The Ionian Mission Part 10

'Do you, indeed? Yet they are utterly unknown in Irish ships; and when they are perceived in others, they are universally termed Saxon standards.'

'Call 'em what you like, they are d.a.m.ned ill-looking uncouth objects and I knew very well the squadron would laugh and come it the satirical; but I will be bled if I have a topmast carry away and so miss all the fun, and I will be d.a.m.ned if the Admiral throws out our signal to make more sail. And with a wall-sided, weak-kneed ship what can you... There goes his toplight, by the way.' Jack c.o.c.ked his ear to the p.o.o.p: he heard the utterly reliable Pullings' voice say 'Bear a hand now, and wipe Orion's eye,' and the golden effulgence of the Worcester's three stern lanterns lit the mizen topsail and the maincourse several seconds before those of any other ship in the squadron.

'You were telling me of your ideal battle, with a view to ill.u.s.trating naval strategy,' said Stephen.

'Yes. The frigates tell us that the enemy is there under our lee - for the wind has stayed true, do you see - preferably straggling over a couple of miles of sea in two or three untidy heaps, as foreigners do, with the land no great way off to hamper their movements and to make it even easier for Admiral Thornton to decide the moment for the action. My bet is that he will instantly make a dash for it, before they can form their line - bear down immediately, forming our own as we go, double on his weakest part and so work up, taking, burning or sinking as we go. For it will take them a great while to make an orderly line, whereas we do so every day, and we practise the manoeuvre from the dispersed positions at least twice a week. Every man will slip into his place; and since the Admiral has explained his plans for half a dozen situations every man will know just what he is to do. There will be little signalling. The Admiral dislikes it except in the greatest emergency, and the last time he spoke to the captains he said that if any one of us was puzzled or could not make out the order of battle because of the smoke, he might take it upon himself to engage the nearest Frenchman yardarm to yardarm. But there are fewer of us, and since we must be able to compel a perhaps unwilling enemy to accept battle just when and where it suits us, all this, you understand, depends on our having the weather-gage: that is to say, that the wind shall blow from us to them. Lord, Stephen, I shall not be satisfied with anything under twenty prizes, and a dukedom for the Admiral.'

'Sure, I take your point about the wind,' said Stephen in a sombre voice. Although he longed for the final overthrow and destruction of Buonaparte and his whole system, the immediate prospect of huge slaughter depressed him extremely - apart from anything else his duties during battle and after it brought him to be intimately acquainted with war's most hideous side and with young men maimed; he did not mention this, however, but after a pause he asked 'Twenty? That is more than Monsieur Emeriau has with him."

Jack had named the impossible number by way of conjuring fate: in fact he expected a very severe encounter indeed, for although from want of keeping the sea the French were often slow in manoeuvring, their gunnery was sometimes deadly accurate, and their ships were solid, well-found and new; but he was aware of what was in his friend's mind and he was about to pa.s.s his twenty off as a slip of the tongue when the Renown, quarter of a mile away on the Worcester's starboard bow, hoisted a string of coloured lanterns to tell the Admiral that she was overpressed with sail.

'Overpressed with sail,' said Jack. 'And she will not be the only one. We shall see a good many topgallants gone in the morning, if the breeze keeps freshening like this, working up an ugly sea.'

'It is shockingly rough indeed. Even I have to cling on with both hands,' said Stephen, and as he spoke a packet of mixed water and froth struck the side of his face, running down inside his shirt. He considered for a while and added, 'Poor Graham will be in a sad way: he has not yet learnt the lithe gliding motion of the seaman. He has not learnt to antic.i.p.ate the billow's force.'

'Perhaps you should turn in, Stephen. You may need all your strength tomorrow. I will have you called the moment the French fleet is seen, never fear - I promise you shall miss nothing.'

Yet the sun rose and no one woke Dr Maturin. A thin grey damp light straggled down to the cabin where he swung in his damp cot, dripped or even squirted upon each time the Worcester rolled, and still he lay, almost comatose after eight sleepless, tossing hours and then at last a small gla.s.s of laudanum. A more than usually violent lee-lurch sent a positive jet of water through the ship's side as her timbers opened and closed under the strain; and the jet, striking him in the face, plucked him from a dream of whales into the present world, and he woke with a confused sense of extreme urgency.

