The Yellow Admiral (29 page)

Returning to the cabin he darted an accusing eye at the coffee-pot. But Killick, during the few moments he could spare from eavesdropping near the master's day-cabin, had for his part observed the Doctor's motions - as unscrupulous as ever where coffee and certain sweetmeats were concerned - and another pot was already on its way.

'As I had hoped,' said Jack with great satisfaction, 'the French have taken advantage of this blessed north-east wind to attempt a sortie, and we...' He raised his voice very much indeed to carry above the bosun's, 'All hands, all hands, there' and the subsequent thunder of feet, emphatic orders, and the huge variety of sounds caused when a ship of the line, sailing large under courses and reefed topsails, is suddenly required to change course from almost due south to west-north-west and spread all the canvas she can bear. '...and we are pelting up to join Ramillies and Aboukir, who seem to be engaging them. It will take some time, since we have to bear up; but I have hopes that the wind will back westerly. Now, when I have finished this glorious cup and changed my good coat, I shall go and urge the ship on by force of mind. I shall also keep my fingers crossed,' he added privately.

He might indeed have indulged in even grosser forms of superstition; for this dreadful bay, thickly sown with rocks, isolated or in reefs, largely invisible through low cloud, sheets of rain and even downright fog, called for a mind that could retain some hundreds of bearings and shift the internal chart according to the ship's speed and directions, never forgetting the local current and the all-important ebb and flow of the tide. Fortunately Jack possessed this sort of mind, if not to perfection then at least to a high degree: furthermore, he had been up and down this great stretch of water, patrolling all of it and surveying much, for what seemed eternity; and above all he was on terms of good understanding - friendship might be the better word, with the Bellona and her people.

Reade in the tender had almost equal knowledge of the bay, since he had accompanied his captain on most of his movements and surveys, and since the Ringle could lie so much closer to the wind he was soon out of sight even when the murk parted; but the unhappy Grampus was perfectly new to Brest, and she kept so perilously close to the Bellona's stern that Jack stationed a hand with a speaking-trumpet to warn her where he was about to tack, a fairly frequent exercise in these waters, though somewhat less so as the wind continued to veer westerly.

From time to time, Stephen, resuming the tarpaulin jacket, stood in out-of-the-way places on the leeward side of the quarterdeck: the ship might have been sailing, perhaps at a very great speed (with everything - sea, foam, squalls, fog - in furious, apparently random motion it was impossible to judge) through a nightmare lit only by battle-lanterns and through one of the noisier, unrecorded, circles of the Inferno: and it was both wonderful and comforting to see the wet, cheerful, unconcerned faces around him, perfectly willing to tally aft and belay or leap into the rigging and vanish upwards at a pipe or the word of command - competent, at home, eagerly expectant.

Space might scarcely exist, having lost all boundaries, but time was still with them, measured by bells; and at six bells in the middle watch Stephen made his way cautiously down and down (the size of this ship still surprised him) to the sick-berth, which, in comparison, was a gently lamplit haven of peace: so much so that his cystotomy and all the other patients and their attendants were fast asleep. He sat listening to the cystotomy's even breathing for a while, and then, noticing a change in the Bellona's motion, he returned to the quarterdeck, feeling that in this wild rush through the obscurity his presence (though useless) was called for, by decency, if by nothing else.

'There you are, Stephen,' said Jack. 'We have just reached the western end of the Black Rocks and we are starting our run in for the Goulet. Do you hear them banging away? They are well to the east of St Matthews: right in the Goulet. Dear Lord, what a prodigious great deal of weather! Not a fit night out for man or beast, as the Centaur observed, ha, ha, ha!'

With this western tendency in the turning wind the Bellona now received it where she liked it best, and at four bells in the morning watch the midshipman in charge of the log reported, 'Nine knots and one fathom, sir, if you please.'

Killick came out, shielding a jug of coffee, and as Jack came aft to share it with Stephen he nodded towards a wicked swirl of white water a quarter of a mile on the starboard beam and said, 'That is the Basse Royale, a death-trap for a ship of our draught in a hollow sea, near the bottom of the ebb: and over there,' nodding to larboard, 'you would see the Basse Large, was you on the poop, which is worse by far but more obvious. Mr Whewell' - raising his voice -'I believe we may shake out the reef in the foretopsail.'

