The Ionian Mission Part 3

'Twenty, nineteen, five,' said Graham. 'Twenty pounds English, nineteen shillings and five pence.'

'So you will understand that captains seek the best market for their private powder: this came from a fireworks manufactory - hence the unusual colours.'

'There was no intention to deceive, then?'

'Est summum nefas fallere: deceit is gross impiety, my dear sir.'

Graham stared: then his grave grey face adopted a somewhat artificial smile and he said, 'You speak facetiously, no doubt. But the false colours, the French flag, was certainly intended to draw the enemy closer, so that he might be more readily destroyed; and it almost succeeded. I wonder we did not raise the signal of distress, or even pretend to surrender: that would have brought them closer still.'

'To the nautical mind some false signals are falser than other false signals. At sea there are clearly-understood degrees of iniquity. An otherwise perfectly honourable sea-officer may state by symbol that he is a Frenchman, but he must not state that his ship has struck upon a rock, nor must he lower his colours and then start to fight again, upon pain of universal reprehension. He would have the hiss of the world against him - of the maritime world.'

'The end proposed is the same in either case, the deception equal. I should certainly hoist all the colours in the spectrum, were it to advance the fall of that wicked man by five minutes. I refer to the self-styled Emperor of the French. War is a time for efficient action, not for the display of fine feelings, nor the discussion of the relative merits of forgery and false pretences.'

'It is illogical, I admit,' said Stephen, 'but this is the moral law, as perceived by the nautical mind.'

'The nautical mind,' said Graham. 'Hoot, toot."

'The nautical mind has its own logic,' said Stephen, 'and although it may disobey many of the Articles of War with a clear conscience - swearing is forbidden, for example, and yet we daily hear warm, intemperate language, even blasphemous and obscene; so is the sudden spontaneous beating of men who are thought to move too slowly, or stoning, as we call it. But you may see a certain amount of it even in this ship, which is more humane than most. Yet all these transgressions and many more, such as that stealing of stores which we term capperbar, or the neglect of religious feasts, are carried only to certain clearly-understood traditional limits, beyond which it is mortal to go. The seamen's moral law may seem strange to landsmen, even whimsical at times; but as we all know, pure reason is not enough, and illogical as their system may be, it does enable them to conduct these enormously complex machines from point to point, in spite of the elements, often boisterous, often adverse, always damp and always capricious.'

'It is a perpetual source of wonder to me that they arrive so often,' said Graham. 'And I remember what a friend of mine wrote on the subject. Having taken proper notice of the complexity of the machine, as you so rightly observe, the infinity of ropes and cords, the sails, the varying forces that act upon them, and the skill required to manage the whole, directing the vessel in the desired direction, he went on to this effect: what a pity it is that an art so important, so difficult, and so intimately concerned with the invariable laws of mechanical nature, should be so held by its possessors that it cannot improve but must die with each individual. Having no advantages of previous education, they cannot arrange their thoughts; they can scarcely be said to think. They can far less express or communicate to others the intuitive knowledge which they possess; and their art, acquired by habit alone, is little different from an instinct. We are as little ent.i.tled to expect improvement here as in the architecture of the bee or the beaver. The species cannot improve.'

'Perhaps your friend was unfortunate in his sea-going acquaintance,' said Stephen, smiling. 'As unfortunate as he was in his reference to the bee and her building, which is surely confessed by all mathematicians to be geometrically perfect, and therefore not susceptible of improvement. But leaving the bee aside, for my part I have sailed with mariners who were not only active in improving the architecture of their machines and the art of conducting them, but who were only too willing to communicate the knowledge they possessed. Such tales have I heard of Captain Bentinck's palls, or rather shrouds, and his triangular courses, of Captain Pakenham's newly-discovered rudder, of Captain Bolton's jury-mast, of improved iron-horses, dogs, dolphins, mouses - or mice as some say -puddings..."

'Puddings, my dear sir?' cried Graham.

'Puddings. We trice 'em athwart the starboard gumbrils, when sailing by and large.'

'The starboard gumbrils... by and large,' said Graham, and with a pa.s.sing qualm Stephen recalled that the Professor had an unusually good memory, could quote long pa.s.sages, naming the volume, chapter and even page from which they came. 'My ignorance is painful to me. As an old experienced seafarer you understand these things, of course.'

Stephen bowed and went on, keeping to slightly safer ground, 'Not to mention the countless devices to measure the speed of the vessel through the water by means of rotating vanes or the pressure of the circ.u.mambient ocean - machines as ingenious as the double-bottomed defecator. That reminds me: pray, what qualifications are called for in an Anglican clergyman, what attendance at a seminary, what theological studies?'

