‘Very right, Mr Dillon,’ said Jack. ‘Will you lend me your glass?’
At the masthead, with his breath coming back and the light of day broad over the sharp, unmisted sea, he could
make them out clearly. Two ships to windward, coming up fast from the south with all sails set: men-of-war for a ten-pound note. English? French? Spanish? There was more wind out there and they must be running a good ten knots. He glanced over his left shoulder, at the landing trending away eastwards out to sea. The Sophie would have a devil of a job rounding that cape before they were up with her; yet she must do so, or be shut in. Yes, they were men-of-war. They were hull-up now, and although he could not count the ports they were probably heavy frigates, thirty-six gun frigates: frigates for sure.
If the Sophie rounded the cape first she might have a chance: and if she ran through the shoal water between the point and the reef beyond it she would gain half a mile, for no deep-drafted frigate could follow her there.
‘We will send the people to their breakfast, Mr Dillon,’ he said. ‘And then clear for action. If there is to be a dust-up, we might just as well have full bellies for it.’
But there were few bellies that filled themselves heartily aboard the Sophie that brilliant morning; a kind of impatient rigidity kept the oatmeal and hard-tack from going down regular and smooth; and even Jack’s freshly-roasted, freshly-ground coffee wasted its scent on the quarter-deck as the officers stood very carefully gauging the respective courses, speeds and likely points of convergence: two frigates to windward, a hostile coast to leeward and the likelihood of being embayed – it was enough to take the edge off any appetite.
‘Deck,’ called the look-out from within the pyramid of tightly-drawing canvas, ‘she’s breaking out her colours, sir. Blue ensign.’
‘Aye,’ said Jack, ‘I dare say. Mr Ricketts, reply with the same.’
Now every glass in the Sophie was trained upon the nearer frigate’s foretopgallant for the private signal: for although anyone could heave out a blue ensign, only a King’s ship could show the secret mark of recognition.
There it was: a red flag at the fore, followed a moment later by a white flag and a pendant at the main, and the faint boom of a windward gun.
All the tension slackened at once. ‘Very well,’ said Jack.
‘Reply and then make our number. Mr Day, three guns to leeward in slow time.’
‘She’s the San Fiorenzo, sir,’ said James, helping the flustered midshipman with the signal-book, whose prettily-coloured pages would race out of control in the freshening breeze. ‘And she is signalling for Sophie’s captain.’
‘Christ,’ said Jack inwardly. The San Fiorenzo’s captain was Sir Harry Neale, who had been first lieutenant of the Resolution when Jack was her most junior midshipman, and then his captain in the Success: a great stickler for promptness, cleanliness, perfection of dress and hierarchy. Jack was unshaved; what hair he had left was in all directions; Stephen’s bluish grease covered one half of his face.
But there was no help for it. ‘Bear up to close her, then,’ he said, and darted into his cabin.
‘Here you are at last,’ said Sir Harry, looking at him
with marked distaste. ‘By God, Captain Aubrey, you take your time.’
The frigate seemed enormous; after the Sophie her towering masts might have been those of a first-rate ship of the line; acres of pale deck stretched away on either hand. He had a ludicrous and at the same time a very painful feeling
of being crushed down to a far smaller size, as well as that
of being reduced all at once from a position of total authority to one of total subservience.
‘I beg pardon, sir,’ he said, without expression.
‘Well. Come into the cabin. Your appearance don’t change much, Aubrey,’ he remarked, waving towards a chair. ‘However, I am quite glad of the meeting. We are overburdened with prisoners and mean to discharge fifty of ’em into you.’
‘I am sorry, sir, truly sorry, not to be able to oblige you, but the sloop is crowded with prisoners already.’
‘Oblige, did you say? You will oblige me, sir, by obeying orders. Are you aware I am the senior captain here, sir? Besides, I know damned well you have been sending prize-crews into Mahon: these prisoners can occupy their room. Anyhow, you can land them in a few days’ time; so let us hear no more of it.’
‘But what about my cruise, sir?’
‘I am less concerned with your cruise, sir, than with the good of the service. Let the transfer be carried out as quickly as possible, because I have further orders for you. We are sweeping for an American ship, the John B. Christopher. She is on her passage from Marseilles to the United States, calling at Barcelona, and we expect to find her between Majorca and the main. Among her passengers she may have two rebels, United Irishmen, the one a Romish priest called Mangan and the other a fellow by the name of Roche, Patrick Roche. They are to be taken off, by force if necessary. They will probably be using French names and have French passports: they speak French. Here is their description: a middle-sized spare man about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose; a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth. That’s the parson. T’other is a tall stout man above six foot high, black hair and blue eyes, about thirty-five, has the little finger of his left hand cut off and walks stiff from a wound in hi” 7eg. You had better take these printed sheets.’
‘Mr Dillon, prepare to receive twenty-five prisoners from San Fiorenzo and twenty-five from Amelia,’ said Jack. ‘And then we are to join in a sweep for some rebels.’
‘Rebels?’ cried James.
‘Yes,’ said Jack absently, peering beyond him at the slack foretopsail bowline and breaking off to call out an
order. ‘Yes. Pray glance at these sheets when you have leisure – leisure, forsooth.’
‘Fifty more mouths,’ said the purser. ‘What do you say to
that, Mr Marshall? Three and thirty full allowances. Where in God’s name am I supposed to find it all?’
‘We shall have to put into Mahon straight away, Mr Ricketts, that’s what I say to it, and kiss my hand to the cruise. Fifty is impossible, and that’s flat. You never saw two officers look so glum in your life. Fifty!’
‘Fifty more of the buggers,’ said James Sheehan, ‘and
all for their own imperial convenience. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’
‘And think of our poor doctor, all alone among them damned trees – why, there might be owls. God damn the service, I say, and the – San Fiorenzo, and the bleeding Amelia, too.’
‘Alone? Don’t you think it, mate. But damn the service to hell, just as you say.’
It was in this mood that the Sophie stretched away to the north-west, on the outward or right-hand extremity of the sweeping line. The Amelia lay half topsails down on her larboard beam and the San Fiorenzo the same distance inshore of the Amelia, quite out of sight of the Sophie and in the best position for picking up any slow prize that offered.
Between them they could oversee sixty miles of the clear-skied Mediterranean; and so they sailed all day long.
It was indeed a long day, full and busy – the fore-hold to clear, the prisoners to stow away and guard (many of them
privateer’s men, a dangerous crew), three slow-witted heavy merchantmen to scurry after (all neutrals and all unwilling
to heave-to; but one did report a ship, thought to be American, fishing her injured foretopmast two days’ sail to windward) and the incessant trimming of the sails in the shifting, uncertain, dangerously gusty wind, to keep up with the frigates the Sophie’s very best would only just avoid disgrace. And she was short-handed: Mowett, Pullings and old Alexander, a reliable quartermaster, were
away in prizes, together with nearly a third of her best men, so that James Dillon and the master had to keep watch and watch. Tempers ran short, too, and the defaulters’ list lengthened as the day wore on.
‘I did not think Dillon could be so savage,’ thought Jack, as his lieutenant roared up into the foretop, making the weeping Babbington and his reduced band of topmen set the larboard topsail studdingsail afresh for the third time. It was true that the sloop was flying along at a splendid pace (for her); but in a way it was a pity to flog her so, to badger the men – too high a price to pay. However, that was the service, and he certainly must not interfere. His mind returned to its many problems and to worrying about Stephen: it was sheer madness, this rambling about on a hostile shore. And