Book 19 - The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  Here, as exactly arranged as the men on a chess-board in spite of the swell, stood the Surprise's Royal Marines, drawn up athwartships right aft, with their officer, sergeant, corporal and drummer. They were in their fine scarlet coats, white waistcoats, tight white breeches and gaiters; their black stocks were as trim and tight as was consistent with breathing at all, their muskets, side-arms, buttons gleaming. Ordinarily, when they were helping with the work of the ship or making part of a gun-crew, they wore seaman's slops, sometimes with an old Marine jacket or cap. The high pitch of military splendour was reached only when they were on guard-duty or at this climax of the week; and out of Christian charity Jack inspected them first, so that they could be dismissed and no longer suffer in the sun.

  This done, with a fine stamp, a dismissive clash of arms and a roll on the drum, the Commodore turned to the purely nautical side.

  'As you see,' murmured Stephen, 'the various divisions, each under a particular lieutenant, with sub-divisions under his midshipmen or master's mates, are already standing along predetermined lines upon the deck. They are in their best sea-going clothes, they are newly-shaved, their pigtails have been tied afresh. This has taken them two and a half hours; and they have been closely inspected by their lieutenant and his midshipmen. And now, as you see, the Commodore inspects them all over again—see, he checks a midshipman for not wearing gloves. But on the whole there are very few reproofs . . . very little occasion for reproof in so seasoned and competent a ship's company.'

  'Is nobody to be flogged?'

  'No, sir. Not at divisions.'

  'I am glad of that. It is a spectacle that I find extremely painful.'

  Jack had finished with the first division: he said something kind to the lieutenant and the senior midshipman and moved on. The group he had just inspected was made up of the afterguard and waisters, but in such a ship as the Surprise almost all of them were right seamen, though some might be a little less nimble than they were: Stephen knew every soul present except for those who replaced the casualties in the recent action; and even of these one had been shipmates with him in the Worcester. He had a word with most, particularly those he had treated, calling them by name, until halfway along the line, when he came to a face, a perfectly distinct, typical middle-aged seaman's face, brown, wrinkled, gold-earringed, yet one that baffled him again and again, as the waister knew very well: he was used to it and he called out, 'Walker, sir, if you please; and much better for the bolus.' They both laughed: Stephen said, 'I must take one myself, to jog my memory.'

  'Is this familiarity usual in the service?' asked the Caroline's secretary.

  'Only in ship's companies that have served long together,' said Stephen.

  'In a Russian ship, such a remark . . .' began the secretary, but he checked himself as they came to the next group, under Whewell, the third lieutenant, and three comparatively mature midshipmen or master's mates. These hands, all prime seamen, managed the midship guns in a way and at a speed that gave Jack the utmost satisfaction: many of them came from that curious little port Shelmerston, when the Surprise was a letter of marque. Stephen knew them and their families, had treated them again and again for everything from the cruellest wounds and scurvy to piles, with the usual seamen's diseases in between. Many, if not most of them he had always called by their Christian names. 'Well, Tom,' he said, 'how are you coming along?' The Commodore, the French captain and Mr Harding were well ahead, so some of Tom's wittier companions answered for him, in hoarse whispers—Tom had got a young woman with child again—and there was a good deal of stifled mirth.

  The ceremony carried on, past the forecastle-men, the oldest, most highly-skilled seamen in the ship, then to the boys—the few ship's boys—under the master-at-arms, and so by way of the galley with its gleaming cauldrons and coppers, which Jack ritually wiped, looking at his spotless handkerchief, and so to the sick-berth, which Poll Skeeping and her friends had reduced to such a supernatural state of cleanliness that the two patients (bloody flux), pinned in their cots by tight-drawn, unwrinkled sheets, dared neither speak nor move, but lay there as though rigor mortis had already reached its height.

  The sick-berth, however gratifying, was only a preliminary to the climax of divisions; and when Jack, Stephen and Christy-Pallière returned to the quarterdeck they found everything set out, with chairs for the officers and a kind of lectern made of an arms-rack with a union flag draped over it for the captain.

