The Thirteen Gun Salute (12 page)

'I hope it answers, I am sure. Lord Nelson's coxswain told me the admiral used to suffer most cruelly for the first few days, if he had been ashore for a while. Stubbs' - directing his voice through a scuttle - 'light along the sandwiches and the wine.'

'The bubbly stuff is all very well,' said Jack, looking at the light through his glass, 'but for flavour, for bouquet and for quality, give me good sillery every time. Capital wine, sir: but now I come to think of it, I do not believe I caught your name.'

'Fitton, sir. Michael Fitton,' said the young man with a shy, expectant look.

'Not John Fitton's son?' asked Jack.

'Yes, sir. He often spoke about you, and I saw you once at home when I was a boy.'

'We were shipmates in three commissions,' said Jack, shaking his hand. 'Isis, Resolution, and Colossus, of course.' He looked down, for it was on the gun-deck of the Colossus, not three feet away from him, that John Fitton had been killed during the battle of St Vincent.

At this moment Sir Joseph, whose cupboard opened into the cabin, called out in a choking voice for his servant, and when the hurrying to and fro was over Stephen said, gazing about, 'So this is a cutter. Well, I am prodigiously glad to have seen a cutter. Pray why is it so called?'

At another time Jack might have replied that Stephen had seen cutters by the score, by the hundred, every time he came into home waters, and very often elsewhere, and that the rig had been carefully explained to him so that he should not confuse a cutter with a sloop; but now he only said, 'Why, because they go cutting along, you know. Skilfully handled' - smiling at young Fitton - 'they are the fastest craft in the Navy.'

'Should you like to see over her, Doctor, when it is raining a little less?' asked Fitton. 'She is remarkably large and elegant for a cutter - nearly seventy feet long - and although some people might say she wanted headroom, she is much broader in the beam than you would think: twenty-four feet, but for a trifle. Twenty-four feet, sir, I do assure you.'

After supper Jack and the captain of the Nimble fell to a close discussion of the sailing of cutters, both with fore-and-aft and with square rig, in order to get the best out of them by as well as large; and although from time to time they remembered that Stephen was there and tried to make the question clear to him, he soon went to bed. He was in fact quite tired - he had reason to be - but before he went to sleep he reflected for a while on diaries, on the keeping of diaries. The Nimble was now pitching to such an extent that Killick came in and took seven turns about him and his cot to prevent him from being tossed out or being flung against the deck-head, but even without the constriction it would have been impossible to make one of his habitual entries - cryptic entries, because of his strongly-developed sense of privacy, and selective entries, because of his connexion with intelligence.

'Today I should have recorded no more than the weather, the helleborus foetidus when we stopped to mend a trace, and the handsomely expressed gentlemanly gratitude of the men, the wholly uneducated men, to whom we gave the horses. When first I met Jack I should have been very much more prolix. Or should I? I was terribly low in those days, after the obvious, inevitable failure of the rising, the infamous conduct of so very, very many people, and of course the loss of Mona; to say nothing of the intolerable miseries in France and the destruction of all our sanguine generous youthful hopes. Lord, how a man can change! I remember telling James Dillon, God rest his soul, that I no longer felt loyalty to any nation or any body of men, only to my immediate friends - that Dr Johnson was right in saying that the form of government was of no consequence to the individual - that I should not move a finger to bring about the millennium or independence. And yet here I am, hurrying through this wicked sea in an attempt however slight at bringing about both, if the defeat of Buonaparte can be considered the one and Catholic emancipation and the dissolution of the union the other. When I am at the Grapes I shall look at the diary of that year and see what in fact I said. Shall I remember the code?'

At breakfast Michael Fitton said, 'Today, Doctor, if the rain stops, you will see the Nimble in all her glory: she is almost directly before the wind, with topsail and single-reefed square mainsail, and at the last heave she ran off eleven knots and the best part of a fathom.'

'Yes,' said Jack, 'and you will see the extraordinary merits of a running bowsprit. When she pitches like this' - the table took on a forward slope of twenty-five degrees, their hands automatically securing the toast - 'the bowsprit does not stab into the sea and snap off short or at the very least check her way.'

'How can this be achieved, for all love?'

'Since a cutter's bowsprit has no steeve, since it is horizontal, it can be run in on deck,' they told him kindly, and promised that he should see it directly.

