CHAPTER TEN

Captain Aubrey and his officers spent that afternoon going along the Strait in Ringle, very carefully surveying and in places sounding as they went; and at one point, far to the westward, they met two heavy frigates, Acasta and Lavinia, with whom they exchanged numbers: both had obviously suffered much from the weather, and both were still pumping without a pause - strong, thick jets flying to leeward.

Out and along the Strait, the familiar skyline memorized even more firmly, and back in the late afternoon: and speaking privately to Stephen in the cabin, Jack said, 'Now that it belongs to the past, Jacob's piece of intelligence, so whole and perfect, seems to me to be too good to be true.'

'Whole and perfect, to be sure. But I believe it to be true. Jacob and Arden are the only two men in this matter of intelligence for whom I would lay my head on the block.'

'In that case, dear Stephen, I shall shift my clothes, pull across to the flag and either ask for an interview or leave this note.' He passed it and Stephen read Captain Aubrey presents his respectful compliments to Lord Barmouth and on account of very recent intelligence most urgently begs leave to sail this evening: he takes the liberty of adding that his political adviser is wholly of the same mind.

'Very well put, Jack,' he said.

Jack smiled and called, 'Killick. Killick, there. Plain coat, decent breeches; and tell Bonden I shall need the barge directly.'

The barge received him and took him across the smooth water to the flag, where, in reply to the hail, Bonden called 'Surprise'. After the formalities of the reception of a postcaptain Jack said, 'I am sorry to trouble you again, Holden, but I must either see the Admiral or have this note conveyed to him.'

Moments later the flag-lieutenant returned, begged Captain Aubrey to come this way, and brought him to the great cabin, where Lord Barmouth, looking ten years younger, received him with a cordiality he had never known before, though the Admiral had always been known as a temperamental man, moving from one extreme to another. 'As for this note,' said the Commander-in-Chief, 'how happy do you feel about your source of intelligence?'

'Happy enough to stake my life upon it, my Lord,' said Jack. 'And Dr Maturin is of the same opinion.'

'Then you shall certainly go. But Aubrey, I had no idea that you were a childhood friend of my wife's - indeed some sort of a cousin. Acasta came in this afternoon, bringing her at last, in blooming health in spite of the weather - she is a splendid sailor - and as she had a package for Lady Keith we went straight over to their place. They very kindly kept us to dinner - just an impromptu scratch dinner, the four of us - and I do not know how your name arose but it very soon became apparent that both the women had known you ever since you were breeched and even before: they had followed you from ship to ship in the Gazette and the Navy List, and when they put a foot wrong, as in the date of your appointment to Sophie, Lord Keith put them right. In the end it was decided that we should ask the Keiths and you and Dr Maturin - Lord Keith has the highest opinion of him - to dine with us aboard the flag tomorrow. But I fear this request of yours may put it out of your power.'

'I am afraid it does, my Lord; but I am very sensible of your goodness, and I am sure Maturin will say the same.'

The Admiral bent his head, and went on, 'Now as to the request, do you feel entirely confident of your agent's intelligence?'

'Entirely so, my Lord: should commit my ship and myself to the hilt; and Maturin agrees.'

'And the occasion is urgent?'

'It could not be more so, my Lord.'

'You must go, then. But Lady Barmouth and I will be very happy to see you both and the Keiths on your return.' He rang the bell and told his steward to bring the old, old, very old brandy. When it came he filled their glasses and drank 'to Surprise and her success'.

'This is famous brandy, upon my word,' said Jack; and after a pause he went on with a certain embarrassment, 'I never had the honour of serving under Admiral Horton and being very often out of England I never heard either of his marriage or his death.'

'He married Isobel Carrington just after he was given his flag.'

'Isobel Carrington!' cried Jack. 'Of course I should have thought of her when you spoke of Queenie and her. Isobel and Queenie! Lord, those names bring back such delightfully happy memories! I shall very much look forward to paying my respects to Lady Barmouth. And I thank you most heartily for your permission to sail, my Lord.'

The Commander-in-Chief gave him his hand and they parted on better terms than Jack would have believed possible.

Aboard Surprise again, and in ordinary working clothes, he called for the carpenter and said, 'All things considered, Chips, which do you think our fastest, most weatherly boat?'

'Oh, the blue cutter, sir, without a doubt: the blue cutter, with Mr Daniel at the helm. He can coax her an extra halfpoint nearer the wind, and an extra half knot.'

'Very good: pray run an eye over her, and if anything is wanting let Mr Harding know: the gunner will give you some blue and red lights and some star-bursts.' Then directing his voice over the still water he called, 'Ringle: Mr. Reade, we shall be moving out into the Strait very soon, so if you have any women aboard they had better go ashore directly. And when we are well clear of the mole, I should like to have a word with you.'

