The Nutmeg of Consolation (22 page)

Yet the Corn�e had lost distance by her double turn and she did not even fire her chasers before the debris was cleared away, before the carpenter and his crew were busy on the heel, and before the opening by which Jack had hoped to elude the Frenchman lay broad on the starboard beam. It was then that the cry came down from the foretopgallant yard: 'Sail ho.'

'Where away?'

'On the larboard bow, sir. I see her royals just behind the headland, sir. Another. Two sail of ships, sir. Three. Four. God love us. You will see 'em presently, sir.'

'Topmast ready, sir,' said Fielding to Jack.

'Sway it up, Mr Fielding, if you please,' said Jack. 'The topgallant after it, and cross the yards as soon as possible.'

He walked with a composed step to the forecastle and fixed the headland with his glass. Minutes passed; one of the stern-chasers fired a ranging shot and the duel began again -his prohibition against hurting a hair of the Corn�e's head had lapsed long since, and the Nutmeg's one desire was to cripple her before she knocked away a mast. 'You'll see 'em directly minute, sir,' said the lookout in a conversational tone.

The first ship glided out from behind the cover of the high ground. She was not much more than a mile away, and with the breeze on her beam and a press of sail she was steering south-east at perhaps ten knots - a fine bow-wave. Against the young sun he could not make out her armament, but her American colours were plain enough. Two followed her, both steering the same urgent course, both of about the same size, heavy sloops-of -war or small frigates, both wearing American colours. Signals were exchanging at a great pace. A fourth ship and his stony heart broke into flower. He walked back fast, not running, to the quarterdeck: 'Mr Richardson and the yeoman of signals,' he called, and Richardson, the signal lieutenant, came hobbling from the waist, his leg thick with bandages. Titus the yeoman followed him, racing aft from the heads. 'Colours, jack at the jack-staff, private signal, Diane's number, and Ghase to the north-west. Then telegraph Well met Tom. All from topgallant and stay; and a couple more jacks on the yard.'

Richardson repeated this; Adams wrote it down; the yeoman ran to his colour-chest; Jack called 'Mr Reade, pray jump down to the sick-berth and tell the Doctor with my congratulations that the Surprise is in sight.' He looked into the waist, where the hawser to the lower capstan was tautening to sway the topmast up to the trestle-trees, and he was about to tell Fielding to send up the pennant as soon as the topgallant was in place when a thought froze his heart once more: had the Surprise been captured by an American squadron?

He walked forward. Colours, private signal and direction to chase were already flying; he watched the Surprise with rigid attention. She had hauled her wind and she was running past the other three with her familiar greyhound ease. Behind him the firing had stopped. He heard the orders for swaying up the topmast and the cry 'Launch ho' when it was home and fidded; but all this came from a great way off. Titus composed the message to be sent by telegraph, muttering T,O,M; and at last the Surprise's colours gave a twitch and raced down. They were replaced by her own to the cheering of far more of the Nutmeg's hands than had any business to be looking about them; and glancing aft Jack saw that the Corn�e had worn and was heading for the heavy rain-squalls in the north-west.

'The Doctor's compliments, sir,' said Reade. 'He gives you joy of the meeting and will come on deck as soon as he is free.'

Dr Maturin was free by the time the Nutmeg, with her maintopsail, maintopgallant and man-of-war's pennant restored, had turned in pursuit of the Corn�e; she was close-hauled to the wind and she was tearing along at a splendid pace, throwing the water white and wide, but the Surprise, coming up to leeward, had had to ease off her sheets not to pass too fast. Stephen came running up in the black coat and apron he wore in action, and the contrast between the drying blood on the dusty blackness and his shining face was particularly striking.

'There she is!' he cried. 'I should have recognized her anywhere. What joy!'

'Yes, indeed,' said Jack. 'And I am so glad you came before we had to clew up the crossjack. You may never see another.'

'Pray point it out,' said Stephen.

'Why, it is this sail just above our heads, set on the crossjackyard,' said Jack.

'A very handsome sail too, upon my word: ornamental to the last degree. How she comes along, the brave boat! Huzzay, huzzay! There is Martin in front of the thing - I forget its name. I shall wave my handkerchief.'

The Surprise ranged up within pistol-shot, and shivering her foretopsail she paused abreast of the Nutmeg, travelling at much the same pace. Her rail was lined with happy, grinning faces, all well known to Jack and Stephen; but there was an etiquette in these matters at sea, and not a word did they utter until the two captains were opposite one another, Jack Aubrey still in his vile Monmouth cap, Tom Pullings in working clothes with a uniform hat clapped on for the ceremony: beneath it his dreadfully wounded face was ablaze with joy.

