Even in a frigate as well worked-up as the Surprise the order 'man and arm boats' was rarely carried out in under twenty-five minutes, the system of tackles to the fore and main yardarms being so cumbrous; and the launch was scarcely in the water before the Frenchmen in the Truelove had grown suspicious. They were gathering on the shore and moving through the village southwards along the stream, carrying bundles.
The launch and blue cutter were already full of men, however, and Jack called 'Go ahead with what you have, Mr Davidge, and do your best to hold them until the rest come up.'
'I shall do my very best, sir,' said Davidge, looking up and smiling. 'Shove off. Give way.'
The boats raced for the shore and ran far up the sand; the men bundled out, holding their muskets high, and almost at once they disappeared into the tree-ferns.
When the other cutter and the gig were on their way Jack hurried up into the foretop. The deep belt of tree-ferns thinned out to a country of tall grass scattered with bushes and small but very thick patches of wood, full of lianas. The column could be seen here and there, still in reasonable formation, but much drawn-out, the leading men doing their best to keep up with the extraordinarily agile Davidge. Their muskets gleamed in the sun, and their cutlasses as they slashed at the lianas and the undergrowth.
The Frenchmen had now started running too, throwing down their bundles but not their arms. They, like Davidge, were clearly aiming for the point where the stream broke out of the mountains in a narrow gorge; and although the distance from the column's landing-place to the gorge was much the same as that from the village, the Frenchmen had the advantage of the road cut for the gun.
'Even so,' said Jack, clasping his hands with great force, 'we had half an hour's start." The line was becoming still more drawn-out, Davidge going like a thoroughbred: he was running not indeed for his life but rather for his living, for all that made life worth while. The other boats had now landed their men, and they were tearing along the track already made - the tree-ferns could be seen waving as they passed. 'Oh no, oh no!' he cried as a body of Surprises, outstripped, tried to catch up by forcing their way straight through a brake criss-crossed with thorny creepers. 'Would God I had gone with them,' he said; and he was about to lean over and call 'Tom, try a long shot at the Frenchmen on the road,' when he realized that the sound of the gun would act as a spur, doing certain harm for almost no likelihood of good.
The Surprises had now come to fairly clear country and the two lines were converging fast. Davidge had reached the stream: he was across it: he climbed the far bank and stood in the gorge, facing the three leading French, his sword in his hand. He ran the first through the body, pistolled the second, and the third brought him down with a clubbed musket. From that moment on it was impossible to make out particular actions: more Surprises hurled themselves across the stream, more Frenchmen came up the road as fast as they could run. Dust rose over the close fighting, the hand-to-hand battle in the gorge; there was a steady crackle of musket-fire as the reinforcements came up taking the Frenchmen from behind and picking off those who were not yet engaged or those few who tried to run back.
The shouting died; the dust settled. It was clear that Davidge's men had won. Jack took the ship across to lie alongside the Truelove, landed in the jollyboat with Stephen, Martin and Owen to interpret, and walked fast along the road towards the gorge. He was silent, more exhausted than if he had taken part.
It was a small group they met, men of Davidge's division, carrying his body.
'Was anyone else killed?' asked Jack.
'Harry Weaver copped it, sir,' said Paget, captain of the foretop, 'and William Brymer, George Young and Bob Stewart were so badly hurt we dursn't move them. And there are some more their mates are helping down to the boats.'
'Did any French survivors get away?'
'There weren't no survivors, sir.'
By the height of flood everything was laid along: the wounded had been brought down, the Trueloves who had taken refuge in a puuhonua, a sanctuary so profoundly taboo that even Kalahua would not allow the French to violate it, had been recovered, and the Surprise, followed by the Truelove, had warped across the harbour to the northern side of the narrows, waiting for the first of ebb to waft them through.
As Stephen came into the cabin Jack looked up and said 'How are your patients coming along?'
'Tolerably well, I thank you. At one time I was doubtful about Stewart's leg - I even reached for the saw - but now I believe that with the blessing we may save it. The rest of our people are mostly straightforward cut or stab wounds, though some poor fellows from the Truelove are in a sad way. Is there any coffee in that pot?"
