HMS Surprise. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ flecked the southern horizon, Nelson waiting for the French admiral to come out.

      The mistral had been blowing for three days now and the sea showed more white than blue, with the off-shore wind cutting up little short waves that sent spray flying over the waist of the ship: the three frigates had reduced sail at noon, but even so they were making seven knots and heeling until their larboard chains were smothered in the foam.

      The tediously familiar headland of Cape Sicié came closer and closer; in this sparkling clean air under the pure sky they could see the little white houses, carts creeping on the road up to the semaphore station and the batteries. Closer, almost within range of the high-perched forty-two pounders; and now the wind was coming in gusts off the high ground.

      ‘On deck, there,’ hailed the lookout at the mast-head. ‘Naiad’s showing a waft, sir.’

      ‘Hands wear ship,’ said the lieutenant of the watch, more from form than anything else, for not only did the Lively have a crew that had worked together for years, but also she had carried out this manoeuvre several hundred times in this very stretch of water and the order was scarcely needed. Routine had taken the edge off the Livelies’ zeal, but nevertheless the boatswain had to call out ‘Handsomely, handsomely, now, with that bleeding sheet’; for the crew had been brought to such a pitch of silent efficiency that the frigate ran the risk of darting her jib-boom over the taffrail of the Melpomene, her next ahead, whose talents and sailing qualities could not have recommended her anywhere.

      However, round they went in succession, each wearing in the spot where her leader had turned; they hauled their wind and re-formed their rigid line, heading for Giens once more, Naiad, Melpomene, Lively.

      ‘I do hate this wearing in succession,’ said one thin midshipman to another thin midshipman, ‘It does not give a man a chance: nothing can you see, not a sausage, no not a sausage; nor yet a smell of one,’ he added, peering forward through the rigging and sails towards the gap between the peninsula and the island of Porquerolles.

      ‘Sausage,’ cried the other. ‘Oh, Butler, what an infernal bloody thing to say.’ He, too, leaned over the top of the hammocks, staring towards the passage; for at any moment now the Niobe might appear from her cruise, watering at Agincourt Sound and working back along the Italian coast, badgering the enemy and picking up what supplies she could find, and it would be the Lively’s turn next. ‘Sausage,’ he cried above the mistral, as he stared, ‘hot, crisp, squirting with juice as you bite ’em – bacon – mushrooms!’

      ‘Shut up, fat-arse,’ whispered his friend, with a vicious pinch. ‘The Lord is with us.’

      The officer of the watch had moved away over to leeward at the clash of the Marine sentry’s salute; and a moment later Jack Aubrey stepped out of the cabin, muffled in a griego, with a telescope under his arm, and began to pace the quarterdeck, the holy windward side, sacred to the captain. From time to time he glanced up at the sails: a purely automatic glance – nothing called for comment, of course: she was a thoroughly efficient machine, working smoothly. For this kind of duty the Lively would function perfectly if he were to stay in his cot all day. No reproach was possible, even if he had felt as liverish as Lucifer after his fall, which was not the case; far from it; he and the men under his command had been in a state of general benignity these many weeks and months, in spite of the tedium of a close blockade, the hardest and most wearisome duty in the service; for although wealth may not bring happiness, the immediate prospect of it provides a wonderfully close imitation and last September they had captured one of the richest ships afloat. His glance, then, was filled with liking and approval; yet still it did not contain that ingenuous love with which he had gazed at his first command, the short, thick, unweatherly Sophie. The Lively was not really his ship; he was only in temporary command, a jobbing-captain until such time as her true owner, Captain Hamond, should return from his seat at Westminster, where he represented Coldbath Fields in the Whig interest; and although Jack prized and admired the frigate’s efficiency and her silent discipline – she could flash out a full suit of canvas with no more than the single quiet order ‘Make sail’, and do so in three minutes forty-two seconds – he could not get used to it. The Lively was a fine example, an admirable example, of the Whiggish state of mind at its best; and Jack was a Tory. He admired her, but it was with a detached admiration, as though he were in charge of a brother-officer’s wife, an elegant, chaste, unimaginative woman, running her life on scientific principles.

      Cape Cépet lay broad on the beam, and slinging his telescope he hoisted himself into the ratlines – they sagged under his weight – and climbed grunting into the maintop. The topmen were expecting him, and they had arranged a studdingsail for him to sit on. ‘Thankee, Rowland,’ he said, ‘uncommon parky, hey? Hey?’ and sank down upon it with a final grunt, resting his glass on the aftermost upper deadeye of the topmast shrouds and training it on Cape Cépet: the signal-station leapt into view, bright and clear, and to its right the eastern half of the Grande Rade with five men-of-war in it, seventy-fours, three of them English. Hannibal, Swiftsure and Berwick: they were exercising their crews at reefing aboard the Hannibal, and quantities of people were creeping up the rigging of the Swiftsure, landmen under training, perhaps. The French nearly always had these captured ships in the outer Rade; they did it to annoy, and they always succeeded. Twice every day it vexed him to the heart, for every morning and every afternoon he went aloft to peer into the Rade. This he did partly out of professional conscience, although there was not the slightest likelihood of their coming out unless they had thick weather and such a gale of wind that the English fleet would be blown off station; and partly because it was some sort of exercise. He was growing fat again, but in any case he had no intention of getting out of the way of running up and down the rigging, as some heavy captains did: the feel of the shrouds under his hands, the give and spring of live rigging, the heave and swing on the roll as he came over into the top made him deeply happy.

      The rest of the anchorage was coming into view, and with a frown Jack swung his glass to inspect the rival frigates: seven of them still, and only one had moved since yesterday. Beautiful ships: though in his opinion they over-raked their masts.

      Now the moment was coming. The church tower was almost in line with the blue dome, and he focused with renewed attention. The land hardly seemed to move at all, but gradually the arms of the Petite Rade opened, and there was the inner harbour, a forest of masts, all with their yards across, all in apparent readiness to come out and fight. A vice-admiral’s flag, a rear-admiral’s, a commodore’s broad pennant: no change. The arms were closing; they glided imperceptibly together, and the Petite Rade was closed.

      Jack shifted his aim until the Faro hill came into sight, then the hill behind it, and he searched the road for the little inn where he and Stephen and Captain Christy-Pallière had eaten and drunk such a capital dinner not so very long ago, together with another French sea-officer whose name he forgot. Precious hot then: precious cold now. Wonderful food then – Lord, how they had stuffed! – precious short commons now. At the thought of that meal his stomach gave a twinge: the Lively, though she considered herself the wealthiest ship on the station and conducted herself with a certain reserve towards the paupers in company, was as short of fresh provisions, tobacco, firewood and water as the rest of the fleet, and because of a murrain among the sheep and measles in the pigsty even her officers’ stores were being eked out with the wicked old salt horse of his ‘young gentleman’ days, while all hands had been eating ship’s biscuits for a great while now. There was a small shoulder of not altogether healthy mutton for Jack’s dinner: ‘Shall I invite the officer of the watch?’ he wondered. ‘It is some time since I had anyone to the cabin, apart from breakfast.’ It was some time, too, since he had spoken to anyone on a footing of real equality or with any free exchange of minds. His officers – or rather Captain Hamond’s officers, for Jack had had no hand in choosing or forming them – entertained him to dinner once a week in the gun-room, and he invited them quite often to the cabin, almost always breakfasting СКАЧАТЬ