The Thirteen Gun Salute (16 page)

'No,' said Jack. 'You may recall that yesterday evening I spoke of Tristan itself. If you look forward, just to the west - to the left - of the cliff, you can make out its snowy peak among the clouds, rather more than twenty miles away. It is quite clear on the top of the rise. And there is Nightingale away to the south.'

'I see them both,' said Fox, having peered awhile. 'But do you know, I believe I shall go and put on a greatcoat. I find the air a little raw. If there were any wind it would be mortal.'

'This is mid-winter, after all,' said Jack with a civil smile. He watched Fox walk off to the companion-ladder with scarcely a lurch in spite of the most uncommon roll - clear proof not only that he had an athletic frame and an excellent sense of balance but that he had been at sea without a break for some ninety degrees of latitude: never a sight of land since they cleared the Channel, Finisterre, Teneriffe and Cape San Roque all having passed in dirty weather or in darkness. Fox disappeared and Jack returned to his anxiety.

This had been an anxious voyage even before it began, with great difficulty in manning the ship in spite of Admiral Martin's good will, and the Diane had had to sail twenty-six hands short of her complement. Then there had come the heart-breaking weeks of lying windbound in Plymouth, eventually putting to sea in search of a wind the moment the weather allowed him to scrape past Wembury Point, but leaving so fast that he had had to abandon his surgeon and four valuable hands, they not having responded to the blue peter within the prescribed twenty minutes.

It was when they sank the Lizard at last, with a charming steady topgallant gale on the starboard quarter but with the plan of their voyage hopelessly disrupted, that Jack decided to go far south, keeping well over on the Brazil side for the current and the south-east trades to carry them down as quickly as possible to the forties, with their strong and constant westerly winds, leaving out the Cape of Good Hope altogether. He had long had the possibility in mind, and he had conned over Muffitt's logs, observations and charts. Now the shortage of hands seemed less disastrous, for given a moderately favourable run the Diane's provisions should certainly last; and to deal with the problem of water he, the sailmaker, the bosun and the carpenter had contrived a system of really clean sailcloth, hoses and channels, easily shipped and designed to collect the rain that often fell in such prodigious quantities in the doldrums. The doldrums had behaved perfectly; the Diane had passed through the calms in little more than a week, picking up the trades well north of the line and running down for the forties touching neither brace nor sheet, hundreds and hundreds of miles of sweet sailing.

She had not reached them yet, though in thirty-seven degrees south she was on their edge. But, thought Jack, looking at the cliff that now stretched wide on either hand, unless he took measures fairly soon she would never reach them at all. There was no anchoring here: the bottom plunged to a thousand fathoms just off shore. And the swell was heaving the ship in, broadside on, at a knot and a half or even more.

He was extremely unwilling to wreck the people's Sunday, and they in their best clothes, particularly as no one had slept for a full watch these many nights past, all hands having been called again and again; but unless his prayers were answered by seven bells he would have to order out the boats to tow her clear - very severe work indeed, with this enormous swell.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Elliott, crossing the deck and taking off his hat, 'but Thomas Adam, sheet-anchor man, starboard watch, was here during the peace with another whaler: in a dead calm and in just such a swell their consort was heaved ashore and destroyed. He says the current sets east much stronger close inshore.'

'Pass the word for Adam,' said Jack, and Adam came aft at the double, a reliable middle-aged seaman, now exceedingly grave. He repeated his account, adding that the other whaler rolled her mainmast by the board as they were getting out a boat, and the ship was already in the kelp before they began trying to tow: he and his friends had watched from off the southern point, unable to help in any way. No one had been saved.

'Well, Adam,' said Jack Aubrey, shaking his head, 'if we do not have a breeze before seven bells we too shall lower down the boats; and I trust we may have better luck.' He looked at the sky, still full of promise, and scratched a backstay.

'Sir,' said Elliott in a low, strangely altered voice, 'I am very sorry - I should have reported it before - the carpenter found the garstrake and two bottom planks of the launch rotten under the copper, and he has taken them out.'

Jack instantly glanced at the boats on the booms. The jolly-boat was stowed inside the launch and the work was not at all apparent, but an informed eye saw it at once. 'In that case, Mr Elliott,' he said, 'let us get what boats we have over the side at once. And I should like a word with the carpenter.'

