Master & Commander (32 page)

   But there were few bellies that filled themselves heartily aboard the
Sophie
that brilliant morning; a kind of impatient rigidity kept the oatmeal and hard-tack from going down regular and smooth; and even Jack's freshly-roasted, freshly-ground coffee wasted its scent on the quarter-deck as the officers stood very carefully gauging the respective courses, speeds and likely points of convergence: two frigates to windward, a hostile coast to leeward and the likelihood of being embayed—it was enough to take the edge off any appetite.

   'Deck,' called the look-out from within the pyramid of tightly-drawing canvas, 'she's breaking out her colours, sir. Blue ensign.'

   'Aye,' said Jack, 'I dare say. Mr Ricketts, reply with the same.'

   Now every glass in the
Sophie
was trained upon the nearer frigate's foretopgallant for the private signal: for although anyone could heave out a blue ensign, only a King's ship could show the secret mark of recognition. There it was: a red flag at the fore, followed a moment later by a white flag and a pendant at the main, and the faint boom of a windward gun.

   All the tension slackened at once. 'Very well,' said Jack. 'Reply and then make our number. Mr Day, three guns to leeward in slow time.'

   'She's the
San Fiorenzo
, sir,' said James, helping the flustered midshipman with the signal-book, whose prettily-coloured pages would race out of control in the freshening breeze. 'And she is signalling for
Sophie's
captain.'

   'Christ,' said Jack inwardly. The
San Fiorenzo's
captain was Sir Harry Neale, who had been first lieutenant of the
Resolution
when Jack was her most junior midshipman, and then his captain in the
Success
: a great stickler for promptness, cleanliness, perfection of dress and hierarchy. Jack was unshaved; what hair he had left was in all directions; Stephen's bluish grease covered one half of his face. But there was no help for it. 'Bear up to close her, then,' he said, and darted into his cabin.

'Here you are at last,' said Sir Harry, looking at him with marked distaste. 'By God, Captain Aubrey, you take your time.'

   The frigate seemed enormous; after the
Sophie
her towering masts might have been those of a first-rate ship of the line; acres of pale deck stretched away on either hand. He had a ludicrous and at the same time a very painful feeling of being crushed down to a far smaller size, as well as that of being reduced all at once from a position of total authority to one of total subservience.

   'I beg pardon, sir,' he said, without expression.

   'Well. Come into the cabin. Your appearance don't change much, Aubrey,' he remarked, waving towards a chair. 'However, I am quite glad of the meeting. We are overburdened with prisoners and mean to discharge fifty of 'em into you.'

   'I am sorry, sir, truly sorry, not to be able to oblige you, but the sloop is crowded with prisoners already.'

   '
Oblige
, did you say? You will oblige me, sir, by obeying orders. Are you aware I am the senior captain here, sir? Besides, I know damned well you have been sending prize-crews into Mahon: these prisoners can occupy their room. Anyhow, you can land them in a few days' time; so let us hear no more of it.'

   'But what about my cruise, sir?'

   'I am less concerned with your cruise, sir, than with the good of the service. Let the transfer be carried out as quickly as possible, because I have further orders for you. We are sweeping for an American ship, the
John B. Christopher
. She is on her passage from Marseilles to the United States, calling at Barcelona, and we expect to find her between Majorca and the main. Among her passengers she may have two rebels, United Irishmen, the one a Romish priest called Mangan and the other a fellow by the name of Roche, Patrick Roche. They are to be taken off, by force if necessary. They will probably be using French names and have French passports: they speak French. Here is their description:
a middle-sized spare man about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose; a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth
. That's the parson. T'other is
a tall stout man above six foot high, black hair and blue eyes, about thirty-five, has the little finger of his left hand cut off and walks stiff from a wound in his leg.
You had better take these printed sheets.'

'Mr Dillon, prepare to receive twenty-five prisoners from
San Fiorenzo
and twenty-five from
Amelia
,' said Jack. 'And then we are to join in a sweep for some rebels.'

   'Rebels?' cried James.

   'Yes,' said Jack absently, peering beyond him at the slack foretopsail bowline and breaking off to call out an order. 'Yes. Pray glance at these sheets when you have leisure—leisure, forsooth.'

