Mason & Dixon (5 page)

"Oh Dear," Capt. Smith upon the Quarter-deck in the Winter's grudg'd Sunlight, the Letter fluttering in the Breeze,— from the direction of London, somewhere among a peak'd Convoy of Clouds, a steady Mutter as of Displeasure on High, "and yet I knew it. Didn't I. Ah,— misunderstood!”

Far from any Extortion-scheme, it had rather been the Captain's own
Expectation,— the fancy of a Heart unschool'd in Guile,— that they
would of course all three be messing together, Day upon Day, the voyage
long, in his Quarters, drinking Madeira, singing Catches, exchanging
Sallies of Wit and theories about the Stars,— how else?— he being of
such a philosophickal leaning, and so starv'd for Discourse, it never
occurr'd to him that other Arrangements were even possible
     

"I assum'd, foolishly, that we'd go in equal Thirds, and meant to ask but your Share of what I hop'd to be spending, out of my personal Funds, upon your behalf,— not to mention that buying for three, at certain Chandleries, would've got me a discount,— Ah! What matter? Best of intentions, Gentlemen, no wish to offend the First Lord,— our Great Circumnavigator, after all, my Hero as a Lad...."

"We regret it, Sir," Dixon offers, "— far too much Whim-Wham."

Mason brings his Head up with a surpris'd look. "Saintly of you, considering your Screams could be heard out past the Isle of Wight? Now, previously unconsulted, / am expected to join this Love-Feast?"

Dixon and the Captain, as if in Conspiracy, beam sweetly back till Mason can abide no more. "Very well,— tho' someone ought to have told you, Captain, of that Rutabageous Anemia which afflicts Lensmen as a Class,— the misunderstanding then should never have arisen."

"Gracious of You, Mr. Mason," cries Dixon, heartily.

"Most generous," adds the Captain.

Tis arrang'd at last that they will be put in the Lieutenant's Mess, which is financ'd out of the Ship's Account,— that is, by the Navy,— and take their turns with the other principal Officers in dining with the Captain, whose dreams of a long, uneventful Voyage and plenty of Philo-sophick Conversation would thus have been abridg'd even had the l'Grand never emerg'd above the Horizon.

On the eighth of December the Captain has an Express from the Admiralty, ordering him not to sail. "Furthermore," he informs Mason and Dixon, "Bencoolen is in the hands of the French. I see no mention of any plans to re-take the place soon. I am sorry."

"I knew it... ?" Dixon walking away shaking his head.

"We may still make the Cape of Good Hope in time," says Capt. Smith. "That'll likely be our destination, if and when they cut the Orders.”

"No one else is going there to observe," Mason says. "Odd, isn't it? You'd think there'd be a Team from somewhere."

Capt. Smith looks away, as if embarrass'd. "Perhaps there is?" he suggests, as gently as possible.

As they proceed down the Channel, "Aye, and that's the Tail of the Bolt," a sailor informs them, "where the Ramillies went down but the year February, losing seven hundred Souls. They were in south-west Weather, the sailing-master could not see,— he gambl'd as to which Headland it was, mistaking the Bolt for Rome Head and lost all."

"This is League for League the most dangerous Body of Water in the world," complains another. "Sands and Streams, Banks and Races, I've no Peace till we're past the Start Point and headed for the Sea."

"Can this Lad get us out all right?"

"Oh, young Smith's been around forever. Collier Sailor. If he's alive, he must have learn'd somewhat."

Passing the Start-Point at last, the cock's-comb of hilltops to starboard, the Ship leaning in the up-Channel wind, the late sun upon the heights,— more brilliant gold and blue than either Landsman has ever seen,— the Cold of approaching Night carrying an edge, the possibility that by Morning the Weather will be quite brisk indeed..."Su-ma-tra," sing the sailors of the Seahorse,

"Where girls all look like Cleo-

Pat-tra,

And when you're done you'll simply

Barter 'er,

For yet another twice as

Hot, tra-

La la-la la-la la-la la—

La la la, la..."

From the day he assum'd command of the Seahorse, Capt. Smith has lived in a tidy corner of Hell previously unfamiliar to him. Leaving the rainswept landing, rowed out into the wet heaving Groves of masts and spars upon Spithead, 'mid sewage and tar and the Breath of the Wind,

 
he had searched, with increasing desperation, for some encouraging first sight of his new command, till oblig'd at last to accept the remote scruffy Sixth Rate throwing itself like a tether'd beast against its anchor-cables. Yet, yet,...through the crystalline spray, how gilded comes she,— how corposantly edg'd in a persisting and, if Glories there be, glorious light...and he knows her, it must be from a Dream, how could it be other? A Light in which all Pain and failure, all fear, are bleach'd away....

