‘Masthead,’ he hailed, ‘what do you make of her?’
A long pause. ‘Nothing, sir. She ain’t there.’
Just so. What was he to do now? He wanted to think:
he wanted to think there on deck, in the closest possible
touch with the situation – with the shifting wind on his face, the glow of the binnacles just at hand and not the least interruption. And this the conventions and the discipline of the service allowed him to do. The blessed inviolability of a captain (so ludicrous at times, such a temptation to silly pomp) wrapped him about, and his mind could run free. At one time he saw Dillon hurry Stephen away: he recorded the fact, but his mind continued its unbroken pursuit of the answer to his problem. The polacre had either altered its course or would do so presently: the question was, where would this new course bring it to by dawn? The answer depended on a great many factors – whether French or Spanish,
whether homeward or outward bound, whether cunning or simple and, above all, upon her sailing qualities. He had a very clear notion of them, having followed her every movement with the utmost attention for the last few hours; so building his reasoning (if such an instinctive process could be called by that name) upon these certainties and a fair estimate of the rest, he came to his conclusion. The polacre had worn; she might possibly be lying there under bare poles to escape detection while the Sophie passed her in the darkness to the northward; but whether or no, she would presently be making all sail, close-hauled for Agde or Cette, crossing the Sophie’s wake and relying on her lateen’s power of lying nearer to run her clear to windward and so to safety before daylight. If this was so the Sophie must tack directly and work to windward under an easy sail: that should bring the polacre under her lee at first light; for it was likely that they would rely on their fore and mizen alone – even in the chase they had been favouring their wounded mainmast.
He stepped into the master’s cabin, and through narrowed, light-dazzled eyes he .checked their position; he checked it again with Dillon’s reckoning and went on deck to give his orders.
‘Mr Watt,’ he said, ‘I am going to put her about, and I desire the whole operation shall be carried out in silence. No calls, no starting, no shouts.’
‘No calls it is, sir,’ said the bosun, and hurried off uttering ‘All hands to tack ship,’ in a hoarse whisper, wonderfully curious to hear.
The order and its form had a strangely powerful effect:
with as much certainty as though it had been a direct revelation, Jack knew that the men were wholly with him; and for a fleeting moment a voice told him that he had better be right, or he would never enjoy this unlimited confidence again.
‘Very well, Assou,’ he said to the Lascar at the wheel, and smoothly the Sophie luffed up.
‘Helm’s a-lee,’ he remarked – the cry usually echoed from one horizon to the other. Then
‘Off tacks and sheets’. He heard the bare feet hurrying and the staysail sheets rasping over the stays: he waited, waited, until the wind was one point on her weather bow, and then a little louder, ‘Mainsail haul!’ She was in stays: and now she was paying off fast. The wind was well round on his other cheek. ‘Let go and haul,’ he said, and the half-seen waisters hauled on the starboard braces like veteran forecastlemen. The weather bowlines tightened: the Sophie gathered way.
Presently she was running east-north-east close-hauled under reefed topsails, and Jack went below. He did not choose to have anything showing from his stern-windows, and it was not worth shipping the dead-lights, so he walked, bending low, into the gun-room.
Here, rather to his surprise, he found Dillon (it was Dillon’s watch below, certainly; but in his place Jack would never have left the deck) playing chess with Stephen, while the purser read them pieces from the Gentleman’s Magazine, with comments.
‘Do not stir, gentlemen,’ he cried, as they all sprang up. ‘I have just come to beg your hospitality for a while.’
They made him very welcome – hurried about with glasses of wine, sweet biscuits, the most recent Navy List -but he was an intruder: he had upset their quiet sociability, dried up the purser’s literary criticism and interrupted the chess as effectually as an Olympian thunderbolt. Stephen
messed down here now, of course – his cabin was the little boarded cupboard beyond the hanging lantern – and he already looked as though he belonged to this community: Jack felt obscurely hurt, and after he had talked for a while (a dry, constrained interchange, it seemed to him; so very polite) he went up on deck again. As soon as they saw him looming in the dim glow of the hatchway the master and young Ricketts moved silently over to the larboard side, and Jack resumed his solitary pacing from the taffrail to the aftermost deadeye.
At the beginning of the middle watch the sky clouded over, and towards two bells a shower came weeping across, the drops hissing on the binnacles. The moon rose, a faint, lopsided object scarcely to be made out at all: Jack’s stomach was pinched and wrung with hunger, but he paced on and on, looking mechanically out over the leeward darkness at every turn.
Three bells. The quiet voice of the ship’s corporal reporting all’s well. Four bells. There were so many other possibilities, so many things the chase could have done other than bearing up and then hauling her wind for Cette:
hundreds of other things.
‘What, what’s this? Walking about in the rain in your shirt? This is madness,’ said Stephen’s voice just behind him.
‘Hush!’ cried Mowett, the officer of the watch, who had failed to intercept him.
‘Madness. Think of the night air – the falling damos
– the fluxion of the humours. If your duty requires you to walk about in the night air, you must wear a woollen garment. A woollen garment, there, for the captain! I will fetch it myself.’
Five bells, and another soft shower of rain. The relieving of the helm, and the whispered repetition of the course, the routine reports. Six bells, and a hint of thinner darkness in the east. The spell of silence seemed as strong as ever; men tiptoed to trim the yards, and a little before seven bells the
look-out coughed, hailing almost apologetically, only just loud enough to be heard. ‘Upon deck. Deck, sir. I think him vos there, starboard beam. I think.
Jack stuffed his glass into the pocket of the grego Stephen had brought him, ran up to the masthead, twined himself firmly into the rigging and trained the telescope in the direction of the pointing arm. The first grey forerunners of the dawn were straggling through the drifting showers and low torn cloud to leeward; and there, her lateens faintly gleaming, lay a polacre, not half a mile away. Then the rain had hidden her again, but not before Jack had seen that she was indeed his quarry and that she had lost her maintopmast at the cap.
‘You’re a capital fellow, Anderssen,’ he said, clapping him on the shoulder.
To the concentrated mute inquiry from young Mowett and the whole Of the watch on deck he replied with a smile that he tried to keep within bounds and the words, ‘She is just under our lee. East by south. You may light up the sloop, Mr Mowett, and show her our force: I don’t want her to do anything foolish, such as firing a gun – perhaps hurting some of our people. Let me know when you have laid her aboard.’ With this he retired, calling for a light and something hot to drink; and from his cabin he heard Mowett’s voice, cracked and squeaking with the excitement of this prodigious command (he would happily have died for Jack), as under his orders the Sophie bore up and spread her wings.
Jack leant back against the curved run of the stern-window and let Killick’s version of coffee down by gulps into his grateful stomach; and at the same time that its warmth spread through him, so there ran a lively tide of settled, pure, unfevered happiness – a happiness that another commander (remembering his own first prize) might have discerned from the log-entry, although it was not specifically mentioned there: 1/2 past 10
tacked, 11 in courses, reefed topsail. AM cloudy and rain. 1/2 past 4 chase observed E by S, distance 1/2 mile. Bore up and took possession off, which proved to be L’Aimable Louise, French polacre laden with corn and general merchandise for Cette, of about 200
tons, 6 guns and 19 men. Sent her with an officer and eight men to Mahon.