PATRICK O’BRIAN
Blue at the Mizzen
Chapter One
The Surprise, lying well out in the channel with Gibraltar half a mile away on her starboard quarter, lying at a single anchor with her head to the freshening north-west breeze, piped all hands at four bells in the afternoon watch; and at the cheerful sound her tender Ringle, detached once more on a private errand by Lord Keith, cheered with the utmost good will, while the Surprises turned out with a wonderful readiness, laughing, beaming and thumping one another on the back in spite of a strong promise of rain and a heavy sea running already. Many had put on their best clothes – embroidered waistcoats, and silk Barcelona handkerchiefs around their necks – for the Surprises and their captain, Jack Aubrey, had taken a very elegant prize indeed, a Moorish galley laden with gold, no less –
a galley that had fired on Surprise first, thus qualifying herself as a pirate, so that the prize-court, sitting at the pressing request of Captain Aubrey’s friend Admiral Lord Keith, had condemned her out of hand: a perfectly lawful prize, to be shared according to the usage of the sea, or more exactly according to the Prize Law of 1808.
And now they were all on deck, radiating joy and facing aft on the larboard side of the quarterdeck in the usual disorderly naval heap, gazing at their captain, his officers, the purser and the clerk, ranged athwartships and facing forward on either side of some charming barrels. These had been brought aboard by a guard of Marines, heavily sealed: but now their heads had been taken off (though carefully numbered and preserved by the cooper) and it was apparent that their bodies were filled with coin. The gold was somewhat unorthodox, it having been captured in small uneven ingots which the Gibraltar goldsmiths had cast into smooth shining disks each marked 13oz Troy: one hundred and thirty grains Troy weight: but the silver and copper were in their usual homely forms.
The echo of the fourth bell and the cheering died: the clerk, catching his captain’s nod, called ‘John Anderson’. Since no one else aboard Surprise in this commission had ever come earlier in the alphabet it was no surprise to John Anderson or his shipmates; and although he was ordinarily shy and awkward he now stepped aft quite happily to the capstan-head: taking off his hat, he touched his forelock and cried, ‘John Anderson, sir, if you please: ordinary, larboard watch, afterguard.’ The clerk followed this conscientiously in the book though he knew it all by heart; said, ‘Very well: one hundred and fifty-seventh part of a half-share: hold out your hat.’ And plunging his right hand into the barrel of gold he drew out first one handful of disks and counted them into the hat, ‘One, two . . . ten.’
Plunged again, counted out seven more, said ‘Wait a minute’ to Anderson and to his little dark shrewish assistant at the other two barrels, ‘Seventeen and fourpence.’ Then to Anderson again, ‘That makes seventeen pound, seventeen shillings and fourpence: and here is your witnessed paper asking for three hundred and sixty-five pound to be remitted to Mrs Anderson. Are you content?’
‘Oh dearie me, yes,’ said Anderson, laughing. ‘Oh yes, sir, quite content.’
‘Then sign here,’ said the clerk: but seeing Anderson’s uneasy look, he murmured, ‘Well, just make your mark in the bottom corner.’
And so it went, right through the list: there were a few men with no dependants of any kind, and they walked off with the entire hundred and fifty-seventh part of half the splendid prize; but most over thirty had yielded to the representations of their captain and divisional officers to send at least some money home; and all eagerly agreed with the clerk’s reckoning. At one time Stephen Maturin, the frigate’s surgeon, had been calculating the degree of literacy aboard; but melancholy, no doubt helped by the increasing wind and the spindrift, had welled up and he lost count among the names beginning with N. ‘How I do wish,’ he murmured to Jack in a moment’s pause, ‘that William and his Ringles might have been here.’
‘So do I indeed: but, you know, as a privately-owned tender to what is in fact a hydrographical vessel I do not think they would stand in line for more than fourpence. In any case I could not refuse Lord Keith – he had no other suitable craft at hand – he asked it as a personal favour. And I owe him a great deal: I owe both of them a great deal.’
‘Of course, of course: it was only that I should have liked some of the younger ones to accept a gold piece, by way of memento,’ said Stephen. ‘How the waves increase! The darkness thickens.’
‘They will rejoin at Madeira,’ said Jack. ‘And then you can give them their gold pieces.’
They talked on quietly until Jack realized that Willis and Younghusband had been dealt with, and that once Moses Zachary, one of Surprise’s very old Sethian hands, had stopped chuckling over the coins that he obscurely insisted upon stuffing or trying to stuff into a variety of little inadequate triangular pockets it would be time for him as captain to wind up proceedings.
But the proceedings would not be wound up: in spite of the gathering darkness and the now quite vicious driving rain some hand, probably Giles, captain of the foretop, called out
‘It’s all along of the unicorn’s horn – it’s all along of the glorious hand. Huzzay, three times huzzay for the Doctor.’
Lord, how they cheered their surgeon! It was he who had brought the narwhal’s tusk aboard: and the severed hand, the Hand of Glory, was his property: both symbolized (and practically guaranteed) immense good fortune, virility, safety from poison or any disease you chose to name: and both had proved their worth.
Jack Aubrey was a taut captain: he had been brought up by commanders who looked upon exact discipline and exact gunfire as of equal importance in a man-of-war, but on this occasion he knew that he had nothing whatsoever to say; and speaking privately to his first lieutenant he observed, ‘Mr. Harding, when things are a little calmer, let us weigh and proceed south-west by west with all the sail she can bear. If any King’s ship hails or signals you will reply carrying dispatches and pursue your course, touching neither sheet nor brace.’
‘South-west by west it is, sir: and carrying dispatches,’ said Harding, and Jack, steadying Stephen by the elbow – the frigate was pitching quite violently by now – guided him to the great cabin, where they sat at their ease on the cushioned stern-lockers that ran across the ship under the elegant, remarkably elegant sash-lights that gave on to the sea.
‘I am afraid it is going to turn out a truly dirty night,’ said Jack. He stood up and in his sure-footed seaman’s way walked over to his barometer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Dirtier than I had thought.’ He came back and gazed out at the darkness, full of rain and flying water from
the ship’s bow-wave, more and more as she increased her way. ‘But, however,’ he went on, ‘I am most heartily glad to be at sea. At one time I thought it could never be done . . .
indeed, without Queenie and Lord Keith it never would have been done.’ The stern-lanterns were now lighting up the frigate’s wake – exceptionally broad, white and agitated for a ship with such fine lines – but in spite of the brilliance just aft he could still clearly make out the distant red glow above Gibraltar, where they were still keeping it up in spite of the wind and the rain.
For his own part he had had quite enough of the junketing, especially that part of it which consisted of patriotic songs, self-praise and mocking the French, who had after all gone down fighting, outnumbered, with the utmost gallantry – gibes that very often came from those who had had nothing whatsoever to do with the war. Even Maturin, though he loathed the whole Napoleonic system root and branch, could not bear the obscene, gloating caricatures of Bonaparte that were everywhere to be seen, a penny plain and up to as much as fourpence coloured.
‘Do you remember Malta, when there was a payment of six dollars a head for one-share men?’ asked Jack. ‘No, of course you do not: you were at the hospital, looking after poor Hopkins’s leg. Well, I thought it would answer, with a settled, steady crew of seamen: and they certainly expected it, the bag of silver having been hauled out of the trabacolo’s cabin and spilt on deck. But I was wrong: once ashore they kicked up Bob’s a-dying to a most shocking extent and then set about the soldiery.’
‘Indeed I remember it. My colleagues and I had to treat many of them: contusions, mostly, and some quite important fractures.’