The Ionian Mission Part 2

'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.'

'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry.'

'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?'

'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great Pa.s.sion according to St Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern taste, but I do a.s.sure you, Stephen, there is meat in it. I have tried this part.i.ta in C a good many times, and the argument goes so deep, so close and deep, that I scarcely follow it yet, let alone make it sing. How I should love to hear it played really well - to hear Viotti dashing away.'

Stephen studied the 'cello suite in his hand, booming and humming sotto voce. 'Tweedly-tweedly, tweedly tweedly, deedly deedly pom pom pom. Oh, this would call for the delicate hand of the world,' he said. 'Otherwise it would sound like boors dancing. Oh, the double-stopping... and how to bow it?'

'Shall we make an attempt upon the D minor double sonata?' said Jack, 'and knit up the ravelled sleeve of care with sore labour's bath?'

'By all means,' said Stephen. 'A better way of dealing with a sleeve cannot be imagined.'

Neither had at any time been more than a fairly accomplished amateur: of recent years neither had had much leisure for practice, and various wounds (an American musket-ball in Jack's case, a French interrogation in Stephen's) had so slowed down their fingers that in places they were obliged to indicate the notes by hooting; and as they felt their way through the difficult sonata time after time they made the night so hideous that Killick's indignation broke out at last and he said to the Captain's cook, 'There they go again, tweedly-deedly, tweedly-deedly, belly-aching the whole bleeding night, and the toasted cheese seizing on to their plates like G.o.ddam glue, which I dursen't go in to fetch them; and never an honest tune from beginning to end.'

Perhaps there was not: but after a particularly difficult, severe and abstract pa.s.sage the last movement ended with a triumphant summing-up and resolution that they could both play at first sight and that they repeated again and again; and the grave happiness of the music was still with Captain Aubrey when he walked on to his quarterdeck in the bright morning to see his stump topgallantmasts and their attendant royals come aboard, followed almost immediately by the Tamar's barge bringing a score of glum but resigned and obviously competent Skates to the larboard side and by a Plymouth wherry with two pink-faced young men, very carefully shaved, wearing identical uniforms, their best, and solemn expressions. The wherry hooked on to the starboard mainchains: the young men ran up the side in order of seniority - two whole weeks lay between them - saluted the quarterdeck and looked quickly fore and aft for the officer of the watch. They saw no calm dignified figure pacing up and down with a telescope under his arm and an epaulette on his shoulder, but after a moment a very dirty tall thin man in tarry trousers and a round jacket stepped towards them from the busy crowd at the foot of the foremast; his eyes were rimmed with red, his expression stern, as well it might be, Pullings having been obliged to keep watch as well as carry out all his other duties since the Worcester left Portsmouth. The first young man took off his hat and said in a humble voice, 'Collins, sir, come on board, if you please.'

'Whiting, sir, if you please: come on board,' said the other.

'You are very welcome, gentlemen,' said Pullings. 'I will not give you my hand, it being covered with slush; but you are very welcome. There is a mortal deal of work to be done, if ever we are to put to sea. There is not a moment to lose.'

Jack was speaking to the gunner at the time, explaining that the private powder in the kegs marked X was mixed with red orpiment, and XX with antimony or copper, while still others had lycoperdium or camphor or strontium, but he noticed with satisfaction that neither of the two young men did in fact lose a moment. Their sea-chests were scarcely aboard before they were out of their fine clothes, actively forwarding the work on the foretopgallantmast, as deep in slush as any of those concerned with easing its head through the awkward trestle-trees and cap. 'It may not be fighting-powder, Mr Borrell,' said Jack, 'but it will answer very well for practice. Let a dozen rounds be filled for each gun. I should like to see how the people shape as soon as we put to sea: perhaps tomorrow, on the evening tide.'

'A dozen rounds it is, sir,' said the gunner with deep approval. Captain Aubrey belonged to the school of Douglas and Collingwood, men who believed that a ship's prime purpose was to bring cannon within range of the enemy and then to fire with extreme speed and accuracy, and Borrell supported this view with all his heart. He walked off to fill cartridge with his mates in the magazine and Jack looked up at the rising foretopgallantmast with a smile: there was order in that apparent chaos of men, spars and ropes, and Tom Pullings had the whole operation well in hand. He looked down, and his smile faded: a small boat crammed with parsons was approaching the ship, followed by another with a lady in mourning, a small boy by her side.

'I had hoped to persuade her to put the boy to school,' said Jack to Stephen after supper, as they sat down to a comparatively simple Scarlatti piece that they both knew well. 'I had hoped to convince her that a voyage of this kind, a few months on the Toulon blockade, a relieving turn with no future in it - a mere parenthesis, as you said the other day - would be no use to her boy, and that there were many other captains, with schoolmasters and a long commission ahead of them: I named half a dozen. And I had hoped to ship no first-voyagers this time, no squeakers, no use to me and I no use to them. But she would not be denied - wept, upon my word; shed tears. I have never been so wretched in my life.'

'Mrs Calamy is an officer's widow, I collect?'

'Yes. Edward Calamy and I were shipmates in Theseus, before he was made post into the Atalante. Then they gave him the Rochester, seventy-four, just such a ship as this: she was lost with all hands in the great autumn blow of the year eight. If I had told her that we came from the same yard, she might have taken the little brute away.'

