He had acquired the ability to go fast asleep at any time early in his naval career and although years had passed since he kept a watch he still possessed it; he could still sleep on, however great the din and the discomfort, and it still needed some significant nautical disturbance to rouse him. A coir cable being dragged across the deck with shrill Indian cries was not enough, nor was the sound of his own enormous snoring (for his head had fallen back and his mouth had opened), nor was the smell of Turkish cooking that came eddying aft as evening fell. What woke him, and woke him completely, was a change in the wind: it had quite suddenly shifted two points; it was slackening and coming in gusts.
He went on deck, on to the unusually crowded little quarterdeck: his officers at once led the Turks and the Arab to the lee rail, uncomprehending, but meek aboard a ship. The windward side was cleared in a moment, and he stood there looking at the evening sky, the broken clouds high over Africa and the haze on the Arabian shore. The weather was on the change, he was sure; and that too was certainly the opinion of a number of the Surprise's forecastle hands, elderly men with an immense experience of the sea; they were as sensitive as cats to these alterations and they now lined the gangway, directing meaning glances at him.
'Mr McElwee,' he said, turning to the Company's pilot, 'what do you and the serang make of it?'
'Well, sir,' said Mr McElwee, 'I have not often been north of Jeddah or Yanbo, as I said, nor has the serang, but we both think it looks mighty like dropping for the night, with maybe an Egyptian coming on tomorrow.'
Jack nodded. The Egyptian wind, though by no means as favourable a breeze as could be wished in so narrow a channel as the Gulf of Suez, with its strong currents and its coral reefs, would at least be abaft the beam; and if the Niobe was as weatherly as she was said to be, and skilfully handled, it might carry her down into the relatively open sea. 'Well,' he said, 'I believe we may lay out a kedge, so that if this damned breeze has slackened enough by the height of flood, she may be warped out beyond the harbour mouth, not to lose a minute of the Egyptian, if ever it comes on to blow.'
'Doctor,' he said, as Stephen and Martin came aboard, having handed up box after box of coral and shells, and as the hawser crept out from the Niobe's bows, carried by the long-boat through the crowd of Arab dhows and djerms, 'we are half-promised an Egyptian wind.'
'Would that be the same as the dread simoon?'
'I dare say,' said Jack. 'I have heard it is most uncommon hot, even for these parts. But the great point is that it is westerly, and even a little north of westerly; and so long as it comes abaft the beam, it may blow as hot as it pleases.'
'As hot as it pleases,' he said again, when they were drinking tea in the cabin. 'It really cannot be much hotter, or nothing but crocodiles would survive. Have you ever known a heat like this, Stephen?'
'I have not,' said Stephen.
'Nelson once said he did not need a greatcoat—love for his country kept him warm. I wonder whether it would have kept him cool, had he been here? I'm sure it has no effect on me: I drip like Purvis's distilling machine.'
'Perhaps you do not love your country quite enough.'
'Who could, with the income-tax at two shillings in the pound, and captains docked an eighth of their prize-money?'
The first wafts of the Egyptian wind came a little after dawn. The Niobe was lying at single anchor well outside the harbour, having warped clear of all shipping in the night: the breeze had dropped to a dead calm during the middle watch, and even with all scuttles and hatches open it was stiflingly hot below; yet these first Egyptian wafts were hotter still.
Jack had taken a couple of cat-naps, but he was on deck at first light and he saw the wind move across the troubled, tide-rippled water with a great lifting of his heart, a feeling of liberation, of hope renewed. With so many and such willing hands the capstan fairly spun round, plucking the anchor up with scarcely a pause; and soon after the Niobe had got under way, casting as prettily as could be wished in spite of the cross tide, he found that although she could not compare with the Surprise in breeding and instant response nor in speed, she was a stiff, serviceable little ship, not much inclined to sag to leeward, at least when sailing large; and this was a great satisfaction to him. Yet there was something strange about the breeze: not only its extraordinary heat, like the breath out of an oven, nor its uneasy, unsettled gusting but something else that he could not define. The young sun blazed clear in the pure eastern sky, terribly strong already, but over there in the west there was a lowering murk, and all along the horizon, rising some ten degrees, an orange-tawny bar, too thick for cloud.