Sitting up and clinging to the lengths of baize-covered man-rope that had kindly been provided for his getting in and out he raised his voice in a grating howl, his nearest approach to the all-pervading sea-officer's call for his servant. Nothing happened. Perhaps his hail had been drowned by the omnipresent noise of grinding timber, pounding seas, and roaring wind. He said 'd.a.m.n the b.o.o.by' and hurried into his damp breeches, tucking his wet nightshirt about him. He groped his way to the empty wardroom and there he hailed the wardroom steward ; but again he hailed in vain. Empty it was, the long table stretching away with fiddles upon it holding a few empty bowls while the bread-barge glided up and down as the Worcester pitched. The wardroom kept a barrel of small beer slung from the after beams for those who liked it and Stephen, dry within though damp without, was wondering whether the draught would be worth the journey when the Worcester plunged her stern deep into her own wake, so that he was obliged to crouch to keep his balance. There followed a quivering pause during which he considered small beer and then the forward part of her hull crashed down into a hollow of the sea with such extraordinary and quite unexpected violence that Stephen turned a double backward somersault, miraculously landing on his feet, quite unhurt.

'That was why I was dreaming of whales, no doubt - of the ship diving upon whales,' he reflected as he climbed the companion-ladder and put his head above the rim of the quarterdeck. A rough, blowing, overcast day he saw, with spray and packets of solid water flying through the air: a grim quarterdeck, with almost all the officers and young gentlemen upon it, looking grave, and a strong party at the pump by the mainmast, turning the winches fast, with reliefs standing by. Jack and Pullings over on the weather side, obviously discussing something high among the sails.

Even if Jack had not been so obviously engaged, Stephen would not have approached him: the Captain of the Worcester never allowed his young gentlemen to appear improperly dressed and he expected his officers to set a good example. He was himself rosy with new-shaving, although from his drawn face he had certainly not been to bed at all. Nor had a good many other people Stephen could see; and from their grey, jaded looks it appeared to him that both watches had been on deck all night. There was obviously some grave emergency, for one of the oldest, most strictly observed of all naval rules required that those who attended to the officers' comfort should never, never be called away unless instant dissolution threatened; yet here before him, at the c.u.mp-winches or waiting their turn, stood his own servant, the wardroom steward, Killick himself, and the Captain's cook.

Eager to know more, he crammed his nightcap into a pocket, pa.s.sed his hand over his bristly skull by way of making himself more presentable, and climbed the remaining steps, with the intention of sidling along behind the midshipmen to the leeward beak of the p.o.o.p, where the purser (a great tactician) was evidently explaining the situation to Stephen's two a.s.sistants and the Captain's clerk. But again he had reckoned without the Worcester's strange surprising capers - he was on the rim itself, bending forward, when the ship dropped her bows sideways into the long vacancy, making that same monstrous jerk and crash and bowling him diagonally across the deck to his Captain's feet.

'Bravo, Doctor,' cried Jack. 'You could set up for a tumbler, if all else fails. But you have no hat, I -see -you have forgot your hat. Mr Seymour,' he called out to a midshipman, 'jump to my fore-cabin for the spare foul-weather hat by the barometer, and read the gla.s.s as you bring it away.'

'Twenty-eight inches and one sixteenth, sir, if you please,' said Mr Seymour, pa.s.sing the hat. 'And sinking still.'

Jack clapped the hat on Stephen's head, Pullings fastened the tapes under his chin, and together they propelled him to the rail. 'But there they are,' he burst out, his voice cracking with emotion. 'There they are, for all love.'

And there they were indeed, the long line of French men-of-war covering a mile of torn, white-whipped sea, the rearmost division somewhat separated from the rest and not much above two miles from the English ships. 'Give you joy of your prophecy, Jack,' he cried but the words were hardly out before he wished them back. For the essence of the prophecy was not there: the strong, gusty wind was blowing from the enemy line and not towards it and that was the reason for the look of cruel, long-drawn-out disappointment on his friend's face. Emeriau it was who had the weather-gage, and he was making use of it to go home, declining battle.

The wind had veered steadily throughout the night, falling to a near calm in the middle watch and then suddenly springing up again and blowing harder from the north-west, so that although they found the French fleet off Cape Cavaleria as they had hoped, the whole situation was reversed. The enemy were now steering for home with the wind one point free, while the English line, close-hauled, crowded sail in the hope, the very faint hope, of cutting off the rear division.