  'Shipmates,' said he, with a significant look, 'this Sunday I am not going to read a sermon. Let us just sing the Old Hundredth. Mr Adams'—to his clerk—'pray give the note.'

  The clerk drew a pitch-pipe from his bosom, blew the note loud and clear, and the ship's company fearlessly joined their captain in the psalm, a fine deep body of sound. The frigate had a moderate breeze on her larboard quarter, with Pomone no great way astern; and when the Surprises had uttered their full-throated amen, the Pomones' hymn reached them over the water, admirably clear. Jack stood listening for a moment, then he squared to the lectern, opened the book the clerk had brought him, and in a strong, grave voice he read the Articles of War, right through to XXXV: 'If any person who shall be in actual service and full pay in his Majesty's ships and vessels of war, shall commit upon the shore, in any place or places out of his Majesty's dominions, any of the crimes punishable by these articles and orders, the persons so offending shall be liable to be tried and punished for the same, to all intents and purposes, as if the same crimes had been committed at sea, on board any of his Majesty's ships or vessels of war.' And to XXXVI, the catch-all: 'All other crimes, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea.'

  During this familiar series of articles (twenty-one of which included the death penalty) Stephen had been reflecting on his quite unusually happy morning and the evident good will that surrounded him as he walked along the decks. He rarely saw many of his shipmates at any one time; and for a long while now those that his duties or his leisure had brought him into touch with had been grave and if not reserved then something like it—concerned only with the matter in hand, unwilling to speak at length, even embarrassed—no open expression of sympathy, still less of condolence, until the horn was broken, when Bonden and Joe Plaice and a few others he had known for a great while, said 'it was a cruel hard thing—they were very sorry for his trouble.'

  That day Stephen dined in the gun-room, with Richard as his guest. The sense of well-being continued. Black desolation underlay it, as he knew perfectly well; but the two could exist in the same being. Some part of the gun-room's friendliness would certainly have been caused by the presence of his guest, part of his happiness to the fact that he was speaking French most of the time (a language in which he had been wildly happy, amorous and even politically enthusiastic when he was a student in Paris), and part to the excellence of the dinner; but there remained an overplus that he had to attribute to his return to what was, after these many years, his own village, his own ship's company, that complex entity so much more easily sensed than described: part of his natural habitat.

  The long pause after the gun-room's dinner, while Jack and Christy-Pallière carried on with their conversation in the cabin, was filled, as far as Stephen and Richard were concerned, with medical consultation. 'I do not in any way mean to criticize the Royal Navy's food,' said Richard, when they were alone. 'An excellent dinner, upon my word, and remarkably good wine. But what was that ponderous mass, glutinous and yet crumbling, enveloped in a sweet sauce, that came at the end?'

  'Why, that was plum duff, a great favourite in the service.'

  'Well, I am sure it is very good if you are used to it: but I fear that such very heavy cooking does not suit my digestion, delicate from childhood. Frankly, sir, I think that I may die.'

  After the usual questions, palpations and other gestures, Stephen suggested a co
mfortable vomit: this was rejected with a shudder, but a moderate glass of brandy was exhibited with some small beneficial effect, and they spent the rest of their time playing a languid series of games of piquet for love, keeping themselves awake with coffee.

  At last however they heard the bosun's call and the watch on deck manning the side; and a midshipman came below with the Commodore's compliments: Caroline's barge was pulling across.

  It was an affectionate farewell between the two commanders, but both were hoarse with talking; and when Jack Aubrey turned from the side after a last wave to Christy-Pallière he looked tired and worn. 'Can you spare me a minute?' he asked Stephen.

  'How I wish you had been with us,' he went on as they sat by the stern windows, watching the French ship haul her wind and head for Mahon, followed by her shabby consort.

  'It would never have done.'