'I believe he must have taken his degree at one of the universities, and certainly he must have found a bishop willing to ordain him. My impression is that nothing more is required - no seminary, no theological studies - but I am sure you know more of the Anglican polity than I, since like so many of my countrymen I am a Presbyterian.'

'Not I, since like so many of mine I am a Catholic.'

'Indeed? I had supposed that all officers in the Navy were obliged to forswear the Pope.'

'So they are too, the commissioned officers: but surgeons are appointed by a warrant from the Navy Board. I forswore nothing, which was a comfort to be sure; yet on the other hand without renouncing the Bishop of Rome I can scarcely look forward to being an admiral and hoisting my flag. The height of naval ambition is denied me.'

'I do not understand. Surely a gentleman in the physical line can never hope to be an admiral? But you are pleased to be jocose, I have no doubt.' Jocularity did not please Professor Graham; he looked somewhat offended, as though he had been trifled with, and shortly afterwards he took his leave.

But he was back again the next afternoon, and he and Stephen now gazed upon the Rock at short range, the Worcester having been removed to make room for the Brunswick and Goliath, and Pullings having swung her stern-on so that her starboard side could be sc.r.a.ped and painted. It was one of those days when some particular quality in the light and not merely the brilliance of the sun makes colours glow and sing: a military band was playing on the Alameda, its bra.s.ses blazing like gold beneath the shade, while through the gardens and up and down the Grand Parade flowed an easy crowd of red coats, blue jackets, and a wonderful variety of civilian clothes from Europe, Morocco, the Turkish provinces of Africa, Greece and the Levant, and even from much farther east. White turbans and the pale, dust-blue robes of Tangier Copts, the dark red and broad straw hats of Berbers and the black of Barbary Jews moved in and out among the pepper-trees, mingling with tall Moors and Negroes, kilted Greek seamen from the islands, red-capped Catalans, and small Malays in green. On Jumper's Bastion stood a group of the Worcester's young gentlemen, some long and thin, others very small indeed, and Stephen noticed that they seemed to be gathered about a monstrous dog; but as they moved off it became apparent that the creature was a calf, a black bull-calf. Other Worcesters wandered among the geraniums and castor-oil plants: these were the select bands of liberty-men, those who had had the time and the foresight to provide themselves with white or black-varnished low-crowned hats with the ship's name embroidered on the ribbon, watchet-blue jackets with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, spotless white duck trousers, and little shoes; each had had to pa.s.s the master-at-arms' inspection, for although the Worcester was not yet a crack ship or anything remotely like one, Pullings was very jealous of her reputation and he acted on the principle that the appearance of virtue might induce its real presence. Few of them were drunk yet, and most of their mirth - clearly audible at half a mile - was the effect of pure unaided gaiety. Beyond them and the variegated crowd rose the grey and tawny Rock, green only at its lower rim, and above its long crest the strange fog or breeding cloud brought into being by the levanter, a breeding cloud that dissipated there in the blazing light of the western side. Stephen had Mount Misery clear in his telescope, and sharp against the whitish sky an ape: high, high above the ape a vulture hanging on the wind. Both Stephen and the ape gazed at the bird.

Professor Graham cleared his throat. 'Dr Maturin,' he said, 'I have a cousin who occupies a confidential post under Government: he is concerned with the gathering of information more reliable than newspaper or mercantile or even consular reports and he has asked me to look out for gentlemen who might a.s.sist him. I know little of these things - they are far outside my province - but it occurs to me that a medical man, fluent in the Mediterranean languages, with a wide acquaintance scattered about these sh.o.r.es, would be unusually well suited for such purposes, above all if he were of the Romish persuasion; for it appears that most of my cousin's colleagues are Protestants, and clearly a Protestant cannot enter into the intimacy of Catholics as well as their co-religionists. Allow me to add, that my cousin disposes of considerable funds.'

The distant ape shook its fist at the vulture: the enormous bird tilted and gliding sideways crossed the strait to Africa without a movement of its wings - a fulvous vulture, Stephen observed with satisfaction as the colour showed upon the turn. 'Why, as for that,' he said, putting down his telescope, 'I am afraid I should make but an indifferent source of information. Even in a small town - and you must have noticed how closely a ship resembles a small crowded town, with its hierarchy, its people all knowing one another, its particular walks and places of refreshment for the different cla.s.ses, its perpetual gossip - even in a town a medical man rarely gets away. But a ship is a town that carries its walls with it wherever it goes. A naval surgeon is tied to his post, and even when the ship is in port he is still much taken up with his patients and with paper-work, so that he sees little of the country or its inhabitants. Oh, it is the pity of the world to travel so far and to see so little.'