'The trouble is, being new and clean they sail so much better on a bowline than we do with our foul bottoms and old ships,' said Jack. 'But we still have a chance: the wind may back and favour us - it has often shifted these last hours - and they have the indraught and the Cavaleria current to contend with.'

'What is that frightful noise, that great resounding crash?'

'We call it slapping. Some of our northern ships do it when they stem these short hollow seas. It makes the Mediterranean builders laugh.'

'Perilous would it be, at all?'

Jack whistled. 'Why, as long as we do not spring a b.u.t.t, we are not likely to founder,' he said. 'But it does make things a little damp between decks, and it does check our speed. Now you must forgive me. You would get a better general view from the p.o.o.p: Mr Grimmond, Mr Savage, give the Doctor a hand to the p.o.o.p. He would like to sit on the coaming where he can clap on to the fife-rail if it should get rough. Forecastle, there: is that spritsail-topsail laid along?'

He returned to the task of driving a heavy, partially-waterlogged and possibly disintegrating ship through a savage chaotic cross-sea, the Mediterranean at its sudden worst: and all the time he tried to persuade himself that the rearmost Frenchmen were not drawing away. The English line had changed a good deal since it was first formed at crack of dawn and the Worcester had moved up two places, the Orion dropping astern for want of foretopgallantmast and then the Renown with her bowsprit gone in the gammoning: the squadron was now sailing in a bow-and-quarter line, pelting along as hard as ever they could go, all their carefully-husbanded stores, cordage, sailcloth and spars now laid out with a reckless prodigality. Jack could see the Admiral, made fast to an elbow-chair clamped to the Ocean quarterdeck, his telescope often trained forward to fix Emeriau's flagship. Little time he had for watching the Admiral, however: this pace, close-hauled on a strong but capricious and veering wind that might lay the Worcester on her beam ends with a sudden furious gust or take her aback, called for the closest attention; and all this time the four experienced quartermasters at the wheel had to favour her to try to avoid the murderous slap, but without losing speed.

From his lonely, windswept, comfortless viewpoint abaft the mizenmast Stephen could make out little but a confused turmoil of water, high, sharp-pointed waves apparently running in every direction - a dirty sea with a great deal of yellowish foam blown violently over the surface, eddying here and there, and all this beneath a low yellow-grey sky with lightning under the western clouds. Far more impressive seas he had known: the enormous rollers of the high southern lat.i.tudes, for example, of the hurricane waters off Mauritius. But he had not seen a more wicked and as it were spiteful sea, with its steep, close-packed waves - a sea that threatened not the instant annihilation of the great antarctic monsters but a plucking apart, a worrying to death. Looking along the line he saw that several of the English ships had already been plucked to some degree - many a topgallantmast was gone, and even to his unprofessional eye there seemed to be some strange makeshift spars, sails and rigging, while far astern one unhappy ship could be seen sending up a jury mizen and at the same time trying everything humanly possible to keep pace. Yet there was not a ship but that was hurrying, racing along, with a prodigious expenditure of nautical skill and ingenuity and persistence, as though joining battle were the only felicity: a battle that seemed more and more improbable as time went by, measured for Stephen by the regular strokes on the Worcester's bell and for the seamen by one emergency after another - the main pump choking, a gun breaking loose on the lower deck, the foretopsail blowing clean out of its boltrope.

At four bells Dr Maturin, changing into his old crusted black coat, crept down to make his rounds of the sick-bay: this was earlier than his usual time, but it was rare that a heavy, prolonged blow did not bring a fair number of casualties and in fact the sick-bay was busier than he had expected. His a.s.sistants had dealt with many of the sprains, contusions and broken bones, but some they had left for him, including a striking complex compound fracture, recently brought below.

'This will take us until after dinner, gentlemen,' he said, 'but it is much better to operate while he is unconscious: the muscles are relaxed, and we are not distracted by the poor fellow's screams.'

'In any case there will be nothing hot for dinner,' said Mr Lewis. 'The galley fires are out.'

'They say there are four feet of water in the hold,' said Mr Dunbar.

'They love to make our flesh creep,' said Stephen. 'Come, pledgets, ligatures, the leather-covered chain and my great double-handed retractor, if you please; and let us stand as steady as we can, bracing ourselves against these uprights.'

The compound fracture took even longer than they had expected, but eventually he was sewn up, splinted, bandaged, and lashed into a cot, there to swing until he was cured. Stephen hung his b.l.o.o.d.y coat to drip dry upon its nail and walked off. He looked into the wardroom, saw only the purser and two of the Marine officers wedged tight about their bottle, and returned to his place on the p.o.o.p, carrying a tarpaulin jacket.

