‘At the moment it is nip and tuck: or touch and go. But I mean to sail for Callao tonight with the intention of cutting out the Peruvians’ fifty-gun frigate Esmeralda, of carrying her back to Valparaiso and of manning her with picked men from the Chilean navy trained by poor Lindsay and myself. That should put the balance of power more strongly on the republican side, even before the return of O’Higgins and the troops from Concepcion.’
‘Certainly,’ said an astronomer, ‘but, my dear sir and colleague, we are men of science, not of war.’
‘Just so,’ said Captain Aubrey, ‘but as scientists you are accurate observers: you will very soon make out whether the battle is won or lost; and the first of my two requests is that you will send the result, either way, to the Admiralty with the utmost dispatch. And as scientists you will understand the importance of my second: our brother, Stephen Maturin, has left all his collections at our inn in Valparaiso. I, and this ship, have incurred the enmity of the local authorities: I dare not let him go ashore. You under the aegis of the Royal Society may do so without fear: you may sup agreeably at the Antigua Sevilla, gather his belongings, and so join Surprise and her tender, the schooner Ringle, just a mile off the harbour at midnight.’
Chapter Ten
It was a strikingly beautiful morning in November: but a November morning some twelve degrees south of the equator has few associations with Guy Fawkes or bonfires. The dear topgallant breeze had chased away any hint of mist the night might have left and this was a light-filled day with a deep blue sky from horizon to horizon – a transparent air that allowed small details to be seen a great way off, and although when the sun reached his zenith – the exact height to be measured by every soul aboard who could command a sextant, quadrant or backstaff – his warmth might be troublesome, but euphroes were already at hand for the awnings that would moderate his zeal, and while the bosun and his mates were laying out the intricacies of their lines, fore and aft, Jack Aubrey stood leaning on the elegant taffrail of the Surprise, gazing somewhat eastward of her wash at the boat pulling towards her from the vessel registered as Isaac Newton but universally called the Lisbon packet, that having been her vocation before her owner (as unlucky in cards as he was in love) sold her to a penurious entomologist who, having inherited a prodigious fortune, indulged himself and his colleagues of the Royal Society in an equally prodigious voyage. One of the friends sailing with him, the foremost European authority on voles, was also in holy orders: and this being Sunday he was coming aboard the frigate to officiate and perhaps to read a sermon.
‘He will not be disappointed,’ observed her captain, having glanced forward and aloft at the snowy canvas, in charming contrast with her yards, gleaming with Mr. Harding’s blacking – though to be sure the sails were somewhat given to flapping now that Surprise
had started her sheets to allow the boat to catch up. But the person to whom the remark was addressed gave no more than a brutish grunt, clapped his telescope to, and said, ‘He is only an aberrant frigate-bird. Those curious marks were certainly the excrement of some companion.’
Jack was on the edge of a witty reply, but before he could both formulate and utter it the boat was alongside: the guest had to be received with due ceremony and led below to drink a glass of sherry and to put on the rolled-up surplice that was handed up after him.
Yet since the Reverend Mr. Hare had by now been afloat for so many thousand miles it was reasonable to suppose that he might like to have some of the new-rigged Surprise’s perfections pointed out: but Jack might as well have addressed his words to a vole, for Hare was as insensible to the blacking as he was to the unusual cut of the flying jib. In fact he quite dreaded reading his sermon, and once below he gulped down his sherry and looked wistfully at the decanter.
However, when he came on deck again into the presence of the scrubbed, new-shaven, neatly-clad ship’s company with their officers sweating in formal broadcloth under the torrid sun, the familiar cry of ‘Jews and Roman Catholics fall out’ comforted him and he walked with an assured, sea-manlike step to the small-arms chest that served as a lectern. The Jews and Roman Catholics did not in fact fall out any more than the various kinds of Muslim, the Orthodox Christians, or the plain wicked heathens. The congregation looked grave, and even blank; but they grew more cheerful when Mr. Hare (an aspiring author) began his hesitant reading of a neighbour’s sermon based upon a text from Job:
‘Oh that my words were now written, oh that they were printed in a book’. Then came some familiar hymns, in which Poll Skeeping and Maggie Tyler, who knew the words, distinguished themselves, and a psalm, which Awkward Davies sang in a strikingly true basso profundo.
Mr. Hare dined in the cabin with the Captain, of course, the first lieutenant and the surgeon, dined remarkably well, Valparaiso’s victuals and livestock still being plentiful, and the chief supplier having thrown in a score of prime guinea-pigs by way of compliment, while the exceptionally good Chilean wine positively encouraged excess. Not that Parson Hare needed any encouragement in his heartfelt relief at having delivered his sermon without a single blunder: indeed, it could not truthfully be said that the wine was his undoing – the blame for that, if one is to censure unsteady gait and a certain garrulity, must be ascribed to the United States’ rum, some bottles of which had survived the wicked cold and the even more wicked seas off the Horn. Jack Aubrey was not much given to censure, apart from instances of poor seamanship, being too conscious of his own faults in that direction (more than once he had been obliged to be wheeled aboard in a barrow), but when it was time for leave-taking he said that he and Stephen would see their guest home, not only to greet their fellow-members of the Royal Society but also to view the packet, and to ask her master about her behaviour under various combinations of sail in given winds.
It was too reasonable to be refused, and when the Surprise was heaved to so that the Isaac Newton could come closer, all three went on deck. The frigate’s hands had been particularly gratified by the presence, the temporary presence, of an undoubtedly certificated parson, an admirable preacher, and as he took his seat in the bosun’s chair, a kindly device that would raise him from the deck, swing him out over the side and so lower him into the boat without any exertion or ability on his own part, a disorganised cheer
arose, gaining in unity and volume as the barge pulled over to the packet, where Hare’s shipmates, aware of his weakness, had already rigged another chair to bring him aboard.
‘What an obliging fellow your master is,’ said Jack, coming back into Dobson’s cabin after his inspection of Isaac Newton. ‘He answered all my questions like a right seaman – he has in fact sailed with several friends of mine, renowned as taut captains – and he told me many interesting things about Magellan’s Strait, too. What is more he said that you had spoken a barquentine which had touched at Callao, where there were two other fair-sized merchantmen, one from Boston, the other belonging to Liverpool, as well as the Esmeralda, moored over on the man-of-war’s side. Now that brings me to the favour I have to ask of you.’
‘I should be very glad to hear it,’ said Dobson, looking at him earnestly.
‘It is my intention to stand into Callao, wind and weather permitting, fairly late in the evening of tomorrow or the next, and then endeavour to cut her out. We shall enter not disguised but with a peaceable, mercantile appearance, carry her by boarding in the dark and if possible carry her out. I shall take all the hands Ringle can spare, but leave her enough to bring the outcome to you, lying off the port: she will also bring out a written account, a dispatch, and you would oblige me extremely by confiding it to your friends bound for England, begging them to deliver it to the Admiralty.’
‘I shall certainly do that, and I am sure I can answer for my friends. Crossing the isthmus to the Atlantic coast in only a moderate day’s ride, and I know they can expect no less than three ships ready to sail to the Pool of London.’
‘God give them a good wind, and us a happy dispatch.’