Clarissa Oakes Part 6

'Sir,' whispered the gunroom steward in Pullings' ear, 'cook says if we don't eat our swordfish steaks this selfsame minute he will hang himself. I have been signalling your honour this last half gla.s.s."

The steaks arrived in style, the dishes covering the middle of the table, while in the intervals and at the corners there were small bowls of such things as dried peas beaten into a paste with a marline-spike and flavoured with turmeric, and white sauce beautified with cochineal. Davies' dreadful whiskered face could be seen in the doorway, leering in: he had arranged all the dishes by hand. Martin was an accomplished anatomist, and Stephen noticed that he helped Mrs Oakes to some particularly tender pieces with great complaisance. He also noticed that Reade was filling his gla.s.s every time the wine came within reach.

'I had no idea that swordfish could be so very good,' said Clarissa, above the sound of knives and forks.

'I am so happy you like it, ma'am,' said Pullings. 'May I pour you a gla.s.s of wine?'

'Just half a gla.s.s, Captain, if you please. I long to hear the rest of Earl Howe's battle.'

After a decent reluctance, and encouragement by most of the table, West said 'I am afraid I have been far too long-winded; but now rather than try to describe the whole battle, I shall only say that when their line was perfectly clear, the Admiral rearranged our heavy ships to match theirs, and so we bore down, each to steer for her opposite number, break their line and engage her independently from to leeward. Well, some did, and some did not; but everyone knows we took six of them, sunk one, crippled many more, and lost none of our own, though it was nip and tuck at times, they fighting with such spirit. So having said that, may I just speak of a few things I saw? For I was on the quarterdeck, acting as our first lieutenant's runner, and some of the time I stood quite close to the Admiral's chair - you must understand, ma'am, that Lord Howe was a very ancient gentleman, seventy, if I do not mistake, and he sat there in a wooden elbow-chair. Now our opposite number was of course the French admiral's flagship, the Montagne of a hundred and twenty guns, and her next astern was the Jacobin, of eighty. They started firing at half past nine, but as the wind was blowing from us to them, their smoke rolled away to leeward; so we could see them perfectly well, and the Admiral, setting topgallants and fore-course, aimed for the gap between them, meaning to pa.s.s through, luff up on the Montagne's starboard side and fight her yardarm to yardarm; but when we were within pistol-shot, the Jacobin, disliking the idea of being raked by our starboard guns as we broke through the line ahead of her, began to move up into the Montagne's lee. "Starboard," calls the Admiral, in spite of the Jacobin's being in the road. "My lord, you will be foul of the French ship if you don't take care," says Mr Bowen, the master - the master, ma'am, handles the ship in battle. "What's that to you, sir?" cries the Admiral. "Starboard." "d.a.m.ned if I care, if you don't," says old Bowen but not very loud. "I'll take you near enough to singe your black whiskers." He clapped the helm hard astarboard and the ship just sc.r.a.ped through, the Montagne's ensign brushing the Charlotte's shrouds and the Charlotte's bowsprit grazing the Jacobin's as she flinched away; and then lying on the Montagne's quarter we raked her again and again, at the same time battering the Jacobin with our starboard broadside. We mauled them terribly - blood gushing from the scuppers - but presently we lost our foretopmast - chaos forward - and they were able to make sail from us into the great bank of smoke to leeward. The rest of their line was breaking too, and the Admiral threw out the signal for a general chase. After that everything grew more confused of course, but I remember very well that late in the afternoon I received my only wound. The first lieutenant had just jumped down into the waist, and the Admiral said to me "Go and tell Mr Cochet to make the forecastle guns stop firing at that ship: she is the Invincible." I went down, and we ran forward. "Stop firing at Invincible," says Mr Cochet. "But she's not Invincible. She's a French ship that has been firing at us all along," said Mr Codrington, and Mr Hale agrees. "I know that," says Mr Cochet. "Let's have a shot." The gun was run in, sponged, loaded, run out: he pointed it just so, waited for the roll, waited again, and fired. The shot went home. And as the smoke cleared,' said West, with a sideways glance at Jack, 'there was the Admiral. "G.o.d d.a.m.n you all," he cries, hitting Mr Hale - he thought Hale had fired the shot - with the flat of his sword. "G.o.d d.a.m.n you all," fetching me a swipe on the top of my head. Then the ship, hauling her wind, showed her French colours, and Cochet, to save the Admiral's face, said "She is painted just like the Invincible" but ..."

