'It is ungrateful in me to repine,' he wrote, 'but when I think that I might have paced the burning sands of Libya, filled (as Goldsmith tells us) with serpents of various malignity; that I might have trodden the Canopic shore, have beheld the ibis, the Mareotic grallatores in their myriads, even perhaps the crocodile himself; that I was whirled past the northern coast of Candia, with Mount Ida in sight all day long; that at a given moment Cythera was no more than half an hour away, and yet for all my pleas no halt to be made, no "heaving to"; and when I reflect upon the wonders that lay at so short a distance from our course the Cyclades, the Peloponnese, great Athens, and yet no deviation allowed, no not for half a day – why, then I am obliged to restrain myself from wishing Jack Aubrey's soul to the devil. Yet on the other hand, when I look over these notes not as a series of unfulfilled potentialities but as the record of positive accomplishment, how many causes have not I for rational exultation! The Homeric sea (if not the Homeric land); the pelican; the great white shark the seamen so obligingly fished up; the holothurians; euspongia mollissima (the same that Achilles stuffed his helmet with, iaith Poggius); the non-descript gull; the turtles! Again, these weeks have been among the most peaceful 1 have known: they might have been among the happiest, jf I had not been so aware that JA and jD might kill one another, in the civillest way in the world, at the next point of land: for it seems these things cannot take place at sea. JA is still deeply wounded about some remarks concerning the Cacafuego -feels there is a reflexion upon his courage – cannot bear it it preys upon him. And JD, though quieter now, is wholly unpredictable: he is full of contained rage and unhappiness that will break out in some way; but I cannot tell what. It is not unlike sitting on a barrel of gunpowder in a busy forge, with sparks flying about (the sparks of my figure being the occasions of offence).'
Indeed, but for this tension, this travelling cloud, it would have been difficult to imagine a pleasanter way of spending the late summer than sailing across the whole width of the Mediterranean as fast as the sloop could fly. She flew a good deal faster now that Jack had hit upon her happiest trim, restowing her hold to bring her by the stern and restoring her masts to the rake her Spanish builders had intended. What is more, the brothers Sponge, with a dozen of the Sophie's swimmers under their instruction, had spent every moment of the long calms in Greek waters (their native element) scraping her bottom; and Stephen could remember an evening when he had sat there in the warm, deepening twilight, watching the sea; it had barely a ruffle on its surface, and yet the Sophie picked up enough moving air with her topgallants to draw a long straight whispering furrow across the water, a line brilliant with unearthly phosphorescence, visible for quarter of a mile behind her. Days and nights of unbelievable purity. Nights when the steady Ionian breeze rounded the square mainsail – not a brace to be touched, watch relieving watch – and he and Jack on deck, sawing away, sawing away, lost in their music, until the falling dew untuned their strings. And days when the perfection of dawn was so great, the emptiness so entire, that men were almost afraid to speak.
A voyage whose two ends were out of sight – a voyage sufficient in itself. And on the plain physical side, she was a well-manned sloop, now that her prize-crews were all aboard again: not a great deal of work; a fair sense of urgency; a steady routine day after day; and day after day the exercise with the great guns that knocked the seconds off one by one until the day in 16°31'E., when the larboard watch succeeded in firing three broadsides in exactly five minutes. And, above all, the extraordinarily fine weather and (apart from a languid week or so of calm far to the east, a little after they had left Sir Sidney's squadron) fair winds so much so that when a moderate Levanter sprang up as soon as their chronic shortage of water made it really necessary to put into
Malta, Jack said uneasily, 'It is too good to last. I am afraid we must pay for this, presently.'
He had a very particular wish to make a rapid passage, a strikingly rapid passage that would persuade Lord Keith of his undeviating attention to duty, his reliability; nothing he had ever heard in his adult life had so chilled him (upon reflexion) as the admiral's remarks about post rank. They bad been kindly meant; they were totally convincing; they haunted his mind.
'I wonder you should be so concerned over a mere title -a tolerably Byzantine title,' observed Stephen. 'After all, you are called Captain Aubrey now, and you would still only be called Captain Aubrey after that eventual elevation; for no man, as I understand it, ever says "Post-captain So-and-so".
Surely it cannot be a peevish desire for symmetry – a longing to wear two epaulettes?'
'That does occupy a great share of my heart, of course,
along with eagerness for an extra eighteenpence a day. But you will allow me to point out, sir, that you are mistaken in everything you advance. At present I am called captain only by courtesy – I am dependent upon the courtesy of a parcel of damned scrubs, much as surgeons are by courtesy called Doctor. How should you like it if any cross-grained brute could call you Mr M the moment he chose to be uncivil? Whereas, was I to be made post some day, I should be captain by right; but even so I should only shift my swab from one shoulder to the other. I should not have the right to wear both until I had three years' seniority. No. The reason why every sea-officer in his right wits longs so ardently to be made post is this – once you are over that fence, why, there you are! My dear sir, you are there! What I mean is, that from then onwards all you have to do is to remain alive to be an admiral in time.'
'And that is the summit of human felicity?'
