Book 6 - The Fortune Of War

by Patrick O'Brian

  'By all means,' said Stephen. 'But do you think it would be possible to play on deck? Then, while you attempt to delay your inevitable defeat, I may keep my eye upon the sea. I should be loath to miss my skimmer.'

  Mr Evans looked doubtful, but said he would have a word with the officer of the watch. 'All is well,' he said, coming back. 'Mr Heath has every sympathy with your wish: if you want to see a skimmer, you may play chess in any part of the ship, he says; and he will give orders that you be told if skimmers appear. He thinks there is a fair chance, once we are close in with the cape, and out of the blue water.'

  Some minutes later he brought the board, saying, 'I love this game. Apart from anything else, it is agreeable to my sentiments as a citizen of a republic, since it always ends with the discomfiture of a king.'

  'I too was a republican in the frothy pride of my youth,' said Stephen, inspecting the position, while an awning was being stretched to protect them from the sun. 'And had I been out of coats at the time, I should have joined you at Bunker Hill and Valley Forge and those other interesting spots. As it was, I cheered the taking of the Bastille. But with age, I have come to think that after all a monarchy is best.'

  'When you look about the world, and view the monarchs in it—I do not refer to your own, of course—can you really maintain that the hereditary king cuts a very shining figure?'

  'I cannot. Nor is that to the point: the person, unless he be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, is of no importance. It is the living, moving, procreating, sometimes speaking symbol that counts.'

  'But surely mere birth without any necessary merit is illogical?'

  'Certainly, and that is its great merit. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility. In good utilitarian logic a man does not sell all his goods to go crusading, nor does he build cathedrals; still less does he write verse. There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown. It is as well, I grant you, that the family should have worn it beyond the memory of man; for your recent creations do not answer—they are nothing in comparison of your priest-king, whose merit is irrelevant, whose place cannot be disputed, nor made the subject of a recurring vote.'

  Six bells struck; the awning was finished; Mr Evans said, 'Good Dr Maturin, you will not take it amiss, if I point out that your priest-king is on the wrong square.'

  'So he is, too,' said Stephen; and having put it right he fell to studying the position again. While he did so, a shadow crossed the board. He made his move and looked up: it was Pontet-Canet, surveying the game with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. The oblique sunlight fell on his black whiskers, showing an odd rusty tinge beneath the dye: or perhaps caused by the dye? Where had he seen the man before?

  His eyes wandered beyond the whiskers, beyond Mr Evans's bowed cogitating head, swept the sea for skimmers, and returning beheld Jack Aubrey. Jack kept out of the way of his captors as much as he decently could—the necessary cheerfulness was burdensome to him, far more burdensome than the truly shocking pain in his shattered arm; but now that he was well enough to come on deck he could not decently sit moping in his cabin. He paused at the top of the ladder, and Stephen saw his keen gaze run round the horizon in search of a British man-of-war, preferably an exact match for the Constitution, ideally his own Acasta (though she only carried eighteen-pounders). Having searched in vain he cast an automatic glance at the sails and the sky to windward, and walked aft to watch the game.

  'I have moved, sir,' said Mr Evans, disguising his triumph in a tone of false meekness.

  He had indeed. Stephen, intent upon his own attack, had overlooked that odious knight. Whatever he did he must lose a piece, and against a player as strong as Mr Evans that must mean losing the game: unless . . . He advanced a pawn.

  'No, no,' cried Pontet-Canet. 'You must—'

  'Hush,' cried Evans, Jack and Stephen.

  Pontet-Canet glared, particularly at Jack, sniffed, and walked away; but presently he was back, his fingers fairly itching to put the chessmen right.

  The pieces fell, a brisk massacre; the board was almost clear, and Evans, one piece and two pawns up, fell plump into the trap. 'Oh,' cried he, striking his forehead, 'a stalemate!'

  'Morally you won,' said Stephen. 'But at least this time my king was not discomfited.'

  'What you should have done,' cried Pontet-Canet, 'was to take the fool.'

