The Commodore (20 page)

'Mrs Oakes, ma'am, you are very welcome aboard,' said Reade, helping her up the side. 'And you too, my dear. Doctor, sir, you have caught your tide as pretty as could be. I had scarcely started looking at my watch. Ma'am, how I hope you have an appetite. Our friends in the town have brought us the noblest soles that ever yet were seen.' He showed them below, begging them to mind their heads, and returned to the deck.

The usual sounds followed their usual sequence - the cable coming aboard, the anchor being catted and fished, the boat run up to the davits; then even a moderately practised ear could make out the sound of halliards in their blocks and the deck leaned over under their feet: the ship was filled with a universal living sound, a vibration.

'It is moving we are!' cried Brigid. She escaped from the cabin and ran up on deck. 'I must not behave like an old foolish mother-hen,' thought Stephen, but he followed her nevertheless, and sitting abaft the tiller he watched her risk life and limb, very gently restrained in her wilder excesses by Padeen and the seamen, kind and endlessly patient: at one point he saw her ascend to the fore crosstrees, clinging to the rough and scaley neck of old Mould.

She was the ideal traveller, indefatigable, delighted with everything; and though the Ringle met a fine west-south-west swell when she was clear of the land, a swell that cut up somewhat on meeting the tide, she felt not the slightest qualm, nor, apparently, fear of any kind. She did not mind getting wet, either, which was just as well, since the Ringle was sailing due south-west with the breeze two points free and the choppy seas were coming aboard in packets over the starboard bow, soaking her at regular intervals as she clung to the foremost shrouds, each packet, green or white, being signalled by a delighted shriek.

Eventually, with darkness gathering, she was brought aft and below, dried, put down in front of a bowl of lobscouse (the Ringle's only dish, apart from skillygalee or burgoo) and desired to 'tuck in, mate, tuck in like a good 'un.' After two spoons she fell fast asleep, her head on the table, one hand still clutching a gnawed ship's biscuit, so fast asleep that she was obliged to be carried off, perfectly limp, sponged more or less, and lashed into a small hammock.

'Well, sir,' said Reade at supper, 'we could not have asked for a more prosperous breeze. This craft fairly loves the wind afore the beam and we have been making ten knots ever since we passed the Start with no more than what you see - no dimity, no gaff topsails even. I did suggest cracking on, ma'am, to show you just what she could do, but they would have none of it. There was no actual downright mutiny, just disapproving looks and shaking heads, and I was told it was felt the barky should sail sweet, this being the little maid's first trip: though I must say I do not think she would turn a hair if we were scudding under bare poles, in danger of being pooped every other minute. Now ma'am, a trifle of this apple tart? The carpenter's wife sent it down, one for his mess and one for ours, which I take very kind.'

'The merest trifle, if you please. I love a good apple tart, and this one looks superb; but I am so sleepy that I am liable to disgrace myself and fall over sideways. It is no doubt the effect of the sea air.'

No doubt at all. The sea air did the same for all three passengers, who did not stir until the sun was well up, when they appeared, heavy-eyed, pale, and stupid, no one any better than the rest.

'Good morning, sir,' cried Reade, offensively bright. 'What a brilliant day! We had a wonderful run in the night, and close in by Ushant we spoke the Briseis: old Beaumont - you remember old Beaumont in the Worcester, sir? - was the officer of the watch, and he said some of the offshore squadron had exchanged signals with the Commodore on Thursday, standing south-west under an easy sail. But sir, I dare say you would like your breakfast. What will the little girl take?'

'What indeed? Mrs Oakes,' he called, 'pray what are children fed on?'

'Milk,' said Clarissa.

The Ringle's people looked tolerably blank; and discipline aboard a private tender under a midshipman not being as rigid as it might have been in a ship of the line, they freely exchanged their views. 'If only I had thought,' said Slade, 'I should have brought a pailful along; and a pot of cream.'

'Cheese is particularly good for young female bones,' said the yeoman of the sheets. 'My cousin Sturgis would have lent us his goat.'

