Post Captain (14 page)

another, of greater strength, for Major Hill. A whale!

A whale!'

'Where away?' cried Mr Johnstone, the first officer. He had been in the Greenland fishery when he was young, and his whole being responded to the cry. He had no answer, for Dr Maturin was squatting like a baboon, resting a telescope on the rail and training it with concentrated diligence upon the heaving sea between the ship and the horizon; but directing his gaze along the tube and staring under his two hands cupped Mr Johnstone presently saw the distant spout, followed by the hint of an immense slow roll; gleaming black against the grey.

'Och, she's no good to you at all,' he said, relaxing. 'A finwhale.'

'Could you really see its fins that great way off?' cried Miss Susan. 'How wonderful sailors are! But why is it no good, Mr Johnstone? Not quite wholesome, perhaps, like oysters without an R?'

'There she blows!' cried Mr Johnstone, but in a detached, academic voice, from mere habit. 'Another one. See the spout, Miss Susan. Just a single fountain-jet: that means a finner - your right-whale shows two. Aye, aye, there she goes again. There must be a fair-sized pod. No good to man or beast. It vexes my heart to think of all that prime oil swimming there, no good to man or beast.'

'But why is the whale no good?' asked Miss Lamb.

'Why, because she is a finwhale, to be sure.'

'My sister means, what is wrong with being a finwhale? Do you not, Lucy?'

'The finner is too hugeous, ma'am. If you are so rash as to make an attempt upon her - if you creep up in the whale-boat and strike your harpoon home, she will bash the boat like a bowl of neeps as she sounds, maybe, and in any case she will run out your two-hundred-fathom whale-line in less than a minute - you bend on another as quick as you can - she runs it out - another, and still she runs. She tows you under, or she carries all away:

you lose your line or your life or both. Which is as who should say, be humble, flee ambition. Canst thou draw up Leviathan with a hook? Confine thyself to the right-whale, thy lawful prey.'

'Oh, I will, Mr Johnstone,' cried Miss Lamb. 'I promise you I shall never attack a finwhale all my life.'

Jack liked to see a whale - amiable creatures - but he could tear himself away from them more easily than either Stephen or the person at the mast-head who was supposed to be looking-out, and for some time now he had been watching the white fleck of sails against the darkening westward sky. A ship, he decided at last: a ship under easy sail on the opposite tack.

A ship she was, the Bellone, a Bordeaux privateer, one of the most beautiful to sail from that port, high and light as a swan, yet stiff; a thirty-four-gun ship-rigged privateer with a clean bottom, a new set of sails and two hundred and sixty men aboard. A fair proportion of those sharp-eyed mariners were at present in the tops or at the crowded mast-heads, and although they could not exactly make the Lord Nelson out, they could see enough to make Captain Dumanoir edge cautiously down for a closer look in the failing light.

What he saw was a twenty-six-gun ship, that was certain; probably a man-of-war, but if so then a partially disabled man-of-war, or her topgallantmasts would never have been down on deck in such a breeze. And as Dumanoir and his second captain gazed and pondered in the main crosstrees all notion of the Lord Nelson's being a man-of-war gradually left them. They were old-experienced sailors; they had seen much of the Royal Navy in the last ten years; and there was something about the Lord Nelson's progress that did not square with their experience.

'She's an Indiaman,' said Captain Dumanoir, and although he was only three parts convinced his heart began to thump and his arm to tremble; he hooked it round the topgallant shrouds and repeated, 'An Indiaman.' Short of a Spanish galleon or treasure-ship, a British Indiaman was the richest prize the sea could offer.

A hundred little details confirmed his judgment; yet he might be wrong; he might be leading his precious Bellone into an action with one of those stubby English sixth-rates that carried twenty-four-pounder carronades, the genuine smashers, served by a numerous, well-trained, bloody-minded crew; and although Captain Dumanoir had no sort of objection to a dust-up with any vessel roughly his own size, King's ship or not, he was primarily a commerce destroyer; his function was to provide his owners with a profit, not to cover himself with glory.

He regained his quarterdeck, took one or two turns, glancing up at the western sky. 'Dowse the lights one by one,' he said. 'And in fifteen minutes' time put her about. Courses and foretopsail alone. Matthieu, Jean-Paul, Petit-Andre, up you go: let them be relieved every glass, Monsieur Vincent.' The Bellone was one of the few French ships of the time in which these orders, together with others concerning the preparation of the guns and small-arms, were received without comment and exactly obeyed.

