Jack considered. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We shall do as you say. As soon as you have finished your account I will send it across to Pomone, who will carry it to Valetta.’
A violent ten-minute downpour had cleared the sky without much deadening the prosperous topgallant breeze: day was breaking fair and clear in the east and looking southward at his companions he saw that Cerbère had hoisted the French royal ensign.
‘Mr Rodger,’ he said to the signal midshipman, ‘to Ringle: Send a boat aboard pennant, if you please.’
The young man had seen much great-gun exercise, but he had never been in anything so very like action as this and he was still at least three parts deaf, as well as stupid from lack of sleep. Jack repeated the words somewhat louder, but the grizzled yeoman had heard the first time and he had the hoist not exactly ready, but clearly evident.
‘Stephen,’ said Jack, ‘I do not mean to hurry you in the least, but as soon as you have finished a boat will carry it to Pomone. Shall I send word too, stating our aims?’
‘It might be as well: just “it has been agreed that . .
Yours will be a separate cover.’ He drew the candle towards himself, melted wax, and sealed his brief account: as a matter of course he wrapped it in oiled silk, thrust the whole into a sailcloth pocket, sealed that too, and passed it over.
‘I wonder that so fumble-fisted a companion can be as neat as a seamstress when it comes to parcels: or opening your belly, for that matter,’ reflected Jack, watching him.
‘Use makes master,’ observed Stephen.
‘I never said a word,’ cried Jack. ‘I was as mute as a swan.’ Ringle’s boat came alongside. The young officer received the parcel reverentially, and Jack put his ship about, heading back to the coast with the wind two points free, followed by the Ringle. As they passed those bound for Malta they exchanged greetings, some formal, others, from the open gunports, facetious and even bawdy. The Commodore had it in mind to observe an already ancient naval tradition and throw out a signal consisting of book, chapter and verse:
‘Oh that my words were now written, oh, that they were printed in a book’ was the quotation that had been addressed to him in the Baltic by Admiral Gambier when he was very slow with a return of stores; but before he could think of the references, a truly heavenly smell of coffee and kippered herrings wafted along the quarterdeck.
‘Mr Rodger,’ he said to the signal midshipman, ‘should you care to breakfast in the cabin?’
‘Oh yes, sir, if you please.’
‘My compliments to Mr Harding, and should be happy if he were to join us.’
It was a cheerful breakfast, and copious, as Jack Aubrey’s breakfasts always were whenever he was anywhere near a civilized shore; and his present cook Franklin was an old Mediterranean hand, with a genius at shopping in lingua franca, gestures, and cheerful repetition growing louder and louder until the poor foreigner (Dalmatian in this case) understood. The kippers had of course been brought from home, but the perfectly fresh eggs, butter, cream and veal cutlets were from the island of Brazza itself and the new sack of true Mocha from a friendly Turkish ship encountered off the Bocche di Cattaro.
Harding had been in the Adriatic with Hoste in 18 i i, serving as second in Active, 38, and since they could now see the island of Lissa through the stern windows, on the starboard quarter, with very little prompting he gave a vivid account of that famous action, one of the few frigate-battles of the war, with ten of them engaged, besides smaller vessels, illustrating the movements of the squadrons with pieces of crust.
Breakfast was necessarily late that day and the very exact account of an engagement with so many ships in constant motion made it later still. Favorite had only just run aground in shocking confusion when a midshipman came in, and begging the Commodore’s pardon, asked if he might tell Dr Maturin that Dr Jacob would like to speak to him.
‘I hope not to be a moment,’ said Stephen. ‘I would not miss a single manoeuvre.’
‘Have I done wrong in calling you?’ asked Jacob. ‘I thought you would like to see the first results of our conversations in Spalato.’ In the bright sun flames could not be seen to full advantage, but the great trail of smoke drifting west-north-west was very eloquent.
