Blue at the Mizzen (4 page)

Killick stood swaying in the doorway, but seeing that the Doctor was not likely to stop for some time, he burst in with 'Which Mrs. Webber says would the old gentleman like a little thin gruel? A caudle?' His voice was heavy and slurred, but a sense of what was proper in a post-captain's steward kept him more or less upright, and when he had received and understood Stephen's reply, he said, 'Then I shall tell Grimble to cut along to the Crown and call for your supper to be set on table in half an hour: which I must go and fetch your clean nightshirts.'

The Surprises, their ship being barely habitable, were scattered about the town, most of the officers at the Crown, the master's mates and the superior warrant-officers at the Blue Boar, while the greater part of the ship's company were lodged in a disused set of barracks, food and beer being supplied by the dockyard in exchange for stores removed from the frigate - 'Nothing for nothing, and precious little for fourpence' being the invariable doctrine of the Victualling Office - barracks that were guarded with a certain amount of pomp in front, but whose laundry and sculleries opened on to a squalid lane.

The Crown, however, being a civilized place where Jack had often stayed when he was in funds - a place that provided him and Stephen with a handsome parlour and with a bedroom apiece - was not at all unlike a ship, so that it came quite naturally to Captain Aubrey to invite two of his officers to breakfast with him, Harding, the first lieutenant, and Whewell, the third. From about two in the morning the town had been, and still was, almost preternaturally silent: all hands had slept well after an extremely trying day, and now all hands were laying into their breakfast with a splendid zeal.

'May I trouble you again for the sausages, Mr. Whewell?' asked Jack; and, taking the dish, 'Good morning, Mr. Somers. Will you join us?'

'Good morning, sir,' said the distressed young man. 'I am very sorry to trouble you - very sorry to bring such wretched news - but I am afraid most of the hands have deserted.' He had seen all the men except those granted shore-leave into their hammocks at lights out: he had spoken to the responsible bosun's mates and quartermasters, and he had left proper orders with the sergeant commanding the soldiers at the outer gate. There were still a couple of score old Surprises in the barracks: they complained bitterly of the dockyard food, but they knew nothing about their shipmates' disappearance: nothing whatsoever.

'They have probably gone over the Lines into Spain," said Jack. 'Many of them would venture upon it for a passage home. Sit down, Mr. Somers, and take at least a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. I shall send to the Convent -their people are almost certain to have news of the deserters. And Mr. Harding, please arrange for a muster aboard at noon. Now, if you will forgive me, I must go and pay an early morning call on the Admiral.'

The Admiral in question was not Barmouth, who, though civil, was neither very well inclined nor, in matters of this sort, with their odd, ambiguous responsibilities, a fount of wisdom: not Barmouth, but Lord Keith, Jack's friend from very early days and a man of immense naval and administrative experience.

It was at Keith's door that he knocked, therefore, and the anxious, downcast servant (an old acquaintance) showed him into the breakfast-room, where Queenie was sitting, mechanically dipping into a bowl of porridge. 'Oh Jack,' she cried, 'such wretched news from Tullyallan...'

Tullyallan was a very considerable estate in Scotland belonging to the Admiral - an estate he prized extremely -and it appeared that the factor who looked after it, a man with very wide powers and responsibilities, had made the most of them, absconding with a very large sum of money and leaving Tullyallan in debt and heavily encumbered. 'I have never seen Keith so affected,' said Queenie. 'It is as though he had been struck by a disease... he sits there writing letters as fast as his pen can fly, and then tearing them up. But I shall tell him you called, dear Jack.'

Returning, hot and tired from his bitterly disappointing walk under a sun blazing from very near the zenith - a broadcloth uniform coat a prison rather than a protection -returning as ignorant of his exact legal status and powers as when he set out - Captain Aubrey found Stephen and Dr. Jacob sitting on the Crown's veranda, smoking a hubble-bubble. Both Stephen and Jack were used to Jacob's sudden appearances and disappearances: Jack put it down to his being a naturalist as well as a medical man - he had once found Jacob gazing with affection at a remarkably fine plant of henbane, whose qualities he explained with much the same vigour and with an approval almost amounting to enthusiasm as Stephen might have used - a naturalist who could come and go as he pleased.