'Of course it is,' cried Jack, staring. 'Does it not seem plain to you?'
'Oh, certainly.'
'Well then,' said Jack, smiling at the prospect, 'well then, up the list you go, once you are there, whether you have a ship or no, all according to seniority, in perfect order – rear-admiral of the blue, rear-admiral of the white, rear-admiral of the red, vice-admiral of the blue, and so on, right up – no damned merit about it, no selection. That's what I like. Up until that point it is interest, or luck, or the approbation of your superiors – a pack of old women, for the most part. You must truckle to them – yes, sir; no, sir; by your leave, sir; your most humble servant… Do you smell that mutton? You will dine with me, will you not? I have asked the officer and midshipman of the watch.'
The officer in question happened to be Dillon, and the acting midshipman young Ellis. Jack had very early determined that there should be no evident breach, no barbarous sullen inveteracy, and once a week he invited the officer (and sometimes the midshipman) of the forenoon watch to dinner, whoever he was; and once a week he in turn was invited to dine in the gun-room. Dillon had tacitly acquiesced in this arrangement, and on the surface there was a perfect civility between them – a state of affairs much helped in their daily life by the invariable presence of others.
On this occasion Henry Ellis formed part of their protection. He had proved an ordinary boy, rather pleasant than otherwise: exceedingly timid and modest at first and outrageously made game of by Babbington and Ricketts, but now, having found his place, somewhat given to prating. Not at his captain's table, however: he sat rigid, mute, the tips of his fingers and the rims of his ears bleeding with cleanliness, his elbows pressed to his sides, eating wolf-like gulps of mutton, which he swallowed whole. Jack had always liked the young, and in any case he felt that a guest was entitled to consideration at his table, so having invited Ellis to drink a glass of wine with him, he smiled affably and said, 'You people were reciting some verses in the foretop this morning. Very capital verses, I dare say – Mr Mowett's verses? Mr Mowett turns a pretty line.' So he did. His piece on the bending of the new mainsail was admired throughout the sloop: but most unhappily he had also been inspired to write, as part of a general description:
For the time being this couplet had quite destroyed his authority with the youngsters; and it was this couplet they had been reciting in the foretop, hoping thereby to provoke him still further.
'Pray, will you not recite them to us? I am sure the Doctor would like to hear.'
'Oh, yes, pray do,' said Stephen.
The unhappy boy thrust a great lump of mutton into his cheek, turned a nasty yellow and gathered to his heart all the fortitude he could call upon. He said, 'Yes, sir,' fixed his eyes upon the stern-window and began,
'White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon Oh God don't let me die
'White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon
'Her b -' His voice quavered, died, revived as a thin desperate ghost and squeaked out 'Her bottom'; but could do no more.
'A damned fine verse,' cried Jack, after a very slight pause. 'Edifying too. Dr Maturin, a glass of wine with you?'
Mowett appeared, like a spirit a little late for its cue, and said, 'I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting you, but there's a ship topsails up three points on the starboard bow.'
In all this golden voyage they had seen almost nothing on the open sea, apart from a few caiques in Greek waters and a transport on her passage from Sicily to Malta, so when at length the newcomer had come close enough for her topsails. and a hint of her courses to be seen from the deck, she was stared at with an even greater intensity than usual. The Sophie had cleared the Sicilian Channel that morning and she was steering west-north-west, with Cape Teulada in Sardinia bearing north by east twenty-three leagues, a moderate breeze at north-east, and only some two hundred and fifty miles of sea between her and Port Mahon. The stranger appeared to be steering west-south-west or something south, as though for Gibraltar or perhaps Oran, and she bore north-west by north from the sloop. These courses, if persisted in, would intersect; but at present there was no telling which would cross the other's wake.
A detached observer would have seen the Sophie heel slightly as all her people gathered along her starboard side, would have noticed the excited talk die away on the fo'c'sle and would have smiled to see two-thirds of the crew and all the officers simultaneously purse their lips as the distant ship set her topgallants. That meant she was almost certainly a man-of-war; almost certainly a frigate, if not a ship of the line. And those topgallants had not been sheeted home in a very seamanlike way – scarcely as the Royal Navy would have liked it.
'Make the private signal, Mr Pullings. Mr Marshall, begin to edge away. Mr Day, stand by for the gun.'
The red flag soared up the foremast in a neat ball and broke out smartly, streaming forwards, while the white flag and pendant Hacked overhead at the main and the single gun fired to windward.
'Blue ensign, sir,' reported Pullings, glued to his telescope. 'Red pendant at the main. Blue Peter at the fore.'
'Hands to the braces,' called Jack. 'South-west by south a half south,' he said to the man at the wheel, for that signal was the answer of six months ago. 'Royals, lower and tops'l stuns'ls. Mr Dillon, pray let me know what you make of her.'
