Book 18 - The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  'You are very good indeed, sir,' cried Stephen, shaking Mr Hope by the hand, 'and I should be most uncommon happy to accept your generous offer. Allow me to introduce you to my wife.' They made their way slowly through the throng towards the coach, and as they went Stephen said, 'If my friends do not find a suitable conveyance today, perhaps we might count bats together.'

  With the horses cared for and Diana installed with Stephen in the Feathers' St Vincent parlour (the Feathers himself had served in the glorious action, losing a leg below the knee) and Bonden in the snug with the sea-chests, Jack and Dundas set off again, with Killick in tow to question his innumerable acquaintance among the seamen, thick along the highwater mark or lying in the dunes behind.

  The seamen, upon the whole, were a very decent set of men and Jack felt happy among them and at home—many he had served with and barely once did he forget a name—yet once again it surprised, even astonished him that such a decent set, with so much hard-won knowledge, should have so primitive a notion of what was fun, and that they should attract such an obviously false set of hangers-on, such a forbidding crew of doxies, so very often short, thick and swarthy, sometimes so obviously diseased.

  Still, both he and Heneage had known this long before their voices broke, when they were mere first-class volunteers, not even midshipmen, and they were not much moved by the spectacle, repeated again and again as they went along from respectable taverns to boozing-kens to billiard rooms to places that were not quite open brothels so early in the day. They were looking primarily for a captain who might be on the wing for Ushant and the squadron; but any officer, commissioned, warrant or petty who could give news was welcome—or of course old shipmates now serving out there. It was a homely quest, variegated and pleasant in its way, thrusting land-borne cares into the background; and they learnt a great deal about the present way of life, the most recent news, out there off the Black Rocks and what was called Siberia.

  Yet familiar and congenial though this was—a kind of inverted homecoming, with the smell of sea and tide-wrack in their nostrils—it seemed as though their quest, so hopefully, so confidently begun, must end in disappointment and a dreary search for lodgings. A wider, much wider stretch of sand was showing now: the breeze was still steady in the true north-east, but the lovely tide alas was at half ebb as they reached the last place of all, a more reputable eating-house than most.

  'It is scarcely worth going in,' said Dundas. 'We have seen all the serving officers ashore, and this is no place for the penniless mid.'

  Yet there was a penniless mid, or at least a master's mate: young James Callaghan, laughing and talking, his large red face crimson with mirth, and he was entertaining a young person as cheerful as himself but of a more reasonable colour—a fresh, pretty, well-rounded girl, not a trollop at all.

  Captain Aubrey's tall shadow fell over them; they looked up; and in a moment their colours changed, the young woman's to an elegant rosy pink, Callaghan's to that of purser's cheese.

  Jack was a humane creature, upon the whole, and he checked the question 'What are you doing here?'—the only possible answer being 'Neglecting my duty, sir; and disobeying orders in order to lead out a wench (or some more civil equivalent)' and substituted 'Mr Callaghan, where is the tender?' Callaghan had of course leapt up, upsetting his chair, and he was almost launched into an explanation of his being here because Miss Webber could not be asked out in her home town when a glimmer of sense returned to him and he said, 'Brixham, sir: all hands aboard under Mr Despencer, at single anchor in the fairway.'

  'Then when you and your guest have finished your meal,' said Jack, with a bow to Miss Webber, 'be so good as to bring the tender round. We are at the Feathers. You need not press yourself unduly, so we catch the tail of the tide.'

  The tail of the tide swept Captain Aubrey, his surgeon, steward and coxswain round Berry Head, and they shaped their course for Ushant, all the Ringle's hands attentive and zealous, as meek as mice, they being to some degree implicated in Callaghan's crime. In spite of their zeal the Ringle could not show her best pace with the breeze so very far aft; yet even so, by the time Jack and Stephen turned in she was making rather better than thirteen knots.