How easy it seemed, the quiet departure of the two vessels a little after the evening gun: scarcely an order was needed, and scarcely any were uttered: long-practised hands coiled down the familiar ropes, hauled the bowlines as the ship left the mole and made all fast with scarcely a conscious reflection. But Jack did check the customary hoisting of the toplight; and he called for only one single stern-lantern. The Surprises winked at one another and jerked their heads in a very knowing fashion: they were perfectly aware that something was up, and presently they knew just what that something was.

Jack called William Reade to join him and his officers on the quarterdeck. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you are all perfectly aware that this voyage was undertaken in order to discourage Bonaparte at sea: but it also had another side. From the landward point of view Napoleon's supporters in Bosnia, Serbia and those parts believed that if they could prevent the Russian and Austrian armies from joining the British and Prussians, he would be able to defeat each of the Allies separately, piecemeal. For this intervention they had to hire a large number of Balkan Muslim mercenaries: we stopped the Dey of Algiers letting the money pass through his country, but now it is on its way by sea from Morocco in a large galley that means to run through the Straits tonight. According to our intelligence the galley intends to lie under Tarifa until the turn of the tide, and then, the wind being favourable, to run through the Straits. And if the breeze fails him, then to row: they can make seven or even eight knots for a burst. And then again there is the advantage of the eastward current. The captain of the galley, a wellknown, active corsair, has hired two others to act as decoys, one on the African side and one in mid-channel. We shall take no notice of them, but make steadily for Tarifa, Ringle to larboard and Mr Daniel in the blue cutter to starboard, each three cable's lengths abeam of Surprise. The first to sight the galley will send up a blue light if the enemy is to starboard, red if to port, and a star-burst if the galley is right ahead.'

'Blue to starboard, red to larboard, white if right ahead,' they murmured, and Reade went back to his command, while the blue cutter was lowered down.

No moon, but a most splendid wealth of stars - Orion in his glory, great Vega blazing on the larboard quarter and Deneb beyond; a little forward of the beam, both bears and the Pole Star; Arcturus and Spica on the starboard bow: and had the foresail not been in the way, Stephen would have seen Sirius, but he was shown Procyon. Then on the larboard bow Capella, low down but still brilliant, and both Castor and Pollux - 'Castor is a glorious double,' said Jack, pointing them out to Stephen. 'I must show him to you in my telescope when we are at home.' Then raising his voice a little, 'Mr Harding, I believe we may shorten sail a little,' for the faint wafts of vapour - they could scarcely be called cloud - beneath the stars were now some five or even six degrees more southerly than they had been when first he had started pointing them out to Stephen. The breeze was certainly backing, and if it went on at this rate the Surprise would certainly be well to windward of the galley by the time they reached Tarifa. Furthermore, if Jack waited for the turn of the Atlantic tide there was a strong likelihood that the galley would begin her run; and although she could sail half a point nearer the wind than a square-rigged ship, once the corsair was a little way into the Strait, Surprise would even more certainly have the weather-gage and an encounter could not be avoided.

No moon, of course; but the suffused starlight gave a practised eye a fair view of the Spanish skyline - Punta Carnero, Punta Secreta, Punta del Fraile, and Punta Acebuche were all astern: Tarifa was not far off.

'Topsails alone,' said Jack quite low; and some of the way came off the ship.

'Four knots and two fathoms, sir, if you please,' said the midshipman in charge of the log, murmuring low.

There was a steadily mounting sense of crisis aboard, and for some time now the quartermaster had sounded the bells only with his knuckles. Almost no talk or even whispering along the deck, where the guns were already run out and the slow-match smouldered in the tubs.

It was Daniel in the blue cutter who first saw the galley, inshore of him and already under sail, two fine lateens sheeted well in and rounded with the breeze. He sent up a blue light and its lasting effulgence showed the enemy clear, the sea, and its own smoke, still more distinctly drifting from the south.

The galley was not quite as deeply engaged in the Strait as Jack could have wished, but she lay pretty well: pretty well, indeed. He signalled Ringle to pick up the cutter and follow him, then spread all the canvas the Surprise could carry in this moderate breeze, increasing as it backed, and he hauled her as close as ever she would lie.

The galley, seeing that she had been detected by perhaps as many as three men-of-war - possibly with others towards the eastern end warned of her approach - abandoned all hope of racing through the channel, struck her sails and took to her oars, steering into the eye of the wind.

The frigate's great spread of white sail showed clearly enough in the starlight for Murad Reis to chance a long shot with his larboard chaser when the galley was head-and-stern in line with Surprise: the heavy guns could not be traversed: they had to be aimed by means of the vessel that carried them, and he moved the rudder with an expert hand.

A long shot: but the combination of good aiming, excellent bore and powder, and the toss of the sea caused the twentyfour pound ball to strike the second gun of the Surprise's starboard,broadside, killing Bonden, its captain, and young Hallam, the midshipman of the division. Once the gun had been secured Jack ran the length of the battery, checking the captains' pointing - though indeed the low-lying galley was but the faintest blur - urging highest elevation and then, on the rise, he cried, 'Fire!'

