The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  'It had not struck me,' said Jack, 'but the situation is indeed very like. Yet could he really carry a line up that cliff? McLeod,' he called, and the tall, middle-aged seaman, a recent draught from Erebus in Gibraltar, came up, awkward and embarrassed. 'Do you think you could take a line up that cliff? Right up that cliff?'

  'I think so, sir,' said McLeod in his halting English, 'with a little well-tempered hand-pick, and a stout peg with a block to send me up another twenty-five fathom. This is no so steep as Diamond Rock, but it is softer, and may be false at top.'

  'Should you like to try? If ever it grows too false you may come down with no shame—it is only an attempt, a trial.'

  'We hauled up twenty-four pounders,' said McLeod, not quite following him.

  'Let us shove off at once,' said Jack, and he led the way to the boat. They pulled back at a great pace, helped by the current and buoyed up by recollections of the Diamond Rock, that most uncommon feat—back to Surprise as she lay so moored that her broadside would shatter the emerging galley on the starboard side if ever she ventured out, while Ringle would do the same to larboard.

  The bosun roused out coils of the strongest white line; the armourer blew his forge to an incandescent heat, fashioned wedges with eye-holes for the blocks, forged and tempered a little hand-pick, one head a beak, the other a hammer, under McLeod's supervision.

  They were still too hot to hold as the boat pulled back, though in the mean time McLeod and his cousin had sewn tight sailcloth climbing shoes.

  'In the Pyrenees I have pursued the izard, God forgive me, who dwells in the highest peaks,' said Stephen, standing with his hands behind his back, watching McLeod's ascent, 'but never have I seen such climbing. He might almost be a gecko.'

  It was indeed an extraordinary spectacle, that stalwart twelve-stone man moving up the almost perpendicular lower cliff, fissured to be sure, but from below apparently smooth; and when he reached a more craggy stretch where he could rest and then drive home his peg and make fast his line, all hands cheered amain. He tossed down his ball of twine for the next coil and so, heaving it up and putting the coil over his shoulder and carried on, faster this time, up to the middle height, while his cousin Alexander, making use of the first line, made his way up. In a surprisingly short time they were able to look cautiously over the top, the whole lagoon open below them.

  Now, while bold but less wholly intrepid hands chipped footholds along the line of the first rope and beyond, began one of the most elaborate cat's cradles that Jack had ever seen: although it was nothing to the aerial railway of the Diamond Rock, it was the bosun's seventh heaven, and presently all was ready to send a nine-pounder cannon up, sliding along a steep messenger to a point where it commanded the lagoon: and if a nine-pounder would not answer, then two fourteen-pounders could not possibly be denied.

  By night the Surprise came round at low tide, when the water was too low for the galley to attempt the outward passage from the lagoon. And offshore, in excellent holding ground, she dropped two anchors and then sent hawsers ashore. They rose by means of powerful tackles past the various staging points to the very summit, where they were made fast to a complexity of stakes and hauled taut by the ship's capstan. 'Chaser away,' said Jack, and his personal nine-pounder was made fast to the messenger, slung below it by iron hoops. At the cry of 'Handsomely, handsomely, now,' the hands at the uppermost winch, under the command of Whewell, began to turn: the long hawsers, spliced end to end, stretched, sighed, grew more rigid, and the gun began its smooth progress up along the messenger. The gun, its emplacement, its munitions, represented a prodigious amount of labour; but as the sun rose, lighting the lagoon, with the galley up against its mole, nobody was in the least fatigued.

  Jack knew his gun intimately: the distance was nothing much for a well-bored chaser—a little over a furlong—but as he told Stephen—who with Jacob, had been carried up like parcels—he had rarely fired at such a downward angle. 'I shall just try one or two sighters,' he said, 'aiming at those dilapidated houses. Run her up, shipmates.' The gun thumped against its emplacement: Jack shifted the wedge still farther, glared along the sight, made one more trifling adjustment and clapped the linstock down, arching his body to let the recoiling nine-pounder shoot back under him. While the team swabbed, cleaned, reloaded, rammed home the wad and ran her up again, he stood fanning the smoke and smiling with satisfaction: the shot had gone right home. And the Moors were swarming about the galley and the mole like startled ants.

