Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  The thought, ‘Oh my God I have backed the wrong man’ flashed through Jack’s mind together with a whole train of other bitter reflections as he laid his fiddle on the locker. ‘How much truth is there in it, do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Graham. ‘It would be unusual for the Porte to come to a decision so soon in a matter of this kind, but on the other hand our embassy has been very busy, I am afraid: perhaps fatally busy.”

  ‘Why do you say fatally busy?’

  ‘Because if Ismail is installed that is the end of our attack on Marga. As Dr Maturin may have told you, I have undeniable evidence of his relations with the French: they are a source of very great profit to him.’

  ‘Do you know the origin of the rumour?’

  ‘The most probable origin is a courier who passed through on his way to Ali Pasha: the account may be exaggerated, but it is likely to have some foundation. A man would have little temptation to invent such unwelcome news.’

  ‘If it is true, what do you think we should do?’

  ‘Are you asking my advice, sir?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I am.’

  ‘I cannot give you a considered reply. I have only caught a fag-end of the tale at third-hand, no doubt distorted. I must see the Bey in the morning: fortunately he is an early riser.’

  The old Turk walked out of his kiosk to mount his horse before dawn, but he did not outrise Captain Aubrey, for Jack had not gone to bed at all. Much of the night he spent on deck, watching the clouds scud from the north as he paced up and down, irritating the harbour-watch and absolutely terrifying Mowett as he crept back from a venereal assignation; and as he paced so some critic in his mind kept up a very unprofitable nagging about what he ought to have done, outlining various courses that would infallibly have led to success. He ought for example to have closed with Mustapha right away and to have sent for the transports by that same tide: the wind would then have served admirably, Mustapha would have taken Kutali out of hand, and by now they would be battering Marga together; for the Capitan-Bey, though something of an explosive and unpredictable ruffian, was at least a man of action. Nonsense, he replied: Kutali would have had to be conquered street by street, if it had been conquered at all, even with the guns destroying its walls and houses. And Mustapha was quite untrustworthy, as far as Marga was concerned. When he had had enough, and more than enough, of this nagging, Jack went below, and having, stared for some time at charts of the passage north from Cephalonia - charts he knew by heart - he turned to his unfinished letter home. ‘... so much, my dear, for the public side, the service side, for the lost time and opportunity and treasure if all this turns out to be true,” he wrote. ‘Now, since we are the same person, I can speak of the personal side: if the expedition returns to Malta with its cargo of guns, having accomplished nothing, Harte’s expressions of goodwill and support will not amount to much. They will certainly not prevent him from tossing me over the side. He can say that I backed the wrong man, and I cannot deny it. The responsibility and the blame will rest on me and no amount of justification on my part (though I could produce a great deal) will make a scrap of difference to the outcome. With ill-will it could be made to look very bad indeed, and even with a friendly report (which I cannot expect) it must be a very black mark against my name; and that, coming after the fiasco at Medina, will do me no good at all in Whitehall. What particularly grieves me is that it will put it even farther out of my power to do anything for Tom Pullings. If he is ever to be promoted commander and employed in that rank, it must be tolerably soon; for no one wants a greybeard in a sloop of war, nor even a man of thirty-five. Yet on the other hand I now know that the people of Kutali would have resisted Mustapha, however much he had battered their walls; and when I think what his men would have done in the town I am glad I had no hand in it.’ His thoughts moved on to Andrew Wray, to the unholy alliance between Harte and Wray; to the large number of influential men he had contrived to disoblige in one way or another; to his father . . .

  Eight bells, and piercing through his reflections came the shrill piping of All hands at the main hatchway and the muffled bellowing of bosun’s mates ‘Starbowlines hoy, starbowlines hey. Rise and shine, there, rise and shine. Here I come with a sharp knife and a clear conscience. Oh rise and shine. Out or down. Tumble up, you idle hounds,’ and a remote howl of laughter as Sleeper Parslow’s hammock was in fact cut down.

