Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

The gunboat stayed in company, and at dusk the Livelys’ launch pulled round under her stern on its way inshore, towards the dark loom of the island. Mr Butler, packing his own quarterdeck, ordered the salute in a voice that started deep and shot up into a strangled, blushing squeak, his first experience of the anguish of command.

Jack, wrapped in a boat-​cloak, with a dark-​lantern between his knees, sat in the stern-​sheets, filled with pleasurable anticipation. He had not seen Stephen Maturin for a vast stretch of time, made even longer by the grinding monotony of the blockade: how lonely he had been for the want of that harsh, unpleasant voice! Two hundred and fifty-​nine men living in promiscuity, extreme promiscuity for the lower-​deck, and the two hundred and sixtieth a hermit: of course it was the common lot of captains, it was the naval condition, and like all other lieutenants he had strained every nerve to reach this stark isolation; but admitting the fact made precious little odds to what it felt like. No consolation in philosophy. Stephen would have seen Sophie only a few weeks ago, perhaps even less; he would certainly have messages from her, possibly a letter. He put his hand secretly to the crinkle in his bosom, and lapsed into a reverie. A moderate following sea heaved the launch in towards the land; with the rhythm of the waves and the long even pull and creak of the oars he dozed, smiling in his almost sleep.

He knew the creek well, as indeed he knew most of the island, having been stationed there when it was a British possession; it was called Cala Blau, and he and Stephen had often come over from Port Mahon to watch a pair of red-​legged falcons that had their nest on the cliff above.

He recognised it at once when Bonden, his coxswain, looked up from the glowing compass and gave a low order, changing course a trifle. There was the curious peaked rock, the ruined chapel on the skyline, the even blacker place low on the cliff-​face that was in fact a cave where monk-​seals bred. ‘Lay on your oars,’ he said softly, and flashed the dark-​lantern towards the shore, staring through the darkness. No answering light. But that did not worry him. ‘Give way,’ he said, and as the oars dipped he held his watch to the light. They had timed it well: ten minutes to go. Not that Stephen had, or by his nature ever could have, a naval sense of time; and in any event this was only the first of the four days of rendezvous.

Looking eastwards he saw the first stars of the Pleiades on the clear horizon; once before he had fetched Stephen from a lonely beach when the stars were just so. The launch lay gently pitching, kept just stern-​on by a touch of the oars. Now the Pleiades had heaved clear, the whole tight constellation, He signalled again. ‘Nothing more likely than he cannot strike a light,’ he thought, still without any apprehension. ‘In any case, I should like to walk there again; and I shall leave him a private sign. Run her in, Bonden,’ he said. ‘Handsomely, handsomely. No noise at all.’

The boat slipped over the black, starlit water, pausing twice again to listen: once they heard the snort of a seal breaking surface, then nothing until the sand grated under her bows.

Up and down the water-​line of the half-​moon beach, with his hands behind his back, turning over various private marks that might make Stephen smile if he missed this first rendezvous: some degree of tension, to be sure, but none of the devouring anxiety of that first night long ago, south of Palam—s, when he had had no idea of his friend’s capabilities.

Saturn came up behind the Pleiades; up and up, nearly ten degrees from the edge of the sea. He heard stones rattle on the cliff-​path above. With a lift of his heart he looked up, picked out the form moving there, and whistled low Deh vieni, non tardar.

No reply for a moment, then a voice from half-​way up, ‘Captain Melbury?’

Jack stood behind a rock, took a pistol from his belt and cocked it. ‘Come down,’ he said pleasantly; and directing his voice into the cave, ‘Bonden, pull out.’

‘Where are you?’ whispered the voice at the foot of the cliff.

When Jack was certain that there was no movement on the path above he stepped from the rock, walked over the sand, and shone his light on a man in a brown cloak, an olive-​faced man with a fixed, wary expression, exaggerated in this sudden light against the darkness. He came forward, showing his open hands, and said again, ‘Captain Melbury?’

‘Who are you, sir?’ asked Jack.

‘Joan Maragall, sir,’ he whispered in the clipped English of the Minorcans, very like that of Gibraltar. ‘I come from Esteban Domanova. He says, Sophia, Mapes, Guarnerius.’

Melbury Lodge was the house they had shared; Stephen’s full name was Maturin y Domanova; no one else on earth knew that Jack had once nearly bought a Guarnerius. He un-​cocked the pistol and thrust it back.

‘Where is he?’

‘Taken.’

‘Taken?’

‘Taken. He gave me this for you.’

In the beam of the lantern the paper showed a straggle of disconnected lines: Dear J - some words, lines of figures - the signature S, tailing away off the corner, a wavering curve.

‘This is not his writing,’ whispering still in the darkness, caution rising still over this certainty of complete disaster. ‘This is not his hand.’

‘He has been tortured.’

Under the swinging lamp in the cabin, he looked intently into Maragall’s face. It was a tough, youngish, lined face, pock-​marked and with bad teeth; an ill-​looking cast in one eye, but the other large and as it were gentle. What to make of him? The fluent Minorcan English, perfectly comprehensible but foreign, was difficult to judge for integrity:

the open sheet of paper under the lamp had been written with a piece of charcoal; almost the whole message had crumbled away or smudged. Do not - perhaps wait; then several words underlined with only the line remaining -send this - a name: St Joseph? - not to trust. Then the traces of figures, five painful rows of them, and the trailing S.

The whole thing might be an elaborate trap: it might also be intended to incriminate Stephen. He listened to the run of words, examined the paper, weighed the possibilities, with his mind working fast. There were times when there was something very young and slightly ridiculous about Jack; it was a side of him that Sophie loved beyond measure; but no one looking at him now, or in action, would have believed in its existence.

He led Maragall through his narrative again - the first trouble following a denunciation to the Spanish authorities, quickly settled by the production of an American passport and the intervention of the vicar-​general: Se–or Domanova was an American of Spanish origin. Then the interference of the French, their removal of the suspect to their own headquarters in spite of violent protests. The jealousy between the French and Spanish allies at all levels, administration, army, navy, civilian population

- the French way of behaving as though they were in conquered territory, which was bringing even Catalans and Castilians together. Particular hatred for this alleged French purchasing commission, which was in fact an intelligence unit, small but very active, recently joined by a Colonel Auger (a fool) and Captain Dutourd (brilliant) straight from Paris, busily recruiting informers, as bad as the Inquisition. Growing detestation of the French, almost universal apart from some opportunists and the leaders of the Fraternitat, an organisation that hoped to use them rather than the English against the Castilians -to win Catalan independence from Napoleon rather than George Ill.

‘And you belong to a different organisation, sir?’ said Jack.