Book 6 - The Fortune Of War Page 33

  At this point both ships had the breeze a little before the beam, but the Chesapeake's motion suddenly increased and she came right up close to the wind—her headsails had probably been shot away as well as her helmsman killed—and there she lay, with no way on her at all, showing the Shannon her stern and larboard quarter.

  And now the Shannon mauled her terribly, shattering her stern-ports, sweeping her decks in a long murderous diagonal, doing the most shocking execution; and blood ran thick from her lee-scuppers.

  'She is going to haul away,' said Broke. 'Mr Etough, port your helm.'

  'She has sternway, sir,' cried Watt. 'She's paying round off.'

  This would bring the Chesapeake's uninjured broadside into action, and, coming round, gathering headway, she could also board—a fatal move, perhaps, with her much larger crew.

  Broke nodded, put the Shannon's helm a-starboard, and roaring in his speaking-trumpet through the bellowing of the guns, ordered the mizzen topsail to be shivered to keep her off the wind. But even as the sail-trimmers leapt to the braces from their guns, those few of the Chesapeake's that could be brought to bear shot away the Shannon's jibstay; and with no jib to swing her, she hardly moved, whereas the Chesapeake, her sternway still on her, was coming backwards towards the Shannon, and coming fast.

  The lane of water between them narrowed, and all the time the Shannon kept up this tremendous fire, flinging hundredweights of iron and lead at the closest range. And still the Chesapeake came backwards. An overheated quarterdeck carronade overset on its recoil, breaking its breechings, and Jack was too busy helping to check it as it plunged among a mess of hammocks blasted from the nettings and of blood to see what was happening forward until he heard-the crash as the Chesapeake's quarter came grinding against the Shannon's side, just amidships. But as he looked up he saw the Chesapeake, her sternway checked, beginning to forge ahead—she had dropped her forecourse. Yet scarcely had she made a few yards, still grinding along the Shannon's side, but her quarter-gallery hooked in the fluke of the Shannon's best bower anchor.

  In an enormous voice for a man of his size, or of any size, Broke roared, 'Cease fire, the great guns. Maindeck boarders away. Mr Stevens, lash her fast. Jack, Mr Watt. Quarterdeck men forward to board.' Then, throwing down his speaking-trumpet, he cried, 'Follow me who can.'

  He raced along the starboard gangway, drawing his sword as he ran and leaping over the bodies of his clerk, the purser, and several of their men. The moment the carronade was tripped, Jack followed him with the quarterdeck boarders through a violent plunging fire from the Chesapeake's tops: but there along the gangway, outside the ragged bulwark and the torn hammock-netting, hung the old bosun and his mates, lashing the Chesapeake fast by a stanchion, and from the Chesapeake's quarter-gallery and gun-room-port men were firing pistols at them, lunging with pikes, swabs, handspikes, and one, outboard himself, was slashing down at his arm with a cutlass. Jack checked his stride, tore his pistol free, and firing left-handed, missed his man. The bosun passed the turn—the knot was tied—the cutlass flashed down: Jack and Watt fired together and the man dropped between the ships. But too late: the arm was gone, severed, still clinging to the Chesapeake. They heaved the old man in. Jack shouted into a seaman's ear to clap his handkerchief tight round the stump and ease him down between the maindeck guns; the bosun said something with a ferocious grin, something like 'Damn the arm', but Jack did not catch it. He ran blundering on, awkward because of his bound arm, the quarterdeck boarders swarming past him on the gangway and below among the maindeck guns.

  He reached the forecastle—many dead and wounded there—and saw that Broke had already boarded the Chesapeake with a score of hands. Jack followed him, jumping perilously on to the muzzle of a run-out carronade and so over what was left of the hammocks on to the American quarterdeck. Not a living man was there, though many dead, several of them officers; but as Watt came after him with a prodigious leap clear over the taffrail, so the lieutenant fell, shot from the mizzentop. He was up at once, holding his foot and bawling across to the Shannon to fire a nine-pounder into the Chesapeake's tops—'Grape,' he shouted. 'Grape,' as more boarders, seamen and Marines made their way across by every point of contact and rushed past him, gathering at the mainmast.

  'Forward, forward all,' cried Jack. He had his sword out—it felt good in his hand—and he drove at the men packed along the starboard gangway with a dozen boarders behind him, many of them Irish, screaming as they came. Little resistance on the gangway—the officers were dead or gone, the men disorganized—most skipped down to the maindeck and thence below, a few were killed. And so to the forecastle, which Broke and his men had already cleared except for some who were plunging over the bows or trying to force their way down the fore hatchway or fighting still, cornered against the bulwark. Jack's party came pounding up: the few men fighting, now far outnumbered, threw down their cutlasses and pikes and muskets.

  Now most of the Shannon's Marines were aboard, red coats along the decks, and while some of them helped the seamen as they fought to keep back the desperate rushes of the main hatchway, others returned the murderous fire from the main and mizzentops.

