Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  The quarterdeck was crowded: all the officers and all the young gentlemen were there: there was a general atmosphere of excitement, and Stephen noticed that his particular friends were looking at him with a kindly triumph and expectancy, as though amazement might knock him flat at any moment now. He gazed at the pale blue morning sky, the darker white-laced sea, the quantities of sails. He was most unwilling to expose himself before so many comparative strangers, most unwilling to disappoint his friends, and with all the conviction and astonishment that could be summoned on an empty stomach he cried, ‘I do not believe I ever have. A most remarkable sight, upon my word.’

  ‘You can see ‘em even better from the hances,’ said Jack, leading him to the side, and carefully following the admiring gaze of all eyes on the quarterdeck Stephen perceived an array of overlapping triangular sails along the bowsprit and beyond it, well beyond it. ‘There,’ said Jack. ‘There you have the whole shooting-match. Fore and foretopmast staysails, of course, inner jib, outer jib, flying jib, spindle jib, and jib of jibs!’ He explained to Stephen at some length that after long experiment he had found this answer best with the Worcester’s present trim and with the present light breezes: he named a large number of other staysails, the spanker and driver, pointed out the total absence of square sails on the main and their rarity elsewhere, and assured Stephen earnestly that by so shifting the centre of rotation he was able to make good a course as close as six true points, so that now, with really able seamen at the helm and a prime quartermaster at the con, she could eat the wind out of any seventy-four of her class. ‘When you have gazed your fill, come and eat breakfast with me. I have some prodigious fine Minorca bacon, and will set things in train.’ He hurried away, and Pullings came up to wish the Doctor a good morning and congratulate him on having seen such a spectacle.

  ‘Now you will really have something to tell your grandchildren,’ observed Mowett; and pointing upwards he added, ‘And you must not forget the mizen topgallant-staysail, whatever you do.’

  ‘I served eight years with Sir Alan Howarth, and I do suppose he was the greatest flying-kite man in the service,’ said Collins, ‘but in all that time I never saw the whole shooting-match, not all at once.’

  Stephen wondered how long he must in decency go on staring at the whole shooting-match: he smelt bacon, he smelt coffee: he slavered. ‘Mr Pullings, my dear,’ he began, but at that point the jib of jibs saw fit to part company with its sheet, and in the turmoil Stephen slipped away.

  They were still breakfasting in the lavish naval fashion when the mate of the watch came bounding in, rather ahead of Jack’s permission so to do. ‘Mr Mowett’s duty, sir,’ he cried, ‘and there are four sail of merchantmen fine on the larboard bow.’

  ‘No men-of-war, Mr Honey?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. Great fat greasy merchantmen all huddled together, ha, ha, ha!’ In the gaiety of his heart Mr. Honey laughed aloud, turning it into a cough when he met his Captain’s cold eye. Jack dismissed him, and said to Stephen, ‘I am afraid I am going to disappoint them cruelly again. But if we are to be off the mouth of the Aigouille by tomorrow evening there is no time for whoring after prizes.”

  ‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said Mowett in the doorway, ‘but I am afraid Honey did not report quite right. There are four sail of merchantmen fine on the larboard bow, one of them very large; and if we do not alter course they will be windward of us in half a glass. May I put the ship about?’

  ‘Are you quite certain they are merchantmen?’

  ‘Dead certain, sir,’ said Mowett, grinning wide, an amiable wolf.

  ‘Then our course must still be east-north-east a half east.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Mowett with creditable fortitude, ‘east-north-east a half east it is.’ The light left his face, and he left the cabin.

  ‘There,’ said Jack, ‘I was afraid of it. A fine twelve-hour chase, with all hands on deck and every stitch of canvas set and drawing and the bow-guns playing long bowls would have pulled the people together wonderfully after the letdown at Medina. You have heard of it, Stephen?’

  ‘I have too: at intolerable length.’

  ‘I was obliged to disappoint them there... or so I thought. They have never been the same since. And for my part I have been most hellish ill-tempered - wake up angry in the morning - vex all too easy throughout the day. Tell me, Stephen, are there pills or draughts against the blue devils and ill-temper? I am most damnably hipped these days, as I am afraid you have noticed.’ For a moment he thought of telling Stephen about the suspicion that dwelt in his mind, but recollecting what kind of rendezvous his friend was to keep he only said ‘If you have finished, Stephen, pray smoke away. I am sure you bought some of your best mundungus in Mahon.’

