The Ionian Mission Part 5

The squadron cruised in strict formation under the eye of a most punctilious Captain of the Fleet and under the far more dreaded supervision of the unseen Admiral. It was not unlike a perpetual full-dress parade, and the least mistake led to a public reproof, a signal from the flag requiring the erring ship to keep her station, a message that could of course be read by all the rest. And since each ship had her own trim, her own rate of sailing and her own amount of leeway this called for incessant attention to the helm, jibs and braces, as wearing as the incessant vigilance by day and night, the searching of the sea for Emeriau in line of battle. For the Worcesters it was not so bad as for those who had been at it for months and even years; it had something of novelty, and there were quite enough man-of-war's men aboard for her not to disgrace herself. There was a great deal of necessary work to keep them busy: for most these were not yet routine tasks, already done so often that they were second nature; and unlike the other ships' companies the Worcesters had not been at sea so long that the absence of female company was a matter of almost obsessive concern. And although the gunner's wife, a plain, sober, middle-aged lady, had received a number of propositions - propositions that she rejected firmly but without surprise or rancour, being used to men-of-war ? the idea of subst.i.tution had hardly spread at all. The ship was blessed with a long spell of fine weather to ease her in, and in a surprisingly short time this exactly-ordered, somewhat hara.s.sing but never idle existence seemed the natural way of life, pre-ordained and perhaps everlasting. Jack knew most of his six hundred men and boys by now, their faces and capabilities if not always their names, and upon the whole he and Pullings found them a very decent crew; some King's hard bargains among them and more who could not stand their grog, but a far greater number of good than bad: and even the landsmen were beginning to take some tincture of the sea. His midshipmen's berth he was less pleased with: it was the weakest part of the ship. The Worcester was ent.i.tled to twelve oldsters or midshipmen proper; Jack had left three places vacant, and of the nine youths aboard only four or perhaps five had the evident makings of an officer. The others were amiable enough; they walked about doing n.o.body any harm, gentlemanly young fellows; but they were not seamen and they took no real pains to learn their profession. Elphinstone, Admiral Brown's protege, and his particular friend Grimmond, were both heavy, dull-witted, hairy souls of twenty and more; both had failed to pa.s.s for lieutenant and both were fervent admirers of Somers, the third lieutenant. Elphinstone he would keep for his uncle's sake; the other he would get rid of when he could. As for the youngsters, the boys between eleven and fourteen, it was harder to form an opinion, they being so mercurial: harder to form an opinion of their capabilities, that is to say, for their attainments could be summed up in a moment, and a more ignorant set of squeakers he had never seen. Some might be able to pa.r.s.e until all was blue or decline a Latin noun, but parsing never clawed a ship off a lee sh.o.r.e. Few understood the Rule of Three; few could multiply with any certainty, nor yet divide; none knew the nature of a logarithm, a secant, a sine. In spite of his determination not to run a nursery he undertook to show them the rudiments of navigation, while Mr Hollar the bosun, a far more successful teacher, made them understand the rigging, and Bonden the right management of a boat.

His cla.s.ses were tedious in the extreme, since none of these pleasant little creatures seemed to have the least natural bent for the mathematics, and they were awed into even deeper stupidity by his presence; but the lessons did at least keep him from worrying about what the lawyers might be doing at home. Of recent weeks his mind had tended to run out of control, turning over the intricate problems again and again: a sterile, wearing, useless activity at the best of times and far worse between sleeping and waking, when it took on a repet.i.tive nightmarish quality, running on for hours and hours.

It was after one of these sessions with the youngsters and their multiplication table that he stepped on to the quarterdeck and took a few turns with Dr Maturin while his gig was hoisting out. 'Have you weighed yourself lately?' asked Stephen.

'No,' said Jack, 'I have not.' He spoke rather curtly, being sensitive about his bulk: his more intimate friends would exercise their wit upon it at times, and Stephen looked as if he might be on the edge of a bon mot. But on this occasion the question was not the prelude to any satirical fling. 'I must look into you,' said Stephen. 'We may all of us entertain an unknown guest, and I should not be surprised if you had lost two stone.'

'So much the better,' said Jack. 'I dine with Admiral Mitch.e.l.l today: I have two pair of old stockings on, as you see. Larboard mainchains,' he called to his c.o.xswain, and almost immediately afterwards he ran down into the waiting gig, leaving Stephen strangely at a loss. 'What is the connection between the loss of two stone and the wearing of two pair of old stockings?' he asked the hammock-netting.

The connection would have been clear enough if he had gone aboard the San Josef with Jack. Her quarterdeck had a large number of officers upon it, which was natural enough in a flagship: officers tall, medium and short, but all of them remarkably lean and athletic - no sagging paunches, no dewlaps in the San Josef. From among them stepped the Admiral, a small compact man with a cheerful face and the pendulous arms of a foremast-hand. He wore his own grey hair, cut short in the new fashion and brushed forward, which gave him a slightly comic air until one met his eye, an eye capable of a very chilling glance indeed, though now it expressed a cordial welcome. He spoke with a pleasant West Country burr, and he rarely p.r.o.nounced the letter H.

They talked about some improvements in the tops, the provision of a new kind of swivel-gun with little or no recoil; and as Jack had expected the Admiral said, 'I tell you what, Aubrey, we will have a look at them; and then while we are about it let us race to the jack-crosstrees - there is nothing like it for a whet to your appet.i.te - the last man down to forfeit a dozen of champagne.'

'Done, sir,' said Jack, unbuckling his sword. 'I'm your man.'

'You take the starboard ratlines, since you are the guest,' said the Admiral. 'Away aloft.'

