The Ionian Mission Part 7

'Are they, by G.o.d?' cried Jack, stopping short.

'Yes, sir. A seventy-four and a thirty-six-gun frigate.' He had come upon them suddenly as he turned the dog-leg into the Goletta, the long channel leading up to the port of Medina. There they lay, moored under the larger of the two batteries guarding the entrance to the Goletta, and if he had not instantly hauled his wind the Dryad must have been carried past them, into the channel, her escape cut off.

'Did they fire?' asked Jack.

'No, sir. I fancy they were as taken aback as I was, and I did not leave them much time to recover their surprise. I clawed off as quick as ever I could: Dryad came about beautifully, though we had only one reef out of our topsails; we weathered the cape with ten yards to spare and then cracked on regardless to join you, so that we could go back and destroy them together.' Babbington seemed to entertain no sort of doubt about the destruction of the French ships: none about the propriety of his conduct. Presumably his dispatches would be delivered to the consul in Medina once the destruction had taken place.

'Lord, sir,' he said, 'how I hope they are still there!'

'Well, William," said Jack, 'we shall soon find out.' For his own part he hoped they had put to sea. Quite apart from the whole th.o.r.n.y question of neutrality, an action against moored ships was not unlike a soldiers' battle: the unpredictable sea-changes were not there. Superior seamanship could not seize upon a shifting slant of wind, the tail of a current or a shoal and turn it into a decisive advantage, but would have to fight a motionless opponent, one unaffected by the breeze or lack of it, with all his hands free to fire the great guns or repel boarders. At sea there was room for manoeuvre, room for luck: and he was a great believer in luck. If the Frenchmen had put to sea, as he hoped, their course would almost certainly be for the Straits; yet with this breeze they could not yet have worked to the windward of Cape Hamada, and there was every likelihood that by steering west-south-west he would find them under his lee in the morning. He would have the weather-gage and with it the initiative, the power of choosing the moment and the closeness of action; all sorts of possibilities would be open to him; and to make the odds more nearly even he would need every happy turn that offered. For although the Worcester could probably deal with an average French seventy-four by a short battering and then by boarding her, the Dryad and the Polyphemus could not possibly undertake a well-handled frigate except by clever manoeuvring, so that at least one raked her while the Worcester brought her other broadside to bear. It could be done: the engagement, though unequal, could be brought to a successful end, given luck and less skilful opponents. Luck had nearly always been with him in battle, or at least rarely against him; but there was no guarantee that these Frenchmen would be less skilful or that they would let themselves be outmanoeuvred and destroyed piecemeal. There were inept French sailors, to be sure, but not nearly so many as people in London seemed to believe and as far as he was concerned the French sea-officers he had come into contact with had usually been thoroughly able, wily, and courageous. As the three ships ran west-south-west under all the sail the slowest could bear, he sat snorting and gasping over his charts, drinking lemon-shrub hot and reflecting upon some of the French commanders he had known: the formidable Linois, who had taken him in the Mediterranean and who had very nearly sunk him in the Indian Ocean; Lucas, who had fought the Redoubtable so brilliantly at Trafalgar; Christy-Palliere... many others. On the other hand these ships had almost certainly escaped from Toulon in one of the recent blows, and although their officers might be capable enough it was unlikely that their crews would have much experience: yet were his own people much better? If he did meet the French at sea, and if things went as he hoped they would, with the Worcester between the seventy-four and the frigate, he would obviously have to fire both broadsides at the same time - that would be the whole point of the manoeuvre. But so far the Worcesters had had almost no training at all in that unusual operation.

'That can be remedied however, at least to some small extent,' he said aloud in a hoa.r.s.e croak; and for the rest of the day laundry, ironing, making and mending were all laid aside, while the people went through the motions of fighting both sides of the ship at once, the gun-crews running from starboard to larboard as fast as ever they could, sweating in the afternoon sun, heaving guns in and out, in tearing high spirits from beginning to end.

Labour lost, however, for the Polyphemus spoke to an Algerine galley, an old and trustworthy acquaintance, and learnt that the Frenchmen had not sailed from Medina, had no intention of sailing, but had warped closer to the Goletta mole.

Mr Patterson brought this information himself, and Jack observed that his eyes were as bright as his steel hook, his whole ungainly person filled with fresh youth: there was the same elation on the Worcester's quarterdeck, throughout the ship indeed, and Jack wondered at his own lack of joy. This was the first time that the prospect of action had not moved him like the sound of a trumpet: it was not that he dreaded the outcome, although this engagement was of that uncomfortable sort called a point-of-honour fight - an action where one's force was just too great to allow a decent, unblameable retreat yet not great enough to give much reasonable hope of success - but rather that he did not look forward to it with his usual eagerness. His heart did beat higher, but not very much higher, his mind being too much oppressed by material worries to do with the ship, with the conduct of a battle of this kind, and with the probable att.i.tude of the Bey of Medina to be able to take much active pleasure in the prospect. 'It will be all right once the dust starts to fly,' he said to himself, and he gave the order that would carry the three ships to Medina as fast as the stiff breeze would carry them.

