'Certainly,' said an astronomer, 'but, my dear sir and colleague, we are men of science, not of war.'
'Just so,' said Captain Aubrey, 'but as scientists you are accurate observers: you will very soon make out whether the battle is won or lost; and the first of my two requests is that you will send the result, either way, to the Admiralty with the utmost dispatch. And as scientists you will understand the importance of my second: our brother, Stephen Maturin, has left all his collections at our inn in Valparaiso. I, and this ship, have incurred the enmity of the local authorities: I dare not let him go ashore. You under the aegis of the Royal Society may do so without fear: you may sup agreeably at the Antigua Sevilla, gather his belongings, and so join Surprise and her tender, the schooner Ringle, just a mile off the harbour at midnight.'
Chapter Ten
It was a strikingly beautiful morning in November: but a November morning some twelve degrees south of the equator has few associations with Guy Fawkes or bonfires. The dear topgallant breeze had chased away any hint of mist the night might have left and this was a light-filled day with a deep blue sky from horizon to horizon—a transparent air that allowed small details to be seen a great way off, and although when the sun reached his zenith—the exact height to be measured by every soul aboard who could command a sextant, quadrant or backstaff—his warmth might be troublesome, but euphroes were already at hand for the awnings that would moderate his zeal, and while the bosun and his mates were laying out the intricacies of their lines, fore and aft, Jack Aubrey stood leaning on the elegant taffrail of the Surprise, gazing somewhat eastward of her wash at the boat pulling towards her from the vessel registered as Isaac Newton but universally called the Lisbon packet, that having been her vocation before her owner (as unlucky in cards as he was in love) sold her to a penurious entomologist who, having inherited a prodigious fortune, indulged himself and his colleagues of the Royal Society in an equally prodigious voyage. One of the friends sailing with him, the foremost European authority on voles, was also in holy orders: and this being Sunday he was coming aboard the frigate to officiate and perhaps to read a sermon.
'He will not be disappointed,' observed her captain, having glanced forward and aloft at the snowy canvas, in charming contrast with her yards, gleaming with Mr Harding's blacking—though to be sure the sails were somewhat given to flapping now that Surprise had started her sheets to allow the boat to catch up. But the person to whom the remark was addressed gave no more than a brutish grunt, clapped his telescope to, and said, 'He is only an aberrant frigate-bird. Those curious marks were certainly the excrement of some companion.'
Jack was on the edge of a witty reply, but before he could both formulate and utter it the boat was alongside: the guest had to be received with due ceremony and led below to drink a glass of sherry and to put on the rolled-up surplice that was handed up after him. Yet since the Reverend Mr Hare had by now been afloat for so many thousand miles it was reasonable to suppose that he might like to have some of the new-rigged Surprise's perfections pointed out: but Jack might as well have addressed his words to a vole, for Hare was as insensible to the blacking as he was to the unusual cut of the flying jib. In fact he quite dreaded reading his sermon, and once below he gulped down his sherry and looked wistfully at the decanter.
However, when he came on deck again into the presence of the scrubbed, new-shaven, neatly-clad ship's company with their officers sweating in formal broadcloth under the torrid sun, the familiar cry of 'Jews and Roman Catholics fall out' comforted him and he walked with an assured, sea-manlike step to the small-arms chest that served as a lectern. The Jews and Roman Catholics did not in fact fall out any more than the various kinds of Muslim, the Orthodox Christians, or the plain wicked heathens. The congregation looked grave, and even blank; but they grew more cheerful when Mr Hare (an aspiring author) began his hesitant reading of a neighbour's sermon based upon a text from Job: 'Oh that my words were now written, oh that they were printed in a book'. Then came some familiar hymns, in which Poll Skeeping and Maggie Tyler, who knew the words, distinguished themselves, and a psalm, which Awkward Davies sang in a strikingly true basso profundo.
