O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 17 - The Commodore

The Commodore

by Patrick O'Brian

Chapter One

Thick weather in the chops of the Channel and a dirty night, with the strong north-east

wind bringing rain from the low sky and racing cloud: Ushant somewhere away on the

starboard bow, the Scillies to larboard, but never a light, never a star to be seen; and no

observation for the last four days.

The two homeward-bound ships, Jack Aubrey's Surprise, an elderly twenty-eight-

gun frigate sold out of the service some years ago but now, as His Majesty's hired vessel

Surprise, completing a long confidential mission for Government, and HMS Berenice,

Captain Heneage Dundas, an even older but somewhat less worn sixty-four-gun two-

decker, together with her tender the Ringle, an American schooner of the kind known as a

Baltimore clipper, had been sailing in company ever since they met north and east of

Cape Horn, about a hundred degrees of latitude or six thousand sea-miles away in a

straight line, if straight lines had any meaning at all in a voyage governed entirely by the

wind, the first coming from Peru and the coast of Chile, the second from New South

Wales.

The Berenice had found the Surprise much battered by an encounter with a heavy

American frigate: even more so by a lightning-stroke that had shattered her mainmast

and, far worse, deprived her of her rudder. The two captains had been boys together,

midshipmen and lieutenants: very old shipmates and very intimate friends indeed. The

Berenice had supplied the Surprise with spars, cordage, storage and a remarkably

efficient Pakenham substitute rudder made of spare topmasts; and the two ship's

companies, in spite of an initial stiffness arising from the Surprise's somewhat irregular

status, agreed very well together after two ardent cricket matches on the island of

Ascension, where a proper rudder was shipped, and there was a great deal of ship-visiting

as all three lay with loose flapping sails in the doldrums, a sweltering fortnight with melted

tar dripping from the yards. Though unconscionably long, it was a most companionable

voyage, particularly as the Suprise was able to do away with much of the invidious

difference between deliverer and delivered by providing the sickly and under-manned

Berenice with a surgeon, her own having been lost, together with his only mate, when

their boat overturned not ten yards from the ship - neither could swim, and each seized

the other with fatal energy

- so that her people, sadly reduced by Sydney pox and Cape Horn scurvy, were left to the

care of an illiterate but fearless loblolly-boy; and to provide her not merely with an ordinary

naval surgeon, equipped with little more than a certificate from the Sick and Hurt Board,

but with a full-blown physician in the person of Stephen Maturin, the author of a standard

work on the diseases of seamen, a Fellow of the Royal Society with doctorates from

Dublin and Paris, a gentleman fluent in Latin and Greek (such a comfort to his patients), a

particular friend of Captain Aubrey's and, though this was known to very few, one of the

Admiralty's - indeed of the Ministry's - most valued advisers on Spanish and Spanish-

American affairs: in short an intelligence-agent, though on a wholly independent and

voluntary basis.

Yet a surgeon, even if he may also be a physician with a physical bob and a gold-

headed cane who has been called in to treat Prince William, the Duke of Clarence, is not a

mainmast, still less a rudder: he may uphold the people's spirits and relieve their pain, but

he can neither propel nor steer the ship; the Surprises had therefore every reason to feel

loving gratitude towards the Berenices, and since they knew the difference between right

and wrong at sea they made full acknowledgment of their obligations as they passed

through the frigid, temperate and torrid zones and so to the merely wet and disagreeable

climate of home waters; but at no time could they be brought to love the Berenice herself.

Their feelings were shared by the crew of the Ringle, very much so indeed; for both

the frigate and the schooner were quite exceptionally weatherly vessels, fast, capable of

sailing very close to the wind - the schooner wonderfully close - and almost innocent of

leeway, while the much larger and more powerful two-decker was but a slug on a bowline.

