The Fortune of War (37 page)

He reflected on Captain Broke, an even more devoted, determined man than he had supposed. An austere man and no doubt rather shy in personal relationships: Stephen had the impression that he did not arouse quite the same affection among his crew as did Jack Aubrey, but there was not the least question of their great respect. It appeared to him that Broke lived in a state of unusual tension, as though he had an unusually heavy private cross to bear, and as though great concern with his guns and his ship helped him to do so. It would be interesting to meet Mrs Broke. The cross was there, whatever its nature: and obviously in a proud man the only sign of it would be the habitual reserve and tacit self-control that he had already remarked in Broke. The Shannon's surgeon joined him, and they talked of seasickness, the vanity of physical treatment on the one hand and the surprising effect of emotion on the other, at least in some cases.

'That man on the larboard gangway, there,' said the surgeon, 'the man in striped pantaloons chewing tobacco and spitting over the hammock-netting - he is the master of an American brig we took some days ago. She had just slipped out from Marblehead, and there she was, right under our lee at dawn, and we snapped her up in a trice.'

'In a what?'

'A trice. Now he was as sick as a dog - always was, he told me, the first days at sea - and he had to be helped up the side, puking as he came. Hopeless case: could hardly stand: did not mind his capture. But the moment he sees his brig on fire, oh what a change! Colour returns, wrath and passion, a complete cure: stamps about the deck swearing - names the cargo - twenty-eight thousand dollars' worth and uninsured, ruin to his owners. Cured. Never a qualm since, and he is grown philosophical. I wish I could say the same.'

'Are not you philosophical, sir?'

'I am not, sir. I cannot bear to see the prizes burn. With half my share of these last four and twenty - four and twenty, sir, upon my honour - I should have bought myself a snug practice in Tunbridge Wells; and with the whole, I should not have needed to practise any more at all; I should have set up for a country gentleman. How I hope that wretched Chesapeake will come out, so that we may return to our legalized piracy.'

'You have no doubt of the event, then?'

'No more than did the surgeons of Guerrière, Macedonian, Java and Peacock. But in either case, it would be an end to this torment of seeing my fortune go up in hellish smoke and flames.'

'I must attend my patient, sir,' said Stephen. 'Give you good day.'

On the gundeck Captain Broke was also concerned for Diana Villiers. He said to his first lieutenant, a tall, round-headed man, rather deaf, who bent anxiously to catch his words, 'Mr Watt, it occurs to me that at quarters this evening, we should not make a clean sweep fore and aft The lady in the master's cabin must not be disturbed It is only seasickness, and she will no doubt be better tomorrow, but today she must not be disturbed; so let the cabin bulkheads stand. On the other hand, I should like to show Captain Aubrey what we can do, so pray let some targets be prepared'

'Directly, sir,' said Watt, and he ran off eight bells in the afternoon watch had already struck, and there was little time to spare The hands who had not overheard the Captain's words observed the lieutenant's hurried pace and drew their own conclusions in any case the whole ship's company knew what was afoot within two minutes, and the gun-crews gathered round their pieces, checking trucks and tackles and breechings, shot garlands, swabs, and worms, chipping and changing their flints They knew Captain Aubrey's reputation as a tiger with the great guns, and his former shipmates among them had magnified his deadly accuracy and speed, reducing his factual three broadsides in three minutes ten seconds to three in two, and asserting that every shot went home They did not quite believe it, but they wanted the ship to show well and they did what little they could little it was, because the Shannon's guns were never housed in anything much short of a perfect state, but still, a little slush from the galley could ease a block or a truck and perhaps strike a second off the time.

One bell in the first dog-watch, and Stephen sat down by Diana: a fairly heavy sea was still running and she was still motionless, a ghastly colour, but she opened her eyes when the drum beat for quarters and gave him a watery smile.

Quarters, and all hands ran to their action stations; and at once the ship took on much of her fighting appearance, her 330 people gathered in tightly ordered groups along her 150 feet of length. The midshipmen, the junior lieutenants, and the Marine officers inspected their men, reported to Mr Watt 'All present and sober, sir, if you please,' and Mr Watt, moving one step aft and taking off his hat, made the same report to Captain Broke, who then gave the expected order: 'A clean sweep fore and aft on the starboard side. Red cutter away.'

