Читать книгу The Reverse of the Medal - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChapter Two
The caravel Nossa Senhora das Necessidades, a very old-fashioned square-sterned vessel, was taking advantage of the inshore breeze to approach Needham’s Point; but unhappily she was doing so on the starboard tack and the moment she crossed the line of white water separating the local breeze from the trade-wind she was brought by the lee – the northeaster laid her right over and the Caribbean sea gushed in through her scuppers.
‘Let all go with a run, you infernal lubbers,’ cried Jack.
‘There is Sam pulling on a rope,’ said Stephen, who had the telescope.
‘It is the wrong one,’ said Jack, wringing his powerful hands.
But right or wrong the caravel somehow recovered, somehow heaved herself up, all her sails flapping wildly, and the mariners could be seen running about embracing and congratulating one another and the good Fathers before they cautiously paid off, brought the steady trade a little abaft the larboard beam, and vanished behind the headland.
‘Thank God,’ said Jack. ‘Now they will not have to rise sheet or tack until they reach Para: they may even arrive without the loss of a soul. Lord, Stephen, I have never seen such a piece of seamanship nor such an example of divine intervention. That horrible old tub should never have reached Bridgetown in the first place; and she would certainly have foundered with all hands just now but for the grace of God. Only an uninterrupted series of miracles can have kept her afloat these last sixty or seventy years. Yet even so I could wish he had sailed in something that did not call for guardian angels working double tides, watch and watch.’
‘He is a fine young man,’ observed Stephen.
‘Ain’t he?’ said Jack. ‘How I hope young George will be such another. It did my heart good to hear you and him prattling away in Latin, fourteen to the dozen: though I noticed that Parson Martin did not seem to follow him quite so well.’
‘That was because poor Martin uses the English pronunciation.’
‘What is wrong with the English pronunciation?’ asked Jack, displeased.
‘Nothing at all, I am sure, except that no other nation understands it.’
‘I should think not,’ said Jack. And then, ‘Do you know, he can reach lower F without straining or losing volume? A voice like an organ.’
‘Of course I do. I was there: it was I who asked him to give us the Salve Regina an octave below. It made the table tremble again.’
‘So it did, ha, ha, ha! Still, I could wish he were not black.’
‘There is nothing wrong with being black, brother. The Queen of Sheba was black, and a fine shining black too, I am sure. Caspar, one of the Three Kings, was black. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was an African: and he too had a son born out of wedlock, as no doubt you will recall. Furthermore, once you are accustomed to black skins, yellowish-white bodies seem unformed and indeed repulsive, as I remember very well in the Great South Sea.’
‘And I do wish – forgive me, Stephen - that he were not a Roman. I do not mean this as a fling at you; I do not mean it from the religious point of view – oh no, it is not at all impossible that he should be saved. No. I mean because of the feeling against them in England. You remember the Gordon riots, and all the tales about the Jesuits being behind the King’s madness and many other things. By the way, Stephen, those Fathers were not Jesuits, I suppose? I did not like to ask straight out.’
‘Of course not, Jack. They were suppressed long ago. Clement XIV put them down in the seventies, and a very good day’s work he did. Sure, they have been trying to creep back on one legalistic pretext or another and I dare say they will soon make a sad nuisance of themselves again, turning out atheists from their schools by the score; but these gentlemen had nothing to do with them, near or far.’
‘Well, I am glad of it. But what I really mean is, if he had been white and a Protestant, he might have been an admiral – he might have hoisted his flag! A fellow with his parts, quick, cheerful, lively, resourceful, modest, and good company, was all cut out to be a sailor; given the least hint of a chance he would have distinguished himself, and in a bloody war and a sickly season he could not have missed of promotion – he might have ended wearing the union flag at the maintopgallant, an Admiral of the Fleet!’
‘But being black and a Catholic he may become an African bishop, like St Augustine, and wear a mitre and carry a crook: indeed, he may even become the Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign Pontiff, and don the triple tiara. Then again, Jack, you are to consider that in being a papisher he is only following the example of all his English ancestors from the time Irish missionaries taught them their letters and the difference between right and wrong until the days of Henry VIII of glorious memory, only a few generations ago.’
Jack did not seem altogether satisfied. After a moment he said, ‘I must be going aboard the flag. This damned court-martial begins sitting at ten.’
‘So must I,’ said Stephen. ‘I have a patient to attend.’
As they walked to the landing-place Jack said, ‘But I am glad to hear what you tell about your saint, however.’
‘He is your saint too, you know. St Augustine is acknowledged by even the most recent sects: he is, after all, one of the Fathers of the Church.’
‘So much the better. If a saint and a Father of the Church can – can have an irregular connexion, why, that is a comfort to a man.’
‘So it is too; though I believe he was not a practising saint at the time.’
Jack walked on in silence and then said, ‘There was one thing I had wanted to ask Sam, but somehow I could not get it out. Somehow I could not say “Sam, did you mention your reason for wishing to see me at Ashgrove Cottage?” ’
‘He did not,’ said Stephen. ‘I am as certain as though I had been there. He is a dear, open, candid young man, but he is no fool. No fool at all; and he would never sow trouble.’
‘Yet even so, I am afraid Sophie must have smoked it, looking at his face, black though it is, bless him. You did so right away, or you would never have told me not to be dismayed.’
‘There is a very striking resemblance, it must be confessed.’
‘Do you think, Stephen,’ asked Jack in a somewhat hesitant voice, ‘do you think it would answer, was one to mention St Augustine to Sophie? She is a great one for church. And she is much opposed to irregularities of that kind, you know. She could hardly be brought to love...’ Here guardian angels stepped in again, one with a gag – for the name Diana had actually formed in his gullet: Diana, Sophie’s cousin and Stephen’s wife, who had been very irregular indeed on occasion – and the other with an inspiration, so that almost without a pause he went on ‘. . . could hardly be brought to love Heneage Dundas, because of his tribe of little bastards, until I told her he had saved me from a watery grave when we were boys.’
