‘Very good, sir,’ said Jack, unable to conceal his satisfaction.
It was a curious dinner, much commented upon. As far as the ship’s crew were concerned, it started naturally enough, before dinner, with the ship and all her people
being brought to an even more unnatural state of cleanliness and, where possible, of polish. It was natural too that the great man’s approach should be marked by a roaring of guns that did not leave a single bird on the water: and that the side should be dressed as he was piped aboard: but even at that early point there was something odd in his being brought out by the Captain’s barge, together with a colonel, who made a proper soldier’s job of coming aboard; and it was odder still when, well on into the cabin’s dinner the order came to get the barge aboard and start untittivating the ship, stowing the beautifully ornamented man-ropes and getting everything back into sea-going order.
‘I tell you what, Maggie,’ said Poll Skeeping to her particular friend, ‘I think there’s something fishy going on.’
‘The minute I saw Joe Edwards and his mates unpicking those man-ropes, with the gentlemen still at table, nowhere near their port even, I smelt a rat.’
To keep so very complex an entity as a man-of-war functional, all hands and most of the gear must be able to face a great number of widely differing events, circumstances, emergencies very quickly indeed; and in a man-of-war so highly worked up as the Surprise, with a crew of right seamen, this could usually be done smoothly. But virtually all sea-borne emergencies have a certain pattern, a sequence, however disagreeable; and once that pattern is very grievously upset, confidence dwindles. The unpicking of those man-ropes did much more harm than the raising of the barge to its usual place on deck –
in itself most unusual, reprehensible, but not downright insane, or even worse, unlucky.
As Jack’s dinner carried on with its agreeable progress, the decanters making their steady round, most of the frigate’s people spoke of their uneasiness, usually confiding in their tie-mates, the friends to whom they would entrust their pigtails for combing and replaiting, but sometimes to others, quite far removed even by watch, with whom they had a particular sympathy. These friendships were by no means uncommon, but few were as improbable or as wholly unequal as that which had sprung up between Horatio Han-son and Awkward Davies – awkward, not because of his uncouth motions but because of his truly awful rage if crossed. They were working together on a new log-line and a new sounding-line, placing the marks with the extreme accuracy required for exact navigation.
‘Sir,’ asked Davies, in a low and anxious tone, ‘did you ever see a man-rope stowed, unpicked and stowed, when guests were still aboard?’ They were certainly still aboard, their voices, eagerly discussing the politics of juntas, could be heard quite clearly where the new log-line lay.
‘Oh, as for that,’ said Horatio, ‘Poll mentioned it when I went below for a flannel rag, and I told her to be easy – it was the Captain’s orders.’
‘Ah, the Captain’s orders …” said Davies, and he sighed with relief.
Shortly after this the Captain’s orders came on deck again in the form of a rather small, still immaculately neat midshipman called Wells, who smiled nervously at Hanson and said, ‘The Captain sends me with orders for Mr. Somers. We are to weigh.’
‘You will find him in the head,’ said Hanson.
Very shortly the word came aft, and reassurances with it. They were to prepare for weighing: they were to drift with the ebb and then spread the close-reefed fore-course until they were round the headland. The ship was filled with intense activity: but a calm and relatively placid activity. They knew where they were now – Surprise was to steal away on the ebb, according to the Captain’s long-considered plan – steal away with the lowering sun in the casual watcher’s eye – and then, once round the headland, make sail and bear
away on this fine easterly offshore breeze in whatever direction he desired, carrying the country’s ruler and his mate. With great zeal but with even greater discretion they weighed the best bower and the kedge, taking great care that there should be no clashing as the anchor was catted and fished, yet finding time to watch Ringle’s boat come across for Mr.
Reade, who hooked himself rapidly down the frigate’s side without the least ceremony, urged his men to a frenzy of activity and instantly set about getting the schooner into a similar state of discreet motion.
Night: and this being the dark of the moon, an actual instant brilliance of stars. But neither O’Higgins nor Cousin Eduardo was the least degree concerned with astronomy or navigation; and both, as hardened guerrilleros, knew the value of sleep. They smoked a cigar apiece on the quarterdeck, tossed the still glowing stubs into the spectacular wake and went straight to bed, leaving Jack Aubrey to show Daniel, Hanson and Shepherd (a midshipman whose intelligence was beginning to develop) the moons of Jupiter, not indeed as objects of beauty or curiosity, but as valuable elements in fine navigation.
The next morning, at a particularly cheerful breakfast, O’Higgins begged Jack to keep well out to sea when they were at the height of Concepcion. ‘My dear sir,’ said Jack, ‘that is not likely to be much before five in the afternoon.’
‘Indeed? Yet I thought you had been driving along at a furious pace. But then I know very little of the sea.’
‘Well, we did manage a little more than ten knots: we could have made more sail, but I understood that you wished us to come off Valdivia in the last hour or so of the sun.’
‘So I did, of course: and no doubt you have portioned it out.’
‘So I have. Nothing whatsoever is sure at sea, nothing at all. But the barometer is steady; the breeze has every appearance of remaining true; and if we do not see Valdivia before the sun has set, I will give ten guineas to any church or charity you choose to name.’
‘Come, that is encouraging,’ said O’Higgins with an eager smile, ‘and I will do the same if you succeed.’
This very soon, and by the usual channel, became known throughout the ship: although there was scarcely a man aboard who had not left Gibraltar heavy with gold – several years’ pay at the least – most had used their not inconsiderable ingenuity to get rid of it.
True, some had made really important allocations home: but in any case the ship’s company’s old sense of values had revived, and when they heard that ten guineas, ten guineas, were at stake, they kept the barky at it with the same zeal that they showed when there was a chase in sight. The officers and reefers were also very busy, but there was scarcely one but Harding who was such a good seaman as the older hands, and no one who knew the barky better. All orders were anticipated, and when at about five o’clock in the afternoon Stephen and Jacob made their perfunctory rounds – two of the usual hernias that would yield only to rest, and a couple of obstinate poxes -and drank their habitual cup of tea with Poll and Maggie, they heard Captain Aubrey’s very powerful voice telling the Supreme Director down there on the quarterdeck that the blur of smoke one point on the starboard quarter was Con-cepcion.
‘I am heartily glad of it,’ replied O’Higgins, directing his voice upwards with all the force he could manage. ‘And I hope all my people have settled in comfortably.’
Jack Aubrey had always meant to take in topgallants and even topsails well before standing in for Valdivia, at about the time Cape Corcovado bore due east; but the
favourable wind, the current, and above all the people’s zeal showed him the Cape on the larboard bow long before it had any right to be there, long before the sun was low as he could wish. He shortened sail, and when everything was neat, quiet and properly coiled down he said to the Supreme Director, ‘Sir, it occurs to me that you and Colonel Valdes might like to practise climbing into the top in preparation for our closer view of Valdivia a little later, when the sun is nearer the horizon?’
‘I should be very happy,’ said O’Higgins: and Colonel Valdes could hardly say less: but they concealed their happiness quite remarkably as they climbed up and up, with a wooden stoicism, until they reached the modest height of the maintop.
‘We can go much farther up, you know,’ said Captain Aubrey.
‘Thank you, I can see perfectly well from here,’ said O’Higgins, rather shortly: and Colonel Valdes asked whether telescopes might be sent up. In the case of those unaccustomed to going aloft, there was the danger of an involuntary, purely muscular, trembling of the hands if one were required to go up and down repeatedly. He was perfectly ready to stay in the top until the true reconnaissance should begin: it could not be long now – he could already make out several familiar stretches of the shoreline, and the sun was no great way from the horizon.