The Wine-Dark Sea Read online

  The Wine-Dark Sea

  Patrick O'brian

  PATRICK O'BRIAN

  The Wine-Dark Sea

  W.W. Norton & Company

  New York * London

  Chapter One

  A purple ocean, vast under the sky and devoid of all visible life apart from two minute ships racing across its immensity. They were as close-hauled to the somewhat irregular north-east trades as ever they could be, with every sail they could safely carry and even more, their bowlines twanging taut: they had been running like this day after day, sometimes so far apart that each saw only the other's topsails above the horizon, sometimes within gunshot; and when this was the case they fired at one another with their chasers.

  The foremost ship was the Franklin, an American privateer of twenty-two guns, nine-pounders, and her pursuer was the Surprise, a twenty-eight-gun frigate formerly belonging to the Royal Navy but now acting as a privateer too, manned by privateersmen and volunteers: she was nominally commanded by a half-pay officer named Thomas Pullings but in fact by her former captain, Jack Aubrey, a man much higher on the post-captain's list than would ordinarily have been found in so small and antiquated a ship - an anomalous craft entirely, for although she purported to be a privateer her official though unpublished status was that of His Majesty's Hired Vessel Surprise. She had set out on her voyage with the purpose of carrying her surgeon, Stephen Maturin, to South America, there to enter into contact with those leading inhabitants who wished to make Chile and Peru independent of Spain: for Maturin, as well as being a doctor of medicine, was an intelligence-agent exceptionally well qualified for this task, being a Catalan on his mother's side and bitterly opposed to Spanish - that is to say Castilian - oppression of his country.

  He was indeed opposed to oppression in all its forms, and in his youth he had supported the United Irishmen (his father was a Catholic Irish officer in the Spanish service) in everything but the violence of 1798: but above all, far above all, he abhorred that of Buonaparte, and he was perfectly willing to offer his services to the British government to help put an end to it, to offer them gratis pro Deo, thus doing away with any hint of the odious name of spy, a vile wretch hired by the Ministry to inform upon his friends, a name associated in his Irish childhood with that of Judas, Spy-Wednesday coming just before the Passion.

  His present undertaking, resumed after a long interruption caused by the traitorous passing of information from London to Madrid, gave him the greatest satisfaction, for its success would not only weaken the two oppressors but it would also cause extreme anger and frustration in a particular department of French intelligence that was trying to bring about the same result, though with the difference that the independent South American governments should feel loving and strategically valuable gratitude towards Paris rather than London.

  He had had many causes for satisfaction since they left the Polynesian island of Moahu in pursuit of the Franklin. One was that the American had chosen to rely on her remarkable powers of sailing very close to the wind on a course that was leading them directly towards his destination; another was that although her sailing-master, an old Pacific hand from Nantucket, handled her with uncommon skill, doing everything in his power to run clear or shake off his pursuer by night, neither his guile nor his seamanship could outmatch Aubrey's. If the Franklin slipped a raft over the side in the darkness, lighting lanterns upon it, dowsing her own and changing course, she found the Surprise in her wake when the day broke clear; for Jack Aubrey had the same instinct, the same sense of timing and a far greater experience of war.

  Still another cause for satisfaction was that every successive noonday observation showed them slanting rapidly down towards the equator and some two hundred miles or more closer to Peru, a country that Dr Maturin associated not only with potential independence but also with the coca plant, a shrub whose dried leaves he, like the Peruvians, was accustomed to chew as a relief from mental or spiritual distress and physical or intellectual weariness as well as a source of benignity and general well-being. Rats, however, had eaten his store of leaves somewhere south of Capricorn. Coca leaves could not be replaced in New South Wales, where the Surprise had spent some dismal weeks, and he looked forward eagerly to a fresh supply: ever since he last heard from his wife - letters had caught up with the ship off Norfolk Island - he had felt a deep indwelling anxiety about her; and the coca leaves might at least dispel the irrational part of it. They sharpened the mind wonderfully; and he welcomed the prospect of that familiar taste, the deadening of the inside of his mouth and pharynx, and the calming of his spirit in what he termed 'a virtuous ataraxy', a freedom that owed nothing to alcohol, that contemptible refuge, nor even to his old love opium, which might be objected to on physical and even perhaps on moral grounds.