For some time now, as the veracity left West's account, the ship had been heeling more and more: to counteract the lean those to windward, those on Pullings' right, braced their feet against the stretcher; but Reade's legs were too short to reach it and he slid quietly under the table, his eyes shut, his face pale. Stephen glanced at Padeen, who lifted the boy out and carried him away as easily as he might have carried off the folded cloth when it was drawn. There was no fuss, no comment; and West did not pause in his narrative.

Jack listened with half an ear, grateful for the sound but wishing that it might be replaced with something of greater interest. He was not a censorious man; he did not mind West's fiction, which he recognized as being composed for Mrs Oakes' benefit, any more than he minded Reade's collapse; but West was ordinarily the soul of truth, and his fiction was poor, embarra.s.singly poor, as well as far, far too long. It was with some relief therefore that he saw the long-expected messenger from the quarterdeck appear in the doorway. The gunner's mate looked into the gunroom and its formal array, hesitated for a moment, and then strode aft as if he were going into action. 'Gunner's duty, sir,' he said, very loud, bending over Jack, 'and the breeze is freshening. May he reduce sail?'

'Certainly, Melon. Tell him I am very glad to hear it and that I desire he will use his own judgment."

'Aye aye, sir. Is very glad to hear it, and desires he . . .'

'Will use his own judgment.'

'Will use his own judgment it is, sir.'

'I am very glad to hear it,' said Jack to the table at large. 'We have been creeping over a mill-pond far too long, and the hands have been idle all this time.' A childhood memory to do with Satan and idle hands floated there, but he could not quite fix it and ended with the unuttered words 'Not only the hands, neither, G.o.d d.a.m.n the wicked dogs.'

It was some time since he had dined with the gunroom. The last occasion had been rather a dull afternoon - Davidge and West were always indifferent company, their conversation either shop or twice-told tales, and Martin was always constrained when he was there - but a perfectly acceptable, traditional afternoon in a well-run ship.

Now the difference was very great. He could only guess at the causes: the effects, to a man who had spent most of his life at sea, were perfectly evident - the gunroom, as a civilized community, was almost at an end. But much more than their social comfort was at stake. Without good feeling between the officers, effective, willing co-operation was impossible, and without co-operation a ship could not be run efficiently: ill-blood in wardroom or gunroom was always perceived on the forecastle and it always upset the hands - apart from anything else each set of men had their own particular loyalty. And this ill-blood seemed to run in many directions: there was not only the obvious dislike between West and Davidge, but a series of other currents that seemed to affect Pullings as well and even Martin.

At present however there was this fine new flow of talk, initiated, he recalled, by Mrs Oakes - 'I shall always honour her for saving the feast from sinking with all hands' - and even the sullen Davidge had grown quite voluble.

Jack had missed the beginning while he reflected upon the situation, upon its possible causes and remedies, upon the ship's inner voice, now increasingly urgent in spite of sails having been taken in, and upon his own duties as a guest, and when he heard Stephen say ' "O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," ' he called down the table 'What was that, Doctor? Are you talking about the income-tax?'

'Not at all, at all. We were discussing duels and when they were, by general consent, permissible, when they were universally condemned, and when they were absolutely required. Mrs Oakes asked whether the military code did not oblige the officer who was beaten by Earl Howe to ask for satisfaction, a blow being an intolerable affront, and we all said no, because he was a very old gentleman and therefore allowed to be a little testy, because his immense deserts excused him almost anything, and because he could be said to have asked pardon by patting the lieutenant on the shoulder and saying "Well, so she ain't Invincible after all." '

'I am so ashamed,' said Clarissa. 'I lived very much out of the world when I was young, and that was one of my two pieces of fashionable wisdom. The other was that if you paid for anything in a shop with a bank-note you must always clearly state its value, so that there may be no argument about the change.'

'How I wish I had been taught that when I was a boy,' said Jack. 'Bank-notes did not often come my way, but the first decent prize-money I ever saw had one in it, a ten-pounder on Child's, no less; and the d.a.m.ned - I beg pardon, ma'am -the shabby fellow at the Keppel's k.n.o.b gave me change for five, swearing there was not a tenner in the house - I might look in the till if I wished, and if I found a tenner there I might have it all. But Doctor, how did the Spartan dog come in.'

