Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  The familiar tedium of blockade made these spacious, lonely evenings lonelier and more spacious by far, but in one form or another they were the lot common to all captains who respected tradition and who wished to maintain their authority. Some dealt with the situation by having their wives aboard, in spite of the regulations, particularly on the longer, quieter passages, and some took mistresses; but neither would do in a squadron commanded by Admiral Thornton. Others sailed with friends, and although Jack had known this answer fairly well, generally speaking it seemed that few friendships could stand such close, enforced proximity for many weeks, let alone months or even years. There were also men who took to drinking too much, while some grew strange, crotchety and absolute; and although the great majority became neither confirmed drunkards nor eccentrics, nearly all captains with more than a few years’ service were deeply marked by it.

  So far Jack had been unusually lucky in this respect. From his first command he had nearly always sailed with Stephen Maturin, and it had proved the happiest arrangement. As her surgeon, Dr Maturin was very much part of the ship, having his own independent function and being, one no more than nominally subject to the captain; but since he was not an executive officer their intimacy caused no jealousy or ill-feeling in the wardroom: and although he and Jack Aubrey were almost as unlike as men could be, unlike in nationality, religion, education, size, shape, profession, habit of mind, they were united in a deep love of music, and many and many an evening had they played together, violin answering ‘cello or both singing together far into the night.

  Now when the fiddle sang at all it sang alone: but since Stephen’s departure he had rarely been in a mood for music and in any case the partita that he was now engaged upon, one of the manuscript works that he had bought in London, grew more and more strange the deeper he went into it. The opening movements were full of technical difficulties and he doubted he would ever be able to do them anything like justice, but it was the great chaconne which followed that really disturbed him. On the face of it the statements made in the beginning were clear enough: their closely-argued variations, though complex, could certainly be followed with full acceptation, and they were not particularly hard to play; yet at one point, after a curiously insistent repetition of the second theme, the rhythm changed and with it the whole logic of the discourse. There was something dangerous about what followed, something not unlike the edge of madness or at least of a nightmare; and although Jack recognized that the whole sonata and particularly the chaconne was a most impressive composition he felt that if he were to go on playing it with all his heart it might lead him to very strange regions indeed.

  During a pause in his evening letter Jack thought of telling Sophie of a notion that had come to him, a figure that might make the nature of the chaconne more understandable: it was as though he were fox-hunting, mounted on a powerful, spirited horse, and as though on leaping a bank, perfectly in hand, the animal changed foot. And with the change of foot came a change in its being so that it was no longer a horse he was sitting on but a great rough beast, far more powerful, that was swarming along at great speed over an unknown countryside in pursuit of a quarry - what quarry he could not tell, but it was no longer the simple fox. But it would be a difficult notion to express, he decided; and in any case Sophie did not really care much for music, while she positively disliked horses. On the other hand she dearly loved a play, so he told her about the Worcester’s performance. ‘Neither the oratorio nor Hamlet has come off yet, and I think that for beginners we aimed a little high, since both call for a world of preparation. I have no doubt we shall hear them in the end, but in the mean time we content ourselves with much less ambitious entertainments: we have them once a week, weather permitting, on the evenings of make-and-mend day - a surprisingly good band of ten performers, some dancers good enough for Sadler’s Wells, short dramatic pieces, and a kind of farce that carries on from one week to the next - very popular - in which two old forecastle hands show a fat, stupid landsman the duties of a sailor and the customs of the Navy, banging him with bladders every time he does wrong.’ He smiled again, remembering the massive laughter of five hundred close-packed men as the fool, beaten on both sides, fell into the bucket for the seventh time: then, as he brought his paragraph to a close, his mind drifted back to his sonata. It was not music that he would have chosen to play when he was alone and low in his spirits: but he was not allowed to change or give up once he had fairly started on a piece, so when he played at all it was this partita that he worked upon, playing in a non-committal way and attending chiefly to the technical aspect of the thing. ‘At least I shall be word-perfect when Stephen comes back,’ he said. ‘And I shall ask his opinion of it.’

