Treason's Harbour (37 page)

'You were quite right to do so, I am sure,' said Stephen, taking it. 'And there was no call in the world to be consulting me, my dear; sometimes you misinterpret my actions. No call at all, at all,' he murmured, reading Mr Fielding begs to acknowledge Captain Aubrey's letter of today's date, but regrets he is unable to avail himself of the offer it contains: he hopes however that he may meet Captain Aubrey in Malta before any considerable time shall have passed. 'I regret it extremely,' he said, and although Jack knew him very well he could not tell what he meant or on what grounds he regretted it so. 'I operated on the gentleman this forenoon, and talked with him for some time afterwards,' said Stephen after a while. 'And although by far the best thing would be for him to come back with us, I do not feel that persuasion would serve any useful purpose. Rather the contrary, indeed. But I may take it, may I not, that we must necessarily be the first to reach Valletta with the news of Mr Fielding's escape?'

'Certainly. We shall have that vile tub of Babbington's with us, so we shall probably not set royals or even topgallants all the way, but even so there is nothing else sailing back from here until the next convoy.'

There was a silence, each far away. Jack had fought the odd duel in his time, but he had disliked them then and he disliked them even more now that it was almost always a matter of pistols, generally more deadly than the sword. They seemed to him foolish and even wicked: he had not the least wish to make Laura a widow, even less to do the same to Sophie.

'Barge alongside, sir, if you please,' said Bonden in his loud sea-voice, startling the silence of the cabin.

'Barge?' said Captain Aubrey, brought up all standing in his meditations.

'Why, yes, your honour,' said Bonden politely. 'Which you are to eat your dinner with Captain Babbington aboard of Dryad in five minutes' time.'

Few creatures in the sea gave Stephen Maturin more delight than dolphins, and here in the Strait of Otranto he had them by the score. One particular troop had been with the ship ever since he finished with the sick-bay, and he had been watching them all this time, as far forward as he could get, leaning against the warm figurehead and gazing down. The dolphins would come racing up the larboard, the sunlit side, and leap all together before crossing and going down to play in the wake before running up again: sometimes they would scratch themselves against the frigate's side or even her cutwater before turning, but generally they leapt, and he would see their amiable faces clear of the water. The same troop, with two exceptionally fat, profusely spotted dolphins in it, had appeared several times before; he knew most of the individuals, and he was convinced that they were aware of his presence. He hoped that they recognized him and even liked him, and each time they rose he waved.

The dolphins did not have to exert themselves, for in these gentle breezes the Surprise was scarcely making five knots as she steered south-south-west under an easy sail, while far to leeward her lumpish consort the Dryad laboured along under almost everything she could spread to keep her station. The two were covering as wide an expanse of sea as ever they could because there was a strong possibility of enemy privateers in the southern Adriatic and the northern Ionian (unaccompanied British ships and even small convoys had been sadly mauled), while a French or Venetian man-of-war was by no means out of the question, nor yet a merchantman, fat and lawful prize. The Dryad was as eager as any sloop in the Navy for glory and even indeed for gain, but although she was small and low she was also ponderous and slow on the rise, and she was making very heavy weather of the long swell that beat against her starboard bow, a sure sign of storms in the western Mediterranean. Sometimes her lower sails were becalmed when she was in the trough, and sometimes their filling on the rise would make her butt into the top of the wave, so that green water swept over her forecastle, along her waist and into her captain's cabin. The Surprise on the other hand rose to them like a wild swan; and sometimes, when the swell mounted very high and the ship sank very low, Stephen would see his dolphins swimming away up there in the solid transparent uptilted mass of water as though he were looking through the side of some immeasurable tank. He had been at his post since the sun was only half way up the brilliant eastern sky, reclining at his ease, sometimes reflecting, sometimes merely staring, the bowsprit just above his head gently creaking with the pitch of the ship and the pull of the forestaysail, and the warm breeze wafting by him: he had been there at the time of the noon observation and throughout the hullaballoo of piping the hands to dinner and the piercing scream of the fife for grog, and he might have stayed there indefinitely had he not been called away. He had long since made up his mind what to do about the situation brought into being in Fielding's reappearance: although the Surprise would be well ahead of the news it would still be best to act quickly. He would have to open himself entirely to the Admiral and Wray, which, though regrettable, was still a small price to pay for pinning all the important French agents in Malta. Laura would make an appointment with her man, and it would be strange if he did not lead them to the rest. But before they were gathered in she would have to be moved to a place of safety, since some unimportant people among the discontented Maltese would probably escape; he had already worked out a formula that would exculpate her in the Admiral's eyes, and he had no very rigid morality to fear on the part of Wray. That decision belonged to the past: for the present he was giving himself up entirely to immediate, intense pleasure in the warm, astonishingly clear air, the brilliant light, the ship's rhythmic bounding through the clean blue-green sea. The sun had now passed the zenith; it had moved two handsbreadths to the west and the staysail was casting a grateful shade upon him by the time Calamy came forward in a clean frilled shirt with his hair brushed smooth and said 'Why, sir, what's all this? Surely you have not forgot you are entertaining the Captain?'

