The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  'The French are in Medina, sir,' he said, the moment they were in the cabin.

  'Are they, by God?' cried Jack, stopping short.

  'Yes, sir. A seventy-four and a thirty-six-gun frigate.' He had come upon them suddenly as he turned the dog-leg into the Goletta, the long channel leading up to the port of Medina. There they lay, moored under the larger of the two batteries guarding the entrance to the Goletta, and if he had not instantly hauled his wind the Dryad must have been carried past them, into the channel, her escape cut off.

  'Did they fire?' asked Jack.

  'No, sir. I fancy they were as taken aback as I was, and I did not leave them much time to recover their surprise. I clawed off as quick as ever I could: Dryad came about beautifully, though we had only one reef out of our topsails; we weathered the cape with ten yards to spare and then cracked on regardless to join you, so that we could go back and destroy them together.' Babbington seemed to entertain no sort of doubt about the destruction of the French ships: none about the propriety of his conduct. Presumably his dispatches would be delivered to the consul in Medina once the destruction had taken place. 'Lord, sir,' he said, 'how I hope they are still there!'

  'Well, William,' said Jack, 'we shall soon find out.'

  For his own part he hoped they had put to sea. Quite apart from the whole thorny question of neutrality, an action against moored ships was not unlike a soldiers' battle: the unpredictable sea-changes were not there. Superior seamanship could not seize upon a shifting slant of wind, the tail of a current or a shoal and turn it into a decisive advantage, but would have to fight a motionless opponent, one unaffected by the breeze or lack of it, with all his hands free to fire the great guns or repel boarders. At sea there was room for manoeuvre, room for luck: and he was a great believer in luck. If the Frenchmen had put to sea, as he hoped, their course would almost certainly be for the Straits; yet with this breeze they could not yet have worked to the windward of Cape Hamada, and there was every likelihood that by steering west-south-west he would find them under his lee in the morning. He would have the weather-gage and with it the initiative, the power of choosing the moment and the closeness of action; all sorts of possibilities would be open to him; and to make the odds more nearly even he would need every happy turn that offered. For although the Worcester could probably deal with an average French seventy-four by a short battering and then by boarding her, the Dryad and the Polyphemus could not possibly undertake a well-handled frigate except by clever manoeuvring, so that at least one raked her while the Worcester brought her other broadside to bear. It could be done: the engagement, though unequal, could be brought to a successful end, given luck and less skilful opponents. Luck had nearly always been with him in battle, or at least rarely against him; but there was no guarantee that these Frenchmen would be less skilful or that they would let themselves be outmanoeuvred and destroyed piecemeal. There were inept French sailors, to be sure, but not nearly so many as people in London seemed to believe and as far as he was concerned the French sea-officers he had come into contact with had usually been thoroughly able, wily, and courageous. As the three ships ran west-south-west under all the sail the slowest could bear, he sat snorting and gasping over his charts, drinking lemon-shrub hot and reflecting upon some of the French commanders he had known: the formidable Linois, who had taken him in the Mediterranean and who had very nearly sunk him in the Indian Ocean; Lucas, who had fought the Redoubtable so brilliantly at Trafalgar; Christy-Pallière . . . many others. On the other hand these ships had almost certainly escaped from Toulon in one of the recent blows, and although their officers might be capable enough it was unlikely that their crews would have much experience: yet were his own people much better? If he did meet the French at sea, and if things went as he hoped they would, with the Worcester between the seventy-four and the frigate, he would obviously have to fire both broadsides at the same time—that would be the whole point of the manoeuvre. But so far the Worcesters had had almost no training at all in that unusual operation.

  'That can be remedied however, at least to some small extent,' he said aloud in a hoarse croak; and for the rest of the day laundry, ironing, making and mending were all laid aside, while the people went through the motions of fighting both sides of the ship at once, the gun-crews running from starboard to larboard as fast as ever they could, sweating in the afternoon sun, heaving guns in and out, in tearing high spirits from beginning to end.

