O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 02 - Post Captain

VIP免费

2024-12-05 0 0 1.61MB 313 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian

CHAPTER ONE

At first dawn the swathes of rain drifting eastwards across the Channel parted long

enough to show that the chase had altered course. The Charwell had been in her wake

most of the night, running seven knots in spite of her foul bottom, and now they were not

much above a mile and a half apart. The ship ahead was turning, turning, coming up into

the wind; and the silence along the frigate's decks took on a new quality as every man

aboard saw her two rows of gun-ports come into view. This was the first clear sight they

had had of her since the look-out hailed the deck in the growing darkness to report a ship

hull-down on the horizon, one point on the larboard bow. She was then steering north-

north-east, and it was the general opinion aboard the Charwell that she was either one of

a scattered French convoy or an American blockade-runner hoping to reach Brest under

cover of the moonless night.

Two minutes after that first hail the Charwell set her fore and main topgallants - no great

spread of canvas, but then the frigate had had a long, wearing voyage from the West

Indies: nine weeks out of sight of land, the equinoctial gales to strain her tired rigging to

the breaking-point, three days of lying-to in the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and it was

understandable that Captain Griffiths should wish to husband her a little. No cloud of sail,

but even so she fetched the stranger's wake within a couple of hours, and at four bells in

the morning watch the Charwell cleared for action. The drum beat to quarters, the

hammocks came racing up, piling into the nettings to form bulwarks, the guns were run

out; and the warm, pink, sleepy watch below had been standing to them in the cold rain

ever since - an hour and more to chill them to the bone.

Now in the silence of this discovery one of the crew of a gun in the waist could be heard

explaining to a weak-eyed staring little man beside him, 'She's a French two-decker, mate.

A seventy-four or an eighty: we've caught a tartar, mate.'

'Silence there, God damn you,' cried Captain Griffiths. 'Mr Quarles, take that man's name.'

Then the grey rain closed in. But at present everyone on the crowded quarterdeck knew

what lay behind that drifting, formless veil: a French ship of the line, with both her rows of

gun-ports open. And there was not one who had missed the slight movement of the yard

that meant she was about to lay her foresail to the mast, heave to and wait for them.

The Charwell was a 32-gun 12-pounder frigate, and if she got close enough to use the

squat carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle as well as her long guns she could

throw a broadside weight of metal of 238 pounds. A French line-of-battle ship could not

throw less than 960. No question of a match, therefore, and no discredit in bearing up and

running for it, but for the fact that somewhere in the dim sea behind them there was their

consort, the powerful 38-gun 18-pounder Dee. She had lost a topmast in the last blow,

which slowed her down, but she had been well in sight at nightfall, and she had responded

to Captain Griffiths's signal to chase: for Captain Griffiths was the senior captain. The two

frigates would still be heavily outgunned by the ship of the line, but there was no doubt

that they could take her on: she would certainly try to keep her broadside to one of the

frigates and maul her terribly, but the other could lie on her bow or her stern and rake her -

a murderous fire right along the length of her decks to which she could make almost no

reply. It could be done: it had been done. In '97, for example, the Indefatigable and the

Amazon had destroyed a French seventy-four. But then the Indefatigable and the Amazon

carried eighty long guns between them, and the Droits de

l'Homme had not been able to open her lower-deck ports

- the sea was running too high. There was no more than

a moderate swell now; and to engage the stranger the

Charwell would have to cut her off from Brest and fight

her for - for how long?

'Mr - Mr Howell,' said the captain. 'Take a glass to the masthead and see what you can

make of the Dee.'

The long-legged midshipman was half-way to the mizentop before the captain had

finished speaking, and his 'Aye-aye, sir' came down through the sloping rain. A black

squall swept across the ship, pelting down so thick that for a while the men on the

quarterdeck could scarcely see the forecastle, and the water ran spouting from the lee-

scuppers. Then it was gone, and in the pale gleam of day that followed there came the

hail. 'On deck, sir. She's hull-up on the leeward beam. She's fished her. .

'Report,' said the captain, in a loud, toneless voice. 'Pass the word for Mr Barr.'

The third lieutenant came hurrying aft from his station. The wind took his rain-soaked

cloak as he stepped on to the quarterdeck, and he made a convulsive gesture, one hand

going towards the flapping cloth and the other towards his hat.