'Poor little brute. Pullings found him bathed in tears, and comforted him: the child led him downstairs, below, and gave him a large piece of plum-cake. This argues a grateful heart in Mr Calamy. I hope he may thrive, though he is so puny, so very puny.'

'Oh, I dare say he will, if he is not drowned or knocked on the head. Mrs Borrell will look after him - the Navy is equipped to breed up squeakers, after all. But I tell you what, Stephen, I tell you what: the Navy is not equipped to deal with a whole G.o.d-d.a.m.ned - a whole blessed convocation of clergy. It is not six parsons that are come aboard but seven: seven, upon my sacred honour. How I hope this breeze holds true for three more tides, so that we may put to sea before they send us half the bench of bishops.'

The wind did not hold true. The Worcester had barely shipped her new stumps, rattled down the shrouds, completed her water and received the port-admiral's visit before an ominous swell set in, causing her to pitch and roll even in the sheltered Hamoaze and foretelling the great grey swathes of rain driving in on a strong south-wester whose force steadily increased day after day, emptying the Sound, pinning the men-of-war to their moorings in Hamoazc and the merchant ships in Cat.w.a.ter, driving the Brest team off their blockade into Torbay, and scattering the sh.o.r.es with driftwood, much of it ancient wreckage, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and neutral. But some was recent, and this was mostly English, for not only were there now far more English merchantmen than foreigners to be wrecked, but the Royal Navy, keeping the sea in all weathers, the whole year round, was fast wearing out, and although new ships were continually being built as fast as limited treasure and supplies would allow, many others had to be kept in active service when they were no longer seaworthy - thirteen had been lost this year, quite apart from those taken by the Americans or the French.

Yet at least this delay gave the Worcester time for all kinds of last-minute arrangements, such as a provision of soap or blotting-paper, so often forgotten in even the best-ordered ships until they have sunk the land and with it all sources of supply: it also allowed still more people to put off with requests to Captain Aubrey, still more letters to come aboard for Admiral Thornton's squadron and for the Worcester herself. Some of these were addressed to her Captain; long, intricate and not particularly encouraging letters from his lawyer, letters that made Jack look careworn and old. 'How I do loathe this hanging about,' he said. 'It is a kind of enforced unpunctuality. And the d.a.m.ned thing about it is that Sophie could perfectly well have come down for a week or so: and Diana too I dare say. Yet at least it has brought you acquainted with your new messmates. You must be pretty crowded down there, but I hope you find them good company, learned and so on?'

Jack had not yet dined with the wardroom and its new inhabitants: not only had he been extremely busy with a restowing of the hold, to improve the Worcester's trim, but partly out of custom and partly out of a desire to forget his legal worries he had also dined with other captains almost every day: fine hard-drinking parties, most of them, and a moderately good way of overlaying care for the while.

He had also travelled quite far inland to pay his respects to Lady Thornton and to ask whether he might carry anything from home to the Admiral. 'Yet now I come to think of it,' he went on, 'one of them, the Scotchman, is not a parson at all, but a professor of moral philosophy, to be delivered to Port Mahon, where presumably they are in need of his services. Moral philosophy. How does that differ from your kind, Stephen?'

'Why, natural philosophy is not concerned with ethics, virtues and vices, or metaphysics. The fact that the dodo has a keel to her breastbone whereas the ostrich and her kind have none presents no moral issue; nor does the dissolution of gold by aqua regia. We erect hypotheses, to be sure, some of us to a most stupendous height, but we always hope to sustain them by demonstrable facts in time: these are not the province of the moralist. Perhaps it might be said that your moral philosopher is in pursuit of wisdom rather than of knowledge; and indeed what he is concerned with is not so much the object of knowledge as of intuitive perception - is scarcely susceptible of being known. Yet whether wisdom can be any more profitably pursued than happiness is a question. Certainly the few moral philosophers I have known do not seem to have been outstandingly successful in either, whereas some natural philosophers, such as Sir Humphrey Davy..." Stephen carried on to the end of his long, his very long sentence, but a great while before he stopped it was apparent to him that Captain Aubrey was meditating a joke.

'So I suppose,' he said, smiling so broadly that his blue eyes were not more than twinkling slits in his red face, 'that you and Sir Humphrey could be described as immoral philosophers?'

'Sure there may be some poor thin barren minds that would catch at such a paltry clench,' said Stephen. 'Pothouse wits that might, if their beery genius soared so high, also call Professor Graham an unnatural philosopher.'

Captain Aubrey heaved silently for a while - few men relished their own wit more than Jack - and then, smiling still, he said, 'Well, at all events, I hope he is good company. I can imagine an unnatural and an immoral philosopher arguing the toss for hours, to the admiration of all hands, ha, ha, ha.'

