The Wine-Dark Sea (3 page)

'Oh, Mr West,' he said, opening the gunroom door, 'before I forget it - the Captain would like to see you for a minute or two. I believe he is in the cabin.'

'Jesus,' cried West, looking shocked; then recollecting himself, 'Thank you, Doctor.' He ran into his cabin, put on his best coat, and hurried up the ladder.

'Come in,' called Jack.

'I understand you wish to see me, sir.'

'Oh yes, Mr West; but I shall not keep you a minute. Push those files aside and sit on the locker. I had meant to speak to you before, but I have been so taken up with paper-work that I have left it day after day: it is just to tell you that I was thoroughly satisfied with your conduct through our time at Moahu, particularly your exertion in getting the carronades up that infernal mountain: most officerlike. I have mentioned it in my official letter; and I believe that if only you had contrived to be wounded you might have been fairly confident of reinstatement. Perhaps you will do better next time.'

'Oh, I shall do my very best, sir,' cried West. 'Arms, legs, anything... and may I say how infinitely I am obliged to you for mentioning me, sir?'

'Mr Grainger, welcome to the gunroom,' said Tom Pullings, splendid in his uniform. 'Here is your place, next to Mr West. But first, messmates, let us drink to Mr Grainger's health.'

'Good health,' 'Hear him,' 'Huzzay,' and 'Welcome,' cried the other four, emptying their glasses.

'My dear love to you all, gentlemen,' said Grainger, sitting down in a good blue coat borrowed from his cousin the carpenter, looking pale under his tan, grim and dangerous.

But grimness could not withstand Pullings' and Stephen's good will, far less West's surprising flow of spirits: his happiness broke out in an extraordinary volubility - a thoroughly amiable volubility - and he rose high above his ordinary powers of anecdote and comic rhyme; and when he was not proposing riddles he laughed. There was no doubt that Grainger was pleased with his reception; he ate well, he smiled, he even laughed once or twice; but all the time Maturin saw his quick nervous eyes flitting from plate to plate, seeing just how the gunroom ate its dinner, managed its bread and drank its wine. Yet by pudding-time and toasts the anxiety was gone; Grainger joined in the song Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies and even proposed one of his own: As I walked out one midsummer's morning, for to view the fields and the flowers so gay.

'From what I could make out here on deck,' said Jack, when Stephen joined him for coffee, 'your dinner seemed quite a cheerful affair.'

'It went off as well as ever I had hoped,' said Stephen. 'Mr West was in a fine flow of spirits - jokes, riddles, conundrums, imitations of famous commanders, songs - I did not know he possessed such social gifts.'

'I am heartily glad of it,' said Jack. 'But Stephen, you look a little worn.'

'I am a little worn. All the more so for having first stepped on deck for a breath of air: the appearance of the ocean appalled me. I asked Bonden what he thought - was it often like this? He only shook his head and wished we might all be here come Sunday. Jack, what do you think? Have you considered it?'

'I considered it most of the time your Nebuchadnezzar's feast was going on, and I cannot remember ever having seen or read of anything like it; nor can I tell what it means. When you have glanced over my draft, perhaps we might go on deck again and see whether we can make it out.'

Jack always sat uneasy while his official letters were read: he always broke the current of the reader's thoughts by saying 'The piece about the carronade-slides ain't very elegantly put, I am afraid... this is just a draft, you understand, not polished at all... Anything that ain't grammar or that you don't quite like, pray dash it out... I never was much of a hand with a pen,' but after all these years Stephen took no more notice of it than the thin drifting Irish rain.

