Post Captain (17 page)

'She is scarcely commodious, your brig,' he said to Jack. 'We may have serious difficulty with her. I must ask you to go below. Messiers les prisonniers into the hold, if you please - I invite the prisoners to go into the hold.'

There was no denying his authoritative tone. They went below with many a reluctant glance at the evening sea, down hatchway after hatchway to the final grating, which

closed over them with a thump and the rattle of a chain. And it was in the crammed bowels of the Indiaman, shut firmly down in the smell of tea, cinnamon and bilgewater that Jack, Pullings, the Company's Europeans and all the passengers witnessed the action. Aural witnesses, of course, no more, since they were below the water-line, with nothing but a swinging lantern and the vague shape of bales to see, but what they heard they heard well. The Lord Nelson resonated like a sounding-box to the crash of her eighteen-pounders, transposing the roar an octave lower; and the sea transmitted the Seagull's broadsides

- a curious dead thump, like a padded hammer a great way off, a sound devoid of overtones and so distinct that it was sometimes possible to distinguish each of the eight carronades, whose fire would have seemed simultaneous in the open air.

They listened, tried to calculate the direction, worked out the weight of metal - four hundred and thirty-two pounds for the Lord Nelson, three hundred and ninety-two for the brig - and the possibility of bringing it into play. 'Azéma is using his big guns alone,' observed Jack. 'Concentrating on her masts, I make no doubt.' Sometimes the Seagull hit them, and they cheered, full of speculation as to the place of the strike; once a sudden rush in the well and a renewed activity of the pump made it clear that the Lord Nelson had been holed between wind and water, probably in the forepeak; and once a great metallic clang made them think that a gun had been struck; perhaps dismounted.

Towards three o'clock in the morning the candle went out, and they lay in darkness, listening, listening, sometimes regretting their coats, rugs, and pillows and food, and sometimes dozing. The firing went on and on: the Seagull had given up her broadsides and was firing gun by gun; the Lord Nelson had never done anything else throughout the engagement - a steady, deliberate rhythm hour after hour.

Miss Lamb woke with a scream: 'It was a rat! A monstrous great wet rat! 0 how I regret my trousers!'

Extreme attention slackened as the long night wore on. Once or twice Jack spoke to Major Hill and to Pullings and had no reply. He found that his counting of the shots was mingling with a calculation of the number of sick and wounded under Stephen's hands - with observations made to Sophia - with thoughts of food, of coffee, and the playing of the D minor trio - Diana's rough glissando and the deep sustaining note of the 'cello, as they played three-handed.

A flood of light, the grinding of the chain and grating, and he was conscious that he had been three parts asleep.

Not wholly, since he knew that the firing had stopped this last/hour and more, but enough to feel shifty and ashamed.

On deck it was raining, a thin drizzle from a high sky - very little wind, and that a land-breeze; Captain Azéma and his people looked deathly pale, tired, but undisturbed

- too worn for outward pleasure, but undisturbed. Under her fore and main topsails the Lord Nelson was slipping along through the water close-hauled, away from the motionless Seagull, far away on her starboard quarter: even at this distance Jack could see that she had suffered badly. Her foreyard was gone, her maintopmast seemed to be tottering, there was a great deal of wreckage on her deck and dangling over her side: four gun-ports beat in: strangely low in the water: pumps hard at work. She had hauled off to refit, to stop her leaks, and the likelihood of her renewing the action - of being able to renew the action- was.

Captain Azéma had been bent over a gun, laying it with the very greatest care: he gaged the roll, fired, sending a ball plumb amidships into the repairing party. He waited for the flight of the shot, said 'Carry on, Partre,' and stepped back to his mug of coffee, steaming on the binnacle.