'We have barely exchanged a dozen words; he seems a reserved gentleman, and perhaps a little deaf. I have hardly formed any opinion of him; though he must be widely read, sure, to occupy a chair in a respectable university. I believe I have seen his name to a recent edition of the Nicomachean Ethics.' 'And what of the others, the parsons proper?' Ordinarily they did not exchange their views about Stephen's fellow-members of the wardroom mess; Jack, for example, had not said a word about his extreme displeasure at the arrival of Mr Somers rather than either of the lieutenants he had applied for, nor of his intimate conviction that the young man had been in Plymouth for several days, reporting aboard only when the hard labour of fitting the Worcester for sea was done. But the parsons were no part of the ship's company; they were pa.s.sengers; they might be discussed, and Stephen described them briefly. One was a West Country rector, an invalid who hoped to find health in the Mediterranean, where his cousin commanded the Andromache. 'I wish he may get there, at all: such a cachexy I have rarely seen ambulant' - all the others were unbeneficed clergymen: two had been ushers in schools for young gentlemen, and thought any other life preferable to that, even on shipboard ; two had tried long and hard and unsuccessfully to live by their pens - they were pitifully thin and shabby -and one, from the West Indies, had ruined himself by the invention of a double-bottomed defecator.'It appears that the machine, which is designed to purify sugar, requires only the investment of a little more capital to sweep the board; and that any gentleman with a few hundreds to spare might set up his coach on the profits within a very short s.p.a.ce of time. But come, joy, are we ever to attack Scarlatti, the poor soul, or arc we to sit here until the crack of doom, as windbound as our unhappy argosy?'

'There is not a moment to be lost,' said Jack, reaching for his bow. 'Let the battle begin.'

The grey days crept by with continual heavy rain and the gale working up a sea that made the Worcester pitch and roll at her moorings to such a degree that most of the black coats deserted the wardroom table and even ship-visiting came to a stop. But on the afternoon of Tuesday the wind backed into the east, just far enough to allow the Worcester to warp out into the Sound and shape a course, every staysail set, topsailyards braced up cracking taut, all seamen on deck, all landsmen ordered below, for Penlee Point. Then, shaving the headland so close that the quarterdeck held its collective breath, while Stephen privately crossed himself, she edged away, brought the breeze on to her larboard quarter, dropped her courses, and ran clear out into the Channel under all plain sail, the first to leave Plymouth apart from a revenue cutter since the blow began.

'The skipper is in a h.e.l.l-fire hurry,' observed Somers to Mowett, as Jack cast a look at Rame Head, looming through the rain on the starboard beam, and stepped purposefully below.

'Wait until you see him at quarters,' said Mowett. 'There will be an exercise tonight, and you will have to rattle your guns out pretty brisk to please him.'

'Oh, as for that,' said Somers, 'I am not at all afraid. I know how to make my men skip, I believe.'

Jack was indeed in a h.e.l.l-fire hurry. Not only did he always long to be at sea, and even more so this time than usual, out of lawyers' reach and before he could be saddled with a convoy, but he knew very well that the Brest squadron had been blown off their station and that he had a fair chance of snapping up any French privateer that might take advantage of their absence and of the easterly wind to run into the ocean, there to cruise for British merchantmen: privateers, or even with great luck a frigate. For although any French frigate he had ever seen would surely have the legs of the Worcester, which added sloth to unresponsiveness and lack of beauty, his ship could throw a broadside of 721 pounds from her long guns alone, enough to disable any frigate at long range, if only they were pointed straight and fired briskly.

He was in a hurry, but a cheerful hurry: he had brought his ship to sea after a delay far shorter than many he had known, in spite of the time spent in reducing her masts to something more near his liking; thanks to Fanshaw's kindness and Mowett's zeal his people amounted to 613 souls, only twenty-seven short of the Worcester's official complement, with a far higher proportion of seamen than he had any right to expect; and although thanks to her Captain's weakness she carried the usual nursery of very young gentlemen, some useless mids, and a lieutenant he did not care for, Jack had upon the whole been let off very lightly.

With his first lieutenant and the gunner he plunged down into the familiar reek of the lower deck: bilge-water, cable-slime, mould, hard-worked unwashed men. Well over five hundred hands slept here, close-packed; and since it had been impossible to open the gunports or pipe up hammocks this last week and more the reek was even stronger than usual although the long low s.p.a.ce was empty now, apart from a couple of heaps of hopelessly seasick landsmen, apparently dead, and a few swabbers. But Jack was not concerned with them, nor with the stench, a part of life from his earliest days: his business was with the ship's main armament, the two tiers of ma.s.sive guns, thirty-two pounders, stretching fore and aft in the gloom, bowsed tight up against the side, uttering squeaks and groans as the roll shifted their concentrated three tons an inch or so in spite of the well-heaved frapping. With the light crew that brought the Worcester down he had not been able to fire the lower-deck guns, but he was confident that with the weather clearing he should do so later in the day and he was eager to begin- gunnery was his pa.s.sion and he could not rest easy until he had at least started the long and arduous process of working up the gun-crews to his own exacting standards of rapid and above all accurate fire. Holding a lantern he walked bent low along the tiers, each gun neat and square with its sponge, worm, rammer, powder-horn, bit, quoin and handspikes laid just so; he listened attentively to Borrell's account of each and to Pullings' provisional arrangements for the crews, and once again he blessed the luck that had given him reliable officers, as well as enough right men-of-war's men to provide at least an experienced first and second captain for every piece.

'Well,' he said at the end of their tour, 'I believe we may have some live practice this evening. I hope so, indeed. We can afford quite a number of rounds: my Dock powder was a most amazing bargain, and we fairly cleared the widow's shop. You have plenty filled, Mr Borrell?'

