The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  The list had been very much enriched by Stephen and Jacob's private information, and with the wind settling into the west a little south and increasing to a fine topgallant breeze they went reaching down the coast at a handsome pace. There was not a night without a fire, great or small, to larboard; and Stephen noticed that Jack and the master were more than usually exact in their calculation of distance made good, and that whenever the ships were off one of the yards Jack Aubrey was in the foretop and Reade high-perched in the schooner's rigging, gazing at the ruin with a grim satisfaction. He also noticed that the gun-room was uneasy, remarkably restrained: they knew that there was something in the intelligence line at work, something that should not be openly discussed; though Somers, an ardent fisherman, did say of the flaming carcass of a half-finished corvette, that it was more like buying one's salmon off a fishmonger's slab than catching it with a well-directed fly.

  Yet the satisfaction did exist, and it reached its height off Durazzo itself, with all seven yards (counting those of the suburbs) in a blaze that lit the sky, and in which the masts and yards of a small frigate and two corvettes flamed like enormous torches.

  'Well,' said Jack, 'it may not be very glorious, Stephen; but by God, your allies have cleaned the coast marvellously; and although they have lost us a small fortune in prize-money, they have saved us a world of time. There may be something to be said for your Saint George and his omens after all.'

  Chapter Six

  At Durazzo they stood out to sea, leaving the blaze on their larboard quarter and sailing across an uneventful sea with a fine topgallant breeze. But two days later, a little after seven bells in the last dog-watch the mild northerly wind that had brought them so far gave a sigh and faltered; and those that knew these waters well said 'We're in for a right levanter, mate.'

  Jack gazed at the sky: his officers, the bosun and the older hands gazed at Jack: and no one was surprised when just before the usual moment for the pipe 'Stand by your hammocks' the Commodore took over the deck and called for preventer-stays, rolling tackles, the taking in of topgallants, the rigging of storm-jibs and staysails, and the bowsing of the guns so taut up against the sides that their carriages squeaked, all except for the brass bow-chaser that fired the evening gun.

  The hands perfectly agreed with the orders, unwelcome though they were to the watch below, and they worked with remarkable speed—scarcely a word of direction, all the original Surprises being truly able seamen—partly because the larbowlins wanted to turn in after a long day and partly because they all knew how violent and sudden and untrustworthy these Mediterranean winds could be.

  When at last the evening gun boomed out and the bosun did pipe 'Stand by your hammocks', the first gust of the levanter came racing across the water with a low cloud of spray: it struck the Surprise from astern, a glancing blow that drove her foretop deep, so that she gave a sudden peck like a horse going over a hedge and finding the ground on the far side much lower than it had expected—a movement so violent that it flung Stephen and Jacob the length of the gun-room, together with their backgammon board, the dice and the men.

  'It was the all-dreaded thunder-stroke,' said Stephen.

  'I am in no position to contradict you, colleague, being your subordinate,' said Jacob, 'but in my opinion it is the first blast of a levanter. And I believe Shakespeare said thunder-stone.'

  'I do not set myself up as an authority on Shakespeare,' said Stephen.

  'Nor I. All I know of the gentleman is that he had a second-best bed.'

  'I was aware that being gammoned twice running had vexed you: but to this degree . . . I wonder that competitive games have survived so long, such intense resentment do they breed. Even I dislike being beaten at chess.'

  Jacob, having picked up the last of the dice, was about to say something very cutting indeed, when Somers walked in. 'Well, gentlemen,' he said 'I would not have you go on deck without tarpaulins and a sou'wester for the world. I am soused as a herring, and must shift my clothes directly.' He moved towards his cabin, and Jacob called after him, 'Is it raining?'

  'No, no. It is only a prodigious spindrift worked up by this levanter—coming aboard in buckets.'

  'Beg pardon, sir,' said Killick to Stephen (he rarely took notice of the assistant surgeon), 'which Mr Daniel has taken a tumble and Poll thinks it may again be his collar-bone.'