‘Sure, it could do no harm,’ said Stephen. More he could not say, because they were at the hard where the men-of-wars’ boats landed and here was Bonden with the frigate’s fine new barge, for the Admiral had kept his word and the Surprise was being handsomely supplied. She had already completed her water, bread, beef, and most of her firewood, and that afternoon the powder-hoy was to come out to fill her magazines: Mowett, her first lieutenant, and Adams, her purser, and all her people had been kept exceedingly busy, yet even so they had found time to beautify the barge, and the bargemen had spent their watches below beautifying themselves, or at least their clothes. Many captains liked their bargemen to wear uniform clothes, sometimes corresponding to the name of the ship – those of the Emerald, for example, wore bright green shirts; those of the Niger were all black; those of the Argo carried a swab dyed yellow – sometimes to the captain’s private fancy: but Jack would have nothing to do with such capers and he issued no orders on the subject. His bargemen however took it upon themselves to dress all alike; it was their obvious duty to do the ship outstanding credit – by no means easy in the West Indies, the home of spit and polish, outward show and brilliantly white sepulchres – and they felt that in the present circumstances this was best done by wearing a very broad-brimmed sennit hat tilted far back, a three-foot ribbon embroidered HMS Surprise floating free from round its crown, a snowy shirt, equally brilliant trousers, very tight round the middle, very loose below and piped at the seams with blue and red, a newly-plaited pigtail down to the waist (eked out with tow if Nature had been near with the hair), a black Barcelona handkerchief knotted loosely round their necks and very small pumps with genteel bows on their huge feet, splayed by so much running about on deck without shoes. In this rig they could decently ferry their Captain across to the Irresistible for the court-martial, a full-dress affair, but they could not jump out on to the filthy hard without endangering the effect; they had therefore hired four little Barbadian boys to run out the gang-board and shove the boat off. It was only a short gang-board, but the barge-men had all sailed with Dr Maturin for a number of years and they all knew what he was capable of in the way of plunging off ladders, out of stern-windows, and over the edges of quays, and they all craned round to watch his cautious unsteady advance over the mud. It was not that they feared for his life on this occasion, the sea being so shallow, but at low tide the water was horribly unclean, and floundering about in it he might splash their clothes. Besides, on being rescued he would certainly drip on them. In any case, he was not a fit companion for their skipper that particular morning: Captain Aubrey was resplendent in blue and gold; a Lloyd’s presentation sword hung at his side and the Nile medal from the fourth buttonhole of his coat, while the chelengk, a Turkish decoration in the form of a diamond aigrette, sparkled in his best gold-laced hat, worn nobly athwartships like Nelson’s; he had washed and shaved (a daily custom with him, even in very heavy weather), and his hair, having been rigorously brushed, clubbed, and fastened with a broad black band behind, was now exactly powdered. Dr Maturin, on the other hand, had certainly not shaved and had probably not felt the need to wash; he was wearing his breeches unbuckled at the knee, odd stockings, and a wicked old coat that his servant had twice endeavoured to throw away; and he had put altogether too much reliance on his scrub-wig to give him a civilized appearance.
‘Perhaps, sir,’ said Bonden, ‘the Doctor might like to go back to the ship in a Moses. There is one putting off for the barky with vegetables this minute.’ He nodded towards the basket-like flat-bottomed craft on the edge of the man-of-war’s hard, a much steadier, more suitable conveyance.
‘Nonsense,’ said Stephen, stepping on to the gang-board. ‘I am going to the Irresistible. They receive me in this – this shaloop, this embarkation, like a dog in a game of skittles,’ he muttered in a discontented tone, creeping on. A slight tremor from a distant wave traversed the plank; he staggered, uttering a faint shriek, but Jack pinned his elbows from behind, ran him up, over the gunwale and into the boat, where powerful hands passed him aft like a parcel to the stern-sheets.
The same powerful hands propelled him up the flagship’s accommodation-ladder, adjuring him to watch his step, to mind out, and to clap on with both hands. Jack, duly piped aboard, had already been received with full ceremony and carried aft; and by the time Stephen reached the quarterdeck he was no longer to be seen. Mr Butcher, lately the surgeon of the Norfolk and now a prisoner of war, was there however and to him Stephen said, ‘Good day to you now, Mr Butcher; how very kind of you to come. I am much indebted to you.’ Butcher was a man of unusually wide experience and although he was not particularly learned nor, outside his profession, particularly wise, he also possessed a gift for diagnosis and prognosis that Stephen had rarely seen equalled.
‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘I am only too happy to repay some small part of your kindness to poor Captain Palmer.’ He took snuff, and observed, ‘Mr Martin is already gone below.’
‘Perhaps we should join him,’ said Stephen.
‘I guess we should,’ said Butcher. ‘But before we go, allow me to ask you why you operated here, rather than sending the patient to hospital? In Jamaica, with its miasmas and yellow jack, I should understand it, but in so healthy an island as Barbados...’
‘The truth of the matter is that he is a little difficult, and he has fallen out with almost all his medical colleagues, including those belonging to the hospital.’
‘Oh, in that case I understand his reluctance. Besides, although a hospital is far more convenient for operating, surviving is quite another matter: for my part I had rather be at sea. I have known a whole ward of amputations die in a week, whereas several of the men who had to be kept aboard for want of room lived on. Some are living yet.’
The patient did not seem particularly difficult. He thanked Mr Butcher for his visit, congratulated him on his coming release – the Swedish ship that was to convey the American officers home on parole had dropped anchor that morning – and sent messages to friends in Boston. But he felt that the question of his survival had been raised and he was acutely aware of Butcher’s impartial judging eye upon him; he felt that the eye condemned him and he talked faster and faster to prove that the eye was mistaken, that he was quite well, that this issue from his wound and the slight recurrence of fever was of no importance. ‘Laudable pus,’ he said, searching their faces. ‘Nothing but laudable pus. I have seen it a thousand times.’
‘Well, sir?’ asked Stephen, when they were on the quarter-deck again.
‘Well, sir,’ said Butcher, ‘there is sepsis, as you know very well; but as for the turn it will take...’ He imitated the motion of an uncertain balance with his hands, and added ‘If there were some triumph, or if he had sudden good news it might turn the scale; but as things stand perhaps it would be wise to prepare for an unfavourable termination. I do not suppose you mean to attempt any heroic remedies?’