Dawn showed Cape Malbek fine on the starboard bow, and by the time the decks were washed and flogged dry the ships had opened the deep bay with Medina far away at the bottom of it. The wind slackened with the rising sun, but it was still as fair as could be wished and they stood in towards the distant town, keeping close to the western sh.o.r.e, gliding by the long line of salt lagoons so close that they could see the files of camels with their shining loads. At one point an undulating cloud of flamingoes wafted over the sea, showing scarlet as they all wheeled together, ten or twenty thousand strong. 'How I wish the Doctor were here,' said Jack once more, but Pullings only returned a formal 'Yes, sir,' and Jack was strongly aware of the many eyes turned upon him from the crowded quarterdeck and, somewhat more furtively, from the p.o.o.p, the gangways, the maintop, and points forward. The last patches of deck were clean and dry, the last falls had been coiled down; there was no immediate task in hand and the ship was extraordinarily silent - hardly a sound but the even song of the breeze in the rigging and the hiss of the smooth water running down the Worcester's side. He knew that the hands were longing to clear her for action; the moral pressure was as perceptible as the warmth of the sun, and after a moment's listening to a sudden outburst of goose-like gabbling from the flamingoes he said 'Mr Pullings, let the hands be piped to breakfast: when they have finished, we may go to quarters. And we should be well advised to take advantage of the galley fires ourselves, before they are...' He would have added 'put out' if a fit of sneezing had not prevented him, but the missing words were clearly understood and in any case the bosun's mates had already started their calls.

Usually Jack asked Pullings and a midshipman or two to breakfast with him, but today, after a sleepless night, most of it on deck, he really felt too jaded for even Pullings' conversation and he retired alone, blowing his reddened nose as he went and murmuring 'Oh dear, oh dear. G.o.d d.a.m.n and blast it,' into his handkerchief.

It was his rule always to eat hearty before an action or the probability of an action and Killick set a dish of bacon on the table, with four fried eggs, saying apologetically that 'that was all there was so far this morning, but the speckled hen might lay any minute now.' He ate them mechanically, but neither they nor even his coffee had their natural savour and when Killick came triumphantly in with the fifth egg he could not look at it with any pleasure. He tossed it privately out of the quarter-gallery scuttle, and as he followed its flight he saw the sea turn brown, then clear again. In their eagerness to be clearing the ship and casting loose their guns, the hands had started their tubs' of cocoa over the side.

'Chips,' said Killick, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, and a moment later the carpenter came in, followed by some of his crew and the captain's joiner. Rather more civilly than the steward, he asked if he might begin. 'Just let me down this cup, Mr Watson,' said Jack, drinking the last of his ill-tasting coffee, 'and the place is yours. You will take particular care of the Doctor's - the Doctor's object, will you not?' he added, pointing at Stephen's dressing-case, now doing duty as a music-stand.

'Never you fret, sir,' said the carpenter, pointing at the joiner in much the same manner. 'Pond here has made a special case for it, lined with junk.'

'It is not an article that should ever have gone to sea,' said the aged joiner in a discontented voice. 'Still less into action.'

As Jack left the cabin he heard them attack the bulkheads, knocking out the wedges with a splendid zeal and rolling up the chequered canvas deck-cloth: before he had taken half a dozen turns on the quarterdeck Stephen's object and all the cabin furniture, crockery and gla.s.s had been struck down into the hold, the bulkheads had vanished and with them his various apartments, so that there was a clean sweep fore and aft and the impatient gun-crews could get at their charges, the pair of thirty-two-pounder carronades that Jack had installed in the coach.

They were too early, far too early: there were still miles of salt lake to pa.s.s. The harbour at the far end of the bay was still dim and misty in the shadow of the hills behind the town, and Jack had not the least notion of sailing into the enclosed'water without surveying the whole of it: he ordered the courses to be hauled up in the brails, and now the Worcester and her consorts moved more slowly, under the usual fighting trim of topsails alone.

There were a fair number of country craft moving in and out in the morning light, tunny-boats and coral-fishers: and two corsair-xebecs with immense black lateen sails pa.s.sed the Worcester on the opposite tack, low to the water, moving very fast. They were crammed with men and as they swept by scores of faces looked up, brown, shining black, sunburnt white, some bearded, some smooth, most turbanned or skull-capped, all keen and predatory. Jack glanced at them with strong dislike and looked away. 'Let us make a tour of the ship,' he said to Pullings.

As he had expected with such a first lieutenant, everything was in order - hatches laid, the decks so carefully dried not long ago now wetted and sanded, scuttle-b.u.t.ts of fresh water amidships for the men to drink, shot-garlands full, arms-chests open: the guns were not run out yet, since the ship had not beat to quarters, but the slow-match for firing them was smouldering away in its little tubs, sending its fierce, well-remembered scent along the decks, and the boarders already had their cutla.s.ses or those axes with a spike that some preferred in a hand-to-hand engagement. There were hands, both seamen and landsmen, who looked anxious, and some were over-excited, but most were gravely cheerful, quiet, and self-contained. It was a time of unusual freedom and those who had sailed into action with Jack before talked to him as he went round. 'Remember Surprise, your honour, and the dinner they give us in Calcutta?' 'The breeze lay just so when we took the big Spaniard.'

