Treason's Harbour (13 page)

As the gig sped across the Grand Harbour Jack said 'I thought the Admiral was ashore.'

'So he is, sir,' said the boy in his high clear treble, 'but he said he would be aboard long before I found you, and longer still before you put on your breeches.' The gig's crew grinned, and bow-oar uttered a strangled hoot. 'But I did not even go to the lady's house,' the boy went on in perfect innocence, 'because one of our bargemen said he had seen you putting off at Nix Mangiare steps for the dockyard, and I found you first go!"

Going up the Caledonia's side, Jack noticed with satisfaction that the gathering of officers on the quarterdeck was far more impressive than was called for by the arrival of a mere post-captain: clearly the Admiral had.not yet returned. Indeed, the Caledonia's bell had time to be struck twice while Jack was talking to her commander before the Admiral's barge was seen to shove off and come racing out, pulling double-banked as though for a wager. The whole quarterdeck stiffened: the bosun's mates wetted their calls, the Marines straightened their stocks, the sideboys put on their white gloves. The Admiral came aboard in style: hats flew off, and Marines presented arms with a ringing unanimous stamp and clash, while their officer's sword cut a gleaming curve in the sunlight and the bosun's calls wailed over all. Sir Francis touched his own hat, glanced about the quarterdeck, caught sight of Jack's bright yellow hair and called out 'Aubrey! Now that is what I call brisk. Good: very good. I had not looked for you this hour and more. Come along with me.' He led the way to the great cabin, waved Jack to an elbow-chair, settled behind a broad, paper-lined desk and said 'First I must tell you that Worcester is condemned. She should never have been attempted to be repaired: it was a damned job to firk money out of Government. The new surveyors I have brought with me say that without she is completely rebuilt she can never take her place in the line of battle, and she ain't worth it; we have already spent far, far too much on her. So since we are in need of one, I have ordered her to be converted into a sheer-hulk.'

Jack had been expecting this; and since he had the Surprise for the present and the firmly-promised Blackwater for the future he was not much concerned, particularly as the Worcester was one of the few ships he had known that he never could love or even esteem. He bowed, saying 'Yes, sir.'

The Admiral looked at him with approval, and said 'How is Surprise coming along?'

'Pretty well, sir. I went over her this morning, and barring mishaps she should be ready for sea in thirteen days. But, sir, unless I am given a very large draft of men I shall not have hands enough to work her. We have been bled white.'

'You have enough to work a moderate ship?'

'Oh yes, sir: enough to work and fight any sloop in the list.'

'And I dare say most of them are seamen? I dare say you kept the hands that had served with you in other missions?' said the Admiral, taking the list Jack brought from his pocket. 'Yes,' he said, cocking it to the light and holding it at arm's length, 'scarcely a man that is not rated able. Now that is just what I want.' He searched among the folders on his desk, opened one, and said with his rare smile, 'I believe I may be able to put you in the way of a plum. You deserve one, after turning the French out of Marga.' He looked through the papers for some minutes, while Jack gazed out of the stern-windows at the vast sunlit Grand Harbour with the Thunderer, 74, wearing red at the mizen, gliding towards St Elmo under topsails before the west-north-west breeze, bearing Rear-Admiral Harte away to the blockading squadron and its everlasting watch on the French fleet in Toulon.

'Plum?' he thought. 'How I should love a plum. But there are precious few left in the Mediterranean: can he be topping it the ironical comic?'

'Yes,' said the Admiral, 'turning the French out of Marga was a capital stroke. Now,' - taking a chart from the folder and speaking in quite another tone, in the rapid, urgent, emphatic way that came naturally to him when any naval undertaking was in hand - 'bring your chair over here and look at this. Have you ever been in the Red Sea?'

'Only as far as Perim, sir.'

'Well, now, here is the island of Mubara. Its ruler has some galleys and an armed brig or two; he is obnoxious to the Sublime Porte and to the East India Company, and it was thought he could be quietly deposed by a small force arriving unexpectedly, the Company providing an eighteen-gun ship-rigged sloop and the Turks a suitable body of troops and a spare ruler. The sloop is there, lying at Suez with a small crew of lascars and conducting herself as a merchantman, and the Turks are ready with their soldiers. It was thought that Lord Lowestoffe would go out, travelling overland with a party of seamen, and carry out the operation some time next month. But Lowestoffe is sick, and in any case a new situation has arisen. The French want a base for the frigates they have and plan to have in the Indian Ocean and although Mubara is rather far to the north it is a great deal better than nothing. They offered the ruler - his name is Tallal, and he has always been a friend of theirs- gunners and engineers to fortify his harbour, together with a present of gewgaws. But Tallal was not interested in gewgaws: hard cash was what he wanted, and a very great deal of it. Indeed, his demands have increased at every interview. I say, his demands have increased at every interview.'

