Post Captain (56 page)

A day of light variable airs, mostly in their teeth -whistling fore and aft, and prayers that were answered by a fair breeze on Thursday, October 2. They passed Cape St Vincent later that day, under royals, with the Medusa in company, and they had been exercising the guns for some time - a very particular salute for that great headland, just visible from the masthead on the larboard beam when the bosun came aft and spoke to the first lieutenant. Mr Simmons pursed his lips, looked doubtful, hesitated, and then stepped across to Jack. 'Sir,' he said, 'the bosun represents to me, that the men, with the utmost respect, would wish you to consider whether it might be advisable not to fire the bow guns.'

'They do, do they?' cried Jack, who had caught some odd, reproachful glances before this. 'Do they also think it advisable to double the ration of grog?'

'Oh no, sir,' said the sweating crew of the gun nearest at hand.

'Silence, there,' cried Mr Simmons. 'No, sir: what they mean is - that is to say, there is a general belief that firing the bow guns checks her way; and time being so short.

'Well, there may be something in what they say. The philosophers don't believe it, but we will not run the risk. Let the bow guns be run in and out, and fired in dumb show.'

A pleased smile spread along the deck. The men wiped their faces - it was 80° in the shade of the sails - tightened the handkerchiefs round their foreheads, spat on their hands, and prepared to whip their iron monsters in and out in under two minutes and a half. After a couple of broadsides - in for a penny, in for a pound - and some independent firing, the tension, strongly present throughout the ship since Finisterre, suddenly rose to the highest pitch. Medusa was signalling a sail one point on the larboard quarter.

'Up you go, Mr Harvey,' said Jack to a tall, light midshipman. 'Take the best glass in the ship. Mr Simmons may lend you his.'

Up he went, up and up with the glass slung over his shoulder, up to the royal pole and the tie; poor Cassandra could hardly have outstripped him. Presently his voice came floating down. 'On deck, there, Amphion, sir. I believe she has sent up a jury foretopmast.'

The Amphion she was, and bringing up the breeze she joined company before the fall of night. Now they were three, and the next morning found them at their last rendezvous, with Cape Santa Maria bearing north-east, thirty miles away, visible from the fighting-tops in the brilliant light.

The three frigates, with Sutton of the Amphion now senior captain, stood off and on all day, their mastheads thick with telescopes, perpetually sweeping the western sea, a vast blue rolling sea, with nothing between them and America except, perhaps, the Spanish squadron. In the evening the Indefatigable joined, and on the fourth day of October the frigates spread wide to cover as great an area as possible, still remaining within signalling distance: silently they beat up and down - gunnery had been laid aside since Cape St Vincent, for fear of giving the alarm. Aboard the Lively almost the only sound was the squeaking of the grindstone on the forecastle as the men sharpened their cutlasses and pikes, and the chip-chip-chip of the gunner's party scaling the shot.

To and fro, to and fro, wearing every half hour at the first stroke of the ship's bell, men at every masthead watching the other frigates for a signal, a dozen glasses scanning the remote horizon.

'Do you remember Anson, Stephen?' said Jack, as they paced the quarterdeck. 'He did this for weeks and weeks off Paita. Did you ever read his book?'

'I did. How that man wasted his opportunities.'

'He went round the world, and worried the Spaniards out of their wits, and took the Manilla galleon - what more could you ask?'

'Some slight attention to the nature of the world round which he sailed so thoughtlessly. Apart from some very superficial remarks about the sea-elephant, there is barely a curious observation in the book. He should certainly have taken a naturalist.'

'If he had had you aboard, he might be godfather to half a dozen birds with curious beaks; but on the other hand, you would now be ninety-six. How he and his people ever stood this standing off and on, I do not know. However, it all ended happy.'

'Not a bird, not a plant, not a smell of geology. Shall we have some music after tea? I have written a piece I should like you to hear. It is a lament for the Tir nan 0g.'

'What is the Tir nan Og?'

'The only bearable part of my country: it vanished long ago.'

'Let us wait until the darkness falls, may we? Then I am your man: we will lament to your heart's content.'

Darkness; a long, long night in the stifling gun-deck and the cabins, little sleep, and many a man, and officer too, taking a caulk on deck or in the tops. Before dawn on the fifth the decks were being cleaned - no trouble in getting the hands to tumble up - and the smoke from the galley fire was streaming away on the steady north-east wind, when the forward look-out, the blessed Michael Scanlon, hailed the deck with a voice that might have been heard in Cadiz - the Medusa, the last ship in the line of frigates as they stood to the north, was signalling four large sail bearing west by south.

