The Thirteen-Gun Salute Read online

  'Yes,' said Jack, 'and you will see the extraordinary merits of a running bowsprit. When she pitches like this'—the table took on a forward slope of twenty-five degrees, their hands automatically securing the toast—'the bowsprit does not stab into the sea and snap off short or at the very least check her way.'

  'How can this be achieved, for all love?'

  'Since a cutter's bowsprit has no steeve, since it is horizontal, it can be run in on deck,' they told him kindly, and promised that he should see it directly.

  But they were mistaken. The rain continued steadily, sweeping in vast grey swathes from the south-west, over a grey sea mottled here and there with white; and although in the dim afternoon of Thursday Jack dragged him on deck to look at Ushant, a faint white-ringed blur on the starboard bow, he could not be induced to go forward to see the bowsprit nor even to climb a little way up the shrouds to view the remote ships of the Brest blockade; and the next day, when the Nimble was racing up the Channel, the breeze had hauled so far forward that she now wore her fore-and-aft mainsail, foresail and jib; her bowsprit was therefore run out, and it remained run out until the end of their voyage—a most remarkably fine passage that brought them into Portsmouth late on Friday afternoon, quite a warm day for May, and with no more than an intermittent drizzle.

  Sir Joseph, whose policy of lying motionless and eating very large quantities of dry bread had worked well after the first horrible hours, set off for London as soon as he had taken tea and muffins at the Crown; he said to Jack, 'I presume orders will be telegraphed down to Admiral Martin as soon as I have made my report; and I have little doubt that officially or unofficially I shall see you both early next week.'

  They accompanied him to his post-chaise, and as they walked back Stephen said, 'I have been thinking, brother. Diana will be in a very delicate condition by now, and if we suddenly appear, it may shock her extremely.'

  'Oh,' said Jack, who had been on the point of sending for horses, 'I suppose it might. Pen a discreet, diplomatic note hinting that you might be in the neighbourhood presently, and we will send it by Bonden or Killick or both in a chaise.'

  'A chaise, with Bonden and Killick getting out of it, would be sure to cause alarm—dreadful apprehensions of bad news travelling with such speed and ostentation. A boy on a mule would be much more suitable.'

  The boy on a mule set off with a note—My dear, pray do not be alarmed or in any way concerned if you should see us presently: we are both perfectly well and send our love—and the men were about to set off to gaze at the Diane from a discreet distance when they ran into the Port Admiral, a cheerful soul, who insisted on their cracking a bottle: 'I am seventy-four today; you cannot refuse me.' A number of other sea-officers were in the hall and he invited them too. Some were very well known to Jack, among them three post-captains; like many other post-captains they made up for their solitary state at sea by being unusually loquacious by land. The Physician of the Fleet was also there, together with one of the medical men from Haslar; and they too were very conversible. Talk flowed, bottles came and went, time passed, passed. But at length the landlord's son came and stood by Stephen: 'Oh, Dr Maturin, sir,' he said when Stephen paused in his account of the Basrah method of setting broken bones, 'there is a coach outside with some ladies asking for you'

  'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' muttered Stephen, darting from the room.

  Diana was at the near-side window. She leant out and cried, 'Oh Maturin, my dear, what a monster you are to terrify innocent women like this.' Inside the coach behind her Sophie's voice rose to a high squeak, 'Is not Jack there? You said Jack would be there.'

  Diana opened the door and offered to jump out, but Stephen took her elbows and lifted her down. 'My dear, you are a fine size,' he said, kissing her tenderly. 'Sophie, will you come in and see Jack and Admiral Martin and a number of other sailors? They are drinking port in the Dolphin room.'

  'Oh Stephen,' called Sophie, 'pray bring him out and let us all go home together at once. I do not want to lose a minute of him. Nor of you either, dear Stephen.'

  'Sure you are right, for the moments are few: we must be in town on Tuesday, I do believe.'

  In fact it was on Sunday evening that a message came from the Port Admiral requiring Captain Aubrey to wait upon the First Lord in Arlington Street at half-past five o'clock the next day. Yet if the reprieve had been longer they could scarcely have said any more, all of them having talked incessantly since the coach started moving back to Ashgrove Cottage from the Crown.