Even with his night-glass in the maintop he could not make out for sure whether the guns had had any effect: but after a few more distant exchanges in which the Surprise received only a harmless, spent ricochet, it seemed probable. At all events, after twenty minutes the galley's pace seemed to slacken, either because of damaged oars (terribly vulnerable to broadside fire) or because that first dash had exhausted the rowers.

While his glass focused on what was almost certainly the galley (for their courses were convergent) Jack ordered a forward gun to fire, and in the flash he distinctly saw her making sail.

She was fast, and her lateen rig gave her the advantage on a wind; but in their present positions and with the breeze still backing steadily, any attempt on her part to cross the frigate's bows or stern before the changing wind made it quite impossible would expose her to at least three or four unanswerable broadsides: a galley, however heavy, wellhandled and however dangerous her bow- and stern-chasers, could not stand broadside-to-broadside combat with a manof-war mounting fourteen twelve-pounders a side, apart from chasers, swivel-guns in the tops, and musketry, to say nothing of much stouter timbers.

There was no possibility of boarding, either, without the certainty of being raked fore and aft several times before coming alongside; and although Murad Reis had boarded and taken merchantmen heavier than Surprise, the truly naval speed and efficiency of her broadside convinced him that the attempt would not answer and he turned to the only other alternative - that of outsailing her (a galley could be very fast in a reasonably smooth sea with a following wind) and so of casting an eastward loop at the end of a very long run, thus, perhaps, regaining the weather-gage and freedom.

The morning sun, rising over Africa, showed the galley almost exactly where Jack had expected her, about two miles away westward: her two lateens out on either side making the most of the topgallant south-west-by-south wind: and so they ran all that pure cloudless day, and even the next, when sea, wind and current were almost exactly the same. But the extreme tension of that first day, when every man, woman and boy tried to urge the frigate on with clenched stomach muscles and extraordinary zeal in racing aloft or doing anything that might possibly increase the vessel's speed, diminished to the extent that the people went about their ordinary duties - cleaning decks, stowing hammocks, directing the fire-hoses high into the sails to help them draw a little better, eating their breakfast and the like - without perpetually breaking off to look at the chase. One boy even went to tell Stephen of a curious bird, a brown-faced booby; and Stephen and Jacob were much less often disturbed in their favourite observation-point right forward, by the starboard cathead. They had little or nothing to do in the sickberth that could not safely be left to Poll and Maggie. Jack was as active as any of his officers in drawing the last ounce of thrust from the breeze; and in any case Jack was disinclined for any other occupation whatsoever. He was, of course, very thoroughly acquainted with sudden death, but this time he felt the loss of Bonden, an admirable sailor, and of young Hallam, the son of an old shipmate, very deeply indeed.

This day was most uncommoply hot, and the next, a Monday, hotter still: Jacob, in the most natural way in the world, put on a turban, and Stephen, without much urging, a knotted white handkerchief. 'This might go on for ever,' he observed before dinner, settling down on his coil of rope.

'To be sure, these two long wakes and the infinite quantity of sea have something of the look of eternity,' said Jacob.

'Or of dream. But for my part I do not think it can last much longer. I have been aboard an Algerine corsair and a Sallee rover, and since their chief aim is to take by boarding, they are usually very full of men. Furthermore, unless they intend the raiding of a distant coast - which is not the case here - a mere dash down the Straits and so to Durazzo - they rarely carry much in the way of provisions. Then again, when the galley was using its oars at such a pace I observed the quite exceptional number of rowers: all these mouths have to be fed.'

Eight bells: the hands were piped to dinner, and they were still chewing or smelling of rum or both when they came hurrying back forward to see how the chase lay now. 'What is your opinion, Tobias Belcher?' asked Stephen, speaking to a grey-haired seaman from Shelmerston, a shipmate on former voyages and a member of the Sethian community, renowned for truthfulness. Belcher looked and considered, and in time he replied that 'there was something not wholly Christian about this here weather.'

At this point the gunroom steward came to warn the doctors that dinner would be on table directly, so they hurried off with nothing more precise than a vague apprehension. The Surprise, on reverting to a private ship, had lost her Royal Marine officer, but still with the three lieutenants, the master, the purser and her two surgeons, it was a fine full table, with a great volume of talk about the probable outcome of the day - a volume cut dead just as the pudding came in, by a magistral crash right forward, the impact of yet another ricochet from one of the galley's stern-chasers.

Now, under the blazing sun, there began a curious form of sea-warfare: a slight strengthening of the breeze reached the frigate first and brought her within range of the galley's chasers; but since the vessels were not directly in line, the galley, in order to aim these guns, had to shift her helm, exposing some of her quarter. This danger increased with the wind, which brought Surprise's foremost guns, trained right forward, into play; with the further peril that she might put her helm hard over, showing the galley the whole of her flank and sending a hundred and sixty-eight pounds of round-shot into the galley's relatively fragile timbers.

