Book 2 - Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Did he indeed say that?' cried Jack. 'I shall never think the same of him again. I have no doubt your Ossian was a very honest fellow.'

  'He did, sir, upon my honour,' cried Macdonald, laying his right hand flat upon the table. 'And falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus, I say.'

  'Why, yes,' said Jack, who was as well acquainted with old omnibus as any man there present. 'Falsum in omnibus. What do you say to omnibus, Stephen?'

  'I concede the victory,' said Stephen smiling. 'Omnibus routs me.'

  'A glass of wine with you, Doctor,' said Macdonald.

  'Allow me to help you to a little of the underside,' said Jack. 'Killick, the Doctor's plate.'

  'More dead men, Joe?' asked the sentry at the door, peering into the basket.

  'God love us, how they do stow it away, to be sure,' said Joe, with a chuckle. 'The big cove, the civilian—it's a pleasure to see him eat. And there's figgy-dowdy to come, and woodcocks on toast, and then the punch.'

  'You ain't forgotten me, Joe?' said the sentry.

  'The bottle with the yellow wax. They'll be singing any minute now.'

  The sentry put the bottle to his lips, raised it up and up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and observed, 'Rum stuff they drink in the cabin: like blackstrap, only thinner. How's my gent?'

  'You'll carry him to his cot, mate: he's coming along royal, sheets aflowing. Which the same goes for buff waistcoat. A bosun's chair for him.'

  'Now, sir,' said Jack to Canning, 'we have a Navy dish that I thought might amuse you. We call it figgy-dowdy. You do not have to eat it, unless you choose—this is Liberty Hall. For my part, I find it settles a meal; but perhaps it is an acquired taste.'

  Canning eyed the pale, amorphous, gleaming, slightly translucent mass and asked how it was made; he did not think he had ever seen anything quite like it.

  'We take ship's biscuit, put it in a stout canvas bag—' said Jack.

  'Pound it with a marlin-spike for half an hour—' said Pullings.

  'Add bits of pork fat, plums, figs, rum, currants,' said Parker.

  'Send it to the galley, and serve it up with bosun's grog,' said Macdonald.

  Canning said he would be delighted—a new experience—he had never had the honour of dining aboard a man-of-war—happy to acquire any naval taste. 'And really,' he said, 'it is excellent, quite excellent. And so this is bosun's grog. I believe I must beg for another glass. Capital, capital. I was telling you, sir,' he said, leaning confidentially over towards Jack, 'I was telling you some ten or twenty courses back, that I had heard a wonderful Figaro at the Opera. You must run up if you possibly can; there is a new woman, La Colonna, who sings Susanna with a grace and a purity I have never heard in my life—a revelation. She drops true on the middle of her note, and it swells, swells . . . Ottoboni is the Contessa, and their duet would bring tears to your eyes. I forget the words, but you know it, of course.' He hummed, his bass making the glasses tremble.

  Jack beat the time with his spoon and struck in with 'Sotto i pini . . .'

  They sang it through, then through again; the others gazed at them with a mild, bemused, contemplative satisfaction; at this stage it seemed natural that their captain should personate a Spanish lady's maid, and even, somewhat later, three blind mice.

  Before the mice, however, there was an event that confirmed them in their affectionate regard for Mr Canning: the port went round, and, the loyal toast being proposed, Canning leapt to his feet, struck his head against a beam and collapsed into his chair as though pole-axed. They had always known it might happen to some land-soldier or civilian, had never actually seen it, and, since he had done himself no lasting injury, they were enchanted. They comforted him, standing round his chair, dressing the lump with rum, assuring him that it was quite all right—it would soon pass—they often banged their heads—no harm in it—no bones broken. Jack called for the punch, telling the steward in a rapid undertone that a bosun's chair was to be rigged, and administered a tot with a medical air, observing, 'We are privileged to drink the King seated in the Navy, sir; we may do so without the least disrespect. Few people know it however—quite recent—it must seem very strange.'

  'Yes. Yes.' said Canning, staring heavily straight at Pullings. 'Yes. I remember now.' Then, as the punch spread new life throughout his vitals he smiled round the table and said, 'What a green hand I must look to all you gentlemen.'

