Desolation Island (27 page)
profiting from the situation to work up his crew, his horribly numerous crew, to an even higher state of perfection. Jack could see him clearly through his telescope, a tall man in a light-blue coat with brass buttons, sometimes standing on his quarterdeck, smoking a short pipe at intervals of scrutinizing the Leopard, sometimes walking about among the upper-deck guns; and in spite of the cheering and pleasant spirit aboard, Jack was heartily pleased when another light air, neglecting the Waakzaamheid, enabled him to run out of range.
That night, the night of the new moon, they lay with very little movement until the morning watch, when cold rain came sweeping from the west, and a moderate swell made the Leopard pitch as she stood for the distant Cape, now considerably to the north as well as east.
No one had to wake the Captain this time. He was on the quarterdeck well before sunrise, muffled in a pilot jacket by the lee rail; as he had expected, the first light showed him the Waakzaamheid, far over between him and Africa, steering a course that would cut his own in a few hours' time. Jack brought the wind upon his starboard beam; the Dutchman did the same, but no more - he did not attempt to close. And so they ran all day through the rain, running parallel courses, south and south. Now and then a squall would hide one from the other, but every time it cleared, there was the Waakzaamheid, keeping station as faithfully as if she were the Leopard's consort, attending to her signals. Sometimes one would gain a mile or two, sometimes the other, but by nightfall they were at much the same distance apart, having run off a hundred and thirty miles by dead reckoning - no sight of the sun at noon, with all that driving cloud. After dark Jack began beating up, tack upon tack, both watches on deck, hoping to shake off the Waakzaamheid, which was not such a windward ship, and then to fetch a wide cast northwards, to cross her wake far out of sight. And so he might have done, had not the wind failed him, leaving the Leopard
with little more than steerage-way, drifting westward on the current, so that once again the morning sun showed her that odiously familiar shape, exact to the rendezvous.
It was that night, after a day of manoeuvring in light airs that boxed the compass, that the Waakzaamheid made her attempt at boarding. The sun set clear in a sky that promised a true breeze in the morning; there was a fair amount of starlight before the young moon rose, and it showed the Dutchman ghosting nearer under skysails, although there was not a ripple on the long oily swell. The movement was scarcely perceptible at first, and only the successive disappearance of the lowest stars betrayed it to the lookout's watchful eye: the seventy-four must have picked up the first whisper of the air as it was born, and when it brought her within gunshot she heaved to and opened up with a most spectacular series of rippling broadsides. The Leopard was already at action-stations; the battle-lanterns gleamed behind her open larboard ports; both tiers of guns peered out; the smell of burning match drifted along the decks; but until the ships were closer Jack would not give the order to fire. He stood on the poop, staring across the water with his night-glass; he did not wholly believe in this attack, and he was searching for the boats he would himself have launched. No sign, no sign at all: but then, when he had almost given up, he caught the flash of oars, very much farther from the ship than he had reckoned on. The Dutch captain had launched them on his blind side in the dark, and had sent them off, crammed with men, at least half an hour ago. They were pulling fast in a wide arc to take the Leopard on the starboard side while the Waakzaamheid engaged her with distant gunfire on the other. 'The fox,' said Jack, and he gave orders for boarding-netting, for the guns to be drawn and reloaded with grape, and for all the Marines to leave the guns for their muskets.
The attempt failed because a slant of wind wafted the Leopard southward faster than the boats could pull, so that she caught the leaders, cutting them up most dreadfully with grape-shot at two hundred yards; and because the Waakzaamheid lost too much time picking up the surviving boats and men to take advantage of the breeze. But it might very well have succeeded: Jack's ship could not fight both sides at once, and the men in the boats outnumbered his crew.
'I shall not run that risk again,' he said. 'Whatever wind we have, I shall beat up, even if it means going directly away from the Cape for days on end. By every sign, and by all the rules, it should come from the south, and so much the better. With luck,' he said, touching the wooden handle of his sextant, 'a southerly breeze should let us work up well into the forties, where we can be sure of no calms. He has to have a calm night for that kind of frolic.'
