The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  Unhappily the victualler carrying the Aleppo muslin ordered from Malta was intercepted by a French privateer—it now adorned the whore-ladies of Marseilles—while Gibraltar sent nothing whatsoever; and the day came nearer with no elegant refined costumes within a thousand miles and all the purser's duck irrevocably turned into common slops long since. The sailmaker and his mates, indeed the whole ship's company, began to look wistfully at the rarely-used light and lofty sails, the kites, skyscrapers, royal and topgallant studdingsails: but the Worcester was a taut ship, a very taut ship; her Captain had already proved that he knew every last thing about capperbar, or the misappropriation of Government stores, and with the squadron so short of everything and so far from sources of supply it was impossible that he would tolerate even a modest degree of innocent theft. However, they sounded Mr Pullings, who was obviously concerned with the success of the performance and the honour of the ship, and at the same time they made devious approaches to the Captain by means of Bonden and Killick, to Dr Maturin through a small black boy who acted as his servant, and to Mr Mowett by 'ingenuous' requests for advice as to how to proceed. The whole matter had therefore been present in Jack's mind—present in the atmosphere and with a favourable bias—well before he was called upon to make a decision, and the decision came out with all the directness that the seamen looked for: any God-damned swab—any man that presumed to tamper with any sail, however thin, however worn in the bunt or chafed in the bands, should have his ears nailed to a four-inch plank and be set adrift with half a pound of cheese. On the other hand, there were seven untouched bolts of number eight canvas, and if Sails and his crew liked to shape the cloths for a fair-weather suit of upper sails, that might do the trick. Sails did not seem to comprehend: he looked stupid and despondent. 'Come, Sails,' said Jack, 'How many two-foot cloths do you need for a main royal?'

  'Seventeen at the head and twenty-two at the foot, your honour.'

  'And how deep are they?'

  'Seven and a quarter yards, not counting the tabling or the gores: which is all according.'

  'Why then, there you are. You fold your cloth four times, tack a couple of grommets to each clew of the open ends, clap it over your shoulders fore and aft and there you are in an elegant refined costume in the classical taste very like a toga, and all without cutting canvas or wronging the ship.'

  It was in these costumes then that they gathered for the dress rehearsal: but although the togas were not a week old they had already lost their classical simplicity. Many were embroidered, all had ribbons neatly sewn into the seams, and the general aim seemed to be to outdo Orion's feathers and tinsel as quickly as possible—the cooper and his friends had come out in gilded keg-hoops by way of crowns. Yet although the choir looked a little strange, and would look stranger by far given time and leisure, they made a fine body of sound as they sang away, all crammed together below with the deck touching the cooper's crown, the taller men's heads, but so deep in the music that the discomfort counted for nothing.

  In spite of the foul weather Captain Aubrey heard them on the wind-swept, rain-swept, spray-swept quarterdeck. He was not an extremely amorous man: hours or even days might pass without his thinking of women at all. But even so he had no notion of the eunuch's tranquillity and although he did his duty, visiting the sick-bay daily and standing doggedly by the cases of mumps for three full minutes he tended to avoid his friend Maturin, who wandered about in a most inconsiderate way, as though he did not mind spreading infection—as though it were all one to him if the entire ship's company piped like choir-boys rather than roaring away in this eminently manly fashion, so that the Worcester's beams vibrated under foot. He stood by the weather-rail with his back to the rain, partly sheltered by the break of the poop, wearing a griego with the hood pulled up, and he stared forward in the dim late afternoon light at the Orion, his next ahead on the larboard tack, as the squadron stood westward under close-reefed topsails with the wind two points free: part of his mind was considering the effects of resonance and the harmonics of the hull, the singers being in rather than on the sound-box, while the rest concentrated upon the Worcester's mainmast. This massive piece of timber, a hundred and twelve feet long and more than a yard across where it rose from the deck, complained every time the ship lifted to the short steep seas under her larboard bow. Fortunately there was no topgallantmast aloft to add its leverage on the roll, nor any great press of canvas, but even so the mast was suffering. He would give it another preventer travelling backstay, and if that did not answer he would turn to his old caper of getting light hawsers to the mastheads, however uncouth it might look. But the whole ship was suffering for that matter, not only the masts: the Worcester hated this particularly Mediterranean rhythm that caught her between two paces as it were, so she could neither trot easy nor canter, but had to force her way through the sea with one reef more out of her topsails than her better-built companions, many of them from French or Spanish yards.

