Post Captain (13 page)

The path meandered, branching and sometimes disappearing among huge ancient widespread beeches, their trunks silver in the moon, and at last Stephen stopped. Jack blundered into him, stood still, and felt a hand gripping him hard through the skin: Stephen guided him into the black velvet shadow of a fallen tree. Over the soughing of the wind he heard a repeated metallic sound, and as he recognized the regular beat - a patrol making too much noise - all notion of the unbreathable air and the intolerable state of his body left him. Low voices now and then, a cough, still the clink-clink-clink of someone's musket against a buckle, and presently the soldiers passed within twenty yards of them, moving down the mountain-side.

The same strong hand pulling him, and they were on the path again. Always this eternal climb, sometimes across the leaf-filled bed of a stream, sometimes up an open slope so steep that it was hands and knees: and the sirocco. 'Can this be real?' he wondered. 'Must it go on for ever?'

The beech-trees gave way to pines: pine-needles under foot, oh the pain. Endless pines on an endless mountain, their roaring tops bowing northwards in the wind.

The shape in front had stopped, muttering 'It should be about here - the second fork - there was a charcoal burner's lay - an uprooted larch, bees in the hollow trunk.'

Jack closed his eyes for a great swimming pause, a respite, and when he opened them again he saw that the sky ahead was lightening. Behind them the moon had sunk into a haze, far down in the deep veiled complicated valleys.

The pines. Then suddenly no more pines - a few stunted bushes, heather, and the open turf. They were on the upper edge of the forest, a forest ruled off sharp, as though by a line; and they stood, silently looking out. After two or three minutes, right up there in the eye of the wind, Jack saw a movement. Leaning to Stephen he said 'Dog?' Soldiers who had had the sense to bring a dog? Loss, dead failure after all this?

Stephen took his head, and whispering right into the hairy ear he said 'Wolf. A young - a young female wolf.'

Still Stephen waited, searching the bushes, the bare rocks, from the far left to the far right, before he walked out, paced over the short grass to a stone set on the very top of the slope, a squared stone with a red-painted cross cut into it.

'Jack,' said he, leading him beyond the boundary mark, 'I bid you welcome to my land. We are in Spain. That is my house below - we are at home. Come, let me get your head off. Now you can breathe, my poor friend. There are two springs under the brow of the hill, by those chestnuts, where you can wash and take off the skin. How I rejoice at the sight of that wolf. Look, here is her dung, quite fresh. No doubt this is a wolf's pissing-post: like all the dogs, they have their regular..

Jack sat heavily on the stone, gasping inwards, filling his starved lungs. Some reality other than general suffering returned. 'Wolf's pissing-post: oh, yes.' In front of him the ground fell suddenly - almost a precipice - two thousand feet below there was Spanish Catalonia spread out in the morning light. A high-towered castle just below them on a jutting rock - a lobbed stone would reach it; the Pyrenees folded away and away in long fingers to the plain; square distant fields, vineyards green; a shining river winding left-handed towards the great sweep of the sea; the Bay of Rosas with Cap Creus at the far northern end - home water, and now the hot wind smelt of salt.

'I am happy you were pleased with your wolf,' he said at last in a sleep-walker's voice. 'There are - they are uncommon rare, I dare say.'

'Not at all, my dear. We have them by the score - can never leave the sheep by night. No. Her presence means we are alone. That is why I rejoice. I rejoice. Even so, I think we should go down to the spring: it is under the chestnuts, those chestnuts not two minutes down. That wolfess may be a fool - see her now, moving among the junipers - and I should not wish to fail, just when we have succeeded. Some chance cross-patrol, douaniers rather than soldiers, some zealous sergeant with a carabine. Can you get up? God help me, I hardly can.'

The spring, Jack wallowing in it, cold water and grit sweeping off the crass, the stream running filthy, but coming fresh and fresh straight from the rock. Jack luxuriating, drying in the wind, plunging again and again. His body was dead white where it was not cruelly galled, bitten, rasped; his colourless face puffy, sweat-swollen, corpse-like, a tangled yellow beard covering his mouth; his eyes were red and pustulent. But there was life in them, brilliant delight blazing through the physical distress.

'You have lost between three and four stone,' observed Stephen, appraising his loins and belly.

'I am sure you are right,' said Jack. 'And nine parts of it is in this vile skin, a good three stone of human grease.' He kicked the limp bear with his bleeding foot, damned it once or twice for a son of a bitch, and observed he must take the papers out before setting it alight. 'How it will stink - how it does stink, by God. Just hand me along the scissors, Stephen, pray.'