'I believe so. I had not the heart to finish it; I am afraid it may be cold.' Stephen poured his cup in silence. He knew how Jack hated watching a battle rather than take part in it, and how he would brood over orders he might have given - ideal orders that would have meant victory at no cost to his own people. 'But at least I can give you some good news,' Jack went on. 'One of the Trueloves from the taboo place was born in the Sandwich Islands - Tapia is his name, a chief's son, intelligent, speaks uncommon good English and he knows these parts very well. He it was that told the others about the puuhonua when they had to cut and run after their captain and his mate were killed. And he says he is confident that once we get out, if we get out, he can pilot us through the reefs. I am amazingly glad of it, because although Wainwright's chart is a good one, picking up his bearings on a moonless night would be a damned anxious business.'
'Sir,' said Killick, coming in with a tray, 'which I brought you a pot and a decanter.'
'God shield you from death, Preserved Killick,' said Stephen. 'I could do with both. Faith, so I could.'
'And would your honour like some hot water?'
'Perhaps I should,' said Stephen, looking at his hands, which were gloved over with brown dried blood. 'It is a curious thing, but though I nearly always clean my instruments I sometimes forget my person.' Washed and drinking coffee and brandy in alternate sips, he said 'But tell me, brother, why should you wish to grope through the darkness? The sun always rises.'
'There is not a moment to be lost. Kalahua means to attack on Friday in the morning, whether he can get his gun there in time or not: his god says he cannot fail.'
'How do you know?'
'Tapia told me: he had it from his sweetheart, who brought him food in the puuhonua, and all the news. If we do not get out on this ebb and with this moderate backing wind we may lose essential days - we may even have to wait for the change of the moon. What I hope, what I very much hope to do is to run down to Eeahu by Wednesday, tell Puolani that she is about to be attacked and that we shall defend her against Kalahua and the Franklin if she will promise to love King George, and so make our arrangements to deal with either or both with at least a day in hand.'
'Very good.' Stephen considered for a while and then asked 'What have you learnt of the Franklin?'
'It appears that although Dutourd is no great seaman he now has a Yankee sailing-master, as they say in America, who is: the ship is a flyer, and he drives his people very hard. Of course, with only twenty-two nine-pounders, a broadside of ninety-nine pounds, she is scarcely a match for us, with a hundred and sixty-eight, not counting carronades; but a fight at sea can turn on one lucky shot, as you know very well, and I had much rather not have to cope with her and perhaps her prize at the same time as Kalahua. I ought to have said, by the way, that Dutourd took all his seamen out of the Truelove to run after this chase, so he would have plenty of hands to serve his guns. Come in.'
'If you please, sir,' said Reade, 'Mr West says the tide is on the turn.'
They waited until the gentle current had grown to a stream that gurgled round their stern and tightened the hawsers from ship to shore so that they rose above the surface, almost straight, in a low dripping curve, and the palm-trees, which acted as bollards, leant still more. 'Let go,' called Jack, and the two ships moved smoothly out through the
narrows.
The wealth of precautions - tow-line to the launch anchored out in the bay to heave her head to windward if she sagged, hands poised to fend her off the rock, a complication of lines to the Truelove - proved unnecessary: they both passed through with ten yards to spare and instantly flashed out topsails to gather way enough to go about on their first leg. The Surprise had a remarkably clean bottom, even now, and she had always been brisk in stays; she came round easily. But Jack, watching the deep-laden bluff-bowed Truelove, had a horrible feeling that she was not going to manage it; and that since there was no room to box off, still less to wear, Tom Pullings would have to club-haul her: a perilous manoeuvre with an unknown crew. The critical moment passed, and with it his extreme anxiety: she filled on the starboard tack - she was round, and the Surprises would have joined the Trueloves' cheer - she was an uncommonly valuable prize - if Davidge's body had not been lying there, sewn up in a hammock with four cannon-balls at his feet and an ensign over him.
