Master and Commander

by Patrick O'Brian

  'A thirty-two-gun xebec-frigate,' said Jack, 'and she cannot be anything but Spanish. Her hanging-ports deceived us entirely—thought she was a merchantman until the east moment—and nearly all her hands were down below. Mr Dillon, get a few more people out of sight without its showing. Mr Marshall, three or four men, no more, to shake out the reef in the fore topsail—they are to do it slowly, like lubbers. Anderssen, call out something in Danish again and let that bucket dangle over the side.' In a lower voice to Stephen, 'You see her, the fox? Those ports opened two minutes ago, quite hidden by all that bloody paintwork. And although she was thinking of swaying up her square yards—look at her foremast—she can have that lateen back in a moment, and snap us up directly. We must stand on—no choice—and see whether we can't amuse her. Mr Ricketts, you have the flags ready to hand? Slip off your jacket at once and toss it into the locker. Yes, there she goes.' A gun spoke from the frigate's quarter-deck: the ball skipped across the Sophie's bows, and the Spanish colours appeared, clear of the warning smoke. 'Carry on, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack. The Dannebrog broke out at the Sophie's gaff-end, followed by the yellow quarantine flag at the fore. 'Pram, come up here and wave your arms about. Give orders in Danish. Mr Marshall, heave to awkwardly in half a cable's length. No nearer.'

  Closer and closer. Dead silence aboard the Sophie: gabble drifting across from the xebec. Standing just behind Pram, in his shirt sleeves and breeches—no uniform coat—Jack took the wheel. 'Look at all those people,' he said, half to himself and half to Stephen. 'There must be three hundred and more. They will hail us in a couple of minutes. Now, sir, Pram is going to tell them we are a Dane, a few days out of Algiers: I beg you will support him in Spanish, or any other language you see fit, as the opportunity offers.'

  The hail came clear over the morning sea. 'What brig?'

  'Good and loud, Pram,' said Jack.

  'Clomer!' called the quartermaster in the buff waistcoat, and very faintly off the cliffs there came back the cry 'Clomer!' with the same hint of defiance, though so diminished.

  'Back the foretopsail slowly, Mr Marshall,' murmured Jack, 'and keep the hands to the braces.' He murmured, for he knew very well that the frigate's officers had their glasses trained on the quarter-deck, and a persuasive fallacy assured him that the glasses would magnify his voice as well.

  The way began to come off the brig, and at the same time the close groups aboard the xebec, her gun-crews, began to disperse. For a moment Jack thought it was all over and his heart, hitherto tranquil, began to bound and thump. But no. A boat was putting off.

  'Perhaps we shall not be able to avoid this action,' he said. 'Mr Dillon, the guns are double-shotted, I believe?'

  'Treble, sir,' said James, and looking at him Stephen saw that look of mad happiness he had known often enough, in former years—the contained look of a fox about to do something utterly insane.

  The breeze and the current kept heaving the Sophie in towards the frigate, whose crew were going back to their task of changing from a lateen to a square rig: they swarmed thick into the shrouds, looking curiously at the docile brig, which was just about to be boarded by their launch.

  'Hail the officer, Pram,' said Jack, and Pram went to the rail. He uttered a loud, seamanlike, emphatic statement in Danish; but very ludicrously in pidgin-Danish. And no recognizable form of Algiers appeared only the Danish for Barbary coast, vainly repeated.

  The Spanish bowman was about to hook on when Stephen, speaking a Scandinavian but instantly comprehensible Spanish, called out, 'Have you a surgeon that understands the plague aboard your ship?'

  The bowman lowered his hook. The officer said, 'Why?'

  'Some of our men were taken poorly at Algiers, and we are afraid. We cannot tell what it is'

  'Back water,' said the Spanish officer to his men. 'Where did you say you had touched?'

  'Algiers, Alger, Argel: it was there the men went ashore. Pray what is the plague like? Swellings? Buboes? Will you come and look at them? Pray, sir, take this rope.'

  'Back water,' said the officer again 'And they went ashore at Algiers?'

  'Yes. Will you send your surgeon?'

  'No. Poor people, God and His Mother preserve you.'

