Book 17 - The Commodore

by Patrick O'Brian

  Stephen and his assistants and the potto in her darkened cage went ashore through intense activity: while his young men did all that was needed at the apothecary's, Stephen hurried to Mrs Wood with his charge and took his leave—his forced unwilling leave, as he observed—strangely moved. No young woman could have been kinder.

  Back on board he saw the powder-hoys cast off, and in the waist the resigned merchant sailors being assigned to their watch and station. Within eleven and a half hours of Jack's emphatic order the blue peter broke out at the foretopmast head: one or two boats and some frantic canoes came racing through the moderate surf; and at the twelfth hour the squadron stood out to sea in a perfect line, steering west-north-west with a full topsail breeze just abaft the beam and the band of the Aurora playing loud and clear:

  Come cheer up my lads, 'tis to glory we steer

  To add something new to this wonderful year:

  To honour we call you, not press you like slaves,

  For who are so free as we sons of the waves?

  Chapter Ten

  Commodore Aubrey stood on the main topgallant crosstrees of the Bellona, about a hundred and forty feet above the broad grey sea: they were a frail support for a man of his weight and with even this moderate roll and pitch his sixteen or seventeen stone moved continually through a series of irregular swooping curves that might have puzzled an ape, the roll alone swinging him seventy-five feet; but although he was conscious of the starboard watch bending a heavy-weather topsail to the yard below him (the glass was dropping steadily), he was unaware of the movement, the varying centrifugal forces, or the wind howling round his ears, and he stood there as naturally as at home he would have stood on the small landing at the top of the Ashgrove Cottage stairs. He gazed steadily into the north-east, where he could see the Laurel's topsails clear above the horizon, fifteen miles away while the Laurel's lookout commanded a horizon still farther off, where the Ringle was lying, at the limit of fair-weather communication: but never a hint of a signal did the Laurel show. Slinging his telescope and changing the arm that held him to the topgallant shrouds, he pivoted to scan the south-west ocean. Here the expected cloud-bank obscured much of the lower sky, but he could still make out the white flash of the Orestes brig, herself in touch with the Nimble cutter, three leagues beyond. At the moment, therefore, he was at the centre of a circle fifty miles across in which no vessel could move unseen; but presently his far-off ships and smallcraft would be moving closer, the sun would set among the south-west clouds, and the night, with almost certain dirty weather, would set in. No moon.

  He had been here, with his whole squadron in tolerable shape after an often difficult run from Sierra Leone, some forty degrees of latitude away, eight days before the earliest date that naval intelligence had given for the meeting of the French squadron with their seventy-four, their line-of-battle ship from the west, in 42°20'N, 18°30'W, and during these eight days, with fairly kind winds and clear weather, he had cruised slowly north-east till noon and south-west till sunset each side of centre. Nothing had he seen except for a recent outward-bound Bristol merchantman which had met with never a sail since the chops of the Channel and which was in this out-of-the-way corner of the sea because of a wicked American privateer schooner that was playing Old Harry farther south. But these eight days had had seven nights between them, and an eighth was just at hand.

  Another glance into the north-east, and he saw that the Laurel was already steering for the squadron, close-hauled on the larboard tack. Another, and much longer, south-west, for that was the vital quarter: if he did not intercept that seventy-four, and if the French commander knew how to handle his ship, the squadron so heavily outnumbered faced disgrace.

  He turned, slung his glass again and made his way down, heavy with care. Stephen heard him talking to Tom Pullings in the coach, covered his code-book and the innumerable variations of Blaine's message that he had worked out, shifting numbers, letters, combinations in the hope of finding his old friend's initial mistake and so making sense of his sheet: so far, after many days of the closest application, he had only reached a firmer conviction that the group he half-recognized at first did in fact refer to Diana. He locked his desk-top, wiped the anxiety off his face, and returned to the great cabin. When Jack came in he found him sitting before a tray of bird's skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said, 'To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.'

  'Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat.'

  He sank into a reverie, while Stephen went on sorting and labelling his skins. He had an intimate conviction that the seventy-four had slipped through from the west by night, and that the odds against his squadron would be very great. That was not unexpected in the service. Sir Robert Calder with fifteen of the line had met the combined French and Spanish fleet off Finisterre under Villeneuve with twenty: he was court-martialled and blamed for having taken only two: to be sure, he had left the English coast unguarded and he was censured for misjudgment rather than misconduct; but even so . . . Nelson, with nine seventy-fours, one of which ran aground, came upon Brueys with ten, together with three eighty-gun ships and his own splendid 120-gun l'Orient, fourteen battle-ships in all, in the bay of Aboukir, attacked them at once, and burnt, took or destroyed all but two. And on another scale altogether, he himself, commanding a fourteen-gun brig, had boarded and carried a Spanish frigate mounting thirty-two. But then Nelson knew his captains, knew his ships: and he knew the enemy too. 'Never mind manoeuvres,' he had said to Jack one memorable evening, 'always go at them.'

  Yes, but at that time the enemy was not a really eminent seaman: he had been shut up in port for years on end, his crew were not used to working a ship quickly in heavy seas (or in any others, quite often) nor to fighting her guns with bloody resolution; and discipline was poor. Now however the case was altered. Nelson would never have advised the captain of the Java to go straight at the USS Constitution, entirely neglecting manoeuvres.

  Nelson had known his captains: the young Jack Aubrey had known the crew of the Sophie intimately, after long cruising cooped up together in that little sloop. For all their faults and frequent drunkenness, they could be relied upon to act together without hesitation in the approach to battle and in battle itself, and to deal with frightful odds. On the other hand, the older Jack did not know his captains, apart from Howard of the Aurora and Richardson of the Laurel. Where Duff was concerned, he had no doubt of his personal courage: the trouble there was the possibility of discipline having declined so far as to interfere with the seamanlike working of the ship into action and during the course of it. As for Thomas of the Thames, the Emperor, there was no telling: very heavy brutes might prove courageous in battle; but it was quite certain that if he fought, he would not fight his ship intelligently—Lack of sense as well as lack of experience guaranteed that. Jack did not worry much about the fighting-spirit of the crew. They had been brought up to a reasonable standard of gunnery, and he had always found that once a ship was thoroughly engaged, the gun-team working fast, all together and with the roundshot flying, the roar of guns and the powder-smoke did away with shyness in the most unpromising. They might sometimes get rid of very tyrannical officers, accidentally-done-a-purpose—but he had never known them stop fighting unless their ship were forced to strike.

  No: in this engagement—for engagement there would have to be, whether the other French seventy-four joined or not—the heart of the matter would almost certainly lie in manoeuvres, in ship-handling; and with poor discipline in the Stately and poor seamanship in the Thames that near-certainty so daunted his heart that when he could not command his mind it kept putting forward plans of attack that reduced the factor almost to the vanishing-point.

  'I do not think there is any more futile occupati
on,' he said aloud, 'than talking about what should be done in a battle at sea until you know the direction and force of the wind, the numbers on both sides, their relative position, the state of the sea, and whether it will take place by day or . . . By God, Stephen, I could swear I smelt toasted cheese. We have not had toasted cheese before our music this last age and more.'

  A short pause, and at some distance, through the scent of the sea, the mingled reverberation of taut rigging and the creak of wood, Killick's voice could be heard addressing his mate: 'You heard, Art. You ain't got flannel ears. I said open the door with your arse and let me through.'

  Almost immediately after he came crabwise in, holding a splendid silver affair with little fitted dishes of toasted cheese. He put it down on their supper-table with a look of surly triumph and said, 'Which that Bristol cove gave some to Purser's steward. Cheddar. And I got it off of him.'

