The surgeon's mate, page 22
'Tobacco, certainly,' said the Admiral. 'Wine may be more difficult, though I dare say the wardrooms of the squadron would yield a fair amount; and we could always fill up with rum, if you feel that would be suitable.'
'Rum would answer tolerably well,' said Stephen, 'although wine would be better. And now, sir, I have some more important observations. This is clearly an expedition that must end either in complete success or in complete failure: there is little point in discussing the failure, so, if you please, I will speak only of the happier event. As you are no doubt aware, I made it a condition of my stepping in that the Catalan troops on Grimsholm should not be treated as prisoners of war, and that they should be carried to Spain with arms and baggage at His Majesty's charges. It is a small price to pay for the bloodless delivery of such a fortress, I believe; and in any case I am intimately convinced that once they are in the Peninsula they will at once engage on Lord Wellington's side.'
'It would indeed be a trifling price,' said the Admiral, 'and fortunately I have the transports here, just at hand. Mr Ponsich made the same condition."
'Very good, very good,' said Stephen. 'I now come to another point: the commanders of the transports should be strongly impressed with the necessity for according the Catalan officers all the usual compliments of salutes and guns and flags and so on, with all or even more than all the usual ceremony. Their position is irregular; their pride susceptible to the last degree. The least appearance of a slight might have the most unfortunate effects.' He paused. 'But I am running too far ahead. Ideally, sir, the operation would proceed on these lines: the emissary is landed from the merchantman while the Ariel and the transports remain out of sight; he carries his point; after a stated interval the Ariel comes nearer to see his signal; she in her turn calls the transports, which come in with a body of gunners sufficiently numerous to man the batteries, and the transfer takes place at once, while the prospect of the journey home still has its full exhilarating effect and the indignation against the French is at its height; for the sooner they arc out and the sooner the possibility of jealousies or disagreement is done away with the better. All this may be too much to ask, but perhaps some part at least may be feasible.'
'As far as the transports are concerned,' said Admiral Saumarez, 'I see no difficulty, always providing the wind serves; for as you know, Dr Maturin, we are wholly tributary to the winds. If Captain Aubrey can do his part with the necessary Dane, I believe we can do ours with the troop-carriers and the gunners, and indeed with the wine and tobacco that you mentioned. I fully take your point about the necessity for a very rapid transfer; and I see, sir, that the Admiralty was not at all mistaken in advising me to rely upon Dr Maturin's sagacity.'
'The Admiralty was too kind entirely,' said Stephen, 'too indulgent by far. But to tell you the truth of it, sir, this is a conjuncture in which I had rather be granted a single small cup of luck than a whole tun of wisdom.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a black night for the squadron when the Ariel slipped her moorings and stood out into the rain-swept midnight sea, for she carried with her most of the wardrooms' wine and an uneasy proportion of the foremast-jacks' rum and tobacco, as well as twenty prime hands chosen from among the many Dutchmen, Poles, Finns and Letts in the fleet. She left something near prostration behind her, with little to enliven or revive it: in all his experience of naval life Stephen Maturin had never seen anything to equal the speed with which the Ariel was equipped - boats crowded about her, stores flowing in under the immediate supervision of Sir James. The Admiral contributed three tierces of a noble claret to the cargo, observing that he should willingly drink green tea for the rest of the commission rather than jeopardize Ariel's chances; and after that no wardroom could do less. She stood out, therefore, deeper in the water than she had stood in, more crowded than ever, with barrels still lashed provisionally here and there on deck, the purser and the mate of the hold out of their wits, and more than half of her crew suspiciously jolly if not downright drunk.
