Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

  'In sweeps,' said Jack. 'Mr Day, throw the guns overboard.'

  'Aye aye, sir,' said the gunner briskly, but his movements were strangely slow, unnatural and constrained as he sprung the capsquares, like those of a man walking along the edge of a cliff, by will-power alone.

  Stephen came on deck again, his hands neatly mittened. He saw the team of the starboard brass quarter-deck fourpounder with crows and handspike in their hands and a common look of anxious, almost frightened concern, waiting for the roll: it came, and they gently urged their gleaming, highly-polished gun overboard – their pretty number fourteen over the side. Its splash coincided exactly with the fountain thrown up not ten yards away by a ball from the Desaix's bow-chaser, and the next gun went overboard with less ceremony. Fourteen splashes at half a ton apiece; then the heavy carriages over the rail after them, leaving the slashed breeching and the unhooked tackles on either side of the gaping ports – a desolation to be seen.

  He glanced forward, then astern, and understood the position he pursed his lips and retired to the taffrail The lightened Sophie gathered speed minute by minute, and as all this weight had gone from well above the water-line she swam more upright – stiffer to the wind

  The first of the Desaix's shot whipped through the topgallantsail, but the next two pitched short. There was still time for manoeuvre – for plenty of manoeuvre. For one thing, reflected Jack, he would be very much surprised if the Sophie could not come about twice as quickly as the seventy-four 'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will go about and back again. Mr Marshall, let her have plenty of way on her.' It would be quite disastrous if the Sophie were tO miss stays on her second turn: and these light airs were not what she liked – she never gave of her best until there was something of a sea running and at least one reef in her topsails.

  'Ready about… 'The pipe twittered, the sloop luffed up, came into the wind, stayed beautifully and filled on the larboard tack: her bowlines were as taut as harpstrings before the big seventy-four had even begun her turn.

  The swing began, however; the Desaix was in stays; her yards were coming round; her checkered side began to show; and Jack, seeing the first hint of her broadside in his glass, called out, 'You had better go below, Doctor.' Stephen went, but no farther than the cabin; and there, craning from the stern-window, he saw the Desaix's hull vanish in smoke from stem to stern, perhaps a quarter of a minute after the Sophie had begun her reverse turn. The massive broadside, nine hundred and twenty-eight pounds of iron, plunged into a wide area of sea away on the starboard beam and rather short, all except for the two thirty-six pound balls, which hummed ominously through the rigging, leaving a trail of limp, dangling cordage. For a moment it seemed that the Sophie might not stay – that she would fall impotently off, lose all her advantage and expose herself to another such salute, more exactly aimed. But a sweet puff of air in her backed headsails pushed her round and there she was on her former tack, gathering way before the Desaix's heavy yards were firmly braced – before her first manoeuvre was complete at all.

  The sloop had gained perhaps a quarter of a mile. 'But he will not let me do that again,' reflected Jack.

  The Desaix was round on the starboard tack again, making good her loss; and all the while she fired steadily with her bowchasers, throwing her shot with remarkable accuracy as the range narrowed, just missing, or else clipping the sails, compelling the sloop to jig every few minutes, slightly losing speed each time. The Formidable was lying on the other tack to prevent the Sophie slipping through, and the Indomptable was running westwards, to haul her wind in half a mile or so for the same purpose. The Sophie's pursuers were roughly in line abreast behind her and coming up fast as she ran sloping across their front. Already the eighty-gun flagship had yawed to fire one broadside at no unlikely distance; and the grim Desaix, making short boards, had done so on each turn. The bosun and his party were busy knotting, and there were some sad holes in the sails; but so far nothing essential had been struck, nor any man wounded.

  'Mr Dalziel,' said Jack, 'start the stores over the side, if you please.'

  The hatch-covers came off, the holds emptied into the sea – barrels of salt beef, barrels of pork, biscuit by the ton, peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, vinegar. Powder, shot. They started their water and pumped it overboard. A twenty-four pounder hulled the Sophie low under the counter, and at once the pumps began gushing sea as well as fresh water.

  'See how the carpenter is doing, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack.