Mr Hare dined in the cabin with the Captain, of course, the first lieutenant and the surgeon, dined remarkably well, Valparaiso's victuals and livestock still being plentiful, and the chief supplier having thrown in a score of prime guinea-pigs by way of compliment, while the exceptionally good Chilean wine positively encouraged excess. Not that Parson Hare needed any encouragement in his heartfelt relief at having delivered his sermon without a single blunder: indeed, it could not truthfully be said that the wine was his undoing—the blame for that, if one is to censure unsteady gait and a certain garrulity, must be ascribed to the United States' rum, some bottles of which had survived the wicked cold and the even more wicked seas off the Horn. Jack Aubrey was not much given to censure, apart from instances of poor seamanship, being too conscious of his own faults in that direction (more than once he had been obliged to be wheeled aboard in a barrow), but when it was time for leave-taking he said that he and Stephen would see their guest home, not only to greet their fellow-members of the Royal Society but also to view the packet, and to ask her master about her behaviour under various combinations of sail in given winds.
It was too reasonable to be refused, and when the Surprise was heaved to so that the Isaac Newton could come closer, all three went on deck. The frigate's hands had been particularly gratified by the presence, the temporary presence, of an undoubtedly certificated parson, an admirable preacher, and as he took his seat in the bosun's chair, a kindly device that would raise him from the deck, swing him out over the side and so lower him into the boat without any exertion or ability on his own part, a disorganised cheer arose, gaining in unity and volume as the barge pulled over to the packet, where Hare's shipmates, aware of his weakness, had already rigged another chair to bring him aboard.
'What an obliging fellow your master is,' said Jack, coming back into Dobson's cabin after his inspection of Isaac Newton. 'He answered all my questions like a right seaman—he has in fact sailed with several friends of mine, renowned as taut captains—and he told me many interesting things about Magellan's Strait, too. What is more he said that you had spoken a barquentine which had touched at Callao, where there were two other fair-sized merchantmen, one from Boston, the other belonging to Liverpool, as well as the Esmeralda, moored over on the man-of-war's side. Now that brings me to the favour I have to ask of you.'
'I should be very glad to hear it,' said Dobson, looking at him earnestly.
'It is my intention to stand into Callao, wind and weather permitting, fairly late in the evening of tomorrow or the next, and then endeavour to cut her out. We shall enter not disguised but with a peaceable, mercantile appearance, carry her by boarding in the dark and if possible carry her out. I shall take all the hands Ringle can spare, but leave her enough to bring the outcome to you, lying off the port: she will also bring out a written account, a dispatch, and you would oblige me extremely by confiding it to your friends bound for England, begging them to deliver it to the Admiralty.'
'I shall certainly do that, and I am sure I can answer for my friends. Crossing the isthmus to the Atlantic coast in only a moderate day's ride, and I know they can expect no less than three ships ready to sail to the Pool of London.'
'God give them a good wind, and us a happy dispatch.'
'Amen, amen, amen.'
'For if it is even moderately happy, I should very much like my superiors to have it before they have completed the new South African squadron.'
Most ships have a Killick or two aboard, but naval history records none with a more intense, persistent curiosity and want of scruple in employing his talents—so long as he was the only soul in the ship's company to know what the authorities, above all his captain, meant to do, the means were of no consequence; and they ranged, of course, from listening behind doors to the reading, lips in motion, of obviously extremely private
letters. But this time he was disappointed; and if he had so low and false an opinion of his lower-deck shipmates, a seasoned band of fighting seamen, as to suppose them ignorant of the destination of the iron balls they had spent hours upon, chipping the iron off them and restoring their perfectly spherical appearance and thus their power to fly straight, then he deserved to be.
On Wednesday evening, the Surprise, looking as much like a merchantman as she decently could without culpable falsity, sailed into Callao with little abroad but her topsails and a jib, leaving Isaac Newton hull-down in the west and Ringle about a mile off the coast, there to wait for a signal, though most of her able hands had already been drafted to help serve the frigate's guns.
With no appearance of haste, therefore, they glided in just before the top of the tide, her very young master steering her into battle according to naval custom.
'Lay me for her larboard broadside, Mr Hanson,' said Jack. 'And then bring her up when we are beam to beam.'
