going to attack the pennant-ship from to-windward, while Stately goes on to deal with her companion. I am going to engage so close that our roundshot will go through both her sides, to end it quick. And be damned to him who first cries Hold, enough.'
A very hearty cheer indeed, echoed from the Stately: and the waft from the match-tubs by each gun drifted in eddies, a scent surpassed only by powder-smoke. Yet the Thames had not answered the cheer, though she was no great way off on the southern side. Jack took his glass: she was in trouble: she had contrived to get inshore of a reef and she could neither turn nor advance.
The first ranging shot from the Frenchmen splashed alongside. The next came home, somewhere about the larboard hawse-hole. Tom yawed just enough for the forward starboard guns to reply, and now, in spite of the wind right aft, there was the scent of powder-smoke as well.
How quickly those last few hundred yards fleeted by! At one moment you could still notice a gull or that damn fool of a Thames, and the next you were in the full deafening roar of battle yardarm to yardarm, the broadsides losing all unity and merging into a continuous iron bellow. The ships ground together as the Frenchmen tried to board, yelling as they came. They were repelled; and now came a louder, more triumphant cry, then another as the enemy's mizzen went by the board at deck-level, carrying the maintopmast with it. The ship could no longer lie head to wind and she slewed to larboard; but still answering her helm she ran north-east along the shore, keeping up a fire from her undamaged side until, at the very height of flood, eleven minutes after the first shot, she struck, racing high on to the rocky shelf just below the village.
Jack rounded to and called upon her to surrender; and this, after a moment's hesitation, she did. Even if she had been able to bring a gun to bear, which she could not, lying at that dreadful angle on the rock among the surf there was no hope. Yet so far down the bay and in these shallows, the surf was far less dreadful than it looked. The quarter-boats brought the French commodore and his officers across little difficulty, and carried a prize-crew back, including, at the Frenchman's most earnest request, Stephen Maturin, their own surgeon having been killed - he had wished to see a battle. A nominal prize-crew, and as a last thought a small party of Marines, for even if he had imagined trouble aboard the prize Jack had no time to spare. Below the racing cloud he had just seen Stately attempt an extremely brave but perilous manoeuvre, drawing ahead and suddenly tacking across the Frenchman's bows to rake her fore and aft with broadside after broadside. But his ship or his men's skill betrayed him: the Stately would not come round. She hung there in irons while the Frenchman pounded her, knocked away her main and mizzen topmasts, and then she fell off to her former starboard tack. The enemy of course bore up and raked her in his turn.
But for the Bellona's approach he must have destroyed or taken her. As it was he let fall his courses and raced closehauled to the end of the southern headland and out to sea beyond it, just saving both masts and sails, and disappeared, steering eastward and increasing sail without the least care for his friends in their secluded cove.
The reason for this headlong flight appeared a moment later, when two English seventy-fours and a frigate appeared round the northern cape. Jack signalled them to heave to, emphasizing the order with a gun, told Tom to look to the Stately, and if she could be left, to make the best of his way towards the troop-ships' cove, and so dropped into Ringle.
He went aboard the nearest seventy-four, Royal Oak, which received his shabby, battle-stained and indeed bloody person with all the compliments due to his broad pennant, and with very great enthusiasm. 'Gentlemen, I bring you prizes,' he said. 'There is a cove among that group of islands there' - pointing - 'which conceals four French troop carriers and two frigates. I should take them myself, but I have four foot water in the hold and gaining fast, having had a bout with that fellow aground down there - a very determined fighter indeed - and the ship is slow and heavy.'
They treated him with infinite consideration - of course they would do all he desired - they gave him the most cordial joy of his victory - hoped that his people had not suffered and thanked the Lord they had been ordered from Bere Haven on rumours of gunfire - led him to the cabin - would the Commodore care for a dish of tea? of cocoa? Perhaps gin and hot water, or the whiskey of these parts? All this time they were
approaching the cove, and now Jack's frigate captains came aboard, passionate for news, grieved for the Bellona's battered state - she could indeed be seen to be wallowing along, her pumps flinging water wide to leeward.
One of the French frigates in the cove chanced it. She cut her cable, squeezed through an improbable gap and ran east before the gale with everything she could set, joining the ship of the line in her way back to France. The rest submitted to the overwhelming force: for by this time the Bellona had joined.
'William,' said Jack Aubrey to Reade in the tender, 'pray run down to the Doctor and tell him that Captain Geary is lending us some hands to pump and seeing us back to Bantry to be patched up, and Warwick is giving poor Stately a tow. Tell him that all is well, and that I hope to ride across and see him in a day or two. It is only a short way across by land- that is how the news of our being here reached Bantry: a boy on an ass to tell them that it was the French at last.'
The French at last: looked for so long, so long promised. Things now seemed to be going astray somewhat; yet here at least was a great French ship and she filled with people, filled with arms.
The tide withdrew, farther and unbelievably far, and the French ship settled, her wounded timbers groaning and even breaking under her weight. Most of the prisoners were confined between decks, but some gave the prize-crew a hand with various tasks, and some helped Stephen transfer the wounded to the Sacred Heart hospital behind and above Duniry. Some of the men of the village had been in one or another of the Irish regiments in the French service before the Revolution, and were still fluent in the language; it was they who learnt the purpose of the expedition and the nature of the ship's cargo for sure. The word spread and by the time Stephen came back from the hospital with Father Boyle there was a noisy, threatening crowd by the stranded ship, her landward side now almost dry. An awkward kind of accommodation-ladder had been shipped, and on a platform at its foot stood a guard of the Bellona's Marines, looking both cross and apprehensive, for not only were the men of the village very near to the point of stoning them, but the foreshore had quantities of seaweed, mud, general filth, and the women, who had already loosed their hair, were perfectly capable of flinging it, wrecking their sacred uniforms.
They made room for Father Boyle and Stephen, the young officer whispering 'I fear they may try to rush the side.' Half way up the ladder Stephen turned, and speaking in Irish he said, 'Men of Duniry, it is weapons you desire.'
'It is,' they cried. 'And it is weapons we shall have.'
'If you had those weapons, weapons from the man who has kept the Holy Father close prisoner, and who turned Turk in Cairo, worshipping Mahomet, they would be your bane and your certain death, God between us and evil. Do you not know that the whole barony is raised with the news of their coming, the French? The yeomanry of all West Cork and the County Kerry are afoot, and every man found with a musket from this ship must hang. A full gibbet by nightfall, and never a roof with its thatch unburnt.' Turning to the priest he cried 'Mors in olla, vir Dei: mors in olla. For God's sake urge them to be quiet, Father dear, or there will be widows by the score tomorrow.'