She got along well enough when the breeze was abaft the beam - she liked it plumb on

the quarter best - but as it came forward so her people exchanged anxious looks; and

when at last studdingsails could no longer stand and when the ship was hauled close to

the wind, the bowlines twanging taut, all their exertions could not bring her to within six

points, nor prevent her sagging most disgracefully to leeward, like a drunken crab.

Most unhappily she had been compelled to behave in this manner for several days

now, ever since an accurate observation had told them that they could set about painting

ship, renewing the blacking on the yards and polishing everything that could be induced to

take a shine, so that they might strike soundings fully prepared to sail home in glory. But

for all of these days the breeze had been contrary, and although the Surprise - even more

so the schooner - could have beaten up to good effect, working a great way to windward,

they had been kept back by their unweatherly companion. And now they were far into this

dirty night, this filthy goddam night, with their beautifully painted topsides being spoilt by

spray, when they might have been bowsing up their jibs ashore; or at least the Surprises

might, they being from Shelmerston, a little place much closer than the Berenice's

Portsmouth.

Feeling ran high, especially on the Surprise's quarterdeck, where an unusually

vicious blast, cutting against the tide on its turn, had soaked all hands; but below, in the

great cabin, the two captains sat unmoved as the &renice floundered along under topsails

and courses, shipping a great deal of water and drifting to leeward at her usual horrid rate,

while the Sutprise kept exactly in her due station astern with no more than double-reefed

topsails and a jib half in, and the Ringle even less. Both men knew that all seamanship

could do was being done, and a long professional career had taught them not only to

accept the inevitable but not to fret about it. Even before they struck soundings Heneage

Dundas had suggested that the Surprise should ignore naval convention and part

company, going ahead as fast as she chose.

'She ain't carrying dispatches,' replied Jack with a frown - a ship carrying

them was excused from all ordinary decencies or politeness; forbidden indeed to delay for

even a minute - so there the matter rested; and now, Dundas having dined and supped

aboard the frigate, they sat there with a broadbottomed decanter of port between them,

half-hearing the stroke of the sea on the larboard bow and then on the starboard when the

ship had gone about on yet another of her long legs, and the hanging lamp swung over

the locker, intermittently lighting a backgammon board, a sea-going board with the men

still held by their pegs in Jack Aubrey's improbable winning position.

'Well, you shall have her,' said Dundas, emptying his glass. 'And you shall have her

with all her gear and her ground-tackle too.'

'Come, that is handsome in you, Hen,' said Jack. 'Thank you kindly.'

'But I will say this, Jack: you have the most infernal luck. You had no right even to

save your gammon.'

'It was a damned near-run thing, I must admit,' said Jack, modestly; then after a

pause he laughed and said, 'I remember your using those very words in the old

Bellerophon, before we had our battle.'

'So I did,' cried Dundas. 'So I did. Lord, that was a great while ago.'

'I still bear the scar,' said Jack. He pushed up his sleeve, and there on his brown

forearm was a long white line.

'How it comes back,' said Dundas; and between them, drinking port, they retold the

tale, with minute details coming fresh to their minds. As youngsters, under the charge of

the gunner of the Bellerophon, 74, in the West Indies, they had played the same game.

Jack, with his infernal luck, had won on that occasion too: Dundas claimed his revenge,

and lost again, again on a throw of double six. Harsh words, such as cheat, liar, sodomite,

booby and God-damned lubber flew about; and since fighting over a chest, the usual way

of settling such disagreements in many ships, was strictly forbidden in the Bellemphon, it

was agreed that as gentlemen could not possibly tolerate such language they should fight

a duel. During the afternoon watch the first lieutenant, who dearly loved a white-scoured

deck, found that the ship was almost out of the best kind of sand, and he sent Mr Aubrey

away in the blue cutter to fetch some from an island at the convergence of two currents

where the finest and most even grain was found. Mr Dundas accompanied him, carrying

two newly sharpened cutlasses in a sailcloth parcel, and when the hands had been set to

work with shovels the two little boys retired behind a dune, unwrapped the parcel, saluted

gravely, and set about each other. Half a dozen passes, the blades clashing, and when

Jack cried out 'Oh Hen, what have you done?' Dundas gazed for a moment at the spurting

blood, burst into tears, whipped off his shirt and bound up the wound as best he could.