'Take it off, sir,' cried Captain Griffiths, flushing dark red. 'Take it right off your head. You

know Lord St Vincent's order - you have all of you read it - you know how to salute. . . 'He

snapped his mouth shut; and after a moment he said, 'When does the tide turn?'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Barr. 'At ten minutes after eight o'clock, sir. It is almost the

end of slack-water now, sir, if you please.'

The captain grunted, and said, 'Mr Howell?'

'She has fished her main topmast, sir,' said the midshipman, standing bareheaded, tall

above his captain. 'And has just hauled to the wind.'

The captain levelled his glass at the Dee, whose topgallant-sails were now clear above

the jagged edge of the

sea: her top-sails too, when the swell raised both the frigates high. He wiped the

streaming objective-glass, stared again, swung round to look at the Frenchman, snapped

the telescope shut and gazed back at the distant frigate. He was alone there, leaning on

the rail, alone there on the holy starboard side of the quarterdeck; and from time to time,

when they were not looking at the Frenchman or the Dee, the officers glanced thoughtfully

at his back.

The situation was still fluid; it was more a potentiality than a situation. But any decision

now would crystallize it, and the moment it began to take shape all the succeeding events

would follow of themselves, moving at first with slow inevitability and then faster and

faster, never to be undone. And a decision must be made, made quickly -at the Charwell's

present rate of sailing they would be within range of the two-decker in less than ten

minutes. Yet there were so many factors . . . The Dee was no great sailer close-hauled on

a wind; and the turning tide would hold her back - it was right across her course; she might

have to make another tack. In half an hour the French 36-pounders could rip the guts out

of the Charwell, dismast her and carry her into Brest - the wind stood fair for Brest. Why

had they seen not a single ship of the blockading squadron? They could not have been

blown off, not with this wind. It was damned odd. Everything was damned odd, from this

Frenchman's conduct onwards. The sound of gunfire would bring the squadron up. . .

Delaying tactics.

The feeling of those eyes on his back filled Captain Griffiths with rage. An unusual number

of eyes, for the Charwell had several officers and a couple of civilians as passengers, one

set from Gibraltar and another from Port of Spain. The fire-eating General Paget was one

of them, an influential man; and another was Captain Aubrey, Lucky Jack Aubrey, who

had set about a Spanish 36-gun xebec-frigate not long ago with the Sophie, a 14-gun brig,

and had taken her. The Cacafuego. It had been the talk of

the fleet some months back; and it made the decision no less difficult.

Captain Aubrey was standing by the aftermost larboard carronade, with a completely

abstracted, non-committal look upon his face. From that place, being tall, he could see the

whole situation, the rapidly, smoothly changing triangle of three ships; and close beside

him stood two shorter figures, the one Dr Maturin, formerly his surgeon in the Sophie, and

the other a man in black - black clothes, black hat and a streaming black cloak - who

might have had intelligence agent written on his narrow forehead. Or just the word spy,

there being so little room. They were talking in a language thought by some to be Latin.

They were talking eagerly, and Jack Aubrey, intercepting a furious glance across the

deck, leant down to whisper in his friend's ear, 'Stephen, will you not go below? They will

be wanting you in the cockpit any moment now.'

Captain Griffiths turned from the rail, and with laboured calmness he said, 'Mr Berry, make

this signal. I am about to. .

At this moment the ship of the line fired a gun, followed by three blue lights that soared

and burst with a ghostly effulgence in the dawn: before the last dropping trail of sparks

had drifted away downwind she sent up a succession of rockets, a pale, isolated Guy

Fawkes' night far out in the sea.

'What the devil can she mean by that?' thought Jack Aubrey, narrowing his eyes, and the

wondering murmur along the frigate's decks echoed his amazement.

'On deck,' roared the look-out in the foretop, 'there's a cutter pulling from under her lee.'

Captain Griffiths's telescope swivelled round. 'Duck up,' he called, and as the clewlines

plucked at the main and foresails to-give him a clear view he saw the cutter, an English

cutter, sway up its yard, fill, gather speed, and come racing over the grey sea, towards the

frigate.

'Close the cutter,' he said. 'Mr Bowes, give her a gun.'

At last, after all these hours of frozen waiting, there came the quick orders, the careful

laying of the gun, the crash of the twelve-pounder, the swirl of acrid smoke eddying briefly

on the wind, and the cheer of the crew as the ball skipped across the cutter's bows. An

answering cheer from the cutter, a waving of hats, and the two vessels neared one

another at a combined speed of fifteen miles an hour.