'Oh yes, sir. But I was obliged to fill promiscuous, which some of the kegs had no marks and others two or three; and very old-fashioned some of it smelled arid tasted, too. Not that it was not very fine-corned and bold and dry, sir: I mean no reflection.'

'I am sure you do not, master gunner. But I hope you did not taste much of the powder with antimony in it. Antimony is ticklish stuff, they say. It is most uncommon damp down here," he added, pushing his finger deep into the mould on the beam over his bowed head. 'We certainly need a thorough house-warming, as you might put it.'

'Much of the wet comes through the hawse-holes and the manger, sir,' said Pullings, who was very willing to find some virtue in his ship. 'The bosun has a party there with extra hawse-bags. But upon the whole, sir, she is pretty tight - tighter than I had expected, with this swell. She certainly labours much less with these new topgallantmasts, and she scarcely heaves under the chains at all.'

'Oh, a swell like this don't put her out,' said Jack.

'As far as she was designed at all, she was designed for the Atlantic. But what she will do in those short steep Mediterranean seas that cut up so quick - well, it will be interesting to find out. And it will be interesting to see the effect of antimony. The effect on the guns, I mean, Mr Borrell; I am sure you would have to eat a peck of it to do a man of your const.i.tution any harm.'

'Pray, Dr Maturin,' he said on the quarterdeck, 'what is the effect of antimony?'

'It is a diaph.o.r.etic, an expectorant and a moderate cholegogue; but we use it chiefly as an emetic. You have heard of the everlasting antimony pill, sure?'

'Not I.'

'It is one of the most economical forms of physic known to man, since a single pill of the metal will serve a numerous household, being ingested, rejected, and so recovered. I have known one handed down for generations, perhaps from the time of Paracelsus himself. Yet it must be exhibited with discretion: Zwingerius likens it to the sword of Scanderberg, which is either good or bad, strong or weak, as is the party that prescribes or uses it, a worthy medicine if it be rightly applied to a strong man, otherwise it may prove but a freward vomit. Indeed, the name is said to signify monk's bane.'

'So I have always understood,' said Jack. 'But what I really meant was its effect on guns, was a little mixed with the powder.'

'Alas, I am wholly ignorant of these things. But if we may go by a.n.a.logy, it should cause the piece to vomit forth the ball with more than common force.'

'We shall soon know,' said Jack. 'Mr Pullings, I believe we may beat to quarters.'

It was common knowledge throughout the Worcester that something was up, and none of the seamen was particularly surprised when after a preliminary running in and out of the guns the Captain walked forward along the gangway through the hush of a ship stripped for battle, all hands silent at their action-stations, the officers and midshipmen by their divisions, deck after deck, the powder-boys sitting on their cartridges behind each gun, the slow-match smouldering in the tubs and sending its heady scent eddying along the deck as the tensely expectant Worcester lay to in the grey and empty Channel, heaving high but easy on the swell. They were not particularly surprised when on reaching the starboard bow-chaser, whose first captain was his own c.o.xswain, Barret Bonden, he took out his watch and said, 'Three rounds: fire on the roll.'

The usual crashing roar, the stab of flame, and the usual furious ordered activity of the crew in the billowing smoke, sponging, reloading with the practice powder, ball and wad rammed home, the gun heaved up and primed, everything directed at cutting a few seconds off the time between the discharges. For this was the gun-crew that was to set the standard by which the rest would be compared. No surprise here, though a keen appreciation of their speed: but amazement, sheer amazement fore and aft, when in fifty-one seconds flat Bonden clapped his match to the priming of the second charge and the gun uttered an enormously loud high-pitched unnatural screeching bellow, jetting out a vast tongue of brilliant white light, in which the fragments of wad showed momentarily black.

It was a miracle alone that prevented the astonished crew from being crushed by the recoiling gun, and Jack had to tally on to the train-tackle to stop it running out again unchecked on the downward roll. He too wore the same blank look of wonder as those about him, but quicker than the rest he changed it to the Olympian calm appropriate to a captain, and when Bonden took the rope, muttering 'Beg pardon, sir: I wasn't expecting...'He returned to the counting of the seconds and observed, 'Come, Bonden, you are wasting time.'

They did their best, they heaved valiantly, but their rhythm, their coordination was upset and a full two minutes pa.s.sed before the gun was run up, primed and pointed, and Bonden bent over it with an expression of ludicrous apprehension on his tough, battle-hardened face, his mates all edging as far from the piece as was decent or even farther, in an atmosphere of the most lively tension. His hand came down: this time the gun belched crimson, a n.o.ble, long-lasting crimson flame and crimson smoke, a deep, solemn, musical boom; and all along the deck the exact discipline of the gun-crews dissolved in delighted laughter.

'Silence fore and aft,' cried Jack, cuffing a contorted powder-boy, but his voice trembled as he said, 'Stop your vent. House your gun. On the roll, fire three.'

After the first dull blast of the regulation powder with which it had been loaded, number three produced a splendid blue, a splendid green; and so it went throughout the ship, deck after deck: exquisite colours, strange unheard-of bangs, infinite mirth (though sternly repressed) and a truly wretched performance in point of time.

