Book 13 - The Thirteen-Gun Salute

by Patrick O'Brian

  The Surprise, stored for a very long voyage, was low in the water, yet even so some twelve feet of wet side rose from the sea-level; and the steps, though wide, were startlingly shallow. Stephen and Martin stood immediately above him, by a gangway stanchion, leaning down and giving advice: Standish was the only man belonging to the ship who knew less about the sea than they (he had never left the land before) and they did not dislike sharing their knowledge.

  'You are to consider,' said Stephen, 'that the inward slope of the ship's flank, the tumblehome as we call it, makes the steps far less vertical than they seem. Furthermore, when the ship rolls from you, showing her copper, the angle is even more advantageous.'

  'The great thing is not to hesitate,' said Martin. 'A determined spring at the right moment, and the impetus will carry you up directly. I am sure you have seen a cat fly up a much steeper wall, only touching once or twice. Impetus; it is all impetus.'

  The two vessels wallowed companionably for a while.

  'Leap, leap!' cried Martin at the third upward rise.

  'Stay,' said Stephen, holding up his hand. 'The roll, or heave, is wrong.'

  Standish relaxed again, breathing hard. 'Come on, sir,' said the pilot impatiently as the boat rose once more. Standish gauged the distance and gave a convulsive spring; he had much over-estimated the expanse of water and he struck the side with great force, missing the steps entirely and falling straight back into the sea. The pilot instantly shoved off, to prevent the next surge from crushing him between the cutter and the ship. Standish came to the surface, spouting water; the pilot lunged with his boat-hook, but missing his collar, tore his scalp. Standish sank again, and the cutter, no longer anchored to the Surprise, drove before the wind. 'I can't swim,' roared the pilot, and Jack, looking up from his precious hygrometer, cyanograph and the rest, grasped the situation at once.

  Flinging off his coat, he plunged straight over the side, striking the purser as he rose again and driving him down breathless a good four fathoms, into quite dim water. This however gave time for entering ropes to be shipped and for a line with a man-harness hitch to be passed down, so that when Jack—a practised hand—brought Standish's head clear of the water, the purser could be hauled aboard and the Captain could walk up the steps of his ship at his ease.

  He found Standish sitting on a carronade-slide and gasping while the surgeons examined his wound. 'Nothing at all,' said Stephen. 'A mere superficial tear. Mr Martin will sew it up in a trice.'

  'I am most exceedingly obliged to you, sir,' said the purser, standing up and fairly pouring blood from the superficial tear.

  'My dear sir, I beg you will not think of it,' replied Jack, shaking his bloody hand. Leaning over the rail he called out to the pilot, who was clawing up into the wind, 'All's well', and ran below, where a furious Killick was waiting with a towel, a dry shirt and trousers. 'And these here woollen drawers, sir,' he said. 'You done it again—you are always a-doing of it—but this time you will catch your death, without you put on these woollen drawers. Who ever heard of dipping his bare arse off of the Eddystone? It is worse than the North Pole: far worse.'

  Standish had been led right aft to be stitched in a really good light, and they were swabbing his blood from the deck, the slide and even the metal of the carronade. Opinion among the foremast hands was quite strongly against the purser.

  'A pretty beginning,' said Awkward Davies, who like many other Surprises had been rescued by Jack Aubrey but who very much disliked sharing this distinction. 'Nothing could bring worse luck.'

  'He has ruined the Captain's fine pantaloons with his nasty blood,' said a forecastleman. 'It never comes out.'

  'Now he is being sick,' observed old Plaice.

  'Mr Martin is handing him below.'

  Standish and his perfectly proper, indeed absolutely called for, expression of gratitude having disappeared, faintly belching, Jack returned to the quarterdeck and said to Stephen, 'Let me show you my splendid hygrometer. Here are spare blades, at the side of the case, do you see—uncommon neat. And wonderfully sensitive, much more so than the whalebone kind. Should you like to breathe upon it? What a piece of luck poor Standish did not bring it over in his pocket. That would have damped its spirit, I believe.' Jack laughed heartily, showed Stephen the cyanoscope, and walked him away to the taffrail, where he said quietly, 'I wish you had been here a little while ago. The Orkneymen sang out in a most surprising manner. I had never heard them before, what with the refitting, the coppering, the quarter-davits, and they being kept busy in the hold; but before we get under way again I think it can be repeated, and I should like you to tell me what you make of their cadences.'

