Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

‘I am so sorry - I should not have made you uneasy for the world - thank you, Bonden, for your very timely help: please be so good as to tell Dr Jacob that I may be a few minutes late for our appointment.’ When Bonden had disappeared, Stephen went on, ‘That dear good fellow gave me a hand when a hand was extraordinarily welcome: I found breeches and shoes a sad embarrassment. The truth is...’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘The truth is,’ he went on with more conviction, ‘that there was something on the shore that interested me extremely: I could not be certain of the object without bringing it closer, so seeing your glass on its usual peg, and you not being in the way, I took the perhaps unwarrantable liberty of seizing it and running aloft as fast as my powers would admit; and upon my soul it was worth the journey. And, although it is scarcely decent in me to say so, the liberty.’

All this time - and it was not inconsiderable, for diffidence reduced Maturin’s ordinarily rapid canter to a hobbling walk with frequent pauses - Jack had been examining his precious telescope, one of Dollond’s achromatic masterpieces, with a jealous eye: but finding it quite undamaged he said, ‘Well, I am glad you saw your object. A double-headed Dalmatian eagle, I make no doubt.’

‘Do you see the blur of smoke over the headland, somewhat to the left?’

‘Yes. It looks as if they were burning the furze on the far side: though spring is an odd time of year to be doing so. Cape San Giorgio, I believe. Have you noticed how foreigners can never get English names quite right?’

‘Poor souls: yet I hope this name, though distorted, may be a good omen. On the far side of that little projection lies the village of Sopopeia, with its chalybeate springs; and in a deep, sheltered inlet let us say a furlong south of it, the shipyard of Simon Macchabe, a sordid wretch, but one who was building a gunboat until his unpaid hands laid down their tools. I believe they burnt the yard some hours ago, and this wafting smoke, much diminished since first I saw it, rises only from the calcined ashes.’

He was by no means sure how Jack would take this form of warfare, and when the ship rounded the cape, opening Macchabe’s creek, whose dismal blackened ruins Jack surveyed through his glass with his closest attention before closing it and saying, ‘Whewell saw a newly-burned yard on the coast of Curzola. It was not on our list, but that one over there is, and at this point I should have looked into it, sending Ringle or the boats if necessary.’

‘In the nature of things you would have burnt the halffinished gunboat in that event. Even if we had time to spare, which we have not, most certainly not, such a miserable prize would not have been worth the while. Jack, I must tell you in your private ear that we have some allies ashore, rather curious allies, I admit, who look after these operations: I hope and trust that you will see many another yard burnt or burning before we reach Durazzo. I am aware that this is not your kind of war, brother: it is not glorious. Yet as you see, it is effective.’

‘Do not take me for a bloody-minded man, Stephen, a death-or-glory swashbuckling cove. Believe me, I had rather see a first-rate burnt to the waterline than a ship’s boy killed or mutilated.’ Leaning over the rail he called down orders that took the frigate away from the land. ‘Let us go down and look at Christy-Pallière’s list with your additions,’ he said. ‘And may I beg you to unbuckle your breeches at the knee, leave your coat on those stunsails for the boy to bring down, and lower yourself through the lubber’s hole. I will guide your feet.’

The list had been very much enriched by Stephen and Jacob’s private information, and with the wind settling into the west a little south and increasing to a fine topgallant breeze they went reaching down the coast at a handsome pace. There was not a night without a fire, great or small, to larboard; and Stephen noticed that Jack and the master were more than usually exact in their calculation of distance made good, and that whenever the ships were off one of the yards Jack Aubrey was in the foretop and Reade highperched in the schooner’s rigging, gazing at the ruin with a grim satisfaction. He also noticed that the gunroom was uneasy, remarkably restrained: they knew that there was something in the intelligence line at work, something that should not be openly discussed; though Somers, an ardent fisherman, did say of the flaming carcass of a half-finished corvette, that it was more like buying one’s salmon off a fishmonger’s slab than catching it with a well-directed fly.

Yet the satisfaction did exist, and it reached its height off Durazzo itself, with all seven yards (counting those of the suburbs) in a blaze that lit the sky, and in which the masts and yards of a small frigate and two corvettes flamed like enormous torches.

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘it may not be very glorious, Stephen; but by God, your allies have cleaned the coast marvellously; and although they have lost us a small fortune in prizemoney, they have saved us a world of time. There may be something to be said for your Saint George and his omens after all.’

Chapter Six

At Durazzo they stood out to sea, leaving the blaze on their larboard quarter and sailing across an uneventful sea with a fine topgallant breeze. But two days later, a little after seven bells in the last dog-watch the mild northerly wind that had brought them so far gave a sigh and faltered; and those that knew these waters well said ‘We’re in for a right levanter, mate.’

Jack gazed at the sky: his officers, the bosun and the older hands gazed at Jack: and no one was surprised when just before the usual moment for the pipe ‘Stand by your hammocks’ the Commodore took over the deck and called for preventer-stays, rolling tackles, the taking in of topgallants, the rigging of storm-jibs and staysails, and the bowsing of the guns so taut up against the sides that their carriages squeaked, all except for the brass bow-chaser that fired the evening gun.

The hands perfectly agreed with the orders, unwelcome though they were to the watch below, and they worked with remarkable speed - scarcely a word of direction, all the original Surprises being truly able seamen - partly because the larbowlins wanted to turn in after a long day and partly because they all knew how violent and sudden and untrustworthy these Mediterranean winds could be.

When at last the evening gun boomed out and the bosun did pipe ‘Stand by your hammocks’, the first gust of the levanter came racing across the water with a low cloud of spray: it struck the Surprise from astern, a glancing blow that drove her foretop deep, so that she gave a sudden peck like a horse going over a hedge and finding the ground on the far side much lower than it had expected - a movement so violent that it flung Stephen and Jacob the length of the gunroom, together with their backgammon board, the dice and the men.

‘It was the all-dreaded thunder-stroke,’ said Stephen.

‘I am in no position to contradict you, colleague, being your subordinate,’ said Jacob, ‘but in my opinion it is the first blast of a levanter. And I believe Shakespeare said thunder-stone.’

‘I do not set myself up as an authority on Shakespeare,’ said Stephen.

‘Nor I. All I know of the gentleman is that he had a second-best bed.’

‘I was aware that being gammoned twice running had vexed you: but to this degree...I wonder that competitive games have survived so long, such intense resentment do they breed. Even I dislike being beaten at chess.’

Jacob, having picked up the last of the dice, was about to say something very cutting indeed, when Somers walked in. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said ‘I would not have you go on deck without tarpaulins and a sou’wester for the world. I am soused as a herring, and must shift my clothes directly.’ He moved towards his cabin, and Jacob called after him, ‘Is it raining?’