The Fortune of War (36 page)

The higher the rank, the later the dinner. Cosnahan was already greasy from his pudding in the midshipmen's berth before the gunroom had sat down to their boiled cod, and the cabin's meal was still no more than a remote, though not unpleasing, smell in the galley: Stephen had salivated in vain. He quietly slipped a biscuit from the bread-barge into his pocket and returned to Diana.

She was more prostrate than ever, now that the Shannon was out in her natural habitat, the full Atlantic swell: a cold, glaucous, apathetic figure, racked from time to time by a spasm but otherwise mute and apparently insensible. He had already undressed and sponged her, and there was nothing more that his art could do, apart from warm blankets. He tidied her a little, gazed thoughtfully a while, gnawing on his biscuit, and then went below to the cabin that his old shipmate Falkiner had vacated for him. He checked his papers, now wrapped in sailcloth, and remembering that he had spoken a little sharply in the night, he did what he could to make himself presentable, to do Jack credit in the cabin: clean and trimmed at last, he sat on Falkiner's cot, his newly-acquired watch in his hand, reflecting on Diana.

He had so very much to reflect upon, so very many aspects of a complex relationship, as well as marriage itself, that unknown state, that his thoughts had not run far beyond a long digression on the singular effects, physical and spiritual, of pregnancy, sometimes admirable, sometimes disastrous, before the elegant hands of the watch and a minute chime within told him that it was time to go. His night's sleep, short though it was, had been extraordinarily profound and restorative: his head still ached, he still found it hard to focus his eyes well enough to read, and his cracked ribs hurt abominably on the least false movement, but he was his own master for immediate purposes; he no longer had to struggle with a vacillating, uncertain, exhausted mind, incapable of decision; and although he could not see clearly as far as Diana was concerned, he was able to thrust his grief and sense of bereavement to one side.

On the way he met Cosnahan again, sent to fetch him, for Captain Aubrey placed no reliance on his surgeon's punctuality; but blameless for once and even commendable, he walked in with quiet triumph.

It was a good dinner - oysters, halibut, lobster, turkeypoult, and a massive roly-poly that gave the sailors at least a good deal of unaffected pleasure - and since most of the talk ran on nautical affairs Stephen had plenty of time to consider Captain Broke. He liked what he saw: a slight, dark man, reserved, quiet, grave, and even melancholy, not half Jack's weight but of much the same size in natural authority and determination. They were obviously close friends and at first glance this seemed paradoxical, their styles being so very different, the extremes of what was to be found in the service, as different as the centuries, Jack belonging more to the heartier, more flamboyant, hard-drinking eighteenth, Broke in the more discreet modern age that was spreading so fast, even in the conservative Navy. Yet they were both sailors, and on this plane they were as one; their ideas and their aims were both the same. Jack Aubrey was a fighting captain, made for the sea and violent action; so, in his different way, was Broke, and perhaps his sense of the Royal Navy's defeat was even stronger, if that were possible. He was a man of strong feelings, and although they rarely appeared the occasional gleam left Stephen in no doubt. This was particularly apparent when he and Jack talked about the Chesapeake, now the sole object of the Shannon's long blockade, the sole object of Broke's ambition and passionate desire. They had gone over every detail of her equipment before Stephen joined them, and Jack had been able to tell a great deal, from the exact nature of her carronades to a very close estimate of her crew, which he set at a little under four hundred. And now, when they discussed her commander Jack said, 'Lawrence is a very fine fellow, and I am sure that if his orders do not compel him to sit still, he will give you a meeting with all the pleasure in the world.'

'Oh how I hope so,' cried Broke with a fine flash. 'I have been waiting for him day after day, with our water running low - half allowance this last week, although I took all Tenedos could spare before sending her off - and the idea of being forced off the station, letting him out or leaving him to Parker, fairly tormented me. I sent in messages by various prisoners I discharged, inviting him to come out; but I dare say they never reached him. I was afraid he might be shy, or that he might share the feelings of so many people in New England.'

'Lawrence shy? Never in life,' said Jack emphatically.

