Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  POST CAPTAIN

  Patrick O'Brian is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. His first novel, Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories have recently been reprinted by HarperCollins. He translated many works from French into English, among the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the first volume of Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime's contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he was awarded an honurary doctorate of letters by Trinity College, Dublin. He died in January 2000 at the age of 85.

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  This paperback edition 2003

  Previously published in B-format paperback

  by HarperCollins 1996

  Reprinted four times

  Previously published in paperback by HarperCollins 1993

  Reprinted twice

  Also published in paperback by Fontana 1971

  Reprinted eleven times

  First published in Great Britain by

  HarperCollinsPublishers 1972

  Copyright © The estate of the late Patrick O'Brian CBE 1972

  Patrick O'Brian asserts the moral right to

  be identified as the author of this work

  ISBN 978-0-00-649916-9

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  FOR MARY, WITH LOVE

  Chapter One

  At first dawn the swathes of rain drifting eastwards across the Channel parted long enough to show that the chase had altered course. The Charwell had been in her wake most of the night, running seven knots in spite of her foul bottom, and now they were not much above a mile and a half apart. The ship ahead was turning, turning, coming up into the wind; and the silence along the frigate's decks took on a new quality as every man aboard saw her two rows of gun-ports come into view. This was the first clear sight they had had of her since the look-out hailed the deck in the growing darkness to report a ship hull-down on the horizon, one point on the larboard bow. She was then steering north-north-east, and it was the general opinion aboard the Charwell that she was either one of a scattered French convoy or an American blockade-runner hoping to reach Brest under cover of the moonless night.

  Two minutes after that first hail the Charwell set her fore and main topgallants—no great spread of canvas, but then the frigate had had a long, wearing voyage from the West Indies: nine weeks out of sight of land, the equinoctial gales to strain her tired rigging to the breaking-point, three days of lying-to in the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and it was understandable that Captain Griffiths should wish to husband her a little. No cloud of sail, but even so she fetched the stranger's wake within a couple of hours, and at four bells in the morning watch the Charwell cleared for action. The drum beat to quarters, the hammocks came racing up, piling into the nettings to form bulwarks, the guns were run out; and the warm, pink, sleepy watch below had been standing to them in the cold rain ever since—an hour and more to chill them to the bone.

  Now in the silence of this discovery one of the crew of a gun in the waist could be heard explaining to a weak-eyed staring little man beside him, 'She's a French two-decker, mate. A seventy-four or an eighty: we've caught a tartar, mate.'

  'Silence there, God damn you,' cried Captain Griffiths. 'Mr Quarles, take that man's name.'

  Then the grey rain closed in. But at present everyone on the crowded quarterdeck knew what lay behind that drifting, formless veil: a French ship of the line, with both her rows of gun-ports open. And there was not one who had missed the slight movement of the yard that meant she was about to lay her foresail to the mast, heave to and wait for them.

  The Charwell was a 32-gun 12-pounder frigate, and if she got close enough to use the squat carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle as well as her long guns she could throw a broadside weight of metal of 238 pounds. A French line-of-battle ship could not throw less than 960. No question of a match, therefore, and no discredit in bearing up and running for it, but for the fact that somewhere in the dim sea behind them there was their consort, the powerful 38-gun 18-pounder Dee. She had lost a topmast in the last blow, which slowed her down, but she had been well in sight at nightfall, and she had responded to Captain Griffiths's signal to chase: for Captain Griffiths was the senior captain. The two frigates would still be heavily outgunned by the ship of the line, but there was no doubt that they could take her on: she would certainly try to keep her broadside to one of the frigates and maul her terribly, but the other could lie on her bow or her stern and rake her—a murderous fire right along the length of her decks to which she could make almost no reply. It could be done: it had been done. In '97, for example, the Indefatigable and the Amazon had destroyed a French seventy-four. But then the Indefatigable and the Amazon carried eighty long guns between them, and the Droits de l'Homme had not been able to open her lower-deck ports—the sea was running too high. There was no more than a moderate swell now; and to engage the stranger the Charwell would have to cut her off from Brest and fight her for—for how long?

  'Mr—Mr Howell,' said the captain. 'Take a glass to the masthead and see what you can make of the Dee.'

  The long-legged midshipman was half-way to the mizzentop before the captain had finished speaking, and his 'Aye-aye, sir' came down through the sloping rain. A black squall swept across the ship, pelting down so thick that for a while the men on the quarterdeck could scarcely see the forecastle, and the water ran spouting from the lee-scuppers. Then it was gone, and in the pale gleam of day that followed there came the hail. 'On deck, sir. She's hull-up on the leeward beam. She's fished her . . .'

  'Report,' said the captain, in a loud, toneless voice. 'Pass the word for Mr Barr.'

  The third lieutenant came hurrying aft from his station. The wind took his rain-soaked cloak as he stepped on to the quarterdeck, and he made a convulsive gesture, one hand going towards the flapping cloth and the other towards his hat.