  The Surprise had been lying to all this time, although the pilot-cutter was now no more than a speck beyond the Eddystone and the ships of the line had altered course to enter the Sound; and many a questioning glance had been cast at her captain. He now walked forward and said, 'Mr Davidge, I am not quite pleased with the foretopsailyard; pray let it be eased off and settled a trifle more snug. Then we may get under way again, setting the foretopgallant: the course south-west by south. I should like to see it done by Macaulay and his mates,' he added, 'with the after-guard tailing on.'

  The usual cries, pipes and running feet, and then after a moment's pause that outlandish song:

  Heisa, heisa,

  Vorsa, vorsa,

  Vou, vou.

  One long pull,

  More power,

  Young blood.

  More mud.

  'I believe they may have it from the Hebrides,' said Stephen. 'It is not unlike the seal-singing of those parts; or indeed some I have heard in the far, far west of Ireland, on Belmullet, where the phalarope lives.'

  Jack nodded. He was considering the fact that 'more mud' had replaced the wild shriek, and that the blocks had not clashed together with the haulers' zeal. He would go into that with Stephen later, and ask him whether it was a deformation of Gaelic. Or Norse? An expression of opinion? In any event, it had a strange beauty. For the moment there was the foretopgallant to be set.

  More orders, more piping, more running feet: hands racing aloft. The cry 'Let fall, let fall,' and the topgallant billowed loose; they sheeted it home and the Orkneymen clapped on to the halliards. The sail rose, filling round and taut as the yard moved up and the men sang

  Afore the wind, afore the wind

  God send, God send

  Fair weather, fair weather,

  Many prizes, many prizes.

  The naval Surprises might not hold with shanties in general but they thoroughly approved of this one, above all its sentiment; and with ship swinging to the true south-west by west and gathering speed, all those forward of the quarterdeck repeated

  Many prizes, many prizes.

  Chapter Two

  Fair weather, fair weather bore the Surprise right out beyond the chops of the Channel, to the lonely waters Jack preferred for priddying the decks and making all ship-shape and man-of-war fashion before he turned south for Portugal. It was not that as a letter of marque he feared any pressing of his hands, nor incivility on the part of any considerable King's ship; for in the first place he had his protection from the Admiralty and in the second those few senior officers in the home or Mediterranean fleets who might hive offered to treat the Surprise as a common privateer—obliging Aubrey to lie to, to come up under their lee, bring his papers aboard, justify his existence, answer questions and so on—knew that now he was a member of parliament he was likely to be restored to the list. But on the one hand he preferred to avoid the invitations of even the well-inclined (apart from intimate friends) and the slight awkwardness of their reception of him as a mere civilian; and on the other he would as soon do without the nuisance of the busy unrated vessels of the smaller kind commanded by lieutenants or even by master's mates. They could be dealt with, of course, but it was a time-wasting bore, an irritation.

  The frigate therefore sailed into a vast unfrequented pool, traversed by whales and creatures of t
he deep and by young boobies in the season of the year, but by little else: its centre bay far to the south of Cape Clear in Ireland, and here, if the day should prove as peaceful as they hoped, the Surprises meant to carry on with their titivating and above all to deal with the piebald blackstrake. The weather was ideal: a dying air from the south-west and the remains of a long easy southern swell, but barely a ripple on the surface. It was one of those early mornings when there is no horizon, when sea and sky blend imperceptibly in a nameless band of colour that strengthens to pale blue at the zenith; and many hands thought they might have a little fishing over the side before they started on the blackstrake—this was a most promising time for codlings.

