The Ionian Mission Part 14

'No,' said Jack. 'Perhaps I should have said not worth winning.'

The breeze came northerly; the Dryad sailed for Cepha-lonia and Malta; the Bey clapped an embargo on all shipping so that the news should not reach Marga before the first cannon-ball and the first summons to surrender; and the Surprises set about rigging their ropeway.

At one point they had hopes of completing it by the time the transports could be expected from Cephalonia -four or five days, with the usual variable breezes at this season of the year - but it was soon found that their first plan had been too sanguine and that at least a week would be necessary, since the Kutaliotes' goodwill did not extend to the destruction of three particularly valued church towers and a raised cemetery in which the dead lay as though in pigeon-holes and the only way of avoiding them was to start right over at the far corner of the mole, a much more considerable undertaking. However, they made a vigorous beginning, the merchants and shipowners of Kutali coming forward with ma.s.sive windla.s.ses and great quant.i.ties of cordage (though nothing that the Navy could possibly look upon in the light of a cable), and presently the system took on its general form, with light hawsers running by stages from bottom to top. This was only a beginning, of course: true cables, seventeen-inch cables a hundred and twenty fathoms long apiece, spliced end to end and heaved as near tw.a.n.ging-tight as human ingenuity could heave them, were to take the hawsers' place.

But just as the prayers of the Catholic Albanians, Orthodox Greeks and the various minorities such as Melchites, Copts, Jews and Nestorians for a north wind had been immoderate, so was the response: the north wind came, but although it carried the Dryad racing down to Cephalonia it also kept the transports pinned there, and quite soon it worked up such a heavy sea that it was impossible to stay on that exposed corner of the mole. Pullings, the bosun and their men were obliged to confine themselves to finework at the top or on the intermediate stages, walking up and down the sunny town day after day, growing thoroughly familiar with its geography and its people, talking to them in fearless naval Albanian or Greek or even both.

At the beginning Jack divided his time between the ropeway and the road the chosen guns would have to take to batter Marga: he also took his gunner and the Marine officer to consider sites for the batteries; but it was thought unwise to spend much time up there, for fear of arousing suspicion, and he was happy to accept Sciahan Bey's invitation to hunt the wolf. He took his sickly midshipman Williamson with him, feeling that the boy could do with an airing, and he adjured him to keep close to the Bey's nephews, who would show him what to do, and perhaps keep him from being eaten by the quarry. They had a pleasant day of it, but for the fact that Jack's horse, though of the famous Epirotic breed, was not up to its rider's weight. Towards the evening the wolf retired to a dank forest, the haunt of many of its kind, and here in a clearing the horse refused to go any farther. They were alone, the Bey, his nephews, Mr Williamson and the mixed bag of dogs having vanished among the trees some time ago; and as Jack sat there on his trembling, sweating mount in the twilight he realized that persuasion would be useless: the horse could do no more. He dismounted and heard it gasp with relief: he looped the reins over his arm and they walked quietly back, meaning to leave the forest where they had first entered it, at a gra.s.sy place by a brook. From time to time the horse looked into his face with its l.u.s.trous and (for a horse) intelligent eyes, as though to express something -possibly doubt, for the darkness gathered under the trees, and the gra.s.sy place did not appear. Then, while Jack was considering what little sky he could see through the leaves to get his bearings, they heard a wolf's voice away on the right, and another beyond it. The horse at once began to dance, thoroughly revived by now; and although Jack had it firmly by the head he could not mount. They spun round one another faster and faster until he managed to thrust its rump against a tree, which gave him just enough time to make a froglike spring, swarm into the saddle and away. When he had recovered both stirrups - a long process -and something like control they were out of the trees, labouring up a ferny slope, the horse's ears brought to bear on a dimly-seen dell right ahead. Again the cry of wolves to the left and the right, and now from the very dell itself, followed almost immediately afterwards by the hail 'Captain Aubrey, ahoy.' He distinguished Williamson and one of the Bey's younger nephews against the skyline as they emerged from the dell; they howled again, coming down to meet him, and he said, 'Why are you making that G.o.ddam row, youngster?'

'We are imitating the wolves, sir. Suleiman here can do it so well, they answer almost every time. Ain't it fun! How the other chaps will envy us.'

