Post Captain (45 page)

'Take possession, Mr Pullings,' said Jack. 'Keep close under my lee. You can only have five men. Mr Goodridge, Mr Goodridge! Stand on.'

In half an hour the channel was clear of floating transports. Three had grounded. Two had run themselves ashore. One had sunk - the twenty-four pound smashers at close range - and the rest had doubled into the outer road or back to Chaulieu, where one was set ablaze by red-hot shot from St Jacques. And in half an hour, the time to run the length of the channel and to wreak all this havoc, the Polychrest was moving so heavily, keeping such a strain on the towline, that Jack hailed the Fanciulla and the transport to come alongside.

He went below, Bonden holding him by the arm, confirmed the carpenter's desperate report, gave orders for the wounded to be moved into the corvette, the prisoners to be secured, his papers brought, and sat there as the three vessels rocked on the gentle swell of slack water, watching the tired men carry their shipmates, their belongings, all the necessaries out of the Polychrest.

'It is time to go, sir,' said Parker, with Pullings and Rossall standing by him, ready to lift their captain over.

'Go,' said Jack. 'I shall follow you.' They hesitated, caught the earnestness of his tone and look, crossed and stood hovering on the rail of the corvette. Now the veering breeze blew off the land; the eastern sky was lightening; they were out of the Ras du Point, beyond the shoals; and the water in the offing was a fine deep blue. He stood up, walked as straight as he could to a ruined gun-port, made a feeble spring that just carried him to the Fanciulla, staggered, and turned to look at his ship. She did not sink for a good ten minutes, and by then the blood - what little he had left - had made a pool at his feet. She went very gently, with a sigh of air rushing through the hatches, and settled on the bottom, the tips of her broken masts showing a foot above the surface.

'Come, brother,' said Stephen in his ear, very like a dream. 'Come below. You must come below - here is too much blood altogether. Below, below. Here, Bonden, carry him with me.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

Fanciulla

The Downs

20 September 04

My dear Sir,

By desire of your son William, my brave and respectable midshipman, I write a hasty line to inform you of our brush with the French last week. The claim of distinction which has been bestowed on the ship I commanded, I must entirely, after God, attribute to the zeal and fidelity of my officers, amongst whom your son stands conspicuous. He is very well, and I hope will continue so. He had the misfortune of being wounded a few minutes after boarding the Fanciulla, and his arm is so badly broken, that I fear it must suffer amputation. But as it is his left arm, and likely to do well under the great skill of Dr Maturin, I hope you will think it an honourable mark instead of a misfortune.

We ran into Chaulieu road on the 14th instant and had the annoyance of grounding in a fog under the cross-fire of their batteries, when it became necessary to cut out a vessel to heave us off. We chose a ship moored under one of the batteries and proceeded with all dispatch in the boats. It was in taking her that your son received his wound: and she proved to be the Ligurian corvetto Fanciulla of 20 guns, with some French officers. We then proceeded to attack the transports, your son exerting himself all this time with the utmost gallantry, of which we took one, sank one, and drove five ashore. At this point the Polychrest unfortunately sank, having been hulled by upwards of 200 shot and having beaten five hours on the bank. We therefore proceeded in the prizes to the Downs, where the court-martial, sitting yesterday afternoon in the Monarch, most honourably acquitted the Polychrest's officers for the loss of their ship, not without some very obliging remarks. You will find a fuller account of this little action in my Gazette letter, which appears in tomorrow's newspaper, and in which I have the pleasure of naming your son; and since I am this moment bound for the Admiralty, I shall have the pleasure of mentioning him to the First Lord.

My best compliments wait on Mrs Babbington, and I am, my dear Sir,

With great truth, sincerely yours,

Jno. Aubrey

PS. Dr Maturin desires his compliments, and wishes me to say, that the arm may very well be saved. But, I may add, he is the best hand in the Fleet with a saw, if it comes to that; which I am sure will be a comfort to you and Mrs Babbington.

'Killick,' he cried, folding and sealing it. 'That's for the post. Is the Doctor ready?'

'Ready and waiting these fourteen minutes,' said Stephen in a loud, sour voice. 'What a wretched tedious slow hand you are with a pen, upon my soul. Scratch-scratch, gasp-gasp. You might have written the Iliad in half the time, and a commentary upon it, too.'

'I am truly sorry, my dear fellow - I hate writing letters: it don't seem to come natural, somehow.'

'Non omnia possumus omnes,' said Stephen, 'but at least we can step into a boat at a stated time, can we not? Now here is your physic, and here is your bolus; and remember, a quart of porter with your breakfast, a quart at midday...

They reached the deck, a scene of very great activity: swabs, squeegees, holystones, prayer-books, bears grinding in all directions; her twenty brass guns hot with polishing; the smell of paint; for the Fanciullas, late Polychrests, had heard that their prize was to be bought

into the service, and they felt that a pretty ship would fetch a higher price than a slattern - a price that concerned them intimately, since three-eighths of it would be theirs

'You will bear my recommendations in mind, Mr Parker,' said Jack, preparing to go down the side.

