and now they did not. Gasps, choking, a vigorous plying of the bellows, more smoke, more and steadier gasps, coughing. ‘You may cut him down now,’ said Stephen to the fascinated seamen. ‘It is clear that he was born to be hanged.’The frigate had covered a great deal of sea in this time, and now her gun-ports could be counted without a glass. She was a heavy frigate – her broadside would throw three
hundred pounds of metal as against the Sophie’s twentyeight – but she was deep-laden and even in this moderate wind she was making heavy weather of it. The swell broke regularly under her bows, sending up white water, and she had a labouring air. She was still gaining perceptibly on the Sophie. ‘But,’ said Jack to himself, ‘1 swear with that crew he will have the royals off her before it is quite dark.’ His intent scrutiny of the Dédaigneuse’s sailing had convinced
him that she had a great many raw hands aboard, if not a new crew altogether – no uncommon thing in French ships. ‘He may try a ranging shot before that, however.’
He looked up at the sun. It was still a long way from the horizon. And when he had taken a hundred counted turns from the taffrail to the gun, from the gun to the taffrail, it was still a long way from the horizon, in exactly the same place, shining with idiot good humour between the arched foot of the topsail and the yard, whereas the frigate had moved distinctly closer.
Meanwhile, the daily life of the sloop went on, almost automatically. The hands were piped to supper at the beginning of the first dog-watch; and at two bells, as Mowett was heaving the log James Dillon said, ‘Will I beat to quarters, sir?’ He spoke a little hesitantly, for he was not sure of Jack’s mind: and his eyes were fixed beyond Jack’s face at the Dédaigneuse, coming on with a most impressive show of canvas, brilliant in the sun, and her white moustache giving an impression of even greater speed.’Oh, yes, by all means.
Let us hear Mr Mowett’s reading;
and then by all means beat to quarters.’
‘Seven knots four fathoms, sir, if you please,’ said Mowett
to the lieutenant, who turned, touched his hat and repeated this to the captain.
The drum-roll, the muffled thunder of bare feet on the hollow, echoing deck, and quarters; then the long process of lacing bonnets to the topsails and topgallants; the sending-up of extra preventer-backstays to the topgallant mastheads (for Jack was determined to set more sail by night); a hundred minute variations in the spread, tension and angle of the sails – all this took time; but still the sun took longer, and still the Dédaigneuse came closer, closer, closer. She was carrying far too much sail aloft, and far too much aft: but everything aboard her seemed to be made of steel – she neither carried anything away nor yet (his highest hope of all) broached to, in spite of a couple of wild yawing motions in the
last dog-watch that must have made her captain’s heart stand still. ‘Why does he not haul up the weather skirt of his mainsail and ease her a trifle?’ asked Jack. ‘The pragmatical dog.’
Everything that could be done aboard the Sophie had been done. The two vessels raced silently across the warm kind sea in the evening sun; and steadily the frigate gained.
‘Mr Mowett,’ called Jack, pausing at the end of his beat. Mowett came away from the group of officers on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, all gazing very thoughtfully at the Dédaigneuse. ‘Mr Mowett . . .’ he paused. From below, half-heard through the song of the quartering wind and the creak of the rigging, came snatches of a ‘cello suite. The young master’s mate looked attentive, ready and dutiful, inclining his tube-like form towards his captain in a deferential attitude continually and unconsciously adapted to the long urgent corkscrewing motion of the sloop. ‘Mr Mowett, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me over your piece about the new mainsail. I am very fond of poetry,’ he added with a smile, seeing Mowett’s look of wary dismay, his tendency to deny everything.
‘Well, sir,’ said Mowett hesitantly, in a low, human voice;
he coughed and then, in quite another, rather severe, tone, said, ‘The New Mainsail’, and went on -‘The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,
In streaming pendants flying, is unbent:
With brails refixed, another soon prepared,
Ascending, spreads along beneath the yard.
To each yardarn the head-rope they extend,
And soon their earings and their robans bend.
