Treason's Harbour (42 page)

The heavy frigate was now rather more than half a mile away just abaft the starboard beam and coming up fast. Jack did not so much reduce sail as reduce speed, discreetly starting sheets and luffing a little too much. The hands were used to his ways, but even so they looked extremely grave as the Frenchman drew first abreast and then ahead while the passage between the first rock and the second came closer still and the wall of the cape beyond loomed up tall and threatening in the rain. In passing the Frenchman gave them a distant broadside but instead of returning it Jack cried 'Stand by to reduce sail,' and stepped over to the wheel.

The Frenchman raced ahead, flinging a splendid bow-wave, raced on into the middle passage: and struck with unbelievable force, all her masts instantly pitching forwards and to leeward. Her consort at once bore up, running fast to the eastern shore.

'Silence fore and aft,' roared Jack above the cheering. 'Clew up, clew up. Back the maintopsail.' And when enough way had come off he steered her, gently gliding, not through the first passage at all but through a deep cleft between the first Brother and the shore-cliff itself, so narrow that her yardarms scraped on either side. 'Brace up and haul aft,' he said; and the Surprise, gathering live way again with the wind on her beam, headed out to the open sea.

As she ran clear of the headland beyond the Brothers a veil of rain swept across the bay from the north-northwest, a thick grey veil that blotted out the shores on either hand and checked the extreme exuberance on deck. Men stopped thumping one another on the back, shaking hands, and crying 'We served 'un out, the old sod - we foxed 'un - God love us, did you ever see the like?' But even so it was with flushed, shining faces and eager eyes that they looked at their captain when the rain had passed over, leaving blue sky over beyond Cape Akroma.

He was standing firmly planted by the taffrail with his legs wide apart, swinging his telescope from one end of the bay to the other. The first savage blaze of triumph had faded, but his eye still had a fine piratical gleam in it as he turned the possibilities over in his mind. 'Pass the word for the Doctor,' he called after a while; and when the Doctor came, 'Listen, this is the situation,' he said, nodding over the mile and a half of grey heaving sea to where the French two-decker lay motionless, 'Pollux is sunk- blown up- sunk, of course - but she mauled the Frenchman finely first.' He passed the telescope, and Stephen saw the look of demi-wreck, the midship ports battered in, the foremast gone, the water pouring from her scuppers. 'And the explosion did a vast amount of damage - beams slipped from the clamps, I dare say. She has lines out fore and aft; she is low in the water, very much by the head; and I am convinced she will not move today, whatever we may do.'

Stephen moved his glass about the blackened wreckage covering half a mile of sea. 'Five hundred men in a second's blast, dear Mother of God.'

'Now look back at the Brothers,' said Jack after a short pause. 'That is their heavy frigate dismasted on the reef of the middle passage. She ran on so hard, so far, that she will never come off. It is not even worth our while going over to burn her.'

'Those are her people going ashore in the boats, I collect,' said Stephen.

'Just so. And now,' - pointing - 'look right down the bay. That is her poor shabby consort cracking on like smoke and oakum to reach Zambra: a Dutchman, I take it, pressed into the French service, with no notion of shedding her blood for a parcel of foreigners. You have the situation clear in your mind?'

'What are all those boats down there?'

'They are fishermen and the like, coming out to loot anything they can carry from the wreck.'

'And that - that vessel over there with two masts?'

'She is our launch. We left her behind when we slipped: Honey will be joining with the kedge and hawser.'

'In that case I believe everything is clear.'

'Very well. Then be so good as to give me your opinion, your political opinion, on the following plan: we proceed to Zambra without the loss of a minute, engage that miserable Dutch herring-buss and the fort that fired on us, and having taken them send to the Dey stating that unless his government instantly apologizes for the insult to the flag we shall burn all the shipping in the harbour. When that is settled, we can have our interview with Mr Consul Eliot. Do you think this a good scheme?"

'No, sir, I do not. It is clear that the Dey was a party to this carefully-laid trap, and since his fort fired on the Surprise he obviously considers that we are already in a state of war. From all I understand he is an unusually bloody-minded, choleric man, and I believe that an attack at this stage, in the present state of excitement, would certainly result in Mr Eliot's death. And with a French two-decker in the bay there is no time for pourparlers, even though she may be obliged to lie at her moorings for a while. I think the plan politically unsound, not only for these reasons but for many more, and beg you will abandon it. In the present circumstances no political counsellor in his right wits could advise you to do anything but sail away with the utmost dispatch and ask for fresh instructions together with a powerful reinforcement.'

