Jack Aubrey gazed earnestly at his friend for a minute; then he nodded and said,
‘Very well. Give Dr Jacob his orders and what introductions you think fit, and I will summon Ringle.’ He touched the bell, and to Killick he said, ‘My compliments to Dr Jacob, and should like to see him as soon as it may be convenient.’ –
‘Dr Jacob,’ he said, a few moments later, ‘pray sit down. Dr Maturin will tell you the reason for this somewhat abrupt summons; and in the mean time I shall go on deck.’
On deck he said to the signal midshipman, ‘To Ringle:
Captain repair aboard.’
William Reade came up the side, his hook gleaming and with something of the look of a keen, intelligent dog that believes it may have heard someone taking down a fowlingpiece. Jack led him below. ‘Now, William,’ he said, guiding him to the chart-table,
‘here is Kutali, a fine upstanding city, going up like the stairs inside the Monument; or it was when I last saw it. The approaches are straightforward and you have good holding ground in fifteen to twenty fathoms from here to here: only you want to have two anchors out ahead almost to the bitter end if the bora sets in. And you are to take Dr Jacob there.
In all likelihood you will outsail us, so unless you receive orders to the contrary you will proceed to Spalato the moment Dr Jacob is aboard again:
still with the utmost dispatch.’
‘To Kutali it is, sir, and then to Spalato, with the utmost dispatch in both cases,’ said Reade. ‘Is the gentleman ready?’
Ready or not, Jacob was hurried aboard the schooner with what letters Stephen had had time to write to his friends in Kutali, with a clean shirt wrapped up by Killick and his best coat, and with Stephen’s words nestling in his ears: ‘The whole essence is to learn whether the Brotherhood’s messengers have been sent, and if so whether they can still be intercepted. Money is of no consequence whatsoever.’
Ringle did indeed outsail Surprise and Pomone, but not to such an extent as she might have done if Captain Vaux had not grown more used to the ways of his ship and had not so changed her trim, bringing her by the stern, that even in these moderate breezes she gained nearly a knot on a broad reach. The schooner was indeed just in sight from the masthead when they rounded Cape Santa Maria at dawn, but she soon vanished with the coming of the sun. It rose over the Montenegrin heights, and for a while the far coast remained sombre though the zenith was already a brilliant, quite light blue. This eastern shore was a coast familiar to
Jack and Stephen: in the very same ship they had sailed up from the lonian Sea reasonably far along the Adriatic.
They drew in with the land – a fine topgallant breeze on the larboard quarter – and presently the sea grew more and more populated with feluccas, trabaccaloes,
merchantmen of various rigs and sizes making for the Bocche di Cattaro or emerging from the splendid great harbour, and with fishermen, some in fast xebecs with twenty-foot-long trolling rods out on either side, like the antennae of some enormous insect.
One hailed the Surprise, and drawing alongside, pointed to their catch, a single tunny, but so huge that it filled the bottom of the boat – a fish that would feed two hundred men. The master, a jovial soul, called out to Jack, ‘Cheap, cheap, oh very cheap,’ and made the gestures of eating – of eating with delight.
‘Pass the word for the cook,’ said Jack, and to the cook, who stood there wiping his hands on his apron, ‘Franklin, nip down into the boat: look whether it is a today’s fish, and if so, set a fair price.’ Franklin was considered a judge of fish and a competent hand with the lingua franca.
‘Dead fresh, sir,’ called Franklin, looking up from the boat. ‘Still warm.’
‘Do you speak figuratively?’ asked Stephen.
‘Anan,
sir?’
‘Do you mean warm warm, as who should say a rabbit was so fresh killed that it was still warm?’
The cook looked anxious, and made no reply; so Stephen scrambled down the side, tripped over the xebec’s gunwale and fell on his knees in the tunny’s blood.
‘Well, sir,’ said the cook, setting him upright, ‘now you’ve fair wrecked and ruined your trousers – which it will never come out – so you might as well put your hand in the place where they gaffed him and where all this blood is coming out of.’ –
‘By God, you are right,’ cried Stephen, rising and shaking
Franklin’s reluctant hand. ‘It is against nature – I am amazed
–
amazed and delighted.’