  But before that they were to have breakfast; and presently eight bells, the bosun's call, the general hurrying about and banging of mess-kids told Stephen that they were in the act of taking it. His own would come soon, when Jack smelt the coffee, the toast and the frying bacon. Aubrey had stayed up until the middle watch, studying Humboldt's observations and working out the best form to record his own, and now as usual he was sleeping right through the din that followed eight bells—nothing but a change of wind, the cry of 'Sail ho!' or the smell of breakfast would wake him.

  Had he been sailing alone as captain of the Surprise he would have enjoyed no less than three apartments of his own, the great cabin right aft, a noble room flooded with light from the stern-window that stretched across almost its whole width, and just forward of that much the same amount of space divided down the middle into the coach on the larboard side and the bed-place on the starboard. But since he was not alone he and Stephen shared the great cabin and Stephen had the coach to himself. As the frigate's surgeon, Maturin also had a cabin below, a stuffy little hole which, like those of the other officers, opened on to the gun-room: he used it on occasion, when Jack, the other side of the frail partition, snored beyond all bearing; but at present, in spite of a steady volume of sound, he was sitting there with his papers, chewing a few coca-leaves.

  He had woken not long since from a most unusually explicit and vivid erotic dream; they had become increasingly frequent of late, with the laudanum dying even in its remotest lingering effects, and the vehemence of his desire quite distressed him. 'I am becoming a mere satyr,' he said. 'Where should I be without my coca-leaves? Where indeed?'

  He reached out for the letters the pilot had brought and read them again. The bank regretted that it appeared to have no trace of the vouchers mentioned in his esteemed communication of the seventh ultimo; it would be obliged if Dr Maturin's verbal instructions to Mr McBean might be confirmed in writing, a necessary formality without which the business could not proceed; it was concerned to say that the requested dispatch of guineas to Mrs Maturin had not yet been able to be effected, the premium for gold now having risen from five to six shillings in the pound and Dr Maturin's direct written consent, naming this increased sum, being required for the transaction; and awaiting the favour of his further instructions it begged to have the honour of remaining his most humble obedient etc. 'Buggers,' said Stephen, using a word that he had quite often heard aboard but that rarely came to his mind as a term of reproach. A little surprised at himself, he took up the small heavy parcel that had been delivered at the same time. He had recognized the hand when first he saw the address, and in any case the sender's name was written on the back—Ashley Pratt, a surgeon and fellow member of the Royal Society who had for some time laid himself out to be agreeable. Stephen could not like him. It was true that Sir Joseph Banks thought highly of Pratt and often entertained him; but Sir Joseph's judgment of a plant or a beetle was more to be relied upon than his judgment of a man; his general kindness sometimes led him into acquaintances that his friends regretted and his general obstinacy confirmed him in them. Stephen had seen something of an obsequious, bullying fellow named Bligh, a naval officer alas, whose government of New South Wales had ended in very great discredit for everyone concerned; yet Banks still countenanced the man. Stephen was fond of Sir Joseph and he thought him an excellent president of the Society, but he did not feel that judgment was his most outstanding quality—indeed Stephen disliked almost everything he had ever heard about the management of the colony, generally looked upon as Banks's child. And though Pratt was a fashionable and no doubt fairly able surgeon, Stephen would never trust him with a popliteal aneurism, having seen what he had done to a patient in Bart's. However, it was benevolent in Pratt to send him this present, a peculiarly strong magnet or combination of magnets designed to extract splinters of cannon-ball from wounds, particularly from wounded eyes: Pratt had praised the device at their last meeting.

  'It might answer, especially if one could direct the force, and make out the path of entry. If Jack is not stirring in seven minutes'—booking attentively at his watch—'I shall call for coffee and breakfast by myself: perhaps a lightly boiled egg. Perhaps two lightly boiled eggs. In the meantime I shall put Pratt's object in the medicine-chest.'

  Emerging from the medicinal smell of his part of the orlop, he became aware both of the eddying smell of coffee (which had in fact roused the Captain) and of a confused noise and excitement on deck. As he reached the gun-room door he met Standish, recognizable by his bandaged head; he was carrying a cup of tea and he cried, 'Doctor, they were quite right. The Captain has hit the very place. Come and see. You can make her out even from the quarterdeck.'

