they were going aft, down the sternladder and into the boat towing behind: this was no punishment, nor no threat of punishment. He flemished down the offending slab-line in a seamanlike manner and walked back to the quarterdeck.
‘Now, Polychrests,’ he said, ‘now we are going to crack on until she groans again. Stuns’ls aloft and alow, royals, and, damn me, royal stuns’ls and skys’ls if she’ll bear ’em. The sooner we’re there; the sooner we’re home. Topmen, upperyardmen, are you ready?’
‘Ready, aye ready, sir.’ A comfortable, good body of sound – relief, thankfulness?
‘Then at the word, up you go. Lay aloft!’
The Polychrest bloomed like a white rose. Her rarely-used studdingsails stretched out brilliant white one after another, her brand-new royals shone high, and above them all, her hitherto unseen skysails twinkled in the sun. The ship groaned and groaned again as they were sheeted home; she plunged her forefoot deep while behind her the barge raced along in her wake, the water almost to its gunwales.
If the Polychrest could be said to have a good point of sailing, it was with the wind three points abaft the beam; and here the wind stayed all day, scarcely varying from west-north-west by north, and blowing with a gentle urgency that kept all eyes aloft for the safety of her royals and skysails. She was cracking on indeed, racing down the Channel as though their lives depended upon it, making so much water that Mr Gray the carpenter, coming up from the well, officially registered his protest. She did carry away a skysail, and at one point a large unidentified object tore from her bottom, but the leagues raced away in her wake, and Jack, perpetually on the quarterdeck, could almost have loved her.
On the forecastle the watch below were at their make and mend; the watch on duty were kept busy, necessarily busy, trimming sail; and everybody seemed to be enjoying the speed, the racing tension to get the last ounce out of her. His orders about starting were being punctually obeyed; and so far no man or boy seemed to move any slower for it. The men in the barge had been brought aboard, lest it should tow under, and they had had their dinner in the galley: he was not afraid of them now – their influence was gone, their shipmates avoided them. Davis, the really dangerous brute for a sudden reckless explosion, seemed wholly amazed; and Wilcocks, the eloquent attorney’s clerk turned pickpocket, could find no one to listen to him. The seamen, for the most part, had turned with their usual calm volatility from one disaster to the interval before the next. For the moment he had the situation in hand.
His only anxiety was the wind. As the afternoon wore on it grew fainter and more irregular, giving every sign of falling away altogether with the setting of the sun: as the damp evening settled from the sky, with the dew tightening the rigging, it revived a little, still breathing from the longed-for north-west; but there was no trusting to it.
By six o’clock they had run off their distance, standing in to raise the unmistakable tower and headland of Point Noir, with a cross-bearing on Camaret; but now, as they steered east-south-east to make the coast a little north of Chaulieu, the haze thickened, thickened, until at the very entrance to Chaulieu bay itself, they found themselves in a fog, their royals faint blurs high over the deck – a fog that lay a little above the smoothly swelling surface of the sea, and that was torn in long wafts of thick and clear, faintly luminous from the rising moon.
They were no more than a little late for their tide, and they stood in steadily with the master at the con and two
leads going without a pause – ‘By the deep eight, by the deep eight, by the mark ten, a quarter less ten, by the deep nine, and a half seven, by the mark five, a quarter less five, and a half four.’ The bottom was shelving fast. ‘We are on the edge of the outer bank, sir,’
said the master, looking at the sample of shelly ooze from the lead. ‘All well. Tops’ls alone, I believe.’
‘She is yours, Mr Goodridge,’ said Jack, and he stood back a step, while the ship whispered through the water and the master took her in. She had been cleared for action long before; the hands were silent and attentive; the ship answered her helm promptly as she worked through the channels, sheets and braces tightening at the word. ‘That will be the Galloper,’ said the master, nodding towards a stretch of pale water on the starboard bow. ‘Starboard a point. Two points. Steady – easy, now. As she goes. Port your helm.
Hard over.’ Silence. Dead silence in the fog.
‘Morgan’s Knock to larboard, sir,’ he said, coming aft. Jack was glad to hear it. Their last sure cross-bearing seemed a terribly long time ago; and this was blindman’s buff: it was water he did not know. With Morgan’s Knock astern, they would have to bear westward round the tail of Old Paul Hill’s bank, and then head a little south of east and so into the outer road, crossing the Ile Saint-Jacques. ‘Starboard three points,’ said the master, and the ship
swung to the west. It was wonderful how these old Channel pilots knew their sea: by the smell and feel of it, no doubt. ‘Mind your bowline, for’ard there,’ called the master in a low voice. A long, long pause, with the Polychrest close-hauled to the now freshening breeze.
‘Down with your helm, now. Steady, steady. As she goes. Look, sir, on the larboard bow –
that’s St Jacques.’ A tear in the fog, and there, about a mile away, rose a tall white mass with a fortification on its top and half-way down its side.
‘Well done, Mr Goodridge, well done indeed.’
‘On deck, there,’ hailed the look-out. ‘Sail on the larboard beam. Oh, a mort of craft,’ he added conversationally. ‘Eight, nine – a proper old crowd of ’em.’
‘They’ll be at the far end of the outer road, sir,’ said the master. ‘We are in it now.’
The breeze was tearing great windows in the fog, and gazing over to port Jack had a sudden vision of an assembly of fair-sized vessels, ship- and brig-rigged, bright in the moonlight. These were his prey, the transports and cannonières for the invasion.
‘You are happy that they are in the outer road, Mr Goodridge?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes, sir. We just had St Jacques bearing south-south-east. There’s nothing but open water between you and them.’ ‘Down with your helm,’ said Jack. With the wind on her larboard quarter the Polychrest ran through the sea, going fast in with the tide, straight for the gun-vessels.
‘Out tompions,’ he said. ‘Stand to your guns.’ He meant to run right in among them, firing both sides, to get the very most out of the surprise and the first discharge, for a moment after it all hell would break loose from the batteries, and the men would never be so steady again. The mist had drifted across again, but it was clearing – he could see them dimly, coming closer and closer.
‘Not a gun till. . . ‘he called, and a shock threw him fiat
on the deck. The Polychrest was brought up all standing. She had run full tilt on to the West Anvil.
This was plain as he got to his feet and the clearing of the fog showed one fort right astern and another almost exactly alike on the starboard bow, forts that woke to instant life with a shattering roar, a blast of flame that lit the sky. They had mistaken Convention for St Jacques, the inner road for the outer: they had come in by a different channel, and the vessels were separated from him by an impassable spit of sand. Those ships were in the inner, not the outer road. By some miracle the Polychrest had all her masts still standing: she lifted on the swell and ground a little farther on to the bank.
‘Up sheets,’ he shouted, full voice – no call for silence now. ‘Up sheets.’ The strain on the masts eased. ‘Parker, Pullings, Babbington, Rossall, get the guns aft.’ If she were only hanging by her forefoot this might bring her off. On the far side of the bank a great flurry of canvas
– ships getting under way in every direction – and amidst this confusion two distinct well-ordered shapes steering to cross his bows. Gun-brigs, which marked their presence by two double jets of fire, meaning to rake him from stern to stern. ‘Leave the fo’c’sle guns,’
he cried. ‘Mr Rossall, Adams, keep up a steady fire on those brigs.’
Now the moon shone out with surprising brilliance, and as the wind blew away the smoke, it showed the batteries as clear as day. It showed the whole inner road, crowded with shipping – a corvette moored right up against Convention, under its guns; certainly the ship Thetis and Andromeda had chased in, his quarry. ‘A damned-fool place to moor her’ –