The Discovery Of Slowness (10 page)

‘Let's hope he gets there,' said Dance. ‘We're at war again.'

John understood and was fearful. ‘But he's got a pass,' he said.

‘Only for the
Investigator
.' The captain's finger drew as many lines on the table of his cabin as there are furrows on a forehead. Then he came to the point: ‘You're our passenger, Mr Franklin,
but I hear you're a competent signal man … Are you listening, Mr Franklin?'

John was troubled. He thought of Matthew. Painfully, he turned back to Dance: ‘Aye aye, sir.'

‘The
Earl Camden
is the flagship for a squadron of East Indiamen. I'm the commodore. And herewith you're signal ensign.'

Commodore Nathaniel Dance was sixty years old, tall, haggard, with a large nose and tangled grey hair. His words, if he didn't explicate Bible passages or talk about intellectual matters, were deliberate and clearly understandable. Each movement emerged from the previous one without strain. His eyes could sparkle mischievously, as happens often with good-natured people. He acted as though he were impatient, yet he listened nonetheless. Sometimes he said something rude, like ‘Thank you. I'm beginning to be bored.'

He quarrelled with the painter Westall even at table. He believed that art must be beautiful. But it could be so only with the help of precise details. Creation was more beautiful than anything man could imagine. Westall responded cleverly that man was the crown of creation and the spirit within him the highest. What was beautiful was not the physical construction of things but what eye and mind made of it. Premonition, fear and hope were part of it. After the meal, Westall grumbled, ‘The painter Nathaniel Dance is his uncle. For that reason this tar thinks he knows a lot about painting.'

The next day the quarrel started up again. The commodore seemed to like nothing better than to throw the artist into confusion. ‘Painting fear or the arbitrariness of eyesight? Why not just blindness? I have sixty years of fear and arbitrariness behind me. No, Mr Westall; man must rise above his weakness through God's mercy. Your brother knows that. Think of
Esau Asks
Isaac's Blessing
– now that's a picture! Art must be edifying.'

The
Earl Camden
left Whampoa at the head of a squadron of fifteen heavily loaded East Indiamen. The ships' armaments were
weak and they weren't as solidly built as warships; above all, they were more weakly manned. No Marines on board. The rigging was made of untarred manila hemp and seemed easy to handle. But after a few days John noticed that this was so not just because of the hemp but also because of the crew. The dark-skinned lascars were superbly trained, quick-witted and hard-working. A few sailors' wives were on board, too, dark-skinned as well as white. No one thought anything of it. An Indiaman was not a floating combat station. The hull was painted with black and yellow stripes to deceive pirates, but inside it was a peaceful ship. Working day and night, John soon taught himself to remember the entire squadron precisely. He knew the lascars by name, just as he knew the officers. Again and again he wondered what made a good captain and whether this would be true of Dance.

Who in this world should rule over all others?

It would, in any case, be true of people like Matthew. There were reasons for this. For example, after the shipwreck he stayed on the sandbank as long as necessary to fix one star in a clear sky and so establish his position. He had to wait three full days for the storm to pass. John knew many people who would have left long before. They would never have reached Port Jackson, not to mention made a return. Perhaps Matthew had been slow, too, before he had made it to captain? If Mockridge had been correct, Matthew had become a midshipman only because the housekeeper of a line-of-battle ship's commander had interceded for him. And if Matthew hadn't had friends in the Admiralty, above all a man named Banks, he would have been relieved of his command when his wife was discovered on the
Investigator
, or at the latest when they ran aground in the Channel.

Whether a man could sail round a continent in a rotting ship with a deathly sick crew and still make reliable maps – that sort of thing was not decided beforehand by admirals on shore. If a man was slow he could accomplish a great deal, but he had to have good friends.

Anything the commodore wanted to tell his flotilla passed through John's hands, and whatever came back his eyes read first. Meanwhile, he knew by heart all the flags and their combinations.
When he looked he could do so with automatic ‘blindness' – it was possible to do that with flags. Sometimes Old Man Dance watched him. His glance seemed approving. He said nothing.

