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

Slowly they drew together, and although his mind was as cool and lucid as he could wish, he found he had stopped breathing: he heaved in a deep draught with a sigh, and the boat hailed, ‘OhŽ, de la barca.’

‘OhŽ,’ he repeated, and waved his hand.

The boat ran alongside, hooked on, and a man made a blundering leap for the rail; Jack caught his arms and lifted him clear over, looking into his face - Maragall. The boat shoved off; Jack nodded significantly to Bonden, waved his hand, and led Maragall into the cabin.

‘How is he?’ he whispered.

‘Alive - still there - they talk of moving him. I have sent no message, received none.’ His face was strained and deadly pale, but he moved it into the shape of a smile, and said, ‘So you are in. No trouble. You are to lie off the old victualling wharf; they have given you the dirty filth-​place, because you are French. Listen, I have four guides, and the church will be open. At half after two o’clock I put fire to Martinez’s warehouse close to the arsenal - Martinez it was denounced him. This will allow a friend, an officer, to move the troops; by three there will be no soldiers or police within a quarter of a mile of the house. Our two men who work there will be at the church to show the way inside the house. Right?’

‘Yes. How many men inside tonight?’

‘Boat hailing, sir,’ said Bonden, thrusting in his head.

They leapt from their seats, and Maragall stared out over the water. The lights of Mahon were showing round the point, silhouetting a black felucca a hundred yards away. The felucca hailed again. ‘He asks what it is like outside,’ whispered Maragall.

‘Blowing hard - close-​reefed topsails.’

Maragall called out in Catalan, and the felucca dropped astern, out of the lights. Back in the cabin he wiped his face, muttering, ‘Oh, if only we had had more time, more time. How many men? Eight and a corporal: probably all five officers and one interpreter, but the colonel may not have come back. He is playing cards at the citadel. What is your plan?’

‘Land in small parties between two and three o’clock, reach St Anna’s by the back streets, take the rear wall and the garden house. If he is there, away at once, the way we came. If not, cross the patio, seal the doors and work through the house. Silently if possible, and fall back on the gunboat. If there is a row, then out across country: I have boats at Cala Blau and Rowley’s Creek. You can manage horses? Do you need money?’

Maragall shook his head impatiently. ‘It is not only Esteban,’ he said. ‘Unless the other prisoners are released, he is pointed at - identified, and God knows how many others with him. Besides, some of them are our men.’

‘I see,’ said Jack.

‘He would tell you that himself,’ whispered Maragall urgently. ‘It must look like a rising of all the prisoners.’

Jack nodded, peering out of the stern window. ‘We are almost in. Come on deck for the mooring.’

The old victualling-​wharf was coming closer, and with it the stench of stagnant filth. They slid past the customs house, all lit up, and into the darkness beyond. The pratique boat hailed, backing water and turning back down the harbour. Maragall replied. A few moments later Bonden murmured ‘In sweeps’ and steered the gunboat gently up along the black and greasy side. They made fast to a couple of bollards and lay there in silence, with the lap of water on the starboard side and the diffused noise of the town on the other. Beyond the stone quay there was a vague plain of rubbish, a disused factory on the far side, a rope-​walk, and a shipbuilder’s yard with broken palings. Two unseen cats were howling in the middle of the rubbish.

‘You understand me?’ insisted Maragall. ‘He would say exactly the same.’

‘It makes sense,’ said Jack sharply.

‘He would say so,’ repeated Maragall. ‘You know where you are?’

‘There’s the Capuchins’ church. And that is St Anna’s,’ he said, jerking his head towards a tower. It stood high over them, for at this point, the far end of the harbour, a cliff rose sheer from the low ground, a long cliff beginning in the middle of the town, so that this part of Mahon rode high above the water.

‘I must go,’ said Maragall. ‘I shall be here at one with the guides. Think, I beg of you, think what I have said: it must be all.’

It was eight o’clock. They carried out a kedge, moored the gunboat stern-​on with the sweeps ready at hand and lay there in squalid loneliness: Jack had a meal served out to the men in messes of six, crowded into the little cabin, while the rest sheltered under the half-​deck -only one light, little movement or sound, no appearance of activity.

How well they bore the waiting! A low murmur of talk, the faint click of dice; the fat Chinese snoring like a hog. They could believe in an omniscient leader, who had everything in hand - meticulous preparations, wisdom, local knowledge, sure allies: Jack could not. Every quarter the church bells chimed all over Port Mahon; and one, with a cracked treble, was St Anna’s, which he had often heard from that very garden house with Molly Harte. A quarter past; the half-​hour; nine. Ten.

He found himself staring up at Killick, who said, ‘Three bells, sir. Gentleman back presently. Here’s coffee, sir, and a rasher. Do get summat in your gaff, sir, God love us.’

Like every other sailor Jack had slept and woken in all latitudes at all hours of the night and day; he too had the trick of springing out of a deep sleep ready to go on deck, highly developed by years and years of war; but this time it was different - he was not only bright awake and ready to go on deck - he was another man; the cold desperate tension was gone and he was another man. Now the smell of their foul anchorage was the smell of coming action -it took the place of the keen whiff of powder. He ate his breakfast with eager voracity and then went forward in the quarter moonlight to talk to his crew, squatting under the half-​deck. They were astonished at his contained high spirits, so different from the savage remoteness of the run down the coast; astonished, too, that they should outlast the stroke of one, of half past, the waiting and no Maragall.

It was nearly two o’clock before they heard steps running on the quay. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, panting. ‘To make people to move in this country . . . Here they are, guides. All’s well. St Anna’s at three, yes? I shall be there.’

Jack smiled and said, ‘Three it is. Good-​bye.’ And turning to the shadowy guides, ‘Cuatro groupos, cinco minutos each, eh? Satisfaction, then Java Dick: Bonden, bring up the rear.’ He stepped ashore at last, the stiff, unyielding ground after months at sea.

He had thought he knew Port Mahon, but in five minutes of climbing up through these dark sleeping alleys, with no more than a cat flitting in the doorways and once the sound of a baby being hushed, he was lost; and when they came crouching through a low stinking tunnel he was astonished to find himself in the familiar little square of St Anna’s. The church door was ajar: they pushed silently in. One candle in a side-​chapel, and by the candle two men holding white handkerchiefs. They whispered to the guide, a priest or a man dressed as a priest, and came forward to speak to him. He could not make out what they said, but caught the word foch several times repeated, and when the door opened again he saw a red glow in the sky. The back of the church was filling as the guides led in his other groups: close-​packed silent men, smelling of tar. The glow again, and he went to look out - a fire down by the harbour, with smoke drifting fast away to the south, lit red from below - and as he looked he heard a shriek: high bubbling agony cut off short. It came from a house no great way off.