Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

  Successful action together, strong driving discipline and a high degree of competence (apart from Mad Willy, Sophie's lunatic, and a few other hopeless cases, every man and boy aboard could now hand, reef and steer) had welded them into a remarkably united body, perfectly acquainted with their vessel and her ways. It was just as well, for their new lieutenant was no great seaman, and they got him out of many a sad blunder as the sloop made her way westwards as fast as ever she could, through two shocking gales, through high battering seas and maddening calms, with the Sophie wallowing in the great swell, her hea4 all round the compass and the ship's cat as sick as a dog. As fast as ever she could, for not only had all her people a month's mind to be on the enemy's coast again, but all the officers were intensely eager to hear the news from London, the Gazette and the official reaction to their exploit – a post-captain's commission for Jack and perhaps advancement for all the rest.

  It was a passage that spoke well for the yard at Malta, as well as for the excellence of her crew, for it was in these same waters that the sixteen-gun sloop Utile foundered during their second gale – she broached to going before the wind not twenty miles to the south of them, and all hands perished. But the weather relented on the last day, sending them a fine steady close-reef topsail tramontana: they raised the high land of Minorca in the forenoon, made their number a little after dinner and rounded Cape Mola before the sun was half-way down the sky.

  All alive once more, though a little less tanned from his confinement, Jack looked eagerly at the wind-clouds over Mount Toro, with their promise of continuing northerly weather, and he said, 'As soon as we are through the narrows, Mr Dalziel, let us hoist out the boats and begin to get the butts on deck. We shall be able to start watering tonight and be on our way as soon as possible in the morning. There is not a moment to lose. But I see you have hooks to the yards and stays already – very good,' he added with a chuckle, going into his cabin.

  This was the first poor Mr Daiziel had heard of it: silent hands that knew Jack's ways far better than he did had foreseen the order, and the poor man shook his head with what philosophy he could muster. He was in a difficult position, for although he was a respectable, conscientious officer he could not possibly stand any sort of comparison with James Dillon: their former lieutenant was wonderfully present in the mind of the crew that he had helped to form – his dynamic authority, his immense technical ability and his seamanship grew in their memories.

  Jack was thinking of him as the Sophie glided up the long harbour, past the familiar creeks and the islands one after another: they were just abreast of the hospital island and he was thinking how much less noise James Dillon used to make when he heard the hail of 'Boat ahoy' on deck and far away the answering cry that meant the approach of a captain. He did not catch the name, but a moment later Babbbington, looking alarmed, knocked on his door to announce 'Commandant's barge pulling alongside, sir.'

  There was a good deal of plunging about on deck as Dalziel set about trying to do three things at once and as those who should dress the sloop's side tried to make themselves look respectable in a violent hurry. Few captains would have darted from behind an island in this way; few would have worried a vessel about to moor; and most, even in an emergency, would have given them a chance, would have allowed them a few minutes' grace; but not Captain Harte, who came up the side as quickly as he could. The calls twittered and howled; the few properly dressed officers stood rigid, bare-headed; the marines presented arms and one dropped his musket.

  'Welcome aboard, sir,' cried Jack, who was in such charity with the present shining world that he could feel pleased to see even this ill-conditioned face, it being familiar. '1 believe this is the first time we have had the honour.'

  Captain Harte saluted the quarter-deck with a sketchy motion towards his hat and stared with elaborate disgust at the grubby sideboys, the marines with their crossbelts awry, the heap of water-butts and Mr Daiziel's little fat meek cream-coloured bitch, that had come forward into the only open space, and that there, apologizing to one and all, her ears and whole person drooping, was in the act of making an immeasurable pool.

  'Do you usually keep your decks in this state, Captain Aubrey?' he asked. 'By my living bowels, it's more like a Wapping pawnshop than the deck of a King's sloop.'

  'Why, no, sir,' said Jack, still in the best humour in the world, for the waxed-canvas Admiralty wrapper under Harte's arm could only be a post-captain's commission addressed to J. A. Aubrey, Esqr., and brought with delightful speed. 'You have caught the Sophie in her shift, I am afraid. Will you step into the cabin, sir?'

