Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O'Brian

  'Pretty active, I believe. Then the next place is quite high up, a natural cleft of rather better than a cable's length, with remarkably steep sides. When our friends here learn that the northerners are coming they usually send a squadron of war-canoes up to Pabay—they are better at sea than on land—while another body hurries to this cleft and throws up a dry-stone wall: they are amazingly quick and skilful and they have the stone at hand. Sometimes they hold it, being picked men: sometimes they are overwhelmed, the attackers having the advantage of the slope. But even if that does happen, the southerners rarely suffer much, since the men from Pabay have to hurry back because of the war-canoes. The third place is where the really decisive battles have been fought. It is higher still, on a desolate lava plain flanked with cliffs; it has a damned unpleasant sulphurous smell, and it is still littered with whitened bones. I absolutely saw hundreds of skulls: perhaps thousands.'

  'May I ask what you mean to do?'

  'Oh, it is the cleft, every time. Kalahua knows that Puolani cannot send her war-canoes to Pabay with the Franklin likely to appear at any moment: he can use his whole force, demolish the wall at once if he has brought his gun so far, and in any case push on without fear. I will draw you the cleft. There: about two hundred yards long and twenty wide: room for Kalahua and all his men. My idea—I must repeat that they are astonishing hands at dry-stone building—is to post two carronades here at the north entrance, hidden by walls. Four more at the southern end, spaced out thus and similarly hid, two firing straight down and two, like those at the far end, firing diagonally: quite a slight angle, but enough to sweep the whole ground. I post a few of Puolani's people just beyond the cleft. When Kalahua comes up they skirmish a little to concentrate his men and then run hell-fire quick back towards us, drawing the northerners into the cleft. When they are in, the guns at the far end open fire. The northern rear presses hard up against its own van, and the guns at the southern end open up.'

  'Have the northerners no retreat?'

  'None.'

  'I had imagined it was a military maxim that the enemy should always be left a line of retreat.'

  'Perhaps that is so in the army; but the Navy is required to take, sink, burn or destroy. Pray don't look so low, Stephen. After all, the man who starts a war only gets what he asked for, you know, if he is destroyed. And he can always call for quarter.'

  When Stephen had returned to the sick-berth, Jack sent for Oakes and said 'Sit down, Mr Oakes. As you know, tomorrow we shall be preparing to support Queen Puolani against the people from Pabay and the Americans. Captain Pullings and I and Mr West and most of the warrant officers will be on shore, and we shall probably sleep there, some way up the country. You will remain on board in command of the ship and Mr Reade of the prize. If during my absence the American privateer Franklin should make as if to enter the bay you are both to hoist our colours and engage her, but at no greater distance than a quarter of a mile. I shall leave you enough men to fight one side, with the gunner's mate to assist you. If you are obliged to slip rather than weigh your anchors, which is probable should the American appear, you are to buoy them with the utmost care. Should the Franklin withdraw, she is not to be pursued beyond a line joining the two headlands. I cannot emphasize that point too strongly, Mr Oakes. Have you any questions?'

  'No, sir. But may I say, sir, may I say with all respect, that I never had a go at Pabay. I never had a go at what you might call—I never had a go at regaining your esteem.'

  'No. It is true I was angry with you for bringing Mrs Oakes aboard, but since then you have behaved in a seamanlike, officerlike fashion and I think highly enough of your qualities to make you prizemaster of the Truelove with orders to take her to Batavia to be condemned, if the encounter goes as we wish and if you feel competent to command her.'

  'Oh sir,' cried Oakes, 'I don't know how to thank you—I shall tell Clarissa—that is to say, oh yes, if you please. I am reasonable good at navigation, and I believe I know how to handle a ship—not like you, sir, of course, but tolerably well.'

  'It should not be too difficult. She is well-found and you will have the monsoon with you. I shall, if all goes well, give you an acting order as lieutenant; and although she will still be a little short-handed, I shall let you have a couple of our master-mariners, Slade and Gorges for example, who can stand a watch and keep their own reckoning: the three French prisoners too—they can at least haul on a rope. And I shall make an advance on your pay and prize-money to bear your charge from Batavia home. Now, although the whole matter depends on our success the day after tomorrow, you had better go across and become acquainted with the Truelove and her people.'