As far as he could make out little had changed. The Worcester and all the ships he could see ahead and astern were still tearing along at the same racing speed, carrying a great press of canvas and flinging the white broken water wide- a great impression of weight, power, and extreme urgency. On the decks below him there was still the same tension, with men jumping to make the innumerable slight changes that Jack called for from the place at the weather-rail that he had scarcely left for five minutes since the chase began, and where he was now eating a piece of cold meat. The pumps were still turning fast, and somewhere in the middle parts of the ship another had joined them, sending its jet in a fine curve far out to leeward. The French line still stretched half-way to the horizon, standing north-east for Toulon: they did not seem very much farther away if at all and it seemed to Stephen that this might continue indefinitely. To be sure, the Worcester was labouring cruelly, but she had been labouring cruelly for so long that there seemed no good reason why she should not go on. He watched attentively, therefore, and not without hope that some disaster among the French ships might allow the squadron to make up those few essential miles: he watched, fascinated by the spectacle of what he was tempted to call motionless - relatively motionless - hurry, with a sense of a perpetual, frozen present, unwilling to miss anything, until well on into the afternoon, when Mowett joined him.

'Well, Doctor,' said he, sitting wearily on the coaming, 'we did our best."

'Is it over, so?' cried Stephen. 'I am amazed, amazed.'

'I am amazed it lasted so long. I never thought to see her take such a pounding, and still swim. Look at that,' he said, pointing to a length of caulking that had worked out of a seam in the deck. 'G.o.d love us, what a sight. She spewed the oak.u.m from her sides long since, as you would have expected with such labouring; but to see it coming from a midships seam...'

'Is that why we must give up?'

'Oh no: it is the breeze that fails us.'

'Yet there seems to be a good deal still,' said Stephen, looking at the strip of mixed pitch and oak.u.m as it lashed to and fro in the wind, the end shredding off in fragments that vanished over the side.

'But surely you must have seen how it has been hauling forward this last hour? We shall be dead to leeward presently. That is why the Admiral is taking his last chance. You did not notice the Doris repeating his signal, I suppose?'

'I did not. What did it signify?'

He is sending our best sailers in to attack their rear.

If they can get there before the wind heads them, and if Emeriau turns to support his ships, he hopes we shall be able to come up in time to prevent ours being mauled.'

'A desperate stroke, Mr Mowett?'

'Well, sir, maybe, maybe. But maybe it will bring on a most glorious action before the sun goes down. Look: here they come. San Josef, Berwick, Sultan, Leviathan, and just the two frigates to windward - no, sir, to windward - Pomone and of course our dear old Surprise. All French or Spanish ships, you see, and all with a fine tumblehome. Some fellows have all the luck. I will fetch you a spygla.s.s, so that you miss nothing.

Now that they were no longer obliged to keep down to the squadron's pace the four swift-sailing ships of the line ran up in splendid style, steadily increasing sail as they came. They pa.s.sed up, forming as they went, and each ship gave them a brief informal spontaneous cheer as they went by: Stephen saw the cheerful Rear-Admiral Mitch.e.l.l in the San Josef, the surgeon of the Leviathan, and perhaps a dozen other men he knew, all looking as though they were going to a treat. And he waved to Mr Martin on the Berwick's quarterdeck; but Mr Martin, half blinded by the spray sweeping aft from the Berwick's eager bow, did not see the signal.

Now they were well ahead, the San Josef leading, the others in her wake, and all heading straight for the gap between the French rear and centre divisions. Stephen watched them closely with his gla.s.s: the finer points of seamanship no doubt escaped him, yet he did see that for the first hour they not only drew clear away from their friends but they certainly gained on their enemies.

For the first hour: then between three bells and four the situation hardly changed. All those heavily-armed, densely-populated ships raced strenuously over the sea in gratuitous motion, neither gaining nor losing. Or was there indeed a loss, a slackening of the tension, the first edge of sickening disappointment? Stephen peered over the p.o.o.prail down at the quarterdeck, where Jack Aubrey stood in his set place as though he were part of the ship; but little did he learn from that grave, closed, concentrated face.

