Post Captain (33 page)

But the Polychrest spent tomorrow night on the other side of the Channel, lying to under Dungeness, shipping such seas that Jack thought he should have to run for the shelter of the Isle of Wight, and report back to the admiral with his tail between his legs, his mission unaccomplished; but the wind chopped round westwards at dawn, and the sloop, pumping hard, began to creep back under close-reefed topsails across the angry water - a sea so short and steep that she proceeded by sickening and often unpredictable jerks, and in the gun-room no amount of fiddles or ingenuity on the parts of the diners would keep their food on the table.

The purser's place was empty, as it usually was as soon as the first reef was taken in; and Pullings was dozing as he sat.

'You do not suffer from the sea-sickness, sir?' said Stephen to Macdonald.

'Why, no, sir. But then I come from the Western Isles, and we are in boats as soon as we are breeched.'

'The Western Isles... The Western Isles. There was a Lord of the Isles - of your family, I presume, sir?' -Macdonald bowed. 'And that always seemed to me the most romantic title that ever was. We, indeed, have our White Knight, and the Knight of the Glen, the O'Connor Don, the McCarthy Mor, O'Sionnach the Fox, and so on; but the Lord of the Isles... it gives a feeling of indeterminate magnificence. That reminds me: I had the strangest impression today - an impression of time recovered. Two of your men, both by the name of Macrea, I believe, were speaking privately, furbishing their equipment with one piece of pipeclay between them as I stood near them -nothing of any consequence, you understand, just small disagreement about the pipeclay, the first desiring the second to kiss his arse and the second wishing the soul of the first to the Devil and a good deal more to the same effect. And I understood directly, without the least thought or conscious effort of will!'

'You have the Gaelic, sir?' cried Macdonald.

'No, sir,' said Stephen, 'and that is what is so curious. I no longer speak it; I thought I no longer understood it. And yet there at once, with no volition on my part, there was complete understanding. I had no idea the Erse and the Irish were so close; I had imagined the dialects had moved far apart. Pray, is there a mutual understanding between your Hebrideans and the Highlanders on the one, and let us say the native Ulstermen on the other?'

'Why, yes, sir; there is. They converse tolerably well, on general subjects, on boats, fishing, and bawdy. There are some different words, to be sure, and great differences of intonation, but with perseverance and repetition they can make themselves understood very well - a tolerably free communication. There are some Irishmen among the pressed hands, and I have heard them and my marines speaking together.'

'If I had heard them, they would be on the defaulters' list,' said Parker, who had come below, dripping like a Newfoundland dog.

'Why is this?' asked Stephen.

'Irish is forbidden in the Navy,' said Parker. 'It is prejudicial to discipline; a secret language is calculated to foment mutiny.'

'Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,' said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. 'We'll lose the mizen first, Doctor,' - picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage - 'and so we'll be a brig; then we'll lose the foremast, so we'll be a right little old sloop; then we'll lose the main, and we'll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.'

By some miracle of dexterity Macdonald had seized, and preserved, the decanter; holding it up he said, 'If you can find a whole glass, Doctor, I should be happy to drink a wee doodly of wine with you, and to lead your mind back to the subject of Ossian. From the obliging way in which you spoke of my ancestor, it is clear that you have a fine delicate notion of the sublime; and sublimity, sir, is the greatest internal evidence of Ossian's authenticity. Allow me to recite you a short description of the dawn.'

Once again the blue light shone down on the deck of the Polychrest and the uplifted faces of the watch; but this time it drifted off to the north-east, for the wind had come right round, bringing a thin rain and the promise of more, and this time it was almost instantly answered by musketry on the shore - red points of flame and a remote pop-pop-pop.

'Boat pulling off, sir,' called the man in the top. And two minutes later, 'On deck, on deck there! Another boat, sir. Firing on the first one.'

'All hands to make sail,' cried Jack, and the Polychrest woke to urgent life. 'Fo'c'sle, there; cast loose two and four. Mr Rolfe, fire on the second boat as I run inshore. Fire the moment they bear - full elevation. Mr Parker, tops'ls and courses.' They were half a mile off, well out of range of his carronades, but if only he could get under way he would soon shorten it. Oh, for just one long gun, a chaser.

