Book 19 - The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  The blaze having been mastered by sunrise, and the combined bosuns and carpenters of the convoy having set about rerigging and repairing the ship, the commodore and senior captains of the Indiamen waited on Jack to express their acknowledgements and to hope that his squadron had not suffered very grievous loss.

  'Two of our men were killed, I regret to say, in the very first exchange, when a gun was struck on the muzzle. Otherwise there were only musket-ball and splinter wounds—perhaps a score of hands in the sick-bay. The rest of the squadron are in much the same case. But I am afraid your losses must have been more considerable?'

  'Nothing to touch theirs, sir, I do assure you: the three galleys that Pomone destroyed or cut in two would have manned a heavy frigate.'

  Killick uttered a theatrical cough and when Jack turned, he said, 'Beg pardon, sir: which coffee is up, and a little relish.'

  The relish consisted of Gibraltar crabs, lobsters, crayfish, prawns and shrimps and the captains ate them with the keen appetite of those who had had a long, wearisome, and ultimately extremely dangerous voyage on short commons from Cape Town on. They looked upon their host with more than usual benevolence, and with the intention of making an obliging remark one of them said he was very glad that Commodore Aubrey should have suffered so little, in what might have been a most bloody engagement.

  'It is true, as the gentleman observes, that we lost few men,' replied Jack, 'but then we had very few men to lose. The squadron is sadly short of hands, Pomone above all; and I will tell you frankly that before I knew of your plight I had intended that her boats should have visited you in the hope of some right seamen. And for my own part I should be thankful for two or three upper-yard hands and above all for a steady, reliable master's mate. When you sailed none of you can have known that the war had broken out again, so I dare say there are two or three score men in the convoy who would like to enter voluntarily and take the bounty.'

  In the short pause that followed the captains looked at their chief with a studied want of expression: but he, knowing them well, gathered the sense of the company—everyone present knew that Jack could press if he chose—everyone knew how much they owed him—and he replied, 'I am sure you are right, sir; and I am sure that none of us would be so wanting in his duty as to make the slightest difficulty. Word will be passed in all ships belonging to the convoy, together with a promise that any man joining you will have his pay-docket to the present date countersigned by me. As for your two or three active young upper-yard men, I shall certainly send you four of my own. But where master's mates are concerned, we are all very poor indeed—guinea-pigs by the dozen, but nothing that would answer for you, sir. On the other hand, I could offer you a bright, well-qualified, gentlemanly purser. As a volunteer, sir,' he added, seeing the doubt in the Commodore's eye, a doubt caused not only by the strangeness of the offer but even more so (for the offer in itself was by no means unwelcome, though inexplicable) by the countless formalities surrounding the appointment of a purser in a ship of the Royal Navy—the sureties, the guarantees, the verbiage, the paper-work. 'Purely as a volunteer, just for a few months or so if so desired; or at least until his domestic affairs are settled. There is a question of children born when he was on a three-year China voyage. The first he heard of it was at the Cape on the way back, and he does not like to go home until the lawyers have dealt with it all: he cannot face going into his own house with the little bastards running about in it, if I may so express myself without offence. He is used to the Navy, sir: was captain's clerk in Hebe, then purser in Dryad and Hermione, before joining the Company, where his brother has a China ship.'

  For the hydrographical voyage Jack had intended to act as his own purser: yet even by Funchal he had found it a very wearisome task indeed, and now that he had this present command some relief was essential. Three times he had meant to speak of it aboard the Royal Sovereign and three times he had lost the opportunity.

  'Do you guarantee your man?' he asked.

  'Without the least reserve, sir.'

  'Then I should be happy to see him; and his fellows, of course. Now for my part, I do not believe for a moment that those villains are going to lie in Sallee wringing their hands and lamenting their loss. So in case they come out again when the squadron is gone, I shall send Dover to strengthen your escort. They will not face your artillery again, backed up with that of a thirty-two gun frigate. And there is always the possibility of French privateers or even men-of-war in the Channel.'

  'Very good—hear him—hear him,' cried the captains, beating on the table.