  'Arlington Street,' said Jack in a hoarse whisper. 'His private house. I am heartily glad of it. Because had it been the Admiralty I should have been in a fine quandary—report in uniform and be presumptuous or report in civilian clothes and be incorrect. However I shall take uniform as well, in case I have to go on. Sweetheart, it has not gone to wrack and ruin all these years?'

  'Neither the one nor the other, my dear, only the epaulettes are a little tarnished. Killick and my mother and both the girls have been blowing on your best and dry-scrubbing it with soft brushes to get the smell of moth-balls out since yesterday morning. But I am afraid it will be much too big; you have grown pitifully thin, my poor darling.'

  Pitifully thin or not, Jack Aubrey still made the post-chaise heel well over as he stepped into it, having kissed his family all round except for George, who had been wearing breeches for quite some time now.

  They struck into the main London road at Cosham and bowled along at a splendid rate under a blue, blue sky with billowing, flat-bottomed white clouds travelling in the same direction, but at a far more stately pace. 'Remarkable fine horses,' observed Jack. 'And a most uncommon pretty day.' He whistled and then sang From Ushant to Scilly, 'tis thirty-five leagues right through.

  Since there had been no rain on Saturday or Sunday the hedges all along the busy road were white with dust, but only a little way beyond them there was a living green in the wheat, oats and barley, in the various leys, and in the woods and copses with leaves coming to their glory under the brilliant sky that it would have lifted the heart of any man, let alone one who might expect such an end to his journey.

  Most of the summer migrants had arrived and there were still some passing through to northern parts; the countryside was therefore rich in birds, and as they changed horses at a village some way beyond Petersfield Stephen heard no less than three separate cuckoos at once. He shook his head, remembering the extreme pain that call had caused him at an earlier time, but almost at once his mind was taken off by the sight of a wryneck, a bird he had much more often heard than seen. He pointed it out to Jack with the usual result: 'There is a wryneck.' 'Where?' 'On the young elm to the right of—it is gone.'

  Wrynecks, the progress of Jack's daughters in learning and deportment under Miss O'Mara, and the albatrosses of the high and even moderate southern latitudes occupied the next stage, but after that Jack became more and more silent. There was so very much at stake and now the moment of decision was so very near—hurrying and even racing nearer every minute. He grew exceedingly uneasy in his mind.

  'I shall feel better after dinner,' he said to himself as the chaise turned off the Strand, rolled down into the Liberties of the Savoy and came to a halt at the Grapes, their accustomed inn.

  Mrs Broad made them heartily welcome. Killick, travelling up on yesterday's night coach, had given her warning, and she provided them with a dinner that would have soothed any reasonable man; but at this point Jack Aubrey was not a reasonable man. His mind was fixed on the possibility of unacceptable conditions or even downright failure and he ate mechanically, drawing no benefit from his food whatsoever.

  'It is my belief the Captain has been called out, and is going to meet some gentleman in Hyde Park,' said Mrs Broad to Lucy, for Castlereagh's duel with Canning and some other slightly less notorious encounters were still very much in the public mind. 'He never even touched the pudding.'

  'Oh Aunt Broad, what a terrible thing to say,' cried Lucy. 'But sure I never saw a man
look so grim.'

  Yet not so grim when he knocked on the door in Arlington Street as the St James's clock struck half past five, for now the action was engaged; the time of waiting was over; he was on the enemy's deck at last.

  He gave the servant his card, saying, 'I have an appointment with his lordship.' 'Oh yes, sir, this way, if you please,' said the man, and led him to a small room opening directly off the hall.

  'Captain Aubrey,' said Lord Melville, rising from behind his desk and stretching out his hand, 'let me be the first to congratulate you. We have sorted out this wretched business at last: it has taken far longer than I could have wished for—far, far longer than you can have wished, I fear—but it is done. Sit down and read that: it is a proof-sheet of the Gazette that is now printing off.'

  Jack looked at the sheet with a fixed, stern expression. The ringed-round lines ran May 15. Captain John Aubrey, Royal Navy, is restored to the List with his former rank and seniority, and is appointed to the Diane, of thirty-two guns. He said, 'I am deeply sensible of your kindness, my lord.'

