The Ionian Mission Part 12

'Mr Rowan, report to the Commander-in-Chief, with my duty, that the transports are in Cephalonia, and that all is well. You need not mention the fact that you saw one of the squadron crammed with women from head to stern; you need not report this open and I may say shameless violation of the Articles of War, for that disagreeable task falls to your superiors; nor need you make any observations about floating brothels or the relaxation of discipline in the warmer eastern waters, for these observations will naturally occur to the Commander-in-Chief without your help. Now pray go aboard our prize and proceed to Malta without the loss of a minute: not all of us can spare the time to dally with the s.e.x.'

'Oh sir,' cried Babbington, as Rowan darted over the side, 'I really must be allowed to protest - to deny -'

'You will not deny that they are women, surely? I can tell the difference between Adam and Eve as quick as the next man, even if you cannot; just as I can tell the difference between an active zealous officer and a lubber that lies in port indulging his whims. It is of no use trying to impose upon me.'

'No, sir. But these are all respectable women.'

'Then why are they leering over the side like that, and making gestures?'

'It is only their way, sir. They are all Lesbians -'

'And no doubt they are all parsons' daughters, your cousins in the third degree, like that wench in Ceylon.'

'- and Lesbians always join their hands like that, to show respect.'

'You are becoming an authority on the motions of Greek women, it appears.'

'Oh sir,' cried Babbington, his voice growing shriller still. 'I know you do not like women aboard -'

'I believe I have had occasion to mention it to you some fifty or sixty times in the last ten years.'

'But if you will allow me to explain -'

'It would be interesting to hear how the presence of thirty-seven, no, thirty-eight young women in one of His Majesty's sloops can be explained; but since I like some decency to be preserved on my quarterdeck, perhaps the explanation had better take place in the cabin.' And in the cabin he said, 'Upon my word, William, this is coming it pretty high. Thirty-eight wenches at a time is coming it pretty high.'

'So it would be, sir, if there were any guilty^ or even shall I say cheerful intent; but upon my honour, I am blameless in thought, word, and deed. Well, in word and deed, anyhow.'

'Perhaps you had better begin the explanation.'

'Well, sir, as soon as I had seen the transports into Argostoli I shaped a course for the Strophades, and towards the end of the day we sighted a sail far to leeward, flying signals of distress. She proved to be a Tunis corsair that had been dismasted in a squall and had run clean out of water, having so many prisoners aboard. She had been raiding the islands for women, and she had done far better than she expected - chanced upon a kind of sewing-bee on the sh.o.r.e at Naxos and then all the young female part of a wedding in Lesbos, taken as they were crossing Peramo harbour in boats.'

'The dogs,' said Jack. 'So these are the women?' 'Not all of them., sir,' said Babbington. 'We told the Moors, of course, that the Christians must be given up, in the nature of things; and we told the women that they should be taken back to Greece. But then it appeared that those from Naxos, who had been aboard quite a long time, did not want to be parted from their corsairs, whereas those from Lesbos did - they were absolutely pa.s.sionate about going home. We could not quite make it out at first, but presently the Naxiotes and the Lesbians started calling names and pulling one another's hair, and everything became quite clear. So we separated them as gently as we could - my bosun was bitten to the bone, and several hands cruelly scratched- helped the Moors set up a jury-mast, gave them biscuit and water enough to carry them home, and made all possible sail to join you at the rendezvous. And here I am, sir, quite happy to be publicly reproached, abused, and amazingly vilified, so long as I am conscious of having done my duty.'

'Well, damme, William, I am sorry: I am very sorry, indeed I am. But injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends.'

'Certainly, sir. And now, sir, what must I do?'

'You must drink a few gla.s.ses of madeira, and then you must turn about while the wind serves, and take all your pretty creatures, your virgoes intactoes I am sure, to Cephalonia and entrust them to Major de Bosset, the governor. He is an uncommon energetic, reliable officer and understands the Greek; he will look after them, victualling them on the sh.o.r.e establishment, until he finds a good stolid trader going to Lesbos. Killick,' he called, raising his voice from habit, although his steward could he heard breathing heavily on the other side of the bulkhead, eavesdropping as usual, 'Killick, light along some madeira, and ask the Doctor and Mr Pullings if they would like to step below.'

'I must tell the Doctor of a prodigious kind of pelican that flew over us off Zante,' said Babbington. 'And I must not forget the Turkish frigate we saw not long before I met you. She gave us a civil gun when we showed our colours, and I returned it; but we did not speak, because she was chasing a felucca to leeward, cracking on most surprising for a Turk, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side.'