'How happy I am to see you, Dr. Jacob; I trust you are tolerably recovered?"

'Perfectly recovered, I thank you: a mere blood-letting, sir.'

'I am heartily glad of it," he said, sitting wearily down on the step. 'I dare say Maturin has told you of our misfortune?'

'Yes, sir: and I told him where they had gone.'

'Over the Lines, I suppose?"

'No, sir: they traversed the entire Rock and dropped down to Catalan Bay, where the fishermen packed them all into three boats and took them across to the Spanish shore under San Roque and there landed them. It cost two and a half ounces of silver each."

'Pray, how did you find out?"

'Why, I asked a fisherman, sir.'

'Sir,' said Harding, 'forgive me for interrupting, but the muster you called for will take place at noon, if that is convenient.'

'Perfectly convenient. Make it so, Mr. Harding: and if you pass by the bar, please ask them to bring a jug of very cold sangria, with at least four glasses.'

The muster was not a very cheerful occasion, to be sure - the inevitable first name to be called was answered by a heavy, embarrassed silence, and a capital R was placed by Anderson's name, R for run, one of the very few deserters Jack had known as a commanding officer - but he had not asked for numbers, and judging by his officers' tone he had expected things to be much worse. Most of the old and valuable Surprises were there: he greeted each by name -'Well, Joe, and how are you coming along?' 'Davies, I am happy to see you; but you must take that head of yours to the Doctor' - and they answered with such evident and personal good will that it cancelled the absence of many a good seaman, to say nothing of waisters and members of the afterguard.

This oddly heartening muster took place aboard a docked ship, her bows in an impossible position to allow carpenters - hypothetical carpenters - to deal with some of the sprung butts; and it ended with Harding's most agreeable words, 'Sir, Mr. Daniel tells me that Ringle has just made her number.'

'I am very glad to hear it,' said Jack. 'Mr. Reade will no doubt have a message for Lord Keith: please leave word that when he has delivered it, I should be happy if he would dine with me. In the meantime, let us look at the wreck of the bows with Chips.'

There they stood, or rather crouched, right forward and what ordinarily would have been far below: by now their eyes were used to the darkness, and by what light the lanterns could be induced to shed they gazed at the breast-hooks - at the horrible gashes round the breast-hooks - and sighed. 'Listen, Chips,' said Jack to the carpenter, 'I think you know perfectly well that the yard is going to do nothing to all this for a long, long time. Have any of your fellow-carpenters on the commercial side both the timber and the skill to allow us to put to sea and creep to Funchal, to da Souza's place?'

'Well, sir,' said the carpenter, 'I do know a little firm of private shipwrights just below Rosia Bay - I sailed as mate with the top man once, and the other day he showed me some lovely wood in his yard. But they are what you might call carriage-trade, and very expensive. And to do anything here, in the royal yard, they would have to come surreptitious, and sweeten many a palm.'

'Can you give me any sort of a figure?'

'It would not be less than ten guineas a day, I am afraid; and the wood on top.'

'Well, Chips, pray lay it on,' said Jack. 'And pray tell your friends that they shall have a handsome present if upon their conscience we can swim before the new moon.'

He and Stephen left the ship and walked along the mole, gazing eastward at the white spread of Ringle's sails as she beat against the wind, making good progress; and in this total privacy Jack said, 'I think I have made up my mind. It is very probable that Chips's friends will patch her up well enough for us to hope to reach Madeira and a pretty good yard, which should see us home.'

'Home, brother?'

'Why, yes: to Seppings' yard in the first place, the best yard in the kingdom, that practically rebuilt her. And in the second place, to gather an adequate crew, a crew of real seamen. Our South American caper absolutely calls for a strong crew, even without paying any attention to our engagements with the Chileans. Surveying, really surveying these coasts - but then you know about the weather and the tides of the Horn - requires truly able seamen aboard the surveyor's ship.'

'It was the world's pity that those wretched fellows ran off.'

