"Master & Commander" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Brian Patrick)

Chapter Three

Two bells in the morning watch found the Sophie sailing steadily eastward along the thirty-ninth parallel with the wind just abaft her beam; she was heeling no more than two strakes under her topgallantsails, and she could have set her royals, if the amorphous heap of merchantmen under her lee had not determined to travel very slowly until full daylight, no doubt for fear of tripping over the lines of longitude.

The sky was still grey and it was impossible to say whether it was clear or covered with very high cloud; but the sea itself already had a nacreous light that belonged more to the day than the darkness, and this light was reflected in the great convexities of the topsails, giving them the lustre of grey pearls

'Good morning,' said Jack to the marine sentry at the door.

'Good morning, sir,' said the sentry, springing to attention.

'Good morning, Mr Dillon.'

'Good morning, sir,' touching his hat.

Jack took in the state of the weather, the trim of the sails and the likelihood of a fair forenoon, he drew deep gusts of the clean air, after the dense fug of his cabin. He turned to the rail, unencumbered by hammocks at this time of day, and looked at the merchantmen they were all there, straggling over not too vast an area of sea, and what be had taken for a far stern lantern or an uncommonly big top-light was old Saturn, low on the horizon and tangled in their rigging To windward now, and he saw a sleepy line of gulls, squabbling languidly over a ripple on the sea – sardines or anchovies or maybe those little spiny mackerel The sound of the creaking blocks, the gently straining cordage and sailcloth, the angle of the living deck and the curved line of guns in front of him sent such a jet of happiness through his heart that he almost skipped where he stood.

'Mr Dillon,' he said, overcoming a desire to shake his lieutenant by the hand, 'we shall have to muster the ship's company after breakfast and make up our minds how we are to watch and quarter them.'

'Yes, sir: at the moment things are at sixes and sevens, with the new draft unsettled.'

'At least we have plenty of hands – we could fight both sides easily, which is more than any line of battle ship can say. Though I rather fancy we had the tail end of the draft from the Burford; it seemed to me there was an unnatural proportion of Lord Mayor's men among them. No old Charlottes, I suppose?'

'Yes, sir, we have one – the fellow with no hair and a red handkerchief round his neck. He was a foretopman, but he seems quite dazed and stupid still.'

'A sad business,' said Jack shaking his head.

'Yes,' said James Dillon, looking into vacancy and seeing a leaping spring of fire in the still air, a first-rate ablaze from truck to waterline, with eight hundred men aboard. 'You could hear the flames a mile away and more. And sometimes a sheet of fire would lift off and go up into the air by itself, cracking and waving like a huge flag. It was just such a morning as this: a little later in the day, perhaps.'

'You were there, I collect? Have you any notion of the cause? People talk about an infernal machine taken aboard by an Italian in Boney's pay.'

'From all I heard it was some fool who allowed hay to be stowed on the half-deck, close to the tub with the slow-match for the signal-guns. It went up in a blaze and caught the mainsail at once. It was so sudden they could not come to the clew-garnets.'

'Could you save any of her people?'

'Yes, a few. We picked up two marines and a quarter-gunner, but he was most miserably burnt. There were very few saved, not much above a hundred, I believe. It was not a creditable business, not at all. Many more should have been brought away, but the boats hung back.'

'They were thinking of the Boyne, no doubt.'

'Yes. The Charlotte's guns were firing as the heat reached them, and everybody knew the magazine might go up at any minute; but even so… All the officers I spoke to said the same thing ~- there was no getting the boats close in. It was the same with my people. I was in a hired cutter, the Dart -'

'Yes, yes, I know you were,' said Jack, smiling significantly.

'- three or four miles down-wind, and we had to sweep to get up But there was no way of inducing them to pull heartily, rope's end or no. There was not a man or boy who was what you would call shy of gunfire – indeed, they were as well-conducted a set of men as you could wish, for boarding or for carrying a shore-battery, or for anything you please. And the Charlotte's guns were not aimed at us, of course – just going off at random. But no, the whole feeling in the cutter was different, quite unlike action or an ugly night on a lee-shore. And there is little to be done with a thoroughly unwilling crew.'

'No,' said Jack. 'There is no forcing a willing mind.' He was reminded of his conversation with Stephen Maturin, and he added, 'It is a contradiction in terms' He might have gone on to say that a crew thoroughly upset in its ways, cut short in the article of sleep, and deprived of its trollops, was not the best of weapons either; but he knew that any remark passed on the deck of a vessel seventy-eight feet three inches long was in the nature of a public statement

Apart from anything else, the quartermaster at the con and the helmsman at the wheel were within arm's reach. The quartermaster turned the watch-glass, and as the first grains of sand began their tedious journey back into the half they had just so busily emptied he called 'George,' in a low, night-watch voice, and the marine sentry clumped forward to strike three bells.

By now there was no doubt about the sky: it was pure blue from north to south, with no more than a little violet duskiness lingering in the west.

Jack stepped over to the weather-rail, swung himself into the shrouds and ran up the ratlines. 'This may not look quite dignified, in a captain,' he reflected, pausing under the loom of the top to see just how much more clearance well-bowsed cross-catharpings might give the yard. 'Perhaps I had better go up through the lubber's hole.' Ever since the invention of those platforms some way up the mast called tops, sailors have made it a point of honour to get into them by an odd, devious route – by clinging to the futtock-shrouds, which run from the catharpings near the top of the mast to the futtock-plates at the outer edge of the top: they cling to them and creep like flies, hanging backward about twenty-five degrees from the vertical, until they reach the rim of the top and so climb upon it, quite ignoring the convenient square hole next to the mast itself, to which the shrouds lead directly as their natural culmination – a straight, safe path with easy steps from the deck to the top. This hole, this lubber's hole, is as who should say never used, except by those who have never been to sea or persons of great dignity, and when Jack came up through it he gave Jan Jackruski, ordinary seaman, so disagreeable a fright that he uttered a thin scream. 'I thought you were the house-demon,' he said, in Polish.

'What is your name?' said Jack.

'Jackruski, sir. Please: thank you,' said the Pole.

'Watch out carefully, Jackruski,' said Jack, moving easily up the topmast shrouds. He stopped at the masthead, booked an arm through the topgallant shrouds and settled comfortably in the crosstrees: many an hour had he spent there by way of punishment in his youth – indeed, when first he used to go up he had been so small that he could easily sit on the middle crosstree with his legs dangling, lean forward on his arms folded over the after tree and go to sleep, firmly wedged in spite of the wild gyrations of his seat. How he had slept in those days! He was always sleepy or hungry, or both. And how perilously high it had seemed. It had been higher, of course, far higher, in the old Theseus – somewhere about a hundred and fifty feet up: and how it had swung about the sky! He had been sick once, mast-headed in the old Theseus, and his dinner had gone straight up into the air, never to be seen again. But even so, this was a comfortable height. Eighty-seven feet less the depth of the kelson – say seventy-five. That gave him a horizon of ten or eleven miles. He looked over those miles of sea to windward – perfectly clear. Not a sail, not the slightest break on the tight line of the horizon. The topgallantsail above him was suddenly golden: then two points on the larboard bow, in the mounting blaze of light, the sun thrust up its blinding rim. For a prolonged moment Jack alone was sunlit, picked out then the light reached the topsail travelled down it, took in the peak of the boom mainsail and so reached the deck, flooding it from stem to stern Tears welled up in his eyes, blurred his vision, overspilt, rolled down his cheeks they did not use themselves up in lines upon his face but dropped, two, four, six, eight, round drops slanting away through the warm golden air to leeward.