'There will be a long defaulters' list tomorrow,' said Jack, in a tone that sensibly reduced the merriment. He had just emerged from a long session with Mr Pellworm and the master, in which they had each independently laid down a course to intercept the licensed Dane they had passed not long before, the creeping, short-handed cat: three courses that coincided almost exactly, courses designed to find the cat in the first hours of full day. 'Mr Fenton, we must have very good men at the wheel, and they must steer north seventeen east exactly. Wittgenstein, the quartermaster from the flagship, will do for one: an excellent seaman - I have sailed with him before. You will heave the log at every glass, keeping as near as possible to six knots, making or reducing sail accordingly; above all, do not exceed - we must not pass in the darkness. And although I do not expect to see her before dawn, you will keep sharp, sober men at the masthead, changing them every glass. The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork. I am to be called should anything occur, or should there be any change of wind.' In his earlier ships he would have gone on to say that he was about to sup with the Doctor on a very strange dish, a salted buzzard produced by the Commandant at Gothenburg, and they would probably have talked about tomorrow's prospects for a while: but this was a temporary command; he hardly knew his officers, and in any case they seemed so young as almost to belong to another species. Their deference was burdensome, and it would require a real effort on his part, even at a social gathering, to cross the gap, as far as it could be crossed at all. But the god-like remoteness of command came naturally to him now, and having desired Fenton to repeat his orders and to place the written copy in the binnacle drawer he went directly below.
He found the buzzard already in pieces, carved not with the Christian carving-knife and fork the steward had laid out but with an instrument that Stephen hid under his napkin as he said 'Forgive me, Jack. I have not actually begun, but I could not wait to see the creature's sternum. I learnt a great deal about sternums in Paris.'
'I am glad of that,' said Jack, 'and I am glad to see you are recovered.'
'It was only a passing indisposition, caused perhaps by over-indulgence in fish; in any event, the emotion of setting all in train has quite done away with it.' Jack had a notion that the easier motion of the ship might also have helped - the gale had blown itself out and she was now slipping along with a quartering breeze, little roll and an even pitch - but he kept it to himself. 'Will you look at this breast-bone, now, and at these sutures upon it?' said Stephen, holding up the buzzard's keel. 'You would say they were attachments for the sternal muscles, would you not?'
'I should have taken my oath upon it, I do assure you.'
'So should I, until a few days ago. But in fact it appears that they are the points of union of the bones that make up the sternum in the fowl's earliest youth. It was an eminent Academician who told me this, a man whose acquaintance I prize extremely. He envisages a whole new classification ..." Jack's attention wandered to the Ariel's topgallantmasts, struck down on deck in the recent blow, until Stephen said with unusual emphasis '...and those that put too much trust in a bird's toes as a generical symptom may find themselves compelled to call the nightjar and the osprey cousins.'
'That would never do, I am sure,' said Jack. 'It eats rather like pig, don't it?'
'Very like pig. But when you consider that the honey-buzzard's diet consists mainly in wasps and their brood, it is scarcely surprising. Allow me.' He took the bones from Jack's plate and wrapped them in his handkerchief. 'I was much impressed by your Admiral,' he said. 'Admirable Admiral, admirable force of decision: I had been so afraid of interminable shilly-shally, and reluctance to come to the hard point of assuming responsibility.'
'There is nothing like that about Sir James,' said Jack. 'You remember him at Gibraltar, tearing out after the combined squadron? No shilly-shally there, I believe. But Stephen, did you not remark how terribly he has aged? He cannot be sixty yet, but he looks an old, old man.'
'The appreciation of age is so relative: I dare say you look like a patriarch to the young men in the gunroom. I know that one of the midshipmen helped me across the street in Gothenburg as though I were his grandsire.'
'I dare say I do,' said Jack, laughing. 'I am quite certain they look terribly young, pitifully young to me. I hope to God they have had time to learn their profession. Are you away, Stephen?'
'I am. I mean to turn in, digest my buzzard in my cot, and sleep upon both ears for what is left of our time. Good night to you, now."
Stephen was perfectly calm, in rather higher spirits than usual, and Jack had no doubt that he would sleep until the morning. He envied him. Although long training usually allowed him to drop off at any moment, Jack knew that tonight he would have little rest; he was extremely anxious, both reasonably and unreasonably anxious. He called for a pot of coffee, and as he drank it he checked his course again. The answer came out the same as before: but there were so many, many things that could go wrong, so many variables.