Already the Surprise's larboard watch were preparing the boats for launching: they were equipped with cutlasses, pistols and sometimes, as in Davies' case, with a terrible boarding-axe. Gently the frigate began her left-hand turn. The captains of the starboard guns kept them on their target with iron levers until Jack, taking the distance and the angle to be just so, gave the order 'From forward aft, fire as they bear'. And to Hanson, 'Back the fore and main topsails.'
After the first three unanswered, murderous broadsides they hammered one another with shocking speed and ferocity, the Esmeralda replying very nearly shot for shot at first. But then, before the way was off her, Jack gave the order to fill the sails and put the helm hard over, bringing the fresh gun-crews into the most violent action. The Peruvians' rate of fire diminished, as well it might with four of her twelve-pounders dismounted.
For nearly two minutes she was silent, for a shocking accident in the magazine meant that the guns could not be reloaded. Almost at the beginning of this ghastly pause Jack cried 'Boarders away', and leapt down into his barge. The larboard boats came round and up the Peruvian's side as Jack's band made their way on to her deck, Awkward Davies uttering his horrifying roar.
The Peruvians were now attacked before and behind, and although they rallied again and again they were not used to this kind of battle, whereas the Surprises were: and use makes master. Gradually the most part of the Esmeraldas were forced to escape below. But now the light was fading fast and now the inexplicably silent artillery in the fortress guarding the naval port opened fire, each heavy gun shooting out a great tongue of flame.
Jack's uniform had necessarily caught the Peruvian officers' attention and for some time—as far as time can be reckoned in such encounters—he had been extremely busy. Yet even so his eye, the practised eye of a predator, had caught the hoists of coloured lights rising to the mast-heads of the two merchantmen in the harbour—position lights, obviously agreed upon beforehand.
He backed out of the fray and roared for his coxswain. 'Take any of the bargemen and any boat and pull like fury back to the ship. Tell Mr Whewell from me to hoist coloured lights instantly and move the ship about. Cut along.' He raced back into the dense mob fighting two and three deep, fighting all round the main hatchway and a pistol bullet struck him in the left shoulder at very close range, knocking him flat, while a dark-faced man with a fixed devilish grin passed a sword clean through his thigh.
The next moment Dark Face was utterly destroyed by a blow from Awkward Davies, an appalling blow: young Hanson, unhurt so far, stood over Jack until he could pluck out the sword and the two dragged him back to the Peruvian's shattered side. There, although for the moment he was unable to move he saw with satisfaction that the gunners up there were now confused, firing at everything. He also saw with great relief but no very great surprise that the only Peruvians who had not gone below were now surrendering. He called to a group of Ringles he knew well and told them to stand by to unmoor. They stared at him with the wild, half-mad look of men who were or who just had been fighting to the death; and he hailed one of them. 'Mr Lewis, get these men to stand by to unmoor. And if you can lend me a cravat or a large handkerchief to tie up my leg I should be obliged.'
But now some of the forward gunners there, gathering his intention, redoubled their fire. Fortunately it was not very accurate, and some were still concentrating on the Boston and Liverpool ships. Even so, if the Esmeralda were to be cut out at all, it would have to be done quickly. Helped by a seaman called Simon he got to his feet and staggered to the starboard bow and the mooring: the frigate was very strangely made fast to the mole by a cable, a remarkably stout cable. He bawled 'All hands to loose topsails', fell forward and saw young Hanson, with an absurdly curved but obviously very sharp scimitar cutting away at the enormous rope while Davies levered it taut with a gunner's handspike. Hack, hack, a deep breath and a third blow with all his strength. The cable parted, and the ship, feeling the growing force of the ebb, swung free and moved a little way from the mole.
Joy and even a certain strength flooded into Jack's being. 'Hands loose topsails,' he cried. 'All hands there.' Then hoarsely, 'Thank you, Horatio: you are a very good fellow. Now take her out, will you?'
Take her out he did, the ship being hit once or twice but not seriously: out beyond the sheltering mole and into the darkness; and Jack felt a charming ease rise through the pain of his wounds, a pain that did not die away until he lost consciousness as they handed him down into his own sick-bay.
