of hierarchy at all – and her appearance was greeted with a spontaneous, friendly cheer. Busy hands supported her to the rail, pointed out the distant schooner, now standing east; tight against her elbow the cook gave her a detailed account of the movements since sunrise in a hoarse whisper, almost drowned by the explanations of the two mates and a little stunted boy who wished her to know that he had foreseen it all from the start. Mr Dalgleish came up, took off his hat, and welcomed her with some ceremony: ‘We are all very happy to see you on deck, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and hope we may be so honoured every day for the rest of the passage, when fine. Not that there will be so many days, if this wind holds true: those villains pushed us east so fast and far, I should not be surprised to raise Rockall on Wednesday.’ And seeing that Rockall meant nothing to her he said, ‘I should not be surprised if we were to make the quickest passage ever known, bar Clytie’s in ninety-four. And how glad they will be to see us, ma’am, with the news we bring. I fairly laughed aloud when first I heard the Shannon had took the Chesapeake.’