'Yes, it was: by the time we had rounded the Horn, the bosun and his mates, to say nothing of the officers' efforts and my own, might have turned the rag-tag and bob-tail half into something like real seamen. I do not really blame them, however. We had nothing much to offer them except for hard work, short commons and hard lying - no possibility of prizes and no home leave. It is true that once even indifferent seafarers are no longer in demand - which will be in a month or two - and once their money is spent, which is likely to be sooner by far, a berth in Surprise might be something to be envied. But as far as we are concerned, I am pretty sure of being able to pick up enough truly able-bodied seamen paid off from King's ships with the corning of peace to form a strong crew, capable of fighting the ship. At present we can handle her with those good souls who have stayed, but we could not fight her. You do not seem quite happy, brother?'

'It is the Chileans who worry me. All this - the present repair, the dillying in Madeira - all this will take a whole almanac of time: and the Chileans are in a high revolutionary fervour, eager for immediate or almost immediate results. Will they wait?'

'They have no choice. It is not every day that Government fits out a man-of-war to chart their waters, and do little acts of kindness on the way.'

'Well, I hope you are right, my dear. But do not forget that they are foreigners.'

'To be sure, that is very much against them, poor souls. Yet from what you have told me, they have been very steadily set upon independence for many years now. Nothing very flighty or enthusiastic in that, I believe? When we are in London, or elsewhere for that matter, should you like me to speak to the heads of the mission and put the case to them in plain seamanlike terms? They could not fail to be convinced.'

Chapter Two

To a casual observer it would have seemed difficult if not impossible to carry on an affair in so small and tight-knit a community as Gibraltar; yet it was done or attempted to be done by those who did not mind mixing levity and love, done on a quite surprising scale; and when Lord Barmouth's current mistress, an exceptionally vicious woman who hated Isobel, told him that she and Jack Aubrey met daily in a hayloft or at the house of a complaisant friend, it did not surprise him very much. He by no means wholly believed it: an affectionate, easy familiarity was not at all surprising in those who had been children together. Yet he did not like having it said - where horns were concerned he far preferred giving to receiving or even appearing to receive - and although no one had ever questioned his courage in battle, domestic war was another matter entirely. Not only was his own conduct exceptionable to a very high degree, but Isobel, if angered, had a flow of language that he quite dreaded: she was an exceptionally courageous woman, and once her temper had risen beyond a certain degree she was as wholly determined and unshakeable as one of those terriers that will let itself be killed before losing hold. He was also, in his way, deeply attached to her, and very willing that she should be in a good humour with him.

He reflected, therefore: and among other things that occurred to him was the fact that Aubrey was one of Keith's rare proteges. Keith, though resting from his labours at the moment, had very great influence and might easily return to high office. Presently, having walked up and down, Barmouth sent two discreet men to the yard. They confirmed his impression that almost all the remaining Surprises were actively engaged with caulking, painting, and rerigging her boats; and that the frigate herself was still in that improbable position, given over to her captain, carpenter, his mates and auxiliaries.

He threw a shabby old cloak over his uniform, and making his way down to the yard, threaded through those vessels last on the list for repairs until he dropped from the mole on the Surprise's deck. A few people stared at him open-mouthed but he moved rapidly forward and below until he reached the dim, crowded forepeak. Above the sound of mallets he called, 'Captain Aubrey, there.' And in the appalled dead silence, 'How are you coming along?'

'Admirably well, sir, I thank you. Some of my carpenter's old shipmates and friends are bearing a hand. And if I may hold this lantern, my Lord, and beg you to look at the lower breast-hooks I think you will agree that they are making a very pretty job of it indeed.'

'Uncommon pretty,' said Barmouth, gazing with narrowed, knowing eyes. 'Uncommon pretty. Let them carry on, while we take a turn upon the mole.'

Upon the mole, the deserted mole, he spoke quite easily: 'I am glad to see you so forward with your repairs, Cousin Jack; for there is a certain amount of uneasiness in Whitehall about your ultimate destination, and I think I must relax the rigour of my order on precedence and get Surprise to sea a good deal earlier than I had thought. The moment you think it safe to take her off the slips we will step your foremast anew, rattle down the shrouds and send you on your way with adequate stores, to say nothing of munitions. Powder and shot is by no means in short supply.'