But they were mistaken. The rain continued steadily, sweeping in vast grey swathes from the south-west, over a grey sea mottled here and there with white; and although in the dim afternoon of Thursday Jack dragged him on deck to look at Ushant, a faint white-ringed blur on the starboard bow, he could not be induced to go forward to see the bowsprit nor even to climb a little way up the shrouds to view the remote ships of the Brest blockade; and the next day, when the Nimble was racing up the Channel, the breeze had hauled so far forward that she now wore her fore-and-aft mainsail, foresail and jib; her bowsprit was therefore run out, and it remained run out until the end of their voyage - a most remarkably fine passage that brought them into Portsmouth late on Friday afternoon, quite a warm day for May, and with no more than an intermittent drizzle.

Sir Joseph, whose policy of lying motionless and eating very large quantities of dry bread had worked well after the first horrible hours, set off for London as soon as he had taken tea and muffins at the Crown; he said to Jack, 'I presume orders will be telegraphed down to Admiral Martin as soon as I have made my report; and I have little doubt that officially or unofficially I shall see you both early next week.'

They accompanied him to his post-chaise, and as they walked back Stephen said, 'I have been thinking, brother. Diana will be in a very delicate condition by now, and if we suddenly appear, it may shock her extremely.'

'Oh,' said Jack, who had been on the point of sending for horses, 'I suppose it might. Pen a discreet, diplomatic note hinting that you might be in the neighbourhood presently, and we will send it by Bonden or Killick or both in a chaise.'

'A chaise, with Bonden and Killick getting out of it, would be sure to cause alarm - dreadful apprehensions of bad news travelling with such speed and ostentation. A boy on a mule would be much more suitable.'

The boy on a mule set off with a note -My dear, pray do not be alarmed or in any way concerned if you should see us presently: we are both perfectly well and send our love - and the men were about to set off to gaze at the Diane from a discreet distance when they ran into the Port Admiral, a cheerful soul, who insisted on their cracking a bottle: 'I am seventy-four today; you cannot refuse me.' A number of other sea-officers were in the hall and he invited them too. Some were very well known to Jack, among them three post-captains; like many other post-captains they made up for their solitary state at sea by being unusually loquacious by land. The Physician of the Fleet was also there, together with one of the medical men from Haslar; and they too were very conversible. Talk flowed, bottles came and went, time passed, passed. But at length the landlord's son came and stood by Stephen: 'Oh, Dr Maturin, sir,' he said when Stephen paused in his account of the Basrah method of setting broken bones, 'there is a coach outside with some ladies asking for you'

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' muttered Stephen, darting from the room.

Diana was at the near-side window She leant out and cried, 'Oh Maturin, my dear, what a monster you are to terrify innocent women like this 'Inside the coach behind her Sophie's voice rose to a high squeak, 'Is not Jack there? You said Jack would be there.'

Diana opened the door and offered to jump out, but Stephen took her elbows and lifted her down. 'My dear, you are a fine size,' he said, kissing her tenderly. 'Sophie, will you come in and see Jack and Admiral Martin and a number of other sailors? They are drinking port in the Dolphin room.'

'Oh Stephen,' called Sophie, 'pray bring him out and let us all go home together at once. I do not want to lose a minute of him. Nor of you either, dear Stephen.'

'Sure you are right, for the moments are few: we must be in town on Tuesday, I do believe.'

In fact it was on Sunday evening that a message came from the Port Admiral requiring Captain Aubrey to wait upon the First Lord in Arlington Street at half-past five o'clock the next day. Yet if the reprieve had been longer they could scarcely have said any more, all of them having talked incessantly since the coach started moving back to Ashgrove Cottage from the Crown.

'Arlington Street,' said Jack in a hoarse whisper. 'His private house. I am heartily glad of it. Because had it been the Admiralty I should have been in a fine quandary - report in uniform and be presumptuous or report in civilian clothes and be incorrect. However I shall take uniform as well, in case I have to go on. Sweetheart, it has not gone to wrack and ruin all these years?'

'Neither the one nor the other, my dear, only the epaulettes are a little tarnished. Killick and my mother and both the girls have been blowing on your best and dry-scrubbing it with soft brushes to get the smell of moth-balls out since yesterday morning. But I am afraid it will be much too big; you have grown pitifully thin, my poor darling.'

Pitifully thin or not, Jack Aubrey still made the post-chaise heel well over as he stepped into it, having kissed his family all round except for George, who had been wearing breeches for quite some time now.