At that point the Worcester's captain was in fact even more part of his ship than usual: the master's, carpenter's, first lieutenant's reports had given him a fairly clear picture of what was happening below and intuition provided the rest. He felt each of her monstrous plunges as though her bowels were his own; furthermore he knew that the immense purchases by which he had so far held the Worcester's masts to her hull depended essentially upon the mechanical strength of her clamps and hanging-knees, that these must be near their limit, and that if they went he could not carry half his present sail - could not keep up with the squadron, but would have to fall to leeward with the other lame ducks. For a long while he had prayed that they might last long enough for the fighting to begin in the French rear and for the Worcester to come up; now, keener-sighted than his friend, he saw that there was to be no fighting. Long before Stephen saw the San Josef taken squarely aback, losing her maintopgallantmast with the shock, Jack realized that Mitch.e.l.l's ships were being headed by the wind: he had seen the quivering weather-leeches, he had divined the furious bracing of the yards and the hauling of the bowlines, and he had measured the increasing gap between the English and the French, and it was clear to him that the advanced ships' slanting approach to the enemy could not succeed - that the long chase must end in slow disappointment and anticlimax.

But it was not over yet. 'Look at Surprise and Pomone, sir,' cried Pullings, and swinging his telescope from the San Josef Jack saw the two frigates draw ahead under a great press of sail and bear down under the rearmost Frenchman's lee, the Robuste, of eighty guns. They moved faster than any ship of the line and as soon as they were within range they opened with their bow-guns and then with their broadsides, firing high in the hope of knocking away some important spar.

'Luff up, luff up, for G.o.d's sake luff up,' said Jack aloud as he followed them in their perilous course along the Robuste's side: very close range was everything in such a case. But neither Surprise nor Pomone luffed up. Both sides fired repeatedly at a distance; neither did any apparent damage, and after the frigate's first unsuccessful run Admiral Thornton threw out the signal of recall, emphasizing it with two guns: an engagement at that range, a distant peppering, would accomplish nothing, whereas the Robuste's heavy metal might disable or even sink the smaller ships. And these two guns, together with those remote and ineffectual broadsides under the clouds to the north-east, were all the firing the squadron ever heard.

Almost immediately after the Admiral's second gun, and as though in answer to it, a particularly violent gust laid the Worcester over in a cloud of foam: she recovered heavily, all hands clinging to their holds; but as she came up and took the weather-strain so Jack heard the deep internal rending that he had dreaded. He and Pullings exchanged a glance: he stepped over to his larboard hawsers, felt their horrible slackness, and called to the signal-midshipman, 'Mr Savage, prepare the hoist; I am overpressed with sail.'

CHAPTER NINE.

When Jack Aubrey brought his ship into the fleet at the rendezvous south-east of Toulon she had three turns of twelve-inch cable frapped about her and a spare sprit sail, thick with tarred oak.u.m, drawn under her bottom. She had something of the chrysalis-look her captain had once imagined in the lightness of his heart, but at least she still possessed her masts and all her guns, though they had cost her people some cruel days of pumping, and at least she looked trim and clean as she glided cautiously in over a perfect sea, the deep, deep blue rippling under the caress of a languid southern breeze. The water still gushed in steady jets from her side, but she was no longer in danger of foundering.

The Worcester came in at such a gentle pace that Jack had plenty of time to survey the squadron. Some ships were missing, either because they had been sent to Malta to refit or because they had not yet rejoined; but on the other hand two seventy-fours and an eighty-gun ship had arrived from Cadiz, and at least some stores must have reached the fleet, since there were now only half a dozen jury-masts to be seen. The squadron, though battered and somewhat diminished, was still a powerful blockading force. He saw that clearly enough from a distance, and when his barge pulled along the line in answer to the flagship's signal he saw it more clearly still. On this calm, sunny day the ships all had their ports open to air the lower decks, and behind these ports he saw the guns, row after row of guns, with seamen t.i.tivating them. This sense of abiding strength and his exact falling-in with the squadron was a satisfaction to him, but the greater part of his mind was taken up with foreboding and concern. As the barge slipped along past the Ocean's splendid gilded stern he heard the howling of the Admiral's little dog, and when Bonden hooked on at the entry-port, blundering for the first time in his life as captain's c.o.xswain, Jack was obliged to compose himself for an instant before going aboard.

The ceremony of reception was muted; on all hands he saw faces as grave as his own; and the Admiral's secretary, leading him to the fore-cabin, said in a low voice, When I take you in, pray let the interview be as short and smooth as possible. He has had a long hard day of it: Dr Harrington is with him now.'