  Evans and Stephen were too busy telling one another how they had contrived to lose, each having an impregnable position, an invincible plan of attack, to pay much attention to the others; but they were soon obliged to do so. The tone had risen far beyond that of ordinary disagreement; it had risen to acrimony; and at the same time it had so increased in volume that the American officers who were on the quarterdeck looked round in surprise.

  'I must insist that you have placed the pieces wrongly,' said Jack again in a strong voice, unaccustomed these many years to contradiction from any but admirals and his wife. 'The queen's rook was here.' He tweaked the piece from the Frenchman's hand, and firmly leaning across him, put it down, not without some emphasis.

  'Do you believe to bully me?' cried Pontet-Canet. 'You damned rogue. By God, it will not be so . . . I'll overboard you like a dead cat . . . if I find you too heavy, I'll cling to you with hands, legs, nails, everything; my life is nothing to send such a dog to hell,. Now, just now . . .'

  Fortunately his words came tumbling so fast, and in so very strange an accent, that Jack did not understand much of what he said; and fortunately, as Stephen and Mr Evans interposed, the quarterdeck filled for the solemn noonday observation of the sun—a ceremony as grave here as it was in the Royal Navy—and the moment Commodore Bainbridge decreed that the hour was twelve the uproar of All hands to dinner drowned all private dissension. Stephen and Evans led Jack below for the dressing of his arm, and made him lie down to rest before dining with the Commodore.

  'Shall we save it, do you suppose?' asked Evans as they returned to the open air.

  'I doubt it,' said Stephen, 'and sometimes I am much tempted to cut. It is this clammy heat that does so weigh against him. And of course the mental agitation: he will accept Mr Bainbridge's invitations, his very kindly-intended invitations, though it kill him.'

  'As for the heat,' said Mr Evans, 'once we round Cape Hatteras and stand inshore for the stream, there will be no more of that. And as for the agitation, might not we add the inspissated juice of lettuce to our present measures? The pulse is light, quick, and irregular; and there is an uncommon degree of nervous excitement and irascibility, in spite of the apparent stoicism. Another such scene as this morning's may have very grave effects. Obnoxious fellow, with his "what you ought to have done"! I would not lose a game of chess to that man for the world. With no fever, no pain, no weakness, I found it hard enough to govern my tongue. In peacetime I should have kicked him; but war makes strange bedfellows.'

  'A ludicrous exhibition,' said Stephen. Too ludicrous, perhaps: perhaps too much of the excitable passionate Frenchman, whom no one would take seriously. With his foot on the top of the ladder, Stephen remembered where he had seen him before: it was at a little inn high above Toulon, much frequented by the greedier part of the French navy. A French officer, Captain Christie-Pallière, had taken Jack and Stephen to dinner there, during the peace of Amiens, and this man, passing by their table, had spoken to Christie-Pallière. Stephen remembered his Dijon accent: he was about to eat a 'côôôôq au vin' and the rest of his party a 'rrâââble de lièvre'; and he had taken particular notice of Jack, who was speaking English.

  'Do you see a skimmer, sir?' asked Mr Evans, blocked behind him.

  'I doubt it,' said Stephen.

  They took several turns, up and down past the repairing parties and the line of carronades, a neat line now, although two had broken trunnions and one had received a ball full in the muzzle, while many of their slides were deeply
scored and wounded. If an English man-of-war were to appear, she would find that the Constitution already had several of her teeth drawn. But it was too early for much hope of that: the cruisers were much more likely to be off the Chesapeake, or Sandy Hook, or in Massachusetts Bay, at the entrance to Boston itself; for Boston was their destination. The Java may have been destroyed, but at least she had prevented the Constitution from going on to cruise in the Pacific as she had intended, and obliged her to return to her home port to be overhauled. Boston was her port, and at Boston, unless the blockading squadron captured her, the future would begin: for this voyage was no more than a transition, a curious long-continued present.

  'That is Cape Fear,' observed Mr Evans, pointing. 'And now you can see the division between the Gulf Stream and the ocean clearly. There, do you see, the line running parallel with our course, about a quarter of a mile away.'

  'A noble headland,' said Stephen. 'And a most remarkably clear division: thank you, sir, for pointing it out.'

