The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  He was clearly less experienced than Dormer, but Dormer had already taken a great deal of exercise, he was fat, and he was tiring fast. They were on opposite sides of the main topmast shrouds, high up where they narrowed to pass through the topgallant crosstrees. Very near the top, where the main topgallant futtock-shrouds diverged, far from the vertical, Geoghegan leant backwards, one hand whipping out for the futtock, the other for the forward crosstrees; and here, both holds slipping in his haste, he fell: fell almost straight, just brushing the maintop in his fall and striking one of the starboard quarterdeck carronades, not a yard from the officer of the watch.

  Stephen had been walking aft to meet Jack as he came from talking to the master by the wheel. At the general cry he turned, and calling out 'Do not move him' he ran to Geoghegan hoping that there might not be too much damage—that taken below with great care he might be recovered. After a moment's examination he could only report instant death.

  Jack picked the boy up and carried him into the great cabin, tears running down his face. Later that evening they sewed him into his hammock with thirty-two-pound roundshot at his feet and buried him over the side according to the custom of the sea.

  The fog increased that night, and Jack spent most of his time on deck, together with Woodbine and Harding, both of them experienced navigators with a fair knowledge of the waters off Brest. The Bellona had lain-to near the Ar Men rock for the brief ceremony and she had now to feel her way across some twenty miles of often dangerous water to a point a little west of St Matthews (most of the places had English names) where either the Ramillies or one of her boats would meet her, bringing the Brittany pilot and Stephen's colleague; for tomorrow was the dark of the moon, the time for the landing in Dog-Leg Cove.

  Although the very slowly falling glass foretold dirty weather in the near future, Jack felt reasonably confident that he should be able to carry out his plan, which was to beat steadily up and down between the Black Rocks and the Saints by day, as usual, and at nightfall, after the turn of the tide, to double back and run through the Raz de Sein with the current, dropping Stephen as near to the cove as he dared and then to stand off and wait for the boat, anchored south of the Ile de Sein: twelve-fathom water and good holding ground. But first, of course, there was the essential rendezvous, and with the log heaved every glass or sometimes more often and the lead going steadily they sailed west by north with the wind one point free, the fog streaming across the binnacles and the storm lantern.

  When by their very close and concordant reckoning they were well beyond the Iroise Passage the breeze strengthened, veering northwards, and presently it became obvious that even close-hauled they could not reach the channel through the islands they had hoped for: Jack therefore wore ship and set a necessary but most disagreeable course that would bring them close to the southern fringe of the Black Rocks and their outliers—not always accurately charted.

  This held until four bells in the middle watch—low tide—when the infernal breeze wavered, grew uneasy, uttered some violent gusts and hauled a full point forward, with every sign of doing worse. Before it could come frankly into the north-east and head him, Jack Aubrey changed course yet again and stood right across the mouth of the Passage du Four, which had no more than seven fathoms in some places. The Bellona drew six. On and on, the three men entirely closed upon their continually developing calculations, all based on the frequent reports of the ship's progress, their informed estimate of her leeway under this trim and with this wind, the ebb and flow of the tide, the force of local currents, the occasional dive into the master's sea-cabin abaft the wheel where by a dim light a chart as accurate as present knowledge would allow was spread out, and on their own sense of the sea, intuitive, pragmatical, hardly to be reduced to words.

  'I wonder whether the others hear and feel that wicked grind and crack as we strike a reef,' said Jack to himself. 'Probably.' He had felt it this last glass and more as they drew nearer and nearer to St Matthews, now perhaps no more than a few cables' length away in the north-east. Then aloud, 'Mr Woodbine, do you smell anything?'

  Pause. 'No, sir.'

  Captain Aubrey, in a carrying voice: 'Back the main topsail: start the sheet right forward, there.' To the man at the wheel, 'Down with the helm.'

  The way came off the Bellona: she lay there, heaving in the fog; and a voice some way on her starboard bow called, 'The ship ahoy. What ship is that?'