He'd been greeted at the Quarter-deck by a Youth of loutish and ungather'd appearance, recruited but recently in a press-gang sweep of Wapping, who exclaim'd, "Damme! Look at this, Boys! An officer wha' knows enough to come in out of the rain!"

Trying not to bark, Capt. Smith replied, "What's your name, sailor?" "By some I be styl'd, 'Blinky.' And who might you be?" "Attend me, Blinky,— I am the Captain of this Vessel." "Well," advised the young salt, "you've got a good job,— don't fuck up."

Steady advice. He haunts his little Raider like a nearly unsensed ghost, now silent upon his side of the Quarter-deck, now bending late and dutifully over the lunar-distance forms. "He wishes to be taken as a man of Science," opines the Revd upon first meeting the Astronomers, - perhaps he even seeks your own good opinion. Mention'd in a report to the Royal Society? However you do that sort of thing." Choosing to stand with the ingenious and Philosophickal wing of the Naval profession rather than its Traditional and bloody-minded one, though he would fight honorably, Capt. Smith does not consider his best game to be war.

The Vessel herself, however, enjoys a Reputation for Nerve, having proved it at Quebec, fearless under the French batteries of Beauport, part of a Diversion whilst the real assault proceeded quite upon the other flank, out of the troop-cariying ships that had sailed past the city, further upstream. Thenceforward is her Glory assur'd. She has done her duty in the service of a miracle in that year of miracles, 1759, upon whose Ides of March Dr. Johnson happen'd to remark, "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

Some would call her a Frigate, though officially she is a couple of guns shy, causing others to add the prefix "Jackass,"— a nautical term. Neither Names nor modest throw-weights have kept her from mixing it up with bigger ships. Capt. Smith has long understood that tho' a Sea Horse may be born in spirit an Arab stallion, sometimes must it also function as a Jackass,— a Creature known, that is, as much for its obstinacy in an argument as for its trick of turning and using its hind legs as a weapon. "Therefore I want the best gun crew for the Stern Cannon. Let this Jackass show them a deadly kick."

When the l'Grand comes a-looming, nevertheless, the Captain is more than a little surprised. Why should Monsieur be taking the trouble?— knowing the answer to be "Frigate Business," built into the definition of the command. In return for freedom to range upon the Sea, one was bound by a Code as strict as that of any ancient Knight. The Seahorse's Motto, lovingly embroider'd by a certain Needlewoman of Southsea, and nail'd above the Bed in his Cabin, reads Eques Sit Mquus.

"Now, Eques," according to the helpful young Revd Wicks Cherry-coke, "means 'an arm'd Horseman.''

"Ranging the Land," Dixon suggests, "as a Frigate-Sailor the Sea."

"Later, in old Rome, it came to mean a sort of Knight,— a Gentleman, somewhere between the ordinary People and the Senate. Sit is 'may he be,' and Æquus means 'just,'— also, perhaps, 'even-temper'd.' So we might take your ship's Motto to mean, 'Let the Sea-Knight who would command this Sea-Horse be ever fair-minded,'—

"— trying not to lose his Temper, even with boil-brain'd subordinates?" the Captain growling thus at Lieutenant Unchleigh, who stands timidly signaling for his attention.

"Um, what appears to be a Sail, South-Southwest,— although there is
faction upon the question, others insisting 'tis a Cloud
               
"

"Damnation, Unchleigh," Capt. Smith in a low Voice, reaching for his Glass. "Hell-fire, too. If it's a Frenchman, he's seen us, and is making all sail."

"I knew that," says the Lieutenant.

"Here. Don't drop this. Get up the Mast and tell me exactly what and where it is. Take Bodine up with you, with a watch and compass,— and if it proves to be a sail, do try to obtain a few nicely spac'd magnetickal Bearings, there's a good Lieutenant. You'll note how very Scientifick we are here, Gentlemen. Yet," turning to a group of Sailors holystoning the deck, "ancient Beliefs will persist. Here then, Bongo! Yes! Yes, Captain wishes Excellent Bongo smell Wind!"

The Lascar so address'd, crying, "Aye, aye, Cap'n!," springs to the windward side, up on a rail, and, grasping some Armful of the Fore-Shrouds, presses himself far into the Wind, head-rag a-fluttering,— almost immediately turning his Head, with a look of Savage Glee,— "Frenchies!"