  ‘If you are sure you really do not find it disagreeable,’ said Stephen, instantly feeling in his pockets, ‘I believe I may. For me tobacco is the crown of the meal, the best opening to a day, a great enhancer of the quality of life.

  The crackle and yield of this little paper cylinder,’ he said, holding it up, ‘gives me a sensual pleasure whose deeper origins I blush to contemplate, while the slow combustion of the whole yields a gratification that I should not readily abandon even if it did me harm, which it does not. Far from it. On the contrary, tobacco purges the mind of its gross humours, sharpens the wits, renders the judicious smoker sprightly and vivacious. And soon I shall need all my sprightliness and vivacity.’

  ‘I wish to God you were not going,” said Jack in a low voice.

  ‘There is no option,’ said Stephen.

  Jack nodded: to be sure, Stephen’s landing in some remote creek had as little free choice about it as Jack’s carrying his ship into action; yet there was something so horribly cold-blooded about the creek - cold-blooded, dark and solitary. He hated the idea: yet he drove the Worcester towards the place where the idea should become reality with all the skill he had acquired in a lifetime at sea. He drove her and her people hard, with jibs and staysails perpetually flashing in and out and with the utmost nicety of weather-helm, himself standing at the con watch after watch. The Worcesters were mystified: but those who understood seamanship were deeply impressed and those who did not were still so much affected by the sense of grave urgency that they too jumped to carry out all orders. He drove her so hard that in the event he made his landfall with hours to spare, intolerably dragging hours in which the Worcester stood on and off and the sun crept down the bright western sky. It set at last in a long golden blaze and the ship ran in on a kind but untrustworthy breeze, bringing the darkness with her: yet still another hour had to pass before she was close enough to send a boat off to that flat, desolate shore, and that hour was as burdensome as ten. All the preparations had been made, the letters written, the recommendations repeated several times: Jack fussed with the dark lantern, the blue signalling flare, the pistols, and the patent device for striking a light that Stephen was to take with him. Jack also added a clasp-knife and a few fathoms of stout line. ‘I have renewed your pistol flints,’ he said again.

  Again Stephen thanked him, and looked at his watch: only seven minutes had passed. ‘Come,’ he said, walked over to his ‘cello case and said, ‘Let us improvise.’

  They growled and squeaked for a few minutes and passed the rosin to and fro; then Stephen struck out a phrase from a Haydn symphony they had heard together, a strange haunting inconclusive phrase, a faintly questioning voice from another world. Jack repeated it: they played it in unison once or twice and then handed it back and forth with an infinity of variations, sometimes by common accord playing together, sometimes separately. Neither was an excellent player but each was competent enough to express much of what he wished to express, and they so conversed without a pause until Pullings came in to say that the ship was in ten-fathom water and that the cutter had been veered astern.

  After the lit cabin the deck seemed impenetrably dark, apart from the glow of the binnacles, and unseen hands guided Stephen to the ladder. The Worcester carried
no top-lights, her great stern-lanterns were cold and unlit, the scuttles and stern-windows of cabin and wardroom had been carefully screened, and she was whispering gently towards the even darker shore through an unseen sea, her sails ghostly overhead: people spoke in undertones.

  Stephen heaved himself up on to the rail: someone farther down the ladder set his searching feet on the first rung. He felt Jack’s hand reaching for his, shook it, and made his way down into the boat.

  A moment later Mowett said ‘Shove off.’ The Worcester’s tall stern moved smoothly on, even darker than the general night, shutting out a great stretch of star-filled sky. ‘Give way,’ said Mowett, and in a moment the boat was quite alone.

