The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  'A charming letter from Dolly, and quite good news of the children: the rest was mostly bills. But Jack, I am truly sorry to say the cutter also brought me an order from the flag. I am required to acquaint you that on the night you received a pilot from Ramillies and shaped a course for the Raz de Sein two French frigates sailed from Brest with the wind at north-east and are now attacking British and allied merchantmen with great success. This cannot but be attributed to your negligence in not keeping a good lookout since from all appearance the Frenchmen must have crossed your wake. I am therefore to reprimand you severely: and you are hereby severely reprimanded.'

  'Yes, sir,' said Jack, without expression. 'Is that all?'

  'No,' replied Fanshawe with more expression than he intended and with his eyes on the paper in front of him. 'I am also under orders to require you to proceed off Ushant without the loss of a moment and to report to the flag: there you will be attached to the offshore squadron where it is hoped that other and perhaps sharper eyes will diminish the very grave consequences of such unseamanly negligence.'

  A silence. Neither intended to comment on the Admiral's prose.

  'Will you dine with me, Jack?' asked Fanshawe in an attempt at an ordinary conversational tone.

  'Thank you very much, Billy,' said Jack, 'but without the loss of a moment stands in the way. And between ourselves, my post acquainted me that I have been taken in adultery without a goddamn leg to stand on and that there is the Devil to pay. It destroys a man's appetite, you know.'

  'Oh, my dear Jack, I know, I know,' cried Fanshawe with great feeling. 'I know only too well. Come, drink up your brandy and I will see you over the side.'

  Coming aboard the Bellona again Jack returned the many salutes, walked into his cabin, where the letters were still strewn over a medley of unopened covers, and sent for the master. 'Mr Woodbine,' he said, 'pray shape a course for Ushant, for wherever the offshore squadron is most likely to be lying at this state of the tide and in the particular wind. Or whatever wind we find out there.'

  Indeed, the winds the offshore squadron experienced were generally very much harder than those that blew eastward of Ushant, especially the great south-westers, from whose full force and from whose prodigious seas the inshore ships were protected to some degree by the chain of the Saints, which acted as a not very efficient but still appreciable breakwater; and this was even more evident in the Chenal de la Helle, which Woodbine took that afternoon.

  They made good progress, and although the topsails had to be double-reefed on reaching the wholly unprotected Passage de Fromveur it was clear that the wind was diminishing. On the other hand, the monstrous sea it had worked up on the far side of the island was if anything greater still, in spite of the heavy rain, by the time they reached the squadron, lying-to off the Stiff Bay in the north-east; and when Jack, in response to the flagship's Captain repair aboard, made his way down into his wildly heaving barge he missed his footing for once and with his boat-cloak flying about his ears he fell plump into the water swirling about the boat's bottom. Much more water joined it on the way across, and it was a damp Jack Aubrey that stood waiting for his interview with the Admiral aboard the Charlotte. A long wait; and although Charles Morton, her captain, was civil enough Jack knew perfectly well that a man who was very much out of favour, who had just received a reprimand, a severe reprimand, was a dangerously infectious leper, above all in a ship governed by Stranraer; and he inflicted neither his remarks nor his presence on any of the officers about him.

  When he was taken into the Admiral's cabin he found that the Captain of the Fleet was also present, sitting at Stranraer's side behind a long table set athwartship, with the Admiral's secretary and a clerk at the larboard end. 'Good evening, my lord,' he said. 'Good evening, sir.'

  'Good evening, Captain Aubrey,' said the Admiral. 'Sit down. Now what have you to say about these French frigates you allowed to slip past you?'

  'I have only to say that I very much regret any Frenchman should have got out of Brest.'

  'Then you admit they went by?'

  'I must have expressed myself badly, my lord. I expressed nothing but regret at what is said to have taken place: I acknowledged no sort of responsibility.'

  'Where was your ship at sunset on the twenty-seventh?'

  'Two cables north of the Men Glas, my lord, waiting for the tide.'

  'Then how do you explain the fact that two frigates could leave the Goulet de Brest, run out by the Iroise and be seen a league north of the Ile de Sein three quarters of an hour later without they passed astern of you, almost within hail, certainly in sight?'

