They ran inshore on the starboard tack with the wind one point free, bringing up the daylight, and when they were first seen from the Sophie's deck they were greeted with joy. The boats had just reached the sloop after a long wearisome pull, and the French men-of-war were not sighted as early as they might have been: but sighted they were, in time, and at once every man forgot his hunger, fatigue, aching arms, and the cold and the wet, for the rumour instantly filled the sloop—'Our galleons are coming up, hand over fist!' The wealth of the Indies, New Spain and Peru: gold ingots by way of their ballast. Ever since the crew had come to know of Jack's private intelligence about Spanish shipping there had been this persistent rumour of a galleon, and now it was fulfilled.
The splendid flame was still leaping up against the hills, though more palely as dawn broke all along the eastern sky; but in the cheerful animation of putting all to rights, of making everything ready for the chase, no one took notice of it any more—whenever a man could look up from his business his eyes darted eager, delighted glances over the three or four miles of sea at the Desaix, and at the Formidable, now some considerable way astern of her.
It was difficult to say just when all the delight vanished: certainly the captain's steward was still reckoning up the cost of opening a pub on the Hunstanton road when he brought Jack a cup of coffee on the quarter-deck, heard him say 'A horrid bad position, Mr Dalziel,' and noticed that the Sophie was no longer standing towards the supposed galleons but sailing from them as fast as she could possibly go, close-hauled, with everything she could set, including bonnets and even drabblers.
By this time the Desaix was hull-up—had been for some time—and so was the Formidable: behind the flagship there showed the topgallants and topsails of the Indomptable, and out to sea, a couple of miles to windward of her, the frigate's sails nicked the line of the sky. It was a horrid bad position; but the Sophie had the weather-gage, the breeze was uncertain and she might be taken for a merchant brig of no importance—something a busy squadron would not trouble with for more than an hour or so: they were not in very grave earnest, concluded Jack, lowering his glass. The behaviour of the press of men on the Desaix's fo'c'sle, the by no means extraordinary spread of canvas, and countless indefinable trifles, persuaded him that she had not the air of a ship chasing in deadly earnest. But even so, how she slipped along! Her light, high, roomy, elegant round French bows and her beautifully cut, taut, flat sails brought her smoothly over the water, sailing as sweetly as the Victory. And she was well handled: she might have been running along a path ruled out upon the sea. He hoped to cross her bows before she had satisfied her curiosity about the fire on shore and so lead her such a dance of it that she would give it up—that the admiral would eventually make her signal of recall.
'Upon deck,' called Mowett from the masthead. 'The frigate has taken the packet.'
Jack nodded, sweeping his glass out to the miserable Ventura and back beyond the seventy-four to the flagship. He waited: perhaps five minutes. This was the crucial stage. And now signals did indeed break out aboard the Formidable, signals with a gun to emphasize them. But they were not signals of recall, alas. The Desaix instantly hauled her wind, no longer interested in the shore: her royals appeared, sheeted home and hoisted with a brisk celerity that made Jack round his mouth in a silent whistle. More canvas was appearing aboard the Formidable too; and now the Indomptable. was coming up fast, all sails abroad, sweeping along with a freshening of the breeze.
It was clear that the packet had told what the Sophie was. But it was clear, too, that the rising sun was going to make the breeze still more uncertain, and perhaps swallow it up altogether. Jack glanced up at the Sophie's spread: everything was there, of course; and at present everything was drawing in spite of the chancy wind. The master was at the con, Pram, the quartermaster, was at the wheel, getting everything out of her that she was capable of giving, poor fat old sloop. And every man was at his post, ready, silent and attentive: there was nothing for him to say or do; but his eye took in the threadbare, sagging Admiralty canvas, and his heart smote him cruelly for having wasted time—for not having bent his own new topsails, made of decent sailcloth, though unauthorized.
'Mr Watt,' he said, a quarter of an hour later, looking at the glassy patches of calm in the offing, 'stand by to out sweeps.'