'The bear may serve again,' said Stephen. 'Let us roll it up and thrust it under the bush. I will send for it from the house.'

'Is the house a great way off?'

'Why no,' said Stephen, pointing to the castle. 'It is just there below us, a thousand feet or so - to the right of the white scar, the marble quarry. Though I am afraid it will take us an hour to get there - an hour to breakfast.'

'Is that castle yours, Stephen?'

'It is. And this is my sheepwalk. What is more,' he said, looking sharply at the cowpats, 'I believe those French dogs from La Vaill have been sending their cattle over to eat my grass.'

CHAPTER FIVE

Three days after crossing the tropic the Lord Nelson East-Indiaman, Captain Spottiswood, homeward-bound from Bombay, broached to in a westerly gale; the ship survived, but she lost her maintopmast and its topgallant, carried away her mizen just above the cap, sprang her fore and main masts, and damaged her rigging to an extraordinary extent. She also lost her boats upon the booms and most of the booms themselves; so, the wind being foul for Madeira, the passengers in a state of panic and the crew near mutiny after a very long and uniformly disagreeable voyage, Mr Spottiswood bore away for Gibraltar, right under his lee, although like all homeward-bound captains he was very unwilling to put into a naval port. As he had expected, he lost many of his English-born sailormen to the press, all prime hands; but he did repair his ship, and as some meagre consolation he did embark a few passengers.

The first to come aboard were Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin; they were received by the captain at the head of his officers in some style, for the Company possessed, or at least arrogated to itself, a particular status, and its ships adopted many of the ways of the Royal Navy. There were sensible reasons for some of these - the chequered gun-ports, for instance, and the general appearance of regularity had persuaded many an enemy cruiser that he had to do with a man-of-war and that he had better look elsewhere -but there were many little pretensions that vexed the real Navy, and King's officers aboard a Company ship were apt to look about them with a carping eye. In this case a critic could have found fault straight away: in spite of the black side-boys in their white gloves, the reception

was incorrect - that vague huddle of figures would never have done aboard the Superb, for example, in which Jack had dined, and whose hospitality was still ringing in his head, although he could walk straight. Furthermore, he was conscious of a huge grin from the midst of that same huddle, a kind of half-determined nodding and becking, a bashfulness accompanied by familiarity that brought a hint of stiffness into his expression. He spoke with particular civility to Captain Spottiswood, who privately damned him for his condescension, and then turning he recognized the stare.

'Why, Pullings!' he cried, all his ill-humour - a very slight ill-humour in any case - vanishing at once and the hard lines of his face dissolving into a delighted smile. 'How happy I am to see you! How do you do? How are you coming along, eh? Eh?'

'And this is our supercargo, Mr Jennings,' said Captain Spottiswood, not best pleased at having his regular sequence changed. 'Mr Bates. Mr Wand. Mr Pullings you already know, I see.'

'We were shipmates,' said Jack, shaking Pullings's hand with a force in direct proportion to his affection for the young man, a former master's mate and acting-lieutenant in the Sophie, who was now beaming over his shoulder at Dr Maturin.

The Lord Nelson had never been a happy or a fortunate ship, but within an hour of taking her passengers on board a brisk Levanter sprang up to carry her right out through the strong current of the Gut and into the full Atlantic; and poor Captain Spottiswood, in the innocence of his heart, reckoned this a great stroke of luck - a good omen at last, perhaps. She was not a very comely ship, either, nor much of a sailer: comfortable for the passengers, roomy for her cargo, certainly; but crank, slow in stays, and near the end of her useful life. This was, in fact, to be her last voyage, and even for her trip in 1801 the underwriters had insisted upon an extra thirty shillings per cent.

It also happened that she was the first Indiaman Jack had ever sailed in, and as he walked about with Pullings during his watch below he gazed with astonishment at the general lumber of the deck and at the casks and water-butts lashed between the guns. Twenty eighteen-pounders and six twelves: an imposing show of force for a merchantman. 'And how many people have you aboard?' he asked.

'Just above a hundred now, sir. A hundred and two, to be exact.'