‘I do not. It is a frail constitution there, much fretted with acrimony and discontent and domestic misfortune. Let us go and look at Captain Palmer.’
By this time the court-martial had decided against the request of three of the prisoners to have their cases tried separately; the charges against each had been read with all the necessary but wearisome legal repetition; and the machine that would grind slowly on until they were hanged by the neck was now in full motion.
There had been little dispute about identity. The description of all the Hermione mutineers had been circulated to every naval station: ‘George Norris, gunner’s mate, aged 28 years, five feet eight inches, sallow complexion, long black hair, slender build, has lost the use of the upper joint to his forefinger of the right hand, tattooed with a star under his left breast and a garter round his right leg with the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense. Has been wounded in one of his arms with a musket-ball.’ ‘John Pope, armourer, aged 40 years, five feet six inches, fair complexion, grey hair, strong made, much pitted with smallpox, a heart tattooed on his right arm.’ ‘William Strachey, aged 17 years, five feet three inches, fair complexion, long dark hair, strong made, has got his name tattooed on his right arm, dated 12 December.’ There was no arguing with such evidence and although a few men asserted that they had shipped under a purser’s name to avoid debt or a bastardy order and that an indictment using a pseudonym was invalid, this carried no weight, a naval court-martial having no use for quibbles that might have answered at the Old Bailey; and most of the accused acknowledged their identity. But so far none had acknowledged his guilt: the blame lay elsewhere, they said, and some of them did not scruple to say just where it lay, and to name the active mutineers. At present Aaron Mitchell was arguing passionately that as a boy of sixteen he could not have held out against the violent fury of two hundred men – that it would have been death to oppose them, and utterly useless – that he had wholly abominated the handing-over of the ship to the Spaniards, but that he was wholly powerless to prevent it.
There was a good deal of truth in what he said, thought Jack: it would have called for extraordinary moral strength and courage in a young fellow to withstand the determination of full-grown men, some of them fierce and bloody-minded brutes, who had been goaded beyond all endurance. Beyond all limits: Hugh Pigot, with the enormous powers of the captain of a man-of-war, had turned the Hermione into a hell afloat. The evening before the mutiny, the crew were reefing topsails: he roared out that the last man off the mizzentopsail yard was to be flogged. Pigot’s floggings were so dreaded that the two hands farthest out, at the weather and lee earings, on the yardarm itself, leapt over the inner men to reach the backstays or shrouds, their downward path, missed their hold and fell to the quarterdeck. When Pigot was told by those who picked them up that they were dead he replied ‘Throw the lubbers overboard.’
Yes, but most unhappily Mitchell’s was the usual line of defence, and every repetition weakened it disastrously. For the fact remained that the mutineers killed not only Pigot but also the first, second and third lieutenants, the purser, the surgeon, the captain’s clerk, the Marine officer, the bosun, and the young midshipman, Sir William’s cousin; and the ship had been handed over to the enemy. The surviving carpenter and gunner spoke of no seaman being shouted at or hustled or wounded, far less killed, for opposing the mutineers. Yet man after man said that he had had nothing to do with it, that he had been overborne, that he had begged them for God’s sake to consider what they were about, but in vain. Some of the more articulate spoke surprisingly well; some others were of the familiar sea-lawyer kind who used legal terms and harried the witnesses, telling them to remember they were on oath and that perjury was death in this world and hell everlasting in the next; but most, intimidated by their surroundings and dispirited by their long imprisonment, made little more than dull, mechanical, obstinate denials, denials of everything. Yet they nearly all stood up for themselves; they nearly all tried to defend their lives with what skill and intelligence they possessed, although they must have known that there was very little hope.
In fact there was none. The court was dead against them and the case had been decided long before ever the sitting began. Quite apart from the abhorrence that this particular mutiny aroused, the evidence against the men was overwhelming; and to make doubly sure two of them had been allowed to turn informer and peach on the rest, their lives being promised them. Yet still the men resisted, struggling in the midst of accusations and counter-accusations, as though the court’s decision could really be affected by what they did.
Jack listened to them with a grave, attentive expression, his spirits sinking steadily as the hours passed by. On his left hand sat Captain Goole, the president of the court, and on his right a grey-headed commander; beyond Goole there was Berry of the Jason and beyond him a young man named Painter, recently promoted commander and given the Victor sloop. They sat, a solid bench of blue and gold, all with much the same grave, self-contained look, and before them, at a table covered with papers, Stone, the deputy judge-advocate, helped by his clerks, directed the game. For a game it was, an odious game; and like most games it had intricate rules, one of which was that the accused should be allowed to have their say, should be allowed to cross-question the witnesses and address the court, so that the performance should have all the appearance of a fair, impartial trial. There was something very deeply unpleasant in playing a part in this solemn farce, something horribly indecent about being in the judgment seat and watching the others in their hopeless struggle. Jack could not lay his hand on his heart and swear that in young Mitchell’s place he would have risked his life for the infamous Pigot: there were probably several men who had in fact been swept along in terrified neutrality, but it was utterly impossible to say who they were, and in any case those who had turned King’s evidence swore that there was not one of the accused who had not taken up arms. How he wished he had knocked them all on the head in hot blood: how he wished that his duty did not require him to sit here in righteous squalor.
Not that the squalor was all on the safe, well-dressed, well-fed side of the table either; the thin, prison-hulk-pale, dirty, ragged, long-haired, unshaved prisoners, grotesque in front of their immaculate scarlet guard of Marines, had now in many cases abandoned themselves to naked lying and to throwing the blame wherever they thought it might stick. Of course it was infinitely more understandable on that side of the room, but that made it none the prettier. Jack had seen the strong mutual loyalty of seamen break down before now. He had seen men in overcrowded boats pulling away from a sinking ship thrust their swimming shipmates back and even cut off their fingers as they clung to the gunwale. This was much the same kind of spectacle.
By the time the court adjourned for a late dinner his spirits were very low indeed, all the more so because it was now apparent that the trial was going to last some time.
