Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

'Yes,' said the Admiral, 'I have been expecting this. Mohammed sounded us some time ago, to find whether we should help him to depose his brother Jaffar. But it did not suit, Jaffar being a good friend of ours, while as we knew very well, both from his reputation and from intercepted letters, that Mohammed was hand in glove with the French, who promised to set him up in his brother's place. It is probable that the ships that got out of Toulon went there for the purpose.' He considered for a while. 'I must find out whether the French are still there, which is very likely,' he went on. 'Then I rather think I can confound his knavish tricks by provoking them into a breach of his neutrality. Once they fire a shot he is committed, and I can send a powerful detachment, restore Jaffar, who is in Algiers, and perhaps catch the Frenchmen at the same time. Yes, yes. The next, if you please.'

'The next, sir, is from the Emperor of Morocco, and it is addressed to the King of England, by the hand of the Admiral of his glorious fleet. It begins, "In the name of God, amen. He is our first, our father, and all our faith is reposed in Him. From the servant of God, whose sole confidence is in Him, the head of his nation, Suliman, offspring of the late Emperors Mahomet, Abdallah, and Ismael, Sheriffs from the generation of the faithful, the Emperor of Great Africa, in the name of God and by His order, the Lord of his Kingdom, Emperor of Morocco, Fez, Taphelat, Draah, Suez, etc. To His Majesty of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King George the Third, Defender of the Faith, etc., etc., and worthiest and best of kings, commanding Great Britain, Ireland, etc., etc., etc., the Glory of his Country, Duke of Brunswick, etc., etc. May the Lord grant him long life, and happiness throughout his days. We had the honour to receive your Majesty's letter, which was read before us, and were happy to be assured of your friendship, which we had before learned from your favours and attention to our wishes concerning our agents and subjects; for which please to accept our warmest and most sincere thanks. Your Majesty may rely on it, that we shall do everything in our power to assist your subjects in our dominions, and also your troops and vessels which may touch at our ports. We pray to the Almighty never to dissolve the friendship which has subsisted between our ancestors for so many years, but that it may be increased to the end of our generations: and we are always ready, at your Majesty's command, to do any thing that may contribute to your happiness or that of your subjects. Before we had written this, our express orders were, that all British ships that might touch at any of our ports should be supplied with a double allowance of provisions, and all that they might stand in need of; and we are ever ready, as we before said, to attend to your commands. We conclude with our most fervent prayers for your Majesty's health, peace, and happiness." '

'I am heartily glad of that,' said the Admiral, 'These sources of supply are of the first importance to us, and the Emperor is a man one may rely upon. How I wish I could say the same of the Beys and Pashas of the Adriatic, to say nothing of certain European rulers - ah, Allen, here you are at last. Dr Maturin, allow me to name Mr Allen, my secretary - Dr Maturin.' They bowed, looking attentively at one another. 'How did the court go?' asked the Admiral.

'Very well, sir,' said Allen. 'We got through a surprising amount of business, and I have some death-sentences for your confirmation. It was not necessary to try the Maltese: he died before his case came up. It is supposed he poisoned himself.'

'Poisoned himself?' cried the Admiral, fixing Allen with a stern, penetrating look. Then the life faded: he muttered, 'What does one man matter, after all?' and bent his grey face over the sentences, confirming them one by one with his careful signature.

The calm lasted through the night, and in the morning, despite a threatening sky, a falling barometer, and a prophetic swell from the south-east, the sentences were carried out. Mr Martin's ship still being absent, he had spent the night with two condemned men aboard the Defender, which had no chaplain: he walked beside each through the entire ship's company assembled, boats from the whole squadron attending, in a heavy silence, to the point under the foreyardarm where each had his last tot of rum before his hands were tied, his eyes blindfolded, and the noose was fitted round his neck. Martin was much shaken by the time he returned to the Worcester, but when all hands were called on deck to witness punishment he took what he conceived to be his place among them, next to Stephen, to watch the horrible procession of armed boats escorting those men who were to be flogged round the fleet.

'I do not think I can bear this,' he said in a low voice as the third boat stopped alongside their ship and the provost-marshal read out the sentence for the seventh time, the legal preliminary to another twenty lashes, this time to be inflicted by the Worcester's bosun's mates.

'It will not last much longer,' said Stephen. 'There is a surgeon in the boat, and he can stop the beating when he sees fit. If he has any bowels he will stop it at the end of this bout.'

'There are no bowels in this pitiless service,' said Martin. 'How can those men ever hope for forgiveness? Barbarous, barbarous, barbarous: the boat is awash with blood,' he added, as though to himself.

'In any case, this will be the last, I believe. The wind is rising: see how the Captain and Mr Pullings look at the sails.'

'God send it may blow a hurricane," said Mr Martin.

It blew, it blew: not indeed a hurricane, but a wet wind out of Africa that came at first in heavy gusts, tearing the spray from the top of the rollers, clearing some of the degrading filth from the boats used for punishment. The flagship threw out the signal for hoisting all boats in, for making sail, for taking station in line abreast, for steering west-north-west; and the squadron headed for the coast of France, raising the topsails of the inshore squadron within two hours, the hills behind Toulon looming through the rain on the horizon, a little firmer than the clouds; and there a caique from the Adriatic found the flagship with still more letters for the Admiral's overloaded desk.

Encouraging news from the inshore squadron, however: the frigates that plied continually between Cape Side" and Porquerolles, standing right in to the extreme range of the guns on the hillside whenever the wind served, reported that the French had moved three more ships of the line into the outer road and that they now lay there with the rest, yards crossed and ready for sea. On the other hand it was confirmed that one seventy-four, the Archimede, and one heavy frigate, probably the Junon, had slipped out in the last blow but one, their destination unknown. This still left Emeriau, the French admiral, a theoretical twenty-six sail of the line, six of them three-deckers, and six forty-gun frigates, as against Thornton's thirteen of the line and a number of frigates that varied so much according to the Admiral's needs in remote parts of the Mediterranean that he could rarely count on more than seven at any one time. It was true that several of the French ships were newly launched and that their crews had little experience apart from cautious manoeuvring between Cape Brun and the headland of Carquaranne, and that others were undermanned; but even so the enemy could certainly bring out a superior force, something in the nature of seventeen efficient line-of-battle ships. And since Emeriau had recently been sent a capable, enterprising second-in-command, Cosmao-Kerjulien, it was by no means unlikely that they should do so.

But they did not do so with the offshore squadron in sight, nor did they do so when the Commander-in-Chief withdrew over the rim of the horizon, taking Admiral Mitchell's flagship with him, to cruise in those middle waters that he called the sea of hope deferred.