The Surgeon’s Mate. Patrick O’Brian
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whether Mr Henry’s signal means anything or whether it is just another wicked falsehood. Mr Crosland, flying-jib…’
While Dalgleish was giving orders for more sail Jack studied the Liberty: a long low schooner painted black, about seventy-five feet in length and twenty in beam, a vessel of perhaps a hundred and fifty tons, built for speed. As far as he could see she carried eight broadside guns, probably twelve-pounder carronades, and something in the way of a bow-chaser. Her deck was crowded with men. She had set a square foretopsail and she was coming down goosewinged; but no schooner could show her best paces before the wind, goosewinged or not, and during his long study of her it did not appear to him that she gained much, if indeed she gained at all.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said a voice by his side.
‘Good morning, Mr Humphreys,’ said Jack rather coolly. Humphreys was the officer chosen to carry the duplicate dispatch rather than any of the master’s mates who had fought in the action with the Chesapeake. In the opinion of the service it was a vile job, designed to secure Humphreys’ advancement. There was no possible doubt of the Shannon’s officers being promoted, and Falkiner was in fact aboard the Nova Scotia, heading straight for a commander’s commission; but even so it was felt that one of the younger men should also have shared in the glory at home.
‘What do you see, Tom?’ called Mr Dalgleish.
‘Well now, Dad,’ said Tom, ‘I believe I make out a sail, hull-down, two or maybe three points abaft the beam. But it is cruel hazy there in the eye of the sun, and it may be an ice-mountain.’
‘What away to leeward, Tom?’
‘Nothing to leeward, Dad, bar a pod of whales – there she blows again! – and north I see clear to the horizon.’ A pause; and then from on high, ‘Harkee, Dad, that is a sail to wind-ward. A schooner, too.’
‘Thanks be,’ murmured the master of the packet; and turning to Jack he said, ‘I am right glad I said we should go south about Sable Island. With t’other beating up from leeward, they would have pinched us between them like…’ With one eye to his glass, and that glass trained on the Liberty, he sought for some likeness that might strengthen the idea of two vessels gradually closing in upon a third from either side over an enormous stretch of sea, found none, and repeated ‘Pinched us between them, like…’ his hand imitating the movement of a lobster’s claw.
‘You think they had intelligence of your sailing, then?’
‘Bless you,’ said Mr Dalgleish, ‘in Halifax you can scarcely piss against a wall, without the Yankees know next day. While we were waiting for the dispatches I was in the King’s Head – a roomful of people – and I just happened to remark that I should go south about as soon as I had the bag aboard, ha, ha!’
‘So you were not altogether surprised to find them waiting for you, on the southern course?’
‘No, sir, I was not. Not Liberty, at all events. Mr Henry there,’ – nodding over the miles of sea – ‘has laid for me many and many a time, hoping to come up from leeward – for she lies uncommon close to the wind, and sails uncommon swift – to carry us by boarding. Which was how she took Lady Albemarle and Probus, both neat, fast-sailing packets; to say nothing of other prizes. A pretty good seaman, Mr Henry: I knew him well before the war. He was a packet-captain too, before he took to privateering. But t’other, his friend, I am surprised to see. They never hunt in pairs unless there is a fat merchantman to be looked for; and there ain’t no merchantman, fat or thin, due to sail or to come in this fortnight and more. And a packet – why, ’tis a feather in their caps, to be sure, and one in the eye for King George, but it don’t hardly answer the expense, if you have something like a hundred men aboard, at American rates of pay, eating their heads off; to say nothing of the wear and tear and the risk of carrying away a spar. And to say nothing, neither, of the clawing you may get in the last moments before you board.’
‘I believe you could give him a rare old clawing, Captain Dalgleish,’ said Jack, looking at the brig’s array of carronades, five twelve-pounders to a side.
‘So I could,’ said Dalgleish, ‘and so I shall, if he comes alongside. But never you fear, Captain, we have the legs of her, before the wind; and I have not even set my studdingsails yet. With this nip in the air there is sure to be fog on the Middle Bank or the Banquereau; we will shake them off there, and carry on with our course as before, if they don’t give over first, as I dare say they will. A packet is no great prize; no cargo, and no market for the hull in the States; nothing worth cracking on for regardless all day, let alone by night, with all this summer ice coming down.’
After a silence Jack said, ‘Have you ever thought of the lame-duck caper, Captain Dalgleish? Starting your sheets a trifle – steering rather wild – slipping a drag-sail over the blind side – sending half your people below? If you could lure her up in the next hour or so, you could deal with her long before her friend came up. You could take the Liberty, as one might say, ha, ha!’
Dalgleish laughed, but Jack saw that he might as well have been whistling psalms to the taffrail: the master of the packet was quite unmoved, was perfectly satisfied with his role – a strong, self-reliant man, confident that his was the right conduct. ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘that would never answer with Mr Henry. I know him and he knows me; he would smell a rat directly. And even if he did not, Captain Aubrey, even if he did not, it is no part of my business to take the Liberty, as you put it so wittily. I am not a man-of-war, and my brig is not a man-of-war neither, but an unestablished temporary packet – temporary these last twelve years and more: a contract-vessel, as we say. For you gentlemen in the glory-line it is quite different: you are answerable to King George, whereas I am answerable to Mrs Dalgleish, and they see things in quite a different light. Then again, you can go to the dockyard and indent for half a dozen topmasts, any number of spars, nay, a whole new suit of sails, any day in the week you choose. But if I went to the Postmasters General and asked them for half a bolt of number three canvas, they would laugh in my face and remind me of my contract. And my contract is to provide a vessel at my own charges for His Majesty’s mails, and to carry them, as per contract, as fast as is consistent with their safety: for the mails are sacred, sir. The mails and dispatches are sacred: particularly this blessed dispatch about the victory.’ Here he looked significantly at Mr Humphreys, who gave a solemn nod; he did not say anything, however, for Jack was very much superior to him in rank, an awe-inspiring figure; and Humphreys, although he would not have relinquished it for the world, was conscious of his position, painfully conscious that he might be looked upon as a well-connected intruder, even perhaps as a scrub. ‘What is more,’ added Dalgleish, ‘this brig is my livelihood, and no one will give me another if she is taken.’
‘And a very handsome brig she is,’ said Jack. ‘I doubt I have ever seen finer lines.’ He could not dislike Dalgleish: although his whole being was alive with the prospect of an action, laid on with cunning, ending with extreme violence, and very probably the capture of the Liberty, he found the packet-captain’s calm, assured attitude convincing and indeed respectable.
He said as much to Stephen when they met in the middle of the morning for a private pot of coffee. ‘I never thought I should like a fellow who ran so openly – who ran like a hare, without beating about the mulberry bush, or making any bones about it, although he has a neat little broadside, quite enough to make the schooner cry peccavi if he knows how to ply it.’
‘Brother,’ said Stephen, ‘you speak of hares – of bones and mulberries – of a schooner, and I am none the wiser.’
‘Why, don’t you know we are being chased?’
‘I do not.’
‘Where have you been all the morning?’
‘I have been sitting with Diana. At one time I came on deck, but they were arranging the sails, and desired me to go below again; so seeing that you and Mr Dalgleish were in conversation I returned to her side.’
‘How is she?’
‘Utterly prostrated. She is without