The Turkish frigate, said Professor Graham, who had a recent list of the Sultan's men-of-war, was the Torgud of thirty guns. She and the Kitabi of twenty guns, together with a few smaller things, const.i.tuted the command of Mustapha, the ruler of Karia and the Capitan-Bey or senior naval officer in these waters: indeed, they might be said to belong to Mustapha himself, since he used them just as he saw fit, without any reference to Constantinople. And this was fair enough, since Constantinople never produced the men's wages, and Mustapha was obliged to feed and pay them himself. He was said, however, to be an active, zealous officer, and after they had been sailing an hour or two, with the mainland of Epirus looming high and jagged ahead and the Bonhomme Richard and the Dryad lost to view long since, they came across signs of his activity and zeal -the charred remains of a felucca, shattered by gunfire but still just awash and still just recognizable. Then, perfectly recognizable, twenty or thirty corpses drifting in a line along the current: all Greek, all stripped, some headless, some with their throats cut, some impaled, and three roughly crucified, Saint Andrew fas.h.i.+on, on the felucca's broken sweeps.

CHAPTER TEN.

The Surprise lay off Mesenteron, moored in fifteen fathom water, pitching gently as she gazed at the harbour, a harbour silted up long since and now full of tree-trunks from the last flood of the river that meandered through the low-lying unhealthy town. Two castles guarded the tree-trunks and the score of smallcraft inside the harbour: the castles had once belonged to Venice and the winged lion of St Mark still stdod in bold relief upon their outward walls, but now they flew the Turkish crescent. The frigate had saluted them on dropping anchor and they had replied, the roar of cannon sending up clouds of pelicans from an unseen lagoon.

But since then nothing had happened: nothing to the purpose, that is to say. The pelicans had recovered their wits, flying back in long straight lines to their brackish mud, and the fis.h.i.+ng-boats continued to mill about in the harbour, spearing squids as they rose to the surface in the ecstasies of ten-armed copulation; yet no canopied official boat shoved off from the castle jetty, no pasha showed his horse-tail banner, and aboard the frigate there was a distinct sense of anticlimax.

A sailor's eye would have seen that she was even trimmer than usual, with her furled sails skinned up in the bunt and her head-braces lying in perfect Flemish fakes, while even a landsman would have noticed that the officers had abandoned their usual working clothes of easy nankeen pantaloons and light jackets for undress uniform and Hessian boots, while the bargemen were already in their snowy trousers, bright blue jackets and best straw hats, ready to row their Captain ash.o.r.e as soon as he was invited. Yet the invitation did not come. The castle showed no sign of life and Captain Aubrey was certainly not going to make the first move: he sat in his great cabin, elegantly and even splendidly dressed but for the fact that his gold-laced coat lay on a chair with his Patriotic Fund hundred-guinea sword beside it, while his neckcloth was as yet untied and his breeches unbuckled at the knee. He was drinking a supplementary pot of coffee and eating biscuits with a fine equanimity, fully prepared either to see Ismail Bey, if that gentleman appeared or sent a proper message, or to sail northward for an interview with Mustapha. Or failing Mustapha, then with Sciahan Bey in Kutali itself. He had wished to see his three Turks in regular succession, travelling up the coast from Ismail's Mesenteron to Mustapha's Karia and so past Marga and its Frenchmen to Kutali, thus spending the least possible time in preliminaries. But with such a delicate mission as this he was certainly not going to allow himself to fret over details, and if his Turks did not chance to be at home as he pa.s.sed by, then he would take them in another order: in any event he intended to be at sea, well out at sea, before the evening. At quarters yesterday the s.h.i.+p's gunnery had disappointed him, and although the hands' tearing high spirits over the prize had something to do with their criminal levity and indifferent shooting it was also true that they were not yet quite at home with the frigate's guns. A couple of hours' steady practice, live practice, would do wonders, even though it meant burning much of the powder he had taken out of the prize.

Ismail's absence did not vex him unduly, therefore, but it did puzzle him: in these circ.u.mstances, where the cannon he could provide would probably mean victory to any one of the three sides, he had expected an eager welcome - janissaries playing a Turkish march, fireworks, perhaps an oriental carpet laid out. Was this apparent indifference Turkish policy, a common manoeuvre in the East? He would have liked to ask Professor Graham: but early in the day, as soon as the mountains of Epirus grew clear on the eastern sky, the Professor and Dr Maturin had made their way into the maintop, helped and guarded by Honey and Maitland, both master's mates and both powerful young men, there to survey the cla.s.sic ground. It was not Attica, it was not even Boeotia, but it was still just Greece, and the poor young gentlemen were bored to a galloping pallor, intolerably bored with accounts of Theopompus and the Molossians, of Agathocles and the Molossians, of Themistocles and the Molossians with his speech at full length, of the Actian games, and even of the battle of Actium itself, though neither Graham nor Maturin could remember which side had the weather-gage. Their only relief from boredom came when Graham, in the heat of declamation (Plutarch on Pyrrhus), stepped backwards into the lubber's hole, and when they were sent down for maps and an azimuth compa.s.s so that it might be determined which mountain on the skyline concealed Dodona and its speaking oak - 'Dodona, young gentlemen, which Homer describes as the hole of the Selli, who sleep upon the ground and do not wash their feet.'

