Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

Duty was obeyed, but with a sullen and a reluctant step; and it was clear to the coxswain and crew of the barge, hurriedly called from Florio's skittle-alley, that they had better watch out for squalls. A glance at their Captain's closed, forbidding face, a glance at one another, with an almost imperceptible jerk of the head or movement of an eyelid, and all was understood: the bargemen sat in their places, prim, mute, and correct as a Sunday-school while Bonden took the boat right down the harbour with a strong favourable breeze and the officers sat silent in the stern-sheets.

Jack's silence was that of extreme disappointment-and frustration: Stephen's that of a mind busy far away, preoccupied with motives and probabilities in the first place and then with questions of the distances to be covered by various men and the time required for their journeys. That morning he had received word of the meeting he and his colleagues had been working for, a meeting with men high in the service of the French and their allies that might lead to very great things: the meeting itself was confirmed, but to enable an important officer from Rochefort to attend it had been put forward three days. All the factors that Stephen could check agreed that the appointment could be kept by those on land, but there remained the Worcester's ability to carry him to that obscure marshy rendezvous and as soon as they were in the fore-cabin he said to Jack, "Pray, Jack, could you set me down at the mouth of the Aigouille by Tuesday evening?'

'Where is the Aigouille?' asked Jack coldly. Stephen turned to the chart-table and ran his finger along the low flat coastline of Languedoc with its salt lagoons and brackish marshes, canals and small un-navigable rivers choked by sandbars, meandering through malarial fens, and said 'Here.'

Jack looked at the chart and whistled. 'As far as that?' cried he. 'I had supposed you meant something in these parts. How can I possibly answer for such a distance unless I can foretell the wind's direction and its force? Above all its direction. It is not quite foul at present, but it might haul forward until it is directly in our teeth any minute -dead on end, as they say. I wonder at your asking such a simple question: you must know by now that with the best will in the world a ship cannot lie closer than six points, and the Worcester will not come up so near. You must have heard of leeway - somebody must surely have told you of leeway and..."

'For God's love, Jack, just point the ship in as near the right direction as ever you can, and tell me about leeway afterwards. There is not a moment to be lost.' These words had so often been addressed to him during his years in the Navy that even in his present hurry of spirits he was pleased to be the one who uttered them, and he repeated, 'There is not a moment to be lost.'

'Do you wish me to slip?' asked Jack seriously; and to make his meaning even clearer, 'To slip the cable, leaving it and the anchor behind?'

'Would that save much time, so?'

'Not above a few minutes in this clean ground.'

'Then perhaps we should retain our anchor,' said Stephen. 'That invaluable implement's a precious standby.'

Jack made no reply to this but went on deck. 'I am afraid I have vexed him, the creature,' said Stephen to himself, and then sank back into his former train of thought. Half-consciously he heard the fiddle on the capstan-head, the stamp and go of the men at the bars, a strong cry of 'Heave and rally', the fiddle increase its tempo, and then the even stronger cry of 'Heave and aweigh.'

Two minutes later with the anchor catted the Worcester was making her ponderous way close-hauled for Cape Mola under topsails, driver and jib, swaying up her topgallantmasts as she went. As soon as she was well clear of the headland she took the true breeze, undeflected, a moderate tramontane, and Jack, standing by the helmsman with the master, said 'Luff and touch her.'

Up she came, spoke by spoke, until the weather-leech of the maintopsail began to shiver. 'Haul the bowlines,' called Jack.

'One, two, three. Belay oh!' The traditional howling chant came from the fore, main and mizen gangs in exact order and with immense spirit; and from the forecastle Mowett roared 'Bowlines hauled, sir,' with equal zeal, for Mowett, like all those who had sailed with Jack Aubrey in the Sophie, was used to these sudden departures from Mahon. In those days Jack had private sources of information about the sailing of enemy merchantmen and the Sophie would dart out to play havoc with French and Spanish commerce at a moment's notice, sending in prizes to such an extent that at one time Holborne's Quay had no room for any more and they were obliged to be moored in the fairway. It was then that the Sophie's commander came by the nickname of Lucky Jack Aubrey, and his enterprise, good fortune and accurate intelligence had brought all the Sophies a great deal of money, which they liked. But even without the prize-money, or with much less of it, they would still have loved these cruises, the long-drawn-out chase with every possible turn of seamanship on either side, and then the capture - piracy with a clear conscience: and now, the word having spread from the former Sophies to all the present Worcesters with its usual electric speed, the hands hauled the bowlines and sharped the yards with far more than common energy. Jack noticed it, of course, just as he noticed Pullings' eager, questioning eye, and with a pang he realized that he was going to disappoint them all once more.

'Luff and touch her,' he said again, and the Worcester, braced so as to look as like a fore-and-aft vessel as her nature would allow or indeed rather more, came nearly half a point nearer the wind. He studied the angle of the dog-vane, called for an azimuth-compass to take the bearings of the wake and of Cape Mola, gazed long at the sky, the familiar clear tramontane sky with high white clouds moving in a steady procession toward Africa, and methodically began to pack on sail, causing the log to be heaved every five minutes.

Returning to the cabin at last he said to Stephen, 'If the breeze hold true, and there is a fair likelihood of its doing so, I may be able to carry you to the mouth of your river in time, by making three legs of it, the last profiting by the indraught close to the shore. But you are clearly to understand that at sea nothing whatsoever can be guaranteed.' He still spoke in a somewhat official tone, looking taller than usual, and stern; and even when Stephen had made all proper acknowledgements he went on in the same captain's voice, 'I am not sure what you meant by saying spouse-breach at the Crown just now, but if it means what I think it means, allow me to tell you that I resent the imputation extremely.'

Denial was on the tip of Stephen's tongue, denial or a rapid though necessarily fallacious explaining away: on the other hand it was exceedingly difficult to lie successfully to so intimate a friend. In the event he only had time to pass his tongue over his lips once or twice like an embarrassed guilty dog before Captain Aubrey stalked out of the cabin.

'Such asperity,' said Stephen to himself. 'Dear me, such asperity.' He stayed leaning over the chart for some time, studying the lines of approach to the hidden rendezvous: his colleagues and agents used it more often than most of their meeting-places in the southern parts, but he had not been there himself for many years. He remembered it well for all that: a lagoon at the river's mouth, then beyond it a great dyke dividing salt marsh from fresh; far along the dyke on the left hand a shepherd's hut by one of those vast buildings where wintering sheep were housed by night, and a rarely-inhabited shooting-box; away on the right hand the village of Mandiargues, almost depopulated by malaria, Malta fever and conscription but still served by an indifferent road; the whole, even beyond the distant village, deep in reed-beds, a paradise for duck, wading birds in great variety, mosquitoes, and the bearded titmouse. 'The bitterns may have arrived,' he said, partly to still an uneasiness that would keep rising in the depths of his mind, and he returned to his own part of the ship.