'It seemed to me to express the state of mind of a deeply injured furious duellist when he plunges his sword into the opponent's bowels.'

'May I cut you a trifle of pudding, ma'am?' asked Pullings, moved by the a.s.sociation of ideas.

Clarissa might decline, but Captain Aubrey, feeling that he must do honour to the gunroom's feast, already tolerably damped, held out his plate; and now for the first time he realized with a pang that a third slice was going to be more of a labour than a delight: non sum qualis eram drifted up from those remote years when he was flogged into at least a remote, nodding acquaintance with Latin; the rest he could not recall. It might have had nothing to do with pudding at all, but the effect was the same.

'Mr Martin,' he asked, 'what is the Latin for pudding, for a pudding of this kind?'

'Heavens, sir, I cannot tell,' said Martin. 'What do you say, Doctor?'

'Sebi confectio discolor,' said Stephen. 'Will I pour you a gla.s.s of wine, colleague?'

'I beg your pardon, sir," said Davidge, standing between Jack and Pullings, 'but it will be eight bells in two minutes and Oakes and I must relieve the gunner.'

'Lord,' cried Pullings, 'so you must. How time flies! But you must drink to the bride and bridegroom first. Come, gentlemen, b.u.mpers if you please, and no heel-taps. Here's to the bride' - bowing to Clarissa - 'and here's to the happy man,' bowing to Oakes.

They all rose, and swaying on the roll they cried Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay, stretched out their gla.s.ses to Clarissa, crying Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay again, and then to Oakes, with a final cheer in which all the seamen servants joined, a fine deep roar.

When the party had broken up, Stephen took Padeen forward and they emptied Reade with a powerful emetic, undressed him, cleaned him, and put him back into his hammock, still three parts drunk and very unhappy. Stephen sat with him for a while after Padeen had carried off the basin, dirty clothes and dressings: Reade had the whole starboard midshipmen's berth to himself, immediately opposite the Oakeses, and very s.p.a.cious it looked under the swinging lantern. The Surprise had from early times been a law unto herself as far as berthing was concerned, and now that she carried no Marines and a smaller body of seamen, the carpenter, bosun and gunner had taken advantage of the elbow-room to move themselves into cabins right forward, private triangular snugs, so that now the two midshipmen's berths were comparatively isolated, with the gunroom bulkhead and the ladder to the upper deck aft, the great screened-off s.p.a.ce where the crew slept forward, and nothing in the broad pa.s.sage between them but the captain's pantry, a stout erection the height of the 'tween decks, seven feet across and five fore and aft.

At one time Reade had spoken in a confused, incoherent way about Mrs Oakes: he had loved her so: he was sure his heart must break. But now he was asleep: even pulse, regular breath. Stephen dowsed his light and walked quietly out into the gloom of the lower deck. A movement on the far side, the larboard side, of the captain's pantry caught his eye, a dark coat that at once slipped out of sight: it was perhaps a little surprising that the dark coat did not call out to him, did not ask after Reade, but he thought nothing of it until he was climbing the ladder by the gunroom door, when he glanced to the left and realized that the man must now be standing against the forward side of the pantry, the only side hidden from the ladder. 'It would have been much wiser to hurry on through the screen,' he reflected. 'So much less furtive, so much more easily explained in the extremely improbable event of any explanation being called for.'

He climbed on, grasping the rail with both hands, the ring of his lantern between his teeth, for the Surprise was now capering like a wanton, the movement growing stronger as he rose.

It had early been laid down that there would be no beating to quarters today, and he found Jack Aubrey gazing out of the windward scuttle with his hands behind his back and a sombre look on his face. He turned, brightening, and said 'Why, there you are, Stephen. A pot of coffee will be up in a moment, if that wicked fellow has not upset his kettle again - she is grown a little skittish. You have been looking at Reade, I dare say? How does he do, poor little chap?'

'He will survive, with the blessing.'

'I suppose when you lose an arm there is less of you to take up your wine. I know Nelson was very abstemious and - Hold up!' he cried, 'Clap on to the locker!' He eased Stephen into a chair, saying, 'G.o.d's my life, Stephen, you absolutely turned a somersault. I hope nothing is broke?'

'Nothing, I thank you,' said Stephen, feeling his head. 'But had I not been wearing a wig, Martin would have had a depressed fracture of the skull to deal with. Surely, Jack, that was a very wild capricious bound?'

