The Surgeon's Mate

by Patrick O'Brian

  From here he could see the whole bay perfectly well, the small islands at the bottom of it, the officers' houses and the barracks beyond, and half way down the bay, between the two flanking batteries, the Minnie, slowly taking in her topgallants as she glided towards the landing-place. A long, long pause while the work of the ship went on all round him and the Minnie crept on. At last she rounded-to and dropped her anchor some way from the shore. They seemed to be hoisting out a boat, but the declining sun sent such long shadows that he could scarcely make it out.

  'On deck, there,' he called. 'Send up a telescope.'

  Hyde brought it up himself. 'I can see them, sir,' he said. 'Just to the right—I mean to the left—of the large red house on shore.'

  Jack made no reply: he was hardly aware of the man's presence. There was Stephen, sharply focused in his glass, looking pale, but no paler than usual, sitting in the sternsheets while Wittgenstein pulled him towards a low jetty full of men drawn up in formal ranks that dissolved as Jack watched, leaving him in a state of the utmost doubt: he could not tell what it signified.

  In the boat itself Stephen sat quiet. The first signs had been favourable: the Minnie had not been fired upon; a voice from one of the flanking batteries as they sailed close in had called out to know whether they had brought any tobacco and the Danish cook's reply had brought a roar of satisfaction: but these were only preliminaries. The real test lay a hundred yards ahead, where those soldiers were waiting under arms. He had been weak enough to let himself be influenced by Jack's dismay at the childish omen, and by the young man's death; and although this was in some ways the easiest of his important missions he had a premonition of disaster. He wondered at it, and at his own attachment to life. There were so many exquisite things in it—the smell of the clean sea, the golden light of the westering sun, to say nothing of an eagle soaring on the wind. His strength was not as great as he had supposed.

  These contradictions, this conflict between theory and practice, were turning in his mind when his whole spirit was jerked into the immediate present by the sight of the ordered ranks on the jetty dissolving into an ordinary crowd, no more. It had been a guard of honour. At the sight of a mere black coat coming ashore it had been dismissed: its function was to honour superior officers, not civilians.

  Wittgenstein spun the little boat about and made a stern-board so that it bumped against the jetty. Stephen stood up, hesitated, leapt for a bollard with a sergeant standing by it, and missed his hold. He fell between the jetty and the boat, and coming to the surface called out in Catalan, 'Pull me out. Hell and death.'

  'Art a Catalan?' cried the sergeant, amazed.

  'Mother of God, of course I am,' said Stephen. 'Pull me out.'

  'I am amazed,' said the sergeant, staring; but two corporals next to him flung down their muskets, leaned over, took Stephen's hands, and drew him up.

  'Thank you, friends,' said he above a whole crowd of voices that wanted to know where he came from, what he was doing here, what news of Barcelona, Lleida, Palamos, Ripoll, what the ship had brought, and was there any wine. 'Now tell me, where is Colonel d'Ullastret?'

  'He wants the Colonel,' said some; others said 'Can't he see him?' and the crowd parted, pointing. Stephen saw a small, upright, familiar figure. 'Padri!' he cried.

  'Esteve!' cried his godfather, raising his arms, and they ran together and embraced, patting one another on the back in the Catalan manner.

  This Jack saw among the lengthening shadows as the sun dipped over Sweden, but he could not make it out clearly for the crowd. Was it a greeting? Was it an arrest? A savage conflict? Nor could he tell what it meant when the whole group moved off to the large house painted red, though he stared until the red faded and the whole bay was filled with darkness, pricked with lights here and there and the old glow of the furnaces.

  The Ariel stood on and off all night. He slept, or at least he lay down, until the middle watch, the dead hours of the night, when he climbed slowly into the dew-soaked top and sat there wrapped in his cloak, watching the stars and the lights of Aeolus and her transports, that had orders to close within signalling distance after sunset.

  He was there still at the changing of the watch, when the master came on deck and Fenton said 'There you have her. Topsails and jib, course north-east by east a half east one glass, south-west by west a half west the other glass, Captain to be called if anything happens—any lights or activity on shore.' Then, in a lower voice, 'He's in the maintop.'