In the end it was decided. that if ship's biscuit and small beer were rejected - and Mrs Oakes rejected both out of hand- then skillygalee was their only resource. Brigid therefore faced a bowl of very thin oatmeal gruel, sweetened with sugar and tempered with butter. She thought it the finest dish she had ever eaten, a more-than-birthday indulgence: she ate it up with naked greed and begged for more, and when at last she was told that she might get down skipped about the deck singing 'Skilly-galee, skillygaloo, skillygalee ooh hoo hoo hoo' with a persistence that only very good-natured men could have borne, as the Ringles did, until dinner changed the course of her mind. This being Thursday, she and all hands were allowed a pound of salt pork and half a pint of dried peas: a gallon of beer would also have made part of her ration, but she was advised not to insist upon it.

The breeze freshened in the afternoon: they took a reef in the foresail and the main, and the Ringle was filled with that happy sense of making a good passage: ten knots, ten and two fathoms, eleven knots, sir, if you please, watch after watch; and Brigid spent all her time in the bows, watching the schooner rise on the now much longer swell, race down, and split the next crest at great speed, flinging the spray to leeward in the most exhilarating fashion, always the same, always new. Once a line of porpoises crossed their hawse, rising and plunging like a single long black serpent; and once Stephen showed her a petrel, a little fluttering black bird that pittered on the white traces of broken waves; but otherwise the day was made up of strong diffused light, racing clouds with blue between, a vast grey sea, the continuous rush of wind and water, and a freshness that pervaded everything.

'You was born with sea-legs, my dear,' said Slade, as she came careering aft for supper.

'I shall never go ashore,' she replied.

Padeen slipped easily back into his place as a seaman, an ordinary seaman, for he did not possess the countless particular skills required to be rated able - skills he had, and many of them, but they were all to do with the land, he being profoundly a peasant, a peasant by breeding and inclination. Yet he was seaman enough to be perfectly at home aboard, and in the morning watch on Thursday Stephen found him fishing for mackerel in the Ringle's bows.

It was still long before dawn: moderately thick weather with occasional showers, thunder out to sea: a long even swell: the wind quite strong in the west-north-west. The schooaer had been making long, long boards, beating steadily into it, and now she was on the starboard tack, close in with the land, with the ironbound northern coast of Spain hitherto unseen. Well ahead on the larboard bow the Vares light, high on a cape that ran far out to sea, showed fiery orange when it was not obscured by the squalls; and it was said that this light attracted the fish so often to be found within this bay. Whether this was so or not, the middle watch had caught a fine basketful, and that was why the clipper had lingered a little longer on this tack, drawing somewhat closer to the shore. She was under reefed fore and main sails, with the jib half in, easily stemming the tide, which ran fast round the cape, but making no great way with regard to the land.

'You have not gone to bed, I find,' he said.

'Nor have I, indeed,' said Padeen. 'At the end of the watch I began thinking about the man that betrayed us, the informer, the Judas; and what with the fury and the dread of being sent back to Botany Bay there was no sleep in me at all'

'The back of my hand to the informer,' said Stephen. 'Hell is filled with them seventeen deep. They are...' He was cut short by a triple flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous thunderclap over the cliff to leeward. 'There,' he went on, 'there is the coast of Spain itself.' Still more lightning showed it clear. 'And once you have set foot in that country, no man can take you up and send you back to that infamous place. In any event I am confident that within the year I shall get you your pardon, and then you can go wherever you please. But, Padeen, for the present I wish you to go with Brigid and Mrs Oakes to Avila, in Spain, to look after them. They are to live there in a convent where many other ladies stay with the nuns. And listen, now, Padeen, if you look after them faithfully for a year and a day, you shall have a small farm I own in Munster, near Sidhein na Gh�e in the County Clare, with seventeen acres - seventeen Irish acres - of moderate land: it has a house with a slate roof, and at present there are three cows and an ass, pigs of course, and two hives of bees; and it has the right to cut seventeen loads of turf on the bog. Are you content, Padeen?'

'I am content, your honour, your discretion,' said Padeen in a trembling voice. 'I should look after the Brideen for a thousand years and a day for nothing at all; but oh how I should love some land itself. My grandfather once owned nearly three acres, and rented two more...'

They talked about the land, the pleasures of farming, the delight of seeing things grow, of reaping and threshing; or rather Padeen talked, such a clear torrent of words as Stephen had not heard from him before; and the day broke, broke quite suddenly, the clouds tearing away in the first gleam of dawn.