And Joseph Plaice said something so witty about the Sophie that his own mirth made the end incomprehensible. Not that Jack had thoroughly understood even the beginning, since the cold had interfered with his hearing: it did not affect his sight, however, and when, having finished his tour, he climbed into the maintop with a telescope he saw Medina plain. The sun shone on the Golden Mosque, its dome and minaret, and on the inner harbour, too shallow for vessels of any draught, but the foretopsail cut off his view of the Goletta. 'Larboard a point,' he called, and as the ship turned so the long ca.n.a.l came into sight, with some merchantmen unloading at its wharfs and a good many smallcraft. At its seaward end two towers, one either side of the entrance, marking the end of the two long moles or breakwaters that closed the bottom of the bay, two curving lines of masonry on the colossal Phoenician and Roman scale that linked reefs and steep-to islands for a mile on either hand. And now as the Worcester steadied he saw the Frenchmen perfectly, a ship of the line and a frigate: they had moved since the Dryad's visit and now they were moored a cable's length from the farther tower where the mole curved inward between two small islands, moored so close in that there was no pa.s.sing between them and the stonework. The French commander was obviously determined that there should be no repet.i.tion of the Nile: he had made sure that no enemy could double upon him, taking him between two fires, and he had also taken- up such a position in his little bay that it would be impossible to lie athwart his hawse and rake him, since his bows were protected by the solid masonry. The frigate also lay snugly in this recess, and in her case the outward curve shielded her stern. Both ships were moored with their starboard broadsides to the sea, and between them there was a gap of some forty yards. The French boats were very busy in this gap, and for a while Jack could not make out what they were at. He leant on the barricade of tight-packed hammocks and focused more exactly: landing guns on the mole, that was what they were at, the dogs. Guns from their larboard broadsides to make a battery commanding the interval between the ships. Guns: and casks, spars and hammocks to protect them. Even if they shifted only the lighter, more get-at-able guns they would soon have the equivalent of the second frigate's broadside, judging by their present energy. And since their ships were moored, they would have all the hands they needed to fight them and as many again: an enormous increase in their fire-power.

'Let fall the fore-course,' he cried, and slinging his telescope he ran down on deck. 'Hoist out the launch and the cutters,' he said, and to the signal-midshipman, Dryad and Polyphemus: captains repair aboard.'

The Worcesters were still making heavy weather of the ponderous launch when Babbington and Patterson came running up the side. 'You see the position, gentlemen,' said Jack. 'They are landing their guns as fast as they can: six are already in position. In an hour's time the place will be another G.o.d-d.a.m.ned Gibraltar, impossible to be attempted. I intend to engage the seventy-four yardarm to yardarm for five minutes and then to board her in the smoke. I desire you will cram your ships under my stern and second me at the given word, boarding her over the bows or by way of our stern if you cannot get there. While we are engaged, play upon her head and forecastle with your small-arms - I doubt any of your great guns will bear - but listen, gentlemen, listen: not a musket, not a pistol, let alone a great gun, must be fired until they have fired on us and I give the word loud and clear. Spread all your officers and midshipmen among the hands with the strictest possible orders to that effect. Tell them that any man who fires before the word shall have five hundred lashes and by G.o.d's name I mean five hundred lashes: and the officer whose division he belongs to shall be broke. That is clearly understood?'

'Yes, sir,' said Babbington.

Patterson smiled his rare smile and said he understood perfectly; but they need not worry - he had never known a Frenchman respect a port's neutrality in all his life, not if the odds were on his side.

'I hope you are right, Mr Patterson,' said Jack. 'But whether or no, those are my absolute orders. Now let us go about our business, before the odds grow greater still.' They shook hands and he saw them to the side; then, turning to Pullings he said, 'Beat to quarters,' and loud over the instant thunder of the drum, 'Pa.s.s the word for Captain Harris.'

The Marine came running from his station on the p.o.o.p. 'Captain Harris,' said Jack, 'it is my intention to board the seventy-four after a very short cannonade. In the mean time you will take a party round the enemy's stern in the boats, drive them from their battery on the mole, and turn the guns against the frigate. Have you any comments?'

'None, sir. Only that it would be an uncommon pretty stroke.'

'Then take as many of your men from the guns as you think fit ? we can manage short-handed for a short burst. Let them be in the boats and out of sight when we are alongside the Frenchman, ready to pull round the moment I give the signal.'

Word with the gunner: appropriate guns to be drawn and reloaded with chain-shot or bar for the first round, to destroy the enemy's boarding-netting. With the bosun: grapnels to make the Frenchman fast; prime hands in the tops to run out and lash his yardarms. With the master, on the course to steer, luffing up the second they were past the island that made the near corner of the bay. With Pullings, about leadsmen in the channels, so that they might keep as close insh.o.r.e as possible, about the replacement of the Marines, a dozen other points. He was deeply pleased by the amount of intelligent antic.i.p.ation he found: most of the things he called for were already on their way, most of the measures already in hand. He savoured this for a moment, watching the mole come nearer - its towers were a thousand yards away and the Frenchmen something farther - and waiting for the din of the top-chains being put to the yards to stop. There were many other things he would have liked to order, but with the Frenchmen landing their guns at this rate he must engage at once; and in any case the essential had been done. The yards were chained: the clashing stopped. 'Worcesters,' said Jack in as strong a croak as he could manage, 'I am going to lay the ship alongside that French seventy-four. We do not fire a shot until I give the word: she must fire first. That's the law. Then when I give the word we thump in four brisk broadsides and board her in the smoke. Those that have not boarded before will not go far wrong if they knock the nearest Frenchman on the head. But remember this: any man that fires before I give the word gets five hundred lashes.'

As an inspiriting harangue this did not perhaps rank very high, but Captain Aubrey was no orator and he had rarely done much better: in any case it seemed to satisfy the Worcester's people and he left the deck to a murmured sound of approval: 'Four rounds brisk, then board.'

He stepped below to the half-deck, where Killick was waiting with his second-best uniform coat and his fighting sword, a heavy cavalry sabre. Many seamen clubbed their pigtails in time of action, but Killick rolled his up into a tight ball: this, combined with a pursed look of disapproval, gave him more the air of an ill-looking shrew than ever. He hated seeing good clothes put at risk and as he helped Jack on with the coat he muttered something about 'taking care of them epaulettes - cost the bleeding eyes out of your head.' For his own part he had changed the duck trousers and blue jacket that he wore as Captain's steward for a very squalid old shirt and petticoat breeches, which heightened the resemblance. Buckling on Jack's sword he said 'There is a fresh supply of wipes in both the pockets: which you could do with one now."