  This was scarcely a subject that so discreet, private and indeed secretive a person as Stephen Maturin was likely to discuss, and although it flashed into his mind as a piece of green seaweed rose momentarily on the bow-wave, all he said to his companion was 'It is a great satisfaction to see the ocean a colour so near to that of new wine - of certain kinds of new wine - as it comes gushing from the press.'

  He and Nathaniel Martin, his assistant-surgeon, were standing in the frigate's beakhead, a roughly triangular place in front of and below the forecastle, the very foremost part of the ship where the bowsprit reached out, where the seamen's privy was to be found, and where the medicoes were least in the way, not only of the hands trimming the sails to capture the greatest possible thrust from the wind but, and above all, of the gunners serving the two bow-chasers on the forecastle, guns that pointed almost directly forward. The gun-crews in question were commanded by Captain Aubrey himself, who pointed and fired the windward chaser, a long brass nine-pounder called Beelzebub, and by Captain Pullings, who did the same for the leeward gun: they both had much the same style of firing, which was not surprising, since Captain Pullings had been one of Jack's midshipmen in his first command, a great while ago in the Mediterranean, and had learnt all his practical gunnery from him. They were now very carefully aiming their pieces at the Franklin's topsail yards with the intent of cutting halyards, backstays and the whole nexus of cordage at the level of the mainyard and even with luck of wounding the mainyard itself: in any case of delaying her progress without damage to her hull. There was no point in battering the hull of a prize, and a prize the Franklin seemed fated to be in the long run - perhaps even today, since the Surprise was perceptibly gaining. The range was now a thousand yards or even a little less, and both Jack and Pullings waited for just before the height of the roll to send their shot racing over the broad stretch of water.

  'The Captain does not like it, however,' observed Maturin, referring to the wine-dark sea. 'He says it is not natural. He admits the colour, which we have all seen in the Mediterranean on occasion; he admits the swell, which though unusually broad is not rare but the colour and the swell together..."

  The crash and rumble of the Captain's gun, followed with scarcely a pause by Pullings', cut him short: smoke and smouldering scraps of wad whistled about their heads, yet even before they swept away to leeward Stephen had his spyglass to his eye. He could not catch the flight of the ball, but in three heartbeats he saw a hole appear low in the Frenchman's topsail, joining a score of others. To his astonishment he also saw a jet of water shoot from her lee scuppers, and above him he heard Tom Pullings' cry. 'They are starting their water, sir!'

  'What does this signify?' asked Martin quietly. He had not applied to a very valuable source, Dr Maturin being strictly a land-animal, but in this case Stephen could truthfully reply 'that they were pumping their fresh water over the side to lighten the ship and make it go faster'. 'Perhaps,' he added, 'they may also throw thei
r guns and boats overboard. I have seen it done.'

  A savage cheer from all the Surprises in the fore part of the ship showed him that he was seeing it again; and having watched the first few splashes he passed Martin the glass.

  The boats went overboard, and the guns: but not quite all the guns. As the Franklin's speed increased, her two stern-chasers fired together, the white smoke streaming away across her wake.

  'How disagreeable it is to be fired at,' said Martin, shrinking into as small a space as possible; and as he spoke one ball hit the best bower anchor close behind them with an enormous clang: the sharp fragments, together with the second ball, cut away almost all the foretopgallantmast's support. The mast and its attendant canvas fell quite slowly, spars breaking right and left, and the Surprise's bow-chasers just had time to reply, both shots striking the Franklin's stern. But before either Jack's or Pullings' crew could reload their guns they were enveloped in sailcloth, whilst at the same time all hands aft raised the cry Man overboard and the ship flew up into the wind, all her sails taken aback and clattering like a madhouse. The Franklin fired a single gun: an extraordinary cloud of smoke, and extraordinary report. But it was drowned by Captain Aubrey's roar of 'Clew up, clew up, there,' and emerging from the canvas 'Where away?'

  'Larboard quarter, sir,' cried several hands. 'It's Mr Reade.'

  'Carry on, Captain Pullings,' said Jack, whipping off his shirt and diving straight into the sea. He was a powerful swimmer, the only one in the ship, and from time to time he heaved himself high out of the water like a seal to make sure of his direction. Mr Reade, a midshipman of fourteen, had never been able to do much more than keep afloat, and since losing an arm in a recent battle he had not bathed at all. Fortunately the remaining arm was firmly hooked into the bars of a hen-coop that had been thrown to him from the quarterdeck, and though sodden and bruised he was perfectly in possession of his wits. 'Oh sir,' he cried from twenty yards, 'Oh sir, I am so sorry - oh how I hope we han't missed the chase.'

