THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL aam-11

by Patrick O`Brian

  All the hands, from the miserable Davies to the wholly irreproachable Bonden, seemed to be suffering from a sense of collective guilt, and his cold, impersonal, objective orders, with never an oath or a hasty word, designed solely to get the last ounce of thrust out of the breeze, quite daunted them. They hurried about in dead silence, with anxious faces; and when he ordered the fire-engine into the tops so that the sails, being wetted, might draw better, they pumped with such force that the jet reached beyond the royals, which ordinarily called for buckets, sent up with a whip.

  In the darkening twilight he concentrated all his powers on the exact trim of sails and braces and presently the ship began to speak: her cutwater split a distinct bow-wave and innumerable small bubbles ran down her side with a continuous hiss, while the slightly increasing wind hummed and sang in the rigging. The moon rose directly ahead, and in her path he saw the Spartan, a magnificent wide-winged spread of canvas, like a distant bird; a distant bird, but no more distant than she had been a little while ago. She was no longer obviously gaining.

  He loosened his very strong grip of the fife-rail, yawned from hunger, and glanced fore and aft. Over to leeward' he was aware of Stephen and Martin smiling at him, as though willing to be spoken to.

  'You are too late for the clock-calm,' he said, remembering that he had sent to them long ago. 'There is a light air from the west at present, and with any luck it may grow into a breeze.'

  'We are sorry about the calm,' said Stephen, 'but we thought you might like to view our beetles. They are now fully set out for the first time, a most gratifying sight, covering the entire table and the floor. It cannot last however, the gentlemen of the gunroom being so impatient for their supper.'

  'That would give me great pleasure,' said Jack, with a last searching look under the mainsail to the fully-drawing forecourse. 'And if the gunroom - after the bugs, of course would invite me to take a bite of bread and cheese, how happy I should be. Mr Mowett, pray have the hands piped to supper at last, watch by watch, and tell Killick to rouse me up an elbow-chair, my broad night-glass and a boat-cloak. The dew is falling, so the engine may leave off.'

  In this chair, wrapped in his cloak, he spent the long moonlit night, rising at every bell to walk along the gangway to the forecastle and out along the bowsprit to peer at the Spartan with his night-glass between the spritsail course and its topsail. She was maintaining her lead, possibly increasing it, and she was obviously a flyer, commanded by a very able man; but Jack had the feeling that she would not be so happy in heavy weather, and if only the west wind would come on to blow as it sometimes did in these waters, he believed the Surprise would close with her. Apart from anything else he had a way of enabling her to bear an extraordinary press of sail, particularly with the wind abaft the beam: he sent light hawsers and cablets to the mastheads, and although they made the ship look barbarously ugly they did keep her masts standing, where in another ship with the same thrust acting on her they would have carried away, shrouds, backstays, preventer-backstays and all.

  The moon sailed across the pure sky, and the pale stars in their due sequence; the ship followed her nightly routine with the same kind of ordered regularity. The log was heaved - five knots to five knots two fathoms, no more - the log-board marked by the glow of the binnacle - the depth of water in the well reported - the glass was turned, the bell struck, the helm relieved, and all round the ship the lookouts cried 'All's well'.

  At four bells in the middle watch the breeze hauled a little forward, so that Jack filled the mainsail, but apart from that both ships raced over the sea with never a change, as though they were running in a timeless dream.

  A little before dawn, with the moon right low astern, Mars blazing in the east, and the head-pump already setting the forecastle awash for the swabbers, the sharp scent of coffee pierced through his reflexions. He walked into his lit cabin, and with half-closed eyes he looked at the quicksilver in the glass: it had not actually gone down, but the top of the column was concave rather than the other way about - there was at least a reasonable hope of wind. Killick brought him the pot and some very old rye bread toasted and asked in a subdued, dutiful tone whether there was anything else he would like. 'Not for the moment,' said Jack. 'I suppose the Doctor is not about?'