  'I do not explain it at all, my lord. But I will assert that there was a lookout at each masthead and of course on the fo'c'sle, able seamen of known reliability.'

  'So you deny the possibility of the Frenchman's getting past unseen?'

  'I do not deny it. The weather was uncommon thick at times that afternoon and night—the pilot had to feel his way along past the Basse Vieille by the flash of surf—and it is not impossible that she passed unseen. What I do deny is the possibility of her doing so through the fault or negligence of any of my people.'

  'So you blame it all on the weather, do you?'

  'If blame there should be, I should certainly lay it on the fog, my lord.'

  The Admiral looked at Calvert, the Captain of the Fleet and the officer principally concerned with discipline. 'What do you say?'

  Calvert, a cold, withdrawn man, tall for a sailor and thin, looked dispassionately at Jack for a moment and said, 'In cases of this kind there is much to be said for gathering all the available objective evidence. Not only does the ship in question keep a logbook with remarks on the weather but there are also the officers' and midshipmen's journals. If this should ever become an important disciplinary matter—if there should be the least question of anyone asking for a court martial—they would certainly have to be looked at.'

  Stranraer considered. The clerk mended his pen. 'Oh, I do not think it will come to that,' said the Admiral at last. 'If Captain Aubrey will solemnly declare that his ship was in a state of full preparedness on the twenty-seventh I shall rest content.'

  Jack made the declaration. Stranraer stood up, saying, 'Then let us leave it at that.'

  'Certainly, my lord. But if you will allow me, I have a request to make: a request for leave.'

  'Leave?' cried Stranraer. 'Not more leave, for God's sake? Parliamentary leave again?'

  'No, my lord, for urgent private affairs.'

  'No. That really will not do. If every officer or seaman for that matter, were to go home every time there was an urgency in his private affairs we should never be able to man the fleet. It is not a sudden death, I trust?'

  'No, my lord.'

  'Then let us hear no more about it. Ours is a hard service, as you know very well; and this is wartime.'

  Certainly it was a hard service, and neither Admiral Stranraer nor the autumnal gales had the least intention of making it any less so. The squadron was drilled, and most rigorously drilled, in all weathers short of a close-reefed topsail blow. Towards the end of the day boats would be seen carrying apprehensive captains across to the flag to hear the Admiral's candid opinion of their seamanship: his notion of drill was curious, rather like that of the army of an earlier age, when precision of button, pipeclay and movement counted for almost everything, together with evolutions such as counter-marches which had very little to do with war, an activity that might easily spoil a uniform. Lord Stranraer had little use for gunfire. He would certainly have grappled with the French had they come out, but during his very frequent drills the great guns generally lay idle, shining wherever polish was in any way appropriate and housed with perfect regularity. It was something like the West Indian discipline transported to the Channel, where it made even less sense than it had in the Caribbean.

  Although he was constantly forming and reforming the line of battle, with the rear becoming the van and the van becoming the rear, combat its
elf did not really seem to interest the Admiral. He had in his youth been concerned in a certain number of actions, in which he had not behaved with discredit, but he pinned all his faith in the moral force of a large, intact fleet, impeccably expert in all possible manoeuvres and professionally far in advance of any possible rival, a body that would silently impose its will.

  However, these drills did at least keep Jack Aubrey very fully occupied indeed. He was extremely unwilling to have his ship and by inference his ship's company picked out for harsh signals—Bellona's number showing clear aboard the flag or the repeating frigate followed by keep your station or make more sail or some telegraphic remark such as look alive or do you need assistance—and since Bellona's crew, though a very fair body for the purpose of fighting the ship, at present included more than a fair share of landmen, and (which was even more important) had never at any time been worked up to this kind of stop-watch performance in anything but gunnery, he and his officers had to do their very utmost to anticipate the next order, a wearing task and one in which they were not always successful. The Bellona's barge therefore often joined those who were summoned aboard the flag at the end of the exercise to be told their faults by their rough-tongued admiral.