So exactly that even before the lightening of the day the look-out on the Lord Nelson's forecastle felt the loom of a ship to the windward, a ship sailing on a parallel course and not much above a mile away. What he could not see was that the ship was cleared for action - guns run out, shot-racks charged, cartridge filled and waiting, small arms served out, splinter-netting rigged, yards puddened, boats towing astern - but he did not like her proximity, nor the lack of lights, and when he had stared awhile, wiping his streaming eyes, he hailed the quarterdeck: between his sneezes he gave Mr Pullings to understand that there was a vessel on the larboard beam.

Pullings' mind, lulled by the long even send of the sea, the regular hum of the rigging, the warmth of his pilot-jacket and blackguardly wool hat, exploded into sharp awareness. He was out of his corner by the binnacle, half-way up the weather shrouds, before the sneezing had stopped: three seconds for a long hard stare, and he turned up the watch with the roar he had learnt aboard HMS Sophie. The boarding-netting was already rigging out on the long iron cranes by the time he had shaken Captain Spottiswood into full wakefulness - orders confirmed, beat to action, clear the decks, run out the guns, women down into the hold.

He found Jack on deck in his nightshirt. 'She means business,' he said, over the high beating of the eastern drum. The privateer had put up her helm. Her yards were braced round and she was entering a long smooth curve that would cut the Lord Nelson's present course in perhaps a quarter of an hour; her main and fore sails were dewed up, and it was clear that she meant to bear down under topsails alone - could do so with ease, a greyhound after a badger. 'But I have time to put my breeches on.'

Breeches, a pair of pistols. Stephen methodically laying out his instruments by the light of a farthing dip.

'What do you make of her, Jack?' he asked.

'Corvette or a damned big privateer: she means business.'

Up on deck. Much more daylight already, and a scene of less disorder than he had feared, a far better state of things. Captain Spottiswood had put the Indiaman before the wind to gain a few minutes' preparation, the French ship was still half a mile away, still under her topsails, still a little dubious, choosing to probe the Lord Nelson's strength rather than make a dash for it.

Captain Spottiswood might lack decision, but his officers did not, nor the most part of his crew: they were used to the pirates of the South China Sea, to the wicked Malays of the Straits, to the Arabs of the Persian Gulf, and they had the boarding-netting rigged out taut and trim, the arms chest open, and at least half the guns run out.

On the crowded quarterdeck Jack snapped in between two sets of orders, said, 'I am at your disposition, sir.' The drawn, hesitant, elderly face turned towards him. 'Shall I take command of the for'ard division?'

'Do, sir. Do.'

'Come with me,' he said to Major Hill, hovering there at the fringe of the group. They ran along the gangway to the forward eighteen-pounders, two under the forecastle, two bare to the thin rain. Pullings had the waist division; the first officer the twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck; Mr Wand the maindeck eighteen-pounders aft, all encumbered in the stateroom and the cabins; and overhead a tall thin midshipman, looking desperately ill, stood shouting weakly at the bow-gun's crew.

The forward division on the larboard side, guns one, three, five and seven, were fine modern flintlock pieces; two were already run out - primed, cocked and waiting. Number one's port-lid was jammed, its crew prising with their crows and handspikes in the confined space, thumping it with shot, hauling on the port-tackle, all smelling of brown men in violent emotion. Jack bent low under the beams, straddled the gun: with his hands hard on the carnage he lashed out backwards with all his might. Splinters and flakes of paint dropped from the port: it did not budge - seemed built into the ship. Three times. He slipped off, hobbled round to check the breeching, cried 'Bowse her up' and as the gun's muzzle came hard against the port, 'Stand by, stand by.' He pulled the laniard. A spark, a great sullen crash (damp powder, by God), and the gun leapt back under him. The acrid smoke tore out of the shattered port, and as it thinned Jack saw the sponger already at work, his swab right down the barrel of the gun, while the rest of the crew clapped on to the train-tackle. 'They know their business' he thought with pleasure, leaning out and tearing the wreckage from its hooks. 'Crucify that God-damned gunner!' But this was no time for reflection. Number three was still inboard. Jack and Major Hill tailed on to the side-tackles, and with 'One - two - three' they ran it up, the carriage crashing against the port-sill and the muzzle as far out as it could go. Number five had no more than four Lascars and a midshipman to serve it, an empty shot-rack and only three wads: it must have run itself out on the roll when they cast loose. 'Where are your men?' he asked the boy, taking his dirk and cutting the seizing within the clinch.

'Sick, sir, all sick. Kalim is nearly dead - can't speak.'

'Tell the gunner we must have shot and a cheese of wads. Cut along. Now, sir?' to another midshipman.

