In the main, Jack's forecast was sound enough, but so were his reservations. The wind backed south-south-west earlier than he had expected, so that the French squadron had to beat up, tack upon tack, for their rendezvous; then the Commodore Esprit-Tranquil Maistral, a survivor of the enormous expedition destined for Bantry Bay in '96 with no less than seventeen of the line and thirteen frigates, decided to wait for the seventy-four from America until the fourteenth, a particularly lucky day; and even then not to set sail until the most auspicious hour, which was half-past eleven, so that with a thick, dirty night, with a brave topgallant wind on the larboard quarter that bowled them along at a fine rate, he and his ships very nearly ran clear.
During this time, if a space filled with such anxiety could be called a time, the Bellona and her fellows had been edging steadily westwards so as to fetch the Frenchman's wake as he proceeded north-north-east for Ireland in three or four days, and they filled the interval with the innumerable tasks always waiting to be done in a ship at sea, and fishing over the side, with moderate success.
The position at which the squadron would lie to, somewhat to the south and east of the point the French were expected to reach in three days at the most, had been given to the Laurel and the Ringle; but in almost twice that space of time, ocean drift, dirty weather and human fallibility deprived the figure of much of its meaning, and it was only when Maistral had been at sea since the fourteenth, that the Ringle came tearing close-hauled through a very heavy sea and a black squall at seven bells in the morning watch to bellow and roar that the French had been seen hull-down in the north-east steering north-east, half an hour after sunset yesterday.
For the last day and a half Jack Aubrey had spent almost all the time on deck or at the masthead, saying very little, eating less, pale, withdrawn. Now he breathed again; and now the steady process of cracking on began—preventer backstays, braces, shrouds and stays to enable the ship to bear the press of foul-weather canvas that the people were spreading with such goodwill.
But it required all this burst of furious seamanlike energy, all this urgent driving of the ship and encouragement of the squadron to prevent him slipping back into bitter self-reproach for having come so near to failure through over-confidence in his own judgment. Much of this activity, once the Bellona was in racing trim, was devoted to the Thames. He spent a whole day aboard her, showing them quite kindly how to wring an extra knot or even an extra two or three fathoms out of her; but although there was some improvement he had to admit that even when he had done his best she was still slow for a frigate: nothing would cure her but radical measures. It did not appear to him that her hull was particularly ill-formed, but it was quite certain that she could sail no better with her present trim. To take advantage of her lines, she had to be at least a foot and a half by the stern; yet solely to improve her looks, her hold, her ballast, water, stores, everything, had been stowed so that her masts were bolt upright, perpendicular for pretty. The smartest ship on the station, with her yards squared by the lifts and braces and her masts at right angles with the sea, said Thomas: Prince William had often commended her appearance. Jack concealed his opinion of Prince William's judgment of a man-of-war, but said that when they were in the Cove of Cork they would try to bring her by the stern a trifle and make comparative trials; he then said good day, leaving the frigate in a better mood. He had scarcely returned to the Bellona before the Thames, in her zeal, carried away her foretopgallant mast.
Nevertheless, on the second morning, towards the end of the forenoon watch, the low sky cleared a little and the French sails showed, faint white glimmers on the north-east horizon. Jack contemplated them from the masthead for some considerable time, gathering a general sense of their sailing qualities; and coming down at last he met with Killick's disagreeable, disapproving face. 'Now, sir,' he said, in that familiar whine, 'your good shirt and admiral's uniform has been spread out this last half glass. Which you ain't forgot you are dining with the wardroom today? Even the Doctor remembered it, and changed voluntary.'
The excitement of the chase had done wonders for the wardroom cook: he had lashed in most of his rarest and most costly ingredients—sherry in the turtle soup, port in the sucking-pig's gravy, brandy in one of the Commodore's favourite forecastle dishes, fu-fu, ordinarily made of barley and treacle, but now with honey and cognac.
