two of them; and that is what it may come to if we are outnumbered: while as for the soldiers. .
He broke off, his head raised and intent, like a hound trying to catch an elusive scent. ‘Did you hear anything?’ he asked.
Both sat, silent, concentrated, trying to pierce through the countless voices of the ship and the sea. ‘If it is not distant thunder, would it be gunfire, at all?’ asked Stephen. Jack nodded, ran on deck, sent the second lieutenant down into the hold (a capital place for catching the tremor of a broadside a great way off) and listened himself from the master’s day-cabin, together with Harding.
‘Either Ramillies and Aboukir are engaging the St Matthews batteries or the French are coming out with this north-easter,’ said Jack. The second lieutenant joined them. ‘I believe it is a sea-fight, sir,’ he said, panting with haste and emotion. ‘I clearly heard broadside for broadside, never the irregular fire of a battery.’
‘Thank you, Mr Somers,’ said Jack, who was of the same opinion. ‘Mr Harding, a lee-gun if you please; and when Ringle is within hail, tell Mr Reade to make the best of his way to Ramillies and say we shall be there as soon as possible. Grampus is to join us and observe our motions.’
Returning to the cabin he darted an accusing eye at the
coffee-pot. But Killick, during the few moments he could spare from eavesdropping near the master’s day-cabin, had for his part observed the Doctor’s motions – as unscrupulous as ever where coffee and certain sweetmeats were concerned
– and another pot was already on its way.
‘As I had hoped,’ said Jack with great satisfaction, ‘the French have taken advantage of this blessed north-east wind to attempt a sortie, and we…’ He raised his voice very much indeed to carry above the bosun’s, ‘All hands, all hands, there’ and the subsequent thunder of feet, emphatic orders, and the huge variety of sounds caused when a ship of the line, sailing large under courses and reefed topsails, is suddenly required to change course from almost due south to west-north-west and spread all the canvas she can bear.
‘…and we are pelting up to join Ramillies and Aboukir, who seem to be engaging them. It will take some time, since we have to bear up; but I have hopes that the wind will back westerly. Now, when I have finished this glorious cup and changed my good coat, I shall go and urge the ship on by force of mind. I shall also keep my fingers crossed,’ he added privately.
He might indeed have indulged in even grosser forms of superstition; for this dreadful bay, thickly sown with rocks, isolated or in reefs, largely invisible through low cloud, sheets of rain and even downright fog, called for a mind that could retain some hundreds of bearings and shift the internal chart according to the ship’s speed and directions, never forgetting the local current and the all-important ebb and flow of the tide. Fortunately Jack possessed this sort of mind, if not to perfection then at least to a high degree: furthermore, he had been up and down this great stretch of water, patrolling all of it and surveying much, for what seemed eternity; and above all he was on terms of good understanding –
friendship might be the better word, with the Bellona and her people.
Reade in the tender had almost equal knowledge of the bay, since he had accompanied his captain on most of his movements and surveys, and since the Ringle could lie so
much closer to the wind he was soon out of sight even when the murk parted; but the unhappy Grampus was perfectly new to Brest, and she kept so perilously close to the Bellona’s stern that Jack stationed a hand with a speaking-trumpet to warn her where he was about to tack, a fairly frequent exercise in these waters, though somewhat less so as the wind continued to veer westerly.
From time to time, Stephen, resuming the tarpaulin jacket, stood in out-of-the-way places on the leeward side of the quarterdeck: the ship might have been sailing, perhaps at a very great speed (with everything – sea, foam, squalls, fog – in furious, apparently random motion it was impossible to judge) through a nightmare lit only by battle-lanterns and through one of the noisier, unrecorded, circles of the Inferno: and it was both wonderful and comforting to see the wet, cheerful, unconcerned faces around him, perfectly willing to tally aft and belay or leap into the rigging and vanish upwards at a pipe or the word of command – competent, at home, eagerly expectant.
Space might scarcely exist, having lost all boundaries, but time was still with them, measured by bells; and at six bells in the middle watch Stephen made his way cautiously down and down (the size of this ship still surprised him) to the sick-berth, which, in comparison, was a gently lamplit haven of peace: so much so that his cystotomy and all the other patients and their attendants were fast asleep. He sat listening to the cystotomy’s even breathing for a while, and then, noticing a change in the Bellona’s motion, he returned to the quarterdeck, feeling that in this wild rush through the obscurity his presence (though useless) was called for, by decency, if by nothing else.
‘There you are, Stephen,’ said Jack. ‘We have just reached the western end of the Black Rocks and we are starting our run in for the Goulet. Do you hear them banging away?
They are well to the east of St Matthews: right in the Goulet. Dear Lord, what a prodigious great deal of weather! Not a fit night out for man or beast, as the Centaur observed, ha, ha, ha!’
With this western tendency in the turning wind the Bellona now received it where she liked it best, and at four bells in the morning watch the midshipman in charge of the log reported, ‘Nine knots and one fathom, sir, if you please.’
Killick came out, shielding a jug of coffee, and as Jack came aft to share it with Stephen he nodded towards a wicked swirl of white water a quarter of a mile on the starboard beam and said, ‘That is the Basse Royale, a death-trap for a ship of our draught in a hollow sea, near the bottom of the ebb: and over there,’ nodding to larboard, ‘you would see the Basse Large, was you on the poop, which is worse by far but more obvious. Mr Whewell’ – raising his voice -‘I believe we may shake out the reef in the foretopsail.’
The mingled cloud and fog lifted a little about this time, just before the first hint of day in the east, and its grey lower surface showed crimson with the stabbing gunfire ahead. ‘Yes,
they are right in the Goulet, by the Basse Beuzec,’ said Jack. ‘Happily the St Matthews battery cannot see a thing, perched up there: we shall have to pass right under their guns.’
‘Sail on the starboard bow,’ bawled a lookout, adding confidentially, ‘Tender, I do believe.’
‘The ship, ahoy,’ called a voice from that direction. ‘What ship is that?’
‘Bellona, Mr Reade,’ said Jack. ‘Come aboard.’ And directing his voice forward, ‘Pass a line there.’
‘Stand by to fend off,’ cried Harding, careful for his paintwork.
‘What is the position?’ asked Jack as Reade came over the side.
‘They are two French seventy-fours, sir,’ said Reade, ‘and they have battered Aboukir and Ramillies pretty badly. Aboukir is stuck on the near Basse Beuzec and the Frenchmen would have boarded her, but Naiad came up and kept peppering them, while Ramillies hit one of them very hard
– there was an explosion amidships.’
‘Very good. Just how does Aboukir lie?’ Reade explained. ‘Then cut back and do what you can to lay out a kedge
east-north-east. With any luck the tide should lift her in -, He looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle – ‘twenty minutes. Master gunner,’ he called, and after a short, largely formal exchange with Mr Meares he said to his first lieutenant, ‘Mr Harding, let us beat to quarters. Stephen,’ he added in an aside, smiling as he spoke, ‘away below with you, out of the falling damps.’
The Bellona’s surgeon and his assistants sat there in the cockpit, listening intently: the midshipmen’s sea-chests, lashed together under the lantern, covered with tarpaulins, then sailcloth and then a fine white sheet made fast all round, stood in the middle: the instruments, shining clean and, where an edge was called for, shaving-sharp, stood in their accustomed order, saws to the larboard.
They listened, and even down here the rumbling grumble of the French seventy-fours, the Ramillies and the Naiad made the bottles tremble; while a little later the poor hard-hit Aboukir, lifting to the tide, brought her broadside to bear and returned the enemy fire with all the pent-up fury of a ship that has been punished without being able to reply.