The Yellow Admiral (28 page)

'There have been exceptions,' said Stephen, smiling.

'Oh, surely not,' said Jack: then, catching the allusion (his fourteen-gun sloop Sophie had captured the thirty-two-gun frigate Cacafuego), he went on, 'Well, yes, there are exceptions, but broadly speaking it is true; and the French are now building ships at a great pace in Venice, along the Adriatic, where they have much more oak than we have now, and better, Genoa, Toulon, La Rochelle; and here in Brest there is immense activity as well as down the coast. I cannot state it as a fact that we are outnumbered, but I am very sure that we soon shall be.'

'My dear, you said all other things being equal: but surely it is generally admitted that they are not equal - that our seamanship is very much better than theirs?'

'On land it is generally admitted that we are the very pink of perfection and that heart-of-oak tars cannot put a foot wrong. But the Americans showed us that we were not quite infallible, and showed us in fair fight too. And as for the French, they have always built better ships than our people could do: our seventy-fours and most of our frigates are modelled on their lines - your own dear Surprise was built at Havre. We certainly were better seamen at the beginning of these wars, when their absurd revolutionary ideas practically wiped out their old seasoned officers. But although that Napoleon is, as you say, a mumping great villain, he has at least knocked all these pernicious democratic and republican notions on the head, and by now there is a new race of French sea-officers, certainly not to be under-estimated. The Admiralty don't under-estimate them, I can tell you. We have been reinforced to a remarkable extent...' Jack was called away at this point, and Stephen, having emptied the pot, made his way below, where an unhappy patient awaited his knife, already held down by leather-padded chains, already calmed, to a certain degree, by thirty drops of laudanum, his belly already washed and shaved, with his particular friend and tie-mate already standing by to comfort him. The operation was a suprapubic cystotomy and it was one that Stephen had often carried out, almost always with success: he approached this particular case with an unstudied calm that soothed the poor rigid sweating seaman more than the laudanum, more than his friend's 'All over very soon, mate - just a twinge or so and Bob's your uncle', cast his eye over the range of instruments that his assistant had laid out, took off his coat, reached for the alcohol, and said, 'Now, Bowden, I am going to pour spirits of wine over your belly to take away the pain: but at first you may feel a little stab. Do not fling away, or I may not be able to come to the trouble.'

'Carry on, sir, if you please,' said Bowden. 'I shall not sing out.'

His mate nevertheless tightened the chain a full link: and indeed the first incision drew a shuddering gasp from the patient. Shuddering gasps had no effect of any kind on the surgeons, however, and they worked steadily on, passing needles, passing forceps, until the last suture was looped, pulled firm, cut short, and the trembling but infinitely relieved patient dismissed to the sick-berth, carried by Graves, the senior loblolly-boy (once a horse knacker) and Butcher, then and now his assistant, and followed by Bow-den's messmate, the paler of the two, but crammed with matter for conversation on the mess-deck.

'Pray, sir,' asked Macaulay, 'why do you use the spirits of wine? Have they a particular virtue?'

'The sudden chilling from evaporation has some slight effect: the knowledge that the surgeon wishes to avoid giving pain probably has more: but upon the whole I use it empirically, no more. Duranton, who taught me at the Hotel Dieu, always used it, above all when he opened an abdomen; and he was a remarkably successful surgeon. So I do the same, perhaps out of a superstitious reverence for my master.'

'I shall certainly imitate you,' said Macaulay, 'cost what it may.'

Stephen wiped his hands, put on his coat, climbed the ladder and reached the quarterdeck. 'Good morning, sir,' said Harding. 'Have you come up for a breath of air?'

'I have, if you have any to spare.'

'Oh, I assure you there is enough for all hands - but should you not like a tarpaulin jacket with a hood, at least? Mr Wetherby, jump down to my cabin and fetch the Doctor a grego: there is one hanging against the bulkhead.'

It came in time to protect Stephen from a stinging gust of rain, and Harding said, 'I am afraid this is really very disagreeable weather. I had hoped you would see our new reinforcements all spread out on the azure main. Grampus is somewhere over there' - nodding into the greyness on the starboard beam. 'She will certainly not be far off: Faithorne has her, and he don't know the bay, so naturally enough he keeps very close.' Naturally indeed, since the Bellona was on her usual southern patrol, heading for the Pointe du Raz and its horrible reef, rocks, tide-races, things abhorrent to a blue-water sailor.