  When they had buried their dead—an expeditious matter at such a time—and repaired the worst of their damage, the convoy and squadron parted on the best of terms, the Indiamen and their escort steering north-west and the squadron beating up tack upon tack for Gibraltar.

  Stephen and Jacob had some very seriously injured patients as well as the routine strains, common fractures, contusions and powder-burns; and it was now that Dr Maturin came to appreciate the full value of good female nursing. Both Poll Skeeping and Mrs Cheal had that devotion peculiar perhaps to their sex and a lightness of hand, a dexterity where dressings were concerned that he had not seen equalled outside a religious order. He was busy, but not desperately so (as he had been after some much bloodier fights), and he was quite able to accept Jack's invitation to dine with several of the captains and other officers. He was placed between Hugh Pomfret and Mr Woodbine, the master, an old acquaintance who was eagerly engaged in an argument with Captain Cartwright of Ganymede about lunar observations, an argument that had started before dinner and that did not interest Stephen in the least. Captain Pomfret, though obviously unwell and in very low spirits, was a civilized man and he provided a proper amount of conversation; yet their end of the table could hardly have been described as outstandingly cheerful or amusing and it did not surprise Stephen when, as the party broke up, Pomfret asked in a low voice whether he might beg for a consultation, a medical or quasi-medical consultation, at any time that suited Dr Maturin.

  'Certainly you may,' said Stephen, who very much liked what he had seen of the young man and who knew the limits of Pomone's surgeon. 'But only with the concurrence of Mr Glover.'

  'Mr Glover is no doubt a very clever doctor,' said Pomfret, 'but unhappily we are barely on speaking terms, and this is a wholly personal, confidential matter.'

  'Let us take a turn upon deck.'

  There under the open sky, with the ship close-hauled on the larboard tack, he explained the rudiments of medical etiquette. 'I quite take your point,' said Pomfret, 'but this is more what might be called a moral or spiritual rather than a physical matter—not wholly unlike the distinction between right and wrong.'

  'If you would be a little more specific, I might perhaps tell you whether I could properly be of any use.'

  'My trouble is this: Pomone, under my orders, beat one Moorish galley to pieces by gunfire and deliberately rode down two others in the mêlée, cutting them in half so that they sank within the minute. And I perpetually see those scores of men, Christian slaves chained to their oars, looking up in horror, looking up perhaps for mercy; and I sailed on to destroy another. Is it right? Can it be right? I cannot sleep for those faces gazing, straining up. Have I mistaken my profession?'

  'On the face of it,' said Stephen, 'I do not think you have. I feel extremely for your very great distress, but . . . no, I should have to summon more powers than I can call upon at present, to justify a war, even a war against a dictatorial system, an open denial of freedom; and I shall only say that I feel it must be fought. And since it has to be fought it is better that it should be fought, at least on one side, with what humanity war does allow, and by officers of your kind. I shall play the doctor so far as to send you a box of pills that will give you two nights' heavy sleep. If, having slept, you wish to hear my reasons, I hope I shall have them fairly well arranged; and after that you must be your own physician.'

  Chapter Three

  That
night the wind backed steadily until by two bells in the graveyard watch it was a little south of west, where it steadied, strengthened and carried them right through the Strait—no more piping of all hands every other glass or two, but a sweet passage to the Rock itself and their accustomed moorings.

  Stephen and Jacob were heartily glad of it because three of their badly injured men had taken a serious turn for the worse: in one case a leg could no longer be saved, in another a resection was imperatively necessary, and in the third trephining on a solid table was preferable to the same operation on a moving deck. They and all but the slightly wounded men were taken to the hospital, where in any event more surgeons were called for, one of the immense cranes on the new mole having collapsed, very heavily loaded, on a gang of workmen.

  They had finished, they had taken off their bloody aprons and they were washing their hands when a midshipman from the Surprise arrived with a note from the Commodore desiring them to come aboard at once.