John had made a list of his own aims. To reach every port by means of his nautical skill. To prevent mishaps – for example, to avoid drifting toward shore in a storm. Never to have to be ashamed, like Captain Palmer of the
Bridgewater
. And not to be guilty of producing bad results, not to cause the death of others. The list was not all that long.

The squadron passed through the South China Sea and was approaching the Anamba Islands. ‘I hope nothing happens,' Westall said all of a sudden, and he didn't take the trouble to elaborate.

‘Sail ho!'

Their fears were confirmed: French warships. ‘They've been lying in wait for us,' muttered Lieutenant Fowler. ‘If I were in command here I'd use every scrap of sail and draw out our formation in three directions.' ‘It would be our only chance,' remarked another. ‘Those fellows have seventy-four guns apiece; they'll put us in their pipes and smoke us. We ought to have been before the wind long ago.' And one of the younger men said, ‘The old man is too slow.'

Who should rule in this world? Which third man among three should tell the other two what to do? Who saw most? Who was a good captain?

Just then Nathaniel Dance clambered up the mainmast to survey the situation from the proper height. But who checked whether an aging commander still had the sure eye or whether he had lost it? Now he was at last at the maintop, painstakingly adjusted the sights of his telescope, peered into the distance, and blew his nose. Then he climbed down again, not a bit faster than before. He didn't have to call the officers together. They and the crew were already standing there.

‘Gentlemen,' said the old man as, unabashed, he swung his left leg back and forth: it had gone to sleep in the maintop. ‘There are five Frenchmen out there; they're up to something. But they
didn't calculate correctly. Mr Sturman, please be so good as to ready the ship for combat. Mr Franklin?'

‘Sir?' That had become automatic. When John heard his surname, he supplemented it at once with ‘Sir' without further thought. So his answer was no slower in coming than that of all the others.

‘Set the signal: squadron clear for combat. Close ranks on line. Heave to.'

Uncertain cheers sounded. At bottom they were all very ill at ease. At first the flags John raised brought only queries in return. The entire flotilla was in a daze. Eventually, something like a battle line developed after all. But then an astounding event occurred. The warships hove to also. Their hulls could not yet be recognised from the top. ‘Ours can't be either,' Fowler said, on the gundeck, giggling. ‘They won't dare do a thing before tomorrow.'

The sun set behind the island of Pulau Aur, whose tip could just be made out. The wide-bellied merchantmen were lying there in their grim black-and-yellow garments, as though they were heavily armed ships of the line. They were sheep in wolves' clothing. The French wouldn't allow themselves to be bluffed for long. During the night everyone expected the command to set sail, but it didn't come. Dance actually wanted to remain where he was. Nobody slept. A few said hoarsely, ‘Why not fight? We'll show 'em!' Some felt an inkling of courage rising to the surface of their consciousness, but those whom it didn't seize hoped at least that the French would slip away on their own to escape from an assumed superior English force.

There were no signals to be set in the dark. John had time to occupy himself with his doubts. Decisiveness and self-confidence were not easy to come by today. He could not rely on the fact that he always did the right thing. There had been that white flag on the
Investigator
long ago. Quite distinctly he had heard an order which had perhaps never been given. If so, he would have had to face a possible court martial under any other captain.

On the other hand, Nelson! He had simply ignored the order of the highest admiral to retreat before Copenhagen – no court
martial! But even Nelson had been protected by his success after the fact. Only those could maintain certainty who were themselves of great permanence – like the stars, the mountains and the sea. And they in turn possessed no words with which to tell what they had come to know from their long existence. On this score, John discovered, there was more freedom than one could wish. One could, of course, do the right thing, but it was always possible that all the others thought it wrong. They might even be right.

Day broke. The sails on the horizon were still there and did not stir. The French continued to heave to, lying motionlessly in the wind. The commodore let his ships sail on in the old direction to force the enemy into a decision. It didn't take long for the French sails to multiply and grow tall. Now John was very busy. Dance changed course again and sent the fleet directly towards the enemy.