The captain of the maintop and his mates received them calmly and showed them the working of the swivel-guns. They were perfectly used to the sudden appearance of the Admiral, who was famous throughout the fleet as an upperyardsman and as one who believed in the virtue of exercise for all hands; they looked covertly at Captain Aubrey's face for signs of the apoplexy that had struck down the last visiting commander and they were gratified to see that from a pleasing red Jack's face had already turned purple from keeping pace with the Admiral. But Jack was a tolerably deep file: he loosened his collar and asked questions about the guns - the guns interested him extremely - until he felt his heart beat easy with the coming of his second wind, and when the Admiral cried 'Go-he sprang into the topmast shrouds as nimbly as one of the larger apes. With his far greater reach and length of leg he was well ahead until half-way to the topmast bibs, where the Admiral drew level, swung out on the mizen flagstaff stay and began swarming up the frail spider's web that supported the San Josefs lofty topgallantmast with the jack-crosstrees at its head, up and up hand over hand, no ratlines here for their feet. He was at least twenty years older than Jack, but he led by a yard when he reached the crosstrees, writhed round them and took up a strategic position that effectually stopped Jack's progress. 'You must stand on them with both feet, Aubrey,' he said without a gasp. 'Fair's fair,' and so saying he leapt outwards on the easy roll. For a split second he was in the air, free as a bird, two hundred feet above the sea: then his powerful hands grasped the standing backstay, and the immensely long rope that plunged straight from the mast-head to the ship's side by the quarterdeck at an angle of some eighty degrees; and as the Admiral swung to clasp it with his legs so Jack set both feet on the crosstrees. Being so much taller he could reach the corresponding stay on the other side without that appalling leap, without that swing; and now weight told. Fifteen stone could slide down a rope faster than nine, and as they both shot past the maintop it was clear to Jack that unless he braked he must win. He tightened his grip above and below, felt the fierce burning in his hands, heard his stockings go to ruin, gauged his fall exactly, and as the deck swept close he dropped from the stay, landing at the same instant as his opponent.

Tipped on the post,' cried the Admiral. 'Poor Aubrey, beat by half a nose. But never mind; you did very well for a cove of your uncommon size. And it has clawed some of the jam off your back, hey? Given you an appet.i.te, hey, hey? Come and drink some of your champagne. I will lend you a case until you can pay me back.'

They drank Jack's champagne, the dozen between eight of them; they drank port and something that the Admiral described as rare old Egyptian brandy; they told stories, and in a pause Jack produced the only decent one he could remember. 'I do not set up for a wit,' he began.

'I should think not,' said the Captain of the San Josef, laughing heartily.

'I cannot hear you, sir," said Jack, with a vague recollection of legal proceedings; 'But I have the most amazingly witty surgeon: learned, too. And he once said the best thing I ever heard in my life. Lord, how we laughed! It was when I had Lively, keeping her warm for William Hamond. There was a parson dining with us, that knew nothing of the sea, but someone had just told him that the dog-watches were shorter than the rest.' He paused amid the general smiling expectancy. 'By G.o.d, I must get it right this time,' he said inwardly, and he concentrated his gaze on the broad-bottomed decanter. 'Not so long, if you understand me, sir,' he went on, turning to the Admiral.

'I believe I follow you, Aubrey,' said the Admiral.

' "So the dog-watches are shorter than the rest," says the parson, "very well. But why dog, if you please?" As you may imagine, we looked pretty blank: and then in the silence the Doctor pipes up. "Why, sir," says he, "do you not perceive that it is because they are cur-tailed?" '

Infinite mirth, far greater than on the first occasion long ago, when it had had to be explained. Now the company had known that something droll was coming; they were prepared, primed, and they exploded into a roar of honest delight. Tears ran down the Admiral's scarlet face: he drank to Jack when he could draw breath at last, he repeated the whole thing twice, he drank to Dr Maturin's health with three times three and a heave-ho rumbelow; and Bonden, who had regained the gig with his crew half an hour before, having been kindly entertained by the Admiral's c.o.xswain, said to his mates, 'It will be the gallery-ladder this tide. Mark my words.'

The gallery-ladder it was, a humane device discreetly let down so that captains who did not choose to face.the ceremony of piping the side might come aboard unseen, giving no evil example to those they might have to flog for drunkenness tomorrow, and it was by the gallery-ladder that Captain Aubrey regained his cabin, sometimes smiling, sometimes looking stern, rigid and official. But he had always had a good head for wine, and although he had lost some weight there was still a fine bulk in which wine might disperse: after a nap he woke in time for quarters, perfectly sober. Sober, but grave, rather melancholy; his head ached; his hearing seemed unnaturally acute.

The great-gun exercise was not what it had been: a ship on blockade, sailing in formation, could hardly blaze away as the Worcester had done in the lonely ocean. But Jack and the gunner had devised a framework of laths with a mark hung in the middle by a network of lines whose meshes were just smaller than a twelve-pound ball, so that the exact flight of the shot could be traced and the angle corrected; this was boomed out from the fore yardarm and different crews Bred at it from the quarterdeck twelve-pounders every evening. They still used Jack's curious private powder, which excited a good deal of ribald comment in the squadron - laborious signals about Guy Fawkes, and was the Worcester in serious distress? - but he persisted, and by now it was rare that any crew failed to cut the lines near the mark, while often they struck the bull's eye itself, to the sound of general cheering.

'I suppose, sir, that we may dispense with the firing today,' said Pullings in a quiet, considerate voice.

'I cannot imagine why you should suppose any such thing, Mr Pullings,' said Jack. 'This evening we shall fire six supplementary rounds.'