  'May I tell my wife first?' asked Oakes, almost laughing with pleasure.

  'By all means—my best compliments wait on Mrs Oakes—and let Mr Reade know I should like to see him.'

  The ship's boats were coming back in the darkness, having landed the very heavy material; they were hoisted in, and when the jollyboat was safely stowed inside the launch—for the small-arms men and the gun-crews were to be taken off at dawn by Puolani's canoes, by way of precaution—West reported to Pullings, who relayed the news to Jack that all hands except two of the most notorious lechers were aboard.

  'Very well,' said Jack, and he went below, sharp-set.

  At supper he interrupted his steady attack upon the sea-pie to say 'I was never so much surprised in my life. Just now I told Oakes I should give him an acting order as lieutenant to take the Truelove in, if all went well on Friday. He was amazed. Delighted and amazed. His wife had not given him the slightest hint. Yet she must have known it hours before, from your questions.'

  'She is a jewel of a woman,' said Stephen. 'How I value her.'

  Jack shook his head and returned to the sea-pie. Eventually, leaning back, he said, 'I never asked you what you thought of Puolani.'

  'I thought her a magnificent queenly woman. Juno, with the same large expressive eyes, and I hope without her faults of temper.'

  'She is certainly very kind. She set her people to work making a house for me to sleep in, but I told her that tomorrow night I must be right up by the guns.' A silence for pudding, and he went on, 'I do not think I told you how pleased I was with the war-chiefs and their men—thoroughly professional and well-disciplined—not the least jealousy of the Navy, as you so often find at home. They were perfectly ready to take any suggestions I made, and I had hardly mentioned a dressing-station for you on a convenient shaded little plateau half an hour short of the cleft before they started setting it up.'

  'Half an hour short of the cleft?'

  'Yes. It is not the custom here to take prisoners, and I can do nothing about it. I expect something of a slaughter-house; and I cannot have a battle of this kind interrupted for a moment on humane grounds.'

  'Have you ever known me interfere in any battle?'

  'No. But I strongly suspect you of a tender heart, and in such a case I think you would be far better in your proper place, which is a dressing-station well to the rear, corresponding to the cockpit in a ship of the line.'

  It was in this dressing-station that Jack, Stephen, Pullings, West and Adams slept on Thursday night, having walked up the broad well-beaten track, smelling of crushed green, that the carronades had taken before them, stubby short-range guns that could be manhandled for this distance and on this slope with relative ease, they weighing no more than half a ton, three times less than Kalahua's piece.

  And it was here, clearly, that Stephen woke at the first hint of light. His companions had already left, moving with that silence usual among naval men in the night watches; so had most of the warriors, but as he stood in the doorway, with birds singing and calling in the trees all round and below him, more tribesmen came hurrying up the path, big brown cheerful men, some wearing matting armour, all armed with spears, clubs and sometimes dreadful hardwood swords, their edges studded with shark's teeth. They called out as they passed, smiling and waving.

  When the last had gone up, r
unning not to miss the fight, Stephen sat outside the doorway in the rising sun. Presently the birdsong diminished to a few screeches here and there (they were not a melodious choir, upon the whole), and presently Padeen succeeded in striking a light, coaxing a fire into being, and warming the coffee.

  A number of birds passed close at hand, some of them probably honeysuckers; but still he waited, listening rather than seeing. Kalahua's camp fires had showed clear last night only an hour's march beyond the cleft, and even with the gun the northern men and their white mercenaries should reach it before the sun had risen another hand's breadth.

