The Surgeon's Mate (39 page)

But then no more, no gleam, no flash, all swallowed up in a driving pelting rain so thick that men ducked their heads to breathe, rain borne almost flat across the deck by a wind whose voice in the rigging and over the torn sea rose to such a pitch that it would have drowned any broadside beyond half a mile. At first they thought it was a squall, but it lasted, all night it lasted; and they were obliged to admit they had utterly lost sight of the Jason and her chase.

'Never mind,' said Jack. 'We shall see them to windward at break of day.' Always providing the Meduse had not put before the wind for Cherbourg, he added to himself; for by his reckoning, based on Jason's position some hours before, she should have reached the best point for a run up mid-channel, with no great risk of interception on a night as dirty as this.

'Should you not turn in, sir?' suggested Hyde diffidently. 'You have been on deck since the beginning, as well as most of last night. There is nothing we can do, with the sky as dark as pitch; and we have two hundred miles under our lee.'

'I believe I shall, Hyde,' said Jack. 'Keep her just so,'-the ship was under lower staysails, reefed forecourse and mizen, heading south-east, plunging along through a very heavy sea, the wind steady in the west-south-west- 'and let me be called at daylight, or if anything should happen before.' It was dirty weather, very dirty weather, but the Ariel was a fine tight weatherly little ship, a good sea-boat, and she could deal with worse than this in spite of her jury foretopmast.

Rarely had he slept so deep. He had hardly thrown off his jacket before his eyes were closing: as he lay down he could hear himself breathing, perhaps snoring, for a moment and then he was gone, gone into a strangely vivid dream in which some fool was shaking him and bawling into his ear 'Breakers under the lee.'

'Breakers under the lee, sir,' shouted Hyde again.

'Christ,' said Jack, instantly awake. He leapt from his cot and sprang up on deck, Hyde following with his jacket. There in the greyness, neither night nor yet day, white water showed broad on the larboard beam, an enormous sea breaking on a vast shoal of rocks, two cables' lengths away.

The ship was still close hauled on the starboard tack: although she was making a fair headway the wind, the swell and the making tide were all heaving her in towards the reef, broadside on. She would never stay out against such a wind even if her foretopmast were sound; he could not tack; but there was still just room to wear. 'Hands about ship. Hard a-port,' he said, and no more. The officers and men flew to their duty, the after sails vanished, the ship paid off to leeward, faster and faster towards the reef, turned on its very edge, turned through twenty points, and came up beautifully on the larboard tack heading north-north-west.

'Luff and touch her,' Jack said to the man at the wheel. 'Shiver the maincourse.' He wanted no strong headway until he knew where he was: they were either right on Ushant or the French mainland - in either case his reckoning had set him fifty miles north of his true position and far to the east - but it was essential to know which. Staring to leeward he could scarcely make out more than the dark loom of land through the rain: yet at least he did see that Hyde had done all that was proper aboard - the carpenter and his crew stood by with axes to cut away the masts; in the bows the anchors were cleared away and ready a-cockbill; the lead was going in the mainchains, rapid casts, no chant, the depth instantly given 'Six. A quarter less five... '

'Breakers ahead,' roared the forecastle lookout.

Jack ran forward, surveyed the long line of fast appearing white, a second reef that barred their path to the west and the north, their way to the open sea: an unbroken line that seemed to end in a dim headland away to starboard. The reef grew clearer, and he saw rollers breaking far out into the offing, a great breadth of mortal surf. 'Fill the maincourse,' he called. 'One point to starboard.' The Ariel ran on straight for the white water. As he gauged the distance and the force of the wind, listening intently to the leadsman, the hands on the forecastle turned their anxious faces to his with total reliance in his judgment. Fifty yards from the turmoil he called 'Hard a-weather.' The Ariel shot up into the wind, paused in four fathoms, and he said 'Let go the best bower' just as sternway came on her. The anchor held. She gently veered out a cable and rode there between the two reefs, bowing the sea and the tide, a strong tide near the top of the flood. It was a respite: but if they were where he suspected it could not last long. He sent to rouse Stephen, Jagiello and the Colonel; called for a double guard on the spirit-room, for seamen loved to die drunk; ordered the galley fires to be lit. Some of the Ariel's people were badly frightened, as well they might be, and an appearance of order would comfort them, to say nothing of hot burgoo in their bellies.