  Yet although hawsers might secure the masts, holding them even more strongly to the hull, if the Worcester did not mind looking lumpish and untidy, what measures could secure the hull itself? As Jack listened below the oratorio, below the complaining of the masts, below the innumerable voices of the sea and the wind right down to the deep confused groaning of the timbers themselves, out of tune and unhappy, he reflected that if she could not be provided with new knees in the course of a thorough refit he might eventually have to frap her whole carcass, winding cable round and round until it looked like an enormous chrysalis. The idea made him smile, and smile all the wider since the choir forward had worked their way to their favourite chorus, and were now topping it the Covent Garden with all their might—with infinite relish, too. 'Halleluiah,' sang their Captain with them as a fresh sheet of rain struck the ship, drumming on the back of his hood, 'halleluiah,' until an unmistakable gunshot to leeward cut his note short and at the same moment the lookout hailed 'Sail ho! Sail on the larboard quarter.'

  Jack plunged across the deck to the lee rail, helped on his way by the Worcester's roll and lurch: hammocks had not been piped up that soaking day and there was no barrier between him and the sea to the southward. Yet nothing could he make out: he and Mowett, who had the watch, stood there searching the thick grey squall of rain.

  'Just abaft the mizzen backstay, sir,' called Pullings from the maintop, where he too had been sheltering from Dr Maturin: and the veil parting both Jack and Mowett cried out 'Surprise!'

  Surprise she was, far to leeward, so far and so directly to leeward that with all her fine sailing qualities she could never hope to join the squadron for a great while: but it was clear that she meant the squadron to join her, for as they watched she fired another gun and let fly her topsail sheets. At this distance and in this light and with this wind Jack could not make out the signal flying from her foremasthead, but he had no doubt whatsoever of its meaning. The French fleet was out: the frigate's entire appearance and all her behaviour said so in the loudest voice—her frightful press of sail (topgallants in this close-reef topsail breeze!), her wild conduct with her sheets and guns and now a blue light streaking away down the wind, could only mean one thing. The enemy was at sea, and the moment the signal reached the Admiral the line would wear round on to the starboard tack and bear up for the Surprise, to learn what more she might have to say.

  'All hands to wear ship,' he cried: and the signal midshipman, who had had the wit not to take his eyes from the brig stationed outside the line to repeat signals from the almost invisible Ocean, bawled 'Flag to squadron, sir: wear in succession: course south-east' over the roaring of the bosun. Hollar and his senior mate, who both loathed Handel, happened to be on the poop ladder at the moment of Jack's order: they now raced forward towards the unconscious choir, towards the vigorous crescendo, the one shouting 'Rouse out, you nightingales' and the other piping 'All hands wear ship' with such force as almost to burst his silver call.

  Seconds later, in a strange blank silence, the nightingales cam
e flooding aft to their appointed stations. All the right sailors among them had discarded their togas, but a few of the landsmen had not, while the cooper still had his crown on his head. It so happened that his place was at the foresheet and that two of the togaed figures clapped on just behind him: they were all men of slow comprehension and they looked amazed, aggrieved, and so ludicrous that Jack laughed aloud, they being in his field of vision as he looked beyond them for the first movement of Ocean's helm. His heart was bubbling high: that old splendid feeling of more, far more than common life.

  The ships bore down on the distant frigate, packing on more sail as they went; and the moment the Worcester was settled on her new course Jack sent for the bosun, desired him to lay along the long-disused topgallantmasts—'we shall need 'em soon, Mr Hollar, ha, ha, ha'—and explained his wishes about light hawsers to the mastheads. These wishes were not entirely new to the service: it was known that Lord Cochrane and Captain Aubrey and one or two other commanders had achieved surprising feats with these same hawsers: but the service as a whole was dead against them as innovations, ugly, untidy innovations, worthy of privateersmen or even, God forbid, of pirates. It needed very great authority or a peerage or preferably both to impose them on an old experienced bosun, and the Surprise was quite near at hand before Hollar moved off, at least outwardly convinced that the Worcester must disgrace herself in appearance if, during the probable chase of the French fleet, she were not to disgrace herself in performance. The bosun done with, Jack looked across the water at the Surprise, and he observed with satisfaction that this was not a sea in which a boat could be launched, while the wind would make signalling slow and difficult: word of mouth it would surely be, and those without scruples might perhaps overhear the exchange between the frigate and the flagship.

