ship's company.
Sophie then returned to arguments against Jack's leaving quite so soon: tomorrow morning would be far, far better in every way; they could not possibly have his clothes ready before then. In spite of her nimble wit, logical arguments soon began to run short, and Stephen, feeling that at any moment she might resort to others, even to tears, or appeal to him for support, slipped quietly out of the room. He communed with his horse in its outhouse for a while, and when he came back he found Jack at the door, staring up at the scudding clouds, with Sophie, looking exceptionally beautiful in her anxiety and emotion, beside him. 'The glass is rising,' said Jack thoughtfully, 'but the wind is still due south . . . and when you consider where she lays, right up the harbour, there is not a hope of getting her out on this tide. No, my dear; perhaps you are right. Perhaps I should not go aboard until tomorrow. But tomorrow, sweetheart,' he said, looking fondly down, tomorrow at the crack of dawn you lose your husband to his natural element.'
CHAPTER TWO
Upon that damp element, always unstable, often treacherous, but for the moment both warm and kind, Captain Aubrey dictated an official letter to his happy clerk:
Boadicea, at sea
Sir,
I have the honour to acquaint you, that at dawn on the seventeenth instant, the Dry Salvages bearing SSE two leagues, His Majesty's ship under my command had the good fortune to fall in with a French national ship of war with a prize in company. On the Boadicea? approach she bore up, abandoning her prize, a snow, whose topmasts were struck down on deck. Every exertion was made in this ship to come up with the enemy, who endeavoured to lead us among the shoals of the Dry Salvages; but missing stays in consequence of the loss of her mizen topmast, she struck upon a reef. Shortly afterwards, the wind having fallen to a flat calm, and the rocks sheltering her from the Boadicea? guns, she was boarded and carried by the boats, when she proved to be the Hebe, formerly His Majesty's twenty-eight-gun frigate Hyaena but now mounting twenty-two twenty-four-pounders, carronades, and two long nines, with a complement of 214 men, commanded by Mons. Bretonniere, lieutenant de vaisseau, her captain having been killed in the action with the prize. She was thirtyeight days out of Bordeaux, on a cruise, and had taken the English vessels named in the margin. My first lieutenant, Mr Lemuel Akers, an old 52 and deserving officer, commanded the Boadicea? boats and led the attack in the most gallant manner; while Lieutenant Seymour and Mr Johnson, master's mate, displayed great activity. Indeed I am happy to say, that the conduct of the Boadicea? people gave me great satisfaction, and I have no greater loss to deplore than two men slightly wounded. The snow was secured without delay: she is the Intrepid Fox of Bristol, A. Snape master, from the Guinea Coast, laden with elephants' teeth, golddust, grains of Paradise, hides, and skins. In view of the value of her cargo, I have thought proper to send her into Gibraltar, escorted by the Hyaena under the command of Lieutenant Akers. I have the honour to be, etc.
Captain Aubrey watched his clerk's flying pen with great benevolence. The letter was true in essence, but like most official letters it contained a certain number of lies. Jack did not think Lemuel Akers a deserving officer, and the lieutenant's gallantry had in fact been confined to roaring at the Hibi from the stern-sheets of the launch, to which his wooden leg confined him, while the conduct of several of the Boadicea? people had filled their new captain with impatience, and the snow had not been secured without delay.
'Do not forget the wounded at the bottom of the page, Mr Hill,' he said. 'James Arklow, ordinary, and William Bates, Marine. Now be so good as to let Mr Akers know that I shall have a couple of private letters for him to take to Gibraltar.'
Left alone in the great cabin he glanced out of the stern-window at the calm, crowded, sunlit sea, with his prizes lying upon it and boats plying to and fro, the Hebe's or rather the Hyaena's rigging full of men putting the last touches to her repairs, the shrouds of her new mizen rattled down already: he had a first-rate bosun in John Fellowes. Then he reached out for a sheet of paper and began: 'Sweetheart--a hasty line to bring you my dear love and tell you all is well. We had an amazing prosperous voyage down as far as 35'30', with a fine double- reefed topsail quartering breeze--Boadicea? best point of sailing in her present trim--all the way from the moment we sank Rame Head right across the Bay and almost to Madeira. We put into Plymouth at the height of flood on Monday night--black, with squalls of sleet and blowing hard -and since we had made our number to Stoke Point, Mr Farquhar was ready waiting, bag and baggage, at the Commissioner's office. I sent to Lady Clonfert's inn, desiring her to be at the quay by twenty minutes past the hour; but through some mistake she did not appear, and I was obliged to proceed to sea without her.
'However, to cut things short, this pretty wind carried us across the Bay, where the Boadicea proved she was a dry, wholesome ship, and at one time I thought we should raise the Island in just over a week. But then it backed into the south-cast and I was obliged to stretch away for Tenerife, cursing my luck: and at four bells in the morning watch I happened to be on deck to make sure the master, an ignorant old man, did not run us on the Dry Salvages as he had nearly run us on Penlee Point, when there , right under our lee at the dawn of day, was a Frenchman, lying to with her prize. She had scarcely a chance, for the prize, a well-armed Guineaman, had mauled her briskly before she was taken; her rigging was all ahoo, she was bending a new foretopsail, and many of her people were in the Guineaman, setting her to rights: and of course she was not half our size. And since we had the weather-gage we could afford to yaw and let fly with our bow guns: not that it did her much harm, apart from flustering her people. However, she did her best, peppering us with her stern-chaser and trying to lead us into the four- fathom water of the Dog-Leg Passage. But I sounded that channel when I was a midshipman in the Circe, and since we draw twenty-three foot, I did not choose to follow her, although there was no swell worth speaking of. Had she got through, we might have lost her, Boadicea being a trifle sluggish (though you will not repeat that anywhere, my dear); but we knocked away her mizen topmast- she missed stays in the turn of the passage--ran on to the reef, and there being no wind could not beat across. So we lowered the boats and took her without much trouble, though I am sorry to say her commanding officer was wounded--Stephen is patching him up at this moment, poor fellow.
'There was no glory in it, sweetheart, not the least hint of danger; but the charming thing is, that she can just be called a frigate. She was our old Hyaena, a jackass twenty-eight as ancient as the Ark, that the French took when I was a boy: she was overgunned, of course, and they reduced her to what they rate a corvette, with twenty-four pounder carronades and a couple of long nines--I scarcely recognized her at first, she was so changed. But she is still a frigate for us, and of course she will be bought into the service (she is a fine sailer too, particularly on the wind, and we hauled her clear with no damage at all, bar a fathom or two of her copper being scraped off). And then there is head-money, and above all this Guineaman. She is no prize to us, being English, but she is salvage, and she does represent a certain amount of cash, which, the kitchen copper being in the state it is, will not be unwelcome. Unfortunately the Admiral shares. Although mine were Admiralty orders, the cunning old dog added some nonsense of his own, to make sure of one of my eights if I took anything; and this he did in the most barefaced way, after dinner, laughing cheerfully, ha, ha. All admirals are tarred with the same brush, I fear, and I dare say we shall find the same thing at the Cape.' He had scarcely written the last word before Stephen's grave warnings about close counsel came to his mind: he carefully changed it to 'our destination', and then returned to the Guineaman. 'Ordinarily she would have been crammed with blacks for the West Indies, which would have added much to her value; but perhaps it was just as well that there were none. Stephen grows so outrageous the minute slavery is mentioned, that I dare say I should have been obliged to set them ashore to prevent his being hanged for mutiny. Only the last time I dined in the gunroom, Akers, the first lieutenant, got on to the subject, and Stephen handled him so severely, I was obliged to intervene. Mr Farquhar is of the same
