The Letter of Marque (8 page)

It was no Caspian tern that they were looking at, but a sail, and a sail no very great way off. 'What airs these eighteen-gun sloops do give themselves, to be sure,' said Pullings in a discontented voice. 'Look how she is cracking on! It will be moonrakers next. I will lay half a crown she carries away that foretopgallant studdingsail in the next five minutes.'

'Should you like to have a look at her, sir?' asked Jack, passing Martin his glass.

Martin clapped his one eye to it, silently recorded a stormy petrel, and after a pause exclaimed 'It has fired a gun! I see the smoke! Surely it will never have the temerity to attack us?'

'No, no. She is one of ours.' The boom reached them. 'That is a signal for us to lie to.'

'Would it not be possible to feign deafness, and to sail off in the opposite direction?' asked Stephen, who dreaded another encounter.

'Most private men-of-war avoid their public brethren if they can possibly outsail them,' said Jack, 'and the notion did occur to me when first she was sighted. But she altered course so quick - hauled her wind five points - that I am sure she recognized us; and if we were not to lie to after a gun, and this is the second, and if she were to report us, we might very well lose our letter of marque. Surprise is so damned recognizable: it is this most uncommon mainmast - you can smoke it ten miles away, like a bear with a sore thumb. Tom, I believe we must use the spare stump topgallant for ordinary cruising: we can always sway this one up for a determined chase.'

Pullings did not answer: he crouched lower and lower over his telescope, poised on the top-rail, focussing more exactly, and all at once he cried, 'Sir, sir, she's the Tartarus !'

Jack caught up his glass, and after a moment and in what for him was a happy voice he said 'So she is. I can make out that absurd bright-blue bumpkin.' Another gun, and he said 'She has made her number. She will be signalling presently: William was always a great hand with the bunting.' Directing his voice downwards he called 'Mr West, we will close the sloop under all plain sail, if you please; and let the signal yeoman stand by. Yes,' he went on to those in the top as a distant line of flags appeared, 'there he is - such a hoist. Tom, I dare say you can read it without the book?'

Pullings had been Jack's signal lieutenant, and he still had much of the list by heart. Til have a try, sir,' he said, and slowly read out 'Welcome... repeat welcome... happy see... beg captain sup... have message... hope... now he is telegraphing: P H I Z... the signal-mid can't spell ..."

On the quarterdeck the yeoman of the signal's mate, a Shelmerstonian, asked 'What does the brig mean with her P H I Z?'

'She means our doctor; which he is not a common twopence-a-go barber-surgeon but a genuine certificated physician with a bob-wig and a gold-headed cane.

'I didn't know,' said the Shelmerstonian, staring hard at the maintop.

'You don't know much, mate,' said the yeoman, but not unkindly.

'The approaching vessel is under the command of Mr Babbington," said Stephen to Martin. 'You remember Mr Babbington at the cricket-match?'

'Oh yes,' replied Martin. 'He made several late cuts, most beautifully timed; and you told me he had played for Hambledon. I should be happy to see him again.'

A little later he did see him again. The ships were lying to with their topsails backed, not very close, because of the growing sea: the Tartarus, with great politeness, had run under the frigate's lee, and her captain, his face bright red with the pleasure and exertion, was urging Jack not to get his boats off the booms - Tartarus had quarter-davits - Tartarus would lower her cutter down in a split second.

'Should be very happy, William,' called Jack in a conversational voice that carried easily over the hundred yards of sea. 'But it can only be a short visit: I have a great deal of southing to make up, and it is likely to turn dirty.'

The cutter splashed down; the guests were pulled across, and Jack, forgetting for a moment that he was in no position to give orders, said to the midshipman in charge, 'Larboard side, if you please,' for this meant no ceremony. Yet he recollected himself when the boat hooked on and he made Pullings and Stephen, both King's officers, take precedence. The momentary awkwardness was drowned by Dr Maturin's shrill indignation at the bosun's chair that had been rigged to bring him aboard dry, without anxiety: 'Why this injurious distinction?' he cried. 'Am not I an old salt, a hardened sea-dog?" But his voice changed entirely as he was set down on deck and found his old shipmate James Mowett standing there to receive him. 'Why, James Mowett, joy, how happy I am to see you. But what are you doing here? I thought you were to be first of the Illustrious.'