'I do not know what to make of it,' he said to himself. As he turned to go below for his first breakfast, the first wonderfully reviving cup of coffee—the genuine Mocha, straight from that interesting port—that he had already smelt, he caught the eyes of his four young gentlemen fixed thoughtfully upon him. 'Of course,' he reflected, 'they expect me to know what to make of it. A captain is omniscient.'
Stephen walked in, holding a small bottle. 'Good day to you, now,' he said. 'Do you know the temperature of the sea? It is eighty-four degrees by Fahrenheit's thermometer. The salinity I have not yet calculated, but suppose it to be extraordinarily high.'
'I am sure it is. This is an extraordinary place altogether. The glass has not dropped very much, yet . . . I tell you what, Stephen, I should take it kindly if you would ask Hassan what he thinks of the bar in the western sky. Since he spends much of his time roaming about the Arabian desert on a camel he must take notice of the local weather. But there is no hurry; let us finish our pot first.'
It was as well that there was no hurry, because the pot was huge and Stephen unusually prosy, on the subject of scorpions. A large number had been found below and the Surprises were hurrying about killing them. '. . . most illiberal—your scorpion never wantonly attacked—stung only if provoked—might cause a certain amount of discomfort, even coma, but was rarely lethal—it might almost be said never, except in the case of those whose hearts were out of order, and they were probably condemned in any case.'
'What about poor Hairabedian?' asked Jack.
'He will be running about tomorrow, rather better for his rest,' said Stephen, and at this moment a squall struck the Niobe, laying her over almost on her beam ends. The coffee shot to leeward, though they ludicrously preserved their empty cups; and as the ship righted Jack recovered his feet, making his way through the tumble of chairs, table, papers and instruments. The moment he passed the cabin door he was enveloped in a tawny cloud of sand—sand flying, sand underfoot, sand grating between his teeth—through which he dimly saw a fine scene of confusion. Sailcloth was threshing wildly, the wheel, spinning round, had broken the helmsman's arm and flung him against the rail, the booms and the boats were all abroad, and a ghostly maintopmast staysail, blown almost out of its bolt-rope, streamed away to leeward. The situation was critical, though the present damage was not very grave; the breechings of the guns had held—had even one of the nine-pounders plunged through the other side in that monstrous lee-lurch the ship might have foundered directly—the sheets had instantly been started, preserving the masts, and two quartermasters were already at the wheel. What was much more serious was the crowd of horrified Turks: some were running about the forecastle and the waist in the swirling dust and sand, still more were swarming up the main and fore hatchways. Many of those on deck clung to the running rigging, blocking the seamen's efforts; and if more joined them it would be impossible to work the ship: another squall must lay her down, perhaps for good, certainly with great loss of life—the landsmen would be washed overboard by the score.
Mowett, Rowan and the master were there—Gill half naked. 'Drive them below,' cried Jack, running forward with his arms spread and going 'Hoosh, hoosh,' as though he were herding geese. The Turks were furious fighters by land, but now they were at a loss, out of their element; many were sea-sick and all were terrified, disarmed. The total competence and authority of the four
officers advancing so easily over the heaving deck daunted them. They stumbled and blundered to the hatchways and climbed or fell in heaps below. Hardly had Jack given the order 'Lay the hatches' which would keep them there, than he felt the vacuum in his ears that came a split second before the second squall. The blast laid the ship over, nor did she fully recover, for now the Egyptian had set in, blowing irregularly but hard and without a pause. As Jack made his way aft, his eyes almost closed against the sand, he had time to wonder whether people could breathe in such hot, thick air, and to thank his stars that he had not sent up topgallantmasts.
