They were talking eagerly, and Jack Aubrey, intercepting a furious glance across the deck, leant down to whisper in his friend’s ear, ‘Stephen, will you not go below? They will be wanting you in the cockpit any moment now.’
Captain Griffiths turned from the rail, and with laboured calmness he said, ‘Mr Berry, make this signal. I am about to. .
At this moment the ship of the line fired a gun, followed by three blue lights that soared and burst with a ghostly effulgence in the dawn: before the last dropping trail of sparks had drifted away downwind she sent up a succession of rockets, a pale, isolated Guy Fawkes’ night far out in the sea.
‘What the devil can she mean by that?’ thought Jack Aubrey, narrowing his eyes, and the wondering murmur along the frigate’s decks echoed his amazement.
‘On deck,’ roared the look-out in the foretop, ‘there’s a cutter pulling from under her lee.’
Captain Griffiths’s telescope swivelled round. ‘Duck up,’ he called, and as the clewlines plucked at the main and foresails to-give him a clear view he saw the cutter, an English cutter, sway up its yard, fill, gather speed, and come racing over the grey sea, towards the frigate.
‘Close the cutter,’ he said. ‘Mr Bowes, give her a gun.’
At last, after all these hours of frozen waiting, there came the quick orders, the careful laying of the gun, the crash of the twelve-pounder, the swirl of acrid smoke eddying briefly on the wind, and the cheer of the crew as the ball skipped across the cutter’s bows. An answering cheer from the cutter, a waving of hats, and the two vessels neared one another at a combined speed of fifteen miles an hour.
The cutter, fast and beautifully handled – certainly a smuggling craft – came to under the Charwell’s lee, lost her way, and lay there as trim as a gull, rising and falling on the swell.
A row of brown, knowing faces grinned up at the frigate’s guns.
‘I’d press half a dozen prime seamen out of her in the next two minutes,’ reflected Jack, while Captain Griffiths hailed her master over the lane of sea.
‘Come aboard,’ said Captain Griffiths suspiciously, and after a few moments of backing and filling, of fending-off and cries of ‘Handsomely now, God damn your soul,’ the master came up the stern ladder with a bundle under his arm. He swung easily over the taffrail, held out his hand and said, ‘Wish you joy of the peace, Captain.’
‘Peace?’ cried Captain Griffiths.
‘Yes, sir. I thought I should surprise you. They signed not three days since. There’s not a foreign-going ship has heard yet. I’ve got the cutter filled with the newspapers, London, Paris and country towns – all the articles, gentlemen, all the latest details,’ he said, looking round the quarterdeck. ‘Half a crown a go.’
There was no disbelieving him. The quarterdeck looked utterly blank. But the whispered word had flown along the deck from the radiant carronade-crews, and now cheering broke out on the forecastle. In spite of the captain’s automatic ‘Take that man’s name, Mr Quarles,’ it flowed back to the mainmast and spread throughout the ship, a full-throated howl of joy – liberty, wives and sweethearts, safety, the delights of land.
And in any case there was little real ferocity in Captain Griffiths’s voice: anyone looking into his close-set eyes would have seen ecstasy in their depths. His occupation was gone, vanished in a puff of smoke; but now no one on God’s earth could ever know what signal he had been about to make, and in spite of the severe control that he imposed upon his face there was an unusual urbanity in his tone as he invited his passengers, his first lieutenant, the officer and the midshipman of the watch to dine with him that afternoon.
‘It is charming to see how sensible the men are – how sensible of the blessings of peace,’
said Stephen Maturin to the Reverend Mr Hake, by way of civility.
‘Aye. The blessings of peace. Oh, certainly,’ said the chaplain, who had no living to retire to, no private means, and who knew that the Charwell would be paid off as soon as she reached Portsmouth. He walked deliberately out of the wardroom, to pace the quarterdeck in a thoughtful silence, leaving Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin alone.
‘I thought he would have shown more pleasure,’ observed Stephen Maturin.
‘It’s an odd thing about you, Stephen,’ said Jack Aubrey, looking at him with affection. ‘You have been at sea quite some time now, and no one could call you a fool, but you have no more notion of a sailor’s life than a babe unborn. Surely you must have noticed how glum Quarles and Rodgers and all the rest were at dinner? And how blue everyone has always looked this war, when there was any danger of peace?’
‘I put it down to the anxieties of the night – the long strain, the watchfulness, the lack of sleep: I must not say the apprehension of danger. Captain Griffiths was in a fine flow of spirits, however.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, closing one eye. ‘That was rather different; and in any case he is a post-captain, of course.
He has his ten shillings a day, and whatever happens he goes up the captains’ list as the old ones die off or get their flag. He’s quite old – forty, I dare say, or even more
– but with any luck he’ll die an admiral. No. It’s the others I’m sorry for, the lieutenants with their half-pay and very little chance of a ship – none at all of promotion; the poor wretched midshipmen who have not been made and who never will be made now – no hope of a commission. And of course, no half-pay at all. It’s the merchant service for them, or blacking shoes outside St James’s Park. Haven’t you heard the old song? I’ll tip you a stave.’ He hummed the tune, and in a discreet rumble he sang.
‘Says Jack, “There is very good news, there is peace both by land and by sea; Great guns no more shall be used, for we all disbanded be,”
Says the Admiral, “That’s very bad news;” says the captain, “My heart will break;”
The lieutenant cries, “What shall I do? For I know not what course for to take.”
Says the doctor, “I’m a gentleman too, I’m a gentleman of the first rank; I will go to some country fair, and there I’ll set up mountebank.”
Ha, ha, that’s for you, Stephen – ha, ha, ha -Says the midshipman, “I have no trade; I have got my trade for to choose,
I will go to St James’s Park gate, and there I’ll set black of shoes; And there I will set all day, at everybody’s call, And everyone that comes by, ‘Do you want my nice shining balls?'”‘
Mr Quarles looked in at the door, recognized the tune
and drew in a sharp breath; but Jack was a guest, a superior officer – a master and commander, no less, with an epaulette on his shoulder – and he was broad as well as tall.
Mr Quarles let his breath out in a sigh and closed the door.
‘I should have sung softer,’ said Jack, and drawing his chair closer to the table he went on in a low voice, ‘No, those are the chaps I am sorry for. I’m sorry for myself too, naturally –
no great likelihood of a ship, and of course no enemy to cruise against if I do get one. But it’s nothing in comparison of them. We’ve had luck with prize-money, and if only it were not for this infernal delay over making me post I should be perfectly happy to have a six months’ run ashore. Hunting. Hearing some decent music. The opera – we might even go to Vienna! Eh? What do you say, Stephen? Though I must confess this slowness irks my heart and soul. However, it’s nothing in comparison of them, and I make no doubt it will be settled directly.’ He picked up The Times and ran through the London Gazette, in case he should have missed his own name in the first three readings. ‘Toss me the one on the locker, will you?’ he said, throwing it down. ‘The Sussex Courier.’
‘This is more like it, Stephen,’ he said, five minutes later. ‘Mr Savile ‘S hounds will meet at ten o’clock on Wednesday, the sixth of November 1802, at Champflower Cross. I had such a run with them when I was a boy: my father’s regiment was in camp at Rainsford. A seven-mile point – prodigious fine country if you have a horse that can really go. Or listen to this: a neat gentleman’s residence, standing upon gravel, is to be let by the year, at moderate terms. Stabling for ten, it says.’