'She will do it sometimes, I am afraid, with a cross-sea and an increasing breeze that has not settled - that varies three or four points in as many minutes. There are all sorts of plat.i.tudes about ships being like women: unpredictable, if you know what I mean.'

'It was a shrewd blow,' said Stephen, rubbing the top of his head.

Killick came in with the coffee-pot slung in elegant gimbals and two thick, resistant, heavy-weather mugs that had seen service in many a furious sea. He instantly grasped the situation and told Stephen in a rather louder, more didactic voice than usual that he should always keep a weather-eye open, and have one hand for himself and another for the ship. 'Your best new-curled wig, too,' he said, taking it away. 'All crushed and filthy.'

'When we have had our cup, I shall take off my finery and go on deck,' said Jack. 'I believe the evening will be a little too lively for music, so what do you say to backgammon?'

'With all my heart,' said Stephen.

For many years they had played chess, with fairly even fortunes; but they played with such intensity, being extremely unwilling to lose, that in time it came to resemble hard labour rather than amus.e.m.e.nt; and they being unusually close friends remorse for beating the other sometimes outweighed the triumph of winning. They had also played countless games of piquet, but in this case luck ran so steadily in Stephen's direction, good cards and sequences flocked to him in such numbers, that it became dull; and they had fixed upon backgammon as a game in which the mere throw of the dice played so large a part that it was not shameful to lose, but in which there was still enough skill for pleasure in victory. As well as those of the usual kind, they had heavy-weather tables in which the men were provided with a peg, and Stephen had set them out long, long before Jack returned, wet, with his hair draggled down the side of his face. 'I believe you will have a quiet night of it,' he said. 'The breeze has settled into the south-south-east, and steering east by north a half north we have it rather better than one point free: double-reefed topsails and courses.' He walked into the quarter-gallery, dried himself, and came out saying, 'And if the barometer don't lie, we shall have it for a good while yet - long forecast, long last, you know. A squall took my hat, a d.a.m.ned good Lock's hat, but a breeze like this is welcome to it - would be welcome to have a dozen more, and with gold lace on, too. I have rarely been so happy to see the gla.s.s sinking, with promise of more to come.'

'You conceal your joy with wonderful skill, brother."

'Nay, but I am happy, uncommon happy. Perhaps I may look a little hipped, and feel it too, having over-eaten at your splendid feast, but at the same time I promise you I am extremely pleased with this blow. It may carry us as far as the Friendly Islands: in any event I mean to drive the ship and keep all hands busy night and day, very busy indeed. No idle hands. No G.o.ddam mischief ... It is your turn to begin, I believe.'

By now the solid crash of the seas on the frigate's starboard bow and her motion had both become more steady, and the sweep of white water along her upper-works came at regular intervals: to ears accustomed to all the sounds of a five-hundred-ton ship being urged through a rough sea at nine knots by the force of the wind, the rattle and roll of dice was now clear enough, together with the cries of 'Ace and trey,' 'Deuce and cinq,' 'Aces, by G.o.d!' But after a while Stephen said 'Brother, your mind is not on the game.'

'No,' said Jack. 'I beg pardon. I am stupider than usual tonight. I had thought it universally true that however much dinner you had eaten, there was always room for pudding. But now,' - looking down and shaking his head - 'I find it ain't the case. I took a third piece out of compliment to Tom Pullings, and it is with me still. Not that I mean the least fling against your glorious feast, of course - a n.o.ble spread upon my word. Poor dear Tom had an anxious time of it, however. He would have been lost without Mrs Oakes talking away in that good-natured fashion. How I blessed her! And it was she that set West in motion.'

'West: aye, West. Tell me, Jack, how much of his account was historically accurate?"

'All the first part, until they were bearing down in line abreast, though the sequence was a little muddled and though he did not say enough about the Charlotte's breaking the French line on the twenty-eighth. But then - well, perhaps it was a little fanciful. One tells such things to ladies, you know, like the black fellow in the play, in Venice Preserved: he rattled away, too, about fields and floods.' He looked thoughtfully at Stephen, hesitated, and said no more.

Stephen said nothing either for a while, but then observed, 'Pudding. Sure, it starts with pudding or marchpane; then it is the toss of a coin which fails first, your hair or your teeth, your eyes or your ears; then comes impotence, for age gelds a man without hope or reprieve, saving him a mort of anguish.'

