The Hundred Days (18 page)

Jack opened the door of the sick-bay and looked in.
‘Forgive me for interrupting you,’ he said, ‘but I just wanted to ask Dr Jacob
where the French frigate is lying.’

‘Over by the Marsa, sir,
the broad northern end. There are some merchantmen from the Barbary Coast fairly near.’

‘How many guns does she carry?’

‘I am sorry to say that I never noticed, sir, but so
many, according to his secretary, that he could not decently surrender to a
little nine-pounder frigate.’

‘I see,’ said Jack. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘I am afraid I offended him,’ said Jacob, when the
door had closed.

‘Never in life, colleague,’ said Stephen. ‘Pray go
on.’

But Jacob had been shaken by that cold look of
dislike that it took him some moments to collect his ideas. ‘Yes,’ he said,
‘well, I took it upon myself to send word to our friend in Ancona and to arrange a meeting
with the heads of the Carbonari as soon as you should appear. I hope this does
not embarrass you?’

‘Not in the least. Has a time been named?’

‘Just after the rising of
the moon.’

‘At what o’clock would that
be?’

‘I took it to be at night, of course, but I am
sorry to say I cannot be more precise.’

‘I have seen the moon by day, looking very
whimsical in the presence of the sun. However. I shall
ask the Commodore.’

       ‘Commodore, dear,’ he said some moments
later, ‘would you know when the moon rises tonight?’

‘At thirty-three minutes after midnight; and she is just five
degrees below the planet Mars. And Stephen, let me tell you something: Pomone
is in this channel, no great way astern. If I were on my own I should send a
French-speaking officer aboard the French frigate to tell her captain that
Pomone, a thirty-gun eighteen-pounder frigate, and the twelve-pounder Surprise
would enter the harbour at first light tomorrow, that they would fire half a
dozen blank broadsides at close range, to which he would respond, also with
blanks; and that then, decencies preserved, we should all make sail, leaving by
the broad north-west passage if this leading wind holds as I expect, and
proceed to Malta. But would this interfere with your plans?’

‘Not in the least: and if you wish I will carry
your proposal over to the Cerbère.’

‘That would be very kind of you, Stephen. Should
you like me to write it down?’

‘If you please.’

Jack scratched for a while, and passing the list he
said, ‘You will see that I have underlined blank every
time: but in his agitation the poor man might not think to draw all his guns
before the first exchange. You will put him in mind of it, if you please...but
tactfully, tactfully, if you know what I mean.’

‘What would be a proper time for this visit?’ asked
Stephen without the least sign of having heard but reflecting upon his friend’s
large, clear, somewhat round and feminine hand, his instant reaction in time of
nautical crisis, and his not uncommon ineptitudes.

‘As soon as you have put on your good uniform and
Killick has found your best wig. A boat and a bosun’s chair will be ready.’

The captain and the officers of Cerbère were an
intelligent set, and since captains usually collect men of a like mind, they
were all thoroughly dissatisfied with the present state of affairs. They longed
to be out of this ambiguous posture, and it was with a general satisfaction
that they saw the light of a boat pulling, man-of-war fashion, from the narrow
mouth of the Porte di Spalato. They all of them studied it with their
night-glasses and when its obvious intention was to come aboard them, the
officer of the watch ordered a bosun’s chair to be rigged: they had already
experienced Dr Jacob’s almost fatal attempt at coming up the side.

They hailed the boat as a matter of form, and they
were somewhat shocked when the reply ‘a message from the English commodore’,
though in French, was not in Jacob’s French. However, they lowered the chair
and Stephen came aboard with what grace could be managed with such a vehicle
but at least dry, clean and orderly.

He returned the first lieutenant’s salute, said
that he should like to speak to the captain, and was shown into the great
cabin.

Captain Delalande received him with a grave
courtesy and listened to what he had to say in silence: when Stephen had
finished he said, ‘Be so good as to tell the Commodore, with my compliments,
that I agree to all his proposals, and that I shall reply to his and his
consort’s blank broadsides with an equal number, equally blank, that I shall
follow him through the Canale di Spalato, and then proceed to Malta.’ He
coughed, unbent a little, and proposed coffee.

When they had drunk two cups and eaten two
Dalmatian almond biscuits, the tension had so far diminished that Stephen asked
whether the captain had ever known the firing of a salute or the like to be
accompanied by the involuntary discharge of a ball, the drawing of the cannon
having been overlooked.

