Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

'Steady, fore and aft,' he said. Then 'Stand by, the axes: stand by.'

'Hard over,' murmured the master in the silence.

'Hard over it is, sir,' said the helmsman and the Worcester came round into the Frenchmen's bay.

She hung there, her backed maintopsail exactly balancing the others' thrust, poised for the first gun and for the order that would carry her forward to cut away her anchors and so swing against the enemy's side there in his sheltered nook.

The first gun never came, nor yet the order. This same impression of stillness and silence: the French ship's side was higher than the Worcester's and even by standing on a gun Jack could not see over the hammocks to her quarterdeck, which gave the strangest feeling of impersonality. All her ports were open, all her guns run out: her barricaded waist was lined with soldiers, their hats and muskets showing: thin wafts of smoke drifted from the lower ports, otherwise there was no movement at all, except in the tops, where the same musket-barrels pointed at him, gently varying their angle with the heave of the sea. After a few seconds it was clear to Jack that the French commander's orders about firing first were as rigid and as strictly obeyed as his own.

The minutes dropped by. With great skill the master kept the Worcester in equilibrium until an odd gust drove her a trifle out and she began forging very slowly ahead. The men stationed by the hanging anchors raised their axes, waiting for the word: but Jack shook his head. 'Fill the mainyard,' he said in his hoarse voice. The Worcester surged forward, moving across the face of the battery, now much stronger, but as quiet and unmoving as the seventy-four, and past the equally silent frigate. Here at least he could look down into her and on her quarterdeck he saw her captain, a short, capable, grave-looking man standing there with his hands behind his back, looking up. Their eyes met, and at the same moment each moved his hat to the other.

Jack was perfectly convinced that the Frenchman in command was determined not to fire the first shot, but since there might be some fool among the thousand men moored against the mole he led his ships up and down again. Fools there may well have been, but none in charge of a gun or even a musket, and the French were not to be provoked.

'May we not try just once more, sir, giving them a cheer as we go down?' asked Pullings in his ear.

'No, Tom: it will not do,' said he. 'If we stay here andther half hour, with the breeze veering like this, we shall never get out of this God-damned bay - windbound for weeks, mewed up with these miserable brutes.' Turning from Pullings' bitter distress, he raised his voice, addressing the master: 'Mr Gill, pray lay her for Cape Mero, and then let us shape a course for Barka.'

He took a few turns up and down the quarterdeck in order not to evade the disappointed looks of the crews housing their guns, the sullen, disappointed atmosphere, the flat sense of anticlimax. The ship was profoundly dissatisfied with him: he was profoundly dissatisfied with himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

'And so, sir,' said Jack, 'I left them there and shaped a course for Barka, having first sent Dryad to inform you of their presence.'

'I see,' said Admiral Thornton, leaning back in his chair, putting on his spectacles, and inspecting him with a cold objectivity. 'Then before we return to the subject of Medina, give me a brief account of what happened at Barka,' he added after a disagreeable pause.

'Well sir, I am afraid that Barka was not altogether satisfactory either. When we arrived Esmin Pasha was being besieged by his son Muley and he asked us for guns as well as the presents. These I felt obliged to refuse until I could obtain your consent, but after consultation with Mr Consul Hamilton I sent my carpenter, gunner, and a dozen hands ashore to remount the cannon he possessed: most of their carriages were so decayed that they could not be attempted to be fired. But, however, his defences had hardly been put in a tolerable posture before a squadron came in from Constantinople bringing a new Pasha and an order for Esmin's recall. He did not see fit to obey it, and left by night with most of the presents and the guns to join his son, with the intention of besieging the new Pasha once the squadron had sailed. In the mean time the new man sent to say that it was customary to congratulate every newly-installed ruler of Barka with music, fireworks and gifts. The music and the fireworks I could manage,' said Jack with a nervous artificial smile. The nervous artificial smile met with no response whatsoever from the Admiral or his secretary, between whom it was divided: the expression of the first showed no change; the second looked down at his papers. Admiral Harte had no share in the smirk: nevertheless he saw fit to give a disapproving sniff.

It was a curious sight, the massive Jack Aubrey, a powerful fellow in the prime of life, long accustomed to authority, sitting there with an anxious, deferential expression, poised on the edge of his chair before a small, sick, bloated, old man he could have crushed with one hand. The service had enormous faults: its dockyards were corrupt and often incompetent, the recruitment of the lower deck was a national disgrace and that of the officers an utterly haphazard affair, while their promotion and employment often depended on influence and favouritism: yet still the Navy managed to throw up admirals who could make men like Jack Aubrey tremble. St Vincent, Keith, Duncan; and Admiral Thornton was one of their kind, or even more so. Now, after another pause, he said, 'You have seen Captain Babbington since your return to the fleet?'

'Yes, sir.' He had indeed - William Babbington pulling out in a double-banked cutter the moment the Worcester was in sight, pulling out over a sea so rough it was a wonder a boat could swim.

'Then you are no doubt aware that I have it in contemplation to call you both to a court-martial for disobedience of orders.'

'So Babbington gave me to understand, sir; and I told him at once that although I was extremely concerned at having displeased you, I flattered myself I could show that I had carried out my orders as I understood them to the best of my ability. And may I add, sir, that Captain Babbington acted under my direction at all times: if there was any fault in that direction, the responsibility is entirely mine.'

'Did you direct him to return from Medina without delivering the consul's dispatches?'

'In a manner of speaking, yes, I did. I particularly impressed upon him the necessity for respecting Medina's neutrality, and this he could not have done had he entered into conflict with the French. I wholly approved his return: had he entered the Goletta he must have been captured."

'You wholly approved his defeating a carefully planned stratagem? Are you not aware, sir, that the Dryad or at least some similar vessel was intended to be captured? And that within five minutes of receiving news of her capture and of the Frenchmen's violation of neutrality I should have detached a squadron to depose the Bey and put in a friend of ours, at the same time clearing every French ship out of all the ports in his country? Had you no notion of this?'

'None whatsoever, sir, upon my honour.'

'Nonsense,' said Harte. 'I made it perfectly plain.' 'No, sir, you did not,' said Jack. 'You spoke in a general way about this being an important service requiring particular discretion, which puzzled me, since the carrying of presents and consular dispatches did not strike me as a task calling for exceptional abilities. You also dwelt upon the necessity of respecting the Barbary States' neutrality. When I referred to my written orders I found nothing whatsoever, not the slightest hint that they were to be understood in a special sense - that I was to send a ship under my command into a trap and oblige her to be captured, perhaps with heavy loss. And I do not wonder at it, sir,' said Jack, his choler rising at the idea of Babbington hauling down his colours at last under overwhelming fire, 'I do not wonder that you did not give me a plain direct order to send my friend in under such circumstances. On the other hand, my written orders did insist upon the respect due to neutrality, as did your verbal instructions; it was natural therefore to conclude that that was where the need for discretion lay. And I may say, sir,' he said looking Admiral Thornton in the eye, 'that I respected that neutrality to the very limit of human endurance.'