Stephen Maturin’s were not much higher. Captain Palmer of the Norfolk had been suffering from a quartan ague and melancholia ever since the far South Sea: and since Butcher’s medicine-chest had gone down with the ship, Stephen had prescribed for him, at first with considerable success. The ague and its sequelae had slowly yielded to Jesuits’ bark and sassafras, but since their eastward rounding of the Horn the melancholia had grown steadily worse.
‘He will cut his throat if he is not watched,’ observed Butcher as they walked away.
‘I am afraid so,’ said Stephen. ‘Yet the tincture of laudanum seemed to be having a radical effect. How I wish I could come at the leaves of coca, the Peruvian shrub. That would stir the desponding wretched mind far beyond our milk-and-water hellebore.’
Here they were interrupted by the coming of the boat, and Stephen returned to the Surprise. Her captain had come aboard without ceremony, hooking on to the larboard chains only a few minutes before, and he gave Stephen a hand over the side.
‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked, for the gunroom hour was long passed.
‘Dinner? Perhaps not,’ said Stephen. ‘No, I have certainly not had dinner.’
‘Then come and take a bite with me: though God knows,’ he added, leading the way into the cabin, ‘there is nothing like a court-martial for cutting one’s appetite.’
‘It wants seventeen minutes of the hour, sir,’ said Killick, with a surly look, as though he had been found in fault. ‘Which you said four o’clock, it being a court-martial day.’
‘Never mind,’ said Jack. ‘Tell the cook to stir his stumps, and bring some sherry while we are waiting.’
They did not have to wait long. Jack’s cook was from the East Indies; he was accustomed to be flayed if he did not feed his employers promptly, and before the second glass of sherry was out a fish soup filled the cabin with the scent of saffron, lobster, crab, bonito, mussels, clams, and a wide variety of small coral fishes – fishes, that is to say, from the coral reef.
It was a splendid soup, one that they would ordinarily have taken up to the last drop; but this time they sent it away almost untouched. ‘Did you ask the Admiral about Mr Barrow and Mr Wray?’ asked Stephen, when the steak and kidney pudding had been set on the table.
‘Yes, I did,’ said Jack, ‘and he told me that the position was unchanged.’
‘Thank you for remembering,’ said Stephen, pushing the soft white crust with a spoon. ‘I wish this pudding may be cooked.’ He expressed no opinion about the news, but in fact he was rather pleased. Although the ailing Mr Barrow was still nominally the Second Secretary of the Admiralty his work had been done for some considerable time by Andrew Wray, a youngish well-connected man who had gained a reputation for ability at the Treasury. Stephen had met him long before Wray had anything to do with the Navy – he was an acquaintance of Jack’s – but he had come to know him well only when Wray, as acting Second Secretary, came out to Malta to deal with corruption in the dockyard and a much more serious affair of treachery in the island’s administration, in which some highly-placed man seemed to be giving one of the French intelligence services secret information of the first importance. Yet it was not this that had brought them together; at the time it had seemed to Stephen that Wray, a newcomer to this highly-specialized and very dangerous work, did not enjoy the full confidence of Stephen’s own chief, Sir Joseph Blaine, the head of naval intelligence, who naturally enough preferred his agents to give proof of their powers and above all of their discretion before entrusting them with the lives of a whole network of men. These reticences were very usual in intelligence and counter-espionage, where a man might be admitted to the hall, but might wait there five years before reaching the inner closet. So although Stephen and Wray were on friendly terms and although they listened to music and played cards together – extraordinarily unfortunate cards for Wray, who now owed Stephen a small fortune, and not so small either – Stephen had not seen fit to speak of his own work in the Mediterranean or to mention his connection with Sir Joseph until the very last moment, when he had no choice about it. Quite independently he had identified the traitor and his French colleague, yet no sooner did he possess this precious information than he was obliged to leave the island. He therefore sent post-haste to Wray, who was in Sicily, telling him everything he knew (and thereby of course revealing his own identity) so that Wray might wipe out the whole organization. Unhappily, although the traitor had been seized, the chief French agent had escaped, perhaps because of Wray’s inexperience. Stephen heard of all this in Gibraltar, just before setting off on the voyage that took him to the South Seas; and although he did not see Wray, who was returning to England overland, he took advantage of Wray’s offer to carry a letter home. In undermining the French intelligence agents in Malta Stephen had made use of a very good-looking Italian lady; he had often been seen with her, and she had sailed with him in the Surprise as far as Gibraltar. It was generally supposed that she was his mistress. Word of all this had reached Diana, an unusually passionate, impulsive woman; she had written to him in unusually passionate, impulsive terms and his letter was designed to do away with her resentment of what she saw not as immoral conduct (she had no particular objection to immoral conduct) but as an intolerable public affront. Most unhappily his letter, in the nature of things, could not be wholly candid; it could not tell the whole truth, and he relied upon Wray’s spoken word, or rather his tone of voice, to convey the essential underlying truth that he could not write. He also wanted to hear every last detail of the Maltese plot and the facts behind the traitor’s curious suicide, and these would be much more valuable coming straight from Wray than filtered through Mr Barrow, that inexhaustible bag of foolish self-complacent words, or even through Sir Joseph; for although Sir Joseph (for whom Stephen had collected a large number of beetles and some butterflies) was ten times the size of Wray, a man of great sagacity and immense experience, he had not been there, on the spot, in Malta. Besides, even if Wray was not in Sir Joseph’s class he was still sharp, quick, perceptive and clever. Perhaps rather too clever: certainly too much given to high living and playing for high stakes. Stephen did not dislike him; he had found Wray something of a bore towards the end of his stay in Valletta, when he would insist on playing cards, losing steadily more and more until at last he was unable to pay and was obliged to ask for Stephen’s forbearance, but Stephen did like his deep love for music and the way he had brought about (or at least brought out) the promotion of Tom Pullings, Jack Aubrey’s first lieutenant, in spite of a rather ugly disagreement between Aubrey and Wray some years before – a disagreement whose exact details were unknown to Stephen but one that might have left ill-feeling in a malignant mind. As for Wray’s promises about helping Jack to a heavy frigate on the North American station and Pullings to a sea-going command by way of gratitude for this forbearance, Stephen was not so simple as to look upon them as wholly binding contracts; but even so they were as well to have.
