He was contemplating one of the clocks, made by Wm Timmins of Gosport and ornamented with a creditable ship of the last age, a ship that still carried a lateen yard on the mizen, when the pattering feet reached the staircase on his right and looking up he saw Mercedes coming down - an unchanged Mercedes. Still pigeon-plump, but no vast spreading bulk, no moustache, no coarseness.
‘Why, Mercy, my dear,’ he cried. ‘How happy I am to see you!’ And stepping to the foot of the stairs he stood there with open arms.
Mercedes paused a moment in her course, and then, crying ‘Capitan manyac!’ flung herself into them. It was as well that he was a powerful man and well braced, for Mercedes, though slim-waisted, was a solid girl and she had the advantage of the height: he stood the shock however, the padded, scented shock, and having squeezed the breath out of her body he lifted her up and gazed at her face with great complacency. Pleasure, freshness, gaiety and peach-like bloom he saw there, and he kissed her heartily, a delighted, frankly amorous kiss, heartily returned. Kisses were not unknown at the Crown; Jack and Mercedes had exchanged them before now without the roof falling in; but these set off a very shocking hullabaloo. Both clocks struck the hour, the front door and two windows slammed with a sudden gust of wind, four or five bull-mastiffs began to bay, and at the same moment the hall filled with people coming in from the street or the courtyard or down the other flight of stairs, all with messages or questions or orders that had to be shouted over the hollow roaring of the dogs. Mercedes banged and thumped the mastiffs, dealt with the questions in English, Spanish and Catalan, and between two of them she told a boy to lead the Captain to the Mermaid, a particularly comfortable little room up one pair of stairs.
And in this little room, the Crown grown calm again, they sat very companionably together, eating their dinner at a small round table, the dishes coming up hot and hot from the kitchen by a plate-hoist let into the wall. Mercedes ate much less than Jack, but she talked much more, very much more: her English had never been accurate ; it had slipped with the years, and now her rather wild remarks were interrupted by bubbling laughter and cries of ‘Cat’s English, manyac; kitchen-cat’s English.’ Nevertheless Jack perfectly understood the essence: Mercedes had married the Crown, a man much older than herself, a poor, thin, pitiful, weak-hammed cat as avaricious as a badger who had only made the offer to spite his family and save her wages. He had never made her a single present and even her ring was found to be brass and therefore neither valid nor binding: whereas the present Jack had given her long ago yet not so very long ago neither was close to her heart at this very moment: she had put on a new pinner for the occasion, and now undoing it she leant over the table, showing him the diamond pendant he had bought for her in the year two, one of the many charming fruits of a valuable prize, nestling low in her bosom. The Crown, that sordid creature, was away for some days, in Barcelona. Jack would have his old room, no doubt: it had been new-hung with crimson curtains!
‘Oh damme, Mercy dear,’ he cried, ‘I am a captain now, you know, and must not sleep out of my ship.’
‘Would you not even be allowed a little siesta after all that duck pie, and the day so hot?’ asked Mercy, gazing at him with wide innocent eyes.
Jack’s face, somewhat more florid than usual with fish soup, lobster, lamp chops, duck pie, Minorcan cheese and three bottles of wine, spread in a rosy smile so wide that his bright blue eyes vanished and Mercedes knew that he was about to say something droll. So he would have done too, as soon as he had hit just the right balance between ‘not sleeping’ and indelicacy, if Stephen had not made the most unwelcome entrance of his life. They had heard his harsh, disagreeable voice on the stairs and Mercedes had had time to spring up and adopt the attitude of one waiting at table when he walked rapidly in, smelling of hot mule. ‘Good day to you, young gentlewoman,’ he said in Catalan and then without the slightest pause ‘Come, brother, drink up your coffee. There is not a moment to lose. We must run to the boat.’ He seized the water-jug, drained it, recognized Mercedes and said, ‘Why, Mother of God, it is you, child, I am happy to see you. Pray run for the reckoning, my dear; the Captain must leave this minute. Is it a guest you have?’ he asked Jack, observing the two places laid.