A few minutes after this the Desaix hoisted her colours and opened with her bow-chasers; and as though the rumbling double crash had stunned the air, so the opulent curves of her sails collapsed, fluttered, swelled momentarily and slackened again. The Sophie kept the breeze another ten minutes, but then it died for her too. Before the way was off her—long before—all the sweeps that Malta had allowed her (four short, alas) were out and she was creeping steadily along, five men to each loom, and the long oars bending perilously under the urgent, concentrated heave and thrust, right into what would have been the wind's eye if there had still been any blowing. It was heavy, heavy work: and suddenly Stephen noticed that there was an officer to almost every sweep. He stepped forward to one of the few vacant places, and in forty minutes all the skin was gone from his palms.
'Mr Daiziel, let the starboard watch go to breakfast. Ah, there you are, Mr Ricketts: I believe we may serve out a double allowance of cheese—there will be nothing hot for a while.'
'If I may say so, sir,' said the purser with a pale leer, 'I fancy there will be something uncommon hot, presently.'
The starboard watch, summarily fed, took over the labouring sweeps while their shipmates set to their biscuit, cheese and grog, with a couple of hams from the gun-room—a brief, uneasy meal, for out there the wind was ruffling the sea, and it had chopped round two points. The French ships picked it up first, and it was striking to see how their tall, high-reaching sails sent them running on little more than an air. The Sophie's hard-won advance was wiped out in twenty minutes; and before her sails were drawing the Desaix already had a bow-wave, whiskers that could be seen from the quarter-deck. Sophie's sails were drawing now, but this creeping pace would never do.
'In sweeps,' said Jack. 'Mr Day, throw the guns overboard.'
'Aye aye, sir,' said the gunner briskly, but his movements were strangely slow, unnatural and constrained as he sprung the capsquares, like those of a man walking along the edge of a cliff, by will-power alone.
Stephen came on deck again, his hands neatly mittened. He saw the team of the starboard brass quarter-deck fourpounder with crows and handspike in their hands and a common look of anxious, almost frightened concern, waiting for the roll: it came, and they gently urged their gleaming, highly-polished gun overboard—their pretty number fourteen over the side. Its splash coincided exactly with the fountain thrown up not ten yards away by a ball from the Desaix's bow-chaser, and the next gun went overboard with less ceremony. Fourteen splashes at half a ton apiece; then the heavy carriages over the rail after them, leaving the slashed breeching and the unhooked tackles on either side of the gaping ports—a desolation to be seen.
He glanced forward, then astern, and understood the position he pursed his lips and retired to the taffrail. The lightened Sophie gathered speed minute by minute, and as all this weight had gone from well above the water-line she swam more upright—stiffer to the wind
The first of the Desaix's shot whipped through the topgallantsail, but the next two pitched short. There was still time for manoeuvre—for plenty of manoeuvre. For one thing, reflected Jack, he would be very much surprised if the Sophie could not come about twice as quickly as the seventy-four 'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will go about and back again. Mr Marshall, let her have plenty of way on her.' It would be quite disastrous if the Sophie were to miss stays on her second turn: and these light airs were not what she liked—she never gave of her best until there was something of a sea running and at least one reef in her topsails.
'Ready about . . .' The pipe twittered, the sloop luffed up, came into the wind, stayed beautifully and filled on the larboard tack: her bowlines were as taut as harpstrings b
efore the big seventy-four had even begun her turn.
The swing began, however; the Desaix was in stays; her yards were coming round; her checkered side began to show; and Jack, seeing the first hint of her broadside in his glass, called out, 'You had better go below, Doctor.' Stephen went, but no farther than the cabin; and there, craning from the stern-window, he saw the Desaix's hull vanish in smoke from stem to stern, perhaps a quarter of a minute after the Sophie had begun her reverse turn. The massive broadside, nine hundred and twenty-eight pounds of iron, plunged into a wide area of sea away on the starboard beam and rather short, all except for the two thirty-six pound balls, which hummed ominously through the rigging, leaving a trail of limp, dangling cordage. For a moment it seemed that the Sophie might not stay—that she would fall impotently off, lose all her advantage and expose herself to another such salute, more exactly aimed. But a sweet puff of air in her backed headsails pushed her round and there she was on her former tack, gathering way before the Desaix's heavy yards were firmly braced—before her first manoeuvre was complete at all.
The sloop had gained perhaps a quarter of a mile. 'But he will not let me do that again,' reflected Jack.