The cutter, fast and beautifully handled - certainly a smuggling craft - came to under the

Charwell's lee, lost her way, and lay there as trim as a gull, rising and falling on the swell.

A row of brown, knowing faces grinned up at the frigate's guns.

'I'd press half a dozen prime seamen out of her in the next two minutes,' reflected Jack,

while Captain Griffiths hailed her master over the lane of sea.

'Come aboard,' said Captain Griffiths suspiciously, and after a few moments of backing

and filling, of fending-off and cries of 'Handsomely now, God damn your soul,' the master

came up the stern ladder with a bundle under his arm. He swung easily over the taffrail,

held out his hand and said, 'Wish you joy of the peace, Captain.'

'Peace?' cried Captain Griffiths.

'Yes, sir. I thought I should surprise you. They signed not three days since. There's not a

foreign-going ship has heard yet. I've got the cutter filled with the newspapers, London,

Paris and country towns - all the articles, gentlemen, all the latest details,' he said, looking

round the quarterdeck. 'Half a crown a go.'

There was no disbelieving him. The quarterdeck looked utterly blank. But the whispered

word had flown along the deck from the radiant carronade-crews, and now cheering broke

out on the forecastle. In spite of the captain's automatic 'Take that man's name, Mr

Quarles,' it flowed back to the mainmast and spread throughout the ship, a full-throated

howl of joy - liberty, wives and sweethearts, safety, the delights of land.

And in any case there was little real ferocity in Captain Griffiths's voice: anyone looking

into his close-set eyes would have seen ecstasy in their depths. His occupation was gone,

vanished in a puff of smoke; but now no one on God's earth could ever know what signal

he had been about to make, and in spite of the severe control that he imposed upon his

face there was an unusual urbanity in his tone as he invited his passengers, his first

lieutenant, the officer and the midshipman of the watch to dine with him that afternoon.

'It is charming to see how sensible the men are - how sensible of the blessings of peace,'

said Stephen Maturin to the Reverend Mr Hake, by way of civility.

'Aye. The blessings of peace. Oh, certainly,' said the chaplain, who had no living to retire

to, no private means, and who knew that the Charwell would be paid off as soon as she

reached Portsmouth. He walked deliberately out of the wardroom, to pace the quarterdeck

in a thoughtful silence, leaving Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin alone.

'I thought he would have shown more pleasure,' observed Stephen Maturin.

'It's an odd thing about you, Stephen,' said Jack Aubrey, looking at him with affection. 'You

have been at sea quite some time now, and no one could call you a fool, but you have no

more notion of a sailor's life than a babe unborn. Surely you must have noticed how glum

Quarles and Rodgers and all the rest were at dinner? And how blue everyone has always

looked this war, when there was any danger of peace?'

'I put it down to the anxieties of the night - the long strain, the watchfulness, the lack of

sleep: I must not say the apprehension of danger. Captain Griffiths was in a fine flow of

spirits, however.'

'Oh,' said Jack, closing one eye. 'That was rather different; and in any case he is a post-

captain, of course.

He has his ten shillings a day, and whatever happens he goes up the captains' list as the

old ones die off or get their flag. He's quite old - forty, I dare say, or even more

- but with any luck he'll die an admiral. No. It's the others I'm sorry for, the lieutenants with

their half-pay and very little chance of a ship - none at all of promotion; the poor wretched

midshipmen who have not been made and who never will be made now - no hope of a

commission. And of course, no half-pay at all. It's the merchant service for them, or

blacking shoes outside St James's Park. Haven't you heard the old song? I'll tip you a

stave.' He hummed the tune, and in a discreet rumble he sang.

'Says Jack, "There is very good news, there is peace both by land and by sea;

Great guns no more shall be used, for we all disbanded be,"

Says the Admiral, "That's very bad news;" says the captain, "My heart will break;"

The lieutenant cries, "What shall I do? For I know not what course for to take."

Says the doctor, "I'm a gentleman too, I'm a gentleman of the first rank;

I will go to some country fair, and there I'll set up mountebank."

Ha, ha, that's for you, Stephen - ha, ha, ha -Says the midshipman, "I have no trade; I have

got my trade for to choose,

I will go to St James's Park gate, and there I'll set black of shoes;

And there I will set all day, at everybody's call, And everyone that comes by, 'Do you want

my nice shining balls?'"'