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘That is to say, yes; most certainly -of course. Stephen, let us meet at the boat in a couple of hours’ time - it is no good before then - I have given a youngster leave: he cannot be left behind.”
‘Jack, I have run my poor mule nearly to death: you may certainly maroon a midshipman. Ten midshipmen.’
‘Then again, I have some important communications to make to a friend here.’
‘Are these communications of the very first importance to the service, tell?’
‘They are more of a personal nature, but -’
‘Then let us hear no more of them, I beg. Would I have rid the cruel long road from Ciudadela in the heat of the day - would I drag you from your coffee and your company and drink none myself, if there were no imperative haste? If it were not more important than amiable communications or even than spouse-breach for all love? Come, child, the Captain’s hat and coat and sword, if you please: duty calls him away.’
Duty was obeyed, but with a sullen and a reluctant step; and it was clear to the coxswain and crew of the barge, hurriedly called from Florio’s skittle-alley, that they had better watch out for squalls. A glance at their Captain’s closed, forbidding face, a glance at one another, with an almost imperceptible jerk of the head or movement of an eyelid, and all was understood: the bargemen sat in their places, prim, mute, and correct as a Sunday-school while Bonden took the boat right down the harbour with a strong favourable breeze and the officers sat silent in the stern-sheets.
Jack’s silence was that of extreme disappointment-and frustration: Stephen’s that of a mind busy far away, preoccupied with motives and probabilities in the first place and then with questions of the distances to be covered by various men and the time required for their journeys. That morning he had received word of the meeting he and his colleagues had been working for, a meeting with men high in the service of the French and their allies that might lead to very great things: the meeting itself was confirmed, but to enable an important officer from Rochefort to attend it had been put forward three days. All the factors that Stephen could check agreed that the appointment could be kept by those on land, but there remained the Worcester’s ability to carry him to that obscure marshy rendezvous and as soon as they were in the fore-cabin he said to Jack, “Pray, Jack, could you set me down at the mouth of the Aigouille by Tuesday evening?’
‘Where is the Aigouille?’ asked Jack coldly. Stephen turned to the chart-table and ran his finger along the low flat coastline of Languedoc with its salt lagoons and brackish marshes, canals and small un-navigable rivers choked by sandbars, meandering through malarial fens, and said ‘Here.’
Jack looked at the chart and whistled. ‘As far as that?’ cried he. ‘I had supposed you meant something in these parts. How can I possibly answer for such a distance unless I can foretell the wind’s direction and its force? Above all its direction. It is not quite foul at present, but it might haul forward until it is directly in our teeth any minute -dead on end, as they say. I wonder at your asking such a simple question: you must know by now that with the best will in the world a ship cannot lie closer than six points, and the Worcester will not come up so near. You must have heard of leeway - somebody must surely have told you of leeway and...”
‘For God’s love, Jack, just point the ship in as near the right direction as ever you can, and tell me about leeway afterwards. There is not a moment to be lost.’ These words had so often been addressed to him during his years in the Navy that even in his present hurry of spirits he was pleased to be the one who uttered them, and he repeated, ‘There is not a moment to be lost.’
‘Do you wish me to slip?’ asked Jack seriously; and to make his meaning even clearer, ‘To slip the cable, leaving it and the anchor behind?’<
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‘Would that save much time, so?’
‘Not above a few minutes in this clean ground.’
‘Then perhaps we should retain our anchor,’ said Stephen. ‘That invaluable implement’s a precious standby.’
Jack made no reply to this but went on deck. ‘I am afraid I have vexed him, the creature,’ said Stephen to himself, and then sank back into his former train of thought. Half-consciously he heard the fiddle on the capstan-head, the stamp and go of the men at the bars, a strong cry of ‘Heave and rally’, the fiddle increase its tempo, and then the even stronger cry of ‘Heave and aweigh.’
Two minutes later with the anchor catted the Worcester was making her ponderous way close-hauled for Cape Mola under topsails, driver and jib, swaying up her topgallantmasts as she went. As soon as she was well clear of the headland she took the true breeze, undeflected, a moderate tramontane, and Jack, standing by the helmsman with the master, said ‘Luff and touch her.’