  The crew were tolerably busy as she made her way through the shipping and prepared to moor, but they were used to their sloop and they were used to their anchorage, which was just as well, for a disproportionate amount of their attention was taken up with listening to the voices that came out of the cabin.

  'He's coming it the Old Jarvie,' whispered Thomas Jones to William Witsover, with a grin. Indeed, this grin was fairly general abaft the mainmast, where those in earshot quickly gathered that their captain was being blown up. They loved him much, would follow him anywhere; but they were pleasantly amused at the thought of his copping it, his being dressed down, hauled over the coals, taken to task a little.

  '"When I give an order I expects it to be punctually obeyed," 'mouthed Robert Jessup in silent pomp to William Agg, quartermaster's mate.

  'Silence there,' cried the master, who could not hear.

  But presently the grin faded, first on the faces of the brighter men nearest the skylight, then on those within reach of their communicative eyes, meaning gestures and significant grimaces, and so forward. And as the best bower splashed into the sea the whisper ran 'No cruise.'

  Captain Harte reappeared on deck. He was seen into his barge with rigid ceremony, in an atmosphere of silent suspicion, much strengthened by the look of stony reserve on Captain Aubrey's face.

  The cutter and the launch began watering at once; the jolly-boat carried the purser ashore for stores and the post; bumboats came off with their usual delights; and Mr Watt, together with most of the other Sophies who had survived their wounds, hurried out in the hospital wherry to see what those sods in Malta had done to his rigging.

  To these their shipmates cried, 'Do you know what?'

  'What, mate?'

  'So you don't know what?'

  'Tell us, mate.'

  'We ain't going to have no more cruise, that's what. We've had it,' says old Whoreson Prick, 'we've had our time.'

  'We'm used it up, going to Malta. – Our thirty-seven days! - We convoy that damned lubberly packet down to Gib, that's what we do; and thank you kindly for your efforts in the cruising line. – Cacafuego was not bought in – sold to them bloody Moors for eighteen-pence and a pound of shit, the swiftest bleeding xebec that ever swam. – We come back too slow: "Don't you tell me, sir," says he, "for I knows better." – Nothing in the Gazette about us, and Old Fart never brought Goldilocks his step. – They say she weren't regular and her captain had no commission – all bloody lies. – Oh, if I had his cullions in my hand, wouldn't I serve him out, just? I'd…' At this point they were cut short by a peremptory message from the quarter-deck, delivered by a bosun's mate with a rope's end; but their passionate indignation flowed on in what they meant to be whispers, and if Captain Harte had reappeared at that moment they might have broken out in mutinous riot and flung him in the harbour. They were furious for their victory, furious for themselves and furious for Jack; and they knew perfectly well that their officers' reproaches were totally devoid of conviction; the rope's end might have been a wafting handkerchief; and even the newcomer Dalziel was shocked by their treatment, at least as it was delivered by rumour, eavesdropping, inference, bumboat talk and the absence of the lovely Cacafuego.

  In fact, their treatment was even shabbier than rumour had it. The Sophie's commander and her surgeon sat in the cabin amidst a heap of papers, for Stephen Maturin had been helping with som
e of the paper work as well as writing returns and letters of his own, and now it was three in the morning: the Sophie rocked gently at her moorings, and her tight-packed crew were snorting the long night through (the rare joys of harbour-watch). Jack had not gone ashore at all – had no intention of going ashore; and now the silence, the lack of real motion, the long sitting with pen and ink seemed to insulate them from the world in their illuminated cell; and this made their conversation, which would have been indecent at almost any other time, seem quite ordinary and natural. 'Do you know that fellow Martinez?' asked Jack quietly. 'The man whose house the Hartes have part of?'

  'I know of him,' said Stephen. 'He is a speculator, a sort of would-be rich man, the left-handed half.'