During all this time, that is to say from the end of divisions which as acting-surgeon he attended, Stephen had been sitting on a paunch-mat, wedged between the foremast and the foretopsail-sheet bitts, gazing at the extraordinary wealth of life in, upon and over these waters: Port Egmont hens, Cape pigeons and four other kinds of petrel so far, the inevitable boobies, some prions, many terns and far, far greater numbers of penguins, some of which he could not identify at all. No great calm albatross hitherto, alas, but on the other hand the most wonderfully gratifying view of seals and fishes. The water was exceptionally clear, and as each unbreaking, untroubled wave of this prodigious swell rose and rose, towering above the ship as she lay in the trough, the inhabitants of the deep could be seen within it, seen with the utmost clarity, and seen sideways, going about their business, seen as though the observer shared their element. He sat there entranced, facing away from the island because the sun was now over the Tropic of Cancer and the light came from the north. Once Ahmed crept forward with a biscuit and said he would bring a covered mug of coffee if the tuan would like it; but otherwise there was no interruption at all.

He faintly heard the psalm; he was aware of the Sunday smells, pork and plum-duff, coming from the galley; and he had some notion that there were bosun's calls, vehement orders, the running of many feet. But piping, vehemence and running were commonplace in naval life and in any case his entire conscious attention was now wholly taken up with the most striking, moving and unexpected sight he had ever seen: as his eyes followed a penguin swimming rapidly westwards in the glassy wall rearing before him they met a vast shape swimming east. He instantly knew what it was but for a moment his mind was too astonished, amazed to cry out Whale! A whale, a young plump sperm whale, a female, slightly speckled with barnacles; and she had a calf close by her side. They swam steadily, their tails going up and down, the calf's faster than its mother's; and at a given moment they were on a level and even higher than his gaze. Then the ship in its turn rose, heeling on the crest, and they were gone, quite gone. Farther off he saw other whales spouting, but they were too far away; they belonged to the rest of the school.

Suffused with joy, he made his way aft through all the busy hands, their cries, their tight-stretched ropes, staggering on the roll and twice very nearly pitching into the waist. His expression changed when he saw Jack's face and heard him say privately, 'Stephen, you can do me an essential service: keep the civilians below, out of the way.'

He nodded and made straight for the companion-ladder. Fox and Edwards, his secretary, were just about to mount, but they stood aside to let him come down.

'I beg your pardon,' said Stephen. 'I have been banished. Apparently there is some manoeuvre toward for which the mariners require the deck quite clear.'

'Then we had better stay below,' said Fox. 'Would you like a game of chess?'

Stephen said he would be very happy. He was an indifferent player and he disliked losing; Fox played well and he liked winning; but this would keep the envoy quiet and in his cabin.

'It is curious that there should be little or no surf on that island with such a swell,' observed Fox, looking out of the scuttle as he fetched the board and men. 'We should surely see it from here. The island has come very much closer, in spite of the calm. Has the manoeuvre any connexion with it? Are we to confess our sins and make our wills?'

'I think not. I presume the activity has to do with our landing on Tristan. Captain Aubrey has promised a wind in the middle of the day, which is to waft us to the northern island. I look forward to it extremely; for among other things I hope to astonish and gratify Sir Joseph with some beetles unknown to the learned world. As to the surf, or rather its absence, the explanation, I am told, lies in a broad zone of that gigantic southern sea-wrack which some call kelp. Cook speaks of stems exceeding three hundred and fifty feet in length off Kerguelen. I have never been more fortunate than two hundred and forty.'

The game began, Stephen, who had the black men, following his usual plan of building up a solid defensive position in the middle of the board. Edwards, an obviously capable and intelligent young man, but unusually reserved, muttered something about 'a glass of negus in the gunroom' and sidled unnoticed out of the door

Stephen's hope was that Fox, in attacking his entrenchments, would leave a gap through which some perfidious knight might leap, threatening destruction, and indeed after some fifteen moves it appeared to him that such an opening would come into existence if he were to protect his king's bishop's fourth. He advanced a pawn one square.

'Quite a good move,' said Fox, and Stephen saw, with real vexation, that it was fatal. He knew that if Fox were now to castle on his queen's side and attack with both rooks, black had no defence. He also knew that Fox would take some time before he made these moves, partly to check all the possible responses twice over and partly to relish the position.

Yet Fox delayed them three rolls too long. The board survived two unusually violent lurches as the ship entered the great kelp-bed, but at the third it slid off the table, scattering the pieces all over the cabin. As he helped to pick them up Stephen remarked, 'You are cleaning your Manton again, I see.'

'Yes,' said Fox, 'the lock is such a delicate affair that I do not like to leave it to anyone else. As soon as the sea grows more reasonable, we must go back to our competition.'

Fox had two rifles, as well as fowling-pieces and some pistols, and he was a remarkably good shot: better than Stephen. But although Stephen had little hope of improvement at chess he could outdo Fox with a pistol and he thought that with practice he might perform quite well with a rifle; hitherto he had used nothing but sporting guns and the usual smooth-bore musket.

'Do you think they have finished on deck?' asked Fox. 'There seems to be less trampling.'