By an unhappy chance it so happened that the powder filled for this evening's practice was the kind that gave a blinding white flash and an extraordinarily loud high-pitched bang. At the first discharge Jack clapped his hands tight behind his back to prevent himself from putting them to his head; and long before the last of the additional rounds he regretted his petulance with all his heart. He also regretted clasping his hands so tight, since his childish sliding on the flagship's backstay had scorched them cruelly, and in his sleep the right-hand palm had swelled in a red and angry weal. However, the marksmanship had been unusually good; everybody looked pleased; and with a haggard, artificial grin he said 'A creditable exercise, Mr Pullings. You may beat the retreat.'

After a barely decent interval while his cabin was being put to rights - for the Worcester was one of the few ships that stripped every evening, a clear sweep fore and aft - he retreated himself.

The first thing that met his cross-grained nose was the smell of coffee, his favourite drink. 'What is that pot doing here?' he asked in a harsh, suspicious voice. 'You do not imagine that I am in need of coffee at this time of day, do you?'

'Which the Doctor is coming to look to your hand,' said Killick with the surly, aggressive, brazen look that always accompanied his lies. 'We got to give him something to whet his whistle, ain't we?

Sir,' he added, as an afterthought.

'How did you make it? The galley fire has been out this half hour and more.'

'Spirit-stove, in course. Here he is, sir.'

Stephen's ointment soothed Jack's hand, the coffee soothed his jangling soul, and presently the normal sweetness of his nature made a veiled appearance, though he still remained unusually grave. 'Your Mr Martin carries on about the harshness of the service,' he observed after the fourth cup, 'and although I must confess that a flogging round the fleet is not a pretty sight, I feel that perhaps he may carry it a trifle high. He may exaggerate.

It is unpleasant, to be sure, but it is not necessarily death and d.a.m.nation.'

'For my part I should prefer hanging,' said Stephen. 'You and Martin may say what you like,' said Jack, but there are two ends to every pudding.'

'I should be the last to deny it,' said Stephen. 'If a pudding starts, clearly it must end; the human mind is incapable of grasping infinity, and an endless pudding pa.s.ses our conception.'

'For example, I dined today with a man who was flogged round the fleet; and yet he flies his flag.'

'Admiral Mitch.e.l.l? You astonish me: I am amazed. It is rare, perhaps all too rare, that an admiral is flogged round the fleet. I cannot recall an instance in all my time at sea, though the Dear knows I have seen a terrible lot of punishment.'

'He was not an admiral at the time. Of course he was not, Stephen: what a fellow you are. No. It was a great while ago, in Rodney's day I believe, when he was a young foremast-jack. He was pressed. I do not know the details, but I have heard he had a sweetheart on sh.o.r.e and so he deserted again and again. The last time he refused his captain's punishment and applied for a court-martial, just at the wrong moment. There had been a great deal of trouble with men running and the court decided to make an example of poor Mitch.e.l.l - five hundred lashes. But, however, he survived it; and he survived the yellow jack when his ship was ordered to the Spanish Main, when her captain and half the people died of it in less than a month. The new captain took a liking to him, and being precious short of petty-officers rated him midshipman. Well, not to be tedious, he minded his book, pa.s.sed for lieutenant, was appointed to the Blanche right away, and was acting second when she took the Pique, her captain being killed. That gave him his step, and he had not commanded his sloop half a year before he ran into a French corvette at dawn, boarded her and carried her into Plymouth: he was made post for that, about twelve years before I was; and having the luck not to be yellowed he hoisted his flag not long ago. Luck was with him all the time. He is an excellent seaman, of course, and those were the days when you did not need to pa.s.s for a gentleman, as they say now; but he needed luck too. I have noticed,' said Jack, draining the pot into Stephen's cup, 'that luck seems to play fair, on the whole. It gave Mitch.e.l.l a d.a.m.ned ugly swipe early on, and then made it up to him: but, do you see, I had amazing good luck when I was young, taking the Cacafuego and the Fanciulla and marrying Sophie, to say nothing of prizes; and sometimes I wonder... Mitch.e.l.l began by being flogged round the fleet: perhaps that is how I shall end.'

CHAPTER FIVE.

The San Josef sailed away, taking the hospitable Mitch.e.l.l back to the insh.o.r.e squadron, and the Worcester's long spell of kind weather came to an end with a shrieking nine-day mistral that blew the fleet half way to Minorca over a torn white heaving sea that did almost as much damage as a minor action. Yet even if this and their laborious beating up to lat.i.tude 43N had not put an end to social intercourse, Jack would still have led a tolerably isolated existence. It was not a sociable squadron. Admiral Thornton did not entertain; the Captain of the Fleet preferred all commanders to remain in their ships so long as there was any way upon them and he disliked ship-visiting in other officers as a relaxation of discipline, while in ratings he looked upon it as a probable prelude if not a direct incitement to mutiny; and although Rear-Admiral Harte did give an occasional dinner-party when weather permitted he did not invite Captain Aubrey.

Jack had paid his duty-call on the Rear-Admiral on joining and he had been civilly received, even to the extent of expressions of pleasure at his being in the squadron; but although Harte was a practised dissembler these expressions deceived neither Jack nor anyone else. Most of the captains were aware of the bad blood that had existed between the two ever since Jack's liaison with Mrs Harte, long before his marriage, and those who did not know were soon told.