When Stephen had set off for his evening rounds Jack brought out his half-finished sheet and carried on with his letter to Sophie: 'The gunroom has at last been able to give its long-overdue feast for the Oakeses, thanks to a providential sword-fish. He was prime eating - have never tasted a better - and with him we drank a capital light dry sherry of Stephen's, as sound as a nut though it has crossed the Line and both tropics at least twice. Yet I am afraid the party was heavy going, and poor Tom Pullings had but a sad time of it. He is never very happy, as you know, when he is obliged to take the head of a table, having, as he says himself, no genteel conversation. It began badly, with at least three officers doing themselves no credit, though it is true that after a while West gave us a long account of the First of June. Martin, to be sure, was properly hospitable, so was Adams, and so of course was Stephen when he thought of it; but we should have been nowhere without Mrs Oakes, who talked away n.o.bly, never letting that deadly silence descend; and it must have been uphill work with three dumb sullen unsmiling faces opposite her. I smirked and drank wine all round and topped it the agreeable as much as I could, but as you know very well, my dear, I am not much gifted that way, particularly as I began to be oppressed by a set of shockingly unpleasant ideas. I did my best to help things along by perpetually pa.s.sing dishes, helping people to more, pouring wine, and eating and drinking until I could no more: but what with nausea and the growth of these notions I was a pretty dismal companion by the end of the meal. For they did grow, increasing from a faint half-serious suspicion to something not far short of certainty.

'It is the very Devil that I cannot speak to Stephen about his messmates. I was in great hopes just now when he asked me whether West's account of the battle was to be taken literally. I had hoped I might lead on from that to the present situation, but when I found that he only wanted to know whether it was sound history I did not dare. If I had asked him, in effect, to peach on his fellow-officers even ever so slightly, he would have brought me up with a round turn - such a round turn! He has a greater contempt for informers than anyone I have ever met. Not that I really want him to peach but rather to give me the benefit of his lights: he knows more about the gunroom and more about mankind in general than I do, being such a very deep old file: but how to separate peaching and the lights is more than I can tell.

'For some time now, being taken up with writing notes for Helmholtz fair, and some pieces of my own, and dealing with estate papers (by the way, Martin has accepted the two vacant livings and is to have Yarell when it falls in) - I have kept rather to myself, apart from music and backgammon with Stephen; yet from odd words and exchanges on the quarterdeck, or rather from their tone, I had gathered that there was a certain amount of ill-feeling in the gunroom. But I had no notion of how much or how quickly it had developed until this afternoon. Can you imagine three what are ordinarily called gentlemen sitting in a row at a full-dress dinner with guests and never opening their mouths but to eat? It is true that Oakes, though a young fellow of some family and a pa.s.sable seaman, is completely devoid of the graces and that Davidge had fallen down the companion-ladder. But it was not enough to explain the situation. In any case the livid bruise on the side of his head was like none I have ever seen given by a fall of that kind: it was much more like a blow with a mallet or a man's fist. And gradually it came to seem more and more probable to me that either Oakes or West had in fact hit him - a very heavy blow indeed, almost a knock-out blow. Why, of course, I cannot be sure; but this appears to me to be the explanation: n.o.body would call Mrs Oakes very pretty, but she is certainly good company.

'As for her having been a convict, which once caused such interest, it is neither here nor there: aboard ship, and I believe it is the same in prison - it certainly was in the Marshalsea, as you know very well, my dear - once you have been shut up together for some time, original differences scarcely matter. In the Surprise it is less obvious, because we are nearly all more or less white, but in the Diane there were black, brown and yellow men, Christians, Jews, Mahometans, heathens. We had barely doubled the Cape (though far to the south) before one took no notice - they were all blue with cold anyhow, and they were all Dianes. In the same way Mrs Oakes is now a Surprise, or close on; and as I say kind, good-natured, conversible, and a good listener, interested in their stories of the sea; and it so happens that they are all, except for Davidge, tolerably hideous. Most women would recoil from them, but she in her good nature does not. Cousin Diana told me long ago that there was a c.o.xcomb to be found in almost every man, even the most unlikely; and these fellows I believe have misinterpreted her kindness as liking of quite another kind and have grown absurdly jealous of one another. It is not only absurd but where West and Davidge are concerned it is also extraordinarily unwise. They both long to be reinstated in the Service - it is their dearest wish - and having done well hitherto in the Surprise they are in a fair road to it: but they have to have my good word, their captain's good word, and my parliamentary influence behind them. What captain is going to speak well of officers who cannot command their pa.s.sions better than this, let alone use his interest with the Ministry for them? During dinner they were talking about duels - Mrs Oakes had started that hare with the best of intentions, I am sure - and Davidge, coming out of his heavy stupidity, spoke very eagerly about the impossibility of putting up with an affront.

