by Seth Hunter
Nathan dearly loved his dinner – especially when it was likely to be a proper dinner and not the birdseed he had been pecking at on the Pigeon – but Admiralty orders were quite clear on the subject. The Pigeon was carrying despatches and forbidden to delay for any unnecessary purpose, even to the extent of refusing an invitation to dinner from an epicurean as celebrated as Ben Hallowell.
‘Oh, we are in no hurry,’ Ben assured him, charmingly – or as charmingly as a bellow can sound at the distance of a pistol shot. ‘We will keep you company for an hour or so.’
It was likely to be a good deal longer than an hour, but the khamsin seemed to have burned itself out already, leaving a half-decent wind on their starboard quarter, so Nathan and his associates went below to change into their uniforms while the three vessels cruised side by side in relative equanimity under a serene sky. The corvette was called the Fortune and she would make a not inconsiderable contribution to Ben’s own, for it was certain that the admiral would buy her into the service and she was likely to be valued at not a penny less than £15,000. But Nathan did not press his claim – not wishing to be thought grasping – and they made a jolly dinner party. Hallowell was an amiable host, and he and Nathan were reasonably well-acquainted, having served together with Admiral Jervis off Cadiz. Ben was known throughout the fleet to be Canadian, though he had once, in his cups, confessed to Nathan that he had, in fact, been born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father had been a revenue officer, which had not made him popular among the Americans, and when they took up arms against King George the entire family had been obliged to flee to Canada, including young Ben, who had been fifteen at the time. He was thirty-seven now, and a couple of years senior to Nathan on the Captain’s List.
They dined in the great stern cabin with all the windows open to the breeze – which, for once, continued to move them steadily in the direction in which Nathan wished to go – and it was significantly cooler than he had anticipated at four bells in the afternoon watch. Ben had invited the French captain and two of his officers to join them, and though they were naturally a little more subdued than the British contingent, they failed to put a dampener on the proceedings. Possibly they consoled themselves with the thought that they were still alive, unlike many of their comrades in the Bay of Abukir, and that they would almost certainly be exchanged by the first available cartel. The food, too, must have helped.
Ben had just replenished his supplies from the port of al-Arish on the coast of Sinai, and he had barely completed his purchases when the approaching khamsin had forced him to put to sea.
‘To your good fortune, captain,’ he congratulated Nathan, raising his glass; then, recalling his French guests with a faint blush, ‘if not yours, gentlemen.’
But the success of the meal owed more to the cook, an individual of Spanish origin, who had been taken as a slave by the Barbary corsairs and had learned his trade in the kitchens of the Bey of Algiers. How he had subsequently come into Ben’s employment, Nathan did not like to enquire, but it was a coup worthy of Machiavelli. They began with a cold concoction identified as an Arab soup, made from a combination of stale bread, soaked in olive oil, with water, garlic, and vinegar, and a quantity of fresh cucumbers, lemons and tomatoes, which was served with a pale Jerez, brought up from the depths of the Swiftsure’s hold where it had been kept cool in straw and ice ever since its acquisition in Lisbon. This was followed by a quantity of smoked meats and some ox tongue with several dishes of chutney and pickles, followed by a tuna, purchased from the fishermen at al-Arish, and served with fresh vegetables and a dozen bottles of a Sicilian wine. Nathan foolishly took this for the main dish and was startled by the arrival of a whole lamb, roasted over a spit, and served with rice and fruit, in the Arab manner. He loosened his belt, and set himself to the task with his usual resolve, however, going easy on the rice, and confining himself to two glasses of the Spanish red which accompanied the dish. He was beginning to think he had been a little too abstemious when the pudding made its appearance – a concoction of milk and crushed almonds, served with a variation of orange shrub, made of rum, sugar and orange juice, spiced with a little cinnamon. They finished off with some cheeses and an excellent cognac taken from the Fortune.
The conversation was inevitably dominated by their recent experience of the battle at Abukir which would doubtless remain the single most spectacular event of their lives. Nathan had served aboard the Vanguard during the battle, and as it was fought mostly in darkness, it had been difficult to see the exact part that had been played by the other ships of Nelson’s command, so he was interested to hear Ben Hallowell’s account.
The Swiftsure had been sent off by the admiral to look into Alexandria, and the two fleets had been engaged for some hours before she finally entered the affray. It was properly dark by then, and though the flash of a thousand guns lit up much of the bay, there was so much smoke it was, as Ben vividly put it, like streaks of lightning through thunderclouds. There was sufficient illumination, however, for them to make out the Culloden, grounded on a sand-bank north of Abukir Island, and they had given her a wide berth, taking a course that would bring them into the centre of the battle. Then another ship came drifting out of the darkness towards them, without masts or lights, but apparently standing out from the action. Ben took her for a Frenchman and was eager to alter course and give her a broadside in passing, but as she was so battered as to be rendered hors de combat, he was persuaded to leave her be.
‘Which was just as well,’ he told Nathan, ‘for we found later she was the Billy Ruffian, by God, and we would have near finished her off.’
