The Reverse of the Medal (11 page)

'She is the Spartan for sure,' said Awkward Davies to his mate over the enormous padded stone called a bear they were scouring the deck with. 'You can take my word for it: John Larkin has seen the Spartan. John Larkin has always been the lucky cove.'

Honey sent his midshipman to tell Mowett; and Jack, stirring in his cot, heard an elderly Italian seaman just by the skylight say to another, 'John Larkin, im see Spartano.'

By the time Jack reached the deck Mowett, still in his nightshirt, had descended billowing from the top, and he said with a beaming face, 'Sir, I was just about to send to ask permission to alter course and make sail. There is a sail to leeward, and Larkin thinks it might be the privateer.'

'Ha, ha,' said several of the men on the gangway, their swabs idle in their hands.

'Very well, Mr Mowett,' said Jack. 'Alter course by all means. And perhaps at the same time you might induce the watch to do a little towards preddying the deck. The King does not pay them for their beauty alone, and it would be a pity to speak this privateer, if privateer she be, in such a state of unspeakable squalor - to be seen, even by foreigners, looking like Sodom and Gomorrah.'

Privateer she was, but she was not the Spartan. Indeed she was not a foreigner at all, but the Prudence, a twelve-gun brig out of Kingston. As soon as the sun had burnt off the haze she backed her foretopsail and lay to; and when the Surprise was within hailing distance her master came across with her papers.

He ran up the side and saluted the quarterdeck Navy fashion, a man in a plain blue coat about Jack's age. He was obviously ill at case and at first Jack put this down to his anxiety about having his men pressed, but it persisted even after Jack had remarked that he had no need of any more hands, and when some time had passed Jack perceived that it arose from a fear of being recognized and of not being acknowledged.

'I had no idea I had ever seen him at first,' he said, when he and Stephen were tuning their strings that evening. 'No notion at all, until he threw out a hint about "recognizing the old Surprise with her thirty-six-gun ship's mainmast right away", and then I smoked it: he was the same Ellis that had commanded the Hind, eighteen, a King's ship, and I had seen him half a dozen times at the Cape. This is a sad come-down for him, of course, rather as it was for the men I spoke of when we were telling Parson Martin about privateers. Though in this case I am afraid there was a court-martial: I forget the details - something to do with bills drawn on the Navy Board, I believe: not very pretty. But we got along famously, once I had recollected who he was, and he told me a good deal about the Spartan. We are not likely to see her this side of the Azores, I fear.'

'Mr Allen's duty, sir,' said the dwarvish Howard, hurrying in, 'and there are the lights of four sail of ships, three points on the starboard bow.

Howard's want of teeth made him hard to understand, but in time his message came through and Jack said, 'Yes, those are the West Indiamen the privateer was speaking of. Let them be given two blue lights and a windward gun.'

The gun went off, and it could be heard being made fast again; but still Jack sat on, his fiddle drooping in his hand.

'You are in a fine study, brother,' said Stephen, not unkindly, when he had been waiting a very long while.

'Lord, yes,' cried Jack. 'I do beg your pardon. it is that I was just wondering whether the infernal ptarmigan was there when Sam called at Ashgrove Cottage: not that it really signifies, however.'

'Certainly not.' Stephen played a phrase: Jack replied with a variation, and so they handed it to and fro, playing sometimes separately, sometimes together, hunting it through a great number of forms until the pattern worked out in a fine satisfying close with both in unison; and at this point their toasted cheese came in.

'In England, I find,' said Stephen after a while, 'cranes are called herons; and there are many other differences. As an Englishman, pray how would you define a ptarmigan, now?'

'Why, ptarmigans are those contentious froward cross overbearing women you come across only too often. Lady Bates is one; so is Mrs Miller. They are called after Mahomet's wife, I believe; or at least that was what my old father told me when I was a boy.'

