Stephen back to the house at once. At their first greeting he said that he had received the Brazilian leaves, but it was not until the door was closed behind them that he spoke of three messages that had arrived for Dr Maturin.
Stephen thanked him cordially for his trouble, paid for the leaves, put the messages in his pocket and said ‘You have been very kind to me: allow me to suggest the purchase of East India stock as soon as it drops below a hundred and sixteen.’
They parted on excellent terms, and Stephen, with Square carrying the little sack, set off for the strand, the boat, the ship, and the privacy of his cabin and his decoding book; but
they had not gone a furlong before the road was blocked by a turbulent mass of seamen, many already drunk, all fighting or about to fight or bawling encouragement at those who were engaged – hands from the Thames and the Stately having a dust up.
Happily a group of moderately sober Bellonas came by, some of them Stephen’s old shipmates, and they, forming close about the pair and roaring ‘Make a lane, there’ ran them briskly through unharmed.
Once aboard Stephen hurried below, locked the door and opened the messages in the order of their sending. They were all, of course, from Blaine’s office. The code was so familiar that he could almost have done without the key, and the first two were comforting though unremarkable: the French plan was following its course: there had been two unimportant changes of command in minor vessels and one ship substituted for another of equal force. The third, however, stated that a requisition in the Netherlands had provided faster, better, more efficient transports and that the whole operation might be advanced by a week or ten days and that a third line-ofbattle ship, the César, 74, coming from America might join the French squadron in 42°20’N, 18°3oW: there might however be a reduction in the number of French frigates. The message ended with the hope that this might not reach Stephen too late, and it enclosed a fourth sheet written by Blaine himself according to the formula they used for private, personal communication. Stephen recognized the hand, he recognized the shape of the sequences, but he could not make the message out at all, though he was almost certain that one group was the combination Sir Joseph used for Diana’s name. He ran clean through the book, a book that he knew backwards in any case; but there was no evident solution.
He put the personal message aside for further study and went in search of Jack, who was in the master’s day-cabin with Tom, all three gazing very anxiously at the chronometers, which no longer agreed, harmattan, drought and dust having presumably deranged one or both. In some ways Jack was very quick: one glance at Stephen’s face and he was in the great cabin in a moment: he listened in silence, and then said ‘Thank God we heard in time. I shall get under way as soon
as possible. Pray see to your medical stores at once.’ He summoned Tom: ‘Tom, we must be under way in twelve hours, on the first of the ebb. We are short-handed and with so many men ashore, hard to find and bring off, we shall be in real difficulties: send the boats to the last-come merchantmen and press all you can. Stores are fairly good, apart from the gunner’s, but watering will take place at once. No liberty, of course. Throw out one signal for all captains and another for the powder-hoys. All Marines to round up stragglers and I shall ask the Governor to use his troops.’
•
Stephen and his assistants and the potto in her darkened cage went ashore through intense activity: while his young men did all that was needed at the apothecary’s,
Stephen hurried to Mrs Wood with his charge and took his leave – his forced unwilling leave, as he observed – strangely moved. No
•
young woman could have been kinder.
Back on board he saw the powder-hoys cast off, and in the waist the resigned merchant sailors being assigned to their
watch and station. Within eleven and a half hours of Jack’s emphatic order the blue peter broke out at the foretopmast head: one or two boats and some frantic canoes came racing through the moderate surf; and at the twelfth hour the squadron stood out to sea in a perfect line, steering west-north-west with a full topsail breeze just abaft the beam and the band of the Aurora playing loud and clear:
Come cheer up my lads, ’tis to glory we steer
To add something new to this wonderful year:
To honour we call you, not press you like slaves,
For who are so free as we sons of the waves?
Chapter
Ten
Commodore Aubrey stood on the main topgallant crosstrees of the Bellona, about a hundred and forty feet above the broad grey sea: they were a frail support for a man of his weight and with even this moderate roll and pitch his sixteen or seventeen stone moved continually through a series of irregular swooping curves that might have puzzled an ape, the roll alone swinging him seventy-five feet; but although he was conscious of the starboard watch bending a heavy-weather topsail to the yard below him (the glass was dropping steadily), he was unaware of the movement, the varying centrifugal forces, or the wind howling round his ears, and he stood there as naturally as at home he would have stood on the small landing at the top of the Ashgrove Cottage stairs. He gazed steadily into the north-east, where he could see the Laurel’s topsails clear above the horizon, fifteen miles away while the Laurel’s lookout commanded a horizon still farther off, where the Ringle was lying, at the limit of fair-weather communication: but never a hint of a signal did the Laurel show. Slinging his telescope and changing the arm that held him to the topgallant shrouds, he pivoted to scan the south-west ocean. Here the expected cloud-bank obscured much of the lower sky, but he could still make out the white flash of the Orestes brig, herself in touch with the Nimble cutter, three leagues beyond. At the moment, therefore, he was at the centre of a circle fifty miles across in which no vessel could move unseen; but presently his far-off ships and smallcraft would be moving closer, the sun would set among the south-west clouds, and the night, with almost certain dirty weather, would set in. No moon.
He had been here, with his whole squadron in tolerable shape after an often difficult run from Sierra Leone, some forty degrees of latitude away, eight days before the earliest date that naval intelligence had given for the meeting of the French squadron with their seventy-four, their line-of-battle ship from the west, in 42°20’N, 18°3o’W, and during these eight days, with fairly kind winds and clear weather, he had
cruised slowly north-east till noon and south-west till sunset each side of centre. Nothing had he seen except for a recent
outward-bound Bristol merchantman which had met with never a sail since the chops of the Channel and which was in this out-of-the-way corner of the sea because of a wicked American privateer schooner that was playing Old Harry farther south. But these eight days had had seven nights between
them, and an eighth was just at hand.
Another glance into the north-east, and he saw that the
Laurel was already steering for the squadron, close-hauled on
the larboard tack. Another, and much longer, south-west, for
that was the vital quarter: if he did not intercept that seventyfour, and if the French commander knew how to handle his
ship, the squadron so heavily outnumbered faced disgrace.
He turned, slung his glass again and made his way down,heavy with care.
Stephen heard him talking to Tom Pullings in the coach, covered his code-book and the innumerable variations of Blaine’s message that he had worked out, shifting numbers, letters, combinations in the hope of finding his old friend’s initial mistake and so making sense of his sheet: so far, after many days of the closest application, he had only reached a firmer conviction that the group he half-recognized
at first did in fact refer to Diana. He locked his desk-top, wiped the anxiety off his face, and returned to the great cabin.
When Jack came in he found him sitting before a tray of bird’s skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said ‘To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more imtating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.’
‘Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was
always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat.’