Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Pring is dead, sir. Another captain?'

  'Make it so, Mr Dillon.'

  He walked up forward. 'Shall we catch 'un, sir?' asked a grizzled seaman, one of the big boarding-party, with the pleasant friendliness of crisis.

  'I hope so, Cundall, I hope so indeed,' said Jack. 'At least we shall have a bang at him.'

  'That dog,' he said to himself, staring along the dispart-sight at the Algerine's deck. He felt the first beginning of the upward roll under the Sophie's forefoot, snapped the match down on to the touch-hole, heard the hiss and the shattering crash and the shriek of trucks as the gun recoiled.

  'Huzzay, huzzay!' roared the men on the fo'c'sle. It was no more than a hole in the galley's mainsail, about half-way up, but it was the first blow they had managed to get home. Three more shots; and they heard one strike something metallic in the galley's stern.

  'Carry on, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, straightening. 'Light along my glass, there.'

  The sun was so low now that it was difficult to see as he stood balancing to the sea, shading his object-glass with his far hand and concentrating with all his power on two red-turbanned figures behind the galley's stern-chaser. A musketoon-ball struck the Sophie's starboard knighthead and he heard a seaman rip out a string of furious obscenity. 'John Lakey copped it something cruel,' said a low voice close behind him. 'In the ballocks.' The gun went off at his side, but before its smoke hid the galley from him he had made up his mind. The Algerine was, in fact, spilling his wind – starting his sheets so that his sails, apparently full, were not really drawing with their whole force: that was why the poor old fat heavy dirty-bottomed Sophie, labouring furiously and on the very edge of carrying everything away, was gaining slightly on the slim, deadly, fine-cut galley. The Algerine was leading him on – could, in fact, run away at any moment. Why? To draw him far to the leeward of the cat, that was why: together with the real possibility of dismasting him, raking him at leisure (being independent of the wind) and making a prize of the Sophie as well. To draw him to the leeward of the convoy, too, so that the sail to windward might snap up half a dozen of them. He glanced over his left shoulder at the cat. Even if she were to go about they would still fetch her in one board, close-hauled, for she was a very slow creature – no topgallants and, of course, no royals – far slower than the Sophie. But in a very little while, on this course and at this pace, he would never be able to reach her except by beating up, tack upon tack, with the darkness coming fast. It would not do. His duty was clear enough: the unwelcome choice, as usual. And this was the time for decision.

  ''Vast firing,' he said as the gun ran in. 'Starboard broadside: ready, now. Sergeant Quinn, look to the small-arms men. When he have her dead on the beam, aim for her cabin abaft the rowers' benches, right low. Fire at the word of command.' As he turned and ran back to the quarter-deck he caught a look from James Dillon's powder-blackened face, a look if not of anger or something worse, then at least of bitter contrariety. 'Hands to the braces,' he called, mentally dismissing that as something for another day. 'Mr Marshall, lay her for the cat.' He heard the men's groan – a universal exhalation of disappointment – and said, 'Hard over.'

  'We'll catch him unaware and give him something to remember the Sophie by,' he added, to himself, standing directly behind the starboard brass four-pounder. At this speed the Sophie came round very fast: he crouched, half-bent, not breathing, all his being focused along the central gleam of brass and the turning seascape beyond it. The Sophie turned, turned; the galley's oars started into furious motion, churning up the sea, but it was too late. A tenth of a second before he had the galley dead on the beam and just before the Sophie reached the middle of her downward roll he cried 'Fire!' and the Sophie's broadside went off as crisply as a ship of the line's, together with every musket aboard. The smoke cleared and a cheer went up, for there was a gaping hole in the galley's side and the Moors were running to and fro in disorder and dismay In his glass Jack could see the stern-chaser dismounted and several bodies lying on the deck: but the miracle had not happened – he had neither knocked her rudder away nor holed her disastrously below the water-line. However, there was no further trouble to be expected from her, he reflected, turning his attention from the galley to the cat.

  'Well, Doctor,' he said, appearing in the cockpit, 'how are you getting along?'

  'Tolerably well, I thank you. Has the battle begun again?'