  It was a quiet, serious, hurried boat that carried them out, and the midshipman, young Adams, looked particularly grave: both surgeons were silent too—they were sadly worn—but Stephen did notice the Blue Peter at Surprise's masthead and he did notice the curious, bedraggled appearance of the usually trim and more than trim Pomone, with yards all uneven, sails drooping, sagging in the breeze, rope-ends here and there. He had never seen a man-of-war look so desolate.

  As they approached the pennant-ship they saw a captain's barge at the starboard gangway and so pulled round to the other side. By the time Stephen reached the deck—a slow process, with no side-ropes—the officer had taken leave of the Commodore and his barge was shoving off.

  'There you are, Doctor,' said Jack. 'Come and take a draught. How are our people?'

  'The usual reply, I am afraid, my dear: "as well as can be expected", after that cruel bucketing of going about in a heavy head-sea. But poor Thomas could not keep his leg. We had it off in a trice, with barely a moan.'

  'Well done. It will be a cook's warrant for him, if I and my friends have any influence. I wish my news were as good. While you were in the hospital there was a shocking accident aboard Pomone. Most unhappily poor Hugh Pomfret was cleaning his pistols—we are ordered to sea directly—and by some wretched mischance one was loaded. It blew his brains out. Then the Admiral sent for me. He commended what the squadron had done very handsomely indeed and he will do us full justice in his dispatch, sending it by the same courier that brought him orders to send the squadron to sea immediately—the Ministry are much perturbed by the attitude of the Balkan Muslims. He was deeply concerned about Pomfret's death; but he has a young man of his own at hand, John Vaux, who distinguished himself at the taking and above all the arming of the Diamond Rock in the year four and who should have been made post long ago—that was the man you saw leaving the quarterdeck when you came aboard. His barge will carry Pomfret's body to the cemetery but our orders are so urgent that the Admiral and his staff will take care of the funeral. As soon as the barge is back we unmoor and proceed to Mahon, where we shall ship our Marines. Captain Vaux will already have Pomone out of mourning and shipshape—you have seen her yards all a-cockbill, I am sure, and her scandalized mizzen? Very proper, of course, but horrible to see.'

  The squadron had received no more damage than the bosuns and carpenters, with some help from the dockyard, could repair within the day; and by early evening, with the shattered gun aboard Surprise replaced, they took advantage of the kind north-wester to make sail for Mahon, where they would refit more thoroughly, take in stores, and above all learn the most recent intelligence from the Adriatic, the eastern Mediterranean and the convoys to be protected. By the time they had sunk the land, the full-topsail gale was so steady from the west-north-west that the ship was making ten knots and more, never touching a sheet or brace; and after retreat the smoking-circle formed in the galley, the only place where smoking was allowed.

  Although most of the Surprises had sailed together long before this, there were many who preferred to chew their tobacco, there were some who liked fishing over the side, and there were some who were too bashful to attend; for this was not an assembly for just any boy, landman or ordinary seaman—not that there were many aboard—nor for those who were not at ease in conversation, particularly cheerful conversation, enlivened by anecdotes.

  Yet this particular evening began in a positively lugubrious fashion. Mrs Skeeping, though professionally neat as a wren, contrived to trip over the cheese of wads that served as her chair and flung her fresh-filled boiling teapot into Joshua Simmons' lap and bosom. She begged his pardon, mopped him more or less dry, hung his waistcoat in the ratlines and assured him with a laugh that now he was at least clean in places, while the waistcoat was as good as new: but Joshua Simmons—commonly known as Old Groan and tolerated only because he had served at the Nile with Jack Aubrey, under Nelson again at Copenhagen, and finally at Trafalgar—was not to be amused, nor comforted; no, nor mollified neither. After a while he said, 'Well, this is a fine beginning—an unlucky squadron if ever there was one. Those bloody Indiamen never gave so much as a brass farthing between us, though we saved their lives and fortunes; and now there is this wicked self-murder in Pomone. How can there be any luck in such a commission? Which is doomed from the bleeding start.'

  'Balls,' said Killick.