'Oh yes, sir,' cried Parker. 'All this is voluntary.' He looked at Jack with great earnestness; apart from any other reason, the lieutenant's entire future hung on what his captain would say of him at the Admiralty that evening.

Jack nodded, took the side-ropes with a careful grasp and lowered himself slowly into the boat: a ragged, good-natured, but very brief cheer as it pushed off, and the Fanciullas hurried back to their scouring, currying and polishing, the surveyor was due at nine o'clock.

'A little to the left - to the larboard,' said Stephen. 'Where was I? A quart of porter with your dinner: no wine, though you may take a glass or two of cold negus before retiring; no beef or mutton - fish, I say, chicken, a pair of rabbits; and, of course, Venerem omitte.'

'Eh? Oh, her. Yes. Certainly. Quite so. Very proper. Rowed of all - run her up.' The boat ground through the shingle. They ploughed across the beach, crossed the road into the dunes. 'Here?' asked Jack.

'Just past the gibbet - a little dell, a place I know, convenient in every way. Here we are.' They turned a dune and there was a dark-green post-chaise and its postillion eating his breakfast out of a cloth bag.

'I wish we could have worked the hearse,' muttered Jack.

'Stuff. Your own father would not recognize you in that bandage and in this dirty-yellow come-kiss-me-death exsanguine state: though indeed you look fitter for a hearse

than many a subject I have cut up. Come, come, there is not a moment to lose. Get in. Mind the step. Preserved Killick, take good care of the Captain: his physic, well shaken, twice a day; the bolus thrice. He may offer to forget his bolus, Killick.'

'He'll take his nice bolus, sir, or my name's not Preserved.'

'Clap to the door. Give way, now; give way all together. Step out! Lay aloft! Tally! And belay!'

They stood watching the dust of the post-chaise; and Bonden said, 'Oh, I do wish as we'd worked the hearse-and-coffin lark, sir: if they was to nab him now, it would break my heart.'

'How can you be so simple, Bonden? Do but think of a hearse and four cracking on regardless all the way up the Dover Road. It would be bound to excite comment. And you are to consider, that a recumbent posture is bad for the Captain at present.'

'Well, sir. But, a hearse is sure: no bum ever arrested a corpse, as I know of. Howsoever, it's too late now. Shall you pull back along of us, sir, or shall we come for you again?'

'I am obliged to you, Bonden, but I believe I shall walk into Dover and take a boat back from there.'

The post-chaise whirled through Kent, saying little. Ever since Chaulieu, Jack had been haunted by the dread of tipstaffs. His return to the Downs, with no ship and a couple of prizes, had made a good deal of noise -very favourable noise, but still noise - and he had not set foot on shore until this morning, refusing invitations even from the Lord Warden himself. He was moderately well-to-do; the Fanciulla might bring him close on a thousand pounds and the transport a hundred or two; but would the Admiralty pay head-money according to the Fanciulla's muster-roll when so many of her people had escaped on shore? And would his claim for gun-money for the destroyed transports be allowed? His new prize-agent had shaken his head, saying he could promise nothing but delay; he had advanced a fair. sum, however, and Jack's bosom had the pleasant crinkle of Bank of England notes. Yet he was nowhere near being solvent, and passing through Canterbury, Rochester and Dartford he cowered deep in his corner. Stephen's assurances had little force with him: he knew he was Jack Aubrey, and it seemed inevitable that others too should see him as Jack Aubrey, debtor to Grobian, Slendrian and Co. for £1 1,012 6s 8d. With better reason it seemed to him inevitable that those interested should know that he must necessarily be summoned to the Admiralty, and take their steps accordingly. He did not get out when they changed horses; he passed most of the journey keeping out of sight and dozing - he was perpetually tired these days - and he was asleep when Killick roused him with a respectful but firm 'Time for your bolus, sir.'

Jack eyed it: this was perhaps the most nauseating dose that Stephen had ever yet compounded, so vile that health itself was scarcely worth the price of swallowing it. 'I can't get it down without a drink,' he said.