They stood there for a while, looking out through the half-port, beyond the dark rectangle to the brilliance and purity of the day, even purer and more brilliant for being framed: and still the dog howled. 'The doctor is with him,' reflected Jack. 'So they have put the pug into the coach: some dogs cannot bear seeing their masters touched.' The Ocean veered a quarter of a point, and now the frame contained a ship, a great way off and apparently floating above the nacreous surface of the farther sea. As seamen will, Jack tilted his head back and sideways to consider her: she was Surprise, of course, and she was presumably coming from the insh.o.r.e squadron; yet her side was painted blue and what little he could make out of her pennant showed it as low as the crosstrees: the ship was in mourning. 'What happened to Captain Latham?' he asked.

'Can you indeed see as far as that?' said Allen, following his gaze. 'I am afraid he was killed. He and his first lieutenant were killed by the same ball as the Surprise was going down to attack the Robuste.'

Dr Harrington came out of the great cabin, bowed and sombre; he opened the coach door as he went by, and the little dog, scrambling fast across the deck, darted in before Jack and the secretary and flung itself down under the Admiral's desk.

Jack had expected to find the Admiral deeply saddened, even more infirm, possibly savage (he could be a Tartar on occasion), certainly very gravely affected indeed; but he had not expected to find him removed from humanity, and it disconcerted him.

Admiral Thornton was perfectly civil and collected: he congratulated Aubrey on having brought the Worcester in, listened to a brief summary of the Statement of Condition that Jack laid on his desk and said the ship must clearly go to Malta for a complete refit - she would be of no use as a man-of-war for a great while, if at all; but her guns would be uncommonly useful at this juncture. His mind was alive - it dealt with the details of his command, rarely hesitating for a moment - but the man was not, or not wholly, and he looked at Jack from an immense distance: not coldly, still less severely, but from another plane; and Jack felt more and more embarra.s.sed, ashamed of being alive while the other was already taking leave.

'But in the mean time, Aubrey,' said the Admiral, 'you will not be idle. As you may have heard, poor Latham was killed in his engagement with the Robuste, so you will proceed to the Seven Islands in Surprise. The death of one of the Turkish rulers on the Ionian coast has brought about a complex situation that may possibly allow us to expel the French from Marga, even from Paxo and Corfu, and we must have at least one frigate on the spot. I will not elaborate - I am leaving this station very shortly, you know - but Mr Allen will make the position clear and the Rear-Admiral will give you your orders. You will have the advice of Dr Maturin and Mr Graham. Does that suit you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then goodbye to you, Aubrey," said the Admiral, holding out his hand. Yet it was not a human farewell: it was rather a gesture of civility to a being of another kind, very small and far away, at the wrong end of a telescope as it were, a being of no importance, in circ.u.mstances of no great importance, that nevertheless had to be dealt with correctly.

Only twice had Jack felt that the Admiral was still in contact with the ordinary world: once when he gently put his foot on the pug's back to stop it wheezing so loud, and once when he said 'leaving this station'. It was common knowledge that the Ocean was sailing for Mahon and Gibraltar in the morning, but the Admiral's meaning would have been clear to a man with even less religious sense than Jack Aubrey and the tone of unaffected humility and resignation moved him deeply.

Returning to the fore-cabin he found Stephen there with Mr Allen and Professor Graham. 'Captain Aubrey,' said Stephen, 'I have been telling Mr Allen that I must decline going with you to Admiral Harte's apartment. There are circ.u.mstances that make it improper for me to make any official appearance in this matter or in any other to do with Intelligence at present.'

'I quite agree,' said Graham.

'Besides,' added Stephen, 'I have to see Dr Harrington and our patient in fifteen minutes.'

'Very well,' said Allen. 'Then I shall send a messenger to tell Dr Harrington that you are here. Gentlemen, shall we wait on the Rear-Admiral?'