He was aroused not by the piping of All Hands just before eight bells in the middle watch, nor by the bosun's mates bawling 'Starboard watch ahoy! Rise and shine: rouse out there! Starboard watch oh!', nor by the dread sound of eight bells, nor yet by the noises of cleaning the decks with water, sand, and holystones, then swabbing them dry. What woke him from an unimagined depth of sleep was Stephen's whispered explanation of the mangled state of his shoulder: 'The bullet struck the buckle of his sword-belt, do you see, flattening both metal and leather entirely, but leaving the bone intact.'
'I see the crown deeply imprinted in his flesh. Yes, indeed. Surely he is beyond all reason fortunate, when you consider that his thigh was also transpierced without a single important artery being severed,' replied Jacob.
'Gentlemen, a very good morning to you,' said Jack out of the immense happiness that was welling in his full consciousness. 'Is Esmeralda under our lee? Have we made a decent offing?'
Somewhat taken aback, they said that she was; and that the shore could not be seen.
'Give you joy,' said Jack. He vented his own, a bubbling exaltation, in a croak of laughter, and said, 'Pray give me something to drink: I am horribly dry.' Stephen held a jug to his lips and he drank like a thirsty horse.
They looked at him with a certain disapproval, and both felt his pulse. 'It is scarcely reasonable,' said Jacob, aside. 'But then he always was a full-blooded man.' And much louder, 'Give you joy of your victory, sir: give you joy.'
'God bless you, my dear,' said Stephen, gently shaking his hand. 'It was a noble feat. But tell me, Jack, do you feel much pain?'
'Not lying on my back: not to stop me sleeping—Lord, how I slept! Now I am aware of my shoulder, and the bandage on my leg is a trifle tight. But God help us, after such a thrust it ain't surprising. Tell me, could I be fed? Just a little thin gruel, if you like, but something to set me in train: I have a most important letter to write.'
'Fed?' they cried automatically; but then Stephen, who had known Jack's iron constitution for many years, said, 'Thin gruel will not set you a-going. An egg, beaten up with milk, should make a splendid dispatch.'
'Lord, how well that went down,' said Jack some minutes later. 'Killick, pass the word for Mr Harding.'
'Which he is aboard the prize, sir,' said Killick, exulting. 'But we will hail her.'
'Of course you will. Stephen, pray heave me up. I cannot dictate an official letter lying flat on my back. You have already washed my face, I find. Thank you. Killick, there: pass the w
ord for Mr Adams.' And when his clerk came in, 'Mr Adams, a good morning to you. I am about to write an official letter, so let us have excellent paper, excellent pens, and right black ink—Mr Harding, there you are.'
'I will take my leave,' said Jacob. 'Once again, sir, many, many congratulations.'
'Thank you very much—Stephen, pray do not stir. Mr Harding, a very good morning to you. How does Esmeralda swim?'
'Like a swan, sir: very easy indeed.'
'Not much damage?'
'Well, her larboard upper works are tolerably battered, her mizzen shot half through just under the top and I have had to strike three guns down into the hold: and I am afraid the fore part of her magazine is a wreck. But she is dry—no damage beneath the water-line—and with single-reefed courses and topsails she goes along very well.'
'I am very happy to hear it. Now I have to write the official letter, so please let me have the butcher's bill for both sides and the usual details. You are happy to sail her to Valparaiso, I take it?'
'Oh Lord, yes: and all the way home, with some moderate patching, if you choose. But I am afraid their losses, with that dam—that horrible explosion in the magazine, were very heavy. Yet the officers are a decent lot: most of them wounded, and very grateful to Dr Jacob for his care. And the hands are much the same now: their bosun and the carpenter's mate—the carpenter himself was killed—have done what can be done to her mizzen until she can go alongside a sheer-hulk. Our losses were fairly light; but there were some good seamen who will be sadly missed. I thought you would need it, sir, so I have scribbled an exact list on our side, and just approximate numbers on theirs: though I did put their captain's name.'
'Thank you very much, Mr Harding. I shall get my letter off as soon as I can, to Panama with the packet and so straight to London. Is there anyone you would particularly wish to be mentioned?'