O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 11 - The Reverse of the Medal

The Reverse of the Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

CHAPTER ONE

The West Indies squadron lay off Bridgetown, sheltered from the north-cast tradewind and

basking in the brilliant sun. It was a diminished squadron, consisting of little more than the

ancient Irresistible, wearing the flag of Sir William Pellew, red at the fore, and two or three

battered, worn-out, undermanned stoops, together with a storeship and a transport; for all

the seaworthy vessels were far away in the Atlantic or Caribbean, looking for the possible

French or American men-of-war and the certain privateers, numerous, well-armed, well-

handled, full of men, swift-sailing and eager for their prey, the English and allied merchant

ships.

Yet although they were old, weather-worn and often iron-sick they were a pleasant sight

lying there on the pure blue sea, as outwardly trim as West Indies spit and polish could

make them, with paint and putty disguising the wounds of age and their bright-work all

ablaze; and although some of them had suffered so from fever in Jamaica and on the

Spanish Main that they could scarcely muster hands enough to win their anchors, there

were still plenty of men, both officers and foremast-jacks, who were intimately acquainted

with the ship that was beating up against the steady breeze and with many of the people

in her. She was the Surprise, a twenty-eight-gun frigate that had been sent to protect the

British whalers in the South Seas from the Norfolk, an American man-of-war of roughly

equal force. The Surprise was even older than the Irresistible - indeed she had been on

her way to the breaker's yard when she was suddenly given the mission

- but unlike her she was a sweet sailer, particularly on a bowline; and if she had not

been towing a dismasted ship

she would certainly have joined the squadron a little after dinner. As things were, however,

it was doubtful whether she would be able to do so before the evening gun.

The Admiral was inclined to think that she might manage it; but then the Admiral was

somewhat biased by his strong desire to know whether the Surprise had succeeded in her

task, and whether the vessel she had in tow was a prize captured in his extensive waters

or merely a distressed neutral or a British whaler. In the first case Sir William would be

entitled to a twelfth of her value and in the second to nothing whatsoever, not even to the

pressing of a few seamen, for the South Sea whalers were protected. He was also

influenced by his ardent wish for an evening's music. Sir William was a large bony old man

with one forbidding eye and a rough, determined face; he looked very much the practical

seaman and formal clothes sat awkwardly upon his powerful frame; but music meant a

very great deal to him and it was generally known in the service that he never put to sea

without at least a clavichord, and that his steward had been obliged to take tuning lessons

in Portsmouth, Valletta, Cape Town and Madras. It was also known that the Admiral was

fond of beautiful young men; but as this fondness was reasonably discreet, never leading

to any disorder or open scandal, the service regarded it with tolerant amusement, much as

it regarded his more openly-avowed but equally incongruous passion for Handel.

One of these beautiful young men, his flag-lieutenant, now stood by him on the poop, a

young man who had begun life - naval life - as a reefer so horribly pimpled that be was

known as Spotted Dick, but who with the clearing of his skin had suddenly blossomed into

a seagoing Apollo: a sea-going Apollo perfectly unaware of his beauty however, attributing

his position solely to his zeal and his perfectly genuine professional merits. The Admiral

said, 'It may very well be a prize.' He gazed long through his telescope, and then referring

to

the captain of the Surprise, he added, 'After all, they call him Lucky Jack Aubrey, and I

remember him coming into that damned long narrow harbour of Port Mahon with a train of

captured merchantmen at his tail like Halley's comet. That was when Lord Keith had the

Mediterranean command: Aubrey must have made him a small fortune at every cruise - a

very fine eye for a prize, although . . . But I was forgetting: you sailed under him, did you

not?'

'Oh yes, sir,' cried Apollo. 'Oh yes, indeed. He taught me all the mathematics I know, and

he grounded us wonderfully well in seamanship. Never was such a seaman, sir:

that is to say, among post-captains.' The Admiral smiled at the young man's enthusiasm,

his flush of candid admiration, and as he trained his glass on the Surprise once more he

said 'He is a tolerably good hand with a fiddle, too. We played together all through a long

quarantine.'