'Yet surely, sir, you do go on to dry land from time to time?'

'Not nearly as often as I could wish, sir. No. I am afraid I should be of little use to your cousin; and then again the necessary dissimulation, the disguise, the lack of candour, I may even say the deceit called for in such an undertaking would be mighty distasteful. But now that I come to think of it, would not a naval chaplain answer your purpose very well? He has far more time to spare on sh.o.r.e. There are our clerical shipmates, as you see, walking about as free as air with others of their kind. There, just by the dragon-tree. No, my dear sir, that is a common plane: to the right of the date-palms - the dragon-tree, for all love.'

Beneath the dragon-tree's green shade paced twelve clergymen, six from the Worcester, six from the garrison, all clean-shaved, discreetly admiring the majestic beards, Arabian, Hebrew and Berber, that pa.s.sed them on the parade.

'We say farewell to all of them but one,' observed Professor Graham. 'The wardroom will seem strangely bare.'

'Indeed?' said Stephen. 'Five at one blow? I had heard that Mr Simpson and Mr Wells were to leave us, Goliath and Brunswick having arrived, but what is to become of the others, and who is to remain?'

'Mr Martin is to stay.'

'Mr Martin?'

'The one-eyed gentleman. And Mr Powell and Mr Comfrey are to go straight to Malta in that storeship over there.'

'The xebec, or the polacre?'

'The vessel to the right,' said Graham somewhat testily.

'The vessel that is so busy, with sailors creeping up the masts. And Dr Davis has decided to go home, by land as far as ever he can. He finds the sea does not suit his const.i.tution, and is casting about for a suitable conveyance.'

'He is quite right, sure: for a man of his age, and in his state of health, it would be death to be boxed up in a confined moist uneasy tossing habitation, either airless or with so much of it that one's whole person is battered and a.s.sailed; to say nothing of the falling damps, so fatal to those that have pa.s.sed the climacteric. No: to go to sea a man needs youth, an adamantine health, and the digestion of a hyena. But I hope the poor gentleman will be able to attend the farewell dinner? Great preparations are making, I am told. The Captain is coming, and I look forward eagerly to the feast myself; I am sick of eggs and bonny-clabber, and that villain' - nodding in the direction of Killick, who was banging chairs about in the great cabin behind them, before bringing in a host of swabbers to make the place a wet, spotless misery - 'will bring me nothing else.'

Dr Davis was not able to attend: he was in a Spanish diligence with eight mules drawing him as fast as they could away from everything connected with the sea. But he sent his excuses, his best compliments, his best thanks, and his best wishes, and they filled his chair with a lean, deserving young master's mate called Honey, Joseph Honey. As the church clocks of Gibraltar struck the hour Captain Aubrey walked into the crowded wardroom full of blue coats, red coats and clerical black. His first lieutenant welcomed him, and proposed a gla.s.s of bitters. 'I am afraid our company is not quite complete, sir,' he said; and turning he silently gibbered at the wardroom steward.

'Can it possibly be that the Doctor is late?' asked Jack. But even as he spoke there was a m.u.f.fled thumping, two or three vile oaths, and Stephen came in on his bandaged feet, his elbows supported by his servant, a quarter-witted but docile and sweet-natured Marine, and Killick. They greeted him, not indeed with a cheer, for the Captain's presence was a restraint upon them, but very cheerfully; and as they sat down Mowett said, smiling across the table at him, 'You are looking wonderfully well, dear Doctor, I am happy to see. But it is not surprising, for even calamity, by thought refined, Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.'

'Why you should suppose that mine requires any adornment I cannot tell, Mr Mowett,' said Stephen. 'You have been cultivating your genius again, I find.'

'You remember my weakness then, sir?'

'Certainly I do. And to prove it I will repeat certain lines you composed in our first voyage together, our first commission: Oh were it mine with sacred Maro's art To wake to sympathy the feeling heart, Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore Th'impervious horrors of a leeward sh.o.r.e."

'Very good - capital - hear him, hear him,' cried several officers, all of whom had experienced the impervious horrors not once but many times.

'That's what I call poetry,' said Captain Aubrey. 'None of your G.o.ddam - your blessed maundering about swains and virgins and flowery meads. And since we are on calamities and leeward sh.o.r.es, Mowett, tip us the piece about woe.'

'I don't know that I quite remember it, sir,' said Mowett, blushing now that the whole table was attending to him.

