Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

The horizon beyond the larboard bow was broken now by the irregular line of the French coast, and the Lively heaved about on the other tack. How beautifully she handled! She came smoothly up into the wind, paid off and filled in a cable’s length, hardly losing any way at all. In spite of her spread of canvas, with all the staysail sheets to be passed over, scarcely a quarter of an hour passed between the pipe of All hands about ship and the moment when the mastmen began flemishing their ropes and making pretty, while France dropped out of sight astern.

What a ship to handle - no noise, no fuss, no shadow of a doubt as to whether she would stay. And she was making eight knots already: he could eat the wind out of any square-​rigged craft afloat. But what was the good of that, if he could not hit his enemy when he came up with him?

‘We will make a short board, Mr Norrey,’ he said to the master, who now had the watch. ‘And then you will be so good as to lay her in half a mile from Balbec, under topsails.’

‘Stephen,’ he said, some minutes later, ‘how did your operation go?’

‘Very prettily, I thank you,’ said Stephen. ‘It was as charming a demonstration of my method as you could wish: a perfect case for immediate intervention, good light, plenty of elbow-​room. And the patient survived.’

‘Well done, well done! Tell me, Stephen, would you do me a kindness?’

‘I might,’ said Stephen, looking shrewish.

‘It is just to shift your brutes into the quarter-​gallery. The guns are to fire in the cabin, and perhaps the bang might be bad for them. Besides, I do not want another mutiny on my hands.’

‘Oh, certainly. I shall carry the hive and you shall fix the gimbals. Let us do it at once.’

When Jack returned, still trembling and with the sweat running down the hollow of his spine, it was time for quarters. The drum beat and the Livelies hurried to their stations in the usual way; but they knew very well that this was no ordinary ritual, not only from the gunner’s uncommon activity and knowing looks, but also because Mrs Miller had been desired to step down into the hold, with a midshipman bearing an armful of cushions to show her the way: asked if she minded a bang, had replied, ‘Oh no, I love it.’

The frigate was gliding along half a mile from the shore under topsails alone, so close in that the members of a flock of sheep could be seen on the green grass, surrounding their shepherd as he stared out to sea; and the Livelies were not surprised, after they had been reported present and sober, sir, to hear the order ‘Out tompions.’

Some of the tompions needed a furious heave to get them out, they having sat in the muzzles of their guns for so long, but as the frigate approached the battery guarding the little port of Balbec all the guns were staring at it with their iron eyes wide open. This was a little battery of three twenty-​four pounders on an islet outside the creek, and it vanished in its own smoke at extreme range, so that only its immense tri-​colour could be seen floating over the cloud.

‘We will fire the guns in succession, Mr Simmons,’ said Jack, ‘with a half-​minute interval between each. I will give the word. Mr Fanning, note down the fall of each shot with the number of the gun.’

The French gunners were accurate but slow - shorthanded, no doubt. They knocked away the Lively’s stern lantern with their third salvo, but they did not do more than make a hole in her maintopsail before the frigate was within the range that Jack had chosen - before he gave the word to fire. The Lively was slow and inaccurate -little notion of independent fire, almost none of elevation. Only one shot from her starboard guns hit the battery at all, and her last gun was followed by a derisive cheer from the land.

The frigate was coming abreast of the battery, a little over a quarter of a mile away. ‘Are those after guns run out, Mr Simmons?’ asked Jack. ‘Then we will give them a broadside.’ As he waited for the long roll, one twenty-​four pounder hulled the Lively in the mizen-​chains and another passed over the quarterdeck with a deep howl. He noticed that two of the midshipmen bobbed to the ball and then looked anxiously to see whether he had noticed: they had not been under fire before. ‘Fire!’ said Jack, and the whole ship erupted in a vast roaring crash, trembling to her keelson. For a moment the smoke blotted out the sun, then raced away to leeward. Jack stretched eagerly over the rail: this was a little better - stones knocked sideways, the flag leaning drunkenly. The Livelies were cheering; but they were not running up their guns with anything like the speed they furled their topsails The minutes dragged by The battery sent a ball into the Lively’s stern ‘Perhaps that was the quarter-​gallery,’ he thought, with a spurt of hope through his boiling impatience ‘Shiver the maintops’l Hard a-​starboard Will you get those guns run up, Mr Simmons?’ The range was lengthening, drawing out and out. A ball hit the boats on the booms, scattering planks and splinters ‘Port your helm Thus, thus Fire! Ready about, ready oh !’