'Well, I am heartily glad of it,' said Broke, and he went on to speak of the feeling in Boston, as far as he had been able to learn it. He had frequently been in touch with the shore and he had gathered a good deal of information, some of which confirmed what Stephen knew while some went well beyond it. 'The Federalist party certainly wish any event which would tend to restore peace,' he observed, 'and that I had from an intelligent person. But just how my man would define any event is a question. It is all very well to subscribe to a general dislike of the war and to give general information on the state of public opinion; but when it comes to specific details that might bring about a defeat, why then, I suppose, one must reflect that it is one's own country that is concerned, however ill-governed it may be. Now I know they have a steam-vessel, armed with six nine-pounders: but when it came to information on that head - her power, her speed, her range of action, the possibility of cutting her off with the boats - my man grew shy. When you were on shore, Doctor Maturin, were you able to make any remarks on this steam-boat of theirs?'

Alas, Dr Maturin had had no notion of such a vessel: had she indeed a steam-engine mounted in her? What was her means of propulsion?

'The engine drives great wheels on either side, sir, like those of a water-mill,' said Broke. 'A precious awkward thing to meet with in a calm or in a narrow tideway, since she can sail, not only against wind and tide, but without any wind at all.'

'With one long twenty-four-pounder in the bows, such a machine could cut you up quite shockingly,' said Jack. 'I mean, in light airs or a calm.'

The conversation ran on paddle-wheels - on the jet-propulsion advocated by Benjamin Franklin - on the steamer that Broke had seen on a Scotch canal during the peace - those in service upon the Hudson River -their probable value in war - their short range likely to be improved - the dangers of fire - Admiral Sawyer's fury at the suggestion that one might be used in Halifax harbour for towing - the probability that sailors should soon have to turn into vile mechanics, in spite of the Admiralty's steady hatred of such a disgraceful innovation - the shortcomings of the Admiralty in general.

Captain Broke was a well-bred man and he often tried to make the conversation general, but with little success:

Stephen was usually quiet at meals, given to long fits of abstraction: now he was quieter still, not only from his ignorance of nautical affairs but also because sleep kept welling up and threatening to extinguish him entirely. His night, though restorative, had been short; its effects were wearing off; and he longed for the swinging cot below.

Jerking himself from an incipient doze over his pudding, he became aware that Captain Aubrey was about to sing. Jack was the least self-conscious being in the world, and he would sing as naturally as he sneezed, 'I heard it in the Boston mad-house,' he said, emptying his glass. 'This is how it goes.' He leant back in his chair, and his deep, melodious voice filled the cabin:

'Oh, oh, the mourning dove

Says, where can she be?

She was my only love

But gone from me, oh gone from me.'

'Well sung, Jack,' said Broke, and turning to Stephen with his rare smile, 'He reminds me of that tuneful Lesbian qui ferox bello tamen inter arma sive iactatam religarat udo litore navim.'

'To be sure, sir,' said Stephen, 'and as far as Bacchus and Venus are concerned, and even at a push the Muses, what could be more apt? Yet as I recall it goes on et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque crine decorum and although I may well be mistaken, it does not seem to me that the black-haired boy quite suits, in a description of Captain Aubrey's tastes.'

'Very true, sir, very true,' said Broke, put out and disconcerted. 'I was forgetting... There are many objectionable passages in the ancients that are best forgotten.'

'Ha, ha,' said Jack, 'I knew it would never answer, chopping Latin with the Doctor. I have known him knock a full admiral on the head before this, with his ablative absolute.'

Broke gave a conventional laugh, but it was clear that he was unused to contradiction, that he did not possess his cousin's acute sense of humour, and that he disliked anything remotely approaching to bawdy; he was a graver, more earnest man altogether, and he returned to small-arms and great guns with all the earnestness and gravity the moral subject deserved. He described the exercises he had worked out for the frigate, and which the Shannon's people had performed regularly for the last five years and more: Monday, seamen at target; Tuesday, swivelmen at target; Wednesday, swivels in maintop and all Marines at musketry; Thursday, midshipmen at target and carronades.

'Lord, Philip, that must stand you in a pretty penny,' said Jack, thinking of the tons of powder at eight guineas a barrel billowing away in smoke, half a hundredweight for every one of Shannon's broadsides; to say nothing of the shot.

'Yes. Last year I sold the meadows over towards the vicarage, where we used to play cricket with the parson's boys, you remember.'

'No luck with prizes?'

