The Thirteen Gun Salute (32 page)

While the very word 'supper' was sounding in his head both Yusuf and Bonden caught a fish, a fine silvery fish, a two or three pounder with crimson eyes and crimson fins. 'Padang fish, tuan!' cried Yusuf. 'Good, good, very good fish!'

'So much the better,' said Jack, and he let fly the sheet, bringing the cutter gently to the shore: he stepped neatly out, his shoes and his ditty-bag slung round his neck, shoved the boat off, called out 'This evening, then, in Parrot Bay,' and sat down on the warm sand to dry his feet.

Warren replied cheerfully, but Bonden, though back in his rightful place in the stern sheets, shook his head with a despondent look: he would have liked the Captain to take at least a hanger and a brace of pistols, if not a musket and a couple of well-armed hands as well.

The sand here was pinkish-white, quite unlike the volcanic black of Prabang itself, and delightfully firm. Jack, dryfoot and shod, stretched out at a fine pace, his eyes half-closed against the glare, and presently he reached the bottom of the bay and, above highwater-mark, the road. Five minutes after striking into it he was in the grateful shade of sago-paims; they stood deep on either side almost the whole way to the village, and they were completely uninhabited - no people, no animals, scarcely a bird - except for myriads of insects which he could rarely see and never identify but which kept up a continual din, so all-pervading that after a few minutes he was unaware of it except on those rare occasions when it suddenly stopped entirely. The sago-palms were not very beautiful, being thick and short, while their dull-green crowns were rather dusty, and presently he found their company and the loneliness oppressive It was a relief to walk out of the shade at last and into the rice paddies outside the village at the bottom of West Bughis Inlet, people were working in them and some looked up as he went by, but without any particular interest, far less astonishment. Much the same applied to the village itself, sparsely inhabited at this time of day, and from here the reason, for their indifference was evident, since the whole bong bay was now open before him, with Ambelan on the eastern side, its harbour quite crowded and two Chinese junks lying just offshore. Of course these people were used to strangers.

Beyond the village the road mounted to the crest of the long rocky headland that formed the inlet's other arm, and at the top of the hill Jack, now in a fine state of sweat, turned off right-handed to walk out to a point where he would be opposite the little port. There was a path, he found, winding among the boulders and the low, wind-stunted vegetation, and soon he saw why: dotted along the edge of the sea below him there were great fallen rocks by the score, well out from the strand, and on many of them stood fishermen with long bamboos, casting beyond the moderate surf of the tide, now on the make; and each group of rocks had a corresponding side-path leading down to it.

When he had travelled something like a mile he took one of these and dropped down the slope, going rather more than half way, to the clearly-defined division between the zone where the wind was strong enough and steady enough to keep the trees and bushes short and the zone in the lee of the farther cape, where everything grew in its usual wild profusion, trees, rattans, screw-pines, and all along the shore itself coconutpalms soaring up in a thousand graceful attitudes. A few paces from where he stopped there was a little platform with a spring coming out of the cliff-face, a dense growth of soft fern, and an astonishing display of orchids growing on the rock, the deep moss, the trees and bushes, orchids of every size, shape and colour. 'Lord, I wish Stephen were here,' he said, sitting on a convenient mound and taking a small telescope and an azimuth compass from his ditty-bag.

He said it again some time later, when a large black and white bird laboured across the field of his glass, carrying a heavy fish in its talons. The glass was only a pocket telescope of no great power, but with the sun shining full on the opposite shore and the air as clear as air could be he had a brilliant view of the Corn�e. She had indeed been heaved down on a bank a little north of the town - her copper blazed in the sun - heaved down on her larboard side to a number of uncommon great trees, one of which, or perhaps the creeper that enveloped it, a mass of crimson flowers from top to bottom. 'Oh if only my roses would do that,' cried his mind in a parenthesis, running back to the mildewed, aphis-ridden, much-loved shrubs of Ashgrove Cottage.

But something was wrong. Something was amiss. There were all the frigate's belongings in neatly-squared tarpaulined heaps; there were her guns, intelligently placed to deal with any attack from band or sea; there were her people's tents; but where were the people themselves? A few were creeping about on her copper; a few were busy on a staging against a place where the sheathing had been removed far down under her starboard bow; but there was none of the feverish activity usual on such occasions, with all hands kept hard at it, calls piping, starters flying. Some of them could even be seen playing boules in a smooth bare place under the coconut palms, watched by scores of their shipmates. The others were presumably sleeping in the shade.