'Thankee, Killick,' said Jack, blowing his nose. He had forgotten his cold until that moment, and he forgot it again when he returned to the quarterdeck. The enemy were now less than half a mile away, partly concealed by the island and the outward curve of the mole. The Worcester, under topsails, was making five knots; the launch and the cutters, full of Marines, were towing easily along on the larboard side, out of sight of the French; the Dryad and the Polyphemus lay exactly in their stations. No sound but the leadsman: 'By the deep eleven. By the deep eleven. By the mark ten.' In about three minutes they would pa.s.s the mouth of the Goletta, squaring main and mizen yards to reduce speed; and about two minutes after that the dust would begin to fly. It was a fairly hazardous stroke and much would depend on the Frenchmen's estimate of the Polyphemus. She was a large transport, capable of carrying the best part of a regiment, and if they thought she was full of soldiers they would be less likely to withstand the first decisive shock with full, aggressive confidence. But hazardous or not, it was the only attack he could launch at this short notice: in any event the die was cast and fate must look after the event. At present his chief anxiety was that no zealous excited hand should touch off the first shot and put the Worcester legally in the wrong. He knew the importance of the Barbary States' benevolent neutrality; he clearly remembered the words in his orders, "Scrupulous respect will be paid to the laws of neutrality"; and he looked keenly along the deck. There was a midshipman to every two guns - he had stripped his quarterdeck - and an officer to every seven; and all the gun-captains were experienced man-of-war's men. Nothing could be safer.

He dismissed that anxiety: another instantly took its place. The ship was fast approaching the entrance to the Goletta; its two towers were fine on her starboard bow. And now, at this moment, from between them came a swarm of shrimp-boats, rushing out in some kind of a ceremony, to the sound of innumerable conchs. Presumably they expected the Worcester to turn right-handed into the channel, but whether or no they stood on, all sails set, right across her path, and Jack had only just time to back the foretopsail to avoid running down the nearest. His hoa.r.s.e almost voiceless croak was not adequate to the occasion and he said to little Calamy, his only remaining aide-de-camp midshipman, 'Jump forward - tell Mr Hollar to hail 'em to bear up - we are standing on.'

From his station on the forecastle the bosun hailed them with enormous force, in what lingua franca he possessed, helped out by pa.s.sionate gestures. They seemed to understand him, and turning to starboard they sailed along in a disorderly straggling heap, roughly in the same direction as the Worcester but slanting diagonally across her course, to gain the open sea while she proceeded along the mole.

The Worcester filled her foretopsail and surged on. Now the Goletta was astern with the Frenchmen's inlet sweeping close, and Jack's whole being was poised for the order that would carry the ship round the island and bring her grinding alongside the enemy - he and every seaman in the ship were so poised when part of the shrimping fleet suddenly steered insh.o.r.e. For no conceivable reason they steered insh.o.r.e and ran slowly past the island and along the mole. The island was at hand; the mainyard almost brushed it; the master said 'Port your helm' and here was the inlet with a score of brown lateen-sailed shrimpers and beyond them the French ship of the line, colours flying, all gunports open wide.

There was not the least possibility of grappling her without crushing the shrimpers. 'Shall I squeeze 'em, sir?' asked the master from behind the wheel.

'No,' said Jack. 'Haul your wind.' In these few seconds an irretrievable s.p.a.ce had pa.s.sed by; the Worcester was already astern of the seventy-four and with this breeze no seamanship on earth could bring her back. 'Make sail,' said Jack, and followed by the Dryad and the Polyphemus the ship stood on, braced for the fire of the sh.o.r.e battery and the frigate, now abreast.

It did not come, and gathering speed they pa.s.sed the second island, out of the French guns' reach. The extreme tension relaxed.

There had been no wild shot from the Worcester nor from her consorts. But none from the Frenchmen either: it was true that the country craft had partly masked the battery and the frigate as well as the ship of the line, but even so Jack had seen the small-arms men in their tops -he had seen their muskets trained on him, the gleam of the barrels as they followed his movements - yet not a shot had they fired.

Although there could no longer be any element of surprise, and although the Polyphemus's inoffensive character was now evident, and although the landing-party of Marines had been clearly seen, the three ships tacked once they had made a decent offing. The breeze, which had been so kind, was growing fainter and veering south of east, so that a repet.i.tion of their course would be difficult indeed. Not that there could be any exact repet.i.tion, reflected Jack as he watched the Frenchmen through his telescope. He saw intense activity over there, in striking contrast to what he remembered as their total immobility during their few moments of near contact. His memory might be mistaken - it often was in moments of extremely vivid life - and there might had been some movement apart from that wicked creep of musket-barrels, the part of close action that he liked the least, when officers were picked off like sitting birds; but at all events they were very busy now, warping the seventy-four so close to the island that her bowsprit overhung the rock and it weuld no longer be possible for the Dryad and the Polyphemus to board her over the bows. They were also hurrying still more guns ash.o.r.e.

Not that the Worcester was idle, with her Marines coming aboard again and her seamen getting a cable out of the aftermost larboard port, so that she could anchor bow and stern and perhaps come to grips again. There was also the straightforward manoeuvring to bring the ship back to somewhere near her point of departure.

'Sir,' said Harris, 'may I suggest landing my men on the landward side of the mole and approaching the battery from behind? It would be strange if the Frenchmen did not let fly, seeing us coming for them at the double with fixed bayonets.'