  The squadron heaved to: the Surprise worked as close alongside the Ocean as she dared and delivered her information in a roar that could be heard by the ships, the openly listening ships, well ahead and astern. Latham of the Surprise had a tremendous voice, and the Captain of the Fleet, speaking for the Admiral, an even louder one; but their brief conversation did not quite reach the Worcester. However, in this atmosphere of the utmost excitement, formality and even hard feeling went by the board, and as soon as the flag had signalled the new course together with the order Make all sail with safety to the masts, Wodehouse of the Orion appeared at the taffrail of his ship and hailed Jack, poised on the Worcester's starboard cathead: the French were out with seventeen of the line, six of them three-deckers, and with five frigates. They had still been steering south when Admiral Mitchell sent the Surprise away in search of the squadron while he continued dogging them in the San Josef, detaching other messengers from time to time. From the greater zeal with which the French frigates had chased her to eastward, Surprise believed that the French fleet meant to go either to Sicily or right up the Mediterranean for Egypt or Turkey; but on being pressed admitted that this was little more than a guess.

  'What is all this I hear about the French being out?' cried Stephen, suddenly appearing on the crowded quarterdeck in the midst of the swaying-up of the topgallantmasts and the sending of hawsers aloft, two delicate, complex, dangerous manoeuvres that called for all the skilled hands in the ship, an immense quantity of ropes, thick and thin, and, in this strong breeze and awkward sea, very exact timing and instant obedience to orders.

  Stephen did not address himself directly to Captain Aubrey, who was standing by the windward hances, his eyes fixed on the maintopmast crosstrees, for that would have been improper; but Captain Aubrey had no such inhibitions and instantly roared out 'Go below, Doctor. Go below directly.'

  Quite shocked by the vehemence of his cry Stephen turned: but even as he turned a party of seamen ran the stiff end of a cablet into his side, thrusting him under the fiferail and calling out 'By your leave, sir, by your leave,' as they did so. And as he was disentangling himself from the belaying-pins he happened to loop a fancy-line about his ankle and walk off with it until his old friend Tom Pullings bawled 'Stop playing with that fancy-line, and go below,' with a ferocity that might have daunted Beelzebub.

  It was the edge of darkness before he ventured up again, and then only because of a kindly message: 'The Captain's compliments and if the Doctor should wish to take the air, all was now cleared away and coiled down.'

  There was air in plenty on deck: for the moment it was no longer mixed with rain, and it was coming in over the starboard rail even faster and in greater quantities than before. Jack shared the general belief that infection was far less to be dreaded in the open than between decks and he invited Stephen over to the windward side: in any event his mind was so eagerly aglow with life and the anticipation of battle—of a great decisive fleet action—that it had little time for disease. 'They are out with seventeen of the line,' he said. 'Give you joy of our prospects.'

  'Is there a real likelihood of our finding them? We are sailing towards the east, I see,' said Stephen, nodding in the direction of the bloody remains of sunset on the Worcester's starboard bow.

  'Westwards, I believe, if you will forgive me,' said Jack. 'It appears that the sun is usually found to set westerly, in the Mediterranean.'

  Stephen 'rarely suffered facetiousness patiently,-but now he only said 'West, I mean. Are you persuaded they have gone to the westward?'

  'I hope so, indeed. Had they meant to go up the Mediterranean I should have expected them to take some transports along; but according to Surprise there was nothing but men-of-war, and I am sure Latham took her in close enough to make certain. If we are wrong, and if they are destroying Sicily and our positions in the east while we are running west, there will be the Devil to pay and no pitch hot; but I trust the Admiral. He thinks they are making for the Atlantic, and he has shaped a course to intercept them somewhere north of Cape Cavaleria.'

  'Do you think we shall do so? And if we do, can we attack seventeen with no more than twelve?'

  'I believe we may see them in the morning. Any squadron bound for the Straits with this wind is very likely to pass within ten or fifteen leagues of Cavaleria. And as for the odds,' said Jack, laughing, 'I am sure the Admiral would not give a damn if they were twice as great. Besides, there will be Mitchell in San Josef together with what he has left of the inshore squadron, hanging on Emeriau's heels. No: if all goes as I hope it will go, we may bring them to action tomorrow.'

  'God send we may,' said Stephen.