James hoisted himself into the crosstrees and trained his glass on the distant ship: as soon as the Sophie had steadied on her new course, bowing the long southern swell, he compensated for her movement with an even pendulum motion of his far hand and fixed the stranger in the shining round. The flash of her brass bow-chaser winked at him across the sea in the afternoon sun. She was a frigate sure enough: he could not count her gun-ports yet but she was a heavy frigate: of that there was no doubt. An elegant ship. She, too, was setting her lower studdingsails; and they were having difficulty in rigging out a boom.
'Sir,' said the midshipman of the maintop as he made his way down, 'Andrews here thinks she's the Dйdaigneuse.'
'Look again with my glass,' said Dillon, passing his telescope, the best in the sloop.
'Yes. She's the Dйdaigneuse,' said the sailor, a middle-aged man with a greasy red waistcoat over his bare copper-brown upper half. 'You can see that new-fangled round bow. I was prisoner aboard of her a matter of three weeks and more: took out of a collier.'
'What does she carry?'
'Twenty-six eighteen-pounders on the_ main deck, sir, eighteen long eights on the quarter-deck and fo'c'sle, and a brass long twelve for a bow-chaser. They used to make me polish 'un.'
'She is a frigate, sir, of course,' reported James. 'And Andrews of the maintop, a sensible man, says she is the
Dйdaigneuse. He was a prisoner in her.'
'Well,' said Jack, smiling, 'how fortunate that the evenings are drawing in.' The sun would, in fact, set in about four hours' time, the twilight did not last long in these latitudes, and this was the dark of the moon. The Dйdaigneuse would have to sail nearly two knots faster than the Sophie to catch her, and he did not think there was any likelihood of her doing so – she was heavily armed, but she was no famous sailer like the Astrйe or the Pomone. Nevertheless, he turned the whole of his mind to urging his dear sloop to her very utmost speed. It was possible that he might not manage to slip away in the night – he had taken part in a thirty-two-hour chase over more than two hundred miles of sea on the West Indies station himself – and every yard might count. She had the breeze almost on her larboard quarter at present, not far from her best point of sailing, and she was running a good seven knots; indeed, so briskly had her numerous and well-trained crew set the royals and studdingsails that for the first quarter of an hour she appeared to be gaining on the frigate.
'I wish it may last,' thought Jack, glancing up at the sun through the poor flimsy canvas of the topsail. The prodigious spring rains of the western Mediterranean, the Greek sun and piercing winds had removed every particle of the contractor's dressing as well as most of the body of the stuff, and the bunt and reefs, showed poor and baggy: well enough before the wind, but if they were to try a tacking-match with the frigate it could only end in tears – they would never lie so close.
It did not last. Once the frigate's hull felt, the full effect of the sails she spread in her leisurely fashion, she made up her loss and began to overhaul the Sophie. It was difficult to be sure of this at first – a far-off triple flash on the horizon with a hint of darkness beneath at the top of the rise – but in three-quarters of an hour her hull was visible from the Sophie's quarter-deck most of the time, and Jack set their old-fashioned spritsail topsail, edging away another half point.
At the taffrail Mowett was explaining the nature of this sail to Stephen, for the Sophie set it flying, with a jack-stay clinched round the end of the jib-boom, having an iron traveller on it, a curious state of affairs in a man-of-war, of course; and Jack was standing by the aftermost starboard four-pounder with his eyes recording every movement aboard the frigate and his mind taken up with the calculation of the risks involved in setting the topgallant studdingsails in this freshening breeze, when there was a confused bellowing forward and the cry of man overboard. Almost at the same moment, Henry Ellis swept by in the smooth curving stream beneath him, his face straining up out of the water, amazed. Mowett threw him the fall of the empty davit. Both arms reached up from the sea to catch the flying line: head went under – hands missed their hold. Then he was away behind, bobbing on the wake.
Every face turned to Jack. His expression was terribly hard. His eyes darted from the boy to the frigate coming up at eight knots. Ten minutes would lose a mile and more: the havoc of studdingsails taken aback: the time to get way on her again. Ninety men endangered. These considerations and many others, including a knowledge of the extreme intensity of the eyes directed at him, a recollection of the odious nature of the parents, the status of the boy as a sort of guest, Molly Harte's protйgй, flew through his racing mind before his stopped breath had begun to flow again.
'Jolly-boat away,' he said harshly. 'Stand by, fore and aft. Stand by. Mr Marshall, bring her to.'
The Sophie flew up into the wind: the jolly-boat splashed into the water. Very few orders were called for. The yards came round, her great spread of canvas shrank in, halliards, bunt-lines, clew-lines, brails racing through their blocks with scarcely a word; and even in his cold black fury Jack admired the smooth competence of the operation.
Painfully the jolly-boat crept out over the sea to cut the curve of the Sophie's wake again: slowly, slowly. They were peering over the side of the boat, poking about with a boat-hook. Interminably. Now at last they had turned; they were a quarter of the way back; and in his glass Jack saw all the rowers fall violently into the bottom of the boat. Stroke had been pulling so hard that his oar had broken, flinging him backwards.
'Jesus, Mary…' muttered Dillon, at his side.