‘Bertolucci’s yard, of course,’ said Jacob. ‘It had half-completed Néréide, a .
what is smaller than a frigate?’
‘A
corvetto.’
‘Just so: a corvetto. The men have not been paid these three weeks and more . . . I believe I see French sailors trying to put the fire out.’
‘Should you like to climb into that platform up there, with a perspective glass?’
‘Not at all, not at all. Besides, there are our morning rounds, and it is already late.
Surely you have not forgotten young Mr Daniel, your guthdian spirit?’
So practised a body of men as the Surprises could ordinarily fire a rapid series of broadsides without doing themselves much harm, but this time, almost entirely because of levity and mirth, there were three or four hands in the sickberth, some from rope-burns as they tried to check the gun’s recoil, and some from getting in the way of the carriage itself.
The exception was John Daniel, the only true casualty:
Captain Delalande, like his opponent, preferred that his gunfire, however formal, should make a great deal of noise, and he too had the charge rammed home with wooden disks.
One of these, flying out ahead of the wad, had struck poor Daniel in the chest, breaking his collar-bone and making a great livid bruise.
Stephen had certainly not forgotten him; but later in the morning, with all the patients dressed, bandaged and treated (in Daniel’s case with a comfortable dose of laudanum), he was glad to be able to make his way into the maintop unescorted as the frigate ran (or rather crept, the breeze dying on them) between Sabbioncello and Meleda.
Papadopoulos’ yard on the one and Pavelic’s on the other had already been destroyed: only a little smoke rose from the sail- and rigging-lofts, ropewalks and blackened hulls. He stared fixedly at the southern end of Sabbioncello, where according to his list there was a small yard belonging to one Boccanegra: but as Boccanegra, a Sicilian, had a father-inlaw of importance among the Carbonari and their sometimes very curious allies, Stephen was not sure that his yard was part of the bargain. He stared with increasing intensity as the frigate moved gently across the placid Adriatic, focusing and refocusing Jack’s telescope, some remote part of his mind was aware of the striking of eight bells, the assembly of officers making the noon observation, the cheerful sound of hands being piped to dinner; and then at one bell the fife’s squeaking out the expected but still very welcome news that grog was ready.
The cheers and the beating of wooden plates on messtables that greeted its arrival were still quite audible from far below when a nervous ship’s boy in a bright blue jacket, nominally Dr Maturin’s servant, nipped into the top and said, ‘Oh sir, if you please. . . oh, sir, if you please. . . which Mr Killick bids me remind you that the Commodore, his honour, is to dine in the gunroom and you are all filthy. Which he has powdered your best wig.’
‘Thank you, Peter; you may tell him that you have delivered the message,’ said Stephen. He looked at his hands. ‘Not as who should say filthy,’ he murmured. ‘But it is true I had forgotten.’
Although he led Peter a hard life, Killick had not yet recovered the power, conseqquence or esteem that had been his before he broke the horn, nor anything like it, either in the cabin or on the lower deck, he could still point out, in a tolerably shrewish voice, that the gentlemen were all assembled, that they were only waiting for the Commodore, and that Dr Maturin’s clean breeches, his brushed best coat, and his newly-powdered wig were on that there chair: there was not time to more than just sponge his face in this here warm basin and how did he manage to get into such a pickle? ‘We shall never do it in the time, oh dear, oh . . . dear.’
They did do it in the time, however, and five or even ten seconds before the Commodore walked in, Stephen was already in his place between Whewell and the master, his servant behind his chair, and Dr Jacob opposite him. They exchanged a calm, unconscious look as the door opened and the Commodore walked in. Everybody stood up.
‘Be seated, gentlemen; I beg,’ cried Jack. ‘I was so very nearly late that I do not deserve such courtesy. For one who tends to cry up timeliness more than faith, hope or charity it is a very shocking performance. Absurdly enough, I was looking for my glass: I looked in every conceivable place – no glass. But here is consolation’ – draining his admirable sherry.