The fortune of war, page 27
'There is a basket in there, behind you,' said Herapath, still speaking very quietly. 'I will bring you some more food tomorrow.'
Diana spoke up, and spoke handsomely: she thanked Mr Herapath extremely, more than she could say, for this evening; she could not tell him how she admired his coolness. She begged he would kiss that dear child Caroline for her, and she hoped she might see him again after he had had a good night's rest - no man had ever earnt it better. And if it should cross his mind to bring a little milk, she would be so very grateful.
Jack walked with him to the break of the quarterdeck, glanced at the sky, and said, 'Herapath, you have done nobly by us. Nobly, upon my honour. But we are not entirely out of the wood. There will be the devil's own hue and cry tomorrow, and I am not quite happy about your father. Do not suppose that I mean to make the least reflection upon him: after such kindness that would be a sad, shabby thing to do - base - contemptible. But he is an old gentleman: older than I had thought. And if they start to question him, what with the shock of tonight, and the horses bolting, he might be led - you understand me?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Now we spoke of a boat, your father and I - I think it was before you came in - so that when time and tide allowed I could get the Doctor and Mrs Villiers clear away. But now it seems to me that this is the time; and the tide will suit the moment it has reached the full. On the other hand, your father is out of the way at this moment; and tomorrow may be too late. Can you find me one?'
'There is Joe's boat alongside, sir. But it is only an old sawn-down scow he goes fishing in; it would never face the open sea, nor even a blow in the harbour. You could never reach Halifax in it, I am sure.'
'Grant reached the Cape in the cutter. But I hope I shall not have to go so far. May we have a look at it?'
Herapath crossed the deck to the starboard rail, found a rope and pulled: an ugly, slab-sided craft appeared from the gloom and ran alongside into the moonlight. A shrouded object lay fore and aft, and three cans gleamed in the moon like eyes. 'That must be his mast and sail,' said Herapath, 'and, those are his bait-pots. I can smell them from here.'
Jack looked long and hard. 'At high water,' he said, 'I shall go into her and run out on the ebb. Will you not come with us, Herapath? I will rate you midshipman in any ship I command, and you could be the Doctor's assistant again. Things might be unpleasant for you in Boston.'
'Oh no, sir,' said Herapath. 'That would never do: though I am obliged to you for your care of me. I have ties here... and then, you know, we are enemies.'
'By God, so we are. I had forgot. I find it difficult to think of you as an enemy, Herapath.'
'Shall I give you a hand, stepping the mast, sir? It would be awkward, with your arm.'
The mast was stepped, young Herapath was gone. Jack stood there leaning on the rail, looking at the boat and out at the moonlit harbour, the vague looming of the islands and the powerful batteries. The tide flowed, perpetually mounting, the fenders strained and squeaked, and by imperceptible degrees the Arcturus's deck rose above the level of the quay. He kept a continual watch on the shifting currents, the swing of the small-craft and their buoys, the changing sky - the seaman was all alive -and all the time his ear was stretched, however illogically at this hour, for some clamour in the town, parties hurrying along the waterfront, searching the ships. He also weighed a number of alternative courses of action if the breeze and his forecasts should fail. And beneath all this his mind strayed far away: to England and Sophie of course, but also to Acasta, his promised command, and the possibility of a meeting that might set the balance more nearly right, and lift the black depression that had been with him ever since his first hour in the Java. Guerri�, Macedonian, and Java; it was more than a man could bear.
Before this Stephen had called him a deeply superstitious man. Perhaps he was: he certainly had a strong belief in luck, as shown by various portents, some of them trivial enough, such as the presence of the star Arcturus overhead, and by a feeling, impossible to define, though a particularly steady confidence formed part of it, that told him when the tide was in his favour. He felt it now, and although from a primitive piety he dared not let the words form even in the remotest corner of his mind, he thought he should succeed.
On the other hand, he felt there was bad luck with Diana, bad luck hanging about Diana. He did not wish to be below with her. She was unlucky; she brought bad luck. Although he was deeply grateful to her and although he liked the way she had borne up so far - no mincing, no vapours, no complaints - for himself he wished her away. For Stephen he could not tell. He had seen him so tormented by her and for her these last years, that he could no longer tell. Perhaps it was right that he should have her at last. In the dead silence of the middle watch, the graveyard watch, he believed he could just make out their voices, far below.