'I take what comfort I can from the fact that for a great while the ship has either been sitting still, slowly turning in the placid ocean, or swimming very gently along in light variable airs with the people fishing over the side; the weather has been hot and damp, and n.o.body has had enough to do. Even at quarters it is mostly dumb-show, since with the likelihood of trouble at Moahu I have to husband our powder. But now, thank G.o.d, we have a fair breeze, and I shall keep them busy, oh so busy, driving the ship as hard as I dare so far from stores. I believe it will grow to be a long-lasting close-reefed-topsail gale, and by the time it has blown itself out they may have come to their senses. If not I shall have to take very strong measures.

'I hear Stephen in the coach, trying to climb into his cot: he has already kicked the chair over twice. He dislikes being helped, however. He is in - I hear the steady creak. In this damp weather he has taken to wheezing and grumbling like an old dog: and this evening, when the ship pecked on a double crest, he took a most surprising toss, turning completely over on top of his head like a tumbler, quite unhurt; but how he has survived so long at sea I cannot tell.'

Jack laid this sheet aside to dry - the wet ink glistened in the lamplight - and took up yet another file of estate papers. Presently he found he was reading the same line twice, so he shut everything into his writing-desk and went to bed.

Lying there with the fine steady heave of the sea rocking him with a diagonal motion he mused for a while. Sleep did not come. Far from it. 'It is true that Clarissa Oakes is not really pretty,' he said, 'but how I wish she were lying here beside me.' A moment later he slipped out of his cot, put on shirt and trousers and went on deck. A dark, dark night, with warm rain sweeping across from forward: four hands at the wheel, West leaning on the barricade amidships, most of the watch under the break of the forecastle. He walked aft and stood there looking at the glow of the binnacle and the white water racing by under the frigate's lee; and in time the strong wind and rain blowing his long hair out behind like seaweed and soaking him from head to foot, calmed his spirit.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The gla.s.s fell, the wind rose, and although Jack Aubrey could not drive his ship as hard as he would have done with a well-equipped dockyard under his lee, he took her to the uttermost limit of what he, with his intimate knowledge of her power, thought reasonable.

The wind was uncommonly welcome, to be sure, but there was too much east in it and too much rain for anything resembling comfort: day after day the Surprise sailed on a taut bowline, tack upon tack under a low racing sky across a sea as grey and white-capped as the Channel, though as warm as milk and phosph.o.r.escent by night. She ran fast, generally under double-reefed topsails and the array of staysails that Jack had found best to her liking: yet with both wind and sea inconstant this called for very close attention and her captain was on deck most of the time, as wet as a man could well be.

Next to the actual pursuit of an enemy, this was the kind of sailing he liked best, and if it had not been for his anxiety about the gunroom he would have been perfectly happy. He shook out a reef whenever he could, and often, as the ship responded with even greater life, leaning over and throwing her bow-wave broader still, the white water tearing aft and Reade's strangled voice calling 'Ten knots one fathom, sir, if you please' he felt a surge of wholehearted joy. He worked his officers and men very hard indeed, but they were used to it: the Surprise had sailed as a privateer and most of her people were privateersmen, who sailed more for the profit than the glory; and when Jack started beating to windward with such zeal they smiled at one another and nodded. In the ordinary course of events, when Captain Aubrey was sailing his ship from one place to another without a leading wind he rarely tacked but rather wore her. That is to say he did not bring her up to the wind as close as ever she could be, clap his helm a-lee, swing her head right up into the wind's eye and beyond, so that she filled on the other tack, but on the contrary he let her fall right off, present her stern to the breeze and so come round the other way. Wearing was slower, since the ship had to turn through twenty points of the compa.s.s rather than twelve; it looked somewhat old-womanish; and it lost a certain amount of windward distance; but it was much safer and it called for fewer hands, and less violent exertion, whereas tacking, above all in a strong wind and a heavy sea, put spars and sails in danger, as well as requiring the presence of both watches. They smiled even more when he spread so much canvas that even Pullings looked anxiously at him before relaying the order. They were very well acquainted with their skipper, an extraordinarily successful prize-taker who dropped on his prey apparently by intuition, and they were convinced that somehow he had got wind of a merchantman somewhere to the east: a seaman like Captain Aubrey would never gain a little windward distance by tacking in such a sea unless his chase had a beast in view, and they answered the frequent pipe of All hands about ship and the subsequent hard labour with perfect good will. 'Helm's a-lee,' they heard that huge familiar voice roar from the quarterdeck, and instantly, in darkness or fine weather, they let go the fore-sheet, fore-topmast staysails and jib sheets and waited for 'Off tacks and sheets', upon which those at their due stations let go the main tack and sheet and all the staysail tacks and sheets abaft the foremast, pa.s.sing the sheets over the stays. Then came 'Mainsail haul,' and once she was round, with the main tack down and the breast backstays set up, 'Let go and haul.' Furious activity as the fore-tack and head bowlines were raised, the yards braced about just so, the bowlines hauled with the cry of 'One, two, three. One, two, three. Belay oh!' Some wet officer would hail the quarterdeck 'Bowlines hauled, sir,' the order to coil all gear would come back in reply and the watch below would pad off to drip through their hammocks in the steaming Turkish bath atmosphere of the lower deck.