'Tom, how do you do?' called Jack in his powerful voice.

Blooming, sir, blooming,' replied Pullings, pulling off the hat. 'I hope I see you well, and all our friends?'

Jack returned the salute and his long yellow hair streamed away to leeward. 'Never better, I thank you. Go ahead now and get into her wake; it will not take you long - she turned very heavy. But do not close till I come up. She will strike to the two of us: no powder wasted; nobody knocked about. What are your consorts?'

'Triton, sir, an English letter of masque, Captain Goffin, twenty-eight twelve pounders and two long nines; and the others are American prizes.'

'So much the better. Carry on, then, Tom. You are in for a ducking,' he added, still in the same steady roar, as the first drops came sweeping across the deck.

The Surprise filled her foretopsail, forging ahead directly, and now that the official words were done greetings flew to and fro in spite of the rain. 'Captain Pullings, my dear, how do you do? Pray take care of the damp. - Mr Martin, how do you do? I have seen the orang-utang!' 'What cheer, Joe? What cheer, shipmates? What cheer, Methusalem?' And from some facetious hands far forward, 'What ho, the crossjack, ha, ha, ha!' with antic gestures.

The Nutmegs stared in amazement at this familiarity, for although Killick and Bonden - Killick particularly - had regaled them with accounts of Captain Aubrey's importance and wealth (a glass coach with gilded wheels and two puddings a day in the servants' hall) and Dr Maturin's supernatural skill and fashionable life (calls the Duke of Clarence Bill and takes tea with Mrs Jordan), they had never spoken of the Surprise.

Yet there was little time for amazement, since as soon as the Surprise was beyond the range of a moderate call, they were required to furl and unbend the hated crossjack and set the valuable driver, which gave the Nutmeg an additional knot; and even before it was cracking full the Surprise had vanished into the squall, a grey blur of tearing water.

The next half hour was exceptionally anxious, and its minutes stretched out beyond all reason. It was not merely the decks all awash, water shooting from the lee scuppers, nor even fear of the ironbound coast, since Jack had his bearings clear; it was his dread that the Surprise, misled by the Corn�e's slowness, might suddenly find herself alongside, facing her heavier guns at close range. In the middle of this unhappy time thunder cracked and rolled with enormous force at masthead height, continuous thunder shutting out any possible gunfire; and of course lightning to and fro in the even stronger deluge.

At his side Adams looked like a drowned rat - they all looked like drowned rats: there was no point in putting on so much as a sou'wester in this milk-warm flood. 'Sir,' said Adams into his inclined ear, 'I beg pardon, but Mr Fielding said I might speak to you, seeing it was a special case. The gunner is to make up his books, and he is sadly troubled about the crow lost overboard: does not like to ask, but would esteem it a favour, was you to give him a certificate, countersigned by yourself as purser and master, and then by Mr F.'

A wholly extravagant triple peal with a reek of sulphur intervened, but when it was over Jack said quite mildly 'Put me in mind of it when I am signing papers.'

This prodigious clap was the end of the squall. The thunder passed away to leeward, a distant rumble; the rain thinned, cleared, and there, five hundred yards ahead, was the Surprise lying-to, bright in the clean-washed air. But she lay-to alone. In the broad sunlit Passage there was no other ship at all: the coast to larboard, the horizon ahead and to starboard, and no other ship on the sea.

His astonishment lasted hardly long enough to name it. All those boats around the Surprise, more than any one frigate could carry, and the fact that she was taking men in by the score on either side and by the stern ladder meant that the Corn�e had foundered. The telescope showed him men being slung up, almost inanimate - uniformed men.

'Mr Seymour, lower down a boat, any boat that will swim,' he said and hurried below, calling out for some kind of a decent coat, hat, breeches. And recalling that the Surprise was after all Stephen's private property, he sent to ask whether he chose to go across, adding that 'at present the sea was rather rough'. The midshipman came back with Dr Maturin's compliments, but at the moment he and Mr Macmillan were engaged on an urgent task. 'They were going at it with a saw, sir,' said Bennett, still pale and queasy.

The only boat undamaged after the long cannonade was the small cutter: it carried him across the sea to the side and the steps he knew so well. The Surprise had already shipped man-ropes and white-gloved side-boys; she received him in style, and there was a spontaneous, disorganized but hearty cheer as he ran up to the gangway, where Tom Pullings greeted him with an iron grip. 'She foundered, sir,' he said. 'We saw her getting her boats over the side as we came out of the squall: she was up to her port-sills, and as they pulled away she put her bows under a head-sea and slid down like she was sailing. We picked up a rare lot swimming about and clinging to hen-coops. But here is her commanding officer, sir: succeeded his captain in the action. He speaks English and I told him he. was to surrender to you.'