  But the ships were drifting apart, and there was no fresh stream of boarders. Broke stood for a moment. The whole issue was in the balance: if the Chesapeakes broke out from below, the Shannons on board were lost. Jack glanced at the men who had surrendered on the forecastle and who stood, glaring stupidly, bewildered, savage. Four of them he knew—seamen, perhaps British, perhaps impressed Americans, he had sailed with; and if British deserters, certain of an ignominious death. 'Craddock,' said Broke to one of the boarders, a man with a badly wounded leg and a bloody forearm, 'guard the prisoners.' And raising his voice, 'Smith, Cosnahan, silence their tops. Mainhatch, all hands to the mainhatch.'

  The men rushed aft, Jack blundering after them, Broke coming last, and as they ran so young Smith, commanding the Shannon's foretop, made his way out on the yard, followed by his men, and thence to the Chesapeake's mainyard.

  'Sir, sir!' roared Craddock through the continuing fire of musketry and the shouting of men.

  Broke turned. Some of the prisoners had caught up their weapons and they were right on him.

  'Sir,' roared Craddock again. Jack caught the sound, whipped about and saw Broke parry a wicked pike-thrust, wound his man, and then fall, clubbed down with a musket. A third man was astride him with his cutlass high, but Jack's left-handed blow, delivered with all his strength and all his weight, flung the man's arm and cutlass into the sea and his body into the waist of the ship, and a moment later Broke's party laid the remaining prisoners dead. And during this quick, horribly bloody affray the men out on the Shannon's yardarm stormed the Chesapeake's maintop, while the nine-pounder's grape silenced her mizzentop; and now all the boarders were swarming round the silent main hatchway. They clapped a massive grating over it and lashed it down, and apart from one last desperate shot from below resistance ceased. With a rending crash the Chesapeake's quarter-gallery tore clear away, and she slewed round, lying helpless under the Shannon's guns. A hoarse voice below cried out that they had surrendered.

  'Are you all right, Philip?' cried Jack, loud although the tumult had quite died away.

  Broke nodded. His skull was bared—white bone through the blood and perhaps still worse, with more blood welling from his ears. His coxswain tied a handkerchief over the shocking wound, and they sat him on a carronade-slide.

  'Look aft, Philip,' said Jack in his ear. 'Look aft—she's yours. I give you joy.' He pointed aft, where the American colours were coming down. Watt was striking them. But now they were rising again, the white ensign undermost as if in defiance. To those in the Chesapeake it was clear that Watt had twisted the halliards. They shouted to him but he did not hear and the last gun from the Shannon roared out, scattering the small party on the Chesapeake's quarterdeck and indeed killing Watt in his triumph and several of his men.

  Broke stared from side to side, not fully comp
rehending: he fumbled for his watch, looked at it, and said, 'Fifteen minutes, start to finish. Drive them all down into the hold.' But now at last the colours rose again in their due order, soaring to the mizzen-peak. Cheering, wild cheering fore and aft from the Shannon, and through the noise Jack cried again, 'Philip, look aft. She's yours—she's yours. I give you joy of your victory.'

  This time Broke understood. He looked hard at the white ensign against the pure blue sky, the proof of his victory; he focused his dazed eyes; a sweet smile showed on his bloody face, and he said very quietly, 'Thank you, Jack.'

  Black, Choleric

  & Married?

  PATRICK O'BRIAN

  IT IS WITH A CERTAIN RELUCTANCE that I write about myself, in the first place because such an exercise is very rarely successful, and even when it is, the man does not often coincide with his books, which, if the Platonic 'not who but what' is to be accepted, are the only legitimate objects of curiosity. In the second, because privacy is a jewel; and not only one's own privacy but also that of one's friends, relatives, connexions. Then again it seems to me that confusing the man seated at his table and writing what he means to make public with the person of the same name engaged on some entirely private occupation is quite wrong; while doing so sheds no real light upon the heart of the matter. Who for example would suppose that the Boswell who emerges from the endless working-over of his personal papers was capable of writing a very fine book?

  I felt this more strongly when I was young, and when Rupert Hart-Davis asked me to write the blurb for a collection of my short stories I ended it by saying:

  As for the personal side, the Spectator for 1 March 1710 begins, ‘I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a Book with much Pleasure, till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of mild or choleric Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduces very much to the right understanding of an Author.' To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, we may state that Mr O'Brian is a black man, choleric and married.

  That pleased me at the time, but now it seems perhaps rather overdone; and no doubt there is an ill-defined zone between the public and the private that can be spoken of without egotism; so since the British Library has paid me the very high compliment of producing this bibliography, I will, if I may, say something about the background of the books which it records with such meticulous accuracy.

  I shall not deal with my childhood and youth in any detail, however: although the period had its compensations it is not one that I look back upon with much pleasure, partly because my home fell to pieces when my mother died a little after the end of the 1914—1918 War, so that I was sent to live with more or less willing relatives in Connemara and the County Clare and with some family friends in England, and partly because much of the time I was ill, which was not only disagreeable in itself but which also did away with much in the way of regular education and companionship. Fortunately there was a governess, dear Miss O'Mara, and some tutors whom I shall always remember with gratitude: even more fortunately most of these long stays in bed were spent within reach of books, and I read endlessly. Not that I was a chronically bedridden invalid or anything like it—I did go to school from time to time but upon the whole it was a very lonely childhood. (In parenthesis I may observe that although I spent long periods in England, liking the people very much, above all my English stepmother, it was Ireland and France that educated and formed me, in so far as I was educated and formed.)

