Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  The supplementary orders came thick and fast, a continuous, repetitive, exasperated clamour. 'Lay aloft, jump to it, trice up, lay out, lay out—will you lay out there on the maintops' yard? Let fall, God damn your—eyes, let fall, mizzen tops'l. Sheet home. Hoist with a will, now, hoist away.'

  Christ, it was agony: it might have been an undermanned merchantman, a dung-scow in pandemonium: he clasped his hands behind his back and stepped to the rail to prevent himself running forward to sort out the confused bellowing on the fo'c'sle. The boats were coming straight for him, the second firing two or three muskets and a spatter of pistols.

  At last the bosun piped belay and the Polychrest began to surge forward, lying over to the wind. Keeping his eye on the advancing boats he said, 'Mr Goodridge, lay her in to give the gunner a clear shot. Mr Macdonald, your marksmen into the top—fire at the second boat.'

  Now the sloop was really moving, opening the angle between the two boats: but at the same time the first boat began to turn towards her, shielding its pursuer from his fire. 'The boat ahoy,' he roared. 'Steer clear of my stern—pull a-starboard.'

  Whether they heard, whether they understood or no, a gap appeared between the boats. The forward carronades went off—a deep crash and a long tongue of flame. He did not see the fall of the shot, but it had no effect on the following boat, which kept up its excited fire. Again, and this time he caught it, a split-second plume in the grey, well short, but in the right direction. The first musket cracked out overhead, followed by three or four together. A carronade again, and this time the ball was pitched well up to the second boat, for the Polychrest had moved two or three hundred yards: it must have ricocheted over their heads, for it damped their ardour. They came on still, but at the next shot the pursuing boat spun round, fired a last wanton musket and pulled fast out of range.

  'Heave her to, Mr Goodridge,' said Jack. 'Back the mizzen tops'l. The boat, ahoy! What boat?' There was a gabbling out there on the water, fifty yards away. 'What boat?' he hailed again, leaning far over the rail, the rain driving in on his face.

  'Bourbon,' came a faint cry, followed by a strong shout, 'Bourbon' again.

  'Pull under my lee,' said Jack. The way was off the Polychrest, and she lay there pitching and groaning. The boat touched alongside, hooked to the mainchains, and in the glow of the battle-lanterns he saw a body crumpled in the stern-sheets.

  'Le monsieur est touché,' said the man with the boat-hook.

  'Is he badly hurt—mauvaisement blessay?'

  'Sais pas, commandant. Il parle plus: je crois bien que c'est un macchabée à present. Y à du sang partout. Vous voulez pas me faire passer une élingue, commandant?'

  'Eh? Parlez—pass the word for the Doctor.'

  It was not until they had got his patient into Jack's cabin that Stephen saw his face. Jean Anquetil, a nervous, timid-brave, procrastinating, unlucky young man: and he was bleeding to death. The bullet had nicked his aorta, and there was nothing, nothing he could do: the blood was pumping out in great throbs.

  'It will be over in a few minutes,' he said, turning to Jack.

  'And so, sir, he died within minutes of being brought aboard,' said Jack.

  Admiral Harte grunted. He said, 'That is everything he had on him?'

  'Yes, sir. Greatcoat, boots, clothes and papers: they are very bloody, I am afraid.'

  'Well, that is a matter for the Admiralty. But what about this death-or-money boat?'

  So that was the reason for his ill-humour. 'I sighted the boat when I was on my station, sir; there were fifty-three minutes to go before the rendezvous, and if I had borne down I must necessarily have been late—I could never have beaten back in time. You know what the Polychrest is on a bowline, sir.'