Mr Quarles looked in at the door, recognized the tune

and drew in a sharp breath; but Jack was a guest, a superior officer - a master and

commander, no less, with an epaulette on his shoulder - and he was broad as well as tall.

Mr Quarles let his breath out in a sigh and closed the door.

'I should have sung softer,' said Jack, and drawing his chair closer to the table he went on

in a low voice, 'No, those are the chaps I am sorry for. I'm sorry for myself too, naturally -

no great likelihood of a ship, and of course no enemy to cruise against if I do get one. But

it's nothing in comparison of them. We've had luck with prize-money, and if only it were

not for this infernal delay over making me post I should be perfectly happy to have a six

months' run ashore. Hunting. Hearing some decent music. The opera - we might even go

to Vienna! Eh? What do you say, Stephen? Though I must confess this slowness irks my

heart and soul. However, it's nothing in comparison of them, and I make no doubt it will be

settled directly.' He picked up The Times and ran through the London Gazette, in case he

should have missed his own name in the first three readings. 'Toss me the one on the

locker, will you?' he said, throwing it down. 'The Sussex Courier.'

'This is more like it, Stephen,' he said, five minutes later. 'Mr Savile 'S hounds will meet at

ten o'clock on Wednesday, the sixth of November 1802, at Champflower Cross. I had

such a run with them when I was a boy: my father's regiment was in camp at Rainsford. A

seven-mile point - prodigious fine country if you have a horse that can really go. Or listen

to this: a neat gentleman's residence, standing upon gravel, is to be let by the year, at

moderate terms. Stabling for ten, it says.'

'Are there any rooms?'

'Why, of course there are. It couldn't be called a neat gentleman's residence, without there

were rooms. What a fellow you are, Stephen. Ten bedrooms. By God, there's a lot to be

said for a house, not too far from the sea, in that sort of country.'

'Had you not thought of going to Woolhampton - of going to your father's house?'

'Yes . . . yes. I mean to give him a visit, of course. But there's my new mother-in-law, you

know. And to tell you the truth, I don't think it would exactly answer.' He paused, trying to

remember the name of the person, the classical person, who had had such a trying time

with his father's second wife; for General Aubrey had recently married his dairy-maid, a

fine black-eyed young woman with a moist palm whom Jack knew very well. Actaeon,

Ajax, Aristides? He felt that their cases were much alike and that by naming him he would

give a subtle hint of the position: but the name would not come, and after a while he

reverted to the advertisements. 'There's a great deal to be said for somewhere in the

neighbourhood of Rainsford - three or four packs within reach, London only a day's ride

away, and neat gentlemen's residences by the dozen, all standing upon gravel. You'll go

snacks with me, Stephen? We'll take Bonden, Killick, Lewis and perhaps one or two other

old Sophies, and ask some of the youngsters to come and stay. We'll lay in beer and

skittles

- it will be Fiddler's Green!'

'I should like it of all things,' said Stephen. 'Whatever the advertisements may say, it is a

chalk soil, and there are some very curious plants and beetles on the downs. I am with

child to see a dew-pond.'

Polcary Down and the cold sky over it; a searching air from the north breathing over the

water-meadows, up across the plough, up and up to this great sweep of open turf, the

down, with the covert called Rumbold's Gorse sprawling on the lower edge of it. A score of

red-coated figures dotted round the Gorse, and far away below them on the middle slope

a ploughman standing at the end of his furrow, motionless behind his team of Sussex

oxen, gazing up as Mr Savile's hounds worked

their way through the furze and the brown remnants of the bracken.

Slow work; uncertain, patchy scent; and the foxhunters had plenty of time to drink from

their flasks, blow on their hands, and look out over the landscape below them -the river

winding through its patchwork of fields, the towers or steeples of Hither, Middle, Nether

and Savile Champflower, the six or seven big houses scattered along the valley, the

whale-backed downs one behind the other, and far away the lead-coloured sea.

