Desolation Island (Aubrey & Maturin #5)

by Patrick O'Brian

It was easy to be too clever by half, and to over-reach oneself, in matters of this kind: in natural philosophy and in political intelligence a good rule was to look into the obvious first, and to solve the easy parts of the problem.

As to her morals, I have nothing to say, but she was first and foremost an intelligence agent. I had some of her Antwerp reports in my hands not a week since, when we were looking through the Privy Council files, and they were brilliant, Maturin, brilliant. For intelligence, there is nothing like a keen-witted, handsome woman. She told us that De Ruyter was coming to burn our ships. It is true that we did nothing about it, and that the ships were burnt; but the report itself was a masterpiece of precision. Yes, yes.’

‘Please to describe her.’ ‘She is between twenty-five and thirty, but she still retains her bloom: black hair, blue eyes: about five foot eight, but looks taller, since she stands so straight – magnificent carriage of her head. A slight but undeniable figure; though these things, you know, can be improved by stuffing. A thoroughly genteel air, nothing bold or flaunting. Writes like a cat, with every third word underlined, and cannot spell. Speaks excellent French, however, and sits a horse to admiration: no other education that can be detected.’

‘To an impartial mind, it is a little strange to see your dignity so offended by a score of prisoners. You, who have so willingly stuffed your holds with French and Spanish prisoners, to take such exception to a few of your own countrymen, whom you have always rated much higher than any foreigner, and who in any case would never be brought into contact with you, being under the conduct of proper persons.’ ‘They are completely different. Prisoners of war and gaolbirds are completely different.’ ‘The deprivation of liberty is still the same: the subhuman almost servile status. We have both been prisoners of war, and prisoners for debt. We have both sailed with a number of men guilty of the most atrocious crimes. For my part, I have not found my dignity much affected.

yet I will observe, Jack, that a bird in the hand waits for no man, as you so often say yourself, and that the Ajax is at present little more than a naked keel. Who knows, by the time she floats her occupation may be gone. She may sail on mere visits of courtesy, saluting the French colours with a blank discharge and a friendly cheer?’ ‘You do not mean there is danger of peace?’ cried Jack, turning quick. ‘That is to say, I mean the blessings of peace are very capital, nothing finer – but one likes to be warned.’ ‘I do not. I know nothing about it. I only put it to you that the Ajax will not swim for another six months at the least; that there is something to be said for making hay when no clouds obscure the sun; and that it is your rolling stone that gets the worm.’

But if someone would have the goodness to take the rat away, I should be most infinitely obliged.’ ‘The rat, ma’am?’ ‘Yes, sir: in the corner there. I knocked him on the head at last, with my shoe – it was quite a battle.’

On both sides of the Channel, for science flowed freely in spite of the war: indeed, earlier in the year Stephen had been invited to address the learned of Paris at the Institut, a journey that he might have made, with the consent of both governments, had it not been for the presence of Diana Villiers and of certain scruples that were still unconquered by the time the Leopard sailed.

‘The stowaway? Oh, yes, that half-starved fellow this morning. Well, now, since he is so very eager to go to sea, and since, after all, he is at sea, I think you may enter him as a supernumerary landsman. God knows what romantic notions he has in his head . . . the lower deck will soon knock them out again.’ ‘He is probably running from a wench, sir. Twenty young fellows in the starboard watch are in the same case.’ ‘It is often those slim young men who procreate so freely,’ said Stephen, ‘whereas your village champion, for all his parading like the parish bull, in fact remains comparatively chaste. For lack of opportunity? Who can tell? Is the flame more ardent in a lighter form? Does a more insinuating manner count for all?

‘He does not miss much by staying aboard, however, for these islands really are most uncommon black and desolate, having been volcanoes and having a strong inclination to be volcanoes again.

Oh, if only the Admiralty had attended to my plea for Richardson or Ned Summerhayes – but if only pigs had wings, we should have no need for tinkers’ hands, as they say.

‘How their bodies stand it,’ he said, ‘I cannot tell. I can but suppose that sea-air, one solid meal a day, more or less continual damp, heavy labour, no more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time, and that taken in such a tight-packed crowd of unwashed sweating bodies as would be thought severe in a Dublin doss-house, must be what the human frame in fact requires to keep it thoroughly robust; and that our notions of hygiene are quite fallacious.

