The Yellow Admiral (19 page)

Jack stared, stared hard over the larboard bow. His eyes were perfectly accustomed to the darkness, yet they were not what they had been. One had been damaged in battle: 'My solitary point in common with Nelson', he had once said, when half-seas over, and had blushed for it afterwards. It was Yann who cried, 'There she is! Just a little more forward, sir.' And presently Jack caught it, a rhythmic whiteness that travelled from left to right in time with the moderate roll of the ship.

'Now, sir,' said Yann, when they had contemplated this for a while, 'if we steer south-east we should come as near as I dare take you to Dog-Leg Cove in half an hour.'

'Thank you, pilot,' said Jack. 'Lie to, if you please, when we are as close in as you think fit. I shall take my measures.'

He climbed out of the top with the nonchalant ease of one to whom shrouds and ratlines were as natural a path as a flight of stairs, and walked along the dark, silent gangway aft. In the cabin, its lamp hidden from without by deadlights, he found Stephen and Bernard playing chess. Stephen frowned, Bernard made as though to get up, but Jack begged him to remain seated and finish the game: there was perhaps half an hour left.

'Shall we call it a draw?' asked Bernard, after what seemed to Jack an endless pause of the most intense concentration.

'Never in life,' said Stephen. 'Let me record the position, and with the blessing we shall play it out another day.'

'Stephen,' said Jack, 'have you any messages, requests, letters you should like me to send?' Before action he and Stephen usually exchanged wills and the like.

'Not this time, my dear, I thank you very kindly. Lawrence holds all three farthings I possess, and dear Diana knows just what I should wish.'

'Then perhaps we should think of getting ready. The ship will heave to in a very little while; the sea is still and for the moment fairly smooth; and although you will be fifteen minutes before your time, I had sooner set you both ashore with dry coats upon your backs and... Come in.'

It was a midshipman: 'Mr Harding's duty, sir, and there is a light on shore, winking three times, then one.'

Stephen nodded and said, 'Let us go.'

Their meagre baggage was already in the boat: Jack led them across the darkened deck, absurdly hand in hand, helped them into the cutter, and leaning down grasped Stephen's shoulder with an iron grip by way of farewell. He heard the sheaves turn smoothly, 'Handsomely, handsomely,' murmured the bosun, saw the boat touch and bob.

Bonden shoved off: Jack called 'Row dry, there,' and watched the cutter pull away towards the still-winking light. When at last it went out he turned from the rail, gave the orders that would carry the Bellona to her anchorage, and went below, deeply sad. He had seen Stephen off like this many and many a time, but his grief and anxiety never grew less.

As he went he noticed a dim star or two in the zenith; and by the time the boat rejoined, with Bonden's report 'that there was a parcel of gents on the beach, talking foreign, but right glad to see the Doctor - carried him and his mate ashore dryfoot', there was a fine sprinkling of them, with Saturn in the middle, and they so clear and sharp that their light showed him not only the now much greater surf breaking on the reef south of the Ile de Seim but the black, rugged outline of the island itself.

Chapter Six

The grief and anxiety did not die away, but of necessity they receded, and as the Bellona worked her way, tack upon tack, round the Saints to regain the bay at dawn, the top of his mind was taken up with the handling of the ship and with a very close watch to see just what harm the lax but harsh command of his jobbing captain had done. He had already looked through the recent gunnery records, which contained no account whatsoever of live firing, only of rattling the great guns in and out: the log, on the other hand, spoke of frequent flogging, more punishment than Jack would have inflicted in a quarter.

At one bell in the morning watch the Bellona's tender, the Ringle, now commanded by that valuable young man Reade, a fast, weatherly, sweet-sailing schooner with much less draught than the great seventy-four, hailed to say that she was shoaling her water: ten fathoms, then nine. 'What do you say, Yann?' asked Jack - the pilot was standing at his side.

'What him bottom?'

'Arm your lead,' called Jack; and shortly after the reply came back across the calm, gently heaving sea, 'Hake's teeth and white sand, if you please, sir.'

'Carry on, sir,' said Yann. 'Next cast ten, eleven, twelve.'

A presence behind him, and a very agreeable smell. 'Which I thought you might like some coffee, sir,' said Killick, passing the mug. 'The Doctor said it preserved the frame from falling damps.'

'Bellona' called the tender, 'nine fathoms, if you please.' A pause. 'Ten, and grey sludge.'