  The sea-change was already working strongly. Stephen was no greater mariner, but even his mind and person found the long easy yielding of a hanging cot more natural than a motionless bed by land; and although neither had more than a nine-inch plank between him and eternity (indeed, not so much) while at the same time both were exposed to the perils of the sea and the violence of the enemy, a kind of blessed relief came over them, as though the intricacies of conducting first a tender and then a large and crowded man-of-war to a rock-strewn and hostile coast, notorious for its foul weather, perpetual south-western gales and wicked tides, were little or nothing compared with those of life on shore, of domestic life on shore.

  'I do hope Diana don't savage Heneage on the way back,' said Jack. 'You might not think it, but he is a very sensitive cove, and he feels harsh words extremely. I remember when his father called him a vile concupiscent waste-thrift whoremonger he brooded over it a whole evening.'

  'She is not much given to moral judgment,' said Stephen. 'What she really dislikes is a bore, man or woman; and a want of style.'

  'No. I mean if he were to criticize her driving, or to suggest even in a very round-about and subtle diplomatic manner, you know—that he might do better.'

  'Oh, he is wiser than that, sure. After all he knows she can put a dog-cart through the eye of a needle.'

  'I hope you are right,' said Jack. 'But she gave me a cruel bite when I happened, just happened, to throw out a remark about the bridge.'

  'I heard the remark. It was artificial, composed, tactful, and it would have vexed an angel, let alone a woman with four spirited horses between her fingers, and the sun hot on the back of her neck. And in any event, Dundas cannot claim a cousin's freedom of speech. Jack, I wish I had a memory for verse. If I had I should tell you a poem out of that dear man Geoffrey Chaucer, the way women in general have one consuming desire, the desire for command. A very true reflection, you are to observe. And he made some tolerably severe remarks on marriage, the sorrow and woe there is in marriage.' He paused for some kind of response: all that could be made out through the all-pervading ship-sounds and the run of water along the side was the steady breathing of a man lying on his back, a breathing that would presently take on flesh and become a great reverberating snore. With scarcely a thought Stephen reached for his balls of wax, kneaded them for a short while, thrust them into his ears with a prayer for the night and sank easily into a recollection of his late voyage in this vessel, with Brigid in the bows, entranced by the scent of the sea. He did not wake with the change of the watch nor barely with the coming of the light, when he lay perfectly relaxed, perfectly comfortable, until the cabin door gently opened and a midshipman came in. He tiptoed to Jack's cot and said, 'Mr Whewell's compliments, sir, and the squadron is in sight.'

  Jack growled and turned on his side. 'Mr Whewell's compliments, sir,' said the boy rather louder, smiling at Stephen, 'and the squadron is in sight. Topsails-up in the east-south-east.'

  'Thank you, Mr Wetherby,' said Jack, now broad awake. 'Have the idlers been called?'

  'Not yet, sir: perhaps five minutes to go.'

  'Thank you, Mr Wetherby,' said Jack again, dismissing him. 'I thought as much,' he observed with satisfaction. 'I rarely miss the reluctant creeping about of those poor unfortunate creatures.'

  After a pause Stephen said, 'Jack, I have heard the term idlers for ever; but in your private ear alone I will confess that I do not know its exact signification.'

  A penetrating glance showed Jack Aubrey that however wildly improbable it might seem he was not in fact being made game of and he replied, 'Why, do you see, it means those who are not required to make part of a night-watch unless all hands are called. Another word for them is day-men, because they are on duty all day. But for fear they should grow proud, and g
ive themselves airs, they are roused out rather before the sun and made to help clean the decks. Your loblolly-boy is an idler: so is the butcher, and the cooper and a whole lot of people like that . . . tell me, Stephen, what will you do for a loblolly-boy now that you have left Padeen behind?'

  'The Dear knows. I shall look through the new draught in case we now have a paragon aboard the Bellona, a wholly reliable man that will give exact doses as regularly as my watch strikes the hour.' He held it up, waited for the few moments until it uttered its little silvery note: six o'clock, and as though by magic a clash of buckets broke out overhead, a splash of water, the creak of pumps and the steady grinding of holystones, together with the usual orders, cries, and even oaths as the decks were restored to a barely-lost perfection. Stephen knew that even in a vessel as small as the Ringle the hullabaloo would go on for the best part of an hour, and rising on his elbow he spoke somewhat louder, '. . . a man that will not cod the hands with dog-Latin or half-understood medical terms, a kind modest truthful creature. Where is such a treasure to be found, for all love?'