'And how am I supposed to entertain the Captain, for all love?' asked Stephen. 'Am I to grin at him through a horse-collar, propose riddles and conundrums, cut capers?'

'Come, sir,' said Calamy, 'the gunroom is entertaining the Captain to dinner, and you have only ten minutes to change. There is not a moment to be lost.' And as he led Stephen aft, 'I am coming too. Ain't that fun?'

Fun it was, although at first the Captain was unusually quiet: not glum, but mum. He had a singularly poignant feeling of loss as he sat there at Mowett's right. He missed Pullings extremely, and when he looked at the rows of faces that he knew so well, liked and esteemed - looked with the knowledge that this society would be broken up in the next few weeks - he had a strong sense of his life being upon the turn, between two seasons, as it were, with the certainties of the one no longer valid for the other. He was not a fanciful man, but for some time now he had had an indefinable sense of chaos following order, of impending disaster; and it oppressed his mind.

By way of comfort he observed that the life of the service was one of continual separation, one in which ships' companies continually broke up. They would serve a commission together for better for worse, and then the ship would pay off and they would be separated: to be sure, if the captain were given another command right away he might take several of his officers, his midshipmen and followers; yet very often there was a general parting, and this would be just another of the many he had known, different in degree, since he liked his ship and his shipmates more, but not in kind. He grew more and more nearly persuaded of this as the excellent meal progressed. In their happy ignorance and with splendid weather over their heads his hosts were unusually cheerful; and in Maclean, their new Marine officer, they had gained a wonderful caterer. Good food and good wine insensibly had their effect; and although the conversation was not particularly brilliant it was so good-natured that a man would have had to be far more morose than Jack Aubrey not to be pleased with his entertainment and his company. By the time the cloth was drawn and the table covered with nutshells, few joined more heartily in the chorus when Calamy was called upon to 'tip us Nelson at Copenhagen', a song he sang with the fine lack of self-consciousness brought about by three glasses of claret and one of port in a clear treble that contrasted pleasantly with his seniors' deep voices as they chanted

With their thundering and roaring, rattling and roaring

Thundering and roaring bombs.

Nor had Maclean a more attentive listener when the Marine said 'I do not mean to put myself in competition with either Mr Mowett or Mr Rowan- I have not the least claim to original genius in the poetry line - but since I have the honour of being caterer to the mess, perhaps I may be allowed to recite a piece composed by a friend of mine, a Scotch gentleman, on currant jelly.'

'Certainly,' cried some, 'by all means.' Others cried 'Hear him, hear him,' or 'The Jollies for ever'.

'Currant jelly for breakfast, you understand,' said Maclean, and carried straight on:

'Long ere the cups were filled, I'd eager rise,

(The love of jelly flaming in my eyes),

A slice of neatest cut, and spoon, would seize,

And, with my usual much-becoming ease,

Would the ambrosia plentifully spread

In genteel mode upon the wheaten..."

He broke off seeing Williamson, the youngster of the watch, run in and stand by the Captain's chair.

'If you please, sir,' said Williamson, 'Dryad signals that a ship has just cleared Cape St Mary, steering eastward: Edinburgh, she believes.'