  They paced on in silence. No skimmers: no birds of any kind. With his mind reverting to chess, Stephen said, 'Your republic, now, Mr Evans: do you look upon it as one and indivisible, or rather as a voluntary association of sovereign states?'

  'Well, sir, for my part I come from Boston, and I am a Federalist: that is to say I look upon the Union as the sovereign power. I may not like Mr Madison, nor Mr Madison's war—indeed, I deplore it: I deplore this connection with the French, with their Emperor Napoleon, to say nothing of the alienation of our English friends—but I see him as the President of the whole nation, and I concede his right to declare it, however mistakenly, in my name; though I may add that by no means all of my Federalist friends in New England agree with me, particularly those whose trade is being ruined. Most of the other officers aboard, however, are Republicans, and they cry up the sovereign rights of the individual states. Nearly all of them come from the South.'

  'From the South? Do they, indeed? Now that may account for a difference I have noticed in their manner of speech, a certain languor—what I might almost term a lisping deliberation in delivery, not unmelodious, but sometimes difficult for the unaccustomed ear. Whereas all that you say, sir, is instantly comprehensible.'

  'Why sure,' said Evans, in his harsh nasal metallic bray, 'the right American English is spoke in Boston, and even as far as Watertown. You will find no corruption there, I believe, no colonial expressions, other than those that arise naturally from our intercourse with the Indians. Boston, sir, is a well of English, pure and undefiled.'

  'I am fully persuaded of it,' said Stephen. 'Yet at breakfast this morning Mr Adams, who was also riz in Boston, stated that hominy grits cut no ice with him. I have been puzzling over his words ever since. I am acquainted with the grits, a grateful pap that might with advantage be exhibited in cases of duodenal debility, and I at once perceived that the expression was figurative. But in what does the figure consist? Is it desirable that ice should be cut? And if so, why? And what is the force of with?'

  After barely a moment's pause, Mr Evans said, 'Ah, there now, you have an Indian expression. It is a variant upon the Iroquois katno aiss' vizmi—I am unmoved, unimpressed. Yes, sir. But speaking of ice, Dr Maturin, have you any conception of the cold in Boston during the winter months? It may well do good to our patient's arm, but on the other hand, it may carry off the rest of him. Has he no other clothing but what I see? And you, my dear sir, have you cold-weather garments?'

  'I have not; nor has Captain Aubrey. In our earlier mishap we lost all our possessions that we did not carry in our hands. All of them,' said Stephen, looking down as the piercing memory of his collection filled his mind. 'But it is of no great consequence. In a few days we shall be exchanged, and for a few days Captain Aubrey and I can very well brave the northern blizzard in the manner of the Iroquois, or the noble Huron, wrapped in a blanket. And in Halifax, I understand, there is every commodity to be had, from fur hats to the ingenious paddles used for walking on the snow.'

  A shade of embarrassment crossed Mr Evans's face; he coughed once or twice and said, 'Are you not perhaps reckoning without your host, Dr Maturin? Exchange is sometimes eternal slow with us; and your officials in Halifax do not always seem to be much brighter than officials in other parts of the world, nor more active at their work. Surely it would be wise to lay in flannel shirts and woollen drawers, at least? They will always serve.'

  Stephen promised to bear what he said in mind, and indeed it was impossible for him not to do so. When the Constitution was north of the Chesapeake, a screeching north-wester laden with snow and ice-crystals stripped her to close-reefed topsails; and under these topsails alone she stood on, close-hauled, for Nantucket Island.

  Blue noses and red hands were the order of the, day; so was an uncommon alacrity and good humour, super-added to the cheerfulness of victory, for these were home waters for half of the hands. Many of them hailed from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Salem, or New Bedford, and as they jumped to round in braces or to hale upon the bowlines they laughed and called out to one another, in spite of the piercing cold and in spite of the fact that this was the most dangerous part of the voyage, since the Royal Navy was blockading Boston.