'That was the most cheerful exercise I have ever known in my life,' said Jack to Stephen in the after-cabin. 'How I wish you had seen Bonden's face, just like a maiden aunt made to hold a lighted squib. And it was almost as good as a real action for pulling the people together - Lord, how they were laughing on the lower deck when hammocks were being slung. We shall make a happy ship of her, for all her faults. If the wind holds, I shall take her in close tomorrow evening, and let them break some gla.s.s.'

In his long career Captain Aubrey had observed that of all the forms of great-gun exercise there was none that came anywhere near firing at a fixed mark on land, above all if it had windows. Until the gun-crews were quite steady they tended to throw away many of their shots in full-blown action, and although firing at barrels laid out by the boats was very well in its way - infinitely better than the dumb-show of merely heaving cannon in and out that was usual in many ships ? it lacked the high relish, the point of real danger, of smashing valuable defended property, and whenever circ.u.mstances allowed he would take his ship close to the enemy sh.o.r.e to bombard some one of the many small posts and batteries strung all along the coast to guard harbours, estuaries, and places where the Allies might land. Now, the breeze having come well north of east with every sign of backing farther still, he fixed his position by two exact lunar observations and altered course to raise the He de Groix a little before the break of day. Although the night turned thick and troubled in the middle watch - no moon to be seen, still less a star - he was confident of his calculations, precisely confirmed by the mean of his three chronometers, and although his chief hope was of some privateer slipping out of Brest or even a commerce-raiding frigate, if he missed of them, he would at least be able to provide his people with a fine selection of posts to batter.

A little before two bells in the morning watch he came on deck. The idlers had not yet been called and the quiet night-time routine still had some while to run before the washing of the decks began, and the tumult of holystones great and small. The swell had diminished and here under the remote but effective lee of Ushant far astern the breeze made no more than a steady, regular song in the rigging as it came in three points abaft the larboard beam. She was under courses and topsails, no more. Since the arrival of the other lieutenants Pollings no longer kept a watch, but he was already up, talking to Mowett by the larboard rail: both had their night-gla.s.ses trained south-east.

'Good morning, gentlemen,' said Jack.

'Good morning, sir,' said Pullings. 'We were just talking about you. Plaice, on the forecastle lookout, thought he saw a light. Mowett sent a sharp man aloft: he can make nothing of it, but sometimes we seem to catch something on the lift, and we were wondering whether to call you yet. It is all wrong for the Groix lighthouse.'

Jack took the telescope and stared hard and long. 'So G.o.d-d.a.m.ned thick...'he muttered, wiping his eye and staring again.

The half-hour gla.s.s turned, two bells struck, the sentries called 'All's well', the midshipman of the watch heaved the log, reported 'Five knots one fathom, sir, if you please,' and chalked it on the board, a carpenter's mate stated that there was two foot four inches in the well - the Worcester made a good deal of water - and Mowett said 'Relieve the wheel: forecastle hands spell the afterguard at the pumps: call the idlers.'

'There, sir,' cried Pullings. 'No, much nearer.' And at the same moment the forecastle lookout and the masthead roared 'Sail on the larboard beam."

The mists of the dying night had parted, showing not only a stern-lantern and a toplight but the whole of a ghostly ship, sailing large, standing south, and not two miles away. Jack had just time to see that she was taking in her foretopgallant-sail before she vanished, vanished entirely.

'All hands,' he said. 'Dowse the lights. In driver: main and fore topgallants, forestaysail, outer jib. Pa.s.s the word for the master.' He caught up the log-board and strode into the master's day-cabin with its charts spread out, the Worcester's course p.r.i.c.ked to the last observation. Gill came running, frowsty and dishevelled, a glum companion but a Channel pilot and a fine navigator; and between them they worked out the ship's position. Lorient lay due east, and the day would show them the He de Groix fine on the starboard bow. If the weather cleared at all they would see its light well before true dawn.

'A considerable ship, sir?' asked the master.

'I hope so indeed, Mr Gill,' said Jack, walking out of the cabin. He was in fact certain of it, but he did not like to anger luck by saying that what he had seen was either a heavy frigate or even something far better, a ship of the line stealing down the coast to Rochefort: in either case a man-of-war, and necessarily a French man-of-war, since the Worcester had such a head-start over the blockading squadron.

The decks were filling rapidly with the watch below, blundering about half-clothed and stupid, s.n.a.t.c.hed from their short hour's sleep, but brightening wonderfully when they heard there was a ship in sight.

'A two-decker, sir,' said Pullings with a delighted grin. 'She took in her maintopgallant before she disappeared again.'

'Very good, Mr Pullings,' said Jack. 'Clear for action. Let the people go quietly to quarters: no drum, no calling out.'

It was clear that the stranger, now looming faintly through the haze from time to time, had reduced sail to watch for the blink of the Groix light: a further proof that she was bound for Rochefort or the Bordeaux stream, since if her destination had been Lorient she would have borne in with the land an hour ago.

The sky was lightening in the east, and he stood there with his gla.s.s considering his course of action amidst the strange silence of the deck - men absurdly whispering as they stood by their guns, the guns themselves eased gently out, orders pa.s.sing in an undertone. Below he could hear the cabins going down as the carpenter's crew made a clear sweep from stem to stern. The cry of a parson untimely roused came up through the hatchway, where they were laying the fearnought screens and wetting them.