He turned with a gesture of introduction and there among the group of officers, British and French, over to leeward, was Jean-Pierre Dumesnil; he came forward pale and almost dead with fatigue, offering his sword.

'Jean-Pierre!' cried Jack, advancing to meet him, 'By God, I am so happy to see you. I was afraid that... No, no. Keep your sword and give me your hand.'

Chapter Seven

"No, no. Keep your sword and give me your hand," I said; and perhaps that may sound rather like Drury Lane, when the fellow in pink breeches and a plumed helmet raises his fallen enemy and the still-room maid is found to be the Duke's daughter, but at the time I do assure you it came quite natural. I was so very glad to see him. If you have had the long letter that Raffles promised to put aboard the next Indiaman you will know who I mean, Jean-Pierre Dumesnil, the nephew of that Captain Christy-Palliere who captured me when I had the Sophie and who treated me so well - the nephew I met in Pulo Prabang, changed from a little fat midshipman to a tall thin young officer, second of the Corn�e. I thought him a fine young fellow then, and I think him an even finer fellow now. (I beg you will look in the bottom right-hand drawer of the black scrutoire and find the direction of his Christy cousins: I think they live in Milsom Street. He went to Dr Hall's school in Bath during the peace and he often stayed with them -desires his duty and most affectionate greetings; and you will tell them he is quite unhurt.) During the engagement one of our thirty-two pounders played Old Harry on the Corn�e's quarterdeck, leaving Jean-Pierre in command, and another caused her to spring a butt low down in her bows. She made so much water that pumping day and night they could only just keep her free, even with a following wind. Yet for all that, and in spite of being short-handed, he fought his ship nobly. He might even have had us, if we had not met the Surprise in the mouth of the Passage with four ships in company - Tom Pullings had heard the sound of gunfire long before daylight and had come tearing down from his station well to the north. The four came into sight round a headland first, wearing

American colours, and I said "Why, Jack, you are between the Devil and the deep blue sea," meaning the Corn�e's devilish eighteen-pounders behind me and the concentrated fire of an American squadron in front and no sea-room to manoeuvre. But then I saw the dear Surprise appear - Lord, what joy! -and I threw out the signal to chase to the north-west.

'Clearly, five against one was not fair odds, so Jean-Pierre hauled his wind in the hope of getting away behind one of the islands to the south under cover of a squall. But his people had scarcely been able to keep pace with the leak even when they had the wind well abaft the beam, and now with a head-sea and all hands utterly exhausted she could no longer swim. He just had time to get his boats clear before she settled. The Surprise recovered them - some could barely stand, and had to be hauled aboard in slings - and when the Nutmeg came up and I went across he surrendered to me.

'Then, the Passage being but an uneasy place to lie in, we proceeded eastwards to this sheltered road, anchored in sixty-fathom water and made acquaintance with the other ships. The Triton is a heavy letter of marque, almost as large as the Surprise; she is commanded by Horse-Flesh Goffin, whose court-martial for a false muster you will probably remember, and they had been cruising together for some time. The others were splendid American prizes they had taken, all the more splendid because they contained the cargoes of several other vessels too small to be worth a prize-crew. One of them is crammed with furs, sea-otter and the like, much demanded in China, where both ships were bound. Upon the whole the Surprise seems to have had an unusually successful cruise even before these two big merchant-men, capturing Nantucket and New Bedford whalers and sending them into South American ports, but I do not know exactly - we have so much to say to one another and there was so much to do in the poor battered Nutmeg that I do not know half what there is to know.' He was sitting at the starboard extremity of the line of sash lights that filled the great cabin with sunshine reflected from a dappled sea, a window that was more familiar to him than any he had known on land, and looking out he saw the Nutmeg, trim again after a surprisingly short stay in this road, with the carpenter and his crew over the side, putting the last touches to the stern gallery. He glanced along the table to the other end of the range; but seeing that Stephen was writing busily, with a contentious look on his face, he let his gaze wander over the table itself, which had been set, quite exceptionally, in the great cabin, to seat fourteen men in comfort; and he saw not without a certain complacency that it was set with uncommon magnificence. This was the sort of occasion that Killick loved more than his soul, and Jack's silver, preserved through all the vicissitudes of the voyage, blazed and twinkled in the shifting light.