‘Of course I will, sir: should be very happy.’
‘Jack,’ he said, walking into the cabin where the Commodore and his clerk were busy with book after book of accounts, ‘I do beg your pardon for this untimely…’
‘Tomorrow morning, Mr Adams.’
‘. .. but I have first to tell you that Captain Delalande wholly accepts your proposals: he will expect you at first light tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I am so . .
‘On the other hand the Brotherhood’s messengers have already left for Algiers.
Now I must write a minute for Malta and then go to a conference ashore. Until tomorrow, brother.’
‘The doctors are going ashore,’ said Joe Plaice to his old friend Barret Bonden.
‘I don’t blame them,’ said Bonden. ‘I should like to see the sights of Spalato myself.
I dare say they are going to burn a candle to some saint.’
‘That’s a genteel way of putting it,’ said Plaice.
At six bells in the middle watch, when all the larboard and most of the starboard guns had been drawn and reloaded
with powder that Jack kept for saluting, the doctors came back. They were kindly helped up the side by powerful seamen and they crept, weary and bowed, towards their beds.
‘Wholly shagged out,’ said the gunner’s mate. ‘Dear me, they can’t hardly walk.’
‘Well, we are all of us human,’ said the yeoman of the sheets.
‘There you are, gentlemen,’ called the Commodore from by the wheel. ‘You have come aboard again, I find. Let me advise you to get what sleep you can, for presently there may be too much noise for it.’
‘Kedge up and down,’ cried Whewell from the bows.
‘Win her briskly, Mr Whewell,’ said Jack, and directing his voice aft, ‘Are you ready, Master Gunner?’
‘Ready, aye ready, sir,’ replied the gunner, that bull of Bashan.
‘Mr Woodbine,’ said Jack to the master, ‘we will take her in now: just topsails. You can make out the Frenchman’s lights, I believe?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Then steer for a point a cable’s length astern of her and then run up her larboard side within fifty yards. But I shall be on deck again by then.’ He walked aft and called over the dark water, ‘Pomone!’
‘Sir?’ replied Captain Vaux.
‘I am about to get under way.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Hands to make sail,’ said the master to the bosun, who instantly piped the invariable call. ‘Topsails,’ said the master. In almost total silence the hands appointed to gaskets, sheets, clewlines and buntlines, ties, halyards and then braces carried out their tasks with barely a word, at great speed: a pretty example of exact timing, co-ordination and long-established skill, if there had been anyone there who did not take it for granted.
The topsails rose; they filled and they were sheeted home:
the ship began to move, with the warm breeze steady on her larboard quarter. Within moments she had steerageway, and the water spoke down her side, as gently as the breeze in the rigging: out of the shelter of Brazza she began to roll and pitch just a little – it was life renewed after that lying-to.
Light there was none, apart from the faint blur of the moon behind very high cloud –
never a star – and here and there remote top-lanterns on the shipping far on the starboard bow and the odd cluster of lights on the distant quay. Dark and silent: so dark that even the topsails grew faint towards the height of the cross-trees.
All along the starboard side the gun-crews stood mute, some just visible above their shaded fighting-lanterns: midshipmen or master’s mates behind them: lieutenants behind each division.
Mr Woodbine kept his eyes fixed on the Cerbère’s lit stern from the moment they cleared the channel: it grew larger, brighter and brighter. He glanced across at the Commodore, who nodded. ‘Round to,’ said Woodbine to the man at the wheel, and then, as Surprise’s turn laid her parallel to the Cerbère, ‘Dyce, very well dyce,’ and he steadied her on this course. When her bows came level with the Frenchman’s quarter the master backed the main topsail, taking the way off her, and Jack cried ‘Fire!’
Instantly the ship’s side shot forth an enormous volume of sound and an immense smoke-bank lit with brilliant flashes – smoke that drifted evenly over the Cerbère, which replied through it with an even greater roar – greater, though as Jack noticed with satisfaction, not quite so exactly uniform.