'Perhaps that is Graham,' thought Jack, hearing someone speaking to the sentry at the cabin door. But no, it was Stephen, attracted by the smell of coffee wafting up and perhaps a little overcome by Graham's elephantine memory (he was now treating the master's mates to Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, and Pausanias, all of them on the subject of Pyrrhus, born and nurtured in those blue-grey mountains ahead.) 'I was thinking of Graham,' said Jack.

'So was I,' Stephen instantly replied. 'The other day he explained to me that the Navy was a school for cowardice, and I meant to ask you for some heads of argument on the other side. I was reminded of his contention as I came down just now, because I heard a mids.h.i.+pman reproving a foremast hand.'

'How did Graham make this out?' asked Jack. 'Killick, light along another cup.'

'He began by saying that he had seen an admiral throw an inkwell at a post-captain, and that the post-captain, a choleric and masterful man, overcame his desire to retaliate by a very great exertion of self-discipline, explaining afterwards that if he had raised his hand to his superior officer it would have been the end of his career - even in theory of his life. Graham observed that the admiral could blackguard and even a.s.sault the captain with impunity, just as the captain could blackguard and even a.s.sault his lieutenants and they their inferiors and so on to the penultimate member of the s.h.i.+p's company. He said that the admiral, from his earliest days in the Navy, had seen the cowardly practice of abusing and beating men who could not reply, their hands being tied; and that, his mind having been long schooled in cowardice and he wearing the impregnable armour of the King's commission, it now appeared quite natural to him to do so. I did not answer directly, meaning to ask your views first: I was reminded of it by hearing this boy revile a seaman and threaten him with a rope's end, when in a state of nature the man would have put him to silence. Even in the present unnatural conditions the sailor was sufficiently human and incautious to reply:'

'Who was the mids.h.i.+pman?' asked Jack with strong displeasure.

'My dear, I am sorry that my face should look at all like an informer's,' said Stephen. 'But tell me now, how can I best confound Professor Graham?'

'Why, as to that,' said Jack, blowing on his coffee-cup and staring out of the stern-window at the harbour, 'as to that... if you do not choose to call him a pragmatical clinchp.o.o.p and kick his breech, which you might think ungenteel, perhaps you could tell him to judge the pudding by its fruit.'

'You mean, prove the tree by its eating.'

'No, no, Stephen, you are quite out: eating a tree would prove nothing. And then you might ask him, had he ever seen many poltroons in the Navy?'

'I am not quite sure what you mean by poltroons.'

'You might describe them as something that cannot be attempted to be tolerated in the Navy - like wombats,' he added, with a sudden recollection of the creatures Stephen had brought aboard an earlier command. 'Mean-spirited worthless wretches: cowards, to put it in a word.'

'You are unjust to wombats, Jack; and you were unjust to my three-toed sloth - such illiberal reflections. But leaving wombats to one side, and confining ourselves to your poltroons, Graham might reply that he had seen a good many bullies in the Navy; and for him, perhaps, the two are much the same.'

'But they ain't, you know. They ain't the same thing at all. I thought they were once, when I was a youngster in the Queen, and I stood up to a tyrannical brute, quite sure he would prove a barnyard c.o.c.k and turn shy. Lord, how he did bang me up and down,' - laughing heartily at the recollection - 'and when I could no longer hear or see or keep my feet he stood over me with a cobbing-board..." For some minutes he had been watching a remote whirl of activity at the foot of the nearer castle, between the gatehouse and the sh.o.r.e, and now he broke off to say, "They are launching a boat at last, a caique with an awning.' He reached for his telescope. 'Yes. It is something official: I see an old gentleman with a beard being lifted in by two blackamoors. Killick, pa.s.s the word for Professor Graham. Tell Mr Gill with my compliments that he is to be brought down by both master's mates together. Lord, what a set of lubbers' - nodding towards the distant boat - 'They have fouled a tree-trunk. Now they have jibed, G.o.d help them. There will be plenty of time before we have to put on our coats.'

This was the opinion of the quarterdeck as well. All those officers who were not on duty went back to their game of shove-groat in the gunroom: a great compet.i.tion had been going on since Malta, and although the prize of twelve and sixpence seemed trifling since the capture of the Bonhomme Richard, they still played with the greatest eagerness, as careless of the glorious sky, the perfect sea, the spectacular Ionian sh.o.r.e, and even of Pyrrhus and the Dalmatian pelicans as they had been in some sunless convoy, far out in the drizzling German Ocean. Pullings glanced at his perfect decks, the white-gloved sideboys and the new-covered manropes ready to bring the visitor aboard, the powdered and pipe-clayed Marines prepared to stamp and clash by way of martial compliment, the bosun and his mates waiting with their s.h.i.+ning silver calls, and then hurried below himself, to shove a groat, emerging only when the caique was within hailing distance. On deck Gill, the officer of the watch, had everything well in hand: in the cabin below Killick had arranged cus.h.i.+ons in the Oriental manner under Professor Graham's direction, and had lit the hubblebubble laid in for the purpose at Valetta - tobacco-smoke rose from the cabin-skylight, and the afterguard breathed it in greedily.