Yann nodded with satisfaction. 'If we carry on till come two bells, and then wear ship and stand east-south-east and half east, we fine, we all right, sir.'

At two bells the idlers were called; the sentinels all round the ship cried 'All's well'; the mate of the watch, having heaved the log, reported to Miller, third lieutenant and officer of the watch, 'Four knots exactly, sir, if you please,' and this he wrote on the log-board, together with the Bellona's present course of south-south-west; the hoarser of the carpenter's mates whispered, 'Four and half inches in the well, sir,' into Miller's ear; and Miller, turning to the Captain and taking off his hat, repeated all this to him in a voice calculated to be heard above the din of hand-pumps, buckets, swabs and holystones of various sizes that were preparing to clean the deck in the first half-lights of the coming day. But before they could begin Jack called, 'Belay, there,' and more gently, 'Mr Miller, we will wear ship, if you please, and stand east-south-east and a half east. The watch will suffice.'

Jack rarely tacked a line-of-battle ship when he had sea-room to wear her, letting her head fall off from the wind and come right round to the desired bearing: it was slower and less spectacular than coming up into the wind's eye, crossing through and steadying on the new course, but it called for fewer hands and it preserved both spars and rigging. He now watched the manoeuvre attentively. It was carried out smoothly; not very fast, but smoothly, with no bellowing or damning of eyes, and when the quartermaster at the con, seeing the compass dead on the true bearing, called to the helmsman 'Thus, thus: very well thus,' Jack went below, reasonably satisfied, but still low in his spirits: he hated to think of Stephen wandering about there on a hostile shore, among so many more or less trustworthy foreigners.

He sat there, reflecting, while the series of bells that had accompanied his life at sea for so many years continued their unchanging pace, bringing up hammocks with a fine rush of feet at the seventh set of strokes and news of breakfast at the eighth.

Almost the only advantage of being on the Brest blockade was that the victuals were usually fresh and plentiful; and breakfast, perhaps Jack's favourite meal apart from dinner, was fairly sure of being able to provide capital sausages and bacon, while the hens (and the Bellona was unusually well-found in poultry) being still in something like their native air, gave almost a superfluity of eggs.

Yet this was a lonely breakfast. Obviously, in the nature of things, the captain of a man-of-war, above all one who could not afford to keep a table (and this was Jack's case at present) must eat many and many a solitary meal; but for a great while Jack Aubrey had sailed with Stephen Maturin, and now he missed his companion quite severely - a wholly human and often contradictory companion, essentially different from the only other guests he could invite, lieutenants, master's mates or midshipmen, who were all debarred by custom, and by common prudence, from disagreeing with the skipper on any point whatsoever: and who in any case were not to speak until they had been spoken to.

'Come in,' he called.

'Sir,' said a midshipman, opening the cabin door, 'Mr Somers' compliments and duty, and the Alexandria is in sight.'

'Thank you, Mr Wetherby. Is she within signalling distance?'

'Oh, sir, I am sure I cannot tell,' said Wetherby, aghast- he was a first voyager - 'Shall I run up and ask?'

'Never trouble. I shall be on deck directly.'

'She might conceivably be bringing us our post,' reflected Jack. 'How I should love a fat parcel of letters - news of the girls - word of the village and that reptile Griffiths - and perhaps the Proceedings will be out.' He had combined his last visit to London but one to criticizing the naval estimates in the Commons as member for Milport and to reading a second paper on the precession of the equinoxes to the Royal Society as a fellow of that august and learned body: for he was a late-blooming but quite highly esteemed mathematician, specializing in the problems of celestial navigation. Uncommon mathematical and musical abilities are quite often to be found in men wholly ignorant of the laws of prosody and barely capable of assembling two score words of prose in a passably elegant, coherent and grammatical form. 'And there might even be an encouraging letter from Lawrence,' he went on: but the word letter reminded him of the shockingly painful one to the Reverend Mr Geoghegan that he must write out fair - he could scarcely ask his clerk to do so - in order that it should go to the flag as soon as possible: and to change the current of his mind he swallowed the last of his coffee and walked forward along the quarterdeck, all its inhabitants silently moving over to the larboard side as he appeared.

'Where away?' he asked.

'Two points on the starboard bow, sir,' said Somers, the officer of the watch, and two of the midshipmen exchanged a knowing look, for most of the people could see her perfectly well.

