The Surgeon’s Mate. Patrick O’Brian
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through: yet even the most unobservant could not miss the gaping void in the Chesapeake’s stern and larboard quarter, where the Shannon’s full starboard broadside had raked her again and again, sending some five hundredweight of iron hurtling clean through her length at every blast. They did not of course see the blood of that savage conflict, the blood that had poured thick from the scuppers, for the Shannons had cleaned both ships and they had priddied the decks as far as they could; but even so, from the state of the masts and the yards and of the Chesapeake’s hull, any man who had seen action could imagine the slaughter-house look of the ships when the battle ended.
The Shannons, then, knew how they would be received, and the watch below had already contrived to slip into their best shore-going rig of glazed broad-brimmed hats with Shannon embroidered on the ribbon, bright blue jackets with brass buttons, loose white trousers with ribbons in the seams, and very small shining black pumps; but even so they were astonished by the prodigious volume of sound that met them as they neared the wharves – by the overlapping waves of cheers and then by the even louder, even more highly-valued, exactly-ordered cheering as they passed the men-of-war that lay in the harbour, each one with her yards and rigging manned all over, roaring in unison ‘Shannon, huzzay, huzzay, huzzay!’ so as to make the air and the sea under it tremble while the frigate slipped along on the height of the tide to pick up her familiar moorings. The whole of Halifax had turned out to greet them and their victory, the first victory in a war that had started so disastrously for the Royal Navy, with three proud frigates taken one after another by the Americans in single-ship actions, to say nothing of the smaller vessels: obviously the sailors were the most ecstatic – and their bitter pain at all these defeats could be measured by the hoarse enormity of their present joy – but the thousands and thousands of redcoats and civilians were delighted too, and young Mr Wallis, in command of the Shannon, could scarcely be heard when he gave the order to clew up.
Yet although the Shannons were pleased and astonished, they remained for the most part grave, gravely pleased: their deeply-respected captain lay between life and death in his cabin; they had buried their first lieutenant and twenty-two of their shipmates; and the sickbay, overflowing into the berth-deck, held fifty-nine wounded, many of them very near their end and some of them the most popular men in the ship.
When the port-admiral came up the side, therefore, he saw a sparse crew, togged to the nines but with a restraint upon them, and a thinly-peopled quarterdeck – few officers to greet him. ‘Well done, by God,’ he cried above the wail of bosun’s calls piping him aboard, ‘well done, the Shannon.’ And then, ‘Where is Captain Broke?’
‘Below, sir,’ said Mr Wallis. ‘Wounded, I regret to say. Very badly wounded in the head. He is barely conscious.’
‘Oh, I am sorry for that. Damme, I am sorry for that. Is he very bad? The head, you say? Are his intellects in trim – does he know about his famous victory?’
‘Yes, sir, he does. I believe that is what keeps him going.’
‘What does the surgeon say? Can he be seen?’
‘They would not let me in this morning, sir, but I will send below and ask how he does.’
‘Aye, do,’ said the Admiral. A pause. ‘Where is Mr Watt?’ – referring to the first lieutenant, once a midshipman of his.
‘Dead, sir,’ said Wallis.
‘Dead,’ said the Admiral, looking down. ‘I am most heartily sorry for it – a fine seamanlike officer. Did you suffer a great deal, Mr Falkiner?’
‘We lost twenty-three killed and fifty-nine wounded, sir, a quarter of our people: but Chesapeake had above sixty killed and ninety wounded. Her captain died aboard us on Wednesday. May I say, sir,’ he added in a low voice, ‘that my name is Wallis? Mr Falkiner is in command of the prize.’
‘Just so, just so,’ said the Admiral. ‘A bloody business, Mr Wallis, a cruel business: but worth it. Yes, by God, it was worth it.’ His eye ran along the clean, orderly, though scarred deck, the boats, two of them already repaired, up to the rigging, and lingered for a moment on the fished mizzen. ‘So you and Falkiner and what hands you had left brought them both in between you. You have done very well indeed, Mr Wallis, you and your shipmates. Now just give me a brief, informal account of the action: you shall put it in writing presently, if Captain Broke don’t recover in time for the dispatch; but for the moment I should like to hear it from your own mouth.’
‘Well, sir,’ began Wallis, and then paused. He could fight extremely well, but he was no orator; the Admiral’s rank oppressed him, so did the presence of an audience that included the only surviving American officer fit to stand – though even he was wounded. He brought out a lame, disjointed tale, but the Admiral listened to it with a glowing, visible delight, for with what he had heard before it fell into perfect shape, even more perfect than the rumours that had already reached him. What Wallis said confirmed all that he had heard: Broke, finding the Chesapeake alone in Boston harbour, had sent his consorts away, challenging her captain to come out and try the issue in the open sea. The Chesapeake had indeed come out in the most handsome, gallant manner: they had fought their battle fair and square, evenly matched, broadside to broadside, with no manoeuvring; and having swept the Chesapeake’s quarterdeck clear, killing or wounding almost all her officers in the first few moments, the Shannon had raked her, boarded her, and carried her. ‘And it was just fifteen minutes, sir, from the first gun to the last.’
‘Fifteen minutes, by God! That I did not know,’ said the Admiral; and after a few more questions he clapped his hands behind his back and paced up and down, silently digesting his satisfaction.
His eye caught a tall figure in a post-captain’s uniform standing by the Marine officers and he cried, ‘Aubrey! Why, it must be Aubrey, upon my life!’ He stepped forward with his hand outstretched: Captain Aubrey whipped his hat under his left arm, edged his right hand from its sling, and gave the Admiral’s as hearty a shake as he could. ‘I was sure I could not mistake that yellow hair,’ said the Admiral, ‘though it must be years … a wounded arm? I knew you was in Boston, but how come you here?’
‘I escaped, sir,’ said Jack Aubrey. ‘Well done,’ cried the Admiral again. ‘So you were aboard for this noble victory! That was worth an arm or two, by God. Give you joy with all my heart. Lord, how I wish I had been with you. But I am most damnably grieved for poor dear Watt, and for Broke. I must have a word with him, if the surgeon … Is your arm bad?’ – nodding towards the sling.
‘It was only a musket-ball in the Java action, sir. But here are the doctors, sir, if you wish to speak to them.’
‘Mr Fox, how d’ye do?’ said the Admiral, turning to the Shannon’s surgeon, who had just come up the main hatch-way with a companion, both of them in their working clothes. ‘And how is your patient? Is he fit to receive a visit, a short visit?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr Fox with a doubtful shaking of his head, ‘we dread any excitement or mental exertion at this stage. Do you not agree, colleague?’
His colleague, a small sallow man in a blood-stained black coat, dirty linen and an ill-fitting wig, said, ‘Of course, of course,’ in a somewhat impatient tone. ‘No visits can possibly be allowed until the draught has had its effect,’ and he was moving away without another word when Captain Aubrey took him by the elbow and said in a private voice, ‘Hold hard, Stephen: this is the Admiral, you know.’
Stephen looked at Aubrey with his strange pale eyes, redrimmed now after days and nights of almost incessant exertion, and said, ‘Listen now, Jack, will you? I have an amputation on my hands, and I would not pause to chat with the Archangel Gabriel himself. I have only stepped up to fetch my small retractor from the cabin. And tell that man not to talk so loud.’ With this he walked off, leaving nervous smiles behind him, anxious looks directed at the Admiral: but the great man did not seem at all put out. He gazed about the ship and over the water at the Chesapeake and his deep delight showed clear beneath his immediate concern for the Shannon’s captain and her missing officers and men. He asked Wallis for the