  'Could you not call Padeen back?'

  'I could not. As you know very well, he became addicted to one of my tinctures—it is worse than the drink, so it is, far worse—and I dare not leave him a daily temptation. And then again I promised him a few acres in the County Clare, enough for a small but decent living, if he would look after Brigid and Clarissa in Spain. But will he go there? Sure he is with child to go there. He knows just how the few fields lie, and the little small house—but a slate-roofed house, Jack, which is a very near approach to glory with us. Yet will he go there? He will not. What if there should be owls? Or good people under the hill where he has the right to cut turf? Or if he should find himself alone and frightened? I tell him the priest would find him a decent wife or any of the countless go-betweens, so busy in Gort or Kilmacduagh. Indeed, the whole thing is very like marriage: he would and he would not. Two men have I known that conducted a proper, regular courtship, urging their suit: both killed themselves the day they were to go to church. And no doubt there are and have been many like them.'

  'Do you know of any young women who have done the same?'

  'I do not. But I do know of three and have heard of more that ran away on their wedding night.'

  'So have I.'

  'There is a great deal to be said for a country education, where a girl may see a cow led to the bull as a matter of course, the filly to the stallion, and where a phallus is an acknowledged object—a matter of some curiosity perhaps but certainly nothing wholly unexpected, possibly wholly unexpected and even apprehended as a horrid malformation, an unnatural growth.'

  'I scarcely think a country education always . . .' began Captain Aubrey, but he was cut short by a singularly violent and reverberating crash as two idlers, carrying a large matted block of stone, loaded with shot and intended for the perfect cleansing of the planks just overhead, dropped the entirety. This was followed by a great deal of howling, agonized howling, and Stephen ran up on deck in his nightshirt—a crushed foot for sure.

  By the time he had dressed the mangled limb and administered his usual thirty-five drops of laudanum the sun was up, Jack was washed and shaved, his fine clubbed queue of yellow hair was new-tied behind his nape and himself seated before the breakfast-table in a small cabin smelling gloriously of toast, coffee and kippered herring.

  'Forgive me, Stephen,' he cried, 'I am afraid I did not wait. Greed overcame me.'

  'You say that almost every morning, brother; and I am afraid it is true,' said Stephen. 'But I pray that you may yet be saved from gule, that most brutish and most unamiable of the seven deadly sins. But come, Jack'—looking at him attentively—'you are fresh-trimmed, neat as a bridegroom, almost handsome, in your fine coat and golden epaulettes. What's afoot?'

  'You have not been on deck, I find. The squadron is hull-up already, and pretty soon Bellona's number will break at the admiral's mizzen topmast together with the signal captain repair aboard flag.'

  'Be so good as to pass what is left of the toast; and naturally the coffee-pot.'

  'And,' went on Jack in a low voice, 'if I know anything of your doings on a foreign shore, he or at least his secretary will ask to see you. Stephen, would it not be prudent to shave, and shift your coat and breeches?'

  'Jack,' said Stephen. 'I have it in contemplation to grow a beard and put an end to these ill-timed fleers for good and all. In time of war the Roman emperors always wore beards. And as for this coat'—looking at his sleeve—'it will do very well for many years yet.'

  'At least let Killick give it a brush. There is lint on the front; and I fear that may be blood. You would never wish to put the barky to shame aboard the Charlotte.'

  'Perhaps I should have put on my apron,' said Stephen, dabbing at the blood with his napkin. 'But there is no possibility whatsoever of finding a new coat until my sea-chest is unpacked.'

  In the natural course of events Killick heard all this, and before Stephen had fully answered Jack's enquiries after Evan Lloyd, cook's mate, whose foot had been crushed by the bear—a conversation very much at cross-purposes until at last it became apparent that Stephen had never yet gathered that a bear, at sea, was only a holystone writ large—Preserved Killick was standing there with a prim expression on his face and a respectable blue uniform coat (virtually unworn) over his arm. 'Which it was almost on top,' he said. 'And you will have to get out of those there old breeches. The Bellona don't want no more of them there London cries. Monmouth Street cries, for shame.'