True to the rules for once, the morning's wind backed right round into the south. It was neither a steady nor a convincing breeze, but several mollymawks and one great albatross were seen, sure signs of stronger winds not far away; and it did allow the Leopard to work well ahead, tacking like clockwork every other glass and staying perfectly each time. The seventy-four did her best, whipping her heavy yards round like wands, but she could not lie so close; on every leg she lost several hundred yards, and once she was obliged to wear, which cost her the best part of a mile. A long, anxious day, with the surest helmsmen at the wheel, the leeward guns run in, the windward out, to make her stiffer still, every possible device to wring a little extra thrust from the breeze, and the clumsier hands nearly murdered by their mates for the slightest blunder; but a day that left the Waakzaamheid hull down in the north, so that after the drum had beat the retreat, Jack ordered hammocks to be piped down, in order to allow the exhausted larboard watch some. sleep.
'Luff and touch her,' was the order of the night, as the Leopard held steady on the starboard tack, with the westerly current, now much stronger, to ease her way. In
the morning the Waakzaamheid was no more than a pale wink against the dark clouds on the horizon; she had reduced sail, and she seemed discouraged.
More albatrosses appeared during the forenoon watch, and a more normal life began again. The wardroom was no longer part of a naked gun-deck; its cabins were set up once more, and the usual quite civilized dining-room had reappeared, decorations and all. The meal itself, glutinous soup, sea-pie, and duff, was no Lord Mayor's banquet, but it was hot, and Stephen, chilled through and through from watching albatrosses in the maintop, ate it eagerly. Between courses he gnawed a biscuit, tapping the weevils out in what was by now an automatic gesture, and he contemplated his messmates. In the article of clothes, the sailors were not a very creditable lot, being dressed in a disagreeable mixture of uniform and old warm garments, sometimes wool and sometimes cloth. Babbington wore a knitted Guernsey frock, inherited from Macpherson, that hung in folds upon his little form; Byron had on two waistcoats, one black, the other brown; Turnbull had come out in a tweed shooting-coat; and although Grant and Larkin were somewhat more presentable, on the whole they made a sad contrast to the neat Marines. Stephen had contemplated them from time to time since the beginning of this tension, and sometimes their reactions had surprised him. Benton the purser, for instance, never showed the least anxiety about being taken, sunk, burnt or destroyed, but the Leopard's vast consumption of candles in the battle-lanterns and elsewhere rendered him gloomy, silent, irresponsive. Grant too was rather silent, and had been ever since the first shots were fired with intent to kill: silent, that is to say, when Stephen or Babbington were present. When they were not, as Stephen gathered from the chaplain's remarks, he spoke at length about the measures he would have adopted, had he been in command: the Leopard should either have attacked at once, relying on the effect of surprise, or have sailed north directly. Fisher was altogether of his mind, though he admitted that his opinion was of no great value: there was a growing sympathy between the two men, some underlying similarity. In other respects the chaplain was quite changed; he no longer visited Mrs Wogan, and he even asked Dr Maturin to carry her the books she had been promised. 'Ever since my near escape from death in battle,' he said, 'I have been thinking very seriously.'
'To what battle do you refer?' asked Stephen.
'To the first. A cannon-ball struck within inches of my head. Ever since then I have reflected upon the old adage about never allowing fire near inflammable material, and about the dangers of concupiscence.'
He was obviously willing to be questioned and to open his secret mind - but Stephen did not wish to hear. Since the gaol-fever he had lost interest in Mr Fisher, who seemed to him a commonplace man, too much concerned with himself and his own salvation, one whose attraction faded on acquaintance. He only bowed, and accepted the books.