The eastern sky lightened, high wisps of cloud catching the golden light from below the horizon; the milky sea grew brilliant, and there they were, right aft, beating up for Cadiz, four white flecks on the rim of the world.

'Are they Spaniards?' asked Stephen, creeping into the maintop.

'Of course they are,' said Jack. 'Look at their stumpy topmasts. Here, take my glass. On deck, there. All hands stand by to wear ship.'

At the same moment the signal to wear and chase broke out aboard the Indefatigable, and Stephen began his laborious descent, propped by Jack, Bonden, and a bosun's mate, clinging to his tail until tears came into the poor man's eyes. He had prepared his lines of argument for Mr Osborne, but he wished to pass them over in his mind before he conferred with him aboard the Indefatigable, whose captain was in command of the squadron as commodore. He went below, his heart beating at an unusual pace. The Spaniards were gathering together, signals passing between them: negotiations would be delicate; oh, very delicate indeed.

Breakfast, a scrappy meal. The Commodore signalling for Dr Maturin: Stephen upon deck with a cup of coffee in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other as the cutter was lowered away. How very much closer they were, so suddenly! The Spaniards had already formed their battle-line, standing on the starboard tack with the wind one point free, and they were so near that he could see their gun-ports - every one of them open, yawning wide.

The British frigates, obeying the signal to chase, had broken their line, and the Medusa, the southernmost ship and therefore the foremost once they had worn, was running straight before the wind for the leading Spanish ship; a few hundred yards behind her there was the Indefatigable, steering for the second Spaniard, the Medea, with Bustamente's flag at the mizen; then came the Amphion; and bringing up the rear, the Lively. She was closing the gap fast, and as soon as Stephen had been bundled into the cutter she spread her foretopgallant, crossed the Amphion's wake, and steered for the Clara, the last ship in the Spanish line.

The Indefatigable yawed a trifle, backed her topsails, hoisted Stephen aboard, and plunged on. The Commodore, a dark, red-faced, choleric man, very much on edge, hurried him below, paid very little attention to his words as he ran over the heads of the argument that was to persuade the Spanish admiral to yield, but sat there drumming his fingers on the table, breathing fast with angry excitement. Mr Osborne, a quick, intelligent man, nodded, staring into Stephen's eyes: he nodded, taking each point, and nodded again, his mouth tight shut.'... and lastly,' said Stephen, 'induce him by all possible means to come across, so that we may concert our answer to unforeseen objections.'

'Come, gentlemen, come,' cried the Commodore, running on deck. Closer, closer: they were well within range, all colours abroad; within musket-shot, the Spanish decks crowded with faces; within pistol-shot.

'Hard over,' said the Commodore. The wheel spun and the big frigate turned with a roar of orders to round to and lie on the admiral's starboard beam, twenty yards to windward. The Commodore took his speaking-trumpet. 'Shorten sail,' he cried, aiming it at the Medea's quarterdeck. The Spanish officers spoke slightly to one another; one of them shrugged his shoulders. There was dead silence all along the line: wind in the rigging, the lapping of the sea.

'Shorten sail,' he repeated, louder still. No reply: no sign. The Spaniard held his course for Cadiz, two hours away. The two squadrons ran in parallel lines, gliding silently along at five knots, so close that the low sun sent the shadow of the Spanish topgallantmasts across the English decks.

'Fire across his bows,' said the Commodore. The shot struck the water a yard before the Medea's forefoot, the spray sweeping aft. And as though the crash had broken

the spell of silence and immobility there was a quick swirl of movement aboard the Medea, a shout of orders, and her topsails were dewed up.

'Do your best, Mr Osborne,' said the Commodore. 'But by God he shall make up his mind in five minutes.'

'Bring him if you possibly can,' said Stephen. 'And above all, remember Godoy has betrayed the kingdom to the French.'

The boat pulled across and hooked on. Osborne climbed aboard the Spanish frigate, took off his hat and bowed to the crucifix, the admiral and the captain, each in turn. They saw him go below with Bustamente.

