Master & Commander (21 page)

   'Or take me,' said Jack. 'I am called captain, but really I am only a master and commander.'

   'Or the place where the men sleep, just for'ard,' said the purser, pointing. 'Rightly speaking, and official, 'tis the gun-deck, though there's never a gun on it.
We
call it the spar-deck—though there's no spars, neither—but some say the gun-deck still, and call the right gun-deck the upper-deck. Or take this brig, which is no true brig at all, not with her square mainsail, but rather a sorts of snow, or a hermaphrodite.'

   'No, no, my dear sir,' said James Dillon, 'never let a mere word grieve your heart. We have nominal captain's servants who are, in fact, midshipmen; we have nominal able seamen on our books who are scarcely breeched—they are a thousand miles away and still at school; we swear we have not shifted any backstays, when we shift them continually; and we take many other oaths that nobody believes—no, no, you may call yourself what you please, so long as you do your duty. The Navy speaks in symbols, and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words.'

The fair copy of the
Sophie's
log was written out in David Richards' unusually beautiful copperplate, but in all other respects it was just like every other log-book in the service. Its tone of semi-literate, official, righteous dullness never varied; it spoke of the opening of beef-cask no. 271 and the death of the loblolly-boy in exactly the same voice, and it never deviated into human prose even for the taking of the sloop's first prize.

Thursday,June 28, winds variable, SE,by S, course S5OW, distance 63 miles.—Latitude 42°32'N, longitude 4°17'E, Cape Creus S76°W 12 leagues. Moderate breezes and cloudy PM. at 7 in first reef topsails. AM d° weather. Exercising the great guns. The people employed occasionally.

  
Friday, June 29, S and Eastward . . . Light airs and clear weather. Exercising the great guns. PM employed worming the cable. AM moderate breezes and clouds, in third reef maintopsail, bent another foretopsail and close reefed it, hard gales at 4 handed the square mainsail at 8 more moderate reefed the square mainsail and set it. At noon calm. Departed this life Henry Gouges, loblolly-boy. Exercising the great guns.

  
Saturday, June 30, light airs inclinable to calm. Exercised the great guns. Punished Jno. Shannahan and Thos. Yates with 12 lashes for drunkenness. Killed a bullock weight 530 lb. Remains of water 3 tons.

  
Sunday, July 1 . . . Mustered the ship's company by divisions read the Articles of War performed Divine Service and committed the body of Henry Gouges to the deep. At noon d° weather.

Ditto weather: but the sun sank towards a livid, purple, tumescent cloud-bank piled deep on the western horizon, and it was clear to every seaman aboard that it was not going to remain ditto much longer. The seamen, sprawling abroad on the fo'c'sle and combing out their long hair or plaiting it up again for one another, kindly explained to the bandmen that this long swell from the south and east, this strange sticky heat that came both from the sky and the glassy surface of the heaving sea, and this horribly threatening appearance of the sun, meant that there was to be a coming dissolution of all natural bonds, an apocalyptic upheaval, a right dirty night ahead. The sailormen had plenty of time to depress their hearers, already low in their spirits because of the unnatural death of Henry Gouges (had said, 'Ha, ha, mates, I am fifty years old this day. Oh dear,' and had died sitting there, still holding his untasted grog)—they had plenty of time, for this was Sunday afternoon, when in the course of nature the fo'c'sle was covered with sailors at their ease, their pigtails undone. Some of the more gifted had queues they could tuck into their belts; and now that these ornaments were loosened and combed out, lank when still wet, or bushy when dry and as yet ungreased, they gave their owners a strangely awful and foreboding look, like oracles; which added to the landmen's uneasiness.

   The seamen laid it on; but with all their efforts they could scarcely exaggerate the event, for the south-easterly gale increased from its first warning blasts at the end of the last dog-watch to a great roaring current of air by the end of the middle watch, a torrent so laden with warm rain that the men at the wheel had to hold their heads down and cup their mouths sideways to breathe. The seas mounted higher and higher: they were not the height of the great Atlantic rollers, but they were steeper, and in a way more wicked; their heads tore off streaming in front of them so as to race through the
Sophie's
tops, and they were tall enough to becalm her as she lay there a-try, riding it out under a storm staysail. This was something she could do superbly well: she might not be very fast; she might not look very dangerous or high-bred; but with her topgallantmasts struck down on deck, her guns double-breeched and her hatches battened down, leaving only a little screened way to the after-ladder, and with a hundred miles of sea-room under her lee, she lay to as snug and unconcerned as an eider-duck. She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and travelled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between—a natural anemometer—and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon. With the greatest pleasure he saw that his forecast of her qualities as a sea-boat was fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed, 'She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.

   'Eh?'

   'She—is—remarkably—dry.'

   Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling.

   But the rising sun swallowed up the wind, and by half-past seven the next morning all that was left of the storm was the swell and a line of clouds low over the distant Gulf of Lions in the north-west; the sky was of an unbelievable purity and the air was washed so clean that Stephen could see the colour Of the petrel's dangling feet as it pattered across the
Sophie's
wake some twenty yards behind. 'I remember the
fact
of extreme, prostrating terror,' he said, keeping his eye on the tiny bird, 'but the
inward nature
of the emotion now escapes me.'

   The man at the wheel and the quartermaster at the con exchanged a shocked glance.

   'It is not unlike the case of a woman in childbirth,' went on Stephen, moving to the taffrail to keep the petrel in view and speaking rather more loudly. The man at the wheel and the quartermaster looked hastily away from one another: this was terrible—anybody might hear. The
Sophie's
surgeon, the opener (in broad daylight and upon the entranced maindeck) of the gunner's brainpan—
Lazarus Day
, as he was called now—was much prized, but there was no telling how far he might go in impropriety. 'I remember an instance . . .'

