Book 8 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  'What were Ali's motives?'

  'He means to rebel himself: a loyal Mustapha was one of the few men who could stand in his way. If Ali sends Mustapha's head to Constantinople, that not only does away with the suspicions about his fidelity to the Sultan but also leaves the field quite clear. Besides, there was an old enmity between them, more or less patched up but never forgotten by Ali Pasha.'

  'So Ali means to take his head off at their conference?'

  'Yes, if Mustapha ever reaches it. But I think Ali really expects you to deal with the situation first, while he contents himself with confiscating Mustapha's treasure, harem, and beylik in the Sultan's name. That is why his counsellors gave me such very precise information about Mustapha's movements.'

  'It is hardly believable.'

  Graham said 'No . . . no,' in a vague, unmeaning voice and then begged to be excused—he could say no more.

  For the ten thousandth time Jack woke to the sound of holystones on deck: the Surprise might be going into action later in the day, but she was certainly going into it titivated to the nines, and the first lieutenant could be heard calling with unusual insistence for the removal of three spots of tar. Jack's whole massive form was utterly relaxed, yielding to the slow easy lift and roll: he had been on deck twice during the graveyard watch, but since then he had had some hours of deep, deep velvet sleep, and he felt perfectly rested, actively and positively well. The tension of that interminable waiting for the transports was gone, and with it his uncertainty and his immediate distress about Kutali and all the falsity and double-dealing on shore: his present course of action was clear-cut and perfectly direct at last, an operation that he was fully qualified to undertake by training, inclination, and the splendid instrument at his disposal, and one in which he needed no man's advice.

  Yet although he had been a great way down, the thought of their probable encounter with the Torgud had never left him: he had fallen asleep working out the weight of her broadside and now that he was awake his mind carried on the sum. But could the shocking great thirty-six-pounders be counted? Was the renegado to be believed when he said there were only nine rounds for them altogether? And then what was the Turks' gunnery like? A great deal would depend on that. If it was no better than their seamanship it would not be very formidable; but the two did not necessarily go together. As for numbers, the Torgud probably had about a hundred and fifty more men than Surprise when he saw her, but she would have lost a good many in her prize-crews, more than enough to compensate for the Surprises now in Malta or on their way back in the Dryad. He was on the point of exclaiming 'Thank God Dryad ain't here,'—for even an unhandy butter-box of her size would upset the fairly even match and take all the glory away—when he realized that nothing could be more presumptuous or unlucky, and choking back even the enunciation of the thought he sprang out of his cot, singing 'The lily, the lily, a rose I lay, The bailey beareth the bell away,' in his powerful melodious bass.

  Like a horizontal jack-in-a-box Killick shot in, carrying shaving-water; and lathering away Jack said to him, 'Breeches today, Killick. There are chances we may see action.'

  With Killick's goodwill Jack would never have worn anything but scrubbed old nankeen pantaloons and a threadbare coat with the lace taken off, while his good uniforms all lay in tissue-paper where no damp or sun could get at them. He now objected to any change on the grounds that a Turk and above all a rebellious Turk did not rate breeches. 'Lay out the breeches and top your boom,' said Jack firmly, when the nagging had been going on for some time. But when he pulled off his nightshirt and turned, he found that although the letter of the order had been obeyed the spirit, as usual, had not—before him lay a barely reputable pair of darned breeches, thread stockings, yesterday's shirt, and the coat whose sleeve he had ruined in Ismail's dinner. Of his own authority he opened a locker and took out the splendid affair he wore to visit admirals, pashas and governors; in this he walked on to the already crowded quarterdeck, and after a general 'Good morning' he surveyed the scene. A brilliant day with a high dappled sky and the sun a handsbreadth up astern; the breeze steady; the sea flecked with white where the wind caught the remains of the dying northern swell. From the traverse-board and the log-board it was clear that the Surprise was almost exactly where he had meant her to be: Cape Doro would lie a little abaft the beam over the starboard horizon, and right ahead Phanari should loom up within an hour or two. He took a couple of turns the whole length of the ship, breathing the sea-smell deep in after the closeness of his sleeping-cabin, and with it the damp fresh scent of newly-scrubbed planks: most of the ship's company were on deck, and he moved among faces he knew perfectly well. The men had had their breakfast, and they looked at him cheerfully, knowingly, expectantly, with a certain connivance or complicity; some were engaged in beautifying the long seams of the larboard gangway with a shining black preparation invented by Mr Pullings, but most were busy with such things as the breechings of the great guns or the chipping of round-shot to make it more perfectly spherical, truer in its flight, more deadly. The armourer was at his grindstone under the forecastle with a group of seamen round him relaying one another at the crank and giving advice; he had rows of shining cutlasses and boarding axes and officers' swords at his feet, and his mates were checking pistols by the score, while in a separate body a little farther aft the Marines, looking quite human in their shirt-sleeves, polished their already spotless muskets and bayonets.