  'Oh, no. That was only a shot across the cat's bows. The galley is hull-down in the south-south-west and Dillon has just taken a boat across to set the Norwegians free – the Moors have hung out a white shirt and called for quarter. The damned rogues.'

  'I am happy to hear it. It is really impossible to sew one's flaps neatly with the jarring of the guns. May I see your ear?'

  'It was only a passing flick. How are your patients?'

  'I believe I may answer for four or five of them. The man with the terrible incision in his thigh – they tell me it was a splinter of wood: can this be true?'

  'Yes, indeed. A great piece of hard sharp-edged oak flying through the air will cut you up amazingly. It often happens.'

  '- has responded remarkably well; and I have patched up the poor fellow with the burn. Do you know that the rammer was actually thrust right through between the head of the biceps, just missing the ulnar nerve? But I cannot deal with the gunner down here – not in this light.'

  'The gunner? What's amiss with the gunner? I thought you had cured him?'

  'So I had. Of the grossest self-induced costiveness it has ever been my privilege to see, caused by a frantic indulgence in Peruvian bark – self-administered Peruvian bark. But this is a depressed cranial fracture, sir, and I must use the trephine: here he lies – you notice the characteristic stertor? -and I think he is safe until the mornings But as soon as the sun is up I must have off the top of his skull with my little saw. You will see the gunner's brain, my dear sir,' he added with a smile. 'Or at least his dura mater.'

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' murmured Jack. Deep depression was settling on him – anticlimax – such a bloody little engagement for so little – two good men killed – the gunner almost certainly dead – no man could survive having his brain opened, that stood to reason – and the others might easily die too – they so often did. If it had not been for that damned convoy he might have had the galley – two could play at that game. 'Now what's to do?' he cried, as a clamour broke out on deck.

  'They're carrying on very old-fashioned aboard the cat, sir,' said the master as Jack reached the quarter-deck in the twilight. The master came from some far northern part – Orkney, ShetLand – and either that or a natural defect in his speech caused him to pronounce er as ar; a peculiarity that grew more marked in time of stress. 'It looks as though those infernal buggars were cutting their capars again, sir.'

  'Put her alongside, Mr Marshall. Boarders, come along with me.'

  The Sophie braced round her yards to avoid any more damage, backed her fore-topsail and glided evenly along the cat's side. Jack reached out for the main channels on the Norwegian's high side and swung himself up through the wrecked boarding netting, followed by a grim and savage-looking band. Blood on the deck: three bodies: five ashy Moors pressed against the roundhouse bulkhead under the protection of James Dillon: the dumb Negro Alfred King with a boarder's axe in his hand.

  'Get those prisoners across,' said Jack. 'Stow them in the forehold. What's to do, Mr Dillon?'

  'I can't quite make him out, sir, but I think the prisoners must have attacked King between decks.'

  'Is that what happened, King?'

  The Negro was still glaring about – his mates held his arms – and his answer might have meant anything.

  'Is that what happened, Williams?' asked Jack.

  'Don't know, sir,' said Williams, touching his hat and looking glassy.

  'Is that what happened, Kelly?'

  'Don't know, sir,' said Kelly, with a knuckle to his forehead and the same look to a hairsbreadth.

&n
bsp; 'Where's the cat's master, Mr Dillon?'

  'Sir, it seems the Moors tossed them all overboard.'

  'Good God,' cried Jack. Yet the thing was not uncommon. An angry noise behind him showed that the news had reached the Sophie. 'Mr Marshall,' he called, going to the rail, 'take care of these prisoners, will you? I will not have any foolery.' He looked up and down the deck, up and down the rigging: very little damage. 'You will bring her in to Cagliari, Mr Dillon,' he said in a low voice, quite upset by the savagery of the thing. 'Take what men you need.'

  He returned to the Sophie, very grave, very grave. Yet he had scarcely reached his own quarter-deck before a minute, discreditable voice within said, 'In that case she's a prize, you know, not just a rescue.' He frowned it down, called for the bosun and began a tour of the brig, deciding the order of the more urgent repairs. She had suffered surprisingly for a short engagement in which not more than fifty shots had been exchanged – she was a floating example of what superior gunnery could do. The carpenter and two of his crew were over the side in cradles, trying to plug a hole very near the water-Line.

