HMS Surprise. Patrick O’Brian

gunboat stern-on with the sweeps ready at hand and lay there in squalid loneliness: Jack had a meal served out to the men in messes of six, crowded into the little cabin, while the rest sheltered under the half-deck – only one light, little movement or sound, no appearance of activity.

      How well they bore the waiting! A low murmur of talk, the faint click of dice; the fat Chinese snoring like a hog. They could believe in an omniscient leader, who had everything in hand – meticulous preparations, wisdom, local knowledge, sure allies: Jack could not. Every quarter the church bells chimed all over Port Mahon; and one, with a cracked treble, was St Anna’s, which he had often heard from that very garden house with Molly Harte. A quarter past; the half-hour; nine. Ten.

      He found himself staring up at Killick, who said, ‘Three bells, sir. Gentleman back presently. Here’s coffee, sir, and a rasher. Do get summat in your gaff, sir, God love us.’

      Like every other sailor Jack had slept and woken in all latitudes at all hours of the night and day; he too had the trick of springing out of a deep sleep ready to go on deck, highly developed by years and years of war; but this time it was different – he was not only bright awake and ready to go on deck – he was another man; the cold desperate tension was gone and he was another man. Now the smell of their foul anchorage was the smell of coming action – it took the place of the keen whiff of powder. He ate his breakfast with eager voracity and then went forward in the quarter moonlight to talk to his crew, squatting under the half-deck. They were astonished at his contained high spirits, so different from the savage remoteness of the run down the coast; astonished, too, that they should outlast the stroke of one, of half past, the waiting and no Maragall.

      It was nearly two o’clock before they heard steps running on the quay. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, panting. ‘To make people to move in this country… Here they are, guides. All’s well. St Anna’s at three, yes? I shall be there.’

      Jack smiled and said, ‘Three it is. Good-bye.’ And turning to the shadowy guides, ‘Cuatro groupos, cinco minutos each, eh? Satisfaction, then Java Dick: Bonden, bring up the rear.’ He stepped ashore at last, the stiff, unyielding ground after months at sea.

      He had thought he knew Port Mahon, but in five minutes of climbing up through these dark sleeping alleys, with no more than a cat flitting in the doorways and once the sound of a baby being hushed, he was lost; and when they came crouching through a low stinking tunnel he was astonished to find himself in the familiar little square of St Anna’s. The church door was ajar: they pushed silently in. One candle in a side-chapel, and by the candle two men holding white handkerchiefs. They whispered to the guide, a priest or a man dressed as a priest, and came forward to speak to him. He could not make out what they said, but caught the word foch several times repeated, and when the door opened again he saw a red glow in the sky. The back of the church was filling as the guides led in his other groups: close-packed silent men, smelling of tar. The glow again, and he went to look out – a fire down by the harbour, with smoke drifting fast away to the south, lit red from below – and as he looked he heard a shriek: high bubbling agony cut off short. It came from a house no great way off.

      Here was Bonden with the last party, doubling across the square. ‘Did you hear that, sir? Them buggers are at it.’

      ‘Silence, you God-damn fool,’ he said, very low.

      The clock whirred and struck: three. Maragall appeared from the shadows. ‘Come on,’ said Jack, ran from the square to the alley in the corner, up the alley, along the high blank wall to where a fig-tree leaned over the top. ‘Bonden, make me a back.’ He was up. ‘Grapnels.’ He hooked them around the trunk, whispered, ‘Land soft, land soft, there,’ and dropped into the court.

      Here was the garden house, its windows full of light: and inside the long room three men standing over a common rack; one civilian at a desk, writing; a soldier leaning against the door. The officer who was shouting as he leant over the rack moved sideways to strike again and Jack saw that it was not Stephen spreadeagled there on the ground.

      Behind him there was the soft plump of men dropping from the wall. ‘Satisfaction,’ he whispered, ‘your men round the other side, to the door. Java Dick – that archway with the light. Bonden, with me.’

      The bubbling shriek rose again, huge, beyond human measure, intolerable. Inside the room the strikingly handsome youth had turned and now he was looking up with a triumphant smile at the other officers. His coat and his collar were open, and he had something in his hand.

      Jack drew his sword, opened the long window: their faces turned, indignant, then shocked, amazed. Three long strides, and balancing, with a furious grip on his hilt, he cut forehand at the boy and backhand at the man next to him. Instantly the room was filled – bellowing noise, rushing movement, blows, the thud of bodies, a shout from the last officer, chair and table crashing down, the black civilian with two seamen on top of him, a smothered scream. The soldier shooting out of the door – an animal cry beyond it; and silence. The demented, inhuman face of the man on the rack, running with sweat.

      ‘Cast him off,’ said Jack, and the man groaned, shutting his eyes as the strain relaxed.

      They waited, listening: but although they could easily hear the voices of three or four soldiers arguing on the ground floor and someone whistling sweet and true upstairs, there was no reaction. Loud voices, didactic, hortatory, going on and on, unchanged.

      ‘Now for the house,’ said Jack. ‘Maragall, which is the guard-room?’

      ‘The first on the left under the archway.’

      ‘Do you know any of their names?’

      Maragall spoke to the men with the handkerchiefs. ‘Only Potier, the corporal, and Normand.’

      Jack nodded. ‘Bonden, you remember the door into the front patio? Guard that with six men. Satisfaction, your party stays in this court. Java, yours each side of the door. Lee’s men come along with me. Silence, silence, eh?’

      He walked across the court, his boots loud on the stones and soft feet padding by him: a moment’s pause for a last check and he called out, ‘Potier.’ In the same instant, like an echo from up the stairs came the shout ‘Potier’, and the whistling, which had stopped, started again, stopped, and ‘Potier!’ again, louder. The argument in the guard-room slackened, listening; and again, ‘Potier!’

      ‘J’arrive, mon capitaine,’ cried the corporal; he came out of the room, still talking into it before he closed the door. A sob, an astonished gasp, and silence. Jack called, ‘Normand,’ and the door opened again; but it was a surly, questioning, almost suspicious face that craned out, slammed the door to at what it saw.

      ‘Right,’ said Jack, and flung his sixteen stone against it. The door burst inwards, shuddering as it swung; but there was only one man left this side of the crowded open window: they hunted him down in one quick turn. Shrieks in the courtyard.

      ‘Potier,’ from above, and the whistling moved down the stairs, ‘qu’est-ce que ce remue-ménage?’

      By the light of the big lantern under the arch Jack saw an officer, a cheerful, high-coloured officer, bluff good humour and a well-fitting uniform, so much the officer that he felt a momentary pause. Dutourd, no doubt.

      Dutourd’s face, about to whistle again, turned to incredulity: his hand reached to a sword that was not there.

      ‘Hold him,’ said Jack to the dark seamen closing in. ‘Maragall, ask him where Stephen is.’

      ‘Vous êtes un officier anglais, monsieur?’ asked Dutourd, ignoring Maragall.

      ‘Answer, God rot your bloody soul,’ cried Jack with a flush of such fury that he trembled.

      ‘Chez le colonel,’ said the officer.

      ‘Maragall, how many are there left?’

      ‘This person is the only man left in the house: he says Esteban is in the colonel’s room. The colonel is not back yet.’

      ‘Come.’

      Stephen