‘Amen, amen, amen.’
‘For if it is even moderately happy, I should very much like my superiors to have it before they have completed the new South African squadron.’
Most ships have a Killick or two aboard, but naval history records none with a more intense, persistent curiosity and want of scruple in employing his talents – so long as he was the only soul in the ship’s company to know what the authorities, above all his captain, meant to do, the means were of no consequence; and they ranged, of course, from listening behind doors to the reading, lips in motion, of obviously extremely private letters. But this time he was disappointed; and if he had so low and false an opinion of his lower-deck shipmates, a seasoned band of fighting seamen, as to suppose them ignorant of the destination of the iron balls they had spent hours upon, chipping the iron off them and restoring their perfectly spherical appearance and thus their power to fly straight, then he deserved to be.
On Wednesday evening, the Surprise, looking as much like a merchantman as she decently could without culpable falsity, sailed into Callao with little abroad but her topsails and a jib, leaving Isaac Newton hull-down in the west and Ringle about a mile off the coast, there to wait for a signal, though most of her able hands had already been drafted to help serve the frigate’s guns.
With no appearance of haste, therefore, they glided in just before the top of the tide, her very young master steering her into battle according to naval custom.
‘Lay me for her larboard broadside, Mr. Hanson,’ said Jack. ‘And then bring her up when we are beam to beam.’
Already the Surprise’s larboard watch were preparing the boats for launching: they were equipped with cutlasses, pistols and sometimes, as in Davies’ case, with a terrible boarding-axe. Gently the frigate began her left-hand turn. The captains of the starboard guns kept them on their target with iron levers until Jack, taking the distance and the angle to be just so, gave the order ‘From forward aft, fire as they bear’. And to Hanson, ‘Back the fore and main topsails.’
After the first three unanswered, murderous broadsides they hammered one another with shocking speed and ferocity, the Esmeralda replying very nearly shot for shot at first. But then, before the way was off her, Jack gave the order to fill the sails and put the helm hard over, bringing the fresh gun-crews into the most violent action. The Peruvians’ rate of fire diminished, as well it might with four of her twelve-pounders dismounted.
For nearly two minutes she was silent, for a shocking accident in the magazine meant that the guns could not be reloaded. Almost at the beginning of this ghastly pause Jack cried
‘Boarders away’, and leapt down into his barge. The larboard boats came round and up the Peruvian’s side as Jack’s band made their way on to her deck, Awkward Davies uttering his horrifying roar.
The Peruvians were now attacked before and behind, and although they rallied again and again they were not used to this kind of battle, whereas the Surprises were: and use makes master. Gradually the most part of the Esmeraldas were forced to escape below.
But now the light was fading fast and now the inexplicably silent artillery in the fortress guarding the naval port opened fire, each heavy gun shooting out a great tongue of flame.
Jack’s uniform had necessarily caught the Peruvian officers’ attention and for some time –
as far as time can be reckoned in such encounters – he had been extremely busy. Yet even so his eye, the practised eye of a predator, had caught the hoists of coloured lights rising to the mast-heads of the two merchantmen in the harbour – position lights, obviously agreed upon beforehand.
He backed out of the fray and roared for his coxswain. ‘Take any of the bargemen and any boat and pull like fury back to the ship. Tell Mr. Whewell from me to hoist coloured lights instantly and move the ship about. Cut along.’ He raced back into the dense mob fighting two and three deep, fighting all round the main hatchway and a pistol bullet struck him in the left shoulder at very close range, knocking him flat, while a dark-faced man with a fixed devilish grin passed a sword clean through his thigh.
The next moment Dark Face was utterly destroyed by a blow from Awkward Davies, an appalling blow: young Hanson, unhurt so far, stood over Jack until he could pluck out the sword and the two dragged him back to the Peruvian’s shattered side. There, although for the moment he was unable to move he saw with satisfaction that the gunners up there were now confused, firing at everything. He also saw with great relief but no very great surprise that the only Peruvians who had not gone below were now surrendering. He called to a group of Ringles he knew well and told them to stand by to unmoor. They stared at him with the wild, half-mad look of men who were or who just had been fighting to the death; and he hailed one of them. ‘Mr. Lewis, get these men to stand by to unmoor.
And if you can lend me a cravat or a large handkerchief to tie up my leg I should be obliged.’
But now some of the forward gunners there, gathering his intention, redoubled their fire.
Fortunately it was not very accurate, and some were still concentrating on the Boston and Liverpool ships. Even so, if the Esmeralda were to be cut out at all, it would have to be
done quickly. Helped by a seaman called Simon he got to his feet and staggered to the starboard bow and the mooring: the frigate was very strangely made fast to the mole by a cable, a remarkably stout cable. He bawled ‘All hands to loose topsails’, fell forward and saw young Hanson, with an absurdly curved but obviously very sharp scimitar cutting away at the enormous rope while Davies levered it taut with a gunner’s handspike. Hack, hack, a deep breath and a third blow with all his strength. The cable parted, and the ship, feeling the growing force of the ebb, swung free and moved a little way from the mole.
Joy and even a certain strength flooded into Jack’s being. ‘Hands loose topsails,’ he cried.
‘All hands there.’ Then hoarsely, ‘Thank you, Horatio: you are a very good fellow. Now take her out, will you?’
Take her out he did, the ship being hit once or twice but not seriously: out beyond the sheltering mole and into the darkness; and Jack felt a charming ease rise through the pain of his wounds, a pain that did not die away until he lost consciousness as they handed him down into his own sick-bay.
He was aroused not by the piping of All Hands just before eight bells in the middle watch, nor by the bosun’s mates bawling ‘Starboard watch ahoy! Rise and shine: rouse out there!
Starboard watch oh!’, nor by the dread sound of eight bells, nor yet by the noises of cleaning the decks with water, sand, and holystones, then swabbing them dry. What woke him from an unimagined depth of sleep was Stephen’s whispered explanation of the mangled state of his shoulder: ‘The bullet struck the buckle of his sword-belt, do you see, flattening both metal and leather entirely, but leaving the bone intact.’
‘I see the crown deeply imprinted in his flesh. Yes, indeed. Surely he is beyond all reason fortunate, when you consider that his thigh was also transpierced without a single important artery being severed,’ replied Jacob.
‘Gentlemen, a very good morning to you,’ said Jack out of the immense happiness that was welling in his full consciousness. ‘Is Esmeralda under our lee? Have we made a decent offing?’
Somewhat taken aback, they said that she was; and that the shore could not be seen.
‘Give you joy,’ said Jack. He vented his own, a bubbling exaltation, in a croak of laughter, and said, ‘Pray give me something to drink: I am horribly dry.’ Stephen held a jug to his lips and he drank like a thirsty horse.
They looked at him with a certain disapproval, and both felt his pulse. ‘It is scarcely reasonable,’ said Jacob, aside. ‘But then he always was a full-blooded man.’ And much louder, ‘Give you joy of your victory, sir: give you joy.’
‘God bless you, my dear,’ said Stephen, gently shaking his hand. ‘It was a noble feat. But tell me, Jack, do you feel much pain?’
‘Not lying on my back: not to stop me sleeping – Lord, how I slept! Now I am aware of my shoulder, and the bandage on my leg is a trifle tight. But God help us, after such a thrust it ain’t surprising. Tell me, could I be fed? Just a little thin gruel, if you like, but something to set me in train: I have a most important letter to write.’