While Jack was considering this he heard the rattle of stones on the path above, and a man with a bong rod went down past him. The man cabled out in Malay as he went by and Jack replied with an amicable hoot that seemed to satisfy both this fisherman and the one who followed him a little later; but a third man stopped and looked back. Jack saw that although he was as brown as an islander he was in fact a European, a Frenchman, no doubt.

'Captain Aubrey, sir, I believe?' he said, smiling.

'Yes, sir,' said Jack.

'You will not remember me, sir, but my name is Dumesnib, and I had the honour of being presented to you aboard the Desaix. My uncle Guillaume Christy-Pabli� commanded her.'

'Pierrot!' cried Jack, his look of cold reserve changing to open pleasure as he recognized the little fat midshipman in the bong-legged lieutenant. 'How very glad I am to see you. Come and sit down. How is your dear uncle?'

The dear uncle, in a ship of the line, had captured Jack and his first command, the Sophie, a small brig-rigged sloop, in the Mediterranean, as long ago as 1801; he had treated his prisoner very handsomely and they had become friends, a friendship ripening all the more easily since Christy-Palli� had English cousins and spoke their language well. His nephew Pierre had spent the peace at school in Bath, and he spoke it even better. They exchanged news of all their former shipmates - Uncle Guillaume was now an admiral (which Jack knew very well) but he was pining at an office desk in Paris - and it was clear that Christy-Pabbiere had followed Jack's career as closely as Jack had followed his. Dumesnil spoke, without the least animosity, of the dismay and admiration with which they had both received the news of Jack's cutting out the Diane, and went on, 'I saw you of course at the Sultan's audience, and I have seen you once or twice when I went to look at the poor Diane from Prabang: of course it would have been improper to make any gesture, but I did hope you might repay the compliment and come to look at the poor Corn�e. I know some of your people have done so, and from just this very place.'

'To be sure, it does give a most capital view,' said Jack, and there was a significant pause.

'Well, sir,' said Dumesnil, somewhat embarrassed, 'I don't know whether you have ever careened a ship with neither wharf nor hulk?'

'Never. That is to say never anything bigger than a sloop. Frightful things might happen - masts, futtocks .

'Yes, sir. And frightful things have happened. I do not mean the slightest criticism of my captain or my shipmates - these things were more in the line of acts of God - but I may say that the ship cannot possibly float before next spring tide, is very likely not to float until the spring-tide after that, and in fact may not float until next year. I tell you this in the hope that you will not attempt cutting her out, so that we knock one another on the head to no good purpose: two line-of-battle ships anchored in the bay and heaving till their cables and their capstans broke could not bring her off that infernal bank. You might as well try to cut out the Cordouan bight.'

Dumesnil was no more specific about the 'frightful things' than this, though Jack suspected a hopelessly wrung mainmast and several sprung butts at the least, but he did go on to speak of other miseries: the growing hostility of the people of Ambelan; the desertion, in two different Philippine vessels, of most of the Spanish craftsmen and many foremast hands; and of the frigate's extreme poverty: for weeks they had been living, cabin, gunroom and all, on ancient ship's provisions, because the money had been mismanaged and the purser could scarcely afford even the cheapest kind of rice. Credit had always been in indifferent health, and now it was stone dead; no bills on Paris could be attempted to be discounted with the Chinese merchants, even at ninety per cent. 'Fortunately,' he said, laughing, 'there are always these beautiful fish, the padangs. They cruise along in twos and threes just behind the break of the wave when the tide is making, and they take a feather or a shaped piece of bacon-rind, just like the bass at home. See how they are pulling them out!'

So they were. Four or five silver flashes along the line of rocks: and it was nearly high water.

'Pierrot, my dear fellow,' said Jack, standing up, 'you must run down, or you will lose your tide, and I cannot say worse to a sailor. I will send you over a little present by one of our Malays; but don't forget to sign the chit so that I know you have had it. There are a lot of goddam thieves about in these islands, you know.'