That task performed, they first the braces slack,
Then to the chesstree drag th’unwilling tack:
And, while the lee clew-garnet’s lowered away,
Taut aft the sheet they tally and belay.’
‘Excellent – capital,’ cried Jack, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Good enough for the Gentleman’s Magazine, upon my honour. Tell me some more.’
Mowett looked modestly down, drew breath and began again, ‘Occasional Piece’:
‘Oh were it mine with sacred Mam’s art, To wake to sympathy the feeling heart, Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore, Th ‘impervious horrors of a leeward shore.’
‘Ay, a leeward shore,’ murmured Jack, shaking his head; and at this moment he heard the frigate’s first ranging shot. The thump of the Dédaigneuse’s bow-chaser punctuated Mowett’s verse for a hundred and twenty lines, but no fall of shot did they see until the moment the sun’s lower limb touched the horizon, when a twelve-pound ball went skipping by twenty yards away along the starboard side of the sloop, just as Mowett reached the unfortunate couplet,
‘Transfixed with terror at th ‘approaching doom Self-pity in their breasts alone has mom.’
and he felt obliged to break off and explain ‘that of course, sir, they were only people in the merchant service.’
‘Why, that is a consideration, to be sure,’ said Jack. ‘But
now I am afraid I must interrupt you. Pray tell the purser we need three of his largest butts, and rouse them up on to the fo’c’sle. Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon, we will make a raft to carry a stern lantern and three or four smaller ones; and let it be done behind the cover of the forecourse.’
A little before the usual time Jack had the Sophie’s great stern-lantern lit, and himself he went into the cabin to see that the stern-windows were as conspicuous as he could wish: and as the twilight deepened they saw lights appear on the frigate too. What is more, they saw her main and mizen royals disappear. Now, with her royals handed, the Dédaigneuse was a black silhouette, sharp against the violet sky; and her bow-chaser spat orange-red every three minutes or so, the stab showing well before the sound reached them By the time Venus set over their starboard bow (and the starlight diminished sensibly with her going) the frigate had not fired for half an hour:’ her position could only be told by her lights, and they were no longer gaining – almost certainly not gaining any more.
‘Veer the raft astern,’ said Jack, and the awkward contraption came bobbing down the side, fouling the studdingsail booms and everything else it could reach: it carried a spare stern-lantern on a pole the height of the Sophie’s taifrail and four smaller lanterns in a line below. ‘Where is a handy nimble fellow?’ asked Jack. ‘Lucock.’
‘Sir?’
‘I want you to go on to the raft and light each lantern the very moment the same one on board is put out.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Light as put out.’
‘Take this darky and clap a line round your middle.’
It was a tricky operation, with the sea running and the sloop throwing the water about; and there was always the possibility of some busy fellow with a glass aboard the Dédaigneuse picking out a figure acting strangely abaft the Sophie’s stern; but presently it was done, and Lucock came over the taffrail on to the darkened quarter-deck.
‘Well done,’ said Jack softly. ‘Cast her off.’
The raft went far astern and he felt the Sophie give a skip as she was relieved of its drag.
It was a creditable imitation of her lights, although it did bob about too much; and the bosun had rigged a criss-cross of old rope to simulate the casement.
Jack gazed at it for a moment and then said, ‘Topgallant stuns’ls.’ The topmen vanished upwards, and everyone on deck listened with grave attention, unmoving, glancing at one
another. The wind had lessened a trifle, but there was that wounded yard; and in any case such a very great press of canvas.
The fresh sails were sheeted home; the extra preventer-back-stays tightened; the rigging’s general voice rose a quarter-tone; the Sophie moved faster through the sea. The topmen reappeared and stood with their listening shipmates, glancing aft from time to time to watch the dwindling lights. Nothing carried away; the strain eased a little; and suddenly their attention was wholly shifted, for the Dédaigneuse bad begun to fire again. Again and again and again; and then her lit side appeared as she yawed to give the raft her whole broadside – a very noble sight, a long line of brilliant flashes and a great sullen roar. It did the raft no harm, however, and a low contented chuckle rose from the Sophie’s deck.