The Letter of Marque (14 page)

He came down from the yard and took over the deck: he knew very exactly what the Surprise liked in this wind - the only wind in which her present want of a mizen topsail was no disadvantage to her - and presently she was running directly before it with spritsail, foresail with studdingsails on either side, maintopsail and topgallant, both with their studdingsails, and a main royal above all.

'And the boats, sir?' asked Davidge anxiously. 'Do you wish to have them hoisted in?'

'No. With the wind right aft it would lose us more time than it would save. You have the Doctor aboard, however, I see. Doctor, should you like to come into the foretop and see what is afoot? Bonden, give the Doctor a hand, and bring me my come-up glass in its case.'

With the foretopsail furled the foretop gave a perfect view. Jack said 'There! Did you catch it? She has no mizen topsail: that means she is a barque, because with the wind on her beam or just abaft of it, she would certainly spread her mizen topsail if she had one. It stands to reason. Shall I tell you what I think has happened, always supposing my wild guess is right?'

'If you please.'

'I believe the Azul did lie to on that Tuesday, that the Spartan sailed east to look for her, steering rather more to the north than was quite right, and that they came in sight of one another late this afternoon. The Azul bore up and ran for it on what I suppose is her best point of sailing; but the Spartan has the legs of her, and came within range a little while ago. Since then they have been firing their chasers pretty steady, in the hope of knocking something away."

'What is the likely event, do you suppose?'

'If the Azul does not manage to knock something away, the Spartan will overhaul her and then their broadsides will come into play: then everything will- depend on their gunnery. But if the Spartan can get close enough without losing any important spar, her forty-two-pounder carronades must knock the stuffing out of the barque. No question about it."

'We are not to be idle spectators, sure?'

'I hope not, indeed. I doubt we can come up with them before the Spartan - for so I call her - overhauls the Azul, because we are directly before the wind, a poor point of sailing for any ship, even the Surprise. But with any sort of luck we should engage her not long after, for, do you see, as they move south and we follow them, so we bring the breeze more on our quarter, and may spread more canvas. We may engage her, and we may take her.' A pause. 'I am glad we did not change our long guns for carronades, however, as I had once thought of doing: I had much rather pepper her from a distance than come close to her forty-two-pound smashers. If we have to chase, I shall cast off the boats with Bonden and a few good hands in the pinnace. But of course, you know, there are a hundred possibilities. The Azul may haul her wind, cross the Spartan's hawse, rake her and board her in the smoke. A hundred things may happen."

Now they fell silent, as did all the hands crowding the forecastle below them, watching the distant battle as it moved slowly across the western sea in a night all the blacker for the flashes of the guns. Once the pursuer yawed to let fly with a full broadside and the brilliant glare showed that she was ship-rigged. 'The Spartan for a hundred pound,' muttered Jack.

'What is a come-up glass?' asked Stephen.

'Oh,' said Jack absently, 'it has a lens half way along divided into two, so that it gives you two images. When they separate the ship is moving from you; when they overlap she is coming nearer.'

An hour, an hour and a half went by, and slowly, slowly the pursuer made up the distance lost by her yaw and then began to gain. Now she was firing her forward guns; and now, from the Surprise, they were only half way to the horizon.

The crash and rumbling echo of the gunfire grew almost continuous as the two came more nearly alongside; and the smoke rolled away in a solid cloud just aft of the Azul. For Azul she was. In the blaze of the Spartan's full broadside, a long and rippling broadside, Jack caught her pale sides full in his glass. The Spartan was half a mile to windward and edging closer when all at once the Azul seemed to put her helm hard over, turning with extraordinary speed as though to run before the wind and then coming up part of the way on the other tack. The Spartan at once raked her exposed stern, but it seemed to Jack that the range was too great for the carronades to do much execution; nor was the Spartan handled nearly as well as he had expected from their last encounter. She ran on an unconscionable time before her sails were trimmed to carry her after the Azul.

'Perhaps the barque will run clear,' said Jack, half aloud. 'Perhaps the Spartan has lost a spar.'

But something was wrong. The Azul did not seem to be running at all. He fixed her with his come-up glass: the image was steady: she was motionless. What is more lights were running about her deck, and although the Spartan was at last bearing down, the Azul was lowering a boat. Two boats.

'By God,' cried Jack, 'she has struck on the Formigas.'

All this time the chase had been drawing southward, and he had altered sail accordingly; now he reduced it to fore and main courses alone, the most inconspicuous the frigate could wear, and altered course half a point.

