Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Just above a hundred now, sir. A hundred and two, to be exact.'

  'Well, well, well,' said Jack. in the Navy they did not think nine men and a powder-boy too much for an eighteen-pounder, seven and a boy for the twelves: a hundred and twenty-four men to fight the guns one side—a hundred and twenty-four beef- and pork-fed Englishmen, and another hundred to trim the sails, work the ship, repel boarders, ply the small arms, and fight the other side on occasion. He glanced at the Lascars squatting around their heap of junk, working under the orders of their turbanned serang; they might be tolerably good seamen in their way, perhaps, but they were very slight, and he could not see five or six of them running out a two-ton gun against the Atlantic roll. This impression of smallness was increased by the fact that most of them were cold; the few European members of the crew were in their shirts, but several of the Lascars had pea-jackets on as well, and all had a blueish tinge in their dark complexions.

  'Well, well, well,' said Jack again. He did not like to say more, for his opinion of the Lord Nelson was crystallizing fast, and any expression of it could not but give pain—Pullings must feel himself part of the ship. The young man certainly knew that Captain Spottiswood lacked all authority, and that the Lord Nelson moved like a log, and that she had twice missed stays off Cape Trafalgar, having to wear round at last: but there was certainly no point in putting this into words. He looked round for something that he could praise with at least an appearance of candour. The gleam of the brass larboard bow-gun caught his eye, and he commended it. 'Really quite like gold,' he said.

  'Yes,' said Pullings. 'They do it voluntary—poojah, poojah, they say. For days off the island and again when we touched at the Cape, they had a wreath of marigolds around the muzzle. They say their prayers to it, poor fellows, because they think it is like—well, sir, I hardly like to name what they think it is like. But she is medium dry, sir, and she is roomy—oh, as roomy as a first-rate. I have a vast great spacious cabin to myself. Would you do me the honour of stepping below, sir, and drinking a glass of arrack?'

  'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. And stretching himself cautiously on the locker in the vast great spacious cabin, he said, 'How do you come to be here, Pullings, in all your glory?'

  'Why, sir, I could not get a ship and they would not confirm me in my rank. "No white lapels for you, Pullings, old cock," they said. "We got too many coves like you, by half."'

  'What a damned shame,' cried Jack, who had seen Pullings in action and who knew that the Navy did not and indeed could not possibly have too many coves like him.

  'So I tried for a midshipman again, but none of my old captains had a ship themselves; or if they had—and the Honourable Berkely had—no vacancy. I took your letter to Captain Seymour—Amethyst, refitting in Hamoaze. Old Cozzens gave me a lift down as far as the Vizes. Captain Seymour received me very polite when I said I was from you, most obliging: nothing starchy or touch-me-not about him, sir. But he scratched his head and damned his wig when he opened the letter and read it. He said he would have blessed the day he could have obliged you, particularly with such advantage to himself, which was the civillest thing I ever heard—turned so neat—but that it was not in his power. He led me to the gun-room and the mids' berth himself to prove he could not take another young gentleman on to his quarter-deck. He was so earnest to be believed, though in course I credited him the moment he opened his mouth, that he desired me to count their chests. Then he gave me a thundering good dinner in his own cabin just him and me—I needed it, sir, for I'd walked the last twenty miles—and after the pudding we went over your action in the Sophie: he knew everything, except quite how the wind had veered, and he made me tell just where I had been from the first gun to the last. Then "damn my eyes," says he, "I cannot let one of Captain Aubrey's officers rot on shore without trying to stretch the little interest I have," and he wrote me one letter for Mr Adams at the Admiralty and another for Mr Bowles, a great man at East India House.'

  'Mr Bowles married his sister,' observed Jack.

  'Yes, sir,' said Pullings. 'But I paid little heed to it just then, because, do you see, Captain Seymour promised that Mr Adams would get me an interview with Old Jarvie himself, and I was in great hopes, for I had always heard, in the service, that he had a kindness for chaps that came in over the bows. So I got back to town again somehow, and there I was, double-shaved and all of a tremble in that old waiting-room for an hour or two. Mr Adams called me in, warns me to speak up loud and clear to his Lordship, and he is going on to say about not mentioning the good word you was so kind as to put in for me, when there's a bloody great din outside, like a boarding-party. Out he goes to see what's o'clock, and comes back with his face as blank as an egg. "The old devil," he said, "he's pressed Lieutenant Salt. Pressed him in the Admiralty itself, and has sent him off to the tender with a file of marines. Eight years' seniority, and he has sent him off with a file of Marines." Did you ever hear of it, sir?'

  'Never a word.'

