Master & Commander (23 page)

   But the event proved Thomas Pullings wrong. 'Danish prig
Clomer
, sir,' said her master, an ancient bibulous Dane with pale, red-rimmed eyes, showing Jack his papers in the cabin. 'Captain Ole Bugge. Hides and peeswax from Dripoli to Parcelona.'

   'Well, Captain,' said Jack, looking very sharply through the papers—the quite genuine papers—'I'm sure you will forgive me for troubling you—we have to do it, as you know. Let me offer you a glass of this Priorato; they tell me it is good of its kind.'

   'It is better than good, sir,' said the Dane, as the purple tide ran out, 'it is vonderful vine. Captain, may I ask you the favour of your positions?'

   'You have come to the right shop for a position, Captain. We have the best navigator in the Mediterranean. Killick, pass the word for Mr Marshall. Mr Marshall, Captain B . . .—the gentleman would like to know what we make our position.'

   On deck the Clomers and the Sophies were gazing at one another's vessels with profound satisfaction, as at their own mirror-images: at first the Sophies had felt that the resemblance was something of a liberty on the part of the Danes, but they came round when their own yeoman of the sheets and their own shipmate Anderssen called out over the water to their fellow-countrymen, talking foreign as easy as kiss my hand, to the silent admiration of all beholders.

   Jack saw Captain Bugge to the side with particular affability; a case of Priorato was handed down into the Danish boat; and leaning over the rail Jack called after him, 'I will let you know, next time we meet.'

   Her captain had not reached the
Clomer
before the
Sophie's
yards were creaking round, to carry her as close-hauled as she would lie on her new course, north-east by north. 'Mr Watt,' observed Jack, gazing up, 'as soon as we have a moment to spare we must have cross-catharpings fore and aft; we are not pointing up as sharp as I could wish.'

   'What's afoot?' asked the ship's company, when all sail was set and drawing just so, with everything on deck coiled down to Mr Dillon's satisfaction; and it was not long before the news passed along from the gun-room steward to the purser's steward and so to his mate, Jack-in-the-dust, who told the galley and thereby the rest of the brig—the news that the Dane, having a fellow-feeling for the
Sophie
because of her resemblance to his own vessel, and being gratified by Jack's civility, had given word of a Frenchman no great way over the northern horizon, a deep-laden sloop with a patched mainsail that was bearing away for Agde.

   Tack followed tack as the
Sophie
beat up into the freshening breeze, and on the fifth leg a scrap of white appeared in the north-north-east, too far and too steady for a distant gull. It was the French sloop, sure enough: from the Dane's description of her rig there was no doubt of that after the first half hour; but her behaviour was so strange that it was impossible to be wholly persuaded of it until she was lying tossing there under the
Sophie's
guns and the boats were going to and fro over the lane of sea, transferring the glum prisoners. In the first place she had apparently kept no look-out of any kind, and it was not until no more than a mile of water lay between them that she noticed her pursuer at all; and even then she hesitated, wavered, accepted the assurance of the tricolour flag and then rejected it, flying too slowly and too late, only to break out ten minutes later in a flurry of signals of surrender and waving them vehemently at the first warning shot.

   The reasons for her behaviour were clear enough to James Dillon once he was aboard her, taking possession: the
Citoyen Durand
was laden with gunpowder—was so crammed with gunpowder that it overflowed her hold and stood in tarpaulined barrels on her deck; and her young master had taken his wife to sea. She was with child—her first—and the rough night, the chase and the dread of an explosion had brought on her labour. James was as stout-hearted as the next man, but the continuous groaning just behind the cabin-bulkhead and the awful hoarse, harsh, animal quality of the cries that broke out through the groaning, and their huge volume, terrified him; he gazed at the white-faced, distracted, tear-stained husband with a face as appalled as his.

   Leaving Babbington in sole command he hurried back to the
Sophie
and explained the situation. At the word
powder
Jack's face lit up; but at the word
baby
he looked very blank.

   'I am afraid the poor woman is dying,' said James.

   'Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' said Jack hesitantly; and now that he could put a meaning to the remote, dreadful noise he heard it far more clearly. 'Ask the Doctor to come,' he said to a marine.