Stephen also had some modest fun while the north wind kept the guns in Cephalonia. In his life he had never seen a spotted eagle: he longed to see a spotted eagle, and since this was a country in which spotted eagles might 'reasonably be expected to be seen he made his wishes known. Father Andros knew nothing about eagles, spotted or plain, but there was a family of shepherds behind Vost.i.tsa who were said to know everything about birds, how to call and how to speak to them by name: they collected nestling falcons and trained them up for hawking. The mother of these young men, on being called, a.s.serted that she knew the spotted eagle well, intimately well, that her husband had frequently pointed it out when they were in the mountains together, and that her boys would certainly find the gentleman a very spotted one. Stephen believed in her goodwill but little else; she had agreed with every description he proposed and in her desire to please the priest she would in all likelihood have promised him a ca.s.sowary. It was with no great expectations therefore that he set out on his seventeen-mile ride into the mountains: but it was in a state of singular happiness and contained satisfaction that he came staggering, stiff and bandy-legged, into the cabin and said, 'Jack, give me joy: I have seen five spotted eagles, two old and three young.'

Professor Graham, on the other hand, spent his days in conference with the Mirdite bishop, Father Andros and other Christian leaders, with the Bey's Turkish counsellors and with certain travelling government officials, old acquaintances from his days in Constantinople. When he was speaking Turkish or Greek his schoolmasterly arrogance tended to drop away: he was a more amiable man and a more efficient intelligence agent, and during this period he gathered a surprising amount of information about Ismail's relations with the French, the various complex treacheries of the inland pashas, the Egyptian viceroy's appeal to the English to support him in a revolt against the Sultan, and the history of the friendship, the quarrel, and the reconciliation between Mustapha and Ali Pasha of lannina. All this he summarized for Stephen's benefit; for although, as he said, his advice might be neither required nor regarded, he still had a conscience; and it was possible that Dr M's voice might be heard when his was not. Graham was able to devote a long time to this task, far longer than he had expected, for although the heavy sea died down, allowing the work on the mole to continue, the wind remained obstinately in the north. And in fact the ropeway was complete before they had even so much as a smell of the transports: the entire midshipmen's berth and all the ship's boys had, on one pretext or another, walked, crawled, and finally climbed the whole majestic catenary curve from bottom to top and one thirty-two-pounder carronade and one long twelve-pounder had already made the trial voyage successfully, there and back. In a word, everything was ready, except for the essential cannon; and spies sent into Marga by the mountain paths reported that no one there had the least notion of an attack.

But still the north wind blew: day after day the north wind blew. And it was now, when the waiting time was growing not only tedious but barely tolerable, when the time was full-ripe and perhaps on the turn to rotten-ripe, and when Jack was haunted by the feeling that the excellent beginning was in extreme danger, if for no other reason than that the news must leak out and the effect of surprise be lost, for with Sciahan's embargo the busy port was becoming more and more crowded with shipping, and the cause must soon be evident - it was now, when he and Stephen were sitting in the cabin-, silent between two pieces of music as the frigate lay rocking gently alongside Kutali mole, that Graham came aboard, unusually late at night. They heard the sentry's challenge; they heard Graham's habitually harsh and ungracious reply; and some moments later Killick came in to say that the Professor would like to see the Captain.

'I have this to report, sir,' said he in a cold, formal tone. 'There is a rumour in the Turkish camp that Ismail has been appointed governor of Kutali, and that the Sultan has signed the irade, and that the doc.u.ment has already reached Nicopolis.'

The thought, 'Oh my G.o.d I have backed the wrong man' flashed through Jack's mind together with a whole train of other bitter reflections as he laid his fiddle on the locker. 'How much truth is there in it, do you think?' he asked.

'I do not know,' said Graham. 'It would be unusual for the Porte to come to a decision so soon in a matter of this kind, but on the other hand our emba.s.sy has been very busy, I am afraid: perhaps fatally busy."

'Why do you say fatally busy?'

'Because if Ismail is installed that is the end of our attack on Marga. As Dr Maturin may have told you, I have undeniable evidence of his relations with the French: they are a source of very great profit to him.'

'Do you know the origin of the rumour?'

'The most probable origin is a courier who pa.s.sed through on his way to Ali Pasha: the account may be exaggerated, but it is likely to have some foundation. A man would have little temptation to invent such unwelcome news.'

'If it is true, what do you think we should do?'

'Are you asking my advice, sir?'

'Yes, sir, I am.'

'I cannot give you a considered reply. I have only caught a f.a.g-end of the tale at third-hand, no doubt distorted. I must see the Bey in the morning: fortunately he is an early riser.'