Both captains, the one right forward, the other right aft, watched one another most intently, trying to detect the slightest change and to counteract it. Jack had all his forward guns manned, of course, to give nothing away by movement; and when a favourable gust had brought the frigate perhaps fifty yards nearer he said to Daniel, in charge of the forward guns to larboard, 'Mr Daniel, I am going to put the helm a-lee and fire the bow-chaser: the moment she goes off, fire as they bear.' He stepped to the port bow-chaser, a beautiful brass gun of his own, a nine-pounder: it was already at what he judged the right elevation, and kneeling to the sight he cried, 'Helm a-lee: handsomely, now!' And as the galley's stern came just into view he fired. The ball skipped from the enemy's wake and through her after-lateen, while at the same time the three foremost broadside guns sent splinters flying from the galley's stern; but they too struck only on the rebound. Very shortly after, the gust that had brought the frigate nearer, reached and favoured the corsair, carrying her out of range.

'By God, it's hot,' said Jack: he turned and drank from the scuttle-butt, imitated by all hands.

And so it went, burning day after burning day; and now even the moonlit night sky seemed to radiate heat. Day after day, with each doing all that human skill, ingenuity, craft and malevolence could do to destroy the enemy, neither gaining any decisive advantage though each wounded his enemy - wounded him, but far from mortally.

If Jack and Adams his clerk had not kept the ship's logbook - the exact record of positions, distances made good, variations in the wind, observations on the weather, natural phenomena - he would scarcely have known that it was a Wednesday - the first Wednesday in June - when at last the wind failed them entirely, and standing in what trifling shade the limp sails could offer they watched the galley ship her oars and pull, still westwards, towards what might have been a cloud on the horizon, if this pitiless sky would have suffered even a single cloud.

This day Stephen had three cases of sunstroke, and Jack, by way of prevention and diversion, had a sail lowered over the side - all the edges well clear of this shark-infested water - a truly shocking number of sharks - leaping in himself to encourage the crew, but finding, alas, precious little refreshment in the more than luke-warm tide.

Neither surgeon saw fit to join the splashing throng, and seeing that they were quite unwatched, Stephen undertook to guide Jacob up into the maintop, from which - the ship having swung with the current - they could see the galley with a telescope borrowed from the gunroom. It was not a very perilous ascent, but Daniel and three midshipmen, stark naked, ran up the side and into the rigging to give them not only advice but active, expert muscular heaves at moments of crisis.

From the top, Matunin sent them back to their water with many thanks and the assurance that they should be able to make their own way down with no more help than the force of gravity: and after breathing for a while he went on, 'Amos, I believe you have never been up here before.'

'Never,' said Amos Jacob, 'but I am very glad to be up here now - Lord, what an expanse: and Lord, how near the galley seems. She is in active motion. May I have the telescope? Oh God...' he added in a tone of utter disgust. 'But I had foreseen it.'

He passed the telescope. The breeze had filled the galley's sails, and the corsairs were throwing many of their manacled rowers overboard.

They watched in a wholly disgusted silence: and then Stephen leant over and called, 'Captain Aubrey, the galley has the wind. She is sailing towards the island we can see from up here.'

For the cloud had become island, a conical island hollowed out on the near, the eastern side.

Jack was with them in a moment, dripping wet. 'I have heard of their doing that, to save food and water,' he said. And after a silence, 'I do not know that island. But then we are right off any known tract of the sea.'

'I believe I have seen it on an old Catalan map in Barcelona,' said Stephen. 'And as I recall its name is Cranc, a crab.'

'The breeze is joining us,' said Jack, and he gave orders for all hands to come aboard: within minutes the frigate was alive again, her sails full, her bow-wave mounting. And well before the hellish sun dipped down at last, they were in with the Island Crab. There was not a hand aboard who had not seen one of the rowers - slave or unransomable captive - thrown screaming into the sea, the bloody sea, and there was not one who did not hate and loathe those that did it.

The island was presumably of volcanic origin, an eruptive peak that had then blown out its east side, leaving a shallow lagoon with a high wall broken only by a narrow channel through which the sea flowed in and out. From the tops they could see the galley moored under the rock wall near the entrance, close to a battered mole and some derelict buildings. She was entirely sheltered from anything but mortars: and the frigate possessed no mortars; nor could she enter such shallow water to use her guns.

The gentle topgallant breeze carried her round the island, surveying and sounding as she went, clean round with only a single tack: deep water, no apparent reefs, almost no vegetation on the land, no sign, no sign at all of water: nor, to Stephen's astonishment, of sea-birds. On the west side, under quite steep cliffs, there was a little grey-green strand.

