The swinging lantern. He watched it: perhaps for hours. And gradually the world began to fall into place, memory coming back layer by layer, to reach the present. Or nearly so. He could not recall the sequence after the busting of poor Haynes’s gun. Haynes, of course: that was his name. A forecastle-man, larboard watch, in the Resolution, rated quarter-gunner when they were off the Cape. The rest was darkness: this often happened with a wound. Was he wounded? He was certainly in the cockpit, and that was Stephen moving about among the low, crowded, moaning bodies. ‘Stephen,’ he said, after a while.
‘How then, my dear?’ said Stephen. ‘How do you find yourself? How are your intellectuals?’
‘Pretty well, I thank you. I seem all of a piece.’
‘I dare say you are. Limbs and trunk are sound. Coma was all I feared these last few days.
You fell down the forehatch. You may take an Almoravian draught, however. The dogs, they did not find half my Almoravian draught.’
‘We were taken?’
‘Aye, aye, we were taken. We lost thirty-six killed and wounded; and they took us. They plundered us cruelly
– stripped to the bone – and for the first few days they kept us under hatches. Here is your draught. However, I extracted a ball from Captain Dumanoir’s shoulder and looked after their wounded, and now we are indulged with taking the air on deck. Their second captain, Azéma, is an amiable man, a former King’s officer, and he has prevented any gross excess, apart from the plundering.’
‘Privateers,’ said Jack, trying to shrug. ‘But what about those girls? What about the Miss Lambs?’
‘They are dressed as men – as boys. I am not sure that they are altogether pleased with the success of their deception.’
‘A fair-sized prize-crew?’ asked Jack, whose mind had flown to the possibility of retaking the Indiaman.
‘Huge,’ said Stephen. ‘Forty-one. The Company’s officers have given their parole; some of the Lascars have taken service for double wages; and the rest are down with this Spanish influenza. They are carrying us into Corunna.’
‘Don’t they wish they may get us there,’ said Jack. ‘The chops of the Channel and to westward are alive with cruisers.’
He spoke confidently; he knew that there was truth in what he said; but limping about the quarterdeck on Tuesday, when Stephen allowed him up, he surveyed the ocean with a feeling of despair. A vast great emptiness, with nothing but the trim Bellone a little to windward: not a sail, not the smallest lugger on the world’s far rim, nor, after hours of unbroken watching, the least reason why any should appear. Emptiness; and somewhere under the leeward horizon, the Spanish port. He remembered coming from the West Indies in the Alert, sailing along the busiest sea-route in the whole Atlantic, and they had not seen a living soul until they were in soundings off the Lizard.
In the afternoon Pullings came on deck, pale Pullings, supported by a Miss Lamb on either side. Jack had already
seen Pullings (grape-shot in the thigh, a sword-cut on the shoulder and two ribs stove in), just as he had seen Major Hill (down with the influenza) and all the other men under Stephen’s hands, but this was the first time he had seen the girls. ‘My dear Miss Lamb,’ he cried, taking her free hand, ‘I hope I see you well. Quite well?’ he said earnestly, meaning ‘not too much raped?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Miss Lamb, looking conscious and strange – quite another girl, ‘my sister and I are perfectly well.’
‘Miss Lambs, your most devoted,’ said Captain Azéma, coming from the starboard side and bowing. He was a big dark loose-built man, tough, capable, a sailor – a man after jack’s own heart. ‘Misses are under my particular protection, sir,’ he said. ‘I have persuaded them to carry robes, to resume the form divine,’ – kissing his fingers ‘They do not risk the least impertinence. Some of my men are villain buggers indeed, impetuous like one says, but quite
apart from my protection, not one, not one, would want of respect for such heroines.’
‘Eh?’ said Jack.
–
‘That’s right, sir,’ cried Pullings, squeezing them. ‘Copper-bottomed heroines, trundling shot, running about like mad, powder, match when my flint flew off, wads !! Joan of Arcs.’
‘Did they carry powder?’ cried Jack. ‘Dr Maturin said trousers, or something of that kind, but I -.