In a few moments all the bulkheads but Diana's had vanished, the cutter splashed down with its load of empty casks, and the bosun's calls uttered the shrill cutting pipe that hurried the sail-trimmers from their guns to wear ship as the Shannon began the long turn that would bring her starboard broadside to bear on the targets to windward.

The sun still high in the west, a fine topgallantsail breeze in the south-east, and the light perfect; but there was rather more sea running than Jack would have liked for accurate practice. She was round, and here was the first target, a cask flying a black flag on a pole, fine on the starboard bow, three or four hundred yards away. On the gundeck, the familiar orders 'Silence fore and aft - out tompions - run out your guns - prime', all purely formal, since the men moved automatically, having gone through these motions many hundred times, as Jack could see not only from their co-ordinated ease but also from the rutted deck behind each piece, scored deep by countless recoils, far too deep for any holystone.

'Three points, Mr Etough,' said Broke to the acting master, and then, taking out his watch, 'Fire as they bear.'

The Shannon's head fell off from the wind: the target came broader on the bow: the bow-gun went off, followed a split second later by the rest in a rippling broadside that came aft in one long roll of enormous thunder. White water sprang up all round the target; the smoke swept inboard and across the deck - the headiest smell in the world - and in the smoke the crews heaved furiously at their tackles, worming, sponging, reloading, and running out their guns.

'My God,' cried Diana, sitting straight up at the first great crack, 'what's that?'

'They are only exercising the great guns,' said Stephen, waving calmly, but his words if not, his gesture were lost in the prodigious roar of the second broadside, the deep growl of the recoiling guns. The first had knocked away the flag, the second destroyed the cask entirely, but without the slightest pause the crews worked at their guns as the wreckage of the target swept down abaft the beam, whipping the two-ton cannon smack against the port-sills, training them round with handspikes, pointing them, the captains glaring along the sights Then an unearthly hush as they waited for the top of the roll, the first hint of descent, and the third broadside shattered the remaining staves

'By God, they will get in a fourth,' said Jack aloud Already the guns were out again, trained hard aft The bow-gun could not bear, but the remaining thirteen sent two hundredweight of iron hurtling into the sparse black wreckage of the target, far on the starboard quarter

'House your guns,' said Broke, and turning to Jack, 'Four minutes and ten seconds If you will grant me the bow-gun, that is four broadsides at one minute two and a half seconds apiece'

If it had been any man but Broke, Jack would have told him he lied; but Philip did not lie. 'I congratulate you,' he said, 'upon my word, I do. A most admirable performance: I have never done so well.'

He did admire it heartily, but the less worthy part of Jack Aubrey felt somewhat put out: he had always felt a little superior to Philip, nautically superior, and Philip had equalled or even just beaten his most cherished record. Still there was the consolation that two of the locks had missed fire, which would never have happened with the slow-match, and that Philip had had five years to train his men, which had never happened to Jack. But it was most capital gunnery, and seeing the pleased, sweating faces looking at him from the waist and the quarterdeck in decent triumph, he added, with perfect sincerity, 'Most admirable, indeed. I doubt any other ship in the fleet could have done so well.'

'Now let us see what the carronades and chasers and small-arms can do,' said Broke, 'if you are sure it will not disturb Mrs Villiers.'

'Oh no,' said Jack. 'She is quite used to it. I have seen her handle a fowling-piece like any man. And I recall she shot tigers in India - her father was a soldier in those parts.'

Broke hailed the cutter, which laid out more targets, and the carronades, the chasers, and the small-arms men went to work. It was a beautiful sight to see them, the more so as Broke simulated all kinds of emergencies, calling away sail-trimmers, boarders, and firemen from the crews, which nevertheless worked on, unperturbed in the apparent confusion, and only a very little slower for the want of hands. A most impressive display, and one that could have been achieved only by the most intelligent and long-continued training, with good liking between officers and men; and it became even more impressive when Broke put his ship about and let fly with the larboard guns, the midshipmen, with their coats off and a look of concentrated eagerness and attention on their faces, fighting their brass six-pounder.