And now the time dragged slow. Stephen stood by the mainmast, his hands tight clasped behind his back: he hated Graham, the commodore: he hated what was going to happen. He tried with all his force to follow and to influence the argument that was carrying on half a pistol shot away. If only Osborne could bring Bustamente aboard there might be a fair chance of an arrangement.

Mechanically he glanced up and down the line. Ahead of the Indefatigable the Medusa lay rocking gently beside the Fama; astern of the Medea the Amphion had now slipped round under the Mercedes's lee, and in the rear lay the Lively, close to windward of the Clara. Even to Stephen's unprofessional eye, the Spaniards were in a remarkable state of readiness; there was none of that hurried flight of barrels, coops, livestock, tossed into the sea to clear the decks, that he had seen often enough in the Mediterranean. At each gun, its waiting, motionless crew; and the smoke from the slow-match in every tub wafted in a thin blue haze along the long range of cannon.

Graham was pacing up and down with a quick uneven step. 'Is he going to be all night?' he said aloud, looking at the watch in his hand. 'All night? All night?'

A quarter of an endless hour, and all the time the sharp smell of burning match in their nostrils. Another dozen turns and the Commodore could bear it no longer.

'A gun for the boat,' he cried, and again a shot whipped across the Medea's bows.

Osborne appeared on the Spanish deck, clambered down into the boat, came aboard the Indefatigable, shaking his head. His face was pale and tense. 'Admiral Bustamente's compliments, sir,' he said to the Commodore, 'but he cannot entertain your proposals. He cannot consent to being detained. He nearly yielded when I spoke of Godoy,' he said to Stephen, aside. 'He hates him.'

'Let me go across, sir,' cried Stephen. 'There is still time.'

'No, sir,' cried the Commodore, a wild, furious glare in his face. 'He has had his time. Mr Carrol, lay me across her bows.'

'Lee braces - 'The cry was drowned by the Mercedes's crashing broadside as she fired straight into the Amphion.

'Signal close engagement,' said the Commodore, and the vast bay roared and echoed with a hundred guns. A great pall of smoke formed at once, rising and drifting away south-west, and within the pall the flashes of the guns followed one another in a continuous blaze of lightning. An enormous din, trembling heart and spine:

Stephen stood there near the mainmast, with his hands behind his back, looking up and down; there was the cruel taste of powder in his mouth, and in his bosom he felt the rising fierce emotion of a bull-fight - the furious cheering of the gun-crews was invading him. Then the cheering was cut off, drowned, annihilated by a blast so huge that it wiped out thought and almost consciousness:

the Mercedes blew up in a fountain of brilliant orange light that pierced the sky.

Spars, great shapeless timbers rained down out of the pillar of smoke, a severed head, and now through their fall there was the roar of guns again. The Amphion had moved up to the leeward side of the Medea, and the Spaniard was between two fires.

Cheer upon cheer, a rolling fire, and the powder-boys ran by in an unbroken stream. Cheers, and then one greater than the rest, quite different, a great exultant cry 'She's struck! The admiral has struck!'

The fire was slackening all along the line. Only the Lively was still hammering the Clara, while the Medusa was sending a few shots after the distant Fama, who, having struck, had nevertheless borne up: she was flying, uninjured, under a press of sail to leeward.

A few minutes later the Clara's colours came down. The Lively shot ahead alongside the Indefatigable and Jack hailed the Commodore. 'Give you joy, sir. May I go in chase?'

'Thankee, Aubrey,' called the Commodore. 'Chase for all you are worth - she has the treasure aboard. Crack on: we are all chewed up.'

'May I have Dr Maturin, sir? My surgeon is aboard the prize.'

'Yes, yes. Bear a hand, there. Don't let her get away, Aubrey, do you hear me?'

'Aye aye, sir. Briskly the cutter, now.'

The Lively wore clear of the crippled Amphion, just shaving her bowsprit, sheeted home her topgallants and headed south-west. The Fama, untouched in her masts and rigging, was already three miles off, stretching away for a band of deeper blue, a stronger wind that might carry her to the Canaries, or allow her to double back by night for Algeciras.

'Well, old Stephen,' cried Jack, hauling him inboard by main force, 'that was a hearty brush, eh? No bones broke, I trust? All sober and correct? Why, your face is black with powder-smoke. Go below - the gun-room will lend you a basin until the cabin is set to rights - wash, and we will go on with our breakfast as soon as the galley fire is lit again. I will be with you once we have knotted and spliced the worst of the danger.'