The Billy Ruffian was the name commonly applied in the service to the Bellerophen, another 74, which had been so brutally savaged by the French flagship, the 110-gun L’Orient, that she had been forced to drift out of the action.
So the Swiftsure had proceeded on her settled course, finally dropping anchor between the stem of the Orient and the stern of the Franklin. Nathan had heard that it was the Swiftsure’s guns that had set the Orient ablaze, but according to Ben she was already burning when they arrived. However, he had ordered the gun crews to con centrate their broadsides on the poop deck where the flames were at their fiercest. The fire spread and before long the French began to abandon ship. Ben was still picking them out of the water when she blew up.
‘Our sails filled and we were almost laid upon our beam ends,’ he recalled. ‘Then the skies fell in on us. Spars, timbers – the shattered bodies of the dead. I tell you, I have never seen such horror. It was like rain from Hell.’
A silence fell upon the table. Nathan had not been so close when the explosion occurred, but he remembered the exact moment – and the moments that had followed. There had been silence then, too, a terrible silence. And total darkness. The ships of both fleets had stopped firing, as if both sides had been stunned into submission. An almost religious revulsion against the god of war. Then they had started killing each other again.
The Swiftsure, aided by the Defence, resumed her battle with the Franklin. When she surrendered, they moved on to engage the Tonnant, eventually helping to drive her ashore. And when the sea battle ended, early the following morning, Hallowell had landed a party of seamen and marines on Abukir Island to take the enemy guns that had been installed there. The Swiftsure may have been late to the conflict, but she had continued to the last. And hers had been the last guns to fall silent.
Ben’s officers must have heard this story many times, and told it themselves as often, but it clearly moved them as much as at the first telling. And they would continue to tell it, and to be so moved, Nathan reflected, when they were toothless old relics in the care of their daughters, or whatever institution had them in its custody.
‘The fortune of war,’ Hallowell declared, raising his glass to the French captain.
‘The fortune of war,’ chorused his officers, raising their own glasses to the enemy with a genuine empathy which Nathan, for one, found impressive, though he did n
ot know what the French made of it. But they all knew it was true and that the boot could so easily have been on the other foot. Had it not been for the timely arrival of the Swiftsure, he would have been dining with the French captain by now in the stern cabin of the Fortune. If he had not been taken for a spy and put in the orlop deck with the rats.
The French were required to give their own account of the battle and though they did their best to oblige, it was inevitably a much more subdued account, hindered by the necessity for Nathan to provide a translation, for none of them spoke more than a few words of English. Their main contribution to the history was the disclosure that half their crews were ashore when the English fleet was first sighted, foraging for food and digging for water on the beach. It was almost sunset and the French admiral, de Brueys, had not expected an attack until the following morning.
‘We were in shoal waters, with sandbanks all around,’ the French captain explained. ‘Moored in line with every gun pointing out to sea. It was inconceivable to us that the English admiral would attack such a position. And in darkness. Only a madman would have attempted it.’
Nathan had been with Nelson on the quarterdeck of the Vanguard, and this had been his own opinion at the time. Nelson had been driven mad with frustration at his failure to find the French fleet over two months of desperate searching. He was immune to reason, or any note of caution. He would not even wait for all his ships to catch up. He was determined to go straight at them. And he had won. The most decisive naval victory of the war – and a good few wars before this.
‘It does seem like madness,’ Hallowell conceded thought fully, when Nathan had translated the French captain’s words. ‘But one thing you should know about Nelson is that he is a prime seaman – as good a seaman, I think, as any man who is afloat. He knew from the way you were moored how we might reach you – and beat you – even in the dark, even without charts. And we had complete trust in that, trust in him – we would follow him into the jaws of Hell. But more than that, he trusts us. Not just to follow him, but to think for ourselves, to do what needs to be done, without need for signals or commands. Not just because he is our commander and he knows we will do our duty, but because we are a band of brothers. We fight for each other and we would never, ever, let each other down.’
It sounded vainglorious, especially in the French tongue, and there was a slightly embarrassing silence after Nathan had translated, but he knew the sentiment was sincere and though he might not have expressed it in quite the same way, it was one he shared. But there was something that Ben could not explain, nor he himself. When the English fleet sailed into that bay, with darkness falling, and all those French guns pointing at them, the French had let out a cheer. But it was a very thin cheer. What you might call an apprehensive cheer. And the British had laughed. Not the officers, but the men. A riot of spontaneous laughter had run through the whole fleet. Nathan had seen men on the gun deck of the Vanguard throwing their heads back and hooting, slapping each other on their shoulders, punching the air, until called to order by their officers. And this was before the battle. In the very face of death. They knew they would win. And with men like that, how could you lose?
What made them do it? When Ben – and Nelson – spoke of the band of brothers, they meant their brother captains, not the men. But the men had won that battle. Just as much as Nelson had. They had won it with that laughter. Even before a shot was fired.
It was not until the second dog watch that they came up on deck, blinking in the still fierce light of the setting sun. The wind had backed slightly to the east, but the three ships were holding to their course and keeping pace with each other at a speed of about three to four knots. Nathan was concentrating on putting one foot before the other and wondering how he would contrive to descend into the barge without disgracing himself, when his uncertain gaze fell upon an immense baulk of timber lying upon the main deck. It looked very like a section of mainmast, and a very large section at that, and yet as far as he could see the Swiftsure’s mainmast appeared to be intact.