Jack made an excellent dinner, the first for a great while; the chase, the audible speed of the ship, with water singing loud along her side, the sense of eagerly straining wood, removed much of the restraint imposed by an admiral's uniform in the place of honour, and there was a general sound of cheerful and spontaneous conversation. Several of the officers had seen or more often heard something of Hoche's disastrous attempt on Bantry Bay with an enormous, unmanageable fleet in '96, and while for the most part they avoided shop, they had interesting things to say about that iron-bound coast, with its frightful seas in a full south-west gale—the Fastnet rock—the tide-race off the Skelligs—remarks however that might have been better timed if just such a wind were not already blowing, and if a dropping glass did not suggest that it would soon blow harder still.
After coffee Jack suggested that Stephen should put on a tarpaulin jacket and sou'wester—how perfectly named—and come with him to view their quarry from the forecastle, taking his come-up glass with them. It was a wet forecastle, with the spray and even green water of the following seas sweeping right forward to mingle with that flung up by the Bellona's bows as she pitched hawse-deep; but their view was so imperfect that Jack proposed the foretop and called for Bonden.
Stephen protested that he was perfectly recovered, perfectly strong enough for this simple, familiar ascent. Jack hailed somewhat louder, Bonden came at the double, and Stephen submitted, observing privately, 'I thus have the comfort of being raised safely, easily, to this eminence, and at the same time that of retaining my self-respect.'
The eminence of some eighty feet did indeed give them a fine uninterrupted expanse of grey, white-dashed, wind whipped ocean; and there in the north-east were the long looked-for sails. Not topsails alone, but sometimes courses too, and on occasion a hull rose clear. The Bellona had not quite fetched their wake, since the quickest way to do so was to converge upon it in as straight a line as possible rather than make a dog-leg: this meant that from the foretop they still had a slight sideways, glancing view of the French line. Jack passed the telescope. 'Two two-deckers, and a little small thing far ahead,' said Stephen. 'Then four that I take to be troop ships. And two frigates.'
'Yes,' said Jack. 'How well he handles those troop-ships: all neatly in their station. Their Commodore must be a man of parts. They are fast, even very fast for troop-ships, but I have little doubt we are overhauling them.' He turned a screw on the telescope that separated the two halves of a divided lens and said, 'Now you see two images of the leading two-decker just touching: if they stay like that, we are going at the same speed: if they separate, the chase is going faster: if they over lap, we are gaining. One has to wait quite a while for the effect to be visible.'
Stephen gazed and gazed: after a long pause in which he pointed out a stormy petrel pittering up the side of a foaming roller he looked again and cried, 'They have joined. They overlap!'
'We are certainly gaining quite fast, and I think that if we were to leave the Thames to make the best of her way we might be up with them by mid-morning, within sight of land. I think their Commodore will almost certainly heave to and fight there, rather than close among those wicked rocks and on an unknown coast: besides, it might allow him to put his troops ashore under one or both of his frigates.'
'Would our frigates not destroy them?'
'Perhaps. But they might be badly outgunned in weight of metal. One Frenchman is I think a thirty-six-gun ship, almost certainly carrying eighteen-pounders, and the other a thirty-two, with the same. Poor old Thames only has twelves, and Aurora no more than nines . . .'
Stephen made some other observations, but cle
arly Jack, gazing at the enemy, was not attending.
'As things stand at present,' he said at last, 'the sooner we engage the better,' and as he turned he called down to Meares, busy just abaft the forecastle, 'I beg you will make sure of those ring-bolts, Master Gunner. They may be sorely tried tomorrow.'
'If they draw, sir,' replied the gunner, looking up with a grin, 'you may draw me, too; and quarter me into the bargain.'
Jack laughed; but on deck he said privately to Stephen, 'As I remember, the Frenchman's orders were for Bantry Bay or the Kenmare river. Do you know either, or the deep inlets all along?'
'Hardly at all, and then only from a landlubber's point of view. I scarcely know west Cork at all. I did stay with the Whites once: not the Whites of Bantry but cousins between Skibereen and Baltimore. And then there was an idle tale of a white-tailed-eagle meeting on Clear Island that took me there. But as a guide I am useless, let alone a pilot, for all love.'
'If things stand as they are, my mind is tolerably clear,' said Jack.
Things did not stand as they were: the wind strengthened, veering westerly, so that they could carry no more than close-reefed topsails; and even those hurried them along at a breakneck pace. As thick a night as could well be imagined, the sky entirely covered by clouds that barely cleared the masthead, frequent rain, often in very heavy squalls. Not the least possibility of an observation, and little reliance could be placed on dead-reckoning.
