The pedok, the datang and substances warranted to give a brilliant red and a brilliant blue were weighed out and packed in small cotton bags, each labelled with a coloured twist. There was little conversation on the way down to the sea, but as they walked out along the crater-rim – charmingly fresh after the close, damp and very smelly heat of Prabang – Stephen said, ‘What do you feel about those two?’
‘Only
disgust.’
‘You would not kick Ledward, for example?’
‘No. Would you?’
Stephen paused and said, ‘Kick him? No. . . on reflection, no.’ Some minutes of silent walking on the soft crumbled lava and then as they passed the stunted tree by which he had met Lesueur, the Pondicherry clerk, he said, ‘Were there a white stone anywhere at hand, I should use it to mark this day. I brought off what may prove a useful stroke, in my own line.’
‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said Jack; and stopping to fill his powerful lungs he put up one hand as a speaking-trumpet and hailed ‘Diane, ahoy!’ Watching the boat put off he added, ‘No white stones – all as black as your hat – but at least we can break out a case of Hermitage: I am sure it will not mind the heat.’
Stephen, his heart and belly aglow with the Hermitage, spent the later afternoon with Mr White the gunner in the
forward magazine and the filling-room, fairly cool below the water-line, measuring, weighing, and trundling the deadly little barrels to and fro.
‘I do assure you, Master Gunner,’ he kept repeating, ‘it can do your guns no harm.
The Captain has used the same mixture before, broadside after broadside – I saw it with my own eyes – from the stock of a pyrotechnician deceased, and sure it did his guns no harm. Besides, it is only for the salute. We shoot at the targets with your best long-distance red largegrain.’
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Mr White once more, privately conveying a little antimony out of the scales, ‘but if chemicals, Chinese chemicals! don’t honeycomb a gun, what does? And a gun honeycombed with chemicals – Chinese chemicals at that! – is liable to burst.’
He and his mates were the only dismal creatures in the ship, however. Most of the Dianes, sadly bored with lying at anchor, looked forward to the Sultan’s visit with pleasure; they had of course scoured the frigate from truck to keelson, and now, having prepared four elegant lofty targets trimmed with bunting on staves as long as the carpenter could be brought to spare, they were carefully chipping their round-shot so that no unevenness should make the ball deviate from its mark. The ship was filled with the gentle sound of tapping hammers, interrupted from time to time by the crack of Fox’s rifle as he shot at a tree-stump two cable’s lengths away, hitting it with remarkable consistency, so that Ali, with a spy-glass, reported chips flying at almost every shot. He had his second piece at hand, waiting until Maturin should appear.
Everyone was perfectly ready well before the hour, but everyone was equally certain that the Sultan (a foreigner) would be late, and they settled down to enjoy the indefinite waiting in the calm luxury of doing nothing in their best clothes and enjoying the breeze that now blew across the anchorage. It was with real astonishment therefore that
they saw a two-hulled proa with a large deck-house put off from the shore forty minutes before the appointed time and advance, blowing
conchs and trumpets in a manner that would have been presumptuous in any but a ruling prince’s vessel.
Fox, almost the only person not yet in full glory, hurried below for his uniform, and Jack observed to his first lieutenant, ‘If some awkward sod had wanted the court to catch us with our breeches down, he could not have advised them better.’
Fielding glanced anxiously fore and aft, but everything seemed in order – the awning stretched just so, falls flemished, brasswork like that in a royal yacht, all hands shaved and in clean shirts, yards exactly squared – ‘Touching wood, sir,’ he said, ‘perhaps the awkward sod may be disappointed: I believe we may receive all comers without a blush.
But I will just step below and put the Doctor in mind of his coat and wig.’
The first comer was the Sultan himself, who like nearly all Malays came aboard in a seamanlike style, followed by his Vizier, many of his council, and his cup-bearer. They were welcomed with the roar of guns, the howl of pipes and the restrained splendour of a naval reception.