   Now that the excitement of the chase was over, Stephen was at his usual post by the elm-tree pump, peering down its tube into the sunlit upper layers of the Mediterranean; and when they told him there was a woman in the prize, having a baby, he said, 'Aye? I dare say. I thought I recognized the sound,' and showed every sign of returning to his place.

   'Surely you can do something about it?' said Jack.

   'I am certain the poor woman is dying,' said James.

   Stephen looked at them with his odd expressionless gaze and said, 'I will go across.' He went below, and Jack said, 'Well, that's in good hands, thank God. And you tell me all that deck cargo is powder too?'

   'Yes, sir. The whole thing is mad.'

   'Mr Day—Mr Day, there. Do you know the French marks, Mr Day?'

   'Why, yes, sir. They are much the same as ours, only their best cylinder large grain has a white ring round the red: and their halves weigh but thirty-five pound.'

   'How much have you room for, Mr Day?'

   The gunner considered. 'Squeezing my bottom tier up tight, I might stow thirty-five or six, sir.'

   'Make it so, then, Mr Day. There is a lot of damaged stuff aboard that sloop—I can see it from here—that we shall have to take away to prevent further spoiling. So you had better go across and set your hand upon the best. And we can do with her launch, too. Mr Dillon, we cannot entrust this floating magazine to a midshipman; you will have to take her into Mahon as soon as the powder is across. Take what men you think fit, and be so good as to send Dr Maturin back in her launch—we need one badly. God love us, what a terrible cry! I am truly sorry to inflict this upon you, Dillon, but you see how it is.'

   'Just so, sir. I am to take the master of the sloop along with me, I presume? It would be inhuman to move him.'

   'Oh, by all means, by all means. The poor fellow. What a—what a pretty kettle of fish.'

   The little deadly barrels travelled across the intervening sea, rose up and vanished into the
Sophie's
maw; so did half a dozen melancholy Frenchmen, with their bags or sea-chests; but the usual festive atmosphere was lacking—the Sophies, even the family men, looked guilty, concerned, apprehensive; the dreadful unremitting shrieks went on and on; and when Stephen appeared at the rail to call out that he must stay aboard, Jack bowed to the obscure justice of this deprivation.

The
Citoyen Durand
ran smoothly through the darkness down towards Minorca, a steady breeze behind her; now that the screaming had stopped Dillon posted a reliable man at the helm, visited the little watch below in the galley and came down into the cabin. Stephen was washing, and the husband, shattered and destroyed, held the towel in his drooping hands.

   'I hope . . . ' said James.

   'Oh, yes: yes,' said Stephen deliberately, looking round at him. 'A perfectly straightforward delivery: just a little long, perhaps; but nothing out of the way. Now, my friend'—to the captain—'these buckets would be best over the side; and then I recommend you to lie down for a while. Monsieur has a son,' he added.

   'My best congratulations, sir,' said James. 'And my best wishes for Madame's prompt recovery.'

   'Thank you, sir, thank you,' said the captain, his eyes brimming over again. 'I beg you to take a little something—to make yourselves quite at home.'

   This they did, sitting each in a comfortable chair and eating away at the hill of cakes laid up against young hasty's christening in Agde next week; they sat there easily enough, and next door the poor young woman slept at last, her husband holding her hand and her crinkled pink baby snorting at her bosom. It was quiet below, wonderfully quiet and peaceful now; and it was quiet on deck with the following wind easing the sloop along at a steady six knots, and with the rigorous barking precision of a man-of-war reduced to an occasional mild 'How does she lie, Joe?' It was quiet; and in that dimly-lighted box they travelled through the night, cradled by the even swell: after a little while of this silence and this uninterrupted slow rhythmic heave they might have been anywhere on earth—alone in the world—in another world altogether. In the cabin their thoughts were far away, and Stephen for one no longer had any sense of movement to or from any particular point—little sense of motion, still less of the immediate present.

   'It is only now,' he said in a low voice, 'that we have the opportunity of speaking to one another. I looked forward to this time with great impatience; and now that it is come, I find that in fact there is little to be said.'

   'Perhaps nothing at all,' said James. 'I believe we understand each other perfectly.'