'So I am, sir. William Babbington is just giving me a lift to Gibraltar.'

'Of course, of course. Tell, how does your book come along?'

Mowett's exceptionally cheerful face clouded slightly: 'Well, sir, publishers are most hellish -' he began. But Babbington interrupted to welcome the Doctor aboard; and eventually, laughing and talking, he shepherded them all into the cabin, where they found Mrs. Wray, a rather short-legged, swarthy young lady, but now downright pretty in her blushing confusion, her mixture of distress at being seen and her delight at seeing. Nobody was particularly surprised: all the men present had known one another at very close quarters for a very long time - the younger three had been in the midshipmen's berth of Jack Aubrey's first command - and they all knew that Babbington had been more attached to Fanny Harte, as she was before her marriage to Wray, than to any other of his innumerable flames. They might think it was coming it a little high to sail about the main with the wife of the acting second secretary of the Admiralty board, but they all knew that Babbington was rich by land, with enough parliamentary votes in his family to protect him from anything but serious professional misconduct, and they all had at least some notion of Wray's reputation. The only person really surprised, concerned, upset, was Fanny herself; she was particularly terrified of Mr Aubrey and sat as far from him as possible, wedged behind Stephen in a corner. Through the steady roar of voices he heard her whispering'... looks so very odd, don'tit, almost compromising, so far from land - feel quite uncomfortable - am come for my health - Dr Gordon positively insisted upon a short sea-voyage - of course I have my own maid with me. Dear me: oh yes - So very glad to see poor Captain Aubrey tolerably well though dear me what the poor man must have been through and indeed he does look somewhat ancient now and who can be surprised; and rather severe - Shall I have to sit next to him at supper? But William has a letter from his wife and perhaps that will mollify him.'

'My dear Fanny,' said Stephen, 'he needs no mollifying. He has always liked you; and if there were any stones to throw he would never at any time reach for one. But tell me - last time we were talking about Captain Babbington you referred to him as Charles, which puzzled me; though no doubt he has several names to choose from, and prefers this to the others.'

'No, no,' said Fanny, blushing again. 'I was all confused that day - my mind if you can call it one was all of a fluster. We had been to Mrs Graham's masked ball a little while before, me as a Highland sheep and William as the Young Pretender - how we laughed, oh Lord! So I went on calling him Charles for days afterwards - he was so beautiful in his filibeg. You will think me a pitifully simple ninny, I am afraid. But, however, I am amazingly glad to hear what you tell about the Captain's liking me. I shall sit next to him quite happy now. Lord, how I hope the suet pudding ain't raw: William made such a point of it for him. He swears it can be done in a trice in a Papin's digester; but puddings always took hours and hours when I was a girl."

Supper was a cheerful meal, with a great deal of talk and laughter; and merely from the animal point of view it was most uncommonly welcome after the Surprise's Spartan fare. At this point the frigate had no captain's cook and no gunroom cook; Jack had laid in no private stores, out of economy, Stephen out of absent-mindedness, the gunroom out of stark poverty; they all lived on ship's provisions and, since the ship was still in home waters, they drank not grog but small beer or swipes, smaller day by day. The cabin's only luxury was breakfast, which Killick had provided for on his own authority. During the course of the meal Babbington told them hbw the Tartarus had chased an amazingly swift-sailing American schooner for two days and a night, a certain blockade-runner trying to get into Brest or Lorient. 'I sent up light hawsers and cablets just as you used to do, sir," he said, 'and I really believe we should have had her, if both main and fore topsails had not blown out of their boltropes at the same moment. Yet at least we set her three or four hundred miles south of her course, and she will have to run the whole gauntlet again before she sees the coast of France."

'Mr Mowett,' called Stephen in the pause while the table was clearing to make room for the pudding, and pudding-wine - in this case Frontignan and Canary - was handing about, 'you were telling me about your publishers.'

'Yes, sir: I was about to say that they were the most hellish procrastinators -'

'Oh how dreadful,' cried Fanny. 'Do they go to - to special houses, or do they ..."

'He means they delay,' said Babbington.

'Oh.'