  'Well, there was this Mr Salt right desperate for a ship, and he bombarded the First Lord with a letter a day for months and turned up every Wednesday and Friday to ask for an interview. And on the last Friday of all, the day I was there, Old Jarvie winked his eye, said "You want to go to sea? Then to sea you shall go, sir," and had him pressed on the spot.'

  'An officer? Pressed for a common sailor?' cried Jack. 'I've never heard of such a thing in my life.'

  'Nor nobody else: particularly poor Mr Salt,' said Pullings. 'But that's the way it was, sir. And when I heard that, and when people came in and whispered about it, I felt so timid-like and abashed, that when Mr Adams said perhaps I should try another day, I hurried out into Whitehall and asked the quickest way to East India House of the porter. I fell lucky—Mr Bowles was very kind—and so here I am. It's a good berth: twice the pay, and you are allowed a little venture of your own—I have a chest of China embroidery in the after-hold. But Lord, sir, to be in a man-of-war again!'

  'It may not be so long now,' said Jack. 'Pitt's back and Old Jarvie's gone—refused the Channel Fleet—if he weren't a first-rate seaman I'd say the devil go with him—and Dundas is at the Admiralty. Lord Melville. I'm pretty well with him, and if only we can spread a little more canvas and get in before all the plums are snapped up, it will go hard if we don't make a cruise together again.'

  Spreading more canvas: that was the difficulty. Ever since his disagreeable experience in latitude 33° N. Captain Spottiswood had been unwilling to set even his topgallant-sails, and the days passed slowly, slowly by. Jack spent much of his time leaning over the taffrail, staring into the Lord Nelson's gentle wake as it stretched away to the south and west, for he did not care to watch the unhurried working of the ship, and the sight of the topgallantmasts struck down on deck filled him with impatience. His most usual companions were the Misses Lamb, good-natured jolly short-legged squat swarthy girls who had gone out to India with the fishing-fleet—they called it that themselves, cheerfully enough—and who were now returning, maidens still, under the protection of their uncle, Major Hill of the Bengal Artillery.

  They sat in a line, with Jack between the two girls and a chair for Stephen on the left; and although the Lord Nelson was now in the Bay of Biscay, with a fresh breeze in the south-west and the temperature down in the fifties, they kept the deck bravely, cocooned in rugs and shawls, their pink noses peeping out.

  'They say the Spanish ladies are amazingly beautiful,' said Miss Lamb. 'Much more so than the French, though not so elegant. Pray, Captain Aubrey, is it so?'

  'Why, upon my word,' said Jack, 'I can hardly tell you. I never saw any of 'em.'

  'But was you not several months in Spain?' cried Miss Susan.

  'Indeed I was, but nearly all the time I was laid up at Dr Maturin's place near Lérida—all arches, painted blue, as they have in those parts; a courtyard inside, and grilles, and orange-trees; but no ladies of Spain that I recall. There was a dear old biddy that fed me pap—would not be denied—an
d on Sundays she wore a high comb and a mantilla; but she was not what you would call a beauty.'

  'Was you very ill, sir?' asked Miss Lamb respectfully.

  'I believe I must have been,' said jack, 'for they shaved my head, clapped on their leeches twice a day, and made me drink warm goat's milk whenever I came to my senses; and by the time it was over I was so weak that I could scarcely sit my horse—we rode no more than fifteen or twenty miles a day for the first week.'

  'How fortunate you were travelling with dear Dr Maturin,' said Miss Susan. 'I truly dote upon that man.'

  'I have no doubt he pulled me through—quite lost, but for him,' said Jack. 'Always there, ready to bleed or dose me, night and day. Lord, such doses! I dare say I swallowed a moderate-sized apothecary's shop—Stephen, I was just telling Miss Susan how you tried to poison me with your experimental brews.'

  'Do not believe him, Dr Maturin. He has been telling us how you certainly saved his life. We are so grateful; he has taught us to knot laniards and to splice our wool.'

  'Aye?' said Stephen. 'I am looking for the captain.' He peered inquisitively under the empty chair. 'I have news that will interest him; it is of interest to us all. The Lascars are suffering not from the buldoo-panee of their own miasmatic plains, whatever Mr Parley may maintain, but from the Spanish influenza! It is whimsical enough to reflect that we, in our haste, should be the cause of our own delay, is it not? For with so few hands we shall no doubt see our topsails handed presently.'

  'I am in no hurry. I wish this voyage would go on for ever,' said Miss Lamb, arousing an echo in her sister alone.

  'Is it catching?' asked Jack.