'Captain asks what did you fire for, sir,' panted the young man.

'To open the port,' said Jack, smiling into his round-eyed, anxious face. 'Tell him, with my compliments, there is nothing like enough eighteen-pound shot on deck. Cut along now.' The boy shut his mouth on the rest of his message and vanished.

Number seven was in good shape: seven men to its crew, powder-boy standing over to starboard with a cartridge in his hands, gun levelled, tackle-falls neatly faked down; all ship-shape. Its captain, a grizzled European, only replied with a nervous chuckle, keeping his head bent away, feigning to look along the sights. A run seaman, no doubt, a man who had served with him in some commission, who had deserted, and who was afraid of being recognized. Once a quarter-gunner, to judge from the trimness of the gear. 'I hope he can point his piece as well as he..

Jack straightened from his inspection of the flint and pan and glanced right and left. The hammocks were coming up in relays, piling into the netting. Half a dozen very sick men flogged on deck by the serang's mates, were creeping about with shot, and he was standing behind them, obviously in full control; there was still some confusion on the quarterdeck, but the air of frantic haste had gone. This was a breathing-space, and lucky they were to have it. Fore and aft the Indiaman looked like a fighting-ship: thinly manned, decks still encumbered, but a fighting-ship. He looked out over the sea: light enough to see the red of the tricolour five hundred yards away - a severe cold light now the rain had stopped, and a grey, grey sea. Wind steady in the west; high cloud except on the horizon; a long even swell. The Bellone still had her larboard tacks aboard:

she was hanging off to see what weight of metal the Lord Nelson carried. And the Lord Nelson was still before the wind, moving heavily - this was one of her many bad points of sailing. If Captain Spottiswood continued to run it was likely that the Frenchman would bear up, and moving two miles for the Lord Nelson's one, cross under her stern and rake her. That was his business: for the moment Jack's world was confined to his guns: there was a comfort in subordination, in small responsibility, no decisions...

Seven, five and three were well enough: number one was still too cluttered for a full team to work it fast, and a full team it must have. A last sharp look at the privateer - how beautifully she breasted the swell - and he dived under the forecastle.

Hard, fast, dogged, mechanical work, shifting heavy lumps, bales, casks: he found that what he was whistling under his breath was the adagio from Hummel's piece -Sophia's inept playing of it - Diana's rough splendid dash - a jet of intense feeling for Sophia - loving, protective -a clear image of her on the steps of that house. Some fool, Stephen of all people, had said you could not be both busy and unhappy, sad.

The Bellone's opening gun cut short these reflections. Her starboard bow eight-pounder sent a ball skipping along the Lord Nelson's larboard side; and as though he had needed this to set him going, Captain Spottiswood called out his orders. The yards braced round, the seascape turned, and the privateer came into view through the number one gun-port, framed there, bright against the darkness of the low crowded forecastle. The Lord Nelson fell off a little, steadied on her new course with the Bellone on her larboard quarter, so that now Jack saw no more than her head-sails, four hundred yards away, long musket-shot. And as the Indiaman steadied, so her after guns went off, a six-fold crash, a thin high-pitched cheering, and the word came forward. 'Fire as they bear.'

'This is more like it,' said Jack, plunging out of the forecastle. The long pause before action was always hard to bear, but now in a few seconds everything would vanish but for the living instant - no sadness, no time for fear. Number seven was in good hands, trained right round aft as far as the port would allow, and its captain glaring along the barrel, poised for the roll. The waist guns went off together, and in their eddying smoke - it filled his lungs, a choking exaltation - Jack and Major Hill flung themselves upon the long crows to heave number five, that dull inanimate weight, while the Lascars tailed on to the forward train-tackle to help traverse it to point it at the Bellone's stern, just in view over the dispart-sight. Number seven went off with a poor slow explosion and a great deal of smoke. 'If the powder is all like that,' thought Jack, crouching over number five, his handspike ready to elevate the gun, 'we might as well try boarding right away. But,' he added, 'it is more likely the mumping villain has never drawn it this last week and more.' He waited for the smoke to clear, for the roll of the ship to bring the gun to bear, slowly up and up, and just as he heaved on the laniard he saw the Bellone vanish in the white cloud of her own broadside. The gun sprang from under his arched body. He could not see the fall of the shot for the smoke, but from the fine round crash it must have been well pitched up. The privateer's broadside sang and howled overhead - holes in the foretopsail, a bowline hanging loose. The bow-gun overhead went off, and he darted into the forecastle, leaping over the train-tackle as number five was sponged and reloaded. He laid three and one, fired them, and ran back along the line to help run out number five again.