Patrick O'Brian - Blue at the Mizzen

O'Higgins studied his face, looked round the patio, and said, 'Let us walk on the battlements. Please come with us, Captain Aubrey. And you too, Colonel: but first be so good as to place sentries to ensure the privacy of our conversation.'

From the high battlements they could see Surprise and the schooner looking quite beautiful, excellently lit by a declining sun: Surprise being tittivated to a truly remarkable extent, for the Supreme Director was to dine aboard her tomorrow.

They paced along four abreast, and Stephen told the essence of his news: the Peruvian viceroy's decision to invade, crossing the frontier with horse and foot once the Peruvian navy had destroyed the Chilean men-of-war in Valparaiso - the embarrassment of Lima and Callao where stores were concerned - the strong probability that they would seek them in Valdivia.

'Thank you very much indeed, Doctor,' said O'Higgins. 'This thoroughly confirms the less reliable, less precise intelligence that has reached me.'

'Sir,' said Jack Aubrey, 'may I suggest an immediate reconnaissance? The wind serves admirably and in all likelihood it will bring us back. I have rarely seen a more promising breeze.'

'Dr. Maturin,' said O'Higgins, 'did your informants speak of the Peruvian navy's state of preparedness?'

'Not directly, sir,' said Stephen, 'but by implication, and by the already soaring prices, it is clear that their only heavy frigate, the Esmeralda, of I think fifty guns, is by no means ready to take the sea. As for the smaller craft, I gather that they are even more dilapidated.'

The Supreme Director considered, and said, 'If I know anything of those people in Lima they will be circulating minutes and memoranda from ministry to ministry for at least ten more days. We have the time. Dear Captain Aubrey, if I may I will come aboard you to dine, as you so kindly suggested: and while we are eating, let the ship move gently, almost imperceptibly, round the southern headland and then sail with all diligence for Valdivia, to come off the port rather before sunset, so that we may look into it with the light behind us. I shall bring what we have in the way of charts, drawings and plans.'

'Very good, sir,' said Jack, unable to conceal his satisfaction.

It was a curious dinner, much commented upon. As far as the ship's crew were concerned, it started naturally enough, before dinner, with the ship and all her people being brought to an even more unnatural state of cleanliness and, where possible, of polish. It was natural too that the great man's approach should be marked by a roaring of guns that did not leave a single bird on the water: and that the side should be dressed as he was piped aboard: but even at that early point there was something odd in his being brought out by the Captain's barge, together with a colonel, who made a proper soldier's job of coming aboard; and it was odder still when, well on into the cabin's dinner the order came to get the barge aboard and start untittivating the ship, stowing the beautifully ornamented man-ropes and getting everything back into sea-going order.

'I tell you what, Maggie,' said Poll Skeeping to her particular friend, 'I think there's something fishy going on.'

'The minute I saw Joe Edwards and his mates unpicking those man-ropes, with the gentlemen still at table, nowhere near their port even, I smelt a rat.'

To keep so very complex an entity as a man-of-war functional, all hands and most of the gear must be able to face a great number of widely differing events, circumstances, emergencies very quickly indeed; and in a man-of-war so highly worked up as the Surprise, with a crew of right seamen, this could usually be done smoothly. But virtually all sea-borne emergencies have a certain pattern, a sequence, however disagreeable; and once that pattern is very grievously upset, confidence dwindles. The unpicking of those man-ropes did much more harm than the raising of the barge to its usual place on deck - in itself most unusual, reprehensible, but not downright insane, or even worse, unlucky.

As Jack's dinner carried on with its agreeable progress, the decanters making their steady round, most of the frigate's people spoke of their uneasiness, usually confiding in their tie-mates, the friends to whom they would entrust their pigtails for combing and replaiting, but sometimes to others, quite far removed even by watch, with whom they had a particular sympathy. These friendships were by no means uncommon, but few were as improbable or as wholly unequal as that which had sprung up between Horatio Hanson and Awkward Davies - awkward, not because of his uncouth motions but because of his truly awful rage if crossed. They were working together on a new log-line and a new sounding-line, placing the marks with the extreme accuracy required for exact navigation.

'Sir,' asked Davies, in a low and anxious tone, 'did you ever see a man-rope stowed, unpicked and stowed, when guests were still aboard?' They were certainly still aboard, their voices, eagerly discussing the politics of juntas, could be heard quite clearly where the new log-line lay.

'Oh, as for that,' said Horatio, 'Poll mentioned it when I went below for a flannel rag, and I told her to be easy - it was the Captain's orders.'

'Ah, the Captain's orders..." said Davies, and he sighed with relief.

Shortly after this the Captain's orders came on deck again in the form of a rather small, still immaculately neat midshipman called Wells, who smiled nervously at Hanson and said, 'The Captain sends me with orders for Mr. Somers. We are to weigh.'

'You will find him in the head,' said Hanson.

Very shortly the word came aft, and reassurances with it. They were to prepare for weighing: they were to drift with the ebb and then spread the close-reefed fore-course until they were round the headland. The ship was filled with intense activity: but a calm and relatively placid activity. They knew where they were now - Surprise was to steal away on the ebb, according to the Captain's long-considered plan - steal away with the lowering sun in the casual watcher's eye - and then, once round the headland, make sail and bear away on this fine easterly offshore breeze in whatever direction he desired, carrying the country's ruler and his mate. With great zeal but with even greater discretion they weighed the best bower and the kedge, taking great care that there should be no clashing as the anchor was catted and fished, yet finding time to watch Ringle's boat come across for Mr. Reade, who hooked himself rapidly down the frigate's side without the least ceremony, urged his men to a frenzy of activity and instantly set about getting the schooner into a similar state of discreet motion.

Night: and this being the dark of the moon, an actual instant brilliance of stars. But neither O'Higgins nor Cousin Eduardo was the least degree concerned with astronomy or navigation; and both, as hardened guerrilleros, knew the value of sleep. They smoked a cigar apiece on the quarterdeck, tossed the still glowing stubs into the spectacular wake and went straight to bed, leaving Jack Aubrey to show Daniel, Hanson and Shepherd (a midshipman whose intelligence was beginning to develop) the moons of Jupiter, not indeed as objects of beauty or curiosity, but as valuable elements in fine navigation.

The next morning, at a particularly cheerful breakfast, O'Higgins begged Jack to keep well out to sea when they were at the height of Concepcion. 'My dear sir,' said Jack, 'that is not likely to be much before five in the afternoon.'

'Indeed? Yet I thought you had been driving along at a furious pace. But then I know very little of the sea.'

'Well, we did manage a little more than ten knots: we could have made more sail, but I understood that you wished us to come off Valdivia in the last hour or so of the sun.'

'So I did, of course: and no doubt you have portioned it out.'