Book 12 - The Letter of Marque Read online

  'Little do I know of naval battles,' said Stephen, having listened attentively to the arguments for and against carronades. 'For although I have been present at the Dear knows how many, I have nearly always been present at a remove, under the water-line, waiting for the wounded or dealing with them, poor souls; and my views are scarcely worth the uttering. Still and all, in this case why may not you endeavour to have your cake and eat it too? Why may you not train the new teams with much longer bouts of firing the great guns, and then if that do not answer, changing to the carronades? For if I understand you right, you are determined not to have some crews made up of old Surprises and others of new?'

  'Exactly. That would be the best way of dividing the ship's company into two and a most disagreeable division at that—the right gunners on the one hand and the boobies on the other. There is bound to be a certain amount of jealousy—I wonder that it has scarcely shown itself yet—and I should do anything not to increase it: a happy ship is your only efficient fighting ship. But as for blazing away without regard, to see whether the boobies can be turned into right gunners, it would be far too expensive.'

  'Listen, my dear,' said Stephen, 'I honour your desire to save our joint venture every penny you can, but I deplore it too, for there are savings that defeat their own ends so there are, and at times it seems to me that you pinch and scrape beyond what is right—beyond what is indeed useful to the cause. I am not to teach you your own profession, sure, but if a dozen barrels of powder a day will help make up your mind one way or another on a matter of such consequence, pray indulge me by using them. You often used to treat the ship to powder out of your own pocket when you were in funds from prize-money; and at present an impartial accountant would not value the expense at three skips of a louse. And in any event, as far as guns and gunnery are concerned you are to consider the immense saving brought about by Tom Pullings' knowledge of the world. The carronades did not have to be purchased.'

  Tom Pullings' knowledge of the world by land was about the same as his captain's, and he too had been cruelly deceived before this; but he was intimately well acquainted with what might be called the limicole world, that of the minor and middling officials who lived with one foot upon the shore and the other on the sea—master-attendants and their seconds, people from the ordnance and navy boards, and the like—and though in all ordinary matters he was as honest as the rising sun he, like so many of his friends, looked upon government property as a world apart. He had gone down with Stephen when the Surprise was sold out of the service; he had feasted with many of his associates in the port; and the moment he learnt for sure of the frigate's new destination he spoke privately to those whose province it was, pointing out that her guns were hopelessly old-fashioned—they could never be re-issued now—the second reinforce and the muzzle astragal were in every case different from the present regulation piece, and it would not surprise him at all to learn that after so much wear they were in a sad state, honeycombed and only fit for scrap-metal. His friends understood him perfectly well, and although the Surprise was not actually paid for carrying her own guns away to Shelmerston, she was, by way of gratification allowed an equally defective set of carronades, which now made a small part of her 160 tons of ballast, stowed rather high to keep her stiff, in breaks fore and aft of her ground tier.

  'No, indeed,' said Jack, smiling; and after a moment he went on, 'The service's notion of morality is an odd one and I should be puzzled to define it, in some cases. Yet I think almost every sailor knows just about where to draw the line between culpable capabarre and traditional friendly accommodation; and after all Tom did part with enough to leave no one out of pocket, at least on a scrap-metal basis—nothing very criminal in that, I believe. Which reminds me of another thing: punishment in a private man-of-war. You know what I think about flogging. I hate ordering it, and it had occurred to me to follow the quite usual practice in such ships of letting the hands decide the sentence.'

  'They would scarcely be very hard on their shipmates, I imagine,' said Stephen.

  'And yet they are, you know. During the great mutinies of ninety-seven the men kept the ships in strict order, and if anyone misbehaved—I mean misbehaved according to their notions—the grating was rigged. Sentences of two, three and even four dozen were by no means uncommon.'

  'You decided against it, I collect.'

  'Yes, I did. I reflected that if there should be bad blood between the new and the old hands—and you know how very difficult it is for a mixed ship's company to settle down together at first—then if an old Surprise were brought up for sentence, they might give him a really heavy dose; and I am damned if I will have any of my men flogged like that.'

