He sat between Harper and Semple, one of his bargemen, both of them splinter wounds, and told them how the day was doing. ‘She could hit us very hard and we could scarcely hit herat all…’
‘Our Agog hulled her twice, just abaft the cutwater,’ said Harper, light-headed with loss of blood. ‘I saw them go home with my own eyes. How we cheered!’
‘I am sure you did. But now we mean to lead her on, lie in wait at the end of the Passage, and engage her at close quarters. She has fouled her anchor and her longboat is aground at present; but I dare say everything will be in order within an hour, and we can wait an hour.’
Chapter Six
Captain Aubrey did not have to wait so long. In forty-seven minutes the Cornélie had plucked both herself and her long-boat free, had stowed it on the booms in a seamanlike manner and had begun her pursuit of the Nutmeg. By the time they had threaded the channel from Nil Desperandum to the open sea and had settled down to the long chase that would lead them to the Salibabu Passage it was clear that the Frenchman had no intention of catching his quarry, no intention of overtaking the Nutmeg and closing with her. He had seen some of her thirty-two pound balls come aboard and he had no desire to see any more; a distant action was his aim, and every time Jack offered him the chance of drawing closer he declined it. His plan was so to reduce her speed by damaging her sails and rigging that he could yaw and reduce her with raking broadsides from half a mile or more.
It was clear too that Jack had over-estimated the Cornélie’s powers. He had not supposed that a clean-bottomed frigate in tolerable trim could make less than eight or nine knots with this steady south-west monsoon on her quarter, even though the breeze had diminished somewhat during the day; but he was mistaken; with her whole pitiful spread of thin, patched sailcloth abroad the Cornélie could do no better than seven and a half: and although the Nutmeg was towing a heavy unseen buoy it was difficult to keep up a convincing appearance of flying with all possible speed – of really trying to escape.
However, with sheets a little less taut than they should have been, some rather rough steering (Bonden was a master at this and he had several tricks at the wheel) and a slightly defective bracing of the yards it could be done; and so they ran eastwards, firing with a steady deliberation at something near the extreme range of their chasers.
Jack remained on the quarterdeck until he had the Nutmeg’s pace as exactly adjusted to the Cornélie’s as possible, and then he called Seymour. ‘Mr Seymour,’ he said, ‘I am giving you an acting order as third lieutenant: I have mentioned it to Mr Fielding. You will arrange matters with him after the ceremony.’
It was expected. Someone had to keep the master’s watch, however young. Nevertheless Seymour flushed and said ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,’ in a tone that showed how moved he was. As he spoke the starboard stern-chaser fired below them: Jack nodded and ran down the smoking companion-ladder to the smoke-filled cabin – the quartering breeze filled the whole space for a minute after each shot – and he found the two gun-crews glaring through the murk, the more fortunate with their heads right out of the port.
The argument faded as he came in, and the gunner said ‘We may have hulled her that time, sir.’
‘I believe it passed right over,’ said Reade, very shrill.
‘Mr Reade, pipe down,’ said Jack.
‘Aye aye, sir. Beg pardon, sir.’
Jack took a telescope and bending he trained it over the great expanse of sea, a long swell with small waves crossing it diagonally, some white horses making the main a deeper blue. The Nutmeg’s wake ran out and out, wider than usual because of the turbulence of the hidden buoy; and in a direct prolongation of the line came the Cornélie,
throwing a fair bow wave in the very water the Nutmeg had passed through eight minutes before. She had everything she possessed set and drawing and in all likelihood she had very little in the way of spare canvas: perhaps none at all.
It was a difficult position. If he wounded her slightly, reducing her speed by a knot or two, she would probably give up the chase as hopeless: if he did not fire with reasonable accuracy the Frenchman would not believe in his flight. On the other hand, if an unlucky shot slowed the Nutmeg for even a few minutes the Cornélie could put her helm hard over and give her a broadside from those horribly well pointed eighteen-pounders. And an unlucky shot from the Cornélie was more probable than the other way about: her bow-chasers were firing from the forecastle, some eight feet higher than the Nutmeg’s upper deck; furthermore they were firing at the Nutmeg’s exposed stern, her vulnerable rudder.
While these thoughts were racing through his mind he noticed that the frigate was pumping ship, sending a fine spout of water to leeward. ‘When she has got rid of all that, perhaps she will come on a little more briskly,’ he reflected. Then aloud, ‘Mr White, what elevation are you using?’
‘Rather better nor six, sir,’ said the gunner, who laid the starboard gun while Bonden did the same for Beelzebub.
At this the Cornélie fired at the top of the rise. The ball pitched short but came ranging along the Nutmeg’s side in a series of great bounds, the last near enough to send spray aboard.
Jack leant over Beelzebub, his hand on the warm bronze, and as Bonden freed the quoin
– the wedge that raised or lowered the barrel – with his handspike, Jack drew it back and back: they understood one another with no more than a grunt and a nod, for the Captain loved to point a gun and they had been through these motions some thousands of times; and when the elevation brought the middle of the Cornélie’s fore-topmast yard into the sights he called through the open companion ‘Mr Fielding. Mr Fielding, there. Pray see if you can catch the flight of the ball. I am pitching it well up.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Fielding, and now Jack laid the gun:
‘Muzzle to the right . . . a trifle more . . .’ the men with the crows heaving it with the utmost delicacy. ‘Back a hair’s breadth.’ With his eyes fixed along the sights he felt for the match.
The Nutmeg rose on the swell, and just before the gun was on its mark he stabbed the glowing end down on the priming. A hiss lasting a barely measurable instant of time and then the gun went off, shooting back under him with frightful force and filling the air astern with smoke and shattered wad. His head was already out of the port by the time the breeching checked the gun’s recoil with its usual deep satisfying twang and a lucky shift of air allowed him to see the ball for more than a second of its path, a black diminishing blur.
‘A little wide of her starboard mizen-chains, sir,’ called Fielding.
Jack nodded. Other manoeuvres were possible, such as cracking on and eventually fetching to windward of her, but they were all time-consuming, they all jeopardized his ship and his rendezvous. To be sure, this was a perilous caper, but all things weighed he thought it the best solution. ‘Let us keep it up, Mr White,’ he said, ‘but discreetly: no Guy Fawkes’ night blazing away.’
They fired on steadily. Once a ricochet from the Cornélie spoilt the gingerbread-work below the Nutmeg’s taffrail, and twice holes appeared in her fore and main courses.
Beelzebub was growing hot when Jack noticed Reade standing there with the look of one who has a message to deliver. It was in fact an invitation: since the Captain had missed his dinner, did he choose to take a cold collation in the gunroom?
Jack found that he was exceedingly hungry. At the thought of eating his mouth watered painfully and his stomach gave a twinge. He said ‘Yes, with pleasure,’ extricated himself from the tight-knit gun-crew, Bonden taking his place, and stepped over to the quarter-gallery to wash his hands. Opening the door with his eyes still fixed on the chaser he very nearly fell headlong into the sea, saving himself only by a violent leaping writhe. ‘Make this handle fast to the quarter-piece cleat,’ he said. ‘The Doctor might come to grief, else.’
The Doctor was already in the gunroom, and he and the other officers welcomed Jack with potted meat, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs and ham, pickled gherkins, onions, mangoes; they were as hospitable as could be, and Welby mixed a bowl of cold arrack punch. Yet with Warren’s chair standing there empty it was but a low-spirited meal, and towards the end of it Adams came in with a prayer-book: speaking over the crack and thunder of a stern-chaser’s shot and recoil he said in Jack’s ear ‘I have marked the page with a piece of marline, sir.’