   'Fifty more mouths,' said the purser. 'What do you say to that, Mr Marshall? Three and thirty full allowances. Where in God's name am I supposed to find it all?'

   'We shall have to put into Mahon straight away, Mr Ricketts, that's what I say to it, and kiss my hand to the cruise. Fifty is impossible, and that's flat. You never saw two officers look so glum in your life. Fifty!'

   'Fifty more of the buggers,' said James Sheehan, 'and all for their own imperial convenience. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.'

   'And think of our poor doctor, all alone among them damned trees—why, there might be owls. God damn the service, I say, and the—
San Fiorenzo
, and the bleeding
Amelia
, too.'

   'Alone? Don't you think it, mate. But damn the service to hell, just as you say.'

   It was in this mood that the
Sophie
stretched away to the north-west, on the outward or right-hand extremity of the sweeping line. The
Amelia
lay half topsails down on her larboard beam and the
San Fiorenzo
the same distance inshore of the
Amelia
, quite out of sight of the
Sophie
and in the best position for picking up any slow prize that offered. Between them they could oversee sixty miles of the clear-skied Mediterranean; and so they sailed all day long.

   It was indeed a long day, full and busy—the fore-hold to clear, the prisoners to stow away and guard (many of them privateer's men, a dangerous crew), three slow-witted heavy merchantmen to scurry after (all neutrals and all unwilling to heave-to; but one did report a ship, thought to be American, fishing her injured foretopmast two days' sail to windward) and the incessant trimming of the sails in the shifting, uncertain, dangerously gusty wind, to keep up with the frigates—the
Sophie's
very best would only just avoid disgrace. And she was short-handed: Mowett, Pullings and old Alexander, a reliable quartermaster, were away in prizes, together with nearly a third of her best men, so that James Dillon and the master had to keep watch and watch. Tempers ran short, too, and the defaulters' list lengthened as the day wore on.

   'I did not think Dillon could be so savage,' thought Jack, as his lieutenant roared up into the foretop, making the weeping Babbington and his reduced band of topmen set the larboard topsail studdingsail afresh for the third time. It was true that the sloop was flying along at a splendid pace (for her); but in a way it was a pity to flog her so, to badger the men—too high a price to pay. However, that was the service, and he certainly must not interfere. His mind returned to its many problems and to worrying about Stephen: it was sheer madness, this rambling about on a hostile shore. And then again he was profoundly dissatisfied with himself for his performance aboard the
San Fiorenzo
. A gross abuse of authority: he should have dealt with it firmly. Yet there he was, bound hand and foot by the Printed Instructions and the Articles of War. And then again there was the problem of midshipmen. The sloop needed at least two more, a youngster and an oldster; he would ask Dillon if there was any boy he chose to nominate—cousin, nephew, godchild; it was a handsome compliment for a captain to pay his lieutenant, not unusual when they liked one another. As for the oldster, he wanted someone with experience, best of all someone who could be rated master's mate almost at once. His thoughts dwelt upon his coxswain, a fine seaman and captain of the maintop; then they moved on to consider the younger men belonging to the lower deck. He would far, far rather have someone who came in through the hawse-hole, a plain sailorman like young Pullings, than most of the youths whose families could afford to send them to sea . . . If the Spaniards caught Stephen Maturin they would shoot him for a spy.

   It was almost dark by the time the third merchantman had been dealt with, and Jack was shattered with fatigue—red eyes prickling, ears four times too sharp and a feeling like a tight cord round his temples. He had been on deck all day, an anxious day that began two hours before first light, and he went to sleep almost before his head was down. Yet in that brief interval his darkening mind had time for two darts of intuition, the one stating that all was well with Stephen Maturin, the other that with James Dillon it was
not
. 'I had no notion he minded so about the cruise: though no doubt he has grown attached to Maturin too: a strange fellow,' he said, sinking right down.