Already the day was coming, with light over the land: the rain stopped abruptly, the thick haze swept off the sea, and he knew where he was. It was worse than he had thought. They were in what the Navy called Gripes Bay, deep in Gripes Bay: the Ariel had somehow contrived to make her way between the two main reefs in the night, never touching any of the countless rocks that lay scattered between them. It was a vile bay, open to the south-west, never frequented by the ships of the inshore squadron -bad holding ground for anchors, ugly sharp rocks to cut cables, reefs wherever you looked. But he knew its waters well from fishing expeditions in small craft during calm weather when he was on the Brest blockade; and as a seventeen-year-old master's mate he had commanded the Resolution's yawl when the boats of the squadron stormed the Camaret battery. He looked over the taff-rail, and there was the battery itself, a short mile away, a fort high-perched above the north end of the reef; it had been repaired of course, and presently the soldiers would wake up and open fire. Beyond Camaret lay Brest: at the bottom of the bay the village of Tregonnec with its little half-moon jetty round the fishermen's harbour at the mouth of the stream, and another strong fort. No lying there between two fires, although the shore was calm enough, protected as it was by such massive reefs; no great surf on the beach, even with such an enormous sea beating outside. But southwards there was the other horn of the bay, Gripes Point; and round Gripes Point lay salvation, the beautiful great bight of Douarnenez, where a whole squadron could lie, sheltered from the south and west and laughing at the French batteries, too far off to do any harm.

To get there he would have to work round the point. The only way of doing so was to run south, skirting the inner reef towards the rock they called the Thatcher, close in by the southern arm of the bay, and then to go about, make a short board towards the outer reef, and so round Gripes Point into safety, there to lie until the gale blew itself out and a falling tide enabled them to run clear -there was not the least possibility of weathering the outer reef, of running through the gap, at present, with the wind dead on shore. He hoped to God they would be able to go about well before the Thatcher, while there was room to wear, for there was no question of tacking right down there, where the thrust of the sea, unbroken by the outer reef, was so very much greater. But he could decide on the point of turn only when he was much nearer; in the meantime there was the question of rocks and shoals in their path. 'Do any of you gentlemen know this bay?' he asked the quarterdeck. They looked at one another: a general blankness. But before any could reply they were soaked with flying water; the fort had opened fire and the first shot pitched no more than six feet wide of the starboard mainchains.

'Cut the cable,' said Jack. 'Port your helm.'

The ship gathered sternway, turning as she went; the backed jib filled, followed by the hard-braced topsails; and after an infinitesimal pause of no motion she began to surge forward, faster and faster still, through a fresh downpour from the offing. Jack set her down the channel between the inner reef and the outer, and in spite of the shot falling all round them he reduced sail. 'Cast quick, cast quick,' he called to the leadsman: he must not run plump on to a rock or a minor reef. A ricochet from the fort knocked the ensign-staff away and skipped through the mizen topsail.

'Colours to a whip in the leeward shrouds, Mr Hyde,' he said, without looking astern. 'How I hate being fired at from the shore,' he muttered. But at least this fire was not as accurate as some he had known from French batteries; for the short time it lasted the rain-storm almost entirely hid the Ariel, and the artillerymen pointed their pieces at random.

On, cautiously on. He was beginning to recover the whole feel of the bay: on the starboard beam there was a rock where they used to catch gurnards, and on the bow the cluster of islets where they took crayfish at low tide - a white mass of breakers now. Presently they would pass the gap in the inner reef that the fishermen used: the spring tide would be flowing in at a furious rate.

He hauled up a point to anticipate its thrust; and as the leadsman's voice rose to a scream, 'Mark three, mark three,' the Ariel struck in the trough of a wave, a long deep grinding crash that made her check and stagger in her pace, trembling from stem to stern. Then she was off, running smoothly, and the leadsman cried 'Mark five, mark five, deep six, and a half six'; a long dark piece of her false keel showed in the wild water to larboard, turning and rearing as it ran through the gap to the distant shore. Grimmond hurried below.

'Cast quick, cast quick,' said Jack again. 'Cast well ahead.'

'Aye aye sir,' said the leadsman, and he whirled his long heavy plummet in an even wider circle before shooting it out.

