The Commodore (39 page)

A spirit-stove and a willing mind can do wonders, even in a heavy sea with a full gale blowing, and Jack Aubrey, leaving Stephen to carry their coffee-pot down into the cockpit, came on deck again warm and well-fed. He was wearing his usual rig: an old uniform coat, threadbare brass-bound hat that had turned many a cut, a heavy cavalry sabre by way of fighting sword, boots and silk stockings (much better in case of a wound). He glanced along the decks, all in the perfect battleorder Captain Pullings knew so well: over to the other side of the bay, where the Thames was making good progress: towards the Frenchmen, who for their part had moved from the island towards what seemed to be a cloudy village on the south side, where they lay a-try, perhaps with a kedge out ahead. The Stately was keeping a cable's length astern, coming along under the same close-reefed topsails with the same air of competence.

'Shipmates,' said Jack in a conversational voice, but one that carried well over the roar of the wind, 'we are going to attack the pennant-ship from to-windward, while Stately goes on to deal with her companion. I am going to engage so close that our roundshot will go through both her sides, to end it quick. And be damned to him who first cries Hold, enough.'

A very hearty cheer indeed, echoed from the Stately: and the waft from the match-tubs by each gun drifted in eddies, a scent surpassed only by powder-smoke. Yet the Thames had not answered the cheer, though she was no great way off on the southern side. Jack took his glass: she was in trouble: she had contrived to get inshore of a reef and she could neither turn nor advance.

The first ranging shot from the Frenchmen splashed alongside. The next came home, somewhere about the larboard hawse-hole. Tom yawed just enough for the forward starboard guns to reply, and now, in spite of the wind right aft, there was the scent of powder-smoke as well.

How quickly those last few hundred yards fleeted by! At one moment you could still notice a gull or that damn fool of a Thames, and the next you were in the full deafening roar of battle yardarm to yardarm, the broadsides losing all unity and merging into a continuous iron bellow. The ships ground together as the Frenchmen tried to board, yelling as they came. They were repelled; and now came a louder, more triumphant cry, then another as the enemy's mizzen went by the board at deck-level, carrying the maintopmast with it. The ship could no longer lie head to wind and she slewed to larboard; but still answering her helm she ran north-east along the shore, keeping up a fire from her undamaged side until, at the very height of flood, eleven minutes after the first shot, she struck, racing high on to the rocky shelf just below the village.

Jack rounded to and called upon her to surrender; and this, after a moment's hesitation, she did. Even if she had been able to bring a gun to bear, which she could not, lying at that dreadful angle on the rock among the surf there was no hope. Yet so far down the bay and in these shallows, the surf was far less dreadful than it looked. The quarter-boats brought the French commodore and his officers across little difficulty, and carried a prize-crew back, including, at the Frenchman's most earnest request, Stephen Maturin, their own surgeon having been killed - he had wished to see a battle. A nominal prize-crew, and as a last thought a small party of Marines, for even if he had imagined trouble aboard the prize Jack had no time to spare. Below the racing cloud he had just seen Stately attempt an extremely brave but perilous manoeuvre, drawing ahead and suddenly tacking across the Frenchman's bows to rake her fore and aft with broadside after broadside. But his ship or his men's skill betrayed him: the Stately would not come round. She hung there in irons while the Frenchman pounded her, knocked away her main and mizzen topmasts, and then she fell off to her former starboard tack. The enemy of course bore up and raked her in his turn.

But for the Bellona's approach he must have destroyed or taken her. As it was he let fall his courses and raced closehauled to the end of the southern headland and out to sea beyond it, just saving both masts and sails, and disappeared, steering eastward and increasing sail without the least care for his friends in their secluded cove.

The reason for this headlong flight appeared a moment later, when two English seventy-fours and a frigate appeared round the northern cape. Jack signalled them to heave to, emphasizing the order with a gun, told Tom to look to the Stately, and if she could be left, to make the best of his way towards the troop-ships' cove, and so dropped into Ringle.