  'May we come for medicines? Pray let me come into your boat.'

  'No,' said the officer, crossing himself. 'No, no. Keep off, or we shall fire into you. Keep out to sea—the sea will cure them. God be with you, poor people. And a happy voyage to you.' He could be seen ordering the bowman to throw the boathook into the sea, and the launch pulled back fast to the bright-red xebec.

  They were within very easy hailing distance now, and a voice from the frigate called out some words in Danish; Pram replied; and then a tall thin figure on the quarter-deck, obviously the captain, asked, had they seen an English sloop-of-war, a brig?

  'No,' they said; and as the vessels began to draw away from one another Jack whispered, 'Ask her name.'

  'Cacafuego,' came the answer over the widening lane of sea. 'A happy voyage.'

  'A happy voyage to you.'

  'So that is a frigate,' said Stephen, looking attentively at the Cacafuego.

  'A xebec-frigate,' said Jack. 'Handsomely with those braces, Mr Marshall: no appearance of hurry. A xebec-frigate. A wonderfully curious rig, ain't it? There's nothing faster, I suppose—broad in the beam to carry a vast great press of sail, but with a very narrow floor—but they need a prodigious crew; for, do you see, when she is sailing on a wind, she is a lateen, but when the wind comes fair, right aft or thereabouts, she strikes 'em down on deck and sways up square yards instead, a great deal of labour. She must have three hundred men, at the least. She is changing to her square rig now, which means she is going up the coast. So we must stand to the south—we have had quite enough of her company. Mr Dillon, let us take a look at the chart.'

  'Dear Lord,' he said in the cabin, striking his hands together and chuckling, 'I thought we were dished that time—burnt, sunk and destroyed; hanged, drawn and quartered. What a jewel that Doctor is! When he waved the guess-rope and begged them so earnestly to come aboard! I understood him, though he spoke so quick. Ha, ha, ha! Eh? Did not you think it the drollest thing in life?'

  'Very droll indeed, sir.'

  'Que vengan, says he, most piteously, waving the line, and they start back as grave and solemn as a parcel of owls. Que vengan! Ha, ha, ha . . . Oh dear. But you don't seem very amused.'

  'To tell you the truth, sir, I was so astonished at our sheering off that I have scarcely had time to relish the joke.'

  'Why,' said Jack, smiling, 'what would you have had us do? Ram her?'

  'I was persuaded that we were about to attack,' said James passionately. 'I was persuaded that was your intention. I was delighted.'

  'A fourteen-gun brig against a thirty-two-gun frigate? You are not speaking in earnest?'

  'Certainly. When they were hoisting in their launch and half their people were busy in the rigging our broadside and small-arms would have cut them to pieces, and with this breeze we should have been aboard before they had recovered.'

  'Oh, come now! And it would scarcely have been a very honourable stroke, either.'

  'Perhaps I am no great judge of what is honourable, sir,' said Dillon. 'I speak as a mere fighting man.'

  Mahon, and the Sophie surrounded by her own smoke, firing both broadsides all round and one over in salute to the admiral's flag aboard the Foudroyant, whose imposing mass lay just between Pigtail Stairs and the ordnance wharf.

  Mahon, and the Sophie's liberty-men stuffing themselves with fresh roast pork and soft-tack, to a state of roaring high spirits, roaring merriment: wine-barrels with flowing taps, a hecatomb of pigs, young ladies flocking from far and near.

  Jack sat stiffly in his chair, his hands sweating, his throat parched and rigid. Lord Keith's eyebrows were black with strong silver bristles interspersed, and from beneath them he directed a cold, grey, penetrating gaze across the table. 'So you were driven to it by necessity?' he said.
<
br />   He was speaking of the prisoners landed on Dragon Island: indeed, the subject had occupied him almost since the beginning of the interview.

  'Yes, my lord.'

  The admiral did not reply for some time. 'Had you been driven to it by a want of discipline,' he said slowly, 'by a dislike for subordinating your judgment to that of your seniors, I should have been compelled to take a very serious view of the matter. Lady Keith has a great kindness for you, Captain Aubrey, as you know; and myself I should be grieved to see you harm your own prospects; so you will allow me to speak to you very frankly . . .'