  A couple of turns, and then saying to the officer of the watch, 'Mr Gill, pray lend me your glass,' he swung up over the hammocks, tightly packed in their netting, and so up and up for the pleasure of climbing, the strong easy motion of going aloft. The lookout, warned by the creaking of the shrouds, moved out apelike on the topgallant yard to make room and Jack installed himself at the crosstrees, gazing all round the vast blue disc spread taut below him and reaching to the sky on every hand: there to starboard lay Cape Doro, where it ought to be within half a point; and he believed he could just make out Phanari ahead. 'Simms,' he called to the man on the yard, 'keep a good lookout, d'ye hear me there? Our gentleman is likely to come up from the south, but since he is a Turk, he might come from anywhere.'

  With this he returned to the deck, where he found Stephen and Graham. He invited them to breakfast, together with Pullings and two youngsters, Calamy and Williamson; and while it was preparing he talked to the gunner about the amount of cartridge filled and to the carpenter about the provision of plugs to deal with forty-pound-ball shot-holes. 'For,' he said, 'our possible adversary—and I say only possible, Mr Watson . . .'

  'Or hypothetical, as you might put it, sir.'

  'Exactly so—is the Torgud, and she carries two Portuguese thirty-sixes, which is our forty-pounder, give or take a trifle.'

  'Hypothetical,' muttered Killick with great contempt, and then very loud, drowning the carpenter's reply, 'Wittles is up, sir, if you please.'

  It was a cheerful meal. Jack was a good host, and when he had time to concern himself with them he was fond of the little brutes from the midshipmen's berth; furthermore he was in remarkably high spirits and he amused himself and the young gentlemen extremely by dwelling at length on the fact that the country they had just quitted was practically the same as Dalmatia—a mere continuation of Dalmatia—so famous for its spotted dogs. He himself had seen quantities of spotted dogs—had even hunted behind a couple of braces—spotted dogs in a pack of hounds, oh Lord!—while the town of Kutali was positively infested with spotted youths and maidens, and now the Doctor swore he had seen spotted eagles . . . Jack laughed until the tears came into his eyes. In a Dalmatian inn, he said, by way of pudding you could call for spotted dick, give pieces of it to a spotted dog, and throw the remains to the spotted eagles.

  While the others were enlarging upon the possibilities, Graham said to Stephen in a low voice, 'what is this spotted eagle? Is it a joke?'

  'The aquila maculosa or discolor of some authors, Linnaeus' aquila clanga. The captain is pleased to be
arch. He is frequently arch of a morning.'

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' cried the midshipman of the watch, fairly racing in. 'Mr Mowett's duty and two sail on the larboard beam, topsails up from the masthead.'

  'Two?' said Jack. 'Are they ships?'

  'He cannot make out yet, sir.'

  'May I go, sir?' asked Pullings, half out of his chair, his face alive with eagerness.

  'Aye, do,' said Jack. 'We will eat up your bacon for you.'

  Ships they were. Turkish ships they were, although it was so early, and men-of-war: the Torgud and the Kitabi. Mustapha had sailed far sooner than had been expected; and being now perhaps less confident of Ali's good faith he had brought his consort with him.

  'Oh what a damnable thing,' cried Graham, when this was established beyond the tremor of a doubt. 'Oh what a bitter, bitter disappointment. Yet I am sure Osman gave me the best intelligence he had.' He fairly wrung his hands, and Jack said, 'Never be so concerned, sir: it will be somewhat harder, to be sure, but we must not despair of the republic.'

  'You cannot possibly attack both of them,' said Graham angrily. 'The Torgud carries thirty-two guns in all and nearly four hundred men, and the Kitabi twenty guns and a hundred and eighty. You are outnumbered by more than a hundred and eighty. There is no shame in retiring before such odds.'