'What is the Grampus?' asked Stephen.

'She is that unhappy thing a fifty-gun ship,' said Harding. 'A fourth rate, with fifty guns on two decks. She is incapable of fighting a seventy-four, a ship of the line, of course, and her two decks makes frigates run. Even if she does catch and take one, there is no glory in it, while if she is beat (as well she may be) by one of the heavy American or even French frigates, it is total disgrace. The wind is backing northerly,' he observed in passing. 'Then we have another seventy-four, the Scipion, taken in Strachan's action, and a couple of frigates, Eurotas, I am very sure - and Penelope, as pretty as her name. And sometimes the Charlotte looks in, to see how we are getting along, while never a week goes by without a cutter or two from the offshore squadron. We used to cheer them, sure of letters, news, slops, or at least something to eat: but no such thing - they only come for reports from the craft that have looked into Brest and for the usual returns: numbers in the sick-list, quantity of water remaining, powder, round-shot ... mind out, sir.' The making tide threw a freakish wave curling over the starboard hammock-nettings, knocking Stephen down and, in spite of the tarpaulin jacket, soaking him with a quite extraordinary thoroughness, so that water ran from every part of his person, every garment that covered him.

Harding picked him up and dabbed ineffectually with a handkerchief, apologizing as he did so. He seemed to feel that it was all his fault; and this opinion was shared, strongly shared, by the two elderly seamen to whom Stephen was delivered - Joe Plaice and Amos Dray, the Doctor's shipmates this many a year and now members of the afterguard, who propped him aft to the warm, dry cabin with many an indignant glance at their first lieutenant.

Killick changed and dried him - nothing more fatal than damp feet - and seeing that dinner would be up very soon, urged him (since he practically qualified as a patient) to eat very sparingly - only two glasses of wine and water - pudding could not be recommended: it was apt to weigh on the vital spirits.

Jack came in, as wet as Neptune, from the maintop, where he had been surveying the weather and all the bay that was visible, with keen attention. 'I do ask pardon for being so late,' he called from his sleeping-cabin, where he was towelling himself with great force. 'I shall not be a moment.' Nor was he. Clean, dry shirt and breeches had he found at once, but the only coat immediately at hand was that of the rear-admiral's uniform which he had necessarily worn in his last commission, a voyage to West Africa that he had made as a commodore commanding a squadron - a commodore of the first class, no less.

'This was the only dry coat I could lay my hands on without being later still,' he said, looking at the broad expanse of gold lace on the sleeve with some complacency. 'I quite like to wear it, now and then, though the Dear knows whether I shall ever appear in it publicly again.' Killick muttered something and set a blaze of silver down before him. 'This liquid is technically known as soup,' Jack went on, having taken off the cover. 'May I ladle you out a measure?'

'It is pleasant enough to see the remnants of peas so aged and worn that even the weevils scorned them and died at their side, so that now we have both predator and prey to nourish us: and what is pleasanter still, is to see the infamous brew spooned from that gleaming great tureen, the gift of the grateful West India merchants.'

'We tried to sell the whole service, you know; but happily the silversmiths turned up their noses. I am very glad of it now, because however poor you are - and nobody could be much poorer in reality than sailors in a ship without any stores - what crusts you may scrape together eat with more relish in handsome silver.'

Next came a truly villainous piece of salt beef that had travelled to the North American station and back in its time, growing steadily more horny and wooden as years went by. Jack ate it without concern - he had grown and thrived on worse - and as he ate he said, 'I was telling you about the French navy's seamanship at breakfast and I was on the very point of giving you a splendid example when I was interrupted. I did tell you that we had been reinforced, did I not?' Stephen bowed. 'Well, one of our new frigates is Eurotas, my splendid example in person. But I dare say you heard all about Eurotas in London?'

Stephen shook his head. 'I know the Eurotas only as a Spartan stream, and Sparta made no part of our conversation in London at any time.'