  'No. I suppose not . . . but if only someone could have taken notes. He is a dear fellow and a capital seaman, but he does tend to ramble in his speech and start false hares: and in any case it is, as he often said, an extraordinarily complicated situation in the Adriatic—divided loyalties—some good men on either side, but more waiting to see which way the cat jumps, or as Christy put it "trying to reinsure themselves" in either event. And some of course are just out for the main chance, privateering on their own account or with Algerine renegadoes. Most of them think that Boney will win; and to be sure he had collected an extraordinary number of followers . . . One of the things that struck Christy most was the utter confusion in Paris. He went there last year, and having made the proper declarations and sworn the same oaths all over again at their Admiralty, and having complained in the right quarters about the continued delay in payment for the repairing and refitting of Caroline in Ragusa, he attended a levee. There were many people there, several of them men he had never seen who were wearing naval uniform, sometimes of high rank, who stared at him: it was a curious atmosphere of caution and jockeying for position—it was known that he had come up from the Adriatic and some of his service acquaintances avoided him. But when the king spoke to him quite kindly and told a naval aide-de-camp to ask Monsieur Lesueur to receive him that day, there was a singular change—he was no longer potentially dangerous to know. Yet the change had not reached the Ministry: there he found a different set of officials who did not know him, who did not know anything at all about him or his ship—what was her name? What type of vessel?—and who, looking at him with narrowed eyes, made him go through all the earlier formalities once more. Monsieur Lesueur was not available, they said; but he might be the next afternoon. So he was, and although he kept Christy-Pallière waiting for an hour and three quarters he did say that he was sorry for it—that Christy would understand that at such times he was not master of his movements—that the Ministry would very much appreciate a detailed report on the position in the Adriatic, where it was feared that irregularities might be taking place—and that Captain Christy-Pallière would be well advised to wait on Admiral Lafarge.

  'Christy-Pallière had served under Lafarge in his youth: they had neither of them liked one another then and they neither of them liked one another now. Lafarge's face was still scarlet from his last interview and in the same angry tone he asked Christy-Pallière who the devil had given him leave to come up to Paris, and brushing aside his explanation told him that His Majesty did not pay him for whoring about in the capital and making interest for himself: his clear duty was to return to his ship directly, to attend to her repair and refitting, and to await further orders. The Admiral wished neither to listen to his excuses nor to see him again.

  'Christy also told me that this Admiral Lafarge had a half-brother and a cousin in the Adriatic, both of whom were said to have been in communication with Bonaparte when he was on Elba; and that may be an explanation. Just what it might explain I do not know: but I tell you what, Stephen, my wits are strangely muddled—not only am I afraid of forgetting half what Christy told me, but I am as far out of my depth in this devious kind of business as he was: more so, indeed. When we had brought him back to his ship—and a horrible journey he had of it, poor fellow—he said it would be easier for him to explain the situation in the Adriatic, as far as he understood it at all, if we were standing at the chart-table. Shall we do the same?'

  'By all means.'

  'Well, here is Castelnuovo, on the northern tip of the Bocche di Cattaro: Caroline was being repaired and refitted in a perfectly reputable yard just round the headland. Inside the bay there were two brigs of war not far from completion. Now up to Ragusa Vecchio, and there is a thirty-two-gun frigate almost ready for sea after a long refitting in two different yards—almost ready but for some of the shortages that I had and a near-complete lack of cables and hawsers: she is commanded by a fervent Bonapartist. He is called Charles de La Tour, an odd sort of fellow—Christy rather likes him, in a way. A pretty good seaman, and not at all shy: several creditable actions, and it was he who made that dash at Phoebe, very nearly cutting her out. But extremely romantic and a great admirer of Byron: he learnt English on purpose. The only thing Christy cannot bear is this passion for Bonaparte. La Tour knows the campaigns through and through and he is said to carry one of the imperial gloves in his bosom. Yet he is of considerable family and perfectly well bred. By the way, I should have said that although most of the sea-officers up and down the coast are reasonably sure that Bonaparte will win, not many have openly declared for him. This Ragusa Vecchio ship, which according to rumour is paid for in part by a group of Algerines, is moored up against the ruined castle. Now moving northward up the islands, there are at least half a dozen small yards building cutters, xebecs and brigs, obviously intended for privateering: yet recently work has almost stopped for want of funds and material. But moving up to Spalato, there lies the Cerbère, pretty well ready for sea, whose commander, never happy with the Empire or the Emperor, would be perfectly willing to surrender to Louis XVIII's allies if they appeared in face-saving force and made a great deal of noise. On the other hand, Christy was really anxious about the number of people who were sitting on the fence and the amount of damage they could do if things looked just a little better for Bonaparte—the havoc they could work on the supplies for the Valetta yards: timber, cordage and everything that came down from the Dalmatian shore.'