The old Turk walked out of his kiosk to mount his horse before dawn, but he did not outrise Captain Aubrey, for Jack had not gone to bed at all. Much of the night he spent on deck, watching the clouds scud from the north as he paced up and down, irritating the harbour-watch and absolutely terrifying Mowett as he crept back from a venereal a.s.signation; and as he paced so some critic in his mind kept up a very unprofitable nagging about what he ought to have done, outlining various courses that would infallibly have led to success. He ought for example to have closed with Mustapha right away and to have sent for the transports by that same tide: the wind would then have served admirably, Mustapha would have taken Kutali out of hand, and by now they would be battering Marga together; for the Capitan-Bey, though something of an explosive and unpredictable ruffian, was at least a man of action. Nonsense, he replied: Kutali would have had to be conquered street by street, if it had been conquered at all, even with the guns destroying its walls and houses. And Mustapha was quite untrustworthy, as far as Marga was concerned. When he had had enough, and more than enough, of this nagging, Jack went below, and having, stared for some time at charts of the pa.s.sage north from Cephalonia - charts he knew by heart - he turned to his unfinished letter home. '... so much, my dear, for the public side, the service side, for the lost time and opportunity and treasure if all this turns out to be true," he wrote. 'Now, since we are the same person, I can speak of the personal side: if the expedition returns to Malta with its cargo of guns, having accomplished nothing, Harte's expressions of goodwill and support will not amount to much. They will certainly not prevent him from tossing me over the side. He can say that I backed the wrong man, and I cannot deny it. The responsibility and the blame will rest on me and no amount of justification on my part (though I could produce a great deal) will make a sc.r.a.p of difference to the outcome. With ill-will it could be made to look very bad indeed, and even with a friendly report (which I cannot expect) it must be a very black mark against my name; and that, coming after the fiasco at Medina, will do me no good at all in Whitehall. What particularly grieves me is that it will put it even farther out of my power to do anything for Tom Pullings. If he is ever to be promoted commander and employed in that rank, it must be tolerably soon; for no one wants a greybeard in a sloop of war, nor even a man of thirty-five. Yet on the other hand I now know that the people of Kutali would have resisted Mustapha, however much he had battered their walls; and when I think what his men would have done in the town I am glad I had no hand in it.' His thoughts moved on to Andrew Wray, to the unholy alliance between Harte and Wray; to the large number of influential men he had contrived to disoblige in one way or another; to his father...

Eight bells, and piercing through his reflections came the shrill piping of All hands at the main hatchway and the m.u.f.fled bellowing of bosun's mates 'Starbowlines hoy, starbowlines hey. Rise and shine, there, rise and shine. Here I come with a sharp knife and a clear conscience. Oh rise and shine. Out or down. Tumble up, you idle hounds,' and a remote howl of laughter as Sleeper Parslow's hammock was in fact cut down.

Eight bells, and Killick removed the deadlights from the stern window, admitting a grey morning and peering in himself with an inquisitive expression on his ratlike face. Inquisitive and ratlike, certainly, but also shining with cleanliness: how he did it Jack could not tell, remembering his own days on the lower deck and the total absence of anything to wash in before the forenoon watch and precious little then. Clean, and benevolent today, since it was evident that Jack was low in his spirits: for Killick was not unlike a partner on a seesaw, often being at his most shrewish when Jack's cheerfulness was at its height, and the other way about. He reported the wind, still north-north-east, and the weather, medium fair, and then went to fetch the coffee. 'Professor's gone ash.o.r.e, sir,' he said in a conversational tone, bringing it in. 'Most uncommon early."

'Is he?' said Jack. 'I shall look forward to seeing him, when he returns. Let me know the moment he comes aboard.'

After a long blank interval in which the decks were cleaned with the usual din of holystones and swabs and sluicing water, and hammocks were piped up to the sound of a furious rush of more than two hundred men, many of them shouting, a stampede repeated almost immediately afterwards as the same horde was piped to breakfast, Stephen came in, and they waited for Graham together, eating b.u.t.tered toast without the slightest appet.i.te. 'At least,' said Jack, 'the gla.s.s is beginning to fall.'

'What does that signify?'

'A change of weather, with the wind almost certainly coming easterly or even south of east. Lord, how I hope so. Even a few points east would bring the transports up: I know Venable and Allen are both keen, enterprising men, and I am sure they would sail the moment they possibly could. It is not much above two days' sailing, with a brisk full-topsail breeze even one point free. Good morning, Tom,' he said, looking up in surprise. 'Sit down and take a bite.'

'I beg pardon for bursting in like this, sir,' said Pullings, 'but I am just come from the mole and the works, and the town is all of a screech. As far as I can make out, that Ismail is to be governor and they want us to land guns to protect them from him. There is a party coming to see you, sir. They are in such a pitiful taking I said I was sure you would receive 'em.'

