a hand. We must have cartridge.’
The cartridge never came. Jack fired number five, caught a glimpse of topsails towering overhead, saw the Bellone’s foreyards glide into the Lord Nelson’s shrouds, and heard an enormous cheering, roaring of boarders behind him, behind him. The privateer’s boats had slipped round unseen in the smoke and there were a hundred Frenchmen coming up the unprotected starboard side.
They filled the Lord Nelson’s waist, cutting the quarterdeck off from the forecastle, and the press of men coming in over the bows through the chain-?torn netting was so great they could not fight. Faces, chests, arms, so close to him he could not get his long bar free, a little devilish man clinging round his waist. Down, trampled upon, a passing kick. Up and facing them, hitting short-?arm blows - a stab. The crowding force, the weight of men. Back, back, step by step, tripping on bodies, back, back. And then a falling void, an impact faintly, faintly heard, as though from another age.
The swinging lantern. He watched it: perhaps for hours. And gradually the world began to fall into place, memory coming back layer by layer, to reach the present. Or nearly so. He could not recall the sequence after the busting of poor Haynes’s gun. Haynes, of course: that was his name. A forecastle-?man, larboard watch, in the Resolution, rated quarter-?gunner when they were off the Cape. The rest was darkness: this often happened with a wound. Was he wounded? He was certainly in the cockpit, and that was Stephen moving about among the low, crowded, moaning bodies. ‘Stephen,’ he said, after a while.
‘How then, my dear?’ said Stephen. ‘How do you find yourself? How are your intellectuals?’
‘Pretty well, I thank you. I seem all of a piece.’
‘I dare say you are. Limbs and trunk are sound. Coma was all I feared these last few days. You fell down the forehatch. You may take an Almoravian draught, however. The dogs, they did not find half my Almoravian draught.’
‘We were taken?’
‘Aye, aye, we were taken. We lost thirty-?six killed and wounded; and they took us. They plundered us cruelly - stripped to the bone - and for the first few days they kept us under hatches. Here is your draught. However, I extracted a ball from Captain Dumanoir’s shoulder and looked after their wounded, and now we are indulged with taking the air on deck. Their second captain, Azema, is an amiable man, a former King’s officer, and he has prevented any gross excess, apart from the plundering.’
‘Privateers,’ said Jack, trying to shrug. ‘But what about those girls? What about the Miss Lambs?’
‘They are dressed as men - as boys. I am not sure that they are altogether pleased with the success of their deception.’
‘A fair-?sized prize-?crew?’ asked Jack, whose mind had flown to the possibility of retaking the Indiaman.
‘Huge,’ said Stephen. ‘Forty-?one. The Company’s officers have given their parole; some of the Lascars have taken service for double wages; and the rest are down with this Spanish influenza. They are carrying us into Corunna.’
‘Don’t they wish they may get us there,’ said Jack. ‘The chops of the Channel and to westward are alive with cruisers.’
He spoke confidently; he knew that there was truth in what he said; but limping about the quarterdeck on Tuesday, when Stephen allowed him up, he surveyed the ocean with a feeling of despair. A vast great emptiness, with nothing but the trim Bellone a little to windward: not a sail, not the smallest lugger on the world’s far rim, nor, after hours of unbroken watching, the least reason why any should appear. Emptiness; and somewhere under the leeward horizon, the Spanish port. He remembered coming from the West Indies in the Alert, sailing along the busiest sea-?route in the whole Atlantic, and they had not seen a living soul until they were in soundings off the Lizard.
In the afternoon Pullings came on deck, pale Pullings, supported by a Miss Lamb on either side. Jack had already seen Pullings (grape-?shot in the thigh, a sword-?cut on the shoulder and two ribs stove in), just as he had seen Major Hill (down with the influenza) and all the other men under Stephen’s hands, but this was the first time he had seen the girls. ‘My dear Miss Lamb,’ he cried, taking her free hand, ‘I hope I see you well. Quite well?’ he said earnestly, meaning ‘not too much raped?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Miss Lamb, looking conscious and strange - quite another girl, ‘my sister and I are perfectly well.’
‘Miss Lambs, your most devoted,’ said Captain Azema, coming from the starboard side and bowing. He was a big dark loose-?built man, tough, capable, a sailor - a man after Jack’s own heart. ‘Misses are under my particular protection, sir,’ he said. ‘I have persuaded them to carry robes, to resume the form divine,’ - kissing his fingers ‘They
do not risk the least impertinence. Some of my men are villain buggers indeed, impetuous like one says, but quite apart from my protection, not one, not one, would want of respect for such heroines.’
‘Eh?’ said Jack. -
‘That’s right, sir,’ cried Pullings, squeezing them. ‘Copper-?bottomed heroines, trundling shot, running about like mad, powder, match when my flint flew off, wads !! Joan of Arcs.’
‘Did they carry powder?’ cried Jack. ‘Dr Maturin said trousers, or something of that kind, but I -.
‘Oh, you horrid two-?faced thing!’ cried Miss Susan. ‘You saw her! You shouted out the most dreadful things to Lucy, the most dreadful things I ever heard in my life. You swore at my sister, sir; you know you did. Oh, Captain Aubrey, fie!’
‘Captain Aubrey?’ observed Azema, adding the head-?money for an English officer to his share of the prize -a very handsome sum.
‘She’s blown the gaff - I’m brought by the lee,’ thought Jack. ‘They carried powder - What an amazing spirited thing to do.’ ‘Dear Miss Lambs,’ he said most humbly, ‘I beg you to forgive me. The last half-?hour of the action - a damned warm action too - is a perfect blank to me. I fell on my head; and it is a perfect blank. But to carry powder was the most amazing spirited thing to do: I honour you, my dears. Please forgive me. The smoke - the trousers -what did I say, so that I may unsay it at once?’
‘You said,’ began Miss Susan, and paused. ‘Well, I forget; but it was monstrous.
The sound of a gun made the whole group jerk, an absurd, simultaneous, galvanic leap: they had all been