  Labour lost, however, for the Polyphemus spoke to an Algerine galley, an old and trustworthy acquaintance, and learnt that the Frenchmen had not sailed from Medina, had no intention of sailing, but had warped closer to the Goletta mole.

  Mr Patterson brought this information himself, and Jack observed that his eyes were as bright as his steel hook, his whole ungainly person filled with fresh youth: there was the same elation on the Worcester's quarterdeck, throughout the ship indeed, and Jack wondered at his own lack of joy. This was the first time that the prospect of action had not moved him like the sound of a trumpet: it was not that he dreaded the outcome, although this engagement was of that uncomfortable sort called a point-of-honour fight—an action where one's force was just too great to allow a decent, unblameable retreat yet not great enough to give much reasonable hope of success—but rather that he did not look forward to it with his usual eagerness. His heart did beat higher, but not very much higher, his mind being too much oppressed by material worries to do with the ship, with the conduct of a battle of this kind, and with the probable attitude of the Bey of Medina to be able to take much active pleasure in the prospect. 'It will be all right once the dust starts to fly,' he said to himself, and he gave the order that would carry the three ships to Medina as fast as the stiff breeze would carry them.

  Dawn showed Cape Malbek fine on the starboard bow, and by the time the decks were washed and flogged dry the ships had opened the deep bay with Medina far away at the bottom of it. The wind slackened with the rising sun, but it was still as fair as could be wished and they stood in towards the distant town, keeping close to the western shore, gliding by the long line of salt lagoons so close that they could see the files of camels with their shining loads. At one point an undulating cloud of flamingoes wafted over the sea, showing scarlet as they all wheeled together, ten or twenty thousand strong. 'How I wish the Doctor were here,' said Jack once more, but Pullings only returned a formal 'Yes, sir,' and Jack was strongly aware of the many eyes turned upon him from the crowded quarterdeck and, somewhat more furtively, from the poop, the gangways, the maintop, and points forward. The last patches of deck were clean and dry, the last falls had been coiled down; there was no immediate task in hand and the ship was extraordinarily silent—hardly a sound but the even song of the breeze in the rigging and the hiss of the smooth water running down the Worcester's side. He knew that the hands were longing to clear her for action; the moral pressure was as perceptible as the warmth of the sun, and after a moment's listening to a sudden outburst of goose-like gabbling from the flamingoes he said 'Mr Pullings, let the hands be piped to breakfast: when they have finished, we may go to quarters. And we should be well advised to take advantage of the galley fires ourselves, before they are . . .' He would have added 'put out' if a fit of sneezing had not prevented him, but the missing words were clearly understood and in any case the bosun's mates had already started their calls.

  Usually Jack asked Pullings and a midshipman or two to breakfast with him, but today, after a sleepless night, most of it on deck, he really felt too jaded for even Pullings' conversation and he retired alone, blowing his reddened nose as he went and murmuring 'Oh dear, oh dear. God damn and blast it,' into his handkerchief.

  It was his rule always to eat hearty before an action or the probability of an action and Killick set a dish of bacon on the table, with four fried eggs, saying apologetically that 'that was all there was so far this morning, but the speckled hen might lay any minute now.' He ate them mechanically, but neither they nor even his coffee had t
heir natural savour and when Killick came triumphantly in with the fifth egg he could not look at it with any pleasure. He tossed it privately out of the quarter-gallery scuttle, and as he followed its flight he saw the sea turn brown, then clear again. In their eagerness to be clearing the ship and casting loose their guns, the hands had started their tubs' of cocoa over the side.

  'Chips,' said Killick, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, and a moment later the carpenter came in, followed by some of his crew and the captain's joiner. Rather more civilly than the steward, he asked if he might begin. 'Just let me down this cup, Mr Watson,' said Jack, drinking the last of his ill-tasting coffee, 'and the place is yours. You will take particular care of the Doctor's—the Doctor's object, will you not?' he added, pointing at Stephen's dressing-case, now doing duty as a music-stand.

  'Never you fret, sir,' said the carpenter, pointing at the joiner in much the same manner. 'Pond here has made a special case for it, lined with junk.'

  'It is not an article that should ever have gone to sea,' said the aged joiner in a discontented voice. 'Still less into action.'

  As Jack left the cabin he heard them attack the bulkheads, knocking out the wedges with a splendid zeal and rolling up the chequered canvas deck-cloth: before he had taken half a dozen turns on the quarterdeck Stephen's object and all the cabin furniture, crockery and glass had been struck down into the hold, the bulkheads had vanished and with them his various apartments, so that there was a clean sweep fore and aft and the impatient gun-crews could get at their charges, the pair of thirty-two-pounder carronades that Jack had installed in the coach.

  They were too early, far too early: there were still miles of salt lake to pass. The harbour at the far end of the bay was still dim and misty in the shadow of the hills behind the town, and Jack had not the least notion of sailing into the enclosed water without surveying the whole of it: he ordered the courses to be hauled up in the brails, and now the Worcester and her consorts moved more slowly, under the usual fighting trim of topsails alone.

  There were a fair number of country craft moving in and out in the morning light, tunny-boats and coral-fishers: and two corsair-xebecs with immense black lateen sails passed the Worcester on the opposite tack, low to the water, moving very fast. They were crammed with men and as they swept by scores of faces looked up, brown, shining black, sunburnt white, some bearded, some smooth, most turbanned or skull-capped, all keen and predatory. Jack glanced at them with strong dislike and looked away. 'Let us make a tour of the ship,' he said to Pullings.

  As he had expected with such a first lieutenant, everything was in order—hatches laid, the decks so carefully dried not long ago now wetted and sanded, scuttle-butts of fresh water amidships for the men to drink, shot-garlands full, arms-chests open: the guns were not run out yet, since the ship had not beat to quarters, but the slow-match for firing them was smouldering away in its little tubs, sending its fierce, well-remembered scent along the decks, and the boarders already had their cutlasses or those axes with a spike that some preferred in a hand-to-hand engagement. There were hands, both seamen and landsmen, who looked anxious, and some were over-excited, but most were gravely cheerful, quiet, and self-contained. It was a time of unusual freedom and those who had sailed into action with Jack before talked to him as he went round. 'Remember Surprise, your honour, and the dinner they give us in Calcutta?' 'The breeze lay just so when we took the big Spaniard.' And Joseph Plaice said something so witty about the Sophie that his own mirth made the end incomprehensible. Not that Jack had thoroughly understood even the beginning, since the cold had interfered with his hearing: it did not affect his sight, however, and when, having finished his tour, he climbed into the maintop with a telescope he saw Medina plain. The sun shone on the Golden Mosque, its dome and minaret, and on the inner harbour, too shallow for vessels of any draught, but the foretopsail cut off his view of the Goletta. 'Larboard a point,' he called, and as the ship turned so the long canal came into sight, with some merchantmen unloading at its wharfs and a good many smallcraft. At its seaward end two towers, one either side of the entrance, marking the end of the two long moles or breakwaters that closed the bottom of the bay, two curving lines of masonry on the colossal Phoenician and Roman scale that linked reefs and steep-to islands for a mile on either hand. And now as the Worcester steadied he saw the Frenchmen perfectly, a ship of the line and a frigate: they had moved since the Dryad's visit and now they were moored a cable's length from the farther tower where the mole curved inward between two small islands, moored so close in that there was no passing between them and the stonework. The French commander was obviously determined that there should be no repetition of the Nile: he had made sure that no enemy could double upon him, taking him between two fires, and he had also taken-up such a position in his little bay that it would be impossible to lie athwart his hawse and rake him, since his bows were protected by the solid masonry. The frigate also lay snugly in this recess, and in her case the outward curve shielded her stern. Both ships were moored with their starboard broadsides to the sea, and between them there was a gap of some forty yards. The French boats were very busy in this gap, and for a while Jack could not make out what they were at. He leant on the barricade of tight-packed hammocks and focused more exactly: landing guns on the mole, that was what they were at, the dogs. Guns from their larboard broadsides to make a battery commanding the interval between the ships. Guns: and casks, spars and hammocks to protect them. Even if they shifted only the lighter, more get-at-able guns they would soon have the equivalent of the second frigate's broadside, judging by their present energy. And since their ships were moored, they would have all the hands they needed to fight them and as many again: an enormous increase in their fire-power.