But the flag-lieutenant's enthusiasm was not shared by everyone. Only a few feet below

them, in his great cabin, the captain of the Irresistible explained to his wife that Jack

Aubrey was not at all the thing. Nor was his ship. 'Those old twenty-eight-gun frigates

should have been sent to the knackers yard long ago - they belong to the last age, and

are of no sort of use except to make us ridiculous when an American carrying forty-four

guns takes one. They are both called frigates, and the landsman don't see the odds. "Oh

my eye," he cries, "an American frigate has taken one of ours - the Navy is gone to the

dogs - the Navy is no good any more."'

'It must be a great trial, my dear,' said his wife.

'Twenty-four pounders, and scantlings like a line-of-battle ship,' said Captain Goole, who

had never been able to digest the American victories. 'And as for Aubrey, well, they call

him Lucky Jack, and to be sure he did take a great many prizes in the Mediterranean -

Keith favoured him outrageously - gave him cruise after cruise - many people resented it.

And then again in the Indian Ocean, when the Mauritius was taken in the year nine. Or

was it ten? But

I have not heard of anything much since then. No. It is

my belief he overdid it - rode his luck to death. There is

a tide in the affairs of men . . .' He hesitated.

'I dare say there is, my dear,' said his wife.

'I do beg, Harriet, that you will not incessantly interrupt every time I open my mouth,' cried

Captain Goole. 'There, you have driven it out of my head again.'

'I am sorry, my dear,' said Mrs Goole, closing her eyes. She had come from Jamaica to

recover from the fever and to escape being buried among the land-crabs; and sometimes

she wondered whether it was a very clever thing to have done.

'However, what the proverb means is that you must make hay while the sun shines but not

force things. The minute your luck begins to turn sullen you must strike your

topgallantmasts down on deck directly, and take a reef in your topsails, and prepare to

batten down your hatches and lie to under a storm staysail if it gets. worse. But what did

Jack Aubrey do? He cracked on as though his luck was going to last for ever. He must

have made a mint of money in the Mauritius campaign, quite apart from the Med; but did

he put it into copper-bottomed two-and-a-half per cent stock and live quietly on the

interest? No, he did not. He pranced about, keeping a stable of race-horses and

entertaining like a lord-lieutenant and covering his wife with diamonds and taffeta mantuas

. . .'

'Taffeta mantuas, Captain Goole?' cried his wife.

'Well, expensive garments. Paduasoy - Indian muslin

- silk: all that kind of thing. And a fur pelisse.'

'How I should love some diamonds and a fur pelisse,' said Mrs Goole, but not aloud: and

she conceived a rather favourable opinion of Captain Aubrey.

'Gambling, too,' said her husband. 'I have absolutely seen him lose a thousand guineas at

a sitting in Willis's rooms. And then he tried to mend his fortunes by some crackpot

scheme of getting silver out of the dross of an ancient lead-mine - trusted in some shady

projector to

carry it on while he was at sea. I hear he is in a very deep water now.'

'Poor Captain Aubrey,' murmured Mrs Goole.

'But the real trouble with Aubrey,' said the captain after a long pause during which he

watched the distant frigate go about on to the larboard tack and head for Needham's

Point, 'is that he cannot keep his breeches on.,

This seemed a very general failing in the Navy, for it was the character her husband gave

to many, many of his fellow-officers; and in the first days of her marriage Mrs Goole had

supposed that the fleet was largely manned by satyrs. Yet none had ever caused Mrs

Goole the slightest uneasiness and as far as she was concerned they might all have been

glued into their small-clothes. Her husband perceived her want of total conviction and

went on, 'No, but I mean he goes beyond all measure: he is a rake, a whoremonger, a sad

fellow. When we were midshipmen together in the Resolution, on the Cape station, he hid

a black girl called Sally in the cable tiers - used to carry her most of his dinner - cried like a

bull-calf when she was discovered and put over the side. The captain turned him before

the mast: disrated him and turned him before the mast as a common seaman. But

perhaps that was partly because of the tripe, too.'

'The tripe, my dear?'

'Yes. He stole most of the captain's dish of tripe by means of a system of hooks and

tackles. We were on precious short commons in our mess, and the girl needed some too -

famous tripe it was, famous tripe:

I remember it now. So he was turned before the mast for the rest of the commission to

learn him morals, and that is why I am senior to him. But it did not answer:

presently he was at it again, in the Mediterranean this time, debauching a post-captain's

wife when he was only a lieutenant, or a commander at the best.'