It was a small field, and almost everyone there knew everyone else: half a dozen farmers,

some private gentlemen from the Champflowers and the outlying parishes, two militia

officers from the dwindling camp at Rainsford, Mr Burton, who had come out in spite of his

streaming cold in the hope of catching a glimpse of Mrs St John, and Dr Vining, with his

hat pinned to his wig and both tied under his chin with a handkerchief. He had been led

astray early in his rounds - he could not resist the sound of the horn - and his conscience

had been troubling him ever since the scent had faded and died. From time to time he

looked over the miles of frigid air between the covert and Mapes Court, where Mrs

Williams was waiting for him. 'There is nothing wrong with her,' he observed. 'My physic

will do no good; but in Christian decency I should call. And indeed I shall, unless they find

again before I can tell a hundred.' He put his finger upon his pulse and began to count. At

ninety he paused, looking about for some reprieve, and on the far side of the covert he

saw a figure he did not know. 'That is the medical man they have been telling me about,

no doubt,' he said. 'It would be the civil thing to go over and say a word to him. A rum-

looking cove. Dear me, a very rum-looking cove.'

The rum-looking cove was sprawling upon a mule, an unusual sight in an English hunting-

field; and quite apart from the mule there was a strange air about him

- his slate-coloured small-clothes, his pale face, his pale

eyes and even paler close-cropped skull (his hat and wig were tied to his saddle), and the

way he bit into a hunk of bread rubbed with garlic. He was calling out in a loud tone to his

companion, in whom Dr Vining recognized the new tenant of Melbury Lodge. 'I tell you

what it is, Jack,' he was saying, 'I tell you what it is. .

'You sir - you on the mule,' cried old Mr Savile's furious voice. 'Will you let the God-

damned dogs get on with their work? Hey? Hey? Is this a God-damned coffee-house? I

appeal to you, is this an infernal debating society?'

Captain Aubrey pursed his lips demurely and pushed his horse over the twenty yards that

separated them. 'Tell me later, Stephen,' he said in a low voice, leading his friend round

the covert out of the master's sight. 'Tell me later, when they have found their fox.'

The demure look did not sit naturally upon Jack Aubrey's face, which in this weather was

as red as his coat, and as soon as they were round the corner, under the lee of a wind-

blown thorn, his usual expectant cheerfulness returned, and he looked eagerly up into the

furze, where an occasional heave and rustle showed the pack in motion.

'Looking for a fox, are they?' said Stephen Maturin, as though hippogriffs were the more

usual quarry in England, and he relapsed into a brown study, munching slowly upon his

bread.

The wind breathed up the long hillside; remote clouds passed evenly across the sky. Now

and then Jack's big hunter brought his ears to bear; this was a recent purchase, a

strongly-built bay, quite up to Jack's sixteen stone. But it did not much care for hunting,

and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a

discontented horse. If the moods that succeeded one another in its head had taken the

form of words they would have run, 'Too heavy - sits too far forward when we go over a

fence - have carried him far enough for one day - shall have him off presently, see if I

don't. I smell

a mare! A mare! Oh!' Its flaring nostrils quivered, and it stamped.

Looking round Jack saw that there were newcomers in the field. A young woman and a

groom came hurrying up the side of the plough, the groom mounted on a cob and the

young woman on a pretty little high-bred chestnut mare. When they reached the post and

rail dividing the field from the down the groom cantered on to open a gate, but the girl set

her horse at the rail and skipped neatly over it, just as a whimpering and then a bellowing

roar inside the covert gave promise of great things.

The noise died away: a young hound came out and stared into the open. Stephen Maturin

moved from behind the close-woven thorn to follow the flight of a falcon overhead, and at

the sight of the mule the chestnut mare began to caper, flashing her white stockings and

tossing her head.

'Get over, you - ,' said the girl, in her pure clear young voice. Jack had never heard a girl

say - before, and he turned to look at her with a particular interest. She was busy coping

with the mare's excitement, but after a moment she caught his eye and frowned. He

looked away, smiling, for she was the prettiest thing - indeed, beautiful, with her

heightened colour and her fine straight back, sitting her horse with the unconscious grace

of a midshipman at the tiller in a lively sea. She had black hair and blue eyes; a certain

ram-you-damn-you air that was slightly comic and more than a little touching in so slim a

creature. She was wearing a shabby blue habit with white cuffs and lapels, like a naval

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

PostCaptainbyPatrickO'BrianCHAPTERONEAtfirstdawntheswathesofraindriftingeastwardsacrosstheChannelpartedlongenoughtoshowthatthechasehadalteredcourse.TheCharwellhadbeeninherwakemostofthenight,runningsevenknotsinspiteofherfoulbottom,andnowtheywerenotmuchaboveamileandahalfapart.Theshipaheadwasturning,tu...

展开>> 收起<<

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 02 - Post Captain.pdf

共313页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 02 - Post Captain

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: