Then, feeling that he was exposing his friend rather too much (for the animal in question was of course the captain of the Surprise) he laid the sheet aside and wrote 'Jack Aubrey has faults and to spare, the Dear knows: he thinks a sailor's highest aim is to carry his ship from A to B in the shortest possible time, losing not a minute, so that life is a kind of perpetually harassing race, and only yesterday he was doggedly, mechanically stubborn in his refusal to turn a little way aside so that we might view Ithaca. Yet on the other hand (and this is my real point) he is capable of a most surprising degree of magnanimity and self-command when the occasion calls for it: a much higher degree than you might suppose from his impatience over trifles. Of this I had an instance the day after we left Valletta. Among other passengers we are carrying a Major Pollock, and at dinner this gentleman happened to observe that his brother, a lieutenant in the Navy, was amazingly proud of his new ship the Blackwater, and that he made no doubt but she should prove a match for any of the heavy Americans. "Are you sure he said the Blackwater, sir?" asked Jack, surprised, as well he might be, since as you know he has been promised the vessel ever since its keel was laid down and has wholly relied upon taking it to the North American station as soon as this short spel! in the Mediterranean was over. "Quite sure, sir," replies the soldier. "I had a letter from him with the last mail that came in, the very morning I came aboard. It was dated from the Blackwater in the Cove of Cork, and he said he hoped to be in Nova Scotia before it reached me, since there was a fine northeaster blowing and Captain Irby was a great one for cracking on." "Then let us drink to his health," says Jack. "The Blackwater and all who sail in her." In the evening, when we were alone in the great cabin and I made some allusion to the broken promise, all he said was, "Yes. It is a d?d heavy blow; but whining don't help. Let us get on with our music." '
It was indeed a very heavy blow, and when Jack woke in the morning and the recollection came flooding into his mind, the brilliant day darkened. He had counted upon the Blackwater with absolute certainty; he had counted upon continuing employment at sea, a matter of the first importance to him now that his affairs on shore were in such a lamentable state; and not only that, he had relied upon being able to take his officers and his followers with him, and with any luck almost the whole of the Surprise's, crew. Now all this was at an end. The whole efficient, smoothly-working organization - all the makings of a happy ship and a deadly fighting-machine- must be dispersed: and in all likelihood he must be thrown on the beach. Furthermore, since Mr Croker, the First Secretary, had used him badly, even dishonourably, he would almost certainly look upon the name of Aubrey with disfavour in the future.
A very heavy blow indeed, but few would have guessed it, watching him tell Major Pollock how the Surprise and her allies had turned the French out of Marga when last she was in these waters. The frigate, with the remaining convoy under her lee - a well-behaved convoy, keeping exactly to station in these dangerous waters- had stood well in to the southern side of Cape Stavro, a great headland that jutted far out into the Ionian Sea, and now they were abreast of the walled town nestling at the foot of its tall cliffs and straggling some way up them in rock-hewn terraces. 'There is the citadel, do you see,' he said, pointing over the pale green, white-flecked sea, 'to the right of the green-domed church and above it. And down by the mole there are the two tiers of batteries that guard the entrance to the harbour.'
The soldier gave Marga a long, knowing look through the telescope. 'I should have thought it was perfectly impregnable from the sea,' he said at last. 'Those flanking batteries alone would surely sink a fleet.'
'That was my impression,' said Jack. 'So we set about it another way. If you follow the line of the wall behind the citadel you will see a square tower, about a quarter of the way up the cliff.'
'I have it.'
'And behind that a round masonry affair, like a prodigious great field-drain.'
'Yes.'
'That is their aqueduct - they have no water of their own - and it comes from springs above Kutali, some two or three miles away on the other side of the cape. On the brow of the cliff you can just make out something of the road or rather path that covers the water-channel before it plunges down the pipe. That is where we placed our guns.'
'Is the other side of the cape as steep-to as this?'
'More so, if anything.'
'Then it must have been a most enormous undertaking, getting a gun up there. You made a road, I presume?'
'No, a ropeway. We winched them up by two stages to the path of the aqueduct, and once they were there we could trundle them along without too much difficulty, particularly as we had six hundred Albanians and a great number of Turks to tally on to the tow-ropes. When we had a reasonable battery up there we fired a few sighting shots into the harbour and sent down to tell the French commanding officer that if he did not surrender directly we should be under the painful necessity of destroying the town.'
'Did you offer them any terms?'
'No. And I particularly desired that no counter-proposals or conditions should be put forward, our superiority being so great that they could not possibly be entertained.'
'To be sure, a plunging fire from such a height would have been perfectly murderous; and he could have made no reply.'
'He could not scale the cliffs to come at us, either. There is only one shepherds' path, like the one in Gibraltar that leads up from Catalan Bay, and my Turkish ally, Sciahan Bey, had sharpshooters covering every turn of it. But even so I was surprised when the surrender came back straight away.'
'I wonder he did not make at least some show of resistance, or wait until a few houses had been knocked down. It is the usual thing, after all.'
'It would perhaps have been a little more decent, and it would certainly have looked better at his court-martial; but then we learnt that his wife was having a baby and the doctors were very anxious for her - gunfire and falling houses not at all the thing - so he preferred not to make a mere noisy demonstration that must come to the same thing in the end.'
'No doubt it was quite a reasonable decision,' said Major Pollock, in a dissatisfied tone.
'Lord,' said Jack Aubrey, casting his mind back, 'I have never seen anyone so disappointed as my Albanians. They had sweated like galley-slaves getting the guns up, for when we had hoisted them to the top of the ropeway they still had to travel along the covering of the aqueduct, and that called for hundreds of four-inch planks from the shipyards perpetually shifted to spread the weight, as well as strong teams for pulling; they had carried round-shot like heroes, and any amount of powder, and they had covered themselves with weapons of one kind or another, and now they were going to have to take everything back again, without a single shot fired in anger. They very nearly set about the Turks, so as not to be done out of a fight altogether, and my Pope - they have any number of popes in these parts, you know - and the Bey had to lay about them, roaring like bulls in a basin. However, it all ended happy. We packed the Frenchmen off to Zante, bag and baggage, and then the Margiotes gave us a feast that lasted from noon till dawn the next day, Christians in one piazza, Mussulmans in the next, with plenty of kinds words passing between, and songs and dances whenever we could eat no more for the time being.' He remembered the arcade between the piazzas, the swaying line of tall Albanians in white kilts, their arms linked at shoulder-height and their feet moving in perfect rhythm, the flare of torches in the warm night, the strong singing and its insistent beat, the taste of resiny wine.