Treason's Harbour (41 page)

'I see them, sir,' cried Calamy, and Williamson said 'They bear just south-west by west.'

'You would see them better if the breeze were strong in the north-east, and if it had had time to work up a hearty sea. There is a reef between them with not much above two-fathom water over it, and with a north-east swell it shows white. But ordinarily it looks quite smooth, like this. The Moors of these parts take no account of it, but we were stuck there when I was in Eurotas, which drew eighteen foot six abaft. Generally speaking, you would be wise to assume that there is always shoal water between a string of rocks of the same kind. Mr Mowett,' he said, breaking off, 'since we have made such excellent time, we had better complete our water before running down to the port. We do not want to be there too early, and in any event I believe it will rain later, in the day, so let us get it over. The watering-place is on the east side, in the inlet beyond those three small islands.' With this he turned to go into his cabin, but then, checking himself when his hand was actually on the lock, he plunged below to the gunroom.

Here he found Stephen looking frowsty and discontented - there was nothing that more thoroughly persuaded Jack of his friend's innocence with regard to Mrs Fielding than this three days' beard, this vile old wig- and Stephen said to him 'If the woman does not issue a more Christian invitation in two minutes, I shall drink that,' - pointing to the gunroom's coffee, weak, insipid, only just luke-warm. 'She has asked us to take chocolate with her. Chocolate at this time in the morning, dear Mother of God. Suff on her.'

Killick came in, still with a genteel cabin-smirk on his face, and said 'The lady says certainly there will be coffee if the gentlemen prefer it.'

Certainly the gentlemen preferred it, and they sat drinking cup after cup in their usual exorbitant way until from a change in the ship's motion Jack knew they were close to the shore. He went on deck and guided her in past the green islands to the little cove with its sandy beach, where he dropped no more than a kedge, sheltered as they were. He went ashore with the first boat of empty casks, and for the first time that morning he found himself in touch with that feeling of another and as it were parallel world again, the feeling that had been with him so strongly these last few days. It was the extraordinary familiarity of the watering-place that brought it back. He had not been there for nearly twenty very active years and yet he knew every stone of its ancient worn coping and even the exact scent of freshness and green as he leant over the basin.

But getting twenty tons of water aboard, cask by cask, called for a great deal of immediate attention and energy: and since this was one of the tasks that Jack did not choose to delegate, neither he nor anyone else had much leisure for introspection on a conscious level, particularly as a small rain soon began to drive from the north-west in gusts, making the handling of the slippery, ponderous casks even slower and more difficult.

For some time now the Pollux had been edging down towards the opening of the bay, as everybody had already known she would; and at present, impelled by Harte's curiosity and her own notorious sagging to leeward, she was actually within the line between the two capes, backing and filling under the lee of Akroma and exercising her people in the shifting of topgallantmasts. Although she was technically inside the bay, and would have to wear or tack to get out of it, she was still just keeping her promise, since she was well out of sight of Zambra; but her presence irritated the Surprises. 'If Nosey Parker goes on like this, they will have to make two legs of it, wear and wear again, to make their offing,' said Mowett to Rowan; and as he spoke the fortress high on Cape Akroma fired a gun. The sound, borne by the wind, came clearly across the broad expanse of sea, and all hands who were not actively engaged looked up. But nothing happened; and the launch coming alongside with a load of casks immediately afterwards, they very soon looked down again.

Yet it seemed strange to Jack, since the fort flew no colours, and he was still looking at the cape with his telescope when a large ship rounded the point from Jedid Bay. A man-of-war, double-decked, eighty guns, wearing Turkish colours and a commodore's broad pennant: she was closely followed by two frigates, one of thirty-eight or forty guns, the other light, perhaps a twenty-eight. He had just time to observe this and to see that the heavy frigate was passing up along the commodore's larboard side when the Turkish colours came down, the French ran up and the two-decker fired her forward guns into the Pollux. The Pollux put before the wind - what wind she had under the lee of the cape - but in two minutes the big Frenchman ranged close alongside, almost yardarm to yardarm, and began hammering her with full broadsides, while the heavy frigate passed the commodore's disengaged side and took up a station athwart the Pollux' hawse. Even before she opened her murderous raking fire the Surprise abandoning launch, kedge and hawser, was racing out from her inlet, packing on canvas as she came and at the same time clearing for action.