When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon,

their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be

attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on

the bare breech. 'How we howled,' said Dundas. 'You were shriller than I was,' said Jack.

'Very like a hyena.'

Killick, his steward, had long since turned in, so Jack fetched more port himself;

and after they had been drinking it for some time he noticed that Dundas was growing

curiously silent. Orders and bosun's pipes on deck, and the Surprise came smoothly about

with no more than the watch, settling easily on the starboard tack.

'Jack,' said Dundas at last, in a tone that Jack had heard before, 'this is perhaps an

improper moment, while I am swilling your capital wine .. . but you did speak of some

charming prizes in the Pacific.'

'Certainly I did. We were required to act as a privateer, you know, and since I could

not disobey my instructions we took not only some whalers, which we sold on the coast,

but also a vile great pirate fairly stuffed with what she had taken Out of a score of other

ships: maybe two score.'

'Well, I tell you what it is, Jack. The glass is rising, as I dare say you have noticed.'

Jack nodded, looking at his friend's embarrassed face with real compunction. 'That is to

say, it is likely the weather will clear, with the wind backing west and even south of west:

tomorrow or the next day we should run up the Channel and then we shall part company

at last, with you putting into Shelmerston and me carrying right on to Pompey.' This,

though eminently true, called for some further observation if it were to make much sense;

but Dundas seemed incapable of going on. He hung his head, a pitiful attitude for so

distinguished a commander.

'Perhaps you have a girl aboard that you would like landed somewhere else?'

suggested Jack.

'Not this time,' said Dundas. 'No. Jack, the fact of the matter is that as soon as the

Berenice makes her number and it is known in the town that she is at hand the tipstaffs

will come swarming out of their holes and the moment I set foot on shore I shall be

arrested - arrested for debt and carried off to a sponging-house. I suppose you could not

lend me a thousand guineas? It is a terrible lot of money, I know. I am ashamed to ask for

it.'

'In course I could. As I told you, I am amazingly flush - Crocus is my second name.

But would a thousand be enough? What was the debt? It would be a pity to spoil the ship

for a...

'Oh, it would be amply enough, I am sure; and l am prodigiously obliged to you,

Jack. I dare not come down on Melville at this point: it would be different if he loved me as

much as he loves you, but the last time he showed me out of the door he called me an

infernal trundle-thrift whoremonger and condemned me to this vile New Holland voyage in

the Berenice.' Heneage's elder brother, Lord Melville, was at the head of the Admiralty,

and he could do such things. 'No. The judgment was for five hundred odd - the same

young person, I am sorry to say, or rather her infamous attorney - but even with legal

charges and interest I am sure a thousand would cover it handsomely.'

They talked about arrest for debt, sheriff's officers, sponging-houses and the like for

some time, with profound and dear-bought knowledge of the subject, and after a while

Jack agreed that a thousand would see his friend clear until he could draw his long-

overdue pay and see the factor who looked after his Scottish estate: with a vessel as slow

and unwieldy and unlucky as the Berenice there could be no question of prize-money,

above all on such an unpromising voyage.

'How happy you make me feel, Jack,' said Dundas. 'A draft on Hoare's - for you

bank with Hoare's, as I well remember

- will be like Ajax's shield when I go ashore.'

'There is nothing like gold for satisfying an attorney out of hand.'

'Truer word you never spoke, dear Jack. But even if you had gold - you will never

tell me you have gold, English gold, Jack? - it would take hours to tell out a thousand

guineas.'