  Eight bells, and Killick removed the deadlights from the stern window, admitting a grey morning and peering in himself with an inquisitive expression on his ratlike face. Inquisitive and ratlike, certainly, but also shining with cleanliness: how he did it Jack could not tell, remembering his own days on the lower deck and the total absence of anything to wash in before the forenoon watch and precious little then. Clean, and benevolent today, since it was evident that Jack was low in his spirits: for Killick was not unlike a partner on a seesaw, often being at his most shrewish when Jack’s cheerfulness was at its height, and the other way about. He reported the wind, still north-north-east, and the weather, medium fair, and then went to fetch the coffee. ‘Professor’s gone ashore, sir,’ he said in a conversational tone, bringing it in. ‘Most uncommon early.”

  ‘Is he?’ said Jack. ‘I shall look forward to seeing him, when he returns. Let me know the moment he comes aboard.’

  After a long blank interval in which the decks were cleaned with the usual din of holystones and swabs and sluicing water, and hammocks were piped up to the sound of a furious rush of more than two hundred men, many of them shouting, a stampede repeated almost immediately afterwards as the same horde was piped to breakfast, Stephen came in, and they waited for Graham together, eating buttered toast without the slightest appetite. ‘At least,’ said Jack, ‘the glass is beginning to fall.’

  ‘What does that signify?’

  ‘A change of weather, with the wind almost certainly coming easterly or even south of east. Lord, how I hope so. Even a few points east would bring the transports up: I know Venable and Allen are both keen, enterprising men, and I am sure they would sail the moment they possibly could. It is not much above two days’ sailing, with a brisk full-topsail breeze even one point free. Good morning, Tom,’ he said, looking up in surprise. ‘Sit down and take a bite.’

  ‘I beg pardon for bursting in like this, sir,’ said Pullings, ‘but I am just come from the mole and the works, and the town is all of a screech. As far as I can make out, that Ismail is to be governor and they want us to land guns to protect them from him. There is a party coming to see you, sir. They are in such a pitiful taking I said I was sure you would receive ‘em.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Pullings,’ began Jack, but it was too late: the party was aboard and nothing would keep them out. They were mostly priests of the different denominations - though Father Andros was not there - but some were laymen, middle-aged or elderly merchants, senators in the time of the republic, and they put it to Captain Aubrey that it was his duty to protect his fellow-Christians: to guarantee if not the independence then at least the privileged status of Kutali. The city was Turkish, nominally Turkish, rather than part of the Republic of the Seven Islands only by an error that the Powers would soon put right. Jack said that he was no more than an officer acting under orders; he could not commit his Admiral, far less his King’s government. They explained Kutali’s special position, a position that had been guaranteed in the first place by their possession of the citadel and that had been respected by Sciahan Bey; Ismail would not respect it, and the citadel was now known to be naked - an empty threat. Twenty guns, no more, would enable them to impose terms on Ismail. They were very urgent with Captain Aubrey to send at least his upper-deck cannon to the citadel and repay himself from the transports, which must arrive very soon now: one of the former senators, a ship-owner and a man of great experience, said that down off Cephalonia the wind would already be in the east; with this cloud-formation he had known it again and again.

  Jack said that what they asked him was imp
ossible: this ship and everything in her belonged to his master. They then described to him the taking of a Christian city by Turkish troops, particularly by the irregulars, the utterly undisciplined bashi-bazouks employed by Ismail: murder of course, with women raped and men and children sodomized, but also monstrous desecration of churches, graves and everything holy. It was extremely painful: it was as painful as anything Jack had even known, to have elderly dignified men kneeling to him there in the great cabin.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ cried Stephen, ‘We are running too far ahead entirely. All this is no more than a rumour, mere words blowing in the wind. Let me implore you, before you take any desperate measures, even any measures at all that might give the Turks just cause for resentment, to wait on Sciahan Bey to learn where the truth lies and what steps he intends to take.’

  ‘Have you ever known an evil rumour that was not true?’ asked a tall white-bearded man.