He had the impression that both Grant and Fisher were in a state of powerful fear. There were no evident, direct signs of it, but both complained very often: a stream of blame and disapproval of the modern state of mind, the present generation, their useless, idle servants, the ill conduct of the government, of the political parties, and of those about the King: a general denigration, a frequent imputation of motives, always discreditable. They reminded him of his maternal grandmother in her last years, when, from being a strong, sensible, courageous woman, she grew weak and querulous, her expression of general discontent increasing with her vulnerability. He did not know how either of them would behave in a really bloody fight: whether their manliness would reassert itself in an obvious crisis. As for the others, he had little doubt. Babbington he had known since the lieutenant was a boy: as brave as a terrier. And Byron was of the same familiar
naval genus. Turnbull would probably do well enough, for all his loud-mouthed hectoring. Moore had seen a great deal of service; he would shoot and be shot at with great good humour, as a matter of course - it was his profession. And Howard, the other lobster, would surely follow, in his phlegmatic military way: as far as Stephen could make out, there was almost no connection between the flute-playing Howard and the stuffed Marine lieutenant. He did have reservations about Larkin, however: the master's courage and professional ability might be very well, but by now he was fairly pickled in alcohol and unless Stephen's judgement were much at fault, his body was very near the limit of its resistance.
They drank the King; Stephen pushed back his chair, not choosing to stay with the execrable wine, tripped over Babbington's Newfoundland for the hundredth time, and stepped on to the quarterdeck for another glance at his albatross, a noble bird that had been sailing along with the ship since breakfast. Herapath was there, talking to the midshipman of the watch, and they gave him news of the Waakzaamheid, out of sight these two hours past, even from the jacks. 'Long may she stay so,' said Stephen, and returned to work in his cabin.
This cabin, being on the orlop, did not disappear when the ship cleared for action, and at intervals, even during these trying days, he had carried on with a task begun shortly after Herapath had confided in him. It consisted of drawing up a statement, in French, describing the British intelligence network in France and some other parts of western Europe, together with passing references to the United States and allusions to a separate document dealing with the situation in the Dutch East Indies; with its details of double agents, bribes offered and accepted, and treason in the ministries themselves, it was designed to cause disruption in Paris if there were in fact a connection between Mrs Wogan's chiefs and the French; and it was intended to be conveyed to those chiefs by Mrs Wogan herself, by means of Herapath. This statement was to have been found among the papers of a dead officer bound for the East Indies. The officer was not named, though of course Martin, who had spent half his life in France and whose mother-tongue was French, was clearly indicated. Copies of the document were to be made for the authorities, and Dr Maturin, knowing that Mr Herapath was fluent in that language, was to ask him to be so good as to help with the work. Stephen was certain that the artless young man would tell his Louisa, and that Mrs Wogan would soon get transcripts out of him, whatever honourable resistance he might put up at first. That she would then laboriously encode them, poor dear, and oblige Herapath to send them from the Cape. Stephen had poisoned many sources of intelligence in his time; but if all went well, this promised to be the prettiest piece of intoxication ever that he had brought about. Such a wealth of material at his disposition! Such utterly convincing details known only to himself, to Sir Joseph, and to a few men in Paris!
'What now?' he said, angrily.
'Come quick, sir,' cried a ghastly Marine. 'Mr Larkin's murdered our lieutenant.'
Stephen caught up his bag, locked his door, and ran to the wardroom. Three officers had pinned Larkin down, and they were tying his arms and legs. A bloody half-pike on the table. Howard lay back in his chair, his mouth and eyes wide open in his white astonished face. Larkin was still jerking and writhing with convulsive force in delirium tremens, making a hoarse, animal roaring. They overcame his violence and carried him away. Stephen probed the wound, found the aorta severed at the crest of the arch, and observed that death had been almost instantaneous.
The master had got up from the table, they told him, just as Howard began to screw his flute together, had taken a half-pike from the bulkhead, had said, 'There's for you, you flute-playing bugger', lunging straight across between Moore and Benton, and had then fallen roaring on the deck.
'You are strangely quiet,' said Mrs Wogan, as they walked upon the gangway an hour or two later. 'I have made at least two witty observations, and you have not replied. Surely, Dr Maturin, you should wrap up a little more, in this damp and horrid cold?'
'I am sorry, child, to seem so low,' he said, 'but a little while ago one of the officers killed another in a drunken fit, the sweetest flute I ever heard. Sometimes I feel that this is indeed an unlucky ship. Many of the men say there is a Jonah aboard.'