‘No, sir,’ said Delalande, ‘I have not. When we
fire a salute or anything of that nature, we like the gun to make as much noise
as possible. And to this end we withdraw the ball - in itself precious enough,
I assure you, and much regarded by the Ministry - and replace it with more wads
and sometimes a disk or two of wood as well.’

Stephen thanked him and took his leave, escorted by
a lieutenant; and not only on the quarterdeck but also in the waist of the ship
among the hands he noticed approving, even friendly looks. It was not only in
the Royal Navy, he concluded, that secrecy was the rarest commodity aboard a
ship.

‘My dear William,’ he said, safely on the tender’s
deck, ‘I dare say the moon will be up presently?’

‘In about half an hour, sir,’ said Reade.

‘Then if it can be spared, would you be so very
kind as to lend me your little boat and a reliable, grave, sober man to carry Dr
Jacob and me ashore in let us say twenty minutes?’

‘Of course I will, sir: should be very happy.’

‘Jack,’ he said, walking into the cabin where the
Commodore and his clerk were busy with book after book of accounts, ‘I do beg
your pardon for this untimely...’

‘Tomorrow morning, Mr
Adams.’

‘...but I have first to tell you that Captain
Delalande wholly accepts your proposals: he will expect you at first light
tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I am so...’

‘On the other hand the Brotherhood’s messengers
have already left for Algiers. Now I must write a minute
for Malta and then go to a
conference ashore. Until tomorrow, brother.’

‘The doctors are going ashore,’ said Joe Plaice to
his old friend Barret Bonden.

‘I don’t blame them,’ said Bonden. ‘I should like
to see the sights of Spalato myself. I dare say they are going to burn a candle
to some saint.’

‘That’s a genteel way of putting it,’ said Plaice.

At six bells in the middle watch, when all the larboard and most of the starboard guns had been
drawn and reloaded with powder that Jack kept for saluting, the doctors came
back. They were kindly helped up the side by powerful seamen and they crept,
weary and bowed, towards their beds.

‘Wholly shagged out,’ said the gunner’s mate. ‘Dear
me, they can’t hardly walk.’

‘Well, we are all of us human,’ said the yeoman of
the sheets.

‘There you are, gentlemen,’ called the Commodore
from by the wheel. ‘You have come aboard again, I find. Let me advise you to
get what sleep you can, for presently there may be too much noise for it.’

‘Kedge up and down,’ cried Whewell from the bows.

‘Win her briskly, Mr Whewell,’ said Jack, and
directing his voice aft, ‘Are you ready, Master Gunner?’

‘Ready, aye ready, sir,’ replied the gunner, that
bull of Bashan.

‘Mr Woodbine,’ said Jack to the master, ‘we will
take her in now: just topsails. You can make out the Frenchman’s lights, I
believe?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Then steer for a point a cable’s length astern of
her and then run up her larboard side within fifty yards. But I shall be on
deck again by then.’ He walked aft and called over the dark water, ‘Pomone!’

‘Sir?’ replied Captain Vaux.

‘I am about to get under way.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Hands to make sail,’ said the master to the bosun,
who instantly piped the invariable call. ‘Topsails,’ said the master. In almost
total silence the hands appointed to gaskets, sheets, clewlines and buntlines,
ties, halyards and then braces carried out their tasks with barely a word, at
great speed: a pretty example of exact timing, co-ordination and
long-established skill, if there had been anyone there who did not take it for
granted.

 The topsails
rose; they filled and they were sheeted home: the ship began to move, with the
warm breeze steady on her larboard quarter. Within moments she had steerageway,
and the water spoke down her side, as gently as the breeze in the rigging: out
of the shelter of Brazza she began to roll and pitch just a little - it was
life renewed after that lying-to.

Light there was none, apart from the faint blur of the
moon behind very high cloud - never a star - and here and there remote
top-lanterns on the shipping far on the starboard bow and the odd cluster of
lights on the distant quay. Dark and silent: so dark that even the topsails
grew faint towards the height of the cross-trees.

All along the starboard side the gun-crews stood
mute, some just visible above their shaded fighting-lanterns: midshipmen or
master’s mates behind them: lieutenants behind each division.