'Perhaps he has grown wiser with age and increasing

responsibility,' suggested Mrs Goole. 'He is married now, I believe. I met a Mrs Aubrey at

Lady Hood's, a very elegant, well-bred woman with a fine family of children.'

'Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,' cried Goole. 'The very last thing I heard of him was that he

was careering about Valletta with a red-haired Italian woman. No, no, the leopard don't

change his spots. Besides, his father is that mad rakish General Aubrey, the radical

member that is always abusing the ministry, and this fellow is his father's son - he was

always rash and foolhardy. And now he is going to dismast himself. Sec how he cracks

on! He will certainly run straight on to the Needham's Point reef. He cannot possibly avoid

it.'

This seemed to be the general opinion aboard the flagship, and talk died away entirely, to

revive some minutes later in laughter and applause as the Surprise, racing towards

destruction under a great spread of canvas, put her helm alee, hauled on an unseen

spring leading from her larboard cathead to the towline, and spun about like a cutter.

'I have not seen that caper since I was a boy,' said the Admiral, thumping the rail with

pleasure. 'Very prettily done. Though you have to be damned sure of your ship and your

men to venture upon it, by God. Determined fellow: now he will come in easily on this leg.

I am sure he is bringing a prize. Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead? Good

afternoon to you, ma'am,' - this to Mrs Goole, whose husband had abandoned her for a

hundred fathoms of decayed cablet - 'Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead?

Richardson will explain it to you,' he said, making his rheumatic way down the steps to the

quarterdeck.

'Well, ma'am,' said Richardson with a shy, particularly winning smile, 'it was not altogether

unlike clubhauling, with the inertia of the tow taking the place of the pull of the Ice-anchor .

. .'

The manoeuvre was particularly appreciated by the

watch below, plying spyglasses at the open gunports, and as the Surprise ran in on her

last leg they exchanged tales about her - her extraordinary speed if handled right and her

awkwardness if handled wrong - and about her present skipper. For with all his faults Jack

Aubrey was one of the better-known fighting captains, and although few of the men had

been shipmates with him many had friends who had been engaged in one or another of

his actions. William Harris's cousin had served with him in his first and perhaps most

spectacular battle, when, commanding a squat little fourteen-gun sloop, he boarded and

took the Spanish Cacafuego of thirty-two, and now Harris told the tale again, with even

greater relish than usual, the captain in question being visible to them all, a yellow-haired

figure, tall and clear on his quarterdeck, just abaft the wheel.

'There's my brother Barret,' said Robert Bonden, sail-maker's mate, at another gunport.

'Has been Captain Aubrey's coxswain this many a year. Thinks the world of him, though

uncommon taut, and no women allowed.'

'There's Joe Noakes, bringing the red-hot poker for the salute,' said a coal-black seaman,

having grasped the spyglass. 'He owes me two dollars and an almost new shore-going

Jersey shirt, embroidered with the letter P.'

The smoke of the frigate's last saluting gun had hardly died away before her captain's gig

splashed down and began pulling for the flagship in fine style. But half way across the

roadstead the gig met the flotilla of bumboats bringing sixpenny whores out to the

Surprise: it was a usual though not invariable practice - one that most captains liked on

the grounds that it pleased the hands and kept them from sodomy, though others forbade

it as bringing the pox and great quantities of illicit spirits aboard, which meant an endless

sick-list, fighting, and drunken crime. Jack Aubrey was one of these. In general he loved

tradition, but he thought discipline suffered too much from

wholesale whoredom on board; and although he took no

high moral stand on the matter he thoroughly disliked the

sight of the brawling promiscuity of the lower deck of a newly-anchored man-of-war with

some hundreds of men and women copulating, some in more or less screened

hammocks, some in corners or behind guns, but most quite openly asprawl. His strong

voice could now be heard, coming against the breeze, and the Irresistibles grinned.

'He's telling the bumboats to go and - themselves,' said Harris.

'Yes, but it's cruel hard for a young foremast jack as has been longing for it watch after

watch,' observed Bonden, a goatish man, quite unlike his brother.