  'Bellona,' replied Harding.

  Relief, coupled with the intensity of Woodbine's unspoken question, moved Jack to say, 'It is low tide, of course; and I caught a waft of the rotting kelp.'

  When the Ramillies's boat had set both its passengers aboard he left orders for the officer of the watch—the course due south was safe for the next few hours—told Harding and the master to get some sleep, and walked softly into the cabin he was sharing with Stephen.

  'Is all well?' asked Stephen.

  'Yes. Your man is aboard, and I have put him in the coach. The bosun is looking after the pilot. I am afraid I woke you.'

  'Not at all, at all. Will you not turn in?'

  'It scarcely seems worth it; but perhaps I shall.'

  For once his deep-founded habit of going to sleep at once abandoned him. He lay awake for two bells and the first strokes of a third, working out the letters he was to send to Geoghegan's parents: as a captain he had had to do this several times. It was never easy, but this time the words would scarcely come at all.

  The cleaning of the deck before sunrise no longer woke Stephen, but the piping up of hammocks and the sound of bare feet just overhead did so quite abruptly. He stared about, collecting himself, and without surprise he saw Jack come in, pink and obviously new-shaven, even in this dim light. 'Good morning to you, my dear,' he said. 'What of the day?'

  'Good morning, Stephen. I trust you slept? It has cleared a little, but you still cannot see a hundred yards; and we have barely more than steerage-way. Do you choose to trim yourself? The sea is smooth, and I can put a famous edge on your razor if you would like it. And there is your your guest. He will breakfast with us, no doubt.'

  'Oh,' said Stephen, passing a hand over his jaw. 'I will do admirably for a day or two: until Sunday, indeed. In any case, I know Mr Bernard well.'

  Mr Bernard, Inigo Bernard, came from Barcelona, where his family, considerable ship-builders and ship-owners, had been engaged in trade with English merchants for some generations: he had been educated in England and he spoke the language perfectly, yet like his family he remained deeply Catalan—Catalan to the extent of bitterly resenting the Spanish oppression of his country and of supporting the clandestine movement for autonomy if not downright independence; and it was this that had first brought him and Stephen Maturin together. Yet in much the same way as Stephen he had early decided that the French invasion—most particularly atrocious in Catalonia—required him to ally himself with any of the forces that opposed the enemy: in his case with the Spanish government. He had been more fortunate though by no means less enterprising than Maturin as an active member of his secret movement, and his name was to be found on no official lists of rebels or subversive elements; he was therefore able to join one of the Spanish intelligence services particularly concerned with naval matters. And when the Spaniards changed sides on the unfortunate advice of the Prince of Peace and became subservient to Buonaparte he was very well placed for passing information, above all naval information, to his friend. Even now that Spain was whole-heartedly at war with France once more, their collaboration had its advantages, and the two of them were now engaged on a joint mission; for the French side was by no means a united whole, but contained many people with divided loyalties, to say nothing of double agents.

  He presented himself for breakfast in the great cabin as trim and properly dressed as his host, which made a good impression, and the meal passed off well, though in a rather formal manner: Jack, in these circumstances, was perfectly discreet and Bernard was far from expansive, confining himself to genera
lities and well-received observations about the beauty of the ship and above all of the truly splendid cabin.

  After this Jack left them alone, except for dinner, spending much of his time with Harding and even more with the bosun, reinforcing the ship against the expected blow; though he reserved some hours for Yann, marking the Bellona's charts according to his expert advice and listening to what he had to say about these waters.

  'Soon, perhaps the day after Wednesday,' said Yann (he had difficulty with Thursday, though on the whole he was quite fluent), 'it will settle in the south-west and blow horrid. But I don't have to tell you about preventer-stays, sir,' he added, looking with pleasure at the Bellona's rigging. And after a pause he said, 'I wonder them buggers'—nodding towards Brest—'did not try for it when the wind was in the north-east: it was true north-east for a pair of hours after you picked us up. Plenty of time for a frigate to have come down the Goulet and away by the Iroise, ni vu ni connu. Or a fast ship of the line, for that matter: like their Romulus.'