Bending low to look under the topgallantsail he gazed at his charges, the merchantmen: two pinks, two snows, a Baltic cat and the rest barca-longas; all there, and the rearmost was beginning to make sail. Already there was a living warmth in the sun, and a delicious idleness spread through his limbs

This will never do,' he said there were innumerable things to be seen to below He blew his nose, and with his eves still fixed on the spar-laden cat he reached out for the weather backstay His hand curled round it mechanically, with as little thought as if it had been the handle of his own front door, and he slid gently down to the deck, thinking, 'One new landman to each gun-crew might answer very well.'

Four bells. Mowett heaved the log, waited for the red tag to go astern and called 'Turn.' 'Stop!' cried the quartermaster twenty-eight seconds later, with the little sand-glass close to his eye. Mowett nipped the line almost exactly at the third knot, jerked out the peg and walked across to chalk 'three knots' on the logboard. The quartermaster hurried to the big watch-glass, turned it and called out 'George' in a firm and rounded voice. The marine went for'ard and struck the four bells heartily. A moment later pandemonium broke loose: pandemonium, that is, to the waking Stephen Maturin, who now for the first time in his life heard the unnatural wailing, the strange arbitrary intervals of the bosun and his mates piping 'Up all hammocks'. He heard a rushing of feet and a great terrible voice calling 'All hands, all hands ahoy! Out or down! Out or down! Rouse and bitt! Rise and shine! Show a leg there! Out or down! Here I come, with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!' He heard three muffled dumps as three sleep-sodden landmen were, in fact, cut down: he heard oaths, laughter, the impact of a rope's end as a bosun's mate started a torpid, bewildered hand, and then a far greater trampling as fifty or sixty men rushed up the hatchways with their hammocks, to stow them in the nettings.

On deck the foretopmen had set the elm-tree pump a-wheezing, while the fo'c'slemen washed the fo'c'sle with the fresh sea-water they pumped, the maintopmen washed the starboard side of the quarter-deck and the quarter-deck men all the rest, grinding away with holystones until the water ran like thin milk from the admixture of minute raspings of wood and caulking, and the boys and the idlers – the people who merely worked all day – heaved at the chain-pumps to clear the night's water out of the bilges, and the gunner's crew cosseted the fourteen four-pounders; but none of this had had the electrifying effect of the racing feet.

'Is it some emergency?' wondered Stephen, working his way with rapid caution out of his hanging cot. 'A battle? Fire? A desperate leak? And are they too much occupied to warn me – have forgotten I am here?' He drew on his breeches as fast as he could and, straightening briskly, he brought his head up against a beam with such force that he staggered and sank on to a locker, cherishing it with both hands.

A voice was speaking to him. 'What did you say?' he asked, peering through a mist of pain.

'I said, "Did you bump your head, sir?"'

'Yes,' said Stephen, looking at his hand: astonishingly it was not covered with blood – there was not even so much as a smear.

'It's these old beams, sir' – in the unusually distinct, didactic voice used at sea for landmen and on land for half-wits – 'You want to take care of them; for – they – are -very – low.' Stephen's look of pure malevolence recalled the steward to a sense of his message and he said, 'Could you fancy a chop or two for breakfast, sir? A neat beefsteak? We killed a bullock at Mahon, and there's some prime steaks.'

'There you are, Doctor,' cried Jack. 'Good morning to you.. I trust you slept?'

'Very well indeed, I thank you. These hanging cots are a most capital invention, upon my word.'

'What would you like for breakfast? I smelt the gun-room's bacon on deck and I thought it the finest smell I had ever smelt in my life – Araby left at the post. What do you say to bacon and eggs, and then perhaps a beefsteak to follow? And coffee?'

'You are of my way of thinking entirely,' cried Stephen, who had great leeway to make up in the matter of victuals 'And conceivably there might be onions, as an antiscorbutic 'The word onions brought the smell of them frying into his nostrils and their peculiarly firm yet unctuous texture to his palate he swallowed painfully 'What's afoot?' he exclaimed, for the howling and the wild rushing, as of mad beasts, had broken out again.

'The hands are being piped down to breakfast,' said Jack carelessly. 'Light along that bacon, Killick. And the coffee. I'm clemmed.'

'How I slept,' said Stephen. 'Deep, deep, restorative, roborative sleep – none of your hypnogogues, none of your tinctures of laudanum can equal it. But I am ashamed of my appearance. I slept so late that here I am, barbarously unshaved and nasty, whereas you are as smug as a bridegroom. Forgive me for a moment.

'It was a naval surgeon, a man at Haslar,' he said, coming back, smooth, 'who invented these modern short arterial ligatures: I thought of him just now, as my razor passed within a few lines Of my external carotid. When it is rough, surely you must get many shocking incised wounds?'

'Why, no: I can't say we do,' said Jack. 'A matter of use, I suppose. Coffee? What we do get is a most plentiful crop of bursten bellies – what's the learned word? -and pox.'

'Hernia. You surprise me.'

'Hernia: exactly so. Very common. I dare say half the idlers are more or less ruptured: that is why we give them the lighter duties.'

'Well, it is not so very surprising, now that I reflect upon the nature of a mariner's labour. And the nature of his amusements accounts for his pox, of course. I remember to have seen parties of seamen in Mahon, wonderfully elated, dancing and singing with sad drabble-tail pakes. Men from the Audacious, I recall, and the Thaлton: I do not remember any from the Sophie.'

'No. The Sophies were a quiet lot ashore. But in any case they had nothing to be elated about, or with. No prizes and so, of course, no prize-money. It's prize-money alone lets a seaman kick up a dust ashore, for precious little does he see of his pay. What do you say to a beefsteak now, and another pot of coffee?'

'With all my heart.'

'I hope I may have the pleasure of introducing my lieutenant to you at dinner. He appears to be a seamanlike, gentlemanly fellow. He and I have a busy morning ahead of us: we must sort out the crew and set them to their duties – we must watch and quarter them, as we say. And I must find you a servant, as well as one for myself, and a cox'n too. The gun-room cook will do very well.'

'We will muster the ship's company, Mr Dillon, if you please,' said Jack.

'Mr Watt,' said James Dillon. 'All hands to muster.'

The bosun sprung his call, his mates sped below roaring 'All hands', and presently the Sophie's deck between the mainmast and the fo'c'sle was dark with men, all her people, even the cook, wiping his hands on his apron, which he balled up and thrust into his shirt. They stood rather uncertainly, over to port, in the two watches, with the newcomers huddled vaguely between them, looking shabby, mean and bereft

'All hands for muster, sir, if you please,' said James Dillon, raising his hat

'Very well, Mr Dillon,' said Jack. 'Carry on.'

Prompted by the purser, the clerk brought forward the muster-book and the Sophie's lieutenant called out the names. 'Charles Stallard.'

'Here sir,' cried Charles Stallard, able seaman, volunteer from the St Fsorenzo, entered the Sophie 6 May 1795,

then aged twenty. No entry under Straggling, none under Venereals, none under Cloaths in Sick Quarters: had remitted ten pounds from abroad obviously a valuable man He stepped over to the starboard side

'Thomas Murphy'

'Here, sir,' said Thomas Murphy, putting the knuckle of his index finger to his forehead as he moved over to join

Stallard – a gesture used by all the men until James Dillon reached Assei and Assou, with never a Christian-name between them: able seamen, born in Bengal, and brought here by what strange winds? And they, in spite of years and years in the Royal Navy, put their hands to their foreheads and thence to their hearts, bending quickly as they did so.