‘Oh, you horrid two-faced thing!’ cried Miss Susan. ‘You saw her! You shouted out the most dreadful things to Lucy, the most dreadful things I ever heard in my life. You swore at my sister, sir; you know you did. Oh, Captain Aubrey, fie!’
‘Captain Aubrey?’ observed Azéma, adding the head-money for an English officer to his share of the prize -a very handsome sum.
‘She’s blown the gaff – I’m brought by the lee,’ thought Jack. ‘They carried powder – What an amazing spirited
thing to do.’ ‘Dear Miss Lambs,’ he said most humbly, ‘I beg you to forgive me. The last half-hour of the action – a damned warm action too – is a perfect blank to me. I fell on my head; and it is a perfect blank. But to carry powder was the most amazing spirited thing to do: I honour you, my dears. Please forgive me. The smoke – the trousers -what did I say, so that I may unsay it at once?’
‘You said,’ began Miss Susan, and paused. ‘Well, I forget; but it was monstrous.
The sound of a gun made the whole group jerk, an absurd, simultaneous, galvanic leap: they had all been speaking very loud, being still half deafened from the roar of battle, but a gun touched their innermost ears and they all pivoted at once, mechanical toys pointing directly at the Bellone.
She had been under double-reefed topsails all this time, to allow the Lord Nelson to keep company, but now men were already laying out on the yard to shake out the reefs, and Captain Dumanoir hailed loud and clear, telling his second to make straight for Corunna,
‘all sails outside’. He added a good deal that neither Jack nor Pullings could understand, but the general upshot was plain: his look-out had seen a sail to windward; he was not going to take the slightest risk with so valuable a prize; and he meant to beat up to reconnoitre, and as the case fell out, to salute a friend or neutral, to fight an enemy, or, trusting to the Bellone’s magnificent sailing qualities, to lead the strange sail astray.
The Lord Nelson, trailing a curtain of dark-brown weed, leaking steadily (her pumps had never stopped since the action), and still short of sails, spars and rigging, could only make four knots, even with her topgallantsails set; but the Bellone, now a triple pyramid of white, was at her best close-hauled, and in ten minutes they were two miles away from one another. Jack asked permission to go into the top; Captain Azéma not only entreated him to go anywhere he chose, but lent him Stephen’s telescope as well.
‘Good day,’ said the privateersman in the top. Jack had given him a terrible blow with his bar, but he bore no grudge. ‘That is one of thy frigates down there.’
‘Oh wee?’ said Jack, settling his back against the mast. The distant ship sprang close in his objective-glass. Thirty-six guns; no, thirty-eight. Red pennant. Naiad? Minerve? She had been going large under easy sail when first she sighted the Bellone; then studdingsails had appeared – the last were being sheeted home when first jack had her steadily under view – as she altered course to close the privateer; then she saw the Indiaman and altered course again to know more about her. Upon this the Bellone tacked, tacked clumsily, taking an age over what jack had seen her do in five minutes from ‘helm’s
a-lee’ to ‘let go and haul’; he heard them laughing, clowning down there on deck. She stood on this tack until
she was within a mile of the frigate, steadily beating up against the swell, white water sweeping across her forecastle. A white puff showed at the frigate’s bows, and shifting his gaze he saw the red ensign break out at her mizen-peak: he frowned: he would at least have tried the tricolour or, with the big American frigates in those waters, the Stars and Stripes; it might not have worked, but it was worth the attempt. For her part, the Bellone was perfectly capable of showing French colours without any distinction, to pass for a national ship and lead the frigate away.
She had done so. She had done just that thing; and the seaman, who had borrowed the glass, licking it with his garlic tongue, chuckled to himself. Jack knew what was passing through the frigate-captain’s head; far to leeward a ship, probably a merchantship, possibly a prize, but what sort of prize he could not tell: crossing his bows three-quarters of a mile away there was a French corvette, not very well handled, not very fast, peppering him at random-shot. A simple mind would find no great difficulty about this decision and soon Jack saw the frigate haul her