Authors: Patrick O'Brian
‘In that case, God help the poor fellows in Pomone’s
boats,’ said Somers: he spoke facetiously, but the master shook his head,
asking, ‘Did you ever know a bad omen to be wrong, Mr Somers?’
There did indeed follow a series of strong, steady
winds, scarcely varying a point in direction from north-east day after day, nor
in force from full to close-reefed topsails: and during all this time Jack and
David Adams, his clerk on and off these many years but now styled his secretary
(and paid as such) - for although on this occasion it had been agreed that Jack,
with a small squadron soon to be split up for various duties while he himself
was to have such a particular mission, should not have a captain under him, he
was certainly allowed a secretary during all this time they rearranged the
forces at hand and the recent drafts, the Commodore exercising them at gunnery
whenever it was at all possible and dining regularly with his captains. Two of
them he liked very well: young Pomfret in acting command of Pomone and Harris
of Briseis, both excellent seamen and both of his own mind entirely about the
capital importance of rapid, accurate fire. Brawley and Cartwright of the
corvettes Rainbow and Ganymede, though somewhat lacking in authority, were
agreeable young men; but they were not fortunate in their officers and neither
ship was in first-rate order, which was a pity, since both were Bermuda-built,
dry, swift and weatherly. Ward of the Dover on the other hand was the
kind of man Jack could not possibly like: heavy, graceless, dark-faced; rude,
domineering and inefficient. He was said to be rich and he was certainly mean:
a very rare combination in a sailor, though Jack had met it before, a man
generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who
despise him; and Ward’s dinners were execrable.
The wind, which at times was strong enough to send
small pebbles flying through the air on the upper reaches of the Rock, did not
interrupt Stephen’s habit of visiting the hospital every morning: he generally
went there with Jacob, and on two separate occasions he had the pleasure of
carrying out his particular operation of suprapubic cystotomy in the presence
of the Physician of the Fleet and of Poll, who comforted the patient and passed
the sutures. She told Jacob in private ‘that it was the neatest, quickest job
she had ever seen - should never have believed it could have been done so
quick, and with scarcely a groan. I shall light a candle for each of them,
against the infection.’
Yet although the wind did not interfere with his
work, which included a very minute dissection, with Jacob’s help, of the
anomalous hand, it did away with his outdoor pleasure almost entirely. The
migrant birds, always averse to crossing wide expanses of sea and wholly
incapable of making headway against gales of this nature, were pinned down in Morocco; and in the sheltered
hollows behind Cape Spartel twenty booted eagles might
be seen in a single bush. He turned therefore to an occupation that fell into neither category and, it having been turning in his mind for
some time, particularly at night, he quickly finished the second part of his
suite, a forlan, copied it fair that afternoon and showed it to Jack in the
evening.
Sitting there with the score tilted towards the
lamp and what little light there was, with the small rain sweeping in swathes
across the sea, his mouth now formed for whistling (but silent), now for a very
deep humming where the ‘cello came in, Jack came to the end of the saraband,
with its curiously reiterated melody. He gathered the sheets and reached for the
forlan: ‘It is terribly sad,’ he observed, almost to himself - words he wished
unsaid with all his heart.
‘Do you know any happy music?’ asked Stephen. ‘I do
not.’
Embarrassment hung there in the great cabin for no
more than a moment before it was dissipated first by a measured series of small
explosions and then by Salmon, master’s mate, bursting in as the ship, heeling
before a fresh blast, shot him through the door. ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he cried,
‘beg pardon. Ringle’s come in. That was her, sir, saluting the flag.’
Divided between fury that the schooner could have
come in unseen and unhailed and delight at her presence, Jack gave Salmon a
cold glance. He saw that the young man was dripping to a most uncommon degree
and called for his boat-cloak. As soon as he was on deck he saw why no lookout
had reported a sail: even with this short fetch, the unceasing wind had built
up a wall of broken water against the towering mole, a wall made even more
impenetrable at deck-height by the fog-like rain and the disappearance of the
sun’s faint, faint ghost behind the Rock. Furthermore, to shoot between the
moles Ringle had shown no more than a scrap of stormjib right in, which her
people were now stowing in a seamanlike fashion.