   Down, down, into the perfect sleep of an exhausted healthy well-fed young fattish man—a rosy sleep; yet not so far that he did not wake sharply after a few hours, frowning and uneasy. Low, urgent, quarrelling voices came whispering in through the stern-window: for a moment he thought of a surprise, a boat-attack, boarding in the night; but then his more woken mind recognized them as Dillon's and Marshall's, and he sank back. 'Yet,' said his mind a great while later, and still in sleep, 'how do they both come to be on the quarter-deck at this time of the night, when they are keeping watch and watch? It is not eight bells.' As if to confirm this statement the
Sophie's
bell struck three times, and from various points all through the sloop came the low answering cries of
all's well
. But it was not. She was not under the same press of sail. What was amiss? He huddled on his dressing-gown and went on deck. Not only had the
Sophie
reduced sail, but her head was pointing east-northeast by east.

   'Sir,' said Dillon, stepping forward, 'this is my responsibility entirely. I overruled the master and ordered the helm to be put up. I believe there is a ship on the star-board bow.'

   Jack stared into the silvery haze—moonlight and a half-covered sky the swell had increased. He saw no ship, no light: but that proved nothing. He picked up the traverseboard and looked at the change of course. 'We shall be in with the coast of Majorca directly,' he said, yawning.

   'Yes, sir so I took the liberty of reducing sail.'

   It was an extraordinary breach of discipline. But Dillon knew that as well as he did: there was no good purpose to be served in telling him of it publicly.

   'Whose watch, is it at present?'

   'Mine, sir,' said the master. He spoke quietly, but in a voice almost as harsh and unnatural as Dillon's. There were strange currents here; much stronger than any ordinary disagreement about a ship's light.

   'Who is aloft?'

   'Assei, sir.'

   Assei was an intelligent, reliable Lascar. 'Assei, ahoy!'

   'Hollo,' the thin pipe from the darkness above.

   'What do you see?'

   'See nothing, sir. See star, no more.'

   But then there would be nothing obvious about such a fleeting glimpse. Dillon was probably right: he would never have done such an extraordinary thing else. Yet this was a damned odd course. 'Are you quite persuaded about your light, Mr Dillon?'

   'Fully persuaded, sir—quite happy.'

  
Happy
was the strangest word to hear said in that grating voice. Jack made no reply for some moments; then he altered the course a point and a half to the north and began pacing up and down his habitual walk. By four bells the light was mounting fast from the east, and there indeed was the dark presence of the land on their starboard bow, dim through the vapours that hung over the sea, though the high bowl of the sky was clear, something between blue Rnd darkness. He went below to put on some clothes, and while the shirt was still over his head there was the cry of a sail.

   She came sailing out of a brownish band of mist a bare two miles to leeward, and as soon as he had cleared it Jack's glass picked out the fished foretopmast, with no more than a close-reefed topsail on it. Everything was clear: everything was plain: Dillon had been perfectly right, of course. Here was their quarry, though strangely off its natural course; it must have tacked some time ago off Dragon Island, and now it was slowly making its way into the open channel to the south; in an hour or so their disagreeable task would be done, and he knew very well what he would be at by noon.

   'Well done, Mr Dillon,' he cried. 'Well done indeed. We could not have fallen in with her better; I should never have believed it, so far to the east of the channel. Show her our colours and give her a gun.'

   The
John B. Christopher
was a little shy of what might prove a hungry man-of-war, eager to impress all her English seamen (or anyone else the boarding-party chose to consider English), but she had not the least chance of escape, above all with a wounded topmast and her topgallantmasts struck down on deck; so after a slight flurry of canvas and a tendency to fall off, she backed her topsails, showed the American flag and waited for the
Sophie's
boat.

   'You shall go,' said Jack to Dillon, who was still hunched over his telescope, as though absorbed in some point of the American's rigging. 'You speak French better than any of us, now the Doctor is away; and after all you discovered her in this extraordinary place—she is your discovery. Should you like the printed papers again, or shall you . . .' Jack broke off. He had seen a very great deal of drunkenness in the Navy; drunken admirals, post-captains, commanders, drunken ship's boys ten years old, and he had been trundled aboard on a wheelbarrow himself before now; but he disliked it on duty—he disliked it very much indeed, above all at such an hour in the morning. 'Perhaps Mr Marshall had better go,' he said coldly. 'Pass the word for Mr Marshall.'