The Pollux was directly to windward, and unless she could come a mile or two down the bay, the Surprise would have to tack twice to reach her, once a little short of the Brothers and a second time at the height of the Akroma fort. Nine miles to travel and precious little time to do it in. But the breeze had freshened; the Surprise was already running at ten knots; the Pollux was now firing at a tremendous rate, and she had thirty-two-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle. As far as he could see for the dense smoke streaming from the battle she had all her masts standing yet, and she might well hold out until Jack could come up and either relieve her of the heavy frigate's fire or rake the two-decker's stern. The smaller French frigate seemed neither here nor there; she hovered about, putting in an occasional shot, but she did not appear to do much damage and she did not seem very eager to engage.

'Main topgallant staysail,' he said, and as its sheet was belayed the Surprise leant still further over; already her larboard cathead, her larboard chains were deep in a smother of foam; white water raced the whole length of her rail; and yet she was moving faster every minute. 'Hold on, good sticks,' he murmured, and aloud, 'Spindle-jib.'

The deck sloped like the roof of a house and he stood there with his right arm hooked round the aftermost mizen shroud. Mowett was at his side, and a midshipman for messages: two solid quartermasters, Devlin and Harper, at the wheel and the master behind them, conning the ship: the gun-crews, less the sail-trimmers, at their stations with their officers and midshipmen: the Marines and the small-arms men in their places: and all gazing steadfastly at the close-packed roaring battle, the dark smoke and the perpetual orange flashes.

It was almost time to go about. Jack glanced at the Brothers, half a mile away, and he saw Stephen creeping laboriously up the slope from the companion-way: Dr Maturin's action-station was in the orlop, but he rarely went there until the firing had begun. 'How is Mrs Fielding?' asked Jack, high over the rushing of the water.

'Pretty well, I thank you. Roman virtue. Fortitude.'

'Take care: clap on to Davis. We are going about.' Jack caught Gill's eye and nodded.

'Ready oh!' cried the master, and with a great smooth rush the Surprise came about, staying like a cutter in her own length.

Faster and faster still on the larboard tack, and now eddies of the wind brought them the smell of powder-smoke. Jack said 'They may say what they like about the Admiral, but no one has ever called him a shy cock. Lord, how Pollux fights!'

'Sir,' said Mowett, his glass to his eye, 'her foremast is gone.' As he spoke a flaw in the wind swept the smoke aside and there indeed lay the Pollux crippled and unable to turn to leeward, but still firing with a splendid regularity. A moment later the heavy frigate, in response to the two-decker's signal, filled and stood south, followed by the other, to intercept the Surprise.

'Doctor,' said Jack, 'it is time for you go to below. My best compliments to Mrs Fielding, and I believe she would do best in the hold. Pray show her the way.'

Now that the frigates were clear of the smoke he watched them with extreme attention. The nearer was as he had supposed a thirty-eight-gun ship, beautifully built and fast; but with her thousand tons she was unlikely to be as nimble as the Surprise. Her second was, like his own, a twenty-eight-gun frigate; but there the likeness ended -she was broad and bluff-bowed, almost certainly Dutch in origin.

'Half a point a-weather,' he said.

'Half a point a-weather it is, sir.'

When they were within range the leading Frenchman would yaw to give the Surprise a broadside and ordinarily the Surprise would put her helm hard a-weather to avoid being raked. Yet with this scarcely perceptible half-point in hand he could haul his wind a trifle and not only avoid the broadside but perhaps sweep by before the enemy had time for another. Perhaps. So much depended on what the second ship did. It would be a most perilous business, getting past the two of them. Yet it had to be done. As if they had divined his intention the two frigates altered course, one slightly to starboard, the other slightly to port, to take him between them.