  His collar-bone it was, and he was stupid from having pitched from a skid-beam to the deck, hitting his head and shoulder on a gun and its carriage. Stephen strapped him up, eased his pain, and had him carried by two strong men of his division (he was well-liked, though a newcomer) to a cot where he could lie in what peace the ship allowed, which was not inconsiderable. She had settled down to running about two points free, very fast and, apart from the racing of water along her side, very quietly; and since she was both undermanned and healthy, Daniel had an empty corner of the sick-berth. But Stephen was not satisfied with his bone, still less with his confusion and his general appearance. He sat with him until the young man seemed easier, even dozing, and then told Poll to give him as much to drink as he wanted, soup with an egg beaten up in it at the changing of the watch, and no company to trouble him with advice of what he ought to have done.

  Stephen returned to the gun-room, where he found Jacob watching Somers and Harding playing chess on a heavy-weather board, the men pegging into holes. He drew him aside and said, 'You knew Laennec much better than I, did you not?'

  'I believe so. We used to talk at great length about auscultation: I read his first treatise and made some suggestions that he was kind enough to adopt in the final version.'

  'Then pray come and look at one of our most recent patients.'

  'The scalded cook?'

  'No. Mr Daniel, a master's mate. The Commodore brought him aboard at Mahon. I do not like the sound of his chest, and should like a second opinion.'

  They tapped and listened, tapped and listened, trying to distinguish between the echoes they produced and the working of the ship. She was running even faster now, in the stronger wind, and the vibration of her taut rigging, transmitted to her hull by its various points of attachment, filled the sick-bay with a body of all-pervading sound, pierced by the squeak or rattle of countless blocks.

  The second opinion was not much firmer than the first, but more foreboding. 'That amiable young man of yours is in a bad way, as you know very well: undernourished, meagre. I cannot directly point to an inchoate phthisis; but if a pneumonia were to declare itself tomorrow or the next day, I should not be surprised. And that contusion may well turn very ugly. We have no leeches, I collect?'

  'The midshipmen stole them for bait.'

  Four bells in the first watch, and Stephen remembered his traditional appointment with the Commodore and toasted cheese: he hurried up the various ladders, holding on with both hands and reflecting as he climbed that it came naturally to him now. And what was young Daniel going to do, in foul weather, with only one hand to cling by? The answer came at once: he would sit in the master's day cabin, making all the calculations necessary for fine navigation. Mr Woodbine had already said that it was like pure dew from Heaven, having a mate as clever with numbers as Newton or Ahasuerus.

  For once he was early, though no earlier than the scent of cheese toasting in its elegant silver dishes: Killick peered at him through a crack in the door. Stephen had had plenty of time to reflect upon the trifling interval between the perception of a grateful odour and active salivation and to make a variety of experiments, checked by his austerely beautiful and accurate Breguet repeater, before the door burst open and the Commodore strode in, sure-footed on the heaving deck and scattering seawater in most directions. 'There you are, Stephen,' he cried, his red face and bright blue eyes full of delight—he looked ten years younger—'I am so sorry to have kept you waiting: but I have never enjoyed a levanter half so much. It is admirably steady now, for a levanter, and we are under close-reefed topsails and courses, making close on fourteen knots! Fourteen knots
! Should you not like to come on deck and see the bow-wave we are throwing?'

  'By your leave, sir,' said Killick, in an obscurely injured or offended tone, 'wittles is up.' He walked in, stone-cold sober, as steady as a rock, bearing his elaborate toasted-cheese affair with its spirit-lamps burning blue, and followed by his equally grave and sober mate Grimble, bearing a decanter of Romanée-Conti. 'Which it wants eating this directly minute,' said Killick, with the clear implication that the Commodore was late, and set the dish down with a certain ceremony.

  It was indeed a splendid affair, half a dozen little covered rectangular dishes poised on a stand whose lower level held the spirit-lamps, the whole made with love by a Dublin silversmith not far from Stephen's Green. But both were too hungry to admire until each had eaten two dishes, wiped them clean with what little Dalmatian soft-tack remained; then they gazed at the silver with some complacency and drank their capital wine, holding the glasses up so that candlelight shone through.

  'I do not like to boast about the qualities of the ship,' said Jack, 'but touching wood and barring all accidents, errors and omissions, we ought to log well over two hundred miles in four and twenty hours, as we sometimes did in the Trades, or even better; and if nothing carries away, and if this dear levanter don't blow itself out in a single day, as they sometimes do, we should raise your Pantellaria on Friday, and the Cape Bon you mention so often. One, three, six or nine days is the rule for this wind.'

  'So it is for my homely tramontane. But, Jack, do you not fear the impervious horrors of a leeward shore?'