  'Stores overboard, sir,' reported the lieutenant.

  'Very good, Mr Dalziel. Anchors away now, and spars. Keep only the kedge.'

  'Mr Lamb says two foot and a half in the well,' said the midshipman, panting. 'But he has a comfortable plug in the shot-hole.'

  Jack nodded, glancing back at the French squadron. There was no longer any hope of getting away from them close-hauled. But if he were to bear up, turning quickly and unexpectedly, he might be able to double back through their line; and then, with this breeze one or two points on her quarter, and with the help of the slight following sea her lightness and her liveliness, why, she might live to see Gibraltar yet She was so light now – a cockleshell – she might outrun them before the wind, and with any luck, turning briskly, she would gain a mile before the line-of-battle ships could gather way on the new tack To be sure, she would have to survive a couple of broadsides as she passed through… But it was the only hope; and surprise was everything

  'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will bear up in two minutes' time, set stuns'ls and run between the flagship and the seventy-four. We must do it smartly, before they are aware.' He addressed these words to the lieutenant, but they were instantly understood by all hands, and the topmen hurried to their places, ready to race up and rig out the studdingsail booms. The whole crowded deck was intensely alive, poised. 'Wait… wait,' murmured Jack, watching the Desaix coming up wide on the starboard beam. She was the one to beware of: she was terribly alert, and he longed to see her beginning to engage in some manoeuvre before he gave the word. To port lay the Formidable, overcrowded, no doubt, as flagships always were, and therefore less efficient in an emergency. 'Wait… wait,' he said again, his eyes fixed On the Desaix. But her steady approach never varied and when he had counted twenty he cried 'Right!'

  The wheel span, the buoyant Sophie turned like a weathercock, swinging towards the Formidable. The flagship instantly let fly, but her gunnery was not up to the Desaix's, and the hurried broadside lashed the sea where the sloop had been rather than where she was: the Desaix's more deliberate offering was hampered by the fear of ricochets skipping as far as the admiral, and only half a dozen of her balls did any harm – the rest fell short.

  The Sophie was through the line, not too badly mauled – certainly not disabled; her studdingsails were set and she was running fast, with the wind where she liked it best. The surprise had been complete, and now the two sides were drawing away from one another fast – a mile in the first five minutes. The Desaix's second broadside, delivered at well over a thousand yards, showed the effects of irritation and precipitancy; a splintering crash forward marked the utter destruction of the elm-tree pump, but that was all. The flagship had obviously countermanded her second discharge, and for a while she kept to her course, close-hauled, as though the Sophie did not exist.

  'We may have done it,' said Jack inwardly, leaning his hands on the taffrail and staring back along the Sophie's lengthening wake. His heart was still beating with the tension of waiting for those broadsides, with the dread of what they might do to his Sophie; but now its beat had a different urgency. 'We may have done it,' he said again. Yet the words were scarcely formed in his mind before he saw a signal break out aboard the admiral, and the Desaix began to turn into the wind.

  The seventy-four came about as nimbly as a frigate: her yards traversed as though by clockwork, and it was clear that everything was tallied and belayed with the perfect regularity of a numerous and thoroughly well trained crew. The Sophie had an excellent ship'
s company too, as attentive to their duty and as highly-skilled as Jack could wish; but nothing that they could do would make her move through the water at more than seven knots with this breeze, whereas in another quarter of an hour the Desaix was running at well over eight without her studdingsails. She was not going to trouble herself with setting them: when they saw that -when the minutes went by and it was clear that she had not the least intention of setting them – then the Sophies' hearts died within them.

  Jack looked up at the sky. It looked down on him, a broad and meaningless expanse, with stray clouds passing over it – the wind would not die away that afternoon: night was still hours and hours away.

  How many? He glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes past ten. 'Mr Daiziel,' he said, 'I am going into my cabin. Call me if anything whatever occurs. Mr Richards, be so good as to tell Dr Maturin I should like to speak to him. And Mr Watt, let me have a couple of fathoms of logline and three or four belaying-pins.'