  'Let fall the fore-course,' he cried, and slinging his telescope he ran down on deck. 'Hoist out the launch and the cutters,' he said, and to the signal-midshipman, 'Dryad and Polyphemus: captains repair aboard.'

  The Worcesters were still making heavy weather of the ponderous launch when Babbington and Patterson came running up the side. 'You see the position, gentlemen,' said Jack. 'They are landing their guns as fast as they can: six are already in position. In an hour's time the place will be another God-damned Gibraltar, impossible to be attempted. I intend to engage the seventy-four yardarm to yardarm for five minutes and then to board her in the smoke. I desire you will cram your ships under my stern and second me at the given word, boarding her over the bows or by way of our stern if you cannot get there. While we are engaged, play upon her head and forecastle with your small-arms—I doubt any of your great guns will bear—but listen, gentlemen, listen: not a musket, not a pistol, let alone a great gun, must be fired until they have fired on us and I give the word loud and clear. Spread all your officers and midshipmen among the hands with the strictest possible orders to that effect. Tell them that any man who fires before the word shall have five hundred lashes and by God's name I mean five hundred lashes: and the officer whose division he belongs to shall be broke. That is clearly understood?'

  'Yes, sir,' said Babbington.

  Patterson smiled his rare smile and said he understood perfectly; but they need not worry—he had never known a Frenchman respect a port's neutrality in all his life, not if the odds were on his side.

  'I hope you are right, Mr Patterson,' said Jack. 'But whether or no, those are my absolute orders. Now let us go about our business, before the odds grow greater still.' They shook hands and he saw them to the side; then, turning to Pullings he said, 'Beat to quarters,' and loud over the instant thunder of the drum, 'Pass the word for Captain Harris.'

  The Marine came running from his station on the poop. 'Captain Harris,' said Jack, 'it is my intention to board the seventy-four after a very short cannonade. In the mean time you will take a party round the enemy's stern in the boats, drive them from their battery on the mole, and turn the guns against the frigate. Have you any comments?'

  'None, sir. Only that it would be an uncommo
n pretty stroke.'

  'Then take as many of your men from the guns as you think fit—we can manage short-handed for a short burst. Let them be in the boats and out of sight when we are alongside the Frenchman, ready to pull round the moment I give the signal.'

  Word with the gunner: appropriate guns to be drawn and reloaded with chain-shot or bar for the first round, to destroy the enemy's boarding-netting. With the bosun: grapnels to make the Frenchman fast; prime hands in the tops to run out and lash his yardarms. With the master, on the course to steer, luffing up the second they were past the island that made the near corner of the bay. With Pullings, about leadsmen in the channels, so that they might keep as close inshore as possible, about the replacement of the Marines, a dozen other points. He was deeply pleased by the amount of intelligent anticipation he found: most of the things he called for were already on their way, most of the measures already in hand. He savoured this for a moment, watching the mole come nearer—its towers were a thousand yards away and the Frenchmen something farther—and waiting for the din of the top-chains being put to the yards to stop. There were many other things he would have liked to order, but with the Frenchmen landing their guns at this rate he must engage at once; and in any case the essential had been done. The yards were chained: the clashing stopped. 'Worcesters,' said Jack in as strong a croak as he could manage, 'I am going to lay the ship alongside that French seventy-four. We do not fire a shot until I give the word: she must fire first. That's the law. Then when I give the word we thump in four brisk broadsides and board her in the smoke. Those that have not boarded before will not go far wrong if they knock the nearest Frenchman on the head. But remember this: any man that fires before I give the word gets five hundred lashes.'