  It passed, as they had told him it would, and a little while later he joined them in these mice, the Bay of Biscay-o, Drops of Brandy, the Female Lieutenant, and the catch about the lily-white boys, in which he excelled them all, roaring out.

  Three, three the rivals

  Two, two the lily-white boys, clothed all in green-o,

  But one is one and all alone

  And evermore shall be so

  ending with a power and a depth that none of them could reach: Boanerges.

  'There is a symbolism there that escapes me,' said Stephen, his right-hand neighbour, when the confused cheering had died away.

  'Does it not refer to—' began Canning; but the others had returned to their mice, all singing in voices calculated to reach the foretop in an Atlantic gale, all except Parker, that is to say, who could not tell one tune from another and who merely opened and closed his mouth with an expression of polite good-fellowship, in a state of exquisite boredom; and Canning broke off to join them.

  He was still with the mice as he was steered into the bosun's chair and lowered gently into his boat, still with them as he was rowed over the sea towards the great dark assembly of ships under the Goodwin sands; and Jack, leaning over the rail, heard his voice growing fainter and fainter—see how they run, see how they run—until at last it turned back to Three, three the rivals, dying quite away.

  'That was as successful a dinner-party as I remember, afloat,' said Stephen at his side. 'I thank you for my part in it.'

  'Do you really think so?' said Jack. 'I was so glad you enjoyed it. I particularly wished to do Canning well: apart from anything else, he is a very rich man, and one does not like the ship to look scrape-farthing. I was sorry to call a halt so soon, however; but I must have a little light for manoeuvring. Mr Goodridge, Mr Goodridge, how is your tide?'

  'She'll be making for another glass, sir.'

  'Your fender-men are ready?'

  'Ready, all ready, sir.'

  The wind was fair, but at slack water they were to unmoor and pass through the squadron and the convoy: Jack had a mortal dread that the Polychrest might foul one of the men-of-war or half the straggling convoy, and he had armed a party with long poles to shove her off.

  'Then let us step into your cabin.' When they were below he said, 'You have the charts spread out, I see. I believe you are a Channel pilot, Master?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Just as well: I know the West Indian waters and the Mediterranean better than these. Now I want you to lay the sloop half a mile off Gris Nez at three in the morning, the steeple bearing north fifty-seven east and the tower on the cliff south sixty-three east.'

  Towards four bells in the middle watch Jack came on deck: the Polychrest was lying to under foretopsail and mizzen, bowing the swell with her odd nervous lift and jerk. The night was still sharp and clear, bright moonlight, and eastwards a pale host of stars—Altair rising over the dark mass of Cap Gris Nez under the starboard quarter. And the wind was still this same nipping breeze out of the north-west. But far over on the larboard bow trouble was brewing: no stars above Castor and Pollux, and the moon was sinking towards a black bar right across the horizon. With a falling glass this might mean a blow from the same quarter—an uncomfortable position, with the shore so close under his lee. 'I wish it were over,' he said, beginning his ritual pace. His orders required him to be off the headland at three in the morning, to fire a blue light, and to receive a passenger from a boat that should answer his hail with the word Bourbon: he was then to proceed with all possible dispatch to Dover. If no boat appeared or if he were driven off
his station by stress of weather, then he was to repeat the operation on the three succeeding nights, remaining out of sight by day.

  This was Pullings' watch, but the master was also on deck, standing over by the break of the quarterdeck, keeping an eye on his landmarks, while the quiet business of the ship went on. From time to time Pullings trimmed the sails to keep them exactly balanced, the carpenter's mate reported the depth of water in the well—eighteen inches, which was more than was right; the master-at-arms made his rounds, the glass turned, the bell rang, the sentinels called 'All's well' from their various posts, the look-outs and the helm were relieved. The watch took a turn at the pumps; and all the while the breeze hummed through the rigging, the sum of the notes rising and falling through a full tone as the ship rolled, her masts straining their shrouds and braces now this side, now that.

  'Look out afore, there,' called Pullings.

