Post Captain (42 page)

'Yes, sir. But form's sake, I must represent to you that the Polychrest needs to be docked, that I am still twenty-three men short of my complement, that she is making eighteen inches of water an hour in a dead calm, and that her leeway renders inshore navigation extremely hazardous.'

'Stuff, Captain Aubrey: my carpenters say you can perfectly well stay out another month. As for her leeway, we all make leeway: the French make leeway, but they are not shy of running in and out of Chaulieu.' In case the hint should not have been clear enough, he repeated his last remark, dwelling on the word shy.

'Oh, certainly, sir,' said Jack with real indifference. 'I spoke, as I say, purely for form's sake.'

'I dare say you want your orders in writing?'

'No, thank you, sir; I believe I shall remember them quite easily.'

Returning to the ship he wondered whether Harte understood the nature of the service he required of the Polychrest - how very like a death-warrant these orders might be: he was not much of a seaman. On the other hand, he had vessels at his command more suitable by far for the intricate passage of the Ras du Point and the inner roads - the Aetna and the Tartarus would do the job admirably. Ignorance and malice in fairly even parts,

he decided. Then again, Harte might have relied upon his contesting the order, insisting upon a survey, and so dishing himself: if so, he had chosen the moment well, as far as the Polychrest was concerned. 'But what does it signify?' he said, running up the side with a look of cheerful confidence. He gave the necessary orders, and a few minutes later the blue peter broke out at the foretopmasthead, with a gun to call attention to it. Stephen heard the gun, saw the signal, and hurried back to Deal.

There were several other Polychrests ashore- Mr Goodridge, Pullings to see his sweetheart, Babbington with his doting parents, half a dozen liberty-men. He joined them on the shingle, where they were bargaining for a hoveller, and in ten minutes he was back in the pharmaceutical-bilgewater-damp-book smell of his own cabin. He had hardly closed his door before a hundred minute ties began to fasten insensibly on him, drawing him back into the role of a responsible naval surgeon, committed to complex daily life with a hundred other men.

For once the Polychrest cast prettily to larboard and bore away on the height of the tide. A gentle breeze abaft the beam carried her shaving round the South Foreland, and by the time the hands were piped to supper they were in sight of Dover. Stephen came on deck by way of the fore-hatch from the sick-bay, and walked into the bows. As he stepped on to the forecastle the talk stopped dead, and he noticed an odd, sullen, shifty glance from old Plaice and Lakey. He had grown used to reserve from Bonden these last few days, for Bonden was the captain's coxswain, and he supposed Plaice had caught it by family affection; but it surprised him from Lakey, a noisy man with an open, cheerful heart. Presently he went below again, and he was busy with Mr Thompson when he heard 'All hands 'bout ship' as the Polychrest stood out into the offing. It was generally known that they were bound down-Channel to look into a French port: some said Wimereux, others Boulogne, and some pushed as far as Dieppe; but when the gun-room sat down to supper the news went about that Chaulieu was their goal.

Stephen had never heard of the place. Smithers (who had recovered his spirits) knew it well: 'My friend, the Marquis of Dorset, was always there in his yacht, during the peace; and he was for ever begging me to run across with him - "Tis absolutely no more than a day and a night in my cutter," he would say. "You should come, George -we can't do without you and your flute."'

Mr Goodridge, who looked thoughtful and withdrawn, added nothing to the conversation. After a discussion of yachts, their astonishing luxury and sailing qualities, it returned to Mr Smithers's triumphs, his yacht-owning friends, and their touching devotion to him; to the fatigues of the London season, and the difficulty of keeping débutantes at a decent distance. Once again Stephen noticed that all this pleased Parker; that although Parker was a man of respectable family and, in his way, a 'hard horse', he encouraged Smithers, listening attentively, and as it were taking something of it to himself. It surprised Stephen, but it did not raise his spirits; and leaning across the table he said privately to the master, 'I should be obliged, Mr Goodridge, if you would tell me something about this port.'

'Come with me, then, Doctor,' said the master. 'I have the charts spread out in my cabin. It will be easier to explain with these shoals laid down before us.'

'These, I take it, are sandbanks,' said Stephen.

'Just so. And the little figures show the depth at high water and at low: the red is where they are above the surface.'

'A perilous maze. I did not know that so much sand could congregate in one place.'

'Why, it is the set of the tides, do you see - they run precious fast round Point Noir and the Prelleys -and these old rivers. In ancient times they must have been much bigger, to have carried down all that silt.'

'Have you a larger map, to give me a general view?'

'Just behind you, sir, under Bishop Ussher.'