"Hard a-port," calls the Captain, as down from the Maintop comes word that the object does rather appear to be a Sail, at least so far unaccompanied, and is withal running express, making to intercept the Seahorse. "Gentlemen, 'twould oblige me if you'd find ways to be useful below." The Drum begins its Beat. They have grown up, English Boys never far from the Sea, with Tales of its Battles and Pirates and Isles just off the Coasts of Paradise. They know what "below" promises.

At first it seems but a Toy ship, a Toy Destiny.... T'gallants and staysails go crowding on, but the wind is obstinate at SSW, the Seahorse may but ever beat against it, in waters treacherous of stream, whilst the l'Grand is fresh out from Brest, with the wind on her port quarter.

' 'Twas small work to come up with us, get to leeward,— from which the French prefer to engage,— and commence her broadsides, the Seahorse responding in kind, for an hour and a half of blasting! and smashing! and masts falling down!"

"Blood flowing in the scuppers!" cries Pitt.

"Did you swing on a rope with a knife in your teeth?" asks Pliny.

"Of course. And a pistol in me boot."

"Uncle." Brae disapproves.

The Revd only beams. One reason Humans remain young so long, compar'd to other Creatures, is that the young are useful in many ways, among them in providing daily, by way of the evil Creatures and Slaughter they love, a Denial of Mortality clamorous enough to allow their Elders release, if only for moments at a time, from Its Claims upon the Attention. "Sad to say, Boys, I was well below, and preoccupied with sea-

 
surgery, learning what I needed to know of it upon the Spot. By the end of the Engagement I was left with nothing but my Faith between me and absolute black Panic. Afterward, from whatever had happen'd upon that patch of secular Ocean, I went on to draw Lessons more abstract.

"Watching helplessly as we closed with the l'Grand, I felt that with each fraction of a second, Death was making itself sensible in new

ways
      
We were soon close enough to hear the creak and jingling of the

gun tackle and the rumble of trucks upon the deck, then to see the ends
of the rammers backing through the gun-ports, and vanishing as car
tridges and wads were pushed into place, and the high-pitch'd foreign
jabbering as we lean'd ever closer
    

"Broadsides again and again, punctuated by tacking so as to present the Guns of the other Side,— ringing cessations in which came the Thumps of re-loading, the cries of the injur'd and dying, nausea, Speech-lessness, Sweat pouring,— then broadsides once more. Each time the firing stopp'd, there seem'd hope, for a Minute, that we'd got away and it was over,.. .until we'd hear the Gun-Tackle being shifted, and feel in the dark the deck trying to tilt us over, charg'd with the moments, upon the downward Roll, just before the Guns, vibrating in a certain way we had come to expect,— and when it came no more, we stood afraid to breathe, because of what might be next.

"The Astronomers and I meanwhile endur'd intestinal agonies so as not to be the first to foul his breeches in front of the others, as the Spars came crashing from above, and the cannon sent sharp Thuds thro' the Ship like cruel fists boxing our ears, knocking cockroaches out of the overhead,— Blows whose personal Malevolence was more frightening even than their Scale,— the Ship's hoarse Shrieking, a great Sea-animal in pain, the textures of its Cries nearly those of the human Voice when under great Stress."

Altho' Dixon is heading off to Sumatra with a member of the Church of England,— that is, the Ancestor of Troubles,— a stranger with whom he moreover but hours before was carousing exactly like Sailors, shameful to say, yet, erring upon the side of Conviviality, will he decide to follow Fox's Advice, and answer "that of God" in Mason, finding it soon enough

with the Battle on all 'round them, when both face their equal chances of imminent Death.

Dissolution, Noise, and Fear. Below-decks, reduced to nerves, given in to the emprise of Forces invisible yet possessing great Weight and Speed, which contend in some Phantom realm they have had the bad luck to blunder into, the Astronomers abide, willing themselves blank yet active. Casualties begin to appear in the Sick Bay, the wounds inconceivable, from Oak-Splinters and Chain and Shrapnel, and as Blood creeps like Evening to Dominion over all Surfaces, so grows the Ease of giving in to Panic Fear. It takes an effort to act philosophickal, or even to find ways to be useful,— but a moment's re-focusing proves enough to show them each how at least to keep out of the way, and presently to save steps for the loblolly boy, or run messages to and from other parts of the ship.

After the last of the Gun-Fire, Oak Beams shuddering with the Chase, the Lazarette is crowded and pil'd with bloody Men, including Capt. Smith with a great Splinter in his Leg, his resentment especially powerful,— "I'll have lost thirty of my Crew. Are you two really that important?" Above, on deck, corpses are steaming, wreckage is ev'ry-where, shreds of charr'd sail and line clatter in the Wind that is taking the Frenchman away.