Simplicity was not perhaps one of Stephen’s most outstanding characteristics; yet his mind was not wholly free of it and he had never even suspected the possibility of Wray’s being a French agent. Nor, it must be confessed, had the even less simple Sir Joseph, whose only objection to Wray was his unsuitability, his inexperience and his want of discretion. Neither Stephen nor Sir Joseph could conceive the possibility of any French intelligence organization recruiting an expensive, gambling, fashionable, unreliable, loquacious rake, however sharp and clever.
Nor did either of them conceive that Wray and his more intelligent and powerful but less showy friend Ledward (also a besotted admirer of Buonaparte) were in fact behind the obscure movement in Whitehall that was tending to discredit Sir Joseph and his allies, and to displace him in favour of the comparative nonentity Barrow, who could easily be manipulated even if he did return to effective office, a movement that would, if it were successful, give Wray and Ledward access to that curious body, so rarefied as to be almost ghostly, known simply as the Committee, which took cognizance, at the highest level, of the activities of all the various British and allied intelligence services.
And to crown all, in their short acquaintance Stephen had not perceived that Wray did in fact possess a malignant, revengeful mind. He hated Jack Aubrey for that distant quarrel and he had done him all the harm he could in the Admiralty. He did not hate Stephen except as Jack’s friend and as an agent who had undone many of his French colleagues, but if he could bring the occasion about he would certainly deliver him up to the other side.
‘I shall be glad to see him again,’ said Stephen. ‘Apart from anything else he owes me a vast great heap of money, so he does.’
‘Who does?’ asked Jack, for several minutes and a pound of steak and kidney pudding lay between his answer and Stephen’s remark, and pudding under a tropical sun had a more muffling effect on the mind than it had south of the Horn. ‘Wray,’ said Stephen, and as he spoke the Surprise hailed an approaching boat. In the confused bellowing that followed the hail they distinctly heard the word ‘letter’.
‘Killick,’ said Jack, ‘jump up on deck and see whether any mail has arrived.’
They both of them waited, their forks poised and motionless. Stephen was exceedingly anxious to learn the effect of his first letter to Diana and of those he had sent her from Brazil and the far South Atlantic, and Jack longed to know just what Sophie had to say about Samuel’s visit – he was deeply uneasy.
‘No, sir,’ said Killick returning. ‘It was only a letter for Mr Mowett from Captain Pullings, just the one. The Swede spoke a ship he was passenger in and they lay to for half a glass, passing the time of day; and Captain Pullings, he dashed off this letter. To Mr Mowett. But the Swede says he is going back by way of England once he has dropped the Americans, and if we have any mail, would be happy.’
‘Would it be worthwhile writing, at all?’ asked Stephen.
‘I doubt it,’ said Jack, whose book-long serial letter to Sophie had come to an abrupt halt the day Sam arrived. ‘We are little more than a thousand leagues from home, and we are likely to be there first – the Swede is only a high-sterned cat, you know. Not that I look forward to it very much,’ he added in an undertone; and then, ‘Killick, ask Mr Mowett whether he would like to take coffee with us.’
The first lieutenant appeared at the same time as the fragrant pot, and his face fairly lit the cabin. Even at ordinary times it was a pleasant young open face, quite agreeable to see, but now it fairly radiated delight and they both smiled in spite of their gloom. ‘Why, James Mowett, my dear,’ said Stephen, ‘what’s to do?’
‘My poems are to be published, sir. They are to be printed in a book.’ He laughed aloud in pure delight.
‘Well, I give you joy, I am sure,’ said Jack, shaking his hand. ‘Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of right Nantz.’
‘Which I’m getting, ain’t I?’ said Killick, but not very loud: he had heard, of course, and although it was not often that sea-officers brought out a volume of poetry he knew just how the fact should be celebrated.
Old Tom Pullings, it seemed, had been entrusted with the manuscript, and dear old Tom Pullings had found a most capital publisher, a splendid cove that meant to bring it out on the first of June, the Glorious First of June. This open-handed, gentlemanly cove loved poetry and loved the Navy, and had made a most amazingly handsome offer: Mowett was only to pay the cost of printing and paper and advertising and a small fee for seeing the book through the press, and he should have half the profits! The cove had said that Murray’s, a house of much less standing than his, had sold five editions of Byron’s book in nine months, and Byron’s book was not nearly so long: Tom had closed with the offer at once, seizing upon it like a flowing tide. The cove thought the book, set in pica, would make a very neat royal octavo, at half a guinea in boards. He was to have the copyright, of course, and welcome to it, and the refusal of all Mowett’s subsequent works on the same terms.
‘What is pica?’ asked Jack.
‘God knows, sir,’ said Mowett, laughing very cheerfully. ‘I mean to ask Mr Martin. He knows all about books.’
‘Let us ask him to share the ship’s triumph and tell us about the technicalities of publication,’ said Stephen.
When he was an unbeneficed clergyman Martin had indeed spent some lean, anxious and extraordinarily laborious years among the booksellers as a translator, compiler and even as a corrector of the press; he knew a good deal about the Trade and he instantly perceived that Mowett’s cove had a somewhat more pronounced resemblance to Barabbas than most. But after no more than a moment’s gravity he joined in the general congratulation and then told them (not without a certain satisfaction, having suffered much from cat-harpins and nether dog-pawls) that pica was the type that gave you six ems to the inch, and that all books, folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo or even less, took their dimensions from the original sheets, folded twice, four times, eight times and so on, as the case might be, the original sheets having themselves various sizes and names, as foolscap, crown, quad crown, double quad crown, post, demy, royal and many more. Then he told them about the appalling difficulties of distribution, the impenetrable mystery of why some books were bought and others not, and the part played by the reviewers, whom he described as a mixture of gentlemen of letters, ruffians, and old shuffling bribed sots.