This was more like the maps he was used to: it showed the Channel coast of France, running almost north and south below Etaples until a little beyond the mouth of the Risle, where it tended away westwards for three or four miles to form a shallow bay, or rather a rounded corner, ending on the west with the lie Saint-Jacques, a little pear-shaped island five hundred yards from the shore, which then resumed its southerly direction and ran off the page in the direction of Abbeville. In the inner angle of this rounded corner, the point where the coast began to run westward, there was a rectangle marked Square Tower, then nothing, not even a hamlet, for a mile westward, until a headland thrust out into the sea for two hundred yards: a star on top of it, and the name Fort de la Convention. Its shape was like that of the island, but in this case the pear had not quite succeeded in dropping off the mainland. These two pears, St Jacques and Convention, were something less than two miles apart, and between them, at the mouth of a modest stream called the Divonne, lay Chaulieu. It had been a considerable port in mediaeval times, but it had silted up; and the notorious banks in the bay had still further discouraged its trade. Yet it had its advantages: the island sheltered it from western gales and the banks from the north; the fierce tides kept its inner and outer roads clear, and for the last few years the French government had been cleaning the harbour, carrying an ambitious breakwater out to protect it from the north-east, and deepening the channels. The work had gone on right through the Peace of Amiens, for Chaulieu revived would be a valuable port for Bonaparte's invasion-flotilla as it crept up the coast from every port or even fishing-village capable of building a lugger right down to Biarritz - crept up to its assembly-points, Etaples, Boulogne, Wimereux and the rest. There were already over two thousand of these prams, cannonières and transports, and Chaulieu had built a dozen.

'This is where their slips are,' said Goodridge, pointing to the mouth of the little river. 'And this is where they are doing most of their dredging and stone-work, just inside the harbour jetty. It makes the harbour almost useless for the moment, but they don't care for that. They can lie snug in the inner road, under Convention; or in the outer, for that matter, under St Jacques, unless it comes on to blow from the north-east. And now I come to think of it, I believe I have a print. Yes: here we are.' He held out an odd-shaped volume with long strips of the coast seen from the offing, half a dozen to a page. A dull low coast, with nothing but these curious chalky rises each side of the mean village: both much of a height, and both, as he saw looking closely, crowned by the unmistakable hand of the industrious, ubiquitous Vauban.

'Vauban,' observed Stephen, 'is like aniseed in a cake: a little is excellent; but how soon one sickens - these inevitable pepper-pots, from Alsace to the Roussillon.' He turned back to the chart. Now it was clear to him that the inner road, starting just outside the harbour and running up north-east past the Fort de la Convention on its headland, was protected by two long sandbanks, half a mile off the shore, labelled West Anvil and East Anvil; and that the outer road, parallel to the first, but on the seaward side of the Anvils, was sheltered on the east by the island and on the north by Old Paul Hill's bank. These two good anchorages sloped diagonally across the page, from low left to high right, and they were separated by the Anvils: but whereas the inner road was not much above half a mile wide and two long, the outer was a fine stretch of water, certainly twice that size. 'How curious that these banks should have English names,' he said. 'Pray, is this usual?'

'Oh, yes: anything by sea, we feel we own, just as we call Setubal St Ubes, and Coruna The Groyne, and so on: this one here we call the Galloper, after ours, it being much the

same shape. And the Anvils we call anvils because with a north-wester and a making tide, the hollow seas bang away on them rap-rap, first the one and the other, like you was in a smithy. I ran in here once in a cutter, by the Goulet'- pointing to the narrow passage between the island and the main - 'in '88 or '89, with a stiff north-wester, into the inner road, and the spoondrift came in off the bank so thick you could hardly breathe.'

'There is an odd symmetry in the arrangement of these banks, and in these promontories: perhaps there may be a connection. What a maze of channels! How shall you come in? Not by the Goulet, I presume, since it is so close to the fort on the island - I should not have called it a promontory: it is an island, though from the print it looks much the same, being seen head-on.'

'It depends on the wind, of course; but with anything north, I should hope to follow the channel between the Galloper and Morgan's Knock to the outer road, run past St Jacques, and then either go between the Anvils or round the tail of the West Anvil to come to the harbour-mouth; then out again on the ebb, with God's blessing, by the Ras du Point - here, beyond the East Anvil - and so get into the offing before Convention knocks our masts away.