Standing there, with his hands hard-clenched on the top rim, he watched the continuing battle, closer now by far. The moon rose, lighting the great swathes of white smoke, and to his astonishment he saw the Spartan move right in to grapple and board on the far side of the Azul, the starboard side, away from the Surprise.

He raced down on deck, ordered the arms-chests to be brought up and the few remaining lights to be dowsed; then he ran forward into the bows. Far over the water the gunfire reached its height: three full thundering broadsides from either ship, the last two almost simultaneous, then one or two guns, some musket and pistol shots; then silence, and Jack could see men jumping from the Azul's lit gun-ports into the boats on her larboard side. He saw them pull clear, apparently hidden from the Spartan's view.

Back on the quarterdeck he raised his voice and called 'All hands aft.' When the men had gathered he said 'Shipmates, the Azul has struck on the Formigas. The Spartan is grappled fast alongside. We are going to take her and her prize in the boats. Mr West, the armourer will serve out pistols, cutlasses or boarding-axes according to choice. I shall lead the way in the launch, followed by Mr Smith in the blue cutter and Mr Bulkeley in the red, and we board the Azul - the Azul, mind - at the forechains; Mr Davidge takes the pinnace, Mr Bentley the gig and Mr Kane the jolly-boat, and they board the Azul at the mizenchains. The boats keep together with a line stem to stern. We board the Azul, we cross her deck - remember Nelson's bridge! - and we tackle the Spartans, taking them from the front and the rear. Not a sound, not a sound as we approach, but sing out as you go aboard: and once aboard the watchword is Surprise. Now,' - raising his voice at the first murmur - 'not a cheer, not a sound until we are there. Mr West, I am grieved to say you must stay in the ship with ten men, and move in when I signal with three lanterns; but no nearer than half a mile. We proceed in five minutes' time.'

He stepped below for his sword and pistols, wrote orders for West in case he should be knocked on the head or the expedition should end in disaster, and so made his way down into the launch. The darkness was filled with whispering and this accentuated the extraordinary feeling of eagerness that he felt all around him; he had known many a cutting-out expedition, but never one with quite such a degree of fierce anticipation. Though fierce was not quite the word. 'Ready?' he called softly to each boat in turn, and each replied 'Ready, aye ready, sir.' 'Give way,' he said.

There was an easy southern swell; the breeze was with them; and the boats pulled fast across the water, with never a sound but the creak of thwarts and thole-pins and the gurgle of oars. Nearer, nearer, and nearer still, the boats keeping close together: in the last hundred yards Jack was almost certain that a blast of grape was going to come from the Azul's well-lit gundeck, where men could be seen walking about. He leaned forward and said in a low voice 'Stretch out, now. Stretch out for Doggett's coat and badge.'

He loosened his sword, and as Bonden brought the launch smoothly under the Azul's forechains he sprang into them, up over the rail, leaping with a tremendous shout on to the forecastle, empty but for three bodies. Instantly he was urged on by the jostling crowd of men pushing after him and at the same time he heard the bellowing cheer of the other division coming aboard and the roar of Surprise! Surprise!

Some horrified faces stared up from the three bright hatchways and instantly bobbed down out of sight.

'Come on, come on, bear a hand there,' cried Jack, racing along the gangway and over the grapplings into the Spartan. The attack was wholly, utterly unexpected, but twenty-five or thirty Spartans opposed them on the quarterdeck, a close-packed resolute body with what arms they had had time to snatch up. A musket-shot dashed Jack's sword from his hand: a pike-thrust furrowed the side of his neck and a short thick heavy man butted him under the chin, knocking him back on to a corpse. He writhed sideways, pistolled the thick man, caught up a heavy piece of the shattered rail, six feet long, and flung himself at the group, beating with frightful strength. They fell back, hampering one another, and instantly he struck a great scything blow that brought three of them down. He was about to strike again backhanded when Davidge caught his arm, shouting 'Sir, sir, they have surrendered, sir.'

'Have they?" said Jack, breathing heavily, his face losing its pale almost maniac fury. 'So much the better. Belay. Vast fighting, there,' - this directed to a scuffle on the forecastle. He threw down his weapon - it was like a great oak door-jamb - and said, 'Where is their captain?'

'Dead, sir,' said Davidge. 'Killed by the Azul. Here is the only officer left.'

'Do you answer for your men, sir?' said Jack to the white-faced young man before him.

'Yes, sir.'

'Then they must go down into the hold directly, except for the wounded. Where are the Azul's people?'

'They went off in their boats, sir, before we boarded her. There were not many left.'