'Oh surely you do. The piece about not whining -plaintless patience, you know: I make my little girls recite it.'

'Well, sir, if you insist,' said Mowett, laying down his soup-spoon. His normally cheerful, good-natured expression changed to a boding, portentous look; he fixed his eyes on the decanter and in a surprisingly loud moo began: 'By woe, the soul to daring action swells; By woe, in plaintless patience it excels: From patience, prudent clear experience springs And traces knowledge through the course of things;*

Thence hope is formed, thence fort.i.tude, success, Renown - whate'er men covet and caress.'

Amid the general applause, and while the soup gave way to an enormous dish of lobsters, Mr Simpson, who sat at Stephen's side, said, 'I had no idea that the gentlemen of the Navy ever wooed the Muse.'

'Had you not? Yet Mr Mowett is exceptional only in the power and range of his talent; and when you join the Goliath you will find the purser, Mr Cole, and one of the lieutenants, Mr Miller, who often contribute verses to the Naval Chronicle, and even to the Gentleman's Magazine. In the Navy, sir, we drink as much of the Castalian spring as comes within our reach.'

They also drank even headier liquors, and although the Worcester's wardroom, being poor, could afford only the fierce local wine known as the blackstrap, there was plenty of it within reach; and this was just as well, because after its spirited beginning the dinner-party came dangerously near the doldrums: those who had not sailed with Captain Aubrey before were somewhat awed by his reputation, to say nothing of his rank, while the presence of so many parsons called for a pretty high degree of decorum from all hands: and even remarks about the Brunswick's old-fashioned way of carrying her mizentopmast staysail under the maintop were out of place when so many of the company could not tell a staysail from a spanker. The junior officers sat mute, eating steadily; Somers applied himself to the blackstrap, and although he sniffed it scornfully, as one used to decent claret, he drank a great deal; the Marine captain launched into an account of a curious adventure that had befallen him in Port of Spain, but realizing that its scabrous end was utterly unsuitable for this occasion, was obliged to bring it to a pitifully lame and pointless though decent conclusion; Gill, the master, tried hard to overcome his settled melancholy, but he could manage little more than a bright, attentive look, a fixed smile: both Stephen and Professor Graham had retired into private contemplation; and while the company ate their mutton little was to be heard but the sound of their powerful jaws, some well-intentioned, ill-informed remarks on t.i.thes by Captain Aubrey, and a detailed explanation of the working of the double-bottomed defecator at the far end of the table.

But Pullings sent the bottles round with more urgency than before, crying 'Professor Graham, a gla.s.s of wine with you, sir - Mr Addison, I drink to your new floating parish. - Mr Wells, I give you joy of the Brunswick in a b.u.mper, sir: bottoms up.' Jack and Mowett seconded him, and by the time the pudding came in the temperature of the gathering had risen to something more nearly what Pullings could have wished.

The pudding was Jack's favourite, a spotted dog, and a spotted dog fit for a line-of-battle ship, carried in by two strong men.

'Bless me,' cried Jack, with a loving look at its glistening, faintly translucent sides, 'a spotted dog!'

'We thought as how you might like one, sir,' said Pullings. 'Allow me to carve you a slice.'

'Do you know, sir,' said Jack to Professor Graham, 'this is the first decent pudding I have had since I left home. By some mischance the suet was neglected to be shipped; and you will agree that a spotted dog or a drowned baby is a hollow mockery, a whited sepulchre, without it is made with suet. There is an art in puddings, to be sure; but what is art without suet?'

'What indeed?' said Graham. 'But there are also puddings in art, I understand - in the art of managing a ship. Only yesterday I learnt, to my surprise, that you trice puddings athwart the starboard gumbrils, when sailing by and large.'

Graham's surprise was nothing to that of the wardroom.

'By and large?' they said. 'Gumbrils? starboard gumbrils?' Jack's spotted dog hung in his gullet for a moment before he understood that someone had been practising upon the Professor's credulity, an ancient naval form of wit, played off many and many a time on newly-joined young gentlemen, on himself long, long ago, and by Pullings and Mowett on Dr Maturin in former years; but never to his knowledge on any man of Graham's eminence. 'Puddings we have, sir,' he said, swallowing his own, 'and plenty of 'em. There is the wreath of yarns tapering towards the ends and grafted all over that we clap about the fore and main masts just below the trusses before we go into action, to prevent the yards from falling; then there is the pudding on a boat's stem, to act as a fender; and the puddings we lay round the anchor-rings to stop them chafing. But as for the gumbrils, why, I am afraid someone must have been practising on you. They do not exist.' The words were scarcely out of his mouth before he wished them back: he knew Stephen extremely well, and that detached, dreamy expression could only mean a consciousness of guilt. 'Unless,' he added quickly, 'it is some archaic term. Yes, I rather think...'

