‘We shall soon know,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Pullings, I believe we may beat to quarters.’
It was common knowledge throughout the Worcester that something was up, and none of the seamen was particularly surprised when after a preliminary running in and out of the guns the Captain walked forward along the gangway through the hush of a ship stripped for battle, all hands silent at their action-stations, the officers and midshipmen by their divisions, deck after deck, the powder-boys sitting on their cartridges behind each gun, the slow-match smouldering in the tubs and sending its heady scent eddying along the deck as the tensely expectant Worcester lay to in the grey and empty Channel, heaving high but easy on the swell. They were not particularly surprised when on reaching the starboard bow-chaser, whose first captain was his own coxswain, Barret Bonden, he took out his watch and said, ‘Three rounds: fire on the roll.’
The usual crashing roar, the stab of flame, and the usual furious ordered activity of the crew in the billowing smoke, sponging, reloading with the practice powder, ball and wad rammed home, the gun heaved up and primed, everything directed at cutting a few seconds off the time between the discharges. For this was the gun-crew that was to set the standard by which the rest would be compared. No surprise here, though a keen appreciation of their speed: but amazement, sheer amazement fore and aft, when in fifty-one seconds flat Bonden clapped his match to the priming of the second charge and the gun uttered an enormously loud high-pitched unnatural screeching bellow, jetting out a vast tongue of brilliant white light, in which the fragments of wad showed momentarily black.
It was a miracle alone that prevented the astonished crew from being crushed by the recoiling gun, and Jack had to tally on to the train-tackle to stop it running out again unchecked on the downward roll. He too wore the same blank look of wonder as those about him, but quicker than the rest he changed it to the Olympian calm appropriate to a captain, and when Bonden took the rope, muttering, ‘Beg pardon, sir: I wasn’t expecting…’he returned to the counting of the seconds and observed, ‘Come, Bonden, you are wasting time.’
They did their best, they heaved valiantly, but their rhythm, their coordination was upset and a full two minutes passed before the gun was run up, primed and pointed, and Bonden bent over it with an expression of ludicrous apprehension on his tough, battle-hardened face, his mates all edging as far from the piece as was decent or even farther, in an atmosphere of the most lively tension. His hand came down: this time the gun belched crimson, a noble, long-lasting crimson flame and crimson smoke, a deep, solemn, musical boom; and all along the deck the exact discipline of the gun-crews dissolved in delighted laughter.
‘Silence fore and aft,’ cried Jack, cuffing a contorted powder-boy, but his voice trembled as he said, ‘Stop your vent. House your gun. On the roll, fire three.’
After the first dull blast of the regulation powder with which it had been loaded, number three produced a splendid blue, a splendid green; and so it went throughout the ship, deck after deck: exquisite colours, strange unheard-of bangs, infinite mirth (though sternly repressed) and a truly wretched performance in point of time.
‘That was the most cheerful exercise I have ever known in my life,’ said Jack to Stephen in the after-cabin. ‘How I wish you had seen Bonden’s face, just like a maiden aunt made to hold a lighted squib. And it was almost as good as a real action for pulling the people together – Lord, how they were laughing on the lower deck when hammocks were being slung. We shall make a happy ship of her, for all her faults. If the wind holds, I shall take her in close tomorrow evening, and let them break some glass.’
In his long career Captain Aubrey had observed that of all the forms of great-gun exercise there was none that came anywhere near firing at a fixed mark on land, above all if it had windows. Until the gun-crews were quite steady they tended to throw away many of their shots in full-blown action, and although firing at barrels laid out by the boats was very well in its way – infinitely better than the dumb-show of merely heaving cannon in and out that was usual in many ships – it lacked the high relish, the point of real danger, of smashing valuable defended property, and whenever circumstances allowed he would take his ship close to the enemy shore to bombard some one of the many small posts and batteries strung all along the coast to guard harbours, estuaries, and places where the Allies might land. Now, the breeze having come well north of east with every sign of backing farther still, he fixed his position by two exact lunar observations and altered course to raise the Ile de Groix a little before the break of day. Although the night turned thick and troubled in the middle watch – no moon to be seen, still less a star – he was confident of his calculations, precisely confirmed by the mean of his three chronometers, and although his chief hope was of some privateer slipping out of Brest or even a commerce-raiding frigate, if he missed any of them, he would at least be able to provide his people with a fine selection of posts to batter.
A little before two bells in the morning watch he came on deck. The idlers had not yet been called and the quiet night-time routine still had some while to run before the washing of the decks began, and the tumult of holystones great and small. The swell had diminished and here under the remote but effective lee of Ushant far astern the breeze made no more than a steady, regular song in the rigging as it came in three points abaft the larboard beam. She was under courses and topsails, no more. Since the arrival of the other lieutenants Pullings no longer kept a watch, but he was already up, talking to Mowett by the larboard rail: both had their night-glasses trained south-east.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said Jack.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Pullings. ‘We were just talking about you. Plaice, on the forecastle lookout, thought he saw a light. Mowett sent a sharp man aloft: he can make nothing of it, but sometimes we seem to catch something on the lift, and we were wondering whether to call you yet. It is all wrong for the Groix lighthouse.’
Jack took the telescope and stared hard and long. ‘So God-damned thick…’ he muttered, wiping his eye and staring again.
The half-hour glass turned, two bells struck, the sentries called ‘All’s well’, the midshipman of the watch heaved the log, reported ‘Five knots one fathom, sir, if you please,’ and chalked it on the board, a carpenter’s mate stated that there was two foot four inches in the well – the Worcester made a good deal of water – and Mowett said, ‘Relieve the wheel: forecastle hands spell the afterguard at the pumps; call the idlers.’
‘There, sir,’ cried Pullings. ‘No, much nearer.’ And at the same moment the forecastle lookout and the masthead roared ‘Sail on the larboard beam.’
The mists of the dying night had parted, showing not only a stern-lantern and a toplight but the whole of a ghostly ship, sailing large, standing south, and not two miles away. Jack had just time to see that she was taking in her foretop-gallantsail before she vanished, vanished entirely.
‘All hands,’ he said. ‘Dowse the lights. In driver: main and fore topgallants, forestaysail, outer jib. Pass the word for the master.’ He caught up the log-board and strode into the master’s day-cabin with its charts spread out, the Worcester’s course pricked to the last observation. Gill came running, frowsty and dishevelled, a glum companion but a Channel pilot and a fine navigator; and between them they worked out the ship’s position. Lorient lay due east, and the day would show them the Ile de Groix fine on the starboard bow. If the weather cleared at all they would see its light well before true dawn.
‘A considerable ship, sir?’ asked the master.
‘I hope so indeed, Mr Gill,’ said Jack, walking out of the cabin. He was in fact certain of it, but he did not like to anger luck by saying that what he had seen was either a heavy frigate or even something far better, a ship of the line stealing down the coast to Rochefort: in either case a man-of-war, and necessarily a French man-of-war, since the Worcester had such a head-start over the blockading squadron.
The decks were filling rapidly with the watch below blundering about half-clothed and stupid, snatched from their short hour’s sleep, but brightening wonderfully when they heard there was a ship in sight.
‘A two-decker, sir,’ said Pullings with a delighted grin. ‘She