  Melville went on, 'And here is your appointment to the Diane. Your orders will be ready in a day or two, but of course you already know the essence of the matter from Sir Joseph. I am so glad—we are so glad—that you are able to undertake this mission, with Dr Maturin to keep you company, for nobody could be better qualified in every way. Ideally, no doubt, you would bring those evil men Ledward and Wray back with you, but Mr Fox, our envoy and a man of great experience in Oriental concerns, tells me that this could not possibly be done without injuring our subsequent relations with the Sultanate. The same, and I say it with the deepest regret, applies to their frigate, the'—he looked into a folder on his desk—'the Cornélie. Yet at least I most sincerely hope that the mission will frustrate and confound them, bringing them to utter and permanent discredit. And ideally you would be able to choose many of your own officers and midshipmen, but as you know time presses most urgently and unless you can catch the tail of the south-west monsoon Mr Fox may arrive to find the French in possession of a treaty. If you have any friends or followers within immediate reach, well and good—but this is a matter you will discuss with Admiral Satterley. I have made an appointment for you at nine tomorrow morning at the Admiralty, if that is convenient.'

  'Perfectly so, my lord,' said Jack, who had recovered during Melville's steady, practised flow and who was aware of a grave—happiness is too slight a word—emotion filling his whole heart; though even now he found that he was crushing his appointment, grasping it with enormous force and ruining its folds. He smoothed it discreetly and slid it into his pocket.

  'As for hands, Admiral Martin will I am sure do his very best for you, both because their lordships command it and because he has a great liking for you and Mrs Aubrey; but there again you know the difficulties he has to contend with. And lastly, as for Mr Fox, I had thought of arranging a dinner, but Sir Joseph thought it might be better, less formal, if you and he and Maturin were to invite him to Black's, to a private room at Black's.' Jack bowed. 'And speaking of that,' said Melville, glancing at the clock, 'I trust you will eat your mutton with us this evening? Heneage is coming and I can imagine his disappointment at missing you.' Jack said he would be very happy, and Melville continued, 'There, I believe that is all I have to say as First Lord: the admirals will deal with the purely service aspects. But speaking as an ordinary mortal, may I say that my cousin William Dundas is bringing in a private bill on Wednesday to allow him to win some land from the sea. There is likely to be a very thin House, perhaps not enough for a quorum, so if you were to look in, and if you were to approve what he says—though it would diminish your watery realm by nearly two square miles—why, we should take it very kindly.'

  No one but a man far more obtuse than Maturin would have had to ask the result of the interview as Jack came running upstairs, his papers in his hand.

  'He did it as handsomely as the thing could be done,' he said. 'No humming and whoreing, no barking about the wrong bush, no God-damned morality: just shook my hand, said "Captain Aubrey, let me be the first to congratulate you" and showed me these.' Then, having chuckled over the Gazette again, observing that it would make poor Oldham, the post-captain who had stepped into his seniority, look pretty blank tomorrow, he gave Stephen a minute account of the conversation, the subsequent dinner—'it went down remarkably well, considering; but I believe I could have ate a hippopotamus in my relief'—and the truly affecting behaviour of Heneage Dundas. 'He sends his very kindest wishes, by the way, and will look in tomorrow in case you have a free moment while he is in town. Lord, how pleased I was with the whole thing, and how pleased Sophie will be. I shall send an express. But,' he went on after a hesitant pause, 'I do rather wish Melville had not asked me for a vote, not just at that time.'

  'A professional deformation, I suppose: politics and delicacy can rarely go together,' said Stephen, looking at the appointment again. 'But will I tell you something, brother? This is a most wonderfully auspicious date, so it is. On this same fifteenth of May, a Saturday if I remember but in any event just forty days before the Flood, Noah's grand-daughter Ceasoir came to Ireland with fifty maidens and three men. They landed I believe at Dun-na-Mbarc in the County Cork; she was the first person that ever set foot on an Irish strand, and she was buried at Carn Ceasra in Connaught, beside which I have often sat, watching the blue hares run.'

  'You astonish me, Stephen: I am amazed. So the Irish are really Jews?'

  'Not at all. Ceasoir's father was a Greek. And in any case they were all drowned in the Flood. It was not for close on three hundred years more that Partholan arrived.'

  Jack reflected upon this for some little while, looking at Stephen's face from time to time; and then he said, 'But here I am prating away eternally about my own affairs; and I have never even asked what kind of a day you spent. Not a very pleasant one, I fear?'