'John Codlin. William Witsover. Thomas Jones. Francis Lacanfra. Joseph Bussell. Abraham Vilheim. James Courser. Peter Peterssen. John Smith. Giuseppe Laleso. William Cozens. Lewis Dupont. Andrew Karouski. Richard Henry and so the list went on, with only the sick gunner and one Isaac Wilson not answering, until it ended with the newcomers and the boys – eighty-nine souls, counting officers, men, boys and marines.

Then began the reading of the Articles of War, a ceremony that often accompanied divine service and that was so closely associated with it in most minds that the faces of the crew assumed a look of devout blankness at the words, 'for the better regulating of his Majesty's navies, ships of war, and forces by sea, whereon under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety and strength of his kingdom chiefly depend; be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that from and after the twenty-fifth day of December, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, the articles and orders hereinafter following, as well in time of peace as in time of war, shall be duly observed and put in execution, in manner hereinafter mentioned', an expression that they retained throughout, unmoved by 'all flag officers, and all persons in or belonging to his Majesty's ships or vessels of war, being guilty of profane oaths, cursings, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanliness, or other scandalous actions, shall incur such punishment as a court-martial shall think fit to impose'. Or by the echoing repetition of 'shall suffer death'. 'Every flag-officer, captain and commander in the fleet who shall not… encourage the inferior officers and men to fight courageously, shall suffer death… If any person in the fleet shall treacherously or cowardly yield or cry for quarter – being convicted thereof by the sentence of a court-martial, shall suffer death. Every person who through cowardice shall in time of action withdraw or keep back… shall suffer death… Every person who through cowardice, negligence or disaffection shall forbear to pursue any enemy, pirate, or rebel, beaten or flying… shall suffer death… If any officer, manner, soldier or other person in the fleet shall strike any of his superior officers, draw, or offer to draw, or lift up any weapon… shall suffer death If any person in the fleet shall commit the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery or sodomy with man or beast, he shall be punished with death.' Death rang through and through the Articles; and even where the words were utterly incomprehensible the death had a fine, comminatory, Leviticus ring, and the crew took a grave pleasure in it all; it was what they were used to – it was what they heard the first Sunday in every month and upon all extraordinary occasions such as this They found it comfortable to their spirits, and when the watch below was dismissed the men looked far more settled.

'Very well,' said Jack, looking round. 'Make signal twenty-three with two guns to leeward. Mr Marshall, we will set the main and fore stays'ls, and as soon as you see that pink coming up with the rest of the convoy, set the royals. Mr Watt, let the sailmaker and his party get to work on the square mainsail directly, and send the new hands aft one by one. Where's my clerk? Mr Dillon, let us knock these watch-bills into some kind of a shape. Dr Maturin, allow me to present my officers… 'This was the first time Stephen and James had come face to face in the Sophie, but Stephen had seen that flaming red queue with its black ribbon and he was largely prepared. Even so, the shock of recognition was so great that his face automatically took on a look of veiled aggression and of the coldest reserve. For James Dillon the shock was far greater; in the hurry and business of the preceding twenty-four hours he had not chanced to hear the new surgeon's name; but apart from a slight change of colour he betrayed no particular emotion. 'I wonder,' said Jack to Stephen when the introductions were over, 'whether it would amuse you to look over the sloop while Mr Dillon and I attend to this business, or whether you would prefer to be in the cabin?'

'Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to look over the ship, I am sure,' said Stephen. 'A very elegant complexity of…' his voice trailed away.

'Mr Mowett, be so good as to show Dr Maturin everything he would like to see. Carry him into the maintop -it affords quite a visto. You do not mind a little height, my dear sir?'

'Oh no,' said Stephen, looking vaguely about him. 'I do not mind it.'

James Mowett was a tubular young man, getting on for twenty; he was dressed in old sailcoth trousers and a striped Guernsey shirt, a knitted garment that gave him very much the look of a caterpillar; and he had a marlinspike dangling round his neck, for he had meant to take a hand in the making of the new square mainsail. He looked attentively at Stephen to make out what kind of a man he was, and with that mixture of easy grace and friendly deference which comes naturally to so many sailors he made his bow and said, 'Well, sir, where do you choose to start? Shall we go into the top directly? You can see the whole run of the deck from there.'

The whole run of the deck amounted to some ten yards aft and sixteen forward, and it was perfectly visible from where they stood; but Stephen said, 'Let us go up then, by all means. Lead the way, and I will imitate your motions as best I can.'

He watched thoughtfully while Mowett sprang into the ratlines and then, his mind far away, slowly hoisted himself up after him. James Dillon and he had belonged to the United Irishmen, a society that at different tunes in the last nine years bad been an open, public association calling for the emancipation of Presbyterians, dissenters and Catholics and for a representative government of Ireland; a proscribed secret society; an armed body in open rebellion; and a defeated, hunted remnant. The rising had been put down amidst the usual horrors, and in spite of the general pardon the lives of the more important members were in danger. Many had been betrayed – Lord Edward Fitzgerald himself at the very outset – and many had withdrawn, distrusting even their own families, for the events had divided the society and the nation most terribly. Stephen Maturin was not afraid of any vulgar betrayal, nor was he afraid for his skin, because he did not value it: but he had so suffered from the incalculable tensions, rancour and hatreds that arise from the failure of a rebellion that he could not bear any further disappointment, any further hostile, recriminatory confrontation, any fresh example of a friend grown cold, or worse. There had always been very great disagreements within the association; and now, in the ruins of it, it was impossible, once daily contact had been lost, to tell where any man stood.

He was not afraid for his skin, not afraid for himself: but presently his climbing body, now half-way up the shrouds, let him know that for its own part it was in a state of rapidly increasing terror Forty feet is no very great height, but it seems far more lofty, aerial and precarious when there is nothing but an insubstantial yielding ladder of moving ropes underfoot, and when Stephen was three parts of the way up cries of 'Belay' on deck showed that the staysails were set and their sheets hauled aft. They filled, and the Sophie heeled over another strake or two, this coincided with her leeward roll, and the rail passed slowly under Stephen's downward gaze, to be followed by the sea -a wide expanse of glittering water, very far below, and directly underneath His grip on the ratlines tightened with cataleptic strength and his upward progress ceased he remained there spreadeagled, while the varying forces of gravity, centrifugal motion, irrational panic and reasonable dread acted upon his motionless, tight-cramped person, now pressing him forward so that the checkered pattern of the shrouds and their crossing ratlines were imprinted on his front, and now plucking him backwards so that he bellied out like a shirt hung up to dry.

A form slid down the backstay to the left of him: hands closed gently round his ankles, and Mowett's cheerful young voice said, 'Now, sir, on the roll. Clap on to the shrouds -the uprights – and look upwards. Here we go.' His right foot was firmly moved up to the next ratline, his left followed it; and after one more hideous swinging backward lunge in which he closed his cyes and stopped breathing, the lubber's hole received its second visitor of the day. Mowett had darted round by the futtock-shrouds and was there in the top to haul him through.

'This is the maintop, sir,' said Mowett, affecting not to notice Stephen's haggard look. 'The other one over there is the foretop, of course.'

