Patrick O'Brian: The Thirteen Gun Salute

For a moment Fox was staggered, but then his face resumed its look of complete, knowing assurance. He nodded and said, 'You are obliged to support your friend, of course. And of course your motives are quite clear. There is no more to be said.' He stood up and bowed.

Stephen's intense irritation lasted all the time he was climbing into the maintop, and this so took away from his dread and his habitual caution that Jack said, 'What a fellow you are, Stephen. When you choose you can go aloft like' - he was about to say 'a human being' but changed this before it quite left his gullet to 'like an able seaman.'

A league away to the north, over a sea that seemed as devoid of malice as it was of ships, birds, cetaceans, reptiles or even driftwood, a sea of the second day of Creation, rode the white-fringed False Natunas, their generous streak of paint as certain in the glass as the absence of any kind of flag.

'This is not unlike polishing Cape Sici�n the Toulon blockade,' said Jack, closing his telescope. 'Day after day we saw that God-damned headland, always looking much the same. We used to stand in - but of course you remember it perfectly well. You were there. Yes, Mr Fielding?'

'I beg pardon, sir,' said his first lieutenant, 'but I quite forgot to ask you whether we were rigging church tomorrow. The choir would like to know what hymns to prepare.'

'Well, as for that,' said Captain Aubrey with a resentful look at, the False Natunas, 'I think the Articles would come better before the salute. You have not forgotten it is Coronation Day, I am sure?'

'Oh no, sir. I was having a word with Mr White just now. Should you like the board put out, sir?'

'I know them pretty well by heart; but even so it would be as well to have the board. Two precautions are better than one.'

It was before this folding double-leafed object, like a logboard but with a large-printed text of the Articles of War pasted on the wood and varnished, that Captain Aubrey took up his stand at a little after six bells in the forenoon watch on Sunday. He had already inspected his ship, and now its well-washed, shaved, clean-shirted people were ranged before him in attentive groups rather than regular lines; though the mission, the officers and young gentlemen gave the assembly a more formal appearance and the Marines provided their usual geometrical red-coated perfection.

The Articles did not possess the terrible force of some parts of the Old Testament, but Captain Aubrey had a deep voice with immense reserves of power, and as he ran through the catalogue of naval crimes it took on a fine comminatory ring that pleased the hands almost as much as Jeremiah or the Great Anathema. It seemed to Stephen, who attended this ceremony as he did not that of the Anglican rite, that Jack slightly emphasized Article XXIII, 'If any person in the fleet shall quarrel or fight with any other person in the fleet, or use reproachful or provoking speeches or gestures tending to make any quarrel or disturbance, he shall, on being convicted thereon, suffer such punishment as the offence shall deserve, and a court-martial shall impose', and XXVI, 'Care shall be taken in the conducting and steering of any of His Majesty's ships, that through wilfulness, negligence, or other defaults, no ships be stranded, or run upon any rocks or sands, or split or hazarded, upon pain that such as shall be found guilty therein be punished by death....' He did not stress the notorious XXIX which laid down that any man guilty of buggery or sodomy with man or beast should also be punished with death, but a good many of the foremast hands, particularly those who had rowed Fox to and fro across that blazing anchorage without so much as a good day or a thank you, did so for him, with coughs and pointed looks and even, far forward, a discreet 'ha, ha!'

Jack clapped the boards to and called out in an equally official voice, 'All hands face starboard. Carry on, Mr White.'

Fox and his suite sat there, looking uncertain, but as the royal salute boomed on and on in its deliberate splendour, the loyal smoke-bank rolling away to leeward, the envoy's face cleared, and after the last gun he stood up, bowing right and left, and said to Fielding, 'I thank you for a very handsome compliment, sir.'

'Oh no, sir,' said Fielding, 'I must beg your pardon, but no thanks are due. It was in no way personal: all ships of the Royal Navy fire a royal salute on Coronation Day.'

Somebody laughed, and Fox, with a furious look, walked rapidly to the companion-ladder.

The laughter had come from the waist or the gangway: no one on the quarterdeck took the least notice of the painful little incident, and while the Diane was returning to her usual occupation Jack took a few turns fore and aft, fanning himself with his best gold-laced hat. He said to Stephen, 'Somewhere in these waters Tom will have done the same. How I hope they heard us! That would bring them tearing down, indeed, clapping on like smoke and oakum.' They reached the barrieade, and Jack, looking forward, noticed a ship's boy seated on the fore-jear bitts rising and bowing graciously right and left. 'Mr Fielding,' he called, 'that boy Lowry is cutting capers on the forecastle. Let him jump up to the masthead as quick as he likes and learn manners there until supper-time.'

All the seamen who had seen action were of their Captain's opinion about gunfire: nothing would bring another man-of-war over the horizon quicker than the distant thunder of a cannonade, even one so far away that it sounded like swallows in a chimney; and if possible those aloft looked out with even greater zeal - so great a zeal indeed that a little before Jack's guests arrived for dinner a message came below: from the main masthead Jevons, a reliable man, had almost certainly sighted if not a sail then something very like it far to leeward, two points on the starboard bow, now dipping below the horizon, now nicking it again. This was not confirmed either from the fore or the mizen, but then they were both considerably lower.

'I believe there is just time to have a look,' said Jack. 'Stephen, be so kind as to entertain Blyth and Dick Richardson for a moment if they should come before I am down.' He tossed his coat on to a chair, seized his telescope and made for the door: opening it he found himself face to face with his guests. 'Forgive me for two or three minutes, gentlemen,' he said, 'I am just going aloft to see what I can make of this sail.'

'May I come too, sir?' asked Richardson.

'Of course,' said Jack. On deck he hailed the lookout, telling him to move down out of the way; and while Richardson was shedding coat and waistcoat he sprang into the shrouds and so up and up into the top, where the lookout had just arrived. 'Oh Lord, sir,' he said, 'how I hope I was right.' 'I hope so too, Jevons,' said Jack: he grasped the windward topmast shrouds while Richardson took those to the lee, and very soon they were at the masthead, the look-out post, standing on the crosstrees and breathing a little quicker in the heat; and with one arm round the topgallantmast Jack swept an arc of the western horizon. 'Where away, Jevons?' he called.

'Between one and two points on the bow, your honour,' came the anxious reply. 'It came and went, like.' He looked again, hard and steady: sea, sea and nothing more. 'What do you make of it, Dick?' he asked, passing the glass.

'Nothing, sir. No. Nothing, I am afraid,' said Richardson at last, most reluctantly.

The Diane was one of the comparatively few ships that had royal masts; they allowed her to set true royals and even skysails above them on occasion; and these royal masts rose above the topgallant, being secured by jack-crosstrees high above, by a pair of shrouds and of course by stays. But the Diane's main royal mast was not six inches across at the thickest, while the topgallant itself was not much more, its shrouds and stays correspondingly frail; and Captain Aubrey weighed at least seventeen stone.