  Stephen hung his head, keeping himself in countenance to some slight degree by pouring coffee. Not long before this, when the Bellona's yawl had been taking him ashore in Bantry Bay, dressed it must be admitted in a way that did neither himself nor the service much credit, one of the Royal Oak's cutters, with a ribald crew commanded by a drunken midshipman, called out 'What ho, Bellona! Any old clo'? Any old rags, bottles, bones, rabbit skins?' in the manner of the London street traders; and to the infinite grief of the ship the cry had become popular in west Cork. Killick and his shipmates prayed that it would not be imported into the blockading squadron; and in this they were supported by the whole wardroom and by the midshipmen's berth. And indeed Captain Aubrey, who almost always checked Killick's wilder flights, remained silent on this occasion.

  It was therefore with a fairly respectable surgeon that Jack walked the quarterdeck after breakfast. 'There, do you see,' he said, nodding over the starboard quarter at a tall dark rugged mass of granite with white water all round its cliffs, 'that is Ushant, of course, as you know very well; but I do not believe you have ever seen it from the east, from the landward side: not that you can see the land for the moment, but you soon will, when the early mists have cleared. At present we are sailing through the Fromveur Passage, keeping well out in forty-fathom water—it shoals horribly as you go east towards that island on the larboard beam: Molène, a capital place for lobsters on a calm day. Once we are a little farther south and once we have skirted the Green Rock and reached those wicked old Black Rocks four miles further on, you will be able to look over some very ugly, dangerous water indeed right into the Goulet de Brest, a long channel into the harbour, into the inner and outer roads, rather like the entrance to Mahon: they cannot get out with the wind in the south-west, as it so often is; but on the other hand it batters us most cruelly when it blows hard, while they lie at their ease perfectly sheltered. And then again, if we are blown right off, to Cawsand, say, or Torbay, and the wind comes round to north or even north-east, out they come, knock our merchantmen and convoys to pieces while we are beating up, tack upon tack, like so many Jack-Puddings.' Jack spoke eloquently and at length of the hardships of the Brest blockade, and although Stephen listened with a decent attention he also watched the squadron, or at least all the squadron then present inshore, as they stood towards the Ringle, close-hauled to the kindly breeze.

  'They are going to wear in succession,' said Jack, breaking off; and hardly had h
e spoken before the leading ship, the Ramillies, fell off the wind in a long smooth curve, bringing it full aft and so on to her larboard beam, followed at exact intervals by her second astern—'Bellona,' cried Stephen, recognizing his old home as she came broadside on, 'the dear ship: good luck to her.' 'Amen,' said Jack; and as the third followed 'Queen Charlotte, the flag: white ensign at the fore, since Lord Stranraer is a vice-admiral of the white, do you see? Now Zealous. All seventy-fours except the Charlotte, 104, of course. And here are two of his frigates: Naiad and Doris. No doubt they are standing in for the little Alexandria. She is only a twelve pounder but she sails almost as well as dear Surprise, and with this wind she has probably sent her boats in to see what the Frenchmen are doing in the harbour. If so, the gunboats in Camaret Bay may come out. When the haze over the land has cleared. We shall see.'

  But before anything could be seen at all the deep sound of gunfire reached them, the rolling fire of heavy cannon, briskly plied. 'That will be the Grand Minou,' said Jack. 'Forty-two-pounders.' And after a moment of tense listening not a murmur aboard, not a sound but that of the rigging and the following sea, the Ringle right before the wind—'There she looms.'

  Dim on the tender's larboard bow and directly in the path of the squadron a pallor showed through the landward haze, a pallor that quickly resolved itself into the sails of the Alexandria.

  'Ha, ha,' said Jack. 'She is clean out of range; and she has picked up her boats. How those foolish creatures blaze away: fourteen pounds of powder wasted every shot—a stone, no less. No doubt they hope it will be taken for zeal.'