Edinburgh she was, a massive seventy-four commanded by Heneage Dundas. Their courses slowly converged, and as they lay-to on the heaving sea Jack pulled across to ask him how he did: Heneage did pretty well, but might have done much better, very much better, if he had caught the French privateer he had chased under the guns of Taranto that afternoon, a fine twenty-gun ship with sky-blue sides that he had pursued since dawn and that had outrun him at last. But he had a great deal of news apart from that: there had been two shocking blows in the Gulf of Lions, the blockading squadron had been sadly knocked about and blown as far south as Mahon; some ships were still in that port, repairing as fast as they could. The French had not come out in a body, though some were thought to have stole away: there was some doubt about their number and their strength, even about the fact itself. But there was none at all about the flaming row between the Commander-in-Chief and Harte. Its causes were variously reported, but its effect was certain: Harte was going home. Dundas did not know whether he had been superseded, whether he had hauled down his flag with his own hands and jumped upon it as some alleged, whether he had invalided, or whether he was being sent back in disgrace; but Dundas was perfectly sure that England was Harte's destination. 'And long may he stay there,' he said. 'I have never known a worse commander of ships, or men, or himself. But even if he is offered an appointment, which may well happen, because of his connection with Andrew Wray, I do not suppose he will ever serve again at sea, now he is so hellfire rich. My cousin Jelks, who understands these things, tells me he owns half Houndsditch, a clear eight thousand a year.'

During the night the wind, which had been backing and strengthening all the afternoon, settled in the north-west and began to blow quite hard, so that after quarters Jack struck topgallantmasts down on deck. A little before the moon came up he was thinking of taking a second reef in his topsails, not so much because of the strength of the wind as because it was blowing across the swell and working up a cross-sea that made even the Surprise complain. It would have been labour lost, however: even before the moon was clear of the horizon the forecastle lookout bawled 'Sail ho! Sail on the larboard bow. Two points on the larboard bow,' and there she lay, the Edinburgh's French privateer. Jack instantly shook out his first reef and with equal promptness the privateer bore up for the shelter of Taranto and its powerful guns. But the Dryad was to windward of her, and in answer to the Surprise's blue lights she spread all the canvas she possessed and cut the Frenchman off from the land. She carried on in this heroic way for some considerable while, the two of them coursing the nimble privateer like a couple of greyhounds; and although eventually she carried away her jibboom and her maintopmast, all going by the board in one spectacular sweep, by this time the Frenchman could no longer turn. He was directly to leeward of the Surprise, not much above two miles away, heading south for the distant Barbary coast as hard as ever he could pelt.

Both sides now settled down to a perfectly straightforward chase, each captain using every last turn of seamanship, every subtle change of trim and helm, to run the faster. The privateer had the slight advantage of being able to choose his point of sailing, which was with the wind three points abaft the beam, whereas the Surprise preferred it on her quarter; but the frigate had a crew that could flash sails in and out slightly quicker; and so they tore across the bright moonlit sea at twelve and even thirteen knots, flinging the white water wide, spray flying aft and all hands intensely alive. The privateer started her water over the side; then came her boats from the beams, splash after splash; her bower anchors; and at last her guns. And with the wind easing slightly she began to draw away, gaining a quarter of a mile between two in the morning and three. The Surprise checked the gain by pumping out twenty tons of water and lining all available hands along the weather rail to make the ship a trifle stiffer; and then the wind strengthened again, so that the chase could no longer keep her studdingsails abroad- they parted company before she had time to take them in - whereas the frigate could; and the privateer's lead dwindled, dwindled. In the first light of dawn the Surprise was within musket-shot, yet the Frenchman kept racing on, hoping against all probability that the frigate might lose a spar. There was a general feeling in the Surprise that he was coming it a trifle high; that this was mere obstinacy and snowing away; and that he should be brought up with a round turn, or the galley fires could never be lit and breakfast would be late. Jack caught many a meaning look, many a raised eyebrow and questioning head cocked at the bowchasers, which had been cleared away long ago and whose priming Mr Borrell now ostentatiously renewed. And in reply to some remark Mowett said to him, 'Sir, I am concerned about the decks. This is the day for a complete grinding with bears fore and aft; and if that fellow..." Solid water hurtling aft head-high cut him short, but Jack knew very well what he would have said: shading his eyes from the spray and holding firmly to an iron-taut backstay as the frigate bucked the rise, he stared over the torn water at the flying privateer, a fine sight with every possible stitch of urgent canvas set and the foam so thick around her that her hull was in a haze. 'Very well,' he said, 'we will give her a gun.' And raising his voice, 'Mr Borrell, a wide ball to let her know we are in earnest, if you please. Wide, but not too wide.'