'Pray why is that, sir?'

'Because now there is a scheme for Mehemet Ali to conquer Arabia right down to the Persian Gulf, declare himself independent, and join with the French in bundling us out of India; and since Mehemet Ali has no navy in the Red Sea, Mubara has become very valuable indeed; all the more so as the French want it in order to keep a check on their ally. Furthermore, Tallal has relations all along the coast, and the present has grown into a sum that is to bring them over to the French side too. Well, now, they have come to an agreement at last and Tallal has sent one of his galleys down to Kassawa to take the Frenchmen aboard and to load the treasure. How much I do not know: some reports put it as high as five thousand purses, some at only half as much, but they all agree it is the silver that Decaen sent away from the Mauritius just before the island was taken, in a brig loaded to the gunwales. But you know all about that, of course.'

Of course he did: apart from the last purely formal stages, when his admiral assumed command, Jack it was who had taken the Mauritius, at the head of a small squadron. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'I heard about that wretched brig. I even saw her, hull down to the north, but could not chase: I much regretted it.'

'I dare say you did. Well, now, that was at the beginning of their Ramadan: when it is over the galley will return. Do you wish to hear about their Ramadan, Aubrey?'

'If you please, sir.'

'It is a kind of Lent, but far more thorough-paced. They are not allowed to eat or drink or have to do with women from sunrise to sunset, and it lasts from one new moon to the next. Some say travellers are excused, but these people, these Mubaraites, are uncommon pious and they say that is all stuff - everyone must fast or be damned. So since no one can be expected to row a galley some hundreds of miles up the Red Sea - at this time of year the prevailing winds are all northerly, and it is a matter of pulling all the way, galleys being so unweatherly - hundreds of miles, I say, without a drop of water under that infernal sun, nor yet a bite to eat, they mean to sit in Kassawa until Ramadan is over. Now I do not like galleys - frail ricketty affairs that cannot stand a sea and too crank to bear much sail unless the wind is right aft: dangerous, too, if two or three of them come up on you in a dead calm and hammer you for a while and then board you on both sides with several hundred men - do not like galleys, but all officers with local knowledge and all our other informants agree that in those waters they are as regular as the post, pulling their twelve hours and then snugging down for the night. So at least we know where to find them. A ship cruising off the southern channel to Mubara, keeping well clear of these shoals and small islands here, you see, could hardly fail to intercept the galley with the treasure aboard on about the fifteenth day of the moon. She would then proceed to Mubara with the Turks for them to carry out the deposition, which is none of our business.'

'It would call for rapid, well-coordinated movement, sir,' said Jack in reply to the Admiral's expectant pause.

'Speed is the essence of attack," said the Admiral. 'It also calls for a man who is not slack in stays and who is used to dealing with Turks and Albanians. Mehemet Ali is an Albanian, you know, and so are many of his soldiers and associates. That is why I thought of you. What do you say?'

'I should be very happy to go, sir; and I am much obliged to you for your good opinion.'

'I thought you would be: and in any case you are certainly the best man, being so well with the Porte: your chelengk should give you far greater authority in those parts. You will sail with all your people in the Dromedary transport this evening, then, and you will proceed to the eastern extremity of the Nile delta, going ashore at a little out-of-the-way place called Tina on the Pelusian mouth, so as not to offend Egyptian sensibilities; they have never cordially liked us since that wretched business at Alexandria in the year seven; and travel overland to Suez with a Turkish escort. I wish I could send Mr Pocock, my oriental counsellor, with you, but I cannot; however, you will have a dragoman, a most exceptionally learned and able dragoman, an Armenian by the name of Hairabedian, particularly recommended by Mr Wray; and after dinner Mr Pocock will give you an outline of the political situation in those parts: I dare say you would like Dr Maturin to attend?'

'If you please, sir.'