'God love you, Hen. All this morning and much of this afternoon Tom, Adams and I

were counting and weighing like a gang of usurers, making up bags for the final sharing-

out when we drop anchor in Shelmerston. The Doctor helped too, nipping about among

our heaps and taking out all the ancient coins - there were some of Julius Caesar and

Nebuchadnezzar, I think, and he clasped an Irish piece called an Inchiquin pistole to his

bosom, laughing with pleasure - but he threw us out of our count and I was obliged to beg

him to go away, far, far away. When he had gone we sorted and counted, sorted and

counted and weighed, only finishing just before dinner. Those large bags on the left of the

stern-window locker hold a thousand guineas apiece - they are part of the ship's share -

while the smaller bags hold mohurs, ducats, louis d'ors, joes and all kinds of foreign gold

by weight of five hundred each, and the chests all along the side and down in the bread-

room hold sacks of a hundred in silver, also by weight: there are so many that the ship is a

good strake by the stern, and I shall be glad when they are better stowed. Take one of

those thousands on the left, then. I can make up the sum in a moment from the rest, but

silver would be much too heavy for you to carry.'

'God bless you, Jack,' said Dundas, hefting the comfortable bag in his hand. 'Even

this weighs well over a stone, ha, ha, ha!' and as he spoke four bells struck, four bells in

the graveyard watch, This was almost immediately followed by an exchange of orders and

distant cries on deck: they were not the routine noises that preceded going about,

however, and both captains listened intently, Heneage still holding the bag poised in his

hand, like a Christmas pudding. Some moments later a wet, one-armed midshipman burst

in and cried 'Beg pardon, air, but Mr Wilkins desires his compliments and duty and there is

a ship about two miles to windward, he thinks a seventy-four, in any case a two-decker,

and he don't quite like her answer to the private signal.'

'Thank you, Mr Reade,' said Jack. 'I shall be on deck directly.'

'And pray be so good as to rouse out my bargemen,' called Dundas, stuffing the

bag into his shirt and buttoning his waistcoat over it. And when Reade had vanished at a

run, 'Jack, infinite thanks: I must get back to my ship. Clear and come within hail' - he was

the senior captain - 'and short-handed though &renice is, I believe the two of us can take

on any seventy-four afloat.'

Out on the cold wet quarterdeck Jack's eyes grew used to the comparative

darkness as Dundas groped awkwardly down into the tossing barge, clasping his anxious

belly as he went. Comparative darkness, for now an old hunchbacked moon was sending

enough light through the low cloud for him to make out a blur of white to windward, a blur

that resolved itself into topsails and courses as he focused his glass, and a double row of

lit gunports. But it was the hoist that fixed almost the whole of his attention, the reply to the

private signal that distinguished friend from foe. It was a string of three lanterns, the

topmost winking steadily: there should have been four.

'I replied do not understand your signal, sir,' said Wilkins, 'but she still keeps this

one hoisted.'

Jack nodded. 'Clear for action and make sail to close the Berenice,' he said.

'All hands and beat to quarters,' roared Wilkins to the bosun's enchanted mate.

'Forward there, forward: forestayssil and full jib.'

The Surprise was in very good order: she had seen a great deal of action and she

was kept in high training for a great deal more; she could change from a darkling ship,

three parts asleep, to a brilliantly-lit man-of-war with guns run out, hammocks in the

netting, magazines opened and protected with fearnought screens, and every man in his

accustomed, appointed station together with all his mates, ready to give battle at the word

of command. But she could not do so in silence, and it was the roar of the drum, the

muffled thunder of four hundred feet and the screech of trucks that started Stephen

Maturin from his profound and rosy peace.