The caique upset all natural calculations by suddenly darting round to the larboard mainchains at the last moment; but the Navy, accustomed to the wild vagaries of foreigners, dealt with the situation directly, facing about and providing a mirror-image of the proper ceremonies, bringing the old gentleman aboard without a feather of the splendid aigrette in his turban being ruffled.

He was led to the cabin, where Jack welcomed him, Graham acting as the interpreter: his only function was to invite Captain Aubrey to dine with the Bey, and to apologize for the lateness of the invitation - the Bey had been hunting in the marshes and the news of the frigate's arrival had not reached him for a great while: he was desolated; he lay in ashes.

'What was the Bey hunting?' asked Jack, who was interested in these things and who in any case felt that some polite conversation might compensate for Killick's lukewarm version of sherbet and the plain Navy twist in the hubblebubble, neither of which seemed quite to the company's taste.

'Jews,' said Graham, relaying the question and the answer.

'Pray ask the Effendi whether the pelicans nest here,' said Stephen, after the slightest pause. 'I am aware that the Turks have a great kindness for the stork, and never molest her; perhaps their humanity may extend to the pelican, there being a superficial resemblance.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Pullings, coming in, 'but the caique has sunk alongside. We have made it fast to the tyes, head and stern, and the crew are aboard us.'

'Very good, Mr Pullings: I dare say they would like something to eat - anything but swinesflesh, you know. Tell them No porco, pas porco. And let the barge be lowered down: I am going ash.o.r.e. Mr Graham, please convey the sad news to the Effendi, and tell him our carpenters will probably be able to repair the damage.'

The old gentleman did not seem much moved. He said that it was clearly G.o.d's will, and that he for his part had never put to sea without a disaster of some kind. Indeed, the contrary would surprise him.

'Then let us hope that the Effendi will be surprised on his return voyage,' said Jack, 'for it is clear he must make it in my barge.'

Thursday, at sea '... so I took the old gentleman ash.o.r.e, telling my bargemen to row dry, and as luck would have it we s.h.i.+pped not a drop all the way,' wrote Jack in his letter home, 'though navigation in that choked-up harbour, with whole trees aground or floating, was neither beer nor yet skittles. But, however, Bonden knew that our honour depended on it, and he brought us alongside the jetty in great style: there I was pleased to see that they had spread out a perfectly beautiful blue carpet with a close pattern of rosy flowers, just the size to fit the breakfast parlour at home. Standing in the middle of it was Ismail Bey, the ruler of these parts, who welcomed me very civilly and led me to an uncommon fine horse, a bright bay stallion of rather better than sixteen hands, to carry me the three hundred yards into the castle. We pa.s.sed through several courts, and in the last, which was full of orange-trees trimmed neat, they had spread an awning and laid the table - a precious short-legged table I may say, but since there were no chairs, only cus.h.i.+ons raised on a low bench, it was just as well - and a pleasant thing was that through an empty gun-embrasure opposite my place I could see the dear Surprise, exactly framed.