'Well, early in the year, two frigates got out of Brest: they parted company somewhere about the Cape Verdes after a fairly successful cruise, and when she was homeward-bound, one of them, the Clorinde, which carried twenty-eight eighteen-pounders, two eight-pounders and fourteen twenty-four-pounder carronades, fell in with Eurotas, Captain John Phillimore, a thirty-eight-gun twenty-four-pounder frigate, a very powerful vessel, throwing a broadside of six hundred and one pounds as opposed to Clorinde's four hundred and sixty-three: in size and number of crew they were about equal ... Eurotas saw Clorinde first at two o'clock in the afternoon in 470 4o'N, the wind south-west by south, the Clorinde close-hauled for home on the starboard tack. Eurotas at once bore up in chase, having no doubt of the Clorinde's nationality: half an hour later the Clorinde bore up too, packing on sail. By four o'clock the wind had veered north-west, slackening; yet still the Eurotas gained. When the Clorinde was rather less than four miles ahead she suddenly shortened sail and made as though to cross Eurota's hawse. This brought the two ships much closer, and at 4.45 Eurotas bore up' - Jack moved one of the two pieces of biscuit with which he was making the manoeuvre clear, 'and passed under Clorinde's stern, firing her starboard broadside: but then, as she luffed up under the enemy's quarters, the Frenchman fired so fast and straight that by the time the Eurotas reached Clorinde's larboard bow they brought her mizenmast down. It fell over her starboard quarter; and at much the same time Clorinde's foretopmast carried away. This did not prevent her from shooting ahead, however, and she tried to cross Eurotas' bows and rake her fore and aft.' Stephen shook his head: he had seen the results of a full broadside tearing right down the whole length of a crowded ship. 'But, however, Phillimore clapped his helm hard a-port and luffed up, meaning to board her. Yet the wreckage of the mizen made that impossible and all he could do was to fire his larboard broadside into her stern. This brought them side by side again and they blazed away until 6.20, when the Eurotas had her mainmast shot away - can you imagine that, Stephen, a mast two foot three across? - but luckily it fell to starboard, her unengaged side, so the gunfire was not interrupted. Then the Clorinde's mizenmast came down, while at 6.50, the ships still being in much the same posture, Eurotas' foremast fell over her starboard bow and a minute or so later Clorinde too lost her mainmast. Eurotas, mastless, was unmanageable: Clorinde almost so, though a little after 7, when she was on the Eurotas' larboard bow, she managed to set what was left of her foresail - for you remember she had lost only her fore top mast - and a forestaysail and moved away south-east, out of gunshot. Captain Phillimore had been wounded early in the fight - fainted three times from loss of blood - and now he went below. By 5 the next morning his people, under the first lieutenant, had sent up a spare maintopmast as a jury main: by 6.15 a foretopmast for a jury foremast, and a rough spar for the mizen. The Clorinde was now six miles ahead. By noon, with jury-courses, top-sails, staysails and spanker set, Eurotas was making six and a half knots and obviously gaining. Then of course, what heaved up? Why, Dryad, of course, a thirty-six-gun eighteen-pounder frigate you know quite well, and Achates, a sixteen-gun sloop. But that is not the point, nor how the prize-money, gun-money, head-money and the like was 'shared out: no, my point is that now, at present, a Frenchman, inferior in metal and in sailing qualities, is so well manned, and so well officered, that she can fight like ten bulldogs and reduce one of our heaviest and best frigates to a dismasted hulk. That is why it makes me uneasy to hear of them building at such a rate. In spite of poor Eurotas, I should still feel confident of engaging any French seventy-four we might have the good fortune to meet: but I should certainly not engage two of them; and that is what it may come to if we are outnumbered: while as for the soldiers...'

He broke off, his head raised and intent, like a hound trying to catch an elusive scent. 'Did you hear anything?' he asked.

Both sat, silent, concentrated, trying to pierce through the countless voices of the ship and the sea. 'If it is not distant thunder, would it be gunfire, at all?' asked Stephen. Jack nodded, ran on deck, sent the second lieutenant down into the hold (a capital place for catching the tremor of a broadside a great way off) and listened himself from the master's day-cabin, together with Harding.

'Either Ramillies and Aboukir are engaging the St Matthews batteries or the French are coming out with this north-easter,' said Jack. The second lieutenant joined them. 'I believe it is a sea-fight, sir,' he said, panting with haste and emotion. 'I clearly heard broadside for broadside, never the irregular fire of a battery.'

'Thank you, Mr Somers,' said Jack, who was of the same opinion. 'Mr Harding, a lee-gun if you please; and when Ringle is within hail, tell Mr Reade to make the best of his way to Ramillies and say we shall be there as soon as possible. Grampus is to join us and observe our motions.'