  All hands were in tearing spirits; they knew that they would have a heroes' welcome as well as all the delights of home, prize-money, and the diversions of Boston; and officers and men did all that superb seamanship could do to drive the ship onwards through the wicked gale. All hands, except of course for the prisoners of war, particularly Captain Aubrey. Although he knew very well that this wind must blow the British cruisers off the coast he was perpetually on deck, chilled through and through apart from his burning arm, whose pain stabbed so hard from time to time that he was obliged to cling to the rail not to cry out or fall down. He was sick, grey, and weak; he repelled any attempt at help or kindness, any supporting arm, with a curtness that soon did away with any sympathy there might have been, and he stared through the squalls and the thick weather for the relief that never came. Not that there was much sympathy for him to lose, at least among the foremost hands: he was known to have commanded the Leopard, and the Leopard, that unhappy ship which had made the Chesapeake bring to in peace-time to take British seamen, alleged deserters, out of her, and which had fired into her, killing and wounding a score of Americans, stood for all they hated in the Royal Navy.

  The north-wester blew on and on, and the Constitution lay to under Cape Cod, waiting for it to blow out, so that she could slip round into Massachusetts Bay and so home before the blockading squadron returned. Ice formed thick on the yards and rigging; snow drove aboard by day and night. He stood there still, though he could hardly hold his telescope, nor see when he had it firm, a tall and wretched figure. Once an empty beef-cask came alongside, instantly recognizable from its marks: it must have been thrown overboard from a British man-of-war within the last few days.

  The doctors ordered him below, but he repeatedly escaped their vigilance, and the day before the wind veered far enough into the north for the Constitution to round the point, her bowlines as taut as harp-strings, the hands learnt, with general indifference, that the Captain of the Leopard had been laid low with pneumonia.

  'We must get him across at once,' said Stephen, raising his voice. The Constitution, home at last, was rapidly filling with friends and relations, and the increasing roar of New England voices, familiar and at the same time exotic, made it hard to hear. 'Perhaps that ship could be induced to come alongside, and then we could pass him across on a stretcher, without the inevitable agitation and disturbance of a boat.' The ship in question was a cartel filled with English prisoners to be exchanged; she was bound for Halifax, in Nova Scotia, there to pick up an equivalent number of Americans, and she would drop down the Charles river with the tide.

  'I am afraid we cannot bundle him across just like that,' said Evans. 'I must have a word with the first lieutenant.'

  It was not the first lieutenant who appeared, however, but the Commodo
re himself. He came limping in and said, 'Dr Maturin, this matter of exchange is not in my hands. Captain Aubrey must be taken ashore, and he must stay there until the proper authorities have made their decision.' He spoke in a strong, authoritative voice, as though he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and as though the doing of it called for a harsher tone than was natural to him. During the voyage he had always been considerate and polite in his intercourse with Jack, though somewhat remote and reserved, perhaps because of the pain in his wounded leg, and this new tone filled Stephen with uneasiness. 'You must excuse me,' said the Commodore, 'there are a thousand things that must be done. Mr Evans, a word with you.'

  Mr Evans came back. 'It is much as I feared,' he said, sitting down by Stephen in the sickbay. 'Although I know nothing officially, I collect that there is likely to be a long delay over the exchange of our patient.' He leaned forward and raised Jack's eyelid: no comprehension in that blank, unseeing gaze. 'If, indeed, he is to be exchanged at all.'

  'Have you any notion of why this should be so?'

  'I believe it may have something to do with the Leopard,' said Evans hesitantly.

  'But Captain Aubrey had nothing to do with that disgraceful affair, that firing into the Chesapeake; the ship was under the command of another man. At that time Aubrey was five thousand miles away.'

  'It was not that affair I meant. No. But it seems that when he was in command of that wretched vessel . . . but you will forgive me. I must say no more. Indeed, I have no more to say. I have only heard rumours to the effect that someone, somewhere, seems to have taken exception to his conduct—a misunderstanding, no doubt—but he is likely to be detained until it is cleared up.'

  Jack's noisy, laboured breathing stopped; he raised himself, called out 'Luff and touch her', and fell back. Stephen and Evans heaved him up on his pillows, and each took a pulse. They exchanged a look and a confident nod; the patient's heart was bearing up to admiration.