'Yes. The book was supposed to come out on the Glorious First of June; then it was put off to Trafalgar Day; and now they say nothing but the anniversary of Camperdown will really suit the public mind. Yet at least it has this advantage -I can polish what is already down and I can add a new piece I have written.'

'Tip us the new piece, Mowett,' said Pullings.

'Yes, do,' said both Babbington and Fanny.

'Well,' said Mowett with mixed pleasure and modesty, 'it is rather long. So if I may, ma'am,' - bowing to Fanny - 'I will just say the end verses: it is about a battle, and these lines are meant to show the carnage at its height:

'Swift o'er the deep with winged speed they flew

And nearer now the frowning squadrons drew.

"Quick, clear the decks," the shrill-voiced boatswain cries

"Quick, clear the decks," each hollow ship replies.

Pale grows each cheek, with strange unwonted fear:

All stand a moment, lost in fixed amaze,

In awful silence, and unconscious gaze.'

A crash somewhere forward, not unlike the firing of a twelve-pounder, interrupted him, but only for a moment.

'Death strides from ship to ship with sweeping scythe;

On every poop damned fiends of murder writhe,

Demons of carnage ride th'empurpled flood,

Champ their fell jaws, and quaff the streaming blood ..."

'Oh sir, if you please,' cried a tall, pale, frightened midshipman at the cabin door, 'Mr Cornwallis's duty, but the digesting machine has burst.'

'Is anyone hurt?' asked Babbington, rising.

'No one actually dead, sir, I believe, but...'

'Forgive me,' said Babbington to his guests. 'I must go and see.'

'How I hate foreign inventions,' said Fanny in the anxious pause.

'Nobody dead,' said Babbington, returning, 'and the surgeon says their scalds are of no consequence - will heal in a month or so - but I am very much concerned to have to tell you, sir, that the pudding is spread just about equally over the cook and his mates and the deck-head. They thought it might cook quicker if they put a smoothing-iron on the safety-valve.'

'It was a pity about the pudding,' said Jack, when they were back in the cabin of the Surprise, 'but upon the whole, I have rarely enjoyed a supper more. And although Fanny Harte may be neither Scylla nor Charybdis, they are very, very fond of one another, and when all is said and done, that is what really signifies. On his way down to Pompey William looked in at Ashgrove Cottage to ask Sophie how she did, and she gave him a note for me in case we should meet: all is well at home, and my mother-in-law is less of a trial than you might suppose. She declares I am cruelly ill-used and that Sophie and I deserve all her sympathy: it is not that she supposed for a moment that I am innocent, but that she thoroughly approves of what she thinks I did - if she had the least opportunity, she would certainly do the same, and so would any other woman who had a proper sense of duty towards her capital... Surely that is not the Marseillaise you are picking out?'

Stephen had his 'cello between his knees and for some time now he had been very quietly stroking two or three phrases with variations upon them - a half-conscious playing that interrupted neither his talk nor his listening. 'It is not,' he said. 'It is, or rather it is meant to be, the Mozart piece that was no doubt lurking somewhere in the Frenchman's mind when he wrote it. Yet something eludes me...'

'Stephen,' cried Jack. 'Not another note, I beg. I have it exactly, if only it don't fly away.' He whipped the cloth off his violin-case, tuned roughly, and swept straight into the true line. After a while Stephen joined him, and when they were thoroughly satisfied they stopped, tuned very exactly, passed the rosin to and fro and so returned to the direct statement, to variations upon it, inversions, embroideries, first one setting out in a flight of improvisation while the other filled in and then the other doing the same, playing on and on until a lee-lurch half-flung Stephen from his seat, so that his 'cello gave a dismal screech.

He recovered, bow and strings unharmed, but their free-flowing rhythm was destroyed, and they played no more. 'It is just as well, however,' said Jack, 'I should very soon have been most damnably out of tune. During the great-gun exercise I ran up and down without a pause, doing what half a dozen midshipmen usually do, each for his own set of guns - I never knew the little brutes were so useful before - and now I am quite fagged out. Hold hard, Stephen,' he cried, catching Stephen as he fell again, this time from a standing position. 'Where are your sea-legs?'

'It is not a question of sea-legs at all,' said Stephen. 'The ship is moving about in a very wild, unbridled manner. A crocodile would fall, in such circumstances, without it had wings.'