'I am very sensible of your kindness in helping me up,' said Stephen. 'Thank you.'

'Oh, sir,' cried Mowett, 'I beg… And that's the mainstays'l they just set, below us. And that's the forestays'l for'ard: you'll never see one, but on a man-of-war.'

'Those triangles? Why are they called staysails?' asked Stephen, speaking somewhat at random.

'Why, sir, because they are rigged on the stays, slide along them like curtains by those rings: we call 'em banks, at sea. We used to have grommets, but we rigged banks when we were laying off Cadiz last year, and they answer much better. The stays are those thick ropes that run sloping down, straight for'ard.'

'And their function is to extend these sails: I see.'

'Well, sir, they do extend them, to be sure. But what they are really for is to hold up the masts – to stay them for'ard. To prevent them falling backwards when she pitches.'

'The masts need support, then?' asked Stephen, stepping cautiously across the platform and patting the squared top of the lower mast and the rounded foot of the topmast, two stout parallel columns – close on three feet of wood between them, counting the gap. 'I should scarcely have thought it.'

'Lord, sir, they'd roll themselves overboard, else. The shrouds support them sideways, and the backstays – these here, sir – backwards.'

'I see. I see. Tell me,' said Stephen, to keep the young man talking at any cost, 'tell me, what is the purpose of this platform, and why is the mast doubled at this point? And what is this hammer for?'

'The top, sir? Why, apart from the rigging and getting things up, it comes in handy for the small-arms men in a close action: they can fire down on the enemy's deck and toss stink-pots and grenadoes. And then these futtock-plates at the rim here hold the dead-eyes for the topmast shrouds – the top gives a wide base so that the shrouds have a purchase the top is a little over ten foot wide It is the same thing up above There are the cross-trees, and they spread the topgallant shrouds You see them, sir? Up there, where the look-out is perched, beyond the topsail yard'

'You could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea-terms, I suppose No, it would not be possible'

'Using no sea-terms? I should be puzzled to do that, sir, but I will try, if you wish it'

'No, for it is by those names alone that they are known, in nearly every case, I imagine' The Sophie's tops were furnished with iron stanchions for the hammock-netting that protected their occupants in battle Stephen sat between two of them, with an arm round each and his legs dangling, he found comfort in this feeling of being firmly anchored to metal, with solid wood under his buttocks The sun was well up in the sky by now and it threw a brilliant pattern of light and sharp shadow over the white deck below – geometrical lines and curves broken only by the formless mass of the square mainsail that the sailmaker and his men had spread over the fo'c'sle. 'Suppose we were to take that mast,' he said, nodding forward, for Mowett seemed to be afraid of talking too much – afraid of boring and instructing beyond his station, 'and suppose you were to name the principal objects from the bottom to the top.,

'It is the foremast, sir. The bottom we call the lower mast, or just the foremast; it is forty-nine feet long, and it is stepped on the kelson. It is supported by shrouds on either side – three pair of a side – and it is stayed for'ard by the forestay running down to the bowsprit: and the other rope running parallel with the forestay is the preventer-stay, in case it breaks. Then, about a third of the way up the foremast, you see the collar of the mainstay: the mainstay goes from just under here and supports the mainmast below us.'

'So that is a mainstay,' said Stephen, looking at it vaguely. 'I have often heard them mentioned. A stout-looking rope, indeed.'

'Ten-inch, sir,' said Mowett proudly. 'And the preventerstay is seven. Then comes the forecourse yard, but perhaps I had best finish the masts before I go on to the yards. You see the foretop, the same kind of thing as we are on now? It lies on the trestletrees and crosstrees about five parts of the way up the foremast: and so the remaining length of lower mast runs double with the topmast, just as these two do here. The topmast, do you see, is that second length going upwards, the thinner piece that rises above the top. We sway it up from below and fix it to the lower mast, rather like a marine clapping a bayonet on to his musket: it comes up through the trestletrees, and when it is high enough, so that the hole in the bottom of it is clear, we ram a fid through, banging it home with the top-maul, which is this hammer you were asking about, and we sing out "Launch ho!" and the explanation ran eagerly on.

'Castlereagh hanging at the one masthead and. Fitzgibbon at the other,' thought Stephen, but with only the weariest gleam of spirit. and it's stayed for'ard to the bowsprit again: you can just see a corner of the foretopmast stays'l if you crane over this way.'

His voice reached Stephen as a pleasant background against which he tried to arrange his thoughts. Then Stephen was aware of an expectant pause: the words 'foretopmast' and 'crane over' had preceded it.

'Just so,' he said. 'And how long might that topmast be?'

'Thirty-one feet, sir, the same as this one here. Now, just above the foretop you see the collar of the maintopmast stay, which supports this topmast just above us. Then come the topmast trestletrees and crosstrees, where the other lookout is stationed; and then the topgallantmast. It is swayed up and held the same way as the topmast, only naturally its shrouds are slighter; and it is stayed for'ard to the jib-boom do you see, the spar that runs out beyond the bowsprit' The bowsprit's topmast, as it were. It is twenty-three feet six inches long The topgallantmast, I mean, not the jib-boom That is twenty-four'

'It is a pleasure to hear a man who thoroughly understands his profession. You are very exact, sir.'

'Oh, I hope the captains will say the same, sir,' cried Mowett. 'When next we put into Gibraltar I am to go for my lieutenant's examination again. Three senior captains sit upon you; and last time a very devilish captain asked me how many fathoms I should need for the main crowfoot, and how long the euphroe was. I could tell him now: it is fifty fathoms of three-quarter-inch line, though you would never credit it, and the euphroe is fourteen inches. I believe I could tell him anything that can even be attempted to be measured, except perhaps for the new mainyard, and I shall measure that with my tape before dinner. Should you like to hear some dimensions, sir?'

'I should like it of all things.'

'Well, sir, the Sophie's keel is fifty-nine feet long; her gun-deck seventy-eight foot three inches; and she is ten foot ten inches deep. Her bowsprit is thirty-four foot, and I have told you all the other masts except for the main, which is fifty-six. Her maintopsail yard – the one just above us, sir – is thirty-one foot six inches; the maintopgallant, the one above that, twenty-three foot six; and the royal, up at the top, fifteen foot nine. And the stuns'l booms – but I ought to explain the yards first, sir, ought I not?'

'Perhaps you ought.'

'They are very simple, indeed.'

'I am happy to learn it.'

'On the bowsprit, now, there's a yard across, with the spritsail furled upon it. That's the spritsail yard, naturally. Then, coming to the foremast, the bottom one is the foreyard and the big square sail set upon it is the fore course; the foretopsail yard crosses above it; then the foretopgallant and the little royal with its sail furled. It is the same with the mainmast, only the mainyard just below us has no sail bent - if it had it would be called the square mainsail, because with this rig you have two mainsails, the square course set on the yard and the boom mainsail there behind us, a fore-and-aft sail set on a gaff above and a boom below. The boom is forty-two feet nine inches long, sir, and ten and a half inches through.'

'Ten and a half inches, indeed?' How absurd it had been to affect not to know James Dillon – and a very childish reaction – the most usual and dangerous of them all.

'Now to finish with the square sails, there are the stuns'ls, sir. We only set them when the wind is well abaft the beam, and they stand outside the leeches – the edges of the square sails – stretched by booms that run out along the yard through boom-irons. You can see them as clear as can be -'

'What is that?'