  As he said this some of the people on the quarterdeck nodded; others adopted reserved, remote expressions; only Pullings and Mowett frowned with evident disapproval. Stephen thought he detected a predominant sense of agreement with Graham's remark: for his own part he did not feel qualified to form a naval opinion, but he did know how passionately Jack wished to wipe out the wretched affair at Medina and he suspected that desire might warp his judgement.

  'Why, Professor,' said Jack pleasantly, 'I believe you are almost in danger of poaching upon my province,' and Graham, recollecting himself, begged pardon and withdrew.

  Leaning over the hammocks in the starboard netting Jack watched them over the sparkling sea: the frigate and the twenty-gun ship were now not much above two miles away, keeping steadily to their original course under all plain sail while the Surprise stood towards them on the larboard tack, the south-east wind one point free.

  'Lord, how glad I am we weighed directly,' he said to himself. He smiled at the thought of his mad frustration had they arrived too late, all for the sake of the cables and hawsers ashore: he smiled and even chuckled aloud.

  By now the quarterdeck had all its officers and young gentlemen, all its proper foremast hands, signalmen, messengers and timoneers, together with everyone else in the ship who had a right to walk upon it, and Stephen and Professor Graham were wedged against the hances, behind the Captain's clerk and the purser.

  'It seems an uncouth long wait before anything happens,' said Graham in a low voice. 'I dare say you have seen many actions at sea?'

  'I have seen the beginnings of several,' said Stephen, 'but as soon as it grows dangerous I retire to a place of safety below.'

  'You are all very arch and jocose this morning,' said Graham discontentedly. Then, nodding towards the other side, where Jack and Pullings were discussing some point of their approach and laughing heartily as they did so, he said, 'Do you know the word fey, that we use in the north?'

  'I do not,' said Stephen. He was perfectly well acquainted with the word, but he did not wish to discuss his friend's dangerous high spirits with Graham.

  'I am not a superstitious man; but if those gentlemen are married and if their wives . . .'

  'All hands aft,' said Jack, and the howling of the calls and the sound of hundreds of feet drowned Graham's words.

  'I am not going to make a speech,' said Captain Aubrey to his men. 'We know one another too well to go on about duty. Very well. Now when we were in Medina I had to tell you not to fire into the enemy first, and since he would not begin we were obliged to come away without doing anything. Some of you were not quite pleased. This time it will be different. Those two Turkish men-of-war over there have rebelled against their Sultan.' The wrongs of the Sultan of Turkey left the Surprises quite unmoved: their expressions did not change in the slightest degree: they looked attentively at their Captain, who continued, 'And what is more they have taken our transports. So it stands to reason we must knock some sense into their heads, and get our prisoners and ships and cannon back. As I dare say you know, they have a good many men in them, so we are not likely to board very soon, but rather hammer them from a distance. You must fire into their hulls, right into their hulls, mind: fire low and true, deliberate fire with post paid on every ball. Mr Pullings, we may clear for action, and beat to quarters.'

  Very little required doing. All the warrant and petty officers had had plenty of warning and they had taken their measures: Mr Hollar, for example, had had his puddings and dolphins in the tops these hours past. Killick had already taken Jack's better clothes and possessions below, and Diana's dressing-case, horribly ringed and stained by Graham's cocoa, lay in its elaborate double case in the bread-room. All that remained was for the galley fires to be put out, for the carpenters to knock down the bulkheads of Jack's and the master's cabins, and for the gun-crews to take possession of the massive brutes that had been Jack's stable-companions, and it was done.

  The various officers reported to Pullings, and Pullings stepped up to Jack, saluted and said, 'A clean sweep fore and aft, sir, if you please.'

  'Thank you, Mr Pullings,' said Jack, and they stood there side by side, smiling and looking forward, over the starboard bow, at the immediate future coming towards them.

  The Surprise was silent, most of her men grave, as they usually were before action: grave, but not very much concerned, since there were few who had not run down on the enemy like this many times over. On the other hand, not many had run down to quite such odds, and some thought the skipper had bitten off more than he could chew. Most hands knew very well that Medina rankled at his heart, and the few stupid fellows were soon told. 'That is all wery fine and large,' said William Pole, on hearing the news. 'All wery fine and large, so long as I don't have to pay for it with my skin.'

  'For shame, Bill Pole,' said the rest of the gun-team.