But it was too late. Captain Harris, the Marine, was already explaining by and large. With a piece of fresh Gibraltar bread and arrows drawn with wine he showed the ship lying as close as possible to the breeze: '... and this is sailing by the wind, or as sailors say in their jargon, on a bowline; whereas large is when it blows not indeed quite from behind but say over the quarter, like this.'

'Far enough abaft the beam that the studdingsails will set,' said Whiting.

'So as you see,' continued Harris, 'it is quite impossible to sail both by and large at the same time. It is a contradiction in terms.' The expression pleased him, and he repeated, 'A contradiction in terms.'

'We do say by and large,' said Jack. 'We say a ship sails well by and large when she will both lie close when the wind is scant and run fast when it is free. No doubt that is what your informant meant.'

'I think not, sir,' said Graham. 'I think your first supposition was correct. I have been practised upon. I am content. I shall say no more.'

He did not look content; indeed he looked thoroughly displeased, in spite of a formal appearance of complaisance; but he did say no more, no more at least to Dr Maturin, except on one occasion. The dinner ran its course, the wine did its cheerful work, and by the time the port was on the table the wardroom was filled with the comfortable noise of a party going well, laughter and a great deal of talk; the young officers had found their tongues - a decent loquacity - and riddles were propounded; Mowett obliged the company with a piece about dealing with light airs abaft the beam, beginning: With whining postures, now the wanton sails Spread all their charms to snare th'inconstant gales.

The swelling stud-sails now their wings extend, The staysails sidelong to the breeze ascend.

And Stephen, aware that he had not only behaved badly but that his bad behaviour had been discovered, took advantage of a pause between two songs to say that unless the wind came fair tomorrow he intended to go ash.o.r.e to buy a raven at the shop of the Jew-man from Mogador, famous for birds of all kinds, including ravens, 'to see whether it was true that they lived a hundred and twenty years' - a pale, flabby little joke, but one that had made people laugh for two thousand five hundred years. It made them laugh now, after a moment's consideration; but Dr Graham said, 'It is very unlikely that you will live so long yourself, Dr Maturin. A man already so advanced in years, and with such habits, cannot pretend to live to such an age. A hundred and twenty years, forsooth."

These were the last words he said to Stephen until the Worcester was lying off Port Mahon in Minorca, having sailed from Gibraltar the moment the wind came far enough north of east. She now had a leading breeze for Mahon itself, but nothing, not even his respect for learning and his consideration for Professor Graham, would induce Jack to take her into that long harbour, easy to enter but the very devil to leave except with a northerly air. Many a time he had seen line-of-battle ships windbound there in former days, when he in his little weatherly brig could just beat out, but only just; and with Admiral Thornton's squadron not two days' sail away if the breeze held true he did not intend to lose a minute, even if begged to do so by a choir of virgins on their knees. The Worcester lay to, therefore, off Cape Mola, and Mr Graham was lowered into a boat; though at least he was indulged in the relative comfort of the pinnace. He gave Stephen a cold 'Good day to you,' and was gone.

Stephen watched the pinnace hoist its sails and speed away over the short choppy sea, sprinkling its occupants at every plunge and soaking them quite often: he was sorry that he had offended Graham, who was a strong, intelligent man, no cloistered scholar, and no sort of a bore at any time. But such a degree of resentment was unamiable and he saw him go without much regret. 'And in any event,' he reflected, 'he will never again think of me as a potential intelligence-agent; still less as one in fact, dear Mother of G.o.d.'

'Shearwaters!' cried a voice beside him. 'Surely they cannot be shearwaters here?' Stephen turned and saw Mr Martin, the only remaining parson, the thinner and shabbier of the two literary gentlemen. 'Certainly they are shearwaters,' he said. 'Do they not nest in holes on Cape Mola over there? To be sure, they are less sharply black and white than those of the Atlantic, but they are shearwaters for all that - the same voice by night in their burrows, the same solitary white egg, the same grossly obese chick. See how they turn with the wave! Certainly they are shearwaters. You have studied birds, sir?'

'As much as ever I could, sir; they have always been my great delight, but since I left the university I have had little leisure, little opportunity for reading, and I have never been abroad.'