His officers were of the same opinion: they too had served under him in the same privateering line; and since the ship, as a letter-of-marque, had carried no midshipmen they were perfectly accustomed to going aloft as reefers; in recent months, however, they had grown soft and now Jack rode them hard. 'Mr West, there: should you like your hammock sent up?' 'Mr Davidge, pray jump into the foretop again: the aftermost starboard deadeye is far from what it ought to be.' His voice became terrible to them.

The heavy weather brought its crop of injuries and the sick-berth had a number of sprains, cracked ribs, broken bones and a hernia, which together with the usual burns caused by lurching against the galley stove on those days when it could be lit, kept Stephen, Martin and Padeen busy and allowed some interesting developments of the Basra treatment.

Stephen's little girls, Sarah and Emily, were extraordinarily useful at a time like this. They were not in the least offended or surprised by the more squalid aspects of a sick-berth; they had been brought up to dissecting and to keeping Jemmy Ducks' quarters clean; and neither in their remote Melanesian island nor aboard the Surprise had they had a pampered nursery life. Now they carried, fetched, kept the sick men company, comforted, and gave them more informed news of the outside world than could be drawn from the medicoes. To the foremast jacks they talked forecastle English, seaman's English, with a broad West Country burr - 'Skipper auled down the main topmast staysail at one bell. "But," says e, "we'm going to ave another atful of wind more easterly soon; so do ee stow it in the fore catharpings, and pa.s.s a gurt old gasket round'" - and quarterdeck English to Stephen and Martin. 'Sir, Jemmy Ducks says he is going to ask Old Chucks -"Now, Sarey, where's your manners?' asked William Lamb, quarter-gunner, in an aside. 'Beg pardon,' said Sarah. '. . .is going to ask Mr Bulkeley the bosun to suggest to the Captain that hatches might be battened down: we are all aswim forward, and he is afraid for the sitting hen.'

'Battened down,' said Martin. 'There is a term I have heard again and again, like bitter end and laid by the lee, without ever really understanding it. Perhaps, sir, you would explain them?'

'Certainly,' said Stephen. The seamen uttered no word; their vacant expressions betrayed nothing; only two exchanged covert glances. 'Certainly. But in these cases one drawing is worth a thousand words, so let us walk upstairs and find paper and ink.'

Hardly were they at the door, attended by Padeen, than there were cries on the ladderway and Reade was pa.s.sed down, pouring with blood. A falling block had struck him so that he fell on to the marline-spike poised in his hand. It was awkwardly wedged between his ribs and he was half fainting with the pain.

'Hold him just so and sit on the step,' said Stephen to Bonden, who was carrying the boy. 'Padeen, two chests into his cabin and the great lantern this living minute.'

The two chests were lashed together, forming a table; Reade lay on his back on a spare studdingsail with his mouth tight shut, his breath coming fast and shallow; the surgeon looked down in the strong light, swabbing away the blood, gently feeling the spike and the wound and the crepitation of bone.