Jack had himself rowed to it, with Stephen: and as they walked on what sand there was, Jack observed that this was high tide; that the surf must be very severe indeed on this side, after a strong westerly blow; and that he hoped Stephen had found some interesting creatures in that cave.

'I found something more interesting still,' said Stephen. 'A total absence of life. Well into June and not a nestling petrel even. No birds, no bird-lice, no feather mites. And I tell you what it is, brother: there is an uneasy smell in that rock, those fissures - pray thrust your nose into this one. I am no chemist, God forbid, but I very much suspect the presence of a poisonous emanation. That would account for the near-absence of vegetation, even in June.' He mused, and while he was musing Daniel came and said to Jack, 'Sir, we have a hand in the boat, McLeod, who was in Centaur in the year four: he says the position here is very like what it was when Captain Hood took the Diamond Rock. He was a Saint Kilda cragsman in his youth, and he helped to get the guns up the cliff.'

'It had not struck me,' said Jack, 'but the situation is indeed very like. Yet could he really carry a line up that cliff? McLeod,' he called, and the tall, middle-aged seaman, a recent draught from Erebus in Gibraltar, came up, awkward and embarrassed. 'Do you think you could take a line up that cliff? Right up that cliff?'

'I think so, sir,' said McLeod in his halting English, 'with a little well-tempered hand-pick, and a stout peg with a block to send me up another twenty-five fathom. This is no so steep as Diamond Rock, but it is softer, and may be false at top.'

'Should you like to try? If ever it grows too false you may come down with no shame - it is only an attempt, a trial.'

'We hauled up twenty-four pounders,' said McLeod, not quite following him.

'Let us shove off at once,' said Jack, and he led the way to the boat. They pulled back at a great pace, helped by the current and buoyed up by recollections of the Diamond Rock, that most uncommon feat - back to Surprise as she lay so moored that her broadside would shatter the emerging galley on the starboard side if ever she ventured out, while Ringle would do the same to larboard.

The bosun roused out coils of the strongest white line; the armourer blew his forge to an incandescent heat, fashioned wedges with eye-holes for the blocks, forged and tempered a little hand-pick, one head a beak, the other a hammer, under McLeod's supervision.

They were still too hot to hold as the boat pulled back, though in the mean time McLeod and his cousin had sewn tight sailcloth climbing shoes.

'In the Pyrenees I have pursued the izard, God forgive me, who dwells in the highest peaks,' said Stephen, standing with his hands behind his back, watching McLeod's ascent, 'but never have I seen such climbing. He might almost be a gecko.'

It was indeed an extraordinary spectacle, that stalwart twelve-stone man moving up the almost perpendicular lower cliff, fissured to be sure, but from below apparently smooth; and when he reached a more craggy stretch where he could rest and then drive home his peg and make fast his line, all hands cheered amain. He tossed down his ball of twine for the next coil and so, heaving it up and putting the coil over his shoulder and carried on, faster this time, up to the middle height, while his cousin Alexander, making use of the first line, made his way up. In a surprisingly short time they were able to look cautiously over the top, the whole lagoon open below them.

Now, while bold but less wholly intrepid hands chipped footholds along the line of the first rope and beyond, began one of the most elaborate cat's cradles that Jack had ever seen: although it was nothing to the aerial railway of the Diamond Rock, it was the bosun's seventh heaven, and presently all was ready to send a nine-pounder cannon up, sliding along a steep messenger to a point where it commanded the lagoon: and if a nine-pounder would not answer, then two fourteen-pounders could not possibly be denied.

By night the Surprise came round at low tide, when the water was too low for the galley to attempt the outward passage from the lagoon. And offshore, in excellent holding ground, she dropped two anchors and then sent hawsers ashore. They rose by means of powerful tackles past the various staging points to the very summit, where they were made fast to a complexity of stakes and hauled taut by the ship's capstan. 'Chaser away,' said Jack, and his personal nine-pounder was made fast to the messenger, slung below it by iron hoops. At the cry of 'Handsomely, handsomely, now,' the hands at the uppermost winch, under the command of Whewell, began to turn: the long hawsers, spliced end to end, stretched, sighed, grew more rigid, and the gun began its smooth progress up along the messenger. The gun, its emplacement, its munitions, represented a prodigious amount of labour; but as the sun rose, lighting the lagoon, with the galley up against its mole, nobody was in the least fatigued.

Jack knew his gun intimately: the distance was nothing much for a well-bored chaser - a little over a furlong - but as he told Stephen - who with Jacob, had been carried up like parcels - he had rarely fired at such a downward angle. 'I shall just try one or two sighters,' he said, 'aiming at those dilapidated houses. Run her up, shipmates.' The gun thumped against its emplacement: Jack shifted the wedge still farther, glared along the sight, made one more trifling adjustment and clapped the linstock down, arching his body to let the recoiling nine-pounder shoot back under him. While the team swabbed, cleaned, reloaded, rammed home the wad and ran her up again, he stood fanning the smoke and smiling with satisfaction: the shot had gone right home. And the Moors were swarming about the galley and the mole like startled ants.