There was still the possibility of the stranger's being a storeship or a transport, in which case she would bear up for Lorient the moment she saw the Worcester. He also observed with grave concern that with no more than courses and topsails she was gliding along at a remarkable pace: a clean-bottomed ship no doubt, and one that could probably give the Worcester mainsail and topgallants once all canvas was aboard. But if she was what he hoped, and if she showed fight, he must draw her down well south of Lorient, right to leeward, so that with this wind she could never make that port and the protection of its tremendous batteries. To be sure, that would mean playing long bowls with the Frenchmen for a while, and although they might not be the best seamen in the world they were often capital gunners; and his ship's company lacked experience. With a sudden stab at his heart he remembered that he had forgotten to order fighting cartridge instead of practice-powder at the last recharging of the guns: this was dead against his principles, but in fact it did not signify - he had carefully observed the fall of the shot, and the coloured powder threw its ball as well as the King's best Red L.G. In any case, as soon as the stranger was another mile to leeward, too far to fetch Lorient, he must close. He had the immense advantage of being ready, cleared for action, all hands on deck, guns run out, and already Pullings had the studding-sail booms and royals laid along. It would be strange if after the surprise and hurry and confusion aboard the Frenchman during the seven or eight minutes needed to gain that mile - it would be strange if he did not manage to lay her alongside, above all with the island and its shoals lying so awkwardly in her path.

'Mr Whiting,' he said, 'prepare the French colours, the number seventy-seven, and some kind of an answer to their private signal. Let it jam in the halyards.'

The near haze lifted and there she lay, a seventy-four, high, taut and handsome. Probably the Jemmapes: at all events no ship to decline battle. Yet they were strangely inactive aboard her: the Worcester was coming up on them fast, steering for their starboard quarter, running off that precious distance south of Lorient; but they never stirred. Suddenly he realized that every man-jack aboard her was staring for the Groix light. It came sharp and clear, a double flash, She dropped her topgallantsails, and while they were sheeting home someone caught sight of the Worcester - he distinctly heard trumpets aboard the Frenchman, trumpets and the urgent thunder of a drum. His eyes were so used to the half-light that even without a gla.s.s he could see people hurrying about on her decks. After a few moments her colours ran up and she changed helm to cut the Worcester's course. 'Edge off two points,' said Jack to the master at the con. This would bring them still farther south. 'Mr Whiting, French colours if you please. Mr Pullings, battle-lanterns.'

Battle-lanterns aboard the Frenchman too, lights showing in every port, guns running out. The French number and private signal: the Worcester's slow and evasive reply, which did not deceive the enemy for more than a few moments. Yet even those few moments carried the two ships a furlong farther south, and in a very short while now the Jemmapes - for the Jemmapes she was - would no longer be able to haul up for Lorient. Not that she showed the least sign of wishing to do so: far from it. Her commander was bringing her out in the most handsome manner, evidently determined to join issue as soon as possible, as though he had heard Lord Nelson's maxim 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go straight at 'em.'

In earlier years Jack would have lain to for the Jemmapes in much the same generous spirit, but now he wanted to make doubly sure of her; he wanted her to try for the weather-gage, and he kept the Worcester away another point and a half, watching the enemy intently as the two ships ran, each abreasting the sea with a fine bow-wave. Hammocks were racing up on deck aboard the Jemmapes: her waist and forecastle was a pretty scene of confusion, and in that man's place, with such a clean-bottomed swift-sailing ship, Jack would have held off until his people were more nearly settled: but not at all, out she came as fast as she could pelt, and Jack saw that his estimate of her speed had been short of the mark. She was indeed a flyer, and once the vital mile was run off he would have to close as fast as ever he could, while he still had the advantage of wind and readiness - close and board. He had never known it fail. All along the Worcester's decks the arms-chests lay open: pistols, cutla.s.ses, wicked boarding-axes.

He saw the flash of the Frenchman's chaser, the cloud of smoke torn away ahead, and a white plume rose from the grey sea well beyond the Worcester's starboard bow.

'Our colours, Mr Whiting,' he said, fixing the enemy quarterdeck in his telescope. And much louder, 'Maintop there: hoist the short pennant.'

He saw the shift of helm that would bring the Jemmapes broadside on: she turned, turned and vanished in a cloud of smoke billowing to her topsails, the single timber-shattering discharge that only a stout new ship could afford. The line was good, but they had fired a trifle past the height of the roll and their well-grouped shot tore up a broad patch of sea a hundred yards short. A dozen ricochets came aboard, one smashing the blue cutter; a hole appeared in the mainsail and some blocks fell to the deck behind him - there had been no time to rig netting. A subdued cheer from the forecastle and waist and many an eye looked aft for the order to fire. On the edge of his field of vision he saw Stephen standing by the break of the p.o.o.p in his nightshirt and breeches: Dr Maturin rarely went to his action-station in the c.o.c.kpit until there were casualties for him to deal with. But Jack Aubrey's mind was too taken up with the delicate calculations of the coming battle for conversation: he stood there, wholly engrossed, working out the converging courses, the possible variants, the innumerable fine points that must precede the plain hard hammering, when everyone would be much happier. On these occasions, and Stephen had known many of them, Jack was as it were removed, a stranger, quite unlike the cheerful, not over-wise companion he knew so well: a hard, strong face, calm but intensely alive, efficient, decided, a stern face, but one that in some way expressed a fierce and vivid happiness.