  Jack had known that it was going to be unpleasant as soon as he had seen the secretary's grave face, but this was far rougher than his worst expectations. The admiral was shockingly well informed; he had all the details—official reprimand for petulance, neglect of orders on stated occasions, reputation for undue independence, for temerity, and even for insubordination, rumours of ill behaviour on shore, drunkenness; and so it ran. The admiral could not see the smallest likelihood of promotion to post rank: though Captain Aubrey should not take that too much to heart—plenty of men never rose even to commander; and the commanders were a very respectable body of men. But could a man be entrusted with a line of battle ship if he were liable to take it into his head to fight a fleet engagement according to his own notions of strategy? No, there was not the least likelihood, unless something very extraordinary took place. Captain Aubrey's record was by no means all that could be wished. Lord Keith spoke steadily, with great justice, great accuracy in his facts and his diction; at first Jack had merely suffered, ashamed and uneasy; but as it went on he felt a glow somewhere about his heart or a little lower, the beginning of that rising jet of furious anger that might take control of him. He bowed his head, for he was certain it would show in his eye.

  'Yet on the other hand,' said Lord Keith, 'you do possess one prime quality in a commander. You are lucky. None of my other cruisers has played such havoc with the enemy's trade; none has taken half as many prizes. So when you come back from Alexandria I shall give you another cruise.'

  'Thank you, my lord.'

  'It will arouse a certain amount of jealousy, a certain amount of criticism; but luck is something that rarely lasts—at least that is my experience—and we should back it while it is with us.'

  Jack made his acknowledgements, thanked the admiral not ungracefully for his kindness in giving him advice, sent his duty—his affectionate duty, if he might say so—to Lady Keith, and withdrew. But the fire in his heart was burning so high in spite of the promised cruise that it was all he could do to get his words out smoothly, and there was such a look on his face as he came out that the sentry at the door instantly changed his expression of knowing irony to one of deaf, dumb, unmoving wood.

  'If that scrub Harte presumes to use the same tone to me,' said Jack to himself, walking out into the street and crushing a citizen hard against the wall, 'or anything like it, I shall wring his nose off his head, and damn the service.'

  'Mercy, my dear,' he roared, stepping into the Crown on his way, 'bring me a glass of vino, there's a good girl, and a copito of aguardiente. God damn all admirals,' he said, letting the young green flowery wine run cool and healing down his throat.

  'But he is a topping old admiral, dear Capitano,' said Mercedes, brushing dust off his blue lapels. 'He will give you a cruise when you are coming back from Alexandria.'

  Jack cocked a shrewd eye at her, observed 'Mercy querido, if you knew half as much about Spanish sailings as you do about ours, how happy, felix, you would make me', tossed down the burning drop of brandy and called for another glass of wine, that appeasing, honest brew. 'I have an auntie,' said Mercedes, 'that know a great deal.' 'Have you, my dear? Have you indeed?' said Jack. 'You shall tell me about her this evening.' He kissed her absently, tapped his lace hat more firmly on to his new wig and said, 'Now for that scrub.'

  But as it happened, Captain Harte received him with more than ordinary civility, congratulated him upon the Almoraira affair—'that battery was a damned nuisance; hulled the Pallas three times and knocked away one of the Emerald's topmasts; should have been dealt with long ago'—and asked him to dinner. 'And bring your surgeon along, will you? My wife particularly desires me to invite him.'

  'I am sure he will be very happy, if he is not already bespoke. Mrs Harte is well, I trust? I must pay my respects.'

  'Oh, she's very well, I thank you. But it's no use calling on her this morning—she's out riding with Colonel Pitt. How she does it in this heat, I don't know. By the by, you can do me a service, if you will.' Jack looked at him attentively, but did not commit himself. 'My money-man wants to send his son to sea—you have a vacancy for a youngster: it is as simple as that. He is a perfectly respectable fellow, and his wife was at school with Molly. You will see them both at dinner.'