'The bosun piping hands to make sail. They will be setting the royals. Come over here, sir, if you please, or the topmen will trample you down.'

Stephen was scarcely out of the way before a swarm of young men and boys darted over the edge of the top and raced on grunting up the topmast shrouds.

'Now, sir, when the order comes you will see them let the sail fall, and then the men on deck will haul home the lee sheet first, because the wind blows it over that way and it comes home easy. Then the weather sheet: and as soon as the men are off the yard they will hoist away at the halliards and up shell go. Here are the sheets, leading through by the block with a patch of white on it: and these are the halliards.'

A few moments later the royals were drawing, the Sophie heeled another strake and the hum of the breeze hi her rigging rose by half a tone: the men came down less hurriedly than they had mounted; and the Sophie's bell sounded five times.

'Tell me,' said Stephen, preparing to follow them, 'what is a brig?'

'This is a brig, sir; though we call her a sloop.'

'Thank you. And what is a – there is that howling again.'

''Tis only the bosun, sir: the square mainsail must be ready, and he desires the men to bend it to the yard. -

O'er the ship the gallant bosun flies

Like a hoarse mastiff through the storm he cries.

Prompt to direct th'unskilfuI still appears,

The expert he praises, and the timid cheers.'

'He seems very free with that cane: I wonder they don't knock him down. So you are a poet, sir?' asked Stephen, smiling: he was beginning to feel that he could cope with the situation.

Mowett laughed cheerfully, and said, 'It would be easier this side, sir, with her heeling so. I will just get round a little below you. They say it is a wonderful plan not to look down, sir. Easy now. Easy does it. Handsomely wins the day. There you are, sir, all a-tanto.'

'By God,' said Stephen, dusting his hands. 'I am glad to be down.' He looked up at the top, and down again. 'I should not have thought myself so timid,' he reflected inwardly; and aloud he said, 'Now shall we look downstairs?'

'Perhaps we may find a cook among this new draft,' said Jack. 'That reminds me – I hope I may have the pleasure of your company to dinner?'

'I should be very happy, sir,' said James Dillon with a bow. They were sitting at the cabin table with the clerk at their side and the Sophie's muster-book, complete-book, description-book and various dockets spread out before them.

'Take care of that pot, Mr Richards,' said Jack, as the Sophie gave a skittish lee-lurch in the freshening breeze. 'You had better cork it up and hold the ink-horn in your hand. Mr Ricketts, let us see these men.'

They were a lacklustre band, compared with the regular Sophies. But then the Sophies were at home; the Sophies were all dressed in the elder Mr Ricketts' slops, which gave them a tolerably uniform appearance; and they had been tolerably well fed for the last few years – their food had at least been adequate in bulk. The newcomers, with three exceptions, were quota-men from the inland counties, mostly furnished by the beadle; there were seven ardent spirits from Westmeath who had been taken up in Liverpool for causing an affray, and so little did they know of the world (they had come over for the harvest, no more) that when they were offered the choice between the dampest cells of the common gaol and the Navy, they chose the latter, as the dryer place; and there was a bee-master with a huge lamentable face and a great spade beard whose bees had all died; an out-of-work thatcher; some unmarried fathers; two starving tailors; a quiet lunatic. The most ragged had been given clothes by the receiving-ships, but the others were still in their own worn corduroy or ancient second-hand coats – one countryman still had his smock-frock on. The exceptions were three middle-aged seamen, one a Dane called Christian Pram, the second mate of a Levanter, and the two others Greek sponge fishers whose names were thought to be Apollo and Turbid, pressed in circumstances that remained obscure.

'Capital, capital,' said Jack, rubbing his hands. 'I think we can rate Pram quartermaster right away – we are one quartermaster shy – and the brothers Sponge able as soon as they can understand a-little English. As for the rest, all landmen. Now, Mr Richards, as soon as you have finished those descriptions, go along to Mr Marshall and tell him I should like to see him.'

'I think we shall watch almost exactly fifty men, sir, said James, looking up from his calculation.

'Eight fo'c'sle men, eight foretop – Mr Marshall, come and sit down and let us have the benefit of your lights. We must work out this watch-bill and quarter the men before dinner: there's not a minute to be lost.'

'And this, sir, is where we live,' said Mowett, advancing his lantern into the midshipmen's berth. 'Pray mind the beam.! must beg your indulgence for the smell: it is probably young Babbington here.'

'Oh, it is not,' cried Babbington, springing up from his book. 'You are cruel, Mowett,' he whispered, with seething indignation.

'It is a pretty luxurious berth, sir, as these things go,' said Mowett. 'There is some light from the grating, as you see, and a little air gets down when the hatch-covers are off. I remember in the after-cockpit of the old Namur the candles used to go out for want of anything in that line, and we had nothing as odorous as young Babbington.'

'I can well imagine it,' said Stephen, sitting down and peering about him in the shadows. 'How many of you live here?'

'Only three now, sir: we are two midshipmen short. The youngsters sling their hammocks by the breadroom, and they used to mess with the gunner until he took so poorly. Now they come here and eat our food and destroy our books with their great greasy thumbs.'

'You are studying trigonometry, sir?' said Stephen, whose eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could now distinguish an inky triangle.

'Yes, sir, if you please,' said Babbington. 'And I believe I have nearly found out the answer.' (And should have, if that great ox had not come barging in, he added, privately.)

'In canvassed berth, profoundly deep in though:, His busy mind with sines and tangents fraught, A Mid reclines! In calculation lost, His efforts still by some intruder crost,'said Mowett.

'Upon my word and honour, sir, I am rather proud of that.'

'And well you may be,' said Stephen, his eyes dwelling on the little ships drawn all round the triangle. 'And pray, what in sea-language is meant by a ship?'

'She must have three square-rigged masts, sir,' they told him kindly, 'and a bowsprit; and the masts must be in three – lower, top and topgallant – for we never call a polacre a ship.'

'Don't you, though?' said Stephen.

'Oh no, sir,' they cried earnestly, 'nor a cat. Nor a xebec; for although you may think xebecs have a bowsprit, it is really only a sorts of woolded boomkin.'

'I shall take particular notice of that,' said Stephen. 'I suppose you grow used to living here,' he observed, rising cautiously to his feet. 'At first it must seem a little confined.'

'Oh, sir,' said Mowett, 'think not meanly of this humble seat,

Whence spring the guardians 'of the British fleet! Revere the sacred spot, however low, Which formed to martial acts an Hawke! An Howe !'

'Pay no attention to him, sir,' cried Babbington, anxiously. 'He means no disrespect, I do assure you, sir. It is only his disgusting way.'

'Tush, tush,' said Stephen. 'Let us see the rest of the – of the vessel, the conveyance.'

They went for'ard and passed another marine sentry; and groping his way along the dim space between two gratings, Stephen stumbled over something soft that clanked and called out angrily, 'Can't you see where you're a-coming to, you grass-combing bugger?'

'Now then, Wilson, you stow your gob,' cried Mowett. 'That's one of the men in the bilboes – lying in irons,' he explained. 'Never mind him, sir.'

'What is he lying in irons for?'

'For being rude, sir,' said Mowett, with a certain primness.

'Come, now, here's a fair-sized room, although it is so low. For the inferior officers, I take it?'

'No, sir. This is where the hands mess and sleep.'

'And the rest of them downstairs again, I presume.'