This was immediately above Diana's cot, within hand's reach of her head, and at its high-pitched, ear-splitting explosion she started up again. 'Stephen,' she said, 'close the window, there's a Iamb. I must look utterly disgusting. I am so sorry to be such a spectacle, and such a bore. So very, very sorry...' But after the second crash he saw her smile in the half-light - the flash of her teeth. She took his hand, and said, 'Lord, Stephen dear, I am just beginning to realize it. We have escaped - we have run clean away!'

Jack woke at the changing of the watch to the familiar sound of holystones and swabs; he was aware that the wind had dropped in the night, but for a moment he could not tell what ship he was in, nor yet what ocean. Then once again the beautiful fact of their escape came flooding into his mind: he smiled in the darkness, and said, 'Clear away: we have got clear away.'

There was scarcely any light at all below, only just enough for him to make out the shape of Philip Broke moving quietly about the sparsely-furnished great cabin, where Jack's hammock was slung: and perhaps it was this that threw his sense of place and time out of beat - he had rarely slept in a hammock since he was a master's mate. Broke was already up and dressed - Jack could see the gleam of his gold epaulettes - and presently he tiptoed out, to the roar of the great double-handed stones just overhead and the thump-thump-thump as the afterguard flogged the quarterdeck dry. Jack heard him say good morning to the marine sentry at the cabin door and then again to the officer of the watch, young Provo Wallis the Nova Scotian, by the sound of his reply.

Smiling still he sank back into a rosy state between waking and doze. Not only was there a most restful lack of present responsibility, but the tension of yesterday had quite died away; it had persisted well into the night, lasting beyond all reason, but now he could look back upon that series of events as something already in the past. His fury at old Herapath's flight - and Jack had seen him whip the horses - had faded entirely, eclipsed by the contemplation of their luck. Luck all the way, luck at every turn. He considered old age and its mutilations and wondered what it would do for him: examples presented themselves to his mind, not only of mental decay, physical weakness, gout, stone, and rheumatism, but of boastful mendacious garrulity, intense and peevish selfishness; timidity if not cowardice, dirt, concupiscence, avarice. Old Mr Broke had been tolerably mean. Lord, there was nothing of that in his son! In the course of his career Jack had burnt or released a certain number of prizes in critical situations, so as to keep his crew up to strength, but four and twenty in a line was something beyond his experience and he honoured it extremely. True, Philip was comparatively well-to-do, but even richer men loved another ten or twenty thousand guineas: he remembered the nasty wrangle between Nelson, Keith, and St Vincent over their flag-shares in prize-money. And even more than Philip's disregard for cash, Jack admired the way he had formed his officers and men, so that they followed his opinion and shared his views: love of prize-money was so strong in sea-officers and man-of-war's men that it seemed almost contrary to nature. On the other hand all the Shannons, and not only their Captain, had had to swallow the taking of Guerrière, Macedonian, Java and Peacock: a very bitter string of pills. His mood grew dark at the recollection, and he clenched his fist. Precious little strength there: he felt his arm, bound tight across his chest - not much pain today, but no power either, scarcely enough to cock a pistol.

Broke had formed them very well, and he must have had good material to work upon. He was wrong about his flintlocks, but even so the Shannon's gunnery was excellent: excellent, there was no other word for it. And Jack was particularly impressed by the small-arms men in the tops: the senior Marine officer had provided some of his best marksmen with rifled carbines, and they had done remarkable execution; while the swivel-guns, firing grape down on a hypothetical deck, had done even better. True murdering-pieces, well-plied. He had an uneasy feeling that he had never attended to the tops quite as he should have done... Nelson had never much cared for the use of fighting-tops in battle, partly because of the danger of fire, and until recently everything that Nelson said was Gospel to Jack Aubrey. But on the other hand, he had seen the Java carried into battle in obedience to the great man's dictum, 'Never mind manoeuvres: go straight at 'em', and it occurred to him that although Nelson was always right where the French and the Spaniards were concerned, he might have had other views if he had been at war with the Americans.