Rear-Admiral Harte had never held an independent command of any importance and the prospect of supporting the enormous responsibilities of Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean overwhelmed him. Although it was certain that the Admiralty would not leave him in a post so very far beyond his abilities but would send out a replacement as soon as the news of Admiral Thornton's incapacity reached London, Harte's manner and even his appearance were almost unrecognizable. His ill-looking, foxy, close-eyed face wore a look that Jack had never seen on it before, although they were old, old acquaintances -a look of earnest gravity. He was civil to Jack and almost deferential to Allen and Graham, who for their part treated him with no extraordinary respect. Harte had at no time been admitted to the Admiral's confidence in anything but purely naval matters: he knew almost nothing of the deeply involved political situation and nothing whatsoever about the Admiral's frail network of intelligence. Allen gave a short account of the position in the Seven Islands, and Harte could be seen straining his weak understanding to follow it: 'Now, sir,' said Allen, 'I advert not to the Seven Islands as such but to their former allies and dependencies on the mainland, particularly Kutali and Marga. As you know, the French are still in Marga, and they seem to be as firmly settled there as they are in Corfu: yet a little while ago it was represented to the Commander-in-Chief that the possessor of Kutali could cut Marga's aqueduct and take the town from behind; while a friendly base at Kutali would make it far easier for us to attack Paxo and Corfu, which even Buonaparte calls the keys of the Adriatic.'

'We are to take Kutali, then?' said Harte.

'Why, no, sir,' said Allen patiently. 'Kutali is Turkish, and we must not offend the Porte. Any evident, unprovoked aggression in this region would give our enemies in Constantinople a great advantage: it must never be forgotten that the French have some very intelligent men there, that the Sultan's mother is a Frenchwoman, and that Napoleon's recent successes have very much strengthened the French party. But it so happens that the town, which as you will recall was an independent Christian republic before the treaty of Pressburg, lies between three ill-defined beyliks, and its status has not yet been finally decided in Constantinople. The former governor, whose recent death brought this crisis about, was to hold office only while the town's position - its privileges and so on -were considered. It is a valuable place: the neighbouring rulers covet it exceedingly and two of them, Ismail and Mustapha, have already approached us for help, while the agent of the third is thought to be in Malta at present.'

'What kind of help do they want?' asked Harte.

'Guns, sir, and gunpowder.'

'Guns!' cried Harte, looking at the others: but he said no more, and when first Allen and then Graham explained that in the outlying provinces of the Turkish empire the valis, pashas, agas and beys, though in principle subject to the Sultan, often behaved like independent rulers, increasing their territories by usurpation or by making open war upon one another, he looked displeased.

'Ali Arslan of lannina defeated and killed the Pasha of Scutari not long since,' said Graham. 'It is true that Scutari had rebelled: but the same cannot be said for the Derwend-Pasha of Rumelia, nor of Menoglu Bey.'

'The independence increases with the distance from Constantinople,' said Allen. 'In Algiers, for example, it is virtually complete, but here it is usually exercised with a certain discretion. They often go to war with one another, but they generally do so with cries of loyalty to the Sultan, for although the Porte will acquiesce in a fait accompli if it is accompanied by the proper offerings, a reasonably good case still has to be made out - the defeated man must be shown to have had treacherous intentions or to have been in correspondence with the enemy.'

'And except in cases where the pasha or vali throws off his allegiance and goes about to cut himself out a completely sovereign state, as Scutari and Pasanvoglu did not long ago and as Ali Pasha will almost certainly do as soon as he can be sure of the Morea- except in cases of total rebellion, I say, the Sultan's direct appointment is respected in these parts, when at last it is forthcoming in the form of an irade or firman,' said Graham. 'The Sultan's irade is sacred, except to rebels.'

'That is why all three beys also have their agents busy in Constantinople, jockeying for position,' said Allen. 'Though to be sure they expect to settle matters much more briskly by themselves, so that the fact of possession, and the increased wealth of possession, may plead in their favour. Unfortunately one of them has also seen fit to make interest with our emba.s.sy, which may complicate our task; for whereas the Commander-in-Chief inclines towards Mustapha as a seaman and a former acquaintance - they knew one another when Mustapha was in the Dardanelles - the emba.s.sy favours Ismail.'

'Who holds the place at present?' asked Jack.

'The third man, old Sciahan Bey. That is to say he is sitting quietly in the lower town and the suburbs. The Christians, the Kutaliotes, hold the citadel unmolested. For the moment there is an uneasy truce, no one of the three Turks daring to attack for fear of meeting a coalition of the other two, and the Christians biding their time; but the position will change the moment the cannon arrive.' Harte stared for a while and then said, 'So they mean to fight one another, and we are to supply the guns. What do the various sides offer in exchange?'. 'Their promises are the same: they will turn the guns against the French in Marga. Having settled us in Kutali they will join in our attack on Marga, the place being taken before there is time for the French party in Constantinople to interfere.'