Her one-armed captain was already half-way up the
frigate’s side, extraordinarily nimble with his hook. He carried a packet of
letters in his bosom. ‘Come on board, sir,’ he said, saluting as he reached the
quarterdeck.
‘How in God’s name did you get here so quick,
William?’ cried Jack, shaking his one hand. ‘I had not looked for you this week
and more. Come below - have a tot of brandy - you must be destroyed.’
‘Why, sir, you would not believe our run - this
splendid breeze right aft or on our quarter day after day. But sir, before I
say anything more than all’s well at home - much love from all hands’ - here he
put down his packet - ‘I must tell you we saw Pomone’s boats being attacked by
smallcraft under the lee of Spartel, where they were lying-to after a cruel long pull. We soon dealt with the Moors
and offered the boats a tow. But Pomone’s first lieutenant said no, we must
carry straight on and tell the flag that there were half a dozen Sallee rovers
in Laraish waiting for the East-Indiamen lying-to just down the coast. He said
he could certainly look after the local Moors if they came back, with the small
arms we had given them, and he bade us shove off instantly - there was not a
moment to lose.’
‘Very true,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Harding, strike
topgallantmasts down on deck; take a warp out on to the mole; throw out the
signal Squadron prepare to unmoor. I am going across
to the flag in Mr Reade’s boat.’
It was not a long pull to the Royal Sovereign, but
in spite of their hooded boat-cloaks both Jack and William Reade came up the side
as wet as drowned rats. Waterlogged officers were by no means rare in the Royal
Navy, however, and their appearance excited no comment: but when Jack, in a
very few words, had outlined the position, the Captain of the Fleet whistled
and said, ‘By God, I think you must see the Admiral.’
Jack repeated his statement to Lord Keith, who
looked grave and asked, ‘What measures do you propose?’
‘My Lord, I propose leading the squadron out
directly, making for Laraish. If the corsairs are still there I shall just make
a show of force and stand on until I find the Indiamen, presumably still lying
under the Sugar Loaf. If I find them engaged, clearly I disengage them: if not,
I escort them westward and as near north as they can lie, leaving Dover to see them home.’
‘Make it so, Captain Aubrey.’
‘Aye-aye, sir. My best compliments to
Lady Keith, if you please.’
On his way back the boat passed Dover and Pomone, both of which
he hailed, directing them to make sail, to shape a course for Tangier, and to
attend to his signals. It was not really night when he
reached the Surprise, but the weather was so thick that he sent his orders by
word of mouth to the rest of the squadron, adding that signals would now be
made by lights and guns.
It gave him the liveliest pleasure to see how
naturally the frigate came to life: battle-lanterns fore and aft, the signal
midshipman and his yeoman overhauling the flares, the blue lights and
apparatus, the ease with which the warp moved the ship’s six hundred tons and
all her people towards the mole, and the totally professional, even nonchalant
manner in which, edging round its head with barely steerage-way, they flashed
out headsails, carried her clean through the gap and into the open sea, where
she lay a-try, waiting for the others to join her. This they did, creditably
enough on the whole, though their moorings had been ill-placed for this
uncommon wind, while the mole itself and its overlapping neighbour, in the
course of construction, were singularly awkward. But in the event they all came
through, though Dover, setting a trifle too much
sail at that unhandy turn, grazed the new stonework with enough force to wound
her forward starboard mainchains. Her captain’s voice, cracked with fury, could
be heard a great way downwind; yet even so he had enough right sailors,
officers and ratings, aboard to make sail and steer the course shown by the
Commodore’s signal, while the excellent bosun and his mates made good the worst
of the damage, so that the frigate, though disfigured, did not disgrace herself
as the squadron formed the line, heading for a point west of Tangier at no more
than eight knots to give the Dover time to reinforce the main shrouds before
their southward turn for Laraish.
They had scarcely cleared the Straits, leaving the
glow of Tangier on the larboard quarter, before the rain stopped and the wind
lessened, though it was still capable of a powerful gust from the same
direction. ‘Mr Woodbine,’ said Jack to the master, ‘I believe we may send up
the topgallantmasts and spread a little more canvas.’