  'Take it off, sir,' cried Captain Griffiths, flushing dark red. 'Take it right off your head. You know Lord St Vincent's order—you have all of you read it—you know how to salute . . .' He snapped his mouth shut; and after a moment he said, 'When does the tide turn?'

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Barr. 'At ten minutes after eight o'clock, sir. It is almost the end of slack-water now, sir, if you please.'

  The captain grunted, and said, 'Mr Howell?'

  'She has fished her main topmast, sir,' said the midshipman, standing bareheaded, tall above his captain. 'And has just hauled to the wind.'

  The captain levelled his glass at the Dee, whose topgallant-sails were now clear above the jagged edge of the sea: her top-sails too, when the swell raised both the frigates high. He wiped the streaming objective-glass, stared again, swung round to look at the Frenchman, snapped the telescope shut and gazed back at the distant frigate. He was alone
there, leaning on the rail, alone there on the holy starboard side of the quarterdeck; and from time to time, when they were not looking at the Frenchman or the Dee, the officers glanced thoughtfully at his back.

  The situation was still fluid; it was more a potentiality than a situation. But any decision now would crystallize it, and the moment it began to take shape all the succeeding events would follow of themselves, moving at first with slow inevitability and then faster and faster, never to be undone. And a decision must be made, made quickly—at the Charwell's present rate of sailing they would be within range of the two-decker in less than ten minutes. Yet there were so many factors . . . The Dee was no great sailer close-hauled on a wind; and the turning tide would hold her back—it was right across her course; she might have to make another tack. In half an hour the French 36-pounders could rip the guts out of the Charwell, dismast her and carry her into Brest—the wind stood fair for Brest. Why had they seen not a single ship of the blockading squadron? They could not have been blown off, not with this wind. It was damned odd. Everything was damned odd, from this Frenchman's conduct onwards. The sound of gunfire would bring the squadron up . . . Delaying tactics.

  The feeling of those eyes on his back filled Captain Griffiths with rage. An unusual number of eyes, for the Charwell had several officers and a couple of civilians as passengers, one set from Gibraltar and another from Port of Spain. The fire-eating General Paget was one of them, an influential man; and another was Captain Aubrey, Lucky Jack Aubrey, who had set about a Spanish 36-gun xebec-frigate not long ago with the Sophie, a 14-gun brig, and had taken her. The Cacafuego. It had been the talk of the fleet some months back; and it made the decision no less difficult.

  Captain Aubrey was standing by the aftermost larboard carronade, with a completely abstracted, non-committal look upon his face. From that place, being tall, he could see the whole situation, the rapidly, smoothly changing triangle of three ships; and close beside him stood two shorter figures, the one Dr Maturin, formerly his surgeon in the Sophie, and the other a man in black—black clothes, black hat and a streaming black cloak—who might have had intelligence agent written on his narrow forehead. Or just the word spy, there being so little room. They were talking in a language thought by some to be Latin. They were talking eagerly, and Jack Aubrey, intercepting a furious glance across the deck, leant down to whisper in his friend's ear, 'Stephen, will you not go below? They will be wanting you in the cockpit any moment now.'

  Captain Griffiths turned from the rail, and with laboured calmness he said, 'Mr Berry, make this signal. I am about to . . .'

  At this moment the ship of the line fired a gun, followed by three blue lights that soared and burst with a ghostly effulgence in the dawn: before the last dropping trail of sparks had drifted away downwind she sent up a succession of rockets, a pale, isolated Guy Fawkes' night far out in the sea.

  'What the devil can she mean by that?' thought Jack Aubrey, narrowing his eyes, and the wondering murmur along the frigate's decks echoed his amazement.

  'On deck,' roared the look-out in the foretop, 'there's a cutter pulling from under her lee.'

  Captain Griffiths's telescope swivelled round. 'Duck up,' he called, and as the clewlines plucked at the main and foresails to-give him a clear view he saw the cutter, an English cutter, sway up its yard, fill, gather speed, and come racing over the grey sea, towards the frigate.

  'Close the cutter,' he said. 'Mr Bowes, give her a gun.'

  At last, after all these hours of frozen waiting, there came the quick orders, the careful laying of the gun, the crash of the twelve-pounder, the swirl of acrid smoke eddying briefly on the wind, and the cheer of the crew as the ball skipped across the cutter's bows. An answering cheer from the cutter, a waving of hats, and the two vessels neared one another at a combined speed of fifteen miles an hour.

  The cutter, fast and beautifully handled—certainly a smuggling craft—came to under the Charwell's lee, lost her way, and lay there as trim as a gull, rising and falling on the swell. A row of brown, knowing faces grinned up at the frigate's guns.

  'I'd press half a dozen prime seamen out of her in the next two minutes,' reflected Jack, while Captain Griffiths hailed her master over the lane of sea.