'I was afraid you would say that," said Jack, with a longing glance over the water towards Zambra. 'Yet there is a great deal to be said for making hay while the iron is hot, you know... but clearly we must not kill Mr Eliot. And it would be stretching my orders uncommon far to sack the town.' He took a couple of turns to the mainmast and back, raised his voice in an order to close the launch, and then with his usual cheerfulness he said, 'You are quite right: Gibraltar with the utmost dispatch let it be. And since it has stopped raining, aud since we are to have no battle, we must let poor dear Mrs Fielding out of the hold.'

They had moved away from the low-toned privacy of the taffrail, and he spoke in a voice loud and general enough for it not to be indecent, in this particular and most companionable atmosphere of extreme tension relaxed, for Williamson to cry 'I will fetch her sir,' and for Calamy to call out 'I know just where she is, sir. Pray let me go.?

She came on deck just as the Surprise backed her maintopsail and the launch hooked on alongside. She had been told about the Pollux' fate, and she looked extremely grave: she hoped that Captain Aubrey had not lost any friends in her- for her part she had not known anyone aboard, though her husband, she added with a somewhat doubtful look, had served for a while under poor Admiral Harte. The proper things were said, and indeed they were felt in spite of the predominant mood of victory; but they could hardly be expressed at any length, because of the hoisting-in of the launch, a manoeuvre that called for a great deal of piping and the shouting of orders.

In fact there seemed to Captain Aubrey to be rather more chat that was usual or desirable; and even when the launch was safely inboard and griped on its chocks the chat went on, with the word Hoops continually repeated. By the time he had made Mrs Fielding understand the position of the frigate on the now distant reef he saw Mowett hovering as though to speak, with the purser behind him, looking furious, and behind the purser Honey, looking sulky.

'Mr Mowett?' he said.

'I beg pardon, sir," said Mowett, 'but Mr Adams wishes to represent, with the utmost respect, that his hoops have not been fetched away.'

'Four bundles of one and ninepennies, and two of half and half,' said the purser, as though on oath. 'Lent to the cooper for the spare casks and never fetched away by Mr- never fetched away by Someone."

Mowett continued: 'He suggests that were we to skirt the islands, it would not be a moment's work for the jolly-boat to fetch them.'

'All hoops are the purser's responsibility,' said Mr Adams, still addressing the universe rather than any particular person. 'And the Board has checked me something cruel three times this last quarter.'

'Mr Mowett,' said Jack, 'if those hoops were made of triple-refined gold they would still remain on shore until we pass this way again. There is not a moment to lose. Mr Gill, shape me a course for Gibraltar, if you please, and let us spread all the canvas she can possibly bear.'

'My hoops..." said the purser.

'Your hoops are very well, Mr Adams,' said Jack, 'but they are not to compare with the chance of catching these two Frenchmen sitting, if we have any luck with the wind. Yes, Killick, what is it?'

'The lady's cabin is set to rights, sir, if you please; and I have made a pot of coffee."

No one had ever set the cabin to rights in so short a time for Jack, nor had anyone produced a pot of coffee; but he did not quarrel with his good fortune, and as the ship, clearing the bay, heeled to the full force of the north-north-wester, he said, 'I do not like to tempt Fate, but at this pace and with the breeze veering north so pretty, we may be in Gibraltar by Tuesday morning - always a lucky day - so I shall start my official letter this very evening." If the Admiral gave him a ship of the line with a captain junior to himself - the names of half a dozen passed through his mind - the possible, indeed the probable, taking of the two Frenchmen would set him on the right road again, the road for employment, a good command, a forty-gun frigate on the North American station. 'I shall pitch it hot and strong,' he said, with a very happy smile.

'And I shall write," said Laura Fielding. 'I shall write at once to Charles and beg him to come and fetch me. I shall tell him how kind you have been to me, and he will be so happy to meet you: as soon as we have been together for a little while, he will be so very happy to meet you.'

Stephen said, but to himself alone, 'I too shall write a letter. Not more than eight or perhaps nine men knew the contents of Jack's orders; and if that does not enable Wray to lay his hands upon the prime chief Judas, then there is the very Devil in it.'

The End