'Never you fret your heart about the young foremast jack, Bob Bonden,' said Harris. 'He

will get what he wants as soon as he goes ashore. And at any rate he knew he was

shipping with a taut skipper.'

'The taut skipper is going to get a surprise,' said Reuben Wilks, the lady of the gunroom,

and he laughed, deeply though kindly amused.

'Along of the black parson?' said Bonden.

'The black parson will bring him up with a round turn, ha, ha,' said Wilks; and another man

said 'Well, well, we are all human,' in the same tolerant, amiable tone. 'We all have our

little misfortunes.'

'So that is Captain Aubrey,' said Mrs Goole, looking across the water. 'I had no idea he

was so big. Pray, Mr Richardson, why is he calling out? Why is he sending the boats

back?' The lady's parents had only recently married her to Captain Goole; they had told

her that she would have a pension of ninety pounds a year if he was knocked on the head,

but otherwise she knew very little about the Navy; and, having come out to the West

Indies in a merchantman, nothing at all about this naval custom,, for merchantmen had no

time for such extravagances.

'Why, ma'am,' said Richardson, with a blush, 'because they arc filled with - how shall I put

it? With ladies of pleasure.'

'But there are hundreds of them.'

'Yes, ma'am. There are usually one or two for every man.'

'Dear me,' said Mrs Goole, considering. 'And SO Captain Aubrey disapproves of them. Is

he very rigid and severe?'

'Well, he thinks they arc had for discipline; and he disapproves of them for the

midshipmen, particularly for the squcakers - I mean the little fellows.'

'Do you mean that these - that these creatures could he allowed to corrupt mere boys?'

cried Mrs Goole. 'Boys that their families have placed under the captain's particular care?'

'I believe it sometimes happens, ma'am,' said Richardson; and when Mrs Goole said 'I am

sure Captain Goole would never allow it,' he returned no more than a civil, non-committal

bow.

'So that is the fire-eating Captain Aubrey,' said Mr Waters, the flagship's surgeon, standing

at the lee-rail of the quarterdeck with the Admiral's secretary. 'Well, I am glad to have seen

him. But to tell you the truth I had rather see his medico.'

'Dr Maturin?'

'Yes, sir. Dr Stephen Maturin, whose book on the diseases of seamen I showed you. I

have a case that troubles me exceedingly, and I should like his opinion. You do not see

him in the boat, I suppose?'

'I am not acquainted with the gentleman,' said Mr Stone, 'but I know he is much given to

natural philosophy, and conceivably that is he, leaning over the back of the boat, with his

face almost touching the water. I too should like to meet him.'

They both levelled their glasses, focusing them upon a small spare man on the far side of

the coxswain. He had been called to order by his captain and now he was sitting up,

settling his scrub wig on his head. He wore a plain blue coat, and as he glanced at the

flagship before putting on his blue spectacles they noticed his curiously pale eyes. They

both stared intently, the surgeon because he had a tumour

in the side of his belly and because he most passionately longed for someone to tell him

authoritatively that it was not malignant. Dr Maturin would answer perfectly: he was a

physician with a high professional reputation, a man who preferred a life at sea, with all

the possibilities it offered to a naturalist, to a lucrative practice in London or Dublin -or

Barcelona, for that matter, since he was Catalan on his mother's side. Mr Stone was not

so personally concerned, but even so he too studied Dr Maturin with close attention:

as the Admiral's secretary he attended to all the squadron's confidential business, and he

was aware that Dr Maturin was also an intelligence agent, though on a grander scale.

Stone's work was mainly confined to the detection and frustration of small local betrayals

and evasions of the laws against trading with the enemy, but it had brought him

acquainted with members of other organizations having to do with secret service, not all of

them discreet, and from these he gathered that some kind of silent, hidden war was slowly

reaching its-climax in Whitehall, that Sir Joseph Blain, the head of naval intelligence, and

his chief supporters, among whom Maturin might be numbered, were soon to overcome

their unnamed opponents or be overcome by them. Stone loved intelligence work;- he

very much hoped to become a full member of one of the many bodies, naval, military and

political, that operated behind the scenes with what secrecy they could manage in spite of

the indiscretion, not to say the incurable loquacity of certain colleagues; and he therefore

stared with intense curiosity at a man who was, according to his fragmentary, imprecise

information, one of the Admiralty's most valued agents - stared until the quarterdeck filled

with ceremonial Marines and the sound of bosun's pipes and the first lieutenant said

'Come, gentlemen, if you please. We must receive the Captain of Surprise.'