  He was still there at the break of dawn, and as the light slowly mounted in the sky he wiped the dew from his objective-glass. He trained it first on the empty flagstaff and then at the end of the bay. They had already cleared all the deck cargo off the Minnie: but that proved nothing. Soldiers were already moving about, and he heard a trumpet high and clear, sounding a call he did not know. Gradually the red house resumed its colour; and presently he saw movement there, but too dim and far for any real distinction.

  Two bells, and they began to clean the decks below him: up to the flagstaff again, for the twentieth time, and this time there was a group of men at its foot. He saw the rolled colours run up, a small black ball, hesitate at the top, and break out, streaming bravely southwards: yellow with four red strips. Joy filled his thumping heart and he fixed it while he might have counted ten, to make certainty doubly sure; and as he looked he saw the little group of men throw up their hats, join hands, and dance in a ring: he thought he made out cheering from the shore. Then leaning over the rim he called 'Mr Grimmond, take her into the bay.'

  He was so stiff that he went down through the lubber's hole, chuckling to himself as he did so—'Lord, what a fat-arse I have become.' On the quarterdeck he gave orders for the signal that should bring the transports in, for the Catalan flags that should adorn the Ariel's mastheads, and for the coffee and Swedish bread that should still the grinding of his famished stomach. 'Mr Hyde,' he said, 'I should like the ship to look particularly well today, if you please: fit to receive a nobleman.'

  He stood there, eating and drinking on a cleaned, dried patch of deck, as the Ariel repassed the dreaded limit of the great guns' reach, and he noticed that the officers looked uncommonly alert and grave, staring up at the great batteries.

  'Pass the word for the gunner,' he said after a while. 'Mr Nuttall, we will salute the fortress with twenty-one guns, when I give the word.' He waited, waited until the Ariel was right between the two deadly flanking-batteries far within the bay and then said 'Carry on with the salute.'

  Crisp and clear, at precise intervals it came, and the moment the twenty-first gun had spoken, the rocks on either hand, all the great casemates rising one above another overhead, vanished in a swirling cloud of smoke that dimmed the sky and an enormity of sound, a universal roar. A cloud perpetually renewed, perpetually stabbed with flashes from every gun in Grimsholm, so that to the watching transports the whole island seemed to be in eruption; and this in a volume of sound so prodigiously great that the air, the sea, and the Ariel trembled and all her people stood motionless, stunned, amazed, deafened, until the last echoes rolled away and they slowly realized that this was the returning of their salute, their peaceful welcome.

  Chapter Nine

  They had set out from Carlscrona on a dirty night, taking anxiety with them and leaving anxiety behind, an anxiety perhaps harder to bear, since the Admiral and his political colleague could do nothing but wait for the event of the exceedingly important transactions taking place on the far side of the Baltic.

  They returned in the early afternoon of a charming day, transports, prize, Humbug and all ghosting over a light-green sea with barely a ripple on it, the warm southern air just far enough abaft the beam to allow all studdingsails to stand, so that even the overcrowded, slab-sided troop-carriers were a noble sight as they stood in, led by the Ariel, in a perfect line astern, each ship a cable's length from her neighbour, with the Minnie bringing up the rear. And they found a different Admiral, a younger, jolly man, no longer mordant
or severe; the Ariel had telegraphed her news from as far as signals could be made out; the flagship had been in a state of cheerful activity ever since, preparing for her guests, and the galley had been entirely taken over by the great man's cook and his mates.

  'I knew it, I knew it,' he said to Mr Thornton as they watched the Ariel's boat come across. 'I knew the man—I knew what he could do. It is the finest thing—I knew it would be so.'