Jack's social life would therefore have been even more meagre than that of the rest of the captains, if he had not had some particular friends in the squadron, such as Heneage Dundas of the Excellent or Lord Garron of the Boyne, who could afford to disregard Harte's ill-will: and, of course, if he had not had Stephen already on board. But in any case his days were quite well filled: the ordinary running of the ship he could leave to Pullings with total confidence, but he did hope to improve the Worcester's seamanship as well as her gunnery. He observed with pain that the Pompee could shift her topgallantmasts in one minute fifty-five seconds and hoist out all her boats in ten minutes forty seconds, although she was by no means a crack ship, while the Boyne, which habitually took a reef in her topsails after quarters in fine weather, did so in one minute and five seconds. He pointed out these facts to his officers and to those very able seamen the captains of the forecastle, the tops, and the after guard, and from that time on the lives of the less nimble members of the crew became miseries to them.

Miseries, that is to say, in the horribly active daytime: many of them, with rope-scarred hands and weary, aching backs, took to hating Captain Aubrey and the vile watch in his hand. 'Infernal b.u.g.g.e.r - fat sod - don't I wish he may fall down dead,' said some, though very discreetly, as the jibboom flew in and out or topgallantmasts were struck for the sixth time. But after quarters the longed-for drum would beat the retreat, tension would slacken, and hatred die away, so that by the time the evening gun roared out aboard the Admiral something like benevolence returned, and when he came forward to watch the dancing on the forecastle on warm, still, moonlit nights, or to see how the band was coming along, they would greet him very kindly.

There was a surprising amount of musical talent aboard. Quite apart from the fiddler and the Marine fifer who ordinarily played to encourage the hands at the capstan by day and for the hornpipes in the evening, at least forty men could play some instrument or other, and many more could sing, often really well. A decayed bagpipe-maker from c.u.mberland, now a swabber belonging to the starboard watch, helped remedy the lack of instruments, but although he and his fellow north-countrymen set up a spirited shrieking, the band would not be much of a credit to the ship until one of the victuallers brought Jack's order from the music-shop in Valetta; and the Worcester's chief present joy lay in her choir.

Mr Martin's ship, the Berwick, had still not rejomed from Palermo, where her captain was known to be much attached - moored head and stern - to a young Sicilian lady with bright chestnut hair: he therefore remained in the Worcester, taking service every Sunday that church could be rigged, and he had noticed the full-throated rendering of the hymns. To the more full-throated he suggested that they should make an attempt upon an oratorio: the Worcester carried no scores of any oratorio whatsoever, but he thought that with industry and recollection and perhaps some verses from Mr Mowett something might be achieved. However, the word had hardly spread in the lower deck before it was reported to the first lieutenant that the ship possessed five men from Lancashire word-perfect in Handel's Messiah, they having taken part in it again and again in their native wastes. They were poor thin little undernourished creatures with only a few blue teeth among them, though young: they had been taken up for combining with others to ask for higher wages and sentenced to transportation; but as they were somewhat less criminal than those who had actually made the demand they were allowed to join the Navy instead. They had in fact gained by the change, particularly as the Worcester was a comparatively humane ship; yet at first they were hardly aware of their happiness. The diet was more copious than any they had ever known. Six pounds of meat a week (though long preserved, bony and full of gristle), seven pounds of biscuits (though infested) would have filled them out in their youth, to say nothing of the seven gallons of beer in the Channel or seven pints of wine in the Mediterranean; but they had lived so long on bread, potatoes and tea that they could scarcely appreciate it, particularly as their nearly toothless gums could hardly mumble salt horse and biscuit with any profit. What is more, they were the very lowest form of life aboard, landlubbers to the ultimate degree -had never seen even a duckpond in their lives - ignorant of everything and barely acknowledged as human by the older men-of-war's men - objects to be attached to the end of a swab or a broom, occasionally allowed, under strict supervision, to lend their meagre weight in hauling on a rope. Yet after the first period of dazed and often seasick wretchedness they learnt to cut their beef right small with a purser's jack-knife and pound it with a marlin-spike; they learnt some of the ways of the ship; and their spirits rose wonderfully when they came to sing.

Musical gifts cropped up in the most unexpected places: a bosun's mate, two quarter-gunners, a yeoman of the sheets, a loblolly boy, the aged cooper himself, Mr Parfit, and several more were found to be able to sing a score at sight. Most of the others could not read music, but they had true ears, a retentive memory, a natural ability to sing in part, and they were rarely out when once they had heard a piece: the only trouble (and it proved insuperable) was that they confused loudness with excellence, and pa.s.sages that were not so pianissimo as to be almost inaudible were taken with the utmost power of the human voice. In singing the immense difference between Mr Parfit, with two pounds five and sixpence a month plus perquisites, and a landsman with one pound two and six minus deductions for his slops was abolished, and as far as the vocal part of it was concerned the Messiah came along n.o.bly. They most delighted in the Halleluiah Chorus, and often, when Jack walked forward to lend his powerful ba.s.s, they would go through it twice, so that the deck vibrated again and he sang away in the midst of that great volume of true ordered sound, his heart lifted high.

But most of his musical pleasure was on a less heroic scale, and he took it much farther aft, in his great cabin with Stephen, the 'cello singing deep in its conversation with the violin, sometimes plain and direct, sometimes immensely intricate, but always profoundly satisfying in the Scarlatti, Hummel and Cherubini that they knew very well, more tentative and still exploratory as they felt their way far into the ma.n.u.script pieces that Jack had bought from London Bach's young man.

'I beg pardon,' said Stephen, as a lee-lurch made him slur his C sharp into a quarter-tone lower than a lugubrious B. They played on to the end of the coda, and after the moment's triumphant silence, the tension dying, he laid his bow on the table, his 'cello on a locker, and observed, 'I am afraid I played worse than usual, with the floor bounding about in this irregular, uneasy fashion. It is my belief we have turned round, and are now facing the billows.'