Jack did not answer for a moment. He stared at the crowds now hurrying along the mole to see the fun and in his mind's eye he saw the Worcester's Marines among them, moving in neat platoons. Could such a spectacle conceivably be reconciled with neutrality? He did not know Harris and although the man certainly had courage he also had a deeply stupid face: could he be trusted not to fire first or indeed not to charge anything in sight? Including perhaps the Bey's troops, if they were to intervene. Then again any unforeseen delay on either side, anything but perfect synchronization, might expose the Marines to the fire of both ships' remaining larboard guns. It was a spirited suggestion, but without luck, intelligent dash, and exact timing it must lead to endless complications.

'A capital suggestion, Captain Harris,' he said, 'but this time I mean to shoot beyond her, dropping a stern-anchor to swing alongside with the breeze. There will be no room in the ship for the boarding.'

'Haul off all,' cried Pullings, and the mole with its Frenchmen vanished behind the foresail as the Worcester began her second run. More slowly now, as close-hauled as she could be, with the old quartermasters at the wheel staring up at the weather leeches of the sails, always on the edge of shivering. Jack blew his nose at some length and walked across to the starboard side. The Goletta mouth again, and as the ship pa.s.sed the farther tower a man in a splendid turban made gestures towards him with a horsetail banner. What the gestures meant he could not tell, nor could he put his mind to it, for here was the outward curve, the island, the corner they must turn to fall upon the enemy. And here was a party of Frenchmen dragging a heavy carronade to command the line of approach: a moment later and they could have raked him with a hail of grape.

'Steady, fore and aft,' he said. Then 'Stand by, the axes: stand by.'

'Hard over,' murmured the master in the silence.

'Hard over it is, sir,' said the helmsman and the Worcester came round into the Frenchmen's bay.

She hung there, her backed maintopsail exactly balancing the others' thrust, poised for the first gun and for the order that would carry her forward to cut away her anchors and so swing against the enemy's side there in his sheltered nook.

The first gun never came, nor yet the order. This same impression of stillness and silence: the French ship's side was higher than the Worcester's and even by standing on a gun Jack could not see over the hammocks to her quarterdeck, which gave the strangest feeling of impersonality. All her ports were open, all her guns run out: her barricaded waist was lined with soldiers, their hats and muskets showing: thin wafts of smoke drifted from the lower ports, otherwise there was no movement at all, except in the tops, where the same musket-barrels pointed at him, gently varying their angle with the heave of the sea. After a few seconds it was clear to Jack that the French commander's orders about firing first were as rigid and as strictly obeyed as his own.

The minutes dropped by. With great skill the master kept the Worcester in equilibrium until an odd gust drove her a trifle out and she began forging very slowly ahead. The men stationed by the hanging anchors raised their axes, waiting for the word: but Jack shook his head. 'Fill the mainyard,' he said in his hoa.r.s.e voice. The Worcester surged forward, moving across the face of the battery, now much stronger, but as quiet and unmoving as the seventy-four, and past the equally silent frigate. Here at least he could look down into her and on her quarterdeck he saw her captain, a short, capable, grave-looking man standing there with his hands behind his back, looking up. Their eyes met, and at the same moment each moved his hat to the other.

Jack was perfectly convinced that the Frenchman in command was determined not to fire the first shot, but since there might be some fool among the thousand men moored against the mole he led his ships up and down again. Fools there may well have been, but none in charge of a gun or even a musket, and the French were not to be provoked.

'May we not try just once more, sir, giving them a cheer as we go down?' asked Pullings in his ear.

'No, Tom: it will not do,' said he. 'If we stay here andther half hour, with the breeze veering like this, we shall never get out of this G.o.d-d.a.m.ned bay - windbound for weeks, mewed up with these miserable brutes.' Turning from Pullings' bitter distress, he raised his voice, addressing the master: 'Mr Gill, pray lay her for Cape Mero, and then let us shape a course for Barka.'

He took a few turns up and down the quarterdeck in order not to evade the disappointed looks of the crews housing their guns, the sullen, disappointed atmosphere, the flat sense of anticlimax. The ship was profoundly dissatisfied with him: he was profoundly dissatisfied with himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

'And so, sir,' said Jack, 'I left them there and shaped a course for Barka, having first sent Dryad to inform you of their presence.'

'I see,' said Admiral Thornton, leaning back in his chair, putting on his spectacles, and inspecting him with a cold objectivity. 'Then before we return to the subject of Medina, give me a brief account of what happened at Barka,' he added after a disagreeable pause.

'Well sir, I am afraid that Barka was not altogether satisfactory either. When we arrived Esmin Pasha was being besieged by his son Muley and he asked us for guns as well as the presents. These I felt obliged to refuse until I could obtain your consent, but after consultation with Mr Consul Hamilton I sent my carpenter, gunner, and a dozen hands ash.o.r.e to remount the cannon he possessed: most of their carriages were so decayed that they could not be attempted to be fired. But, however, his defences had hardly been put in a tolerable posture before a squadron came in from Constantinople bringing a new Pasha and an order for Esmin's recall. He did not see fit to obey it, and left by night with most of the presents and the guns to join his son, with the intention of besieging the new Pasha once the squadron had sailed. In the mean time the new man sent to say that it was customary to congratulate every newly-installed ruler of Barka with music, fireworks and gifts. The music and the fireworks I could manage,' said Jack with a nervous artificial smile. The nervous artificial smile met with no response whatsoever from the Admiral or his secretary, between whom it was divided: the expression of the first showed no change; the second looked down at his papers. Admiral Harte had no share in the smirk: nevertheless he saw fit to give a disapproving sniff.