  Jack did not enjoy these sessions but they did not touch him deeply even when the strictures were deserved, which with such a crew as his was sometimes inevitable, because his mind was in a very curious state of hurry, confusion and distress. Except when it was taken up with the day-long task of making his ship give as good an account of herself in a highly competitive series of operations, often in heavy weather, his mind ran on that letter and on the stranger who had written it. Innumerable possibilities came crowding, and an immense sadness alternated with a perhaps still greater frustration which took the form of a longing for battle.

  This was clearly obvious to those that knew him well, and even the Captain of the Fleet, not an exceptionally percipient man, handled him with care aboard the Charlotte. On his own quarterdeck he awarded no punishment—there was little need—but occasionally he would clap his jaws shut on some intended rebuke; and this had an effect far more marked than any blasphemous roar.

  'I hope to God he don't explode,' said anxious, unhappy Killick.

  'God help the poor bugger he explodes upon,' said Bonden.

  Solution or at all events relief through the very great and varied emotion of battle came in sight on a Monday. The day before, Bellona like all the other ships and vessels in the squadron, had rigged church: Jack Aubrey could hardly have been called a religious man, but as well as his many superstitions he also had his pieties. He revered the sound if not the full implication of the Book of Common Prayer, the Lessons and the usual psalms and readings: the other rituals such as the inspection of the entire ship and every soul aboard her, clean, shaved, sober and toeing a given line or rather seam, soothed his mind; and although today he did not feel up to reading a sermon he and all his people were perfectly satisfied with the even more usual Articles of War, which, through immemorial use, had acquired ecclesiastical qualities of their own. It is true that there were obvious and extremely painful associations with the parish church at Woolcombe, but the great heave of the sea, the creak of the rigging and the smell of tar put a great enough distance between the two and it was not until he had returned to his cabin that an unlucky shifting of some papers to make room for his prayer-book showed him Sophie's letter clear and the sense of desolation, fury and extreme distress returned with even greater force.

  Jack Aubrey was on deck this Monday morning, having sent his breakfast away—four eggs untouched, congealing in their butter—and he saw the Admiral's signal. The Charlotte was a talkative ship, and although this was usually thought a tiresome characteristic it did give the signal-officers a great deal of practice, and now he heard Callow read off the hoists almost as they appeared, without referring to the book. The squadron was to proceed, in line abreast, on a west-south-westerly course under all plain sail, the Bellona at the southern tip: yet the glass was dropping; the southern sky, or as much of it as could be seen under the low cloud, was wanting in promise; and the sea of this ebbing tide had some curious pallid streaks, apparently rising from the depths. The first lieutenant and the master looked grave. Harding had dined with the Charlotte's wardroom the day before and he had learnt that this sweep was being carried out primarily in order to find how fast and how accurately a signal could travel from one extremity of the line—the unusually wide-spread line—to the other and back again. Lord Stranraer had another admiral, an expert on signals, aboard as a guest.

  Presently they were all under way and the line, after a great deal of nagging from the flag, was as straight on the surface of the ocean as the earth's curvature would allow. But this perfection did not last: a little before dinner the Charlotte made the signal for the squadron to tack together, emphasized by a gun; and as far as could be seen it was obeyed with tolerable regularity right across the broad front; though a second gun seemed to show that at least one ship on the far eastern end had been slow or had even missed the signal altogether—there was a good deal of murk over there. Another explanation was that the unknown ship, having already mixed its noon-day grog, was so infuriated by this untimely order that it delayed out of mere bloody-mindedness.

  Having come about, the squadron made a fair board, quite time enough to eat their quarter of a pound of cheese (this was a banyan day), and then returned to the former course, though with a little more west in it.

  Easy sailing: but presently the weather thickened, and the sound of the wind in the rigging rose steadily until it had traversed a full octave. Jack called for preventer-stays.

  'We shall soon be going home,' said Harding to Miller, who now had the watch; and by home he meant that dismal stretch of sea off Keller's Island where the Admiral liked to shelter when the sea, wind and rain threatened to become more outrageous than usual.