  'Oh, eminently so, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I dare say it will sweep the ship in the next few days. But I shall dose them; oh, I shall dose them! Young ladies, I desire you will take physic tonight: I have made up a comfortable little prophylactic bottle for you both, and another, of greater strength, for Major Hill. A whale! A whale!'

  'Where away?' cried Mr Johnstone, the first officer. He had been in the Greenland fishery when he was young, and his whole being responded to the cry. He had no answer, for Dr Maturin was squatting like a baboon, resting a telescope on the rail and training it with concentrated diligence upon the heaving sea between the ship and the horizon; but directing his gaze along the tube and staring under his two hands cupped Mr Johnstone presently saw the distant spout, followed by the hint of an immense slow roll; gleaming black against the grey.

  'Och, she's no good to you at all,' he said, relaxing. 'A finwhale.'

  'Could you really see its fins that great way off?' cried Miss Susan. 'How wonderful sailors are! But why is it no good, Mr Johnstone? Not quite wholesome, perhaps, like oysters without an R?'

  'There she blows!' cried Mr Johnstone, but in a detached, academic voice, from mere habit. 'Another one. See the spout, Miss Susan. Just a single fountain-jet: that means a finner—your right-whale shows two. Aye, aye, there she goes again. There must be a fair-sized pod. No good to man or beast. It vexes my heart to think of all that prime oil swimming there, no good to man or beast.'

  'But why is the whale no good?' asked Miss Lamb.

  'Why, because she is a finwhale, to be sure.'

  'My sister means, what is wrong with being a finwhale? Do you not, Lucy?'

  'The finner is too hugeous, ma'am. If you are so rash as to make an attempt upon her—if you creep up in the whale-boat and strike your harpoon home, she will bash the boat like a bowl of neeps as she sounds, maybe, and in any case she will run out your two-hundred-fathom whale-line in less than a minute—you bend on another as quick as you can—she runs it out—another, and still she runs. She tows you under, or she carries all away: you lose your line or your life or both. Which is as who should say, be humble, flee ambition. Canst thou draw up Leviathan with a hook? Confine thyself to the right-whale, thy lawful prey.'

  'Oh, I will, Mr Johnstone,' cried Miss Lamb. 'I promise you I shall never attack a finwhale all my life.'

  Jack liked to see a whale—amiable creatures—but he could tear himself away from them more easily than either Stephen or the person at the mast-head who was supposed to be looking-out, and for some time now he had been watching the white fleck of sails against the darkening westward sky. A ship, he decided at last: a ship under easy sail on the opposite tack.

  A ship she was, the Bellone, a Bordeaux privateer, one of the most beautiful to sail from that port, high and light as a swan, yet stiff; a thirty-four-gun ship-rigged privateer with a clean bottom, a new set of sails and two hundred and sixty men aboard. A fair proportion of those sharp-eyed mariners were at present in the tops or at the crowded mast-heads, and although they could not exactly make the Lord Nelson out, they could see enough to make Captain Dumanoir edge cautiously down for a closer look in the failing light.

  What he saw was a twenty-six-gun ship, that was certain; probably a man-of-war, but if so then a partially disabled man-of-war, or her topgallantmasts would never have been down on deck in such a breeze. And as Dumanoir and his second captain gazed and pondered in the main crosstrees all notion of the Lord Nelson's being a man-of-war gradually left them. They were old-experienced sailors; they had seen much of the Royal Navy in the last ten years; and there was something about the Lord Nelson's progress that did not square with their experience.

  'She's an Indiaman,' said Captain Dumanoir, and although he was only three parts convinced his heart began to thump and his arm to tremble; he hooked it round the topgallant shrouds and repeated, 'An Indiaman.' Short of a Spanish galleon or treasure-ship, a British Indiaman was the richest prize the sea could offer.

  A hundred little details confirmed his judgment; yet he might be wrong; he might be leading his precious Bellone into an action with one of those stubby English sixth-rates that carried twenty-four-pounder carronades, the genuine smashers, served by a numerous, well-trained, bloody-minded crew; and although Captain Dumanoir had no sort of objection to a dust-up with any vessel roughly his own size, King's ship or not, he was primarily a commerce destroyer; his function was to provide his owners with a profit, not to cover himself with glory.

  He regained his quarterdeck, took one or two turns, glancing up at the western sky. 'Dowse the lights one by one,' he said. 'And in fifteen minutes' time put her about. Courses and foretopsail alone. Matthieu, Jean-Paul, Petit-Andre, up you go: let them be relieved every glass, Monsieur Vincent.' The Bellone was one of the few French ships of the time in which these orders, together with others concerning the preparation of the guns and small-arms, were received without comment and exactly obeyed.