The Bellona had her three great stern-lanterns all ablaze, and from time to time Jack Aubrey left either his fiddle or the game of cards he was playing with Stephen to stand by them on the poop, watching the rain sweep past in their rays or searching the darkness astern for his squadron: at eight bells a suffused glow as the watch changed aboard the Stately, and once or twice a small light in what he took to be the Ringle right abeam; but almost all the time it was a roaring darkness, another manner of being. After a little while of this the binnacle lamps were so bright when he returned to the quarterdeck that in their mere reflection he recognized the midshipman of the watch, almost extinguished by his waterproof clothes and hat. 'A dirty night, Mr Wetherby,' he said. 'I trust it don't damp your spirits?'
'Oh no, sir,' said the boy, laughing with excitement. 'Ain't it a lark?'
Every few bells he walked—or sometimes clawed his way—on the poop, sensing the changing forces of the air and sea: a great spring tide would flow tomorrow, and already in the countless pressures working on the hull he thought he could discern its first stirring.
'The wind is almost due west now,' he told Stephen, returning from one of these tours, very near the night's end: but Stephen was asleep, bowed in an elbow-chair, his head moving with the roll and pitch of the ship, and she racing through the blackness with him.
For what seemed no more than a moment Jack did the same: but the cry of the lookout on the forecastle: 'Breakers on the starboard bow' pierced through the rising doze, and he was on deck before the messenger could reach him. Miller, the officer of the watch, had already started sheets to reduce the ship's pace, and he and Jack stood listening: through the general din of wind and the crash of tumbling seas there came the grave, regular beat of surf breaking on the shore or on a reef. 'Two blue flares,' said Jack, the agreed signal; and for once, in spite of wind and the omnipresent spray that wetted everything, they soared away at once, their unearthly blue showing clear.
'Indeed the sky is higher, almost clear,' said the lieutenant.
'It will be day in half a glass,' said the master. 'You can make out a glimmer in the east already.'
The glimmer spread: the west wind, though still very strong, bore less rain, more cloud, and presently their night-accustomed eyes made out first a long cape to larboard, cloud still covering all its height above a hundred feet, with islands at the seaward end, and then to starboard the even longer, even more cloudy headland on whose western side the sea was beating with such tremendous, rhythmic solemnity: between them lay a narrow rocky-sided bay reaching away into the land, losing itself in the murk; and as the light increased and the water grew less dark they saw another rounded island some way down, close in on the northern shore. On this side of the island lay two ships. Jack took Miller's glass. They were the French seventy-fours, and as he fixed them, with the utmost intense concentration, he grew more and more convinced that they too were uncertain of their landfall. Indeed, with this visibility, it might have been any one of half a dozen. And that they were trying to make it out, hoping for pre-arranged signals, friendly pilots: they had a green flag flying.
'Do not strike the bell,' he said, stopping the ship's routine: he wanted none of the morning ceremonies at this point.
'No bell it is, sir,' said the quartermaster.
'If you please, sir,' said Miller, pointing to the first island beyond the northern arm of the bay—an island that now proved to be a small group.
'Yes,' said Jack. 'Very good.' For there, in a cove as neat and sheltered and concealed from view as could be wished, invisible from the offing and from the lower bay, there lay the troop-ships and both frigates.
With a fierce pleasure he grasped the situation. The narrow bay ran directly north-east: if the French commodore took his squadron well in, with this wind he could never bring them out. He was trying to make sure whether this was his right destination or not, and already he was most dangerously far along.
All the officers were on deck. 'We have no pilot left from Irish waters?' asked Jack.
'No, sir,' said Miller. 'Even Michael Tierney died in the Bight of Benin. But the master is searching through and through and through his charts—he has called for a sounding.'
'It's all one,' said Jack. 'Beat to quarters.' He ran on to the poop, looking aft. Everyone was present, Stately within a cable's length, except for Thames, who had sagged right away to the east, almost beyond the other horn closing the bay. The Ringle, like a dutiful tender, was rising and falling on the great swell fifty yards on the Bellona's quarter.
