Treason's Harbour (34 page)

'I wonder he did not make at least some show of resistance, or wait until a few houses had been knocked down. It is the usual thing, after all.'

'It would perhaps have been a little more decent, and it would certainly have looked better at his court-martial; but then we learnt that his wife was having a baby and the doctors were very anxious for her - gunfire and falling houses not at all the thing - so he preferred not to make a mere noisy demonstration that must come to the same thing in the end.'

'No doubt it was quite a reasonable decision,' said Major Pollock, in a dissatisfied tone.

'Lord,' said Jack Aubrey, casting his mind back, 'I have never seen anyone so disappointed as my Albanians. They had sweated like galley-slaves getting the guns up, for when we had hoisted them to the top of the ropeway they still had to travel along the covering of the aqueduct, and that called for hundreds of four-inch planks from the shipyards perpetually shifted to spread the weight, as well as strong teams for pulling; they had carried round-shot like heroes, and any amount of powder, and they had covered themselves with weapons of one kind or another, and now they were going to have to take everything back again, without a single shot fired in anger. They very nearly set about the Turks, so as not to be done out of a fight altogether, and my Pope - they have any number of popes in these parts, you know - and the Bey had to lay about them, roaring like bulls in a basin. However, it all ended happy. We packed the Frenchmen off to Zante, bag and baggage, and then the Margiotes gave us a feast that lasted from noon till dawn the next day, Christians in one piazza, Mussulmans in the next, with plenty of kinds words passing between, and songs and dances whenever we could eat no more for the time being.' He remembered the arcade between the piazzas, the swaying line of tall Albanians in white kilts, their arms linked at shoulder-height and their feet moving in perfect rhythm, the flare of torches in the warm night, the strong singing and its insistent beat, the taste of resiny wine.

'Do you mean to put in there now, sir?' asked Major Pollock.

'Oh no,' said Jack, 'We are bound for Kutali, on the far side of the cape. And if only that infernal slug,'- glancing at the Tortoise store-ship, the heaviest sailer in the convoy- 'don't miss stays again, we shall round the point on this tack, and so run in before nightfall; and then you will be able to see the other end of the story.

Mr Mowett, I believe we may throw out the signal, and prepare to go about ourselves; but give the poor Tortoise plenty of time. We may be old and fat ourselves one day.' The Tortoise, given ample warning, came round nobly, cheered by one and all, and the convoy steered steadily for the far point of Cape Stavros, weathering it with half a mile to spare at about the time that Captain Aubrey was finishing his solitary dinner. Until his finances grew so very uncertain Jack had kept a table in the traditional way, nearly always inviting two or three officers and a midshipman; and even now he still entertained a good deal- apart from anything else he felt that it was part of his duty to make sure that in the squalor of the midshipmen's berth his young gentlemen did not forget how to eat like human beings- but he did so more often at breakfast, which called for less preparation on all hands. Yet since learning of their ship's fate he had felt a reluctance to ask anyone: they were so cheerful, all except the melancholy Gill, and he felt so false, concealing the knowledge that would make their days almost as dark as his own.

He was eating his dinner not in the dining-cabin but right aft, sitting with his face to the great stern-window, so that on the far side of the glass and a biscuit-toss below the frigate's wake streamed away and away from him, dead white in the troubled green, so white that the gulls, poising and swooping over it, looked quite dingy. This was a sight that never failed to move him: the noble curve of shining panes, wholly unlike any landborne window, and then the sea in some one of its infinity of aspects; and the whole in silence, entirely to himself. If he spent the rest of his life on half-pay in a debtors' prison he would still have had this, he reflected, eating the last of the Cephalonian cheese; and it was something over and above any reward he could possibly have contracted for.