It was fully day now, though the sun was still hidden by cloud low over the distant land, and there was mist over the sea itself, and presently Jack, bringing his good eye to bear with a now habitual twist of his neck, made out the little frigate, her sails whiter than the whiteness between the two ships.

'She is heading for the Black Rocks,' said Jack. 'Has she uttered?'

'She dipped a topsail, sir,' said Somers. 'But that was probably just Captain Nasmyth's fun.'

'Give her a waft,' said Jack, who was much senior to Nasmyth, the frigate's commander, 'and throw out Desire to speak you.'

The signal midshipman, an oldster named Callow who had sailed with Jack before, and the yeoman were expecting this and the signal raced up, breaking out directly.

The Alexandria put before the wind, spread studdingsails and began throwing a bow-wave, most creditable in this moderate breeze.

'Say Dyce: come no higher,' called Jack. 'Then Have you any news, any letters?'

A short pause, in which all the telescopes on the Bellona's quarterdeck focused earnestly upon the frigate: and even before Callow could read out the answer an audible sigh arose from the quicker-minded watchers. 'No news, sir. No letters. Regret. Repeat regret.'

'Reply Many thanks: the Lord will provide. Carry on.'

The Alexandria carried on, vanishing entirely within half an hour as their courses diverged, Jack beating up for his usual station at this time of day off Dinant Point, where he might possibly fall in with the Ramillies coming down from St Matthews, or one of the cutters that plied between the squadrons.

But for the time being he was to attend to the young gentlemen. They were gathering there on the quarterdeck behind him, accompanied by the schoolmaster, and although some were furtively giggling, treading on one another's toes, most were decently apprehensive.

'Very well, gentlemen, let us begin,' said Jack in their direction, and he led the way into the fore-cabin. Here they showed up their day's workings, which, as there had been no noon observation the day before, were necessarily the product of dead reckoning, and they differed little, except in neatness.

Both Walkinshaw and Jack were perfectly at home with the mathematics of navigation and it was difficult for either to understand how very deeply ignorant it was possible for the young and feather-brained to be, particularly those young men who had spent most of their school-time ashore learning Latin and in some cases Greek and even a little Hebrew - possibly some French. This occurred to Jack with some force in the silence that followed his commendation of the neat and his giving back the workings; and out of this silence he said to a dwarfish twelve-year-old, the son of one of his former lieutenants, 'Mr Thomson, what is meant by a sine?'

He glanced round the general blankness and went on, 'Each of you take a piece of paper and write down what is meant by a sine. Mr Weller' - this to a boy who had been to a nautical academy at Wapping - 'you are whispering to your neighbour. Jump up to the masthead and stay there until you are told to come down. But before you go, gather the papers and show them to me.'

It was difficult to tell whether the schoolmaster or his pupils felt the more distressed as the Captain looked through the undeniable proof of such very complete ignorance of the first elements. 'Very well,' he said at last, 'we shall have to start again with the ABC. Pass the word for my joiner.' The joiner appeared, brushing chips from his apron. 'Hemmings,' said Jack, 'run me up a blackboard, will you? A flat dead paint that will take chalk handsomely, and let me have it by this time tomorrow.' To the youngsters he said, 'I shall write definitions and draw diagrams, and you will get them by heart.' He was not in the best of moods, and his absolute determination, together with his bulk and his immense authority on board, was singularly impressive. They filed out in silence, looking grave.

The next morning the blackboard was present, fixed by thumbscrews within easy reach of the Captain's hand, and from it the boys were taught, with words and diagrams, the nature of sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant, the relations between them, and their value in helping to find your position in a prodigious ocean, no shore, no landmark for ten thousand miles. All these things were to be found in Robinson's Elements of Navigation which, together with the Requisite Tables and Nautical Almanac, lay in their sea-chests, a necessary part of their equipment; and Mr Walkinshaw had tried to lead the youngsters through them. But nothing came anywhere near the concentrated forceful instructions of Jove himself; and after what seemed an anxious eternity to the midshipmen's berth but which in fact lasted no more than a few of the Bellona's usual patrols from Douarnenez Bay to the Black Rocks in hazy, sometimes foggy weather in which they saw nothing at all and sometimes with such light airs that on occasion they lacked even steerage-way and the Captain had all the time in the world for trigonometry.