Mr Woodbine kept his eyes fixed on the Cerbère’s
lit stern from the moment they cleared the channel: it grew larger, brighter
and brighter. He glanced across at the Commodore, who nodded. ‘Round to,’ said
Woodbine to the man at the wheel, and then, as Surprise’s turn laid her
parallel to the Cerbère, ‘Dyce, very well dyce,’ and he steadied her on this
course. When her bows came level with the Frenchman’s quarter the master backed
the main topsail, taking the way off her, and Jack cried ‘Fire!’

Instantly the ship’s side shot forth an enormous
volume of sound and an immense smoke-bank lit with brilliant flashes - smoke
that drifted evenly over the Cerbère, which replied through it with an even
greater roar - greater, though as Jack noticed with satisfaction, not quite so
exactly uniform.

Stephen Maturin, worn limp as an old and dirty pair
of stockings after countless hours of negotiation, mostly in Slavonic languages
that he understood no more than Turkish and that had to be translated, all in a
stifling atmosphere, with people playing shawms outside to prevent the
possibility of eavesdropping - shawms in no key known to him or range of
intervals - had lain flat on his cot the moment he reached it, plunging
instantly into a stupor rather than a Christian sleep.

From this his body leapt up at the first prodigious
crash, leaving its wits behind it: and when the two came together he found that
he was sitting by the door, his body as tense as a frightened cat’s.
Understanding and recollection came with the next roaring broadside; he
recognized his dimly-lit surroundings and groped his way on deck.

He arrived for the Frenchman’s next reply. Above
the smoke the whole low arch of the sky was brilliantly lit - the Algerine
merchantmen could be seen frantically making sail, innumerable lights on shore
running about, the whole city clear in a momentary
blaze of light.

Surprise drew ahead and now it was Pomone’s turn,
her eighteen-pounders making an even more shocking din, improbably loud: again
and again, on both sides, the almost simultaneous flashes lit the sky - astonished
sea-birds could be seen, flying in a wild, uncertain fashion.

‘Well, Doctor,’ said the Commodore, just beside
him, ‘I am afraid you had but a short nap of it: but we shall soon have done -
Mr Woodbine, I believe we may go about.’ And aside to Stephen, as the bosun
piped All hands about ship, ‘There is that big Kutali
xebec, flying in a state of dreadful concern, as though this were the end of
the world, ha, ha.’

‘It sounds very like it, and looks very like it,’
said Stephen, and he muttered, ‘...solvet saeclum in favilla.’

Now they were on the other tack, running gently
down the side of Cerbêre: it was the turn of the larboard guns and this time
they were so close that some of the Frenchman’s smouldering wads came aboard,
to be put out with a great deal of laughter, and indignant, often very cross
cries of ‘Silence, fore and aft’ from the midshipmen.

Yet another tack, yet another apocalyptic series of
shattering broadsides - renewed screeching, howling and running about on shore
- distant drums and trumpets, church bells ringing - and having given the order
to reload with right cartridge and ball, and to house the guns, Jack carried
straight on, shaping a course for the Canale di Spalato, followed by Cerbère
and Pomone, with Ringle under his lee. He called for stern-lanterns and
top-lights, desiring Mr Harding to dismiss the starboard watch once courses had
been set, and went below himself, ludicrously walking on tiptoe. In the cabin -
the bed-place - that they had shared for so many years, he found Stephen, not
dead asleep - far from it - but writing.

‘I hope I do not interrupt you,’ he said.

‘Not at all. I am only setting down a
succinct account of my conversation in Spalato with certain organizations for
the benefit of the Admiral’s intelligence officer in Malta; and as soon as it
is done, my duty, as I see it, is to go to Algiers as fast as ship will fly.’

‘What do you think we should do?’

‘Obviously I cannot dictate to a Commodore; but as
far as the single aim of defeating this intervention by Bonapartist
mercenaries, this potentially “extremely dangerous intervention” as the
Secretary of State put it, I think we should run down the coast, looking
attentively into the yards that contain vessels in any state of forwardness -
and then as soon as we have examined Durazzo, straight away for Algiers,
keeping the sharpest possible watch for a houario between Pantellaria and
Kelibia. Then, it being assumed that we do not catch the vessel, I should go on
in Ringle to dissuade the Dey from carrying the promised treasure across, while
you remain, a very present threat on the horizon, a powerful, famous frigate,
seen by all shipping that comes and goes.’