Book 15 - Clarissa Oakes

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Make it twelve, Mr West,' said Jack, noon being reported to him, and his words were still floating in the air when eight bells struck.

  But whereas they were ordinarily followed by the bosun's pipe to dinner and a wholehearted Bedlam of cries and trampling feet and thumping mess-kids, now there was a total silence, all hands looking attentively aft. 'Carry on, Mr West,' said Jack. 'Away aloft,' cried West, and the mass of the frigate's people raced up the shrouds on either side in a swift and even flow. 'Lay out, lay out,' called West, and they ran out on the yards. When the last light young fellow was right at the end of the starboard foretopgallant yardarm, holding on by the lift, Jack stepped forward and in a voice to be heard in Heaven he uttered the words 'Three cheers for the King.'

  'You must pull off your hat and call out Huzzay,' whispered Pullings into Stephen's ear: the Doctor was staring about him in a very vacant manner.

  Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay: the cheers pealed out like so many rolling broadsides, and after the last nothing could be heard but Sarah and Emily, beside themselves with glee, who huzzayed on and on, 'Huzzay, huzzay for Guy Fawkes', very shrill, until Jemmy Ducks suppressed them.

  'Mr Smith,' said Jack, 'carry on.' And the gunner in his good black Presbyterian-elder's coat stepped forward with a red-hot poker in his hand: the salute, beginning with Jack's own brass bow-chaser, came solemnly aft on either side at exact five-second intervals, the gunner pacing from one to the other with the ritual words 'If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here: fire seven.' When he had reached 'fire seventeen' he turned aft and took off his hat. Jack returned his salute and said 'Mr West, the hands may be piped to dinner.'

  A last wild long-drawn cheer, and before the white clouds of smoke had rolled a cable's length to leeward the usual midday hullaballoo rose to a splendid pitch.

  'By land, in the northern parts of Ireland, I have seen the fifth of November celebrated with fireworks,' observed Stephen.

  'Nothing can exceed the cannon's noble roar,' said the gunner. 'Squibs and burning tar-barrels, even sky-rockets at half a crown apiece, is mere frippery in comparison of a well-loaded gun.' Since he was to take the afternoon watch, thus releasing the whole gun-room for their feast, he was now on the quarterdeck, and turning to Jack he said 'Well, sir, me and my mate will take our bite now, with your leave, and be on deck in half a glass. Are there any special instructions?'

  'No, Mr Smith: only that I am to be told of any considerable change in the breeze and of course of any sail or land.'

  Half a glass went by and then apart from the gunner and his mate and the men at the wheel, the quarterdeck was empty. Stephen and Padeen had carried up two dozen of a pale sherry that had survived the voyage to Botany Bay, entrusting them to the gun-room steward: Stephen had spoken of Mrs Oakes's wish to poor anxious Pullings, had shown the gun-room steward's mate an unusually elegant way of folding napkins, had proposed decorating the table with seaweed, producing examples, and had been desired by all his messmates, their differences temporarily overlooked, to go and watch for his Latham's albatross until four bells. There really was not room for so many people to mill about in so confined a space; besides, it consumed what little fresh air there was—Martin had already gone into the mizzen-top, carrying his silk stockings in his pocket.

  Stephen wandered aft to where the Captain was taking his ease in the great cabin, stretched out on the stern-window locker with one foot in a basin of water.

  'Do you suffer, brother?' he asked, 'or is this part of the Navy's superstitious horror of the unclean?'

  'I suffer, Stephen,' said Jack, 'but moderately. Do you remember how I stood on the dumb-chalder when Dick Richards and I cleared the Nutmeg's rudder?'

  'The dumb-chalder. Sure I think of it constantly: it is rarely from my mind.'

  'Well, it gave me a shrewd knock, and I limped for weeks. And just now I caught my ankle against the linch-pin there, hitting it in just the same place. How I roared!'

  'I am sure you did. Will I look at it, now?'