The mingled cloud and fog lifted a little about this time, just before the first hint of day in the east, and its grey lower surface showed crimson with the stabbing gunfire ahead. 'Yes, they are right in the Goulet, by the Basse Beuzec,' said Jack. 'Happily the St Matthews battery cannot see a thing, perched up there: we shall have to pass right under their guns.'

'Sail on the starboard bow,' bawled a lookout, adding confidentially, 'Tender, I do believe.'

'The ship, ahoy,' called a voice from that direction. 'What ship is that?'

'Bellona, Mr Reade,' said Jack. 'Come aboard.' And directing his voice forward, 'Pass a line there.'

'Stand by to fend off,' cried Harding, careful for his paintwork.

'What is the position?' asked Jack as Reade came over the side.

'They are two French seventy-fours, sir,' said Reade, 'and they have battered Aboukir and Ramillies pretty badly. Aboukir is stuck on the near Basse Beuzec and the Frenchmen would have boarded her, but Naiad came up and kept peppering them, while Ramillies hit one of them very hard - there was an explosion amidships.'

'Very good. Just how does Aboukir lie?' Reade explained. 'Then cut back and do what you can to lay out a kedge east-north-east. With any luck the tide should lift her in -, He looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle - 'twenty minutes. Master gunner,' he called, and after a short, largely formal exchange with Mr Meares he said to his first lieutenant, 'Mr Harding, let us beat to quarters. Stephen,' he added in an aside, smiling as he spoke, 'away below with you, out of the falling damps.'

The Bellona's surgeon and his assistants sat there in the cockpit, listening intently: the midshipmen's sea-chests, lashed together under the lantern, covered with tarpaulins, then sailcloth and then a fine white sheet made fast all round, stood in the middle: the instruments, shining clean and, where an edge was called for, shaving-sharp, stood in their accustomed order, saws to the larboard.

They listened, and even down here the rumbling grumble of the French seventy-fours, the Ramillies and the Naiad made the bottles tremble; while a little later the poor hard-hit Aboukir, lifting to the tide, brought her broadside to bear and returned the enemy fire with all the pent-up fury of a ship that has been punished without being able to reply.

But their own battle, the Bellona's rippling broadsides they had heard so often during the great-gun exercise, did not begin, and tense expectation was drooping even to the point of discontent when, with a wholly different and immediate sharpness, her bow-chasers fired, followed by the foremost guns of her starboard broadside, deep-voiced guns, loud and clear, firing well-spaced, carefully-aimed deliberate long shots.

'It has started,' cried Smith, who had seen no action; and as if in reply a spent, harmless round-shot hit the Bellona's side. Smith gazed at his colleagues with a wild enthusiasm.

'What is it, Mr Wetherby?' asked Stephen, seeing the boy come in.

'Captain's compliments, sir, if you please, and Aboukir's surgeon would be most grateful for a hand with his casualties. There is a cutter alongside, if you please to come with me.'

'We are to expect no more action, I collect?' asked Stephen: he began filling a basket with instruments, bandages, pledgets, tourniquets, splints, laudanum.

'Not at present, sir, I am afraid. The Frenchmen are running for home.'

It would have been temerity carried to a criminal pitch if the Frenchmen had not done so, when they were confronted with a resuscitated Aboukir, a largely intact Ramillies, a thirty-eight-gun frigate, and now two perfectly fresh and untouched two-deckers, particularly as one of the French ships of the line had had seven ports beaten into one and several guns dismounted by the explosion. Yet it was disappointing. 'Call that an action?' asked Mr Meares, addressing his mates. 'I call it a fart in a blind alley. A genteel fart in a blind alley, is what I call it. And after all our hurry and preparation - all hands day and night, then cartridges filled without so much as a hot dinner, screens shipped, decks sanded and wetted and who for God's sake needed any more water on a God-damned day like this?'

'It was disappointing,' said Jack, as Stephen joined him for what had to pass for breakfast. 'But there was no help...'

'Come, sir, if you please,' said Killick, with a bucket of hot water, soap, towel, dressing-gown. He guided Stephen into the quarter-gallery, leaving him with the words, 'You know the Captain can't bear the sight of blood, and there you are soaked, fair soaked, from head to foot and what poor Grimble and I shall do to the floorcioth with all them nasty footprints, I don't know. Now take off everything, sir, shirt, drawers, stockings and all and throw them into that there bucket. I will keep your coffee hot: his honour will not mind waiting.'