They were out of the battery's range, and presently they would be out of the shelter of the outer reef. Its southern extremity was the point he must reach in order to wear round and run into the shelter, the safety of Douarnenez Bay, once he had reached that southern end there would be no difficulty, but of course he could only reach it close-hauled on the larboard tack and as they ran it became more and more evident that the beginning of the turn must lie far along, right down by the Thatcher itself. Nothing short of the Thatcher would bring them out. That meant there would be no room to wear, nothing remotely like it: scarcely even room to club-haul her, a perilous manoeuvre at the best of times, and here he would have to judge it to the yard. With such a wind and sea, and among such rocks, there would be no correcting any error. And the Thatcher was no great way off.

'All's well below, sir,' said the master, coming from the hold. 'A couple of foot in the forepeak, no more.'

Jack nodded. That was very far from well in such a dry ship at ordinary times, but now it did not signify. 'Mr Hyde,' he said, 'I am going to club-haul the ship when we reach that tall black and white rock. Let the sheet-anchor be cleared away: men with axes to stand by.' Then raising his voice to a hoarse shout that carried over the gale, 'Ariels: we are going about, club-hauled, when we reach the height of the Thatcher. Let every man obey the word of command on the instant and with God's help we weather the point and ride snug in Douarnenez Bay. A mistake and we drive on the rock. Do nothing until you are told, but then do it like lightning.' The men nodded, looking very grave but quite confident; he saw with pleasure that not one of them had got at the spirit-room.

Now the ship was far out of the shelter of the offshore reef and she took the full force of the sea and the gale: at this pace - and he had to bear sail - the Thatcher was five minutes away, four minutes away, the white water towering up its sheer side in solemn, thunderous, long-spaced fountains.

'What does he mean by club-haul?' asked Jagiello, clinging to the rail by Stephen's side.

'He means to drop the anchor, stop the ship's motion with its head to the wind, cut the rope, and go off in the other direction, a short way out to sea and so round the cape.'

'The rock is very close.'

'The leadsman says there is a proper depth: hear him.'

'Luff,' cried Jack, his eyes fixed on the Thatcher and the drifting kelp. 'Up staysail sheets.' And after an unbearable five seconds, 'Let go the anchor.'

All at once her bowsprit was pointing straight into the roaring gale, though the heavy seas tried to force her head to leeward. 'Up maintack... haul of all. Cut.'

The axe flashed down on the cable. She was almost round, in the balance. Already she had a prodigious sternway, moving straight for the Thatcher. 'Fetch a cast aft, far aft,' cried Jack to the leadsman, leaning out over the quarter-rail to judge the last possible moment, the greatest possible impetus for the full starboard helm that would bring her right round. The leadsman turned, swung with all his might: the leadline caught the bellying ensign-whip, the lead shot inboard, struck Jack down on the deck.

On his hands and knees, through the crash of the blow and the roar of the sea he heard Hyde's voice at an infinite distance shout 'Larboard all - I mean starboard,' then an all-embracing thunder as the Ariel struck the Thatcher full on, beating her rudder and staving in much of her stern.

He was on his feet - a momentary glimpse of Hyde's appalled deathly face - and he saw the ship broadside on to the sea. 'Brail up, clew up mizen and main: foresail sheets aft,' he cried.

Grinding and grinding again over rock, the good Ariel brought her head right before the wind and he drove her over the narrowest part of the inner reef with what steering the foresail alone would provide. He was still at a great distance, very far removed, but all his mind that was clear felt with the ship and after the seventh great shattering strike he knew her back was broken amidships. Yet with spring-tide near its height she did not hold fast, but drove on and on through breakers that reared up to her tops.

In the calmer water beyond the reef she still swam, she still steered; but it could not last long. 'Guns overboard,' he said. With their weight gone she would stay afloat long enough for him to run her ashore. A few minutes later, with the wind and the sea and the tide heaving her in towards the mouth of the river he told the officers to fetch their commissions and see to their affairs: then he beckoned Stephen and they went below: the water was already shin-deep in the cabin. 'The Colonel must shift into a Marine's uniform and pass for a private,' he said. 'Do you agree?' Stephen nodded. Jack said, 'I will give the order,' and he gathered up the lead-covered signal-book, his dispatches and private papers, and his sword, told the steward to pack what he could, and went back on deck. He threw the signal-book, his dispatches and his sword overboard, spoke to the Marine officer about the Colonel, and returned to steering the poor heavy wreck to the shore.