  'Now then, Preserved Killick,' cried Maggie Cheal, the bosun's wife's sister, taking her short clay pipe from her mouth so that her words were mixed with smoke. 'None of your coarse Seven Dials kind of talk, if you please, with ladies present.'

  'How do you know it was self-murder?' asked the cook, jerking his chin at Simmons. 'You was not there.'

  'No, I was not; but it stands to reason.'

  'Gammon,' cried Killick. 'If it had been self-murder he would have been buried at the crossroads with a stake through his heart. And was he buried at the crossroads with a stake through his heart? No, mates, he was not. He was buried in a Christian grave in the churchyard, with the words said over him by a parson, the Admiral in attendance, the union flag on his coffin, and a volley fired over him. So be damned to Old Groan and his bad luck.'

  Simmons gave a bitter sniff, unpinned his waistcoat and walked off, deliberately feeling in its pockets and glancing back at his companions.

  'In any case,' Killick went on, 'even if he had done himself in a dozen times over, we have a gent aboard that brings in luck by wholesale. Luck? I never seen anything like it. He has a unicorn's horn in his cabin, whole and entire—a unicorn's horn as is proof against all poisons whatsoever, as some people know very well—' glancing at Poll, who nodded in a very emphatic and knowledgeable manner '—and which is worth ten times its own weight in guinea-gold. Ten times! Can you imagine it? And not only that, mates, not only that. He likewise has a Hand of Glory! There's luck for you, I believe.'

  A shocked silence, but for the even song of the ship.

  'What's a Hand of Glory?' asked a nervous voice.

  'Why, you lemon: don't you even know what a Hand of Glory is? Well, I'll tell you. It is one of the hangman's prime perquisites.'

  'What's a perquisite?'

  'Don't you know what a . . .? You're ignorant, is all. Dead ignorant.'

  A voice, 'The same as vails.'

  Another, 'Advantages on the side, like.'

  'There is the rope, of course. He can get half a crown an inch for a rope that hanged a right willain. And there are the clothes, bought by them that think a pair of pissed and shitten breeches . . .'

  'Now then, Killick,' cried Poll, 'this ain't one of your Wapping ale-houses or knocking-kens, so clap a stopper over that kind of talk. "Soiled linen" is what you mean.'

  '. . . are worth a guinea, for the sake of the luck they bring. But most of all it is the Hand of Glory that makes the hangman so eager for the work. Because why? Because it too is worth its weight in gold . . . well, in silver.'

  'What's a Hand of Glory?' asked the nervous voice.

  'Which it is the h
and that did the deed—ripped the young girl up or slit the old gentleman's throat—and that the hangman cuts off and holds up. And our Doctor has one in a jar which he keeps secret in the cabin and looks at by night with his mate, talking very low.'

  The uneasy silence was broken by a hail from the forecastle lookout: 'Land, ho. Land fine on the starboard bow.'

  It was the island of Alboran, almost exactly where it ought to be but slightly earlier than Jack had expected. He altered course a trifle and stood straight on for Mahon.

  There were some rather dull sailers in Jack Aubrey's squadron, and it was not until Tuesday afternoon that they rounded Ayre Island, standing for Cape Mola and the narrow entrance, with the breeze just before the beam and the larboard tacks aboard.

  The Commodore knew Port Mahon intimately well and he took the lead, beginning his salute at exactly the right distance from the great batteries and sailing on until the port-captain's boat hailed him, desiring him to take up his old moorings with the others astern of him.

  'How very little it has changed,' he said, gazing about with lively pleasure as they glided down the long, long inlet and raising his voice to carry above the prodigious reverberations of the fort's reply, echoing from shore to shore.

  'It is even finer than I had remembered,' said Stephen.

  On, past the lazaretto, past the hospital island: but now the warm breeze, meeting the flank of La Mola, hauled aft, blowing so gently that even with topgallants abroad the squadron took just over an hour to reach the moorings at the far end of the port, just under the steep-pitched town and a cable's length from the wharf, where the Pigtail Steps ran down from the main square, sailing all the way under a pure sky, intensely blue at the zenith and passing through imperceptible gradations to a soft lapis lazuli just above the land.