It was perfectly allowable; Jack might have done the same; but there was something so cold-blooded about it that Jack refused a draught from the mug and turned to look at the Lord Nelson's damage and at the coast, barring the whole eastern horizon now. The damage was heavy but not crippling; Azéma had not made quite the landfall he had expected - that was Cape Prior right ahead - but he would be in Corunna road by noon. Jack ignored the second gun: he tried to make out why it should wound him so, for he had no particular friend aboard the Seagull. He could not clarify his mind, but he knew he felt the most furious enmity for Azéma, and it was with more than the ordinary leap of delight, of hope revived when all seemed lost, that he saw the first ship round that Spanish headland, heading north. A homeward-bound line-of-battle ship, HMS Colossus, followed by the Tonnant, eighty.

The mast-head hailed 'Two ships of the line'. But two more followed: a very powerful squadron, all sails abroad, and holding the weather-gage. There was not the slightest chance of escape. Mute, weary consternation; and in the silence Jack stepped to the pointed eighteen-pounder, laid his hand on the lock and said coldly, 'You must not fire that gun, sir. You must strike your colours to the brig.'

CHAPTER SIX

At five minutes to eight Jack Aubrey walked quickly through the dreary rain over the cobbles of the Admiralty courtyard, pursued by the voice of the hackney coachman. 'Fourpence! Call yourself a gent? The poor bleeding Navy's half-pay shame, that's what I call you.'

He shrugged, and ducking under the overflow from the gutter he hurried into the hail, past the main waiting-room and on to the little office called the Bosun's Chair, for he had a First Lord's appointment, no less. The fire was beginning to draw, sending up a strong writhe of yellow smoke to join the yellow fog outside, and through the yellow shot darts of red, with a pleasant roar and crackle; he stood with his back to the chimneypiece, looking into the rain and mopping his best uniform with a handkerchief. Several figures passed dimly through the Whitehall arch, civilians under umbrellas, officers exposed to the elements: he thought he recognized two or three -certainly that was Brand of the Implacable - but the mud deep in the buckles of his shoes occupied him too much for close attention.

He was in a high state of nervous excitement - any sailor waiting to see the First Lord must be in a high state of nervous excitement - yet the surface of his mind was taken up less with his coming interview than with getting the utmost possible service from a single handkerchief and with vague darting reflections upon poverty - an old acquaintance, almost a friend - a more natural state for sea-officers than wealth - wealth very charming

- should love to be rich again; but there was the loss of all those little satisfactions of contriving - the triumph of a guinea found in an old waistcoat pocket - the breathless tension over the turn of a card. The hackney-coach had been necessary, however, with the mud ankle-deep, and this damned south-wester: best uniforms did not grow on trees, nor yet silk stockings.

'Captain Aubrey, sir,' said the clerk. 'His lordship will see you now.'

'Captain Aubrey, I am happy to see you,' said Lord Melville. 'How is your father?'

'Thank you, sir, he is very well - delighted with the election, as we all are. But I beg your pardon, my lord. I am out of order. May I offer you my very best congratulations on your peerage?'

'You are very good - very good,' said Lord Melville, and having answered Jack's civil inquiries for Lady Melville and Robert, he went on, 'So you had a lively time of it, coming home?'

'We did indeed, my lord,' cried Jack. 'But I am astonished you should know.'

'Why, it is in the paper - a passenger's letter to her family, describing the Indiaman's capture and recapture. She mentioned you by name - says the handsomest things. Sibbald pointed it out to me.'

That infernal girl, that Lamb, must have sent her letter by the revenue cutter: and there he had been, hurrying up from Plymouth on borrowed money to reach a London filled with bums forewarned, all waiting to arrest him for debt, charmed with the idea of tossing him into the Fleet or the Marshalsea to rot until the war was over and all chance gone. He had known many officers with their careers ruined by a tipstaff - old Baines, Serocold... and there he had been, prancing about the town, dressed like the King's birthday for every sneaking attorney to behold. The thought made him feel cold and sick: he said something about 'quite amazed - had posted up from Plymouth with not more than a couple of hours at his father's place - thought he had certainly outrun the news.' Yet it must have made tolerable sense, for Lord Melville only observed in that Scotch voice of his, 'I am sure you used your best endeavours. but I wish you could have come more betimes

- weeks, nay, months earlier, before all the plums were gone. I should have liked to do something for you: at the beginning of the war there were commands aplenty. I shall look into this question of promotion that has been urged upon me, but I can hold out no hope of a ship. However, there may be some slight possibility in the Sea-Fencibles or the Impress Service: we are extending both, and they call for active, enterprising men.'