What with his wound and the superabundance of clergymen, Stephen had had almost no contact with Mr Martin, but now his heart warmed to this young man who shared his pa.s.sion, who had learnt a great deal, and who had paid for his learning with long journeys on foot, nights spent in byres, haystacks, sheepcotes, even prisons when he was taken up for a poacher, and with the loss of an eye, destroyed by an owl. 'The poor bird only meant to protect her brood: she could not tell I meant them no harm! I was culpably abrupt in my movements. Besides, it is convenient, when looking through a spy-gla.s.s, not to have to close the other eye.' They exchanged accounts of the bustard, the osprey, the stilt, the cream-coloured courser; and Stephen was describing the great albatross with an eagerness approaching enthusiasm when he heard Captain Aubrey say, in a tone of strong displeasure, 'Loose the foretopsail. Give him a gun.'

It was the conduct of the returning pinnace that caused these remarks. To Stephen it seemed to be coming along well enough, beating into the wind, tacking briskly from time to time, but it was clear from the look of the other officers on the quarterdeck that Mr Somers was not handling the boat to their satisfaction. At one point they all shook their heads in unison, frowning with disapproval, and in fact a moment later a spar carried away - a spar that might be replaced in Malta, but not much nearer at hand. When the pinnace came alongside with a rending crack, Captain Aubrey said, 'Mr Pullings, I should like to see Mr Somers in the cabin,' and walked off.

Somers came out of the cabin ten minutes later, red-faced and sullen. The quarterdeck was full of officers and young gentlemen, watching Minorca dwindle on the larboard quarter as the ship stood north-east for her rendezvous with the Admiral: a glance showed Somers' state of mind, and they all studiously avoided his eye as he paced up and down for a while before going below.

He was still in a surly, resentful mood when the wardroom met for supper, and they tried to cheer him up. It had long been obvious to all the sailors present that he was no seaman, but they all knew the importance of geod relations in a small community, tight-packed, always on top of one another, with no possibility of getting away throughout the whole length of the commission: but Somers did not choose to be brought into a happier state of mind. Where he had served his time they could not tell, but it must have been in some ship that did not observe the conventions they had always known, one of which was that any unpleasantness on deck was forgotten - at least pretended to be forgotten - at table. Towards the end of the meal he grew more conversable, talking to Mr Martin and the younger Marine lieutenant, Jackson, who admired him for his good looks, his comparative wealth, and his connections: without mentioning any names he explained to them the difference, as he saw it, between bosun-captains and gentleman-captains, the first being those who paid great attention to mechanical duties, the province of mere mariners, the second being the true soul of the Navy, high-spirited men who left such things to their inferiors, reserving all their energies for a superior general direction and for battle, in which they led their men (who respected, almost worshipped them) incomparably well. He grew almost as enthusiastic about gentlemen as Stephen had been about the wandering albatross - the common people instinctively recognized blood and accepted its superiority - they knew that a man of ancient lineage was as it were of another essence, and they could distinguish him at once, almost as though he wore a halo. Young Jackson abounded in his sense, applauding his higher flights, until he happened to look along the table and saw the grave faces of his companions, when a certain doubt came over him, and he fell silent. By this time Somers was too drunk to notice that, or to attend to the strong, determined conversation that drowned his voice. He was in fact so drunk, drunk even by naval standards, that he was obliged to be bundled into his cot: this was usual enough, and since he had no watch to keep that night there was no adverse comment (the purser was regularly speechless by lights out, though the Worcester was not reckoned a hard-drinking ship by any means). But his state the next morning was far from usual: he was so unwell that Stephen, having prescribed three drachms of Lucatellus' balsam, told him that he might perfectly well decline the Captain's invitation to dinner, on grounds of health. Somers was touchingly grateful for Dr Maturin's attentions, and as he walked off Stephen reflected that he had often known men who were showy and arrogant in public - men with little instinctive social tact - to be pleasant enough with only one companion. He offered this reflection, in general terms, to Mr Martin as they sat on the p.o.o.p under a cloudless sky after their dinner with the Captain, gazing at the white-flecked pure blue sea and the various gulls that wantoned in the wake; but Martin was too full of the bustard, the great Andalusian bustard bought in Gibraltar, that had formed the main dish, to give more than a civil a.s.sent before returning to that n.o.ble fowl. 'To think that I should have lain three nights in a shepherd's hut on Salisbury Plain - a hut on wheels - in the hope of seeing one at dawn, to say nothing of my vigils in Lincolnshire, and that I should have found a c.o.c.k-bird on my plate in the bosom of the ocean! It is very like a dream.'