  Stephen took the foot in his hands, considered it, pressed it, heard the catch of breath, and said 'It is a little small piece of the external malleolus, trying to come out.'

  'What is the external malleolus?'

  'Nay, if you can oppress me with your dumb-chalders, I can do the same with my malleoli. Hold still. Should you like me to take it out now? I have a lancet over there, among the seaweed.'

  'Perhaps we might wait until after the feast,' said Jack, who very much disliked being cut in cold blood. 'It feels much better now. I put a great deal of salt into the water.'

  Stephen was used to this; he nodded, mused for a while, and said 'So the gunner has the watch. Tell me, Jack, is it not very amazingly strange that a gunner should have a watch?'

  'Oh Lord, no. In a frigate it is unusual, of course, but in many a sloop with only one lieutenant, many an unrated ship, it is quite common for a steady, experienced bosun or gunner to stand his watch. And in our case there is an embarras de choix. I said there is an embarras de choix.'

  'I am sure of it,' said Stephen absently.

  'So many of our Shelmerstonians understand navigation and have even commanded vessels of their own that if the whole quarterdeck were wiped out—'

  'God forbid.'

  'God forbid—they could still carry the barky home.'

  'That is a great comfort to me. Thank you, Jack. Now I believe I shall go and read for a while.'

  In the coach Stephen spread out his authorities, Wiseman, Clare, Petit, van Swieten, John Hunter. They were prolix about men, but although they had little to say about women they all agreed that there was no diagnosis more difficult than in those cases where the physician was confronted with a deep-seated, atypical, chronic infection. He was still reading Hunter with the closest attention when the bell told him he must join his messmates to welcome the gun-room's guests.

  The gun-room was almost silent, in a state of high anxiety, with West and Adams both frowning at their watches. 'There you are, Doctor,' cried Tom Pullings. 'I was afraid we might have lost you—that you might have taken a tumble down the ladder like poor Davidge here, or fallen out of the top, like Mr Martin—do you think the table looks genteel?'

  'Uncommon genteel,' said Stephen, glancing up and down its geometrical perfections. He noticed Davidge standing by the far end, his hand to his head: Davidge caught his eye, stretched his mouth in a smile and said 'I took a toss down the companion-ladder.'

  'The bride sits on my right hand, in course,' said Pullings, 'and then Martin, then you, and then Reade. Mr Adams at the foot. The Captain on my left, then Davidge—you are all right, Davidge, ain't you?'

  'Oh yes. It was nothing.'

  'Then West, and then Oakes on Mr Adams' right. What do you think of that, Doctor?'

  'A capital arrangement, my dear,' said Stephen, reflecting that Davidge's nothing was a damned heavy, turgid, uncomfortable one, a dark swelling from his left temple to his cheekbone.

  'I do wish they would come,' said Pullings, 'the soup is sure to spoil,' and West looked at his watch again. The door opened; Killick walked in, said to Pullings Two minutes, sir, if you please,' and took up his place against the side, behind Jack's chair.

  Martin edged his way round and with a decently restrained triumph he said 'Do not beat me, Maturin, but I have seen your bird.'

  'Oh,' cried Stephen, 'have you indeed? And I wearing out the day watching. Are you sure?'

  'There can be no doubt, I am afraid. Yellow, blue-tipped bill, a strong dark eyebrow, a confiding expression, and black feet. He was within ten yards of me.'

  'Well, who ever said the world was fair? But I am sorry to hear that you fell out of the top.'

  'That was a base slander. In my hurry to come down and tell you my foot made a trifling slip and I hung for a moment or two by my hands, perfectly safe, perfectly in control, and if the well-meaning John Brampton had not heaved me up by main force I should have regained the platform with ease. In any event I came down entirely una
ided.'

  Stephen sniffed and said 'Please to describe the bird.'

  'Well,' said Martin and then stopped to turn and bow to Captain Aubrey: the gun-room welcomed their guest, pressed him to take a whet; Davidge once again explained that he had taken a toss on the companion-ladder and Pullings told Jack that he was uneasy about the soup.