   'Sail ho!' cried the masthead, to the relief of all upon the
Sophie's
quarter-deck.

   'Where away?'

   'To leeward. Two points, three points on the beam. A felucca. In distress—her sheets a-flying.'

   The
Sophie
turned, and presently those on deck could see the distant felucca as it rose and fell on the long troubled sea. It made no attempt to fly, none to alter course nor yet to heave to, but stood on with its shreds of sail streaming out on the irregular breaths of the dying wind. Nor did it show any answering colours or reply to the
Sophie's
hail. There was no one at the tiller, and when they came nearer those with glasses could see the bar move from side to side as the felucca yawed.

   'That's a body on deck,' said Babbington, full of glee.

   'It will be awkward lowering a boat in this,' remarked Jack, more or less to himself. 'Williams, lay her along, will you? Mr Watt, let some men stand by to boom her off. What do you make of her, Mr Marshall?'

   'Why, sir, I take it she's from Tangiers or maybe Tetuan—the west end of the coast, at all events . . .'

   'That man in the square hole died of plague,' said Stephen Maturin, clapping his telescope to.

   A hush followed this statement and the wind sighed through the weather-shrouds. The distance between the vessels narrowed fast, and now everyone could see a shape wedged in the after-hatchway, with perhaps two more beneath it; an almost naked body among the tangle of gear near the tiller.

   'Keep her full,' said Jack. 'Doctor, are you quite sure of what you say? Take my glass.'

   Stephen looked through it for a moment and handed it back. 'There is no possible doubt,' he said. 'I will just make up a bag and then I will go across. There may be some survivors.'

   The felucca was almost touching now, and a tame genet—a usual creature in Barbary craft, on account of the rats—stood on the rail, looking eagerly up, ready to spring. An elderly Swede named Volgardson, the kindliest of men, threw a swab that knocked it off its balance, and all the men along the side hooted and shrieked to frighten it away.

   'Mr Dillon,' said Jack, 'we'll get the starboard tacks aboard.'

   At once the
Sophie
sprang to life—bosun's calls shrilling, hands running to their places, general uproar—and in the din Stephen cried, 'I insist upon a boat—I protest . . .'

   Jack took him by the elbow and propelled him with affectionate violence into the cabin. 'My dear sir,' he said, 'I am afraid you must not insist, or protest: it is mutiny, you know, and you would be obliged to be hanged. Was you to set foot in that felucca, even if you did not bring back the contagion, we should have to fly the yellow flag at Mahon: and you know what that means. Forty mortal bloody days on the quarantine island and shot if you stray outside the pallisado, that is what. And whether you brought it back or not, half the hands would die of fright.'

   'You mean to sail directly away from that ship, giving it no assistance?'

   'Yes, sir.'

   'Upon your own head, then.'

   'Certainly.'

   The log took little notice of this incident; it scarcely could have found any appropriate official language for saying that the
Sophie's
surgeon shook his fist at the
Sophie's
captain, in any case; and it shuffled the whole thing off with the disingenuous
spoke felucca: and ¼ past 11 tacked
, for it was eager to come to the happiest entry it had made for years (Captain Allen had been an unlucky commander: not only had the
Sophie
been almost entirely confined to convoy-duty in his time, but whenever he did have a cruise the sea had emptied before him—never a prize did he take) . . .
PM moderate and clear, up topgallantmasts, opened pork cask no. 113, partially spoiled. 7 saw strange sail to westward, made sail in chase
.

   Westward in this case meant almost directly to the
Sophie's
lee; and making sail meant spreading virtually everything she possessed—lower, topsail and topgallant studdingsails, royals of course, and even bonnets—for the chase had been made out to be a fair-sized polacre with lateens on her fore and mizzen and square sails on her mainmast, and therefore French or Spanish—almost certainly a good prize if only she could be caught. This was the polacre's view, without a doubt, for she had been lying-to, apparently fishing her storm-damaged mainmast, when they first came in sight of one another; but the
Sophie
had scarcely sheeted home her topgallants before the polacre's head was before the wind and she fleeing with all she could spread in that short notice—a very suspicious polacre, unwilling to be surprised.

   The
Sophie
, with her abundance of hands trained in setting sail briskly, ran two miles to the polacre's one in the first quarter of an hour; but once the chase had spread all the canvas it could, their speeds became more nearly even. With the wind two points on her quarter and her big square mainsail at its best advantage, the
Sophie
was still the faster, however, and when they had reached their greatest speed she was running well over seven knots to the polacre's six. But they were still four miles apart, and in three hours' time it would be pitch dark—no moon until half-past two. There was the hope, the very reasonable hope, that the chase would carry something away, for she had certainly had a rough night of it; and many a glass was trained upon her from the
Sophie's
fo'c'sle.

   Jack stood there by the starboard knighthead, willing the sloop on with all his might, and feeling that his right arm might not be too great a price for an effective bow-chaser. He stared back at the sails and how they drew, he looked searchingly at the water rising in her bow-wave and sliding fast along her smooth black side; and it appeared to him that with her present trim the after sails were pressing her forefoot down a trifle much—that the extreme press of canvas might be hindering her progress—and he bade them take in the main royal. Rarely had he given an order more reluctantly obeyed, but the log-line proved that he was right: the
Sophie
ran a little easier, a very little faster, with the wind's thrust more forward.