Only two of her shots had gone home, but one of them had silenced a gun, hitting the embrasure fair and square. The Lively came about, fired her larboard guns in succession - the men had their shirts off now - and then a broadside. As she came abreast of the battery for the second time, gliding smoothly up much nearer to and with her carronades ready to join in, the little garrison was seen to be pulling furiously for the shore, all crammed into one small boat, for the other had gone adrift, its painter cut. ‘Fire,’ said Jack, and the battery leapt in a cloud of dust and chips of stone.

‘How are our boats?’ he asked a quarterdeck midshipman.

‘Your gig has been hit, sir. The others are all right.’

‘Cutter away. Mr Dashwood, be so good as to take the cutter, spike up any serviceable guns and carry what is left of the colours to Mrs Miller with the Lively’s compliments. And just secure that boat of theirs, will you? Then we shall be all square.’

The frigate lay gently pitching on the swell while the cutter hurried across the sea and back. There was nothing in the little port except fishing craft: nothing to be done there. ‘However,’ he said, when the boats were hoisted in, ‘the good of the service requires us to batter the battery a little more. Up jib. We really must see if we can do better than four and a half minutes between broadsides, Mr Simmons.’

To and fro she went, shattering and pulverizing the heap of rubble, the gun-​crews very pleased with themselves and plying their pieces with great zeal if not much accuracy.

By the time she sailed away her practice was a little better, the co-​ordination was a trifle nearer what he could wish, and the men were more accustomed to the crash and leap of their deadly charges; but of course it was still pitifully slow.

‘Well, Mr Simmons,’ he said to the first lieutenant, who was looking at him with a certain uneasiness, ‘that was not bad at all. Number four and seven fired very well. But if we can manage three accurate broadsides in five minutes, then there will be nothing that can stand against us. We must salute every French battery we pass like this - so much more fun than firing at a mark - and our affectionate friends cannot handsomely object. I hope we shall have a little more Channel duty before they send us foreign.’

He would not have formed this wish if he had known how surprisingly soon it was to be fulfilled. The Lively had not anchored in Spithead before orders came off desiring and directing him to proceed immediately to Plymouth to take charge of a north-​bound convoy - Bermuda was off for the next few weeks, perhaps for good. The port admiral’s boat also brought a young man from Jack’s new agent, bearing a cheque for a hundred and thirty pounds more than Jack had dared hope for, and a letter from General Aubrey announcing his return from St Muryan, the rottenest of all the rotten Cornish boroughs, the property of his friend Mr Polwhele, on the simple platform of Death to the Whigs. ‘I have composed my maiden speech,’ wrote the General, ‘and am to deliver it on Monday. It will dish them completely - such corruption you would not credit, hardly. And I shall deliver another, worse, after the recess, if they do not do something for us. We have bled for our country, and may I be damned if our country shall not bleed for us, moderately.’ The moderately was scratched out, and the letter concluded by desiring Jack to enter his little brother’s name on the ship’s books, ‘as it might come in useful, some day.’ Jack’s face took on a very thoughtful cast; it was not that he disliked the sentiment about bleeding - he was all for it; but he knew his father’s notions of discretion, alas. They bundled Mrs Miller ashore, as proud as Pontius Pilate with her piece of flag, and carried on their zigzag course down the Channel against the west and south-​west winds, pausing only to celebrate Jack’s wealth and General Aubrey’s election by beating a battery on the headland of Barfleur into the ground and destroying the semaphore-​station at Cap Levi. The frigate spent barrel after barrel of powder and scattered some tons of iron over the French landscape; her gunnery improved remarkably. Next to the pleasure of shooting at a fellow man, the Livelies loved destroying his works; no shooting at the mark at sea could possibly have given them such delight or have increased their zeal a tenth part as much as shooting at the windows of the semaphore-​station, with their guns at their utmost elevation. And when at last they hit them, when the glass and frames vanished with a crash, they cheered as though they had sunk a ship of the line; and the whole quarterdeck, including the chaplain, laughed and simpered like a holiday.