  The breeze was coming off the shore, loaded with the scents of land: marsh reek, the smell of dew on reeds, the general smell of green. It was a long pull in but they took it easy: the moon would not rise for above an hour. Nobody spoke and Stephen found that sitting there in the darkness, with the rhythmic plash, the heave, and the sense of motion but of motion quite unseen, had the quality of a dream or more exactly that of another state of consciousness; yet presently his eyes grew used to the night and he could make out the land quite clearly. The starlight seemed to grow stronger, although clouds were drifting across the Milky Way, and he recognized several of the boat’s crew - recognized them more from their general shapes then their faces however, or in the case of Fintrum Speldin by the depraved old wool hat from which he was never parted. All sober, discreet, solid men. Bonden, of course, he had known from the first.

  ‘You have your cloak, Doctor?’ said Mowett suddenly.

  ‘I have not,’ said Stephen. ‘Nor do I feel the need of it. Sure it is a warm, even a balmy night.’

  ‘So it is, sir. But I have a feeling the wind may back into the south - look how those clouds turn and tear -and if it does, we shall have rain.’

  ‘The Doctor is sitting on his cloak,’ said Bonden. ‘I stowed it there myself.’

  ‘Now you can see the tower pretty clear,’ observed Mowett after a while. Stephen followed his pointing hand and there indeed the dark tower stood out against the sky, a square Roman tower built when the sea stretched five and even ten miles inland.

  They said no more until they heard the small waves breaking and saw the faint line of white stretching out on either hand. ‘We are just about a quarter of a mile south of the bar, sir,’ said Mowett in a low voice, standing in the boat while the men rested on their oars. ‘Would that answer?’

  ‘Perfectly, I thank you,’ said Stephen.

  Mowett said ‘Give way. Stretch out now.’ The boat sprang into motion, moving faster and faster until it ran tilting up into the sand, checking with a hissing kiss. The bowman leapt out with a gangboard. Bonden led Stephen over the thwarts, said ‘Mind your step, sir,’ and he was ashore in France.

  Five minutes, while Bonden struck a shaded light, lit Stephen’s dark lantern and closed it, hung his other equipment round his neck in a little cloth bag, and made him put on his boat-cloak: then Mowett said very quietly, ‘At half after four tomorrow morning in the same place, sir: or failing tomorrow the blue light at midnight and the next day at dawn.”

  ‘Just so,’ said Stephen absently. ‘Good night to you, now.’ He walked up the slope in the yielding sand and as he went he heard the rattle of the gangboard, the boat’s kiss in reverse, and the stroke of oars. Where the dunes began he stopped and sat down facing the water. He could see the lapping wavelets as they ran up the shore, and the stars reflected for a great way out, and the horizon; but no ship anywhere at all, nor even the boat. The only sound was the wind over the dunes and the lapping water down there: it was in a way the world at the very beginning -the elements alone, and starlight.

  He was extremely unwilling to move. The sense of personal invulnerability that helped at the beginning of the war had left him long ago: he had been a prisoner the last time he was in France and although he had come away unharmed at least two of the French intelligence services had identified him beyond any possibility of a doubt. If he were taken now he could expect no mercy at all: he could not hope to come away untortured or alive. In earlier days he had faced much the same kind of fate, but then there had always been a certain chance of deceiving the other side or of escape: and in those days he was not married - his aims were single-hearted and in any case he cared less about his life.

  Directly before him a glow appeared at one point of the horizon: it grew brighter, still brighter, and then the rim of the moon heaved up, almost painfully brilliant to his night-accustomed eyes. When it was clear of the sea, a gibbous, lumpish moon, he held his watch to his ear, pressed the repeater-stem, and counted the minute true chime. Both the watch and the moon told him that it was time to go, and standing up he paced deliberately down to the water’s edge, where the wet sand not only made walking less laborious but also held no lasting trace.

  Twice he stopped to argue with his unwillingness, and each time he looked out along the moon’s path on the water: nothing whatsoever upon the sea, near or far. The bar at the mouth of the Aigouille lay before him at last, a broad strip of sand strewn with bleached tree-trunks: for except at times of flood most of the river stayed in its lagoons and marshes, the rest reaching the sea by a channel no wider than a man could leap. As he came to it he startled a night-heron fishing under the steep-to bank and for some reason the loud, harsh, familiar cry as it flew off, black and white in the moonlight, was a comfort to him. He made the leap successfully, whereas a few moments earlier he had been afraid that the bodily awkwardness that so often accompanies fear might make him blunder; and when he reached the far bank of the river he saw the two lights he was to look for, two lights one above the other far away in the direction of the shooting-box. His gentleman was there, and exact to the time; but to reach him Stephen must skirt the lagoon, following a fisherman’s path to a wooded knoll, and then strike across through the reed-beds for the dyke, passing three small pools on his way.