It was a curious sight, the ma.s.sive Jack Aubrey, a powerful fellow in the prime of life, long accustomed to authority, sitting there with an anxious, deferential expression, poised on the edge of his chair before a small, sick, bloated, old man he could have crushed with one hand. The service had enormous faults: its dockyards were corrupt and often incompetent, the recruitment of the lower deck was a national disgrace and that of the officers an utterly haphazard affair, while their promotion and employment often depended on influence and favouritism: yet still the Navy managed to throw up admirals who could make men like Jack Aubrey tremble. St Vincent, Keith, Duncan; and Admiral Thornton was one of their kind, or even more so. Now, after another pause, he said, 'You have seen Captain Babbington since your return to the fleet?'

'Yes, sir.' He had indeed - William Babbington pulling out in a double-banked cutter the moment the Worcester was in sight, pulling out over a sea so rough it was a wonder a boat could swim.

'Then you are no doubt aware that I have it in contemplation to call you both to a court-martial for disobedience of orders.'

'So Babbington gave me to understand, sir; and I told him at once that although I was extremely concerned at having displeased you, I flattered myself I could show that I had carried out my orders as I understood them to the best of my ability. And may I add, sir, that Captain Babbington acted under my direction at all times: if there was any fault in that direction, the responsibility is entirely mine.'

'Did you direct him to return from Medina without delivering the consul's dispatches?'

'In a manner of speaking, yes, I did. I particularly impressed upon him the necessity for respecting Medina's neutrality, and this he could not have done had he entered into conflict with the French. I wholly approved his return: had he entered the Goletta he must have been captured."

'You wholly approved his defeating a carefully planned stratagem? Are you not aware, sir, that the Dryad or at least some similar vessel was intended to be captured? And that within five minutes of receiving news of her capture and of the Frenchmen's violation of neutrality I should have detached a squadron to depose the Bey and put in a friend of ours, at the same time clearing every French ship out of all the ports in his country? Had you no notion of this?'

'None whatsoever, sir, upon my honour.'

'Nonsense,' said Harte. 'I made it perfectly plain.' 'No, sir, you did not,' said Jack. 'You spoke in a general way about this being an important service requiring particular discretion, which puzzled me, since the carrying of presents and consular dispatches did not strike me as a task calling for exceptional abilities. You also dwelt upon the necessity of respecting the Barbary States' neutrality. When I referred to my written orders I found nothing whatsoever, not the slightest hint that they were to be understood in a special sense - that I was to send a ship under my command into a trap and oblige her to be captured, perhaps with heavy loss. And I do not wonder at it, sir,' said Jack, his choler rising at the idea of Babbington hauling down his colours at last under overwhelming fire, 'I do not wonder that you did not give me a plain direct order to send my friend in under such circ.u.mstances. On the other hand, my written orders did insist upon the respect due to neutrality, as did your verbal instructions; it was natural therefore to conclude that that was where the need for discretion lay. And I may say, sir,' he said looking Admiral Thornton in the eye, 'that I respected that neutrality to the very limit of human endurance.'

At some point in this statement, delivered with increasing force, the moral advantage changed sides; and now Jack Aubrey, sitting square in his chair, opened his orders at the relevant page and pa.s.sed them to Admiral Thornton, saying, 'There. I appeal to your candour, sir: would not any man take that to be the heart of the matter?

Scrupulous respect will be paid to the laws of neutrality.' While Sir John put on his spectacles again and ran through the orders Harte said that they were written in a great hurry, there not being a moment to lose; that he had not had time to read them over, and the clerk might have mistaken his drift; that a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse; that he was nevertheless perfectly convinced that his verbal instructions had made his meaning clear -anyone could have told that something was afoot when a seventy-four was sent on such a mission and told to keep a full day's sail away - anyone could have told that the orders were to be obeyed to the letter. He had nothing to reproach himself with.

It was disconnected, angry, unskilful and somewhat embarra.s.sing; Admiral Thornton made no reply, but said to Jack, 'International law must be obeyed, of course: yet even Roman virtue can be overdone, and there is such a thing as being too scrupulous by half, above all in a war of this kind, with an enemy that sticks at nothing. Letting fly first with a broadside in the presence of witnesses is one thing: a scuffle ash.o.r.e, where the first blow might have come from anyone, is another. Did it never occur to you to land a party of Marines?'

'Yes, sir, it did. Indeed Captain Harris himself put the suggestion forward in the handsomest manner. I am not very much holier than thou, sir, I hope, in matters of this kind, and I should certainly have done so if my orders had not insisted so upon respect for neutrality.'

'They did nothing of the kind,' said Harte. 'Properly understood, they did nothing of the kind.'

n.o.body saw fit to comment upon this and after a while Admiral Thornton said 'Very well, Captain Aubrey. Although the outcome of this affair is unfortunate in the extreme, I do not think we can usefully say any more. Good day to you."