  'Aye-aye, thir,' came the distant voice. Bolton, one of the men pressed from the Indiaman, a glowering, surly, murderous brute with no front teeth—yellow fangs each side of a lisping gap; but a good seaman.

  Jack held his watch to the moonlight: still a long time to go, and now the dark bar in the north-west had swallowed up Capella. He was thinking of sending a couple of men to the mast-head when the look-out hailed. 'Upon deck, thir. Boat on the thtarboard quarter.'

  He reached up into the shrouds and swung himself to the rail, searching the dark sea. Nothing. 'Where away?' he called.

  'Right on the quarter. Maybe half a point off now. Pulling like hell, three of a thide.'

  He caught sight of her as she crossed the path of the moon. About a mile away: very long, very low, very narrow, more like a line on the water: travelling fast towards the land. This was not his boat—wrong shape, wrong time, wrong direction.

  'What do you make of her, Mr Goodridge?' he asked.

  'Why, sir, she's one of those Deal shells—death-or-money boats, they call 'em, or guinea-boats as some say; and by the look of her, she's got a main heavy cargo aboard. They must have seen a revenue cutter or a cruiser early on, for now they've got to pull against the ebb, and it runs cruel hard off the point. Do you mean to snap her up, sir? It's now or never with the race off the headland. What a bit of luck.'

  He had not seen one before, but he knew them by reputation, of course: they were more like racing-craft for a quiet river than anything built to face a sea—every notion of safety sacrificed to speed; but the profit on smuggling gold was so great that the Deal men would take them clean across the Channel. They could run away from anything, pulling into the eye of the wind, and although the men were sometimes drowned, they were very rarely caught. Unless, as it might fall out, they chanced to be right under the lee of a pursuer, hampered by a swift tide, and tired out by their long pull. Or if they ran straight into a waiting man-of-war.

  Gold packed very small: there might be five or six hundred pounds for him in that frail shell, as well as seven prime hands, the best seamen on the coast—lawful prize, for their protections would be of no sort of use to them whatsoever now. He had the weather-gage. He had but to fill his foretopsail, pay round, set everything she could carry, and bear down. To run from him she would have to pull dead against the tide, and they would not be able to keep that up for long. Twenty minutes: perhaps half an hour. Yes, but then he would have to beat back again to his station; and he knew the Polychrest's powers in that direction, alas.

  'There's the best part of an hour to go before three, sir,' said the master at his side. Jack held up his watch again; the master-at-arms held his lantern to light it; the listening quarterdeck fell unnaturally silent. They were all seamen aft, but by now even the framework-knitter in the waist knew what was afoot.

  'I only make it seven minutes past, sir,' said the master.

  No. It would not do. 'Mind your helm.' snapped Jack as the Polychrest yawed a full point to starboard. 'Mr Pullings, check the blue lights,' he said, and resumed his pacing. For the first five minutes it was hard to bear: every time he reached the taffrail there was that boat, drawing in nearer and nearer to the land, but still in extreme danger. After his twentieth turn she had crossed the invisible line into safety: the sloop could no longer cut her off—he could no longer change his mind.

  Five bells: he checked their position, bringing the bearing-compass on to the steeple and the tower. The dirty weather in the north-west was skirting the Great Bear now. Six bells, and the blue light soared up, burst, and drifted away to leeward, lighting all their upturned faces with an unnatural emphasis—open mouths, mindless wonder.

  'Mr Pullings, be so good as to send a reliable man into the top with a night-glass,' said Jack. And five minutes later, 'Maintop, there. What do you see? Any boat pulling from under the land?'

  A pause. 'Nothing, sir. I got the line of surf in my glass, and nothing ain't pulled off yet.'

  Seven bells. Three well-lit ships passed out at sea, running down the Channel—neutrals, of course. Eight bells, and the changing watch found the Polychrest still there. 'Take her out into the offing, Mr Parker,' said Jack. 'Sink the land entirely, making as little southing as ever you can. We must be here again tomorrow night.'