They were corsairs, men of war: they very quickly grasped their situation, their hopeless situation, and they seized Murad Reis, manhandled him along to the end of the mole nearest the cliff, tied his hands, forced him to kneel and called up, 'Our sins on his head. Our sins on his head.' With a single blow one of the corsairs cut Murad's head clean off, held it up to the watchers on the cliff and cried, 'Our sins on his head. Give us water and we shall be your slaves for ever - you shall have the galley: you shall have the gold.'

Some were drinking the blood, but most were gazing up, holding out supplicatory hands.

'Will you answer, Dr Jacob?' asked Jack.

'It would wholly compromise my position,' said Jacob. 'Let us wait a little. I believe they have some other resource.'

They had: some moments later a dozen almost naked powerful seamen, deeply sunburnt, scored with whip lashes but recognizably white, were pushed forward, and their leader, squaring up to the cliff, called out in a hoarse Port of London voice, 'God bless King George. Which we are British subjects, taken out of the Three Brothers, Trade's Increase and other craft: and should be very grateful to your honour for a drop of anything wet. Amen.'

'Hear him,' croaked the others. 'Right parched we are. Drinking piss this last week.'

'Listen,' said Jack in his strong, carrying voice. 'You take the Moors' weapons and pile them at the end of the mole, tie their hands, and I shall signal the schooner to send in a boat full of fresh water and something to eat.'

The British subjects uttered a hoarse discordant cheer; Jack fired three or four times at random to keep up the tension; and the weapons came piling up on the mole.

Just off the lagoon the Surprises, overflowing with satisfaction and wit, carried out the small heavy, heavy, wonderfully heavy little chests from the galley to those places deep in the Surprise where their weight would be most useful as ballast. The Moorish prisoners, reasonably fed and watered,were stowed in the cable-tiers. They were, at least for the time being, very low in their spirits: indeed morally destroyed: but Jack had seen strange surprising changes in men freed from mortal danger: he reckoned with the resilience of the human spirit, particularly the maritime human spirit; and having, with his officers, fixed the ship's position with the utmost accuracy he set her course for the nearest point in Africa, where he meant to put them ashore.

For the moment however he and Stephen were breakfasting in comfort, gazing with some complacency at the island Cranc. 'Jacob tells me,' said Stephen, 'that in Moorish Arabic the place is now called Fortnight Island. It had been a moderately prosperous fishing and corsair port - dates, carobs, pearl oysters, coral - hence the mole and the ruins - until the time of, I think, Mulei Hassan; but then a new eruption destroyed the few springs, broke the aqueducts and cisterns and slowly liberated that noxious vapour we observed. It seems that you can breathe it for fourteen days with nothing but headaches and gastric pains; but on the fifteenth you die.'

'I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir,' said Harding, 'but you desired me to tell you when all was aboard. The last chest has just been handed down.' As he spoke his usually grave face spread in a most infectious smile: that last case, carried staggering by strong men, weighed well over a hundred and twelve pounds, and Harding, though not an avaricious or grasping man, knew just how many ounces of that mass belonged to him as prize-money.

Patriotism, promotion, and prize-money have been described as the three masts of the Royal Navy. It would be illiberal to assert that prize-money was by any means the most important, but as they left the flat shore north of Ras Uferni in Morocco, where they had at last disembarked their prisoners after a tedious voyage with contrary winds, it was certainly the subject still most frequently discussed.

'If you people will sail the galley into Gibraltar with us,' said Captain Aubrey to the slaves, 'You shall share as able seamen.

'Why, thankee, sir,' said Hallows, their spokesman. 'We take it uncommon handsome: and I promise we shall do our duty by your prize.'

'That's right,' said his mates, and indeed they handled the galley very well. But they did think it part of their duty to run alongside the frigate on three separate occasions, begging the officer of the watch to shorten sail. 'There are too many eggs in this one basket to risk anything at all,' was the usual formula, thought to be both conciliating and witty.

Jack was on deck the last time they did this, and he said, 'Hallows, if you do not keep your station I shall turn you ashore,' with such conviction that although they very nearly came within hail to tell the frigate that there was an enormous great fire on the very top of Cape Trafalgar, they thought better of it and kept the news for Ringle.

Indeed there were fires all along the European side of the Straits, exciting unspeakable wonder aboard the three vessels: but the sight of Gibraltar itself ablaze with innumerable bonfires, the harbour filled with ships dressed over all, bands playing, trumpets blowing and drums beating madly checked all conjecture, and Surprise, having made her number, wafted silently to her usual place, with her companions.

'The flag-lieutenant, sir, if you please,' said a midshipman at his side.

'Give you joy of your splendid prize, sir,' cried the flag lieutenant. 'By God, you could never have timed t better.'