'All hands, all hands!' roared Bonden right aft, and he and others ran beating on the hatches. 'All hands, all hands on deck!' Padeen, easily amazed, tripped Stephen with his rod and his basket of fishes and before they had recovered Reade was on deck in his nightshirt, giving orders. Half a mile astern, in the bay closed by Cape Vares, lay a three-masted lugger, long, low and black. She was heavily armed and heavily manned; she was already increasing sail.

Padeen had instantly run to his station at the fore-sheet. Stephen took up a post on the starboard quarter where he was reasonably out of the way: he could hear the rapid exchanges between Reade and the men whose opinion he asked; and he caught the hands' words as they worked or stood by. All agreed that the lugger was a Frenchman out of Douarnenez called the Marie-Paule - very fast: the Revenue cutters had never caught her - sometimes a privateer - privateer now, for certain sure, so full of hands - they might spare a Brixham trawler, but no one else, Christian, Turk or Jew - and Fran�s the skipper was a right bastard - a brass nine-pounder in the bows they served most uncommon well. All hands spoke very seriously, and they looked grave. He could not see Reade's expression - he was at the tiller with Bonden and his back was turned - but Bonden's was firm-set, composed.

Looking fore and aft Stephen assessed the position, the light strengthening every' minute and the clipper heeling more and more as the sheets were hauled and belayed right aft. As far as his sea-going experience went there was no way out. A short mile ahead Cape Vares ran north into the sea: they could not clear its tip on this starboard tack: they must go about to gain an offing, and as they did so the big lugger must necessarily board them. She was coming up fast, full-packed with men.

Many a sea-chase had he known, as either hunter or quarry, and they had all been long, sometimes very long, a matter of days, with the tension great yet sustained, as it were spread out and more nearly bearable. Now it was to be a matter of minutes rather than hours or days: the clipper, her lee-rail buried in foam and a cloud of sail abroad, was already making ten knots and she must either strike that cape in four minutes or go about and receive the lugger on her starboard beam.

As these minutes passed he realized, with an extraordinary intensity, just what his fortune, lying in its chests below, meant to him and his daughter and to a thousand aspects of his life. It had not occurred to him that money could have such value - that he could prize it so much. Gulls drifted between the Ringle and the cape, waves breaking along its shore. He turned a haggard face to the men at the helm and as though he felt the look Reade glanced back at him. The young man's expression had something of that happy wildness Stephen had often seen in Jack Aubrey at times of crisis, and smiling he called 'Stand by, Doctor. Watch out,' adding some words to Slade about a biscuit. Then he and Bonden, their hands on the triple-turned rope and the tiller, their eyes fixed to the leach of the foresail, eased the helm alee, and still more alee.

Stephen saw the dreadful shore of the cape, now so close, racing away to the left. He saw its seaward end appear, just clear of their larboard bow, at ten yards perhaps. He heard young Reade cry 'Toss it hard.' Slade flung the biscuit, hit the rock, and in a roar of laughter they were past, round into the open sea.

The lugger fired an ineffectual gun and tacked, incapable of weathering the cape, losing ground, impetus, and her prize. The pursuit continued for some hours, but by noon the lugger was hull-down in the east, hopelessly outsailed.

The Ringle carried on in a state of extraordinary good humour, often laughing, often reminding one another that 'they had weathered that old Cape Vares within biscuit-toss, ha, ha, ha!' Some tried to explain their triumph to Mrs Oakes and Brigid, but although they conveyed their happiness and sense of good fortune they had not fully succeeded before the Ringle opened the port of Corunna, or as some said, the Groyne.

As Stephen stood in the bows, smiling at the busy harbour and the town, Mould sidled casually up to him and out of the corner of his mouth be said 'Me and my mates know the Groyne as well as we know Shelmerston: this is where we used to come for our brandy. And if so be you should like to have the goods landed discreet, as I might say, we know a party, dead honest, or he would have been scragged long since, that might answer.'

'Thank you, Mould, thank you very much for your kind suggestion but this time - this time, eh? - I mean to land them in all legality. And that is what I am going to tell the captain of the port and his people. But I am very much obliged to you and your friends for your good will.'