A full minute pa.s.sed. The second French broadside must be rammed home by now. He would have to suffer two or three of them, and at shortening range, before he could carry out his plan: but a fresh crew hated being fired at without making a reply. 'One more,' he said in his strong voice. 'One more, and then you shall serve them out. Then wait for the word and fire at her tops. Fire steady. Do not waste a shot.' A fierce growl all along, then the Frenchman's roaring fire and almost at the same moment the great hammer-crash of round-shot hitting the Worcester's hull, splinters flying across the deck, wreckage falling from aloft. 'Do not do that, youngster,' said Jack to little Calamy, who had bent double when a shot crossed the quarterdeck. 'You might put your head in the way of a ball.' He glanced fore and aft. No great harm, and he was about to give the order to bear up fire when the wounded maintack tore free. 'Clew up, clew up,' he said, and the wild flapping stopped. 'Starboard three points.'

'Three points a-starboard it is, sir,' said the quartermaster at the wheel, and in a long smooth glide the Worcester brought her guns to bear. She was head-on to the swell, a fair pitch but no roll. 'Wait for it,' he called. 'At her tops. Waste not a shot. At the word from forward aft.' The wind sang through the rigging. The Frenchmen would be almost running out their guns again: that was the moment to catch them. He must get his broadside in first, fl.u.s.ter them, and hide his ship in smoke. 'Bow guns stand by. Fire.'

From forward aft the long rolling fire, an enormous all-pervading roar; and a freak of the wind brought the dense smoke eddying back - red smoke, green, blue, crimson and orange, with unearthly tongues of intensely brilliant coloured flame in the greyness. He leapt on to the hammock-cloths to pierce the cloud, the unnatural cloud, yet still it lingered: and no reply from the Jemmapes: 'G.o.d love me, what's amiss?' he said aloud, while below him the gun-crews sponged, loaded, rammed and heaved like fury, fresh powder running up from the magazines.

The smoke cleared at last, and there was the Jemmapes stern-on, running fast, apparently unhurt apart from a small green fire blazing on her p.o.o.p, running close-hauled for Lorient, shocked and appalled by these new secret weapons - she was already packing on more sail.

The guns were run out again. At three degrees of elevation he gave her another broadside, a raking broadside at her defenceless stern, a broadside delivered with a fierce, savage cheer. But though several shots struck her hull they did not check her speed; nor did the now-normal flash of the Worcester's fire induce her to lie to; and by the time Jack called 'Hard a-starboard' to go in chase she had gained a quarter of a mile, while fools were capering on the forecastle, cheering, bawling out 'She runs, she runs! We've beat her!'

The Worcester hauled her wind, the sail-trimmers leapt to the braces and flew aloft to set the upper staysails, but she could not lie as close to her quarry by nearly a whole point, nor, without her mainsail, could she run on a bowline so fast by two knots and more. When the Jemmapes was so far ahead that the bow-chaser could hardly reach her, Jack yawned, gave her one last deliberate, sullen broadside at extreme range, and said 'House your guns. Mr Gill, course south-south-west: all plain sail." He realized that it was day, that the sun was rising over Lorient, and added 'Dowse the battle-lanterns.' As he spoke he saw Pullings' face and the cruel disappointment on it: had they held their opening fire another five minutes the Jemmapes could never have reached Lorient. With the wind, the He de Groix, its reefs, and the sh.o.r.e all lying just so, a close action could have been forced whether the Jemmapes held her course or no: five minutes longer and Pullings would either have been a commander or a corpse. For a successful, evenly-matched action was certain promotion for a surviving first lieutenant: Pullings' only possible chance of promotion from the long and over-crowded lieutenants' list, since he had no pull, no interest or influence of any kind, no hope apart from his patron's luck or superior ability; and Jack Aubrey had misjudged the situation, one that might never arise again in Tom Pullings' whole career. Jack felt a sadness rise, far greater than his usual depression after a real battle, and looking at the dangling maintack he said in a hard voice, 'What are our casualties, Mr Pullings?'

'No dead, sir. Three splinter wounds and a crushed foot, no more. And number seven, lower deck, dismounted. But I am sorry to tell you, sir, I am very sorry to tell you, the Doctor has copped it.'

CHAPTER THREE.

Dr Maturin had taken part in many actions at sea, and although he had twice been captured and once wrecked he had never copped it yet, because as a surgeon he spent most of the time below the water-line, sheltered from splinters, round-shot and grape, in comparative safety if not in comfort. But now he had been wounded in three several places: first a falling shoulder-block knocked him down, then a jagged lump of elm from the hounds of the mizen topmast ripped off half his scalp, and lastly one of a shower of eighteen-inch splinters driven from the Worcester's quarterdeck berthing by a thirty-two-pound ball struck both his feet as he lay there, struck them flatwise, piercing the list slippers and his soles. The wounds were spectacular and he left an uninterrupted trail of blood as he was carried below, but they were not serious; his a.s.sistants sewed him up again - Lewis, the elder man, was a rare hand with a needle- and although the pain was singularly shrill and insistent, Stephen's favourite tincture of laudanum dealt with that. He could take it now with a clear conscience, and with the tolerance resulting from long abuse he drank it by the pint. It was not the wounds, therefore, nor the loss of blood, nor the pain that brought him so low, but rather the incessant flow of visitors.

