have leisure before the engagement: it is so tedious, struggling with the rigor mortis.'
But when he had climbed the successive ladders he saw to his surprise and regret that the Nutmeg was already well in with the land and that although her pace was sober, moderate, mercantile, there would be no time for the autopsy he had in mind. Jack was eating a ham sandwich and talking to Richardson, but he looked across as Stephen appeared and smiled: Dr Maturin had slipped on the old black coat he usually operated in and he could easily pass for a down-at-heel merchant's supercargo. Jack himself was in loose trousers and shirtsleeves and on his head he wore a Monmouth cap, a villainous flat worsted affair, still to be seen among old-fashioned seamen, which had the advantage of containing his long yellow hair, no longer so bright as it was in the days when he was familiarly known as Goldilocks, but still conspicuous.
'There she lies,' he said, turning to Stephen; and there indeed she lay under the blue sky, a trim and elegant ship with her red gunports open to air the deck. She was two thirds of the way down the bay the Nutmeg was now entering, framed by the shore with its white rim and by the rising forest-land behind, bright green in places. There was quite a surf running, and white water could be seen beyond the Corn?e's starboard bow and here and there in other parts of the bay.
'The tide is at the full,' said Jack. 'Slack water this last half hour. Have you been busy? There are sandwiches in the quarter-gallery, and a pot of coffee, if you feel so inclined. Dinner may be rather late: the galley fires have been out this age.'
'We have been as active as ants, carrying our sick to their bay and making all ready in the berth: lint galore, swabs, pledgets, chains, saws, gags. When do you suppose the action will begin?'
'Not for an hour or so, unless she smokes us first. As you see, there is no plain ring of coral enclosing a lagoon: it is more a question of independent reefs with a winding passage between them and a surprising great bar off the mouth of the stream. That is why she is lying so far out, no doubt. It is awkward for her boats, and when one of her cutters went in just now I think she touched on the tail of the bank. Do you see the watering- party?'
'I believe so.'
'At the foot of the black cliffs two points on the starboard bow: take my glass.'
The black cliff, the stream leaping down it, and the seamen gathered round their casks came startlingly close in the brilliant light. 'There may be some extremely interesting plants on that damp rock-face,' said Stephen. 'May I look at the Corn?e?'
'It might be indiscreet from the quarterdeck: the sash-light in the quarter-gallery would be better. Do you see Dick on the foretopsail yard? He is going to con the ship from there. It ought to be the master, but his bowels are upset. We have to head almost for the watering-place, then there are two dog-legs half a mile apart before we can luff up and run under her lee.'
'I shall go and peer at them from the lavatory, eating a sandwich as I do so.'
'Stephen,' said Jack in a low tone, 'look for Pierrot, Christy Palli?'s boy, will you? I hope you do not see him, because that would confirm my idea he is ashore. I fairly dread killing him.'
'You mean the young French officer you met in Pulo Prabang, our friend's nephew? But you forget I never saw him, either as a boy or as a man.'
'Very true,' said Jack. 'Forgive me.'
The Nutmeg stood on, with her captain alone on his quarterdeck, apart from a single man at the wheel and Hooper by the lee rail, looking like a ship's boy. Richardson stood high on the yard, looking down into the clear water ahead, dark blue for the deep water of the channel, light for the shoals on either side. A score of seamen stood about on the forecastle, their hands in their pockets, or lounged on the gangway, even leaning on the rail. All the rest of the ship's company were out of sight under the forecastle, under the gangways, on the half-deck and in the cabin. All the gun-crews were at their stations, and those who could make out anything through the cracks of their portlids or through holes in the canvas strips, told their friends what they saw in a low voice, with striking accuracy. The boarders had their weapons at hand, cutlasses, pistols, boarding-axes, pikes; slow-match smoked in tubs beside the carronades - Jack would never trust to the flint-lock alone; and now the atmosphere was grave.
Behind its sliding door the quarter-gallery was quite cut off from the close-packed attentive crowd and its rumble of voices: it was the Captain's washing, shaving and powdering closet, and together with its companion on the other side (his privy) it was one of the few upper parts of the ship left undisturbed when she was cleared for action. With its wash-basin removed it made a pleasant little place from which to view proceedings; and Stephen was luckier with his sash-light than any of the hundred-odd below decks, except for those who could command a scuttle.
Like them he saw the Corn?e come closer as the Nutmeg glided diagonally across the bay, disappear from his field of vision as she took the first dog-leg in the channel and reappear ten minutes later on the second, remarkably closer, still firmly moored; and as the Nutmeg continued her turn the motionless Corn?e and the sea around her moved steadily forward almost as far as his eyes could follow. It was now that he saw a signal break out at her masthead, just two imperative flags reinforced by a quarterdeck gun: the jet of smoke and then the crack, loud in this waiting silence. A strong voice from the deck above him: 'Stand by. Stand by, there. Man the lee-braces,' and the ship vanished beyond the edge of the sash light.
For Jack she was still very dearly in sight, and he did not need his glass to see her open ports fill with eighteen-pounders run out.
The Nutmeg was tracing the long curve that was to carry her alongside the frigate, now almost right ahead and broadside on. The French colours ran up to the Corn?e's mizen-peak: Jack waited for the warning shot.
There was no warning shot. Instead the three aftermost eighteen-pounders fired to kill almost simultaneously.
'All hands,' called Jack as the balls raced overhead at topsail height a few yards to starboard. It was clear that his disguise had been pierced, but although he might be raked fore and aft he still hoped to sail the Nutmeg close enough to engage with real effect. Below him in the waist the bosun sprung his call: the officers came running up to the quarterdeck. 'Courses and staysails,' said Jack. 'Bear a hand, bear a hand, bear a hand, there. Mr Crown, cast off the painted strips. Mr Fielding, ensign and pennant.'
Stephen heard the crash of a ball somewhere forward, and then in a turmoil more apparent than real his door slid open and Seymour called in his ear 'They have smoked us, sir. Captain desires you will go below.'
The Corn?e's remaining eighteen-pounders fired in a long rippling sequence, her side vanishing behind the smoke. Holes appeared in the topsails and courses; the tack of the mainsail, just belayed, sprang free; the balls