They struck into the main London road at Cosham and bowled along at a splendid rate under a blue, blue sky with billowing, flat-bottomed white clouds travelling in the same direction, but at a far more stately pace. 'Remarkable fine horses,' observed Jack. 'And a most uncommon pretty day.' He whistled and then sang From Ushant to Scilly, 'tis thirty-five leagues right through.

Since there had been no rain on Saturday or Sunday the hedges all along the busy road were white with dust, but only a little way beyond them there was a living green in the wheat, oats and barley, in the various leys, and in the woods and copses with leaves coming to their glory under the brilliant sky that it would have lifted the heart of any man, let alone one who might expect such an end to his journey.

Most of the summer migrants had arrived and there were still some passing through to northern parts; the countryside was therefore rich in birds, and as they changed horses at a village some way beyond Petersfield Stephen heard no less than three separate cuckoos at once. He shook his head, remembering the extreme pain that call had caused him at an earlier time, but almost at once his mind was taken off by the sight of a wryneck, a bird he had much more often heard than seen. He pointed it out to Jack with the usual result: 'There is a wryneck.' 'Where?' 'On the young elm to the right of - it is gone.'

Wrynecks, the progress of Jack's daughters in learning and deportment under Miss O'Mara, and the albatrosses of the high and even moderate southern latitudes occupied the next stage, but after that Jack became more and more silent. There was so very much at stake and now the moment of decision was so very near - hurrying and even racing nearer every minute. He grew exceedingly uneasy in his mind.

'I shall feel better after dinner,' he said to himself as the chaise turned off the Strand, rolled down into the Liberties of the Savoy and came to a halt at the Grapes, their accustomed inn.

Mrs Broad made them heartily welcome. Killick, travelling up on yesterday's night coach, had given her warning, and she provided them with a dinner that would have soothed any reasonable man; but at this point Jack Aubrey was not a reasonable man. His mind was fixed on the possibility of unacceptable conditions or even downright failure and he ate mechanically, drawing no benefit from his food whatsoever.

'It is my belief the Captain has been called out, and is going to meet some gentleman in Hyde Park,' said Mrs Broad to Lucy, for Castlereagh's duel with Canning and some other slightly less notorious encounters were still very much in the public mind. 'He never even touched the pudding.'

'Oh Aunt Broad, what a terrible thing to say,' cried Lucy. 'But sure I never saw a man look so grim.'

Yet not so grim when he knocked on the door in Arlington Street as the St James's clock struck half past five, for now the action was engaged; the time of waiting was over; he was on the enemy's deck at last.

He gave the servant his card, saying, 'I have an appointment with his lordship.' 'Oh yes, sir, this way, if you please,' said the man, and led him to a small room opening directly off the hall.

'Captain Aubrey,' said Lord Melville, rising from behind his desk and stretching out his hand, 'let me be the first to congratulate you. We have sorted out this wretched business at last: it has taken far longer than I could have wished for - far, far longer than you can have wished, I fear - but it is done. Sit down and read that: it is a proof-sheet of the Gazette that is now printing off.'

Jack looked at the sheet with a fixed, stern expression. The ringed-round lines ran May 15. Captain John Aubrey, Royal Navy, is restored to the List with his former rank and seniority, and is appointed to the Diane, of thirty-two guns. He said, 'I am deeply sensible of your kindness, my lord.'

Melville went on, 'And here is your appointment to the Diane. Your orders will be ready in a day or two, but of course you already know the essence of the matter from Sir Joseph. I am so glad - we are so glad - that you are able to undertake this mission, with Dr Maturin to keep you company, for nobody could be better qualified in every way. Ideally, no doubt, you would bring those evil men Ledward and Wray back with you, but Mr Fox, our envoy and a man of great experience in Oriental concerns, tells me that this could not possibly be done without injuring our subsequent relations with the Sultanate. The same, and I say it with the deepest regret, applies to their frigate, the' - he looked into a folder on his desk - 'the Corn�e. Yet at least I most sincerely hope that the mission will frustrate and confound them, bringing them to utter and permanent discredit. And ideally you would be able to choose many of your own officers and midshipmen, but as you know time presses most urgently and unless you can catch the tail of the south-west monsoon Mr Fox may arrive to find the French in possession of a treaty. If you have any friends or followers within immediate reach, well and good - but this is a matter you will discuss with Admiral Satterley. I have made an appointment for you at nine tomorrow morning at the Admiralty, if that is convenient.'