  'Are you hurt?' asked Jack.

  'Not at all, sir: but I am so sorry you should have...'

  'Then clap on to my hair' - the Captain wore it long and clubbed, 'and so get set on my shoulders. D'ye hear me there?'

  From time to time on the way back to the ship Reade apologized into Jack's ear, or hoped they had not lost the chase; but he was often choked with salt water, for Jack was now swimming against the wind and the set of the sea, and he plunged deep at every stroke.

  Reade was less coldly received aboard than might have been expected: in the first place he was much esteemed by all hands, and in the second it was clear to any seaman that his being rescued had not in fact delayed the pursuit of the prize: whether Reade had gone overboard or not, the shattered crosstrees had to be replaced and new spars, sails and cordage had to be sent aloft before the frigate could resume her course. Those few hands who were not extremely busy with the tangle forward passed him the bight of a rope, hauled him aboard, asked him with real kindness how he did, and handed him over to Sarah and Emily Sweeting, two little black, black girls from a remote Melanesian island, belonging to Dr Maturin and attached to the sick-berth, to be led below and given dry clothes and a cup of tea. And as he went even Awkward Davies, who had been rescued twice and who often resented sharing the distinction, called out 'It was me as tossed you the hen-coop, sir. I heaved it overboard, ha, ha, ha!'

  As for the Captain, he was already in conference with Mr Bulkeley the bosun, and the only congratulations he received were from Pullings, who said, 'Well, and so you've done it again, sir,' before going on to the foretopmost cheekblocks. Jack looked for no more, indeed not for as much: he had pulled so many people out of the water in the course of his time at sea that he thought little of it, while those who, like Bonden his coxswain, Killick his steward and several others, had served with him ever since his first command, had seen him do it so often that it seemed natural -some God-damned lubber fell in: the skipper fished him out -while the privateersmen and smugglers who made up most of the rest of the crew had acquired much of their shipmates' phlegm.

  In any case they were all much too preoccupied with getting the barky into chasing trim again to indulge in abstract considerations; and to objective spectators like Maturin and his assistant it was a pleasure to see the intense, accurately-directed and almost silent energy with which they worked, a highly skilled crew of seamen who knew exactly what to do and who were doing it with whole-hearted zeal. The medicoes, having crawled from under the foretopmast staysail, had gone below to find Reade perfectly well, being fed with sick-berth biscuit by the little girls; and now they were watching the strenuous activity from the quarterdeck, where the ordinary life of the ship was going on in a sparse sort of way: West, the officer of the watch, was at his station, telescope under his arm; helmsmen and quartermaster by the wheel.

  'Turn the glass and strike the bell,' cried the quartermaster in a loud official voice.

  There was no one there of course to obey the order so he turned the glass himself and paced forward towards the belfry to strike the bell. But both gangways were obstructed with spars, cordage and a crowd of straining bodies, and he had to go down into the waist and pick his way among the carpenter and his crew as they worked sweating under the sun, now half-way to its height and terrible in the copper-coloured sky. They were shaping not only the new crosstrees but also the heel of the new topgallantmast, an intent body of men, working to very fine limits in a rolling ship, plying sharp-edged tools and impatient of the slightest interruption. But the quartermaster was a dogged soul; he had served with Nelson in the Agamemnon and the Vanguard; he was not going to be stopped by a parcel of carpenters; and presently four bells rang out their double chime. The quartermaster returned, followed by oaths and bringing with him the two helmsmen who were to take their trick at the wheel.

  'Mr West,' said Stephen, 'do you suppose we shall eat our dinner today?"

  Mr West's expression was difficult to read; the loss of his nose, frost-bitten south of the Horn, gave what had been a mild, good-humoured, rather stupid face an appearance of malignity; and this was strengthened by a number of sombre reflexions, more recently acquired.

  'Oh yes,' he said absently. 'Unless we are in close action we always shoot the sun and pipe to dinner at noon.'

  'No, no. I mean our ceremony in the gunroom.'

  'Oh, of course,' said West. 'What with Reade going overboard and the chase stopping us dead and tearing away like smoke and oakum just as we were overhauling her, it slipped my mind. Masthead, there,' he hailed. 'What do you see?'

  'Precious little, sir,' the voice came floating down. 'It is cruel hazy - orange sorts of haze - in the south-east; but sometimes I catch what might be a twinkle of topgallants.'