But the long silence was coming to an end. The first Monday-morning wagons rumbled somewhere in the town, not a great way off, and far to the right he heard carts. The tide was very near the full; the flow had been diminishing this last half hour, and the small-craft - there were a great many of them, pleasure-boats, fishing-boats, and some yachts - no longer strained at their buoys. The moon was only a handsbreadth from her setting.
'Joe,' came a voice from the darkness under the Arcturus's stern. 'Joe. Are youse a-going out?'
'I ain't Joe,' said Jack.
'Who are you, then?' asked the boat, now visible.
'Jack.'
'Where's Joe?'
'Gone to Salem.'
'Are youse a-going out, Jack?'
'Maybe.'
'You got any bait, Jack?'
'No.'
'Well, fuck you, Jack.'
'And fuck you too, mate,' said Jack mildly. He watched the boat scull clear, hoist its sail, quietly swearing, and glide away on the slack water. Then he went below, groping along aft to the bread-room. He saw light showing through the joints in the hinged sheet, tapped, and heard Diana's low voice, 'Who is it?'
'Jack,' he said, and the flap opened, showing Diana by the shielded lantern, with a pistol in her lap. The atmosphere was stifling, and the flame quite low. She put her finger to her lips and said, 'Hush. He has eaten everything in the basket, and now he is fast asleep. He had had nothing all day. Can you imagine that?'
Some part of Jack's mind had also dwelt on breakfast, since his stomach had been calling out for some time, and he was conscious of a piercing disappointment. 'Well, he must wake up now. We are going into the boat: the tide is on the turn.'
They tweaked and pulled him into a state of wakefulness and led him on deck, clutching his bundle.
For a vessel of her size, the Arcturus had no great plank-sheer, but even so the dim boat was a long way down. 'Must we change ships?' he asked.
'I believe we must,' said Jack.
'Would it not be better to wait for the tide to rise and float the boat a little higher, a little nearer to the deck?'
'Their relative positions would remain the same, I do assure you. Besides, the tide is already at the full. Come, Stephen, you have often jumped down into a boat deeper than that.'
'I am thinking of Diana.'
'Oh, Diana - she will skip down like a good 'un. You give her a hand over the side and I will receive her in the boat. Diana, where is your chest? Stephen, clap on to this line, and lower away handsomely when I give the word.' He swung over the rail, dropped to the mainchains, and with his left hand grasping a dead-eye he lowered himself into the boat, 'Lower away,' he called, and the little trunk came down. 'Now, Diana.' He guided her feet on to the chain-wale. 'Mind your petticoats and jump.'
'Damn my petticoats,' said Diana, and jumped He received her full-pitch with his good arm 'No one could call you a light woman, Diana,' he said, setting her down among the bait-pots and the pervading reek of decaying squid, and then blushed in the darkness 'Come on, Stephen,' he called. There were wagons moving along the quay, and several lanterns, voices out on the harbour, bobbing lights.
'Jack, have you a piece of string in your pocket? I cannot climb down without doing up my parcel.'
'Poor lamb,' whispered Diana, 'he is still half asleep.' She sprang up the side like a boy, took off her shawl, wrapped the papers in it, tied the corners, and tossed it into the boat.
'We shall get off some time, I suppose,' said Jack, more or less to himself, shipping the rudder. And when at last they were down, 'Diana, stow yourself right forward and do not get in the way. Stephen, there are the rowlocks: pull right ahead. Give way.' He shoved off; the Arcturus's side receded; Stephen made several effectual strokes.
'Boat your oars,' said Jack. 'Clap on to the halliard -no, the halliard. God's death - haul away. Bear a hand, Stephen. Belay. Catch a couple of turns round the kevel- the kevel.'
The scow gave a violent lurch. Jack dropped all, scrambled forward, caught two turns round the kevel and slid back to the tiller. The sail filled, he brought the wind a little abaft the beam, and the scow headed out to sea.