  In his cabin he made a parcel of his lead-covered signal-book and some other secret papers, put the copper belaying-pins into the bag of mail, lashed its neck tight, called for his best coat and put his commission into its inner pocket. The words 'hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril' floated before his mind's eye, wonderfully clear; and Stephen came in. 'There you are, my dear fellow,' said Jack. 'Now, I am afraid that unless something very surprising happens we are going to be taken or sunk in the next half hour.' Stephen said, 'Just so,' and Jack continued, 'So if you have anything you particularly value perhaps it would be wise to entrust it to me.'

  'They rob their prisoners, then?' asked Stephen.

  'Yes: sometimes. I was stripped to the bone when the Leander was taken, and they stole our surgeon's instruments before he could operate on our wounded.'

  'I will bring my instruments at once.'

  'And your purse.'

  'Oh, yes, and my purse.'

  Hurrying back on deck, Jack looked astern. He would never have believed the seventy-four could have come up so far. 'Masthead!' he cried. 'What do you see?'

  Seven ships of the line just ahead? Half the Mediterranean fleet? 'Nothing, sir,' answered the look-out slowly, after a most conscientious pause.

  'Mr Dalziel, should I be knocked on the head, by any chance, these go over the side at the last moment, of course,' he said, tapping the parcel and the bag.

  Already the strict pattern of the sloop's behaviour was growing more fluid. The men were quiet and attentive; the watch-glass turned to the minute; four bells in the afternoon watch rang with singular precision but there was a certain amount of movement, unreproved movement up and down the fore-hatch – men putting on their best clothes (two or three waistcoats together, and a shoregoing jacket on top), asking their particular officers to look after money or curious treasures, in the faint hope they might be preserved – Babbington had a carved whale's tooth in his hand, Lucock a Sicilian bull's pizzle. Two men had already managed to get drunk: some wonderfully hidden savings, no doubt.

  'Why does he not fire?' thought Jack. The Desaix's bow-chasers had been silent these twenty minutes, though for the last mile or so of their course the Sophie had been well within range. Indeed, by now she was in musket-shot, and the people in her bows could easily be told from one another: seamen, marines, officers – one man had a wooden leg. What splendidly cut sails, he reflected, and at the same time the answer to his question came: 'By God, he's going to riddle us with grape.' That was why he had silently closed the range. Jack moved to the side; leaning over the hammock-netting he dropped his packets into the sea and saw them sink.

  In the bows of the Desaix there was a sudden movement, a response to an order. Jack stepped to the wheel, taking the spokes from the quartermaster's hands and looking back over his left shoulder. He felt the life of the sloop under his fingers: and he saw the Desaix begin to yaw. She answered her helm as quickly as a cutter, and in three heartbeats there were her thirty-seven guns coming round to bear. Jack heaved strongly at the wheel. The broadside's roar and the fall of the Sophie's maintopgallantmast and foretopsail yard came almost together – in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie's bell; and then a silence. The greater part of the seventy-four's roundshot had passed a few yards ahead of her stem: the scattering grape-shot had utterly wrecked her sails and rigging – had cut them to pieces. The next broadside must destroy her entirely.

  'Clew up,' called Jack, continuing the turn that brought the Sophie into the wind. 'Bonden, strike the colours.'

  Chapter Twelve

  The cabin of a ship of the line and the cabin of a sloop of war differ in size, but they have the same delightful curves in common, the same inward-sloping windows; and in the case of the Desaix and the Sophie a good deal of the same quietly agreeable atmosphere. Jack sat gazing out of the seventy-four's stern-windows, out beyond the handsome gallery to Green Island and Cabrita Point, while Captain Christy-Palliиre searched through his portfolio for a drawing he had made when he was last in Bath, a prisoner on parole.

  Admiral Linois' orders had required him to join the Franco-Spanish fleet in Cadiz; and he would have carried them out directly if, on reaching the straits, he had not learnt that instead of one or two ships of the line and a f rig-ate Sir James Saumarez had no less than six seventy-fours and an eighty-gun ship watching the combined squadron. This state of affairs called for some reflexion, so here he lay with his ships in Algeciras Bay, under the guns of the great Spanish batteries, over against the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Jack was aware of all this – it was obvious, in any case – and as Captain Palliиre muttered through his prints and drawings, 'Landsdowne Terrace, another view – Clifton -the Pump Room -' his mind's eye pictured messengers riding at a great pace between Algeciras and Cadiz; for the Spaniards had no semaphore. His bodily eye, however, looked steadily through the window panes at Cabrita Point, the extremity of the bay; and presently it saw the topgallant masts and pendant of a ship moving across, behind the neck of land. He watched it placidly for some two or three seconds before his heart gave a great leap, having recognized the pendant as British before his head had even begun to weigh the matter.

  He darted a furtive look at Captain Palliиre, who cried, 'Here we are! Laura Place. Number sixteen, Laura Place. This is where my Christy cousins always stay, when they come to Bath. And here, behind this tree – you could see it better, was it not for the tree – is my bedroom window!'

  A steward came in and began to lay the table, for Captain Palliиre not only possessed English cousins and the English language in something like perfection, but he had solid notions of what made a proper breakfast for a seafaring man: a pair of ducks, a dish of kidneys and a grilled turbot the size of a moderate cartwheel were preparing, as well as the usual ham, eggs, toast, marmalade and coffee. Jack looked at the water-colour as attentively as he could, and said, 'Your bedroom window, sir? You astonish me.'

  Breakfast with Dr Ramis was a very different matter -austere, if not penitential: a bowl of milkless cocoa, a piece of bread with a very little oil. 'A very little oil cannot do us much harm,' said Dr Ramis, who was a martyr to his liver. He was a severe and meagre, dusty man, with a harsh greyish-yellow face and deep violet rings under his eyes; he did not look capable of any pleasant emotion, yet he had both blushed and simpered when Stephen, upon being confided to his care as a prisoner-guest, had cried, 'Not the illustrious Dr Juan Ramis, the author of the Specimen Animalium?' Now they had just come back from visiting the Desaix's sick-bay, a sparsely inhabited place, because of Dr Ramis' passion for curing other people's livers too by a low diet and no wine: it had a dozen of the usual diseases, a fair amount of pox, the Sophie's four invalids and the French wounded from the recent action – three men bitten by Mr Daiziel's little bitch, whom they had presumed to caress: they were now confined upon suspicion of hydrophobia. In Stephen's view there was an error in his colleague's re
asoning – a Scotch dog that bit a French seaman was not therefore and necessarily mad; though it might, in this particular case, be strangely wanting in discrimination. He kept this reflexion to himself, however, and said, 'I have been contemplating on emotion.'

  'Emotion,' said Dr Ramis.

  'Yes,' said Stephen. 'Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now, in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider – I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?'

  'Never, my dear colleague: though Busbequius speaks of it,' replied Dr Ramis with great complacency.

  'But it seems to me that emotion and its expression are almost the same thing. Let us take your cat: now suppose we shave her tail, so that it cannot shall I say perscopate or bristle; suppose we attach a board to her back, so that it cannot arch; suppose we then exhibit a displeasing sight – a sportive dog, for instance. Now, she cannot express her emotions fully: Quaere: will she feel them fully? She will feel them, to be sure, since we have suppressed only the grossest manifestations; but will she feel them fully? Is not the arch, the bottle-brush, an integral part and not merely a potent reinforcement – though it is that too?'

  Dr Ramis inclined his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and lips, and said, 'How can it be measured? It cannot be measured. It is a notion; a most valuable notion, I am sure; but, my dear sir, where is your measurement? It cannot be measured. Science is measurement – no knowledge without measurement.'

  'Indeed it can,' cried Stephen eagerly. 'Come, let us take our pulses.' Dr Ramis pulled out his watch, a beautiful Breguet with a centre seconds hand, and they both sat gravely counting. 'Now, dear colleague, pray be so good as to imagine – to imagine vehemently – that I have taken up your watch and wantonly flung it down; and I for my part will imagine that you are a very wicked fellow. Come, let us simulate the gestures, the expressions of extreme and violent rage.'