H.M.S. Surprise (32 page)

The Surprises let out a universal sigh. The maintopsail and forecourse dropped like the curtain at the end of a harrowing drama; they were sheeted home, and the bosun piped belay. The frigate answered at once, and as he felt the way on her jack gazed up at the new royal-mast, rigidly parallel with the topgallant and rising high above with a splendid promise of elastic strength: he felt a dart of pure joy, not merely because of the mast, nor because of the sweet motion of the ship - his own dear ship - nor yet because he was afloat and in command. It was a plenitude of being -'On deck, there,' called the lookout in a hesitant, deprecating howl. 'Sail on the larboard bow' Two maybe.'

Hesitant, because reporting the China fleet for a third time was absurd; deprecating, because he should have done so long ago, instead of staring at the perilous drama of the mast.

His hail excited little interest, or none: grog was to be served out the moment the mast was secured and the yard across. Willing hands, well ahead of orders, were busy with the two pair of shrouds, the stoppings on the yard; impatient men were waiting in the crosstrees ready to clap on the braces. However, Jack and his first lieutenant looked attentively at the hazy ships, looming unnaturally large some four miles ahead and growing rapidly clearer as the frigate sailed towards them - she was making five knots already on the steady north-east wind.

'Who is that old-fashioned fellow who carries his mizentopmast staysail under the maintop?' said Stourton. 'I believe I can make out two more behind them. I am astonished they should have come up with us so soon; after all.

'Stourton - Stourton,' cried Jack, 'it is Linois. Haul your wind! Hard a-port, hard over. Let fall the maincourse, there. Strike the pendant. Forestaysail: maintopgallant. Marines, Marines, there: clap on to the mainbrace. Bear a hand, bear a hand. Mr Etherege, stir up your men.'

Babbington came running aft to report the foreroyalyard across, and the frigate's sudden turn, coinciding with a heavy roll, threw him off his balance: he fell sprawling at his captain's feet. 'Butcher!' cried Jack, 'Mr Babbington, this is carrying a proper deference too far.'

'Yard across, sir, if you please,' said Babbington: and seeing the wild glee on Jack's face, the mad brilliance of his eye, he presumed on their old acquaintance to say, 'Sir, what's afoot?'

'Linois is afoot,' said Jack, with a grin. 'Mr Stourton, backstays to that mast at once, and preventers. Do not let them set up the shrouds too taut; we must not have it wrung. All stuns'ls and kites into the tops. Give her what sail she can carry. And then I believe you may prepare to clear for action. 'Slinging his glass, he ran up the masthead like a boy. The Surprise had spun round on her heel; she was now steadying on her course, close-hauled and heading north, leaning far over to larboard as the sail increased upon her and her bow-wave began to fling the water wide. The Frenchmen were fading a little in the haze, but he could see the nearest signalling. Both had been sailing on a course designed to intercept the Surprise - they had seen him first - and now they were following his turn in chase. They would never fetch his wake unless they tacked, however; they had been too far ahead for that. Beyond them he could make out a larger ship: another farther to the south-west, and something indistinct on the blurred horizon - perhaps a brig. These three were still sailing large, and clearly the whole squadron had been in line abreast, strung out to sweep twenty miles of sea; and they were standing directly for the path the slow China fleet would traverse next day. Thunder had been grumbling and crashing since the morning, and now in the midst of a distant peal there was the sound of a gun. The Admiral, no doubt, calling in his leeward ships. 'Mr Stourton,' he called, 'Dutch ensign and two or three hoists of the first signal-flags that come to hand, with a gun to windward - two guns. 'The French frigates were cracking on: topgallant stay-sails appeared, outer jib, jib of jibs. They were throwing up a fine bow-wave, and the first was making perhaps eight knots, the second nine; but the distance was drawing out, and that would never do - his very first concern was to find out what he had to deal with. Below him the deck was like an ant-hill disturbed; and he could hear the crash of the carpenters' mallets below as the cabin bulkheads came down. It would be some minutes before the apparent confusion resolved itself into a trim, severe pattern, a clean sweep fore and aft, the guns cast loose, their crews standing by them, every man at his station, sentries at the hatchways, damp fearnought screens rigged over the magazines, wet sand strewn over the decks. The men had been through these motions hundreds of times, but never in earnest: how would they behave in action? Pretty well, no doubt: most men did, in this kind of action, if they were properly led: and the Surprises were a decent set of men; a little over-eager with their shot at first, perhaps, but that could be dealt with how much powder was there filled? Twenty rounds apiece was yesterday's report, and plenty of wads: Hales was a good conscientious gunner. He would be as busy as a bee at this moment, down there in the powder-room.