On occasions of this kind Fox and even his colleagues managed extremely well.
They sat the guests under the awning, refreshed them with drinks judiciously laced with gin or brandy according to signals arranged beforehand, and helped Jack and Fielding show them round the ship. Jack was particularly struck by the Sultan’s intelligent interest in all he saw, his grasp of the principles of naval architecture on the grander scale; for when Fox’s perfectly fluent Malay ran dry on the subject of spirketting, hanging knees, brace-bitts and ridingbitts, the Sultan at once grasped Jack’s explanation chalked on the deck and helped out with gestures. But it was the guns,
the eighteen-pounders and the broad-mouthed carronades, the genuine short-range smashers, that really fascinated him and his followers: even the Vizier’s benign, intelligent old face took on a predatory gleam.
‘Perhaps His Highness would like to see them in action?’
said Jack.
His Highness would indeed, and the whole party went back
to the quarterdeck: the reception had gone very well so far and Jack was reasonably sure that it would go still better as soon as the ship was under way. Only Abdul would not be pleased. In spite of the fact that the envoy, now aware of the situation, had provided an unusually handsome present, Abdul had been froward from the beginning, and when drinks were being poured he snatched a decanter from Killick’s hands with a rudeness that would have brought him a shrewd box on the ear in any other circumstances. And now, aware that the Dianes did not love him very much, he behaved with a petulant wantonness that made even confirmed old sodomites like the cook and the yeoman of the signals shake their heads. The Sultan himself had to stop him pulling the laniard of one of the quarterdeck guns, and while the targets were being towed out and the cables buoyed and slipped he capered about in a very offensive manner, openly despising Ali, Ahmed and the other Malay servants. Fox had left his two rifles on the capstanhead when he hurried below, and now Abdul picked up the Purdey. He was very
urgent to fire it – he was perfectly used to guns – he was an excellent shot, the best in Pulo Prabang after the Sultan he said in a little boy voice – and to quieten him Fox loaded, showed him how to hold the rifle and where to point. Abdul did not listen, did not cuddle the butt close; and the recoil hurt his cheek and shoulder. He burst into tears of pain and mortification (Ahmed had laughed aloud), and the Sultan, ludicrously concerned, tried to comfort him; but there was nothing to be done until Fox, yielding to very strong hints on the part of His Highness, gave Abdul one of his fowling-pieces. The envoy put as good a face upon it as he could – the treaty was very dear to him – but his complaisance was not very convincing and it was a relief when the pipe of All hands to make sail brought the ship to active life, turning the general attention away from the nasty little scene.
The evening breeze at Prabang was reasonably predictable and at present it was behaving just as they had hoped, blowing across the west-east line from the seaward gap in the crater-rim to the town. The targets had been towed to their positions north and south of this line and four hundred yards from it, two to starboard, two to larboard.
The Diane let fall her topsails, sheeted them home and hoisted the yards, bracing them to the steady breeze just abaft the beam; she gathered way remarkably fast and Jack said to the master at the con, ‘Pray keep her to five knots, Mr Warren.’ She was to fire only the eleven forward guns of the main battery on either side, but here Fielding had concentrated all the frigate’s talent, and he and Richardson, seconded by the four most responsible young gentlemen, were to supervise the firing. Not that there was any great need of supervision: the first and second captains of each gun thoroughly understood their business – Bonden, in charge of the starboard bow gun, had been pointing twenty-four- or eighteen-pounders ever since the battle of St Vincent – and by now the picked crews were all well above the average for speed and accuracy. Since the Diane was new, well-built and strong she could stand the shock of a simultaneous broadside, the most spectacular by far; but everyone concerned knew that this was an all-or-nothing affair, that no error could be corrected, and that they were being watched attentively by knowing eyes; most had taken off their shirts (their best shirts, embroidered in the seams), laying them carefully folded amidships or on the chain-pump brakes, and most were a little nervous.