‘It is from the Orient,’ Ben murmured into his ear, moving his head aside to deliver a polite belch. ‘I had it fetched up from the sea after the battle.’
‘Very good,’ said Nathan, nodding wisely, though for the life of him he could not think what use it would be, and he would have thought there were less cumbersome mementoes of the victory that would not get in the way of the guns.
‘I am thinking of having it made up into a coffin,’ Ben informed him, obviously thinking some rational explanation was required.
‘Very good,’ Nathan repeated, for want of something more original. ‘For yourself?’
‘For the admiral.’
Nathan moved his head carefully, the better to fix his eyes upon the captain’s features. So far as he could see Hallowell did not appear to be joking. He was regarding Nathan with anxious enquiry.
‘I was wondering – how you think the admiral might take it?’
Nathan pondered the subject a moment without inspiration. ‘How do you think he might take it?’ he enquired cautiously.
‘Well, as a compliment, I hope.’
‘As a compliment?’ This required some concentration. Nathan had drunk a great deal of wine. And sherry. And cognac. And rum. ‘So you are thinking of presenting it to him before his death?’
‘Well, of course, man. How could I present it to him after?’
There was obviously some logic here that eluded Nathan for the time being. ‘Is it the custom’, he enquired, ‘in Canada?’
‘The custom?’ Hallowell frowned.
‘To present a fellow with his coffin before he is dead.’
‘No.’ The frown increased in intensity. ‘But I thought it would serve as a form of monument – to his greatest victory.’
‘There is that,’ Nathan conceded. ‘Well, if you were to accompany it with a few carefully chosen words, to the effect that you neither wish nor anticipate his immediate demise …’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Nathan’s opinion had perhaps not been delivered with the enunciation it required.
‘No matter,’ he said. ‘I think it is an excellent idea. But I would wait until he has fully recovered from the wound he received during the battle – he might be confused else.’
‘Well, of course I will. Besides, it will take the carpenter a while to complete.’ Hallowell seemed rather annoyed, and Nathan hastened to thank him for the splendid meal and the excellent company he had provided, the which, he said, he would remember with fondness during his trek across the desert.
‘Ah yes,’ said Ben, recalling Nathan’s mission, which had been explained to him privately. ‘Yes. Well, I wish you the very best of luck.’ His expression indicated that he thought Nathan would need it. A discreet cough at his elbow recalled him to other matters. One of his servants was standing there with what appeared to be a pile of books. ‘Oh, I had almost forgot. I thought you might like some reading matter to help pass the time, not having your usual duties to attend to. We took them from the Fortune.’ The servant passed the books to Nathan, who took them gingerly. ‘They are in French, of course, but that should not give you any difficulty.’
Nathan thanked him with a show of appreciation, though they would be an added encumbrance on his journey down the ship’s side, and if he was to share in the proceeds of the Swiftsure’s latest prize, he would have much preferred to have been given a bottle or two of the cognac they had taken from her. There had been no further discussion of the prize money; nor had he expected it. This was why Ben was a rich man and he was not.
He made it back to the Pigeon without loss of either his dignity or his books, and stood propping up the rail until the Swifsure and her prize had faded to a wavering memory against the setting sun. He felt a deep sense of loneliness and regret, as if he were watching the passing not just of a ship but of a way of life that had sustained him for many years. And for all the vaunted importance of his mission, at that moment
in time he felt he would have given an arm or a leg for command of the little corvette following in the Swiftsure’s wake, and his continuing membership of Nelson’s band of brothers.
He awoke sometime in the middle of the night in his hammock in the stern with his boat cloak wrapped round him and the night sky full of stars. He lay awake for a while trying to name them, and then slept till dawn.
Chapter Four
On Philosophy and War
‘Good God!’
Nathan was sitting upright on the deck of the Pigeon, his back resting against the stout bulwark of the stern frame and his legs stretched out before him. He had been reading quietly for the best part of an hour but for the past few minutes his features had shown signs of increasing agitation.
His companions ignored him. Banjo and Blunt were fish ing, Tully was cleaning his pistols, Spiridion was apparently asleep. The wind remaining strong on her starboard quarter, the Pigeon had made excellent progress northward, advancing some 250 miles in the two days since her encounter with the Fortune. But the voyage provided little in the way of either employment or entertainment, and Nathan had turned, in desperation, to literature. It was clearly not the most relaxing of diversions, either for him or his companions.
‘This man’, he said eventually, ‘should be shot.’
‘Which man is that?’ enquired Tully politely.
‘The man who wrote this book.’
The title of the book in question was ‘La Philosophie dans la boudoir’ which had appealed to Nathan partly because of the title and partly because it was dedicated, in a brief note at the front, to ‘voluptuaries of all ages and every sex’.
Nathan did not consider himself to be a voluptuary – and would in any case have had little occasion to practise the art in recent years – but he had applied himself to its study in much the same way as he might to any improving piece of literature.