This drawing away would never do. He would give them another two minutes and then take his measures. The second frigate had passed the first. She was almost certainly the thirty-six gun Semillante, with twelve-pounders on her maindeck: the Surprise could take her on. He moved out on to the yardarm for a better view, for they lay on his quarter and it was difficult to count the gun-ports. Yes, she was the Sémillante; and the heavy frigate behind her was the Belle Poule, forty, with eighteen-pounders - a very tough nut to crack, if she was well handled. He watched them dispassionately. Yes, they were well-handled: both somewhat crank, probably from want of stores; and both slow, of course; they must be trailing a great curtain of weed, after so many months in this milk-warm water, and they were making heavy weather of it. Beautiful ships, however, and their people obviously knew their duty -Sémillante sheeted home her foretopmast staysail in a flash. In his opinion Belle Poule would do better with less canvas abroad; her foretopgallant seemed to be pressing her down; but no doubt her captain knew her trim best.

Braithwaite appeared, snorting. 'Mr Stourton's duty, sir, and the ship is cleared for action. Do you choose he should beat to quarters, sir?'

'No, Mr Braithwaite,' said Jack, considering: there was no question of action yet awhile, and it would be a pity to keep the men standing about. 'No. But pray tell him I should like sail to be discreetly reduced. Come up the bowlines a trifle and give the sheets half a fathom or so -nothing obvious, you understand me. And the old number three foretopsail is to be bent to a hawser and veered out of the lee sternport.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' said Braithwaite, and vanished. A few moments later the frigate's speed began to slacken; and as the strain came on to the drag-sail, opening like a parachute beneath the surface, it dropped further still.

Stephen and the chaplain stood at the taffrail, staring over the larboard quarter. 'I am afraid they are coming closer,' said Mr White. 'I can distinctly see the men on the front of the nearer one: and even on the ship behind. See, they fire a gun! And a flag appears! Your glass, if you please. Why, it is the English flag! I congratulate you, Dr Maturin; I congratulate you on our deliverance: I confess I had apprehended a very real danger, a most unpleasant situation. Ha, ha, ha! They are our friends!'

'Haud crede colori,' said Stephen. 'Cast your eyes aloft, my dear sir.'

Mr White looked up at the mizen-peak, where a tricolour streamed out bravely. 'It is the French flag,' he cried. 'No. The Dutch. We are sailing under false colours! Can such things be?'

'So are they,' said Stephen. 'They seek to amuse us; we seek to amuse them. The iniquity is evenly divided. It is an accepted convention, I find, like bidding the servant - 'A shot from the Sémillante's bow-chaser threw up a plume of water a little way from the frigate's stern, and the parson started back. '- say you are not at home, when in fact you are eating muffin by your fire and do not choose to be disturbed.'

'I often did so,' said Mr White, whose face had grown strangely mottled. 'God forgive me. And now here I am in the midst of battle. I never thought such a thing could happen - I am a man of peace. However, I must not give a bad example.'

A ball, striking the top of a wave, ricocheted on to the quarterdeck by way of the neatly piled hammocks. It fell with a harmless dump and two midshipmen darted for it, struggled briefly until the stronger wrested it away and wrapped it lovingly in his jacket. 'Good heavens,' cried Mr White. 'To fire great iron balls at people you have never even spoken to - barbarity is come again.'

'Will you take a turn, sir?' asked Stephen.

'Willingly, sir, if you do not think I should stand here, to show I do not care for those ruffians. But I bow to your superior knowledge of warfare. Will the Captain stay up there on the mast, in that exposed position?'

'I dare say he will,' said Stephen. 'I dare say he is turning over the situation in his mind.'