'This is going to be extremely painful,' said Stephen in Latin. 'I shall fetch the poppy.' Hurrying below he unlocked the hidden laudanum, poured a strong dose into a phial, caught up some instruments and ran back. Once there he cried 'Padeen, now, fetch me the long ivory probe and two pairs of retractors,' and as soon as Padeen was gone he raised the boy's head and poured the dose into his mouth. For all Reade's fort.i.tude, tears were running fast.

Jack Aubrey was at the door. 'Come back in half an hour,' said Stephen. Half an hour, and the waves of pain rose and fell, reaching a shocking height before Stephen withdrew the splinter pressing on a thoracic nerve. Reade lay there, inert now, pale, running with sweat. 'There now, my dear, the worst is over," said Stephen in his ear. 'I have not seen a braver patient.' And to Jack at the door, 'With the blessing he will do.'

'I am heartily glad of it," said Jack. 'I shall look in again at eight bells.

By eight bells Reade had drifted off and Stephen stepped to the door when he heard Jack's step. After a few low words Jack said 'Mrs Oakes asks whether you would like her to sit up with him tonight.'

'Will I first see how he comes along?'

'Aye: do,' said Jack.

'And may he have a cot rather than his hammock, and two strong men to lift him in?'

'At once.'

The cot was slung; Bonden and Davies, bracing themselves with infinite care against the heave of the sea, raised the boy on his taut sailcloth, lowered him so gently that he never stirred, and walked silently out.

Stephen returned to his seat, musing on a variety of things - the presence of a highly-developed olfactory system in albatrosses, its paradoxical absence in vultures - the easier motion of the ship, her less urgent voice - the situation in the gunroom - and at two bells Reade said, in a sleepwalker's voice, 'I doubt we are making more than eight knots now.'

'Listen, my dear,' said Stephen, 'should you like Mrs Oakes to sit by you a while? Mrs Oakes?'

'Oh, her,' said Reade. After a long pause he went on '. . . they go in and out of that door, like a bawdy-house. I see them from here,' turned his head away and drifted off again.

When Jack returned Stephen told him that a medical hand was still required - that the patient should be moved downstairs tomorrow, if possible, for constant attention - and that Martin would relieve him in less than an hour.

'Surely the tempest has disarmed,' he said, walking into the lamplit cabin. 'The noise up here is less by half, and I climbed the stairs with barely a stagger.'

'The breeze has been dropping steadily," said Jack, 'and after the last downpour - Lord, how it did pelt! Splashing from the deck up to your waist and gushing from the lee-scuppers like a fire-engine: if we had not battened down quite early you would have had a sopping bed - after the last downpour, the sky cleared . . . but tell me, how is the boy?'

'He is fast asleep and snoring. The wound itself was not very grave - pleura untouched - and extracting the marline-spike was no great matter, but it had driven a splinter of rib hard against a nerve, and withdrawing that was a delicate business. Now that it is out, however, he ought to be comfortable enough; and unless there should be infection, which is happily rare at sea, we may see him walking about quite soon. The young are wonderfully resilient.'

'I am delighted to hear it. And I dare say you will be delighted to hear that we know where we are. Tom and I had two beautiful lunars, the one on Mars, the other on Fomal-haut. If the wind had not hauled round a little north of east we might have made the Friendly Isles tomorrow.'

'You will never tell me, for all love, that you have been careering over this stormy ocean like a mad bull day and night without knowing where you were? And if you had run violently upon an island, Friendly or not, where would you have been then, your soul to the Devil?'

'There is dead reckoning, you know,' said Jack mildly. 'Shall we have something to eat?'

'How happy that would make me,' cried Stephen, suddenly conscious that he was clemmed, pinched and wasted with hunger.

'Which there is the best part of the hen that died,' said Killick, in one of those inferior pantomime appearances they knew so well. 'And since the galley stove is still hot, you might fancy a little broth to wet your biscuit first.'

'Broth and chicken, what joy,' said Stephen, and when Killick had left he went on, 'Tell me, Jack, just how would you explain the term battened down?'

A piercing look showed Jack that although this was almost past believing he was not in fact being made game of, and he replied 'First I should say that we talk very loosely about hatches, often meaning hatchways and even ladderways - "he came up the fore hatch" - which of course ain't hatches at all.

The real hatches are the things that cover the hatchways: gratings and close-hatches. Now as you know very well, when a great deal of water comes aboard either from the sea or the sky or both, we cover those real hatches with tarpaulins.'