He had left Jack and Dundas quite early, for he was something of a check on their

flow of reminiscences; and in any case very highly detailed accounts of war at sea

reduced him almost to tears after the first hour. They had drunk the usual Saturday toast

of sweethearts and wives, and the civil Dundas had added particular compliments to

Sophie and Diana, pledging both in bumpers, bottoms up. This meant that Stephen, an

abstemious, meagre creature, weighing nine stone and odd ounces, far exceeded his

usual two or three glasses, and although he had meant to retire to the rarely-used cabin

below to which he was entitled as the ship's surgeon rather than the more spacious, airier

place he usually shared with Jack, and there, after his evening rounds, to lie reading, the

wine, without making him drunk, had to some extent affected his concentration, and as the

book he was reading - Clousaz' Examen de Pyrrhonisme - called for a great deal he put it

down at the end of a chapter, aware that he had made nothing of the last paragraph, lay

back in his swinging cot and instantly returned to thinking about his wife and daughter, the

first a spirited young woman called Diana with black hair and blue eyes, a splendid rider,

and the second Brigid, a child he had longed for this many a year but whom he had not

yet seen. This reverie was very usual with him, and it required no sort of concentration at

all, but rather the reverse, being a series of images, sometimes imprecise, sometimes

intensely vivid, of conversations, real or imaginary, and of an indefinite sense of present

happiness. Yet tonight for the first time in all this very long parting - no less than a

complete circumnavigation of the world by sea, with a great deal happening on land as

well

- there was a subtle difference, a change of key. At any moment now, he had learnt, they

might strike soundings, an expression that in itself had a chilling quality, quite apart from

its meaning; and the fact itself brought what had been a vague futurity into the almost

immediate present. Now it was not so much a question of wandering in past felicity as of

reflecting upon the reality he would meet in a few days' time or even lees if the wind came

fair.

He looked forward to seeing Diana and Brigid with the utmost eagerness, of

course, as he had for thousands and thousands of miles; but now this eagerness was

mixed with an apprehension that he could not or would not readily name. For almost the

whole of this enormous voyage they had been out of touch: he knew that his daughter had

been born and that Diana had bought Barham Down, a large, remote house with excellent

stabling, good pasture and plenty of gallops - great stretches of down - for the Arabs she

intended to breed; but apart from that virtually nothing.

Years had passed, and years had a bad name: a verse of Horace floated into his

mind:

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes;

eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum...

and for a moment he tried to make a tolerable English version; but his

The years in passing rob us of our delight, of merriment and carnal love, of each in turn,

all sport and dining out...

did not please him and he abandoned the attempt.

In any case things were not yet quite so desperate: although Venus might be a

somewhat remote and flickering planet he still loved a cheerful dinner among friends and

a severe, closefought game of whist or fives. Yet changed he had to some degree, of that

there was no doubt: more and more, for example, it seemed to him that the proper study

of mankind was man rather than beetle or even bird.

He had changed: of course he had changed, and probably more than he knew. It

was inevitable. What kind of Diana would be find, and how would they agree? She had

married him mostly out of friendship - she liked him very well -

perhaps to some degree out of pity, he having loved her so long: he was not at all

agreeable to look at and from the physical point of view he had never been much of a

lover - a state of affairs much influenced by years of addiction to opium, which he neither

smoked nor ate but drank in the form of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum, sometimes, in

his despair over Diana, reaching heroic doses. Diana, on the other hand, had never taken

so much as a drachm, not a scruple of opium, nor anything else to diminish her naturally

ardent temperament.

As the night wore on he worried himself foolishly, as one will in the dark with vitality

low and courage, reasoning power and common sense all at their lowest ebb: at times he

comforted himself with the reflexion that Brigid was there, a great bond between them; at

others he said that the image of Diana as a mother was perfectly absurd; and he longed

for the old tincture to ease the torment of his mind. He did possess a substitute in the

leaves of the coca plant, much esteemed in Peru for the tranquil euphoria they produced

when chewed; but they had the disadvantage of utterly banishing sleep, and sleep was

what he wanted more than anything else in the world.