The Desaix was round on the starboard tack again, making good her loss; and all the while she fired steadily with her bowchasers, throwing her shot with remarkable accuracy as the range narrowed, just missing, or else clipping the sails, compelling the sloop to jig every few minutes, slightly losing speed each time. The Formidable was lying on the other tack to prevent the Sophie slipping through, and the Indomptable was running westwards, to haul her wind in half a mile or so for the same purpose. The Sophie's pursuers were roughly in line abreast behind her and coming up fast as she ran sloping across their front. Already the eighty-gun flagship had yawed to fire one broadside at no unlikely distance; and the grim Desaix, making short boards, had done so on each turn. The bosun and his party were busy knotting, and there were some sad holes in the sails; but so far nothing essential had been struck, nor any man wounded.
'Mr Dalziel,' said Jack, 'start the stores over the side, if you please.'
The hatch-covers came off, the holds emptied into the sea—barrels of salt beef, barrels of pork, biscuit by the ton, peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, vinegar. Powder, shot. They started their water and pumped it overboard. A twenty-four pounder hulled the Sophie low under the counter, and at once the pumps began gushing sea as well as fresh water.
'See how the carpenter is doing, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack.
'Stores overboard, sir,' reported the lieutenant.
'Very good, Mr Dalziel. Anchors away now, and spars. Keep only the kedge.'
'Mr Lamb says two foot and a half in the well,' said the midshipman, panting. 'But he has a comfortable plug in the shot-hole.'
Jack nodded, glancing back at the French squadron. There was no longer any hope of getting away from them close-hauled. But if he were to bear up, turning quickly and unexpectedly, he might be able to double back through their line; and then, with this breeze one or two points on her quarter, and with the help of the slight following sea her lightness and her liveliness, why, she might live to see Gibraltar yet She was so light now—a cockleshell—she might outrun them before the wind, and with any luck, turning briskly, she would gain a mile before the line-of-battle ships could gather way on the new tack. To be sure, she would have to survive a couple of broadsides as she passed through . . . But it was the only hope; and surprise was everything
'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we will bear up in two minutes' time, set stuns'ls and run between the flagship and the seventy-four. We must do it smartly, before they are aware.' He addressed these words to the lieutenant, but they were instantly understood by all hands, and the topmen hurried to their places, ready to race up and rig out the studdingsail booms. The whole crowded deck was intensely alive, poised. 'Wait . . . wait,' murmured Jack, watching the Desaix coming up wide on the starboard beam. She was the one to beware of: she was terribly alert, and he longed to see her beginning to engage in some manoeuvre before he gave the word. To port lay the Formidable, overcrowded, no doubt, as flagships always were, and therefore less efficient in an emergency. 'Wait . . . wait,' he said again, his eyes fixed on the Desaix. But her steady approach never varied and when he had counted twenty he cried 'Right!'
The wheel span, the buoyant Sophie turned like a weathercock, swinging towards the Formidable. The flagship instantly let fly, but her gunnery was not up to the Desaix's, and the hurried broadside lashed the sea where the sloop had been rather than where she was: the Desaix's more deliberate offering was hampered by the fear of ricochets skipping as far as the admiral, and only half a dozen of her balls did any harm—the rest fell short.
The Sophie was through the line, not too badly mauled—certainly not disabled; her studdingsails were set and she was running fast, with the wind where she liked it best. The surprise had been complete, and now the two sides were drawing away from one another fast—a mile in the first five minutes. The Desaix's second broadside, delivered at well over a thousand yards, showed the effects of irritation and precipitancy; a splintering crash forward marked the utter destruction of the elm-tree pump, but that was all. The flagship had obviously countermanded her second discharge, and for a while she kept to her course, close-hauled, as though the Sophie did not exist.
'We may have done it,' said Jack inwardly, leaning his hands on the taffrail and staring back along the Sophie's lengthening wake. His heart was still beating with the tension of waiting for those broadsides, with the dread of what they might do to his Sophie; but now its beat had a different urgency. 'We may have done it,' he said again. Yet the words were scarcely formed in his mind before he saw a signal break out aboard the admiral, and the Desaix began to turn into the wind.