'Oh Christ, Pullings,' began Jack, but it was too late: the party was aboard and nothing would keep them out. They were mostly priests of the different denominations - though Father Andros was not there - but some were laymen, middle-aged or elderly merchants, senators in the time of the republic, and they put it to Captain Aubrey that it was his duty to protect his fellow-Christians: to guarantee if not the independence then at least the privileged status of Kutali. The city was Turkish, nominally Turkish, rather than part of the Republic of the Seven Islands only by an error that the Powers would soon put right. Jack said that he was no more than an officer acting under orders; he could not commit his Admiral, far less his King's government. They explained Kutali's special position, a position that had been guaranteed in the first place by their possession of the citadel and that had been respected by Sciahan Bey; Ismail would not respect it, and the citadel was now known to be naked - an empty threat. Twenty guns, no more, would enable them to impose terms on Ismail. They were very urgent with Captain Aubrey to send at least his upper-deck cannon to the citadel and repay himself from the transports, which must arrive very soon now: one of the former senators, a ship-owner and a man of great experience, said that down off Cephalonia the wind would already be in the east; with this cloud-formation he had known it again and again.

Jack said that what they asked him was impossible: this ship and everything in her belonged to his master. They then described to him the taking of a Christian city by Turkish troops, particularly by the irregulars, the utterly undisciplined bashi-bazouks employed by Ismail: murder of course, with women raped and men and children sodomized, but also monstrous desecration of churches, graves and everything holy. It was extremely painful: it was as painful as anything Jack had even known, to have elderly dignified men kneeling to him there in the great cabin.

'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' cried Stephen, 'We are running too far ahead entirely. All this is no more than a rumour, mere words blowing in the wind. Let me implore you, before you take any desperate measures, even any measures at all that might give the Turks just cause for resentment, to wait on Sciahan Bey to learn where the truth lies and what steps he intends to take.'

'Have you ever known an evil rumour that was not true?' asked a tall white-bearded man.

'G.o.d help them, poor people, poor people,' muttered Jack, watching them cross the gangway. And aloud he said, 'Mr Gill, let the ship be warped out a cable's length into the fairway,' for women, veiled or shawled, were gathering fast on the mole, and he could not bear their coming aboard to plead with him. The hands who carried out the kedge and who cast off the moorings knew very well what they were about, and they and their officers and their Captain looked mean, hang-dog, and ashamed as the frigate, that powerful battery of guns, edged away from the silent crowded wharf.

It was noon before Graham came back. He was wearing Turkish clothes, looking so natural in them that after a moment neither Jack nor Stephen noticed the odds, and he said, 'I have got to the bottom of it, I believe: I have reached the underlying truth. The position seems to be this: the tsarfetim, a kind of preliminary appointment, has been made out in Ismail's favour, but the Sultan has not signed the irade, and no irade has reached Nicopolis or anywhere else. The tsarfetim may have done so, since it is not unusual to send these - these announcements to the regions concerned to see how they are received. There is some slight a.n.a.logy with the banns of marriage. I propose riding post to Constantinople to put the case before the emba.s.sy. When I confront them with the proof of Ismail's intimate connection with the French I have no doubt that they will not only withdraw their support but press for the revocation of the tsarfetim. Furthermore both Sciahan and the Kutaliotes have given me drafts for a sum of money that should certainly ensure this revocation and almost certainly the eventual appointment of Sciahan. They have also supplied me with a guard of Albanian horses.'

'You relieve my mind extremely, Professor,' said Jack. 'We may carry out our attack on Marga yet.'

'I hope so, I am sure,' said Graham. 'But Sciahan has some lingering superst.i.tious doubts about the irade and in any case, without risking the bowstring he cannot move until the tsarfetim is withdrawn. Once that is settled however he says he will certainly carry out his part of the agreement: and by then the guns are more likely to be here.'

'With the wind as it lies, I believe we may look for them the day after tomorrow,' said Jack. 'But tell me, Professor, is not this a most prodigious wearisome ride you are undertaking? Should you not prefer one of these fine taut caiques? They can sail wonderfully close to the wind, and I have known them log two hundred miles from one noon observation to the next. And this breeze serves for up or down.'

'No doubt,' said Graham, 'but the sea is an uncertain chancy whimsical female lunar element: you advance one mile upon its surface and at the same time the whole body of water has retired a league. I prefer the honest earth, where my advance is absolute, however arduous; and I am no more a seaman than is a Turk or a tib-cat. Now, gentlemen, have you any commands for Constantinople? If not, I must beg to take my leave.'