   This was quite true; it was quite true as far as the heart of the matter was concerned; but nevertheless they talked all through their remaining hours of harboured privacy.

   'I believe the last time I saw you was at Dr Emmet's,' said James, after a long, reflective pause.

   'No. It was at Rathfarnham, with Edward Fitzgerald. I was going out by the summerhouse as you and Kenmare came in.'

   'Rathfarnham? Yes: yes, of course. I remember now. It was just after the meeting of the Committee. I remember . . . You were intimate with Lord Edward, I believe?'

   'We knew one another very well in Spain. In Ireland I saw less and less of him as time went on; he had friends I neither liked nor trusted, and I was always too moderate—far too moderate—for him. Though the dear knows I was full enough of zeal for humanity at large, full enough of republicanism in those days. Do you remember the test?'

   'Which one?'

   'The test that begins
Are you straight?
'

  
'l am.
'

   '
How straight?
'

   '
As straight as a rush.'

   '
Go on then
.'

   '
In truth, in trust, in unity and liberty
.'

   '
What have you got in your hand?
'

   '
A green bough
.'

   '
Where did it first grow?
'

   '
In America
.'

   '
Where did it bud?
'

   '
In France.
'

   '
Where are you going to plant it?
'

   'Nay, I forget what follows. It was not the test I took, you know. Far from it.'

   'No, I am sure it was not. I did, however: the word
liberty
seemed to me to glow with meaning, in those days. But even then I was sceptical about
unity
—our society made such very strange bedfellows. Priests, deists, atheists and Presbyterians; visionary republicans, Utopists and men who merely disliked the Beresfords. You and your friends were all primarily for emancipation, as I recall.'

   'Emancipation and reform. I for one had no notion of any republic; nor had my friends of the Committee, of course. With Ireland in her present state a republic would quickly become something little better than a democracy. The genius of the country is quite opposed to a republic. A
Catholic
republic! How ludicrous.'

   'Is it brandy in that case-bottle?'

   'It is.'

   'The answer to that last part of the test was
In the crown of Great Britain
, by the way. The glasses are just behind you. I know it was at Rathfarnham,' Stephen went on, 'for I had spent the whole of that afternoon trying to persuade him not to go on with his shatter-brained plans for the rising: I told him I was opposed to violence—always had been—and that even if I were not I should withdraw, were he to persist with such wild, visionary schemes—that they would be his own ruin, Pamela's ruin, the ruin of his cause and the ruin of God knows how many brave, devoted men. He looked at me with that sweet, troubled look, as though he were sorry for me, and he said he had to meet you and Kenmare. He had not understood me at all.'

   'Have you any news of Lady Edward—of Pamela?'

   'Only that she is in Hamburg and that the family looks after her.'

   'She was the most beautiful woman that ever I saw, and the kindest. None so brave.'

   'Aye,' thought Stephen, and stared into his brandy. 'That afternoon,' he said, 'I spent more spirit than ever I spent in my life. Even then I no longer cared for any cause or any theory of government on earth; I would not have lifted a finger for any nation's independence, fancied or real; and yet I had to reason with as much ardour as though I were filled with the same enthusiasm as in the first days of the Revolution, when we were all overflowing with virtue and love.'

   'Why? Why did you have to speak so?'

   'Because I had to convince him that his plans were disastrously foolish, that they were known to the Castle and that he was surrounded by traitors and informers. I reasoned as closely and cogently as ever I could—better than ever I thought I could—and he did not follow me at all. His attention wandered. "Look," says he, "there's a redbreast in that yew by the path." All he knew was that I was opposed to him, so he closed his mind; if, indeed, he was
capable
of following me, which perhaps he was not. Poor Edward!
Straight as a rush
; and so many of them around him were as crooked as men can well be—Reynolds, Corrigan, Davis . . . Oh, it was pitiful.'

   'And would you indeed not lift a finger, even for the moderate aims?'

   'I would not. With the revolution in France gone to pure loss I was already chilled beyond expression. And now, with what I saw in '98, on both sides, the wicked folly and the wicked brute cruelty, I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to ref órm parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind—it is my own truth alone—but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have—for what they are—are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.'