Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

  'There is a village, is there?' asked Jack, his eyes bright ening.

  'Well, a hamlet: you will see it presently.' A pause, while the sloop whispered through the still water and the landscape imperceptibly revolved. 'Strabo tells us that the ancient Irish regarded it as an honour to be eaten by their relatives – a form of burial that kept the soul in the family'

  ' he said, waving the book.

  'Mr Mowett, pray be so good as to fetch me my glass. I beg your pardon, dear Doctor: you were telling me about Strabo.'

  'You may say he is no more than Eratosthenes redivivus, or shall I say new-rigged?'

  'Oh, do, by all means. There is a fellow riding hell for leather along the top of the cliff, under that castle.!

  'He is riding to the village.'

  'So he is. I see it now, opening behind the rock. I see something else, too,' he added, almost to himself. The sloop glided steadily on, and steadily the shallow bay turned, showing a white cluster of houses at the water's edge. There were three vessels lying at anchor some way out, a quarter of a mile to the south of the village: two houarios and a pink, merchantmen of no great size, but deeply laden.

  Even before the sloop stood in towards them there was great activity ashore, and every eye aboard that could command a glass could see people running about, boats launching and pulling industriously for the anchored vessels. Presently men could be seen hurrying to and fro on the merchantmen, and the sound of their vehement discussion came clearly over the evening sea. Then came the rhythmic shouting as they worked at their windlasses, weighing their anchors: they loosed their sails and ran themselves straight on shore.

  Jack stared at the land for some time with a hard calculating look in his eye: if no sea were to get up it would be easy to warp the vessels off – easy both for the Spaniards and for him. To be sure, his orders left no room for a cutting-out expedition. Yet the enemy lived on his coastwise trade -roads execrable – mule-trains absurd for anything in bulk -no waggons worth speaking of – Lord Keith had been most emphatic on that point. And it was his duty to take, burn, sink or destroy. The Sophies stared at Jack: they knew very well what was in his mind, but they also had a pretty clear notion of what was in his orders too – this was not a cruise but a piece of strict convoy-work. They stared so bard that the sands of time ran out. Joseph Button, the marine sentry whose function it was to turn the half-hour glass the moment it emptied and to strike the bell, was roused from his contemplation of Captain Aubrey's face by nudges, pinches, muffled cries of 'Joe, Joe, wake up Joe, you fat son of a bitch,' and lastly by Mr Pullings' voice in his ear, 'Button, turn that glass.'

  The last tang of the bell died away and Jack said, 'Put her about, Mr Pullings, if you please.'

  With a smooth perfection of curve and the familiar, almost unnoticed piping and cries of 'Ready about – helm's a-lee – rise tacks and sheets – mainsail haul,' the Sophie came round, filled and headed back towards the distant packet, still becalmed in a smooth field of violet sea.

  She lost the breeze herself when she had run a few miles off the little cape, and she lay there in the twilight and the falling dew, with her sails limp and shapeless.

  'Mr Day,' said Jack, 'be so good as to prepare some fire barrels – say half a dozen. Mr Daiziel, unless it comes on to blow I think we may take the boats in at about midnight. Dr Maturin, let us rejoice and be gay.'

  Their gaiety consisted of ruling staves and copying a borrowed duet filled with hemidemisemiquavers. 'By God,' said Jack, looking up with red-rimmed streaming eyes after an hour or so, 'I am getting too old for this.' He pressed his hands over his eyes and kept them there for a while: in quite another voice he said, 'I have been thinking about Dillon all day. All day long I have been thinking about him, off and on. You would scarcely credit how much I miss him. When you told me about that classical chap, it brought him so to mind… because it was about Irishmen, no doubt; and Dillon was Irish. Though you would never have thought so – never to be seen drunk, almost never called anyone out, spoke like a Christian, the most gentleman-like creature in the world, nothing of the hector at all – oh Christ. My dear fellow, my dear Maturin, I do beg your pardon. I say these damned things… I regret it extremely.'

  'Ta, ta, ta,' said Stephen, taking snuff and waving his hand from side to side.