  In the boat itself there was a grave silence: Jack was exhausted, not only by his exertions when the Minnie was aground, by the sleepless nights, by the general wear of spirit during the transfer, and by the writing of his official report, but even more by Colonel d'Ullastret's extraordinary loquacity. The Colonel spoke no English, but he was fluent, dreadfully fluent, in French, a language in which Jack could at least listen and in which, mindful of Stephen's warning that their guest must be handled with the greatest care, he had listened for hours and hours, doing his best to follow and in the rare pauses contributing remarks that might perhaps be appropriate and which he knew to be French, such as holy name of a dog, look me that, and blue belly—hours in which Stephen had deserted him to swim in the newly-recovered Catalanity of the transports. Now however the Colonel had fallen mute. Not only was he a dressy man even in time of peace, but like many soldiers he believed that there was a direct relation between military worth and perfection of uniform: his own had suffered grievously from the Baltic damp; its amaranth facings were now the colour of the mud at the bottom of a wine-barrel, the lace was tarnished, the tassel of one of his boots was gone, and perhaps worst of all his coat did not bear the marks of his present rank. The telescope had shown him the glittering array aboard the flagship, the scarlet and pipeclayed marines, the officers in their number-one cocked hats, the Admiral glorious in blue and gold; and Stephen could see that he was uneasy in his mind, discontented, ready to take offence and to detect a slight. The brooding expression softened a little as the flagship began the salute, the purely personal salute this time, and Stephen saw his godfather counting the guns one after another: thirteen, and he looked quite pleased; fourteen, then the fifteenth due to a grandee or a full admiral, and the Colonel nodded gravely. But his expression was still tense, and Stephen knew that it would not relax entirely until he had been welcomed aboard in a manner he thought appropriate and until he had a good dinner with at least a pint of wine under his shabby sword-belt.

  'Should I embrace the Admiral?' he whispered.

  'I doubt it,' said Stephen.

  'Lord Peterbuggah embraced my grandfather,' said the Colonel, with a dogged look.

  The boat hooked on: a moment's hesitation at the entering ladder, and they were in the midst of high naval ceremony, the wailing of bosun's calls, the grind, stamp and clash of Marines presenting arms, and here was the Admiral, stepping forward with his hand outstretched to greet Captain Aubrey. 'I knew it,' he said, 'I knew it would be so—I knew what you could do!'

  'You are very good, sir,' said Jack, 'but I did little more than stand off and on. The credit,' he added in a lower tone and with a significant look, 'lies in quite another place. Now, sir, permettez-moi de—how shall I put it?'

  'Présenter?' suggested the Admiral.

  'Thank you, sir: présenter Don d'Ullastret—l'Amiral Saumarez.'

  The Admiral swept off his hat: the Colonel spread his arms. After the very slightest pause, and to the unspeakable gratification of the quarterdeck, the Admiral embraced him on both cheeks, assured him with great truth and sincerity that he was very happy to see him aboard, and invited him to dinner, all this in a French somewhat more current than Jack's and certainly less hideous than the Colonel's; for the Admiral was a Guernsey man.

  Yet although his tongue was French his stomach was English, and the Colonel was faced with a dinner that would scarcely have been out of place at the Mansion House: much of it was very strange to him and much more was inedible for a Papist, this being Friday; but he was at the Admiral's right hand; he had precedence over a visiting Swedish officer of equal rank; and he steered his way between damnation and ill-manners with great good humour, eating the root-vegetables and greenstuff untainted by flesh, concealing as much meat as possible, and staying himself with bread and wine, drinking glass for glass with the Admiral, although the Admiral was twice his weight.

  At the other end of the table Mr Thornton was telling Stephen of their anguish of spirit during the Ariel's absence, an anguish made all the more poignant by the arrival of a cutter at dawn with the intelligence that General Mercier had embarked in the Minnie.

  'You talk of anxiety,' said Jack, catching the word during a pause in the happy laughter either side of him, 'but how would you like to be answerable day and night for a fragile, costly affair, the property of the King, perpetually at risk, in season and out? There is anxiety for you, I believe. We sea-officers are much to be pitied.'

  'Hear him, hear him,' said his neighbours.

  'You young fellows may prate about your cares,' said the Admiral, 'but what would you say if you had a squadron on your hands? You cannot conceive—but I was forgetting: Aubrey, you had the Mauritius command, so you know what it is. Yet even so, you can have no conception of the jading worry of settling a Baltic convoy, five or six hundred sail of merchantmen, even a thousand just before the ice stops navigation, and almost nothing to convoy them with. No, no; you are very well as you are, going quietly about your concerns, gathering all the glory and most of the prize-money.'