  The Surprise bore down, therefore, under her fighting-sails, with her master at the con, her guns run out, powder-boys sitting well behind them on their leather cartridge-cases, shot-garlands full, splinter-netting rigged, scuttle-butts all along, decks damped and sanded, and wet fearnought screens over the hatches leading to the magazine far below, where the gunner sat among his little deadly kegs. Mowett had the forward division of guns on the maindeck, Honey, the senior master's mate, the after division, with midshipmen attending three aside each—the oldsters, that is to say, for Jack kept the boys who had breakfasted with him on the quarterdeck as aides-de-camp. Those Marines who were not quartered at the guns lined the gangway, looking particularly trim, their red coats strikingly brilliant against the white hammock-cloths and the now intense blue of the sea, in this powerful sunlight. Their lieutenant now stood amidships, with the purser and the captain's clerk, none of them speaking but all looking steadily forward at the Turks.

  In this silence Graham turned to Stephen, who had not yet gone below to his battle-station, and close to his ear said, 'What did Mr Aubrey mean by desiring the men to put post paid on every ball?'

  'In English law it is a capital offence to stop His Majesty's mails: by extension the stopping of any object marked post paid is also mortal. And indeed the man who stops a cannon-ball is unlikely to survive.'

  'So it was a joke?'

  'Just so.'

  'A joke at a time like this, good God forgive us? Such a man would be facetious at his father's burial.'

  In the last few minutes the ships had approached to within random shot, the Turks on Surprise's starboard bow holding their course without the slightest deviation, with the Kitabi abreast of the Torgud, a quarter of a mile to leeward. Bonden, the captain of the gun, kept the starboard chaser steadily trained on the Torgud's bows
, perpetually shifting it with his handspike. They were drawing together at a combined speed of ten miles an hour, and just before they came to point-blank range the silence was ripped apart by a great screaming blast of Turkish trumpets, harsh and shrill.

  'God, how it lifts your heart,' said Jack, and he gave the orders 'Colours at the fore and main.' With his glass he watched the crowded Turkish deck: saw the man at the halyards, followed the flags as they ran up in reply, and on seeing the regular Turkish ensign break out he reflected, 'He thinks we do not know yet: perhaps he hopes to slip by. But his guns are manned,' and aloud he called 'Professor Graham, pray come and stand by me. Mr Gill, wear round to the starboard tack and lay me within pistol-shot of his starboard side.'

  Now high seamanship showed its splendid powers: the sail-trimmer sprang from their guns; forecourse, staysails and jibs flashed out; the frigate leapt forward like a spurred horse and made her quick tight turn, as Jack knew she would do, bringing her larboard guns to bear when the Turks were still expecting her on the other side.

  'Shiver the foretopsail,' called Jack, with his eye on the Torgud's quarterdeck and her burly captain right under his lee. 'Mr Graham, call out to him that he must surrender directly. Larboard guns stand by.'

  Graham shouted loud and clear. Jack saw Mustapha's red beard part in a white gleam as he roared back his answer, a long answer.

  'In effect he refuses,' said Graham.

  'Fire.'

  The Surprise's entire broadside went off in a single explosion that shook both ships from truck to keelson and for a moment deadened the air; and now in the thick smoke rolling to leeward over the Torgud began the great hammering, red flashes in the gloom, iron crashing into the hulls on either side or howling overhead, an enormous all-pervading din, with ropes parting, blocks falling, jagged pieces of wood struck from the rails, the bulwark, the decks, and whistling across. After their hesitant start, they being caught on the wrong foot, the Turks fired hard and fast, though with no attempt at regularity, and the first shot of their starboard thirty-six-pounder tore a great gap in the hammocks, scored an eighteen-inch groove in the mainmast yet extraordinarily killed no men. But if the Torgud was firing pretty well or at least pretty fast, the Surprise was excelling herself: now that the broadsides were no longer simultaneous, the guns being out of step after the third or fourth discharge, it was hard to be sure, but judging by number seven, just under him, they were achieving something like a round in seventy seconds, while the quarterdeck carronades were doing even better; and Jack was very sure that their aim was a great deal truer than the Turks'. Glancing to windward he saw a wide area of sea torn up by Turkish grape and round-shot that must have missed by as much as twenty or thirty yards, and then as he paced up and down he stared to leeward, trying to pierce the smoke: 'I wonder the Turk bears it so long,' he said, and as he spoke he saw the Torgud's topsails bracing round as she edged away to join the Kitabi to leeward. He caught the master's eye: Gill nodded—he was already following the movement.