Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  In this silence Graham turned to Stephen, who had not yet gone below to his battle-station, and close to his ear said, ‘What did Mr Aubrey mean by desiring the men to put post paid on every ball?’

  ‘In English law it is a capital offence to stop His Majesty’s mails: by extension the stopping of any object marked post paid is also mortal. And indeed the man who stops a cannon-ball is unlikely to survive.’

  ‘So it was a joke?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘A joke at a time like this, good God forgive us! Such a man would be facetious at his father’s burial.’

  In the last few minutes the ships had approached to within random shot, the Turks on Surprise’s starboard bow holding their course without the slightest deviation, with the Kitabi abreast of the Torgud, a quarter of a mile to leeward. Bonden, the captain of the gun, kept the starboard chaser steadily trained on the Torgud’s bows, perpetually shifting it with his handspike. They were drawing together at a combined speed of ten miles an hour, and just before they came to point-blank range the silence was ripped apart by a great screaming blast of Turkish trumpets, harsh and shrill.

  ‘God, how it lifts your heart,’ said Jack, and he gave the orders ‘Colours at the fore and main.’ With his glass he watched the crowded Turkish deck: saw the man at the halyards, followed the flags as they ran up in reply, and on seeing the regular Turkish ensign break out he reflected, ‘He thinks we do not know yet: perhaps he hopes to slip by. But his guns are manned,’ and aloud he called ‘Professor Graham, pray come and stand by me. Mr Gill, wear round to the starboard tack and lay me within pistol-shot of his starboard side.’

  Now high seamanship showed its splendid powers: the sail-trimmer sprang from their guns; forecourse, staysails and jibs flashed out; the frigate leapt forward like a spurred horse and made her quick tight turn, as Jack knew she would do, bringing her larboard guns to bear when the Turks were still expecting her on the other side.

  ‘Shiver the foretopsail,’ called Jack, with his eye on the Torgnd’s quarterdeck and her burly captain right under his Ice. ‘Mr Graham, call out to him that he must surrender directly. Larboard guns stand by.’

  Graham shouted loud and clear. Jack saw Mustapha’s red beard part in a white gleam as he roared back his answer, a long answer.

  ‘In effect he refuses,’ said Graham.

  ‘Fire.’

  The Surprise’s entire broadside went off in a single explosion that shook both ships from truck to keelson and for a moment deadened the air; and now in the thick smoke rolling to leeward over the Torgud began the great hammering, red flashes in the gloom, iron crashing into the hulls on either side or howling overhead, an enormous all-pervading din, with ropes parting, blocks falling, jagged pieces of wood struck from the rails, the bulwark, the decks, and whistling across. After their hesitant start, they being caught on the wrong foot, the Turks fired hard and fast, though with no attempt at regularity, and the first shot of their starboard thirty-six-pounder tore a great gap in the hammocks, scored an eighteen-inch groove in the mainmast yet extraordinarily killed no men. But if the Torgud was firing pretty well or at least pretty fast, the Surprise was excelling herself: now that the broadsides were no longer simultaneous, the guns being out of step after the third or fourth discharge, it was hard to be sure, but judging by number seven, just under him, they were achieving something hke a round in seventy seconds, while the quarterdeck carronades were doing even better; and Jack was very sure that their aim was a great deal truer than the Turks’. Glancing to windward he saw a wide area of sea torn up by Turkish grape and round-shot that must have missed by as much as twenty or thirty yards, and then as he paced up and down he stared to leeward, trying to pierce the smoke: ‘I wonder the Turk bears it so long,’ he said, and as he spoke he saw the Torgud’s topsails bracing round as she edged away to join the Kitabi to leeward. He caught the master’s eye: Gill nodded - he was already following the movement.

  After a few minutes of this gradual turn the smoke would blow away ahead and the sharpshooters would have a chance. He bent to his youngsters, and shouting loud through the uproar and the general deafness that affected all hands he said, ‘Mr Calamy, jump up to the tops and tell them to annoy the Turk’s thirty-six-pounder. Mr Williamson, tell Mr Mowett and Mr Honey we are reducing the charges up here by a third. Mr Pullings, make it so.’