The Admiral looked at Jack for a moment, and then said 'It was strongly urged that you should take another surgeon - that Maturin should be left here for consultation of one kind or another - but on mature consideration, I overruled that. In an enterprise of this kind you want all the political intelligence you can get, and though no doubt Mr Wray's high opinion of Hairabedian is quite justified, it must not be forgotten that the poor fellow is only a foreigner, after all. Now I shall not load your mind with the details of the plan you are to carry out; you will find them, together with a number of recommendations, in the orders that will be writing while we have dinner. They would have been wrote before, but that we only had the news this morning. I wish it were dinner time already: I had no breakfast. If it were not that guests are coming I should have it put on the table this minute; but at least we can have something to drink. Pray touch the bell.'

The Admiral's rapid flow of words, his interlocking parentheses that did not always come out, and his strong, emphatic way of speaking left Jack Aubrey not indeed exhausted but perhaps a little old and certainly very willing to drink up a glass of Plymouth gin. As it went down, and as the Admiral was silently occupied with his own tankard of pale ale, Jack tried to dismiss his hurry of spirits, so as to look objectively at the scheme and at the plum it might contain. His excitement, his beating heart, and his longing for it to succeed must not blind him to the fact that everything would depend on the wind: a few days of calm or of unfavourable breezes anywhere along the hundreds of miles up the Mediterranean or down the Red Sea would bring it all to nothing. And then there were Turks to deal with as well as a completely unknown ship. The plan was somewhat visionary; it would call for consistent good luck in all its stages; yet it was not an impossible stroke by any means. One thing was certain: there was not a minute to be lost. 'With your permission, sir,' he said, putting down his glass, 'I will write a note to my first lieutenant, desiring him to have all hands ready to go aboard at a moment's notice. They are at small-arms exercise, behind Sliema, at present.'

'All of 'em?'

'Every man jack, sir, including the cook and my only two youngsters. I flatter myself our musketry is the finest on the station. We have shot against the Sixty-Third without disgrace; and I believe we could take on any ship of the line. Every single man is there.'

'Well, at least you will not have to scour all the prisons and guard-houses and brothels and wine-shops and low drinking-booths in this God-damned town- Sodom and Gomorrah- discipline goes by the board,' said the Admiral. 'But I wish you may not have turned them into a parcel of soldiers. If there is one thing I dislike more than another it is a fellow dressed up like a ramrod in a red coat with powdered hair and pipe-clay gaiters doing his exercise like a God-damned machine.' He was growing a little snappish from hunger: he looked at his watch and asked Jack to touch the bell again.

But the Admiral fed was more amiable than the Admiral fasting. He had several other guests, a Monsignore, a travelling English peer, three soldiers, his secretary, and three sailors, one of whom was the midshipman, or to be more exact the volunteer of the first class, who had come to fetch Jack and who turned out to be George Harvey, the Admiral's grand-nephew. Sir Francis was a good host: he gave his guests excellent food and a great deal of wine, and he never bored or puzzled the landsmen with the doings of ships either in peace or war; indeed, the meal might almost not have been a naval dinner at all, but for its noble surroundings, the gentle rhythm of the living deck underfoot, the particular manner of drinking the King's health, and one small aspect of the proceedings.

It was clear to Jack that the Admiral was very fond of his grand-nephew and that he wished the boy to go the way he should, especially in the service line: this was very well, and Jack was entirely in favour of George's being guided in the right direction - he did a good deal of guiding youngsters himself, when he had time - but he did feel that the Admiral (who had no children of his own) exaggerated a little, and it did make him uneasy to find that he was being held up as a model. He did not mind the Admiral's saying 'that nodding rather than bowing when taking wine with a man was a vile habit among the young people of today' and then shortly afterwards directing a meaning glance, a glance that would have pierced a nine-inch plank, at the boy, who raised his glass, caught Jack's eye, and with a blush said 'The honour of a glass of wine with you, sir,' bowing until his nose touched the tablecloth. But he did not much care for being commended as an example of briskness; and he positively disliked it when Sir Francis observed that some officers had taken to putting RN on their visiting-cards, a pert and flippant thing to do, meaning nothing - that Captain Aubrey, however, did not put RN on his card, and that when Captain Aubrey wrote a letter to a fellow-officer he did not add a couple of foolish initials to the direction but the words 'of His Majesty's navy'. Captain Aubrey also wore his hat athwartships in the good old way, not fore and aft. These were only a few remarks in a general flood of conversation; the English traveller, who was very rich, and the prelate, who was very well with the King of the Two Sicilies, were not at all oppressed by a sense of rank - but they were enough to cause Jack's neighbours, post-captains of about his own seniority, a good deal of quiet pleasure.