  'Come aboard,' said Captain Griffiths suspiciously, and after a few moments of backing and filling, of fending-off and cries of 'Handsomely now, God damn your soul,' the master came up the stern ladder with a bundle under his arm. He swung easily over the taffrail, held out his hand and said, 'Wish you joy of the peace, Captain.'

  'Peace?' cried Captain Griffiths.

  'Yes, sir. I thought I should surprise you. They signed not three days since. There's not a foreign-going ship has heard yet. I've got the cutter filled with the newspapers, London, Paris and country towns—all the articles, gentlemen, all the latest details,' he said, looking round the quarterdeck. 'Half a crown a go.'

  There was no disbelieving him. The quarterdeck looked utterly blank. But the whispered word had flown along the deck from the radiant carronade-crews, and now cheering broke out on the forecastle. In spite of the captain's automatic 'Take that man's name, Mr Quarles,' it flowed back to the mainmast and spread throughout the ship, a full-throated howl of joy—liberty, wives and sweethearts, safety, the delights of land.

  And in any case there was little real ferocity in Captain Griffiths's voice: anyone looking into his close-set eyes would have seen ecstasy in their depths. His occupation was gone, vanished in a puff of smoke; but now no one on God's earth could ever know what signal he had been about to make, and in spite of the severe control that he imposed upon his face there was an unusual urbanity in his tone as he invited his passengers, his first lieutenant, the officer and the midshipman of the watch to dine with him that afternoon.

  'It is charming to see how sensible the men are—how sensible of the blessings of peace,' said Stephen Maturin to the Reverend Mr Hake, by way of civility.

  'Aye. The blessings of peace. Oh, certainly,' said the chaplain, who had no living to retire to, no private means, and who knew that the Charwell would be paid off as soon as she reached Portsmouth. He walked deliberately out of the wardroom, to pace the quarterdeck in a thoughtful silence, leaving Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin alone.

  'I thought he would have shown more pleasure,' observed Stephen Maturin.

  'It's an odd thing about you, Stephen,' said Jack Aubrey, looking at him with affection. 'You have been at sea quite some time now, and no one could call you a fool, but you have no more notion of a sailor's life than a babe unborn. Surely you must have noticed how glum Quarles and Rodgers and all the rest were at dinner? And how blue everyone has always looked this war, when there was any danger of peace?'

  'I put it down to the anxieties of the night—the long strain, the watchfulness, the lack of sleep: I must not say the apprehension of danger. Captain Griffiths was in a fine flow of spirits, however.'

  'Oh,' said Jack, closing one eye. 'That was rather different; and in any case he is a post-captain, of course. He has his ten shillings a day, and whatever happens he goes up the captains' list as the old ones die off or get their flag. He's quite old—forty, I dare say, or even more—but with any luck he'll die an admiral. No. It's the others I'm sorry for, the lieutenants with their half-pay and very little chance of a ship—none at all of promotion; the poor wretched midshipmen who have not been made and who never will be made now—no hope of a commission. And of course, no half-pay at all. It's the merchant service for them, or blacking shoes outside St James's Park. Haven't you heard the old song? I'll tip you a stave.' He hummed the tune, and in a discreet rumble he sang.

  'Says Jack, "There is very good news, there is peace both by land and by sea;

  Great guns no more shall be used, for we all disbanded be,"

  Says the Admiral, "That's very bad news;" says the captain, "My heart will break;"

  The lieutenant cries, "What shall I do? For I know not what course for to take."

  Says th
e doctor, "I'm a gentleman too, I'm a gentleman of the first rank; I will go to some country fair, and there I'll set up mountebank."

  Ha, ha, that's for you, Stephen—ha, ha, ha—

  Says the midshipman, "I have no trade; I have got my trade for to choose,

  I will go to St James's Park gate, and there I'll set black of shoes;

  And there I will set all day, at everybody's call,

  And everyone that comes by, 'Do you want my nice shining balls?' "

  Mr Quarles looked in at the door, recognized the tune and drew in a sharp breath; but Jack was a guest, a superior officer—a master and commander, no less, with an epaulette on his shoulder—and he was broad as well as tall. Mr Quarles let his breath out in a sigh and closed the door.

  'I should have sung softer,' said Jack, and drawing his chair closer to the table he went on in a low voice, 'No, those are the chaps I am sorry for. I'm sorry for myself too, naturally—no great likelihood of a ship, and of course no enemy to cruise against if I do get one. But it's nothing in comparison of them. We've had luck with prize-money, and if only it were not for this infernal delay over making me post I should be perfectly happy to have a six months' run ashore. Hunting. Hearing some decent music. The opera—we might even go to Vienna! Eh? What do you say, Stephen? Though I must confess this slowness irks my heart and soul. However, it's nothing in comparison of them, and I make no doubt it will be settled directly.' He picked up The Times and ran through the London Gazette, in case he should have missed his own name in the first three readings. 'Toss me the one on the locker, will you?' he said, throwing it down. 'The Sussex Courier.'