  West shook his head, but went on, 'No, no, Doctor; never you fret about our dinner. Cook and steward laid it on handsome, and though we may be a little late I am sure we shall eat it - there, do you see, the crosstrees go aloft. They will be swaying up the mast directly.'

  'Will they indeed? Order out of chaos so soon?'

  'Certainly they will. Never you fret about your dinner.'

  'I will not,' said Stephen, who accepted what seamen told him about ships with the same simplicity as that with which they accepted what he told them about their bodies. 'Take this bolus,' he would say. 'It will rectify the humours amazingly,' and they, holding their noses (for he often used asafoetida) would force the rounded mass down, gasp, and feel better at once. With his mind at ease, therefore, Stephen said to Martin 'Let us make our forenoon rounds,' and went below.

  West, left to his solitude, returned to his own fretting - an inadquate word for his concern for the future and his anxiety about the present. Captain Aubrey had begun this much-interrupted voyage with his old shipmate Tom Pullings acting as his first lieutenant and two broken officers, West and Davidge, as second and third. He did not know them as anything but competent seamen, but he was aware that the sentences of their courts-martial had b
een thought extremely harsh in the service - West was dismissed for duelling, Davidge for signing a dishonest purser's accounts without checking them -and that reinstatement was their chief aim in life. Up until recently they had been in a fair way to it; but when the Surprise was nearly a thousand miles out of Sydney Cove, sailing eastwards across the Pacific Ocean, it was found that a senior midshipman named Oakes had stowed a young gentlewoman away in the cable-tier; and this had led almost all the gunroom officers except Dr Maturin to behave extremely badly. Her instant marriage to Oakes had set her free in that she was no longer a transported convict liable to be taken up again, but it did not liberate her from the adulterous wishes, motions, and jealousies of her shipmates. West and Davidge were the worst and Captain Aubrey, coming late to an understanding of the position, had told them that if they did not put aside the barbarous open enmity that was spreading discord and inefficiency in the ship he would turn them ashore: farewell for ever to any hope of reinstatement.

  Davidge had been killed in the recent action that made the Polynesian island of Moahu at least a nominal part of the British Empire and Oakes had gone off for Batavia with his Clarissa in a recaptured prize; but so far Captain Aubrey had said nothing. West did not know whether his zeal in the approaches to Moahu and in getting the carronades up through rough country and his modest part in the battle itself had earned him forgiveness or whether he should be dismissed when the ship reached Peru: an agonizing thought. What he did know, here and in the immediate present, was that a valuable prize, in which he would share even if he were later dismissed, had almost certainly escaped. They would never catch her before nightfall and in this hazy, moonless darkness, she could run a hundred miles, never to be seen again.

  That was one torment to his spirit: another was that this morning Captain Aubrey had promoted Grainger, a forecastle-man in the starboard watch, to fill the vacancy left by Davidge's death, just as he had raised a young fellow called Sam Norton to replace Oakes. West had to admit that Grainger was a capital seaman, a master-mariner who had sailed his own brig on the Guinea run until he was taken by two Salee rovers off Cape Spartel; but he did not like the man at all. He had already known what it was to be shut up in the gunroom with a shipmate he detested, seeing him at every meal, hearing his voice; and now it seemed that he should have to go through the odious experience again for at least the breadth of the Pacific. Yet more than that, far more, he felt that the gunroom and the quarterdeck, the privileged places in a man-of-war, were not only sacred in themselves but that they conferred a kind of sanctity on their rightful inhabitants, a particular being and an identity. He felt this strongly, though he found the notion difficult to express; and now that Davidge was dead there was nobody with whom he could discuss it. Pullings was a small tenant-farmer's son; Adams, though he acted as purser, was only the Captain's clerk; and Martin did not seem to think either family or caste of much importance. Dr Maturin, who lived almost entirely with the Captain, being his particular friend, was of illegitimate birth and the subject could not be raised with him; while even if West had been in high favour with his commander it would have been quite useless to suggest that if it was necessary to promote foremast jacks, as it was in this case, then they might be made master's mates, herding with the midshipmen, so that the gunroom should be preserved: useless, because Jack Aubrey belonged to an older Navy in which a collier's mate like James Cook could die a much-honoured post-captain, and a foremast-hand like William Mitchell might begin his career by being flogged round the fleet and end it as a vice-admiral, rather than to the modern service, in which an officer had not only to pass for lieutenant but also for gentleman if he were to advance.