The Letter of Marque

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Very well,' said Jack. 'Tartarus, Dolphin, Camel, Vulture, lay on your oars. Bonden, the blue light.'

  Bonden clapped his glowing tinder to the fuse, and with a wavering flight at first but then a determined soar the rocket climbed, climbed, and burst with a great blue star that floated to leeward together with its own white smoke. Within a second of the burst the whole southern sky flashed as the Surprise's broadside answered.

  'Cast off and stretch out,' cried Jack, and as the boats leapt into motion the deep thunder of the carronades reached them, echoing from one side of the port to the other and back again.

  The boats raced to their posts. As the launch bumped heavily alongside the mainchains an indignant voice called out 'Mais qu'est-ce qui se passe?' and a man peered over. But he was instantly overwhelmed by the boarding party that leapt up the side, while the rest of the meagre harbour-watch, chatting over the rail with friends on the quay, were swept down the hatchways by parties coming from head and stern. Stephen, followed by Bonden, darted not into the great cabin but into that where he would have been himself in similar conditions: and here, writing at a table, he found a middle-aged man, who looked up with angry astonishment. 'Pin him, Bonden,' said Stephen, his pistol levelled at the man's head. 'Tie his hands and toss him into a boat. He must not call out and he must not escape.' Meanwhile Padeen and Darkie Johnson, racing over the brows fore and aft, the gangways to the quay, cut the cables; the topmen laid aloft and loosed the foretopsail, cutting the buntlines and clewlines as they did so; three boatloads of boarders were sweeping the lower deck clear of the watch below, turning them out of their hammocks and driving them and their girls down into the hold and clapping the hatches shut. And all this while the Surprise bellowed and thundered like a ship of the line, while in St Martin's the church bells rang madly, drums beat from a dozen points, trumpets sounded, and lines of torches could be seen hurrying towards the isthmus.

  The boarders on deck and between decks rounded up the stray Dianes—there were a few scuffles, a pistol shot or so—and herded them too down into the hold, where the afterhatch was raised to let them pass. 'Mr Bulkeley,' said Jack, standing by the men appointed to steer, 'and Master Gunner, take the cutters and tow her head clear.'

  The cutters' crews were over the side in a moment, and they carried out a line, pulling splendidly; but their zeal and an unhappy gust in the loosed topsail ran the Diane's stem tight between the two gunboats moored close ahead. Jack raced forward and peered down into the black water. 'Mr West,' he said, 'jump down with a party and carry the off gunboat out into the stream.'

  'Sir,' cried West, coming back soaked, gasping, black in the face, 'she's moored with a chain fore and aft.'

  'Very well,' said Jack, and he saw that Davidge was next to him, and men all along both gangways. 'You two take your boats' crews and shift those two merchantmen astern. I do not think they will give you much trouble.'

  Nor did they. But as the ships moved out into the stream so the scene changed entirely. From a street leading from the hill into the middle of the quay a group of sailors on horseback, the Diane's officers, followed by her liberty-men and a body of soldiers came pelting along over the cobbles.

  Jack leaned over the starboard rail and hailed loud and clear, 'Davidge, West, heave her stern clear, and bear a hand, bear a hand, d'ye hear me?' There was no time for more. The Diane still had her brows across, and though she was free aft her larboard bow was wedged between the gunboats, fast against the quay forward; and the ebb was now wedging her tighter still.

  The foremost officer leapt his horse clean on to the frigate's quarterdeck, his pistol aimed at the helmsman; but his horse missed its footing and came down. Jack plucked the man clear and hurled him across the deck into the sea. But others followed him—five horses at least—and men on foot were swarming aboard over the brows fore and aft, some hauling on the buntlines and clewlines to take their power from the sails, only to find them cut, while others tore along the gangway to join the very violent confused struggle on the quarterdeck: there were fallen horses kicking madly and forming a barrier, but as two of them got to their feet they left room for a singularly furious attack led by the Diane's captain. Jack, wedged against the capstan by the surging crowd, saw Stephen shoot him coolly in the shoulder and pass his sword through his body. Then came a heaving struggle, even closer-packed than before, with blows felt but unseen, Surprises from below and from the boats roaring Merry Christmas and flying into the thick of it with cutlasses and boarding-axes. But now there were far more people on the quay. The Surprises were outnumbered and the tide was setting against them; they were being thrust against the wheel and the mizzen and the far rail.