'We sat down six: the Bey and I, his vizier and Professor Graham, and his astrologer with Stephen. The Bulbuljibas.h.i.+, the keeper of the nightingales, and the Tournajibas.h.i.+, the keeper of the cranes, had been brought to tell Stephen about pelicans, but they were not admitted to the table. We had no plates or knives or forks (though we each had a tortoisesh.e.l.l spoon) and dinner was not served quite in our way either, there being no removes, but dishes following one another separately, to the number of thirty-six, not counting the sweetmeats. Each came in to the sound of kettledrums, brought by black men who put them down on a monstrous fine gold salver nestling in an embroidered cus.h.i.+on in the middle of the table: then we all reached out and took lumps with our fingers, unless it was very soft, when we used our spoons. One of the dishes was a roasted lamb with a pudding of bright yellow rice in its belly, and the Bey seized it by the legs, tearing it very neatly to pieces for us. Graham was a great help, keeping up a fine flow of talk in Turkish and telling us how to behave: you would have laughed to hear him say, every so often and without looking at Stephen, 'Feed the keeper of the nightingales - feed the keeper of the cranes', and Stephen would gravely put a piece into the waiting mouth behind. And sometimes he would say, in Killick's very words, 'Captain A, your sleeve is in your dinner," which I am afraid it often was, a uniform coat not being designed for plunging wrist-deep into a common dish. But apart from that it was a forbiddingly grave and solemn meal, with scarcely a smile from start to finish. We drank only water until the end, when we reached coffee, which was poured into odd little china cups without handles that stood in gold stands all set with diamonds and rubies and emeralds. Mine was all emeralds, and I was incautious enough to admire it: Ismail at once ordered it to be put up in a box and carried to the barge, and it was only Graham's firmly and repeatedly stating that for people of our nation this was a most inauspicious day for giving or receiving presents that saved the situation. For indeed it would never have done to lay myself under an obligation to the Bey: although he is in so much favour with our emba.s.sy in Constantinople and although he certainly has smooth, obliging, caressing manners, I found him a disagreeably oily gentleman - not my idea of a Turk at all and indeed Graham tells me that he is the grandson of a Greek apostate, while his mother was Egyptian - and it would not have answered at the end of the feast, when most of the company was dismissed and we came to talk about the real point of our meeting. I will not trouble you with the details of our negotiations, but will only observe, that although my profession requires me to suffer for my King and country, the agony of sitting cross-legged with one's breeches buckles grinding into one's very bone, is, after the first three hours, far, far beyond the call of duty. In any case, I must resume our conversation for the Commander-in-Chief, and to write it out twice would be tedious indeed, particularly as it was so unsatisfactory.'

This was only the second instalment of a new letter, since he had posted the last in Malta, and he ran over it from the beginning - the extraordinary luck of having Surprise, with a hand-picked crew, if only for this single cruise - the delightful little prize - not a floating Golconda, not a Santa Brigida, not a capture that would do away with all the difficulties at home, but at least one that would give him room to turn around: and Sophie was to buy herself a new pelisse, a fine new tippet - Babbington and the Grecian women - the n.o.ble coast-line of Epirus. And he felt a certain twinge as he reread the lines in which he desired his daughters to find out Epirus on the map, and his son to read about Pyrrhus in Gregory's Polite Education, 'for it would be a great shame, was George to be found ignorant of Pyrrhus when he grew up': Jack had never been a hypocrite until he became a father, and even now it did not come easy.

Then he considered the paper he was to write,-the memorandum of his conversation with Ismail Bey. The conclusion was plain enough: if the British guns were to be paid for by effective action against the French in Marga, Jack thought he could take them to a better market. Ismail seemed to him, and to his advisers, much more a politician than a warrior: he had no coherent military plan for taking Kutali, still less Marga, but seemed to think that the town must necessarily fall into his hands as soon as he had the cannon. Nor could he be brought to state the exact number of troops he would bring to the two operations: 'there would be a great many, far more than would be needed; he would have been delighted to show them, parading in the square, but two regiments and most of his best officers were away, putting down rebels in the north, while thousands of men were dispersed along the frontiers. But if Captain Aubrey would give him a little notice before he next came to Mesenteron, there would be a magnificent review: Captain Aubrey would see a splendid body of men, devoted to the British cause, burning to see the downfall of the French, and perfectly equipped, except in the article of guns.' Much of this sounded false, and all the falser for coming over in translation, separated from the significant looks and gestures that accompanied the original words: one of Jack's few certainties was that the Bey's notion of urgency and even of time itself was quite unlike his own.

But by far the greater part of Ismail's discourse was concerned with his excellent relations with the British emba.s.sy and with the characters of Mustapha and Sciahan, his rivals for the possession of Kutali. They were a sad pair, it seemed, in whom wickedness and greed struggled with inept.i.tude and cowardice for the mastery: they would of course endeavour to deceive Captain Aubrey, but Captain Aubrey would instantly perceive that the first was nothing but an illiterate corsair, scarcely better than a pirate, a person whose word no man relied on, while the second was a man of doubtful loyalty to the Sultan, completely under the influence of the notorious Ali Pasha of lannina, and as impotent in the field of battle as he was in the harem: and both were devoted to Napoleon.

Graham had warned him of the slowness of Oriental negotiation, and of the different standards of acceptable duplicity; he had also said that Ismail's vizier, coming to ask what present Captain Aubrey would expect for his good offices in this affair, had offered the professor a personal commission of eight hundred and forty piastres for each gun delivered. It was not an encouraging beginning, and perhaps the other Beys would be much the same: it was not impossible that the emba.s.sy was right, and that Ismail was the depressing best of the bunch. 'Come in,' he said in a low, dispirited voice, and Elphinstone, a mids.h.i.+pman, walked in, trim and s.h.i.+ning. 'Good morning, sir,' he said. 'You wished to see me?'

'Oh, Mr Elphinstone: yes. You have three men down in the defaulters' list. Two are trifling cases and five-water grog for a couple of days will deal with them, but you bring Davis up on a serious charge, a flogging charge. If n.o.body speaks up for him and if he cannot convincingly deny it, I must give him at least a dozen, though I very much dislike seeing men beaten. Do you like seeing men beaten?'

