Book 18 - The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  Something of this speech reached the ships of the inshore squadron, but without much force. The end of the war had been foretold so very often, and as Killick (who stood behind Jack's chair) had found Lord Stranraer's manner of speaking difficult to follow, all that the lower deck gathered at first was that there was to be a new king of France called Châtillon, or something like that, probably related to Wellington. And in any case all public and private attention was taken up by the store-ship, crammed with food, drinks, slops, spars, cordage, sailcloth, everything they had been lacking for so long: and even more, there was an abundant post. In the dog watches very little of the ship's ordinary work was done, and once the precious stores were stowed, little groups formed round the more literate, and while his friends stood at a discreet distance, a man would listen while his letter was read out.

  For once no cruel tidings reached the Bellona, which for a ship's company of more than six hundred men and boys, nearly all with close and mortal relatives, and a long absence of mail, was very far from common.

  The mild domestic news from Woolcombe was charmingly uneventful, though Sophie's bantam had brought off a clutch of minute chicks. Diana and Clarissa were settling into their wing, furnishing the dining-room with walnut objects of the last age, which they found at auctions, sometimes travelling up to fifty miles for a handsome piece. And it was rumoured that Captain Griffiths meant to sell and move to London.

  Yet in spite of this deep and abiding contentment Jack was low in his spirits. 'Do you think the Admiral's account was reasonably sound?' he asked.

  'It certainly coincides with what I have heard,' said Stephen.

  'A sad booby I must have looked, prating away to you about the French navy and my fear of a long war, with them building away at a great pace.'

  'I thought it perfectly reasonable from a naval point of view; and you could not tell that on land Buonaparte had completely lost his wits: it was almost unbelievable how he threw away his chances, and countless lives, in these last few months.'

  Jack shook his head; and after a while he said, 'I do not mean to say a single syllable against William Fanshawe, but upon my word I think the Admiral might have mentioned Bellona. He will not do so in his dispatch, either. Yet our people worked like demons—all hands watch upon watch—to get her up there in time, and it would have been a bloody disaster if she had not arrived . . . From a purely selfish point of view, I am so glad you told me about your scheme for Chile. There is to be no distinction for me, this side of the ocean. I do not mean to top it the tragedy queen, Stephen, and I should not say this to anyone else, but I feel the yellow rising about my gills. Come in,' he cried.

  Harding came in, bringing the sun with him. 'Forgive me for bursting upon you like this, sir, but I have had such a pleasing letter—my wife has just inherited a little estate in Dorset from a distant cousin: it lies between Plush and Folly. I am to be squire of Plush!'

  'Give you joy with all my heart,' said Jack, shaking his hand. 'We shall be neighbours—my son is at school there, Mr Randall's school. How happy my wife and I will be. But I am afraid that I must warn you that Plush often leads to Folly.'

  'Why, yes, sir . . .' began Harding, somewhat staggered: but then he caught the nature of Captain Aubrey's witticism (perhaps the best thing Jack had ever said) which depended on a knowledge of the fact that when grog was served out the ordinary members of each mess of seamen received slightly less than the regular measure: by ancient custom, the amount of grog left, which was called plush, belonged to the cook of the mess; and unless he had a good head for rum, this often led him to commit a foolish action.

  Jack's gravity had not lasted quite as long as Harding's, and his whole-hearted mirth continued for some moments after Harding had recovered himself: but he received the wardroom's invitation with a decent complaisance.

  'That is certainly the best thing I have ever heard, in the naval line,' said Harding, 'and I shall write it down—how Eleanor will roar. But my errand is really to beg for the honour of your company to dinner in the wardroom tomorrow. We have been shocking remiss these many, many weeks, but now that the store-ship has found out where we lie at last, we hope to make up at least some of our leeway.'

  When he was speaking to Stephen about the Admiral Jack had not made a good many of the unkind reflections that had naturally occurred to him: he had not, to take a very small example, said that Lord Stranraer's claret was meagre in quantity and execrable in quality (his lordship had no taste whatsoever for wine—never drank it for pleasure himself—was convinced that others judged only by label and price and that if they saw neither they would never know the difference) because he had seen the Admiral's evident esteem for Stephen and he did not know whether the liking might be returned.

  In any event, the wardroom's dinner to their Captain could not possibly have led to such a reproach, uttered or suppressed. Dr Maturin was of course a wardroom officer: he usually looked after the wine, and for occasions such as this, when the claret brought out by the store-ship in casks had neither been bottled nor given a moment of rest after a violent tossing about, he had provided a fine old very full bodied Priorato.

  It went down extremely well, but it was of course considerably stronger than most Bordeaux, and the conversation up and down the table was somewhat louder, more general and less restrained than usual. The table itself was a fine sight, with a dozen officers sitting there, mostly blue and gold, with the Marines' scarlet coats setting them off pleasantly, and their servants standing behind their chairs: but the general mood was one of anxious uncertainty, repressed out of consideration for their guest, but evident enough for one who had been so long at sea. He looked down the table, considering the many faces he knew: and in a momentary silence he heard a hand on deck call out 'Mark of the forebrace down, sir,' and the officer of the watch reply 'Belay, oh.'