  Upon the whole Jack Aubrey was not much given to lowness of spirits, and circumstances far more adverse than these had not disturbed his cheerful mind; but now a slowly-maturing cold, the monotony of the blockade, the unvarying sight of the Pompee ahead and the Boyne astern on the starboard tack and the other way about on the larboard, a long and most unseasonable, un-Mediterranean spell of dismal weather, combined with his loneliness and isolation to bring him down. He let his mind run over his complicated affairs at home - a very useless exercise, since the legal issues were obscure to experts, let alone to sailors, whose law was contained in the thirty-six Articles of War - and over his position here. On taking command of the Worcester he had known that she was bound for the Mediterranean and that Harte was second in command to Admiral Thornton on that station: but the Admiral Thornton he and all his friends had always known had so very strong and dominant a personality that his second would count for very little, particularly when he was so small a man as Harte. Had Jack known how likely it was that Harte might inherit the supreme command he would have pressed hard for another ship.

  These reflections were running through his mind as he leant on the stern-gallery rail a few days later, holding a handkerchief to his streaming nose, looking sometimes at the Worcester’s grey and turbid wake, sometimes at the Pompee’s bows, a cable’s length astern, and sometimes at the Dryad, Babbington’s slab-sided tub, stationed well out to the leeward to repeat signals up and down the line. A diminished line, since the Admiral had run down to Palermo for a few days and the inshore squadron had been reinforced, but even so it covered a mile of sea as the squadron stood eastwards through the gloom and the task of repeating was no sinecure, particularly as they were hauled close to the wind - a wretched angle for a signal-lieutenant - and as Harte was perpetually fiddling with his flags.

  By this time Jack was perfectly well acquainted with the numbers of all the ships in the squadron, and although from his place in taut-drawn line he could see little beyond the Pompee and odd glimpses of the Achilles directly in her wake, he caught all Harte’s loquacity echoed from the Dryad and he saw the Culloden required to make more sail, the Boreas told to keep her station, and a distant frigate, the Clio, repeatedly ordered to alter course. And as he watched, nursing his red nose in a red-spotted handkerchief, he saw a number that he did not recognize together with a hoist requiring the ship in question to take a position astern of the Thetis. Some newcomer had joined the fleet. For a moment he had a wild hope that she might have come out from home, bringing letters and news, but then he realized that in such a case Pullings would certainly have sent to tell him. Still, he felt a curiosity about the stranger and he turned to go on deck: at the same moment Killick came out of the cabin with a bucket full of handkerchiefs to dry on his private line. ‘Now sir, what’s all this?’ he cried angrily. ‘No greatcoat, no cloak, no bleeding comforter even?’

  Ordinarily Captain Aubrey could quell his steward with a firm glance, but now Killick’s moral superiority was so great that Jack only muttered something about ‘putting his nose out for a moment, no more,’ and walked into the cabin with its unnecessary hanging stove, heated cherry-red. ‘Who is come into the fleet?’ he asked.

  ‘What the Doctor would say, was he here, I do not know,’ said Killic
k. ‘He would carry on something cruel about folk risking the pulmony: he would say you ought to be in your cot.”

  ‘Give me a glass of hot lemon shrub, will you, Killick?’ said Jack. ‘Who is come into the fleet? Bear a hand.’

  ‘I got to hang the wipes out first, ain’t I?’ said Killick. ‘Only Niobe from off of Alex - spoke to the Admiral off of Sicily - sent on here.’

  Jack was sipping his hot lemon shrub and reflecting upon moral superiority, its enormous strength in all human relationships but even more so between husband and wife - the contest for it in even quite loving couples - the acknowledgement of defeat in even the least candid - when he heard a boat hailed from the quarterdeck. The answer ‘Aye aye’ made it clear that an officer was coming aboard and it occurred to Jack that it might be Mr Pitt, the Niobe’s surgeon, a great friend of Stephen’s perhaps coming over to see him, not knowing he was gone - a man he would be happy to see: but as he passed through the door to the quarterdeck he gathered from Pullings’ expression that it was not Mr Pitt, nor anything agreeable at all.