'Oh no, sir; but is it not necessary for discipline?'

'Some people think so, and with some men perhaps it is; but I have known commanders go a year and more without any flogging, taut commanders of crack s.h.i.+ps.'

'Davis answered, sir: he answered very rudely when I told him to strop the block again - said something about me "still s.h.i.+tting yellow" which made the others laugh.'

'Davis is a special case. He is a little odd and he has always been allowed rather more leeway than the others. He was at sea long before you were born, and although he is still not very good at stropping a block nor serving a cable he has other seamanlike qualities that will no doubt occur to your mind. He is enormously strong, for one thing; he is always the first to board and he is a most terrifying sight on the enemy's deck: mad bulls ain't in it. But I was forgetting, you have yet to see that kind of service. That is all I have to say for the moment, Mr Elphinstone: good day to you. Pray give my steward a hail as you go by.'

'It ain't no bleeding good, sir,' said Killick in an angry whine, coming in with Jack's best coat over his arm. 'This nasty foreign mess will not come out, not if it's ever so, and now I've tried to cover it with saffron over the gold lace it looks even worse. Time and time again I've said "Your sleeve's in your dinner, sir" when it was only beef and pudding or drowned baby or the like, and that's been bad enough; but this here foreign mess -why...'

'Come, Killick, pipe down and give me my coat,' said Jack. 'There is not a moment to be lost.'

'On your own head be it,' said Killick, helping him into the heavy full-dress coat; and he added something mutinous about 'laughing-stock' under his breath.

Yet no very great degree of mirth greeted Captain Aubrey when he stepped on to his quarterdeck: this was a Wednesday, and at six bells in the forenoon watch on Wednesdays it was customary for all hands to be piped aft to witness punishment, a solemn occasion. Six bells struck: all the officers and young gentlemen were present, all in uniform: the grating was rigged and the bosun's mates stood by it, prepared to seize up any guilty man at the Captain's word and flog him with the cat-o'-nine-tails that Mr Hollar had ready in its baize bag.

The cat was not needed for the earlier defaulters. They were all mild cases of profane oaths, cursings, execrations, reproachful and provoking speeches or gestures, of uncleanliness or of drunkenness, and they were dealt with by suspension or dilution of grog or by extra duties; but when Davis' name was called and his offence made known and admitted or at least not denied, the bosun began untying the baize bag's strings. 'This is a d.a.m.ned bad state of affairs, Davis,' said Jack. 'There you are, a man rated able these twenty years and more, answering an officer. You must have heard the Articles read out some hundreds of times, and yet there you are, answering an officer! Mr Ward, let us hear number twenty-two, the second part.'

'The twenty-second Article of War, sir: the second part,' said the clerk, and he continued in a hieratic boom, 'If any mariner, or other person in the fleet, shall presume to quarrel with any of his superior officers, being in the execution of his office, or shall disobey any lawful command of any of his superior officers; every such person being convicted of any such offence by the sentence of a court-martial, shall suffer death.' Here he paused and repeated 'shall suffer death' before going on in a perfunctory manner 'or such other punishment as shall, according to the nature and degree of his offence, be inflicted on him by the sentence of a court-martial.'

'There you are,' said Jack, looking at Davis, who looked steadily at the deck. 'How can you hope to escape flogging? Have you anything to say for yourself?' Davis made no reply, but began to take off his s.h.i.+rt. 'Has anyone else anything to say for him, then?'

'If you please, sir," said Elphinstone, taking off the c.o.c.ked hat he had put on for the occasion., 'he is in my division and has always been diligent and attentive hitherto, obedient to command and respectful.' At this one of Davis' messmates, out of sight in the throng, burst out in a coa.r.s.e hoot of laughter, but Elphinstone, blus.h.i.+ng painfully, went on, 'I believe it was only a temporary lapse, sir; and should like to beg him off his punishment.'

'Come, that is handsomely put," said Jack. 'Do you hear, Davis? Mr Elphinstone begs you off your flogging.' He then delivered a particularly dreary homily on right and wrong, whose only merit was that it was fairly short and that it made him smile within.

He was smiling openly when Stephen walked in, looking shrewish. Like many large, florid, good-natured men, Jack Aubrey was afflicted with an undue proportion of small pale, meagre friends of a shrewish turn. One of his earliest s.h.i.+pmates and closest acquaintances, Heneage Dundas, had already earned himself the name of Vinegar Joe throughout the service; Jack's steward was a confirmed nagger; and at times even Sophie... He was therefore peculiarly sensitive to the quality of shrewishness and even before Stephen opened his mouth Jack knew that he was about to say something disagreeable.