The Sophie was on the hover, with some way on her already, as the jolly-boat came alongside and the drowned boy was passed up. 'Dead,' they said. 'Make sail,' said Jack. Again the almost silent manoeuvres followed one another with admirable rapidity. 'Too much rapidity. She was not yet on her course, she had not reached half her former speed, before there was an ugly rending crack and the foretopgallantyard parted in the slings.
Now the orders flew: looking up from Ellis' wet body, Stephen saw Jack utter three bouts of technicalities to Dillon, who relayed them, elaborated, through his speaking-trumpet to the bosun and the foretopmen as they flew aloft; saw him give a separate set of orders to the carpenter and his crew; calculate the altered forces acting on the sloop and give the helmsman a course accordingly; glance over his shoulder at the frigate and then look down with a sharp attentive glance. 'Is there anything you can do for him? Do you need a hand?'
'His heart has stopped,' said Stephen. 'But I should like to try.… could he be slung up by the heels on deck? There is no room below.'
'Shannahan. Thomas. Bear a hand. Clap on to the burton-tackle and that spun-yarn. Carry on as the Doctor directs 'you. Mr Lamb, this fish…
Stephen sent Cheslin for lancets, cigars, the galley bellows; and as the lifeless Henry Ellis rose free of the deck so he swung him forwards two or three times, face down and tongue lolling, and emptied some water out of him. 'Hold him just so,' he said, and bled him behind the ears. 'Mr Ricketts, pray be so good as to light me this cigar.' And what part of the Sophie's crew that was not wholly occupied with the fishing of the sprung yard, the bending of the sail afresh and swaying all up, with the continual trimming of the sails and with furtively peering at the frigate, had the inexpressible gratification of seeing Dr Maturin draw tobacco smoke into the bellows, thrust the nozzle into his patient's nose, and while his assistant held Ellis' mouth and other nostril closed, blow the acrid smoke into his lungs, at the same time swinging his suspended body so that now his bowels pressed upon his diaphragm and now they did not. Gasps, choking, a vigorous plying of the bellows, more smoke, more and steadier gasps, coughing. 'You may cut him down now,' said Stephen to the fascinated seamen. 'It is clear that he was born to be hanged.'The frigate had covered a great deal of sea in this time, and now her gun-ports could be counted without a glass. She was a heavy frigate – her broadside would throw three hundred pounds of metal as against the Sophie's twentyeight – but she was deep-laden and even in this moderate wind she was making heavy weather of it. The swell broke regularly under her bows, sending up white water, and she had a labouring air. She was still gaining perceptibly on the Sophie. 'But,' said Jack to himself, '1 swear with that crew he will have the royals off her before it is quite dark.' His intent scrutiny of the Dйdaigneuse's sailing had convinced him that she had a great many raw hands aboard, if not a new crew altogether – no uncommon thing in French ships. 'He may try a ranging shot before that, however.'
He looked up at the sun. It was still a long way from the horizon. And when he had taken a hundred counted turns from the taffrail to the gun, from the gun to the taffrail, it was still a long way from the horizon, in exactly the same place, shining with idiot good humour between the arched foot of the topsail and the yard, whereas the frigate had moved distinctly closer.
Meanwhile, the daily life of the sloop went on, almost automatically. The hands were piped to supper at the beginning of the first dog-watch; and at two bells, as Mowett was heaving the log James Dillon said, 'Will I beat to quarters, sir?' He spoke a little hesitantly, for he was not sure of Jack's mind: and his eyes were fixed beyond Jack's face at the Dйdaigneuse, coming on with a most impressive show of canvas, brilliant in the sun, and her white moustache giving an impression of even greater speed.'Oh, yes, by all means. Let us hear Mr Mowett's reading; and then by all means beat to quarters.'
'Seven knots four fathoms, sir, if you please,' said Mowett to the lieutenant, who turned, touched his hat and repeated this to the captain.
The drum-roll, the muffled thunder of bare feet on the hollow, echoing deck, and quarters; then the long process of lacing bonnets to the topsails and topgallants; the sending-up of extra preventer-backstays to the topgallant mastheads (for Jack was determined to set more sail by night); a hundred minute variations in the spread, tension and angle of the sails – all this took time; but still the sun took longer, and still the Dйdaigneuse came closer, closer, closer. She was carrying far too much sail aloft, and far too much aft: but everything aboard her seemed to be made of steel – she neither carried anything away nor yet (his highest hope of all) broached to, in spite of a couple of wild yawing motions in the last dog-watch that must have made her captain's heart stand still. 'Why does he not haul up the weather skirt of his mainsail and ease her a trifle?' asked Jack. 'The pragmatical dog.'
Everything that could be done aboard the Sophie had been done. The two vessels raced silently across the warm kind sea in the evening sun; and steadily the frigate gained.
'Mr Mowett,' called Jack, pausing at the end of his beat. Mowett came away from the group of officers on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, all gazing very thoughtfully at the Dйdaigneuse. 'Mr Mowett…' he paused. From below, half-heard through the song of the quartering wind and the creak of the rigging, came snatches of a 'cello suite. The young master's mate looked attentive, ready and dutiful, inclining his tube-like form towards his captain in a deferential attitude continually and unconsciously adapted to the long urgent corkscrewing motion of the sloop. 'Mr Mowett, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me over your piece about the new mainsail. I am very fond of poetry,' he added with a smile, seeing Mowett's look of wary dismay, his tendency to deny everything.