  'Let us hope that the constant firing of the great guns will bring them better friends. I have often observed that extremely violent noise and activity go with good-fellowship and heightened spirits.'

  In the matter of extremely violent noise and activity, the Surprise's surgeon and his mate were well served in the following days; Jack took Stephen at his word, and not only was the latter part of the forenoon watch given over to real gunfire, but in the evening quarters invariably saw the ship stripped for action, roaring away, sometimes even firing both sides at once, jetting flame in the midst of a dark pall of smoke, a self-contained volcano.

  Martin was a quiet, humane being, and so, essentially was Maturin; they both disliked the enormous din—not merely the great crash of the repeated explosions, but the roaring of the carriages as they rushed in and out and the general thunder of feet racing to and from the magazines and shot-lockers—they both disliked the murdering-pieces themselves, and they particularly resented the way quarters would stretch out well into the last dogwatch, at a time when the ship was reaching some particularly interesting waters from the naturalist's point of view. Not only did the Surprise keep up such an infernal bellowing that no bird, no mobile jellyfish or pelagic crab would stay between the same horizons with her, but they were confined to the orlop, their station in time of battle and indeed of practice, for many an unfortunate was brought or even carried below with bruises, burns, crushed toes or fingers, and even once a broken leg.

  Occasionally Stephen would make his way up the ladders to the main hatchway and peer fore and aft along the busy deck, and it did his heart good to see Jack Aubrey hurrying from gun to gun in the smoke, sometimes violently lit by the great stabs of flame, sometimes a tall wraith, advising the crews in a steady, wholly competent roar, shoving the awkward hands into the right position, sometimes clapping on to a side-tackle to run the gun up, sometimes heaving on a crow to point it, always with the same eager, intense concentration and a look of grave satisfaction when the shot went home and the gun-crew cheered.

  It was tense work, a very fair imitation of a real engagement, for the guns were fired so fast they soon heated and grew skittish, leaping high and recoiling with frightful force. Once Jumping Billy broke both breeching and after side-tackle and since there was a heavy swell from the south-west the whole lethal mass of gun and carriage would have run amok on the deck if Padeen, who was enormously strong, had not wedged it with a handspike until his mates could make all fast. They worked as quick as ever they could, but all this time Padeen had to stand there with his excoriated hand pressed hard against the hot gun, so hot that his blood hissed as it ran down the metal.

  Bonden, the captain of the team, brought him below, openly weeping with the pain, and as they came he could be heard comforting him in the loud and distinct voice used for invalids, foreigners and those who were not quite exactly (and Padeen for the moment had all these qualifications): 'Never mind, mate, the Doctor will soon put you right—what a rare plucked 'un you are, to be sure—you smell like a grilled beefsteak, mate—he may save your poor bloody hand too, I dare say—anyway he will take away the pain.' And reaching up, for Padeen was far taller, he gently wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  The Doctor dealt with the pain, the very severe pain, by an heroic dose of laudanum, the alc
oholic tincture of opium, one of his most valued medicines. 'Here,' he said in Latin to his mate, holding up a bottle of the amber liquid, 'you have the nearest approach to a panacea that has ever been found out. I occasionally use it myself, and find it answers admirably in cases of insomnia, morbid anxiety, the pain of wounds, toothache, and head-ache, even hemicrania.' He might well have added heart-ache too, but he went on, 'I have, as you perceive, matched the dose to the weight of the sufferer and the intensity of the suffering. Presently, with the blessing, you will see Padeen's face return to its usual benevolent mansuetude; and a few minutes later you will see him glide insensibly to the verge of an opiate coma. It is the most valuable member of the whole pharmacopoeia.'

  'I am sure it is,' said Martin. 'Yet are there not objections to opium-eating? Is not it likely to become habitual?'

  'The objections come only from a few unhappy beings, Jansenists for the most part, who also condemn wine, agreeable food, music, and the company of women: they even call out against coffee, for all love! Their objections are valid solely in the case of a few poor souls with feeble will-power, who would just as easily become the victims of intoxicating liquors,'and who are practically moral imbeciles, often addicted to other forms of depravity; otherwise it is no more injurious than smoking tobacco.' He corked his valuable flask, observed that he had a couple of carboys of it in the store from which it must be refilled, and went on 'It is now some time since they stopped their hellish banging, so perhaps we might go and take a cigar on the quarterdeck. They can hardly object to a little more smoke up there, I believe. Padeen, now, how do you come along?'