  Those near the door listened attentively for the Oakeses coming, but in this case there would be no steps on the ladder down to warn them as it had warned them of Jack's approach, since the midshipmen's berths, one of which the Oakeses inhabited, were only a short way along the passage that led from the gun-room door forward to the great screened-off expanse of the lower deck, deserted now, where the foremast-hands slung their hammocks. Even so, Adams' quick ear caught the swish of silk and he opened the door to the splendid scarlet glow that Stephen had never yet beheld.

  'Upon my honour, ma'am,' he said when it was his turn to greet her, 'I have never seen you look so well. You fairly light up our dim and shabby dining-room.'

  'Dim and shabby dining-room,' said the gun-room steward to Killick in a sea-going whisper, 'Did you ever hear such wickedness?'

  'That is what we call a genteel compliment,' said Killick. 'Which it ain't meant to be believed.'

  'It is all due to Captain Aubrey's kindness,' she said, smiling and bowing to Jack as she sat down. 'Never was such glorious silk.'

  The sound of chairs being drawn in, the arrival of the swordfish soup and the ladling of it out filled the gun-room with the pleasant confusion of sounds usual at the beginning of a feast; but presently they began to die away. The ill-feeling between Davidge and West was so great that even now, with their Captain present, they barely exchanged a word: Oakes, always more at home in a pot-house, was even more than usually mute, a dogged look on his pale face. Reade, on Stephen's right, answered with no more than 'Yes, sir', 'No, sir', looking quite pitifully sad: whilst on his left, Martin maintained his reserved, though perfectly correct, attitude towards Clarissa throughout the soup. Stephen, Adams, and to some extent West made a reasonable amount of noise at the far end of the table about swordfishes they had known, the different kinds of swordfish, the inveterate enmity between the swordfish and the whale, instances not only of ships but even ships' boats being pierced, and the anguish of those sitting on the bottom, between the thwarts. Jack and Pullings found a good deal to say about tunny in the Mediterranean, with asides to Clarissa about the Sicilian and Moorish way of catching them.

  The subject however had its limits, and although both Jack and Pullings would have been happy to engage Mrs Oakes, they were a little shy of doing so. There was the relief of taking soup plates away with a fine mess-deck clatter and bringing on the swordfish fritters, and during the interval both Stephen and Jack reflected upon the amount of ordinary dinner-table conversation taken up by 'do you remember?' or 'were you ever at?' or 'you probably know Mr Blank' or 'as I dare say you are aware', questions or implied questions that might offend the lady; or by personal recollections, in which she never indulged.

  Stephen, Jack and even more Pullings felt the awful approach of silence, and Jack for one turned to his infallible standby: 'A glass of wine with you, ma'am.' Infallible, but not long-lasting; and he was grateful when West made some sudden, prepared observations about the saw-fish. Stephen took up this creature (such was the table's indigence), and compelled both Oakes and Reade to acknowledge that they had seen its mummified head in an apothecary's shop in Sydney and had speculated on the use of the saw.

  Half-way through the fritters he found to his relief that Clarissa, who was not only beautifully dressed but who was also in looks, with colour in her cheeks and sparkling eyes—Clarissa, who had laid herself out to be amiable throughout the soup, had by now won her point: Martin's reserve had been overcome and they were talking away at a great rate.

  'Oh, Mr West,' she called across the table, 'I was going to tell Mr Martin about your particular share in the Glorious First of June, but I am sure I would make some foolish landlubber's blunder. May I beg you to do it for me?'

  'Well, ma'am,' said West, smiling at her, 'since you desire it, I will, though it don't redound much to my credit.' He considered, emptied his glass, and went on, 'Everyone knows about the Glorious First of June.'

  'I am sure I do not,' said Stephen. 'And Mr Reade may not either; he was not born at the time.' Roused from his unhappiness for a moment, Reade looked at him reproachfully but said nothing.