'Good morning, William,' he called. 'How are you bearing up?'
'Good morning, sir,' answered Reade. 'Prime, sir, thank you very much.'
Returning, Jack made first Thames's signal to rejoin and then Stately's to come within hail.
The sixty-four came under the Bellona's lee, and in his strong voice Jack said, 'Captain Duff—there lie the French two-deckers. Let us attack them directly; and while we are bearing down let us at least have a bite and a sup. I shall tackle the pennant-ship, if you and Thames will look after the other.'
'Very happy, sir,' said Duff, smiling, and his crew gave three cheers.
Before going below Jack gave the Aurora, Camille and Laurel orders to maintain a discreet watch on the transports and their escort between the islands. He had every hope of snapping them up with neither damage nor casualties if he were successful in the bay.
A spirit-stove and a willing mind can do wonders, even in a heavy sea with a full gale blowing, and Jack Aubrey, leaving Stephen to carry their coffee-pot down into the cockpit, came on deck again warm and well-fed. He was wearing his usual rig: an old uniform coat, threadbare brass-bound hat that had turned many a cut, a heavy cavalry sabre by way of fighting sword, boots and silk stockings (much better in case of a wound). He glanced along the decks, all in the perfect battle-order Captain Pullings knew so well: over to the other side of the bay, where the Thames was making good progress: towards the Frenchmen, who for their part had moved from the island towards what seemed to be a cloudy village on the south side, where they lay a-try, perhaps with a kedge out ahead. The Stately was keeping a cable's length astern, coming along under the same close-reefed topsails with the same air of competence.
'Shipmates,' said Jack in a conversational voice, but one that carried well over the roar of the wind, 'we are going to attack the pennant-ship from to-windward, while Stately goes on to deal with her companion. I am going to engage so close that our roundshot will go through both her sides, to end it quick. And be damned to him who first cries
Hold, enough.'
A very hearty cheer indeed, echoed from the Stately: and the waft from the match-tubs by each gun drifted in eddies, a scent surpassed only by powder-smoke. Yet the Thames had not answered the cheer, though she was no great way off on the southern side. Jack took his glass: she was in trouble: she had contrived to get inshore of a reef and she could neither turn nor advance.
The first ranging shot from the Frenchmen splashed alongside. The next came home, somewhere about the larboard hawse-hole. Tom yawed just enough for the forward starboard guns to reply, and now, in spite of the wind right aft, there was the scent of powder-smoke as well.
How quickly those last few hundred yards fleeted by! At one moment you could still notice a gull or that damn fool of a Thames, and the next you were in the full deafening roar of battle yardarm to yardarm, the broadsides losing all unity and merging into a continuous iron bellow. The ships ground together as the Frenchmen tried to board, yelling as they came. They were repelled; and now came a louder, more triumphant cry, then another as the enemy's mizzen went by the board at deck-level, carrying the maintopmast with it. The ship could no longer lie head to wind and she slewed to larboard; but still answering her helm she ran north-east along the shore, keeping up a fire from her undamaged side until, at the very height of flood, eleven minutes after the first shot, she struck, racing high on to the rocky shelf just below the village.
Jack rounded to and called upon her to surrender; and this, after a moment's hesitation, she did. Even if she had been able to bring a gun to bear, which she could not, lying at that dreadful angle on the rock among the surf there was no hope. Yet so far down the bay and in these shallows, the surf was far less dreadful than it looked. The quarter-boats brought the French commodore and his officers across little difficulty, and carried a prize-crew back, including, at the Frenchman's most earnest request, Stephen Maturin, their own surgeon having been killed—he had wished to see a battle. A nominal prize-crew, and as a last thought a small party of Marines, for even if he had imagined trouble aboard the prize Jack had no time to spare. Below the racing cloud he had just seen Stately attempt an extremely brave but perilous manoeuvre, drawing ahead and suddenly tacking across the Frenchman's bows to rake her fore and aft with broadside after broadside. But his ship or his men's skill betrayed him: the Stately would not come round. She hung there in irons while the Frenchman pounded her, knocked away her main and mizzen topmasts, and then she fell off to her former starboard tack. The enemy of course bore up and raked her in his turn.
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