'I ask only for information,' he said, 'and without the least personal bearing: but tell me, when captains set themselves up as judges and lay down the moral as well as the military law, extolling virtues that they rarely if ever practise, do they often feel the spiritual squalor of their conduct?'

'I dare say they do,' said Jack, smiling still. 'I know I have often wondered that I was not struck down by a levinflash. But there you are - no s.h.i.+p carries a man rated spotless Christian hero, so the captain has to do what he can, for the sake of discipline.'

'I see,' said Stephen. 'So it is not for the sake of exalting him in his own opinion, it is not for the sake of airing his own views before an audience that dare not stir or disagree, it is not for the deeply discreditable, nay, wicked pleasure of exercising his almost unlimited power: nor is it that our gentleman is unaware of the true nature of his act. No, no: it is all for discipline, for the country's good. Very well: I am content.' He sniffed, and went on, 'Pray, what is this I hear about pa.s.sing for a gentleman?'

With a flash of insight Jack perceived that Stephen had been talking to Driver, the new Marine officer they had s.h.i.+pped at Malta, a great admirer of kings, t.i.tles of honour, ancient families, coats of arms, hereditary office and privilege in general. 'Well,' he said, 'you know what we mean by pa.s.sing for lieutenant? When a mid has served his six years he attends the Board with his certificates and his logs, the captains present examine him, and if they find he understands his profession he pa.s.ses for lieutenant.'

'Sure, I have heard of it many, many times; and I remember poor Babbington's trembling anxiety. But I calmed his spirits with three drops of the essence of h.e.l.lebore on a piece of sugar, and he pa.s.sed with sailing colours.'

'Flying colours.'

'Let us not be pedantical, for all love.'

'But,' said Jack, 'so many have pa.s.sed since the beginning of the war, and so many have been made lieutenants, that now there are more on the list than there can be employment for, let alone promotion; so some years ago men of no particular family found they were being left on sh.o.r.e. They had not pa.s.sed for gentlemen, and they did not possess the friends or connections that could make interest for them, though sometimes they were capital seamen. Tom Pullings could not find a s.h.i.+p for a great while: and of course no s.h.i.+p, no promotion. I did my best, naturally, but I was away much of the time, and anyhow one scheme after another came to nothing: just before they gave me the Worcester I took him to dine at Slaughter's with Rowlands of the Hebe, who had lost a lieutenant overboard. They got along well enough, but afterwards Rowlands told me he did not choose to have anyone on his quarterdeck who did not say balcony, and unfortunately poor Tom had said balcony. It is the old story of the gentleman captains and the tarpaulins all over again.'

'What is your view of the matter?'

'I have no very clear view. There are so many factors; and so much depends on what you mean by gentleman. But suppose it is no more than the usual notion of someone whose family has had a certain amount of money for two or three generations, someone with reasonably good manners and at least a sc.r.a.pe of education - why then, seamans.h.i.+p being equal, I should rather have the gentleman than not, partly because it is easier for the officers to live together if they have roughly the same ideas of behaviour, but even more because the foremost hands value birth so highly, perhaps much more highly than they should.'

'Your ideal is a gentleman who is also a seaman?'

'I suppose so. But that would exclude Cook and many other men of the very first rate. As a rough rule it might answer for the common run, but it seems to me that your really good sea-officer is always an exceptional being, and one that ordinary rules scarcely apply to. Tom Pullings, for example: he may not be another Howe or Nelson, but I am quite certain he would make a far better captain than most - we do not often have occasion to talk of balconies at sea. I have tried to get him made again and again, as you know very well; but pus.h.i.+ng don't always answer, and too much may do harm. Look at this,' he said, pa.s.sing a letter from among the papers on his open desk.

'Sir,' read Stephen, 'The Board not having considered the service (alluded to in your letter of the 14th) performed under the direction of Lieutenant Pullings of the description that ent.i.tles him to promotion, I must confess my surprise at the manner in which you have thought fit to address me on the subject of it. Very sincerely, your humble servant, Melville.'

'That was years ago,' said Jack. 'The cutting-out of the Rosa. But things are no better now - rather worse indeed, with my old father cutting his capers in the Commons and shedding such a blight on any recommendation of mine -and Tom's only hope is a successful action. That is why we were so very disappointed when Emeriau slipped away, and why I do so very much hope that this next Turk, this Mustapha, may show more promise than the last. Turning the French out of Marga would almost certainly count as a frigate-action, with a step for the first lieutenant. With this breeze we should reach Karia tomorrow, and form some notion of the Capitan-Bey.'

In the event they formed their notion of him a good deal earlier. The Surprise was standing northward, surrounded by a cloud of her own making, when the lookout gave news of two s.h.i.+ps on the starboard quarter, two s.h.i.+ps under the land. He would have given the news sooner if he had not been watching the compet.i.tion between the watches with such pa.s.sionate interest, and now his hail had an anxious quality, for the s.h.i.+ps were already hull-up, and this was one of the offences that Captain Aubrey rarely overlooked. By way of covering up he added details -'Turkish frigate, coming up hand over hand, stuns'ls aloft and alow, t'other maybe a twenty-gun s.h.i.+p, Turk likewise - all plain sail - holds her course under the land - very hard to see.'