'Well, sir,' said Mowett hesitantly, in a low, human voice; he coughed and then, in quite another, rather severe, tone, said, 'The New Mainsail', and went on -'The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,
'Excellent – capital,' cried Jack, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Good enough for the Gentleman's Magazine, upon my honour. Tell me some more.'
Mowett looked modestly down, drew breath and began again, 'Occasional Piece':
'Oh were it mine with sacred Mam's art, To wake to sympathy the feeling heart, Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore, Th 'impervious horrors of a leeward shore.'
'Ay, a leeward shore,' murmured Jack, shaking his head; and at this moment he heard the frigate's first ranging shot. The thump of the Dйdaigneuse's bow-chaser punctuated Mowett's verse for a hundred and twenty lines, but no fall of shot did they see until the moment the sun's lower limb touched the horizon, when a twelve-pound ball went skipping by twenty yards away along the starboard side of the sloop, just as Mowett reached the unfortunate couplet,
'Transfixed with terror at th 'approaching doom Self-pity in their breasts alone has mom.' and he felt obliged to break off and explain 'that of course, sir, they were only people in the merchant service.'
'Why, that is a consideration, to be sure,' said Jack. 'But now I am afraid I must interrupt you. Pray tell the purser we need three of his largest butts, and rouse them up on to the fo'c'sle. Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon, we will make a raft to carry a stern lantern and three or four smaller ones; and let it be done behind the cover of the forecourse.'
A little before the usual time Jack had the Sophie's great stern-lantern lit, and himself he went into the cabin to see that the stern-windows were as conspicuous as he could wish: and as the twilight deepened they saw lights appear on the frigate too. What is more, they saw her main and mizen royals disappear. Now, with her royals handed, the Dйdaigneuse was a black silhouette, sharp against the violet sky; and her bow-chaser spat orange-red every three minutes or so, the stab showing well before the sound reached them
By the time Venus set over their starboard bow (and the starlight diminished sensibly with her going) the frigate had not fired for half an hour:' her position could only be told by her lights, and they were no longer gaining – almost certainly not gaining any more.
'Veer the raft astern,' said Jack, and the awkward contraption came bobbing down the side, fouling the studdingsail booms and everything else it could reach: it carried a spare stern-lantern on a pole the height of the Sophie's taifrail and four smaller lanterns in a line below. 'Where is a handy nimble fellow?' asked Jack. 'Lucock.'
'Sir?'
'I want you to go on to the raft and light each lantern the very moment the same one on board is put out.'
'Aye aye, sir. Light as put out.'
'Take this darky and clap a line round your middle.'
It was a tricky operation, with the sea running and the sloop throwing the water about; and there was always the possibility of some busy fellow with a glass aboard the
Dйdaigneuse picking out a figure acting strangely abaft the Sophie's stern; but presently it was done, and Lucock came over the taffrail on to the darkened quarter-deck.
'Well done,' said Jack softly. 'Cast her off.'
The raft went far astern and he felt the Sophie give a skip as she was relieved of its drag. It was a creditable imitation of her lights, although it did bob about too much; and the bosun had rigged a criss-cross of old rope to simulate the casement.
Jack gazed at it for a moment and then said, 'Topgallant stuns'ls.' The topmen vanished upwards, and everyone on deck listened with grave attention, unmoving, glancing at one another. The wind had lessened a trifle, but there was that wounded yard; and in any case such a very great press of canvas.
The fresh sails were sheeted home; the extra preventer-back-stays tightened; the rigging's general voice rose a quarter-tone; the Sophie moved faster through the sea. The topmen reappeared and stood with their listening shipmates, glancing aft from time to time to watch the dwindling lights. Nothing carried away; the strain eased a little; and suddenly their attention was wholly shifted, for the Dйdaigneuse bad begun to fire again. Again and again and again; and then her lit side appeared as she yawed to give the raft her whole broadside – a very noble sight, a long line of brilliant flashes and a great sullen roar. It did the raft no harm, however, and a low contented chuckle rose from the Sophie's deck. Broadside after broadside – she seemed in quite a passion – and at last the raft's lights went out, all of them at once.
'Does he think we have sunk?' wondered Jack, gazing back at the frigate's distant side. 'Or has he discovered the cheat? Is he at a stand? At all events, I swear he will not expect me to carry straight on.'
It was one thing to swear it, however, and quite another to believe it with the whole of his heart and head, and the rising of the Pleiades found Jack at the masthead with his night-glass swinging steadily from north-north-west to east-north-east; first light still found him there, and even sunrise, although by then it was clear that they had either completely outsailed the frigate or that she had set a new course, easterly or westerly, in pursuit.