Had General Aubrey confined himself to etymology, however bold, he would have done his son no harm; but he had seen fit to go into politics as an opposition member for various rotten boroughs, and since he was a man of weak understanding but inexhaustible energy his perpetual vehement harrying of the ministry had made even his Tory connexions objects of dislike or suspicion. He was now associated with the least reputable members of the Radical movement, not because he wished to see the slightest reform of parliament or anything else, but because in his folly he still imagined that the ministry would give him some plum, such as a colonial governorship, to shut his mouth. He also thought that some of his Radical friends were devilish clever money-making fellows; and he was intensely eager, indeed avid, for wealth.

Stephen had met Jack's father - a really dangerous parent - and the wish that the General might choke to death on his next bite fleeted through his mind, but he passed the toasted cheese in silence, and soon after they played a very gentle lament he had learnt in the City of Cork from Hempson, the great harper of the world, when he was a hundred and four.

The second Spartan they saw was in fact just this side of the Azores, plum to windward, within a hundred miles of the place where she had taken Pullings and the Dana�in chase; and just as Pullings had said in his letter, she was so like a Portuguese man-of-war that at a mile even an old experienced hand would have sworn she was all she seemed. Everything was right: colours, officers' uniforms, even the gilded crucifix catching the sun on the quarterdeck.

The old experienced hand would still have sworn it at half a mile: and Captain Aubrey and Mr Allen, who had been standing there side by side with their telescopes fixed on the approaching ship while the keen smell of slow-match wafted about them and hands stood by to cast off the cloths masking the loaded guns, turned to one another with the same expression of dawning comprehension, surprise, disappointment, and relief.

'Thank God we never fired, sir,' said the master.

Jack nodded, and cried, 'Dowse the match, there; dowse the match. Mr Mowett, pennant and colours.' The Portuguese hail came across the water, somewhat testy, and he went on 'Mr Allen, pray reply,' - for the master was fluent in Portuguese - 'and ask the captain to dine with me.'

The Portuguese captain would not dine, but he did accept Jack's apologies and explanation with a good grace. They split a bottle of capital white port in his cabin, and Jack learnt that although there were two American privateers in the harbour of Fayal, neither was the Spartan, nor anything like her size. She had been seen in these waters, but the Portuguese thought she had probably borne away for the Guinea coast, unless conceivably she was lying far to the eastward 'looking out for some of your fat West Indiamen with the full moon to chase them in' he said with a chuckle, for he loved a prize as much as any man living.

The full moon was indeed no great way off, and its increase tended to swallow the wind, so that by the time the Surprise saw her third Spartan, well to the east of Terceira, the Atlantic looked as harmless as the Serpentine, ruffled here and there with light airs and varying breezes. She appeared as ships so often did, from a morning bank of haze: she was lying there to the northward, hull up from the quarterdeck, on the frigate's starboard bow and she too was on the larboard tack. At first she met with little credit. The starboard watch, red legged from cleaning the decks with water that was now quite cold, were sick of this here so-called privateer, sick of this goddam deck-cargo and these bloody side-cloths. it was far too late to come across any Spartan now, and they wanted their breakfast.

Jack, staring out over the sea from the maintop, was much of their opinion, but he did think it worthwhile to call down that hammocks were not to be piped up and that the watch below was to stay there until further orders.

As the light strengthened he was glad he had done so. His very recent experience of a Portuguese man-of-war made the Spartan's disguise - for this was the true, the genuine privateer - less convincing; and in any case the ship over there answered exactly to Pullings' description. A tall ship with massive spars, no doubt very fast indeed, and capable of throwing a shockingly heavy broadside, at least at close quarters. On seeing the Surprise she had at once clapped her helm a-lee, and this seemed to Jack profoundly significant, since it would in time give her the weather-gage. A real Portuguese, with no more than a discretionary duty to inspect, would not go to so much trouble - would not undertake a move which at this distance and in these light airs could come to good only after hours of careful manoeuvring.

Jack steered a corresponding course, and as he took his breakfast in the top he watched her with unremitting attention. By his last cup of coffee he was perfectly convinced of her identity, and his conviction had communicated itself to the crew. From time to time he sent still more men below, so as to reduce his visible crew as nearly to the size of a merchantman's as he could: a difficult task, since at the same time he needed enough hands to make sail and brace round the heavy yards as quickly as the privateer, which, he saw, was very well manned indeed.