He went aboard the nearest seventy-four, Royal Oak, which received his shabby, battle-stained and indeed bloody person with all the compliments due to his broad pennant, and with very great enthusiasm. 'Gentlemen, I bring you prizes,' he said. 'There is a cove among that group of islands there' - pointing - 'which conceals four French troop carriers and two frigates. I should take them myself, but I have four foot water in the hold and gaining fast, having had a bout with that fellow aground down there - a very determined fighter indeed - and the ship is slow and heavy.'

They treated him with infinite consideration - of course they would do all he desired - they gave him the most cordial joy of his victory - hoped that his people had not suffered and thanked the Lord they had been ordered from Bere Haven on rumours of gunfire - led him to the cabin - would the Commodore care for a dish of tea? of cocoa? Perhaps gin and hot water, or the whiskey of these parts? All this time they were

approaching the cove, and now Jack's frigate captains came aboard, passionate for news, grieved for the Bellona's battered state - she could indeed be seen to be wallowing along, her pumps flinging water wide to leeward.

One of the French frigates in the cove chanced it. She cut her cable, squeezed through an improbable gap and ran east before the gale with everything she could set, joining the ship of the line in her way back to France. The rest submitted to the overwhelming force: for by this time the Bellona had joined.

'William,' said Jack Aubrey to Reade in the tender, 'pray run down to the Doctor and tell him that Captain Geary is lending us some hands to pump and seeing us back to Bantry to be patched up, and Warwick is giving poor Stately a tow. Tell him that all is well, and that I hope to ride across and see him in a day or two. It is only a short way across by land- that is how the news of our being here reached Bantry: a boy on an ass to tell them that it was the French at last.'

The French at last: looked for so long, so long promised. Things now seemed to be going astray somewhat; yet here at least was a great French ship and she filled with people, filled with arms.

The tide withdrew, farther and unbelievably far, and the French ship settled, her wounded timbers groaning and even breaking under her weight. Most of the prisoners were confined between decks, but some gave the prize-crew a hand with various tasks, and some helped Stephen transfer the wounded to the Sacred Heart hospital behind and above Duniry. Some of the men of the village had been in one or another of the Irish regiments in the French service before the Revolution, and were still fluent in the language; it was they who learnt the purpose of the expedition and the nature of the ship's cargo for sure. The word spread and by the time Stephen came back from the hospital with Father Boyle there was a noisy, threatening crowd by the stranded ship, her landward side now almost dry. An awkward kind of accommodation-ladder had been shipped, and on a platform at its foot stood a guard of the Bellona's Marines, looking both cross and apprehensive, for not only were the men of the village very near to the point of stoning them, but the foreshore had quantities of seaweed, mud, general filth, and the women, who had already loosed their hair, were perfectly capable of flinging it, wrecking their sacred uniforms.

They made room for Father Boyle and Stephen, the young officer whispering 'I fear they may try to rush the side.' Half way up the ladder Stephen turned, and speaking in Irish he said, 'Men of Duniry, it is weapons you desire.'

'It is,' they cried. 'And it is weapons we shall have.'

'If you had those weapons, weapons from the man who has kept the Holy Father close prisoner, and who turned Turk in Cairo, worshipping Mahomet, they would be your bane and your certain death, God between us and evil. Do you not know that the whole barony is raised with the news of their coming, the French? The yeomanry of all West Cork and the County Kerry are afoot, and every man found with a musket from this ship must hang. A full gibbet by nightfall, and never a roof with its thatch unburnt.' Turning to the priest he cried 'Mors in olla, vir Dei: mors in olla. For God's sake urge them to be quiet, Father dear, or there will be widows by the score tomorrow.' And reverting to Irish he said 'There was the Prophet Eliseus, as our good Father Boyle will tell you, and he and his disciples were offered a meal in the desert: but someone cried out in a great voice, roaring from his chest, "Do not touch it, oh man of God. There is poison in the pot." Countrymen, that accursed ship would be the deadly pot for you, so it would, were you to touch it, God forbid.' With this he walked up into the prize, leaving them silent.

Late that night and all next morning the yeomanry, the military and the plain soldiers, with the usual apparatus of triangle, irons and fire, searched Duniry and all the nearby farms and cabins; and nothing did they find but some illicit spirit, which they drank.

