Closer and closer. Dead silence aboard the Sophie: gabble drifting across from the xebec.
Standing just behind Pram, in his shirt sleeves and breeches – no uniform coat – Jack took the wheel. ‘Look at all those people,’ he said, half to himself and half to Stephen. ‘There must be three hundred and more. They will hail us in a couple of minutes. Now, sir, Pram is going to tell them we are a Dane, a few days out of Algiers: I beg you will support him in Spanish, or any other language you see fit, as the opportunity offers.’
The hail came clear over the morning sea. ‘What brig?’
‘Good and loud, Pram,’ said Jack.
‘Clomer!’ called the quartermaster in the buff waistcoat, and very faintly off the cliffs there came back the cry ‘Clomer!’ with the same hint of defiance, though so diminished.
‘Back the foretopsail slowly, Mr Marshall,’ murmured Jack, ‘and keep the hands to the braces.’ He murmured, for he knew very well that the frigate’s officers had their glasses trained on the quarter-deck, and a persuasive fallacy assured him that the glasses would magnify his voice as well.
The way began to come off the brig, and at the same time the close groups aboard the xebec, her gun-crews, began to disperse. For a moment Jack thought it was all over and his
heart, hitherto tranquil, began to bound and thump. But no. A boat was putting off.
‘Perhaps we shall not be able to avoid this action,’ he said. ‘Mr Dillon, the guns are double-shotted, I believe?’
‘Treble, sir,’ said James, and looking at him Stephen saw that look of mad happiness he had known often enough, in former years – the contained look of a fox about to do something utterly insane.
The breeze and the current kept heaving the Sophie in towards the frigate, whose crew were going back to their task of changing from a lateen to a square rig: they swarmed thick into the shrouds, looking curiously at the docile brig, which was just about to be boarded by their launch.
‘Hail the officer, Pram,’ said Jack, and Pram went to the rail. He uttered a loud, seamanlike, emphatic statement in Danish; but very ludicrously in pidgin-Danish. And no recognizable form of Algiers appeared only the Danish for Barbary coast, vainly repeated.
The Spanish bowman was about to hook on when
Stephen, speaking a Scandinavian but instantly comprehensible Spanish, called out,
‘Have you a surgeon that understands the plague aboard your ship?’
The bowman lowered his hook. The officer said, ‘Why?’
‘Some of our men were taken poorly at Algiers, and we are afraid We cannot tell what it is’
‘Back water,’ said the Spanish officer to his men. ‘Where did you say you had touched?’
‘Algiers, Alger, Argel: it was there the men went ashore. Pray what is the plague like?
Swellings? Buboes? Will you come and look at them? Pray, sir, take this rope
‘Back water,’ said the officer again ‘And they went ashore at Algiers?’
‘Yes Will you send your surgeon?’
‘No. Poor people, God and His Mother preserve you.’
‘May we come for medicines? Pray let me come into
your boat.’
‘No,’ said the officer, crossing himself. ‘No, no. Keep off,
or we shall fire into you. Keep out to sea – the sea will cure them. God be with you, poor people. And a happy voyage to you.’ He could be seen ordering the bowman to throw the boathook into the sea, and the launch pulled back fast to the bright-red xebec.
They were within very easy hailing distance now, and a voice from the frigate called out some words in Danish; Pram replied; and then a tall thin figure on the quarter-deck, obviously the captain, asked, had they seen an English sloop-of-war, a brig?
‘No,’ they said; and as the vessels began to draw away from one another Jack whispered,
‘Ask her name.’
‘Cacafuego,’ came the answer over the widening lane of sea. ‘A happy voyage.’
‘A happy voyage to you.’
‘So that is a frigate,’ said Stephen, looking attentively at
the Cacafuego.