  At intervals he looked at it over the immense stretch of sea ending in a taut horizon. Immobile of course. He tried thinking of that glorious Queen Puolani: it was said that her late husband, her consort, proved a man of inferior parts and that she had him set in the forefront of just such a battle in the cleft. He tried repeating verses; but those which he knew well, which came easily, did not overlay his vision of the sheer-sided defile two hundred yards by twenty, filled with men and they being fired upon from back and front and diagonally. The twenty-four pounder carronades would be using canister, about two hundred iron balls at each discharge; and they would be served by expert crews, capable of firing, reloading, aiming and firing again in less than a minute. In five minutes six carronades would discharge at least six thousand lethal shots into those trapped bodies. In his harsh unmusical voice he chanted plainsong, which had a better covering effect: he had reached a Benedictus in the Dorian mode and he was straining for a high qui venit when the clear sharp voice of gunfire—carronade-fire—cut him short. Four almost at once, it seemed to him, and then two; but the echoes confused everything. Then four quick hammer-strokes again. Then silence.

  Padeen and he stood staring up the mountain. They could make out a vague roaring, but nothing more; and the birds that had started from the trees below all settled again. Perhaps battle had been joined: perhaps the carronades had been overrun.

  Time passed, though less slowly now, and presently steps could be heard on the path. A young long-legged man raced down past them, a messenger of good news, his whole face alive with joy. He shouted something as he passed: victory, no doubt at all.

  After him, several minutes after him, came two more, each carrying a human head by the hair, Polynesian the first, European the second. Both heads had their eyes open, indignant in the one case, perfectly blank in the other.

  Then loud and clear, helped by some eddy in the wind, came the cry 'one, two, three, belay-oh!' and it was plain that a carronade was coming down the path. Long before it reached them a group of small-arms men could be heard laughing and talking, and as soon as they came in sight Stephen called 'Wilton, are many of our people hurt?'

  'None that I know on, sir. Ain't that right, Bob?'

  'Right as dried peas, mate. And none of the Queen's men that I see, neither.'

  'But them poor unfortunate buggers in the gulley,' said the captain of the hold, an old shipmate of Stephen's and entitled to speak freely, 'God love us, sir, it was bloody murder.'

  By this time the mountainside was alive with men, islanders who knew scores of paths the guns could never have taken, most of them carrying their spoils: weapons, matting, ornaments, ears.

  Presently Jack appeared at the turning, with Bonden a little way behind him, looking somewhat anxious. Stephen walked up the track and as they met he said 'May I give you joy of your victory?'

  'Thank you, Stephen,' said Jack, with a sort of smile.

  'Are there any wounded I can look after?'

  'All that did not run away are dead by now, brother. Shall we take a side path? It will get us down so long as we follow the slope and hit the Eeahu river. Tom is seeing to the carronades. Bonden, give Padeen a hand with the medical stores, will you?'

  They struck off to the left, a track that led steeply down through ferns to a little purling stream; the path was too narrow and abrupt for any conversation until the place where the stream ran across, making a pool under a spreading tree. Jack knelt down, washed his face and hands and drank deep. 'Lord, that is better,' he said, sitting back on a mossy root. 'Should you like to know how things went?'

  'I am afraid it distresses you to speak of it at present.'

  'Yes, it does. But these things soon pass, you know. Well, the scheme worked perfectly, like a drill-book. They were rather tired, having come uphill nearly all the way, dragging their gun and precious short of food; and our young men, posted at the far end to provoke them and bring them on into the cleft, had plenty of time to run back behind the guns and leave the field clear. I should never have believed case-shot could do so much damage. I must say the French came on very well, leaping and scrambling over the bodies: two rounds dealt with them. But even then Kalahua's people rallied and charged with a shout, some of them almost reaching the guns before the last broadside. We stopped firing then, and those that could run ran, pursued by some of Puolani's men—not many, and they will not go far, the war-chiefs tell me, because of the broken country. We took their gun, of course, and I dare say Puolani will get it down in time.' After a pause he said 'We only fired ten rounds, Stephen, but there was a butcher's bill like a fleet action. And though the hands were pleased, of course, scarcely anyone raised a cheer; and it was not taken up.'

  'You did not follow your plan of closing the other end, I collect, since some were able to run away?'

  'My plan? Oh no: that did not make very good sense. I was really trying to make your flesh creep, as you do mine with your surgical horrors. It is my belief, Stephen, that you do not always know when I am being droll.'