  ‘It is Davis again, sir,’ said Pullings.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ cried a huge dark seaman in a hairy coat. ‘Old Davis again. Faithful and true. Merry and bright. Always up to the mark.’ He stepped forward in a blundering, lurching movement, thrusting the cheerful young lieutenant from the Niobe aside, clapping his clenched left hand to his forehead and holding out the other. It was not usual in the Navy for anyone much under flag-rank to initiate conversation with a captain on his quarterdeck, still less to grasp his hand; but Captain Aubrey, a powerful swimmer, had had the misfortune to rescue Davis from the sea, perhaps from sharks, certainly from drowning, many years before. Davis had at no time expressed any particular gratitude, but the fact of the rescue had given him a kind of lien upon his rescuer. Having rescued him, Jack was obliged to provide for him: this seemed to be tacitly admitted by all hands and even Jack felt that there was some obscure justice in the claim. He regretted it, however: Davis was no seaman although he had spent his whole life afloat, a dull-witted, clumsy fellow, very strong and very dangerous when vexed or drunk, easily vexed and easily intoxicated; and he either volunteered for Jack’s various ships or managed to get transferred to them, his other captains being happy to see the last of a troublesome, ignorant, untameable man.

  ‘Well, Davis,’ said Jack, taking the hand and bracing his own to resist the bone-crushing grasp, ‘I am happy to see you.’ Less he could not say, the relationship being what it was, but in the faint hope of evading the gift he was telling the Niobe’s lieutenant that the Worcester was so short of men that he could not possibly spare a single one in exchange, no, not even a one-legged boy, when the Dryad repeated the signal Worcester : captain repair aboard flag.

  ‘My barge, if you please, Mr Pullings,’ said Jack, and as he stayed to have a civil word with the Niobe’s officer and to ask after Mr Pitt, he saw Davis plunge in among the hands who were preparing to hoist the boat out and then thrust one of its crew aside by brute force, passionately asserting his right to be one of the captain’s bargemen again. Jack left Bonden and Pullings to deal with this by themselves and stepped aft for a last draught of hot lemon. How they did so without a scene he did not know, but as he sat in the barge, wrapped in his boat-cloak, with a supply of warm dry handkerchiefs in his lap and a ludicrous woollen comforter round his neck, he noticed that Davis was rowing number three, pulling with his usual very powerful, jerky, inaccurate stroke and wearing a look of surly triumph on his ill-natured and even sinister face. Whether he was staring straight at his captain Jack could not decide, seeing that one of Davis’s eyes had a wicked cast in it.

  Captain Aubrey repaired aboard the flag with all possible dispatch, pulling for three-quarters of a mile through a cold and choppy sea against the wind; but the flag was not ready to receive him. The Flag-Captain was a hospitable soul, however, and at once took him, together with the Captain of the Fleet, into his cabin, where he called for drinks. ‘Though now I come to think of it, Aubrey,’ he said, examining Jack’s face, his red, bottle-shaped nose, with narrowed eyes, ‘you seem to have a cold coming on. You want to take care of these things, you know. Baker,’ he called to his steward, ‘mix a couple of glasses of my fearnought draught, and bring ‘em hot and hot.’

  ‘I saw you swimming the other day,’ said the Captain of the Fleet. ‘Swimming in the sea. And I said to myself, This is madness, stark, staring madness; the fellow will catch cold directly and then go wandering about the squadron like a mad lunatic, spreading infection far and wide, like a plague-cart. Swimming, for God’s sake! In a sheltered cove, under proper supervision, on a warm calm day with the sun veiled and on an empty stomach but not too empty neither, I have nothing against it; but in the open sea, why, it is just asking for a cold. The only cure is a raw onion.’

  The first glass of the fearnought draught came in. ‘Drink it while it is hot,’ said the Flag-Captain.

  ‘Oh, oh,’ cried Jack the moment it had gone down. ‘God help us.’