At one time it seemed that the subject could never be exhausted, but Mowett was a well-bred soul; he checked himself in the midst of conjectures about the title-page – would By an Officer of Rank stun the critics into respect, or would By J. M., of the Royal Navy look better? – and said ‘Of course, sir, Tom sends you his best respects – love to all the gunroom too – and bids me tell you he had a most astonishing passage home, chased like smoke and oakum by the heaviest, fastest privateer he had ever seen, so that although the Danaë was a flyer – which we knew very well, ha, ha, ha! – he was forced to crack on most amazingly. Bonnets, drabblers, save-alls – the whole shooting-match – but even so he would have been caught if the privateer had not split her foresail in a late evening gust.’
‘That must be the Spartan,’ said Jack. ‘The Admiral was telling me about her: a joint French and American venture that specializes in West Indiamen. If they are outward bound she takes them in to New Bedford and if they are going home with sugar she runs the blockade, loading it into chasse-marées off the French coast. Her usual cruising-ground is the windward of the Azores.’
‘Yes, sir. That was where she took the Danaë in chase. And Tom says she was most diabolically cunning – so like a Portuguese man-of-war, trim, ensign, uniforms, signals and all that he let her come almost within gunshot before he smoked the cheat and bore away. Very like a man-of-war indeed.’
‘But is not a privateer a man-of-war?’ asked Stephen.
Jack and Mowett pursed their lips and looked disapproving. ‘Why,’ said Jack after a moment, ‘I suppose strictly speaking you could call them men-of-war, private men-of-war; but no one ever does.’
‘Some say letters of marque,’ observed Mowett. ‘It sounds a little better.’
‘I know nothing whatsoever about privateers,’ said Martin.
‘Why,’ said Jack, ‘they are vessels armed and fitted out to cruise against the enemy, often by merchants and ship-owners that cannot carry on their trade because of the war; and the Admiralty gives them letters of marque and reprisal. They are allowed to capture ships of the enemy nation named in their commission, and if the ships are condemned as lawful prize then they have them, just as we do. They have head-money too, like the Navy: five pounds for every man aboard the enemy at the beginning of the action.’
‘So it is very much like the Navy altogether, except that the King does not have to provide the boat – the ship, I mean.’
‘Oh no,’ said Jack. ‘It is quite different.’
‘It is not at all the same,’ said Mowett.
‘I have often heard privateers referred to with strong reprobation,’ remarked Stephen. ‘As, “Dog of a privateer, go your ways.” It is certainly a term of reproach.’
‘Forgive me if I am obtuse,’ said Martin, ‘but if both public and private ships of war attack the enemy under licence from Government, making legal prize of his merchantmen and distressing his trade, I cannot see the distinction.’
‘Oh, it is not at all the same,’ said Jack.
‘No, no,’ said Mowett. ‘It is quite different.’
‘You are to consider, my dear sir,’ said Stephen, ‘that the privateer is primarily concerned with gain; he lives on captured merchantmen. Whereas the gentlemen of the Royal Navy live chiefly on glory, and fairly scorn a prize.’
Both Jack and Mowett laughed, but not quite so heartily as Martin and Stephen, who had seen the gentlemen of the Navy in pursuit of a flying merchantman, their eyes starting from their heads and every nerve and sinew twanging-tight, and Jack said, ‘No, sir, but in all sober earnest we do endeavour to make prize of the enemy’s men-of-war first, and sometimes we succeed, at the cost of tolerably hard knocks. And that is more than can be said for the common privateer, who as the Doctor says is primarily concerned with pewter, with gain. Indeed, some of them are so concerned with it that they overstep the mark between privateering and piracy. That is what has given them such a bad name: that and the kind of men they ship, particularly the inshore privateers, who merely want a swarm of determined ruffians to board and overwhelm the trader’s crew.’
‘When I was last in London, I heard a statistical gentleman set the number of privateersmen at fifty thousand,’ remarked Stephen.
‘You astonish me,’ said Martin. ‘That is a third of all our seamen and Marines.’
Jack however had been following his own line of thought and now he said, ‘Yet you are not to suppose that they are all tarred with the same feathers. Most privateers are very fine vessels, built for speed of course, and well manned, often with prime seamen; and their officers are sometimes perfectly respectable. Many an unemployed lieutenant has taken command of a privateer, rather than rot on the beach. There was one I knew, William Foster, such a good fellow – we were shipmates in Euryalus – he had one. You remember, Mowett: we spoke him in the chops of the Channel and he begged us not to take any of his men. And he very nearly made his fortune, taking a Hamburger fairly bursting with spices and silk; but he always was an unlucky wight and on some legal quibble or other the prize-court refused to condemn her.’
‘Lord, sir,’ cried Mowett. ‘I do beg your pardon, but Pullings’ letter quite deprived me of my wits and I completely forgot to beg you to honour the gunroom with your presence tomorrow. We are giving the American officers a farewell dinner: that is to say, those of them that are fit.’
‘It is very kind in you, Mowett,’ said Jack, ‘but I am afraid the court may not adjourn until three or even later. It would never do to keep your guests slavering until then. Let me take a quick bite aboard the flag and join you for pudding. I should be sorry not to pay them every proper attention.’
The court did not in fact rise until past four, having packed a great deal of business into the day, but as the barge carried Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin back to the Surprise it was clear to them that the gunroom’s farewell dinner was still in progress. It was also clear to them that this was a very cheerful gathering, with a great deal of laughter and song, and both men realized that they would have to change their grave and even sombre faces. The trial alone had been enough to make Jack sombre, in all conscience, particularly as it seemed that late tomorrow, a Saturday, they might start passing sentence: and there was only one sentence that could be passed. But after the adjournment Goole had said, ‘We have done a good day’s work, gentlemen. The Admiral hopes that we may finish tomorrow, so that if there should be any sentences he may confirm them directly and have them carried out the next day.’
‘But the next day would be Sunday,’ cried the young commander, who knew very well that every man before the court would be found guilty and sentenced to death.
‘That is the whole point,’ said Goole. ‘A Sunday hanging is most uncommon. Was we to finish sentencing on Monday, a Tuesday execution would be commonplace in comparison, although there are so many to be hanged. And if he stood them over till the next Sunday it would not have the same effect at all.’