  This was the first sign of a lifting, at least a superficial lifting of his depression, and by the time they had made their slow and often mistaken way down to Puolani's village he was perfectly capable of responding to their extraordinarily happy and triumphant welcome. He had been expected by the main path through the sugar-canes, where arches of greenery with two carronades under each had been set up: the Queen led him back by a side way to the first and then through the middle of all three to an immense sound of cheering and the thunder of wooden drums. Then he was taken from one group to another—Tapia, recovered from the throng, explained that these were the various branches of the tribe—and each group in turn fell flat, though not quite so flat as to hide their delighted smiles.

  The tribe had a great many branches, but the repeated ceremonies, the incessant beating of drums and blowing of conches, the feeling of great friendliness and affection as Puolani led him about and the great beauty of the day—a brilliant sky and white clouds sailing evenly from the north-east and the heat of the sun tempered by a charming scented breeze—set a barrier between now and the slaughter of the morning, and he walked into the Queen's house perfectly ready to be pleased with his entertainment. Here the whole company, all robed, stood up as he came in; and to his astonishment he saw Stephen, Pullings, West and Adams among them, wearing splendid feather cloaks, and as he stood there Puolani placed one on his shoulders, crimson from top to bottom. She smoothed it with great satisfaction and made a confidential remark. 'She says it belonged to one of her uncles, now a god,' said Tapia.

  'Any god would be flattered by such a cloak,' said Jack, 'much less an humble mortal.'

  'It is a present,' whispered Tapia.

  Jack turned and bowed, returning his best thanks: Puolani looked modestly down, an unusual attitude for her, and motioned him to a seat beside her on the bench, or perhaps firmly padded sofa would be the better description. A yellow-feathered Pullings was on her other side; Stephen, in blue-black, on Jack's left, and to him he said in an undertone 'Are you hungry? I have never been so famished in all my life. It came over me suddenly.' Then, seeing Tapia whispering to an immensely tattooed chief beyond him he said 'Tapia, pray ask the chief if Bonden can be sent back to the ship in a canoe to tell Mr Oakes that all is well and that the boats are to come round tomorrow morning. I shall sleep ashore.'

  Puolani's grandfather
had acquired three ship's coppers. These vessels rarely appeared, since almost all Polynesian cooking was carried out with hot stones in an underground oven, the dish being wrapped in leaves, but now, gleaming like red gold, they were brought out by strong men and set on hearths in front of the house. An extraordinarily savoury smell wafted in and Jack swallowed painfully; to distract his mind he desired Tapia to tell the Queen how much he admired the orderliness of the gathering—to the right hand, outside the house, sat the starboard watch in due order of precedence, on the left, the larboard, all hands wearing garlands of flowers, while beyond them, closing the square, were the densely-packed islanders; and on every hand attendants were preparing food.

  As well as the coppers seven china bowls had reached Moahu, and these were placed on little cushions before the Queen, Jack, Stephen and Pullings, West, Adams, and an ancient chief, together with spoons and wooden platters of mashed taro. A chorus of conches blew three great blasts. Servants stood by the coppers, looking expectantly at the Queen. 'Turtle on the left, fish in the middle, meat on the right,' whispered Tapia. The Queen looked at Jack with a smile and he, returning the smile, said 'Oh meat, ma'am, if you please.'

  The bowls were filled all down the line: the Queen had chosen to begin with fish, nearly all the Surprise's officers with meat. But it was exceedingly hot, and while they toyed with their taro, slavering as they did so, Stephen noticed the unmistakable helix of a human ear in his bowl and said to Tapia 'Please tell the Queen that man's flesh is taboo to us.'

  'But it is Kalahua and the French chief,' said Tapia.

  'Even so,' said Stephen, and leaning to speak behind Puolani's back he said rather louder 'Captain Pullings, Mr West: this is forbidden meat.'

  When the news reached Puolani she laughed cheerfully, changed bowls with Jack, and assured them that his hands were in no danger: they were being fed on pork, which happened to be taboo to her—so many taboos, she said, smiling still.