‘Certainly. But it is the running-up period that is so important, the time while the Admiralty are slowly making up their minds, the years when you must distinguish yourself if you possibly can and when above all you must not put a foot wrong; above all now, when there is a real danger of peace breaking out with countless officers thrown on the beach and commands as rare as needles in a haystack. I do not have to tell you, Stephen, how wholly I long to receive, the order requesting and requiring me, as rear-admiral of the blue, to proceed to the smallest of commands, to His Majesty’s sloop-of-war Mosquito, say, with two four-pounders and a swivel, and to hoist my flag at her mizenmast. I should do anything for it. Anything.’
‘Does Simmon’s Lea come within the limits of anything?’
‘No, of course not, Stephen; how can you be so strange?’
‘It is an elastic term, you know. But, however, even if your fears are realized, that is not necessarily the end of your sea-going career. I made some very good friends in Chile, three of whom I met again in my recent travels across Spain, remarkably intelligent and
well-informed men, who very clearly saw the inevitable end of this war and the independence of their country. They are also aware of the very strong likelihood of rivalry between the liberated ptovinces, of attempts at the domination of Chile on the part of Peru and the necessity for a Chilean navy, officered at least in part by very highly experienced men, victorious in almost all their encounters. What more suitable recruit than an admiral like you, even though he may have been yellowed by political jobbery?’
They sat in silence for some time, digesting this and the possibilities it contained. ‘There is Dead Man’s Bay,’ said Jack. ‘And we are now in the Raz de Sein, a devilish passage in heavy ,weather. By dinner-time – and I think I already hear Killick with the glasses – we should have the Pointe du Raz on our larboard quarter.’
Stephen nodded, and with a curiously knowing look, his head on one side, he asked, ‘Can you foretell the dark of the moon with reasonable accuracy?’
‘I believe so,’ said Jack. ‘Her motions are of some importance in navigation you know, and we learn them quite early.’
‘Well, I am happy to hear you say so, for at the dark of the moon I must beg you to set me ashore, with a gentleman at present aboard the flagship, in a little cove just south of this same Pointe du Raz.’
Jack gazed over the sea. ‘Just how serious are these people?’ he asked after a while.
‘Deeply serious,’ said Stephen. ‘They are closely associated with O’Higgins and his friends. They are men of great substance in those parts and they are wholly committed to independence. More serious you could not wish.’
Another silence. ‘The dark of the moon will be in eight days,’ said Jack.
Chapter Five
For five days, no less, they simply went up and down the fine spacious great bay, admiring the billows and fishing over the side – delightful sailing indeed – and in the evening they played music until supper-time or beyond. On the sixth day, misled by reports of a convoy coming up from Lorient, the inshore squadron sailed through the Passage du Raz once more and across the bay of Audierne to the farther point, where they lay to and sent the Ringle round to look into the harbour and inlets farther south.
Captain Aubrey had dined in the wardroom – a wardroom which on this occasion included the Bellona’s surgeon, a member of course by right – and now he was standing on the poop, drinking coffee with William Harding, the first lieutenant, Captain Temple of the Royal Marines, Mr Paisley the purser, a convivial soul, a great hand at whist, and always willing to play sentimental ballads on his viola while others sang, together with Stephen
and a few others. ‘There, Doctor,’ said Jack, pointing to a truly dreadful reef half a mile on their larboard beam. ‘There are the Penmarks.’
‘I have often heard them mentioned,’ said Stephen. ‘Always with strong disapprobation and even loathing.’
‘Scylla and Charybdis ain’t in it, with a strong southwester and a falling tide,’ said Jack.
‘Nor the Gorgonzola. And that’s Penmark Head beyond. Lord, that must have been a rough wild night of it,’ he added, to Harding.
‘Indeed it was, sir,’ said Harding. ‘I never wish to see such another.’
‘I do not suppose you do,’ said Jack. ‘Doctor, do you know about the Droits de I’Homme?’
‘Few things are more familiar to me than that amiable
fiction. I my youth I wrote several versions, each more liberal than the last In one I even included women, asserting that they were. . .’
The sailors smiled indulgently, and the purser said, ‘He means the man-of-war, Doctor. A French seventy-four, It was in the days of high revolutionary fervour, in ninety-six or ninety-seven, when they gave ships names like that.’
‘The time of Hoche’s expedition to Ireland,’ said Harding. ‘That I remember,’ said Stephen, with a chill about his
heart: and then, feeling that something more was called for, ‘Will you tell me about it, so?’
‘Pray do,’ said the Marine. ‘I was in India at the time.’
‘Well,’ said Harding, collecting his thoughts, ‘it began a little before Christmas of the year ninety-six, here in Brest. The French had gathered seventeen of the line, thirteen frigates, six brig-corvettes, seven transports and a powdership. We were aware of their motions, of course, although we could not tell where they were going, and Admiral Colpoys had a strong force off Ushant, while the inshore squadron was under Sir Edward Pellew in the Indefatigable, forty-four – you will remember, Doctor, that the Indefatigable was cut down from a two-decker, and she was a heavy frigate, carrying twenty-four-pounders – I was a master’s mate in her at the time. And under him he had three other frigates and a lugger.
The Frenchmen came out one afternoon with a kindly east wind, forty-four sail of them with something like twenty thousand soldiers aboard; and they steered for the Passage du Raz, to avoid Admiral Colpoys. But one struck on the Grand Stevenet just at the opening of
the passage and others went out by the Iroise, their admiral having changed his mind quite late in the day, when dusk was falling: there was a shocking confusion of signals and lights and guns. But although Sir Edward sent to the Admiral and to Falmouth they were never intercepted: no,
they sailed on through fog and foul weather to Bantry Bay, where they had a perfectly appalling time of it – gale after gale, with ships driving from their anchors and being blown out to sea, frigates pitching fo’c’sle under, foundering,
impossible to land troops, food running out; and eventually most of them straggled back to France. There was a second rendezvous off the mouth of the Shannon. A few looked in, but only one stayed any length of time before seeing it was hopeless, and having found nobody at Bantry either she steered not for Brest like most of the others but for some point south, probably Rochefort. She was commanded by Commodore La Crosse, a right seaman, and we – Indefatigable and Amazon, 36, first saw her in thick weather about half past three in the afternoon of January i 3th, when we were in 47°30’N, Ushant bearing north-east fifty leagues, a strengthening squally wind from the westward and a heavy swell. She was some way to the north-east of us and far from distinct, but presently we made out that she was a two-decker with no poop, her lower-deck gunports closed, obviously Les Droits de l’Homme, known for swimming low in the water. And while everyone on the quarterdeck had her in their glasses, a squall hit her, carrying her maintopsail braces and then her fore and main topmasts, which fell over her lee-guns.
They cleared away very quick, expecting us to attack on that side, but when we were within hail and under close reefed topsails, Sir Edward hauled up to rake her. Yet she hauled up too and we exchanged broadsides -prodigious musketry on her part, from all the soldiers aboard. Then Sir Edward tried to cross her bows and rake her fore and aft: she foiled him again and did all she could to run us aboard. In avoiding her we showed our stern, but with her lower-deck gunports so near the surface and the very heavy roll of the ship with so little to steady her -courses and mizen topsail was all she could spread – she did no great damage. Presently, when it was near full dark, Amazon came pelting up, fired her larboard broadside into the Droits’s quarters at pistol-shot and then steered to cross her stern and give her the other. Again the Droits clapped her helm over, which brought us both on her less damaged leeward side; and we all blazed away until half past seven, still running south-east, the wind having backed a point or two. Then we and the Amazon shot ahead to knot and splice