  'Oh no, sir.' Stephen was a bad sleeper, but he disapproved of the habitual use of soporifics on medical and moral grounds and he usually delayed the taking of his pill or draught until two in the morning, so that he was rarely to be seen before eight or nine o'clock.

  'When he is up, say that I should be happy to see him and Mr Martin to dinner, wind and weather permitting. And pass the word for the officer of the watch.' 'Mr Allen,' he said to that officer, 'I shall turn in for a few hours, but I am to be called at the slightest change, either in the weather or the chase.'

  A few hours, he said, and they carefully refrained from any noise abaft the mizenmast, cleaning the deck only with silent swabs; but at the changing of the watch there he was, stalking forward to stare at the chase in the brilliant morning. She was almost exactly the same, only sunlit rather than moonlit; she had perhaps drawn a little ahead, but she had not altered her sails - there was indeed very little she could add - and, what was more important, she had not deviated half a degree from her course, northeast by east.

  The night's chase had been dreamlike; the day's was scarcely less so, for although there was the prevailing sense of urgency and even crisis and although there was the engine in the tops, squirting with all its might, while the brass long nines stood ready on the forecastle, trained right forward, with their garlands of smooth shot beside them, there was remarkably little to do. With the perfect steadiness of the breeze, it was like rolling down the trades to the Cape, never touching sheet or brace for days and even weeks on end; but whereas in the trades there was always cleaning, painting ship, washing clothes, making and mending, and the many forms of exercise, to say nothing of church and divisions, here nothing was appropriate but the making of wads and the chipping of roundshot. And so to the click-click of fifty or sixty hammers the Surprise ran on, going as fast as the most careful attention to brace and helm could drive her, pursuing a chase that lay perpetually half way to a horizon that perpetually receded before them both.

  It was to the distant accompaniment of this sound that Jack and his guests ate their dinner. Shaved and shining after a cat-nap, Jack was in fine form; yesterday's intense frustration belonged to history; he had not felt so well or so alive since the horrible days of the court-martial, and he enjoyed his company. Neither Stephen nor Martin was a sailor nor indeed anything remotely like a sailor; neither believed in the sacred majesty of a post-captain and both talked quite freely - a great relief. Furthermore, the glass was sinking, a sure sign of wind; and throughout the meal the steady chipping of shot told him that all was well on deck. A chase in sight, his ship in perfect order, and a blow coming on: this was real sailoring - this was why men went to sea. It is true that the chaplain's presence was usually something of a constraint upon him, and that since the appearance of Sam his troubled conscience had made Jack almost mealy-mouthed when they conversed; but today an abundance of vitality thrust conscience to one side and they talked away in a very pleasant manner. He told them that he was now quite sure the privateer was running for Brest, which was one of her home ports; that he hoped they might come up with her long before Ushant and its tangle of inshore reefs and islands; but there was no certainty of it at all. The chase had shown no signs of distress; she had not started her water over the side, still less her boats and guns. But from the look in his bright-blue, cheerfully predatory eye both his listeners concluded that his unspoken mind was less reserved, less cautious towards fate. Martin said he supposed that the engine, pumping with such force upon the sails, striking them from behind, as it were, must urge the boat along, and so increase its speed.

  'There cannot be the least doubt of it,' said Stephen.

  'When virtue spooms before a prosperous gale My heav
ing wishes help to fill the sail says Dryden, that prince of poets, and the dear knows we spoom in the most virtuous manner. I suggest we all go and blow into the mainsail; or that some blow while others tie a rope to the back of the ship and pull forwards as hard as ever can be, ha, ha, ha!' He cackled for a short while at his own wit, and in doing so (the exercise being unusual with him) choked on a crumb. When he recovered he found that Martin was telling Jack about the miseries of authors: Dryden had died in poverty - Spenser was poorer still - Agrippa ended his days in the workhouse. He might have gone on at very great length, for the material was not wanting, but that Mowett sent to report the appearance of a parcel of bankers on the starboard bow. They were of no great consequence from the warlike point of view, being fishermen from Biscay and the north of Portugal on their way to fish for cod on the Newfoundland banks, but even a single sail in mid-ocean was something of an event; Jack had often travelled five thousand miles in quite frequented sea-lanes without seeing another ship, and when dinner was over he suggested that they should take their coffee on to the forecastle to look at the spectacle.