  ‘God help them, poor people, poor people,’ muttered Jack, watching them cross the gangway. And aloud he said, ‘Mr Gill, let the ship be warped out a cable’s length into the fairway,’ for women, veiled or shawled, were gathering fast on the mole, and he could not bear their coming aboard to plead with him. The hands who carried out the kedge and who cast off the moorings knew very well what they were about, and they and their officers and their Captain looked mean, hang-dog, and ashamed as the frigate, that powerful battery of guns, edged away from the silent crowded wharf.

  It was noon before Graham came back. He was wearing Turkish clothes, looking so natural in them that after a moment neither Jack nor Stephen noticed the odds, and he said, ‘I have got to the bottom of it, I believe: I have reached the underlying truth. The position seems to be this: the tsarfetim, a kind of preliminary appointment, has been made out in Ismail’s favour, but the Sultan has not signed the irade, and no irade has reached Nicopolis or anywhere else. The tsarfetim may have done so, since it is not unusual to send these - these announcements to the regions concerned to see how they are received. There is some slight analogy with the banns of marriage. I propose riding post to Constantinople to put the case before the embassy. When I confront them with the proof of Ismail’s intimate connection with the French I have no doubt that they will not only withdraw their support but press for the revocation of the tsarfetim. Furthermore both Sciahan and the Kutaliotes have given me drafts for a sum of money that should certainly ensure this revocation and almost certainly the eventual appointment of Sciahan. They have also supplied me with a guard of Albanian horses.’

  ‘You relieve my mind extremely, Professor,’ said Jack. ‘We may carry out our attack on Marga yet.’

  ‘I hope so, I am sure,’ said Graham. ‘But Sciahan has some lingering superstitious doubts about the irade and in any case, without risking the bowstring he cannot move until the tsarfetim is withdrawn. Once that is settled however he says he will certainly carry out his part of the agreement: and by then the guns are more likely to be here.’

  ‘With the wind as it lies, I believe we may look for them the day after tomorrow,’ said Jack. ‘But tell me, Professor, is not this a most prodigious wearisome ride you are undertaking? Should you not prefer one of these fine taut caiques? They can sail wonderfully close to the wind, and I have known them log two hundred miles from one noon observation to the next. And this breeze serves for up or down.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Graham, ‘but the sea is an uncertain chancy whimsical female lunar element: you advance one mile upon its surface and at the same time the whole body of water has retired a league. I prefer the honest earth, where my advance is absolute, however arduous; and I am no more a seaman than is a Turk or a tib-cat. Now, gentlemen, have you any commands for Constantinople? If not, I must beg to take my leave.’

  Stephen accompanied him to the shore, and as they walked to the Maidan, where the horses were waiting, Graham said, ‘I shall go by lannina, where Ali Pasha will tell me how things stand at the Palace, and where I shall have a conference with his Christian Greek advisers and with Osman the Smyrniote, who knows a great deal about the workings of the Porte - he was the author of the Pcra reports that you admired so much.’

  ‘You are well with Ali Pasha?’

  ‘I was able to do him a kindness once, and though he is a man of blood he is not ungrateful. He will offer me a larger guard, but I shall not take it.’

  ‘Why is this, colleague?’

  ‘Because Ali is strongly suspected of disloyalty, of wishing to set up as an independent ruler, as so many pashas have done or tried to do; and if only he could be rid of Mustapha, who is in a position to hinder him by sea, I am convinced he would do that very thing. So the less I am seen with him or his men the better. Here are my Ghegs. Good day to you, Maturin.’