'Thank you, Mr Betterton,' said Jack. 'But pray tell me what is afoot?'

The flag-lieutenant stared for a moment, and then he gravely replied, 'Napoleon is beat, sir. There was a great battle at Waterloo in the Low Countries, and the Allies won.'

'Then it is I that give you joy, sir,' said Jack, shaking his hand. 'Have you any details?'

'No, sir. But the courier is arrived and the Commanderin-Chief will have them. When your number was reported he bade me remind you of your engagement: Lady Barmouth has taken the coach to fetch the Keiths.'

'Please tell Lord Barmouth that Dr Maturin and I shall be charmed to wait upon him, above all on such a day.'

'There you are at last, Aubrey,' cried the Commander-in-Chief, obviously overcome by the events and obviously somewhat flushed with wine. 'Doctor, your servant, sir: very happy to see you. So here you are at last, Aubrey, and with a thundering great prize at your tail. Give you joy, of course but the fellow must have led you a most infernal long chase?'

'He did indeed, my Lord. He went to ground in an island I had never heard of, called Cranc, an island with a very shallow but sheltered lagoon - too shallow for Surprise - and I had to winkle him out by a kind of Diamond Rock caper, getting a gun up a five hundred foot cliff to fire down on him.'

'Well, I am sure it was very creditable and I congratulate you of course; but I wish to God you could have done it under any other Dey of Algiers - this one has cut up very rough indeed - says it was his galley and everything in it - sent me a furious note and swears he will take it out of our merchantmen if there is no restitution, compensation and the rest of it.'

'But my Lord, the galley fired on us first. That made him a pirate and fair game.'

'That is not what the Dey says.'

'Is the word of an upstart Dey who was never there and who knows nothing about it to be taken against that of a sea-officer who was there and who does know all about it?'

'...under any other Dey,' repeated Barmouth. 'My politico takes the gloomiest view of the whole situation, and so I fear does the Ministry. They have a special commission out there, half a dozen men of the first distinction, to discuss the possibilities of a treaty, Ali Bey having always been so much in favour of England... Was it a very large sum of money, Aubrey?'

'I cannot say, my Lord: it was in the form of very small gold ingots, about the size of the upper joint of one's finger. But there was one chest that must have tipped the scale at eight stone or more.'

'A hundredweight... how many chests were there?'

'I did not count, my Lord.'

'Well, if there were only eight, my flag-officer's third would have amounted to about five thousand. It fairly makes me tear my hair...' Jack was tempted to say that he was not acting under Barmouth's orders at all, but carrying out Keith's, which were still valid. However, he kept his mouth shut: Barmouth muttered under his breath for a while; then, recollecting himself, he said, 'But in course it is far worse for you; and how you will ever explain it to your people without a bloody mutiny I cannot tell. But hush, the Keiths have just arrived.'

The door opened and in walked the ladies - very fine ladies indeed, glowing with happiness, victory and all their best jewels, followed by Lord Keith. 'Jack!' cried the one, and 'Dearest Cousin Jack!' the other; and both kissed him most fondly.

With the utmost affection and the happiest look he said, 'Queenie and Isobel, Isobel and Queenie, how very delightful it is to see you both together, and in such glorious looks, my dears.'

'Do you remember... ?' cried the one, and 'Do you remember... ?' cried the other, until the Commander-in-Chief broke up the unseemly group, insisting in no very urbane or even civil tone, that their guests should be seated.

He took one end of the table, with Queenie on his right and Arden, his political adviser (only just not late and still pale with emotion) on his left; Isobel Barmouth the other end, with Lord Keith on her right and Cousin Jack on her left.

The politico had been detained by some further details of the great battle or rather series of battles, and these he related with a fair degree of precision; but after that the conversation languished. There had been a very, very great deal of emotion that day, and both admirals were feeling their age. Queenie and Stephen rambled along pleasantly about the island; but then she, having tried to move the Commanderin-Chief from his only too evident ill-humour, fell silent, imitated by Stephen. The only people really enjoying their meal were Jack and Isobel. Isobel was much younger than Queenie: the cousins were indeed much of an age and when they were adolescents there had been a certain degree of ambiguity about the nature of their friendship: now that ambiguity was distinctly more evident. Isobel was in fine voice and very high spirits; and it was evident to Stephen, on the other side of the table, that they were holding hands under the cloth.

She was, he reflected, something of a rake: a very pretty rake. And it was not improbable that her cross old husband was aware of it, for when her cousin had said something that moved her to an indecorous fit of laughter, Lord Barmouth straightened in his chair and called down the table, 'Aubrey, I have just been thinking that now you have nothing to do with the Navy, you might be well advised to slip your moorings and sail off to survey the Horn and plumb the depths of Magellan: the inhabitants may prove grateful, and I am sure the young ladies would welcome such a very amusing companion.'

This was said in such a tone that Isobel stood up at once: she and Queenie paced into the drawing-room, leaving an abashed group of men standing there, all at a moral disadvantage.