  Killick could not actually forbid the move, but with a pinched and shrewish look he poured the guests' coffee into villainous little tin mugs: he knew what they were capable of, if entrusted with porcelain, and he was quite right - each mug was dented when it came back, and the captain of the head had to deplore a trail of dark brown drops the whole length of his snowy deck. It was not that the wind had yet increased, but during dinner the beginning of a swell from the south had reached these waters, and the Surprise's skittish roll almost always caught them on the wrong foot.

  By the time they reached the forecastle the foremost vessels of the straggling fleet of bankers was right ahead of the Spartan and in one view the eye could embrace the picture of peaceful, if rather slow and slovenly industry, and of striving war - of one set of ships creeping in a formless, talkative heap north-westward, while the other raced through them, running east with the utmost efficiency as fast as ever they could move, wholly taken up with mutual violence.

  An hour or so later the Biscayans had vanished over the edge of the world, taking all philosophical reflections with them, and Stephen and Martin had retired below, but Jack Aubrey was still there on the forecastle, considering the chase, the frigate's magnificent spread of canvas, and the weather. He was also a little uneasy about her trim: she might be a trifle by the stern, and he was afraid she would resent it, if a full gale were to come on.

  'Mr Mowett,' he said, returning aft, 'I believe we may ship rolling-tackles, strike the carronades down into the hold, and make ready to start maybe ten tons of water from the aftermost casks. And pray ask the bosun to have cablets and the like ready to his hand, in case it should come on to blow - the glass is sinking. I am just going to show the youngsters how to find whether the chase is gaining or not with a sextant and then I shall turn in for a while.'

  It was as well that he did, for with the rising of, the moon the wind increased, blowing straight into her round, foolish face and across the growing swell. By the time he came on deck Mowett had already taken in the lower studdingsails, and as the night wore on more and more canvas came off until she was under little more' than close-reefed fore and main topsails, reefed courses and trysails, yet each time the reefer of the watch cast the log he reported with mounting glee, 'Six and a half knots, if you please, sir. - Seven knots two fathoms.

  Almost eight knots. - Eight knots and three fathoms. -Nine knots. - Ten knots! Oh sir, she's doing ten knots!'

  With the courses reefed Jack could see his quarry from the quarterdeck, see her plain in the bright moon, for though the wind was in the west, backing a little south, there were few clouds in the sky, and those few were thin racing diaphanous veils, no more. The sea, though not yet really heavy - short and choppy rather than Atlantic-rough had a torn white surface, and the Spartan showed up strangely black, even when the moon was well down the western sky and far astern. She had much the same sail as the Surprise, and though twice she tried a foretopgallant, each time she took it in.

  From time to time Jack took the wheel. At this kind of speed the complex vibrations reaching him through the spokes, the heave of the wheel itself, and the creak of the raw-hide tiller-ropes told him a great deal about the ship: whether she was being overpressed or whether she would bear a reef shaking out, even an inner jib hauled half way up. He spoke little to the succession of officers who took the watch, Maitland, Honey and the master, yet even so the night seemed short. At first dawn he took his first breakfast: the barometer had continued its steady fall and although this could not yet be called a hard gale it was certainly a stiff one, and likely to grow stiffer; he decided to have his cablets sent up to the mastheads in good time, as soon as hammocks were piped up and he had both watches on deck.

  'I beg pardon, sir, said Mowett in the doorway, 'but the privateer has taken a leaf out of our book and she has sent hawsers aloft.'

  'Has she?' cried Jack. 'Oh, the wicked dog. Come, have a cup of coffee to keep your spirits up, Mowett; then we shall go on deck, where virtue spooms before the goddam gale, and our heaving wishes will help to fill the sail, ha, ha, ha! That is Dryden, you know.'