  Stephen scraped the bottom of his second dish as well as he could with a piece of dry biscuit, finished his wine, and said, 'Will I tell you of a point that has been fretting my mind ever since the Bight of Benin, when you told me of your uneasiness about two of the ships? Now I am no great naval strategist . . .'

  'Oh, I should never say that.'

  Stephen bowed. 'Nor even a tactician . . .'

  'After all, everything is relative.'

  'Yet one of the vessels in question was a frigate, and I have always understood that when line-of-battle ships are engaged, the frigate's duty is to stand at a distance, to carry messages, to repeat signals, to pick up survivors clinging to the wreckage, and eventually to pursue and harass the frigates of the other side as they attempt to escape; but in no case to join the fray.'

  'What you say is perfectly sound where fleet-actions are concerned. Ships of the line do not fire on frigates in a fleet-action—though there was an exception I saw in the Battle of the Nile—so long as the frigates do not fire on them. After all, dogs do not bite bitches: it is much the same. But we do not amount to a fleet; and two ships do not form a line of battle. Everything depends on wind and weather, light and darkness, and what sort of a sea is running; but when small squadrons meet there may well be a mêlée in which frigates and even slops are involved. Be a good fellow and toss me your rosin, will you?'—for by this time they were setting to their music.

  'I wonder—I have my own reasons for wondering—that a man of your I might almost say wealth, and of your standing, a member of Parliament, high on the post-captain's list, and well at court, cannot or rather will not afford himself a piece of rosin.'

  'You are to consider that I am a family man, Stephen, with a boy to educate and daughters to provide a dowry for, and clothes—half-boots twice and sometimes even three times a year. Tippets. When you come to worry about Brigid's fortune, and Brigid's tippets, you too may economize on rosin. Yes, yes. Don't you find cheese settle the stomach admirably? I believe I shall sleep tonight.'

  'I have the same impression,' said Stephen. 'I have omitted my usual very moderate dose of coca-leaves, and I have indulged in two glasses of port extraordinary. Already my eyelids tend to droop. Pray pass the score: I have not really mastered the adagio.'

  Toasted cheese is rarely thought of as a soporific, but either the time, the weather or some homely virtue in the cheese, some touch working upon minds extremely worn by anxiety, caused Stephen to sleep right through until the hands were piped to breakfast, while Jack, with one break when his inner watchdog felt the north-west wind increase so that the officer of the watch took a reef in the main and fore topsails, lay gently wheezing until a pale form at his side cried in an adolescent voice breaking with excitement, 'Sir, sir, if you please. Laurel signals enemy reported in sight north-north-west about five leagues steering south-westerly.'

  'Numbers? Rates?'

  'No, sir. It is rather dirty in the north-north-west.'

  'Thank you, Mr Hobbs. I shall be on deck directly.'

  So he was, joining all the officers and midshipmen, those of the middle watch still in their nightshirts with a coat flung over: and they were all gazing fixedly over the larboard bow, where, in the thin morning light under a grey sky the Laurel could be seen hull up already, throwing a fine wave from her cutwater with her press of sail, the signal flying still.

  They all broke off to wish the Commodore a good morning. He said to the signal lieutenant, 'Tell her to ask Ringle whether she has any notion of rates and numbers.'

  A pause, in which a squall drifted over the north-west horizon.

  'Negative, sir,' said a signal lieutenant at last.

  'Laurel, repeat to Ringle: approach enemy under American colours. Ascertain numbers, rates. Sink their topsails steering south-east. Report in . . .' Jack looked intently at the sky '. . . one hour. Do not acknowledge. Now to the squadron: course ENE½E under easy sail.' One bell in the forenoon watch, and Jack said, 'Captain Pullings, if your people are anything like me, they must be damned hungry by now. Let us all have breakfast.'