Stephen accompanied him to the sh.o.r.e, and as they walked to the Maidan, where the horses were waiting, Graham said, 'I shall go by lannina, where Ali Pasha will tell me how things stand at the Palace, and where I shall have a conference with his Christian Greek advisers and with Osman the Smyrniote, who knows a great deal about the workings of the Porte - he was the author of the Pcra reports that you admired so much.'

'You are well with Ali Pasha?'

'I was able to do him a kindness once, and though he is a man of blood he is not ungrateful. He will offer me a larger guard, but I shall not take it.'

'Why is this, colleague?'

'Because Ali is strongly suspected of disloyalty, of wishing to set up as an independent ruler, as so many pashas have done or tried to do; and if only he could be rid of Mustapha, who is in a position to hinder him by sea, I am convinced he would do that very thing. So the less I am seen with him or his men the better. Here are my Ghegs. Good day to you, Maturin.'

It was Captain Aubrey's intention to put to sea until the probable time of Graham's return, to gather his transports on their way north and with them to look into Paxo and Corfu and other places held by the French, partly to hara.s.s the enemy if the opportunity offered and partly because so long a stay in such a welcoming port was bad for the ship's health and discipline, but far, far more because an even longer stay must make the French commander in Marga uneasy. For embargo or no embargo, news spread in this country as it were by the wind alone, and Father Andros, putting off with the present of a buck from Sciahan, told him that various versions of the rumour about Ismail were already to be heard in the remotest mountain villages. Yet Captain Aubrey, his first lieutenant, and above all his bosun, were extremely unwilling to put to sea with so many of their cables, and those her best, stretched between the mole and the citadel: a ship often needed to veer out a great scope of cable if it came on to blow, two and even three on end; and proper simpletons they would look, dragging their anchors on a lee sh.o.r.e, having left half a mile of prime seventeen-inch stuff behind them, dangling on a mountain-side. On the other hand, although the people of Kutali were a little less agitated than they had been at first, there were still continual processions to the churches, and Jack hesitated to give the word to unrig the ropeway.

It was not usual for him to discuss his orders with anyone, since in his opinion a ship, and above all a man-of-war, was not 'a G.o.d-d.a.m.ned debating society' nor yet 'an infernal House of Commons', but on this occasion he said privately to Pullings, 'What do you think about it, Tom?'

'I think there would be a riot, sir,' said Pullings. 'They would be sure we were deserting them. I know if I touched so much as a limmer-line, Annie would have a fit of the mother.'

'Who is Annie?' asked Jack.

'Oh, sir,' cried Pullings, blushing crimson, 'she is only a young person where I go to have a cup of coffee sometimes - a very small cup of coffee - and to learn a little of the language - the customs of the country.'

Stephen asked Father Andros his opinion, and Father Andros, having pulled his beard and looked anxious for a while, admitted that it might be better to wait for a day or two, while the people grew accustomed to the notion that their fears had been exaggerated, that matters were likely to be arranged satisfactorily, and that the ship's going was not definitive. 'One can do a great deal with rumour - with word of mouth properly employed,' he said with a look that surprised Stephen. 'If you had asked me, I should have put it in hand earlier.'

Very late on Friday night, therefore, the Surprise was lying at single anchor, riding easy with her head to the moderate south-east wind and hoping to get her cables in next morning, and her Captain and surgeon were sawing away fortissimo, building up to the climax of their Corelli in C major, when the door burst open and Graham appeared in the opening. His appearance was so extraordinary that neither said a word, but merely stared: the sound fled out of the room and he cried 'Mustapha is at sea. He has taken the transports. You may catch him if you are quick.'

'Where away?' asked Jack.

'He is taking them into Antipaxo, and from there he goes straight on to meet Ali Pasha at Makeni, sailing at dawn."

Jack strode across the great cabin, through the fore-cabin, and whipped up the quarterdeck ladder in the darkness: he was strongly tempted to slip the cable, but the notion of putting to sea with almost nothing to hold him to the sea-bed was so abhorrent, so against all his feelings of what was right, so nearly impious, that he changed his order to 'All hands to weigh", and by the time he left the deck the capstan-bars were already being swifted and the barrel had already made a preliminary turn or so, with the musical click of the pawls. Three top-lanterns and a few battle-lanterns on deck and between-decks were all they had to see by, but it was wonderful how a really seasoned crew of man-of-war's men worked together, rapidly, accurately, with little noise and no fuss, although half of them had been asleep in their hammocks not five minutes before.