'There is no downstairs from here, sir. Below us is the hold, with only a bit of a platform as an orlop.'

'How many men are there?'

'Counting the marines, seventy-seven, sir.'

'Then they cannot all sleep here: it is physically impossible.'

'With respect, sir, they do. Each man has fourteen inches to sling his hammock, and they sling 'em fore and aft: now, the midship beam is twenty-five foot ten, which gives twenty-two places – you can see the numbers written up here.'

'A man cannot lie in fourteen inches.'

'No, sir, not very comfortably. But he can in eight and twenty; for, do you see, in a two-watch ship at any one time about half the men are on deck for their watch, which leaves all their places free.'

'Even in twenty-eight inches, two foot four, a man must be touching his neighbour.'

'Why, sir, it is tolerably close, to be sure; but it gets them all in out of the weather. We have four ranges, as you see: from the bulkhead to this beam; and so to this one; then to the beam with the lantern hanging in front of it; and the last between that and the for'ard bulkhead, by the galley. The carpenter and the bosun have their cabins up there. The first range and part of the next is for the marines; then come the seamen, three and a half ranges of them. So with an average of twenty hammocks to a row, we get them all in, in spite of the mast.'

'But it must be a continuous carpet of bodies, when even half the men are lying there.'

'Why, so it is, sir.'

'Where are the windows?'

'We have nothing like what you would call windows,' said Mowett, shaking his head. 'There are the hatches and gratings overhead, but of course they are mostly covered up when it blows.'

'And the sick-quarters?'

'We have none of them either, sir, rightly speaking. But sick men have cots slung right up against the for'ard bulkhead on the starboard side, by the galley; and they are indulged in the use of the round-house.'

'What is that?'

'Well, it is not really a round-house, more like a little row-port: not like in a frigate or a ship of the line. But it serves.'

'What for?'

'I hardly know how to explain, sir,' said Mowett, blushing. 'A necessary-house.'

'A jakes? A privy?'

'Just so, sir.'

'But what do the other men do? Have they chamber-pots?'

'Oh no, sir, Heavens above! They go up the hatch there and along to the heads – little places on either side of the stem.'

'Out of doors?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But what happens in inclement weather?'

'They still go to the heads, sir.'

'And they sleep forty or fifty together down here, with no windows? Well, if ever a man with the gaol-fever, or the plague, or the cholera morbus, sets foot in this apartment, God help you all.'

'Amen, sir,' said Mowett, quite aghast at Stephen's immovable, convincing certainty.

'That is an engaging young fellow,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin.

'Young Mowctt? I am happy to hear you say so,' said Jack, who was looking worn and harried. 'Nothing pleasanter than good shipmates. May I offer you a whet? Our seaman's drink, that we call grog – are you acquainted with it? It goes down gratefully enough, at sea. Simpkin, bring us some grog. Damn that fellow- he is as slow as Beelzebub

Simpkin! Light along that grog. God rot the flaming son of a bitch. Ah, there you are. I needed that,' he said, putting down his glass. 'Such a tedious damned morning. Each watch has to have just the same proportions of skilled hands in the various stations, and so on. Endless discussion. And,' said he, hitching himself a little closer to Stephen's ear, 'I blundered into one of those unhappy gaffes… I picked up the list and read off Flaherty, Lynch, Sullivan, Michael Kelly, Joseph Kelly, Sheridan and Aloysius Burke – those chaps that took the bounty at Liverpool – and I said "More of these damned Irish Papists; at this rate half the starboard watch will be made up of them, and we shall not be able to get by for beads" – meaning it pleasantly, you know. But then I noticed a damned frigid kind of a chill and I said to myself, 'Why, Jack, you damned fool, Dillon is from Ireland, and he takes it as a national reflexion." Whereas I had not meant anything so illiberal as a national reflexion, of course; only that I hated Papists. So I tried to put it right by a few well-turned flings against the Pope; but perhaps they were not as clever as I thought for they did not seem to answer.'

'And do you hate Papists, so?' asked Stephen.

'Oh, yes: and I hate paper-work. But the Papists are a very wicked crew, too, you know, with confession and all that,' said Jack. 'And they tried to blow up Parliament. Lord, how we used to keep up the Fifth of November. One of my very best friends – you would not believe how kind -was so upset when her mother married one that she took to mathematics and Hebrew directly – aleph, beth – though she was the prettiest girl for miles around – taught me navigation – splendid headpiece, bless her. She told me quantities of things about the Papists: I forget it all now, but they are certainly a very wicked crew. There is no trusting them. Look at the rebellion they have just had.'

'But my dear sir, the United Irishmen were primarily Protestants – their leaders were Protestants. Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy were Protestants. The Emmets, the O'Connors, Simon Butler, Hamilton Rowan, Lord Edward Fitzgerald were Protestants. And the whole idea of the club was to unite Protestant and Catholic and Presbyterian Irishmen. The Protestants it was who took the initiative.'

'Oh? Well, I don't know much about it, as you see – I thought it was the Papists. I was on the West Indies station at the time. But after a great deal of this damned paper-work I am quite ready to hate Papists and Protestants, too, and Anabaptists and Methodies. And Jews. No – I don't give a damn. But what really vexes me is that I should have got across Dillon's hawse like that; as I was saying, there is nothing pleasanter than good shipmates. He has a time of it, doing a first lieutenant's duty and keeping a watch – new ship – new ship's company – new captain – and I particularly wished to ease him in. Without there is a good understanding between the officers a ship cannot be happy: and a happy ship is your only good fighting ship – you should hear Nelson on that point: and I do assure you it is profoundly true. He will be dining with us, and I should take it very kindly if you would, as it were… ah, Mr Dillon, come and join us in a glass of grog.'

Partly for professional reasons and partly because of an entirely natural absence, Stephen had long ago assumed the privilege of silence at table; and now from the shelter of this silence he watched James Dillon with particular attention. It was the same small head, held high; the same dark-red hair, of course, and green eyes; the same fine skin and bad teeth – more were decaying now; the same very well-bred air; and although he was slim and of no more than the average height, he seemed to take up as much room as the fourteen-stone Jack Aubrey. The main difference was that the look of being just about to laugh, or of having discovered a private joke, had quite vanished – wiped out: no trace of it. A typically grave, humourless Irish countenance now. His behaviour was reserved, but perfectly attentive and civil – not the least appearance of sullen resentment.

They ate an acceptable turbot – acceptable when the flour-and-water paste had been scraped off him – and then the steward brought in a ham. It was a ham that could only have come from a hog with a long-borne crippling disease, the sort of ham that is reserved for officers who buy their own provisions; and only a man versed in morbid anatomy could have carved it handsomely. While Jack was struggling with his duties as a host and adjuring the steward 'to clap on to its beakhead' and 'to look alive', James turned to Stephen with a fellow-guest's smile and said, 'Is it not possible that I have already had the pleasure of being in your company, sir? In Dublin, or perhaps at Naas?'

'I do not believe I have had the honour, sir. I am often mistaken for my cousin, of the same name. They tell me there is a striking resemblance, which makes me uneasy, I confess; for he is an ill-looking fellow, with a sly, Castle-informer look on his face. And the character of an informer is more despised in our country than in any other, is it not? Rightly so, in my opinion. Though, indeed, the creatures swarm there.' This was in a conversational tone, loud enough to be heard by his neighbour over Jack's 'Easy, now… wish it may not be infernally tough… get a purchase on its beam, Killick; never mind thumbs…'

'I am entirely of your way of thinking,' said James with complete understanding in his look. 'Will you take a glass of wine with me, sir?'