The starboard watch had just shattered a floating cask at four hundred yards, at the end of an exercise in which they had attained a thoroughly satisfactory rate of accurate fire: Jack said, 'House your guns. Starbowlines win by two points. A creditable exercise, Mr Pullings.' Then walking to the taffrail he directed his telescope at the newcomer and her distant consort. Graham and Stephen were standing by the stern-lantern, and to them he said with a smile, 'We are in luck. Here we have the whole Turkish navy this side of the Archipelago: that is the Torgud coming up and the Kitabi over there under the land, and I make no doubt the Capitan-Bey is aboard the frigate.' Raising his voice he gave the order that brought the Surprise close to the wind on the starboard tack, steering a course that would cross the Torgud's bows.

Jack moved up to the forecastle as the s.h.i.+p turned and studied the Turk intently. She was built in the European manner, probably in a French or Venetian yard, and although the people on her deck wore turbans or scarlet skullcaps she was sailed in the European manner too. Pretty well handled: far better than her lumpish consort over the way, who was most shamefully brought by the lee, rounding a headland, just as he turned his gla.s.s on her.

The Torgud threw a fine bow-wave under her press of sail - she was obviously quite fast when going large - and as the Surprise was always happy on a bowline the two frigates came together at a spanking pace. For a while they were almost head-on, but then the angle opened as the Torgud altered course to swing wide and cross the Surprise's wake; she turned with a fine gleam of bra.s.s cannon all along her side and now for the first time Jack could really see what she was like: she was rather heavier than the Surprise and she mounted another pair of guns - d.a.m.ned odd gunports amids.h.i.+ps, too - but he had the impression that they overpressed her, that she would not handle easy and that she might be slack in stays: from the churning of her wake she must carry an uncommon strong weather-helm. But there was little time for staring. 'Sir,' said Pullings, 'I believe they mean to come under our stern.'

'Come, that is civil,' said Jack. 'Professor Graham, do you understand the Turkish naval etiquette?'

'No, sir, I do not,' said Graham. 'But in general they follow the French.'

'Silly dogs,' said Jack. 'However, he means to be polite. Mr Borrell, stand by to give him thirteen guns the moment his jib comes in.'

The Turkish frigate ran down, put her helm hard over and rounded to, lying there under the Surprise's lee. It was pretty well done: scarcely Navy-fas.h.i.+on - the taking in of the studdingsails was far too ragged for that and there was a sad want of coordination in the rising of the tacks, a general raggedness - but few merchantmen or privateers could have beat the Torgud's performance.

And none could have outdone her in briskness of lowering a boat. It splashed down with an almighty thump from her quarter-davits and its crew tumbled over the rail in a most surprising fas.h.i.+on, followed almost as rapidly by men in robes, presumably officers. Jack had expected a long shouted exchange of civilities from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p, but he had hardly had time to return to the quarterdeck before the Turkish boat was half-way across. Its bargemen were not elegantly dressed (one had nothing more than a torn pair of calico drawers), nor did they row pretty, but from their urgency and concentrated effort they might have been pulling for a prize; and facing the rowers, acting as his own c.o.xswain, sat a man in a purple turban, a red beard down to his swelling belly, and purple baggy trousers, so big a man it was a wonder the boat was not grossly by the stern.

Jack clapped on the c.o.c.ked hat that Killick silently pa.s.sed him, glanced fore and aft and saw that Pullings, quickcr-witted than his commander, had already turned out the Marines and laid on a proper reception. Then he heard the boat hook on, and looking over the rail he saw the big man reach for the manropes - the Surprise gave a distinct heel as he grasped them ? and come running up the side as nimbly as a boy. Reaching the quarterdeck he put his hand to his forehead, then to his heart, bowing with a magnificence that might have seemed excessive in a smaller man: but Mustapha was huge in person and in presence. Though not quite as tall as Jack he was broader by far, and his vast purple Turkish trousers made his bulk seem even greater: 'Mustapha, Capitan-Bey,' he said in a resounding boom, and the wispy officer who had followed him said the same, adding in Greek and something like English, 'Commander of the Grand Turk's s.h.i.+ps in these waters, and lord of Karia.'

'Welcome aboard, sir,' said Jack, stepping forward with his hand held out. 'Professor Graham, pray tell the gentlemen they are welcome aboard, and suggest that we should take coffee in the cabin.'

'So you speak Turkish,' said Mustapha, gently patting Graham's cheek. 'Very good, very good. Then Ulusan can go back to the boat.'