  ‘I learnt it in Finland,’ said the Flag-Captain. ‘Quick, the second glass, or the first is mortal.’

  ‘It is all great nonsense,’ said the Captain of the Fleet. ‘Nothing could be worse for you than boiling alcohol, pepper, and Spanish fly. An invalid should never touch alcohol: nor Spanish fly, neither. What you want is a raw onion.

  ‘Captain Aubrey, sir, if you please,’ said a deferential young man.

  Admiral Harte was sitting with his secretary and a clerk. In an impressive tone he said, ‘Captain Aubrey, there is a service of great importance to be performed, and it is therefore to be confided to a reliable, discreet officer.’ Jack sneezed. ‘If you have a cold, Aubrey,’ said Harte in a more natural voice, ‘I will thank you to sit farther off. Mr Paul, open the scuttle. A service of great importance ... you will take the Dryad under your orders and proceed to Palermo, where you will find the armed transport Polyphemus with presents for the Pasha of Barka and a new envoy aboard, Mr Consul Hamilton. You will carry this gentleman and the presents to Barka with the utmost dispatch. As you are no doubt aware, the benevolent neutrality of the rulers of the Barbary States is of the first importance to us, and nothing whatsoever must be done to offend the Pasha: on the other hand, you are not to yield to any improper demands nor sink the dignity of this country in the least degree, and you are to insist upon satisfaction in the matter of the Christian slaves. You will also carry these dispatches for our consul at Medina. They will be put aboard the Dryad when you are a day’s sail from Medina: Captain Babbington will stand in, deliver them to the consul, and rejoin you and the transport on your passage east. It is clear, is it not, that Dryad is to part company a full day’s sail from Medina?’

  ‘I believe so, sir, but in any case I shall read my orders over and over again, until I have them by rote.’ Like many other captains, Jack knew that in dealing with Admiral Harte it was as well to have everything in writing, and since this was one of the few points on which a captain was entitled to run counter to a flag-officer’s wishes he carried the day, though not without wrangling. Harte was badly placed, since he had an audience perfectly well acquainted with the rules of the service, and after some remarks about unnecessary delay and waste of a fair breeze, urgent service and foolish punctilio, the clerk was told to draw up a summary of Captain Aubrey’s orders as quickly as he could. While it was being written out Harte said, ‘Was you to be bled, it would help your cold. Even twelve or fourteen ounces would do a great deal, and more would really set you up: cure you for good and all.” The notion pleased him. ‘Cure you for good and all,’ he repeated in a low, inward voice.

  The Worcester and the Dryad had hardly sunk the squadron’s topsails below the western horizon before the sun came out and the breeze increased so that the sparkling blue was flecked with white horses.

  ‘Buttons, the French call them,’ observed Captain Aubrey in his thick, cold-ridden voice.

  ‘Do they indeed, sir?’ said Cap
tain Babbington. ‘I never knew that. What a very curious notion.”

  ‘Well, you could say that they are as much like sheep as they are horses,’ said Jack, blowing his nose. ‘But sheep ain’t poetical, whereas horses are.’ ‘Are they really, sir? I was not aware.’ ‘Of course they are, William. Nothing more poetical, except maybe doves. Pegasus, and so on. Think of the fellow in that play that calls out “My kingdom for a horse” - it would not have been poetry at all, had he said sheep. Now here are the orders: read them while I finish my letter, and commit the piece that concerns you to heart. Or copy it out, if you prefer.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Babbington as Jack laid down his pen, ‘my part seems plain sailing: I part company a day’s sail from Medina, run in, deliver the dispatches to the consul there, and rejoin. Indeed, the whole trip seems pretty straightforward: Palermo, Medina, Barka and back.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘So it seems to me; and at the time I wondered at the Rear-Admiral saying it was an important service, calling for a discreet officer that could be relied upon - at his saying it with such a knowing look.’

  There was a short silence. Jack and Babbington had much the same opinion of Admiral Harte, and each knew the other’s mind; but neither acknowledged this by so much as a glance.