  'Lord, Stephen, what a fellow you are! Don't you know we are in the lonian already, with Cape Santa Maria far astern and no lee-shore for a hundred sea-miles?'

  'What is the difference between a sea and a land mile, tell?'

  'Oh, nothing much, except that the sea-mile is rather longer, and very, very much wetter, ha, ha ha! Lord, what a wag I am,' he said, wiping his eyes when he had had his laugh out. 'Very much wetter. But leaving wit aside, another three days, do you see—if we do not waste our time stopping at Malta—should place us well west of Pantellaria.'

  They were indeed west of Pantellaria before the levanter, in its turn, died in half a dozen sullen howls: the two surgeons contemplated the shore and the little fishing port from the taffrail. 'After long reflexion,' said Stephen Maturin, 'it appears to me that there is no great point in knowing whether the messengers have passed or not: our mission is the same in either case—to dissuade the Dey from shipping that which he does not yet possess. And with this wind Mr Aubrey assures me that nothing could have left Algiers, even if the Dey had the treasure in his care—a most unlikely event. He also states that it is extremely improbable that a houario could have survived such a tempest: a houario is not a xebec. Yet conceivably it might have taken shelter in the harbour over there,'—nodding towards Pantellaria—'and since I think we had rather know than not know, I shall beg you to accompany the boat, which the purser is taking in, ostensibly for the purchase of horsehide, tallow, scourges and things of that kind, and ask whether there is any news of a Durazzo houario—your Italian is better than mine. And then, richer in knowledge, we can push on, passing by Cape Bon, which I long to see at this time of the year. You have no objection to climbing down into the boat?'

  'None in the least, dear colleague. No one can say that my spirit is affected by six-foot waves: and by the way, what is the difference between a houario and a xebec?'

  'Oh, there are so many regional variations, and without endless technical details it could not be made plain: but very roughly the xebec is longer, stronger, and most remarkably fleet. Dear colleague, here is the boat. Pray urge them to waste not a minute.'

  They wasted not a minute, and Mr Candish, having bought hide and, with Dr Jacob's help, two puncheons of the famous local wine, they returned: but empty-handed as far as news of the Durazzo houario was concerned. The captain of the port, who had sold them the leather and the wine, had no word of any such vessel calling or passing, and he very much doubted that so light a craft could have survived such a furious blow. However, he said, they need not be afraid: there would be no wind of any kind for at least three days, only very slight western airs, bringing a very welcome drizzle. If the gentlemen would like company while they lay off the island, he would be happy to send some young women.

  His forecast was perfectly accurate: they lay off the island day after day, sometimes seeing it through the drizzle; and the frigate's people spent their time making and mending, pointing ropes, re-leathering the jaws of booms and gaffs, and of course fishing over the side. The small rain spoilt dancing on the fo'c'sle, but there was a good deal of ship-visiting, and Jack and as many of his officers who could be fitted round the table dined with William Reade aboard Ringle. Jacob's forecast, however, was not fulfilled. He was the first to admit that Daniel's thorax no longer made the ugly noises that had alarmed them both; yet he did maintain that the collar-bone was likely to prove long in knitting—that active exercise such as swarming up the masts was not to be countenanced for a moment. 'Not that I am to tell you anything about a froward clavicle,' he added. 'Pray forgive me.'

  'Oh, I entirely agree with what you say,' said Stephen. 'When young fellows are returning to health, supervision is often necessary, and when neither Poll nor the other women nor yet his messmates are sitting with him, I shall do so. In a sick-bay so sparsely inhabited as this, boredom is likely to set in, growing to intolerable proportions.'

  In fact the Commodore, the master, the other officers and the inhabitants of the midshipmen's berth looked in often enough to prevent any extremity of tedium; but the shoulder continued painful, and after lights out, which meant no reading, he was very glad of Stephen's presence. By the time the dreadful calm of Pantellaria ended in light and variable breezes, often bringing rain, and the Surprise was working towards Algiers, taking advantage of every favourable shift, he had quite lost his initial shyness of the Doctor.

  Cape Bon was a cruel disappointment: they had passed it before the sun was up, and when the unwilling day broke at last, all that could be seen was the distant African shore to a height of twenty feet: everything above that was thin grey cloud, and although the voices of those migrant birds that travelled in groups could be heard—the clangour of cranes, the perpetual gossip of finches—never a one could be seen, though Cape Bon was a famous point of departure for some very uncommon examples of the later migrants at this time of the year.