  'And you know the tag about workmen and their tools, Captain Aubrey. Anyhow, there is such a thing as being too scrupulous by half. The fellow was never at the rendezvous at all: these foreigners never are. And in any case, half an hour or so . . . and it positively could not have been more, even with a crew of old women. Are you aware, sir, that Amethyst's boats picked up that Deal bugger as he was running into Ambleteuse with eleven hundred guineas aboard? It makes me mad to think of it . . . made a cock of the whole thing.' He drummed his fingers on the table. The Amethyst was cruising under Admiralty orders, Jack reflected; the flag-officer had no share in her prize-money; Harte had lost about a hundred and fifty pounds, he was not pleased 'However,' went on the admiral, 'it is no use crying over spilt milk. As. soon as the wind gets out of the south, I am taking the convoy down. You will wait here for the Guinea men to join, and the ships in the list Spalding will give you: you are to escort them as far as the Rock of Lisbon, and I have no doubt on your way back you will make good this little mess. Spalding will give you your orders you will find no cast-iron rigid rendezvous'

  By morning the wind had shifted into the west-north-west, and the blue peter broke out at a hundred foretopmastheads: boats by the score hurried merchant captains, mates, passengers and their relatives from Sandwich, Walmer, Deal and even Dover, and many a cruel extortionate bargain was struck when the flagship's signals, reinforced by insistent guns, made it clear that time was short, that this time was the true departure. Towards eleven o'clock the whole body, apart from those that had fallen foul of one another, was under way in three straggling divisions, or rather heaps. Orderly or disorderly, however, they made a splendid sight, white sails stretching over four or five miles of grey sea, and the high, torn sky sometimes as grey as the one or as white as the other. An impressive illustration of the enormous importance of trade to the island, too; one that might have served the Polychrest's midshipmen as a lesson in political economy and on the powers of the average seaman at evading the press—there were some thousands of them there, sailing unscathed from the very heart of the Impress Service.

  But they, in common with the rest of the ship's company, were witnessing punishment. The grating was rigged, the bosun's mates stood by, the master-at-arms brought up his delinquents, a long tally charged with drunkenness—gin had been coming aboard from the bum-boats, as it always did—contempt, neglect of duty, smoking tobacco outside the galley, playing dice, theft. On these occasions Jack always felt gloomy, displeased with everybody aboard, innocent and guilty alike: he looked tall, cold, withdrawn, and, to those under his power, his nearly absolute power, horribly savage, a right hard horse. This was early in the commission and he had to establish an unquestioning discipline; he had to support his officers' authority. At the same time he had to steer fine between self-defeating harshness and (although indeed some of these charges were trivial enough, in spite of his words with Parker) fatal softness; and he had to do so without really knowing three quarters of his men. It was a difficult task, and his face grew more and more lowering. He imposed extra duties, cut grog for three days, a week, a fortnight, awarded four men six lashes apiece, one nine, and the thief a dozen. It was not much, as flogging went; but in the old Sophie they had sometimes gone two months and more without bringing the cat out of its red baize bag: it was not much, but even so it made quite a ceremony, with the relevant Articles of War read out, the drum-roll, and the gravity of a hundred men assembled.

  The swabbers cleaned up the mess, and Stephen went below to patch or anoint the men who had been flogged—those, that is to say, who reported to him. The seamen put on their shirts again and went about their business, trusting to dinner and grog to set them right: the landsmen who had not been beaten navy-fashion before were much more affected—quite knocked up; and the thieves' cat had made an ugly mess of thief Carlow's back, the bosun's mate being first cousin to the man he robbed.

  He came on deck again shortly before the men were piped to dinner, and seeing the first lieutenant walking up and down looking pleased with himself, he said to him, 'Mr Parker, will you indulge me in the use of a small boat in let us say an hour? I could wish to walk upon the Goodwin sands at low tide. The sea is calm; the day propitious.'

  'Certainly, Doctor,' said t
he first lieutenant, always good-humoured after a flogging. 'You shall have the blue cutter. But will you not miss your dinner?'

  'I shall take some bread, and a piece of meat.'

  So he paced this strange, absolute and silent landscape of firm damp sand with rivulets running to its edges and the lapping sea, eating bread with one hand and cold beef with the other. He was so low to the sea that Deal and its coast were out of sight; he was surrounded by an unbroken disc of quiet grey sea, and even the boat, which lay off an inlet at the far rim of the sand, seemed a great way off, or rather upon another plane. Sand stretched before him, gently undulating, with here and there the black half-buried carcasses of wrecks, some massive, others ribbed skeletons, in a kind of order whose sense escaped him, but which he might seize, he thought, if only his mind would make a certain shift, as simple as starting the alphabet at X—simple, if only he could catch the first clue. A different air, a different light, a sense of overwhelming permanence and therefore a different time; it was not at all unlike a certain laudanum-state. Wave ripples on the sand: the traces of annelids, solens, clams: a distant flight of dunlins, close-packed, flying fast, all wheeling together and changing colour as they wheeled.