  They were corsairs, men of war: they very quickly grasped their situation, their hopeless situation, and they seized Murad Reis, manhandled him along to the end of the mole nearest the cliff, tied his hands, forced him to kneel and called up, 'Our sins on his head. Our sins on his head.' With a single blow one of the corsairs cut Murad's head clean off, held it up to the watchers on the cliff and cried, 'Our sins on his head. Give us water and we shall be your slaves for ever—you shall have the galley: you shall have the gold.'

  Some were drinking the blood, but most were gazing up, holding out supplicatory hands.

  'Will you answer, Dr Jacob?' asked Jack.

  'It would wholly compromise my position,' said Jacob. 'Let us wait a little. I believe they have some other resource.'

  They had: some moments later a dozen almost naked powerful seamen, deeply sunburnt, scored with whip lashes but recognizably white, were pushed forward, and their leader, squaring up to the cliff, called out in a hoarse Port of London voice, 'God bless King George. Which we are British subjects, taken out of the Three Brothers, Trade's Increase and other craft: and should be very grateful to your honour for a drop of anything wet. Amen.'

  'Hear him,' croaked the others. 'Right parched we are. Drinking piss this last week.'

  'Listen,' said Jack in his strong, carrying voice. 'You take the Moors' weapons and pile them at the end of the mole, tie their hands, and I shall signal the schooner to send in a boat full of fresh water and something to eat.'

  The British subjects uttered a hoarse discordant cheer; Jack fired three or four times at random to keep up the tension; and the weapons came piling up on the mole.

  Just off the lagoon the Surprises, overflowing with satisfaction and wit, carried out the small heavy, heavy, wonderfully heavy little chests from the galley to those places deep in the Surprise where their weight wpuld be most useful as ballast. The Moorish prisoners, reasonably fed and watered, were stowed in the cable-tiers. They were, at least for the time being, very low in their spirits: indeed morally destroyed: but Jack had seen strange surprising changes in men freed from mortal danger: he reckoned with the resilience of the human spirit, particularly the maritime human spirit; and having, with his officers, fixed the ship's position with the utmost accuracy he set her course for the nearest point in Africa, where he meant to put them ashore.

  For the moment however he and Stephen were breakfasting in comfort, gazing with some complacency at the island Cranc. 'Jacob tells me,' said Stephen, 'that in Moorish Arabic the place is now called Fortnight Island. It had been a moderately prosperous fishing and corsair port—dates, carobs, pearl oysters, coral—hence the mole and the ruins—until the time of, I think, Mulei Hassan; but then a new eruption destroyed the few springs, broke the aqueducts and cisterns and slowly liberated that noxious vapour we observed. It seems that you can breathe it for fourteen days with nothing but headaches and gastric pains; but on the fifteenth you die.'

  'I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir,' said Harding, 'but you desired me to tell you when all was aboard. The last chest has just been handed down.' As he spoke his usually grave face spread in a most infectious smile: that last case, carried staggering by strong men, weighed well over a hundred and twelve pounds, and Harding, though not an avaricious or grasping man, knew just how many ounces of that mass belonged to him as prize-money.

  Patriotism, promotion, and prize-money have been described as the three masts of the Royal Navy. It would be illiberal to assert that prize-money was by any me
ans the most important, but as they left the flat shore north of Ras Uferni in Morocco, where they had at last disembarked their prisoners after a tedious voyage with contrary winds, it was certainly the subject still most frequently discussed.

  'If you people will sail the galley into Gibraltar with us,' said Captain Aubrey to the slaves, 'You shall share as able seamen.

  'Why, thankee, sir,' said Hallows, their spokesman. 'We take it uncommon handsome: and I promise we shall do our duty by your prize.'

  'That's right,' said his mates, and indeed they handled the galley very well. But they did think it part of their duty to run alongside the frigate on three separate occasions, begging the officer of the watch to shorten sail. 'There are too many eggs in this one basket to risk anything at all,' was the usual formula, thought to be both conciliating and witty.