He could also have thanked them for a strong crew of able seamen and an entirely professional set of officers—Mowett and Rowan might be given to verse in the gun-room, but they were all hard tough driving prose on deck in an emergency. Yet even if he had had time he would probably not have done so, since he took seamanship for granted in those who belonged to the Navy, abhorring its absence as extremely discreditable if not downright wicked and praising only its highest flights: however, the question did not arise, because for almost all the twenty hours that followed he was wholly absorbed in preserving his ship and directing her course.
The first long, long stretch was taken up with reducing sail, dealing with such problems as securing the spars and the remaining boats, sending up preventer stays and braces and rolling tackles, providing the guns with double-frapped preventer-breechings, making good the damage aloft, and perpetually looking out for squalls, as far as that was possible in a twilight of sand flying through a haze of very finely-divided yellow dust, a haze so thick that the sun at noon showed like a red orange hanging there as it might have hung over London in November, a November with a temperature of a hundred and twenty-five in the shade.
Then at some point in the forenoon, when the sprung foretopmast had been fished and the Egyptian had settled into a steadier, less gusty stride, the balance changed: it was now less a question of survival than one of wringing every possible mile from the wind, of 'spoiling the Egyptian' as Jack said to himself, a wild glee having succeeded the intense gravity of those first hours, when a false move might have meant loss with all hands. There were few things that moved him more than driving a ship to the limit of her possibilities in a very strong blow, and now his great concern was finding just how much sail the Niobe could carry and where it should be set: the answer obviously varied with the force of the wind and the scend of the sea, and that variation itself was by no means simple, because of the strong and continually changing tidal streams in the gulf and its strange shifting currents.
But it was not only his delight in driving her that made him send the Niobe racing along in this headlong course, with her bow-wave tearing away white in-the murk to larboard and coming in steadily like a storm of salt rain over the starboard forecastle. Very early he had found that the faster the ship moved through the water the less leeway she made; and in a narrow, reef-lined gulf with no harbours, no sheltered bays, not a yard of leeway could he afford. And since there was no lying-to with the Arabian coast so near, he must necessarily crack on and pelt down the middle of the channel, or rather to the windward of the middle, as near as he could judge; unless of course he preferred to wear ship, run back to the dubious protection of Suez harbour, and abandon the expedition. For once the French engineers had reached Mubara they would certainly put the fortress into such a state of defence that no Company's nine-pounder sloop and a handful of Turks could attempt it—he had to get there first or not at all.
Running south was a perilous undertaking, but rather less so now that there was a heavy sea running, making the reefs more evident; and he was splendidly seconded, with the Mocha pilot conning the ship from the foreyard and calling his observations down to Davis, the man with the strongest voice in the crew, who stood half drowned on the forecastle and roared them aft, and with all the Surprises perfectly used to his ways, understanding him at the first word and as seamanlike as men could well be. Yet even so there were moments when it seemed that they were lost. The first when the ship hit a heavy, half-sunk palm-tree, her cutwater striking it in the middle with a shock that almost stopped her in full career: three backstays parted, but her masts held firm and the trunk passed under her keel, missing her rudder by inches. The second came during a particularly long and blinding flurry of sand. The Niobe gave a shudder; there was a grating sound below, loud over the voice of the wind, and in the turn of the rising sea to larboard Jack caught the gleam of a great length of her copper ripped off.
By noon it was less perilous. They were still running at a breakneck pace under close-reefed topsails and courses, but the invisible land of Egypt over to starboard was now low parched stony hill rather than pure desert; it had rather less sand to offer, and the visibility improved. Life on deck became more nearly normal: no noon observation was possible, to be sure, and the galley fires could not yet be lit for the hands' dinner, but the regular succession of bells, of relieving the wheel and heaving the log had resumed, and Jack observed with great pleasure that the last heave showed twelve knots and two fathoms, which, considering her sober, matronly form, was probably very near to the greatest speed at which the Niobe could be urged through the water without serious damage, though he might possibly add a fathom or so with a mizzentopmast stormstaysail.