And shortly after the rising of the court Mr Stone said to Stephen, whom he found on the deserted poop after a prolonged medical session first with the Admiral and then with the now delirious Mr Waters, ‘Oh Dr Maturin, I have a piece of news that will interest Captain Aubrey – you know how these odd scraps of information reach the C-in-C’s secretariat. My informant, a thoroughly reliable source, tells me that the Spartan sailed from New Bedford on a cruise, victualled for three months, five days ago.’ He said this with a slightly knowing, confidential air and he clearly wished it to be understood that he had to do with intelligence-work, that he too had to do with intelligence-work and would not be averse to a little comfortable chat on the subject.
Stephen repelled the advance with impenetrable reserve and stupidity, and he was certain that Stone would never take such a foolish and improper liberty with him again. But he was equally certain that his double character was known or at least suspected in places where he had thought himself safe, and that with each fresh spread of this knowledge his usefulness and his safety diminished.
‘Here you are, sir!’ they cried as the Captain of Surprise came in, bending under the gunroom beams as he had bent this many a year and wearing a pretty good party-face. ‘Here you are, sir, and very welcome too.’ Mowett placed his chair for him and he sat there at the long table opposite Butcher, the guest of honour on Mowett’s right. It was a familiar sight, this long low crowded gunroom, the diners packed four on a side and one at each end and as many servants moving about or standing behind their chairs, just as Killick had now moved to stand behind Jack’s and big Padeen Colman, stooping low, behind Stephen’s. The atmosphere was familiar too: the Surprise had always been a hospitable ship and there was a rosy, loquacious cheerfulness in the room that even the arrival of a post-captain could scarcely damp.
‘We have kept back the pudding for you, sir,’ said Mowett, ‘and meanwhile Mr Butcher has been asking us riddles, some of them most amazingly clever. The present one, that we cannot find out, is What is never out of fashion?’
Jack tried to think of something witty to say, but wit was not at his command so soon after trying men for their lives and he sat there shaking his head, looking interested and amiable. Various suggestions came from up and down the table, but never the right answer. ‘No, gentlemen,’ said Butcher, ‘you will never guess it, though yours is quite a manly service. What is never out of fashion is the getting of bastards, ha, ha, ha!’
In the split second before he began his laugh, rather heartier than the occasion required, Jack saw the eyes of all his officers instantly turn upon him: they expressed concern and support and all hands followed his lead with a violence that gratified Butcher and astonished the tall American midshipman, who had been exposed to the surgeon’s riddles for ten thousand miles and who had thought them sad stuff even at the first hearing. Encouraged, Butcher now asked ‘What did the fellow say who ran his nose against the door in the dark, although he had his arms stretched out?’ but the entrance of the pudding put an end to the conundrum. It was Jack’s favourite, a noble great spotted dog, the first really succulent, palely-gleaming suet pudding he had seen since they came north of Capricorn; yet he would have given a five-pound note to slip his piece through the scuttle or even, veiled in a handkerchief, into his pocket. It called for an iron determination to get the whole mass down under the approving eye of Mowett, who had saved him the particularly glutinous end, and of the gunroom steward, who had supervised the cooking.
Fortunately soon after this the cloth was drawn and the toasts began. Among others they drank Wives and sweethearts and although the usual facetious murmurs of and may they never meet were heard all round the table it was remarkable that hardly a man, on this last leg of their voyage, was unaffected. Vinous sentiment might have played some part in this but it certainly did not in every case; Jack, for example, had drunk nothing at all and yet he was so moved by a sudden diamond-sharp vision of his home – by this vision, coming on top of his horrible day, and by the thoughts that crowded into his head – that the only way he could think of to do his convivial duty by the gunroom and its guests was to drink to them each in turn. This he did not by order of seniority but counter-clockwise: ‘Mr Mowett, a glass of wine with you, sir, and to the Muses. – Mr Butcher, I drink to you, sir, and to the shores of the Potomac.’ Allen, the grey-headed master of the Surprise, was a splendid seaman, but in formal gatherings he was usually so shy, ill-at-ease and constrained that it was no kindness to address him; but this afternoon he was bright pink with pleasure, and he replied to Jack’s proposal by bowing low, filling a bumper and draining it with the hearty words ‘And my dear love to you, sir.’ Beyond Allen sat Honey, a master’s mate whom Jack had appointed acting-lieutenant, and when Honey had finished explaining the English peerage to his right-hand neighbour, Jack called down the table and drank with him. Then, when the decanter came full circle he said to the neighbour in question, ‘Mr Winthrop, sir, let us drink to the ladies of Boston.’ Adams the purser came next, a cheerful man, now in full glow from having his pork, beef, bread, candles, tobacco, spirits and slops aboard and exactly booked; but when he poured his wine Jack cried, ‘Come, sir, I see some of the Almighty’s daylight in that glass, which is close on high treason. Let it be abolished.’ Much the same could have been said for Martin’s modest toast, but Jack had too much respect for the cloth to point it out; and having emptied his own glass he poured another, saying ‘Killick, take this to Mr Maitland,’ – the other acting-lieutenant, who had the deck – ‘and say I drink to him.’ Then came Howard, the Marine officer, whose face was as red as his coat and whose body was scarcely capable of taking another drop of wine, though his spirit was clearly willing. And lastly there was Jack’s left-hand neighbour: ‘Dr Maturin, a glass of wine with you.’
The table was in a general din with three separate animated conversations going on at once, and both Mowett and Mr Allen had to rouse Stephen from his reverie (an unhappy reverie, alas) to make him understand the Captain’s proposal. ‘A glass of wine? He wishes to drink a glass of wine with me? By all means. Your very good health, sir, and may no new thing arise. God send us luck on our voyage.’ It was clear from his tone that he thought luck would be needed, and this might have cast a chill on the party had not the Marine officer chosen the same moment for gliding under the table, a smooth plunge into smiling, speechless coma.
A little after this farewells began, and presently the Americans were rowed back to their empty, echoing whaler, there to pack for their homeward voyage in the Swedish cartel.
In the cabin, as they were preparing their instruments for another evening with the Admiral, Jack said, ‘It is great nonsense to say that wine changes your mood. I drank clean round the table, and yet I am as melancholy as a gib cat and as sober as a judge.’