In the lowest starboard pane appeared the tip of Cape Stavros, a grey limestone cliff seven hundred feet high with the remains of an archaic temple on it, one column standing yet. Slowly the cape invaded pane after pane, rising and falling with the swell: a file of Dalmatian pelicans flew across, vanishing to larboard: and just at the moment Jack would have raised his voice he heard Rowan's cry 'Hands about ship,' and immediately afterwards the sharp cutting notes and prolonged howl of the bosun's call. But this was followed by no rush of feet, indeed by no sound at all, since the Surprises had been expecting the manoeuvre these last five minutes. They had put their barky about thousands of times, often in pitch darkness with an ugly sea running, and it was hardly to be expected that they should now rush flat-footed up and down like a parcel of grass-combing landsmen. Indeed, the subsequent orders were little more than a matter of form: 'Off tack and sheets,' called Rowan, and Jack felt the beginning of the swing; then 'Mainsail haul.' The pelicans and the cape moved steadily back across the window: the Surprise was head to wind, and they were certainly getting the main-tack down and the sheet hauled in. 'Let go and haul,' cried Rowan in a perfunctory voice, and the impetus of the turn increased, the Chian wine in Jack's glass took on a centrifugal lean, quite independent of the lift of the sea, until the ship steadied on her new course, and Rowan's voice could be heard again crying 'Davis, do for God's sake leave the damned thing alone,' since every time the Surprise came about and braced her yards sharp up, Davis would give her foretopsail bowline an extra swig-off for what he considered smartness; and being a horribly powerful man with poor coordination he would sometimes pluck the bridle bodily out of the cringles.

'Killick,' called Jack, 'is there any more of the Santa Maura cake left?'

'No, there ain't,' said Killick from within. His mouth was obviously full, but this did not disguise his ill-natured triumph. When the Captain ate in the great cabin, his steward had to carry the dishes several yards farther in either direction, which angered him. 'Sir,' he added, swallowing.

'Well, never mind,' said Jack. 'Bring the coffee.' Then after some minutes, 'Bear a bob, man.'

'Which I'm coming, ain't I?' cried Killick, bringing in the tray, bent as though he were labouring over a very great distance, a limitless desert.

'Is the hubble-bubble ready, in case the Turkish officers come aboard?' asked Jack, pouring himself a cup.

'Ready, aye ready, sir,' said Killick, who had been smoking it, off and on, most of the morning with Lewis, the Captain's cook. 'But I thought it my duty to run it in, like, and the tobacco is rather low. Shall I take some more?'

Jack nodded. 'And what about the cushions?'

'Never you fret, sir. I stripped the gunroom's cots, and Sails is at work on 'em. Cushions is ready, and so is the conversation peppermints.' These were to be had in Malta; they were extraordinarily popular in the eastern Mediterranean, and many an awkward pause had they filled in Greek, Balkan, Turkish and Levantine ports.

"That is a comfort. Well, now in five minutes' time I should like to see Mr Honey and Mr Maitland.'

These were the senior members of his meagre midshipmen's berth; they had been rated master's mates for some considerable time now and they were quite capable of taking a watch - pleasant, seamanlike young fellows, neither of them a phoenix but both good average officers in the making. But the making, that was the trouble. To be made a young man had first to pass for lieutenant, and then somebody or something had to induce the Admiralty to give him a lieutenant's commission and appoint him to a ship, for without that he might remain a passed midshipman for the rest of his naval life. Jack had known many a 'young gentleman" of forty and more. He was unlikely to be able to do much about the second stage, but nothing whatsoever could be done until they passed the first, and he could at least help them through that.

'Come in,' he said, swinging round. 'Come in and sit down.'

Neither was aware of any really heinous crime, but neither meant to tempt fate by rash confidence, and they sat meekly, with cautious, respectful expressions. 'I have been looking at the muster,' went on Jack, 'and I find that both of you are pretty well out of your servitude.'

'Yes, sir,' said Maitland. 'I have served my full six years, all of it genuine sea-time, sir; and Honey only lacks two weeks.'

'Just so,' said Jack. 'And it seems to me that you might be well advised to try to pass for lieutenant as soon as we get back to Malta. Two of the sitting captains will be friends of mine, and although I do not mean that they will show you any improper favour, at least they will not savage you, which is a great thing if you are anxious: and most people are anxious when they are examined. I know I was. If you wait until you are in London you will find it a far more awe-inspiring affair. In my day it was the only place: you had to go to the Navy Office to pass, even if it meant waiting for years and years, until you could get back from Sumatra or the Coromandel coast.' Once again he saw the stony magnificence of Somerset House on that first Wednesday in the month, the vast round hall with thirty or forty long-legged gawky youths clutching their certificates, each with a troupe of relatives, sometimes very imposing and nearly always hostile towards the other candidates: the porter calling their names two by two: the climbing of the stairs, one being admitted while the other waited by the white circular railing, straining his ears to hear the questions: the tears on the face of the boy who came out as he went in. 'Whereas here, do you see, it is more of a family affair.'