He was reflecting upon this when he noticed Killick at his elbow, holding a sandwich and a bottle of wine and water with a tube through its cork. 'Thankee, Killick,' he said, suddenly aware of being famished in spite of the impossible heat and the peck of sand in his gullet, and thirsty in spite of being soaked with spray, spindrift, and sometimes green water, coming warm and solid over the side. As he ate and drank he listened vaguely to Killick's bellowed yet still whining complaint '. . . never get the bleeding sand out . . . got in all your uniforms . . . in all the chests and lockers . . . in all the bleeding cracks . . . sand in my ear ole . . .' and as soon as he had swallowed the last of the wine he said 'Mr Mowett, we must relieve the pilot and Davis: they are hoarse as crows. Let the hands be piped to dinner by watches. They will have to put up with soft tommy and whatever the purser can find, but they may all have their grog, even the defaulters. I am going below to see how the Turks are coming along.'
The Turks were coming along surprisingly well. Stephen and Martin were with them, and they too sat cross-legged on the floor in the sensible eastern way, wedged against the side of the ship and padded with all that was available in the way of cushions. They were all very quiet, sitting there as placidly as a band of domestic cats round a fire, staring at nothing in particular and saying little more. They smiled at him gently and some made slight welcoming motions with their hands: Jack's first impression was that they were all dead drunk, but then he recollected that the Turks and Arab were Mussulmans, that he had never seen Stephen affected by wine, and that Martin would rarely take a second glass.
'We are chewing khat,' said Stephen, holding up a green twig. 'It is said to have a tranquillizing, sedative effect, not unlike that of the coca leaf of the Peruvians.' There was some quiet conversation behind him and he went on 'The Bimbashi hopes that you are not unduly fatigued, and that you are pleased with the progress of the voyage.'
'Pray tell him that I have never felt better, and that the voyage goes along reasonably well. If this wind holds till the day after tomorrow, we should make up the distance lost and have a fair chance of being south of Mubara in time to intercept the galley.'
'The Bimbashi says, if it is written that we shall take the galley and become immeasurably rich, then we shall take her; if it is not so written we shall not. There is nothing that can be done to alter fate, and he begs you will not trouble yourself or take unnecessary pains: what is written is written.'
'If you can think of a civil way of asking him why in that case he brought his men aboard so quickly, tumbling over one another in their haste, pray do so. If not, just tell him it is also written that Heaven helps those that help themselves, and desire him to stash it: you may
also add that while a tone of lofty wisdom may be proper in a philosopher addressing a groundling, it is perhaps less so when a bimbashi is speaking to a post-captain.'
When these words, suitably modified, had passed through Stephen into French and through Hassan into Arabic, the Bimbashi said with a placid smile that he was quite content with a soldier's simple allowance, and that he rather despised wealth than otherwise.
'Well, my friend,' said Jack. 'I hope this wind does hold a couple of days, if only to give you a chance of showing your contempt in practice.'
It held indeed that afternoon, a great deal more so than was comfortable; and in spite of the slight lessening at sunset, Jack supped on chicken and sand washed down with sand and three-water grog reasonably confident that the Egyptian would blow all night. McElwee, Gill and the serang were of the same opinion, and although they had not been able to make any observation through the clouds of flying grit their dead-reckonings all agreed in setting the Niobe a little south of Ras Minah, with a fine broad stretch of unencumbered channel before her.
He stayed on deck until the graveyard watch—the hottest graveyard he had ever known—listening to the roar of the wind and the strong deep voice of the ship as she ran, and watching the extraordinary phosphorescence of the long curve of the sea, rising high at her bows, dipping to her copper amidships, and then rising again by her mizzenchains, to break in a tumbled blazing furrow aft, a line that stretched quite far out into the darkness now, for although there was still a good deal of sand sweeping across the deck the smaller fog-like dust had stopped. From time to time his eyes closed as he stood there swaying to the heave, and in those moments the ship ran through a dream as well as a storm of sand: but she ran fairly easy—they had furled the courses while both watches were on deck and under this reduced sail she scarcely laboured at all; the backstays were no longer iron-stiff, and her larboard cathead rarely touched the sea.
Book 9 - Treason's Harbour Page 18