The next tack took them clear of the harbour, though the Truelove was within biscuit-toss of the headland. Tapia's sweetheart, who had kept pace in her canoe, said goodbye and he took the ship along the landward side of the reef and so through the dog-leg passage, the Truelove following. Here in the fading light they both heaved to the kind and steady wind. Aboard the Surprise the ship's bell tolled; Martin said the proper, deeply moving words; men from Davidge's division fired three volleys; and his body slid over the side.
They filled again, passed two small islands with their attendant reefs - Tapia pointed out their bearings against the dark peaks of Moahu - and then they were in the open sea.
Oakes took the first watch, and while he was on duty Stephen came on deck to breathe: the air of the sick-berth, in spite of the wind-sails, was uncommonly fetid. Apart from the heat and the numbers, two of the rescued Trueloves had shockingly neglected and mortifying wounds. Clarissa was sitting there in the light of the stern lantern and for a while they talked about the extraordinary phosphorescence of the sea -the wake stretched away in pale fire until it joined the Truelove's bow-wave - and the brilliance of the stars in the black black sky. Then she said 'Oakes was very deeply grieved not to be one of the landing-party; and I am afraid Captain Aubrey was sadly upset by - by the casualties.'
'He was indeed; yet you are to observe that if fighting-men, accustomed to battle from their youth, were to mourn for their companions as long as they might in civil life, they would run melancholy mad.'
Oakes came aft: he said 'Give you joy of our prize, Doctor. I have scarcely seen you since we took her. It is true that the Truelove's guns were all spiked?'
'So I understand: all but one. Tapia told me that Captain Hardy and his mates were spiking the last when the Frenchmen killed them.'
'How do you spike a gun?' asked Clarissa.
'You drive a nail or something of that kind down the touch-hole, so that the flash of the priming don't reach the charge. You can't fire the gun till you get the spike out,' said Oakes.
'It appears that they used steel spikes, which the Franklin's gunner could not deal with. He was going to try drilling new touch-holes when they went off in chase of the ship they are still pursuing,' said Stephen.
Two bells. 'All's well' called the lookouts round the ship, and Oakes went forward to receive the quartermaster's report of 'Six knots, sir, if you please' and to chalk it on the log-board. Coming back, he said 'I know it ain't genteel to talk about money, sir, but I must say the prize could not have come at a better moment for Clarissa and me.' He spoke with a touching earnestness, and by the light of the stern-lantern Stephen caught a look of tolerant affection on her face. 'All the hands are busy reckoning their shares. The Truelove's merchant's clerk told them the worth of the cargo to the last penny, and Jemmy Ducks says the little girls may get close on nine pounds apiece - they walk about scarcely touching the deck, and thinking of presents. You, sir, are to have a blue coat lined with white, whatever it may cost.'
'Bless them,' said Stephen. 'But I did not know they formed part of the ship's company.'
'Oh yes, sir. The Captain rated them boys, third class, long ago, so that Jemmy might have their allowance, to ease his spirits.'
'Oh!' cried Clarissa. 'What, what is this?' She held up a writhing viscous object.
'A flying squid,' said Stephen. 'If you count, you will find he has ten legs.'
'Even if he had fifty, he would have no business spoiling the front of my dress,' she said quite mildly. 'Fly off, sir' - tossing it over the rail.
With the breeze steady on their larboard quarter they went easily along under single-reefed topsails, sitting in their island of lantern-light surrounded by darkness, and talking in a desultory, amiable fashion bell after bell, while the wind sang in the rigging, the blocks creaked rhythmically and the ritual cries were repeated at their due intervals.
Half-way through the watch Oakes left them. 'I am happy to have this chance of speaking to you,' said Stephen, 'because I should like to ask you whether you would welcome the opportunity of going home - of returning to England."
'I have hardly thought about it,' said Clarissa. 'My only wish was to get away from New South Wales, away rather than to anywhere. I have not really thought at all. The present, with all its inconveniences, seemed to me the natural present; and if I had not with great perseverance contrived to make myself so generally disliked I could think of nothing better than sailing on and on and on.'
'Dear Clarissa, collect yourself. I must be back in the sick-berth very soon. Suppose Captain Aubrey were to send this prize away under the command of Mr Oakes, would you rejoice at the thought of seeing England again?'