Stephen Maturin, worn limp as an old and dirty pair of stockings after countless hours of negotiation, mostly in Slavonic languages that he understood no more than Turkish and that had to be translated, all in a stifling atmosphere, with people playing shawms outside to prevent the possibility of eavesdropping – shawms in no key known to him or range of intervals – had lain flat on his cot the moment he reached it, plunging instantly into a stupor rather than a Christian sleep.
From this his body leapt up at the first prodigious crash, leaving its wits behind it: and when the two came together he found that he was sitting by the door, his body as tense as a frightened cat’s. Understanding and recollection came with the next roaring broadside; he recognized his dimly-lit surroundings and groped his way on deck.
He arrived for the Frenchman’s next reply. Above the smoke the whole low arch of the sky was brilliantly lit – the Algerine merchantmen could be seen frantically making sail, innumerable lights on shore running about, the whole city clear in a momentary blaze of light.
Surprise drew ahead and now it was Pomone’s turn, her eighteen-pounders making an even more shocking din, improbably loud: again and again, on both sides, the almost simultaneous flashes lit the sky – astonished sea-birds could be seen, flying in a wild, uncertain fashion.
‘Well, Doctor,’ said the Commodore, just beside him, ‘I am afraid you had but a short nap of it: but we shall soon have done – Mr Woodbine, I believe we may go about.’
And aside to Stephen, as the bosun piped All hands about ship, ‘There is that big Kutali xebec, flying in a state of dreadful concern, as though this were the end of the world, ha, ha.’
‘It sounds very like it, and looks very like it,’ said Stephen, and he muttered, ‘. . .
solvet saeclum in favilla.’
Now they were on the other tack, running gently down the side of Cerbêre: it was the turn of the larboard guns and this time they were so close that some of the Frenchman’s smouldering wads came aboard, to be put out with a great deal of laughter, and indignant, often very cross cries of ‘Silence, fore and aft’ from the midshipmen.
Yet another tack, yet another apocalyptic series of shattering broadsides – renewed screeching, howling and
running about on shore – distant drums and trumpets, church bells ringing – and having given the order to reload with right cartridge and ball, and to house the guns, Jack carried straight on, shaping a course for the Canale di Spalato, followed by Cerbère and Pomone, with Ringle under his lee. He called for stern-lanterns and top-lights, desiring Mr Harding to dismiss the starboard watch once courses had been set, and went below himself, ludicrously walking on tiptoe. In the cabin – the bed-place – that they had shared for so many years, he found Stephen, not dead asleep – far from it – but writing.
‘I hope I do not interrupt you,’ he said.
‘Not at all. I am only setting down a succinct account of my conversation in Spalato with certain organizations for the benefit of the Admiral’s intelligence officer in Malta; and as soon as it is done, my duty, as I see it, is to go to Algiers as fast as ship will fly.’
‘What do you think we should do?’
‘Obviously I cannot dictate to a Commodore; but as far as the single aim of defeating this intervention by Bonapartist mercenaries, this potentially “extremely dangerous intervention” as the Secretary of State put it, I think we should run down the coast, looking attentively into the yards that contain vessels in any state of forwardness –
and then as soon as we have examined Durazzo, straight away for Algiers, keeping the sharpest possible watch for a houario between Pantellaria and Kelibia. Then, it being assumed that we do not catch the vessel, I should go on in Ringle to dissuade the Dey from carrying the promised treasure across, while you remain, a very present threat on the horizon, a powerful, famous frigate, seen by all shipping that comes and goes.’
‘No Pomone?’
‘Her eighteen-pounders are very well, but this is no longer a matter of direct physical strength. We have already dealt with the two dangerous heavy frigates and I have – at enormous expense, I may say – set in train a series of measures that will rid us of several smaller but still dangerous vessels repairing or nearing completion – brigs-ofwar, corvettes, three gunboats. Letting Pomone return to Malta with her companion seems to me a master-stroke.’