  Jack pulled the bell, and through the various ship-noises, all muted in this calm, he heard the quick pittering of his steward. 'Killick,' he said, 'bring me a couple of bottles of that Madeira with the yellow seal, and some of Lewis' biscuits. I can't get him to make a decent seed-cake,' he explained to Stephen, 'but these petty fours go down tolerably well and give the wine a relievo. Now this wine,' he said, looking attentively through his glass, 'was given me in Mahon by our agent, and it was bottled the year Eclipse was foaled. I produce it as a sin-offering, conscious of my offence. Your very good health, sir.'

  'Yours, my dear. It is a most remarkable ancient wine. Dry, yet unctuous. Prime.'

  'I say these damned things,' Jack went on, musing as they drank their bottle, 'and don't quite understand at the time, though 1 see people looking black as hell, and frowning, and my friends going "Pst, pst", and then I say to myself, "You're brought by the lee again, Jack." Usually I make out what's amiss, given time, but by then it's too late. I am afraid I vexed Dillon often enough, that way' – looking down sadly – 'but, you know, I am not the only one. Do not think I mean to run him down in any way – I only mention it as an instance, that even a very well-bred man can make these blunders sometimes, for I am sure he never meant it -but Dillon once hurt me very much, too. He used the word commercial , when we were speaking rather warmly about taking prizes. I am sure he did not mean it, any more than I meant any uncivil reflexion, just now; but it has always stuck hard in my gullet. That is one of the reasons why I am so happy…'

  Knock-knock on the door. 'Beg pardon, your honour. Loblolly boy's all in a mother, sir. Young Mr Ricketts has swallowed a musket-ball and they can't get it out. Choking to death, sir, if you please.'

  'Forgive me,' said Stephen, carefully putting down his glass and covering it with a red spotted handkerchief, a bandanna.

  'Is all well – did you manage…?' asked Jack five minutes later.

  'We may not be able to do all we could wish in physic,' said Stephen with quiet satisfaction, 'but at least we can give an emetic that answers, I believe. You were saying, sir?'

  'Commercial was the word,' said Jack. 'Commercial. And that is why I am so happy to have this little boat expedition tonight. For although my orders will not allow me to bring 'em off, yet I have to wait for the packet to come up, and there is nothing to prevent me from burning 'em. I lose no time; and the most scrupulous mind could not but say that this is the most uncommercial enterprise imaginable. It is too late, of course – these things always are too late – but it is a great satisfaction to me. And how James Dillon would have delighted in it! The very thing for him! You remember him with the boats at Palamos? And at Palafrugell?'

  The moon set. The star-filled sky wheeled about its axis, sweeping the Pleiades right up overhead. It was a midwinter sky (though warm and still) before the launch, the cutter and the jolly-boat came alongside and the landing-party dropped down into them, the men in their blue jackets and wearing white armbands. They were five miles from their prey, but already no voice rose much above a whisper – a few smothered laughs and the clink of weapons handing down and when they paddled off with muffled oars they melted so silently into the darkness that in ten minutes Stephen's straining eyes lost them altogether.

  'Do you see them still?' he asked the bosun, lame from his wound and now in charge of the sloop.

  'I can just make out the darkie the captain's looking at the compass with,' said Mr Watt. 'A little abaft the cathead.'

  'Try my night-glass, sir,' said Lucock, the only midshipman left aboard.

  'I wish it were over,' said Stephen.

  'So do I, Doctor,' said the bosun. 'And I wish I were with them. 'Tis m
uch worse for us left aboard. Those chaps are all together, jolly like, and time goes by like Horndean fair. But here we are, left all thin and few, nothing to do but wait,

  and the sand chokes in the watch-glass. It will seem years and years before we hear anything of them, sir, as you will surely see.'

  Hours, days, weeks, years, centuries. Once there was an ominous clangour high overhead – flamingoes on their way to the Mar Menor, or maybe as far as the marshes of the Guadaiquivir: but for the most part it was featureless darkness, almost a denial of time.

  The flashes of musketry and the subsequent crackle of firing did not come from the small arc on which his stare had been concentrated, but from well to the right of it. Had the boats gone astray? Run into opposition? Had he been looking in the wrong direction? 'Mr Watt,' he said, 'are they in the right place?"