He was exceedingly tense, exceedingly alive; yet some small fragment of his mind remembered Stephen telling him that a-Dieu-va, the French for about ship, also meant, in ordinary language, we must chance it and trust to God. 'That is just about it with us,' he reflected, looking at the distant two-deckers, still battering one another with terrible fury; and as he looked the entire bank of smoke parted, blasted outwards from the centre, and in the middle rose an enormous brilliance, a vast towering jet of flame interspersed with black objects rising, rising, the whole crowned with white smoke. The Pollux had blown up; and even before the immeasurable flash had died away the roar of her exploding magazine reached them, shaking the sea and the sails as it came. The French commodore's foremast had also gone by the board, but the explosion and the falling spars and vast baulks of timber had not sunk her.

'Stand by to wear ship,' said Jack. Now that there was no Pollux to help he must do what he could to save the Surprise and her people; and trying to force his way past those two frigates was not the best fashion of setting about it.

He had not the least doubt that with this overwhelming superiority the French would attack him in Zambra, and it was not to gain the shelter of a neutral port that he ran south-south-east, towards the headland with a fort on it that interposed between him and the town, guarding the entrance to the harbour.

Leaning on the taffrail he trained his glass on the French two-decker. Now and then squalls of rain blurred his view, but he grew more and more certain that she was very badly damaged. What boats she had left were over the side, and they were making a raft or a stage of sorts out of spars; she had already carried out lines fore and aft. As long as he kept out of the range of her remaining thirty-two pounders he probably had little to fear from her. As for the frigates, that was another matter; he could probably deal with either separate, though a well-handled thirty-eight to windward in a confined bay would be hard to escape from. But the two together...

He studied them with the most concentrated attention, with a perfectly cold, impartial, expert judgment; and more and more it became evident to him that the heavy frigate, though an elegant ship and a fine sailer, was handled in no more than a conscientious, journeyman fashion- a captain and crew that had spent more time in port than at sea in all weathers. They were not at home in their ship; there was a lack of coordination in her manoeuvres, a slowness, a certain hesitancy, that showed they were not used to working together. It seemed to him that they had no great sense of the sea. But that did not mean that her guns might not be very well served in the usual French style, nor that her broadside weight of metal was not far greater than his own. As for the smaller one, she had a more able commander, but she was slow; quite far astern already by the time the Surprise came abreast of the fort. Astern, but to windward: that was the devil of it. The two of them had the weather-gage.

It did not surprise him when the fort opened an ineffectual fire; from the first appearance of the French squadron he had been convinced that the Dey was their ally. But it did give him a most plausible excuse for doing what he had in mind.

He shied away and steered close-hauled for the western shore, once again pushing the Surprise as hard as ever she could go. Never had he felt so much one with his ship. In the somewhat lighter wind at the bottom of the bay she could wear a prodigious amount of canvas; he knew exactly how much she could stand and he gave it her; and she behaved like a thoroughbred, drawing well away from the big Frenchman, who had turned almost at the same moment and who was now sailing a parallel course two miles on the Surprise's starboard quarter, firing an occasional shot with her bow-chaser. The western shore came nearer, and several fishing-boats spreading their nets: nearer and nearer at this breakneck pace, and all the time Jack's mind was working out the courses open to him, the strength of the wind, his leeway- a smooth, barely conscious sequence of calculations.

In the quietness Jack called 'Stand by to go about. And at the word jump to it like lightning.' Another hundred yards: two hundred: and 'Helm a-lee,' he cried.

Once again the frigate came about with a perfect grace and raced northwards up the western coast towards the Brothers and the cape just beyond them. But now the full advantage of the weather-gage appeared: in spite of the Surprise's rapid turn and her greater speed, the Frenchmen had less distance to sail- they were in the position of horses on the inner rail in a race, with the Surprise confined to a distant outer rail; and unless she ran herself ashore it seemed that they must either cut her off before the Brothers or, by passing through them, pin her against the cape beyond.

There was dead silence aboard as the Brothers, with their three channels, swept towards them and the two French ships came pelting in. During this long straight run the heavy frigate had had time to pile on a great deal of canvas and now she was running as fast as the Surprise or even faster; and so as not to check their way, neither fired a shot. The heavy frigate was steering for the middle passage, which would bring her to the end of the cape before the Surprise: she would be lying there with her broadside presented as the Surprise worked along the headland. The twenty-eight-gun ship fetched the Surprise's wake to cut her off if, having passed the first channel, she tried to double back.