  'Well, be has got the contract for carrying the mails – a damned job, I'm sure – and has bought that pitiful tub the Ventura to be the packet. She has never sailed six miles in an hour since she was launched and we are to convoy her to the Rock. Fair enough, you say. Yes, but we are to take the sack, put it aboard her when we are just outside the mole and then return back here directly, without landing or communicating with Gibraltar. And I will tell you another thing: he did not forward my official letter by Superb, that was going down the Mediterranean two days after we left, nor by Phoebe, that was going straight home; and I will lay you any odds you choose to mention that it is here, in this greasy sack. What is more, I know as certainly as if I had read it that his covering letter will be full of this fancied irregularity about the Cacafuego's command, this quibble over the officer's status. Ugly hints and delay. That is why there was nothing in the Gazette. No promotion, either: that Admiralty wrapper only held his own orders, in case I should insist upon having them in writing.'

  'Sure, his motive is obvious to a child. He hopes to provoke you into an outburst. He hopes you will disobey and ruin your career. I do beg you will not be blinded with anger.'

  'Oh, I shan't play the fool,' said Jack, with a somewhat dogged smile. 'But as for provoking me, I confess he has succeeded to admiration. I doubt I could so much as finger a scale, my hand trembles so when I think of it,' he said, picking up his fiddle. And while the fiddle was passing through the two feet of air from the locker to the height of his shoulder, purely self-concerned and personal thoughts presented themselves to his mind, scarcely in succession but as a cluster: these weeks and months of precious seniority slipping away – already Douglas of the Phoebe, Evans on the West Indies station, and a man he did not know called Raitt had been made; they were in the last Gazette and now they were ahead of him on the immutable list of post-captains; he would be junior to them for ever. Time lost; and these disturbing rumours of peace. And a deep, barely acknowledged suspicion, a dread that the whole thing might have gone wrong: no promotion: Lord Keith's warning truly prophetic. He tucked the fiddle under his chin, tightening his mouth and raising his head as he did so: and the tightening of his mouth was enough to release a flood of emotion. His face reddened, his breath heaved deep, his eyes grew larger and, because of the extreme contraction of their pupils, bluer: his mouth tightened still further, and with it his right hand. Pupils contract symmetrically to a diameter of about a tenth part of an inch, noted Stephen on a corner of a page. There was a loud, decided crack, a melancholy confused twanging, and with a ludicrous expression of doubt and wonder and distress, Jack held out his violin, all dislocated and unnatural with its broken neck. 'It snapped,' he cried. 'It snapped.' He fitted the broken ends together with infinite care and held them in place. 'I would not have had it happen for the world,' he said in a low voice. 'I have known this fiddle, man and boy, since I was breeched.'

  Indignation at the Sophie's treatment was not confined to the sloop, but naturally it was strongest there, and as the crew heaved the capstan round to unmoor they sang a new song, a song that owed nothing whatever to Mr Mowett's chaste muse.

  – old Harte, – old Harte,

  That red-faced son of a thy French fart.

  Hey ho, stamp and go,

  Stamp and go, stamp and go,

  Hey ho, stamp and go.

  The cross-legged fifer on the capstan-head lowered his pipe and sang the quiet solo part:

  Says old Harte to his missis

  O what do I see?

  Bold Sophie's commander

  With his fiddle-dee-dee.

  Then the deep cross rhythmical bellow again

  – old Harte, – old Harte,

  That one-eyed son of a blue French fart.

  James Dillon would never have allowed it, but Mr Daiziel had no notion of any of the allusions and the song went on and on until the cable was all below in tiers, smelling disagreeably of Mahon ooze, and the Sophie was hoisting her jibs and bracing her foretopsailyard round. She dropped down abreast of the Amelia, whom she had not seen since the action with the Cacafuego, and all at once Mr Daiziel observed that the frigate's rigging was full of men, all carrying their hats and facing the Sophie.

  'Mr Babbington,' he said in a low voice, in case he should be mistaken, for he had only seen this happen once before, 'tell the captain, with my duty, that I believe Amelia is going to cheer us.'

