‘Do not strike the bell,’ he said, stopping the ship’s routine: he wanted none of the morning ceremonies at this point.
‘No bell it is, sir,’ said the quartermaster.
‘If you please, sir,’ said Miller, pointing to the first island beyond the northern arm of the bay – an island that now proved to be a small group.
‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Very good.’ For there, in a cove as neat and sheltered and concealed from view as could be wished, invisible from the offing and from the lower bay, there lay the troop-ships and both frigates.
With a fierce pleasure he grasped the situation. The narrow bay ran directly north-east: if the French commodore took his squadron well in, with this wind he could never bring them out. He was trying to make sure whether this was his right clestination or not, and already he was most dangerously far along.
All the officers were on deck. ‘We have no pilot left from Irish waters?’ asked Jack.
‘No, sir,’ said Miller. ‘Even Michael Tierney died in the Bight of Benin. But the master is searching through and through and through his charts – he has called for a sounding.’
‘It’s all one,’ said Jack. ‘Beat to quarters.’ He ran on to the poop, looking aft.
Everyone was present, Stately within a cable’s length, except for Thames, who had sagged right away to the east, almost beyond the other horn closing the bay. The Ringle, like a dutiful tender, was rising and falling on the great swell fifty yards on the Bellona’s quarter.
‘Good morning, William,’ he called. ‘How are you bearing up?’
‘Good morning, sir,’ answered Reade. ‘Prime, sir, thank you very much.’
Returning, Jack made first Thames’s signal to rejoin and then Stately’s to come within hail.
The sixty-four came under the &llona’s lee, and in his strong voice Jack said
‘Captain Duff – there lie the French two-deckers. Let us attack them directly; and while we
are bearing down let us at least have a bite and a sup. I shall tackle the pennant-ship, if you and Thames will look after the other.’
‘Very happy, sir,’ said Duff, smiling, and his crew gave three cheers.
Before going below Jack gave the Aurora, Camille and Laurel orders to maintain a discreet watch on the transports and their escort between the islands. He had every hope of snapping them up with neither damage nor casualties if he were successful in the bay.
A spirit-stove and a willing mind can do wonders, even in a heavy sea with a full gale blowing, and Jack Aubrey, leaving Stephen to carry their coffee-pot down into the cockpit, came on deck again warm and well-fed. He was wearing his usual rig: an old uniform coat, threadbare brass-bound hat that had turned many a cut, a heavy cavalry sabre by way of fighting sword, boots and silk stockings (much better in case of a wound).
He glanced along the decks, all in the perfect battleorder Captain Pullings knew so well: over to the other side of the bay, where the Thames was making good progress: tDwards the Frenchmen, who for their part had moved from the island towards what seemed to be a cloudy village on the south side, where they lay a-try, perhaps with a kedge out ahead. The Stately was keeping a cable’s length astern, coming along under the same close-reefed topsails with the same air of competence.
‘Shipmates,’ said Jack in a conversational voice, but one that carried well over the roar of the wind, ‘we are going to attack the pennant-ship from to-windward, while Stately goes on to deal with her companion. I am going to engage so close that our roundshot will go through both her sides, to end it quick. And be damned to him who first cries Hold, enough.’
A very hearty cheer indeed, echoed from the Stately: and the waft from the match-tubs by each gun drifted in eddies, a scent surpassed only by powder-smoke. Yet the Thames had not answered the cheer, though she was no great way off on the southern side. Jack took his glass: she was in trouble: she had contrived to get inshore of a reef and she could neither turn nor advance.
The first ranging shot from the Frenchmen splashed alongside. The next came home, somewhere about the larboard hawse-hole. Tom yawed just enough for the forward starboard guns to reply, and now, in spite of the wind right aft, there was the scent of powder-smoke as well.
How quickly those last few hundred yards fleeted by! At one moment you could still notice a gull or that damn fool of a Thames, and the next you were in the full deafening roar of battle yardarm to yardarm, the broadsides losing all unity and merging into a continuous iron bellow. The ships ground together as the Frenchmen tried to board, yelling as they came. They were repelled; and now came a louder, more triumphant cry, then another as the enemy’s mizzen went by the board at deck-level, carrying the maintopmast with it. The ship could no longer lie head to wind and she slewed to larboard; but still answering her helm she ran north-east along the shore, keeping up a fire from her undamaged side until, at the very height of flood, eleven minutes after the first shot, she struck, racing high on to the rocky shelf justThelow the village.
Jack rounded to and called upon her to surrender; and this, after a moment’s hesitation, she did. Even if she had been able to bring a gun to bear, which she could not, lying at that dreadful angle on the rock among the surf there was no hope. Yet so far down the bay and in these shallows, the surf was far less dreadful than it looked. The quarter-boats brought the French commodore and his officers across little difficulty, and carried a
prize-crew back, including, at the Frenchman’s most earnest request, Stephen Maturin, their own surgeon having been killed – he had wished to see a battle. A nominal prizecrew, and as a last thought a small party of Marines, for even if he had imagined trouble aboard the prize
Jack had no time to spare. Below the racing cloud he had just seen Stately attempt an extremely brave but perilous manoeuvre, drawing ahead and suddenly tacking across the Frenchman’s bows to rake her fore and aft with broadside after broadside. But his ship or his men’s skill betrayed him: the Stately would not come round. She hung there in irons while the Frenchman pounded her, knocked away her main and mizzen topmasts, and then she fell off to her former starboard tack. The enemy of course bore up and raked her in his turn.
But for the Bellona’s approach he must have destroyed or taken her. As it was he let fall his courses and raced closehauled to the end of the southern headland and out to sea beyond it, just saving both masts and sails, and disappeared, steering eastward and increasing sail without the least care for his friends in their secluded cove.
The reason for this headlong flight appeared a moment later, when two English seventy-fours and a frigate appeared round the northern cape. Jack signalled them to heave to, emphasizing the order with a gun, told Tom to look to the Stately, and if she could be left, to make the best of his way towards the troop-ships’ cove, and so dropped into Ringle.
He went aboard the nearest seventy-four, Royal Oak, which received his shabby, battle-stained and indeed bloody person with all the compliments due to his broad pennant, and with very great enthusiasm. ‘Gentlemen, I bring you prizes,’ he said. ‘There is a cove among that group of islands there’ – pointing – ‘which conceals four French troop carriers and two frigates. I should take them myself, but I have four foot water in the hold and gaining fast, having had a bout with that fellow aground down there – a very determined fighter indeed – and the ship is slow and heavy.’
They treated him with infinite consideration – of course they would do all he desired
– they gave him the most cordial joy of his victory – hoped that his people had not suffered and thanked the Lord they had been ordered from Bere Haven on rumours of gunfire – led him to the cabin – would the Commo dore care for a dish of tea? of cocoa? Perhaps gin and hot water, or the whiskey of these parts? All this time they were approaching the cove, and now Jack’s frigate captains came aboard, passionate for news, grieved for the Bellona’s battered state – she could indeed be seen to be wallowing along, her pumps flinging water wide to leeward.
One of the French frigates in the cove chanced it. She cut her cable, squeezed through an improbable gap and ran east before the gale with everything she could set, joining the ship of the line in her way back to France. The rest submitted to the overwhelming force: for by this time the Bellona had joined.