When he returned to the cabin Stephen was easing Graham's boots off and mopping the places where they had chafed him raw. 'You have had a hard ride of it, Professor," he said. 'Where have you come from?'

'Only lannina.'

'That is far enough, in all conscience. Should you not take a gla.s.s of brandy, perhaps, and then something to eat? Killick! Killick, there."

'You are very good. If I might be indulged in a little cocoa, with milk, and a lightly boiled egg: but they are already preparing."

'When you have recovered a little, you must tell us how Mustapha came to do this extraordinary thing.'

The cocoa came in, but Graham's hands were trembling so that he could scarcely drink from the mug: however, the ship was on an even keel, so he put it down on Diana's music-stand and drank by suction. 'That's a braw whet,' he said, holding out his mug for more. 'I will tell you now. Mustapha is in open rebellion. He has thrown off his allegiance to the Sultan and has raised his own standard. He needed the guns, and so he has taken them.'

'Was there an action? Has he hurt many of our people?'

'No. He decoyed them in. He is treating them well, in hopes of an arrangement."

'And his course is from Antipaxo to Makeni, sailing at dawn? You are sure of that?'

'As sure as I can be of anything in this world of false-seeming,' said Graham. 'He has a rendezvous with Ali Pasha at Makeni tomorrow evening, and he goes there in his ship the Torgud.'

'Forgive me a moment,' said Jack. On deck the capstan was turning steadily, the ship gliding across the quiet black water, and as Jack turned into the master's day-cabin, calling for a light, he heard the bosun on the forecastle cry 'Right up and down, sir,' and Pullings' reply, 'Thick and dry for weighing.'

He studied the charts by the flaring lamp. Antipaxo to Makeni, the wind steady at south-east, a topgallant breeze: he laid off Mustapha's course and another to intercept it in the approaches to the Corfu channel, where the narrowing of the sh.o.r.es must correct even the wildest Turkish navigation. He worked it out twice, with the known performance of both ships, and it appeared to him that they could scarcely fail to meet. Mr Gill, yawning and unshaved but quick, keen and accurate with figures nevertheless, came to the same conclusion independently. Turning the course over in his mind Jack walked forward to see the anchor catted; and as he stood there he caught the ship's mood - eager excitement at the prospect of a dust-up, intense curiosity about their opponent, and a lively antic.i.p.ation of orders for a middle-watcher, that uncovenanted refreshment that some of the humaner captains, Aubrey among them, sometimes called for when all hands had been turned up, particularly from harbour-watch, at a more unG.o.dly hour than usual. He walked back along the starboard gangway, watching the few remaining lights of Kutali glide slowly astern, and reaching the quarterdeck he said to the officer of the watch, 'Due north to clear the headland - give it a wide berth, Mr Mowett, I beg - and when we are clear west by south a half west: topsails and jib.'

'Due north and a wide berth it is, sir; then west by south and a half west. Topsails and jib.'

Professor Graham was sitting in front of his uneaten eggs, an unbitten piece of bread and b.u.t.ter in his hand: he looked old, surprisingly frail, unwell.

'Now sir,' said Jack to him, 'we are heading out to sea. If your information about Mustapha is correct, and if the breeze holds steady, we may hope to meet him some time in the afternoon tomorrow.'

'I believe it is correct,' said Graham. 'Let me tell you the circ.u.mstances.' An expectant silence, with only the sound of the ship gathering way, the gentle creaking of innumerable ropes, blocks and spars, and the run of water along her side, the more and more urgent heel as her sails were braced to take the wind: then he said, 'I am too worn and stupid to give you anything but the baldest account, and I may leave out some important points. Well, now: the whole tale of Ismail was a flam, a piece of deception invented and engineered by Ali Pasha. It deceived the whole countryside - it deceived me, I am ashamed to say - and it deceived Mustapha, which was the whole object.'

'Why Mustapha?'

'To push him over the edge into rebellion: he was very near it in any case. The news of Ismail's success was perfectly intolerable, and it threw Mustapha into a frenzy of rage and jealousy; and Ali had a confidential friend there to spur him on - he and Ali would join forces and divide the western provinces,and to urge him to make the first bold stroke immediately, seizing the transports while they were within his reach and then coming on to confer with Ali for their campaign against Ismail.'

'What were Ali's motives?'

'He means to rebel himself: a loyal Mustapha was one of the few men who could stand in his way. If Ali sends Mustapha's head to Constantinople, that not only does away with the suspicions about his fidelity to the Sultan but also leaves the field quite clear. Besides, there was an old enmity between them, more or less patched up but never forgotten by Ali Pasha.'

'So Ali means to take his head off at their conference?'