  Their respect for the Admiral was such that at any other time this might have passed, but now there was a general atmosphere of holiday and relaxation and cheerfulness, and the Admiral's good wine had been going round and round; passionate dissent broke out—there was no prize-money in the Baltic, and by the infamous new regulation that nothing was most scandalously divided—the captains had lost a whole eighth—and that eighth was most absurdly minced up and given to people who only played ducks and drakes with it, their share being so small, while the captains were reduced to abject poverty.

  'Never mind, gentlemen,' said the Admiral, 'there is still glory to be picked up in the Baltic—look at Aubrey here, as far as you can see him for his fresh laurels—and in any case who cares about filthy lucre?'

  Some of the captains looked as though they cared very much indeed, and one even observed 'Non olet' in an undertone; but when the Admiral called down the table to his flag-lieutenant, desiring him to 'tip us Heart of Oak', they listened to the young man's pure tenor with great approval as he sang 'Come cheer up my lads, 'tis to glory we steer,' and they joined in the chorus:

  Heart of oak are our ships,

  Heart of oak are our men,

  We always are ready,

  Steady, boys, steady . . .

  with a fine growling roar, the last deep steady making the wine ripple in the decanters.

  'We are singing about glory, sir,' said the Admiral to Colonel d'Ullastret.

  'There is no better subject for a song,' said the Colonel. 'Far more suitable than whining about some woman. I am a great friend to glory; and to song. With your permission, I will sing you one about Lord Peterbuggah and my grandfather, when they took Barcelona together—the most glorious feat of united British and Catalan arms.'

  The song was quite remarkably well received: indeed the whole afternoon passed off very pleasantly, not only in the flagship but aboard the transports too, where ring within ring of Catalans danced the sardana on the forecastle to the sound of oboes and a little drum, while during the intervals the foremasthands showed them the finer points of the hornpipe.

  'Lord, Stephen,' said Jack, when they had returned to the Ariel, 'I do not know that I have ever been so sleepy: I shall turn in as soon as we have unmoored.'

  'Surely we are not to set off again without a pause, for all love?'

  'Eh?'

  'Are we to set off at once? And on a Friday too?'

  'Yes, of course we are. You said yourself that the sooner they were repatriated the better; the Admiral
and the politico quite agreed; so here it is in my orders. You had better look at them: they speak of you. And as for its being Friday, I don't believe in omens any more, not after this last caper.'

  'We really might be a parcel of Wandering Jews,' said Stephen in a discontented voice. He took the orders and observed, 'There seems to be a somewhat petulant insistence upon command and authority here. After so agreeable and shall I say matey afternoon I should have looked for My dear Aubrey rather than this cold and peremptory Sir; and surely the whole tenor is arrogant, devoid of common amenity, calculated to arouse a spirit of indignant revolt. Sir, You are hereby required and directed to proceed without a moment's loss of time, in His Majesty's ship under your command, together with the ships and vessels named in the margin, to Hano Bay, where you will find a convoy under the protection of His Majesty's ships . . . I wish Humbug had been among them: such pompous hectoring tautologous semi-literate stuff . . . you will leave the convoy when you reach the Broad Fourteens and make your way with the utmost diligence to the Bordeaux stream, where you may expect to find His Majesty's ship Eurydice for intelligence of the situation in the Bight of Biscay; failing her you will proceed to Santandero or Passages for the same purpose . . . and in all matters having to do with the landing of the Spanish troops you will follow the advice of Dr S. Maturin, who alone is to determine . . . seek his guidance on the opportunity of . . . Marquess of Wellington . . . submit to his judgment . . . A man of any spirit would be more inclined to toss S. Maturin into the sea than to ask his advice after this . . . Spanish troops, forsooth.' He had been aware for some time that Jack was asleep, but he maundered on until Hyde came in with the news that the Ariel's signal to proceed to sea was flying aboard the flagship.