  Jack had forced his way to the front rank in the centre; here there was no room for fine-work, no room for sword-play; it was all furious short-armed cutting strokes, swords clashing like a smithy, until a maddened horse dashed between the opposing sides. Through the wider gap a French soldier, rising from the deck on which he had tripped, slashed upwards with his sabre, catching Jack's leg above the knee. His friends, pushing forwards, trampled the soldier down again and one of them lunged fast and hard; Jack parried, but a trifle late and the point ploughed up his forearm. The thrust brought the man within reach and Jack caught him with his left hand, stunned him with the pommel of his sword and flung him bodily against his supporters with such force that three of them fell. In the momentary interval he half turned to hail the squadron's boats and as he turned he felt a blow from behind, like a kick. 'Horse,' he thought, and filled his lungs to hail, yet now the savage attacking cry of the Dianes and the soldiers changed to a bellowed warning—run, run while you can. It was almost too late. Davidge and West now had a real purchase on the frigate's stern; they heaved, and first the after and then the forward brow left the quay and fell down the ship's side. Some Dianes leapt back before the gap was too wide, some leapt but fell short, some fought on with their backs to the taffrail until, hopelessly outnumbered, they threw down their arms.

  Yet there was still pistol and musket fire from the quay, and Jack, calling out 'Come on Plaice, come on, Killick,' ran forward to the forecastle carronades—flint-lock pieces—heaved the short gun round to bear on the soldiers, and though his arm was streaming with blood he pulled the laniard. It was only loaded with ball, not the much more deadly case-shot, but it shattered the cobbles and the front of a house, scattering the men entirely.

  'And now we are here,' said Jack, 'I'll be damned if we don't take the gunboats too.' As he said this the battery at the bottom of the harbour came to life at last, but the gunners' aim was impeded by their own vessels, and their shots only ruined the port-office and part of the quay. Jack's aim on the other hand was perfectly clear. 'Belay, there,' he called to those heaving the stern, as the next carronade aft bore full on the mooring-bollard. Again he pulled the laniard and the gun roared out, its long tongue of fire almost touching the target; when the smoke cleared there was no bollard to be seen, but the gunboats had swung out with the tide, and the chain, a loop-chain, had run clear.

  'Mr Bentley,' he said to the carpenter, 'take the jolly-boat and your men and take care of the gunboats.

  The Diane now had way on her; the men on the quarterdeck had cleared the wheel; they had hoisted topsails and forestay-sail, and with the tide, the cutters' towing, and the light breeze she was moving slowly away from the quay. Now at last Jack hailed the waiting Tartaruses, Dolphins, Camels and Vultures; there were five prizes and he had to get them clear of the port before the French galloped field-pieces down to the quay.

  No field-pieces; and they moved out, a solemn procession, though faster and faster as both ebb and breeze increased upon them: a brisk fire of musketry at the narrow pass, soon discouraged by the Diane's full broadside, and they were out in the open sea, heaving on the familiar swell, with the impassive beam of the lighthouse sweeping the air overhead, the Surprise and the ships of the squadron standing in, not a mile away, top-lanterns all ablaze.

 
Chapter Seven

  With Bonden pushing him from behind Jack Aubrey managed to climb up the stern ladder, but the ivory pallor of his face in the lantern-light shocked Tom Pullings extremely. Pullings' look of fierce happiness and triumph vanished; he cried 'Are you all right, sir?' and sprang forward to take his arm.

  'A little hacked about, no more,' said Aubrey, and he walked along the quarterdeck, blood squelching from his boots at each step. 'What is this?' he asked, looking at a great gash in the ship's larboard rail and side, right aft.