'Mr Davidge, three lanterns from the gundeck, if you please, to be slung in the shrouds.' The lanterns lit up a scene of great destruction. The Azul's gunnery must have been strikingly accurate, and the Spartan's heavy metal at close range could not but smash whatever it touched. The death-toll must necessarily be very high, above all between decks; but from what he could see as he strode among the bodies, none of his men had been killed, though Webster was bent gasping over a wound in his belly, and his mates were putting the gunner's bloody arm in a sling.

'Sir,' said the young man, 'may I beg you to cast off the barque? She cannot float another five minutes. We were only waiting until we had the last of the quicksilver out of her."

'I am so sorry you missed it, Tom,' said Jack Aubrey, breakfasting in his cabin with Pullings who, true to his rendezvous, had appeared shortly after the rise of the sun. 'It was the prettiest little surprise you can imagine. And there was no other way of doing it, for I was certainly not going to take the ship in among those shoals at night. Most horrible rocks: the Azul went down in ten fathom water very shortly after we had taken her wounded out. How that young fool ever came alongside her unhurt I shall never comprehend.'

'But I am sorry you should have been hurt, sir,' said Pullings. 'I only hope it is not as bad as it looks.'

'No, no. It is a trifle: the Doctor himself says it is a trifle, and I never felt it at the time - a pike-thrust, a glancing pike-thrust. We suffered very little. But God's my life, how they did maul one another, Spartan and Azul; as bloody a little engagement as ever I saw - the gundecks of both were aswim with blood. Aswim. There were only two boat-loads of Azuls left, capable of walking, and I don't think we took over two score Spartans, apart from the wounded. It is true they had sent a great many men away in their five big prizes, yet even so it was a most shocking butchery.'

'Here is the bosun, sir,' said Killick.

'Sit down, Mr Bulkeley,' said Jack. 'What I wished to ask you was, have we plenty of French colours?'

'Not above three or four, I believe, sir.'

'Then you might consider making a few more. I do not say you are to make a few more, Mr Bulkeley, for that might be coming it a trifle too high; I only say that you might bear it in mind.'

'Aye-aye, sir. Bore in mind it is,' said the bosun, taking his leave.

'Now, Tom,' said Jack, 'returning to prizes, there is not a minute to be lost. The Doctor will curse, I know," nodding through the stern window to an islet upon which Stephen and Martin were creeping on all fours, having left the wounded to their respective surgeons, 'but as soon as the Spartan is in a state to make sail - and she is very well found in cordage and stores of every kind - we must bear away for Fayal as fast as ever we can pelt, cracking on to make all sneer again, because the end of the month and the Constitution are coming closer every day. We must bear away for Fayal: the Spartan's five prizes are lying there in Horta harbour. The Spartan appears in the offing, accompanied by something that looks very like the Azul. Of course the Spartan don't choose to come down that long bay and lose time clawing out; but the Merlin, the Merlin they know so well, stands in, gives them a couple of guns and the signal for departure; they slip their cables, and join us well out at sea, where we remove the prize-crews and carry the prizes home, hoisting French colours aboard each one, to fox the Constitution if she should heave in sight. Do you take my meaning, Tom?"

CHAPTER FOUR

Dr Maturin and his assistant stood in a druggist's warehouse, checking their purchases for the Surprise's medicine-chest. 'Apart from the portable soup, the double retractors and a couple of spare crowbills for musket-bullets, which we will find at Ramsden's, I believe that is everything,' said Stephen.

'You have not forgotten the laudanum?' asked Martin.

'I have not. There is still a reasonable quantity aboard: but I thank you for putting me in mind of it.' The reasonable quantity was in wicker-covered eleven-gallon carboys, each representing more than fifteen thousand ordinary hospital doses, and Stephen reflected upon them with some complacency. 'The alcoholic tincture of opium, properly exhibited, is one of the most valuable drugs we possess,' he observed, 'and I take particular care not to be without it. Sometimes, indeed, I use it myself, as a gentle sedative. And yet,' he added, having looked through his list again, holding it up to the light, 'and yet, you know, Martin, I find its effects diminish. Mr Cooper, how do you do?'

'And how doyou do, sir?' replied the druggist, with unusual pleasure in his voice and on his yellow, toothless face. 'Surprisingly well, I trust, ha, ha, ha! When they told me the surgeon of the Surprise was in the shop, I said to Mrs C. "I shall just step down and wish Dr Maturin joy of his surprising prosperous voyage." "Oh, Cooper," she says to me, "you will never take the liberty of being witty with the Doctor?" "My dear," says I, "we have known each other this many a year; he will not mind my little joke." So give you joy, sir, give you joy with all my heart.'

'Thank you, Mr Cooper,' said Stephen, shaking his hand.