'Yes, sir,' they said.

'I am not afraid of their failing you in seamanship,' he went on. 'No. It is navigation that may lay you both by the lee. Now these,' he said, picking up the young gentlemen's workings, the papers that both oldsters and youngsters were required to hand to the Marine sentry at the cabin door every day as soon as they had fixed the ship's noon position, 'these are all very well, and it so happens that they are reasonably accurate. But they are worked out by rule of thumb, and I am afraid that if you were asked any fine points of theory- and examining captains are doing so more and more nowadays -you would be all to seek. Honey, suppose you know the ship's leeway and her rate of sailing by the log, how do you find the angle of correction to lay off the course she has made good?'

Honey looked aghast, and said he believed he could find it out, sir, if he were allowed paper and time. Maitland thought he might do the same: the rule was in Norie.

'I dare say you could,' said Jack. 'But the whole point is that if you come up against a Tartar you are not allowed to look into Norie, nor are you given time or paper. You have to sing out straight away that as the ship's rate is to the sine of the angle of leeway, so the leeway is to the sine of the angle of correction. Now I do not suppose that we shall have a great deal to do this run, so if you like to come here in the afternoons we will try to polish your navigation in its finer points.'

When they had gone he noted down some particularly knotty points to do with oblique and right ascension -points that had arisen when he was talking to Sextant Dudley, a scientific captain who despised mere seamen and who might easily appear on the examining board together with Jack's closer friends- and then he went on deck. The Surprise was already half way down Kutali bay, wafting along to the windward of her convoy like a superlatively elegant swan with a band of common and in some cases rather dirty goslings. All her passengers were gazing at the scene, and although he knew it so well Jack caught some of his first astonishment in their admiration: the vast sweep of the bay, filled with small craft and trabaccoloes, the prodigious shore-line of mountains plunging straight into deep water, the close-packed fortified town rising from the harbour at an angle of forty-five degrees and shining in the sun - pink roofs, white walls, light grey ramparts, green copper domes- and beyond it higher mountains still, their sides sometimes bare, sometimes dark with forest, and their peaks tangled in the thin vaporous white clouds.

'Now, sir,' he said to Major Pollock, 'now you can see where we began. At the corner of the mole over there we set up an extraordinarily massive double holdfast and ran a line straight up over the lower ramparts, over the middle town, and so to the citadel itself. We bowsed it as taut as a fiddle-string, and with props clapped on just before and just after the passage of the most delicate places, the guns ran up as sweetly as kiss your hand. That was the first stage. The second I cannot show you very clearly from here because of the dead ground behind the castle crag, but there where it rises again, on the swelling green below those light-coloured bluffs, do you see, you can make out the line of the buried aqueduct, following the contour. Though now I come to think about it, perhaps first of all I should give you some notion of the political side. It was tolerably complex.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mowett, 'but I believe the Bey has put off.'

'Damme, so soon?' said Jack, taking his telescope. 'You are quite right, though: and there is that dear Pope with him. Begin the salute. These were my allies in this affair,' he said to Pollock as the gunner came hurrying aft with his salamander, 'and I believe I shall have to break off for a while, particularly as I see half a dozen other boats getting ready to follow them.'

The Surprise's salute had not finished before the Turks began blazing away from a battery a little to the south of the lower town; they had done very well out of the French artillery in Marga, both in guns and ammunition, and in their cheerful Turkish way they sent the occasional round-shot skipping across the water among the fishing-boats. Within minutes the Christians in the citadel, who had done rather better, joined in with their twelve-pounders. Heavy smoke drifted across Kutali from below and from above: the mountains sent the echoes to and fro across the bay; and in the intervals the sharper crack of muskets, pistols and fowling-pieces could be heard. The Surprise was a most uncommonly popular ship among the Kutaliotes, she having preserved them from two rapacious tyrannical beys and having provided them with the means of preserving what in fact amounted to their independence. She had not done so out of disinterested benevolence: it arose from her campaign against the French: but the result was much the same and so was the good will.