  'I can't rightly come at 'un, sir,' said Mr Lamb, in answer to Jack's inquiry. 'We'm half drowned, but we can't seem to bang 'un home, not on this tack.'

  'We'll put her about for you, then, Mr Lamb. But let me know the minute she's plugged.' He glanced over the darkening sea at the cat, now taking her place in the convoy once more: going about would mean travelling right away from the cat, and the cat had grown strangely dear to his heart. 'Loaded with spars, Stettin oak, tow, Stockholm tar, cordage,' continued that inner voice eagerly. 'She might easily fetch two or three thousand – even four… ''Yes, Mr Watt, certainly,' he said aloud. They climbed into the maintop and gazed at the injured cap.

  'That was the bit that done poor Mr Day's business for him,' said the bosun.

  'So that was it? A devilish great lump indeed. But we must not give up hope. Dr Maturin is going to – going to do something prodigious clever with a saw, as soon as there is light. He needs light for it – something uncommonly skilful, I dare say.'

  'Oh, yes, I'm sure, sir,' cried the bosun warmly. 'A very clever gentleman he must be, no question. The men are wonderfully pleased. "How kind," they say, "to saw off Ned Evans' leg so trim, and to sew up John Lakey's private parts so neat; as well as all the rest; he being, so to speak, on leave – a visitor, like."'

  'It is handsome,' said Jack. 'It is very handsome, I agree.

  We'll need a kind of gammoning here, Mr Watt, until the carpenter can attend to the cap. Hawsers bowsed as tight as can be, and God help us if we have to strike topmasts.'

  They saw to half a dozen other points and Jack climbed down, paused to count his convoy – very close and orderly now after its fright – and went below. As he let himself sink on to the long cushioned locker he found that he was in the act of saying 'Carry three,' for his mind was busily working out three eighths of Ј3,500 – it had now fixed upon this sum as the worth of the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter. For three-eighths (less one of them for the admiral) was to be his share of the proceeds. Nor was his the only mind to be busy with figures, by any means, for every other man on the Sophie's books was entitled to share – Dillon and the master, an eighth between them; the surgeon (if the Sophie had officially borne one on her books), bosun, carpenter and master's mates, another eighth; then the midshipmen, the inferior warrant officers and the marine sergeant another eighth, while the rest of the ship's company shared the remaining quarter. And it was wonderful to see how briskly minds not given to abstract thought rattled these figures, these symbols, up and down, coming out with the acting yeoman of the sheets' share correct to the nearest farthing. He reached for a pencil to do the sum properly, felt ashamed, pushed it aside, hesitated, took it up again and wrote the figures very small, diagonally upon the corner of a leaf, thrusting the paper quickly from him at a knock on the door. It was the still-moist carpenter, coming to report the shot-holes plugged, and no more than eighteen inches of water in the well, 'which is less nor half what I expected, with that nasty rough stroke the galley give us, firing from so low down'. He paused, giving Jack an odd, sideways-looking glance.

  'Well, that's capital, Mr Lamb,' said Jack, after a moment.

  But the carpenter did not stir; he stood there dripping on the painted sailcloth squares, making a little pool at last.

  Then he burst out, 'Which, if it is true about the cat, and the poor Norwegians dumped overboard – perhaps wounded, too, which makes you right mad, as being mere cruelty -what harm would they do if battened down? Howsoever, the warrant officers of the Sophie would wish the gentleman' -jerking his head towards the night-cabin, Stephen Maturin's temporary dwelling-place – 'cut in on their share, fair do's, as a mark of – as an acknowledgement of – his conduct considered very handsome by all hands.'

  'If you please, sir,' said Babbington, 'the cat's signalling.'

  On the quarter-deck Jack saw that Dillon had run up a motley hoist – obviously all the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdauer possessed – stating, among other things, that he had the plague aboard and that he was about to sail.

  'Hands to wear ship,' he called. And when the Sophie had run down to within a cable's length of the convoy he hailed, 'Cat ahoy!'

  'Sir,' came Dillon's voice over the intervening sea, 'you will be pleased to hear the Norwegians are all safe.'

  'What?'

  'The – Norwegians – are – all – safe.' The two vessels came closer. 'They hid in a secret place in the forepeak -in the forepeak,' went on Dillon.