  'Why, no, sir,' said the bosun comfortably. 'And if I know anything of it, the captain is a-leading of 'em astray.'

  The crackling went on and on, and in the intervals a faint shouting could be heard. Then to the left there appeared a deep red glow; then a second, and a third; and all at once the third grew enormously, a tongue of flame that leapt up and up and higher still, a most prodigious fountain of light – a whole ship-load of olive-oil ablaze.

  'Christ almighty,' murmured the bosun, deep struck with awe. 'Amen,' said one among the silent, staring crew.

  The blaze increased: in its light they could see the other fires and their smoke, quite pale; the whole of the bay, the village; the cutter and the launch pulling away from the shore and the jolly-boat crossing to meet them; and all round behind, the brown hills, sharp in light and shade.

  At first the column had been perfectly straight, like a cypress; but after the first quarter of an hour its tip began to lean southwards and inland, towards the hills, and the smoke-cloud above to stream away in a long pall, lit from below. The brilliance was if anything greater, and Stephen saw gulls drifting across between the sloop and the land, all heading for the fire. 'It will be attracting every living thing,' he reflected, with anxiety. 'What will be the conduct of the bats?'

  Presently the top two-thirds was leaning over strongly, and the Sophie began to roll, with the waves slapping up against her larboard side.

  Mr Watt broke from his long state of wonder to give the necessary orders, and coming back to the rail he said, 'They will have a hard pull, if this goes on.'

  'Could we not bear down and pick them up?' asked Stephen.

  'Not with this wind come round three points, and those old shoals off of the headland. No, sir.'

  Another group of gulls passed low over the w2ter. 'The flame is attracting every living thing for miles,' said Stephen.

  'Never mind, sir,' said the bosun. 'It will be daylight in an hour or two, and they will pay no heed then, no heed at all.'

  'It lights up the whole sky,' said Stephen.

  It also lit up the deck of the Formidable, Captain Lalonde, a beautifully built French eighty-gun ship of the line wearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Linois at the mizen: she was seven or eight miles off shore, on her way from Toulon to Cadiz, and with her in line ahead sailed the rest of the squadron,. the Indomptable, eighty, Captain Moncousu, the Desaix, seventy-four, Captain Christy-Palliиre (a splendid sailer), and the Muiron, a thirty-eight gun frigate that had until recently belonged to the Venetian Republic.

  'Let us put in and see what is afoot,' said the admiral, a small, dark, round-headed, lively gentleman in red breeches, very much the seaman; and a few moments later the hoists of coloured lanterns ran up. The ships tacked in succession with a quiet efficiency that would have done credit to any navy afloat, for they were largely manned from the Rochefort squadron, and as well as being commanded by efficient professional officers they were filled with prime sailormen.

  They ran inshore on the starboard tack with the wind one point free, bringing up the daylight, and when they were first seen from the Sophie's deck they were greeted with joy. The boats had just reached the sloop after a long wearisome pull, and the French men-of-war were not sighted as early as they might have been: but sighted they were, in time, and at once every man forgot his hunger, fatigue, aching arms, and the cold and the wet, for the rumour instantly filled the sloop – 'Our galleons are coming up, hand over fist!' The wealth of the Indies, New Spain and Peru: gold ingots by way of their ballast. Ever since the crew had come to know of Jack's private intelligence about Spanish shipping there had been this persistent rumour of a galleon, and now it was fulfilled.

  The splendid flame was still leaping up against the hills, though more palely as dawn broke all along the eastern sky; but in the cheerful animation of putting all to rights, of making everything ready for the chase, no one took notice of it any more – whenever a man could look up from his business his eyes darted eager, delighted glances over the three or four miles of sea at the Desaix, and at the Formidable, now some considerable way astern of her.

  It was difficult to say just when all the delight vanished: certainly the captain's steward was still reckoning up the cost of opening a pub on the Hunstanton road when he brought Jack a cup of coffee on the quarter-deck, heard him say 'A horrid bad position, Mr Dalziel,' and noticed that the Sophie was no longer standing towards the supposed galleons but sailing from them as fast as she could possibly go, close-hauled, with everything she could set, including bonnets and even drabblers.