Certainly he was. It was clean that his first duty, having reconnoitred the enemy, was to reach the China fleet and do everything possible to preserve it: nor had he the least doubt that he could outsail the Frenchmen, with their foul bottoms - indeed, even if they had been clean he could no doubt have given them a good deal of canvas, fine ships though they were: for it was they who had built the Surprise and he who was sailing her - it stood to reason that an Englishman could handle a ship better than a Frenchman. Yet Linois was not to be underestimated, the fox. He had chased Jack in the Mediterranean through a long summer's day, and he had caught him.

The two-decker, now so near that her identity was certain - the Marengo, 74, wearing a rear-admiral's flag -had worn, and now she was close-hauled on the larboard tack, followed by the fourth ship and the distant brig. The fourth ship must be the Berceau, a 22-gun corvette: the brig he knew nothing about. Linois had worn: he had not tacked. That meant he was favouring his ship. Those three, the Marengo, Berceau and the brig, standing on the opposite tack, meant to cut him off, if the frigates managed to head him: that was obvious - greyhounds either side of a hare, turning her.

The last shot came a little too close - excellent practice, at this extreme range. It would be a pity to have any ropes cut away. 'Mr Stourton,' he called, 'shake out a reef in the foretopsail, and haul the bowlines.'

The Surprise leapt forward, in spite of her drag-sail. The Sémillante was leaving the Belle Poule far behind, and to leeward; he knew that he could draw her on and on, then bear up suddenly and bring her to close action -hammer her hard with his thirty-two-pounder carronades and perhaps sink or take her before her friends could come up. The temptation made his breath come short. Glory, and the only prize in the Indian Ocean... the pleasing image of billowing smoke, the flash of guns, masts falling, faded almost at once, and his heart returned to its dutiful calculating pace. He must not endanger a single spar; his frigate must join the China fleet at all costs, and intact.

His present course was taking Linois straight towards the Indiamen, half a day's sail away to the east, strung out over miles of sea, quite unsuspecting. Clearly he must lead the Frenchmen away by some lame-duck ruse, even if it meant losing his comfortable weather-gauge - lead them away until nightfall and then beat up, trusting to the darkness and the Surprise's superior sailing to shake them off and reach the convoy in time.

He could go about and head south-east until about ten o'clock: by then he should have fore-reached upon Linois so far that he could bear up cross ahead of him in the darkness and so double back. Yet if he did so, on offered to do so, Linois, that deep old file, might order the pursuing frigates to hold on to their northerly course, stretching to windward of the Surprise and gaining the weather-gauge. That would be awkward in the morning; for fast though she was, she could not outrun Sémillante and Belle Poule if they were sailing large and she was beating up, as she would have to beat up, tack after tack, to warn the China fleet.

But then again, if Linois did that, if he ordered his frigates northwards, a gap would appear in his dispositions after a quarter of an hour's sailing, a gap through which the Surprise could dart, bearing up suddenly and running before the wind with all the sail she could spread and passing between the Belle Poule and the Marengo, out of range of either; for Linois's dispositions were based upon the chase moving at nine on ten knots - no European ship in these waters could do better, and hitherto Surprise had not done as well. Berceau, the corvette, farther to leeward, might close the gap; but although she might knock away some of his spars, it was unlikely that she could hold him long enough for the Marengo to come up. If she had a commander so determined that he would let his ship be riddled, perhaps sunk - a man who would run him aboard - why then, that would be a different matter.

He looked hard over the sea at the distant corvette: she vanished in a drift of rain, and he shifted his gaze to the two-decker. What was in Linois's mind? He was running east-south-east under easy sail: topsails, forecourse dewed up. One thing Jack was certain of was, that Linois was infinitely more concerned with catching the China fleet than with destroying a frigate.

The moves, the answers to those moves on either side, the varying degrees of danger, and above all Linois's appreciation of the position... He came down on deck, and Stephen, looking attentively at him, saw that he had what might be called his battle-face: it was not the glowing blaze of immediate action, of boarding or cutting out, but a remoter expression altogether - cheerful, confident, but withdrawn - filled with natural authority. He did not speak, apart from giving an order to hitch the runners to the mastheads and to double the preventer-backstays, but paced the quarterdeck with his hands behind his back, his eyes running from the frigates to the line-of-battle ship Stephen saw the first lieutenant approach, hesitate, and step back On these occasions,' he reflected, my