'West-north-west is the most likely,' observed Jack, stabbing his bosom with the telescope to close it and narrowing his eyes against the intolerable brilliance of the rising sun. 'That is what I should have done.' He lowered himself heavily, stiffly down through the rigging, stumped into his cabin, sent for the master to work out their present position and closed his eyes for a moment until he should come.
They were within five leagues of Cape Bougaroun in North Africa, it appeared, for they had run over a hundred miles during the chase, many of them in the wrong direction. 'We shall have to haul our wind – what wind there is
– '(for it had been backing and dying all through the middle watch) 'and lie as close as ever we can. But even so, kiss my hand to a quick passage.' He leant back and closed his eyes again, thought of saying what a good thing it was that Africa had not moved northwards half a degree during the night, and smiling at the notion went fast asleep.
Mr Marshall offered a few observations that brought no response, then contemplated him for a while and then, with infinite tenderness, eased his feet up on to the locker, cradled him back with a cushion behind his head, rolled up the charts and tiptoed away.
Farewell to a quick passage, indeed. The Sophie wished to sail to the north-west. The wind, when it blew, blew from the north-west. But for days on end it did nothing whatever, and at last they had to sweep for twelve hours on end to reach Minorca, where they crept up the long harbour with their tongues hanging out, water having been down to quarter-allowance for the past four days.
What is more, they crept down it too, with the launch and cutter towing ahead and the men heaving crossly on the heavy sweeps, while the reek of the tanneries pursued them, spreading by mere penetration in the still and fetid air.
'What a disappointing place that is,' said Jack, looking back from Quarantine Island.
'Do you think so?' said Stephen, who had come aboard with a leg wrapped in sailcloth, quite a fresh leg, a present from Mr Florey. 'It seems to me to have its charms.'
'But then you are much attached to toads,' said Jack. 'Mr Watt, those men are supposed to be heaving at the sweeps, I believe.'
The most recent disappointment or rather vexation -a trifle, but vexing – had been singularly gratuitous. He had given Evans, of the Aetna bomb, a lift in his boat, although it was out of his way to thread through all the victuallers and transports of the Malta convoy; and Evans, peering at his epaulette in that underbred way of his, had said, 'Where did you get your swab?'
'At Paunch's.'
'I thought as much. They are nine parts brass at Paunch's, you know: hardly any real bullion at all. It soon shows through.'
Envy and ill-nature. He had heard several remarks of that kind, all prompted by the same pitiful damned motives: for his part he had never felt unkindly towards any man for being given a cruise, nor for being lucky in the way of prizes. Not that he had been so very lucky in the way of prizes either – had made nothing like so much as people thought. Mr Williams had met him with a long face: part of the San Carlo's cargo had not been condemned, having been consigned by a Ragusan Greek under British protection; the admiralty court's expenses had been very high; and really it was scarcely worthwhile sending in some of the smaller vessels, as things were at present. Then the dockyard had made a childish scene about the topgallant yard – a mere stick, most legitimately expended. And the backstays. But above all, Molly Harte had not been there for more than a single afternoon. She had gone to stay with Lady Warren at Ciudadela: a long-standing engagement, she said. He had had no idea of how much it would matter to him, how deeply it would affect his happiness.
A series of disappointments. Mercy and what she had to tell him had been pleasant enough: but that was all. Lord Keith had sailed two days before, saying he wondered Captain Aubrey did not make his number, as Captain Harte was quick to let him know. But Ellis' horrible parents had not yet left the island, and he and Stephen had been obliged to undergo their hospitality – the only occasion in his life he had ever seen a half bottle of small white wine divided between four. Disappointments. The Sophies themselves, indulged with a further advance of prize-money, had behaved badly; quite badly, even by the standards of port behaviour. Four were in prison for rape; four had not been recovered from the stews when the Sophie sailed; one had broken his collarbone and a wrist. 'Drunken brutes,' he said, looking at them coldly; and, indeed, many of the waisters at the sweeps were deeply unappetizing at this moment – dirty, mazed still, unshaven; some still in their best shore-going rigs all foul and beslobbered. A smell of stale smoke, chewed tobacco, sweat and whore-house scent. 'They take no notice of punishment. I shall rate that dumb Negro bosun's mate. King is his name. And rig a proper grating: that will make them mind what they are about.' Disappointments. The bolts of honest number three and four sailcloth he had ordered and paid for himself had not been delivered. The shops had run out of fiddle strings. His father's letter had spoken in eager, almost enthusiastic, tones of the advantages of remarriage, the great conveniency of a woman to supervise the housekeeping, the desirability of the marriage state, from all points of view, particularly from that of society – society had a call upon a man. Rank was a matter of no importance whatever, said General Aubrey: a woman took rank from her husband; goodness of heart was what signified; and good hearts, Jack, and damned fine women, were to be found even in cottage kitchens; the difference between not quite sixty-four and twenty-odd was of very little importance. The words 'an old stallion to a young -, had been crossed out, and an arrow pointing to 'supervising the housekeeping' said 'Very like your first lieutenant, I dare say.'