  'It is quite mended now, I thank you; your news would have mended anything. But I was put out, I confess. Indeed, I flew into a passion. I went to my bank and there I found that the dogs had carried out almost none of the instructions I had left with them nor those I had sent from Lisbon: there were even some small annuities still unpaid because of trifling informalities in my initial order. Then when I desired them to send a considerable sum in gold down to Portsmouth as soon as we were aboard they observed that gold was exceedingly hard to come by; that if paper money really would not answer they would do their best for me but that I should have to pay a premium. I pointed out that in the first place I had deposited a very much larger sum in gold with them, that it was absurd to expect me to pay for metal that was my own, and eventually I carried my point, though not without the use of some very warm expressions, such as the nautical lobcock and bugger.'

  'Quite rightly applied too. I am sure I should never have been so moderate. Stephen, why do you not change to Smith, the brother of the Smith we dined with just before we left? For my part I shall never desert Hoare's because sooner or later they do everything I ask and because they treated me so well when I had no money at all; but still I do have an account down there with Smith because it is so convenient, particularly for Sophie. In your place I should cashier your lobcocks out of hand and place everything with Smith.'

  'I shall do so, Jack. As soon as that gold is aboard the Diane I shall write them a letter in which every legal requirement is fulfilled three times over—I shall have it drafted by a lawyer. Come in.'

  It was Lucy, sent to know what the gentlemen chose to eat for supper: Mrs Broad thought a venison pasty and an apple pie would be very lovely. Stephen agreed, but Jack said, 'Heavens, Lucy, I could not eat another thing today. Except perhaps for some of the apple pie, and a little piece of cheese. And Lucy, pray ask Killick to step up, if he is below.' A moment later Killick appeared, his eyes starting from his head, and Jack said, 'Killick, jump round to Rowley's, will you, and get a new pair of epaulettes. Ship them first thing tomorrow morning and have a hackney-coach waiting at hal
f past eight. I have an appointment at the Admiralty. Here is some money.'

  'So it's all right, sir?' cried Killick, his shrewish face suffused with triumph. He held out his hand and said, 'If I may make so bold. Give you joy, sir, give you joy with all my heart. But I knew it would be—I said so all along—ha, ha, ha! I told 'em all, it will be all right, mates. Ha, ha, ha! That'll learn the buggers.'

  'Speaking of food,' said Stephen, 'will you come to Black's and dine with Sir Joseph and me and Mr Fox tomorrow at half five? That is to say, in your dialect, at half past four?'

  'If I am through with the Admiralty by then, I should be very happy.'

  'This is not an invitation, Aubrey; you are still a member, and must pay your share.'

  'I know I am, and very handsome it was in the committee to write to me so; but I had sworn never to set foot in the place until I was reinstated. And the Gazette will be out tomorrow, ha, ha. I shall pay my scot with the greatest pleasure.'

  In order to be through with the Admiralty by dinner-time, Jack Aubrey had first to get there, and at one point this seemed to present insuperable difficulties: a little after midnight Killick was brought back to the Grapes on a shutter, drunk even by the strict naval standards, being incapable of speech or movement, however slight. He had been tumbled in the mud; someone had plucked out a handful of his sparse pale hair; he had been partially stripped; his money had been taken away from him; he had no new epaulettes and those which he had carried as a pattern had disappeared.

  Rowley did not live over his shop and no amount of hammering at the door could therefore rouse him, and the rival establishment was far over beyond Longacre, directly away from Whitehall. However, by dint of a great expense of spirit on Jack's part and of effort on that of the coach-horse he did arrive, very hot but properly dressed, in time for his appointment at the Admiralty; and there, in that familiar waiting-room, he had time to grow cool again and to relish the sensation of being in uniform once more. Sophie had been quite right: his white breeches and his blue coat were loose about the middle, where his paunch had been; but the coat and high stiff collar still sat perfectly well on his shoulders and neck, sustaining them in the most agreeable manner. There were few other officers there, and those few only single-epauletted lieutenants, who did not presume to say anything more than 'Good morning, sir,' to his 'Good morning, gentlemen', so presently he took up The Times. He opened it at hazard, and there leaping out of the page before him there stood the column from the Gazette, which, he found, could not be contemplated too often.