One of the variables would have been absent if he had had time to pick his own officers, men like Pullings and Babbington and Mowett who had sailed with him for years and whom he knew through and through; or any of the better midshipmen he had formed and who were now lieutenants. But of course these young fellows in the Ariel's gunroom must know their profession: young though they might be, they had all served afloat since their childhood, and the ship was in excellent order. Sir James had remarked upon it: 'he had rarely seen a sloop of war in such good order.' Hyde might be no nine-days' wonder, no great seaman, but he was an adequate first lieutenant, a good disciplinarian, firm, but no bully; while the master was an excellent navigator, without any kind of doubt; and Fenton seemed above the average run of amiable, competent lieutenants - a man who might do very well if ever he had the good luck to be promoted. He dismissed that part of his anxiety as nonsense; and ten minutes later he was on deck to see whether they knew what they were about.
The rain had stopped, the sky was clearing: no moon: pitch dark. The ship was steering true, and a glance at the log-board showed that she had kept to a steady six knots; she was under topsails with a single reef and an easy sheet. Fenton certainly knew how to sail her. Although it was close on three bells in the graveyard watch and although there was no duty in hand the deck was unusually alive; the odd sheltered places forward or under the lee of the boats sheltered no sleeping figures, their heads wrapped in their jackets; all hands who were not high aloft were at the rails, staring out into the night. One of these was Wittgenstein, a Heligolander brought up in the Leith coal-trade: as a midshipman Jack had pressed him out of his collier, and they had sailed together in three or four commissions to their mutual liking. In the second of these, when Jack's navigation was still not all that it should have been, Wittgenstein was one of the prize-crew with which Jack had to take a valuable merchantman into Port-of-Spain; and thanks to Wittgenstein alone they had not only survived two very nasty blows that carried them a great way out of their course, but found their way, three weeks overdue, to Trinidad. He came aft to trim a stern-lantern, and Jack said, 'Well, Wittgenstein, I am glad to see you again. It must be seven or eight years since we were shipmates. How do you come along?'
'Pretty spry, sir, thank God, though we are none of us as young as we was; and I see you are pretty spry too, sir,' said Wittgenstein looking at him keenly in the yellow glow. 'Well, fairly spry, all things considered.'
Jack stayed on deck for a couple of glasses, and after that he appeared again from time to time to watch the steady working of the ship and gaze at the star-sprinkled sky. Mars was setting, tangled in Virgo, somewhere over Lithuania: Jupiter shone glorious astern. The night seemed never-ending, a continual easy glide through darkness.
Yet he was asleep, sitting in the ingenious swinging chair that Draper had slung in the great cabin, when a midshipman came to tell him that a sail had been sighted. He had slept through the changing of the watch, and now as he came on deck the first streaks of dawn were showing: the binnacle lights still gleamed, and at first he could make out nothing but the line of the horizon.
'Just forward of the shifting backstay, sir,' said the master, who had the morning watch.
He caught the lifting fleck of white, trained his night-glass on it, and stared long and hard. No: it would not do. This was not his cat. It was too early for his cat, and in any case the sail to leeward was steering south. Yet on the other hand ... a train of possibilities raced through his mind as he automatically slung his glass and climbed into the maintop, a serious and rather stern expression on his face. He knew from the Admiral that there were no British cruisers on this station apart from the brig Rattler, and this was a three masted vessel: then again it was unlikely that any English merchantman should be sailing alone; they nearly all waited for convoy to protect them from the Danish privateers. The master followed him.
The light was growing fast: the distant ship - for a ship she was, though small - hung there, an inverted image in his night-glass, somewhat dreamlike. 'She is no cat, neither,' he observed, passing the telescope. 'What do you make of her, Mr Grimmond?'
'No cat, sir, I agree,' said Grimmond, after a long searching pause. 'I can see her topgallantyards as plain as plain. I should not like to take my oath on it, but she looks rather like the Minnie, a Dane out of Aarhus. We saw her often last year, and chased her twice. She has a fine turn of speed on a bowline, and she lies very close indeed.'