The larboard watch, at first delighted with the idea of the starbowlins doing all the cold wet work on deck while they lay like lords in their hammocks, soon became uneasy: then, as more starbowlins were sent below, almost desperate. On the lower deck there were of course no ports nor even scuttles and they were obliged to rely on reports delivered down the forehatchway by their happier companions.

Ships in the Royal Navy differed enormously in the matter of discipline. There were some in which two men could hardly be seen talking together quietly without being put down as malcontents, perhaps potential mutineers, and reported by the master-at-arms. The Surprise was nothing remotely like any of those unhappy vessels, but even so prolonged conversation on duty was not encouraged, especially at a time when exceedingly delicate operations were in hand. The accounts that came down the hatchway were therefore sparse and fragmentary; but uttered by seamen for seamen they gave the broad picture quite accurately.

The two ships lay north and south of one another, and although there were odd cat's paws and small local breezes from other quarters the undoubted general movement of the air was from the westward; and there were signs that in time, perhaps tomorrow, it might freshen. The aim of each captain was to get the weather-gage, that is to say to gain a position westward of the other so that he might come down with the breeze on his best point of sailing and force the engagement at the moment and in the conditions most favourable for himself rather than undertake a long and perhaps inconclusive windward chase, with the continual possibility of having an important spar knocked away by gunfire or carried away by the breeze. But each wished his manoeuvre to seem unstudied, a natural part of his ordinary, peaceful voyage, so that his unsuspecting, unhurrying adversary should let himself be outstripped, thinking no harm.

This added a fresh dimension to the snail-paced but strenuous race to windward, in which every vagrant puff had to be wooed and embraced by all the canvas that could be spread, but it was one that set the Surprise at a disadvantage to begin with, since in her character as a prudent merchantman she had no royal masts above her stump topgallants, and they could hardly be sent up man-of-war fashion without exciting suspicion; nor could royals, skysails, moonsails, stargazers and other flying-kites, all very useful in these mere zephyrs, where the higher air moved somewhat faster than that just over the sea.

The masts and yards were sent up in time and the lofty sails were set upon them, but in the meanwhile the Spartan, profiting by a north-western slant of wind, had come half a mile closer.

This did not suit Jack's book at all. He did not want his ship or his people to be wounded or killed for the sake of a privateer: what he hoped to do was to gain a decided advantage in beating up to the west and then, with the Spartan under his lee and well within reach of his long guns, to throw off his disguise, send a shot across her bows and await her surrender. If it did not come directly, then a couple of broadsides should certainly bring it. But if this present advance went on the privateer would be laying him aboard and there would be a general m�e, the Spartan's forty-two-pound carronades coming into play, with the ship being hurt and a great many people wounded.

Looking very keenly at the cat's paw travelling over the smooth surface and bearing the Spartan with it, Jack leaned over the top-rim and called down his orders. The Surprise turned gently to starboard, glided across towards the Spartan, to within random shot, picked up the cat's paw as it left her and went about, staying with a smooth perfection. For ten or fifteen minutes the Surprise ran fast enough to make the water ripple along her side, leaving the Spartan with all her sails limp, barely capable of steering.

By the time the breeze left the frigate too the balance had been restored. This was reported to the men below, and Faster Doudle, an old and knowing hand, observed that now they could settle down to a luffing-match in peace: the skipper need fear no one in a luffing-match, and as for sailing on a bowline, the barky had no equal -she would eat the wind out of anything afloat by the end of the day.

It was a luffing-match, certainly, with each ship trimming its sails with infinite attention and sailing wonderfully close to what wind there was, with bowlines twanging taut; but it was also much more, with each ship moving from her windward line, sometimes perilously far, in search of one of the vagrant breezes that passed across the sea, often under the fat cushions of cloud. And then there were the moves intended to deceive, such as paying off to gather impetus, putting the helm a-lee, with hands at their stations for going about, and even letting the headsails shiver as though the ship were on the very point of tacking, but then flatting in the jib and foretopmast staysail, falling off and carrying on as before - the intention being that the other ship, carrying out the same manoeuvre, should either hang in stays on seeing her error and so lose time, or go about briskly and lose still more time getting back on to the original tack.