  'Oh, – their forepeak,' muttered the quartermaster at the wheel; for the Sophie was all ears – a very religious hush.

  'Full and by!' cried Jack angrily, as the topsails shivered under the influence of the quartermaster's emotion. 'Keep her full and by.'

  'Full and by it is, sir.'

  'And the master says,' continued the distant voice, 'could we send a surgeon aboard, because one of his men hurt his toe hurrying down the ladder.'

  'Tell the master, from me,' cried Jack, in a voice that reached almost to Cagliari, his face purple with effort and furious indignation, 'tell the master that he can take his man's toe and – with it.'

  He stumped below, Ј875 the poorer, and looking thoroughly sour and disagreeable.

  This, however, was not an expression that his features wore easily, or for long; and when he stepped into the cutter to go aboard the admiral in Genoa roads his face was quite restored to its natural cheerfulness. It was rather grave, of course, for a visit to the formidable Lord Keith, Admiral of the Blue and Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, was no laughing matter. His gravity, as be sat there in the stern-sheets, very carefully washed, shaved and dressed, affected his coxswain and the cutter's crew, and they rowed soberly along, keeping their eyes primly inboard. Yet even so they were going to reach the flagship too early, and Jack, looking at his watch, desired them to pull round the Audacious and lie on their oars. From here he could see the whole bay, with five ships of the line and four frigates two or three miles from the land, and inshore of them a swarm of gunboats and mortar-vessels; they were steadily bombarding the noble city that rose steeply in a sweeping curve at the head of the bay – lying there in a cloud of smoke of their own making, lobbing bombs into the close-packed buildings on the far side of the distant mole. The boats were small in the distance; the houses, churches and palaces were smaller still (though quite distinct in that sweet transparent air), like toys; but the continuous rumbling of the fire, and the deeper reply of the French artillery on shore, was strangely close at hand, real and menacing.

  The necessary ten minutes passed; the Sophie's cutter approached the flag-ship; and in answer to the hail of Boat ahoy the coxswain answered Sophie, meaning that her captain was aboard. Jack went up the side in due form, saluted the quarter-deck, shook hands with Captain Louis and was shown to the admiral's cabin.

  He had every reason to be pleased with himself he had taken his convoy to Cagliari without loss; he ha
d brought up another to Leghorn; and he was here at exactly the appointed time, in spite of calms off Monte Cristo – but for all that he was remarkably nervous, and his mind was so full of Lord Keith that when he saw no admiral in that beautiful great light-filled cabin but only a well-rounded young woman with her back to thз window, he gaped like any carp.

  'Jacky, dear,' said the young woman, 'how beautiful you are, all dressed up. Let me put your neck-cloth straight, La, Jackie, you look as frightened as if I -were a Frenchman.'

  'Queeney! Old Queeney!' cried Jack, squeezing her and giving her a most affectionate smacking kiss.

  'God damn and blast – a luggit corpis sweenie,' cried a furious Scotch voice, and the admiral walked in from the quarter-gallery. Lord Keith was a tall grey man with a fine leonine head, and his eyes shot blazing sparks of rage.

  'This is the young man I told you about, Admiral,' said Queeney, patting poor pale Jack's black stock into place and waving a ring at him. 'I used to give him his bath and take him into my bed when he had bad dreams.'

  This might not have been thought the very best possible recommendation to a newly-married admiral of close on sixty, but it seemed to answer. 'Oh,' said the admiral. 'Yes. I was forgetting. Forgive me. I have such a power of captains, and some of them are very mere rakes…

  '"And some of them are very mere rakes," says he, piercing me through and through with that damned cold eye of his,' said Jack, filling Stephen's glass and spreading himself comfortably along the locker. 'And I was morally certain that he recognized me from the only three times we were in company – and each time worse than the last. The first was at the Cape, in the old Reso, when I was a midshipman: he was Captain Elphinstone then. He came aboard just two minutes after Captain Douglas had turned me before the mast and said, "What's yon wee snotty bairn a-greeting at?"

  And Captain Douglas said, "That wretched boy is a perfect young whoremonger; I have turned him before the mast, to learn him his duty."'