To his annoyance, John noticed that he was trembling. And because he noticed it, his fear worsened. That the battle of Copenhagen would repeat itself he considered not probable, but that was of little help. He therefore tried to imagine that all this would be over sometime. Pulau Aur lay to the west. He thought how after the battle the survivors would flee to this island, English as well as French. Would they share their food and make decisions together? Or would they kill each other? Even this thought already contained his fear. He resolved to think of completely different things which were useful and kind. He ticked them off. ‘Food, water, tools, bandages, ammunition …' Things which had to go into the lifeboats in case of shipwreck. If he couldn't conquer his fear, at least he could get rid of that miserable trembling.

Why hadn't Dance fled during the night? That risk would have been smaller. He couldn't possibly dare take a chance on being boarded.

John felt weak, but he observed, decoded, reported, confirmed everything correctly. When signals came, they set his mind into motion outside himself. If none came, he continued his list:
‘Telescope, sextant, compass, chronometer, paper, plumbline, fishing-rod, kettle, needle …' The list was long enough for his fear. Among the few things not to be saved from a sinking ship under any circumstances were the holystones.

The trembling actually got worse.

‘Spars, sailcloth, twine, flags …'

The warships came on fast.

‘Signals,' John murmured. ‘Dear God, if possible, just signals this time.'

On the
Earl Camden
one of the first French shells hit the helmsman. Dance looked toward the waiting replacement and pointed his chin in his direction. With this gesture he bent his head slightly so that his forehead pointed to the helm and his chin to the man. He could also have said: ‘You! Take over!' But the place at the helm was awash with blood, so he preferred to talk with his chin and forehead. Then he pulled out his watch and studied it carefully, as if the precise moment were the most important aspect of James Medlicott's death.

John's trembling became more violent. He wondered how he could hide it. No one could hold on to his own face, his own body. He bent down, grabbed the dead man by his back and knees, and lifted him up the way one would lift women and children. Mockridge had once told of an accident involving a nine-year-old boy in Newcastle who, in his fatigue, had plunged one evening into a running machine. The story had frightened John very much. He had often imagined how he would have carried the wounded child away if he had been there.

‘But the man is dead!' one of the lascars shouted. John gave no answer. He carried the corpse carefully, bumped into no obstacle. Of course, what he did was nonsense. But he finished it now, especially since it covered up his trembling. The guns roared; the ship jerked and bucked. John laid down the dead man alongside the wounded and walked away as fast as he could. The surgeon would determine that there was nothing that could be done. John climbed up again. He firmly believed that it was not cowardice that had made him do this. Rather, it was a kind of disapproval.
Yes, that's what it had been. But it had not been unworthy. John's breath became quieter, his fear abated. Above, the French boarding-attack would come soon. John refused to acknowledge it, exactly as he did everything else in that situation. There was nothing but defiance within him. He said, ‘I cannot condone this. I will not fight.'

He wanted to see, to wait like a mountain, dead or alive. For war, all of them were too slow, not just John Franklin.

John climbed the last companionway to the deck in deep calm. There was hardly a more resolute person on this ship; that much was sure.

But the test did not materialise.

Everything turned out differently.

After three-quarters of an hour John had to send another signal: general pursuit of the enemy for up to two hours. The French had enough and decamped. They were chased by sixteen British merchantmen with a well-stocked cargo of Japanese copper, saltpetre, agar-agar and tea in their bellies. Five men-of-war, bristling with guns and ammunition and with a battalion of Marines standing ready with fixed bayonets, had stood out to sea.

At one point, John noticed that all around him everyone was laughing like mad because at that moment the world could not have been crazier and brighter and because someone on the foredeck had shouted, ‘I think they didn't want to get us!' John also perceived that he had long since joined their laughter, that it didn't end his defiance but rather, on the contrary, his defiance actually expressed itself in this laughter.