‘A xebec-frigate,’ said Jack. ‘Handsomely with those braces, Mr Marshall: no appearance of hurry. A xebec-frigate. A wonderfully curious rig, ain’t it? There’s nothing faster, I suppose broad in the beam to carry a vast great press of sail, but with a very narrow floor
– but they need a prodigious crew; for, do you see, when she is sailing on a wind, she is a lateen, but when the wind comes fair, right aft or thereabouts, she strikes ’em down on deck and sways up square yards instead, a great deal of labour. She must have three hundred men, at the least. She is changing to her square rig now, which means she is going up the coast. So we must stand to the south – we have had quite enough of her company. Mr Dillon, let us take a look at the chart.’
‘Dear Lord,’ he said in the cabin, striking his hands together and chuckling, ‘I thought we were dished that time
– burnt, sunk and destroyed; hanged, drawn and quartered. What a jewel that Doctor is!
When he waved the guess-rope
and begged them so earnestly to come aboard! I understood him, though he spoke so quick. Ha, ha, ha! Eh? Did not you think it the drollest thing in life?’
‘Very droll indeed, sir.’
‘Que vengan, says he, most piteously, waving the line, and they start back as grave and solemn as a parcel of owls. Que vengan! Ha, ha, ha. . . Oh dear. But you don’t seem very amused.’
‘To tell you the truth, sir, I was so astonished at our sheering off that I have scarcely had time to relish the joke.’
‘Why,’ said Jack, smiling, ‘what would you have had us do? Ram her?’
‘I was persuaded that we were about to attack,’ said James passionately. ‘I was persuaded that was your intention. I was
delighted.’
‘A fourteen-gun brig against a thirty-two-gun frigate? You are not speaking in earnest?’
‘Certainly. When they were hoisting in their launch and half their people were busy in the rigging our broadside and small-arms would have cut them to pieces, and with this breeze we should have been aboard before they had recovered.’
‘Oh, come now! And it would scarcely have been a very honourable stroke., either.’
‘Perhaps I am no great judge of what is honourable, sir,’ said Dillon. ‘I speak as a mere fighting man.’
Mahon, and the Sophie surrounded by her own smoke, firing both broadsides all round and one over in salute to the admiral’s flag aboard the Foudroyant, whose imposing mass lay just between Pigtail Stairs and the ordnance wharf.
Mahon, and the Sophie’s liberty-men stuffing themselves with fresh roast pork and soft-tack, to a state of roaring high spirits, roaring merriment: wine-barrels with flowing taps, a hecatomb of pigs, young ladies flocking from far and near.
Jack sat stiffly in his chair, his hands sweating, his throat parched and rigid. Lord Keith’s eyebrows were black with strong silver bristles interspersed, and from beneath them he directed a cold, grey, penetrating gaze across the table. ‘So you were driven to it by necessity?’ he said.
He was speaking of the prisoners landed on Dragon Island: indeed, the subject had occupied him almost since the beginning of the interview.
‘Yes, my lord.’
The admiral did not reply for some time. ‘Had you been driven to it by a want of discipline,’
he said slowly, ‘by a dislike for subordinating your judgment to that of your seniors, I should have been compelled to take a very serious view of the matter. Lady Keith has a great kindness for you, Captain Aubrey, as you know; and myself I should be grieved to see you harm your own prospects; so you will allow me to speak to you very frankly. .
Jack had known that it was going to be unpleasant as soon as he had seen the secretary’s grave face, but this was far rougher than his worst expectations. The admiral was shockingly well informed; he had all the details – official reprimand for petulance, neglect of orders on stated occasions, reputation for undue independence, for temerity, and even for insubordination, rumours of ill behaviour on shore, drunkenness; and so it ran. The admiral could not see the smallest likelihood of promotion to post rank: though Captain Aubrey should not take that too much to heart – plenty of men never rose even to commander; and the commanders were a very respectable body of men. But could a man be entrusted with a line •of battle ship if he were liable to take it into his head to fight a fleet engagement according to his own notions of strategy? No, there was not the least likelihood, unless something very extraordinary took place. Captain Aubrey’s record was by no means all that could be wished. Lord Keith spoke steadily, with great justice, great accuracy in his facts and his diction; at first Jack had merely suffered, ashamed and uneasy; but as it went on he felt