  His domain grew larger with the ebbing of the tide; fresh sandpits appeared, stretching far, far away to the north under the cold even light; islands joined one another, gleaming water disappeared, and only on the far rim of his world was there the least noise—the lap of small waves, and the remote scream of gulls.

  It grew smaller, insensibly diminishing grain by grain; everywhere there was a secret drawing-in, apparent only in the widening channels between the sandbanks, where the water was now running frankly from the sea.

  The boat's crew had been contentedly fishing for dabs all this time, and they had filled two moderate baskets with their catch.

  'There's the Doctor,' said Nehemiah Lee, 'a-waving of his arms. Is he talking to hisself, or does he mean to hail us?'

  'He's a-talking to hisself,' said John Lakes, an old Sophie. 'He often does. He's a very learned cove.'

  'He'll get cut off, if he don't mind out,' said Arthur Simmons, an elderly, cross-grained forecastleman. 'He looks fair mazed, to me. Little better than a foreigner.'

  'You can stow that, Art Simmons,' said Plaice. 'Or I'll stop your gob.'

  'You and who to help you?' asked Simmons, moving his face close to his shipmate's.

  'Ain't you got no respect for learning?' said Plaice. 'Four books at once I seen him read. Nay, with these very eyes, here in my head,'—pointing to them—'I seen him whip a man's skull off, rouse out his brains, set 'em to rights, stow 'em back again, clap on a silver plate, and sew up his scalp, which it was drooling over one ear, obscuring his dial, with a flat-seam needle and a pegging-awl, as neat as the sail-maker of a King's yacht.'

  'And when did you bury the poor bugger?' asked Simmons, with an offensive knowingness.

  'Which he's walking the deck of a seventy-four at this very moment, you fat slob,' cried Plaice. 'Mr Day, gunner of the Elephant, by name, better than new, and promoted. So you can stuff that up your arse, Art Simmons. Learning? Why, I seen him sew on a man's arm when it was hanging by a thread, passing remarks in Greek.'

  'And my parts,' said Lakey, looking modestly at the gunwale.

  'I remember the way he set about old Parker when he gagged that poor bugger in the larboard watch,' said Abraham Bates. 'Those was learned words: even I couldn't understand above the half of 'em.'

  'Well,' said Simmons, vexed by their devotion, that deeply irritating quality, 'he's lost his boots now, for all his learning.'

  This was true. Stephen retracted his footsteps towards the stump of a mast protruding from the sand where he had left his boots and stockings, and to his concern he found that these prints emerged fresh and clear directly from the sea. No boots: only spreading water, and one stocking afloat in a little scum a hundred yards away. He reflected for a while upon the phenomenon of the tide, gradually bringing his mind to the surface, and then he deliberately took off his wig, his coat, his neckcloth and his waistcoat.

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' cried Plaice. 'He's a-taking off his coat. We should never have let him off alone on those—-sands. Mr Babbington said "Do not let him go a-wandering on them—sands, Plaice, or I'll have the hide off your—back". Ahoy! The Doctor ahoy, sir! Come on, mates, stretch out, now. Ahoy, there!'

  Stephen took off his shirt, his drawers, his catskin comforter, and walked straight into the sea, clenching his mouth and looking fixedly at what he took to be the stump of mast under the pellucid surface. They were valuable boots, soled with lead, and he was attached to them. In the back of his mind he heard the roaring desperate hails, but he paid no attention: arrived at a given depth, he seized his nose with one hand, and plunged.