'Perhaps we have,' said Jack. 'The squadron wears in succession at the end of every watch, you know, and it is now just a little after midnight. Shall we finish the port?'

'Gule, or gluttony, is a beastish sin,' said Stephen. 'But without sin there can be no forgiveness. Would there be any of the Gibraltar walnuts left, at all?'

'If Killick has not blown out his kite with them, there should be plenty in this locker. Yes. Half a sack. Forgiveness,' he said thoughtfully, cracking six together in his ma.s.sive hand. 'How I hope Bennet may find it, when he rejoins. If he has any luck he will come into the fleet tomorrow. The Admiral is less likely to blast him on a Sunday, and this is still a fine leading wind from Palermo.'

'He is the gentleman who commands Mr Martin's ship?'

'Yes. Harry Bennet, who had Theseus before Dalton. You know him perfectly well, Stephen: he came to Ashgrove Cottage when you were there. The literary cove, that read Sophie a piece about the school at Eton and teaching the boys how to shoot, while she was knitting your stockings.'

'I remember him. He made a particularly happy quotation from Lucretius - suave mare magno, and so on. Why should he be blasted, so?'

'It is common knowledge that he stays in Palermo far, far longer than he should because of a wench, a red-haired wench. The Spry and two victuallers saw the Berwick at single anchor, yards crossed, ready for sea on Monday, and yet there was Bennet driving up and down the Marina in an open carriage with this nymph of his and an ancient gentlewoman for decency's sake, looking as pleased as Pontius Pilate. No one could mistake that flaming hair. In all sober earnest, Stephen, I do hate to see a good officer-like man such as Bennet jeopardize his career, hanging about in port for a woman. When he rejoins I shall ask him to dinner: perhaps I could drop a few tactful hints. Perhaps you could say something in the cla.s.sical line, about that fellow who contrived to hear the Sirens, listening to them while seized to the mainmast, the rest of the ship's company having their ears blocked with wax: it happened in these waters, I believe. Could you not bring it in by some reference to Messina, the Straits of Messina?'

'I could not,' said Stephen.

'No. I suppose not,' said Jack. 'It is a most infernally delicate thing to take notice of, even to a man you know very well.' He thought of the time when he and Stephen had competed for Diana's quite unpredictable favours; he had behaved much as Harry Bennet was behaving now, and he had savagely resented anything in the way of tactful hints on the part of his friends. His eye rested on the dressing-case she had given Stephen: it had long since been confided to Killick, to be kept dry and shipshape, and it now lived in the cabin, where it acted as a music-stand, an unbelievably polished music-stand. Its candles shone on the gold mountings, the gleaming wood, with an unearthly radiance. 'Still,' he said, 'I do hope he comes in tomorrow. Psalms may dull the Admiral's edge.' Stephen walked into the quarter-gallery, the cabin's place of ease; and coming back he said, 'Great bands of migrant quails are pa.s.sing northwards: I saw them against the moon. G.o.d send them a kind wind.'

Sunday morning broke fine and clear, and the Berwick was seen a great way off, crowding sail for the squadron on the larboard tack. But long before church was rigged, long before Mr Martin had even looked out his surplice, the breeze began to veer northwards, so that it was a question whether she might not be headed and set well to leeward. As for the quails there was no question at all. Presently the unvarying path of their migration led them straight into the wind's eye, and the poor birds, worn out with their night's flying, began to come aboard, dropping on deck in their hundreds, so tired they could be picked up. But this was shortly after the bosun's mates had piped down the hatchways, roaring, 'Clean up for muster at five bells - clean shirt and shave for muster at five bells - white frocks and trousers - muster-clothes at divisions," and only those few men who had had the foresight to pin the ship's barber as soon as the idlers were called in the first grey light and to make sure that their clothes-bags, their quarters and their persons would pa.s.s the coming inspection could trouble with quails. Few were so provident as to have shaved with Etna pumice and to have combed out their pigtails in sheltered corners during the dark hours of the middle or morning watch; but few as they were, there were too many for Mr Martin. He skipped about the upper deck, his one eye alive with concern, moving quails to safe places, forbidding the men to touch them: 'Yes, sir: no, sir,' they said respectfully, and as soon as he hurried on they stuffed more birds into their bosoms. He ran down to Stephen in the sick-bay and begged him to speak to the Captain, the master, the first lieutenant -'They have come to us for shelter, it is impious, inhuman to destroy them,' he cried, pushing Dr Maturin up the ladder at a run. But as they reached the quarterdeck, thrusting their way through a dense red ma.s.s of Marines hurrying to form on the p.o.o.p, the officer of the watch, Mr Collins, said to the mate of the watch, 'Beat to divisions,' and the mate of the watch turned to the drummer, standing three feet away, his drumsticks poised, and said, 'Beat to divisions.'

The familiar thunder of the general drowned their words and brought all quail-gathering to a stop. Encouraged by cries of 'Toe the line, there,' and sometimes by shoves and even kicks for the very stupid, all the Worcester's people gathered in ordered ranks with their clothes-bags, all as clean as they could manage with sea-water, all shaved, all in white frocks and trousers. The midshipmen of their divisions inspected the hands, the officers of the divisions inspected hands and midshipmen and then, pacing carefully through the ever-increasing flocks of quails, reported to Mr Pullings that 'all were present, properly dressed, and clean,' and Mr Pullings, turning to the Captain, took off his hat and said 'All the officers have reported, sir, if you please.'