'Dear Lord above, sweetheart,' wrote Jack in his serial letter, 'I have never been so relieved in my life. All the way back in the boat I dared scarcely smile, or even congratulate myself; and there was William Babbington waiting for me with such a look of mortal anxiety on his face, as well there might have been, he having beheld the Admiral in the first full flood of his wrath. I carried him into the stern-gallery, it being a sweet evening with a light breeze at SSW and the squadron standing due east under topgallantsails so that we had a capital sunset spread out before us, and gave him an exact account of what had pa.s.sed. We were as gay as a pair of schoolboys that have escaped a most prodigious flogging and expulsion, and we called Pullings and Mowett in to sup with us. I could not in decency open my mind to them about the Rear-Admiral - I could not even say how painful it was to hear and see a man of his rank and age sounding and looking so very mean, so very like a scrub - but we understood one another pretty well and Mowett asked me whether I remembered a disrespectful song the hands had made up about him when I had the dear Sophie. It was not the sentiment that Mowett objected to, he said, but the metre, which, it appears, broke the laws of prosody.' Yet the sentiment was not wholly inoffensive either, since even the moderate chorus ran b.u.g.g.e.r old Harte, b.u.g.g.e.r old Harte That red-faced son of a blue French fart as Jack remembered very well.

'It was a charming supper-party, only wanting Stephen to make it complete; and even he will be with us, wind and weather permitting, in two days' time. For this morning the Admiral made my signal, received me kindly - no cold glare, no d.a.m.ned icy distance this time, no Captain Aubrey or you, sir - and gave me very welcome orders to proceed to Port Mahon to take certain stores on board and my surgeon, he having had leave of absence in those parts." The orders had in fact continued, 'Now, Aubrey, I understand from Dr Maturin that you are acquainted with the nature of some of his more confidential expeditions: he also says that he places the utmost reliance on your discretion, and had rather sail with you than any other captain on the list. At present his occasions take him to the French coast, something west of Villeneuve, I believe: you will therefore carry him to the most suitable point for landing and take him off again as and when you shall between you think best. And I do most sincerely hope that you will bring him back safe, with the least possible delay.' But obviously this could form no part of his letter. Nor could another subject that dwelt in his mind, rarely quitting his immediate consciousness. He could and did skirt round it, saying 'I do hope we have a brush with the enemy soon, if only to wipe out the fiasco at Medina. The officers and men who have sailed with me before know that upon the whole I am not wanting in conduct nor I believe I may say in ordinary courage; but most of the ship's company know little or nothing about me and I think some suppose I did not choose to fight. Now it is a very bad thing for men to sail under a commander they suspect of shyness. They cannot of course respect him, and without respect true discipline goes by the board..." Discipline, as the essence of a fighting-ship, was certainly very dear to Jack Aubrey's heart; but there were some things dearer still and reputation was one of them. He had not had the least notion of how he valued it until both Harris and Patterson treated him not indeed with disrespect but with something considerably less than their former deference. This was not immediately after his most unpopular order to leave the Frenchmen lying there, when he knew very well that in the first flat anticlimax and disappointment, the letting-down of very high-wrought spirits, the ship would happily have seen him flogged, but some days after Medina. The incident, if anything so evanescent and impalpable could be called an incident, was followed by a series of unquestionable facts - the appearance of several names on the defaulters' list, charged with fighting, half of them former Skates, half of them men who had sailed with Jack before. Naval justice was crude and amateurish, with no rules of evidence or procedure, but at this quarterdeck level, with the grating rigged for immediate execution, it was not calculated for delay, still less for concealing the real causes at issue, and quite often the truth came out at once, naked and sometimes inconvenient. In this case it appeared that the Skates, comparing Jack's conduct with that of Captain Allen, their last commander, maintained that Captain Aubrey was less enterprising by far. 'Captain Allen would have gone straight at 'em, says he, law or no law: Captain Allen was not near so careful of his health or his paintwork, he says. So I fetch him a little shove, or a nudge as you might call it, to remind him of his manners.'

This evidence explained the battered appearance of many hands who were not charged at all - Bonden, Davis, Martens and several more of Jack's lower-deck friends, even placid old Joe Plaice - the equally battered appearance of a number of Marines as well as former Skates, and the increased animosity between soldiers and seamen. It also led Jack to notice or to fancy he noticed changes in the att.i.tude of some of his officers, a lack of the perhaps somewhat exaggerated awe and respect that they thought due to the genuine salamander's reputation that had surrounded him for so many years, that had made his work so very much easier, and that he accepted as a matter of course.

All this Jack could have put in his letter, and he might even have added his reflection about a man's losing his reputation and a woman's losing her beauty and each of them looking right and left for signs of the loss in much the same manner; but it would not have told Sophie much about her husband's real trouble, which was a dread that he might in fact have behaved cowardly.

He had a profound belief in the lower deck's corporate opinion. There might be a good many fools and landlubbers down there, but the seamen predominated not only in moral force but even in number; and in matters of this kind he had hardly ever known them to be wrong. He had had no great heart for the fight in the first place, none of those tearing spirits and that joy and intense antic.i.p.ation, like fox-hunting at its best, but fox-hunting raised to the hundredth power, which had preceded other actions"Yet that was neither here nor there: a man could be out of form without being chicken-hearted and he had certainly sought out the enemy with all possible zeal, directly offering a close engagement with the odds against him and even trying to provoke it. On the other hand he remembered his relief when he understood that the Frenchmen were not going to fight: an ign.o.ble relief. Or was ignominious the word? Not at all: it was a perfectly reasonable relief at not having to throw an ill-prepared, unseasoned crew into a desperate fight, in which so many of them must certainly be killed, wounded, crippled, maimed. In actions of that kind there was always a most shocking butcher's bill, and with such a crew it would have been even worse, to say nothing of the strong possibility of defeat.