He glanced across the quarter-deck at his lieutenant, who was showing young Lucock how to hold a sextant and bring the sun down to the horizon. Lucock's entire being showed a restrained but intense delight in understanding this mystery, carefully explained, and (more generally) in his elevation; the sight of him gave the first thrust to shift Jack's black humour, and at the same moment he made up his mind to go south about the island and to call in at Ciudadela – he would see Molly – there was perhaps some little foolish misunderstanding that he would clear away directly they would pass an exquisite hour together in the high walled garden overlooking the bay.
Out beyond St Philip's a dark line ruled straight across the sea showed a wafting air, the hope of a westerly breeze: after two sweaty hours in the increasing heat they reached it, hoisted in the launch and cutter and prepared to make sail.
'You can run inside Ayre Island,' said Jack.
'South about, sir?' asked the master with surprise, for north round Minorca was the directest course for Barcelona, and the wind would serve.
'Yes, sir,' said Jack sharply.
'South by west,' said the master to the helmsman.
'South by west it is, sir,' he replied, and the headsails filled with a gentle urgency.
The moving air came off the open sea, clean, salt and sharp, pushing all the squalor before it. The Sophie heeled just a trifle, with life flowing back into her, and Jack, seeing Stephen coming aft from his elm-tree pump, said, 'My God, it is prime to be at sea again. Don't you feel like a badger in a barrel, on shore?'
'A badger in a barrel?' said Stephen, thinking of badgers he had known. 'I do not.'
They talked, in a quiet, desultory fashion, of badgers, otters, foxes – the pursuit of foxes – instances of amazing cunning, perfidy, endurance, lasting memory in foxes. The pursuit of stags. Of boars. And as they talked so the sloop ranged close along the Minorcan shore.
'I remember eating boar,' said Jack, his good humour quite restored, 'I remember eating a dish of stewed boar, the first time I had the pleasure of dining with you; and you told me what it was. Ha, ha: do you remember that boar?'
'Yes: and I remember we spoke of the Catalan language at the same time, which brings to mind something I had meant to tell you yesterday evening. James Dillon and I walked out beyond Ulla to view the ancient stone monuments – druidical, no doubt – and two peasants called out to one another from a distance, alluding to us. I will relate the conversation. First peasant: Do you see those heretics walking along so pleased with themselves? The red-haired one is descended from Judas Iscariot, no doubt. Second peasant: Wherever the English walk the ewes miscarry and abort; they are all the same; I wish their bowels may gush out. Where are they going? Where do they come from? First peasant: They are going to see the navetta and the taula d'en Xatart: they come from the disguised two-masted vessel opposite Bep Ventura's warehouse. They are sailing at dawn on Tuesday to cruise on the coast from Castellon up to Cape Creus, for six weeks. They have been paying four dollars a score for hogs. I, too, wish their bowels may gush out.'
'He had no great fund of originality, your second peasant,' said jack, adding in a pensive, wonderingtone, 'They do not seem to love the English. And yet, you know, we have protected them most of this past hundred years.'
'It is astonishing, is it not?' said Stephen Maturin. 'But my point was rather to hint that our appearance on the main may not be quite so unexpected as you suppose, perhaps. There is a continual commerce of fishermen and smugglers between this and Majorca. The Spanish governor's table is furnished with our Fornells crayfish, our Xambo butter and Mahon cheese.'
'Yes, I had taken your point, and am much obliged to you for your attention in -'
A dark form drifted from the sombre cliff-face on the starboard beam – an enormous pointed wingspan: as ominous as fate. Stephen gave a swinish grunt, snatched the telescope from under Jack's arm, elbowed him out of the way and squatted at the rail, resting the glass on it and focusing with great intensity.
'A bearded vulture! It is a bearded vulture!' he cried.
'A young bearded vulture.'
'Well,' said Jack instantly – not a second's hesitation 'I dare say he forgot to shave this morning.' His red face crinkled up, his eyes diminished to a bright blue slit and he slapped his thigh, bending in such a paroxysm of silent mirth, enjoyment and relish that for all the Sophie's strict discipline the man at the wheel could not withstand the infection and burst out in a strangled 'Hoo, hoo, hoo,' instantly suppressed by the quartermaster at the con.
'There are times,' said James quietly, 'when I understand your partiality for your friend. He derives a greater pleasure from a smaller stream of wit than any man I have ever known.'
It was the master's watch; the purser was away forward discussing accounts with the bosun; Jack was in his cabin, his spirits still high, one part of his mind designing a new disguise for the Sophie and the other revelling (by anticipation) in the happy outcome of his evening's interview with Molly Harte. She would be so surprised to see him at Ciudadela, so pleased: how happy they would be! Stephen and James were playing chess in the gun-room: James' furious attack, based upon the sacrifice of a knight, a bishop and two pawns, had very nearly reached its culminating point of error, and for a long placid stretch of time Stephen had been wondering how he could avoid mating him in three or four moves by any means less obvious than throwing down the board. He decided (James minded these things terribly) to sit it out until the drum beat to quarters, and meanwhile he waved his queen thoughtfully in the air, humming the Black Joke.