They mount forty-two pounders: a mighty heavy gun. We must start to come in on the first half of the flood, do you see, to get off if we touch and to do our business at high water. Then away with the ebb, so as not to be heaved in by the making tide, when they have chawed us up a little, and we have not quite the control we could wish. And chaw us up they will, playing their heavy pieces on us, unless we can take them by surprise: capital practice those French gunners make, to be sure. How glad I am I left the Modest Proposal with Mrs G., fair-copied and ready for the press.'

'So the tide is all-important,' observed Stephen, after a pause.

'Yes. Wind and tide, and surprise if we can manage it. The tides we can work. I reckon to bring her there, with the island bearing due south and the square tower south-east a half east, with the flood, not of tomorrow night, but of the night after - Sunday, as ever is. And we must pray for a gentle west or north-west breeze to take us in: and out again, maybe.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Stephen sat by his patient in the gently rocking sick-bay. He had almost certainly pulled him through the crisis -the faint thready pulse had strengthened this last hour, temperature had dropped, breathing was almost normal - but this triumph occupied only a remote corner of his mind: the rest was filled with dread. As a listener, a half unconscious listener, he had heard too much good of himself - 'The Doctor is all right - the Doctor will not see us abused - the Doctor is for liberty - he has instruction; he has the French - he is an Irish person, too.' The murmur of conversation at the far end had dropped to an expectant silence; the men were looking eagerly towards him, nudging one another; and a tall Irishman, visiting a sick shipmate, stood up, his face turned towards the Doctor. At his first movement Stephen slipped out of the sick-bay: on the quarterdeck he saw Parker, talking with the Marine lieutenant, both gazing at a line-of-battle ship, a three-decker standing south-west with all her canvas abroad, studdingsails port and starboard, tearing down the Channel with a white bow-wave streaming along her side. Two midshipmen, off duty, sat making a complex object out of rope in the gangway. 'Mr Parslow,' said Stephen, 'pray be so good as to ask the Captain if he is at leisure.'

'I'll go when I've finished this,' said Parslow coolly, without getting up.

Babbington dropped his fid, kicked Parslow vehemently down the ladder and said, 'I'll go, sir.' A later moment he came running back. 'Captain has Chips with him just now, sir, but will be very happy in five minutes.'

Very happy was a conventional phrase, and it was obvious that Captain Aubrey had had an unpleasant conversation with his carpenter: there was a lump of rotten wood with a drawn bolt in it on his desk and a shattered, bludgeoned look on his face. He stood up, awkward, doubtful, embarrassed, his head bent under the beam.

'I am sorry to have to ask for this interview, sir,' said Stephen. 'But it is probable there will be a mutiny tomorrow night, when the ship is in with the French coast. The intention is to carry her into Saint-Valery.'

Jack nodded. This confirmed his reading of the situation - the Sophies' downcast, wretched looks, the men's demeanour, the twenty-four-pound shot that had left their racks to trundle about the deck in the middle watch. His ship was falling to pieces under his feet, his crew were falling away from their duty and their allegiance. 'Can you tell me who are the ringleaders?'

'I cannot. No, sir: you may call me many things, but not an informer. I have said enough, more than enough.'

No. Many surgeons, with a foot in each world, were more than half in sympathy with mutineers: there had been that man at the Nore, and the unfortunate Davidson they hanged for it at Bombay. And even Killick, his own servant, even Bonden - and they must have known something of what was brewing - would not inform on their shipmates, although they were very close to him.

'Thank you for having come to see me,' he said stiffly.

When the door had closed behind Stephen he sat down with his head in his hands and let himself go to total unhappiness - to something near despair - so many things together, and now this cold evil look: he reproached himself most bitterly for not having seized this chance for an apology. 'If only I could have got it out; but he spoke so quick, and he was so very cold. Though indeed, I should have looked the same if any man had given me the lie; it is not to be borne. What in God's name possessed me? So trivial, so beside the point - as gross as a schoolboy calling names - unmanly. However, he shall make a hole

in me whenever he chooses. And then again, what should I have the air of, suddenly growing abject now that I know he is such a deadly old file?' Yet throughout this period of indulgence some other part of his brain was dealing with the immediate problem, and almost without a transition he said, 'By God, I wish I had Macdonald.' This had nothing to do with a desire for comfort or council - he knew that Macdonald disapproved of him - but for efficiency. Macdonald was an officerlike man; this puppy Smithers was not. Still, he might not be wholly inept.

He rang his bell, and said, 'Pass the word for Mr Smithers.'

'Sit down, Mr Smithers. Tell me over the names of your Marines, if you please. Very good: and there is your sergeant, of course. Now listen to what I say. Think of each of these men separately, with great attention, and tell me whether or no each is to be relied upon.'

'Why, of course they are, sir,' cried Smithers.