  He paused. 'And he was even more concerned with some kind of a plot that he had heard of at third or second hand but that neither he nor his best, most trustworthy informant thoroughly understood—the informant's English was most imperfect in any case and Christy's Greek and lingua franca worse. Yet imperfect though it was, the account impressed him very deeply. It appears that the Mussulmans of the country are preparing to send a very powerful, seasoned force of mercenaries north to prevent the junction of the Austrian and Russian armies—if possible to make each side believe in the treachery of the other—but in any case to delay their united march westward, giving Napoleon time to bring up his reserves from the south-east and to establish himself in a very strong position for battle. He felt that there was an extreme urgency. That is why he put to sea, with most of his water and half his cables still on shore.'

  'I am sure he is right,' said Stephen. 'So is the Admiralty: that is why we are here. I think you know that Jacob, my nominal assistant, was assigned to me by Sir Joseph? He has worked in our department for years. He speaks the languages of these parts with extraordinary fluency. What I should like you to do is to put him aboard the Ringle and desire William Reade to carry him with all possible speed to Kutali—we have true friends in that fine city, I believe—there to learn all that Sciahan Bey and his vizier, the Orthodox bishop and the Catholic bishop, and all the private connexions he may have can tell him, and then to return to us with the same extreme rapidity, either in Malta or if I may suggest it, on our way up the Dalmatian coast.'

  Jack Aubrey gazed earnestly at his friend for a minute; then he nodded and said, 'Very well. Give Dr Jacob his orders and what introductions you think fit, and
I will summon Ringle.' He touched the bell, and to Killick he said, 'My compliments to Dr Jacob, and should like to see him as soon as it may be convenient.'

  'Dr Jacob,' he said, a few moments later, 'pray sit down. Dr Maturin will tell you the reason for this somewhat abrupt summons; and in the mean time I shall go on deck.'

  On deck he said to the signal midshipman, 'To Ringle: Captain repair aboard.'

  William Reade came up the side, his hook gleaming and with something of the look of a keen, intelligent dog that believes it may have heard someone taking down a fowling-piece. Jack led him below. 'Now, William,' he said, guiding him to the chart-table, 'here is Kutali, a fine upstanding city, going up like the stairs inside the Monument; or it was when I last saw it. The approaches are straightforward and you have good holding ground in fifteen to twenty fathoms from here to here: only you want to have two anchors out ahead almost to the bitter end if the bora sets in. And you are to take Dr Jacob there. In all likelihood you will outsail us, so unless you receive orders to the contrary you will proceed to Spalato the moment Dr Jacob is aboard again: still with the utmost dispatch.'

  'To Kutali it is, sir, and then to Spalato, with the utmost dispatch in both cases,' said Reade. 'Is the gentleman ready?'

  Ready or not, Jacob was hurried aboard the schooner with what letters Stephen had had time to write to his friends in Kutali, with a clean shirt wrapped up by Killick and his best coat, and with Stephen's words nestling in his ears: 'The whole essence is to learn whether the Brotherhood's messengers have been sent, and if so whether they can still be intercepted. Money is of no consequence whatsoever.'

  Ringle did indeed outsail Surprise and Pomone, but not to such an extent as she might have done if Captain Vaux had not grown more used to the ways of his ship and had not so changed her trim, bringing her by the stern, that even in these moderate breezes she gained nearly a knot on a broad reach. The schooner was indeed just in sight from the masthead when they rounded Cape Santa Maria at dawn, but she soon vanished with the coming of the sun. It rose over the Montenegrin heights, and for a while the far coast remained sombre though the zenith was already a brilliant, quite light blue. This eastern shore was a coast familiar to Jack and Stephen: in the very same ship they had sailed up from the lonian Sea reasonably far along the Adriatic.