'It seems,' said James, dropping the words into the silence, 'that there may be some danger of peace.' Stephen pursed his lips and closed one eye. He, too, had heard these rumours in Port Mahon. 'So I hope to God we may see a touch of real action before it is too late. I am very curious to know what you will think of it: most men find it entirely unlike what they had expected – like love in that. Very disappointing, and yet you cannot wait to be starting again. It is your move, you know.'
'I am perfectly aware of it,' said Stephen sharply. He glanced at James, and he was surprised at the look of naked, unguarded distress on his face. Time was not doing what Stephen had expected of it: not by any means. The American ship was still there on the horizon. 'And would you not say we had seen any action, then?' he went on.
'These scuffles? I was thinking of something on a rather larger scale.'
'No, Mr Watt,' said the purser, ticking the last item in the private arrangement by which he and the bosun made thirteen and a half per cent on a whole range of stores on the borderland of their respective kingdoms, 'you may say what you please, but this young chap will end up by losing the Sophie; and what is more, he will either get us all knocked on the head or taken prisoner. And I've no wish to drag out my days in a French or Spanish prison, let alone be chained to an oar in an Algerine galley, rained upon, sunned upon and sitting there over my own stink. And I don't want my Charlie knocked on the head, either. That's why I'm transferring. It's a profession that has its risks, I grant you, and I'm willing for him to run them. But understand me, Mr Watt: willing for him to run the ordinary risks of the profession, not these. Not capers like that huge bloody great battery; nor lying right inshore by night as though we owned the place; nor watering here there and everywhere, just to stay out a little longer; nor setting about anything you see, regardless of size or number. The main chance is all very well; but we must not only be thinking of the main chance, Mr Watt.'
'Very true, Mr Ricketts,' said the bosun. 'And I can't say I have ever really liked those cross-catharpings. But you're wide of the mark when you say it's all the main chance. Look at this hawser-laid stuff, now: better rope you'll never see. And there's no rogue's yarn in it,' he said, teasing out an end with his marlin-spike. 'Look for yourself. And why is there no rogue's yarn in it, Mr Ricketts? Because it never come off of the King's yard, that's why: Mr Screw-penny Bleeding Commissioner Brown never set eyes on it. Which Goldilocks bought it out of his own pocket, as likewise the paint you're a-sitting on. So there, you mean-souled dough-faced son of a cow-poxed bitch,' he would have added, if he had not been a peaceable, quiet sort of a man, and if the drum had not begun to beat to quarters.
'Pass the word for my cox'n,' said Jack after the drum had beat the retreat. The word passed – cap'n's cox'n, cap'n's cox'n, come on George, show a leg George, at the double George, you're in trouble George, George is going to be crucified, ha, ha, ha – and Barret Bonden appeared. 'Bonden, I want the boat's crew to look their best: washed, shaved, trimmed, straw hats, Guernsey frocks, ribbons.'
'Aye aye, sir,' said Bonden with an impassive face and his heart brimming with inquiry. Shaved? Trimmed? Of a Tuesday? They mustered clean to divisions on Thursdays and Sundays: but to be shaved on Tuesday – on a Tuesday at sea! He hurried off to the ship's barber, and by the time half the cutter's crew were as rosy and smooth as art could make them the answer to his questions appeared. They rounded Cape Dartuch, and Ciudadela came into view on the starboard bow; but instead of sailing steadily north-west the Sophie bore up for the town, heaving to in fifteen fathom water with her foretopsail aback a quarter of a mile from the mole.
'Where's Simmons?' asked James, quickly passing the cutter's crew in review.
'Reported sick, sir,' said Bonden, and in a lower voice, 'His birthday, sir.'
James nodded. Yet the substitution of Davies was not very clever, for although he was much of a size, and filled the straw hat with Sophie embroidered on its ribbon, he was an intense blue-black and could not but be noticed. However, there was no time to do anything about it now, for here was the captain, very fine in his best uniform, best sword and gold-laced hat.
'I do not expect to be more than an hour or so, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, with an odd mixture of conscious stiffness and hidden excitement; and as the bosun sprung his call he stepped down into the scrubbed and gleaming cutter. Bonden had judged better than James Dillon: the cutter's crew might have been all the colours of the rainbow, or even pied, for all Captain Aubrey cared at this moment.
The sun set in a somewhat troubled sky; the bells of Ciudadela rang for the Angelus and the Sophie's for the last dog watch; the moon. rose, very near the full, swimming up gloriously behind Black Point. Hammocks were piped down. The watch changed. Seized by Lucock's passion for navigation, all the midshipmen took observations of the moon as it mounted, and of the fixed stars, one by one. Eight bells, and the middle watch. The lights of Ciudadela all going out.
'Cutter's away, sir,' reported the sentry at last, and ten minutes later Jack came up the side. He was very pale, and in the strong moonlight he looked deathly – black hole for a mouth, hollows for his eyes. 'Are you still on deck, Mr Dillon?' he said, with an attempt at a smile. 'Make sail, if you please: the tail of the sea-breeze will carry us out,' he said, and walked uncertainly into his cabin.