'Well, well, well,' said Jack. in the Navy they did not think nine men and a powder-boy too much for an eighteen-pounder, seven and a boy for the twelves: a hundred and twenty-four men to fight the guns one side -a hundred and twenty-four beef- and pork-fed Englishmen, and another hundred to trim the sails, work the ship, repel boarders, ply the small arms, and fight the other side on occasion. He glanced at the Lascars squatting around their heap of junk, working under the orders of their turbanned serang; they might be tolerably good seamen in their way, perhaps, but they were very slight, and he could not see five or six of them running out a two-ton gun against the Atlantic roll. This impression of smallness was increased by the fact that most of them were cold; the few European members of the crew were in their shirts, but several of the Lascars had pea-jackets on as well, and all had a blueish tinge in their dark complexions.

'Well, well, well,' said Jack again. He did not like to say more, for his opinion of the Lord Nelson was crystallizing fast, and any expression of it could not but give pain - Pullings must feel himself part of the ship. The young man certainly knew that Captain Spottiswood lacked all authority, and that the Lord Nelson moved like a log, and that she had twice missed stays off Cape Trafalgar, having to wear round at last: but there was certainly no point in putting this into words. He looked round for something that he could praise with at least an appearance of candour. The gleam of the brass larboard bow-gun caught his eye, and he commended it. 'Really quite like gold,' he said.

'Yes,' said Pullings. 'They do it voluntary - poojah, poojah, they say. For days off the island and again when we touched at the Cape, they had a wreath of marigolds around the muzzle. They say their prayers to it, poor fellows, because they think it is like - well, sir, I hardly like to name what they think it is like. But she is medium dry, sir, and she is roomy - oh, as roomy as a first-rate. I have a vast great spacious cabin to myself. Would you do me the honour of stepping below, sir, and drinking a glass of arrack?'

'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. And stretching himself cautiously on the locker in the vast great spacious cabin, he said, 'How do you come to be here, Pullings, in all your glory?'

'Why, sir, I could not get a ship and they would not confirm me in my rank. "No white lapels for you, Pullings, old cock," they said. "We got too many coves like you, by half."'

'What a damned shame,' cried Jack, who had seen Pullings in action and who knew that the Navy did not and indeed could not possibly have too many coves like him.

'So I tried for a midshipman again, but none of my old captains had a ship themselves; or if they had -and the Honourable Berkely had - no vacancy. I took your letter to Captain Seymour - Amethyst, refitting in Hamoaze. Old Cozzens gave me a lift down as far as the Vizes. Captain Seymour received me very polite when I said I was from you, most obliging: nothing starchy or touch-me-not about him, sir. But he scratched his head and damned his wig when he opened the letter and read it. He said he would have blessed the day he could have obliged you, particularly with such advantage to himself, which was the civillest thing I ever heard - turned so neat - but that it was not in his power. He led me to the gunroom and the mids' berth himself to prove he could not take another young gentleman on to his quarter-deck. He was so earnest to be believed, though in course I credited him the moment he opened his mouth, that he desired me to count their chests. Then he gave me a thundering good dinner in his own cabin just him and me - I needed it, sir, for I'd walked the last twenty miles - and after the pudding we went over your action in the Sophie: he knew everything, except quite how the wind had veered, and he made me tell just where I had been from the first gun to the last. Then "damn my eyes," says he, "I cannot let one of Captain Aubrey's officers rot on shore without trying to stretch the little interest I have," and he wrote me one letter for Mr Adams at the Admiralty and another for Mr Bowles, a great man at East India House.'

'Mr Bowles married his sister,' observed Jack.

'Yes, sir,' said Pullings. 'But I paid little heed to it just then, because, do you see, Captain Seymour promised that Mr Adams would get me an interview with Old Jarvie himself, and I was in great hopes, for I had always heard, in the service, that he had a kindness for chaps that came in over the bows. So I got back to town again somehow, and there I was, double-shaved and all of a tremble in that old waiting-room for an hour or two. Mr Adams called me in, warns me to speak up loud and clear to his Lordship, and he is going on to say about not mentioning the good word you was so kind as to put in for me, when there's a bloody great din outside, like a boarding-party. Out he goes to see what's o'clock, and comes back with his face as blank as an egg. "The old devil," he said, "he's pressed Lieutenant Salt. Pressed him in the Admiralty itself, and has sent him off to the tender with a file of marines. Eight years' seniority, and he has sent him off with a file of Marines." Did you ever hear of it, sir?'

'Never a word.'

'Well, there was this Mr Salt right desperate for a ship, and he bombarded the First Lord with a letter a day for months and turned up every Wednesday and Friday to ask for an interview. And on the last Friday of all, the day I was there, Old Jarvie winked his eye, said "You want to go to sea? Then to sea you shall go, sir," and had him pressed on the spot.'