  'Tell me, Yann,' said Jack, 'if it stays as thick as this, will you undertake to carry the ship through the Raz? With no moonlight at all?'

  'As thick as this, sir? I should be happier in a frigate or a sloop than in a heavy great seventy-four, as thick as this: I could do it, because the ebbing tide dashes up so white on the Vieille that I could barely miss it, knowing where to look, since I was a boy.' He held his hand, flattened, low down, to show his height when first he saw the Vieille. 'But never make yourself bad blood, sir: it will not stay as thick as this.'

  How true. Towards sunset when they were lying off the Men Glas waiting for the tide the wind settled in the north-east again, and although there were patches of true fog still in the east and north-east, over the land, most of the bay to larboard was no more than misty. Indeed some fishing-boats could dimly be seen on the larboard beam half a mile away: larboard, because at this point Jack was some way along his northward run, the ordinary routine patrol. When darkness was almost complete he desired Harding to summon the officer of the watch, Whewell in this case, the master's mates and midshipmen: and when they were all there on the quarterdeck he said, 'Gentlemen, in fifteen minutes I shall put the ship about. I should like this manoeuvre to be executed as silently as possible, and with almost nothing in the way of light; and we shall proceed under reefed courses alone. There is no mad hurry: we are not running a race: but let there be no singing out. Each officer must pick his men. This is no caper for raw hands, however stout and willing. Mr Reade, you have checked the blue cutter, I believe?'

  'Yes, sir,' said Reade, smiling in the dark. 'And I believe all is as you could wish.'

  Against strong opposition from the more conservative, and from his own heart, Jack had rigged davits above the Bellona's quarter-galleries, taking away somewhat from her beauty and committing an innovation; but now he rejoiced in the thought of that boat hanging there fully equipped, ready to be stepped into by the less expert and lowered down without danger, without anxiety on either part. He had put Stephen ashore in many and many a place, generally by night; and the anguish, even in a dead-calm sea, of watching his unsteady, lurching journey down the side, though helped by gravity and devoted hands, had added years to his apparent age: any innovation, however barbarous, was worth the relief of seeing him sitting there with his hands folded, his baggage beside him, and the whole, container and contents, very gently descending until it touched the surface, with Bonden there to fend off and the cutter's crew leaping down like cats.

  All this, however, was in the future. Once the ship had been put about—which was done with creditable speed, in near silence—and once she was heading south by east under reefed courses with the wind a little abaft the beam, as inconspicuous as a ship of the line could ever hope to be, her captain's station was in the foretop with the pilot, an attentive midshipman on deck to relay his orders.

  For a long while there were no orders to relay. Jack and the pilot discussed the clearing of the mist, likely to be complete by the morning; the Bellona's leeway, very slight; and her present position. 'On the starboard bow, sir, you can just make out the Bas Wenn. The course half a point to larboard, sir, if you please: thus, very well thus. And was it day you would see Dead Men's Bay to leeward.' A long silence, in which they heard the muted strokes of five bells in the first watch.

  'Now, sir,' said Yann, 'we are well into the Raz, the tide running three knots and more; and in ten minutes, on the larboard bow, if God wishes you will see the white water on the Vieille. This westerly breeze across the strong ebb should throw it quite high.'

  Jack stared, stared hard over the larboard bow. His eyes were perfectly accustomed to the darkness, yet they were not what they had been. One had been damaged in battle: 'My solitary point in common with Nelson', he had once said, when half-seas over, and had blushed for it afterwards. It was Yann who cried, 'There she is! Just a little more forward, sir.' And presently Jack caught it, a rhythmic whiteness that travelled from left to right in time with the moderate roll of the ship.

  'Now, sir,' said Yann, when they had contemplated this for a while, 'if we steer south-east we should come as near as I dare take you to Dog-Leg Cove in half an hour.'