'With all my heart.'

They pledged one another in the sloe-juice, vinegar and sugar of lead that had been sold to Jack as wine and then turned, the one with professional interest and the other with professional stoicism, to Jack's dismembered ham.

The port was respectable, however, and after the cloth was drawn there was an easier, far more comfortable atmosphere in the cabin.

'Pray tell us about the action in the Dart,' said Jack, filling Dillon's glass. 'I have heard so many different accounts

'Yes, pray do,' said Stephen. 'I should look upon it as a most particular favour.'

'Oh, it was not much of an affair,' said James Dillon. 'Only with a contemptible set of privateers – a squabble among small-craft. I had temporary command of a hired cutter – a one-masted fore-and-aft vessel, sir, of no great size.' Stephen bowed. '- called the Dart. She had eight four-pounders, which was very well; but I only had thirteen men and a boy to fight them. However, orders came down to take a King's Messenger and ten thousand pounds in specie to Malta; and Captain Dockray asked me to give his wife and her sister a passage.'

'I remember him as first of the Thunderer,' said Jack. 'A dear, good, kind man.'

'So he was,' said James, shaking his head. 'Well, we had a steady tops'l libeccio, made our offing, tacked three or four leagues west of Egadi and stood a little west of south. It came on to blow after sundown, so having the ladies aboard and being short-handed in any case, I thought I should get under the lee of Pantelleria. It moderated in the night and the sea went down, and there I was at half-past four the next morning. I was shaving, as I remember very well, for I nicked my chin.'

'Ha,' said Stephen, with satisfaction.

'- when there was a cry of sail-ho and I hurried up on deck.'

'I'm sure you did,' said Jack, laughing.

'- and there were three French lateen-rigged privateers. It was just light enough to make them out, hull-up already, and presently I recognized the two nearest with my glass. They carried each a brass long six-pounder and four one-pounder swivels in their bows, and we had had a brush with them in the Euryalus, when they had the heels of us, of course.'

'How many men in them?'

'Oh, between forty and fifty apiece, sir: and they each had maybe a dozen musketoons or patareroes on their sides.

'And I made no doubt the third was just such another. They had been haunting the Sicily Channel for some time, lying off Lampione and Lampedusa to refresh. Now they were under my lee, lying thus,' he drew in wine on the table 'with the wind blowing from the decanter. They could outsail me, close-hauled, and clearly their best plan was to engage me on either side and board.'

'Exactly,' said Jack.

'So taking everything into consideration – my passengers, the King's Messenger, the specie, and the Barbary coast ahead of me if I were to bear up – I thought the right thing to do was to attack them separately while I had the weather-gage and before the two nearest could join forces: the third was still three or four miles away, beating up under all sail. Eight of the cutter's crew were prime seamen, and Captain Dockray had sent his cox'n along with the ladies, a fine strong fellow named William Brown. We soon cleared for action and treble-shotted the guns. And I must say the ladies behaved with great spirit: rather more than I could have wished. I represented to them that their place was below – in the hold. But Mrs Dockray was not going to be told her duty by any young puppy without so much as an epaulette to his name and did I think a post-captain's wife with nine years' seniority was going to ruin her sprigged muslin in the bilges of my cockleshell? She should tell my aunt – my cousin Ellis – the First Lord of the Admiralty -bring me to a court-martial for cowardice, for temerity, for not knowing my business. She understood discipline and subordination as well as the next woman, or better; and "Come, my dear," says she to Miss Jones, "you ladle out the powder and fill the cartridges, and I will carry them up in my apron." By this time the position was so – 'he redrew the plan. 'The nearest privateer two cables' lengths away and to the lee of the other: both of them had been firing for ten minutes with their bow-chasers.'

'How long is a cable?' asked Stephen.

'About two hundred yards, sir,' said James. 'So I put my helm down – she was wonderfully quick in stays – and steered to ram the Frenchman amidships. With the wind on her quarter, the Dart covered the, distance in little more than a minute, which was as well, since they were peppering us hard. I steered myself until we were within pistol-shot and then ran for'ard to lead the boarders, leaving the tiller to the boy. Unhappily, he misunderstood me and let the privateer shoot too far ahead, and we took her abaft her mizen, our bowsprit carrying away her larboard mizen shrouds and a good deal of her poop-rail and stern-works. So instead of boarding we passed under her stern: her mizen went by the board with the shock, and we flew to the guns and poured in a raking broadside. There were just enough of us to fight four guns, with the King's Messenger and me working one and Brown helping us run it out when he had fired his own. I luffed up to range along under her lee and get across her bows, so as to prevent her from manoeuvring; but with that great spread of canvas they have, you know, the Dart was becalmed for a while, and we exchanged as hot a fire as quickly as we could keep it up. But at last we forged ahead, found our wind again and tacked as quickly as we could, right athwart the Frenchman's stem – quicker, indeed, for we could only spare two hands to the sheet and our boom came crack against her foreyard, carrying it away -the falling sail dowsed her bow-chaser and the swivels. And as we came round there was our starboard broadside ready, and we fired it so close that the wads set light to her foresail and the wreckage of the mizen lying there all over her deck. Then they called for quarter and struck.'

'Well done, well done!' cried Jack.

'It was high time,' said James, 'for the other privateer had been coming up fast. By something like a miracle our bowsprit and boom were still standing, so I told the captain of the privateer that I should certainly sink him if he attempted to make sail and bore up directly for his consort. I could not spare a single hand to take possession, nor the time.'

'Of course not.'

'So here we were approaching on opposite tacks, and they were firing as the whim took them – everything they had. When we were fifty yards away I paid off four points to bring the starboard guns to bear, gave her the broadside, then luffed up directly and gave her the other, from perhaps twenty yards. The second was very remarkable, sir. I did not think four-pounders could have done such execution. We fired on the down-roll, a trifle later than I should have thought right, and all four shot struck her on the waterline at the height of her rise – I saw them go home, all on the same strake. A moment later her people left their guns – they were running about and hallooing. Unhappily, Brown had stumbled as our gun recoiled and the carriage had mangled his foot most cruelly. I bade him go below, but he would have none of it – would sit there and use a musket – and then he gave a cheer and said the Frenchman was sinking. And so he was: first they were awash, and then they went down, right down, with their sails set.'

'My God!' cried Jack.

'So I stood straight on for the third, all hands knotting and splicing, for our rigging was cut to pieces. But the mast and boom were so wounded – a six-pound ball clean through the mast, and many deep scores – that I dared not carry a press of sail. So I am afraid she ran' clean away from us, and there was nothing for it but to beat back to the first privateer. Luckily, they had been busy with their fire all this time, or they might have slipped off. We took six aboard to work our pumps, tossed their dead overboard, battened the rest down, took her in tow, set course for Malta and arrived two days later, which surprised me, for our sails were a collection of holes held together with threads, and our hull not much better.'

'Did you pick up the men from the one that sank?' asked Stephen.

'No, sir,' said James.

'Not corsairs,' said Jack. 'Not with thirteen men and a boy aboard. What were your losses, though?'

'Apart from Brown's foot and a few scratches we had no one wounded, sir, nor a single man killed. It was an astonishing thing: but then we were pretty thin on the ground.'

'And theirs?'

'Thirteen dead, sir. Twenty-nine prisoners.'