'I doubt it,' said Stephen. 'Captain Aubrey would surely have sent a midshipman to tell us.'

Less trampling, no outcry, no sound but the furious working on the launch, the only voice that of the white-faced sweating carpenter with his 'I always said this coppering of boats was fucking nonsense. In course their fucking bottoms rot beneath it, never seen.' The whole being of all the others was fixed upon the boats, the ten-oared pinnace, the ten-oared cutter, the four-oared jolly-boat and even the Doctor's personal skiff as they towed the ship, the rowers rising from the thwarts as they pulled, straining their oars to the breaking-point: the eyes of all but those who were labouring with such passionate zeal shifted now from the boats to the stark cliff of Inaccessible and now from the cliff to the ship's side to compare her forward progress with the sideways heave. The towing had begun quite well, but now that the ship had entered the binding weed, and now that the indraught of the current was stronger still it was clear that the boats were not pulling her ahead as fast as the swell was urging her inshore. There was only a quarter of a mile to go before the end of the cliff and the open sea beyond the island, but at this rate it was not possible that she should run that far before she touched. The anchors had been cleared away and they were hanging a-cockbill; but the lead gave no hope of a holding-ground - of any ground at all. And hands were stationed along the side with spars to boom off when the sheer rock was near enough; but that could not prolong the run more than a minute or so. Nearer; nearer with every enormous heave.

Jack gazed up at the top of the precipice. 'Mind your helm, there,' he called to the quartermaster with very great force, though the poor dazed man was within a few feet of him; and the nascent breeze he had seen stirring the grass up on that distant edge came breathing along the cliff-face. It moved the main topgallant and faded; it came again, nearly filling all three topgallants and the topsails; again, and they and even the courses bellied out. The ship distinctly gathered way, and cheering began.

'Silence fore and aft,' roared Jack. 'Man the braces.' And to the man at the wheel, 'Down with the helm.'

The carpenter came running from the waist. 'She'll swim, sir,' he said.

'Thank you, Mr Hadley,' said Jack. 'Mr Elliott, get her over the side. Launch's crew away: jump to it, there, jump to it.'

They jumped to it indeed; but even pulling to crack their spines they could not make fast at the head of the tow before the ship, slanting away from that dreadful shore, had such motion on her that the hawser was slack.

'Mr Elliott,' said Jack, when the island was clear astern and the decks were filled with grinning men, laughing and congratulating one another as they worked in a general diffused sound of the most uncommon happiness, 'the course is northeast a half east. The hands may be piped to dinner as soon as the boats are in. Mr Bennett' - to a midshipman - 'pray tell Dr Maturin with my compliments that if he is at leisure I should like to show him the north side of Inaccessible.'

Jack Aubrey sat in what remained to him of the great cabin, contemplating not only the frigate's wake stretching away and away to the north-west, but also a variety of other things: the room, though now divided by a bulkhead running fore and aft for the accommodation of the envoy, was still a fine capacious place for one brought up to the sea, with enough space to contemplate a large number of subjects, and not only space but quietness and privacy in which to do so. Relative silence, that is to say, for the stays, shrouds and backstays were being set up again after the frightful stretching they had suffered off Tristan; and no one, least of all Jack Aubrey, could expect rigging to be set up without roaring and bawling: and Crown, the bosun, had a voice fit for a line of battle ship, a first-rate line of battle ship. Furthermore Fox and Stephen were still banging away at bottles, tossed overboard and allowed to go a great way astern; while at the same time Fielding, who had been allowed on deck in this easy quartering sea, stumped about on his crutches and plastered leg, making an odd resonant sound and calling out from time to time to any of the many hands aloft who might possibly spoil the blacking of his yards. But if things of this kind had worried Jack he would have run mad long since: he let them pass by his ears as the South Atlantic was now passing by the Diane's gunports, in a smooth unnoticed flow, and he reflected upon the curiously hard fate of being unable to tell Sophie of their escape without at the same time letting her know of their danger. He had come upon this difficulty often enough in his correspondence with her, a correspondence that took the form of a serial letter that continued day by day until it could be sent, a fat bundle, by some homeward-bound chance encounter, or that was never sent at all but read aloud at home, with comments. Yet he had never come upon it so forcibly. The horror of that last cable's-length, with the ship moving with a nightmare inevitability to destruction, was still strong upon him, and he would so have liked her to share his immeasurable relief and present joy in living. He had written a watered version of the events, which he now looked over with no approval until he came to the words 'I was very pleased with the people; they behaved uncommon well' and to his praise of the ship. 'Of course, she is not the Surprise, but she is a fine responsive little ship, and I shall always love her for the way she took that breath of air off Inaccessible.'