‘Are you in fact quite sober, Jack?’
‘Oh, I may slur my notes a little more than usual in a quick passage, but my mind is stone cold sober. For example, there is not the slightest danger of my wrecking my career just for the pleasure of telling that old hound what I think of his Sunday hanging.’
‘Your wits are unaffected, I find. Then listen, Jack: the secretary made a most improper and foolish communication to me this afternoon, from which it appears that the Spartan, the corsair that pursued Tom Pullings, sailed from New Bedford five days ago. No doubt the Admiral will tell you in due course, but it might be as well for you to know it now.’
‘Sailed? The Devil she has,’ said Jack, a dark gleam coming over his face. ‘Then I may be able to cook two geese with one – I may both get out of this damnable hanging and have a chance of nobbling the privateer. Killick, Killick there. Pass the word for Mr Mowett. Mr Mowett, there is a possibility that we may be able to slip away on tomorrow’s tide rather than wait until next week. The ship is ready to sail, I believe?’
‘All except one last Moses of rum and two of sugar, sir, and some firewood.’
‘Then once they are aboard, let there be a reasonable number of liberty-men tonight and tomorrow till noon. But there must be enough perfectly sober hands to carry us out with credit in the event of our sailing on the evening tide. So unless there are orders to the contrary you will stand by to weigh the moment my barge shoves off tomorrow. There will be at least one stone-cold sober watch to make sail and cat the anchors; and there will be no women on board whatsoever, no women at all. I cannot be sure of it, of course, but I hope the proceedings will be over before the turn of the tide.’
‘It would be most improper in me to try to influence the proceedings of a court-martial in any way whatsoever,’ said the Admiral at the end of their first trio, while sheet-music and little Barbados buns were being handed round. ‘But I do hope you gentlemen will be able to make up your minds one way or another tomorrow. If the trial has to be adjourned until next week a great deal of the effect will be lost.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack. ‘I hope so too – I very much look forward to an early end, because with your leave I should like to sail on the evening tide. Mr Stone tells me the Spartan privateer sailed from New Bedford five days ago, and it seems to me that with a fair wind I might find her this side of the Azores; though of course there would not be a moment to lose.’
‘I wish you may find her, with all my heart. The privateers are ruining this island – the planters are continually making representations to the Governor and me – and she is the worst of them all. But did Stone also tell you she has shipped forty-two-pounder carronades? I have been hoping to send Harrier and Diligence after her, but I can never spare both of them at the same time and neither is strong enough to tackle her alone: even you may find you have caught a Tartar, if you come up with her. A forty-two pound ball makes an ugly great hole in scantlings like yours. I beg your pardon, Doctor. Here are we tarpaulins talking shop and keeping you from your music. Pray forgive me, and let us set about the Dittersdorff.’
The Dittersdorff was a charming piece. It played on in their heads as they rowed through the warm moonlight and the lapping sea back to the Surprise, and it was still playing in Jack’s inward ear as he stood on his quarterdeck, waiting to step into his barge the next morning. But it was cut short by the sight of a hoist running up to the flagship’s peak. ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked his youngsters, six boys gathered there to take part in the ceremony of piping the side – six boys he had taken aboard as children; and even now they were little more. ‘No, sir,’ said two breaking, unsteady voices and four clear trebles. ‘No, sir: we have never seen it before.’
‘You are an unobservant set of lubbers,’ said Jack. ‘You saw it yesterday and you saw it the day before, and a damned unpleasant sight it is. Union at the peak, a court-martial. Mr Boyle, tell the Doctor if he is not here in five seconds he will miss the boat. Mr Mowett, it would be as well to let Jemmy Bungs go ashore and pick up some old knocked-down slack-casks, enough to give the appearance of a deck-cargo, and about fifty yards of that scrim they use for lining sugar-barrels. He may spend ten pounds.’
Stephen came running with a piece of toast in his hand and hurried down into the barge; Jack followed him, in greater state, to the howl of pipes; and as the barge shoved off he said to himself, ‘I hope to God this is the last time: it will be a horrible session.’
It was the last time; and it was a horrible session, even more horrible than he had expected. When the court was cleared after the prisoners’ last vain and generally irrelevant but sometimes extremely painful statements, the five members considered their verdict, the youngest, Painter, giving his opinion first. He had never sat on a court-martial before and the thought of judging a man’s life away troubled him extremely. He turned the matter this way and that, but Stone and Goole dealt with his scruples in a calm, practical, businesslike manner; indeed, as the law stood he had no real choice, and when it came to the formal voting he said ‘Guilty’ to each name, though in a most hesitant and reluctant voice. Stone, the judge-advocate for the time being, bent to his table, writing fast and fair: ‘find the charges proved . . . adjudge them and each of them to suffer death by being hanged by the neck on board such of His Majesty’s ship or ships, at such time or times and at such place or places...’ He looked over his paper with a keen, objective eye, nodded, and passed it to the members for their signature: it was an ugly document to put one’s name to, and none of the captains relished it, not even Goole. Even less did they relish the next stage, when the prisoners were brought back, and when the bystanders had been silenced so that nothing but ship-sounds and a remote cry of ‘Sweepers, sweepers aft, d’ye hear me there?’ could be heard, the judge-advocate read his paper out in a strong, impassive voice, so that through all the legal forms and repetitions each man heard his sentence loud and clear.
It was an ugly business, and after taking a curt, barely civil leave of Goole and the others Jack walked out on deck. On the poop the yeoman of signals was folding up the court-martial flag, and looking with half-closed shielded eyes over the blazing sunlit water Jack saw that the Surprise was already moving across to her windward anchor, the fife shrilling loud upon her capstan as it turned.
Stephen Maturin was waiting for him at the head of the accommodation-ladder with a face as grave and heavy as his own. As Jack approached he said to Mr Waters’ older assistant, ‘Three drops each hour, and if possible continue the bark tomorrow,’ and walked silently down into the barge.
‘Larboard,’ said Jack to Bonden, and the moment the boat reached the ship he sprang up the side, glanced fore and aft, saw that everything was in train, and said, ‘Mr Mowett: to flag, Request permission to part company.’