'Oh sir, that is extremely kind of you, but I cannot take anything from an officer who is technically an enemy. And I never meant to speak of our poverty in any sense of...

'Quelle connerie, as your uncle would say. I didn't accept anything from him, did I? Oh no. By no means. Not at all. Only fifty guineas and a whole series of the best dinners I have ever ate. It was the same with the Americans when they took us: Bainbridge of the Constitution fairly loaded me with dollars. Don't be an ass, Pierrot. Send me word if you can think of a discreet neutral place where we can meet, or failing that, let me hear from you the minute peace is signed. Your uncle knows my address. God bless you, now.'

'Well, Stephen,' he said, 'there you are, back from your Godforsaken steps and all alive, I am happy to see. What buck to find you aboard. Have you abandoned your bawdy-house? Have the girls all proved poxed? Or have you turned evangelical? Ha, ha, ha, ha!' He sat down, wheezing and wiping his eyes. Stephen waited until he had had his laugh out, no small matter, since mirth in Jack Aubrey fed upon what it laughed at.

'What a rattle you are, to be sure,' he said at last.

'Forgive me, Stephen, but there is something so infinitely comic in the idea of you being a Methody, haranguing the girls, handing out tracts.... Oh...'

'Control yourself, sir. For shame.'

'Well. If I must. Killick! Killick, there.'

'Which I'm a-coming, ain't I?' - this from a certain distance; and as the cabin door opened, 'This is the best I can do, sir. Lemon barley-water made of rice, and boo-warm at that; but at least the lemon is shaddocks, which is close on.'

'Bless you, Killick. That last three hours' pull in a clock calm was thirsty work.' He engulfed a couple of pints, broke into an instant sweat, and said, 'I had such a pleasant encounter yesterday evening. Do you remember when Christy-Palliere in the Desaix captured us in the year one?'

'Faith, I shall not easily forget it.'

'And do you remember his nephew, a little round fat-faced boy cabled Pierrot?'

'I do not.'

'No. You were with their surgeon all the time, an ill-looking yellow-faced - that is to say a very learned man, I am sure. Anyhow, there he was, young Pierrot, all those years ago; and there he was again yesterday, a long thin lieutenant, much the same in essence - amazing good English, too. We talked for a great while, and he told me not to try cutting out his ship, because she could not swim until the spring-tide after next, if then. They have heaved her down, you know, and what has happened to her futtocks and top-timbers.... however, since the spring-tide after next coincides with our second rendezvous with Surprise - the first is already past - that knocks my idea of waiting for her in the offing on the head. Though I do not suppose Fox will have finished his negotiations even by then, unless he and the Sultan spread more canvas: in any case, it was no more than a general notion."

'As for the negotiations, my dear,' said Stephen, 'I believe you may be - how shall I put it? May be mistaken, bald by the lee. There have been some surprising developments since you sailed away. Shall we take a turn in my little boat? I will row, you being somewhat worn.'

'Now,' he said, resting on his oars, 'do you remember Ganymede, the Sultan's cupbearer Abdul?'

'The odious little sod I longed to kick off my quarterdeck?'

'The same. He was the Sultan's minion, not to use a coarser term; but he was unfaithful and he lay with Ledward. They were taken in sodomy. Abdul was put to death, but Ledward and Wray, who had been promised protection, were not. They are only banished from the court and the council and forbidden to take part in any discussions whatsoever. This has reduced Duplessis to helplessness; he cannot speak Malay, and the council, very strict about rank and precedence, will not listen, will not admit a plebeian interpreter. The French mission has very probably failed, but this cannot be known directly, since one or two days must still pass before Fox can wait on the Sultan. Ledward is of course ruined, and Wray with him, but Fox's hatred is by no more lessened: far from it. He was bitterly disappointed that Ledward was not put to the same hideous death as Abdub. There is a most inveterate, implacable enmity between them... What is more, it appears to me that Ledward's mind has become deranged. At one time assassination could have been seen as a perfectly reasonable move in negotiations of this kind and in this part of the world, and at a given point it was Ledward's only possible chance of success. But now, in the present posture of affairs, it can effect nothing. Yet Ledward has made two attempts.'