'You are cursed snappish tonight, Jack,' said Stephen. 'How do you expect me to understand your altumal cant, without pondering on it? I do not expect you to understand medical jargon, without giving you time to consider the etymology, for all love.'
'Not to know the odds between a halliard and a sheet, after all these years at sea: it passes human understanding,' said Jack.
'You are a reasonably civil, complaisant creature on dry land,' said Stephen, 'but the moment you are afloat you become pragmatical and absolute, a bashaw - do this, do that, gluppit the prawling strangles, there - no longer a social being at all. It is no doubt the effect of the long-continued habit of command; but it cannot be considered amiable.'
Diana said nothing: she had a considerable experience and she knew that if men were to be at all tolerable they must be fed. She was also feeling the first premonitory qualms of seasickness - she was a very bad sailor - and she dreaded what was to come.
The cut-down scow looked an awkward lump of a boat, but in point of fact, once Jack had grown used to its ways, he found that it behaved quite well, apart from its obstinate griping and its quite extraordinary leeway: its bottom was perfectly flat, and it skidded sideways from the wind almost as fast and far as it travelled forward. There was plenty of sea-room, however, and as he had no need to fear shoal water in a craft that did not draw six inches he set its head for Point Shirley in order to weather the long island.
They were not alone in the vast outer harbour: several other fishing-boats had put out, and now away to starboard, in the deep-water channel, lay the Chesapeake herself just looming into view. There were lights in her cabin - Lawrence was already up - and as Jack gazed the morning watch was called. More lights appeared in every scuttle and open half-port all along the berth-deck, and over a mile of water he could hear the voices of the bosun's mates, all the familiar din, so very like the ships he had served in.
Indeed the silence of the night was fading fast. Overhead the faint gulls were calling, and at the bottom of the bay Boston was waking up - lights showing the shape of the waterfront, when he glanced astern. But they would not be needed long: Saturn had set, following the moon to rise in Tartary, and already there was a lightening in the east.
On and on, steadily on, away from the land, the water rippling along the side, the sheet alive in his hand, the tiller under the crook of his knee. The breeze was nothing much, but with the help of the powerful ebb they were making four knots or five with relation to the shore, and now he could feel the beginning of the true ocean, the heave of the open sea, though much attenuated here by reason of the long island.
'What's amiss?' he asked suddenly.
'Diana is sick,' said Stephen.
'Well, well: poor soul. Let her lean out the leeward side.'
The lightness ahead increased and the long island was no longer a blur but a sharply-outlined black mass, well within gunshot. Diana had collapsed in the bottom of the boat. 'It will have to be worse before it gets better,' he reflected, glancing at her with a dispassionate eye. A string of gulls passed overhead, uttering their usual coarse cynical laughter; droppings fell aboard; and so they ran.
The breeze was drawing ahead: at this rate of leeway he would probably have to tack to clear the point. And as it drew ahead, so it slackened: the rising sun might swallow it entirely.
There was no breeze to be wasted. 'Lose not a minute,' he said: and tacking must lose many. Peering under the sail, he watched the island shore coming closer, quite clear now, with people walking about on it and white water off the point. Closer and closer still: he let fly the sheet and grasped an oar, trusting to the strong tide-run to carry them round. A couple of bumps, a rock fended off, and it had done so. A man called out to them from the island. Jack waved, hauled in the sheet, and now they met the swell, setting from the south-east and cutting up against the ebb. At once the scow began a lumbering dance, and a renewed sound of dry retching came from the bows.
'Put my coat over her,' said Jack, taking it off - an easy task with his arm slung outside. Stephen had already covered her with his, but she shivered still, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, shivered convulsively.
Now there was Lovell's Island ahead, a cluster of fishing-boats, blue sky beyond, and brilliant rays shooting up into it from the east: and now the blazing rim of the sun himself, bearable for a moment, and then too powerful by far. The breeze, grown fitful and capricious, suddenly backed right aft, a stronger gust that thrust the scow's head into a rising wave. Diana was soaked: she neither moved nor groaned, flat in the bows.
'Bail with the bait-pots,' said Jack. 'That is Lovell's Island there ahead. I believe we shall weather it.'
