prams, cannonières and transports, and Chaulieu had built a dozen.
‘This is where their slips are,’ said Goodridge, pointing to the mouth of the little river. ‘And this is where they are doing most of their dredging and stone-work, just inside the harbour jetty. It makes the harbour almost useless for the moment, but they don’t care for that.
They can lie snug in the inner road, under Convention; or in the outer, for that matter, under St Jacques, unless it comes on to blow from the north-east. And now I come to think of it, I believe I have a print. Yes: here we are.’ He held out an odd-shaped volume with long strips of the coast seen from the offing, half a dozen to a page. A dull low coast, with nothing but these curious chalky rises each side of the mean village: both much of a height, and both, as he saw looking closely, crowned by the unmistakable hand of the industrious, ubiquitous Vauban.
‘Vauban,’ observed Stephen, ‘is like aniseed in a cake:
a little is excellent; but how soon one sickens – these inevitable pepper-pots, from Alsace to the Roussillon.’ He turned back to the chart. Now it was clear to him that the inner road, starting just outside the harbour and running up north-east past the Fort de la Convention on its headland, was protected by two long sandbanks, half a mile off the shore, labelled West Anvil and East Anvil; and that the outer road, parallel to the first, but on the seaward side of the Anvils, was sheltered on the east by the island and on the north by Old Paul Hill’s bank. These two good anchorages sloped diagonally across the page, from low left
to high right, and they were separated by the Anvils: but whereas the inner road was not much above half a mile wide and two long, the outer was a fine stretch of water, certainly twice that size. ‘How curious that these banks should have English names,’ he said. ‘Pray, is this usual?’
‘Oh, yes: anything by sea, we feel we own, just as we call Setubal St Ubes, and Coruna The Groyne, and so on: this one here we call the Galloper, after ours, it being much the same shape. And the Anvils we call anvils because with a north-wester and a making tide, the hollow seas bang away on them rap-rap, first the one and the other, like you was in a smithy. I ran in here once in a cutter, by the Goulet’
– pointing to the narrow passage between the island and the main – ‘in ’88 or ’89, with a stiff north-wester, into the inner road, and the spoondrift came in off the bank so thick you could hardly breathe.’
‘There is an odd symmetry in the arrangement of these banks, and in these promontories: perhaps there may be a connection. What a maze of channels! How shall you come in?
Not by the Goulet, I presume, since it is so close to the fort on the island – I should not have called it a promontory: it is an island, though from the print it looks much the same, being seen head-on.’
‘It depends on the wind, of course; but with anything north, I should hope to follow the channel between the Galloper and Morgan’s Knock to the outer road, run past St Jacques, and then either go between the Anvils or round the tail of the West Anvil to come to the harbour-mouth; then out again on the ebb, with God’s blessing, by the Ras du Point –
here, beyond the East Anvil – and so get into the offing before Convention knocks our masts away.
They mount forty-two pounders: a mighty heavy gun. We must start to come in on the first half of the flood, do you see, to get off if we touch and to do our business at high water.
Then away with the ebb, so as not to be heaved in by the making tide, when they have chawed us up a little, and we have not quite the control we could wish. And chaw us up they will, playing their heavy pieces on us, unless we can take them by surprise: capital practice those French gunners make, to be sure. How glad I am I left the Modest Proposal with Mrs G., fair-copied and ready for the press.’
‘So the tide is all-important,’ observed Stephen, after a pause.
‘Yes. Wind and tide, and surprise if we can manage
it. The tides we can work. I reckon to bring her there, with the island bearing due south and the square tower south-east a half east, with the flood, not of tomorrow night, but of the night after – Sunday, as ever is. And we must pray for a gentle west or north-west breeze to take us in: and out again, maybe.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stephen sat by his patient in the gently rocking sick-bay. He had almost certainly pulled him through the crisis -the faint thready pulse had strengthened this last hour, temperature had dropped, breathing was almost normal
– but this triumph occupied only a remote corner of his mind: the rest was filled with dread.
As a listener, a half unconscious listener, he had heard too much good of himself – ‘The Doctor is all right – the Doctor will not see us abused – the Doctor is for liberty – he has instruction; he has the French – he is an Irish person, too.’ The murmur of conversation at the far end had dropped to an expectant silence; the men were looking eagerly towards him, nudging one another; and a tall Irishman, visiting a sick shipmate, stood up, his face turned towards the
Doctor. At his first movement Stephen slipped out of the sick-bay: on the quarterdeck he saw Parker, talking with the Marine lieutenant, both gazing at a line-of-battle ship, a three-decker standing south-west with all her canvas abroad, studdingsails port and starboard, tearing down the Channel with a white bow-wave streaming along her side. Two midshipmen, off duty, sat making a complex object out of rope in the gangway. ‘Mr Parslow,’ said Stephen, ‘pray be so good as to ask the Captain if he is at leisure.’
‘I’ll go when I’ve finished this,’ said Parslow coolly, without getting up.
Babbington dropped his fid, kicked Parslow vehemently down the ladder and said, ‘I’ll go, sir.’ A later moment he came running back. ‘Captain has Chips with him just now, sir, but will be very happy in five minutes.’
Very happy was a conventional phrase, and it was
obvious that Captain Aubrey had had an unpleasant conversation with his carpenter: there was a lump of rotten wood with a drawn bolt in it on his desk and a shattered, bludgeoned look on his face. He stood up, awkward, doubtful, embarrassed, his head bent under the beam.
‘I am sorry to have to ask for this interview, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘But it is probable there will be a mutiny tomorrow night, when the ship is in with the French coast. The intention is to carry her into Saint-Valery.’
Jack nodded. This confirmed his reading of the situation – the Sophies’ downcast, wretched looks, the men’s demeanour, the twenty-four-pound shot that had left their racks to trundle about the deck in the middle watch. His ship was falling to pieces under his feet, his crew were falling away from their duty and their allegiance. ‘Can you tell me who are the ringleaders?’
‘I cannot. No, sir: you may call me many things, but not an informer. I have said enough, more than enough.’
No. Many surgeons, with a foot in each world, were more than half in sympathy with mutineers: there had been that man at the Nore, and the unfortunate Davidson they hanged for it at Bombay. And even Killick, his own servant, even Bonden – and they must
have known something of what was brewing – would not inform on their shipmates, although they were very close to him.
‘Thank you for having come to see me,’ he said stiffly.
When the door had closed behind Stephen he sat down with his head in his hands and let himself go to total unhappiness – to something near despair – so many things together, and now this cold evil look: he reproached himself most bitterly for not having seized this chance for an apology. ‘If only I could have got it out; but he spoke so quick, and he was so very cold. Though indeed, I should have looked the same if any man had given me the lie; it is not to be borne. What in God’s name possessed me? So trivial, so beside the point
– as gross as a schoolboy calling names – unmanly. However, he shall make a hole in me whenever he chooses. And then again, what should I have the air of, suddenly growing abject now that I know he is such a deadly old file?’ Yet throughout this period of indulgence some other part of his brain was dealing with the immediate problem, and almost without a transition he said, ‘By God, I wish I had Macdonald.’ This had nothing to do with a desire for comfort or council – he knew that Macdonald disapproved of him – but for efficiency. Macdonald was an officerlike man; this puppy Smithers was not. Still, he might not be wholly inept.