According to his promise, Stephen passed on Mrs Wogan’s request that she might add a letter to the rapidly filling bay. ‘I shall be interested to see what it contains,’ he said; and as he expected, Jack turned away – turned fast, but not quite fast enough to hide his expression of extreme distaste, and of something very near contempt. Captain Aubrey would do his utmost to deceive an enemy by the use of false colours and false signals, by making him believe that the ship was a harmless merchantman, a neutral, or a compatriot, and by any other ruse that might occur to his fertile mind. All was fair in war: all, except for opening letters and listening behind doors. If Stephen, on the other hand, could bring Buonaparte one inch nearer to the brink of Hell by opening letters, he would happily violate a whole mail-coach full. ‘You will read captured despatches with open glee and exultation,’ he said, ‘for you concede that they are public papers. If you value candour, you must therefore admit that any document bearing on the war is also a public paper: you are to rid your mind of these weak prejudices.’ In his heart Jack remained unconvinced; but Stephen received the letter.

He did not speak again for some while, and when he did it was to say in an obstinate, contentious voice, ‘They can talk to me about Captain Seymour and Lord Cochrane and Captain Hoste and all the rest of them, but I say our skipper’s the finest fighting captain in the fleet; and I served under Lord Viscount Nelson, didn’t I? I’d like to see the man that denies it. Who wiped a Spanish frigate’s eye in a fourteen-gun brig, and made her strike? Who fought the Polychrest till she sunk under him, and swapped her for a corvette cut out from right under their guns?’ ‘I know, Bonden,’ said Stephen mildly. ‘I was there.’ ‘Who set about a French seventy-four in a twenty-eight-gun frigate?’ cried Bonden, angrier still. ‘But then,’ he went on in quite another tone, low and confidential, ‘when we’re ashore, sometimes we’re a little at sea, if you understand me, sir. Which, being as straight as a die, we sometimes believe them quick-talking coves are dead honest too, with their patent knees and braces and goddam silver-mines, pardon the expression, sir. Now ’tis natural for any captain to think his command the finest ship that ever was: but sometimes, being stuffed up with knees and braces, we might perhaps think her finer than is quite reason, and believe it and say it too, without a lie.’

But Grant was a dead weight. His service had been limited to transports, harbour duties, and exploration, and through no fault of his own he had never been in battle; he was a good navigator, but he could not know the inward nature of a fight at sea: nor did he seem willing to learn. It was as though he did not really believe in the possibility of action or the need for anything but formal preparation for it; and his attitude, his tolerably obvious attitude, infected many of those whose idea of battle was as hazy as his own – a general smoke and thunder at close quarters, with the Royal Navy winning as a matter of course. After one or two private interviews with Grant which did not succeed in shaking the older man’s obstinate self-complacency, in spite of his perfectly correct ‘Yes, sir’ at every pregnant pause, Jack wrote him down as just one more burden to be borne, by no means inconsiderable, but far less important than the herd of landsmen on the lower deck; and he carried on with the task of turning the Leopard into a fighting-machine as efficient as his means would allow, entirely changing his methods, suiting them to his strange little crew and, as he put it himself, ‘cutting his coat according to his cloth.’

On the other hand, it made a shambles of the cabin. Most Captain’s stewards would have cried out at seeing their housekeeping blasted to every wind that blew, their cherished brass, paintwork, checkered sailcloth, deck, windows, desecrated as though by battle; and Killick, old in insubordination and dumb insolence, indulged for old times’ sake and grown tyrannical, was perhaps the most crabbed steward in any rated ship, an Attila to the swabbers and ship’s boys under his sway, and a source of anxiety to his Captain. But Jack was happily inspired to invite him to touch off the first discharge, and after that the glory of the cabin might go hang – deck-rings and metal slides might wreck the checkered cloth, garlands of hammered shot, wet swabs, and sooty worms might ruin the unvarying symmetry of this drawing-room, adorned with swords on one hand and with telescopes on the other, the pistols forming a tasteful sunburst in between and the chairs and tables always just so, taking their bearings from the mahogany wine-cooler by the starboard quarter-gallery door, and the whole place might reek of powder-smoke – Killick was there, eyeing the slow-match that was to fire the gun, much as a terrier might eye a rat or a groom his bride. A single shot would make him civil, and even obliging, for a week.