  On his knees, and with his chin level with the top of the table, Stephen watched the male mantis step cautiously towards the female mantis. She was a fine strapping green specimen, and she stood upright on her four back legs, her front pair dangling devoutly; from time to time a tremor caused her heavy body to oscillate over the thin suspending limbs, and each time the brown male shot back. He advanced lengthways, with his body parallel to the table-top, his long, toothed, predatory front legs stretching out tentatively and his antennae trained forwards: even in this strong light Stephen could see the curious inner glow of his big oval eyes.

  The female deliberately turned her head through forty-five degrees, as though looking at him. 'Is this recognition?' asked Stephen, raising his magnifying glass to detect some possible movement in her feelers. 'Consent?'

  The brown male certainly thought it was, and in three strides he was upon her; his legs gripped her wing-covers; his antennae found hers and began to stroke them. Apart from a vibratory, well-sprung quiver at the additional weight, she made no apparent response, no resistance; and in a little while the strong orthopterous copulation began. Stephen set his watch and noted down the time in a book, open upon the floor.

  Minutes passed. The male shifted his hold a little. The female moved her triangular head, pivoting it slightly from left to right. Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then there was a blur of movements so rapid that for all his care and extreme attention he could not follow them, and the male's head was off, clamped there, a detached lemon, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into it, and the eye's glow went out; on her back the headless male continued to copulate rather more strongly than before, all his inhibitions having been removed. 'Ah,' said Stephen with intense satisfaction, and noted down the time again.

  Ten minutes later the female took off three pieces of her mate's long thorax, above the upper coxal joint, and ate them with every appearance of appetite, dropping crumbs of chitinous shell in front of her. The male copulated on, still firmly anchored by his back legs.

  'There you are,' cried Jack. 'I have been waiting for you this quarter of an hour.'

  'Oh,' said Stephen, starting up. 'I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. I know what importance you attach to punctuality—most concerned. I had put my watch back to the beginning of the copulation,' he said, very gently covering the mantis and her dinner with a hollow ventilated box. 'I am with you now.'

  'No you aren't,' said Jack. 'Not in those infamous half-boots. Why do you have them soled with lead, anyhow?'

  At any other time he would have received a very sharp reply to this, but it was clear to Stephen that he had not spent a pleasant forenoon with the admiral; and all he said, as he changed into his shoes, was, 'You do not need a head, nor even a heart, to be all a female can require.'

  'That reminds me,' said jack, 'have you anything that will keep my wig on? A most ridiculous thing happened as I was crossing the square: there was Dillon on the far side, with a woman on his arm—Governor Wall's sister, I believe—so I returned his salute with particular attention, do you see. I lifted my hat right off my head and the da
mned wig came with it. You may laugh, and it is damned amusing, of course; but I would have given a fifty-pound note not to have looked ridiculous with him there.'

  'Here is a piece of court plaster,' said Stephen. 'Let me double it over and stick it to your head. I am heartily sorry there should be this—constraint, between Dillon and you.'

  'So am I,' said Jack, bending for the plaster: then with a sudden burst of confidence—the place being so different, and they on land, with no sort of sea-going relationship—he said, 'I never have been so puzzled what to do in all my life, lie practically accused me—I hardly like to name it—of want of conduct, after that Cacafuego business. My first impulse was to ask him for an explanation, and for satisfaction, naturally. But then the position is so very particular—it is heads I win tails you lose in such a case; for if I were to sink him, why, there he would be, of course; and if he were to do the same by me, he would be out of the Navy before you could say knife, which would amount to much the same thing, for him.'

  'He is passionately attached to the service, sure.'

  'And in either case, there is the Sophie left in a pitiable state . . . damn the man for a fool. And then again he is the best first lieutenant a man could wish for—taut, but not a slave-driver; a fine seaman; and you never have to give a thought to the daily running of the sloop. I like to think that that was not his meaning.'

  'He would certainly never have meant to impugn your courage,' said Stephen.

  'Would he not?' asked Jack, gazing into Stephen's face and balancing his wig in his hand. 'Should you like to dine at the Hartes'?' he asked, after a pause. 'I must go, and I should be glad of your company, if you are not engaged.'

  'Dinner?' cried Stephen, as though the meal had just been invented. 'Dinner? Oh, yes: charmed—delighted.'

  'You don't happen to have a looking-glass, I suppose?' said Jack.