  At this end the path was clear enough and firm underfoot: it led him round a tongue of dry land to a shallow inlet full of wading birds that fled away with desolate fluting cries. And indeed, although the marsh gave an impression of silence - silent water gleaming under a silent moon - there was in fact a good deal of sound quite apart from the soughing of the wind in the reeds: over on his left he could hear the sleepy gabble of flamingoes, gooselike but deeper; duck flew overhead quite often, their wings creaking; and at the far edge of the reed-beds that he must traverse to reach the dyke, perhaps a mile away, a bittern began its foghorn song, boom, boom, boom, as regular as a minute-gun. He reached the knoll (an island once) with its tumbledown hut and the eel-traps hanging in a willow-tree: there were rabbits here, and while he was searching for his landmarks he heard one taken by a stoat.

  On, and into the reed-beds: here it was night again, with very little moon coming down through the long leaves overhead. There was a path of sorts, and his lantern, unshaded now, showed him a cut reed here and there; but much of the way he had to push through, sometimes striding high over dead or fallen stems, often ankle-deep in ancient-smelling mud, always too hot in the cloak and sadly plagued by the mosquitoes he disturbed in his passage; and in any case there was little certainty about the path; others crossed it or merged with it or forked off, confusing the direction. These were certainly made by wild boars and at one point he heard a band of them moving about, snorting. But boars did not interest him very much: what almost frivolously occupied the top of his mind, riding above his eagerness for the meeting and its success, and above his deep and sometimes almost paralysing sense of fear, was the bittern. He was going directly towards it; the sound was astonishingly loud by now, and he thought the bird might be at the edge of the reeds fringing the next pool, whose far end was formed by the dyke itself. If only he could move quietly enough and if only luck were with him, he might see it standing in the moonlight. Though indeed the moon would not last much longer: every time he looked up out of his dense cov
er he saw more and more clouds in the sky, and although he could not be sure of the direction they now appeared to be coming from the south.

  As far as luck was concerned, it seemed to be with him, decidedly with him so far, for although it was impossible to move without at least some rustling he was getting closer and closer, so close now that he could hear the bird’s hoarse straining indraught and the small private note that preceded the enormous boom. The bittern did not mind the noise he made; and perhaps mistaking him for a boar it did not even take fright when a false step sent him splashing knee-deep in the mud. But when a high, nervous voice called from the reeds ahead ‘Halte Ide. Qui vive?’ it instantly fell silent, although it had taken a full breath.

  ‘Le docteur Ralphe,’ answered Stephen.

  The voice made the agreed reply, claiming to be Voltaire, though from the sound it was clear to Stephen that he was an agent named Leclerc. ‘I expected to find you on the dyke,’ he said, examining Leclerc as the moon shone bright through parting clouds. Leclerc explained that he had heard movements on the farther marsh and that he had felt too visible, perched up there. Only cows, perhaps, but possibly poachers or smugglers - it was a great place for smugglers - and it was wiser not to call attention to himself. He had left the horses at the shooting-box, not liking to ride out, they being so nervous tonight. ‘I do not wonder at it,’ said Stephen to himself. ‘If they have caught half your hurry of spirits they must be fit to take to the air.’ Leclerc was a clever fellow, but Stephen would never have chosen him for this assignment; he was a townsman through and through, and townsmen were often ill at ease on a marsh or a mountainside by night. Besides, he had the wrong temperament entirely.

  They were on the dyke, and from here the farther marsh could be seen, mostly rough pasture criss-crossed with shining ditches, but with clumps of tamarisks and taller trees here and there as well as great stretches of reed, and in places one could make out the windings of the road to Mandiargues and the canal of the same name. As they walked along Leclerc named the men who had arrived at the rendezvous by the time he left and he was speaking of those who were still expected when two large pure white shapes rose into the air from just under the dyke. ‘Oh my God,’ he cried, clutching Stephen’s elbow. ‘What was that?’