ports beat into one, the boats on the booms utterly destroyed, shattered spars everywhere, water pouring from her lee-?scuppers as the pumps brought it gushing up from below, tangled rope, splinters knee-?deep in the waist, gaping holes in the bulwarks, fore and mainmast cut almost through in several places, 24 lb balls lodged deep. ‘My God, you have suffered terribly. I give you the joy of victory,’ he said, taking Jack’s hand in both of his, ‘but you have suffered most terribly. Your losses must be shocking, I am afraid.’
Jack was worn now, and very tired: his foot hurt him abominably, swollen inside his boot. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ he said. ‘He handled us roughly, and but for the George coming up so nobly, I believe he must have sunk us. But we lost very few men. Mr Harrowby, alas, and two others, with a long score of wounded: but a light bill for such warm work. And we paid him back. Yes, yes: we paid him back, by God.’
‘Eight foot three inches of water in the well, if you please, sir,’ said the carpenter. ‘And it gains on us.’
‘Can I be of any use, sir?’ cried Muffit. ‘Our carpenters, bosuns, hands to pump?’
‘I should take it kindly if I might have my officers and men back, and any help you can spare. She will not swim another hour.’
‘Instantly, sir, instantly,’ cried Muffit, starting to the side, now very near the water. ‘Lord, what a battering,’ he said, pausing for a last look.
‘Ay,’ said Jack. ‘And where I shall replace all my gear this side of Bombay I do not know - not a spar in the ship. My comfort is, that Linois is even worse.’
‘Oh, as for masts, spars, boats, cordage, stores, the Company will be delighted - oh, they will think the world of you, sir, in Calcutta - nothing too much, I do assure you. Your splendid action has certainly preserved the fleet, as I shall tell ‘em. Yardarm to yardarm with a seventy-?four! May I give you a tow?’
Jack’s foot gave him a monstrous twinge. ‘No, sir,’ he said sharply. ‘I will escort you to Calcutta, if you choose, since I presume you will not remain at sea with Linois abroad; but I will not be towed, not while I have a mast standing.’
The Company did think the world of him, indeed. Fireworks; prodigious banquets, treasures of naval stores poured out; such kind attentions to the crew while the Surprise was repairing that scarcely a man was sober or single from the day they dropped anchor to the day they weighed it, a sullen, brutal, debauched and dissipated band.
This was gratitude expressed in food, in entertainment on the most lavish scale in oriental splendour, and in many, many speeches, all couched in terms of unmixed praise; and it brought Jack into immediate contact with Richard Canning. At the very first official dinner he found Canning at his right - a Canning filled with affectionate admiration, who eagerly claimed acquaintance. Jack was astonished: he had scarcely thought twice about Canning since Bombay, and since the engagement with Linois not at all. He had been perpetually busy, nursing the poor shattered fainting Surprise across the sea, even with a favourable wind and the devoted help of every Indiaman whose people could find footing aboard her; and Stephen, with a sick-?bay full, and some delicate operations, including poor Bowes’s head, had barely exchanged a dozen unofficial words with him that might have brought Diana or Canning to his mind.
But here was the man at his side, friendly, unreserved and apparently unconscious of any call for reserve on either part, present to do him honour and indeed to propose his health in a well-?turned, knowledgeable and really gratifying speech, a speech in which Sophia hovered, decently veiled, together with Captain Aubrey’s imminent, lasting, and glorious happiness. After the first stiffness and embarrassment Jack found it impossible-?to dislike him, and he made little effort to do so, particularly as Stephen and he seemed so well together. Besides, any distance, any coldness on a public occasion would have been so marked, so graceless and so churlish that he could not have brought himself to it, even if the offence had been even greater and far more recent. It occurred to him that in all probability Canning had not the least notion of having cut him out long ago - oh so long ago: in another world.
Banquets, receptions, a ball that he had to decline, because that was the day they buried Bowes; and it was a week before he ever saw Canning in private, He was sitting at his desk in his cabin with his injured foot in a bucket of warm oil of sesame, writing to Sophie ‘the sword of honour they have presented me with is a very handsome thing, in the Indian taste, I believe, with a most flattering inscription; indeed, if kind words were ha’pence, I should he a nabob, and oh sweetheart a married nabob. The Company, the Parsec merchants and the insurers have made up a splendid purse for the men, that I am to distribute; but in their delicacy - ‘ when Canning was announced.
‘Beg him to step below,’ he said, placing a whale’s tooth upon his letter, against the fetid Hooghly breeze. ‘Mr Canning, a good morning to you, sir: pray sit down. Forgive me for receiving you in this informal way, but Maturin will flay me if I rise up from my oil without leave.’
Civil inquiries for the foot - vastly better, I thank you -and Canning said, ‘I have just pulled round the ship, and upon my word I do not know how you ever brought her in. I absolutely counted forty-?seven great shot between what was left of your cutwater and the stump of the larboard cathead, and even more on the starboard bow. Just how did the Marengo lay?’
Few landsmen would have had more than the briefest general account, but Canning had been to sea; he owned privateers and he had fought one of them in a spirited little action. Jack told him just how the Marengo lay; and led on by Canning’s close, intelligent participation in every move, every shift of wind, he also told him how the S?millante and Belle Poule had lain, and how the gallant Berceau had tried to lay, drawing diagrams in oil of sesame on the table-?top.
‘Well,’ said Canning with a sigh, ‘I honour you, I am sure: it was the completest thing. I would have given my right hand to be there . . . but then I have never been a lucky man, except perhaps in trade. Lord, lord, how I wish I were a sailor, and a great way from land.’ He looked down-?spirited and old; but reviving he said, ‘It was the completest thing - the Nelson touch.’
‘Ah no, sir, no,’ cried Jack. ‘There you mistake it. Nelson would have had Marengo. There was a moment when I almost thought we might. If that noble fellow McKay in Royal George could only have brought up the rear a little faster, or if Linois had lingered but a minute to thump us again, the van would have been up, and we had him between two fires. But it was not to be. It was only a little brush, after all - another indecisive action; and I dare say he is refitting in Batavia at this moment.’
Canning shook his head, smiling. ‘It was not altogether unsuccessful, however,’ he said. ‘A fleet worth six million of money has been saved; and the country, to say nothing of the Company, would have been in a strange position if it had been lost. And that brings me to the purpose of my visit. I am come at the desire of my associates to find out, with the utmost tact and delicacy, how they may express their sense of your achievement in something more - shall I say tangible? - than addresses, mountains of pilau, and indifferent burgundy. Something perhaps more negotiable, as we say in the City. I trust I do not offend you, sir?’
