The Letter of Marque

by Patrick O'Brian

  At length the captain of the Viper received him in the low booth that passed for a cabin. Dixon was sitting at a table: he did not offer Aubrey a chair. He had hated him from those remote days in Minorca and ever since the Surprise had heaved in sight he had been preparing sarcastic remarks of a particularly cutting nature. But the sight of Jack's bulk towering there, filling the meagre space and all the more massive since he had to crouch under the low deckhead, his grim face and the natural authority that emanated from him, overcame young Dixon's resolution; he said nothing when Jack pushed some objects from a locker and sat down. It was only when he had leafed through the papers that he said 'I see you have a very full ship's company, Mr Aubrey. I shall have to relieve you of a score or so.'

  'They are protected,' said Jack.

  'Nonsense. They cannot be protected. Privateersmen are not protected.'

  'Read that,' said Jack, gathering up the other papers and standing over him.

  Dixon read it, read it again and held the paper against the light to see the watermark: while he did so Jack gazed out of the scuttle at his boat's crew's tarpaulin-covered hats, rising and falling on the gentle swell. 'Well,' said Dixon at last, 'I suppose there is nothing more to be said. You may go.'

  'What did you say?' said Jack, turning short upon him.

  'I said there is nothing more to say.'

  'Good day to you, sir.'

  'Good day to you, sir.'

  His boat's crew greeted him with radiant smiles, and as they neared the Surprise one of the Shelmerston men called out to his friends peering over the hammocks, 'Mates, we'm protected!'

  'Silence in the boat,' cried the coxswain in a shocked voice.

  'Silence fore and aft,' called the officer of the watch as the cheering spread.

  Jack's mind was still too full of Stephen's paper and its possible implications to take much notice of the din, and he hurried below. But scarcely was his file in its proper place before a far greater hullaballoo broke out: as the Viper filled and gathered way all the men from Shelmerston and all those Surprises who were deserters raced up into the weather shrouds, facing the cutter. The yeoman of the sheets called out 'One, two, three,' and they all bellowed 'Hoo, hoo, hoo' and slapped their backsides in unison, laughing like maniacs.

  'Belay there,' roared Jack in a Cape Horn voice. 'Goddamned pack of mooncalves—is this a bawdy-house? The next man to slap his arse will have it flogged off him. Mr Pullings, the Doctor's skiff over the side directly, if you please, and let three more targets be prepared.'

  'Stephen,' he said, resting on his oars some two hundred yards from the frigate, 'I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that exemption. If any of our old shipmates who are deserters had been taken—and I am sure that poor mean-spirited young hound would not have spared them—they would have run the risk of hanging: of several hundred lashes, in any case. And we should have been perpetually playing hide-and-seek with King's ships; for although a little common sense will generally keep you out of the way of any squadron, you cannot be nearly so sure of cruisers. I believe I must not ask you how you came by it.'

  'I shall tell you, however,' said Stephen, 'for I know you are as silent as the tomb where discretion is required. On this South American journey I shall hope to make some contacts that may be of interest to government. In a hemi-demi-semi official way the Admiralty is aware of this; it is also aware that I cannot reach South America in a ship stripped of its hands. That is why this protection was given. I should have told you before. Indeed there are many things that I should have told you, had we not been so far apart, or had they been fit subjects for correspondence.' Stephen paused, staring at a distant kittiwake; then he said, 'Listen, now, Jack, till I gather my wits and try to tell you the present position. It is difficult, because I am not master of what I can say, so much of what I know having been told me in confidence. And then again I cannot remember how much I told you during that horrible time: the details are clouded in my memory. However, grosso modo and including what you obviously know, this is how things stand. The case for your innocence was that Palmer was under great obligation to you, and by way of return he told you that a peace-treaty was being signed, that prices would rise on the Stock Exchange, and that you would be well advised to buy certain stocks in anticipation of that rise. The case for your guilt was that there was no Palmer at all and that you yourself spread the rumour: in short that you rigged the market. At the time we could not produce Palmer, and in front of such a judge our case was hopeless. Later, however—and now I come to a part of which I believe you know little or nothing—some of my associates and I, helped by a most intelligent thief-taker, found Palmer's body.'

  'Why, then—'