  At this furious rate of fire the guns heated excessively and they kicked with even greater force when they went off: indeed, as he moved towards the taffrail, trying to see through the smoke, one of the quarterdeck carronades did in fact break its breeching and overset.

  As he bent to snub a trailing side-tackle the waft of the thirty-six-pound ball sweeping over the deck a foot from his head made him stagger; and now, as the iron hail beat furiously on and about the Surprise, ball, grape and bar flying through the continuous thunder, with the crackle of musketry above it, there was a new note. The Torgud, with the Surprise following her, had edged down much closer to the Kitabi, and now the Kitabi opened with her shrill twelve-pounders. Up until this point the Surprise had not suffered badly, except perhaps in her hull; but this present hail knocked one of the forward guns half across the deck, striking it on its own recoil and maiming three of its crew, and again the thirty-six-pounder roared out: its great crash was followed by a screaming below that for two minutes pierced even the united gunfire. And now a bloody trail on the deck showed where the wounded were carried down to the orlop.

  Yet the frigate’s fire scarcely slackened from its first tremendous pace: powder and shot ran smoothly up from the magazines, the gun-teams rattled their massive pieces in and out with a magnificent zeal, sponging, loading, ramming, heaving up and firing with a racing coordination that it was a pleasure to watch. Although it was still impossible to sec at all clearly Jack was sure that they must already have mauled the Torgud very severely; she was certainly not firing so fast nor from so many guns, and he was expecting her to wear in the smoke, either to run or to present her undamaged larboard broadside, when he heard the fierce harsh trumpets bray out again. The Torgud was going to board.

  ‘Grape,’ he said to Pullings and his messengers, and very loud, ‘Sail-trimmers stand by.’ The Torgud’s fire died away except for her bow guns; the smoke cleared, and there she was, turning into the wind, steering straight for the Surprise, her bowsprit and even her jibboom crowded with people, willing to take the risk of a raking fire for the sake of boarding. ‘Wait for it,’ cried Jack. To tack his ship before the Turk could run her aboard, to tack her in so short a space of time and sea as though she were a cutter, was appallingly dangerous; but he knew her through and through, and as he calculated the wind’s strength, the ship’s impetus, and the living force of the water he called again, ‘Wait for it. Wait. Fire.’ And then the second his voice could be heard, ‘Hands about ship.’

  The Surprise came about, but only just: the Torgud did not. She lay there, taken aback; and as they passed, the Surprises cheering like maniacs, Jack saw that the storm of grape had cleared her head of men, a most shocking butchery.

  ‘Warm work, Professor,’ he said to Graham in the momentary pause.

  ‘Is it, indeed? This is my first naval battle of any consequence.’

  ‘Quite warm, I assure you: but the Turks cannot keep it up. That is the disadvantage of your brass guns-If you keep on firing at this rate, they melt. They are pretty, to be sure; but they cannot keep it up. Mr Gill, we will lie on her larboard quarter, if you please, and rake her from there.’

  The Torgud, falling off, had put before the wind, and now the Surprise bore up and made sail in pursuit; no guns but the bow-chaser could be trained round far enough to bear, and all up and down the ship men straightened and stood easy. Some went to the scuttle-butts to drink or dash the water in their faces; most were stripped to the waist, shining with sweat; all were in tearing spirits. At one of the quarterdeck carronades a young fellow was showing his mates a lost finger. ‘I never noticed it,” he kept s
aying. ‘Never noticed it go at all.’

  But now here, against all expectation, was the Kitabi, coming up fast with the obvious intention of passing between the Surprise and the Torgud and then presumably of hauling her wind to take the Surprise between two fires.

  ‘That will not do, my friend,’ said Jack, watching her approach. ‘It is very gallant, but it really will not do. Round-shot,’ he called, ‘and fire steady from forward aft: fire at the word.’ Some minutes later, when the relative positions of the three ships were such that the Torgud was directly to leeward of her consort and unable to give her any support, Jack shivered the main and mizen topsails, slanting down towards the Kitabi, making no reply to her high, rapid, nervous, largely ineffectual fire until they were a cable’s length apart, no more.

