The familiar waking to a faint lantern in the darkness and the words ‘Close on eight bells, sir.’ He woke at once, as he had woken so very often since his boyhood, said ‘Thank you,
Mr Conway,’ and swung out of his cot. Some unsleeping recorder had taken notice of the ship’s progress during this time and he was not at all surprised to learn from the run of the water along her side that the Nutmeg had lost speed.
Shirt, trousers and canvas shoes, and he walked quietly out of the dim gunroom. In the moonlit waist he cupped his hands in the scuttle-butt, dashed water into his face and came aft as the sentry went forward to strike eight bells.
‘You are a good relief, sir,’ said Seymour. ‘But I am very sorry to say the breeze has dropped.’
‘Nip,’ cried Conway, and coming across from the lee rail he reported ‘Seven, sir, seven on the knot.’
‘Good night to you both,’ said Jack; and as the wheel, the con, the lookout posts and the guns changed hands he retired to the taffrail. Away on the larboard quarter now, well out in the channel, there lay the Cornélie, a little farther, a little dimmer. The moon, passing through a veil of cloud, was near her height: high water would come well after her southing and in any case the Alkmaar had stated as a known fact that it was three hours later here than at Nil Desperandum; yet even so the flood would have been setting west for some time now. With the log-board by a stern-lantern he added up the figures for the last four hours’ progress. Thirty-one sea-miles. It was not what he could have wished, but it was not very bad: the issue was still open. This present watch, the graveyard watch, was the decisive period, for it was now that the tide would have its say. He had of course asked about the Passage as soon as he heard that the Cornélie was likely to take it, and he had learnt that unlike some parts of the Pacific it had two high tides in a lunar day, the first no great matter, the second, that which the Nutmeg was to stem throughout his watch, stronger. But just how much stronger no one in Batavia could tell him. Of course it depended on the age of the moon, and in her present gibbous state she would not be exerting her full influence nor anything like it. From all their calculations and from what little they had in the way of observations from Dalrymple, Horsburgh and others he and the master (an excellent navigator) had decided that at this point in the lunar month they could expect a westward current of two and a half knots; and in his plan he had allowed for rather more than three.
Few things are harder than judging relative movement by night on an unknown coast with little in the way of marked features. By now most of the few scattered villages had put out their lights, and the difficulty of locating them was increased by the glowing remains of fires lit to clear scrub and forest earlier in the day.
Bell after bell the midshipman of the watch reported seven knots, seven and two fathoms, seven and one fathom, while every hour the carpenter or one of his mates stated the depth of water in the well: never more than six inches. And throughout this time Jack Aubrey examined the shore with his night-glass, trying to find a bearing that would give
him some notion of the current’s speed. A vain attempt: for this some near, clear, fixed point was required.
At just after three bells the fixed point appeared; and not one fixed point but four: four anchored fishing-boats strung out in a line two cables’ lengths away on the starboard bow, all with flaring lights to attract the fish. ‘Mr Oakes,’ he called, ‘bring log-board, chalk, half-minute glass and a lantern.’
He hurried along the gangway and as the first boat came abeam he called, ‘Turn’, followed it with his azimuth compass until Oakes cried ‘Out’ and so read off the difference. The same with the second, third and fourth boats, all far enough apart for his mind to reach an approximate, shocking solution of the triangles.
He went below and worked them out carefully. They were even worse than he had supposed: the tide was flowing at five and a half knots and when the moon was farther west it would flow faster still. The ship’s speed with regard to the land was two miles an hour less than he had counted on. The tide would flow six hours in all, setting the far end of the Passage twelve miles farther off, and by the time they reached it the sun would be well up in the sky.
No, it would not do. For conscience’ sake he ran through his calculations again, but they only confirmed the first and second workings and his feeling of extreme disappointment.
Back on deck he reduced speed for the second time. The Comélie, out there in the stronger current, was falling behind; and although he was no longer sure of what he should do he did not wish to lose touch with her. He leaned over the taffrail, watching the moonlit and slightly phosphorescent wake stream away: clearly there was now no hope whatsoever of carrying out his plan, and for some time he was lost in melancholy, even very bitter, reflexions. For some considerable time, while the muted life of a man-of-war by night went on behind him:
the quiet voice of the quartermaster at the con, the replies of the helmsman, the murmur of the watch under the break of the forecastle and of the gun-crews below him, the striking of the bell, followed by ‘All’s well, forecastle lookout’, all’s well from all the stations right round the ship.
But his naturally sanguine temperament had recovered somewhat before five bells, the dead hour of the night, and he greeted Stephen cheerfully enough: ‘There you are, Stephen. How happy I am to see you.’
‘1 am sorry to be so late. Sleep overcame me, luxurious sleep.’
‘I suppose you wished to see the occultation of Menkar.’
‘Not at all. I had intended to come and sit with you: for as I understand it there is to be no battle until after the moon has set.’
‘Come, I take that very kindly in you, brother. But I am deeply sorry and indeed ashamed to tell you that there is to be no battle at all, at least not for a great while and not in the form I had hoped for. The Cornélie is such a very dull sailer, such an infernal slug, and I made such a stupid mistake about the flow of the tide that it is quite impossible we should be through the Passage before daylight.’
Five bells and the ritual heaving of the log. ‘Seven knots, sir, if you please,’ said Oakes, his young blubbered face even paler, even more pitiful, in the moonlight.
‘It sounds quite well, don’t it?’ said Jack when he had gone. ‘But the whole body of water in which she is making her seven knots is moving westwards at five or better, so that the mouth of the Passage is only two miles nearer every hour, instead of the four I had relied upon. It made me quite low in my spirits, I assure you – absolutely hipped – blue devils for a while. But then it occurred to me that it was not the end of the world if we missed our rendezvous with Tom, and that the right thing to do was to keep the Cornélie in sight, lead her well beyond the strait, fetch a wide cast and work to windward of her in the open sea. With this breeze we can make twelve knots to her seven.’
‘Could you not both keep your rendezvous with Tom Pullings and pursue the Cornélie?’
‘Oh no. Tom is, or should be, lying well to the north. I should have to spread everything we possess to reach him in time, and the Comélie would instantly see what we were about.
Her captain is no fool – see how he smoked us at Nil Desperandum. No. I should hare off to find Tom, perhaps miss him and quite certainly miss the Cornélie. You have no idea how a ship can slip off and vanish in an island-studded sea, given a few hours.’
‘I am sure you are right. And then there is the much surer, more genteel, more comfortable rendezvous at Botany Bay, or Sydney Cove to be more exact. Jack, I cannot tell you how I long to see a platypus.’
‘I remember you spoke of it last time we were there.’
‘A damnable, a hellish last time it was too, upon my soul. Frowned upon by the soldiers, scarcely allowed to set a foot on land, hurried away with almost no stores and nothing but a well-known and commonplace little small green parakeet – oh, it was shameful. New Holland is gravely in my debt.’