  'A bomb, sir. They got a mortar up on to the hill just as we were winning the anchor; but it was only the quarter-gallery—no harm below.'

  'Then we can have—' began Jack, turning to look at the wreckage; but the unfortunate twist sent such a flood of pain through him that he had to cling to a backstay not to fall, and moments went by before he could say '—quarter-davits at last.'

  'Come, sir, you must go below at once,' said Pullings, holding him firmly. 'The Doctor has been aboard this half glass, working in the orlop with Mr Martin. Bonden, give me a hand.'

  Jack could not resist: he only said 'Close the Tartarus under all plain sail' and let them ease him down into the brightly-lit orlop, where Stephen and Martin were each dealing with a wounded man. He sat on a rolled-up hammock, crouching in the only position that gave any relief: at some point his senses must have reeled away from him, for when he was fully aware again he was lying naked on the bloody canvas-covered chests with Stephen and Martin examining the small of his back.

  'It is not there that it hurts,' he said in a surprisingly strong voice. 'It is in my goddam leg.'

  'Nonsense, my dear,' said Stephen. 'That is only referred pain from the great sciatic. We are on the very spot itself. It is a pistol-ball lodged between two vertebrae.' He tapped the general region.

  'There? I thought that was the kick of a horse—nothing much at the time.'

  'We are all of us fallible. Now listen, Jack, will you? We must have it out directly, and then with the blessing all will be well, a week's stiffness, no more. But when my probe reaches the ball and shifts it there will be a very great deal of pain, more than your body can bear without moving; so I must fasten you down. Here is a leather pad to hold between your teeth. There, all is fast. Now, Jack, bite hard and let your back lie as easy and uncontracted as ever it can. The strong pain will not last long. Martin, will you pass me the long-nosed crow-bill, now?'

  Long or short seemed to bear no relation to the agony that followed these words: it was all-embracing and it distorted his body under the leather-covered chains in spite of his utmost fortitude, and he heard a great hoarse animal noise coming from his own throat, on and on. Yet an end it did have at last, and there was Martin casting off the chains while Stephen took the gag from his mouth and gently mopped away the sweat that ran down his face. The pain was still there; it echoed and re-echoed in great waves through his body; but it was no more than a reminder of what it had been, and each wave was less, an ebbing tide.

  'There, my dear,' said Stephen. 'It is all over. The ball came away charmingly: if it had not, I should not have given a great deal for your leg.'

  'Thankee, Stephen,' said Jack, still panting like a dog as they wound a cingulum round him and turned him on his side to dress the other wounds: right forearm, superficial but spectacular, and a deep gash in his thigh. He had not taken much count of either when he received them, but they had cost him a great deal of blood. The same insensibility was on him now; he was aware of the probing and pricking and sewing, he could see, hear and feel Stephen at work, but it scarcely affected him at all.

  'What was the butcher's bill?' he asked.

  'Tolerably severe for so short an action,' said Stephen. 'We have no dead, but there are three abdominal wounds I do not like at all, and Mr Bentley was cruelly bruised when he tripped over a bucket and fell down the main hatchway; while there were many kicked or bitten by the horses, an unreasonable number, for a naval engagement. Take a sup of this.'

  'What is it?'

  'Physic.'

  'It tastes like brandy.'

  'So much the better. Padeen, let you and Bonden bear the Captain away on this sheet. He is not to be bent, but to be laid flat in his cot. Next case.'

  Stephen had long been familiar with his friend's descent into sadness after the exhilaration of battle, and when, coming round with a lantern in the middle watch to see how he did, he found him awake, he said 'Jack, with your recent anguish and your loss of blood and your present pain—for sutures are always uncomfortable—you may feel low in your spirits; but you are to consider that you have taken a French national frigate of greater force than your own, together with two national gunboats and their valuable cannon, as well as two fully-laden merchantmen belonging to the enemy.'