  'I hope you saw your cranes, sir?' said Daniel when Stephen came to sit with him that evening.

  'Well, I heard them at least: a great harsh cry up there in the cloud. Did you ever hear a crane, John Daniel?'

  'Never, sir. But I think I heard or saw most of the birds in our parts: herons quite often, and sometimes a bittern. Mr Somerville, our curate and schoolmaster, would point them out: and there were half a dozen of us, mostly farmers' sons, that he used to give a penny a nest—I mean for particular birds, sir, not any old wood-pigeon or crow. And we were never allowed to touch the eggs. He was very good to us.'

  'Will you tell me about your school?'

  'Oh, sir, it was an ancient old place, one long very high room—you could scarcely see the roof-beams—and it was run by the parson, his son and daughter, and Mr Somerville the curate. It did not set up for a great deal of learning. Pretty Miss Constance taught the little boys reading and writing in a small room of her own—how we loved her! And then they moved up to the great room, where there would be three lessons going on at once. The boys were mostly farmers' sons or the better sort of shopkeepers'; and in spite of the din the brighter ones had a fair amount of Latin if they stayed long enough, and history and scripture and casting accounts. I never could get ahead in Latin, but I really did shine at sums and what we called mensuration: I loved numbers even then, and I shall never forget my happiness when Mr Somerville showed me the use of logarithms.'

  'Time for Mr Daniel's gruel,' said Mrs Skeeping. 'Now, sir, let me spoon it into you.' She
heaved him up in his cot—an accustomed hand, and he was not a great weight—and with professional skill and rapidity fed him a bowlful, stopping only when the spoon had cleaned the sides entirely.

  'Thank you, Poll,' called Daniel after her, and he lay back gasping. 'Logarithms,' he went on presently. 'Yes, but that was later, when my father had had to take me away from school, and I kept the shop while he catalogued gentlemen's libraries or went the round of the markets. Mr Somerville used to give me private lessons; and as some sort of exchange I copied his mathematical essays fair: he had a difficult hand and he made many, many corrections, while mine was tolerably neat. He lodged with us, on the first floor, as I think I said; and we were into conic sections when he died.'

  'I am afraid that must have been a sad loss to you.'

  'It was, sir: a cruel, cruel loss.' After a silence he went on, 'And although it sounds almost wicked to say so, it could not have come at a worse moment. Trade had dropped away most shockingly, and without his few shillings we were poor indeed. I would sit there in the shop all day, and no one would come in. I read and read—Lord, how I read at that unhappy time.'

  'What did you read, upon the whole?'

  'Oh, Mr Somerville's mathematical books, as far as I could: but most were beyond me. Nearly all the time it was books of voyages, as it always had been in my childhood. My father had taken over a stock of such collections—Harris, Churchill, Hakluyt and many another. I had learnt my reading in those heavy great folios. They were beautiful books, full of delight; yet nobody would buy them. People were not buying books any more, and if ever a customer appeared it was to sell, not to buy. In the days when people were buying, my father had sold on credit, long credit; but however long, the bills were not paid. And then an old gentleman whose library my father had been cataloguing for a great while and who owed him a large sum that he relied upon, died. His heirs fell out about the will, and neither side would settle my poor father's account—the court would decide who was responsible, they said. In the town it was reported that the trial would take years and that my father was penniless. Some tradesmen spoke of suing, for we owed a good deal; none liked to give any more credit. So we lived on very miserably, selling odds and ends, doing what we could. Then a London bookseller from whom my father had had several expensive great books on architecture and the like for gentlemen who had not yet settled, came down, saw how things were with us, and said he must have his money. This came at the same time as rent and taxes, and although one of the gentlemen wrote from Ireland saying that he would deal with the bill on quarter-day, nobody believed him and nobody would lend us a groat. It was clear that my father would be in a debtors' prison very soon, so I walked down to Hereford, to the rendezvous as they call it, and volunteered for the Navy: they looked rather doubtful, but men were very hard to find, so they gave me the bounty—all in gold—more than a year's living in a quiet way, our debts paid—and I sent it home by a carrier I knew well. Then the little band of pressed men and . . .'