  Jack was on deck the last time they did this, and he said, 'Hallows, if you do not keep your station I shall turn you ashore,' with such conviction that although they very nearly came within hail to tell the frigate that there was an enormous great fire on the very top of Cape Trafalgar, they thought better of it and kept the news for Ringle.

  Indeed there were fires all along the European side of the Straits, exciting unspeakable wonder aboard the three vessels: but the sight of Gibraltar itself ablaze with innumerable bonfires, the harbour filled with ships dressed over all, bands playing, trumpets blowing and drums beating madly checked all conjecture, and Surprise, having made her number, wafted silently to her usual place, with her companions.

  'The flag-lieutenant, sir, if you please,' said a midshipman at his side.

  'Give you joy of your splendid prize, sir,' cried the flag-lieutenant. 'By God, you could never have timed it better.'

  'Thank you, Mr Betterton,' said Jack. 'But pray tell me what is afoot?'

  The flag-lieutenant stared for a moment, and then he gravely replied, 'Napoleon is beat, sir. There was a great battle at Waterloo in the Low Countries, and the Allies won.'

  'Then it is I that give you joy, sir,' said Jack, shaking his hand. 'Have you any details?'

  'No, sir. But the courier is arrived and the Commander-in-Chief will have them. When your number was reported he bade me remind you of your engagement: Lady Barmouth has taken the coach to fetch the Keiths.'

  'Please tell Lord Barmouth that Dr Maturin and I shall be charmed to wait upon him, above all on such a day.'

  'There you are at last, Aubrey,' cried the Commander-in-Chief, obviously overcome by the events and obviously somewhat flushed with wine. 'Doctor, your servant, sir: very happy to see you. So here you are at last, Aubrey, and with a thundering great prize at your tail. Give you joy, of course . . . but the fellow must have led you a most infernal long chase?'

  'He did indeed, my Lord. He went to ground in an island I had never heard of, called Cranc, an island with a very shallow but sheltered lagoon—too shallow for Surprise—and I had to winkle him out by a kind of Diamond Rock caper, getting a gun up a five hundred foot cliff to fire down on him.'

  'Well, I am sure it was very creditable and I congratulate you of course; but I wish to God you could have done it under any other Dey of Algiers—this one has cut up very rough indeed—says it was his galley and everything in it—sent me a furious note and swears he will take it out of our merchantmen if there is no restitution, compensation and the rest of it.'

  'But my Lord, the galley fired on us first. That made him a pirate and fair game.'

  'That is not what the Dey says.'

  'Is the word of an upstart Dey who was never there and who knows nothing about it to be taken against that of a sea-officer who was there and who does know all about it?'

  '. . . under any other Dey,' repeated Barmouth. 'My politico takes the gloomiest view of the whole situation, and so I fear does the Ministry. They have a special commission out there, half a dozen men of the first distinction, to discuss the possibilities of a treaty, Ali Bey having always been so much in favour of England . . . Was it a very large sum of money, Aubrey?'

  'I cannot say, my Lord: it was in the form of very small gold ingots, about the size of the upper joint of one's finger. But there was one chest that must have tipped the scale at eight stone or more.'

  'A hundredweight . . . how many chests were there?'

  'I did not count, my Lord.'

  'Well, if there were only eight, my flag-officer's third would have amounted to about five thousand. It fairly makes me tear my hair . . .' Jack was tempted to say that he was not acting under Barmouth's orders at all, but carrying out Keith's, which were still valid. However, he kept his mouth shut: Barmouth muttered under his breath for a while; then, recollecting himself, he said, 'But in course it is far worse for you; and how you will ever explain it to your people without a bloody mutiny I cannot tell. But hush, the Keiths have just arrived.'

  The door opened and in walked the ladies—very fine ladies indeed, glowing with happiness, victory and all their best jewels, followed by Lord Keith. 'Jack!' cried the one, and 'Dearest Cousin Jack!' the other; and both kissed him most fondly.