  Padeen, his mind soothed by the Latin and his pain by the drug, smiled but said nothing. Stephen, having repeated his question in Irish with no better result, desired Bonden to see him lashed carefully into a hammock so that his poor arm could not wave about, and led the way to the quarterdeck.

  Its emptiness startled him until he saw Mr West poised in the mizzen shrouds and looking fixedly at the maintop, where the captain and Pullings could be seen with their parallel telescopes trained to the windward.

  'Perhaps they have seen a Caspian tern,' said Martin. 'Mr Pullings noticed the plate in your Buffon—I had it open in the gun-room—and he said he believed he had seen them quite often in these latitudes.'

  'Let us run up the rigging and surprise them,' said Stephen, feeling a sudden unusual gaiety—it was indeed the sweetest evening, balmy, a golden sky in the west and a royal-blue swell, white along the frigate's side and in her wake.

  Several old Surprises, Stephen's patients these many years, came hurrying aft along the gangway, calling 'Don't look down, sir—Don't clap on to them ratlines—Hold the shrouds, the thick uns, with both hands—Easy does it, sir—Don't let go on the roll, whatever you do.' Presently anxious hands were placing their feet from below, up and up, a great way up, since the Surprise had a thirty-six-gun ship's mainmast, and presently two delighted faces gazed into the top through the lubber's hole.

  'Do nothing rash,' cried Aubrey. 'You have not come by your sea-legs yet. This is no time for skylarking. Give me your hand.' He heaved Stephen and then Martin up on to the platform, and once again Stephen wondered at his strength: Stephen's bare nine stone was perhaps natural enough, but Martin was far more stoutly built. For all that he was swung up with a lift as effortless as though he had been a moderate dog, held by the nape—swung right up through the hole and set down on his feet.

  It was no Caspian tern that they were looking at, but a sail, and a sail no very great way off. 'What airs these eighteen-gun sloops do give themselves, to be sure,' said Pullings in a discontented voice. 'Look how she is cracking on! It will be moonrakers next. I will lay half a crown she carries away that foretopgallant studdingsail in the next five minutes.'

  'Should you like to have a look at her, sir?' asked Jack, passing Martin his glass.

  Martin clapped his one eye to it, silently recorded a stormy petrel, and after a pause exclaimed 'It has fired a gun! I see the smoke! Surely it will never have the temerity to attack us?'

  'No, no. She is one of ours.' The boom reached them. 'That is a signal for us to lie to.'

  'Would it not be possible to feign deafness, and to sail off in the opposite direction?' asked Stephen, who dreaded another encounter.

  'Most private men-of-war avoid their public brethren if they can possibly outsail them,' said Jack, 'and the notion did occur to me when first she was sighted. But she altered course so quick—hauled her wind five points—that I am sure she recognized us; and if we were not to lie to after a gun, and this is the second, and if she were to report us, we might very well lose our letter of marque. Surprise is so damned recognizable: it is this most uncommon mainmast—you can smoke it ten miles away, like a bear with a sore thumb. Tom, I believe we must use the spare stump topgallant for ordinary cruising: we can always sway this one up for a determined chase.'

  Pullings did not answer: he crouched lower and lower over his telescope, poised on the top-rail, focussing more exactly, and all at once he cried, 'Sir, sir, she's the Tartarus!'

  Jack caught up his glass, and after a moment and in what for him was a happy voice he said 'So she is. I can make out that absurd bright-blue bumpkin.' Another gun, and he said 'She has made her number. She will be signalling presently: William was always a great hand with the bunting.' Directing his voice downwards he called 'Mr West, we will close the sloop under all plain sail, if you please; and let the signal yeoman stand by. Yes,' he went on to those in the top as a distant line of flags appeared, 'there he is—such a hoist. Tom, I dare say you can read it without the book?'