Up she came, spoke by spoke, until the weather-leech of the maintopsail began to shiver. ‘Haul the bowlines,’ called Jack.
‘One, two, three. Belay oh!’ The traditional howling chant came from the fore, main and mizen gangs in exact order and with immense spirit; and from the forecastle Mowett roared ‘Bowlines hauled, sir,’ with equal zeal, for Mowett, like all those who had sailed with Jack Aubrey in the Sophie, was used to these sudden departures from Mahon. In those days Jack had private sources of information about the sailing of enemy merchantmen and the Sophie would dart out to play havoc with French and Spanish commerce at a moment’s notice, sending in prizes to such an extent that at one time Holborne’s Quay had no room for any more and they were obliged to be moored in the fairway. It was then that the Sophie’s commander came by the nickname of Lucky Jack Aubrey, and his enterprise, good fortune and accurate intelligence had brought all the Sophies a great deal of money, which they liked. But even without the prize-money, or with much less of it, they would still have loved these cruises, the long-drawn-out chase with every possible turn of seamanship on either side, and then the capture - piracy with a clear conscience: and now, the word having spread from the former Sophies to all the present Worcesters with its usual electric speed, the hands hauled the bowlines and sharped the yards with far more than common energy. Jack noticed it, of course, just as he noticed Pullings’ eager, questioning eye, and with a pang he realized that he was going to disappoint them all once more.
‘Luff and touch her,’ he said again, and the Worcester, braced so as to look as like a fore-and-aft vessel as her nature would allow or indeed rather more, came nearly half a point nearer the wind. He studied the angle of the dog-vane, called for an azimuth-compass to take the bearings of the wake and of Cape Mola, gazed long at the sky, the familiar clear tramontane sky with high white clouds moving in a steady procession toward Africa, and methodically began to pack on sail, causing the log to be heaved every five minutes.
Returning to the cabin at last he said to Stephen, ‘If the breeze hold true, and there is a fair likelihood of its doing so, I may be able to carry you to the mouth of your river in time, by making three legs of it, the last profiting by the indraught close to the shore. But you are clearly to understand that at sea nothing whatsoever can be guaranteed.’ He still spoke in a somewhat official tone, looking taller than usual, and stern; and even when Stephen had made all proper acknowledgements he went on in the same captain’s voice, ‘I am not sure what you meant by saying spouse-breach at the Crown just now, but if it means what I think it means, allow me to tell you that I resent the imputation extremely.’
Denial was on the tip of Stephen’s tongue, denial or a rapid though necessarily fallacious explaining away: on the other hand it was exceedingly difficult to lie successfully to so intimate a friend. In the event he only had time to pass his tongue over his lips once or twice like an embarrassed guilty dog before Captain Aubrey stalked out of the cabin.
‘Such asperity,’ said Stephen to himself. ‘Dear me, such asperity.’ He stayed leaning over the chart for some time, studying the lines of approach to the hidden rendezvous: his colleagues and agents used it more often than most of their meeting-places in the southern parts, but he had not been there himself for many years. He remembered it well for all that: a lagoon at the river’s mouth, then beyond it a great dyke dividing salt marsh from fresh; far along the dyke on the left hand a shepherd’s hut by one of those vast buildings where wintering sheep were housed by night, and a rarely-inhabited shooting-box; away on the right hand the village of Mandiargues, almost depopulated by malaria, Malta fever and conscription but still served by an indifferent road; the whole, even beyond the distant village, deep in reed-beds, a paradise for duck, wading birds in great variety, mosquitoes, and the bearded titmouse. ‘The bitterns may have arrived,’ he said, partly to still an uneasiness that would keep rising in the depths of his mind, and he returned to his own part of the ship.