As for his refusing to land the Marines, on first recollection it had seemed to him perfectly innocent, decided in perfect good faith, his orders being what he had understood them to be. But the Admiral's words had shaken him horribly and by now he had argued the matter over with himself so often that what with accusation and indignant denial he could no longer tell just what the true nature of his intention had been: it was obscured by argument. Yet in this matter intention was everything and there was no point in putting the case to any other person on earth. Sophie for example would certainly tell him that he had behaved correctly, but that, though agreeable, would be no real comfort to him since even she could not get inside his head or heart or vitals to inspect his intentions - his intentions as they had been at that moment.

Nor could Stephen, for that matter: still, Jack looked forward extremely to their meeting, and in something less than two days' time, when the Worcester rounded to under Cape Mola, unable to enter Mahon harbour because of the north-wester, he took his barge, pulling through the narrow mouth and then beating right up the whole length, board upon board, although an exchange of signals with the officer in charge of Royal Naval stores had told him that nothing but a little Stockholm tar had yet arrived for the squadron. This was water that he and his c.o.xswain and at least four of his bargemen knew as well as Spithead or Hamoaze and they sailed up with a kind of offhand cunning, shaving past the Lazaretto, catching the back-eddy by Cuckold's Reach (a s.p.a.cious stretch in these warm lat.i.tudes), and slipping through the hospital channel, censuring all changes that had been made since their time. Not that there were many: the Spanish flag rather than the Union flew over various public buildings, and now the Spanish men-of-war in the harbour were not prizes to the Royal Navy but allies, yet upon the whole little had altered. The place still had much of the air of an English Georgian market-town and sea-port set down in an incongruous landscape of vines and olives, with the occasional palm, and a brilliant Mediterranean sky over all.

As they sailed along Jack pointed out the various places of interest to the youngster at his side, such as St Philip's, the powder mill, the ordnance-wharf and the mast-yard; but the gangling boy, a spotted first-voyager named Willet, was too much awed by his company, too eager to be ash.o.r.e, and perhaps too stupid, to absorb much information and as they drew nearer to the town Jack fell silent. 'We will have a pint of sherry at Joselito's for old times' sake,' he said to himself, 'order a handsome dinner at the Crown - a beefsteak pudding, a solomon gundy, and those triangular almond cakes to finish with - and then walk about, looking at the places we used to know, until it is ready.' And then to Bonden, 'Captain of the port's office.'

The barge glided along under a high wall on the far side of the harbour, a wall with a discreet green door leading to the dove-house where he and Molly Harte had first made love. The wall was dotted with capers, growing wild in the interstices of the stones; they were now covered with their strange feathery flowers, as they had been on that occasion, and his mind was still ranging back with a mixture of lubricity and tenderness and indefinite regret when the barge sprang her luff and touched against-the opposing wharf at the Capitania steps. 'Jump up to the captain of the port, Mr Willet,' said Jack. 'Give him my compliments and ask where the Doctor's victualler lays. Her name is Els Set Dolors.'

'Yes, sir,' said Willet, looking appalled. 'Els Set Dolors it is, sir. What language shall I say it in, sir?'

'Spanish or French; and if that don't answer you may try Latin. Bonden will go with you.'

'The captain of the port's compliments, sir,' said the returning Willet, 'and the Set Dolors lays off la... la...'

'Dogana,' said Bonden.

'But Dr Maturin is gone to...'

'Ciudadela, on a mule.'

'And they do not look to see him back before Sunday evening.'

'Asking your pardon, sir,' said Bonden, 'Sat.u.r.day, I believe.'

'He said Sabbath-oh,' cried Willet.

'So he did, sir: but the Sabbath is on Sat.u.r.days in these parts, we find. Sunday they call Dimanche-oh, or something very like.'

'Thank you, Mr Willet,' said Jack, deeply disappointed. 'However, I think we may as well have our dinner here, before returning to the ship.' He reflected for a moment, his eye on the unattached ladies gathering at the waterside: he had put half a guinea of the boy's allowance into his hand before leaving the Worcester, and although Willet was neither amiable nor intelligent Jack did not wish him to buy a pox with it.

'Eldon,' he said to the grizzled, hard-faced bow-oar, 'Mr Willet will have dinner at Bunce's, and then you will show him the sights of Mahon, the ordnance-store, the careenage, the proving-ground and the Protestant church, the slips if there is anything a-building, and the mad-house if there is time before six o'clock.' He arranged with Bonden for the bargemen's dinner, told them to draw straws for boat-keepers, and walked off unattended.

Sentimental pilgrimages had rarely succeeded with Jack Aubrey: in the few that he had ever deliberately undertaken something had nearly always happened to spoil not only the present but much of the past as well; yet it now seemed that perhaps this might be an exception. The day itself was brilliantly clear, as it had often been when he was in Minorca as a lieutenant and a commander, and it was warm, so that climbing the steps to the upper town he unb.u.t.toned his coat, a far finer coat than that which he wore in those days but one that did not prevent him from being recognized and welcomed at Joselito's and the other places he called at on his way to the Crown.

Port Mahon still showed many signs of the enjoining English connection: quite apart from the officers and men from the three Royal Navy vessels in the harbour - two sloops and a gun-brig on convoy-duty - pink faces and hair as bright yellow as Jack Aubrey's walked about the street. Tea and even buns were to be had, as well as English beer and tobacco, and at Joselito's there were copies of the London papers, not more than two or three months old. But the high days were gone, the days when the whole Mediterranean fleet lay in Port Mahon and powerful garrisons filled St Philip's and the citadel: the Royal Navy now relied much more on Malta and Gibraltar; the Spanish navy kept only a couple of brigs in Mahon, while the troops amounted to no more than a few companies of local militia; so it was understandable that the town as a whole should seem rather sleepy, while the places that catered chiefly for sailors and soldiers should have a somewhat deserted air.