  'And I only know that you were wounded,' said Clarissa.

  'Well, ma'am,' said West, 'just the most general lines, for those who may not have been born or who may never have seen a fleet action—' This was aimed at Davidge, who, until Jack took him aboard the Surprise, had seen very little action of any kind: his only acknowledgment of the hit was to drain his glass. 'In May of the year ninety-four, then, the Channel fleet put to sea from Spithead, with Earl Howe in command, the union at the main: the wind had come round into the north-east at last and we all got under way directly, forty-nine men-of-war and the ninety-nine merchants that had gathered at St Helen's, the East and West Indies convoys and those for Newfoundland—an uncommon sight, ma'am, a hundred and forty-eight sail of ships.'

  'Glorious, glorious,' cried Clarissa, clasping her hands with unfeigned enthusiasm, and all the sailors looked at her with pleasure and approval.

  'So we tore down the Channel, and off the Lizard we sent the convoys away with eight line-of-battle ships and half a dozen frigates to look after them: six of those ships of the line were to cruise in the Bay for a very important French convoy from America. That left Lord Howe with twenty-six of the line and seven frigates. We lay off Ushant—I was a youngster in his flagship, the Queen Charlotte, at the time—while a frigate looked into Brest. She saw the Frenchmen, twenty-five of the line, lying in the roads. So we cruised awhile in thick weather, looked in again, and they were gone. Some recaptured prizes told us where they were heading, and since the six ships cruising in the Bay were strong enough to deal with the French convoy, Lord Howe pursued the French fleet with a great press of sail. But it was light, variable airs nearly all the time and thick weather, and we did not catch sight of them until the morning of May 28th, twenty-six of the line now, directly to windward. Well, they bore down to about nine miles from us and formed their line ahead, directly to windward; but they had the weather gage, and seeing they did not seem very anxious to use it and attack, all we could do was to work to windward and harass them as much as possible. The Admiral sent four of the most weatherly ships forward and there was something of an action; there was another the next day, when we did manage to get to windward of them, though in no very good order and too late in the afternoon to force any decisive battle—we had quite a sea running, and the Charlotte, with her lower-deck ports little more than four foot from the surface, shipped so much water she had to pump all night. And her mizzen-yard was so wounded that for a while she could not tack. The day after that the weather grew thicker and thicker—the French disappeared—and although the Admiral threw out the signal for our van ships to keep close order there were times when you could not see your second ahead or astern. But however it cleared a little by nine the next morning—this was the thirty-first, ma'am—and we saw how scattered we were. It was a very horrid sight, and we were very much afraid we had lost the Frenchmen. They came in sight about noon: some fresh ships had joined them, and as some of the ships had not behaved very sensibly in the last engagement, Black Dick—we called the Admiral Black Dick, ma'am, but though it sounds disrespectful, it was not so in fact, was it, sir?'

  'Oh dear me no,' said Jack. 'It was affectionate: but I should never have dared use it to his face.'

  'No. Well, Black Dick decided against an action that might last until darkness, and he hauled to the wind, steering the course he judged the French would follow. He was quite right. At dawn there they were on our starboard bow, about two leagues to leeward, in line of battle on the larboard tack. Moderate sea; breeze steady
in the south by west. We bore down and then hauled to the wind again at seven, four miles from them. The Admiral signalled that he should attack the enemy's centre—that he should pass through the enemy's line and engage to leeward. Then we had breakfast. Lord, how I enjoyed my burgoo! When that was ate, we filled and bore down under single-reefed topsails in line abreast: they were in a close head and stern formation.'

  'Sir,' whispered the gun-room steward in Pullings' ear, 'cook says if we don't eat our swordfish steaks this selfsame minute he will hang himself. I have been signalling your honour this last half glass.'