Here he found his assistants, and together they looked at the Worcester’s sparsely-inhabited sick-bay (a camel-bite, some broken bones), checked their accounts, and mustered their stores. Mr Lewis had dealt with the medical situation perfectly well in Stephen’s absence, but there was a most unfortunate deficiency in the portable soup and port wine intended for invalids: they and two Winchester quarts of Liquor Ammoniac Acetatis had quite certainly been stolen by some criminal hand as yet unknown, misled by, the liquor part of the label. ‘Once he starts upon it we shall certainly know,’ said Mr Lewis, ‘and we shall no doubt recover what he and his messmates have not drunk; but the port and the soup are gone for ever. It was my own fault for not screwing them to the deck, and I shall have to make them good out of my own pocket. My one comfort is that there is said to be a monstrous fine prize in prospect that will enable me to do so without beggaring myself and Mrs Lewis - that will perhaps enable us to set up a carriage, ha, ha! What do you say to that, sir?’
‘Nothing do I know of the future, Mr Lewis,’ said Stephen. ‘Still less of the immediate past. What is this Barka, where the camel bit young Williams?’
Lewis told him about Barka in detail and about Medina, ending, ‘... and so all in all, sir, and by and large, and taking one thing with another, I believe I may say that I have rarely seen a ship’s company so... so deflated is perhaps the proper word, seeing that the martial afflatus it was that was gone. Nor more discontented with their officers and the no doubt necessary state of affairs, nor more divided and apt to disagree - the two fractures and the tooth cases certainly arose from that, whatever the parties themselves may allege - nor more inclined to pick and steal. But I have no doubt that this prize will wipe out the sense of failure and set everything to rights. Our younger loblolly-boy is mess-mates with two old Sophies, and they tell him that Captain Aubrey never set out from Mahon in a hurry without bringing back a prize - never, they swear, not once. And if he did that with a fourteen-gun brig, what will he do with a ship of the line? A galleon is the least I reckon on: more probably two.’
‘Mr Lewis,’ said Stephen, holding up the lantern to see the pure gleam of cupidity more clearly, ‘you forget we are no longer at war with the Spaniards.’
The gleam faded, then came obstinately back with the reflection that vast wealth was still carried by sea, even if galleons were gone. Remember the Hermione, cried Lewis. “The surgeon’s share alone was above four thousand pound!”
Stephen went thoughtfully to bed. That is to say, his cast of mind was thoughtful and so was the expression on his face, but in fact he was so tired after his furious morning?s ride on a more than ordinarily wicked mule that he counld neither govern nor direct his thoughts. Notions, ideas, and statements presented themselves in no apparent order, with no apparent connection. This Medina business certainly explained some of Jack’s asperity: what kind of rhinoceros was it, that Lewis described as having a prehensile upper lip?: howfar was La Reyniere (a sub-agent in Montpellier) to be trusted?: how had he, Stephen, come to say ‘spouse-breach’ at the Crow
n? The imputation was certainly true: it was also certainly impertinent, unwarranted, ill-bred, an unpardonable freedom. Was it impatience and fatigue on his own part, or a lurking jealousy at the sight of that fine, melting, amourous wench? In any event it was inaccurate, and since Mercedes was now married this would have been double: Spouse-breach-his eyes closed upon the word three times repeated, like a spell.
Long, long and late he slept, waking with a delicous sense of ease, his body moulded into the cot, almost immaterial. He lay for an indeterminate stretch, luxuriating, until an abrupt recollection of what the Worcester was carrying him to wiped the warm, benign, dozing pleasure from his face. At the same moment he saw his door open gently and Killick put his long red nose through the crack. How Stephen knew that Killick was doing so for the sixth or seventh time he could not tell, but he was as sure of it as he was sure of the words that Killick did then pronounce: if the Doctor happened to be awake, the Captain would be glad of his company at breakfast. Then the unexpected addition ‘and any road there was something he did ought to see on deck.’
Jack had been on deck in the middle watch and again before dawn, when the breeze freshened. What little sleep he had had - and he was used to short snatches - had been deep and refreshing; the searching wind, right cold by night, and the driving spray had done away with much of his ill-humour; and although he had held back his real breakfast until Stephen should be awake, an early mug of coffee and a piece of bread and honey in his hand had restored much of the usual sweetness of his nature. ‘Good morning to you, Doctor,’ he said as Stephen came blinking into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. ‘Look at that. Ain’t it prime? I do not believe that with all your experience of the sea you have beheld the like.’
Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission Page 21