'Yes, if Mustapha ever reaches it. But I think Ali really expects you to deal with the situation first, while he contents himself with confiscating Mustapha's treasure, harem, and beylik in the Sultan's name. That is why his counsellors gave me such very precise information about Mustapha's movements.'

'It is hardly believable.'

Graham said 'No... no,' in a vague, unmeaning voice and then begged to be excused - he could say no more.

For the ten thousandth time Jack woke to the sound of holystones on deck: the Surprise might be going into action later in the day, but she was certainly going into it t.i.tivated to the nines, and the first lieutenant could be heard calling with unusual insistence for the removal of three spots of tar. Jack's whole ma.s.sive form was utterly relaxed, yielding to the slow easy lift and roll: he had been on deck twice during the graveyard watch, but since then he had had some hours of deep, deep velvet sleep, and he felt perfectly rested, actively and positively well. The tension of that interminable waiting for the transports was gone, and with it his uncertainty and his immediate distress about Kutali and all the falsity and double-dealing on sh.o.r.e: his present course of action was clear-cut and perfectly direct at last, an operation that he was fully qualified to undertake by training, inclination, and the splendid instrument at his disposal, and one in which he needed no man's advice.

Yet although he had been a great way down, the thought of their probable encounter with the Torgud had never left him: he had fallen asleep working out the weight of her broadside and now that he was awake his mind carried on the sum. But could the shocking great thirty-six-pounders be counted? Was the renegado to be believed when he said there were only nine rounds for them altogether? And then what was the Turks' gunnery like? A great deal would depend on that. If it was no better than their seamanship it would not be very formidable; but the two did not necessarily go together. As for numbers, the Torgud probably had about a hundred and fifty more men than Surprise when he saw her, but she would have lost a good many in her prize-crews, more than enough to compensate for the Surprises now in Malta or on their way back in the Dryad. He was on the point of exclaiming 'Thank G.o.d Dryad ain't here,' -for even an unhandy b.u.t.ter-box of her size would upset the fairly even match and take all the glory away - when he realized that nothing could be more presumptuous or unlucky, and choking back even the enunciation of the thought he sprang out of his cot, singing 'The lily, the lily, a rose I lay, The bailey beareth the bell away,' in his powerful melodious ba.s.s.

Like a horizontal jack-in-a-box Killick shot in, carrying shaving-water; and lathering away Jack said to him, 'Breeches today, Killick. There are chances we may see action.'

With Killick's goodwill Jack would never have worn anything but scrubbed old nankeen pantaloons and a threadbare coat with the lace taken off, while his good uniforms all lay in tissue-paper where no damp or sun could get at them. He now objected to any change on the grounds that a Turk and above all a rebellious Turk did not rate breeches. 'Lay out the breeches and top your boom,' said Jack firmly, when the nagging had been going on for some time. But when he pulled off his nightshirt and turned, he found that although the letter of the order had been obeyed the spirit, as usual, had not - before him lay a barely reputable pair of darned breeches, thread stockings, yesterday's shirt, and the coat whose sleeve he had ruined in Ismail's dinner. Of his own authority he opened a locker and took out the splendid affair he wore to visit admirals, pashas and governors; in this he walked on to the already crowded quarterdeck, and after a general 'Good morning' he surveyed the scene. A brilliant day with a high dappled sky and the sun a handsbreadth up astern; the breeze steady; the sea flecked with white where the wind caught the remains of the dying northern swell. From the traverse-board and the log-board it was clear that the Surprise was almost exactly where he had meant her to be: Cape Doro would lie a little abaft the beam over the starboard horizon, and right ahead Phanari should loom up within an hour or two. He took a couple of turns the whole length of the ship, breathing the sea-smell deep in after the closeness of his sleeping-cabin, and with it the damp fresh scent of newly-scrubbed planks: most of the ship's company were on deck, and he moved among faces he knew perfectly well. The men had had their breakfast, and they looked at him cheerfully, knowingly, expectantly, with a certain connivance or complicity; some were engaged in beautifying the long seams of the larboard gangway with a shining black preparation invented by Mr Pullings, but most were busy with such things as the breechings of the great guns or the chipping of round-shot to make it more perfectly spherical, truer in its flight, more deadly. The armourer was at his grindstone under the forecastle with a group of seamen round him relaying one another at the crank and giving advice; he had rows of shining cutla.s.ses and boarding axes and officers' swords at his feet, and his mates were checking pistols by the score, while in a separate body a little farther aft the Marines, looking quite human in their shirt-sleeves, polished their already spotless muskets and bayonets.