'Hold hard,' cried Killick, putting his head and shoulders out of the window. 'Post-boy, ahoy. Pull in at the next public, d'ye hear me, there? Now, sir,' - as the carriage came to a stop - I'll just step in and see if the coast is clear.' Killick had spent little of his life ashore, and most of that little in an amphibious village in the Essex mud; but he was fly; he knew a great deal about landsmen, most of whom were crimps, pickpockets, whores, or officials of the Sick and Hurt Office, and he could tell a gum a mile off. He saw them everywhere. He was the worst possible companion for a weak, reduced, anxious debtor that could well be found, the more so in that his absolute copper bottomed certainty of being a right deep file, no sort or kind of a flat, carried a certain conviction. By way of a ruse de guerre he had somehow acquired a clergyman's hat, and this, combined with his earrings, his yard of pigtail, his watchet-blue jacket with brass buttons, his white trousers and low silver-buckled shoes, succeeded so well that several customers followed him from the tap-room to gaze while he leaned in and said to Jack, 'It's no go, sir. I seen some slang coves in the tap. You'll have to drink it in the shay. What'll it be, sir? Dog's nose? Flip? Come, sir,' he said, with the authority of the well over the sick in their care, or even out of it, 'What'll it be? For down it must go, or it will miss the tide.' Jack thought he would like a little sherry. 'Oh no, sir. No wine. The Doctor said, No wine. Porter is more the mark.' He brought back sherry - had been obliged to call for wine, it being a shay - and a mug of porter; drank the sherry, gave back such change as he saw fit, and watched the bolus go gasping, retching down, helped by the porter. 'That's thundering good physic,' he said. 'Drive on, mate.'

The next time he woke Jack it was from a deeper sleep. 'Eh? What's amiss?' cried Jack.

'We'm alongside, sir. We'm there.'

'Ay. Ay. So we are,' said Jack, gazing at the familiar doorway, the familiar courtyard, and suddenly coming to life. 'Very well. Killick, stand off and on, and when you see my signal, drive smartly in and pick me up again.'

He was sure of a fairly kind reception at the Admiralty: the cutting-out of the Fanciulla had been well spoken of in the service and very well spoken of in the press - it had come at a time when there was little to fill the papers and when people were feeling nervous and low in their spirits about the invasion. The Polychrest could not have chosen a better moment for sinking; nothing could have earned her more praise. The journalists were delighted with the fact that both ships were nominally slops and that the Fanciulla carried almost twice as many men; they did not point out that eighty of the Fanciullas were peaceable Italian conscripts, and they were good enough to number the little guns borne by the transports in the general argument. One gentleman in the Post, particularly dear to Jack's heart, had spoken of 'this gallant, nay, amazing feat, carried out by a raw crew, far below its complement and consisting largely of landsmen and boys. It must show the French Emperor the fate that necessarily awaits his invasion flotilla; for if our lion-hearted tars handle it so roughly when it is skulking behind impenetrable sand-banks under the cross-fire of imposing batteries, what may they not do should it ever put to sea?' There was a good deal more about hearts of oak and honest tars, which had pleased the Fanciullas - the more literate hearts perpetually read it to the rest from the thumbed copies that circulated through the ship - and Jack knew that it would please the Admiralty too: in spite of their lordly station they were as sensitive to loud public praise as common mortals. He knew that this approval would grow after the publication of his official letter, with its grim list of casualties - seventeen dead and twenty-three wounded - for civilians liked to have sailors' blood to deplore, and the more a victory cost the more it was esteemed. If only little Parslow could have contrived to get himself knocked on the head it would have been perfect. He also knew something that the papers did not know, but that the Admiralty did: the Fanciulla's captain had not had the time or the wit to destroy his secret papers, and for the moment the French private signals were private no longer - their codes were broken.

But as he sat there in the waiting-room thoughts of past misdeeds filled his uneasy mind; anything that Admiral Harte's malignance could do would have been done; and in fact he had not behaved irreproachably in the Downs. Stephen's warning had fallen on a raw conscience: and it could only have come through Dundas - Dundas, who was so well placed to know what they thought of his conduct here. If his logs and order-books were sent for, there would be some things he would find hard to explain away. Those strokes of profound cunning, those little stratagems that had seemed individually so impenetrable, now in the mass took on a sadly imbecile appearance. And how did the Polychrest come to be on the sand-bank in the first place? Explain that, you infernal lubber. So he was more than usually pleased when Lord Melville rose from behind his desk, shook him warmly by the hand, and cried, 'Captain Aubrey, I am delighted to see you. I said you would be sure to distinguish yourself, do you recall? I said so in this very room. And now you have done so, sir: the Board is content, pleased, eminently satisfied with its choice of you as commander of the Polychrest, and with your conduct at Chaulieu. I wish you could have done so with less cost: I am afraid you suffered terribly both in your ship's company and in your person. Tell me,' he said, looking at Jack's head, 'what is the nature of your wounds? Do they... do they hurt?'

'Why, no, my lord, I cannot say they do.'

'How were they inflicted?'

'Well, my lord, the one was something that dropped on my head - a piece of mortar-shell, I imagine; but luckily I was in the water at the time, so it did little damage, only tearing off a handsbreadth of scalp. The other was a sword-thrust I did not notice at the moment, but it seems it nicked some vessel, and most of my blood ran out before I was aware. Dr Maturin said he did not suppose there was more than three ounces left, and that mostly in my toes.'

'You are in good hands, I find.'

'Oh yes, my lord. He clapped a red-hot iron to the place, brought up the bleeding with a round turn, and set me up directly.'