‘Do you know of any young women who have done the same?’
‘I do not. But I do know of three and have heard of more that ran away on their wedding night.’
‘So have I.’
‘There is a great deal to be said for a country education, where a girl may see a cow led to the bull as a matter of course, the filly to the stallion, and where a phallus is an acknowledged object – a matter of some curiosity perhaps but certainly nothing wholly
unexpected, possibly wholly unexpected and even apprehended as a horrid malformation, an unnatural growth.’
‘I scarcely think a country education always…’ began Captain Aubrey, but he was cut short by a singularly violent and reverberating crash as two idlers, carrying a large matted block of stone, loaded with shot and intended for the perfect cleansing of the planks just overhead, dropped the entirety. This was followed by a great deal of howling, agonized howling, and Stephen ran up on deck in his nightshirt – a crushed foot for sure.
By the time he had dressed the mangled limb and administered his usual thirty-five drops of laudanum the sun was up, Jack was washed and shaved, his fine clubbed queue of yellow hair was new-tied behind his nape and himself seated before the breakfast-table in a small cabin smelling gloriously of toast, coffee and kippered herring.
‘Forgive me, Stephen,’ he cried, ‘I am afraid I did not wait. Greed overcame me.’
‘You say that almost every morning, brother; and I am afraid it is true,’ said Stephen. ‘But I pray that you may yet be saved from gule, that most brutish and most unamiable of the seven deadly sins. But come, Jack’ – looking at him attentively – ‘you are fresh-trimmed, neat as a bridegroom, almost handsome, in your fine coat and golden epaulettes. What’s afoot?’
‘You have not been on deck, I find. The squadron is hull-up already, and pretty soon Bellona’s number will break
at the admiral’s mizen topmast together with the signal captain repair aboard flag.’
‘Be so good as to pass what is left of the toast; and naturally the coffee-pot.’
‘And,’ went on Jack in a low voice, ‘if I know anything of your doings on a foreign shore, he or at least his secretary will ask to see you. Stephen, would it not be prudent to shave, and shift your coat and breeches?’
‘Jack,’ said Stephen. ‘I have it in contemplation to grow a beard and put an end to these ill-timed fleers for good and all. In time of war the Roman emperors always wore beards.
And as for this coat’ – looking at his sleeve – ‘it will do very well for many years yet.’
‘At least let Killick give it a brush. There is lint on the front; and I fear that may be blood.
You would never wish to put the barky to shame aboard the Charlotte.’
‘Perhaps I should have put on my apron,’ said Stephen, dabbing at the blood with his napkin. ‘But there is no possibility whatsoever of finding a new coat until my sea-chest is unpacked.’
In the natural course of events Killick heard all this, and before Stephen had fully answered Jack’s enquiries after Evan Lloyd, cook’s mate, whose foot had been crushed by
* the bear – a conversation very much at cross-purposes until at last it became apparent that Stephen had never yet gathered that a bear, at sea, was only a holystone writ large –
Preserved Killick was standing there with a prim expression on his face and a respectable blue uniform coat (virtually unworn) over his arm. ‘Which it was almost on top,’ he said.
‘And you will have to get out of those there old breeches. The Bellona don’t want no more of them there London cries. Monmouth Street cries, for shame.’
Stephen hung his head, keeping himself in countenance to some slight degree by pouring coffee. Not long before
* this, when the Bellona’s yawl had been taking him ashore in Bantry Bay, dressed it must be admitted in a way that did neither himself nor the service much credit, one of the Royal Oak’s cutters, with a ribald crew commanded by a
drunken midshipman, called out ‘What ho, Bellona! Any old do’? Any old rags, bottles, bones, rabbit skins?’ in the manner of the London street traders; and to the infinite grief of the ship the cry had become popular in west Cork. Killick and his shipmates prayed that it would not be imported into the blockading squadron; and in this they were supported by the whole wardroom and by the midshipmen’s berth. And indeed Captain Aubrey, who almost always checked Killick’s wilder flights, remained silent on this occasion.
It was therefore with a fairly respectable surgeon that Jack walked the quarterdeck after breakfast. ‘There, do you see,’ he said, nodding over the starboard quarter at a tall dark rugged mass of granite with white water all round its cliffs, ‘that is Ushant, of course, as you know very well; but I do not believe you have ever seen it from the east, from the landward side: not that you can see the land for the moment, but you soon will, when the early mists have cleared. At present we are sailing through the Fromveur Passage, keeping well out in forty-fathom water – it shoals horribly as you go east towards that island on the larboard beam:
Molène, a capital place for lobsters on a calm day. Once we are a little farther south and once we have skirted the Green Rock and reached those wicked old Black Rocks four miles further on, you will be able to look over some very ugly, dangerous water indeed right into the Goulet de Brest, a long channel into the harbour, into the inner and outer roads, rather like the entrance to Mahon: they cannot get out with the wind in the southwest, as it so often is; but on the other hand it batters us most cruelly when it blows hard, while they lie at their ease perfectly sheltered. And then again, if we are blown right off, to Cawsand, say, or Torbay, and the wind comes round to north or even north-east, out they come, knock our merchantmen and convoys to pieces while we are beating up, tack upon tack, like so many Jack-Puddings.’ Jack spoke eloquently and at length of the hardships of the Brest blockade, and although Stephen listened with a decent attention he also watched the squadron, or at least all the squadron
then present inshore, as they stood towards the Ringle, close-hauled to the kindly breeze.
‘They are going to wear in succession,’ said Jack, breaking off; and hardly had he spoken before the leading ship, the Ramillies, fell off the wind in a long smooth curve, bringing it full aft and so on to her larboard beam, followed at exact intervals by her second astern –
‘Bellona,’ cried Stephen, recognizing his old home as she came broadside on, ‘the dear ship: good luck to her.’ ‘Amen,’ said Jack; and as the third followed ‘Queen Charlotte, the flag: white ensign at the fore, since Lord Stranraer is a vice-admiral of the white, do you see? Now Zealous. All seventy-fours except the Charlotte, 104, of course. And here are two of his frigates: Naiad and Doris. No doubt they are standing in for the little Alexandria.
She is only a twelve pounder but she sails almost as well as dear Surprise, and with this wind she has probably sent her boats in to see what the Frenchmen are doing in the harbour. If so, the gunboats in Camaret Bay may come out. When the haze over the land has cleared. We shall see.’
But before anything could be seen at all the deep sound of gunfire reached them, the rolling fire of heavy cannon, briskly plied. ‘That will be the Grand Minou,’ said Jack. ‘Forty-two-pounders.’ And after a moment of tense listening
not a murmur aboard, not a sound but that of the rigging and the following sea, the Ringle right before the wind -‘There she looms.’
Dim on the tender’s larboard bow and directly in the path of the squadron a pallor showed through the landward haze, a pallor that quickly resolved itself into the sails of the Alexandria.
‘Ha, ha,’ said Jack. ‘She is clean out of range; and she has picked up her boats. How those foolish creatures blaze away:
fourteen pounds of powder wasted every shot – a stone, no less. No doubt they hope it will be taken for zeal.’
‘Sir, sir, our number, sir, if you please: and the signal Captain repair aboard flag’ , cried Callaghan.
‘Thank you, Mr Callaghan,’ said Jack. ‘Let us bear down on the Bellona with all the sail we can spread. Mr
Wetherby, pray take a glass aloft and see what the frigate is saying.’
A few moments later the midshipman’s shrill, somewhat breathless voice began to pipe away, at first hesitantly, and then, as the distance lessened, more surely, calling down the frigate’s signals, while Callaghan, having said, ‘Reading from last Tuesday’s plan, sir,’