'I see. Are the guns available?'

'Yes, sir. Two small transports have been prepared and are lying in Valetta. The trouble is we do not know which of the claimants to trust. Ismail openly states that General Donzelot, the commander of Corfu, has made him offers; but this may merely be intended to raise his price. Mustapha says nothing of the kind, but we have a certain amount of intelligence to show that he too may be in contact with the French. So bearing these things in mind, sir, and taking into account the necessity for rapid action, it was thought advisable to send Captain Aubrey, with a political adviser, to view the situation, to meet the beys, to make up his mind on the spot, and, if possible, to carry out the operation.'

'Just so,' said Harte.

'Perhaps it would be as well to couch the orders in the most general sense, leaving a great deal of room for discretion?'

'Certainly, certainly: just put "use his best endeavours" together with a general statement of the aim of the operation, and leave it at that. Do not tie his hands. Does that suit you, Aubrey? If it don't, just say the word and the orders shall be wrote to your dictation. I can't say fairer than that.'

Jack bowed, and there was a short silence.

'Then there is this point of the Surprise's crew, sir,' said Allen. 'In view of the death of Captain Latham and his first lieutenant, the Commander-in-Chief thought you would agree that the best way of dealing with the situation would be to disperse the entire ship's company in small groups throughout the squadron and re-man the frigate from the ships that have to go in to refit.'

'G.o.d d.a.m.n me,' said Harte, 'I should hang the mutinous b.u.g.g.e.rs if I had my own way, every last one of them. But with both chief witnesses dead, I suppose it must be so.'

'Since Worcester must go in,' said Jack, 'I could pick an excellent frigate's crew from her people alone, men who are used to working together; several old Surprises among them.'

'Make it so, Aubrey, make it so,' said Harte: and in the same tone of awkward goodwill he continued, 'Of course you will have to have a sloop of some kind in company for this sort of expedition: if you like I will try to let you have Babbington in the Dryad.'

'Thank you very much, sir,' said Jack. 'I should like that of all things.'

' "I should like that of all things," said I, with a winning leer and a bob of my head,' wrote Jack Aubrey in his letter home, a letter dated from 'Surprise, at sea'. 'But I hope, sweetheart, you will not think me ungenerous or mean-spirited when I say I do not trust him: that is to say, I do not trust the long continuance of his goodwill. If I choose the wrong man among these beys or if the operations do not go well, I think he will throw me to the dogs without the least hesitation; and William Babbington after me. Stephen don't trust him neither.' He paused; and reflecting that he could not very well describe his friend's vehement refusal to appear in the character of an intelligence-agent before 'a man so weak, so choleric, so little master of his pa.s.sions, and so likely to be indiscreet' as Harte even though the Rear-Admiral might for the moment be acting Commander-in-Chief, he added 'which is very sad." But the words were no sooner written than they struck him as ludicrous, and he was so very far from sad himself, that he laughed aloud.

'What now?' called Killick angrily from the sleeping-cabin : he was one of the very few who disliked the move into the Surprise and he had been in a most unpleasant temper ever since they left Malta. His immediate predecessor, Captain Latham's steward, a fornicating sodomite by the name of Hogg, had changed everything - nothing was the same. The night-locker where Killick had always kept needle and thread for small repairs had been moved from starboard to larboard: the midships scuttle under which he had always worked had been blocked up and painted over. He could no longer find anything, nor could he see to sew.

'I was only laughing,' said Jack.

'If I had that Hogg under my needle now,' said Killick, giving the hem of Captain Aubrey's best neckcloth a vicious stab, 'wouldn't I learn him to laugh? Oh no: not half I wouldn't..." His voice diminished in volume, but his nasal whine had a curiously penetrating quality and as Jack carried on with his letter he half-heard the stream of discontent flowing on:'... unhappy ship, and no wonder... everything changed... acres of f.u.c.king bra.s.s... closed up my scuttle... how can a poor unfortunate b.u.g.g.e.r see with no light, sewing black upon black?' This last was so shrill that it quite broke in upon Jack's line of thought. 'If you cannot see in there, carry it out into the stern-gallery,' he called, forgetting for a moment that they were no longer in the Worcester.

'Which there ain't no stern-gallery, sir, now we been degraded to a sixth-rate,' cried Killick with malignant triumph. 'Stern-galleries is for our betters, and I must toil and moil away in the dark.'