  Pullings had been Jack's signal lieutenant, and he still had much of the list by heart. 'I'll have a try, sir,' he said, and slowly read out 'Welcome . . . repeat welcome . . . happy see . . . beg captain sup . . . have message . . . hope . . . now he is telegraphing: P H I Z . . . the signal-mid can't spell . . .'

  On the quarterdeck the yeoman of the signal's mate, a Shelmerstonian, asked 'What does the brig mean with her P H I Z?'

  'She means our doctor; which he is not a common twopence-a-go barber-surgeon but a genuine certificated physician with a bob-wig and a gold-headed cane.

  'I didn't know,' said the Shelmerstonian, staring hard at the maintop.

  'You don't know much, mate,' said the yeoman, but not unkindly.

  'The approaching vessel is under the command of Mr Babbington,' said Stephen to Martin. 'You remember Mr Babbington at the cricket-match?'

  'Oh yes,' replied Martin. 'He made several late cuts, most beautifully timed; and you told me he had played for Hambledon. I should be happy to see him again.'

  A little later he did see him again. The ships were lying to with their topsails backed, not very close, because of the growing sea: the Tartarus, with great politeness, had run under the frigate's lee, and her captain, his face bright red with the pleasure and exertion, was urging Jack not to get his boats off the booms—Tartarus had quarter-davits—Tartarus would lower her cutter down in a split second.

  'Should be very happy, William,' called Jack in a conversational voice that carried easily over the hundred yards of sea. 'But it can only be a short visit: I have a great deal of southing to make up, and it is likely to turn dirty.'

  The cutter splashed down; the guests were pulled across, and Jack, forgetting for a moment that he was in no position to give orders, said to the midshipman in charge, 'Larboard side, if you please,' for this meant no ceremony. Yet he recollected himself when the boat hooked on and he made Pullings and Stephen, both King's officers, take precedence. The momentary awkwardness was drowned by Dr Maturin's shrill indignation at the bosun's chair that had been rigged to bring him aboard dry, without anxiety: 'Why this injurious distinction?' he cried. 'Am not I an old salt, a hardened sea-dog?' But his voice changed entirely as he was set down on deck and found his old shipmate James Mowett standing there to receive him. 'Why, James Mowett, joy, how happy I am to see you. But what are you doing here? I though
t you were to be first of the Illustrious.'

  'So I am, sir. William Babbington is just giving me a lift to Gibraltar.'

  'Of course, of course. Tell, how does your book come along?'

  Mowett's exceptionally cheerful face clouded slightly: 'Well, sir, publishers are most hellish—' he began. But Babbington interrupted to welcome the Doctor aboard; and eventually, laughing and talking, he shepherded them all into the cabin, where they found Mrs Wray, a rather short-legged, swarthy young lady, but now downright pretty in her blushing confusion, her mixture of distress at being seen and her delight at seeing. Nobody was particularly surprised: all the men present had known one another at very close quarters for a very long time—the younger three had been in the midshipmen's berth of Jack Aubrey's first command—and they all knew that Babbington had been more attached to Fanny Harte, as she was before her marriage to Wray, than to any other of his innumerable flames. They might think it was coming it a little high to sail about the main with the wife of the acting second secretary of the Admiralty board, but they all knew that Babbington was rich by land, with enough parliamentary votes in his family to protect him from anything but serious professional misconduct, and they all had at least some notion of Wray's reputation. The only person really surprised, concerned, upset, was Fanny herself; she was particularly terrified of Mr Aubrey and sat as far from him as possible, wedged behind Stephen in a corner. Through the steady roar of voices he heard her whispering '. . . looks so very odd, don't it, almost compromising, so far from land—feel quite uncomfortable—am come for my health—Dr Gordon positively insisted upon a short sea-voyage—of course I have my own maid with me. Dear me: oh yes—So very glad to see poor Captain Aubrey tolerably well though dear me what the poor man must have been through and indeed he does look somewhat ancient now and who can be surprised; and rather severe—Shall I have to sit next to him at supper? But William has a letter from his wife and perhaps that will mollify him.'