  They gave her six deliberate rolling broadsides, beating five of her midships gun-ports into one and silencing her entirely. At the sixth there was a violent explosion aboard her, and the beginning of a fire: the Surprise passed on, leaving her drifting before the wind, her people running with buckets and hose.

  The breeze had faded, perhaps stunned by the cannonade, and the Surprise set her topgallantsails to pursue the Torgud: not that the Turk was evidently flying - he had no great speed of canvas - but he was steering steadily on his original course, perhaps in the hope of reaching Ali Pasha; and right ahead the mainland could now be seen, mountain-peaks nicking the horizon, while the low Morali islands must be nearer still. In this wonderfully silent pause, while the bosun and his mates sprang about the rigging, knotting and splicing, Jack stared at the Torgud for a moment, watching them throw their dead over the side - a trail of dead in her wake - and then made a quick tour of the ship. He found less damage than he had feared: one gun dismounted, the side pierced by three thirty-six-pounder balls and some others, but none of the holes dangerously low, while in Stephen’s hands there were no more than six badly wounded men and three sewn into their hammocks, remarkably few for such a furious bout.

  On deck again he saw that the breeze had recovered, and that the Surprise was overhauling the Torgud fast. They were already within gunshot, but with land in sight it seemed to Jack that so long as he could avoid being boarded close action was called for, and it was not until they were drawing abreast, close enough to see men’s faces clearly, that he reduced sail and the hammering began again. This was the Torgud’s larboard broadside, hitherto unengaged and undamaged, and the Turks blazed away with as much spirit as before: again a thirty-six-pound ball passed so close to Jack’s head that it made him stagger - he actually saw the dark blur of its passing - and he said to Driver of the Marines, ‘Let your men amidships concentrate on the loader of that damned heavy gun.’ Graham, who was just at hand, said ‘May I take a musket, sir? I might do some good, and I feel uneasy, useless and exposed standing here.’

  He was indeed exposed. Now that both ships had the wind aft the smoke blew clear away forward; the Torgud was shooting more accurately than before and as her shot hit the Surprise’s bulwark or upper hull so showers of splinters flew across her deck, some trifling, some deadly. Graham had already been knocked over twice, and- most of those on deck had been more or less banged about.

  The Torgud was still full of fight, and she still had a surprising number of men. After a particularly violent salvo she clapped her helm hard over, meaning to board again, and again her people crowded thick into her bows and along her bowsprit. This time the Surprise had no room to tack, but she had her forecourse in the brails for just such an emergency, and dropping it now she shot ahead: though none too fast, since the Torgud’s jibboom caught in her mizen topgallant backstays. She shot ahead nevertheless, her stern-chasers blasting grape into the close-packed Turks, a red slaughter that checked even the gun-crew’s cheers; and the moment she had way enough she crossed the Torgud’s stern, raking her as she did so. The Surprise let fly her sheets, and the Torgud, ranging up, engaged again with her starboard broadside, shockingly ravaged from that first bout, with at least seven guns dismounted, ports blackened and battered in, the scuppers and even the bare sides thick with blood.

  Ravaged, but still dangerous: now, when some opponents might have struck, she let fly with a dozen or thirteen guns and two of these did more damage than all she had fired hitherto. One struck the uppermost pintle and wedged the rudder, and another, the last of her huge round-shot, caught the Surprise just as she was on the lift, showing her copper, and made a shocking great hole under her waterline. And a third, fired as Jack was giving Williamson orders to carry forward, took the boy’s arm off at the elbow. Jack saw his amazed face go paper-white - not pain but amazement and concern and disbelief - whipped a handkerchief round the stump, twisted it tight, staunched the jetting blood and passed him to a quartermaster to carry below.

  By the time the Surprise had dealt with the steering and the leak the Torgud was much nearer the land. Apart from a few shots from her stern-chasers as she drew ahead she had not tried to profit by her advantage, still less to board. It was possible that she was unaware of the damage she had inflicted: it was certain that the last encounter, the last raking, had killed a great number of her men. She sailed away, therefore, and in her wake there now sailed the Kitabi, she having pursued a course with no turnings since the Surprise left her; and both Turks were clearly steering for the same port.