They also called for solvent men, seeing that they were landborne posts: comfort-loving men, devoid of ambition or tired of the sea, willing to look after a kind of fisherman's militia or to attend to the odious work of the press-gang. Clearly it was now or never, all or nothing. Once that hard-faced man the other side of the desk had made a firm offer of a shore appointment there would be no shifting him. 'My lord,' said Jack, with all the force and energy he could respectfully express, 'I like a plum, a post-ship, as much as any man alive; but if I might have four pieces of wood that swim, I should be happy, more than happy, to sail them on any service, on any station in the world as a commander or anything else. I have been afloat since I was fourteen, sir, and I have never refused any employment their lordships were good enough to offer me. I believe I may promise you would not regret your decision, sir. All I want is to be at sea again.'

'Heu, heu,' said Lord Melville, in his meditating way, pinning Jack with a grey stare. 'So you make no stipulation of any kind? There was a great deal of clack about your friends wishing you to be made post for the Cacafuego affair.'

'None whatsoever, my lord,' said Jack, and shut his mouth. He thought of trying to explain the unfortunate word 'claim' that he had been inspired to use the last time he was in this room: thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut, wearing a look of deferential attention and maintaining it better than he could have done a year ago, although he had a far greater respect for St Vincent than he ever could have for a civilian.

'Weel,' said the First Lord, after a pause, 'I can promise nothing. You can have no conception of the applications, of the interests to be managed, balanced... but there might be some remote possibility... come and see me next week. In the meantime I will look into this question of promotion, though the post-captain's list is grievously overcharged; and I will turn over the possibilities. Come and see me on Wednesday. Mind me, now, if I do find anything, it will be no plum: that is the one thing I can promise you. But I bind myself in no way at all.'

Jack stood up and made his acknowledgments of his lordship's goodness in seeing him. Lord Melville observed, in an unofficial voice, 'I dare say we shall meet this evening at Lady Keith's: if I can find time, I shall look in.'

'I shall look forward to it extremely, my lord,' said Jack. 'Good day to you,' said Lord Melville, ringing a bell and looking eagerly at his inner door.

'You seem wery cheerful, sir,' said the porter, scanning Jack's face with ancient, red-rimmed eyes. Wery cheerful was an exaggeration; contained satisfaction was more the mark; but at all events it was nothing remotely like the expression of an officer with a flat refusal weighing on his heart.

'Why, Tom, so I am,' said Jack. 'I walked in from Hampstead this morning, as far as Seven Dials. There is nothing like a morning walk to set a man up.'

'Something copper-bottomed, sir?' asked Tom: no tales of morning walks would wash with him. He was old, knowing and familiar; he had known Jack before his first shave, just as he knew almost every other officer on the Navy List below the rank of admiral, and he had a right to a tip if something copper-bottomed turned up while he was on duty.

'Not - not exactly, Tom,' said Jack, looking keenly out through the hall and court to the sodden crowds passing up and down Whitehall - the chops of the Channel, full of shipping; and what cruisers, privateers, chasse-marées, lurking there among them? What unseen rocks? What bums? 'No. But I tell you what it is, Tom: I came out without a cloak and without any money. Just call me a coach and lend me half a guinea, will you?'

Tom had no opinion of sea-officers' powers of discrimination or management on shore; he was not surprised that Jack should have come out lacking the common necessities of life, and from his reading of Jack's expression he was of the opinion that something was on its way - the Fencibles alone would provide a dozen fresh appointments, even if he were not made post. He produced the little coin with a secret, conniving look, and summoned a coach.

