A chill fell upon Stephen’s heart: without leave he had taken the telescope, and slinging it about his neck in a seamanlike or fairly seamanlike fashion, had carried it up into the maintop. And there, shocked by Peter’s news, he had left it, lying on a neat heap of studdingsails. To cover his guilt he said, ‘We often hear of people calling their daughters Faith, Hope, Charity, or even Prudence; but never Justice, Fortitude or Temperance; nor yet Punctuality, though I am sure it has its charms.’ He helped himself to soup, and the talk flowed on. Nobody said anything particularly witty or profound or really memorable for foolishness but it was agreeable, friendly conversation, accompanied by acceptable food and more than acceptable wine.
When they had drunk the loyal toast Stephen excused himself: there ‘was something he had forgotten’, he told the president, avoiding Jacob’s eye. There was indeed: but he had completely overlooked the difficulty, for those unrelated to the more nimble kind of ape, of climbing in tight breeches, buckled shoes, and a fine long-tailed coat. In his hurry he slipped again and again, for the ship, now almost becalmed in the lee of a headland, was rolling, wallowing, in a very disgraceful and uncharacteristic fashion.
Sometimes he hung by both hands, writhing to get his feet back onto the ratlines, sometimes by one. He was in this ludicrous posture, much disturbed in his mind, when Bonden came racing up the shrouds, seized him with an iron grasp, wheeled him round to the outboard side and at his faint, wheezing request, propelled him into the top, where he gave him the buckled shoe that had dropped on deck. He asked no questions, he gave no advice; but he did look very thoughtfully at the Commodore’s telescope: he was, after all, Jack Aubrey’s coxswain.
‘Barret Bonden,’ said Stephen, when he had recovered his breath, ‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. Deeply obliged, upon my word. But you need not mention that telescope to the Commodore. I am about to carry it down to him myself, and explain . .
‘Why,’ cried the Commodore, heaving his powerful frame over the top-brim, ‘there’s my glass. I had been looking for it everywhere.’
‘I am so sorry – I should not have made you uneasy for the world – thank you, Bonden, for your very timely help:
please be so good as to tell Dr Jacob that I may be a few minutes late for our appointment.’ When Bonden had disappeared, Stephen went on, ‘That dear good fellow gave me a hand when a hand was extraordinarily welcome: I found breeches and shoes a sad embarrassment. The truth is . .
He hesitated for a moment. ‘The truth is,’ he went on with more conviction, ‘that there was something on the shore that interested me extremely: I could not be certain of the object
without bringing it closer, so seeing your glass on its usual peg, and you not being in the way, I took the perhaps unwarrantable liberty of seizing it and running aloft as fast as my powers would admit; and upon my soul it was worth the journey. And, although it is scarcely decent in me to say so, the liberty.’
All this time – and it was not inconsiderable, for diffidence reduced Maturin’s ordinarily rapid canter to a hobbling walk with frequent pauses – Jack had been examining his precious telescope, one of Dollond’s achromatic masterpieces, with a jealous eye: but finding it quite undamaged he said, ‘Well, I am glad you saw your object. A double-headed Dalmatian eagle, I make no doubt.’
‘Do you see the blur of smoke over the headland, somewhat to the left?’
‘Yes. It looks as if they were burning the furze on the far side: though spring is an odd time of year to be doing so. Cape San Giorgio, I believe. Have you noticed how foreigners can never get English names quite right?’
‘Poor souls: yet I hope this name, though distorted, may be a good omen. On the far side of that little projection lies the village of Sopopeia, with its chalybeate springs; and in a deep, sheltered inlet let us say a furlong south of it, the shipyard of Simon Macchabe, a sordid wretch, but one who was building a gunboat until his unpaid hands laid down their tools. I believe they burnt the yard some hours ago, and this wafting smoke, much diminished since first I saw it, rises only from the calcined ashes.’
He was by no means sure how Jack would take this form of warfare, and when the ship rounded the cape, opening Macchabe’s creek, whose dismal blackened ruins Jack surveyed through his glass with his closest attention before closing it and saying, ‘Whewell saw a newly-burned yard on the coast of Curzola. It was not on our list, but that one over there is, and at this point I should have looked into it, sending Ringle or the boats if necessary.’
‘In the nature of things you would have burnt the halffinished gunboat in that event. Even if we had time to spare, which we have not, most certainly not, such a miserable prize would not have been worth the while. Jack, I must tell you in your private ear that we have some allies ashore, rather curious allies, I admit, who look after these operations: I hope and trust that you will see many another yard burnt or burning before we reach Durazzo. I am aware that this is not your kind of war, brother: it is not glorious.
Yet as you see, it is effective.’
‘Do not take me for a bloody-minded man, Stephen, a death-or-glory swashbuckling cove. Believe me, I had rather see a first-rate burnt to the waterline than a ship’s boy killed or mutilated.’ Leaning over the rail he called down orders that took the frigate away from the land. ‘Let us go down and look at Christy-Pallière’s list with your additions,’ he said.
‘And may I beg you to unbuckle your breeches at the knee, leave your coat on those stunsails for the boy to bring down, and lower yourself through the lubber’s hole. I will guide your feet.’
The list had been very much enriched by Stephen and Jacob’s private information, and with the wind settling into the west a little south and increasing to a fine topgallant breeze they went reaching down the coast at a handsome pace. There was not a night without a fire, great or small, to larboard; and Stephen noticed that Jack and the master were more than usually exact in their calculation of distance made good, and that whenever the ships were off one of the yards Jack Aubrey was in the foretop and Reade highperched in the schooner’s rigging, gazing at the ruin with a grim satisfaction. He also
noticed that the gunroom was uneasy, remarkably restrained: they knew that there was something in the intelligence line at work, something that should not be openly discussed; though Somers, an ardent fisherman, did say of the flaming carcass of a half-finished corvette, that it was more like buying one’s salmon off a
fishmonger’s slab than catching it with a well-directed fly.
Yet the satisfaction did exist, and it reached its height off Durazzo itself, with all seven yards (counting those of the suburbs) in a blaze that lit the sky, and in which the masts and yards of a small frigate and two corvettes flamed like enormous torches.
‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘it may not be very glorious, Stephen; but by God, your allies have cleaned the coast marvellously; and although they have lost us a small fortune in prizemoney, they have saved us a world of time. There may be something to be said for your Saint George and his omens after all.’
Chapter Six
At Durazzo they stood out to sea, leaving the blaze on their larboard quarter and sailing across an uneventful sea with a fine topgallant breeze. But two days later, a little after seven bells in the last dog-watch the mild northerly wind that had brought them so far gave a sigh and faltered; and those that knew these waters well said ‘We’re in for a right levanter, mate.’
Jack gazed at the sky: his officers, the bosun and the older hands gazed at Jack: and no one was surprised when just before the usual moment for the pipe ‘Stand by your hammocks’ the Commodore took over the deck and called for preventer-stays, rolling tackles, the taking in of topgallants, the rigging of storm-jibs and staysails, and the bowsing of the guns so taut up against the sides that their carriages squeaked, all except for the brass bow-chaser that fired the evening gun.
The hands perfectly agreed with the orders, unwelcome though they were to the watch below, and they worked with remarkable speed – scarcely a word of direction, all the original Surprises being truly able seamen – partly because the larbowlins wanted to turn in after a long day and partly because they all knew how violent and sudden and untrustworthy these Mediterranean winds could be.