The supplementary orders came thick and fast, a continuous, repetitive, exasperated clamour. 'Lay aloft, jump to it, trice up, lay out, lay out - will you lay out there on the maintops' yard? Let fall, God damn your - eyes, let fall, mizen tops'l. Sheet home. Hoist with a will, now, hoist away.'

Christ, it was agony: it might have been an undermanned merchantman, a dung-scow in pandemonium: he clasped his hands behind his back and stepped to the rail to prevent himself running forward to sort out the confused bellowing on the fo'c'sle. The boats were coming straight for him, the second firing two or three muskets and a spatter of pistols.

At last the bosun piped belay and the Polychrest began to surge forward, lying over to the wind. Keeping his eye on the advancing boats he said, 'Mr Goodridge, lay her in to give the gunner a clear shot. Mr Macdonald, your marksmen into the top - fire at the second boat.'

Now the sloop was really moving, opening the angle between the two boats: but at the same time the first boat began to turn towards her, shielding its pursuer from his fire. 'The boat ahoy,' he roared. 'Steer clear of my stern -pull a-starboard.'

Whether they heard, whether they understood or no, a gap appeared between the boats. The forward carronades went off - a deep crash and a long tongue of flame. He did not see the fall of the shot, but it had no effect on the following boat, which kept up its excited fire. Again, and this time he caught it, a split-second plume in the grey, well short, but in the right direction. The first musket cracked out overhead, followed by three or four together. A carronade again, and this time the ball was pitched well up to the second boat, for the Polychrest had moved two or three hundred yards: it must have ricocheted over their heads, for it damped their ardour. They came on still, but at the next shot the pursuing boat spun round, fired a last wanton musket and pulled fast out of range.

'Heave her to, Mr Goodridge,' said Jack. 'Back the mizen tops'l. The boat, ahoy! What boat?' There was a gabbling out there on the water, fifty yards away. 'What boat?' he hailed again, leaning far over the rail, the rain driving in on his face.

'Bourbon,' came a faint cry, followed by a strong shout, 'Bourbon' again.

'Pull under my lee,' said Jack. The way was off the Polychrest, and she lay there pitching and groaning. The boat touched alongside, hooked to the mainchains, and in the glow of the battle-lanterns he saw a body crumpled in the stern-sheets.

'Le monsieur est touché,' said the man with the boat-hook.

'Is he badly hurt - mauvaisement blessay?'

'Sais pas, commandant. Il parle plus: je crois bien que c'est un macchabée a present. Y a du sang partout. Vous voulez pas me faire passer une élingue, commandant?'

'Eh? Parlez - pass the word for the Doctor.'

It was not until they had got his patient into Jack's cabin that Stephen saw his face. Jean Anquetil, a nervous, timid-brave, procrastinating, unlucky young man: and he was bleeding to death. The bullet had nicked his aorta, and there was nothing, nothing he could do: the blood was pumping out in great throbs.

'It will be over in a few minutes,' he said, turning to Jack.

'And so, sir, he died within minutes of being brought aboard,' said Jack.

Admiral Harte grunted. He said, 'That is everything he had on him?'

'Yes, sir. Greatcoat, boots, clothes and papers: they are very bloody, I am afraid.'

'Well, that is a matter for the Admiralty. But what about this death-or-money boat?'

So that was the reason for his ill-humour. 'I sighted the boat when I was on my station, sir; there were fifty-three minutes to go before the rendezvous, and if I had borne down I must necessarily have been late - I could never have beaten back in time. You know what the Polychrest is on a bowline, sir.'

'And you know the tag about workmen and their tools, Captain Aubrey. Anyhow, there is such a thing as being too scrupulous by half The fellow was never at the rendezvous at all: these foreigners never are. And in any case, half an hour or so... and it positively could not have been more, even with a crew of old women. Are you aware, sir, that Amethyst's boats picked up that Deal bugger as he was running into Ambleteuse with eleven hundred guineas aboard? It makes me mad to think of it... made a cock of the whole thing.' He drummed his fingers on the table. The Amethyst was cruising under Admiralty orders, Jack reflected; the flag-officer had no share in her prize-money; Harte had lost about a hundred and fifty pounds, he was not pleased 'However,' went on the admiral, 'it is no use crying over spilt milk. As. soon as the wind gets out of the south I am taking the convoy down. You will wait here for the Guinea men to join, and the ships in the list Spalding will give you: you are to escort them as far as the Rock of Lisbon, and I have no doubt on your way back you will make good this little mess. Spalding will give you your orders you will find no cast-iron rigid rendezvous'.