Jack took a quail from his epaulette, set it on the starboard binnacle with an abstracted air, and replied, 'Then we will go round the ship.'

They both of them cast a disapproving glance at Stephen and Mr Martin, neither of whom was properly dressed nor yet in his right place, and set off on the long tour that would take the Captain past every man, boy and even woman in the ship through the steady gentle fall of exhausted birds.

'Come,' whispered Stephen, plucking Martin by the sleeve as Jack, having done with the Marines, approached the first division, the afterguard, and all hats flew off. 'Come, we must go to the sick-bay. The birds will come to no harm for the present.'

Jack carried on past the waisters, the gunners, the foretopmen, the boys, the forecastlemen: a slower progress than usual, since he had to edge little round birds out of the way at every step. There was still a great deal of room for improvement: there were still far too many sloppy Joes; the monoglot Welsh youth among the waisters he privately called Grey Melancholy, being unable to retain his name, was obviously finding life unbearable; the three idiots seemed no wiser, although at least they had been scrubbed this time; and young Mr Calamy appeared to have shrunk rather than grown, in spite of his n.o.ble perseverance with the bull-calf; but perhaps that was only because his best gold-looped round hat came down over his ears. Yet even so, almost all hands looked cheerful, pretty well fed, and at the order 'On end clothes' they showed an adequate array of slops.

'Sure a quail is a very acceptable dish,' said Stephen to his first a.s.sistant, 'but, Mr Lewis, I cannot recommend the eating of her in her northward migration. Apart from the moral issue at this particular juncture, apart from the impiety that Mr Martin so rightly abhors, you are to observe that the quail, eating noxious seeds on the African main, may well be noxious herself. Remember Dioscorides* words; remember the miserable fate of the Hebrews...'

'Quails are coming down the ventilator,' said the second a.s.sistant.

'Then cover them gently with a cloth,' said Mr Martin.

Jack reached the galley, inspected the coppers, the harness-casks, the slush-tubs, the three hundredweight of plum-duff preparing for Sunday dinner; and with some satisfaction he noticed his own private drowned baby simmering in its long kettle. But this satisfaction was as private as his pudding: the long habit of command and the necessary reserve combined with his tall erect person in full-dress uniform made him a somewhat awful figure and this impression was strongly reinforced by a scar down the side of his face that in certain lights turned his naturally good-humoured expression to one of brooding ferocity. This light shone upon it now, and although the cook knew that even Beelzebub could not justly find a fault with the galley today he was too fl.u.s.tered to answer the Captain's remarks: his replies had to be interpreted by the first lieutenant, and when the officers pa.s.sed on he turned to his mates, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow and wringing out his handkerchief.

On through the whole length of the lower deck, with candles burning between the great thirty-two-pounders to show the exact arrangement of swabs, worms, rammers, fire-buckets, shot-garlands and their scrupulous cleanliness. On, and at last to the sick-bay, where Dr Maturin, having greeted him formally and reported the few cases under his care (two ruptures, two gleets, a fractured clavicle) said, 'Sir, I am concerned about the quails.'

'What quails?' asked Jack.

'Why, sir, the quails, the round brown birds,' cried Mr Martin. 'They are landing by hundreds, by thousands...'

'The Captain sees fit to be jocose,' said Stephen. 'I am concerned, sir, because they may represent a threat to the people's health; they may te poisonous, and I desire you will be so good as to order proper measures to be taken.'

'Very well, Doctor,' said Jack. 'Mr Pullings, make it so, if you please. And I believe we may now hoist the church pennant, if it is already flying aboard the flag.'

The pennant was indeed flying aboard the flag, and the moment the Worcester's Captain returned to his quarterdeck it was transformed into a place of worship: that is to say three arms-chests covered with a Union flag were arranged to form a reading-desk and pulpit for the chaplain, chairs were set for the officers, mess-stools and benches made of capstan-bars laid athwart match-tubs for the men, and Mr Martin put on his surplice.

Jack was by no means a blue-light captain - he had never brought a tract aboard in his life - nor was he what would ordinarily have been called a religious man: his only touch of mysticism, his only approach to the absolute, was by means of music; but he had a strong sense of piety and he attended gravely to the familiar Anglican service, conducted with a fine decorum in spite of the mult.i.tudes of quails. Yet at the same time the sailor remained keenly alert, and he noticed that the breeze had not only diminished but that it was fast backing to its original quarter. The birds had stopped landing, though they were still thick on the deck. The Berwick now had the wind two points free and she was tearing along under skysails and kites, a remarkable display of canvas and of zeal. 'He don't spare the dimity,' Jack reflected: he frowned and shook his head at Mr Appleby, who had induced a quail to sit on his shining, ta.s.selled Hessian boot, and glancing beyond him he saw the Berwick's signal break out aboard the flagship.

They sang a hymn - it blended strangely with those coming from the ships within earshot - and then sat down to hear the sermon. Mr Martin had a low opinion of his powers as a preacher and usually he read a sermon by South or Tillotson, but this time he was to expound a text of his own. While he was searching for it - the marker had blown away during the last hymn but one -Jack noticed Stephen on the forecastle: he was directing the Worcester's other Papists, her two Jews and the Lascars she had inherited from the Skate to gather quails in baskets and launch them over the leeward side. Some flew off quite strongly: others returned.

'My text," said Mr Martin at last, 'is from the eleventh chapter of the Book of Numbers, verses thirty-one to thirty-four: "And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: and he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round the camp. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people that l.u.s.ted." Now Kibroth-hattaavah, in Hebrew, signifies the graves of those that l.u.s.ted, and from this we are to understand that l.u.s.t is the gateway to the grave...'