  It was the welcome shrilling pipe and the thunder of feet on deck that woke Dr Maturin at last: he was therefore at table before anyone else, being no more particular about washing, brushing and shaving than the monks of the Thebaïd. On the quarterdeck Jack led the way aft to the master's day cabin, followed by Tom, the first lieutenant and the master himself, and as they went the sun broke through the eastern clouds.

  'Good morning, Commodore,' said Stephen, already deep in eggs and the ship's butcher's capital bacon. 'Good morning, Tom. Here's a pretty state of affairs. I have madly overslept, I have missed my morning rounds, the coffee is almost cold, and there are people running about crying "Oh, oh, the enemy is upon us. What shall we do to be saved?" Can this be true, my dears?'

  'Only too true, alas,' said Jack, hanging his head very dolefully. 'And I am sorry to tell you that they are within thirty miles, or even less.'

  'Never mind, Doctor,' said Tom. 'The Commodore has a plan that will confound their politics.'

  'Would he be prepared to reveal it? To lay it forth in terms suited to the meanest understanding?'

  'Let me finish my mutton chop, and gather my wits,' said Jack, 'and I am your man . . . Well,' he said, wiping his mouth at last, 'what I have to offer is all very theoretical, very much the air: naturally, until we know the enemy's force. But I start with three assumptions: first, that he is in search of the missing seventy-four; second, that he will not come to action, encumbered as he is with transports, if he can possibly avoid it; and third, that this north-wester, providential for him at the moment but uncommon in these waters, will back into the much more usual south-west—much more important by far, for my plan—by nightfall or a little later.'

  Tom nodded and said, 'That's right.'

  'So supposing all these things to be true, I steer somewhat east of east-north-east, keeping him under observation if only this weather stays clear, with Ringle lying say ten miles off—an ordinary object, unsuspicious, a small American privateer: there are dozens of the same build and rig—with Laurel repeating. Then, once the French commodore is well south of us—Tom, give me the bread-barge, will you?' He broke a biscuit, cleared a space on the table, and said, 'Weevils already? Here, the large piece with the reptile lurking inside, is the rendezvous. This is us, standing gently east. Here are the French, over our horizon and with no frigates scouting out: they are heading for the rendezvous. When they get there, which they should do today with this leading wind, when they get there and find no seventy-four, they turn about and steer for Ireland. By this time, in all likelihood, the wind will have backed into the south of south-west, another leading wind for them. Yes, but here we are'—tapping a piece of biscuit—'and once they have repassed the parallel of the point we first saw them—once they are to the north of us, why then we have the weather-gage! We have the weather-gage, and in principle we can bring them to action whether they like it or not.'

  'That is very satisfactory,' said Stephen, considering the pieces of biscuit. 'And eminently clear. But—' shaking his head�
��'it is an odious necessity.'

  Stephen's dislike for killing his fellow-men often embarrassed Jack, whose profession it was, and he quickly added, 'Of course, that is only the ideal course of events. A thousand things could throw it out—the wind staying in the north-west or dropping altogether, some busy dog of a privateer who sees us and reports our presence, a reinforcement, the arrival of the other ship of the line, a storm that dismasts us . . . and in any event my predictions may have a strong touch of Old Moore about them . . .'

  'If you please, sir,' said yet another midshipman, addressing his captain, 'Mr Soames's compliments, and Laurel signals two ships of the line, probably seventy-fours, two frigates in company, a frigate or corvette a league ahead, and four transports, two of them far astern.'

  'Thank you, Mr Dormer,' said Tom Pullings. 'I shall come and look at her presently.' He beamed at Stephen, and when the boy had gone he said, 'I don't believe there is anything at all of Old Moore in the Commodore's prediction, sir. I believe we have them . . .'

  'Hush, Tom,' said the Commodore. 'There's many a slip, twixt the cup and the sip, you know.'

  'How true, sir,' said Tom, touching the wooden bread-barge. 'I nearly said something very improper.' He stood up, returned thanks for his breakfast, and hurried back to the quarterdeck.