Somehow, at some point, he must have attained it, since the drum's echoing beat

to quarters jerked him up from the depths. In most respects he remained a wholly

unimproved landsman in spite of many years at sea, but there were a few naval

characteristics to be found in him. Almost all had to do with his function as a naval

surgeon, and even before his mind was fully aware of the situation his legs were hurrying

him towards his action-station below and right aft on the orlop deck. It being cold as well

as damp in the stuffy, fetid triangular hole that he occupied he had turned in all standing,

so that he only had to put on an apron to be ready for duty. On reaching the sick-berth he

found his loblolly-boy, a large and powerful, almost monoglot Munsterman called Padeen,

hauling two chests together under the great lantern to make an operating-table. 'God and

Mary be with you, Padeen,' he said in Irish. 'God and Mary and Patrick be with your

honour,' said Padeen. 'Is there to be a battle at all?'

'The Dear knows. How are Williams and Ellis?'

These were the two invalids in the starboard sick-berth, whom Padeen had

been sitting with. They had been sparring, in a spirit of fun, with loggerheads, those massy

iron balls with long handles to be carried red-hot from the fire and plunged into buckets of

tar or pitch so that the substance might be melted with no risk of flame. 'They are sober

now, sir; and penitent, the creatures.'

'I shall look at them, when we have everything ready,' said Stephen, beginning to

range saws, scalpels, ligatures and tourniquets. Fabien, his assistant, joined him, followed

by two little girls, Emily and Sarah: they were only just awake, and they would have been

a sleepy pink had they not been extremely black. They had been found long ago on a

Melanesian island whose other inhabitants had all been wiped out by the smallpox

brought by a visiting whaler; and since they were then too ill and wretched to look after

themselves in that charnel-house of a village, Stephen had brought them away. They did

not attend at the very horrible surgery that he was sometimes obliged to carry out, but

their small, delicate hands were wonderfully skilful at bandaging. They looked after those

who had been operated upon, and the convalescents; they were also very useful to Dr

Maturin in his frequent dissections of natural specimens, having no trace of

squeamishness. They had entirely forgotten the language of Sweeting Island, apart from

counting in it as they skipped, but they spoke perfect English, quarterdeck with never an

oath or the much more earthy and emphatic lower-deck version, as occasion required.

Between them they laid out all the material that might be needed during an action

and after it: lint, bandages, splints; the purely surgical instruments such as catlings,

bistouries and retractors; and their grim companions, the gags and the leather-covered

chains. When all these were arranged in their due order, the essentials within reach of the

surgeon's hand and himself tied into his apron, they relaxed and listened with the utmost

attention, trying to piece through the general confused run of the water alongside the ship,

the voice of the eddy on the windward side of the rudder, and the reverberation of the taut

rigging transmitted to the hull, to hear some sound that might tell them what was afoot.

None came, and presently their sense of urgency diminished. The little girls sat on the

deck outside the lantern's strong ring of light, silently playing the game in which an

outstretched hand represented a sheet of paper, a stone, or a pair of scissors. Stephen

walked into the other berth, looked at his patients and asked them how they did. 'Prime,

sir,' they answered, and thanked him kindly.

'Well, I am glad of that,' he said. 'Yet although they were good clean breaks,

immobilized at once, it will be long before you can go aloft, or dance upon the green, if

ever we get home, which God send.'

'Amen, amen, sir,' they answered together.

'But how did you ever come to be so indiscreet and thoughtless as to beat one

another with those vile great loggerheads?'

'It was only in fun, sir, like we sometimes do, meaning no harm. One has a swipe

and the other dodges, turn and turn about.'

'In all my experience of the sea I have never heard of such a dreadful practice.'

The patients looked meek, avoiding one another's eyes; and presently Ellis said 'It

all depends on the ship, sir. We often used to play in the Agameinnon; and my father,

which he was carpenter's crew in the old George, had a real set-to, real serious, with a

forecastleman that called him a. . .'

'Called him what?'

'I hardly like to say it.'

'Murmur it in my ear,' said Stephen, bending low.

'A nymph,' whispered Ellis.

'Did he indeed, the wicked dog? How did it end, so?'

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 17 - The Commodore

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