  So exactly that even before the lightening of the day the look-out on the Lord Nelson's forecastle felt the loom of a ship to the windward, a ship sailing on a parallel course and not much above a mile away. What he could not see was that the ship was cleared for action—guns run out, shot-racks charged, cartridge filled and waiting, small arms served out, splinter-netting rigged, yards puddened, boats towing astern—but he did not like her proximity, nor the lack of lights, and when he had stared awhile, wiping his streaming eyes, he hailed the quarterdeck: between his sneezes he gave Mr Pullings to understand that there was a vessel on the larboard beam.

  Pullings' mind, lulled by the long even send of the sea, the regular hum of the rigging, the warmth of his pilot-jacket and blackguardly wool hat, exploded into sharp awareness. He was out of his corner by the binnacle, half-way up the weather shrouds, before the sneezing had stopped: three seconds for a long hard stare, and he turned up the watch with the roar he had learnt aboard HMS Sophie. The boarding-netting was already rigging out on the long iron cranes by the time he had shaken Captain Spottiswood into full wakefulness—orders confirmed, beat to action, clear the decks, run out the guns, women down into the hold.

  He found Jack on deck in his nightshirt. 'She means business,' he said, over the high beating of the eastern drum. The privateer had put up her helm. Her yards were braced round and she was entering a long smooth curve that would
cut the Lord Nelson's present course in perhaps a quarter of an hour; her main and fore sails were dewed up, and it was clear that she meant to bear down under topsails alone—could do so with ease, a greyhound after a badger. 'But I have time to put my breeches on.'

  Breeches, a pair of pistols. Stephen methodically laying out his instruments by the light of a farthing dip.

  'What do you make of her, Jack?' he asked.

  'Corvette or a damned big privateer: she means business.'

  Up on deck. Much more daylight already, and a scene of less disorder than he had feared, a far better state of things. Captain Spottiswood had put the Indiaman before the wind to gain a few minutes' preparation, the French ship was still half a mile away, still under her topsails, still a little dubious, choosing to probe the Lord Nelson's strength rather than make a dash for it.

  Captain Spottiswood might lack decision, but his officers did not, nor the most part of his crew: they were used to the pirates of the South China Sea, to the wicked Malays of the Straits, to the Arabs of the Persian Gulf, and they had the boarding-netting rigged out taut and trim, the arms chest open, and at least half the guns run out.

  On the crowded quarterdeck Jack snapped in between two sets of orders, said, 'I am at your disposition, sir.' The drawn, hesitant, elderly face turned towards him. 'Shall I take command of the for'ard division?'

  'Do, sir. Do.'

  'Come with me,' he said to Major Hill, hovering there at the fringe of the group. They ran along the gangway to the forward eighteen-pounders, two under the forecastle, two bare to the thin rain. Pullings had the waist division; the first officer the twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck; Mr Wand the maindeck eighteen-pounders aft, all encumbered in the stateroom and the cabins; and overhead a tall thin midshipman, looking desperately ill, stood shouting weakly at the bow-gun's crew.

  The forward division on the larboard side, guns one, three, five and seven, were fine modern flintlock pieces; two were already run out—primed, cocked and waiting. Number one's port-lid was jammed, its crew prising with their crows and handspikes in the confined space, thumping it with shot, hauling on the port-tackle, all smelling of brown men in violent emotion. Jack bent low under the beams, straddled the gun: with his hands hard on the carnage he lashed out backwards with all his might. Splinters and flakes of paint dropped from the port: it did not budge—seemed built into the ship. Three times. He slipped off, hobbled round to check the breeching, cried 'Bowse her up' and as the gun's muzzle came hard against the port, 'Stand by, stand by.' He pulled the laniard. A spark, a great sullen crash (damp powder, by God), and the gun leapt back under him. The acrid smoke tore out of the shattered port, and as it thinned Jack saw the sponger already at work, his swab right down the barrel of the gun, while the rest of the crew clapped on to the train-tackle. 'They know their business' he thought with pleasure, leaning out and tearing the wreckage from its hooks. 'Crucify that God-damned gunner!' But this was no time for reflection. Number three was still inboard. Jack and Major Hill tailed on to the side-tackles, and with 'One—two—three' they ran it up, the carriage crashing against the port-sill and the muzzle as far out as it could go. Number five had no more than four Lascars and a midshipman to serve it, an empty shot-rack and only three wads: it must have run itself out on the roll when they cast loose. 'Where are your men?' he asked the boy, taking his dirk and cutting the seizing within the clinch.