  A boathook caught his ankle, an oar struck the nape of his neck, partly stunning him and driving his face deep into the sand at the bottom: his foot emerged, and he was seized and hauled into the boat, still grasping his boots. They were furious. 'Did he not know he might catch cold?—Why did he not answer their hail? It was no good his telling them he had not heard; they knew better; he had not got flannel ears—Why had he not waited for them?—What was a boat for?—Was this a proper time to go a-swimming?—Did he think this was midsummer? Or Lammas?—He was to see how cold he was, blue and trembling like a fucking jelly.—Would a new-joined ship's boy have done such a wicked thing? No, sir, he would not.—What would the skipper, what would Mr Pullings and Mr Babbington say, when they heard of his capers?—As God loved them, they had never seen anything so foolish: He might strike them blind, else.—Where had he left his intellectuals? Aboard the sloop?' They dried him with handkerchiefs, dressed him by force, and rowed him quickly back to the Polychrest. He was to go below directly, turn in between blankets—no sheets, mind—with a pint of grog and have a good sweat. He was to go up the side now, like a Christian, and nobody would notice. Plaice and Lakey were perhaps the strongest men in the ship, with arms like gorillas; they thrust him aboard and hurried him to his cabin without so much as by your leave, and left him there in the charge of his servant, with recommendations for his present care.

  'Is all well, Doctor?' asked Pullings looking in with an anxious face.

  'Why, yes, I thank you, Mr Pullings. Why do you ask?'

  'Well, sir, seeing your wig was shipped arsy-versy and your comforter all ends up, I thought may be you had had a misfortune, like.'

  'Oh, no: not at all, I am obliged to you. I recovered them none the worse—I flatter myself there is not such a pair in the kingdom. The very best Cordova ass's leather. They will not suffer from a thoughtless hour's immersion. Pray, what was all the ceremony as I came into the ship?'

  'It was for the Captain. He was only a little way behind you—came aboard not five minutes ago.'

  'Ah? I was not aware he had been out of the ship.'

  Jack was obviously in high spirits. 'I trust I do not disturb you,' he said. 'I said to Killick, "Do not disturb him on any account, if he is busy." But I thought that with such a damned unpleasant night outside, and the stove drawing so well in, that we might have some music. But first take a sup of this madeira and tell me what you think of it. Canning sent me a whole anker—so good-natured of him. I find it wonderfully grateful to the palate. Eh?'

  Stephen had identified the smell that hung about Jack's person and that wafted towards him as he passed the wine. It was the French scent he had bought in Deal. He put down his glass composedly and said, 'You must excuse me this evening, I am not quite well, and I believe I shall turn in.'

  'My dear fellow, I am so sorry,' cried Jack, with a look of concern. 'I do hope you have not caught a chill. Was there any truth in that nonsense they were telling me, about your swimming off the sands? You must certainly turn in at once. Should you not take physic? Allow me to mix you a strong . . .'

  Shut firmly in his cabin, Stephen wrote. 'It is unspeakably childish to be upset by a whiff of scent; but I am upset, a
nd I shall certainly exceed my allowance, to the extent of five hundred drops.' He poured himself out a wineglassful of laudanum, closed one eye, and drank it off. 'Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it—nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour—and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnamable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, by the use of a word; and so it strikes afresh every time, bringing with it all the circumstances of its first perception. This is particularly true when a considerable period of time has elapsed. The whiff, the gust, of which I speak brought me the Diana of the St Vincent ball, vividly alive, exactly as I knew her then, with none of the vulgarity or loss of looks I see today. As for that loss, that very trifling loss, I applaud it and wish it may continue. She will always have that quality of being more intensely alive, that spirit, dash and courage, that almost ludicrous, infinitely touching unstudied unconscious grace. But if, as she says, her face is her fortune, then she is no longer Croesus; her wealth is diminishing; it will continue to diminish, by her standard, and even before her fatal thirtieth year it may reach a level at which I am no longer an object of contempt. That, at all events, is my only hope; and hope I must. The vulgarity is new, and it is painful beyond my power of words to express: there was the appearance of it before, even at that very ball, but then it was either factious or the outcome of the received notions of her kind—the reflected vulgarity of others; now it is not. The result of her hatred for Sophia, perhaps? Or is that too simple? If it grows, will it destroy her grace? Shall I one day find her making postures, moving with artful negligence? That would destroy me. Vulgarity: how far am I answerable for it? In a relationship of this kind each makes the other, to some extent. No man could give her more opportunity for exercising all her worst side than I. But there is far, far more to mutual destruction than that. I am reminded of the purser, though the link is tenuous enough. Before we reached the Downs he came to me in great secrecy and asked me for an antaphrodisiac.