He was also full of enthusiasm for the Navy: Such kindness in the Captain, such cordial hospitality - none of the cold formal distance or hauteur he had been led to expect - and the gentlemen of the wardroom were so friendly and considerate - he could not speak too highly of Mr Pullings' and Mr Mowett's amiability. The other officers had been very good to him too, while the comfort of his little cabin in spite of the enormous gun, and the -he might almost say the luxury of their fare, with wine every day, quite astonished him.

Stephen glanced to see whether he were speaking ironically, but all he could detect was honest pleas ure and satisfaction, together with a rosy gleam from Captain Aubrey's port. 'Sure, we are fortunate in our shipmates,' he observed, 'and I have noticed that many sea-officers, nay the majority, are of the same cheerful, good-natured, liberal stamp. c.o.xcombs are rare; reading men not unknown. Yet from the physical point of view the nautical life is usually represented as one of hardship, discomfort, and privation.'

'All things are relative,' said Martin, 'and perhaps some years of living in a garret or a cellar and working for the booksellers is no bad preparation for the Navy. At all events it is the life for me. Both as a naturalist and as a social being, I am -'

'By your leave, sir,' said the captain of the afterguard, coming up the p.o.o.p-ladder with a horde of swabbers.

'What's afoot, Miller?' asked Stephen.

'Which we hope to raise the flag before long,' said Miller, 'and you would not wish the Admiral to see the deck all covered knee-deep with filth, sir, would you now? With remarks pa.s.sed through all the fleet?'

The filth was not discernible to a landsman's eye, unless it were for a very slight dusting of little pieces of worn tow fallen from the rigging and gathered under the lee of the rail, but Stephen and the parson were chivvied off the p.o.o.p to the quarterdeck. Five minutes later the tide of powerful cleaners dislodged them once again and they moved on to the gangway. 'Should you not like to go below, sir?' asked Whiting, the officer of the watch. 'The wardroom is almost dry by now.'

'Thank you,' said Stephen, 'but I wish to show Mr Martin a Mediterranean gull. I believe we shall go to the forecastle.'

'I will have your chair sent forward,' said Pullings. 'But you will not touch anything, will you, Doctor? Everything is quite clean, fit for the Admiral's inspection.'

'You are very good, Mr Pullings,' said Stephen, 'but I can walk and stand quite well now. I do not need the chair, although I am sensible of your attention.'

'You will not touch anything, Doctor?' called Pullings after them: and on the forecastle a midshipman and two elderly sheet-anchor men desired them to take great care, and to touch nothing. They were unwelcome and in the way, but after a while Joseph Plaice, an old shipmate of Stephen's and a forecastle-hand, brought them each a cheese-shaped bag of bow-chaser wads and there they sat in some comfort, touching neither the beautifully flemished falls nor the gleaming gun-sights.

'The Navy is the life for me,' said Martin again. 'Quite apart from the excellent company - and I may say that as far as I have seen, the ordinary sailormen are quite as obliging as the officers.'

'I have certainly found it so, in many cases. Aft the more honour, forward the better man, as Lord Nelson put it,' said Stephen. 'Aft being the officers and young gentlemen, forward the hands - the container for the contents, you understand. Yet I think that by forward we are to take him to mean real sailors; for you are to observe that in a crew such as this a great many scrovies are necessarily swept in, froward dirty disreputable rough good-for-nothing disorderly ragabashes and raparees to begin with, and sometimes for ever.'

Martin bowed, and went on, 'Apart from that, and only to be mentioned long after, there is the material aspect. I must beg pardon, sir, for alluding to such a subject, but unless a man has earned his bread by a calling in which he must rely on himself alone, in which any failure of invention, any bout of sickness, is fatal, he can scarcely appreciate the extraordinary comfort of a certain hundred and fifty pounds a year. A hundred and fifty pounds a year! Good heavens! And I am told that if I consent to act as schoolmaster to the young gentlemen, an annual fee of five pounds a head is due for each.'

'I conjure you to do no such thing. There is a Mediterranean gull, just perched on the long pole running out in front: you see her heavy dark-red bill, the true blackness of her head? Quite different from ridibundus.'

'Quite different. At close range there is no possible confusion. But pray, sir, why must I not teach the young gentlemen?'

"Because, sir, teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul. It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over his pupils: he often beats them and insensibly he loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings. He does them harm, but the harm they do him is far greater. He may easily become the all-knowing tyrant, always right, always virtuous; in any event he perpetually a.s.sociates with his inferiors, the king of his company; and in a surprisingly short time alas this brands him with the mark of Cain. Have you ever known a schoolmaster fit to a.s.sociate with grown men? The Dear knows I never have. They are most horribly warped indeed. Yet curiously enough this does not seem to apply to tutors: perhaps it is scarcely possible to play the prima donna to an audience of one. Fathers, on the other hand -'

'Mr Pullings' compliments, sir,' said a young gentleman, 'and begs Dr Maturin will take his feet off the fresh paint.'