  'Jack, I beg you will not require me to be more explicit or break my train of thought. As I have said, I am not a free agent, and I have to steer very carefully along my line.' Another pause while he considered and the boat rode smoothly on the swell. 'Palmer's principals, the men who had put him up to deceiving you, had him knocked on the head; as a cadaver, and a mutilated, legally useless cadaver at that, he could not compromise them. His principals were French agents, Englishmen highly placed in the English administration; but in this case their chief motive was to make money. They wished the market to be rigged, but to be rigged or apparently rigged by some other person. One of these men was Wray—do not, do not interrupt, Jack, I beg—and since he was perfectly aware of your movements and of your presence aboard the cartel he was able to arrange the sequence of events with striking success. Yet although this was obvious enough after the event, we might never have found out that Wray and his friend were the prime movers if an ill-used French agent, in this case a Frenchman, had not given them away.' Stephen contemplated for a while; then, feeling in his pocket, he brought out a great blue diamond that half-filled his hollowed palm; he rolled it gently so that it flashed blazing in the sun, and went on, 'I will tell you this, Jack: the Frenchman was that Duhamel with whom we had so much to do in Paris. Diana had tried to ransom us with this pretty thing and part of the agreement when we left was that it should eventually be restored: Duhamel brought it. And then in exchange for a service I was able to do him he not only gave me the name of Wray and his colleague Ledward, Edward Ledward, but set them as elegant a trap as Wray set for you. They were both members of Button's, and while I watched from the window of Black's he met them in St James's Street, just outside their club, gave them a packet of bank-notes and received a report on English military and naval movements and English relations with the Swedish court. My associates and I crossed the street within a very short time, but I grieve, I most bitterly grieve to say that we bungled it. When we asked for Wray and his friend they were denied—wished to receive no visitors. Most unhappily one of my companions tried to force his way in: this made a noise, and by the time we had the proper warrant they had bolted, not through the kitchen or the stable doors, for we had men on each, but through a little small skylight in the roof and so along the parapets to Mother Abbott's, where one of the girls let them in, thinking it was a frolic. They went to ground and so far those in charge of the matter have not been able to tell where. Ledward must have had some suspicion that he was in danger: his papers told my friends nothing at all and they fear he may long since have arranged for an intelligent way of escape. Wray was less cautious however and from what was found at his house it is clear that he was implicated in the Stock Exchange business and that he profited largely from it. In any case the report they handed to Duhamel was utterly damning, particularly as some of the information can only have come from inside the Admiralty. There. I think I have told you all I can. It is hardly worth adding that my colleagues, who never thought you could have been anything more than indiscreet with those vile stocks and shares, are now wholly convinced of your innocence.'

  For the last few minutes Jack's heart had been beating with steadily greater strength and speed and now it seemed to fill his chest. Breathing deeply and controlling the pitch of his voice with some su
ccess he said 'Does that mean I may be reinstated?'

  'If there were any justice in the world, I am sure it would, my dear,' said Stephen. 'But you must not look for it with any kind of certainty—never with any kind of strong hope at all. Ledward and Wray have not been taken: they cannot be brought to trial. It is not impossible that someone more highly-placed than either is protecting them: certainly there is a strange reluctance to move . . . In any event the Ministry has no wish to offer the opposition a blazing and most discreditable scandal; and raison d'état may very easily outweigh wrongs inflicted upon an individual, particularly an individual with no political interest: or even indeed with the reverse, for in that respect you will allow me to say that General Aubrey is a sad handicap. Then again all authority implies an extreme reluctance to admit past error. On the other hand I believe a friend would advise you not to despair; above all not to give way to melancholy—be not idle, be not alone, as dear Burton says. For activity, naval activity is the solution, if solution there be.'

  'I am sorry if I seemed so hipped this morning,' said Jack. 'The fact of the matter is—I do not mean to complain, Stephen, but the fact of the matter is, I had just had a dream so real and true that even now I can touch it. The dream was that the whole affair, the trial and everything that followed, was itself a dream; and my huge relief, my joy at realizing this, my immense happiness I think it was that woke me. But even then I was still partly in the dream and for a moment I looked confidently for my old uniform coat.' He dipped his oars and completed his circle round the ship, looking attentively at her trim: his reason acquiesced in everything Stephen had said, but in his irrational part a very small glow was dissipating the most extreme unhappiness.

  As he pulled towards the frigate he said, 'I am glad you saw Duhamel again. I liked him.'

  'He was a good man,' said Stephen. 'And restoring this diamond when he was cutting all ties with his own country—going to Canada—was as striking an example of liberal behaviour as I can recall. I regret him much.'

  'He is not dead, poor fellow?'

  'I should not have mentioned his name if he had been living. No. Heneage Dundas, on my guarantee, was to carry him to America, where he meant to settle by the bank of a trout-stream in the province of Quebec. He had changed all his not inconsiderable fortune into gold, which he carried in a belt about his waist; he went aboard at Spithead in a turbulent sea, and as I have sometimes done he slipped between the boat and the side: his fortune sunk him without the least hope of recovery.'

  'I am heartily sorry for it,' said Jack, and rowed a little harder. He wondered whether he might speak of Diana and her diamond—it seemed inhuman not to do so—but he decided that the matter was altogether too delicate. He might easily be laid by the lee; he might easily give pain; and silence was better until Stephen should mention her again.

  When they were aboard the ship once more he sent the other targets out. The larboard watch had their turn with the guns—a slightly more creditable performance, accompanied by a running fire of criticism, advice and even praise from the quarterdeck—and then the Surprise was indulged in two broadsides at much closer range. They were rippling broadsides, the guns firing in succession from forward aft, because her timbers were too old for the simultaneous crash except in great emergency; but private ships of war had to find themselves in powder, that costly substance, so in most of them broadsides, rippling or otherwise, were extremely rare; and all hands perceived these as a celebration of their triumph over the Viper. The celebration ended with the captain and the gunner firing the bow-chasers, two very finely-bored long brass nines, strikingly accurate far-carrying guns, Jack Aubrey's private property. They fired at the floating remains of the target shattered by the broadsides, and although neither did spectacularly well, they raised a fervent cheer. As Jack came aft, wiping the powder-marks off his face, Martin said to Stephen, 'Surely the Captain is looking more himself, do not you think? Yesterday evening I was extremely shocked.'