  'Belay, oh,' said Jack to the table in general. 'From all I see in the papers Queen Charlotte brought us, and from what I heard aboard the flag, it seems to me that all of us will have to belay very soon. Tie up, belay and pay off.' A pause while he finished his glass of wine. 'War of course is a bad thing,' he went on. 'But it is our way of life—has been these twenty years and more—and for most of us it is our only hope of a ship, let alone of promotion: and I well remember how my heart sank in the year two, the year of the peace of Amiens. But let me offer this reflection by way of comfort: in the year two my spirits were so low that if I could have afforded a piece of rope I should have hanged myself. Well, as everyone knows that peace did not last, and in the year four I was made post, jobbing captain of Lively, and a lively time we had of it too. I throw this out, because if one peace with an untrustworthy enemy can be broke, another peace with the same fellow can be broke too; and our country will certainly need defending, above all by sea. So'—filling his glass again—'let us drink to the paying-off, and may it be a peaceful, orderly and cheerful occasion, followed by a short, I repeat very short run ashore.'

  Chapter Ten

  The paying-off was over and that was the best thing that could be said about it. Even before Napoleon's abdication the ships of the blockading squadron had been sent home in ones and twos, the Bellona being almost the last; and during all this time those of the crew who had been pressed from merchantmen had grown more and more discontented. Throughout the war, or rather wars, the merchant service had been short of hands and wages were correspondingly high; and now here were these ugly, unscrupulous dogs in Grampus, Dryad and Achates going into port to pick up the gold and silver before anyone else, although they had not been on the blockade half as long as the Bellona, had not had a quarter of the hard lying and short commons. There were also some who wanted to see their wives and children; but this did not have quite the same urgency, nor the same effect of intense frustration.

  They told their divisional officers of it and the officers told the Captain; he acknowledged the hardship, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do about it. His few attempts le
d to a most disagreeable rebuff or to total silence; and the last weeks were thoroughly uncomfortable aboard. For example, there was little inclination to bring decks to a very high pitch of cleanliness when it was known that they would soon be desecrated by dockyard maties in hob-nailed boots, stripping and unrigging the barky and laying her up in ordinary: this and a thousand other things led to short answers, ill-will, and sullen looks, though to no deliberate insolence or failure to obey orders—not even the first smell of mutiny. Apart from anything else, these 'awkward buggers' as they were technically known, scarcely amounted to a dozen messes out of fifty-odd, many of the rest of Bellona's people being old man-of-war's men, some of them indeed Captain Aubrey's shipmates for many a commission, and they would not give the slightest countenance to capers of that kind, or anything like them.

  Yet even so the awkward buggers made the last days unpleasant, and they prolonged the necessarily painful end: they included all the Bellona's sea-lawyers, and when the Commissioner and his clerks came aboard, together with the ship's pay-books and some heavily-guarded sacks of money, they produced such a series of quibbles about dates of entry, first rating, dates of being turned over, deductions for slops, venereal medicines and the like that the process had to be carried over to the first hours of another morning.

  'Even so, it ended happy,' said Stephen.

  'I suppose so, if you call this happiness,' said Jack, turning his eyes from the dock where the Bellona lay waiting to go into ordinary, deserted and looking doubly so, since some facetious hands had loosened lifts and braces, causing her yards to hang all ahoo, like a sea-scarecrow—turning them to the left-hand side of the carriage, where a gang of local women had gathered to receive those Bellonas who were still capable of walking as they emerged from the doors of the Old Cock and Bull, where the prize-agent's clerk had met them.

  'I do love a jolly sailor,' sang the women.

  'Blithe and merry might he be . . .' A brewer's dray interrupted them and stopped the carriage, but when they had done with screaming and making gestures at the brewer's men, they sang on

  'Sailors they get all the money,

  Soldiers they get none but brass.

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

  Oh my little rolling sailor,

  Oh my little rolling he,

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers may be damned for me.'