  'Thank you, pilot,' said Jack. 'Lie to, if you please, when we are as close in as you think fit. I shall take my measures.'

  He climbed out of the top with the nonchalant ease of one to whom shrouds and ratlines were as natural a path as a flight of stairs, and walked along the dark, silent gangway aft. In the cabin, its lamp hidden from without by deadlights, he found Stephen and Bernard playing chess. Stephen frowned, Bernard made as though to get up, but Jack begged him to remain seated and finish the game: there was perhaps half an hour left.

  'Shall we call it a draw?' asked Bernard, after what seemed to Jack an endless pause of the most intense concentration.

  'Never in life,' said Stephen. 'Let me record the position, and with the blessing we shall play it out another day.'

  'Stephen,' said Jack, 'have you any messages, requests, letters you should like me to send?' Before action he and Stephen usually exchanged wills and the like.

  'Not this time, my dear, I thank you very kindly. Lawrence holds all three farthings I possess, and dear Diana knows just what I should wish.'

  'Then perhaps we should think of getting ready. The ship will heave to in a very little while; the sea is still and for the moment fairly smooth; and although you will be fifteen minutes before your time, I had sooner set you both ashore with dry coats upon your backs and . . . Come in.'

  It was a midshipman: 'Mr Harding's duty, sir, and there is a light on shore, winking three times, then one.'

  Stephen nodded and said, 'Let us go.'

  Their meagre baggage was already in the boat: Jack led them across the darkened deck, absurdly hand in hand, helped them into the cutter, and leaning down grasped Stephen's shoulder with an iron grip by way of farewell. He heard the sheaves turn smoothly, 'Handsomely, handsomely,' murmured the bosun, saw the boat touch and bob: Bonden shoved off: Jack called 'Row dry, there,' and watched the cutter pull away towards the still-winking light. When at last it went out he turned from the rail, gave the orders that would carry the Bellona to her anchorage, and went below, deeply sad. He had seen Stephen off like this many and many a time, but his grief and anxiety never grew less.

  As he went he noticed a dim star or two in the zenith; and by the time the boat rejoined, with Bonden's report 'that there was a parcel of gents on the beach, talking foreign, but right glad to see the Doctor—carried him and his mate ashore dryfoot', there was a fine sprinkling of them, with Saturn in the middle, and they so clear and sharp that their light showed him not only the now much greater surf breaking on the reef south of the Ile de Sein but the black, rugged outline of the island itself.

  Chapter Six

  The grief and anxiety did not die away, but of necessity they receded, and as the Bellona worked her way, tack upon tack, round the Saints to regain the bay at dawn, the to
p of his mind was taken up with the handling of the ship and with a very close watch to see just what harm the lax but harsh command of his jobbing captain had done. He had already looked through the recent gunnery records, which contained no account whatsoever of live firing, only of rattling the great guns in and out: the log, on the other hand, spoke of frequent flogging, more punishment than Jack would have inflicted in a quarter.

  At one bell in the morning watch the Bellona's tender, the Ringle, now commanded by that valuable young man Reade, a fast, weatherly, sweet-sailing schooner with much less draught than the great seventy-four, hailed to say that she was shoaling her water: ten fathoms, then nine. 'What do you say, Yann?' asked Jack—the pilot was standing at his side.

  'What him bottom?'

  'Arm your lead,' called Jack; and shortly after the reply came back across the calm, gently heaving sea, 'Hake's teeth and white sand, if you please, sir.'

  'Carry on, sir,' said Yann. 'Next cast ten, eleven, twelve.'

  A presence behind him, and a very agreeable smell. 'Which I thought you might like some coffee, sir,' said Killick, passing the mug. 'The Doctor said it preserved the frame from falling damps.'

  'Bellona' called the tender, 'nine fathoms, if you please.' A pause. 'Ten, and grey sludge.'

  Yann nodded with satisfaction. 'If we carry on till come two bells, and then wear ship and stand east-south-east and half east, we fine, we all right, sir.'