'I am obliged to you for your amiable congratulations.' And when they were in the street again he went on, 'Its effects diminish remarkably: I cannot account for it. Mr Cooper is reliability in person, so he is, and I have used his tincture voyage after voyage - always the same, always equal to itself, always extracted with decent brandy rather than raw alcohol. The answer must lie elsewhere, but where I cannot tell; so as I am resolved never to exceed a moderate dose, except in case of great emergency, I must resign myself to a sleepless night from time to time.'

'What would you consider a moderate dose, Maturin?' asked Martin, in a spirit of pure enquiry. He knew that the usual amount was twenty-five drops and he had seen Stephen give Padeen sixty to do away with extreme pain; but he also knew that habitual use might lead to a considerable degree of tolerance and he wished to learn how high that degree might be.

'Oh, nothing prodigious at all, for one accustomed to the substance. Not above... not above say a thousand drops or so.'

Martin checked his horrified exclamation and to conceal even its appearance he hailed a passing hackney-coach.

'But consider,' said Stephen, 'the rain has stopped, the sky is clear, and we have only a mile, an English mile, to walk: colleague, is not this close to extravagance?"

'My dear Maturin, if you had been so poor, and so poor for so very long a time as I, you too might revel in the pomp of high living, when your fortune was made at last. Come, it is a poor heart that never rejoices.'

'Well,' said Stephen, first putting his parcel into the coach and then climbing in after it, 'I wish you may not be growing proud."

They stopped at Ramsden's, ordered the remaining supplies and so parted, Martin going to match a piece of watered tabby for his wife, and Stephen going to his club.

The porters at Black's were a discreet set of men, but there was no mistaking their significant smiles and becks or the pleasure with which they wished him good day and gave him a friendly note from Sir Joseph Blaine, once more the true head of naval intelligence, welcoming him to London and confirming an appointment for that evening.

'Half after six,' said Stephen, looking at the tall Tompion in the hall with one eye. 'I shall have time to ask Mrs Broad how she does.' To the hall-porter he said 'Ben, pray keep this parcel until I come back, and do not let me go to see Sir Joseph without it." And to the hackney-coachman, 'Do you know the Grapes, in the liberties of the Savoy?'

'The public that was burnt down, and is building up again?"

'The very same place.'

Had the day been foggy, as it often was down there by the river, or had the evening been far advanced, the Grapes might indeed have been the very same place, for it had been rebuilt without the smallest change, and Stephen could have walked into his own room blindfold; but the new brick had not yet had time to acquire its coat of London grime, while the unglazed upper windows gave the place a sinister air that it most certainly did not deserve; and it was not until he walked into the snuggery that he felt really at home. Here everything always had been spotlessly clean, and apart from the smell of fresh plaster the newness made no difference. It was an inn that he knew particularly well - he had kept a room there for years - a quiet inn, convenient for the Royal Society, the Entomologists and certain other learned bodies, and one whose landlady he particularly esteemed.

At this moment however his esteem for Mrs Broad was a little shaken by the sound of her voice, some storeys up, raised in a very shrill and passionate harangue. Railing in women always made him uneasy and now he stood there with his hands behind his back, his head bowed, and an unhappy expression on his face; it also had much the same effect on the two glaziers who now came down the stairs, directing submissive words to the torrent behind and above them: 'Yes, ma'am: certainly, ma'am: directly, ma'am, without fail.' In the doorway they squared their paper hats on their heads, exchanged a haggard look, and hurried silently away.

Mrs Broad could be heard grumbling her way down: 'Wicked, idle dogs - radicals - Jacobins - pie-crusts -willains-' and as she came into the snug her voice rose to something near its former pitch: 'No, sir; you can't be served. The house ain't open yet, nor never will be, with those wicious monsters. Oh Lord, it's the Doctor! God love you, sir, pray take a seat.' Her usual good-humoured face beamed out like the sun coming from behind a dark purple cloud, and she held out her short fat arms to an elbow-chair. 'And are you in town, sir? We read about you in the papers, and there were prints and a transparency in Gosling's window - dear me, such goings-on! How I hope nobody was hurt -and the dear Captain? Oh, I could weep for wexation - that vile wretch promised the upstairs windows, the windows for your room too, three weeks ago - three weeks ago -and here you are and no windows. And the rain coming in and spoiling the girls' fine-polished floors: it is enough to make a woman cry. But there you are with nothing in your hand. What may I bring you, sir, to drink to the new Grapes's health?'

'To bless the house and the lady of the house, Mrs Broad,' said Stephen, 'I will happily drink a tint of whiskey.'