  By this time the Desaix was hull-up – had been for some time – and so was the Formidable: behind the flagship there showed the topgallants and topsails of the Indomptable, and out to sea, a couple of miles to windward of her, the frigate's sails nicked the line of the sky. It was a horrid bad position; but the Sophie had the weather-gage, the breeze was uncertain and she might be taken for a merchant brig of no importance – something a busy squadron would not trouble with for more than an hour or so: they were not in very grave earnest, concluded Jack, lowering his glass. The behaviour of the press of men on the Desaix's fo'c'sle, the by no means extraordinary spread of canvas, and countless indefinable trifles, persuaded him that she had not the air of a ship chasing in deadly earnest. But even so, how she slipped along! Her light, high, roomy, elegant round French bows and her beautifully cut, taut, flat sails brought her smoothly over the water, sailing as sweetly as the Victory. And she was well handled: she might have been running along a path ruled out upon the sea. He hoped to cross her bows before she had satisfied her curiosity about the fire on shore and so lead her such a dance of it that she would give it up – that the admiral would eventually make her signal of recall.

  'Upon deck,' called Mowett from the masthead. 'The frigate has taken the packet.'

  Jack nodded, sweeping his glass out to the miserable Ventura and back beyond the seventy-four to the flagship.

  He waited: perhaps five minutes. This was the crucial stage. And now signals did indeed break out aboard the Formidable, signals with a gun to emphasize them. But they were not signals of recall, alas. The Desaix instantly hauled her wind, no longer interested in the shore: her royals appeared, sheeted home and hoisted with a brisk celerity that made Jack round his mouth in a silent whistle. More canvas was appearing aboard the Formidable too; and now the Indomptable. was coming up fast, all sails abroad, sweeping along with a freshening of the breeze.

  It was clear that the packet had told what the Sophie was. But it was clear, too, that the rising sun was going to make the breeze still more uncertain, and perhaps swallow it up altogether. Jack glanced up at the Sophie's spread: everything was there, of course; and at present everything was drawing in spite of the chancy wind. The master was at the con, Pram, the quartermaster, was at the wheel, getting everything out of her that she was capable of giving, poor fat old sloop. And every man was at his post, ready, silent and attentive: there was nothing for him to say or do; but his eye took in the threadbare, sagging Admiralty canvas, and his heart smote him cruelly for having wasted time -for not having bent his own new topsails, made of decent sailcloth, t
hough unauthorized.

  'Mr Watt,' he said, a quarter of an hour later, looking at the glassy patches of calm in the offing, 'stand by to out sweeps.'

  A few minutes after this the Desaix hoisted her colours and opened with her bow-chasers; and as though the rumbling double crash had stunned the air, so the opulent curves of her sails collapsed, fluttered, swelled momentarily and slackened again. The Sophie kept the breeze another ten minutes, but then it died for her too. Before the way was off her – long before – all the sweeps that Malta had allowed her (four short, alas) were out and she was creeping steadily along, five men to each loom, and the long oars bending perilously under the urgent, concentrated heave and thrust, right into what would have been the wind's eye if there had still been any blowing. It was heavy, heavy work: and suddenly Stephen noticed that there was an officer to almost every sweep. He stepped forward to one of the few vacant places, and in forty minutes all the skin was gone from his palms.

  'Mr Daiziel, let the starboard watch go to breakfast. Ah, there you are, Mr Ricketts: I believe we may serve out a double allowance of cheese – there will be nothing hot for a while.'

  'If I may say so, sir,' said the purser with a pale leer, 'I fancy there will be something uncommon hot, presently.'

  The starboard watch, summarily fed, took over the labouring sweeps while their shipmates set to their biscuit, cheese and grog, with a couple of hams from the gun-room – a brief, uneasy meal, for out there the wind was ruffling the sea, and it had chopped round two points. The French ships picked it up first, and it was striking to see how their tall, high-reaching sails sent them running on little more than an air. The Sophie's hard-won advance was wiped out in twenty minutes; and before her sails were drawing the Desaix already had a bow-wave, whiskers that could be seen from the quarter-deck. Sophie's sails were drawing now, but this creeping pace would never do.