  Most of the women might have looked tolerable by lamplight, though there were many old hacks fit only for darkness, but the strong unforgiving sun on their raddled faces, dyed hair, flimsy, tawdry and dirty clothes, was a melancholy sight. Jack had taken leave of many old companions as they left the ship, and just now he had given his officers a farewell dinner, officers who did their best to disguise their extreme anxiety about another ship: it was a superficially cheerful occasion that left deep sadness behind it; and now Jack found the whores' antics more depressing than he might have done at another time They drove on in silence

  Yet presently they were out of the town, into the country and the spring, with rare white clouds sailing very slowly across a pure blue sky on a breeze just strong enough to stir the bright new leaves, and this had a soothing effect on bosoms that had been blockading Brest through one of the roughest winters ever known, particularly as the post-chaise, at Stephen's request, had taken side-roads through charming cultivated country—springing crops on either hand—a stretch of country much favoured by migrants. Stephen knew that Jack did not feel passionate about birds that did not offer a legitimate shot, so he did not trouble him with a rare warbler near Dartford, nor with a probable Montagu's harrier, a cock bird, away on the right; but when they were walking up and down outside the half-way inn while the horses were being changed he said, 'While you were attending to ship-affairs and the people's pay, the Commissioner's secretary gave me some letters that had come down from London. They confirm my arrangements. Will I tell you about then?'

  'If you please.'

  'I thought we should take a holiday for a couple of days at Black's, doing nothing whatsoever apart from attending the Royal Society on the second day. Then on the third you will have to meet the Chileans, and I think that would be better done in my room at the Grapes—we could hardly talk about such matters at Black's, and in any case it would be more discreet. On Saturday and Sunday we can take our ease again—we might listen to some music. And then, always providing that you and the Chileans do not dislike one another, we must go and be interviewed by the Committee; and if that goes well, to the Admiralty for the necessary formalities.'

  'That will remove me from the List?'

  'Suspend might be the better word. An essential step to allow you to command a hired ship: a private vessel with a private person as her master.'

  'Well: I am glad it is not to be on a Friday.'

  'Jack, it does not require great discernment to see that the idea of being removed from the List scarcely fills you with delight.'

  'No. It don't.'

  'My dear, if you have any reluctance at all, let us forget the scheme entirely.'

  'No, no. Of course not. Forgive me, Stephen. I am foolishly hipped . . . these last days, seeing the ship and her company falling to pieces, herself for the knacker's yard, all my mids thrown on the world, aghast, without a penny—no half-pay for them, you know—and with very, very little chance of a ship . . . it makes one low and I am afraid damned ungratefully inclined to cling to having one's name on the List, any kind of List. But it is great nonsense—with half or even more of the Navy being laid up, and with Stranraer's dispatches and his influence against me I have not the faintest chance of a command. And without a command now I have scarcely the faintest chance of not being passed over when the time comes. To avoid that I should happily take a duck-punt to Spitzbergen, let alone dear Surprise round the Horn again. No, no, my dear Stephen. Please forgive me: it was only a weak, foolish burst of superstition . . . lycanthropy might be a better word, perhaps.'

  'Perhaps it would . . . but tell me, Jack, you have not forgot the promise of reinstatement, have you?'

  'Oh dear me, no. I cling to it day and night, like a bull in a china-shop. But promises are made of pie-crust, you know. First Lords can die and be replaced by wicked God-damned Whigs—oh, I beg pardon, brother—and by people belonging to another party, who know not Abraham: whereas one's name, printed in that beautiful List, is as solid as anything can be in this shifting world—here today, gone tomorrow.'

  'That is one of the things I like about this place,' said Jack, the post-chaise having brought them to the open, welcoming door of Black's. 'There are no wild, enthusiastic changes here. Good evening, Joe.'

  'Good evening, Captain Aubrey, sir,' said the porter. 'Good evening, Doctor. I have given you seventeen and eighteen: Killick took your bags up this afternoon.'

  Jack nodded with pleasure, and waving towards the cheerful fire at the far end of the hall he cried, 'There. I will lay a guinea that fire was burning in just the same way when my grandfather used to arrive from Woolcombe; and I hope it will be burning when George walks in as a member.'

  They hurried upstairs, put on the town clothes that Killick (always efficient in the abstract, and even kind) had laid out for them, and met again on the landing.

  'I am going straight to the library to read the history of our missing weeks. Nay months, for all love,' said Stephen.

  'So shall I,' said Jack. 'But perhaps a bite first would be a clever idea. Then one could sit reading one's Morning Post or Naval Chronicle without one's belly rumbling and distracting one's mind. I had almost no dinner, you understand—could not relish my victuals.'

  'If men did not vanquish the brute within, there would be no learning,' said Stephen. 'Besides, it is too early for supper: you would only get the broken meats from dinner, faintly warmed. Come, James will bring you a sandwich, I dare say, and a can of beer.'

  For some time they read silently, avidly; and with an extraordinary degree
of self-command they started at about the equinoctial gales of last autumn which cut them off from anything like regular communication, so that only isolated, almost meaningless victories or defeats, almost all by land, came through the cloud of unknowing. But presently Jack, forging ahead in the concentrated sea-water of the Naval Chronicle rather than the turgid pages of The Times, which paid far too much attention to campaigns in Silesia and such places, as well as home politics, cried out, 'So they have given Boney Elba, the island of Elba: ain't you amazed? And he is gone aboard Undaunted, 38, young Tom Ussher's ship. Do you know him at all? He is an Irishman.'