Book 13 - The Thirteen-Gun Salute

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Two foot seven inches, sir, and now we may be gaining. Mr Edwards would like to speak to you, if he may.'

  Jack considered, looking over the side. The ship felt dead, as though she were in dry-dock; she had not stirred, much less hammered, since that last terrible heave. And she was unnaturally high in the water. In an aside to the quartermaster and the two helmsmen he said, 'You may leave the wheel,' and then he returned to his contemplation, while the chain-pumps whirred and flung out their stream. The water by the frigate's side confirmed his instinctive guess: she had struck at the last moment of spring-tide high-water; the ebb was already moving fast. Turning he saw Killick, mutely holding up a watch-coat, and beyond him Stephen and Edwards. 'Thankee, Killick,' he said, putting it on. 'Good morning, Doctor. Mr Edwards, good morning to you.'

  'Good morning, sir,' said Edwards. 'His Excellency desires his compliments and can he or any of the mission be of service?'

  'He is very good: for the moment nothing but keeping those people out of the way'—nodding towards a group of servants huddled in the waist. 'But no doubt he would like to hear of the position. Pray join us, Doctor: this is for your ear too. We have struck an unknown, uncharted reef at high water. We are now aground. I cannot yet tell what damage the ship has suffered, but she is in no immediate danger. There is a strong likelihood that by lightening her we may float her off the reef at the next high tide. It may then be possible to make her seaworthy enough to take us to Batavia to be docked. In any event we are about to lower down the boats, and it would be as well if Mr Fox with all his people and as much baggage as possible were to go ashore under a proper guard and leave us to our task.'

  Chapter Ten

  Their task, their arduous, complex task: very severe and often highly-skilled labour day and night with peaks of intensity at full tide as extreme as anything Jack had known in his long experience.

  All day they lightened ship: perpetually rousing out stores and carrying them to the shore in boatloads; lowering all uppermasts and spars over the side, there to be formed into rafts; starting the ship's water, though none had yet been found on the island (an island inhabited only by ring-tailed apes), and pumping it away by the ton together with the sea-water that still came in almost as fast as they could fling it out. And as they worked they saw the ebb, the most surprisingly rapid ebb, bare the reef on either hand, so that there was white water all around: moderate white water, since there was no considerable sea and the breeze was neither here nor there: but as the ebb proceeded so the ship took more and more of her own unsupported weight, and her timbers groaned again. And now from the boats they could see her plain, standing there unnaturally high, showing her copper, supported by three dark weed-grown heads of rock, two under her quarters and one beneath her keel about as far forward as her belfry, where that last surge had set her down, almost upright, before she could grind her way over the rest of the reef and into deep water.

  So upright and so solid was she at low water that once Jack had placed some shores by way of precaution all hands had their dinner aboard, by watches, and with extra allowance to recruit them for the heavy work past and to come. The pumping went on all the time of course, and to its steady churning the carpenter and his crew, with lanterns and with all the hatchways wide open for the help of what reflected sun might get down, crept about the encumbered hold and orlop dealing with what damage they could reach and making out the nature of the rest, the Captain being with them most of the time. Meanwhile the bosun and his mates, together with the most experienced forecastle hands and tierers, roused out the best cable the Diane possessed, the most nearly new and unfrayed, a seventeen-inch cable that they turned end for end—no small undertaking in that confined space, since it weighed three and a half tons—and bent it to the best bower anchor by the wholly unworn end that had always been abaft the bitts: the bitter end. There was thought to be good luck attached to the bitter end, as well as greater strength.

  The best bower, backed with the smaller stream anchor, they lowered carefully down into the launch, and at last the boat, moving over the longed-for grateful rising tide, dropped the two into what Fielding and the master, after prolonged sounding in the skiff, considered the best and cleanest holding ground in a most indifferent and rock-strewn anchorage.