  'Reef topsails, Mr Miller, if you please,' said Jack. The topgallants had disappeared long since, and even the Ringle, as trim as a duck away there to leeward, showed little more than a handkerchief on each mast and a third right forward.

  'Hands reef topsails' came the cry and the sharp cutting bosun's pipe: and as the men raced aloft Jack, gazing over the larboard bow, caught hints of whiteness away down in the troubled grey, the growing sea and its now much wilder crests.

  'Port your helm,' he said quietly to Compton, the older of the two men at the wheel, a hand who knew him well, and the tone of his voice. Compton and his mate eased the great plunging ship a trifle to starboard, opening Jack a view as he stood there swaying to the sea, the telescope to his good eye.

  A long pause, an electric tension on the quarterdeck and right along the waist of the ship, filled with men who knew or knew of him; then the first of a series of blinding squalls of mixed rain, sleet and snow; and when it had passed Callow said hesitantly, 'Sir, I believe I saw Monmouth repeat Tack all together just before she vanished.'

  Jack and his officers stared briefly eastward. 'I see nothing,' he said. 'Did you make out any signal, Mr Harding?'

  'None, sir.'

  'Mr Callow: make enemy in sight two leagues south-west by south heading north-west. Mr Miller, shake out the reefs in the foretopsail: set fore topmast staysail half in.' He stepped over to the wheel and with his eye on those remote flecks in the infinity of other greys and whiteness, all shifting incessantly, he set a course to intercept the vessel, the enemy, the very probable enemy.

  The ship's company, including those who had escaped from the sick-berth along with their attendants, lined the side. If there were any so morose as to disbelieve the Captain's implied declaration, they did not mention it. From his early days as an astonishingly successful frigate-captain, coming home with a tail of captured ships and a fortune in prize-money, Jack had acquired the status of a mythical being or something very like it, a being whose judgment in these matters could not be wrong; and any scepticism would have been most furiously resente
d.

  The event confirmed the believers in their creed. Within half an hour the chase, raised high on a towering wave, was seen to be a frigate wearing French colours, herself pursuing a merchantman. She was not a national ship, however, but one of those powerful, fast-sailing privateers from Vannes or Lorient that were more deadly as commerce-raiders than the regular men-of-war and that were now making the most of what war was left to them, often running very extreme risks within miles of the Channel fleet.

  She was called Les Deux Frères and so intent was she on her prey—already within long shot, but they far preferred boarding, in case a ball, causing a leak, should spoil the cargo—that she did not make out the Bellona, partly veiled in a squall for some minutes. On doing so she instantly bore up, bringing the wind not right aft but on her quarter, her best point of sailing; at the same time, out of mere spite, she fired at the merchantman and almost immediately set her flying jib. Little good did either do. The shot missed and the sail blew out of its boltrope.

  Still, she fled along, throwing a splendid bow-wave, her heavy crew tending the sail with the utmost attention and risking long shots at the seventy-four in the hope of wounding her sails and cutting up her rigging, conceivably knocking away a yard or a topmast: after all, the Deux Frères carried a by no means contemptible armament, including some carronades. But even more than that every man and boy aboard knew that their last three captures in the chops of the Channel had made them the richest privateer afloat.

  She fled with the utmost zeal therefore, almost as fast as the Ringle steadily there on her starboard bow, just out of shot. She fled with all the earnest desire to preserve wealth and freedom that can be imagined and with almost superhuman skill; but short of the Bellona being struck by lightning—a good deal was flashing above the low cloud-cover she had no chance. For the sea was rising: minute by minute the crests were higher, the spume tearing away from their tops, and the hollows between them were deeper and wider; and in seas of this magnitude no frigate could outsail a well-handled ship of the line to windward of her, since in these deep valleys the frigate was becalmed, while the seventy-four (which in any case could spread more sail) was not, or not entirely, and she retained the momentum of her sixteen hundred tons. 'It is going to be a dirty night,' said Jack to the officer of the watch. 'Pray pass the word for the gunner. Master Gunner,' he went on, 'we will not touch the lower-deck port-lids, but it would be as well to ready the forward larboard eighteen-pounders. You drew them all yesterday, I believe?'