His a.s.sistants left him pretty well alone, apart from attending to his dressings, for not only was he a dangerous patient, stubborn, dogged and even violent if attempted to be dosed according to any system but his own, but he was also their superior in naval and in medical rank, being a physician and the author of highly-esteemed works on seamen's diseases, an officer much caressed by the Sick and Hurt Board: furthermore he was no more consistent than other men and in spite of his liberal principles and his dislike of const.i.tuted authority he was capable of petulant tyranny when confronted with a slime-draught early in the morning. But he had no authority over the Worcester's pa.s.sengers, and with regard to them the social contract was fully binding. It was their duty to visit the sick unless they were being sick themselves (and poor Dr Davis was prostrated by the slightest roll or pitch); they had nothing else at all to do; and throughout their leisurely, almost windless and unnaturally calm pa.s.sage across the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal they succeeded one another in the Captain's dining-cabin, where Stephen's cot had been set up. Nor were they alone. His old shipmates Pullings and Mowett sat with him every day, and very welcome they were; but all the other members of the wardroom came in from time to time, walking on tiptoe and suggesting remedies in low, considerate tones. Men who had listened to him with respectful attention when he was well now gave him advice quite fearlessly; and Killick hovered near at hand with fortifying broth, possets made by the gunner's wife, and galley receipts for strengthening the blood. Had it not been for the blessed opium that allowed him to plane above his irascibility some of the time his wellwishers would have worried him into his coffin, a hammock with two round-shot at his feet, before they raised the Rock of Lisbon; for although he could put up with pain tolerably well he had always found boredom mortal, and the purser, the Marine Captain (strangers to him) and two of the parsons droned on and on. Apart from the inventor of the double-bottomed defecator, whose history he had heard seven times, they had nothing to say, and they said it for what seemed hours, while his smile grew more fixed and rigid until at last it came to resemble the risus sardonicus.

But in lat.i.tude thirty-eight degrees north he began to recover; the feverish petulance left him, he became equable and mild, and his complaisance was no longer a matter of strong self-restraint. He discovered agreeable qualities in two of the clergymen and Professor Graham. When Cape St Vincent showed misty on the larboard bow he was well enough to be carried on deck in an elbow-chair with two capstan-bars lashed to its sides, sedan-fashion, to be shown the desert of grey ocean in which Lieutenant Aubrey, Sir John Jervis, and Commodore Nelson had defeated the greatly superior Spanish fleet on St Valentine's Day in 1797. And when the Worcester lay alongside the New Mole in Gibraltar, taking in fresh supplies and waiting for the levanter to blow out, the strong east wind that prevented her from pa.s.sing the Strait into the Mediterranean, he sat luxuriating in the sun in the stern-galley, his bandaged feet on a stool, a gla.s.s of fresh orange-juice in his hand, and Professor Graham by his side: for although the Scotchman was a grey, somewhat positive, humourless soul he had read a great deal, and now that he had overcome at least some of his initial reserve he was a grateful companion, a man of obvious parts, and in no way a bore. Stephen had received the visit of several acquaintances from the sh.o.r.e, the last of these bringing him specimens of four uncommon cryptogams that he had always longed to see; he gazed at them now with such pleasure, such intensity, that it was some moments before he answered the Professor's question 'What was the language you were speaking with that gentleman?'

'The language, sir?' he said with a smile - he was feeling unusually cheerful, even merry, 'It was Catalan.' He had been tempted to say Aramaic, out of a spirit of fun; but Graham was too learned, too much of a linguist to swallow that.

'So you speak the Catalan, Doctor, as well as the French and Spanish?'

'I have spent much of my life on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean,' said Stephen, 'and in my malleable youth I came by a certain knowledge of the languages spoken at its western end. I do not possess your command of Arabic, however; still less of your Turkish, G.o.d forbid.'

'To revert to our battle,' said Graham, having digested this. 'What I do not understand is why Captain Aubrey should have shot off those extraordinary coloured b.a.l.l.s in the first place.'

'As for that,' said Stephen, smiling at Graham's notion of a battle - from their n.o.ble balcony they had the whole bay spread out before them, with Algeciras on the farther sh.o.r.e, where he had taken part in a real action: a hundred and forty-two casualties in HMS Hannibal alone: blood and thunder all day long - 'You must know that in their wisdom the Lords of the Admiralty have laid down that for the first six months of his commission no captain may presume to fire more shot a month than one third the number of his guns under various heavy mulcts and penalties; and after that only half as many. Whitehall supposes that the mariners know how to direct their pieces accurately and shoot them off at great speed while the ship is tossing on the billows by instinct: the captains who do not share this amiable illusion buy their own powder, if they can afford it. But powder is costly. A broadside from a ship of this size uses up some two hundredweight, I believe."

'Hoot, toot,' said Graham, deeply shocked.

'Hoot, toot, indeed sir,' said Stephen. 'And at one and tenpence farthing the pound, that comes to a considerable sum.'