'Oh, we have taken a fair number, at least a score this cruise; but I nearly always burn them. I did send in a couple of recaptures the other day, though it cost me a midshipman, a quartermaster, and two prime hands. But that was only because they belonged to Halifax Otherwise

I prefer to burn them'

'That's heroic,' said Jack, deeply impressed, 'but don't it vex your people?'

'In ordinary times it would scarcely answer but it is different now After Guerrière I called them aft and told them that if we were to send prizes into Halifax we should have to man them and thus weaken the ship - we should have less chance of getting our own back if we met one of their heavy frigates They are reasonable men, they know we are so short of ships on this station there is little likelihood of recovering our prize-hands before we put in ourselves, and they want their own back as much as I do

They agreed no murmuring, no sullen looks, oh very far from it They know I lose twenty times as much'

Jack nodded it was a most striking instance of abnegation 'Well,' he said, 'and so you exercise your midshipmen separately' That is a very good idea they cannot learn the men their duty, unless they can do it better themselves A very good idea

'So it should be, Jack - I had it from you many years ago You shall see them practising what you preached this very afternoon Perhaps, sir,' - to Stephen - 'you would like to see them too, and to view the ship' I have made some changes in the gun-sights that might interest a philosophical mind.'

Swallowing a yawn, Stephen said that he should be very happy, and presently they walked out, up the ladder and on to the sunlit quarterdeck. The officers upon it at once moved over to the leeward side and Broke began the tour with a brass six-pounder in a port by the hances specially made for it. 'This is my own,' he said, 'and I use it mostly for the youngsters and the ship's boys; they can rattle it in and out without destroying themselves, and they can point it pretty well too, by now. And here you have my earlier quarter-sight..

'But what is this?' asked Jack.

'A pendulum,' said Broke. 'A heavy pendulum. When it is at zero on this scale, do you see, the deck is horizontal, and at point-blank range a gun will hit its mark even if the captain cannot see it for the smoke. And behind each gun there is a compass cut into the deck, so that it can be trained round on a given bearing if the men are blinded

- you know how the smoke lies when there is no great breeze, and what there is stunned by a heavy cannonade.'

Jack nodded, observing that in such cases 'you could hardly see your neighbour, let alone the enemy.'

Then came the carronades, ugly, squat, big-mouthed things, and the stern-chasers, long, elegant, and dangerous: a closely-reasoned discussion of the best breechings for carronades, the best way to prevent them from oversetting, and so forward along the gangway to the forecastle and its armament, more carronades and the bow-chasers. 'Here is my favourite,' said Broke, patting the starboard nine-pounder. 'With a two-and-a-half-pound charge she throws as sweet a ball as ever you could wish, true at a thousand yards. She has my light-duty sight, because only the best crew fires her: you shall see the others on the maindeck.'

'I shall like that,' said Jack. They crossed the forecastle and he noticed a couple of hands slung below the bowsprit, busy about the figure that to the official mind symbolized not Agriculture nor Beer nor Justice but the

River Shannon, carefully painting it with the same sad blue-grey that covered the frigate's sides. There being nobody within earshot, he said, 'Surely to God, Philip, you could afford her a touch of vermilion and a little gold leaf, prizes or no prizes?'

'Oh, as to that,' said Broke, 'we always were a very unostentatious ship, you know, not like poor old Guerrière, with all her putty and paintwork. Mind your step, Doctor,' he. cried, catching Stephen's arm as the frigate's pitch threatened to fling him down the fore hatchway.

The long, low gundeck and the ship's main armament, the massive eighteen-pounders, bowsed tight up against their ports on either side, their carriages painted the same dull grey, so that they looked like powerful animals bound down, rhinoceroses, perhaps. To and fro along the lines among the busy parties of seamen, officers, and young gentlemen, Jack bowed from long habit under the beams, Broke upright, full of contained enthusiasm as he spoke of each separate gun. They were all equipped with the Captain's simple, ingenious, robust brass sights and with flint-locks. Jack preferred the old slow-match to any lock, and as they argued the point, rooted to the deck, Stephen felt weariness rise to the flood: the pudding lay upon him like a pall. He said something about attending to his patient and withdrew, hardly noticed in the heat of the discussion. But instead of going directly to the cabin he walked aft, right aft along the quarterdeck to the taffrail and stood there for a while, staring at the wake and the boats towing astern - their disreputable scow, a launch, and Captain Broke's own gig.