By morning the wind had shifted into the west-north-west, and the blue peter broke out at a hundred foretopmastheads: boats by the score hurried merchant captains, mates, passengers and their relatives from Sandwich, Walmer, Deal and even Dover, and many a cruel extortionate bargain was struck when the flagship's signals, reinforced by insistent guns, made it clear that time was short, that this time was the true departure. Towards eleven o'clock the whole body, apart from those that had fallen foul of one another, was under way in three straggling divisions, or rather heaps. Orderly or disorderly, however, they made a splendid sight, white sails stretching over four or five miles of grey sea, and the high, torn sky sometimes as grey as the one or as white as the other. An impressive illustration of the enormous importance of trade to the island, too; one that might have served the Polychrest's midshipmen as a lesson in political economy and on the powers of the average seaman at evading the press - there were some thousands of them there, sailing unscathed from the very heart of the Impress Service.

But they, in common with the rest of the ship's company, were witnessing punishment. The grating was rigged, the bosun's mates stood by, the master-at-arms brought up his delinquents, a long tally charged with drunkenness - gin had been coming aboard from the bum-boats, as it always did - contempt, neglect of duty, smoking tobacco outside the galley, playing dice, theft. On these occasions Jack always felt gloomy, displeased with everybody aboard, innocent and guilty alike: he looked tall, cold, withdrawn, and, to those under his power, his nearly absolute power, horribly savage, a right hard horse. This was early in the commission and he had to establish an unquestioning discipline; he had to support his officers' authority. At the same time he had to steer fine between self-defeating harshness and (although indeed some of these charges were trivial enough, in spite of his words with Parker) fatal softness; and he had to do so without really knowing three quarters of his men. It was a difficult task, and his face grew more and more lowering. He imposed extra duties, cut grog for three days, a week, a fortnight, awarded four men six lashes apiece, one nine, and the thief a dozen. It was not much, as flogging went; but in the old Sophie they had sometimes gone two months and more without bringing the cat out of its red baize bag: it was not much, but even so it made quite a ceremony, with the relevant Articles of War read out, the drum-roll, and the gravity of a hundred men assembled.

The swabbers cleaned up the mess, and Stephen went below to patch or anoint the men who had been flogged - those, that is to say, who reported to him. The seamen put on their shirts again and went about their business, trusting to dinner and grog to set them right: the landsmen who had not been beaten navy-fashion before were much more affected - quite knocked up; and the thieves' cat had made an ugly mess of thief Carlow's back, the bosun's mate being first cousin to the man he robbed.

He came on deck again shortly before the men were piped to dinner, and seeing the first lieutenant walking up and down looking pleased with himself, he said to him, 'Mr Parker, will you indulge me in the use of a small boat in let us say an hour? I could wish to walk upon the Goodwin sands at low tide. The sea is calm; the day propitious.'

'Certainly, Doctor,' said the first lieutenant, always good-humoured after a flogging. 'You shall have the blue cutter. But will you not miss your dinner?'

'I shall take some bread, and a piece of meat.'

So he paced this strange, absolute and silent landscape of firm damp sand with rivulets running to its edges and the lapping sea, eating bread with one hand and cold beef with the other. He was so low to the sea that Deal and its coast were out of sight; he was surrounded by an unbroken disc of quiet grey sea, and even the boat, which lay off an inlet at the far rim of the sand, seemed a great way off, or rather upon another plane. Sand stretched before him, gently undulating, with here and there the black half-buried carcasses of wrecks, some massive, others ribbed skeletons, in a kind of order whose sense escaped him, but which he might seize, he thought, if only his mind would make a certain shift, as simple as starting the alphabet at X - simple, if only he could catch the first clue. A different air, a different light, a sense of overwhelming permanence and therefore a different time; it was not at all unlike a certain laudanum-state. Wave ripples on the sand: the traces of annelids, solens, clams: a distant flight of dunlins, close-packed, flying fast, all wheeling together and changing colour as they wheeled.