Church was over. The remaining quails, now regarded with deep suspicion as Jonahs, were encouraged to leave the ship, and the Worcester's people began to look forward with keen antic.i.p.ation to their Sunday pork and plum-duff. The Berwick's barge left the flagship, her captain looking extremely grave; as it came within hail Jack asked Bennet to dinner, observing, as his guest came up the larboard side without ceremony, 'I shall be able to introduce your new chaplain: he is aboard of us. Pa.s.s the word for Mr Martin. Mr Martin: Captain Bennet. Captain Bennet: Mr Martin. Mr Martin has just given us a most impressive sermon."

'Not at all,' said Martin, looking pleased.

'Oh yes, yes: I was immensely struck by the consequences of l.u.s.t, by the graves of those that l.u.s.ted,' said Jack, and it occurred to him that there could be no better prelude to the more or less veiled warning that it was his duty as a friend to give Harry Bennet.

The prelude was perfect, yet the warning never followed. Bennet had had an extremely disagreeable quarter of an hour, but it was only with the Captain of the Fleet, the Admiral being engaged with some Oriental gentlemen, and his spirits revived as soon as he had a gla.s.s of Hollands in him. They rose still higher at table, and from the beginning of the meal to his red-faced, jolly departure he entertained Jack with a detailed account of Miss Serracapriola's charms, physical, intellectual and spiritual; he showed him a lock of her very surprising hair, and spoke of his progress in Italian, the extraordinary beauty of her voice, her skill in playing the mandolin, the pianoforte, the harp. 'Nelson kissed her when she was a child,' he said on taking his leave, 'and you may do so, once we are married.'

Jack usually slept very well, unless legal worries filled his mind, but swinging in his cot to the south-eastern swell and staring at the tell-tale compa.s.s over his head by the light of a small constantly-burning lantern, he said, 'It is a great while since I kissed anyone.' Bennet's glowing account of his Sicilian had moved Jack strangely; he could see her supple form, the particular warmth of southern beauty; he remembered the scent of a woman's hair, and his thoughts wandered to Spanish girls he had known. 'It is a very great while since I kissed anyone,' he said as he heard three bells strike in the middle watch and the discreet cry of the nearer lookouts, 'Life-buoy -starboard quarterdeck - starboard gangway', 'and it will be even longer before I do so again. There is no duller life on earth than a blockade.'

Sometimes the squadron wore every watch, sometimes every two, according to the wind, as the ships beat to and fro across the likely paths of the Toulon fleet, and far out on either wing lay what frigates or brigs the Admiral could spare. Sometimes they stretched across to raise Sardinia when the breeze might let Emeriau come out eastwards; sometimes almost down to Mahon in line abreast when the mistral blew; and sometimes they stood in to speak to the insh.o.r.e squadron. Day after day of much the same manoeuvres, continually looking out; but n.o.body did they see, never a sail but for the odd rigs from up the Mediterranean for the Admiral, otherwise only sea and sky, perpetually changing but still essentially sea and sky. Never a victualler, never a word from the outside world.

Unseasonable drizzling weather from the south brought them fresh water to wash their clothes, but it stopped the dancing on the forecastle, and although the oratorio boomed on between decks, the deeper pa.s.sages echoing like an organ, Jack felt the general tone of the ship sink half a tone.

Some stood the monotony better than others. The midshipmen's berth did not seem aware of it: with some of the younger officers they were preparing a stage-play; and Jack, recalling his own youth, recommended Hamlet. There was no dramatic poet he preferred to Shakespeare, he said. But Mr Gill, the master, grew sadder still, a dead weight at the wardroom table, and Captain Harris of the Marines, who had far less to do than Gill, increased his already heavy drinking; he was never drunk, never anything but amiably hazy, but he was never wholly sober. Somers, on the other hand, was often unsteady, incoherent, and disagreeable: Pullings did his best to check him, but no one could take the private bottles from his cabin.

He had the afternoon watch at a time when Jack, Pullings and the purser were busy with the ship's books and accounts in the fore-cabin. The squadron was sailing in line abreast under all plain sail, the moderate northwest breeze one point free, when the signal came to tack together, an unusual order, since the Admiral almost always required them to wear, as being kinder to the older, more battered ships - as being more economical in every way, seeing that tacking involved risks to material that wearing did not. Jack heard the cry of 'All hands about ship', but his mind was taken up with the question of changing the people's rations from wine to grog and he thought no more of it until a pa.s.sionate bawling on deck and a pounding of feet jerked him from his chair. Three strides brought him on to the quarterdeck and one glance showed him that the Worcester had missed stays. She still had a good deal of way on her, though the foretopsail was braced to, and she was about to run her bowspt.i.t over the Pompee's waist. In the thunderous shaking of canvas hands gazed aft for orders: Somers stared, bemused. 'Back the foretopsail,' called Jack. 'Port your helm. Flat in forward, there.' The ship's way was checked but even so the gap narrowed: narrowed horribly, yet not quite to disaster. The Worcester's bowsprit pa.s.sed six inches astern of the Pompee's taffrail. 'Bartholomew Fair,' shouted her captain as she drew clear and the Worcester gathered sternway. Jack wore his ship round on to the larboard tack, let fall his topgallantsails and ran her up to her rightful station. He turned to Somers, who was looking red and sullen, visibly unsteady: 'How did this lubberly state of affairs come about?' he asked.

'Anyone can miss stays,' said Somers in a thick, heavy voice.