The cook fixed the price in a passionate five-minute argument, referred it to the purser, who nodded, and then said to Stephen, ‘By your leave, sir, by your leave,’ as a double whip came down from the mainyard to hoist the great fish aboard.
Stephen came up the frigate’s side again, leaving traces all the way. ‘That was wonderful, wonderful,’ he cried, disengaging himself from Killick’s officious hand. ‘I must run downstairs for a thermometer.’
The whole ship’s company dined on that enormous fish; and this being Thursday, a make-and-mend day, they sat about on deck, some quite stertorous, all delighting in the gentle breeze that tempered the sun.
‘I can scarcely remember a more agreeable day,’ said Stephen, looking up from his notes, ‘- and there, just above the high land behind Castelnuovo, is a pair of spotted eagles, almost exactly where I saw my first. I only regret that Jacob was not here to view, to experience the tunny’s blood. But I shall read such a paper to the Royal, ha, ha. . .’ He dipped his pen, took another draught of coffee, and wrote on.
‘Mr Harding’s duty, sir,’ said a midshipman, ‘and the cutter is alongside.’ Jack followed him, and looking down at the squalor he said, ‘Well done, Mr Whewell. I do not.
think anyone would connect the boat with the Royal Navy.’
‘I hope not, sir,’ said Whewell, surveying the grease, slime, plain filth and tawdry ornament fore and aft, the knotted rigging and the crew of flashily undressed criminal lunatics. ‘I did not like to come aboard in quite this shape.’
‘The gunroom might have blushed at quite so much rouge,’ said Jack. ‘Well, shove off now, Mr Whewell, if you please. Fortunately the breeze is veering, and I do not think you will have to pull back.’
Nor did they. The cutter was seen coming round the point at dawn, close-hauled and making a good five knots: her
crew had spent much of their time cleaning the boat and themselves, and although neither sails nor rigging could do the Surprise any credit until the bosun and the sailmaker had taken her in hand again, Whewell did not hesitate in coming aboard, nor indeed in breakfasting with the Commodore and his surgeon.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘there she was, lying in front of the old castle, as you said: but there were two armed polacres with her, or rather a polacre and a polacre-settee: both Algerines, I take it.’
‘How many guns did they carry?’
‘It was very difficult to make out, sir, the ports being closed and great heaps of sailcloth and cordage dangling over the sides, but I should say probably twelve for the one and perhaps eight for the other. Nine-pounders, I should imagine, though I cannot assert it. A great many people aboard.’
‘Shore batteries, I dare say?’ Jack was not good at dissembling: Stephen noticed the artificial lightness of his tone, but gazed steadily at the coffee in his coffee-cup.
‘Yes, sir: one at each end of the mole. I did not like to be too busy with my glass, but I thought I could make out six emplacements in each. I could not speak to the nature of the guns.’
‘No, of course not.’ A pause. ‘Mr Whewell, pray help yourself to bacon: it stands at your right hand – the covered dish.’
Chapter Five
When Captain Vaux came aboard the pennant-ship in response to a signal he found the great cabin still comfortably scented with bacon, coffee and toast.
‘Good morning, Vaux,’ said the Commodore, offering him a chair. ‘Mr Whewell had just given me his report on Ragusa Vecchio, where that Bonapartist frigate is lying. As you know, she is moored by the mole in front of the old castle. She has been very short of stores and cordage, but now it seems probable that she has been supplied with them by her Algerian friends: there are two of them with her at present, a polacre and a polacre-settee, both armed and mounting perhaps a score of guns between them, nine- or at the most twelve-pounders. There are also two shore-batteries with six gun-emplacements each: how armed I cannot tell. Now if, as it seems probable, she has the cables and hawsers to allow her to put to sea, she is very likely to go off cruising with her Algerian companions: the present situation makes some people think that Napoleon will very soon be restored. So I think we should deal with this frigate at once. We will sail up the coast prepared for action and summon him: if he does not comply, why so much the worse for him. Or conceivably for us: he carries eighteen-pounders. But since today is a banyan day