‘No. That really will not do. If every officer or seaman for that matter, were to go home every time there was an urgency in his private affairs we should never be able to man the fleet. It is not a sudden death, I trust?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Then let us hear no more about it. Ours is a hard service, as you know very well; and this is wartime.’
Certainly it was a hard service, and neither Admiral Stranraer nor the autumnal gales had the least intention of making it any less so. The squadron was drilled, and most rigorously drilled, in all weathers short of a close-reefed topsail blow. Towards the end of the day boats would be seen carrying apprehensive captains across to the flag to hear the Admiral’s candid opinion of their seamanship: his notion of drill was curious, rather like that of the army of an earlier age, when precision of button, pipeclay and movement counted for almost everything, together with evolutions such as counter-marches which had very little to do with war, an activity that might easily spoil a uniform. Lord Stranraer had little use for gunfire. He would certainly have grappled with the French had they come out, but during his very frequent drills the great guns generally lay idle, shining wherever polish was in any way appropriate and housed with perfect regularity. It was something like the West Indian discipline transported to the Channel, where it made even less sense than it had in the Caribbean.
Although he was constantly forming and reforming the line of battle, with the rear becoming the van and the van becoming the rear, combat itself did not really seem to interest the Admiral. He had in his youth been concerned in a certain number of actions, in which he had not behaved with discredit, but he pinned all his faith in the moral force of a large, intact fleet, impeccably expert in all possible manoeuvres and professionally far in advance of any possible rival, a body that would silently impose its will.
However, these drills did at least keep Jack Aubrey very fully occupied indeed. He was extremely unwilling to have his ship and by inference his ship’s company picked out for harsh signals – Bellona’s number showing clear aboard the flag or the repeating frigate followed by keep your station or make more sail or some telegraphic remark such as look alive or do you need assistance – and since Bellona’s crew, though a very fair body for the purpose of fighting the ship, at present included more than a fair share of landmen, and (which was even more important) had never at any time been worked up to this kind of stop-watch performance in anything but gunnery, he and his officers had to do their very utmost to anticipate the next order, a wearing task and one in which they were not always successful. The Bellona’s barge therefore often joined those who were summoned aboard the flag at the end of the exercise to be told their faults by their rough-tongued admiral.
Jack did not enjoy these sessions but they did not touch him deeply even when the strictures were deserved, which with such a crew as his was sometimes inevitable, because his mind was in a very curious state of hurry, confusion and distress. Except when it was taken up with the day-long task of making his ship give as good an account of herself in a highly competitive series of operations, often in heavy weather, his mind ran on that letter and on the stranger who had written it. Innumerable possibilities came crowding, and an immense sadness alternated with a perhaps still greater frustration which took the form of a longing for
battle.
This was clearly obvious to those that knew him well, and even the Captain of the Fleet, not an exceptionally percipient man, handled him with care aboard the Charlotte. On his own quarterdeck he awarded no punishment – there was little need – but occasionally he would clap his jaws shut on some intended rebuke; and this had an effect far more marked than any blasphemous roar.
‘I hope to God he don’t explode,’ said anxious, unhappy
Killick.
–
‘God help the poor bugger he explodes upon,’ said Bonden.
Solution or at all events relief through the very great and varied emotion of battle came in sight on a Monday. The day before, Bellona like all the other ships and vessels in the squadron, had rigged church: Jack Aubrey could hardly have been called a religious man, but as well as his many superstitions he also had his pieties. He revered the sound if not the full implication of the Book of Common Prayer, the Lessons and the usual psalms and readings: the other rituals such as the inspection of the entire ship and every soul aboard her, clean, shaved, sober and toeing a given line or rather seam, soothed his mind; and although today he did not feel up to reading a sermon he and all his people were pei~ectly satisfied with the even more usual Articles of War, which, through immemorial use, had acquired ecclesiastical qualities of their own. It is true that there were obvious and extremely painful associations with the parish church at Woolcombe, but the great heave of the sea, the creak of the rigging and the smell of tar put a great enough distance
between the two and it was not until he had returned to his cabin that an unlucky shifting of some papers to make room for his prayer-book showed him Sophie’s letter clear and the sense of desolation, fury and extreme distress returned with even greater force.
Jack Aubrey was on deck this Monday morning, having ~,, sent his breakfast away – four eggs untouched, congealing
in their butter – and he saw the Admiral’s signal. The Charlotte was a talkative ship, and although this was usually thought a tiresome characteristic it did give the signal-officers a great deal of practice, and now he heard Callow read off the hoists almost as they appeared, without referring to the book. The squadron was to proceed, in line abreast, on a west-south-westerly course under all plain sail, the Bellona at the southern tip: yet the glass was dropping; the southern sky, or as much of it as could be seen under the low cloud, was wanting in promise; and the sea of this ebbing
tide had some curious pallid streaks, apparently rising from the depths. The first lieutenant and the master looked grave. Harding had dined with the Charlotte’s wardroom the day before and he had learnt that this sweep was being carried out primarily in order to find how fast and how accurately a signal could travel from one extremity of the line – the unusually wide-spread line – to the other and back again. Lord Stranraer had another admiral, an expert on signals, aboard as a guest.
Presently they were all under way and the line, after a great deal of nagging from the flag, was as straight on the surface of the ocean as the earth’s curvature would allow. But this perfection did not last: a little before dinner the Charlotte made the signal for the squadron to tack together, emphasized by a gun; and as far as could be seen it was obeyed with tolerable regularity right across the broad front; though a second gun seemed to show that at least one ship
on the far eastern end had been slow or had even missed the signal altogether –
there was a good deal of murk over there. Another explanation was that the unknown ship, having already mixed its noon-day grog, was so infuriated by this untimely order that it delayed out of mere bloody-mindedness.
Having come about, the squadron made a fair board, quite time enough to eat their quarter of a pound of cheese (this
was a banyan day), and then returned to the former course, though with a little more west in it.
Easy sailing: but presently the weather thickened, and the sound of the wind in the rigging rose steadily until it had
traversed a full octave. Jack called for preventer-stays.
‘We shall soon be going home,’ said Harding to Miller, who now had the watch; and by home he meant that dismal stretch of sea off Keller’s Island where the Admiral liked to shelter when the sea, wind and rain threatened to become more outrageous than usual.
‘Reef topsails, Mr Miller, if you please,’ said Jack. The topgallants had disappeared long since, and even the Ringle, as trim as a duck away there to leeward, showed little more
than a handkerchief on each mast and a third right forward.
‘Hands reef topsails’ came the cry and the sharp cutting bosun’s pipe: and as the men raced aloft Jack, gazing over the larboard bow, caught hints of whiteness away down in the troubled grey, the growing sea and its now much wilder crests.