'What kind of an answer is this?' said Jack. 'You are playing with your duty, sir.' He was very angry indeed: the Worcester had been made to look a fool in front of ten thousand seamen. 'You put your helm hard a-lee. You braced the foretopsail hard to. Of course you did: do not deny it. This is not a cutter, sir, but a ship of the line, and a dull-sailing ship of the line at that, one that must be luffed up handsomely to lose no way, as I have said a hundred times. A disgraceful exhibition.'

'Always finding fault - always finding fault with me - whatever I do is wrong," cried Somers, suddenly very pale; and then breaking out still louder, 'Tyranny and oppression, that's what it is. d.a.m.n your blood, I'll show you who I am.' His hand moved towards a belaying-pin in the fife-rail but at the same moment Mowett gripped his arm. In the stunned silence Jack said, 'Mr Pullings, order Mr Somers to leave the deck.'

Some time later Pullings came into the cabin and asked, awkwardly enough, whether Somers was under arrest. 'No,' said Jack. 'I do not mean to bring him to a court-martial. If he chooses to ask for one, that is his affair; but when he is sober even he will see that any court would certainly break him, whoever his father may be. Break him or worse. But I am determined he shall never do duty in my ship again. He may invalid or exchange, anything he likes; but he shall never serve under me.'

Mr Somers' conduct was a nineteen days' wonder in the Worcester, Even when it was found that he was neither to be hanged nor flogged to death, as had been confidently foretold, the appalling scene was told over again and again, commented upon, and universally censured: it remained a wonder even after a felucca from Malta had brought trumpets, trombones, flutes, oboes and a ba.s.soon and the oratorio began to take on its full dimensions; even after the Worcester's wine ran out and she changed over to the far stronger, far more popular grog, with its usual consequence of far more fighting, disobedience, inept.i.tude, accidents, naval crime and naval punishment.

For part of this time the atmosphere in the wardroom was extraordinarily disagreeable. On coming to his senses the day after his outburst the wretched Somers had been exceedingly alarmed: he wrote Jack an abject letter of apology, and begged Stephen to intercede for him, promising to leave the service 'if this unfortunate incident' were overlooked. Then, finding that he was not to be brought before a court-martial, he began to feel aggrieved: he told his unwilling listeners that he would not bear this treatment - that his father would not bear it either - that his family controlled seven votes in the House of Commons as well as two in the Lords - and that no one could slight him with impunity. Some of his vague, minatory words seemed to hint at an intention of asking Captain Aubrey for satisfaction, of calling him out; but his listeners were few; they paid little attention, and even his former admirers were heartily relieved when he disappeared, having negotiated an exchange with Mr Rowan of the Colossus, a lieutenant of the same seniority.

His departure was a sad disappointment to those hands who had been preparing their testimony for the trial. Some of them were old shipmates of Jack's, and they were perfectly ready to swear through a nine-inch plank so long as their evidence led in the right direction: the court would have heard a lively description of the Honourable Sod's furious a.s.sault upon the Captain with a brace of pistols, a boarding-axe, a naked sword and a topmast fid, together with all the warm or pathetic expressions used on either side, such as Somers' 'Rot your vitals, you infernal b.u.g.g.e.r,' and Jack's 'Pray, Mr Somers, consider what you are about.' Now, until the oratorio should be ready, all they had to look forward to, to break the unvarying monotony of their days, was the coming performance of Hamlet; though indeed the play was said to be as good as bear-baiting at Hockley-in-the-Hole, with a very satisfactory ending, lit with Bengal lights regardless of the cost. Parties of volunteers under the captain of the hold were getting up gravel from the Worcester's ballast, far, far below - an arduous and a very smelly task - for the grave-diggers' scene, and the ship's butcher was already setting his tubs aside, it being understood that whenever a tragedy was performed in one of His Majesty's ships"an appropriate amount of blood should be supplied.

The role of Hamlet came to the senior master's mate by right, and Ophelia had obviously to be Mr Williamson, the only young gentleman with a tolerable face who could sing and whose voice had not broken; but the other parts were distributed by lot, and that of Polonius fell to Mr Calamy.

He often came to Stephen to be heard his words and he was adjuring him neither to borrow nor to lend, to dress soberly but very rich, and to have little or nothing to do with unfledg'd companions in a high breathless chant with no punctuation when the signal midshipman came below with the Captain's compliments to Dr Maturin, 'and if he were at leisure, would like to show him a surprise on deck.'

It was a gloomy day with a low grey sky, spitting rain from the south-south-east, the squadron close-hauled under treble-reefed topsails, beating up to keep their offing; yet there was an extraordinary cheerfulness on the quarterdeck. Pollings, Mowett and Bonden on the leeward side were beaming all over their faces and talking away as though they were in a tavern: to windward Jack stood with his hands behind his back, swaying to the Worcester's c.u.mbrous lift and roll, his eyes fixed upon a ship some five miles away.

'Here is my surprise,' he said. 'Come and see what you make of her.'

For many years Jack, Pollings and Mowett had made game of Dr Maturin in the nautical line; so, more discreetly, had Bonden, Killick, Joseph Plaice and a variety of other mariners, foremast hands, midshipmen and officers. He had grown wary, and now, staring long, he said, 'I should not like to commit myself, but at a casual glance I should take it to be a ship. Conceivably a man-of-war.'

'I am altogether of your opinion, Doctor,' said Jack.

'But will you not look through this gla.s.s, to see whether you can make out even more?'

'A man-of-war, with little doubt. But you need not be afraid, with all this powerful fleet around you; and in any case, I perceive it has only one row of guns -a frigate.' Yet even as he spoke there seemed something familiar about that distant ship, racing towards them with a broad white bow-wave on either side, and she growing larger every minute.