  It was Captain Aubrey’s intention to put to sea until the probable time of Graham’s return, to gather his transports on their way north and with them to look into Paxo and Corfu and other places held by the French, partly to harass the enemy if the opportunity offered and partly because so long a stay in such a welcoming port was bad for the ship’s health and discipline, but far, far more because an even longer stay must make the French commander in Marga uneasy. For embargo or no embargo, news spread in this country as it were by the wind alone, and Father Andros, putting off with the present of a buck from Sciahan, told him that various versions of the rumour about Ismail were already to be heard in the remotest mountain villages. Yet Captain Aubrey, his first lieutenant, and above all his bosun, were extremely unwilling to put to sea with so many of their cables, and those her best, stretched between the mole and the citadel: a ship often needed to veer out a great scope of cable if it came on to blow, two and even three on end; and proper simpletons they would look, dragging their anchors on a lee shore, having left half a mile of prime seventeen-inch stuff behind them, dangling on a mountain-side. On the other hand, although the people of Kutali were a little less agitated than they had been at first, there were still continual processions to the churches, and Jack hesitated to give the word to unrig the ropeway.

  It was not usual for him to discuss his orders with anyone, since in his opinion a ship, and above all a man-of-war, was not ‘a God-damned debating society’ nor yet ‘an infernal House of Commons’, but on this occasion he said privately to Pullings, ‘What do you think about it, Tom?’

  ‘I think there would be a riot, sir,’ said Pullings. ‘They would be sure we were deserting them. I know if I touched so much as a limmer-line, Annie would have a fit of the mother.’

  ‘Who is Annie?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ cried Pullings, blushing crimson, ‘she is only a young person where I go to have a cup of coffee sometimes - a very small cup of coffee - and to learn a little of the language - the customs of the country.’

  Stephen asked Father Andros his opinion, and Father Andros, having pulled his beard and looked anxious for a while, admitted that it might be better to wait for a day or two, while the people grew accustomed to the notion that their fears had been exaggerated, that matters were likely to be arranged satisfactorily, and that the ship’s going was not definitive. ‘One can do a great deal with rumour - with word of mouth properly employed,’ he said with a look that surprised Stephen. ‘If you had asked me, I should have put it in hand earlier.’

  Very late on Friday night, therefore, the Surprise was lying at single anchor, riding easy with her head to the moderate south-east wind and hoping to get her cables in next morning, and her Captain and surgeon were sawing away fortissimo, building up to the climax of their Corelli in C major, when the door burst open and Graham appeared in the opening. His appearance was so extraordinary that neither said a word, but merely stared: the sound fled out of the room and he cried ‘Mustapha is at sea. He has taken the transports. You may catch him if you are quick.’

  ‘Where away?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He is taking them into Antipaxo, and from there he goes straight on to meet Ali Pasha at Makeni, sailing at dawn.”
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br />   Jack strode across the great cabin, through the fore-cabin, and whipped up the quarterdeck ladder in the darkness: he was strongly tempted to slip the cable, but the notion of putting to sea with almost nothing to hold him to the sea-bed was so abhorrent, so against all his feelings of what was right, so nearly impious, that he changed his order to ‘All hands to weigh”, and by the time he left the deck the capstan-bars were already being swifted and the barrel had already made a preliminary turn or so, with the musical click of the pawls. Three top-lanterns and a few battle-lanterns on deck and between-decks were all they had to see by, but it was wonderful how a really seasoned crew of man-of-war’s men worked together, rapidly, accurately, with little noise and no fuss, although half of them had been asleep in their hammocks not five minutes before.

  When he returned to the cabin Stephen was easing Graham’s boots off and mopping the places where they had chafed him raw. ‘You have had a hard ride of it, Professor,” he said. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Only lannina.’

  ‘That is far enough, in all conscience. Should you not take a glass of brandy, perhaps, and then something to eat? Killick! Killick, there.”

  ‘You are very good. If I might be indulged in a little cocoa, with milk, and a lightly boiled egg: but they are already preparing.”

  ‘When you have recovered a little, you must tell us how Mustapha came to do this extraordinary thing.’

  The cocoa came in, but Graham’s hands were trembling so that he could scarcely drink from the mug: however, the ship was on an even keel, so he put it down on Diana’s music-stand and drank by suction. ‘That’s a braw whet,’ he said, holding out his mug for more. ‘I will tell you now. Mustapha is in open rebellion. He has thrown off his allegiance to the Sultan and has raised his own standard. He needed the guns, and so he has taken them.’

  ‘Was there an action? Has he hurt many of our people?’