  The steaks arrived in style, the dishes covering the middle of the table, while in the intervals and at the corners there were small bowls of such things as dried peas beaten into a paste with a marline-spike and flavoured with turmeric, and white sauce beautified with cochineal. Davies' dreadful whiskered face could be seen in the doorway, leering in: he had arranged all the dishes by hand. Martin was an accomplished anatomist, and Stephen noticed that he helped Mrs Oakes to some particularly tender pieces with great complaisance. He also noticed that Reade was filling his glass every time the wine came within reach.

  'I had no idea that swordfish could be so very good,' said Clarissa, above the sound of knives and forks.

  'I am so happy you like it, ma'am,' said Pullings. 'May I pour you a glass of wine?'

  'Just half a glass, Captain, if you please. I long to hear the rest of Earl Howe's battle.'

  After a decent reluctance, and encouragement by most of the table, West said 'I am afraid I have been far too long-winded; but now rather than try to describe the whole battle, I shall only say that when their line was perfectly clear, the Admiral rearranged our heavy ships to match theirs, and so we bore down, each to steer for her opposite number, break their line and engage her independently from to leeward. Well, some did, and some did not; but everyone knows we took six of them, sunk one, crippled many more, and lost none of our own, though it was nip and tuck at times, they fighting with such spirit. So having said that, may I just speak of a few things I saw? For I was on the quarterdeck, acting as our first lieutenant's runner, and some of the time I stood quite close to the Admiral's chair—you must understand, ma'am, that Lord Howe was a very ancient gentleman, seventy, if I do not mistake, and he sat there in a wooden elbow-chair. Now our opposite number was of course the French admiral's flagship, the Montagne of a hundred and twenty guns, and her next astern was the Jacobin, of eighty. They started firing at half past nine, but as the wind was blowing from us to them, their smoke rolled away to leeward; so we could see them perfectly well, and the Admiral, setting topgallants and fore-course, aimed for the gap between them, meaning to pass through, luff up on the Montagne's starboard side and fight her yardarm to yardarm; but when we were within pistol-shot, the Jacobin, disliking the idea of being raked by our starboard guns as we broke through the line ahead of her, began to move up into the Montagne's lee. "Starboard," calls the Admiral, in spite of the Jacobin's being in the road. "My lord, you will be foul of the French ship if you don't take care," says Mr Bowen, the master—the master, ma'am, handles the ship in battle. "What's that to you, sir?" cries the Admiral. "Starboard." "Damned if I care, if you don't," says old Bowen but not very loud. "I'll take you near enough to singe your black whiskers." He clapped the helm hard astarboard and the ship just scraped through, the Montagne's ensign brushing the Charlotte's shrouds and the Charlotte's bowsprit grazing the Jacobin's as she flinched away; and then lying on the Montagne's quarter we raked her again and again, at the same time battering the Jacobin with our starboard broadside. We mauled them terribly—blood gushing from the scuppers—but presently we lost our foretopmast—chaos forward—and they were able to make sail from us into the great bank of smoke to leeward. The rest of their line was breaking too, and the Admiral threw out the signal for a general chase. After that everything grew more confused of course, but I remember very well that late in the afternoon I received my only wound. The first lieutenant had just jumped down into the waist, and the Admiral said to me "Go and tell Mr Cochet to make the forecastle guns stop firing at that ship: she is the Invincible." I went down, and we ran forward. "Stop firing at Invincible," says Mr Cochet. "But she's not Invincible. She's a French ship that has been firing at us all along," said Mr Codrington, and Mr Hale agrees. "I know that," says Mr Cochet. "Let's have a shot." The gun was run in, sponged, loaded, run out: he pointed it just so, waited for the roll, waited again, and fired. The shot went home. And as the smoke cleared,' said West, with a sideways glance at Jack, 'there was the Admiral. "God damn you all," he cries, hitting Mr Hale—he thought Hale had fired the shot—with the flat of his sword. "God damn you all," fetching me a swipe on the top of my head. Then the ship, hauling her wind, showed her French colours, and Cochet, to save the Admiral's face, said "She is painted just like the Invincible" but . . .'