  The extreme edge of unhappiness might have gone, but there was still room for a very great deal of worry and anxiety. Quite apart from his strongly intrusive necessary reflections upon domestic and legal complications (and he was not the resilient, sanguine being of even a year ago), Jack had not realized the difficulty, the near impossibility, of recruiting a ship's company of much the same quality throughout. He had not realized how very far years of team-work and constant practice on the same gun with the same partners had raised the old Surprises beyond the common level. The privateersmen were strong and willing; in dumb-show—the ordinary form of exercise, powder being so dear—they could rattle the guns in and out with great force and spirit; but it was clear that months or even years would be needed to give them that perfect timing, coordination and economy of effort that made the regular Surprises so dangerous to their enemies. In the meantime he could either restore the guns to their former crews or he could change his strategy, and instead of weakening his opponent from a distance, perhaps even knocking a topmast away, before manoeuvring to cross his bow or stern for a raking broadside and then if necessary boarding, he could follow Nelson's advice about 'going straight at 'em'. But that advice was given early in the last war, when French and Spanish gunnery, French and Spanish seamanship were so markedly inferior; at present a ship bearing down with a light breeze over a smooth sea would be exposed, head-on and unable to reply, to the enemy's full broadside for twenty or thirty minutes, and she might well be so mangled by the time she came alongside that she would herself be taken—the biter bit. Then again he had worked out his practice when he was commanding a King's ship, always happy of course to take an enemy merchantman or privateer but primarily intended to take, burn, sink or destroy the enemy's national ships of war. Now the case was altered: now his chief prey was to be merchantmen or privateers, undamaged if possible; and that called for a different approach. Of course, of course, three times of course he would delight in an engagement with an opponent of equal strength belonging to the French or American navy, a hard-hitting battle with no notion of financial gain: for a discarded privateer to take an enemy frigate would be glory indeed. But unhappily the Surprise, though fast and weatherly, belonged to a former age as far as glory was concerned. There were only five twenty-eight-gun frigates left in the Royal Navy and of these five, four were laid up in ordinary, unused. Most frigates now displaced well over a thousand tons and carried thirty-eight eighteen-pounders as well as carronades, and the Surprise could no more have tackled one of them than she could have faced a ship of the line. She gauged less than six hundred tons; she carried twelve-pounders (and if her knees had not been specially strengthened to bear them she would have been happier with nines); and even withher full extravagant Royal Navy complement she had fewer than two hundred men as opposed to the more than four hundred in one of the big Americans. Yet she was still a frigate, and for her there would be no glory in capturing anything of nominally inferior rank, such as the heavier post-ship and any of the sloops, ship-rigged or otherwise.

  'Perhaps it would be better to go back to carronades,' he reflected. At one time the Surprise, apart from her chasers, had been armed entirely with carronades, those stumpy little objects, more like a mortar than a gun, which were light (a carronade throwing a thirty-two pound ball weighed only seventeen hundredweight as opposed to the twelve-pounder long gun's thirty-four) and easily managed. That gave the ship a broadside weight of metal of 456 pounds. To be sure, the 456 pounds could not be thrown very accurately, nor very far; these were short-range weapons. Yet a carronade did not require great skill in the handling; and although its massive balls had a terrible smashing effect, liable to ruin or even sink a prize, the same weapon loaded with case-shot cut up the enemy's rigging and cleared his open decks most efficiently, above all if they were crowded with men intending to board. Counting four hundred shot to a canister, with a broadside of fourteen carronades, that came to more than four thousand; and four thousand iron balls screaming across the deck at 1,674 feet a second
had a discouraging effect, even if they were fired by inexpert hands . . . perhaps that was the right solution, although of course it did away with all the finer points of a single-ship action, the high seamanship of manoeuvring for position, the deliberate firing of the most accurate guns separately at very long range, the rate of fire increasing as the range shortened until they were hammering it out yardarm to yardarm in the paroxysm of battle—an incessant roaring in deep clouds of smoke. 'But that belongs to an almost entirely different world,' he reflected, 'and I can hardly hope to be so fortunate as to know it again. Yet I believe I shall open my mind to Stephen.'

  As the captain of a King's ship, Jack Aubrey had never opened his mind on such matters to anyone. He had always been a silent captain in the matter of strategy, tactics and the right course of action, and this was not from any theory but because it seemed to him evident that a commander was there to command rather than to ask advice or preside over a committee. He had known captains and admirals call a council of war, and the result had nearly always been a prudent retreat or at any rate an absence of decisive action. But now the case was altered: he was no longer commanding a King's ship but a ship belonging to Dr Maturin. He might find it impossible to believe with anything but the very top of his mind that Stephen could conceivably own the Surprise, yet the fact was there, and although from the start they had agreed that the command of the frigate should be carried on in the former manner, with the captain having sole authority, he felt that some degree of consultation was the owner's due.