  On deck he found that the privateer had indeed forestalled him in fortifying her masts and was now outstripping him in speed. With her full topsails she was already making something like eleven knots or even more to the Surprise's ten, and she was throwing a spectacular bow-wave as she did so, clearly to be seen some three miles away. 'All hands,' called Jack, and down below came the cry 'Rouse out, you sleepers. Rise and shine, there, rise and shine. Heave ho, heave ho, lash up and stow.'

  This sending up of hawsers and cablets was a simple, even an obvious idea, and Jack had often wondered why so very few commanders resorted to it in heavy weather; but it was also time-consuming, and before the very powerful extra supports were made fast and heaved taut aboard the Surprise the Spartan had gained horribly. She was now hull-down except on the top of the roll, tearing along under an extraordinary press of sail. 'If a banker crossed her hawse at this moment,' reflected Jack, with his glass trained on her, 'she would sheer clean through.'

  He sent the hands to breakfast watch by watch and began cautiously packing on, sail by sail. The ship's speed mounted; the whole sound, the whole vast chord of her motion changed, rising through two whole tones; and out of the corner of his busy eye he noticed all the reefers and many of the larboard watch along the weather rail and gangway, eating their biscuit and grinning with delight at the flying, swooping speed.

  But he also noticed, and this was much more to the immediate point, that the wind was strengthening and backing farther still. This continued throughout the forenoon watch, and as the gale became more distinctly a south-wester so it brought racing cloud low across the sea. The dawn itself had been grey, but now really thick and dirty weather threatened, and although the Surprise had regained one of her lost miles by the end of the watch -she was indeed the faster ship in a heavy sea - Jack was very much afraid that if he did not come up with the Spartan before nightfall he would lose her in the murk.

  Furthermore, as the wind backed so it blew in the same direction as the growing swell, and the seas grew heavier by far. Both wind and swell were right aft by the time the gunroom sat down to dinner with their guests, Captain Aubrey and Mr Midshipman Howard, and the ship was pitching through forty-one degrees. All those present had known a good deal worse far south of the Horn, but even so it took away from the splendour of the feast. The gunroom had meant to regale their Captain on fresh turtle to begin with and then a variety of other delights, but the early extinction of the galley fires, put out as soon as the men's salt beef had been boiled, had reduced them to a cold, or sometimes luke-warm, collation; however, it included soused pig's face, one of Jack's favourite dishes, and treacle pudding, which he always said ate better if it did not scald your gullet.

  'You were speaking of the miseries of authors,' said Stephen across the tab
le to Martin, 'but neither of us thought to mention poor Adanson. Do you know, sir,' -addressing himself to Jack - 'that Michael Adanson, the ingenious author of the Families naturelles des Plantes, to which we all of us owe so much, submitted twenty-seven large manuscript volumes relating to the natural classification of all known beings and substances, together with a hundred and fifty - I repeat, a hundred and fifty - others containing forty thousand species arranged alphabetically, and a completely separate vocabulary containing two hundred thousand words, and they explained, as well as detached memoirs and forty thousand figures and thirty thousand specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. He presented them, I say, to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and they were received with the utmost applause and respect. Yet when this great man, after whom Linnaeus himself named the baobab tree Adansonia digitata, was invited to become a member of the Institute a little before I had the honour of addressing it, he did not possess a whole shirt nor yet an untorn pair of breeches in which he could attend, still less a coat, God rest his soul.'

  'That was very bad, I am sure,' said Jack.

  'And I might have remembered Robert Heron,' said Martin, 'the author of The Comforts of life, which he composed in Newgate, and many another more learned work. I wrote out his appeal to the Literary Fund, his hand being then too weak, and in it he truthfully stated that he worked from twelve to sixteen hours a day. When the physicians examined him they found him totally incapacitated by what they termed the indiscreet exertion of his mind in protracted and incessant literary labours