Neither Captain Aubrey nor Dr Maturin was an outstandingly meek or patient man, yet such was Killick's total conviction, his moral superiority, that the one waited for his longed-for coffee without complaint and the other not only washed obediently but would have shown both hands, front and back, if required.

'Yes, it was disappointing,' said Jack. 'But there was no help for it. The Frenchmen were hopelessly outnumbered, so of course as soon as they made out our full force and as soon as Aboukir had lifted they spread all the sail they could - unhappily they lost no more than a mizen topmast between them in the action; and that don't signify, since now they have a leading wind.'

'They could not be pursued, with this same leading wind, I presume?'

'Certainly they could be pursued, and by steady fire, yawing now and then for a broadside, we might well knock away a few spars and even conceivably take them, right up in the Goulet, before they reach their friends in the inner bay. But how do you propose to bring them out with the wind in the west, the powerful tide against us too, and the fog lifting with the sun so that we are exposed to the batteries?'

They heard a boat alongside reply 'Ramillies' to the sentinel's hail and Jack hurried on deck to receive Captain Fanshawe. 'Come and have a cup of coffee,' he said, and brought him into the cabin. 'You know Dr Maturin, I believe?'

'Of course, of course: long since. How do you do, sir? And so you have real coffee? We have been down to grains of barley, roasted and ground, these many weeks. How I should love a single draught of right Arabian mocha. Heavens, Jack, you were a welcome sight, you and poor old Grampus, heaving up out of the murk. I had a horrible feeling it was more Frenchmen coming to join their friends - a rendezvous - and we were in a wretched posture to receive them, with Aboukir hard and fast... but, however, now the tables are turned, ha, ha ha - What glorious coffee - Turned as pretty as you could wish.'

'Turned indeed: and the Doctor wants us to bring them out in triumph'

'If we had some of those vessels that are said to sail against wind and tide, we might do so,' said Fanshawe, looking affectionately at Stephen 'But as we are only simple ships of the line I believe we must return to our dreary blockade, sending word to the Admiral that Aboukir will probably have to go into Cawsand Bay.'

This they did, patching up the Aboukir as well as the assembled carpenters and sailmakers could manage, although eastwards they heard remote but quite unmistakable and heavy gunfire, borne on the still westerly breeze.

'No,' said Fanshawe, 'our orders are to patrol the bay, which implies preventing the enemy from coming out or getting in and above all from joining forces. If you like I will send Naiad and your tender to see if either of them can find the flag and ask for orders, but that is as far as I can go. Our clear duty, as I see it, is to go up and down this vile bay until we are told to stop.'

'You always was a pig-headed brute, Billy,' said Jack; but this was a totally unofficial aside (they were alone in the cabin) and it was taken as such: in point of fact Captain Aubrey and all the rest continued to go up and down that vile bay, blockading the port of Brest and growing steadily hungrier - up and down until a little before two bells in the afternoon watch of Friday, a brisk topsail breeze at southwest, the weather clear, a moderate southern swell, when the Bellona's masthead and every other masthead belonging to the inshore squadron reported a sail four points on the larboard bow. As they were then heading for St Matthews, the sail was clearly from Ushant: and since she was travelling fast, with a favourable breeze, further details came down at quite short intervals. 'On deck, there: a three-decker, sir.' 'On deck, there: a brig and a ship in her wake - store-ship, I believe.' 'On deck there: the Charlotte, sir.'

Well before that awe-inspiring (but scarcely unexpected) name, the captains' servants began titivating their masters' best uniform against the almost inevitable signal Captains repair aboard the flag and the first lieutenants hurried about anxiously looking for imperfections that might bring discredit on the ship. Unhappily there was no time for blacking the yards, but at least everything that should be taut was tautened with tackles, Spanish buttons or just plain heaving staves, while the dirtier midshipmen were sent below to wash, while all were desired to brush their hair, change their shirts and put on gloves.

Aboard the Bellona every urgent measure had been taken and they were beginning the fine-work, such as whitening lanyards, when with real concern they saw the flagship round to and at once begin to lower down her barge. Captain Fanshawe was the senior captain present and his ship, the Admiral's natural victim, was seized with a renewed frenzy of zeal, her people hurrying about like ants in an overturned ant-hill: but they were mistaken. Very soon it became apparent that the barge was heading for Bellona, whose Royal Marine officers now conducted the most rapid and thorough-paced reviewof their 120-odd men in the history of the corps, finishing only when the barge, in answer to the wholly superfluous hail, replied 'Flag', and hooked on.