  ‘All sail she will bear, Mr Pullings,’ said Jack, going forward to study the Torgud through a borrowed telescope - a musket-shot had broken his own as he held it: the tube shattered, his hand untouched. The Torgud had suffered terribly, there was no doubt of that; she was sailing low and heavy and although the Surprise was now gathering way fast as Pullings spread topgallantsails and even weather studdingsails in his passionate eagerness, the Torgud seemed unwilling and unable to make any increase. And even now the bodies were still splashing over the side.

  ‘No,’ said Jack to Bonden at the starboard bow-chaser as they came within easy range of the Turk’s stern, moving faster every moment. ‘Do not fire. We must not check her way. Boarding is the only thing for it, and the sooner the better.’

  ‘Anyhow, sir,’ said Bonden, ‘that damned fool is in the way.’ This was the Kitabi. Convinced that the Surprise was in pursuit of her, she had cracked on the most extraordinary amount of canvas to rejoin the Torgud and now she lay directly between the two.

  Jack walked aft, and as he passed the boarders in each gun-crew smiled at him, or nodded, or said ‘Coming up now, sir,” or cheerful words of that kind; and again he felt the rising of that enormous excitement of immediate battle, greater than any other he had ever known in the world.

  He spoke to the Marines, who were now to come into their own, and after a few more turns he ran down the ladders to the lantern-lit orlop. ‘Stephen,’ he said privately, ‘How is the boy?’

  ‘He will do, I believe.’

  ‘I hope so, indeed. As soon as we come up, we mean to board.’

  They shook hands and he ran on deck again. Pullings was already taking in the studdingsails, not to overrun the Torgud: and there, still absurdly ahead, fled the Kitabi, between the two frigates. She fired not a gun: she seemed to have lost her head entirely. ‘Forward, there,’ called Jack to the bow-chaser guns, ‘Send a ball over her deck.’

  ‘By God,’ cried the master, as the Kitabi jigged at the shot, ‘She’ll run the Torgud aboard if she don’t take care - by God, she can’t avoid her - by God, she’s doing it.’

  With a rending, crashing sound that came clear to their ears at four hundred yards the Kitabi ground slanting into the Torgud’s starboard side, her foremast falling over the frigate’s waist.

  ‘Lay me athwart her stern,’ cried Jack, and then very loud, ‘One broadside at the word, and board her in the smoke.”

  As the Surprise began her turn he stepped forward to the great gap in the starboard hammock-netting torn by the Turks, loosening his sword, easing his pistols. Pullings was at his right hand, his eyes sparkling, and from nowhere had appeared the grim ma
n Davis, jostling against Bonden on the left, looking perfectly mad with a line of white spittle between his lips and a butcher’s cleaver in his hand.

  The last sweeping movement, the easy, yielding crunch of the ship’s sides, and the roar of the great guns as Jack gave the word. Then calling ‘Boarders away* he leapt through the smoke down to the Kitabi’s deck. Perhaps forty Turks stood against them, an irresolute line almost instantly overwhelmed and beaten back, and there in the clearing eddies was an officer holding out his sword, hilt first, and crying, ‘Rendre, rendre.'

  'Mr Gill, take charge,' said Jack, and as the Torgud fired her remaining after-guns straight into the Kitabi he raced through the billowing smoke into the bows, roaring 'Come on, come on, come on with me.'

  It was no great leap across, for the Torgud was low, low in the water, the sea washing into her shattered midship ports and flowing out red, and one flying stride took him on to her quarterdeck rail.

  Here it was different. Here though her decks were bloody and ploughed with shot they were still full of men: most were facing aft into the smoke, but one whipped round and cut at him directly. Jack caught the blade on his sword and from his height on the rail gave the Turk a great thrust with his foot that sent him flying into the waist of the ship - into the water that swilled over the waist of the settling, almost sinking ship.