'An officer? Pressed for a common sailor?' cried Jack. 'I've never heard of such a thing in my life.'

'Nor nobody else: particularly poor Mr Salt,' said Pullings. 'But that's the way it was, sir. And when I heard that, and when people came in and whispered about it, I felt so timid-like and abashed, that when Mr Adams said perhaps I should try another day, I hurried out into Whitehall and asked the quickest way to East India House of the porter. I fell lucky - Mr Bowles was very kind - and so here I am. It's a good berth: twice the pay, and you are allowed a little venture of your own - I have a chest of China embroidery in the after-hold. But Lord, sir, to be in a man-of-war again!'

'It may not be so long now,' said Jack. 'Pitt's back and Old Jarvie's gone - refused the Channel Fleet - if he weren't a first-rate seaman I'd say the devil go with him - and Dundas is at the Admiralty. Lord Melville. i'm pretty well with him, and if only we can spread a little more canvas and get in before all the plums are snapped up, it will go hard if we don't make a cruise together again.'

Spreading more canvas: that was the difficulty. Ever since his disagreeable experience in latitude 33° N. Captain Spottiswood had been unwilling to set even his topgallant-sails, and the days passed slowly, slowly by. Jack spent much of his time leaning over the taffrail, staring into the Lord Nelson's gentle wake as it stretched away to the south and west, for he did not care to watch the unhurried working of the ship, and the sight of the topgallantmasts struck down on deck filled him with impatience. His most usual companions were the Misses Lamb, good-natured jolly short-legged squat swarthy girls who had gone out to India with the fishing-fleet - they called it that themselves,

cheerfully enough - and who were now returning, maidens still, under the protection of their uncle, Major Hill of the Bengal Artillery.

They sat in a line, with Jack between the two girls and a chair for Stephen on the left; and although the Lord Nelson was now in the Bay of Biscay, with a fresh breeze in the south-west and the temperature down in the fifties, they kept the deck bravely, cocooned in rugs and shawls, their pink noses peeping out.

'They say the Spanish ladies are amazingly beautiful,' said Miss Lamb. 'Much more so than the French, though not so elegant. Pray, Captain Aubrey, is it so?'

'Why, upon my word,' said Jack, 'I can hardly tell you. I never saw any of 'em.'

'But was you not several months in Spain?' cried Miss Susan.

'Indeed I was, but nearly all the time I was laid up at Dr Maturin's place near Lérida - all arches, painted blue, as they have in those parts; a courtyard inside, and grilles, and orange-trees; but no ladies of Spain that I recall. There was a dear old biddy that fed me pap -would not be denied - and on Sundays she wore a high comb and a mantilla; but she was not what you would call a beauty.'

'Was you very ill, sir?' asked Miss Lamb respectfully.

'I believe I must have been,' said jack, 'for they shaved my head, clapped on their leeches twice a day, and made me drink warm goat's milk whenever I came to my senses; and by the time it was over I was so weak that I could scarcely sit my horse - we rode no more than fifteen or twenty miles a day for the first week.'

'How fortunate you were travelling with dear Dr Maturin,' said Miss Susan. 'I truly dote upon that man.'

'I have no doubt he pulled me through - quite lost, but for him,' said Jack. 'Always there, ready to bleed or dose me, night and day. Lord, such doses! I dare say I swallowed a moderate-sized apothecary's shop - Stephen, I was just telling Miss Susan how you tried to poison me with your experimental brews.'

'Do not believe him, Dr Maturin. He has been telling us how you certainly saved his life. We are so grateful; he has taught us to knot laniards and to splice our wool.'

'Aye?' said Stephen. 'I am looking for the captain.' He peered inquisitively under the empty chair. 'I have news that will interest him; it is of interest to us all. The Lascars are suffering not from the buldoo-panee of their own miasmatic plains, whatever Mr Parley may maintain, but from the Spanish influenza! It is whimsical enough to reflect that we, in our haste, should be the cause of our own delay, is it not? For with so few hands we shall no doubt see our topsails handed presently.'

'I am in no hurry. I wish this voyage would go on for ever,' said Miss Lamb, arousing an echo in her sister alone.

'Is it catching?' asked Jack.

'Oh, eminently so, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I dare say it will sweep the ship in the next few days. But I shall dose them; oh, I shall dose them! Young ladies, I desire you will take physic tonight: I have made up a comfortable little prophylactic bottle for you both, and