'Aye? Very well. There is a glutinous substance in these pots: I see the head of a decapod.'
'Toss it out,' said Jack, 'and bail.'
'Those, I presume,' said Stephen, nodding towards the small-craft ahead as he bailed, 'are fishing-boats that set out before us. But what is that?'
Over the shining sea, from the south end of the long island, came a cutter, pulling double-banked, pulling hard and fast into the eye of the wind. Its course would intercept the scow's very soon indeed, the way those men were stretching out.
'Could you go a little faster, do you think?' asked Stephen.
Jack shook his head, stepped forward, and slowly lowered down the sail. The cutter was racing towards them: the men were armed - shoulder-belts, cutlasses, tomahawks and pistols - and in the stern-sheets an officer bent urgently towards them, bawling, 'Stretch out, stretch out.'
The coxswain at his side half rose and roared, 'Make a lane, there.' The small-craft scattered; the cutter dashed through them, turned left-handed in a long curve that took it past the northern point of the big island, and so vanished, still at a racing speed.
'That was Lawrence exercising his boarders,' observed Jack as he hoisted the sail again. 'He is a taut skipper, all right' He found his heart beating double-time, and he said, 'They will be back aboard the Chesapeake in twenty minutes at this rate, in spite of the tide. How is Diana?'
'There is a certain degree of prostration, benign prostration.
They looked at her: green, hair draggling over her clammy face, eyes closed, mouth clenched tight, a look of mingled death and stubborn resistance. Stephen wiped her cheek Jack said, 'I shall favour the boat. You might move the bait-pots and that old sack under her head: perhaps she don't like the smell.'
He took the scow wide of Lovell's Island, south about, to ease the motion: south about, with the battery under his lee, through the channel, and there, as he cleared the southern tip, he saw what his soul had longed to see: topgallantsails and topsails beyond the northernmost of the Brewster islands, a ship standing in from the Graves.
Without his telescope he could not swear she was the Shannon yet, and he said nothing; but in his heart he had a beautiful calm certainty.
'You seem pleased, brother?' said Stephen, after a while, looking from the green-yellow to the red and beaming face.
'Yes, I am, to be candid with you,' said Jack, 'and so will you be, I believe. Do you see that ship, just clear of the northern island now?'
'I do not.'
'The northern island - the further island, the one on the left. Hull up, for God's sake.'
'Ah, I perceive it now. And for what my opinion is worth, I should say it looks quite like a man-of-war. There is a neatness, a certain air, that we associate with a man-of-war.'
Abandoning all opportunity for wit, Jack laughed aloud and said, 'That is Shannon, standing in for her morning look at the Chesapeake, ha, ha, ha!'
The Shannon stood on, stemming the tide; the scow, as close-hauled at it would lie, steered to cross her bows. Two miles had separated them at first: with their combined rates of sailing this distance lessened to half a mile in ten minutes, and Jack saw that he could not fetch her on this tack - the scow's leeway was too great - and that going about would leave him in her wake. 'Did I speak too soon?' he thought, and standing up he hailed as he had rarely hailed before. 'The ship ahoy. Shannon ahoy.'
A moment of the most intense anxiety, and he saw the frigate back her foretopsail: the way came off her just enough to let the scow run alongside. The awkward boat gave her a shrewd thump amidships, and from the deck above a thundering voice, a familiar voice, cried, 'Mind the paintwork, God damn your eyes. Mind the paintwork - fend off. I've a mind to put a round-shot through your bottom.'
Then, in a milder tone, 'Well, Jonathan, have you any lobsters aboard? Paul, pass him a line.'
With the line firm in his hand and ease flooding through his heart, Jack could be facetious now.
'I must ask you to moderate your language, sir; we have a lady in the boat. Pray tell Captain Broke that I should like a word with him. And take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me, Mr Falkiner.'
Blank consternation on the broad honest weather-beaten face above, the dawn of wrath, shocked silence, fore and aft, then a huge grin, and Falkiner cried, 'By -dear me, 'tis Captain Aubrey. I beg your pardon, sir. I will jump to the cabin directly. Will you come aboard, sir?'