'And the privateer you sank?'

'Fifty-six, sir.'

'And the one that got away?'

'Well, forty-eight, or so they told us, sir. But she hardly counts, since we only had a few random shots from her before she grew shy.'

'Well, sir,' said Jack, 'I congratulate you with all my heart. It was a noble piece of work.'

'So do I,' said Stephen. 'So do I. A glass of wine with you, Mr Dillon,' he said, bowing and raising his glass.

'Come,' cried Jack, with a sudden inspiration. 'Let us drink to the renewed success of Irish arms, and confusion to the Pope.'

'The first part ten times over,' said Stephen, laughing. 'But never a drop will I drink to the second, Voltairian though I may be. The poor gentleman has Boney on his hands, and that is confusion enough, in all conscience.

Besides, he is a very learned Benedictine.'

'Then confusion to Boney.'

'Confusion to Boney,' they said, and drank their glasses dry.

'You will forgive me, sir, I hope,' said Dillon. 'I relieve the deck in half an hour, and I should like to check the quarter-bill first. I must thank you for a most enjoyable dinner.'

'Lord, what a pretty action that was,' said Jack, when the door was closed. 'A hundred and forty-six to fourteen; or fifteen if you count Mrs Dockray. It is just the kind of thing Nelson might have done – prompt – straight at 'em.'

'You know Lord Nelson, sir?'

'I had the honour of serving under him at the Nile,' said Jack, 'and of dining in his company twice.' His face broke into a smile at the recollection.

'May I beg you to tell me what kind of a man he is?'

'Oh, you would take to him directly, I am sure. He is very slight – frail – I could pick him up (I mean no disrespect) with one hand. But you know he is a very great man directly There is something in philosophy called an electrical particle, is there not? A charged atom, if you follow me. He spoke to me on each occasion. The first time it was to say, "May I trouble you for the salt, sir?"

– I have always said it as close as I can to his way ever since – you may have noticed it. But the second time I was trying to make my neighbour, a soldier, understand our naval tactics – weather-gage, breaking the line, and so on – and in a pause he leant over with such a smile and said, "Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them." I shall never forget it: never mind manoeuvres – always go at 'em. And at that same dinner he was telling us all how someone had offered him a boat-cloak on a cold night and he had said no, he was quite warm – his zeal for his King and country kept him warm. It sounds absurd, as I tell it, does it not?

And was it another man, any other man, you would cry out "oh, what pitiful stuff" and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm; but with him you feel your bosom glow, and – now what in the devil's name is it, Mr Richards? Come in or out, there's a good fellow. Don't stand in the door like a God-damned Lenten cock.'

'Sir,' said the poor clerk, 'you said I might bring you the remaining papers before tea, and your tea is just coming up.'

'Well, well: so I did,' said Jack. 'God, what an infernal heap. Leave them here, Mr Richards. I will see to them before we reach Cagliari.'

'The top ones are those which Captain Allen left to be written fair – they only need to be signed, sir,' said the clerk, backing out.

Jack glanced at the top of the pile, paused, then cried, 'There! There you are. Just so. There's the service for you from clew to earing – the Royal Navy, stock and fluke. You get into a fine flow of patriotic fervour – you are ready to plunge into the thick of the battle – and you are asked to sign this sort of thing.' He passed Stephen the carefully-written sheet.

'It is odd how the law always harps upon the unnaturalness of sodomy,' observed Stephen. 'Though I know at least two judges who are paederasts; and of course barristers

What will happen to him?'

'Oh, he'll be hanged. Run up at the yard-arm, and boats attending from every ship in the fleet.'

'That seems a little extreme.'

'Of course it is. Oh, what an infernal bore – witnesses going over to the flagship by the dozen, days lost… The Sophie a laughing-stock. Why will they report these things? The goat must be slaughtered – that's but fair – and it shall be served out to the mess that informed on him.'

'Could you not set them both ashore – on separate shores, if you have strong feelings on the moral issue – and sail quietly away?'

'Well,' said Jack, whose anger had died down. 'Perhaps there is something in what you propose. A dish of tea? You take milk, sir?'

'Goat's milk, sir?'

'Why, I suppose it is.'

'Perhaps without milk, then, if you please. You told me, I believe, that the gunner was ailing. Would this be a convenient time for seeing what I can do for him? Pray, which is the gun-room?'

'You would expect to find him there, would you not? But in fact his cabin is elsewhere nowadays. Killick will show you. The gun-room, in a sloop, is where the officers mess.'

In the gun-room itself the master stretched and said to the purser, 'Plenty of elbow-room now, Mr Ricketts.'

'Very true, Mr Marshall,' said the purser. 'We see great changes these days. And how they will work out I do not know.'

'Oh, I think they may answer well enough,' said Mr Marshall, slowly picking the crumbs off his waistcoat.

'All these capers,' went on the purser, in a low, dubious voice. 'The mainyard. The guns. The drafts he pretended to know nothing about. All these new hands there is not room for. The people at watch and watch. Charlie tells me there is a great deal of murmuring.' He jerked his head towards the men's quarters.

'I dare say there is. I dare say there is. All the old ways changed and all the old messes broken up. And I dare say we may be a little flighty, too, so young and fine with our brand-new epaulette. But if the steady old standing officers back him up, why, then I think it may answer well enough. The carpenter likes him. So does Watt, for he's a good seaman, and that's certain. And Mr Dillon seems to know his profession, too.'

'Maybe. Maybe,' said the purser, who knew the master's enthusiasms of old.

'And then again,' went on Mr Marshall, 'things may be a little more lively under the new proprietor. The men will like that, when they grow used to it; and so will the officers,

I am sure. All that is wanted is for the standing officers to back him up, and it will be plain sailing.'

'What?' said the purser, cupping his ear, for Mr Dillon was having the guns moved, and amid the general rumbling thunder that accompanied this operation an occasional louder bang obliterated speech. Incidentally, it was this all-pervasive thunder that made their conversation possible, for in general there could be no such thing as private talk in a vessel twenty-six yards long, inhabited by ninety-one men, whose gun-room had even smaller apartments opening off it, screened by very thin wood and, indeed, sometimes by no more than canvas.

'Plain sailing. I say, if the officers back him up, it will all be plain sailing.'

'Maybe. But if they do not,' went on Mr Ricketts, 'if they do not, and if he persists in capers of this kind -which I believe it is his nature so to do – why then, I dare say he will exchange out of the old Sophie as quick as Mr Harvey did. For a brig is not a frigate, far less a ship of the line: you are right on top of your people, and they can give you hell or cause you to be broke as easy as kiss my hand.'

'You don't have to tell me a brig is not a frigate, nor yet a ship of the line, Mr Ricketts,' said the master.

'Maybe I don't have to tell you a brig is not a frigate, 4 nor yet a ship of the line, Mr Marshall,' said the purser warmly. 'But when you have been at sea as long as I have, Mr Marshall, you will know there is a great deal more than mere seamanship required of a captain. Any damned tarpaulin can manage a ship in a storm,' he went on in a slighting voice, 'and any housewife in breeches can keep the decks clean and the falls just so; but it needs a headpiece' - tapping his own – 'and true bottom and steadiness, as well as conduct, to be the captain of a man-o'-war: and these are qualities not to be found in every Johnny-come-lately – nor in every Jack-lie-by-the-wall, neither,' he added, more or less to himself. 'I don't know, I'm sure.'