  They climbed two ladders and they reached the quarterdeck, Standish still carrying his cup of tea unspilled, and there in that golden morning were all the officers at the leeward rail—leeward, but only just, so gentle was the moving air. West, as officer of the watch, was dressed with some formality; the others were in trousers and shirt; they all, like the hands along the gangway and on the forecastle, were gazing fixedly to the north-east; and the dew dripped on them from the yards and rigging.

  Martin took the telescope from his one eye, and offering Stephen the glass he said with a beaming smile, 'Just below where the horizon ought to be. You can make her out quite clear when the haze shifts. I never said good morning,' he added. 'How rude I am—greed reduces man to a very brutal state, I am afraid. Forgive me, Maturin.'

  'So you think she is a lawful prize?'

  'I have no notion at all,' said Martin, laughing happily. 'But everyone else seems sure of it—all the seasoned mariners. And what small part of her ballast is not silver is pure double refined gold in bars.'

  'Masthead, there,' called Jack, drowning any conversation around him. 'What do you make of her now?'

  It was Auden, a middle-aged experienced Shelmerstonian, who was up there; and after a moment he replied, 'No. She's not one of ours. I'll take my davy on that, sir. It is my belief she is a Frenchman. Most uncommon massy yards. She is gathering her boats as quick as ever they can pull. A very guilty conscience there, I fear. Oh, conscience does make cowards of us all.'

  Standish looked up at the masthead with some surprise, and Stephen said, 'Auden is what would be called a lay-preacher among the Sethians, I believe.' He then returned to his examination of the distant vessel. On this sea so calm that whole stretches were glassy and even the smallest air made ripples, it was easy to hold a telescope still; and now that the sun was gaining strength—warm, even hot through their shirts—the air grew so clear that he could distinguish the flash of the separate oars as the boats raced home, and even, he thought, the net of silver fishes passing up the side.

  'Good morning, gentlemen,' said Jack, turning. 'Have you seen the snow?'

  He spoke in perfectly good faith; he had not the least intention of astonishing the poor unfortunate landlubbers; but he had so often felt put down by their literary remarks that now it quite pleased him to see the look of utter stupidity on all three faces.

  He was less pleased however when Standish, the first to recover his wits, replied, 'Oh yes, sir; and I was thinking of going to fetch my greatcoat' Pullings frowned, West and Davidge looked away; this was not the tone in which a new-joined purser should answe
r the Captain; the mere fact of having been pulled out of the sea did not warrant this degree of familiarity.

  Jack said, 'Snow is the term we use for vessels of that kind, which carry a trysailmast abaft the main.' Turning to Stephen he said, 'Auden, who understands these things if any man does, swears she is not a West-Country smuggler or privateer. So I think we must look a little closer; the breeze may strengthen with the sun. Poor souls, they had a fine bank of codlings about half a mile astern, and they were hauling them in hand over fist when first they saw us.'

  'They would never be innocent fishermen, at all?'

  'With yards like that, and all built for speed? And pierced for five guns aside, her decks full of men? No. I believe she is a French privateer, and probably new off the stocks. Captain Pullings, we have sweeps aboard, have we not?'

  'Yes, sir,' said Pullings. 'I arranged it myself at Dock: they come out of the old Diomede, and they just happened to be laying by.'

  'Very good: capital. It would scarcely be worth sweeping at this point, unless she starts doing so, for I am reasonably confident'—touching a wooden belaying-pin—'that we shall have a breeze from the south-west in time; but let them be cleared away and the ports made ready. In the meanwhile, Mr West, let us take advantage of what little air may see fit to move. Doctor, what do you say to breakfast?'

  It was most unusual for a ship as large and heavy as the Surprise to use sweeps, so unusual that the little oar-ports were deeply encrusted with generations of paint, and had to be opened by the carpenter with a heavy persuader and a fid; but since so much of the forenoon had passed without a breath of air she ran them out at four bells—dinner was to be taken watch by watch—and began to creep across the smooth surface like some vast long-legged inefficient water-creature. The snow instantly did the same.