Mrs Broad came back in a calmer mind with glasses and cake on a tray - black-currant cordial for herself, her throat being a little hoarse - and a tissue-paper parcel under her arm; and as they sat there on either side of the fire, after Dr Maturin's solemn benediction, Mrs Broad asked very gently whether he had any news from the North?

She and Diana had both tried to keep Stephen healthy, properly fed, dressed in clean linen and well-brushed clothes suitable to his station, and in the course of this long-drawn-out and largely unsuccessful campaign they had become friends: indeed, they had liked one another from the beginning. Mrs Broad had a pretty clear notion of how things stood between Dr and Mrs Maturin, but the tacitly admitted fiction was that Diana had gone into the North for her health while Stephen roamed the seas.

'I have not,' said Stephen. 'Yet it may be that I shall be in those parts quite soon.'

'I heard on Lady-Day past,' said Mrs Broad. 'A gentleman from the legation brought me this' - unwrapping a Swedish doll in a fur pelisse - 'and the note said I was to tell the Doctor that there was a waterproof boat-cloak ordered for him at Swainton's that she had forgot to mention. It had to be wove special, but it would be ready by now. The pelisse is real sable,' she added, smoothing the doll's clothes and bright yellow hair.

'Is that right?' said Stephen, getting up and looking out of the side-window into the street. 'Sable, indeed?' How much wiser he would have been to make a clean break with Diana instead of walking about with her absurd great diamond in his pocket like a talisman and his whole spirit jerking at the sound of her name: he had amputated many a limb in the past, and not only literally. On the far pavement he saw his old friend the butcher's dog sitting in the doorway, scratching its ear with a fine dogged perseverance.

He took a piece of cake and walked out. The dog paused in mid-scratch, peered myopically right and left, twitching its nose, saw him, and came bowing across the street, tail waving. Stephen stroked its head, held up with a hideous grin, observed with regret the film of age over its eyes, thumped its massive brindled flanks, and offered the piece of cake. The dog took it gently by the extreme edge and they parted, the dog walking back to its shop, where, having looked carefully round, it put the untouched cake down behind a heap of filth and lay flat; while Stephen, returning to the Grapes, said to Mrs Broad, 'As for my room, never torment yourself for a minute. It is not for myself that I am come but for Padeen my servant. He is to be operated upon at Guy's tomorrow - a sad great tooth-drawing, alas - and I should not like him to lie in a common ward. You have a room downstairs, I am sure.' 'Teeth to be drawn, oh the poor soul. Of course there is the little room under yours ready this moment; or Deb can move in with Lucy, which might be better, as being more aired.'

'He is a good young man, Mrs Broad, from the County Clare in Ireland; he does not speak much English, and that little he speaks with the terrible great stutter, so it is five minutes before he gets his word out and then it is often the wrong one. But he is as biddable as a lamb and perfectly sober. Now I must leave you, I find, for I have an appointment on the far side of the park.'

His road took him along the crowded Strand to the even more crowded Charing Cross, where at the confluence of three eager streams of traffic a cart-horse had fallen, causing a stagnation of waggons, drays and coaches round which horsemen, sedan-chairs and very light vehicles made their way among the foot passengers, while the carter sat unmoved on the animal's head, waiting until his little boy should succeed in undoing the necessary buckles. It was a good-humoured crowd that Stephen slowly traversed, with those round the boy and the horse full of facetious advice, and it was made up of an extraordinarily wide variety of people, much diversified by uniforms, mostly red: an invigorating tide of life, particularly for one fresh from the sea; yet there was rather much striving and pushing, and not without relief he turned into the park and so by way of Black's for his parcel to Shepherd Market, where Sir Joseph lived in a discreet house with a green door, curious double link-extinguishers and a knocker like burnished gold, in the form of a dolphin.

He raised his hand to the splendid creature's tail, but before he could touch it the door flew open and there was Sir Joseph greeting him, his large pale face showing more pleasurable emotion than most of his colleagues would have believed possible. 'Welcome, welcome home again,' he cried. 'I had been watching for you from the drawing-room window. Come in, my dear Maturin, come in.' He led him upstairs to the library, the pleasantest room in the house, lined with books and slim-drawered insect-cabinets, and placed him an easy chair on one side of the fire while he sat on the other, gazing at him with renewed pleasure until Stephen's first question 'What news of Wray and Ledward?' wiped the expression off his face.

'They have been seen in Paris,' he replied. 'I am ashamed to say they got clean away. You may say that with all our services on the watch we must be a sad lot of boobies to let them out of the country; and I cannot deny that our very first move, at Button's itself, was most horribly mismanaged. But there you are: once it was a question of all our services, all sorts of possibilities arose, apart from mere stupidity.'