  Jack came blinking on deck as the first cheer roared out, a shattering wave of sound at twenty-five yards' range. Then came the Amelia's bosun's pipe and the next cheer, as precisely timed as her own broadside: and the third. He and his officers stood rigidly with their hats off, and as soon as the last roar had died away over the harbour, echoing back and forth, he called out, 'Three cheers for the Amelia!' and the Sophies, though deep in the working of the sloop, responded like heroes, scarlet with pleasure and the energy needed f or huzzaying proper – huge energy, for they knew what was manners. Then the Amelia, now far astern, called 'One cheer more,' and so piped down.

  It was a handsome compliment, a noble send-off, and it gave great pleasure: but still it did not prevent the Sophies from feeling a strong sense of grievance – it did not prevent them from calling out 'Give us back our thirty-seven days' as a sort of slogan or watchword between decks, and even above hatches when they dared – it did not wholly recall them to their duty, and in the following days and weeks they were more than ordinarily tedious.

  The brief interlude in Port Mahon harbour had been exceptionally bad for discipline. One of the results of their fierce contraction into a single defiant ill-used body was that the hierarchy (in its finer shades) had for a time virtually disappeared; and among other things the ship's corporal had let the wounded men returning to their duty bring in bladders and skins full of Spanish brandy, anisette and a colourless liquid said to be gin. A discreditable number of men had succumbed to its influence, among them the captain of the foretop (paralytic) and both bosun's mates. Jack disrated Morgan, promoting the dumb negro Alfred King, according to his former threat – a dumb bosun's mate would surely be more terrible, more deterrent; particularly one with such a very powerful arm.

  'And, Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will rig a proper grating at the gangway at last. They do not give a damn for a flogging at the capstan, and I am going to stop this infernal drunkenness, come what may.'

  'Yes, sir,' said the lieutenant: and after a slight pause, 'Wilson and Plimpton have represented to me that it would grieve them very much to be flogged by King.'

  'Of course it will grieve them very much. I sincerely hope it will grieve them very much. That is why they are to be flogged. They were drunk, were they not?'

  'Blind drunk, sir. They said it was their Thanksgiving.'

  'What in God's name have they got to be thankful about? And the Cacafuego sold to the Algerines.'

  'They are from the colonies, sir, and it seems that it is a feast in those parts. However, it is not the flogging they object to, but the colour of the flogger.'

  'Bah,' said Jack. 'I'll tell you another man who will be flogged if this goes on,' he said, bending and peering sideways through the cabin window, 'and that is the master of that damned packet. Just give him a gun, Mr Daiziel, will you? Shotted, not too far from his ste
rn, and desire him to keep to his station.'

  The wretched packet had had a miserable time of it since leaving Port Mahon. She had expected the Sophie to sail straight to Gibraltar, keeping well out in the offing, out of sight of privateers, and certainly out of range of shore batteries. But although the Sophie was still no Flying Childers, in spite of all her improvements, she could nevertheless sail two miles for the packet's one, either close-hauled or going large, and she made the most of her superiority to work right down along the coast, peering into every bay and inlet, obliging the packet to keep to the seaward of her, at no great distance and in a very high state of dread.

  Hitherto, this eager, terrier-like searching had led to nothing but a few brisk exchanges of fire with guns on shore, for Jack's harsh restrictive orders allowed no chasing and made it almost certain that he should take no prize. But that was an entirely secondary consideration: action was what he was looking for; and at this juncture, he reflected, he would give almost anything for a direct uncomplicated head-on clash with some vessel about his own size.

  So thinking he stepped on deck. The breeze off the sea had been fading all the afternoon, and now it was dying in irregular gasps; although the Sophie still had it the packet was almost entirely becalmed. To starboard the high brown rocky coast trended away north and south with something of a protrusion, a small cape, a headland with a ruined Moorish castle, on the beam, perhaps a mile away.

  'You see that cape?' said Stephen, who was gazing at it with an open book dangling from his hand, his thumb marking the place. 'It is Cabo Roig, the seaward limit of Catalan speech: Orihuela is a little way inland, and after Orihuela you hear no more Catalan – 'tis Murcia, and the barbarous jargon of the Andalou. Even in the village round the point they speak like Morescoes – algarabia, gab ble-gabble, munch, munch.' Though perfectly liberal in all other senses, Stephen Maturin could not abide a Moor.