  But the Polychrest spent tomorrow night on the other side of the Channel, lying to under Dungeness, shipping such seas that Jack thought he should have to run for the shelter of the Isle of Wight, and report back to the admiral with his tail between his legs, his mission unaccomplished; but the wind chopped round westwards at dawn, and the sloop, pumping hard, began to creep back under close-reefed topsails across the angry water—a sea so short and steep that she proceeded by sickening and often unpredictable jerks, and in the gun-room no amount of fiddles or ingenuity on the parts of the diners would keep their food on the table.

  The purser's place was empty, as it usually was as soon as the first reef was taken in; and Pullings was dozing as he sat.

  'You do not suffer from the sea-sickness, sir?' said Stephen to Macdonald.

  'Why, no, sir. But then I come from the Western Isles, and we are in boats as soon as we are breeched.'

  'The Western Isles . . . The Western Isles. There was a Lord of the Isles—of your family, I presume, sir?'—Macdonald bowed. 'And that always seemed to me the most romantic title that ever was. We, indeed, have our White Knight, and the Knight of the Glen, the O'Connor Don, the McCarthy Mor, O'Sionnach the Fox, and so on; but the Lord of the Isles . . . it gives a feeling of indeterminate magnificence. That reminds me: I had the strangest impression today—an impression of time recovered. Two of your men, both by the name of Macrea, I believe, were speaking privately, furbishing their equipment with one piece of pipeclay between them as I stood near them—nothing of any consequence, you understand, just small disagreement about the pipeclay, the first desiring the second to kiss his arse and the second wishing the soul of the first to the Devil and a good deal more to the same effect. And I understood directly, without the least thought or conscious effort of will!'

  'You have the Gaelic, sir?' cried Macdonald.

  'No, sir,' said Stephen, 'and that is what is so curious. I no longer speak it; I thought I no longer understood it. And yet there at once, with no volition on my part, there was complete understanding. I had no idea the Erse and the Irish were so close; I had imagined the dialects had moved far apart. Pray, is there a mutual understanding between your Hebrideans and the Highlanders on the one, and let us say the native Ulstermen on the other?'

  'Why, yes, sir; there is. They converse tolerably well, on general subjects, on boats, fishing, and bawdy. There are some different words, to be sure, and great differences of intonation, but with perseverance and repetition they can make themselves understood very well—a tolerably free communication. There are some Irishmen among the pressed hands, and I have heard them and my marines speaking together.'

  'If I had heard them, they would be on the defaulters' list,' said Parker, who had come below, dripping like a Newfoundland dog.

  'Why is this?' asked Stephen
.

  'Irish is forbidden in the Navy,' said Parker. 'It is prejudicial to discipline; a secret language is calculated to foment mutiny.'

  'Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,' said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. 'We'll lose the mizzen first, Doctor,'—picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage—'and so we'll be a brig; then we'll lose the foremast, so we'll be a right little old sloop; then we'll lose the main, and we'll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.'

  By some miracle of dexterity Macdonald had seized, and preserved, the decanter; holding it up he said, 'If you can find a whole glass, Doctor, I should be happy to drink a wee doodly of wine with you, and to lead your mind back to the subject of Ossian. From the obliging way in which you spoke of my ancestor, it is clear that you have a fine delicate notion of the sublime; and sublimity, sir, is the greatest internal evidence of Ossian's authenticity. Allow me to recite you a short description of the dawn.'

  Once again the blue light shone down on the deck of the Polychrest and the uplifted faces of the watch; but this time it drifted off to the north-east, for the wind had come right round, bringing a thin rain and the promise of more, and this time it was almost instantly answered by musketry on the shore—red points of flame and a remote pop-pop-pop.

  'Boat pulling off, sir,' called the man in the top. And two minutes later, 'On deck, on deck there! Another boat, sir. Firing on the first one.'

  'All hands to make sail,' cried Jack, and the Polychrest woke to urgent life. 'Fo'c'sle, there; cast loose two and four. Mr Rolfe, fire on the second boat as I run inshore. Fire the moment they bear—full elevation. Mr Parker, tops'ls and courses.' They were half a mile off, well out of range of his carronades, but if only he could get under way he would soon shorten it. Oh, for just one long gun, a chaser . . .