'Dear Doctor, pray consider: of course I should like to be in England again, but I was transported, and if I were to return before my time I might be taken up and sent back again, which I could not bear.'
'Not, I believe, as a married woman; and if you were to keep away from St James's Street, the likelihood of your being recognized is less than that of your being struck by a thunderbolt. And even in that case I have connexions who are as it were lightning-conductors. I am speaking to you in this fashion, Clarissa, because I believe that you are a discreet and honourable woman, one. who has a friendship for me as I have a friendship for her, one who understands the value of silence. If you return, I will give you a letter to a friend of mine who lives in Shepherd Market, a good, decent man who would like to hear all that you told me and more and who would certainly protect you in the extraordinarily unlikely event of your being taken up.'
After a long silence Clarissa said 'To be sure, I had rather be in England than anywhere else. But what could I do there? As you know, a midshipman has no half-pay; and I could not go back to Mother Abbott's: not now.'
'No, no, never in life. There is not the least question of that, at all. Captain Aubrey has considerable influence with the Admiralty; my friend more still; and if between them they did not get Oakes a ship at once, he having passed for lieutenant, you would set up house with him for a while. If they succeed, why sure, you might feel lonely, as perhaps my wife does when I am at sea, and you might stay with her. She has a vast great house in the county - whatever county it is behind Portsmouth. Far too big for a woman and she alone apart from our little Brigid and a few servants and the horses. She breeds Arabians.' He spoke a little at random; Clarissa was clearly troubled, and she probably did not attend.
'Yes,' she said, 'but suppose I had done something wrong in Botany Bay - suppose I had committed a capital crime like... like throwing a baby down a well, for example, and suppose that finding me gone they had sent word to England, might I not be sent back for trial?'
'Listen, my dear, with ifs you can put all Paris into a bottle. The protection I offer you will, with reasonable discretion on your part, cover you from a multitude of sins, many or even most of them capital. Here is Padeen, his soul to the Devil, and I must go. Think of what I have said, now: speak to no one - the whole thing is a mere hypothesis, sinc
e I may not persuade the Captain - tell no one at all what I have said, and let me know yea or nay with a look in the morning. Come and be examined if ever there is time. I am away. God bless, now.'
It was morning before he reached the quarterdeck again, a brilliant morning with the sun well up and green land, ending in Eeahu Point, all along the starboard beam. Tapia was at the foremasthead, guiding the ship through the passage in the south-eastern reef. 'All clear now, sir,' he hailed. 'Nine fathom water all the way till you open the bay.' He came down and continued his conversation with the two canoes that had been alongside for some time, and Jack noticed the jollyboat shove off from the Truelove's side, with his armourer in it. 'Come up the sheet a trifle,' he said, to check the frigate's way: vain words - attentive hands had already done it.
'Which the coffee is getting cold,' said Killick. 'And the squids won't be worth eating.'
'Mr Smith wishes to tell you that the armourer has unspiked all the Truelove's guns,' said Pullings, coming across the deck and taking off his hat.
The information came down the chain of command to the armourer, who stepped forward, wheezing and chuckling, gave Jack a handkerchief full of spikes, all with an internal screw-thread tapped into the thick end and all glistening with sweet oil. 'I learnt that ploy in the old Illustrious,' he said, chuckling still.
'And it was an illustrious deed, too,' said Jack. 'Well done, Rogers, upon my word. Good morning, Doctor. You could not have timed your arrival better: we have fried squids for breakfast.'
The squids dispatched, the proper enquiries after the sick-berth made, and a fresh pot of coffee begun, Jack said quietly, 'It may seem flying in the face of Providence to talk about what to do after a battle before you have fought it; but some things, like preventer-stays, have to be laid on before-hand, although in the event they may not prove useful. So I will say this: the gunroom's problems would be best resolved if I were to send Oakes in with the prize. But what would his wife think of it? I do not want to order that good modest young woman back if she don't choose to go. What do you think? You know her so much better than I do.'
The Truelove Page 25