'Let us go up to the masthead, Mr Grimmond,' said Jack, calling to the lookout to slide down the stay. There was barely room at the main crosstrees of so small a ship as the Ariel for a sixteen-stone post-captain and a stoutly-built master, and the frail spars creaked ominously. Grimmond was horribly embarrassed as well as frightened: ordinarily two such figures would have clung close together, but he could not bring himself to such familiarity with the person of Captain Aubrey, and he was obliged to adopt an odd, crucified posture between a shroud and a backstay.
The first thing that Jack did was to search for his quarry, the cat heading for Riga. At this height he commanded a disk of sea twenty-five miles in diameter: there was no cat in it. Nor should there have been any cat. By all his calculations she should still be over the south-eastern horizon, crawling towards a point in the sea where the Ariel should cut her course at about the beginning of the forenoon watch.
'Yes, sir,' said the master. 'I am almost sure she is the Minnie now. Her topsides are all black, and she carries a boat on stern-davits.'
'And what may she be?'
'Why, sir, sometimes she is a trader, sailing under our licence or dealing with the French on her own account, and sometimes she is most likely a privateer: maybe both together, when the opportunity offers. She certainly had no licence when she ran from us, beating into Danzig.'
'She is fast, you say?'
'Very fast on a wind, sir; but going large the Ariel has the legs of her. We should have caught her the second time, but that she ducked in under the guns of Bornholm. We were coming up hand over fist.'
'What does she carry?'
'Fourteen Danish six-pounders, sir.'
A considerable armament for a merchantman, but even so no match for the Ariel. Jack considered, hanging there between the clear sky and the deck. The cat was hypothetical: likely, but still hypothetical. She was desperately slow, and sailing or towing her down the Baltic would eat up a great deal of time. The Minnie was no sort of a hypothesis: she was there, plainly to be seen; she was fast, she was heading in the right direction - a chase would take him on his way - and she was under his lee.
'Very well, Mr Grimmond,' he said, 'we will see if we can catch her this time,' and reaching out for a backstay he slid down on deck in one long smooth sweep.
Apart from the very beginning, when he was fairly sure he could rely on the Minnie's lookout to ignore the Ariel for a while in the usual merchantman fashion and then upon a demi-privateer's curiosity and eagerness for prey, he knew that there would be little room for guile in this pursuit. It would be a straightforward race, a match of speed, perhaps of seamanship; and there was all day to run it in, a fair wind, and an open sea. He bitterly regretted his topgallantmasts, struck down on deck during yesterday's hard blow and never swayed up since - he had meant to leave it until both watches should be on deck.
There would be no room for guile in the long run, but still it would be foolish not to take whatever advantage there was to be gained; they were nearly five miles apart, scarcely hull-up from the deck, and it would take a long while to make up that distance, particularly as the Minnie already had her topgallantyards crossed and the Ariel was rather deep-laden. He sent her slanting casually across the sea to cross the Minnie's wake, still under topsails, suspended the ritual of washing the deck, stated that hammocks would not be piped up until further notice, ordered hammock-cloths to be draped over the gunports, and topgallantmasts and yards laid along, ready to be swayed up and crossed at a moment's notice, with royals to follow them, and desired the officers to follow his example in changing their fine blue coats for pea-jackets. He had gone to sea with only one uniform, his best; and the Ariel's gunroom, supposing this to be his own choice, his normal standard of dress, had hitherto presented an appearance that would have done credit to a flagship, with blazing buttons, epaulettes, and eminent hats, visible a great way off - certain marks of a King's ship. He also sent most of the hands below, keeping only about a dozen in view.
The Minnie sighted them earlier than Jack had expected. From the maintop he saw her people running about, a surprisingly heavy crew and an almost conclusive proof of her being a privateer - quite enough men to serve her seven guns of a side, or to board and carry any ordinary Baltic merchantman. She rounded-to for a closer look, and Jack called 'Danish colours, Mr Grimmond.'