'No, no. Think, man, think,' said Jack, trying to force some responsibility from that pink smirk. 'Think, and reply when you have really thought. This is of the very first consequence.'

His look was exceedingly penetrating and savage; it had effect. Smithers lost countenance and began to swear. He did evidently put his mind into painful motion; his lips could be seen moving, telling over the muster; and after some time he came up with the answer, 'Perfectly reliable, sir. Except for a man called - well, he has the same name as me; but no sort of connection, of course - a Papist from Ireland.'

'You will answer for that? You are dead certain of what you say? I say dead certain?'

'Yes, sir,' said Smithers, staring, terribly upset.

'Thank you, Mr Smithers. You are to mention this conversation to no one. That is a direct, absolute order. And you are to display no uneasiness. Pray desire Mr Goodridge to come here at once.'

'Mr Goodridge,' he said, standing at his chart-table, 'be so good as to give me our position.'

'Exact, sir, or within a league or two?' asked the master, with his head on one side and his left eye closed.

'Exact.'

'I must bring the log-board, sir.' Jack nodded. The master returned, took up scale and compasses, and pricked the chart. 'There, sir.'

'I see. We are under courses and topsails?'

'Yes, sir. We agreed to run down easy for Sunday's tide, if you remember, so as not to hang about in the offing, we being so recognizable.'

'I believe, I believe,' said Jack, studying the chart and the board, 'I believe that we may catch this evening's tide. What do you say, Master?'

'If the wind holds, sir, so we may, by cracking on regardless. I should not care to answer for the wind, though. The glass is rising.'

'Not mine,' said Jack, looking at his barometer. 'I should like to see Mr Parker, if you please: and in the meantime it would be as well to get the stuns'ls, royals and skylines into the tops.

'Mr Parker, we have a mutiny on our hands. I intend to take the Polychrest into action at the earliest possible moment, by way of dealing with the situation. We shall crowd sail to reach Chaulieu tonight. But before making sail I shall speak to the men. Let the gunner load the two aftermost guns with grape. The officers are to assemble on the quarterdeck at six bells - in ten minutes - with their side-arms. The Marines will fall in with their muskets on the fo'c'sle. No hurry or concern will be shown before that time. When all hands are called the guns will be traversed for'ard, with an oldster standing by each one. When I have spoken to the hands and we make sail, no man is to be struck or started until further orders.'

'May I offer an observation, sir?'

'Thank you, Mr Parker, no. Those are my orders.'

'Very good, sir.'

He had no confidence in Parker's judgment. If he had asked the advice of any man aboard it would have been Goodridge. But this was his responsibility as captain of the ship and his alone. In any case, he felt that he knew more about mutinous hands than anyone on the quarterdeck of the Polychrest: as a disrated midshipman he had served before the mast in a discontented ship on the Cape station - he knew it from the other side. He had a great affection for the foremast jack, and if he did not know for certain what would go with the lower deck, at least he was quite sure what would not.

He looked at his watch, put on his best coat, and walked on to the quarterdeck. Six bells in the forenoon watch. His officers were gathering round him, silent, very grave.

'All hands aft, if you please, Mr Parker,' he said.

The shrill pipes, the roaring down hatchways, the stampede, the red coats trooping forward through the throng. Silence, but for the tapping of the reef-points overhead.

'Men,' said Jack, 'I know damned well what's going on. I know damned well what's going on; and I won't have it. What simple fellows you are, to listen to a parcel of makee-clever sea-lawyers and politicians, glib, quick-talking coves. Some of you have put your necks into the noose. I say your necks into the noose. You see the Ville de Paris over there?' Every head turned to the line-of-battle ship on the horizon. 'I have only to signal her, or half a dozen other cruisers, and run you up to the yardarm with the Rogue's March playing. Damned fools, to listen to such talk. But I am not going to signal to the Ville de Paris nor to any other king's ship. Why not? Because the Polychrest is going into action this very night, that's why. I am not going to have it said in the fleet that any Polychrest is afraid of hard knocks.'

'That's right,' said a voice - Joe Plaice, well out in front, his mouth wide open.

'It's not you, sir,' said another, unseen. 'It's him, old Parker, the hard-horse bugger'.

'I'm going to take the Polychrest in tonight,' Jack went on, in a growing roar of conviction, 'and I'm going to hammer the Frenchmen in Chaulieu, in their own port, dy'ye hear me? If there's any man here afraid of hard knocks, he'd better stay behind. Is there any man here, afraid of hard knocks?'

A kind of universal growl, not ill-natured: some laughter; further cries of 'that hard-horse bugger'.