Stephen gazed at him and then at his feet. It was quite true: the glistening surface of the carronade that served him for a footstool gleamed not as he had supposed with polish nor yet with spray but with jet-black paint, newly laid on. 'My compliments to Mr Pullings,' he said at last, 'and pray desire him to let me know, at his leisure, how I am to take my feet off the fresh paint without instantly and indelibly marking both the deck here and at every step I take to the main staircase. These bandages are not lightly to be taken off. And in any case, sir,' - to Mr Martin - 'the question hardly arises, for as you remarked yourself, you found the Pythagorean proposition impossible to be understood; and the education of the young gentlemen aboard is almost all a matter of trigonometry: even of algebra, Heaven preserve us.'

'Then I must abandon my midshipmen, I see,' said Martin smiling. 'But still I feel that the Navy is the life for me - an ideal life for a naturalist.'

'To be sure, it is a very fine life for a young man with no ties on land and with a robust const.i.tution, a young man who is not over-nice about his victuals, and who does not make a G.o.d of his belly. And I am of your opinion entirely, in believing the better kind of sea-officer to be excellent company: though there are others; and the poison of authority can sap a captain, with the unhappiest effects upon the whole ship's company. Then again, if it is your misfortune to have a bore or a petulant c.o.xcomb aboard, you are penned up with him for months and even years on end, so that his shortcomings grow exquisitely tedious and the first words of his often-repeated anecdotes a h.e.l.lish torment. And as to its being a life for a naturalist, why, it has advantages to be sure; but you are to consider that the Navy's prime function is to take, burn, or destroy the enemy, not to contemplate the wonders of the deep. The utmost power of language is not enough to describe the frustration a naturalist must endure in this jading pursuit of merely political, material ends: had we been allowed some days ash.o.r.e at Minorca, for example, I could have shown you not only the black wheatear, not only the curious Minorcan chat, but Eleanora's falcon! The bearded vulture!'

'I am sure what you say is profoundly true,' said Martin, 'and I bow to your experience - I shall nourish no illusions. And yet, sir, you have seen the great albatross, the southern petrels, the penguins in their interesting diversity, sea-elephants, the ca.s.sowary of the far Spice Islands, the emu scouring the sultry plain, the blue-eyed s.h.a.g. You have beheld Leviathan!'

'I have also seen the three-toed sloth,' said Dr Maturin.

'Sail ho,' called the lookout at the foremasthead. 'On deck, there, four sails of ships, six sail, a squadron, fine on the larboard bow.'

'That will be Sir John Thornton's fleet,' said Stephen. 'Presently we must make ourselves trim: perhaps we might call the ship's barber.'

Captain Aubrey, as trim as his newly-brushed best uniform could make him, the Nile medal in his b.u.t.tonhole, the regulation sword at his side (Admiral Thornton was a stickler for etiquette) went down the Worcester's side with the full naval ceremony, preceded by a midshipman with several packets under his arm. He was grave and silent as the barge pulled along the broad expanse of sea between the two ranges of towering line-of-battle ships stretching ahead and astern of the Ocean, each exactly in station, two cable lengths apart. Although this was only a parenthesis in his career, a routine turn on the everlasting Toulon blockade, with little likelihood of action, there was always the sea to cope with, the sudden savage winds of the Gulf of Lions; and the unexpected was always at hand. Admiral Thornton was himself an outstanding seaman; he required a very high degree of competence in his captains; he never hesitated to sacrifice individuals when he thought the good of the service was at issue- many an officer had he set on the beach for ever - and although Jack could hardly hope to distinguish himself during this parenthesis it was quite possible that he might take a fall, particularly as Admiral Harte, the second in command, did not love him. His thoughts were more sombre, his face far less cheerful than usual. After the first few very active weeks of getting the Worcester into shape, weeks in which he had brought her gunnery to a moderately high standard of efficiency, the ship had settled into the steady naval way of life, a happy ship upon the whole; and since he had an excellent first lieutenant in Tom Pullings he had had plenty of time to worry about his affairs at home, his horribly involved and dangerous legal affairs. He had retained little Latin from his brief, remote, and largely ineffectual days at school, but one tag still ran through his head and the substance of it was that no ship could outrun care. The Worcester had run some two thousand miles as fast as he could drive her, yet care still sat there, dispelled only by the great-gun exercise and his evenings with Stephen, Scarlatti, old Bach and Mozart.