  All this while the other boats had been plying to and fro, shifting great quantities of stores, lightening the ship as fast as ever they could. And much of the time Stephen and Macmillan had been sitting not in their usual action-station far below where they would now have been a great hindrance, but in the after cabin. This was a time of great hurry and even greater effort and they had already treated many falls, sprains and twists and even one most unfortunate hernia—a good man who had undone himself in his zeal. Now their patient was Mr Blyth. A hen-coop flung from the waist had struck him down in the small cutter and he was bleeding profusely from a scalp-wound: they sewed him up, staunched the flow, and asked him how the ship was doing.

  'I hope, oh how I do hope, she will be afloat in half an hour,' he said. 'It is very near high-water; the leak is not much worse, though she sat right down; and the Captain believes he may pluck her off. If she leaks extremely when she is in deep water, then he means to beach and careen her; she will certainly last as far as the island, and there is a good berth there. The breeze is on the land and we shall drop our courses while the boats tow as well. But I do not believe it will come to that: he thinks she will swim. The lower futtocks have suffered, in course; but he thinks she will swim, with the pumps going and maybe a sail fothered over the bottom, until we reach Batavia. But the first thing to do is to pluck her off. Hark!'

  'All boats,' came the powerful cry. 'All boats repair aboard.'

  Their hands came tearing up the side, for they too had been watching the tide rise to its height with infinite attention: a fine height—perhaps not quite so fine a height as could have been hoped for, but at least the barky's copper was well out of sight: she sat there like a Christian ship, and if there had been anything of a sea running she would almost certainly be lifting and bumping. And all the seamen knew that this was their best chance, with a tide not much lower than the last and the ship lighter by God knows how many tons, most of them manhandled over the side.

  'Ship the capstan-bars,' said Jack. 'And Mr Crown, pray swift them long.' Then after a pause while the swifting-line joined the outward ends of the bars, leaving a loop at each extremity for extra hands to clap onto, 'Carry on, Mr Fielding.'

  More orders, but no running of feet, for the men were already there, and the fife shrilled out loud and clear, cutting high above the tramping feet. Tramping fast as they ran in the first few turns, then slower, slower, much slower.

  'I think we may go on deck,' said Stephen. 'We might find a place at the bars. We must go by the waist, or we shall be trodden down and destroyed.'

  They skirted the lower capstan, crowded with almost motionless men straining against the bars: half a step and a single click of the pawl at the cost of huge grunting exertion. They ran up to the quarterdeck, to the upper part of the same capstan, equally crowded, equally unmoving, or nearly so. The fife screamed, the little fifer standing on it; the capstan-head blazed in the sun. The men heaved, pale with extreme effort, breathing in quick gasps, their expressions entirely inward and concentrated. 'Heave and rally, heave and she moves,' came Jack's almost unrecognizable voice in the middle of the press. From the starboard hawsehole right forward the cable could be seen squirting water, stretched to half its natural width or less, rigid, almost straight from bow to sea.

  'Rally, oh rally,' he called again. Stephen and Macmillan each found a handhold on one of the swifter-ends—there was no room at the bars—and heaved with all their might: thrust on and on and on with no gain.

  'Oh sir,' cried the carpenter, running aft, 'the hawse-pieces will never bear it.'

  'Vast heaving,' said Jack, after a moment, and he straightened: it was a little while before some of the others did the same, so set were they
.

  'Surge the messenger,' he said, and the strain came off. He walked stiffly to the rail, then along the gangway to the forecastle and the bows, considering the tide, the ship, the reef, all with the extremity of concentration.

  'There is only one thing for it,' he cried. 'Pass the word for Mr White. Mr White: I am sorry, the guns must go overboard. All but the carronades.'

  The gunner, pale from his labour, went paler still. 'Aye aye, sir,' he said, however, and he called his mates and quarter-gunners. This was the cruellest blow of all, a deliberate self-castration: there was not a man who did not feel it when the cherished guns went out through their ports, splash after deeply-shocking splash, the inversion of all natural order.

  'The chasers, sir?'

  These were Jack's personal brass long nine-pounders, wonderfully accurate, very old friends. 'The chasers too, Mr White. We keep only the light carronades.'

  After that last double splash—he was ashamed of the pang it caused—he called 'Mr Fielding, let us splice the main-brace.'