Jack plunged into the coach with his hat pulled over his nose and sat huddled low in the corner, peering furtively through the muddy glasses - a curiously deformed, conspicuous figure that excited comment whenever the horse moved at less than a trot. 'An ill-looking parcel of bastards,' he reflected, seeing a bailiff in every full-grown man. 'But my God, what a life. Doing this every day, cooped up with a ledger - what a life.' The cheerless faces went by, hurrying to their dismal work, an endless wet, anxious, cold, grey-yellow stream of people, jostling, pushing past one another like an ugly dream, with here and there a pretty shop-girl or servant to make it more heart-rendingly pathetic.

A convoy of hay-wains came down the Hampstead Road, led by countrymen with long whips. The whips, the drivers' smocks, the horses' tails and manes were trimmed with ribbons, and the men's broad faces shone red, effulgent through the gloom. From Jack's remote and ineffectual schooldays sprang a tag: 0 fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas. 'Come, that is pretty good. How I wish Stephen had been by, to hear it. However, I shall flash it out at him presently.' There would be plenty of opportunity, since they were to travel down the same road that evening to Queenie's rout, and with any luck they would see some agricolas among that pitiable throng.

'Will you tell me about your interview, now?' said Stephen, pushing his report aside and looking into Jack's face with as much attention as the aged porter.

'It was not so bad. Now I have had time to turn it over in my mind, it was not so bad at all. I think they may promote me or give me a ship: one or the other. If they make me post, there is always the possibility of a post-ship in time, and of acting commands; and if they give me a sloop, why, there I am.'

'What are acting commands?'

'When a post-captain is sick, or wants to go ashore for a while - it often happens when they are peers or members of parliament - another post-captain on half-pay is appointed to his ship for the time being. Shall I tell you about it from the beginning?'

'If you please.'

'It started charmingly. The First Lord said he was happy to see me. No First Lord had ever been happy to see me before, or at least he had always managed to contain it - is there any coffee left in that pot, Stephen?'

'There is not. But you may have some beer presently; it is nearly two o'clock.'

'Well, it began charmingly, but then it took the ugliest vile turn imaginable; he made a sad mouth and said it was a pity I had come so late - he would have liked to do something for me. Then he made my heart die within me by prating about the Fencibles and the Impress Service and I knew that somehow I must head him off before he made a direct offer.'

'Why?'

'Oh, it would never do to refuse. If you turn down a ship because she don't suit - because she's on the West Indies station, say, and you don't care for the yellow Jack - it is a black mark against you: you may never be employed again. They don't like you to pick and choose. The good of the service must come first, they say: and they are perfectly in the right of it. Then again, I could not tell him I hated both the Fencibles and the press and that in any event I could accept neither without being laid by the heels.'

'So you evaded the proposal?'

'Yes. Dropping my claim to be made post, I told him anything that would float would do for me. I did not drop it in so many words, but he took the point at once, and after some humming and hawing he spoke of some remote possibility next week. And he would consider the matter of promotion. I am not to think him in any way committed, but am to call again next week. From a man like Lord Melville I regard that as pretty strong.'

'So do I, my dear,' said Stephen, with as much conviction as he could put into his voice - a good deal of conviction, for he had had dealings with the gentleman in question, who had been in command of the secret funds these many years past. 'So do I. Let us eat, drink and be merry. There are sausages in the scrutoire; there is beer in the green jug. I shall regale myself on toasted cheese.'

The French privateers had taken away his Bréguet watch, as well as most of his clothes, instruments and books, but his stomach was as exact as any timepiece, and as they sat themselves at the little table by the fire, so the church clock told the hour. The crew of the swift-sailing Bellone had also taken away the money he had brought from Spain - that had been their first, most anxious care - and since landing at Plymouth he and Jack had been living on the proceeds of one small bill, laboriously negotiated by General Aubrey while their horses waited, and on the hopes of discounting another, drawn on a Barcelona merchant named Mendoza, little known on the London 'change.

At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the heath with green shutters and a honeysuckle over the door - idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?' he called through the open door.

'No, no,' cried Jack, who had seen him do so. 'There is no room - it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?'

'We might have some music,' said Stephen. 'Your friend's piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?'