At Mass the next day Stephen was greeted with the respect due to the Lord Lieutenant and perhaps more affection: many a man asked would he do the house the honour of taking a tint; and presents of white pudding, cream and carrageen jelly were left for him at the ship. By now all his most critical surgery had been done; and by now the local medical corps had the remaining patients well in hand. He had time to spare, and to walk about, so when one of the many country gentlemen who had come to gaze at the stranded French battleship called from his dogcart 'Why, Maturin! What a pleasure to see you! It must be years and years.. . Come into this little shebeen and take a glass of sherry; or should you prefer the poteen - perhaps safer? How do you do? I am truly charmed to hear it, upon my honour. So I am. You are on your way to see Diana, I am sure. I was out with her at the end of March, with Ned Taaffe's hounds. We had a famous day, and killed two foxes. House. House, there: two glasses of sherry, if you please, and a little small dry crust to help them down - there would never be an anchovy, at all?'

Stephen looked at the pale wine, raised his glass and said 'God bless you,' with a bow. He took out his elegant watch and laid it in the light, watching the centre second-hand make its full revolution.

His friend too watched it with close attention. 'You are taking your pulse, I make no doubt?' he said.

'So I am, too,' said Stephen. 'I have had a variety of emotions recently and I wished to assign a number at least to the general effect, to the physical effect, since quality is not subject to measure. My number is one hundred and seventeen to the minute.'

'That is the luckiest number in the world, I believe; a prime number, to be divided or multiplied by no other.'

'You are in the right of it, Stanislas Roche: it is neither too much nor too little. Listen. Will you do me a kindness, now? Will you run me into Bantry in this elegant equipage, till I can hire a horse or a chaise?'

'I will do better than that, since Bantry is in the wrong direction for at least half the way. I will run you into Drimoleague itself: ain't that handsome in me?'

'It is fit to be written in letters of gold,' said Stephen absently.

And absent, painfully so, was his conversation all the way. Fortunately Stanislas had conversation for two: he described his day with Ned Taaffe's hounds - Diana's spirit in negotiating a prodigious number of banks and ditches on a little Arab gelding - every detail of a long chase through the country Stephen had never seen - a chase that ended in some unexpected, surprising manner. 'Ain't you amazed?' asked Stanislas.

'Deeply amazed,' said Stephen, with the utmost truth; but he was slowly coming out of it, setting things in some kind of an order, almost entirely grasping the fact that in a few minutes he might see his heart's desire, whatever the consequences. Diana was staying, had long been staying, with Colonel Villiers, an ancient relative - uncle? Half-uncle? - of her first husband, a gentleman of whom Stephen knew nothing except that he had served in India and that he was devoted to fishing.

'Here we are,' said Stanislas, pulling up. 'We have made splendid time. Be a good fellow and open the gate, will you? There is almost never anyone in the lodge. Oh, but before I forget, as a King's officer you must put on half-mourning. I was in Bantry this morning, as I told you, looking at the Bellona and the Stately - they had put some sort of a mast into her, the Stately, I mean - and to my concern I saw a flag flying at half-mast on it. I sent over to ask whether it meant the gallant Captain Duff had been killed. No, said they; he had only lost a leg. The flag - which indeed was general, as I saw when I looked at the other men-of-war - was because of the death of a royal, or near enough, the Duke of Habachtsthal, who owned Rossnacreena Castle, Lord Lieutenant of the county, and who had cut his throat in London last Thursday - the news was just come over.'

This added an amazement, not indeed of the same stunning importance, but not inconsiderable by any other standard on earth: with that man dead, there would be no difficulty about pardons for Padeen and Clarissa: and Stephen's own fortune would be safe anywhere. He could give Diana a golden crown, if she should like one.

'Stanislas,' said Stephen from the roadside, 'I will not open the gate. I will say farewell here, and thank you as kindly as ever can be. I have not seen Diana this terrible long while, and thousands of miles of sea; and I wish to find her alone.'

'Certainly, certainly. I quite understand. And she too will be amazed.'

'God bless, now, Stanislas.'

He passed through the wicket into a fine broad court, somewhat marred by a twenty-foot stretch of tall grey stone wall fallen into it and the skeleton of a two-ton sloop shored up by the central fountain. Beyond the court the house spread in the brilliant sun before him had two low wings, a three-storey centre with a classical portico and a fine flight of steps, many of them whole.