A couple of turns, and then saying to the officer of the watch, 'Mr Gill, pray lend me your gla.s.s,' he swung up over the hammocks, tightly packed in their netting, and so up and up for the pleasure of climbing, the strong easy motion of going aloft. The lookout, warned by the creaking of the shrouds, moved out apelike on the topgallant yard to make room and Jack installed himself at the crosstrees, gazing all round the vast blue disc spread taut below him and reaching to the sky on every hand: there to starboard lay Cape Doro, where it ought to be within half a point; and he believed he could just make out Phanari ahead. 'Simms,' he called to the man on the yard, 'keep a good lookout, d'ye hear me there? Our gentleman is likely to come up from the south, but since he is a Turk, he might come from anywhere.'

With this he returned to the deck, where he found Stephen and Graham. He invited them to breakfast, together with Pullings and two youngsters, Calamy and Williamson; and while it was preparing he talked to the gunner about the amount of cartridge filled and to the carpenter about the provision of plugs to deal with forty-pound-ball shot-holes. 'For,' he said, 'our possible adversary - and I say only possible, Mr Watson..."

'Or hypothetical, as you might put it, sir.'

'Exactly so - is the Torgud, and she carries two Portuguese thirty-sixes, which is our forty-pounder, give or take a trifle.'

'Hypothetical,' muttered Killick with great contempt, and then very loud, drowning the carpenter's reply, 'Wittles is up, sir, if you please.'

It was a cheerful meal. Jack was a good host, and when he had time to concern himself with them he was fond of the little brutes from the midshipmen's berth; furthermore he was in remarkably high spirits and he amused himself and the young gentlemen extremely by dwelling at length on the fact that the country they had just quitted was practically the same as Dalmatia - a mere continuation of Dalmatia - so famous for its spotted dogs. He himself had seen quant.i.ties of spotted dogs - had even hunted behind a couple of braces - spotted dogs in a pack of hounds, oh Lord! - while the town of Kutali was positively infested with spotted youths and maidens, and now the Doctor swore he had seen spotted eagles... Jack laughed until the tears came into his eyes. In a Dalmatian inn, he said, by way of pudding you could call for spotted d.i.c.k, give pieces of it to a spotted dog, and throw the remains to the spotted eagles.

While the others were enlarging upon the possibilities, Graham said to Stephen in a low voice, 'what is this spotted eagle? Is it a joke?"

'The aquila maculosa or discolor of some authors, Linnaeus' aquila clanga. The captain is pleased to be arch. He is frequently arch of a morning.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' cried the midshipman of the watch, fairly racing in. 'Mr Mowett's duty and two sail on the larboard beam, topsails up from the masthead.'

'Two?' said Jack. 'Are they ships?'

'He cannot make out yet, sir.'

'May I go, sir?' asked Pullings, half out of his chair, his face alive with eagerness.

'Aye, do,' said Jack. 'We will eat up your bacon for you.'

Ships they were. Turkish ships they were, although it was so early, and men-of-war: the Torgud and the Kitabi. Mustapha had sailed far sooner than had been expected; and being now perhaps less confident of Ali's good faith he had brought his consort with him.

'Oh what a d.a.m.nable thing,' cried Graham, when this was established beyond the tremor of a doubt. 'Oh what a bitter, bitter disappointment. Yet I am sure Osman gave me the best intelligence he had.' He fairly wrung his hands, and Jack said, 'Never be so concerned, sir: it will be somewhat harder, to be sure, but we must not despair of the republic.'

'You cannot possibly attack both of them,' said Graham angrily. 'The Torgud carries thirty-two guns in all and nearly four hundred men, and the Kitabi twenty guns and a hundred and eighty. You are outnumbered by more than a hundred and eighty. There is no shame in retiring before such odds.'

As he said this some of the people on the quarterdeck nodded; others adopted reserved, remote expressions; only Pullings and Mowett frowned with evident disapproval. Stephen thought he detected a predominant sense of agreement with Graham's remark: for his own part he did not feel qualified to form a naval opinion, but he did know how pa.s.sionately Jack wished to wipe out the wretched affair at Medina and he suspected that desire might warp his judgement.

'Why, Professor,' said Jack pleasantly, 'I believe you are almost in danger of poaching upon my province,' and Graham, recollecting himself, begged pardon and withdrew.

Leaning over the hammocks in the starboard netting Jack watched them over the sparkling sea: the frigate and the twenty-gun ship were now not much above two miles away, keeping steadily to their original course under all plain sail while the Surprise stood towards them on the larboard tack, the south-east wind one point free.