'The Captain of Surprise, sir, if you please,' said the secretary at the cabin door.

'Aubrey, I am delighted to see you,' cried the Admiral,

striking a last chord and holding out his hand. 'Sit down and tell me how you have been

doing. But first, what is that ship you arc towing?'

'One of our whalers, sir, the William Enderby of London, recaptured off Bàhia. She rolled

her masts out in a dead calm just north of the line, she being so deep-laden and the swell

so uncommon heavy.'

'Recaptured, so a lawful prize. And deep-laden, eh?'

'Yes, sir. The Americans put the catch of three other ships into her, burnt them and sent

her home alone. The master of Surprise, who was a whaler in his time, reckons her at

ninety-seven thousand dollars. A sad time we have had with her, both of us being so

precious short of stores. We did rig jury-masts made out of various bits and pieces and

made fast with our shoe-strings, but she lost them in last Sunday's blow.'

'Never mind,' said the Admiral, 'you have brought her in, and that is the main thing. Ninety-

seven thousand dollars, ha, ha! You shall have everything you need in the way of stores: I

shall give particular orders myself. Now give me some account of your voyage. Just the

essentials to begin with.'

'Very good, sir. I was unable to come up with the Norfolk in the Atlantic as I had hoped,

but south of Falkland's Islands I did at least recapture the packet she had taken, the

Danaë-. . .'

'I know you did. Your volunteer commander - what was his name?'

'Pullings, sir. Thomas Pullings.'

'Yes, Captain Pullings - brought her in for wood and water before carrying her home. He

was in Plymouth before the end of the month - having been chased like smoke and oakum

for three days and nights by a heavy privateer - an amazing rapid passage. But tell me,

Aubrey, I heard there were two chests of gold aboard that packet, each as much as two

men could lift. I suppose you did not recapture them too?'

'Oh dear me no, sir. The Americans had transferred every last penny to the Norfolk within

an hour of taking her. We did recover some confidential papers, however.'

At this point there was a silence, a silence that Captain Aubrey found exceedingly

disagreeable. An untoward fall, the bursting open of a hidden brass box, had shown him

that these papers were in fact money, a perfectly enormous sum of money, though in a

less obvious form than coin; but this was unofficial knowledge, acquired only by accident,

in his capacity as Maturin's friend, not his captain; and the real custodian of it was

Stephen, whose superiors in the intelligence service had told him where to find the box

and what to do with it. They had not told him why it was there, but no very great

penetration was required to see that a sum of such extraordinary magnitude, in such an

anonymous and negotiable form, must be intended for the subversion of a government at

least. It was clearly something that Captain Aubrey could not speak about openly except

in the improbable event of the Admiral's having been informed and of his giving a lead; but

Jack hated this concealment - there was something sly, shifty and mean about it, together

with an edge of very dangerous dishonesty - and he found the silence more and more

oppressive until he saw that in fact it was caused by Sir William's private conversion of

ninety-seven thousand dollars into pounds and his division of the answer by twelve:

this with a piece of black pencil on the corner of a dispatch. 'Forgive me for a moment,'

said the Admiral, looking up from his sum with a cheerful face. 'I must pump ship.'

The Admiral vanished into the quarter-gallery, and as Jack Aubrey waited he recalled the

conversation he had had with Stephen while the Surprise was running

in. By nature and profession Stephen was exceedingly close; they had never spoken

about these bonds, obligations, bank-notes and so on until it became obvious that Jack

would be summoned aboard the flagship in the next few hours, but then in the privacy of

the

frigate's stern-gallery, he said, 'Everyone has heard the couplet

in vain may heroes fight and patriots rave If secret gold sap On from knave to knave

but how many know how it goes on?'

'Not I, for one,' said Jack, laughing heartily.

'Will I tell you, so?'

'Pray do,' said Jack.

Stephen held up a watch-bill by way of symbol, and with a significant look he continued,

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 11 - The Reverse of the Medal

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