'Silence fore and aft. Well, I'm glad there ain't. There are some awkward hands among us still - look at that wicked ugly slab-line - and some men that talk too much, but I never thought there was a faint heart aboard. They may say the Polychrest ain't very quick in stays; they may say she don't furl her tops'ls all that pretty; but if they say she's shy, if they say she don't like hard knocks, why, black the white of my eye. When we thumped it into the Bellone, there wasn't a single foremast jack that did not do his duty like a lion. So we'll run into Chaulieu, I say, and we'll hammer Bonaparte. That's the right way to bring the war to an end - that's the right way, not listening to a set of galley-rangers and clever chaps - and the sooner it's over and you can go home, the better I'll be pleased. I know it's not a bed of roses, looking after our country the way we have to. Now I tell you this, and mark what I do say. There is going to be no punishment over this business: it will not even be logged, and there's my word upon it. There is going to be no punishment. But every man and boy must attend to his duty tonight, he must mind it very carefully, because Chaulieu is a tough nut to crack - an awkward set of shoals - an awkward tide - and we must be every hand to his rope, and haul with a will, d'ye hear? Quick's the word and sharp's the action. Now I am going to pick some men for the barge, and then we shall crowd all the sail she can bear.' He walked into the tight crowd of men, into the low buzz of talk, the whispers, and silence went before him. Smiling, confident faces, worried faces or blank, some apprehensive, some brute-terrified and savage. 'Davis,' he said, 'go along into the barge.' The man's eyes were frightened as a wild beast's: he darted looks left and right. 'Come on, now, come along, you heard what I said,' said Jack quietly, and Davis lumbered aft, bowed and unnatural. The silence was general now, the atmosphere quite different. But he was not going to leave these men to have dinner with their messmates and try some desperate foolery. He was in a state of exceedingly acute awareness; he had no shadow of a doubt of the men he chose. 'Wilcocks, into the barge. Anderson.' He was far in among them. He had no weapons. 'Johnson. Look alive.' The tension was heightening very fast; it must go no higher. 'Bonden, into the barge,' he said, looking over his coxswain's head. 'Me, sir?' cried Bonden piteously. 'Cut along,' said Jack. 'Bantock, Lakey, Screech.' The low excited talk had begun again on the periphery. Men who could not be suspected were being sent into the barge: they were going aft, down the sternladder and into the boat towing behind: this was no punishment, nor no threat of punishment. He flemished down the offending slab-line in a seamanlike manner and walked back to the quarterdeck.

'Now, Polychrests,' he said, 'now we are going to crack on until she groans again. Stuns'ls aloft and alow, royals, and, damn me, royal stuns'ls and skys'ls if she'll bear 'em. The sooner we're there; the sooner we're home. Topmen, upperyardmen, are you ready?'

'Ready, aye ready, sir.' A comfortable, good body of sound - relief, thankfulness?

'Then at the word, up you go. Lay aloft!'

The Polychrest bloomed like a white rose. Her rarely-used studdingsails stretched out brilliant white one after another, her brand-new royals shone high, and above them all, her hitherto unseen skysails twinkled in the sun. The ship groaned and groaned again as they were sheeted home; she plunged her forefoot deep while behind her the barge raced along in her wake, the water almost to its gunwales.

If the Polychrest could be said to have a good point of sailing, it was with the wind three points abaft the beam; and here the wind stayed all day, scarcely varying from west-north-west by north, and blowing with a gentle urgency that kept all eyes aloft for the safety of her royals and skysails. She was cracking on indeed, racing down the Channel as though their lives depended upon it, making so much water that Mr Gray the carpenter, coming up from the well, officially registered his protest. She did carry away a skysail, and at one point a large unidentified object tore from her bottom, but the leagues raced away in her wake, and Jack, perpetually on the quarterdeck, could almost have loved her.

On the forecastle the watch below were at their make and mend; the watch on duty were kept busy, necessarily busy, trimming sail; and everybody seemed to be enjoying the speed, the racing tension to get the last ounce out of her. His orders about starting were being punctually obeyed; and so far no man or boy seemed to move any slower for it. The men in the barge had been brought aboard, lest it should tow under, and they had had their dinner in the galley: he was not afraid of them now - their influence was gone, their shipmates avoided them. Davis, the really dangerous brute for a sudden reckless explosion, seemed wholly amazed; and Wilcocks, the eloquent attorney's clerk turned pickpocket, could find no one to listen to him. The seamen, for the most part, had turned with their usual calm volatility from one disaster to the interval before the next. For the moment he had the situation in hand.