The seventy-four came about as nimbly as a frigate: her yards traversed as though by clockwork, and it was clear that everything was tallied and belayed with the perfect regularity of a numerous and thoroughly well trained crew. The Sophie had an excellent ship's company too, as attentive to their duty and as highly-skilled as Jack could wish; but nothing that they could do would make her move through the water at more than seven knots with this breeze, whereas in another quarter of an hour the Desaix was running at well over eight without her studdingsails. She was not going to trouble herself with setting them: when they saw that—when the minutes went by and it was clear that she had not the least intention of setting them—then the Sophies' hearts died within them.
Jack looked up at the sky. It looked down on him, a broad and meaningless expanse, with stray clouds passing over it—the wind would not die away that afternoon: night was still hours and hours away.
How many? He glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes past ten. 'Mr Daiziel,' he said, 'I am going into my cabin. Call me if anything whatever occurs. Mr Richards, be so good as to tell Dr Maturin I should like to speak to him. And Mr Watt, let me have a couple of fathoms of logline and three or four belaying-pins.'
In his cabin he made a parcel of his lead-covered signal-book and some other secret papers, put the copper belaying-pins into the bag of mail, lashed its neck tight, called for his best coat and put his commission into its inner pocket. The words 'hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril' floated before his mind's eye, wonderfully clear; and Stephen came in. 'There you are, my dear fellow,' said Jack. 'Now, I am afraid that unless something very surprising happens we are going to be taken or sunk in the next half hour.' Stephen said, 'Just so,' and Jack continued, 'So if you have anything you particularly value perhaps it would be wise to entrust it to me.'
'They rob their prisoners, then?' asked Stephen.
'Yes: sometimes. I was stripped to the bone when the Leander was taken, and they stole our surgeon's instruments before he could operate on our wounded.'
'I will bring my instruments at once.'
'And your purse.'
'Oh, yes, and my purse.'
Hurrying back on
deck, Jack looked astern. He would never have believed the seventy-four could have come up so far. 'Masthead!' he cried. 'What do you see?'
Seven ships of the line just ahead? Half the Mediterranean fleet? 'Nothing, sir,' answered the look-out slowly, after a most conscientious pause.
'Mr Dalziel, should I be knocked on the head, by any chance, these go over the side at the last moment, of course,' he said, tapping the parcel and the bag.
Already the strict pattern of the sloop's behaviour was growing more fluid. The men were quiet and attentive; the watch-glass turned to the minute; four bells in the afternoon watch rang with singular precision but there was a certain amount of movement, unreproved movement up and down the fore-hatch—men putting on their best clothes (two or three waistcoats together, and a shoregoing jacket on top), asking their particular officers to look after money or curious treasures, in the faint hope they might be preserved—Babbington had a carved whale's tooth in his hand, Lucock a Sicilian bull's pizzle. Two men had already managed to get drunk: some wonderfully hidden savings, no doubt.
'Why does he not fire?' thought Jack. The Desaix's bow-chasers had been silent these twenty minutes, though for the last mile or so of their course the Sophie had been well within range. Indeed, by now she was in musket-shot, and the people in her bows could easily be told from one another: seamen, marines, officers—one man had a wooden leg. What splendidly cut sails, he reflected, and at the same time the answer to his question came: 'By God, he's going to riddle us with grape.' That was why he had silently closed the range. Jack moved to the side; leaning over the hammock-netting he dropped his packets into the sea and saw them sink.
In the bows of the Desaix there was a sudden movement, a response to an order. Jack stepped to the wheel, taking the spokes from the quartermaster's hands and looking back over his left shoulder. He felt the life of the sloop under his fingers: and he saw the Desaix begin to yaw. She answered her helm as quickly as a cutter, and in three heartbeats there were her thirty-seven guns coming round to bear. Jack heaved strongly at the wheel. The broadside's roar and the fall of the Sophie's maintopgallantmast and foretopsail yard came almost together—in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie's bell; and then a silence. The greater part of the seventy-four's roundshot had passed a few yards ahead of her stem: the scattering grape-shot had utterly wrecked her sails and rigging—had cut them to pieces. The next broadside must destroy her entirely.