  With the utmost affection and the happiest look he said, 'Queenie and Isobel, Isobel and Queenie, how very delightful it is to see you both together, and in such glorious looks, my dears.'

  'Do you remember . . .?' cried the one, and 'Do you remember . . .?' cried the other, until the Commander-in-Chief broke up the unseemly group, insisting in no very urbane or even civil tone, that their guests should be seated.

  He took one end of the table, with Queenie on his right and Arden, his political adviser (only just not late and still pale with emotion) on his left; Isobel Barmouth the other end, with Lord Keith on her right and Cousin Jack on her left.

  The politico had been detained by some further details of the great battle or rather series of battles, and these he related with a fair degree of precision; but after that the conversation languished. There had been a very, very great deal of emotion that day, and both admirals were feeling their age. Queenie and Stephen rambled along pleasantly about the island; but then she, having tried to move the Commander-in-Chief from his only too evident ill-humour, fell silent, imitated by Stephen. The only people really enjoying their meal were Jack and Isobel. Isobel was much younger than Queenie: the cousins were indeed much of an age and when they were adolescents there had been a certain degree of ambiguity about the nature of their friendship: now that ambiguity was distinctly more evident. Isobel was in fine voice and very high spirits; and it was evident to Stephen, on the other side of the table, that they were holding hands under the cloth.

  She was, he reflected, something of a rake: a very pretty rake. And it was not improbable that her cross old husband was aware of it, for when her cousin had said something that moved her to an indecorous fit of laughter, Lord Barmouth straightened in his chair and called down the table, 'Aubrey, I have just been thinking that now you have nothing to do with the Navy, you might be well advised to slip your moorings and sail off to survey the Horn and plumb the depths of Magellan: the inhabitants may prove grateful, and I am sure the young ladies would welcome such a very amusing companion.'

  This was said in such a tone that Isobel stood up at once: she and Queenie paced into the drawing-room, leaving an abashed group of men standing there, all at a moral disadvantage.

  The servants were by no means unaccustomed to this, and the port very soon made its appearance; it had gone round three times when a servant asked Stephen whether Dr Jacob might have a word with him.

  Stephen excused himself and found Jacob in the hall. 'I beg pardon for disturbing you,' he said, 'but the forerunner of an Algerine delegation brought me the news of Ali Bey's deposition—he was strangled in the slave-market—and since the news of the French defeat reached Algiers earlier than Spain, the new Dey, Hassan, is sending these people to congratulate the Commander-in-Chief, to announce his accession, and to annul his predecessor's absurd claim on the captured treasure; but he should like the galley back, as a symbol of his office
, and he would be most grateful for an immediate loan of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to consolidate his position in Algiers.'

  'What you say fills me with ease,' said Stephen. 'Yet since the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Keith, the politico and Captain Aubrey and nobody else are in there, I believe you should relate all this to them.'

  'Very well: and I have the head of the English mission with me to substantiate what I say. Shall I fetch him?'

  'Not if it would take ten minutes. This news must be eaten hot.'

  'Very well.'

  Stephen led him in. 'My Lord,' he said to Barmouth, 'may I introduce my colleague Dr Jacob, a gentleman very well known to Sir Joseph Blaine?'

  'Hear, hear,' said the politico.

  'Of course you may,' said Barmouth. 'How do you do, sir? Pray take a seat. May I offer you a glass of wine?'

  'My lords and gentlemen,' said Jacob, bowing over his port. 'I must tell you that one of our most reliable agents in Algiers, accompanied by a member of the Ministry's special commission, Mr Blenkinsop, has just told me that tomorrow morning a delegation from the new Dey, Hassan, will arrive to congratulate His Majesty on the defeat of Bonaparte, to announce his own accession, and to settle a point at issue the Algerine galley and its alleged cargo. He waives his predecessor's absurd claim, and although he should like the galley back as a symbol of his office, he fully acknowledges that its commander, in firing first, deprived all persons other than the captain of His Britannic Majesty's ship of any claim to its contents. He should however be most grateful for an immediate loan of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to strengthen his present position—a loan very soon to be repaid.'