  This was greeted by a confused cheer, and Jemmy Bungs darted down to the spirit-room, returning with a beaker not of rum, for that was all gone, but of the even stronger arrack, a quarter of a pint for every soul aboard. This was mixed on deck with exactly three times its amount of water from the scuttle-butt, with stated proportions of lemon-juice and sugar, and so served out, Jack taking the first full pint.

  It seemed to him that whatever might be said against the custom there were times when it could not be faulted, and this was one: he drank his tot slowly, feeling its almost instant effect as he watched the still water over the side. 'Now, shipmates,' he said at last, 'let us see if we can shift the barky this time.'

  It seemed to him that he had felt some life underfoot since the loss of the guns, as though she were on the edge of being waterborne: if there had been anything of a sea she would surely have lifted on her bed, and it was with rising hope that he took his place at the capstan-bar. He nodded to the fifer and all hands walked steadily round to the tune of Skillygalee-skillygaloo and the invariable cries of nippers, there and light along the messenger and side out for a bend; steadily round, and then the strain came on, stronger and stronger; the cable lifted, jetting from its coils and stretching thinner, thinner. 'Heave and rally,' cried Jack, setting his whole weight and great strength against the bar, grinding his feet into the deck. 'Heave and rally,' from the deck below, where another fifty men and more were thrusting with all their might.

  'Heave, heave, oh heave.' The ship made a grating motion beneath their feet and they flung themselves with even greater force against the bars: at this everything gave before them and on both decks they fell in a confused heap.

  'Wind her in,' said Jack. 'A man at each bar will be enough.' He limped forward—some heavy foot had trodden on his wounded leg—and watched the cable come home alone. Bitter end or not, it had parted. 'A bitter end indeed, for us,' he said to the bosun, who gave a wan smile.

  All that night they lightened ship, and at low tide, a calm low tide, they saw her guns all round her in the shallow water, catching the light of the moon. After an early breakfast they carried out the small bower with two carronades lashed to it, choosing a slightly truer line, more nearly a continuation of the ship's keel; and having done so they waited for high water, shortly after sunrise.

  The sun came up at six, and it shone on clean, trim decks: they had not been holystoned but they had been thoroughly swabbed and flogged dry, particularly under the sweep of the capstan-bars; and now all hands were watching the tide as it rose. It crept up the copper, the ripples gaining and losing, but always gaining a little more than they lost until the sun was a handsbreadth clear of the horizon, when the rise came to an end, leaving a broad streak of copper above the level of the sea.

  Can this be all, they asked, can this be true high water? According to the ship's chronometers it was, and had been for some time past. Of course, as every seaman knew, each succeeding tide after the spring mounted less and less until the neap was over; but so great a difference as this seemed unnatural.

  However, this was all the high water they were going to have to float the ship, so they manned the bars and they heaved till sweat poured off them on to the deck. But it was clearly hopeless and presently Jack cried 'Belay,' then directing his hoarse, cracked voice below, 'Mr Richardson, there, avast heaving.' And walking away from the capstan he said in an involuntary whisper to Stephen, 'It is no good heaving out both her guts and our own; we must wait for the next spring-tide. Shall we have our breakfast? That good fellow has the coffee on the brew, by the smell. I should give my soul for a cup.' But with his foot on the ladder he turned and called, 'Oh, Mr Fielding, when the gun-room has breakfasted and when you can summon enough hands able to pull, I think we should weigh the small bower with the launch. I do not like to keep the cable chafing on this rocky ground until next spring. And then perhaps after a pause we can carry some more of the envoy's baggage ashore.'

  The first boat to carry anything to the island brought back the secretary, Edwards, with the envoy's compliments, and should it be convenient for Captain Aubrey to come ashore, Mr Fox would be happy to have an interview, as a matter of some urgency.

  'Please put my reply in the proper form,' said Jack, smiling at the poor young man. 'I am far too stupid to do so this morning. Something in the line of happy—delighted—earliest convenience, if you please: compliments, of course.' And when Edwards had gone he said to Stephen, 'I shall go, when I have had a cat-nap; but what a time for standing on ceremony, for God's sake. He might just as well have come here in the same boat.'