  One of the compensations I have spoken about was the sea. The disease that racked my bosom every now and then did not much affect my strength and when it left me in peace (for there were long remissions) sea-air and sea-voyages were recommended. An uncle had a two-ton sloop and several friends had boats, which was fine; but what was even better was that my particular friend Edward, who shared a tutor with me, had a cousin who possessed an ocean-going yacht, a converted square-rigged merchantman, that he used to crew with undergraduates and fair-sized boys, together with some real seamen, and sail far off into the Atlantic. The young are wonderfully resilient, and although I never became much of a topman, after a while I could hand, reef and steer without disgrace, which allowed more ambitious sailoring later on.

  But by this time the Wall Street crash had come and gone; we were in the great depression of the Thirties, and people were learning sometimes successfully, how to live and even entertain without servants to wait at table, cook, wash up, make beds: a civilisation that had never been known before and one that spread a certain gloom.

  For my own part I carried on writing—it had never occurred to me to do anything else—and before the War I had produced an indifferent, derivative novel and many short stories, though in the late Thirties I was chiefly taken up with a book on Saint Isidore of Seville and the western bestiary, for which I had done a good deal of reading in the British Museum, at the Bodleian, at the Bibliotheque nationale, in Padua and at the Vatican. But between Munich and the out break of war my illness returned with greater severity. This time it left me in a sad way: my strength did not quickly return and I was rejected for active service. While the blitz was on however I drove ambulances in Chelsea; and during one raid when I was out a bomb struck the house, killing nobody but utterly destroying my manuscript and notes.

  Some time after the blitz had died away I joined one of those intelligence organisations that flourished in the War, perpetually changing their initials and competing with one another. Our work had to do with France, and more than that I shall not say, since disclosing methods and stratagems that have deceived the enemy once and that may deceive him again seems to me foolish. After the War we retired to Wales (I say we because my wife and I had driven ambulances and served in intelligence together) where we lived for a while in a high Welsh-speaking valley: dear people, splendid mountains, but a terrible climate. Fine snow drifted through the slates and made a dune on our bed: eggs froze solid. Presently sun and wine came to seem essential and in a quick visit to the Roussillon I was lucky enough to find the second floor of a house in a little fishing village. It had been lived in by an old lady whose ass walked up the narrow stairs with her and slept in the back room: the village was largely medieval in those days and she never felt the need for running water or drains. In Wales I had put together a volume of short stories (a delightful burst of real writing after so many years of official reports) and an anthology of voyages; these allowed us to install both and even electricity, and we settled down to swimming (the Mediterranean was just through the town gate in front of our house), to exploring the countryside, and to helping our neighbours harvest their grapes—the hills behind the village were covered with vineyards.

  This was a time when the sending of money abroad from England was strictly regulated: we were only allowed £200 a year. This was not wealth, but with care it could be made to suffice, particularly as many things such as rice and olive oil cost half as much in Spain, a few miles to the south. We lived quite well until the end of the year, therefore, waiting for the first of January, when the next £zoo should arrive. Months passed and it did not come. Eventually the authorities told us that since we had left England in autumn we should have to wait until the next autumn for our next supply.

  It was an anxious, hungry time, and although our neighbours were wonderfully kind and delicate (many a dish of fresh sardines from the fishermen, barrels of wine from downstairs) there were days when we wondered whether we could go on. There was indeed no money in the house at all when a sainted publisher sent the translation fee for one of my earlier books: sent it in francs from a French office.

  Yet as I remember we were upon the whole extraordinarily happy. I was writing hard, working on a novel called Testimonies, which I placed in Wales, though the situation it dealt with might just as well have arisen in the seacoast of Bohemia: I finished it very late one night, in a state of near-prostration—how I wish I could, in a line or so, convey the strength of generalised emotion a
nd of delight at times like this, when one feels one is writing well. (I speak only for myself, of course.)

  The book was politely received in England, much more enthusiastically in the States where the intellectual journals praised it very highly indeed. It did not sell well, but New York magazines asked me for stories, and once American royalties started coming in our material difficulties faded away. Indeed, we bought a motor car, the little tin Citroen 2CV, and drove right round the whole Iberian Peninsula, looking in vain for an even better village.

  Coming back, I wrote some more stories, a fair amount of verse and another novel. One of its basic ideas was quite good—dryness of heart, inability to love or even to feel ordinary affection, and the distress arising from the perception of this state (this not very unusual state, I believe)—but the execution was not. I read an Italian translation a little while ago and blushed for my tale. English reviewers were quite kind but the Americans tore it to pieces and the source of dollars ran almost dry.