  'Dear Stephen,' said Jack, and his teeth gleamed in the half-darkness, 'I have been considering just that ever since you was kind enough to sew me up; and that is why I have not gone to sleep. But dear Lord, Stephen,' he added after a pause, 'I really thought I had lost the number of my mess that bout. I scarcely noticed it at the time and then all at once there I was a-dying; or so I supposed.'

  'The pain must have been very great indeed, I am sure; but with the ball gone you have no more to fear. It came out exactly as it had gone in—no turning, no cloth carried in, no laceration at all—there was a laudable flow of cleansing blood, and the wound is now quite trifling. As for the others, they are ugly gashes, sure, but you have suffered a dozen far worse with no lasting ill effects; and if you will drink this, compose your mind, and go to sleep, you will feel somewhat better even tomorrow morning; while you may be fit for service, gentle service, as soon as the stitches are out. Your wounds nearly always heal by first intention.'

  Dr Maturin had rarely made a better forecast. In the forenoon of the thirteenth Jack Aubrey was carried up on to his quarterdeck in an elbow-chair, and there he sat in the mild sunshine, contemplating the string of prizes and receiving congratulations. 'By God, sir,' said Babbington, 'this matches the Cacafuego. You could not have succeeded more fully. But I do hope that you have not paid too high.'

  'No, no, the Doctor himself says it is quite trifling.'

  'Well, if he calls that trifling,' said Babbington, nodding at the slung arm and the heavily bandaged leg and the waxen face, 'God help us if ever he tells us we are seriously hurt.'

  'Amen,' said Jack. 'William, have you considered the Diane?'

  'Yes, sir, and a very pretty ship she is—a fine narrow entry and the most elegant lines, though she is so low in the water she don't appear to advantage.'

  'Why, she has twelve or even eighteen months stores aboard: she was going foreign, far foreign. But what I meant was, all those young women walking about her deck. Have you considered them?'

  'Oh yes, sir,' said Babbington, a lubricious creature who had been considering them through a telescope at close range ever since they began to appear. 'There is a particularly handsome one in green just abaft the hances.'

  'You always was an infernal whoremonger, William,' said Jack, though without any moral superiority: moral superiority he could not afford, since it was pretty well known in the service that in his youth he had been turned before the mast for keeping a black girl in the cable-tiers of HMS Resolution off the Cape; while as lieutenant, commander and post-captain he had never really shone as a model of chastity. 'I remember your sailing with a whole harem of Greek wenches in the Ionian, when you had the Dryad. But my intention was rather to suggest that you should pack them off home in a flag of truce, together with the wounded.'

  'Certainly, sir,' said Babbington, reluctantly taking his eye from the girl in green. 'A brilliant idea. No doubt the Doctor will tell me which of the wounded can be moved; but now I come to think of it, I have not seen him this morning.'

  'Nor I don't suppose you shall, not until about noon. Poor soul: he fought like a hero in the cutting-out—pistolled the French captain as neatly as you could wish—and then spent most of the
rest of the night sewing up the Frenchmen he had punctured, as well as our own people. It was a French quartermaster he operated on after me—blood bubbling out of his lungs.'

  'What did he do to you, sir?'

  'Well, I am ashamed to say he took a pistol-ball out of the small of my back. It must have been when I turned to hail for more hands—thank God I did not. At the time I thought it was one of those vile screws that were capering about abaft the wheel.'

  'Oh, sir, surely a horse would never have fired off a pistol?'

  'Yet fired it was: and the Doctor said it was lodged hard up against the sciatic nerve.'

  'What is the sciatic nerve?'

  'I have no idea. But once it had recovered from being as I take it stunned, and once I had given the ball an unhandy twist, sending it closer still, the whole thing—I shall not attempt to describe how disagreeable it was, until the Doctor took it out.'

  Babbington shook his head, looking very grave; and after a while he said, 'The Americans speak of a sciatic stay, leading from the main to the foremast head.'

  'So I recall. No doubt shipping it causes them the utmost agony. But there is Mr Martin: he will tell you which of the French wounded can be moved.'