  Fox seemed to have some sense of this when he greeted Aubrey at the landing-place—a haggard, ill-looking, dead-tired Aubrey, in spite of his cat-nap. 'It is very good of you to come, sir, after what I am sure was a trying day and night; and I should not have troubled you if I had not felt it urgently necessary to consult you on the King's service. Shall we walk along the shore?' They turned from the miscellaneous heaps of files, tape-bound papers, baggage, bales and stores, with disconsolate people sitting about among them, and paced slowly towards the farther end of the little bay, where the sand curved away to rocks that thrust far into the sea.

  'I speak under correction, sir,' began Fox after a few steps, 'but as I understand it, in spite of your heroic efforts the ship has remained on her reef and must there remain until the next spring-tide.'

  'Just so.'

  'And even then it is not quite certain that she will come off, or that having come off she can sail to Batavia without more or less prolonged repairs.'

  'There is almost no absolute certainty at sea.'

  'Yet in all this we do have one firm unquestioned fact: she cannot float until next spring-tide. Now I do not speak in the least sense of criticism, far less of blame, but I do put it to you, Captain Aubrey, that this delay would be most prejudicial to His Majesty's service, and that it is therefore my duty to ask you to have me conveyed to Batavia in one of the larger boats. The loss of more time may have incalculable effects on the general strategy at home—as you know, the balance is so fine that the detachment of a single ship can make an enormous difference—and it may have more immediate and obvious effects on the East India Company's actions. The Directors must know as soon as possible whether or not they can risk this season's Indiamen on the China voyage; and all this has the greatest influence on the country's prosperity and its power of waging war.' And after a pause in which Jack was turning this over in his weary mind, 'Come, it is barely two days' sail with the steady breeze of this time of the year; and the Governor will instantly send ships and artisans in case the Diane needs extensive repairs.'

  'It is close on two hundred miles to Batavia,' said Jack. 'And these are dangerous waters. I am not familiar with the South China Sea or what its sky foretells, and my instruments are out of order. There is the weather; there are the Malays, the Dyaks and the Chinese.'

  'I have known these waters for thirty-five
years; and Loder, who has sailed right round Java in just such a boat as the pinnace, has known them almost as long. He foretells fair weather, our Malays foretell fair weather, and well armed we should be quite at our ease. I put it to you again: this is a matter of duty.'

  They walked on in silence, and when they reached the end of the cove Jack sat down on the rock, reflecting. 'Very well,' he said at last. 'I will let you have the pinnace with a carronade in her bows and a couple of hands to work it—muskets for all your people—an officer to navigate, and a coxswain.'

  'Thank you, Aubrey, thank you,' cried Fox, shaking his hand. 'I am deeply obliged . . . but I expected no less of you, sir.'

  'I shall send the pinnace in at eleven o'clock, manned and rigged. There are provisions, water and firing already ashore. I wish you a quick and fortunate passage: my best compliments to Mr Raffles, if you please.'

  Returning to the ship he said to Fielding, 'The envoy is away for Batavia in the pinnace, armed with a twenty-four-pound carronade, a dozen muskets and proper ammunition. They have all they need in the way of stores. I shall need three volunteers, one fit to act as coxswain, and an officer to take them there.'

  To Stephen he said, 'Fox cannot wait for the moon. He is off to Batavia with his treaty: I have agreed to let him have the pinnace.'

  'Is this a sensible man's undertaking, Jack?' asked Stephen in a low, troubled voice. 'It is not a mad, disproportionate venture?'

  'Mad? Lord, no. Batavia is only a couple of hundred miles away. Bligh sailed close on four thousand in a smaller boat, much less well-found than our pinnace.'

  'Your pinnace,' observed Stephen; and in fact it was Jack's private property.

  'Well, yes. But I hope to see it again, you know.'

  'He will be accompanied by competent people? He will not give wild improper orders?' Stephen went on, willing to soothe his uneasy conscience.