The servants were by no means unaccustomed to this, and the port very soon made its appearance; it had gone round three times when a servant asked Stephen whether Dr Jacob might have a word with him.

Stephen excused himself and found Jacob in the hall. 'I beg pardon for disturbing you,' he said, 'but the forerunner of an Algerine delegation brought me the news of Ali Bey's deposition - he was strangled in the slave-market - and since the news of the French defeat reached Algiers earlier than Spain, the new Dey, Hassan, is sending these people to congratulate the Commander-in-Chief, to announce his accession, and to annul his predecessor's absurd claim on the captured treasure; but he should like the galley back, as a symbol of his office, and he would be most grateful for an immediate loan of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to consolidate his position in Algiers.'

'What you say fills me with ease,' said Stephen. 'Yet since the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Keith, the politico and Captain Aubrey and nobody else are in there, I believe you should relate all this to them.'

'Very well: and I have the head of the English mission with me to substantiate what I say. Shall I fetch him?'

'Not if it would take ten minutes. This news must be eaten hot.'

'Very well.'

Stephen led him in. 'My Lord,' he said to Barmouth, 'may I introduce my colleague Dr Jacob, a gentleman very well known to Sir Joseph Blaine?'

'Hear, hear,' said the politico.

'Of course you may,' said Barmouth. 'How do you do, sir? Pray take a seat. May I offer you a glass of wine?'

'My lords and gentlemen,' said Jacob, bowing over his port. 'I must tell you that one of our most reliable agents in Algiers, accompanied by a member of the Ministry's special commission, Mr Blenkinsop, has just told me that tomorrow morning a delegation from the new Dey, Hassan, will arrive to congratulate His Majesty on the defeat of Bonaparte, to announce his own accession, and to settle a point at issue the Algerine galley and its alleged cargo. He waives his predecessor's absurd claim, and although he should like the galley back as a symbol of his office, he fully acknowledges that its commander, in firing first, deprived all persons other than the captain of His Britannic Majesty's ship of any claim to its contents. He should however be most grateful for an immediate loan of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to strengthen his present position - a loan very soon to be repaid.'

There was a silence: then the Commander-in-Chief said, 'Dr Jacob, we are very grateful indeed for your good news and your early warning - at least we shall be able to receive these gentlemen in a suitable manner. Lord Keith, you are the senior officer present: may I ask your opinion?'

'My opinion is that we should welcome this approach most heartily..

'Hear, hear,' said the politico. Stephen and Jack, being parties concerned, said nothing; but Jack at all events felt a spring of delight rising in his heart.

'... and,' went on Lord Keith, 'since I was concerned with Captain Aubrey's orders in the first place, and since I know the little ways of the prize-court through and through, I propose taking this case before them at once, and then desiring the dockyard to give the vessel something in the way of gold leaf to make her a more presentable present. As for the Dey's loan, I am obviously no longer in a position to speak of the colony's finances, but I have no doubt that the Ministry would consider it a very reasonable outlay.'

'Hear, hear,' said the politico.

The Commander-in-Chief only nodded; but his mobile face, recently so very sour and ill-natured now shone with an inner sun: in the course of these last few minutes his flag-officer's third part of Jack's share of the prize, so recently despaired of, had returned as a solid, very beautiful fact.

Lord Keith was a good friend to Jack Aubrey: very early in the morning he had surprised the swabbers at their task and within minutes there were a score of barrows alongside the Surprise: under guard they wheeled the massy little chests to the premises of Gibraltar's three substantial goldsmiths, who reduced the whole to tested ingots of a stated weight well before the Algerine ship came in with its delegation and a present of full-grown ostriches.

Jacob was present at the various ceremonies, but Jack and Stephen were wholly taken up with other things - Jack with persuading the officers, warrant-officers, steady petty officers and seamen to have at least two-thirds of their prizemoney sent home, and with storing the ship for the first leg of his voyage; while Stephen did much the same for his department, as well as writing a very long coded report to Sir Joseph.

The ceremonies, it appeared, went off very well, particularly the state appearance of the loan on silver salvers: but in the evening, with the Algerines gone to the sound of guns, drums and trumpets, when the Keiths came down to say good-bye, accompanied by an over-excited Mona and Kevin, barely to be restrained by their nursemaid, Jack and Harding found to their grief that they had not been able to keep all their people sober.

It was none of it very gross, and even Queenie had seen a drunken sailor: yet even so Jack was relieved when the moorings were cast off and Surprise, dropping her foresail, glided free of the mole.

'God bless,' called Queenie; and 'Liberate Chile, and come home as soon as ever you can,' called her husband, while the children screeched out very shrill, fluttering handkerchiefs. And at the very end of the Mole, when the frigate turned westward along the Strait with a following breeze, stood an elegant young woman with a maidservant, and she too waving, waving, waving...

The End