This, with the help of a clearing sky over
the main ocean, the light of a splendid moon and a more regular sea, was soon
done; and the squadron, well in hand, at the proper cable’s length apart, ran
down the Moroccan coast under courses and full topsails with an easier
following sea and the wind on their larboard quarter; they were still in the
order of their leaving, Ringle lying under Surprise’s lee, as became a tender.
This was pure sailing, with a fine regular heave
and lift, an urgency of the water along the side, and sea-harping in the taut
sheets and windward shrouds, the moon and the stars making their even journey
across the clearer sky from bow to quarter, pause and back again.
At eight bells in the first watch the log was heaved
and a very small and sleepy boy reported, ‘Twelve knots and one fathom, sir, if
you please.’
‘Thank you, Mr Wells,’ said Jack. ‘You may turn in
now.’
‘Thank you very much, sir: good night, sir,’ said
the child, and staggered off to get four hours’ sleep.
Beautiful sailing, and it
was with some reluctance that Jack, having re-arranged his line by signal, so
that they sailed Surprise, Pomone, Dover, Ganymede, Rainbow,
Briseis, left the deck: he had an overwhelming desire to read his letters
again, thoroughly digesting every detail.
The cabin had not yet been fully cleared for action
and Stephen was sitting there with the light of an Argand lamp focused by a
concave mirror on to the dark purple of that terrible hand, now stretched out
by clamps on a board; and he was making an extraordinarily exact drawing of a
particular tendon, in spite of the frigate’s motion.
‘What a sea-dog you are become,’ said Jack.
‘I flatter myself that a whole pack of sea-dogs
could not have improved upon the forward starboard aspect of this aponeurosis,’
said Stephen. ‘I do it by pressing the underneath of the table with my knees
and the top of it with my elbows so that we all, paper, object, table and
draughtsman, move together with very little discontinuity - one substance, as it
were. To be sure, a fairly regular motion of the vessel is required; and for
regularity this slow, even swing could hardly be bettered; though the amplitude
calls for such tension that I believe I shall now take a spell.’
They both returned to their heaps of letters -
small heaps, since William Reade had kept nagging at the writers about his
tide, and since they had had so little notice that many things of the first
importance flew out of their heads. Clarissa Oakes wrote by far the best, least
flustered account of the household and its return towards something like a
normal existence, much helped by the unchanging ritual of the countryside - of
Jack’s estate and his plantations in particular - and by the children’s
steadily continuing education. Sophie’s two hurried, tear-blotted pages did her
heart more credit than her head, but it was clear that the company of Mrs Oakes
was a great relief to her; though of course their neighbours far and near were
very kind: she asked Jack’s advice about the wording of her mother’s epitaph -
the stone was ready and the mason eager to begin - and she referred to the
window-tax.
‘Sophie and the children send their love,’ he said,
when Stephen laid down the letter he was reading. ‘George tells me that the
keeper showed him a sett with young badgers in it.’
‘That is kind of them,’ said Stephen. ‘And Brigid
sends you hers, together with a long passage from Padeen that I cannot make out
entirely. He told it her in Irish, do you see- they generally speak Irish
together - but although she is perfectly fluent in the language she has no
notion at all of its orthography, so she writes as it might sound, spoken by an
English person. In time I shall find out the meaning, I am sure, by murmuring
it aloud.’
He fell to his murmuring, and Jack to a closer
study of Sophie’s hurried, distracted words: both were interrupted by the sound
of seven bells in the middle watch. Jack tidied his papers, reached for his
sextant and stood up. ‘Is anything afoot?’ asked Stephen.
‘I must look at the coast, take our latitude and
have a word with William: we should be quite near the height of Laraish by
now.’
On deck he found the sky clearer still, with the
outline of the shore plain against it. Both wind and sea had been diminishing
steadily, and if it had not been for his doubt about the solidity of Dover’s
mainmast he would have increased sail some time ago: he glanced down the line -
all present and correct - and to leeward, where the schooner was running
goose-winged on a course exactly parallel with his, well within hail for a
powerful voice. Jack had a powerful voice, strengthened by many, many years of
practice; but for the moment he contented himself with looking at the logboard,
with all its entries of course and speed, doing some mental arithmetic, and
taking the exact, double-checked height of Mizar, a star for which he had a
particular affection.