  'A decisive action would clear the Mediterranean. We could go to America, and the Admiral could go home. Lord, how it would set him up. He would be a new man! So should I, for that matter. A decisive action, Stephen! It sets you up amazingly.'

  'It might stop the war,' said Stephen. 'A decisive victory at this point might stop the war. Tell me, why do not you—'

  'Turn the glass and strike the bell,' cried the quartermaster at the con.

  'Turn the glass and strike the bell it is,' replied the Marine, stepping forward to the belfry.

  At the second stroke a midshipman, wet from heaving the log, reported the ship's speed to the officer of the watch; he was followed by the carpenter, who reported the depth of water in the pump-well; and each time Mr Collins, the officer of the watch, paced across to Jack, took off his hat, and repeated the information: 'Eight knots and one fathom, sir, if you please.' 'Two foot eleven inches in the well, sir, if you please, and gaining fast.'

  'Thank you, Mr Collins,' said Jack. Tray let the forward pumps be shipped as well.' Nearly three foot of water down there already: it was eighteen inches more than he had expected, although he knew that the ship had been working very heavily this last glass and more. They had already taken all the measures that could be taken at sea, and the only thing to do now was to pray that the chain pumps would not refuse their duty: though he might conceivably divert the stuffing-box pump . . . 'I beg your pardon?' he said.

  'Why do we go no faster? Sure, this is a respectable pace for a common voyage, but with such an end in view should we not
outstrip the wind—spread all sails we possess?'

  'Well, the Admiral might take it amiss if we were to leave him behind: he lays down this rate of sailing so that even the slugs can just keep up. But what is much more to the point, what a set of clinchpoops we should look, was we to raise Cavaleria before the French. Always provided they come this way,' he added, bowing to Fate.

  'But surely, surely,' cried Stephen, 'if you wish to stop an enemy, is it not best to throw yourself into his path—to be there first?'

  'Oh dear me no,' said Jack. 'Not at sea. It would never answer at sea. Why, if the wind were to stay true, and if we were to reach Cape Cavaleria first, we should be throwing away all the advantage of the weather-gage. Mr Collins: we may come up the foresheet half a fathom, if you please.' He paced along the starboard gangway to the forecastle, gazing up at the sails, feeling the rigging—Hollar, though an excellent bosun in most respects, had a passion for smartness, for dead-straight shrouds and backstays, and whatever Jack might say he would set up the standing rigging so iron-taut that the masts were in danger of being wrung. All was well at present, however. Poor Hollar's pride had been brought so low by the hawsers to the mastheads that he had not taken his usual surreptitious heave at the lanyards and the shrouds were reasonably pliant. The hawsers and the hairy cablets did indeed look heavy, lumpish and untidy with these Irish pennants all along—not perhaps unseamanlike, but something that no crack spit-and-polish ship could bear for a moment. Yet on the other hand they did allow the Worcester to send up topgallantmasts without danger of rolling them by the board and above all to carry a fair press of sail. She had the wind on her starboard quarter, where she liked it best, and with her present trim she seemed to be running quite easy: but in fact she was still hauling under the chains—her seams opened on the upward roll and closed on the downward—and she was making much more water than she should. The main and forward pumps, turning steadily, were flinging two fine thick jets to leeward: the Worcester usually pumped ship for at least an hour a day even in calm weather and all hands were thoroughly used to the exercise. The larboard watch had the deck at present, and as Jack made his tour he saw that they had not forgiven him for Barka. It was not that there was any deliberate want of respect nor the least sign of discontent. Far from it: the men were in high spirits at the notion of meeting the French fleet, full of fun in spite of the disappointment over the oratorio. But as far as Jack was concerned there was a certain reserve. Intercourse between captain and lower deck was limited even in an unrated vessel with so small a crew that the commander knew each man intimately; there was no freedom of exchange, far less any flow of soul: in a ship of the line with above six hundred hands the apparent interchange was even less. Yet for those attuned to it the language of eye, face and bodily attitude is tolerably expressive and Jack knew very well where he stood with those Worcesters who had not sailed with him before, the majority of the crew and particularly of the larboard watch. It was a pity, since the ship's efficiency as a fighting-machine was affected; but there was nothing he could do about it at this stage, and walking back to Stephen he said, 'Sometimes I wonder whether I express myself clearly; sometimes I wonder whether I make my meaning plain. I am not at all sure that you understand the weather-gage, even now.'