‘At this present rate, we shall exhaust our venereals as well,’ he said, washing his hands. ‘How many does that make, Mr Herapath?’ ‘Howlands is the seventh, sir,’ replied his assistant. ‘The gaol-fever might fox me,’ said Stephen, ‘but the lues venerea never can: pox in all its forms is as familiar to the seafaring medical man as the common cold to his colleague by land. These are all recent infections, Mr Herapath; and since our Gipsy woman is continence itself, sure the only source is Mrs Wogan’s servant Peg. For you are to observe that although a protracted voyage may bring about a wonderful increase in sodomitical practices, these are the wounds of Venus herself. A fireship is among us, and her unlucky name is Peggy Barnes.’

‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ he said to Stephen at breakfast. ‘That is a very fine thought,’ said Stephen, ‘and strikingly original: pray, when did it come to you?’ ‘Oh very well, very well. But if you had said it in Latin or Greek or Hebrew you would triumph for half an hour together, crowing over those who can only express themselves like plain honest Christians: and yet it would be all one, you know.

But I believe our solicitude is misplaced. We landed him in a Catholic country.’ ‘You mean he might be saved?’

It was notorious that whalers had the sharpest eyes of any men afloat: their livelihood depended on seeing the distant spout, often in a torn, tormented, cloud-covered waste of sea, and they always had men up there in their crow’s nests, watching with the most constant eagerness: the remotest gleam of topsails could not escape them by day, nor yet by these late moonlit nights.

In the darkened cabin he found Stephen with his ’cello between his knees and a soup-tureen at his side. ‘Judas,’ he said, lifting the lid and beholding emptiness. ‘Not at all, my dear. More is on the brew; but I cannot recommend it. You would be better with a glass of water, tempered with a few drops of wine, a very few drops of wine, and a piece of biscuit.’ ‘What did you eat it for, then? Why did you not leave a scrap, not a single scrap?’ ‘It was only that I felt my need was greater than thine, my business of greater importance than your business. For whereas yours is concerned with death, mine is the bringing forth of life. Mrs Boswell is in labour, and some time tonight or tomorrow I think I may promise you an addition to your crew.’ ‘Ten to one another – woman,’ said Jack. ‘Killick! Killick, there!’ More soup appeared, chops hot and hot, a jug of coffee, and a wedge of solid duff. ‘Will this last long, do you suppose?’ asked Stephen, over the booming of his ’cello. ‘A stern chase is a long chase,’ said Jack. ‘And would you consider this a really stern one?’ ‘It could not well be more so. The Dutchman is in our wake. He is dead astern.’ ‘So that is the significance of the term. I had always supposed it to mean an eager, a grim, a most determined pursuit, inspired by inveterate animosity. Well: and so this is a stern chase. Listen till I tell you something for my part: a breech-presentation is a long, long labour too. It looks to me that the both of us have an active n...

...ight ahead: you will allow me to call for another pot.'

When should he begin to reduce sail, to let the bosun get at the precious hawsers? Could he ask the exhausted people to strike the topgallantmasts down on deck against the expected blow, and then call upon them for unknown exertions when it came to securing the ship? How did the tides run in these uncharted waters? The threat grew stronger in the west: lightning flickered on the far horizon – far, but not so very far. The feeling of the day had changed. These and many more were decisions that only he could take. Collective wisdom might do better, but a ship could not be a parliament: there was no time for debate. The situation was changing fast, as it often did before an action, when a whole carefully worked-out plan might have to be discarded in a moment, and new steps decided upon. This rested on him alone, and rarely had he felt more lonely, nor more fallible, as he saw the headland advancing towards him, and with it the moment of decision. The lack of sleep, the pain, the confusion of day and night for weeks on end, had told upon him; his head was thick and stupid; yet a mistake in the next hour might cost the ship her life.