With Jack's voice in the background, the roll and pitch of the ship and the crash of the sea on her weather-bow never affecting his concentration he read a succinct narrative, cast in the wooden service style: the Surprise, proceeding eastwards in accordance with their Lordships' instructions, had been overtaken in latitude 28�31S, longitude 168�1'E by a cutter from Sydney with official information that the inhabitants of the island of Moahu were at war with one another and that the British seamen were being ill-used and their ships detained: Captain Aubrey was to deal with the situation, backing whichever side seemed more likely to acknowledge British sovereignty. He had therefore changed course for Moahu without loss of time, pausing only at Anamooka for water and provisions: here he found the whaler Daisy, recently from Moahu, whose master, Mr Wainwright, informed him that the war between the chief of the northern part of Moahu and the queen of the south was complicated by the presence of a number of French mercenaries on the chief's side and of a privateer under American colours, the Franklin, commanded by another Frenchman allied to the chief, a Monsieur Dutourd. Acting upon this information, Captain Aubrey therefore proceeded with the utmost dispatch to Pabay, the northern port of Moahu, in the hope of finding the Franklin at anchor. She was not there, so having released the detained British ship, the Truelove, together with her surviving crew, and having destroyed the French garrison with the loss of one officer killed and two seamen wounded, he hastened to the southern harbour, which was about to be attacked from the mountains by the northern chief and probably from the sea by the privateer. The Surprise arrived in time: her people had the happiness of defeating the northern land forces without loss before the arrival of the privateer, and Captain Aubrey received the assurance of the Queen's willingness to be a faithful ally to His Majesty. Here followed a more detailed account of the two actions and the letter returned to the appearance of the Franklin next morning -her inferior force - her flight - and Captain Aubrey's hope that in spite of her excellent sailing qualities she might soon be captured.

'It seems to me a perfectly straightforward seamanlike account,' said Stephen, closing the folder. 'Admirably calculated for Whitehall, apart from a few quibbles I have pencilled in the margin. And I see why West was so happy.'

'Yes: I thought it due to him; and perhaps I laid it on a little heavy, because I was so sorry about Davidge. Thank you, Stephen. Shall we go on deck?'

It was indeed a lurid and portentous sight, the sky quite hidden and the diffused glow, now more orange than umber, showed an irregularly turbulent sea flecked as far as the eye could see (which was not much above three miles) with broken water that should have been white and that in fact had taken on an unpleasant acid greenish tinge, most evident in the frigate's leeward bow-wave - an irregular bow-wave too, for now, although the swell was still very much present, rolling strongly from the north-east, the series of crests was interrupted by innumerable cross-seas.

They stood in silence; and all along the gangway and on the forecastle there were little groups of seamen, gazing in the same attentive way, with a few low murmured words.

'It is not unlike the typhoon that so nearly did for us when we were running for the Marquesas, south of the line,' observed Jack. 'But there are essential differences. The glass is perfectly steady, for one thing. Yet even so I believe I shall strike topgallantmasts.' Raising his voice he called for the bosun and gave the order; it was at once followed by the wailing of pipes and entirely superfluous cries of 'All hands to strike topgallantmasts. All hands. All hands, d'ye hear me there?'

Without a word of complaint or a wry look, for they were much of the Captain's mind, the patient Surprises laid aloft to undo all they had done with such pains in the forenoon watch. They cast off all that had to be cast off; they clapped on to the mast-rope and by main force raised the foretopgallant so that the fid could be drawn out again and the whole lowered down; and this they did to the others in succession, as well as running in the jib-boom, making all fast and double-griping the boats.

'A pretty halfwit I may look, if the poor souls have to sway them up again tomorrow,' said Jack in a low voice. 'But when I was very young I had such a lesson about not getting your upper masts down on deck in plenty of time - such a lesson! Now we are on deck I could tell you about it, pointing out the various ropes and spars.'

'That would give me the utmost pleasure,' said Stephen.

'It was when I was coming back from the Cape in the Minerva, a very wet ship, Captain Soules: once we were north of the line we had truly miserable weather, a whole series of gales from the westward. But the day after Christmas the wind grew quite moderate and we not only let a reef out of the maintopsail but also sent up the topgallant mast and yard: yet during the night it freshened once more and we close-reefed the topsails again, got the topgallant yard down on deck and shaped the mast.'

'Before this it was amorphous, I collect? Shapeless?'

'What a fellow you are, Stephen. Shaping a mast means getting it ready to be struck. But, however, while this was in train, with the people tailing on to the mast-rope, the one that raises it a little, do you see, so that it can have a clear run down, the ship took a most prodigious lee-lurch, flinging all hands, still fast to their rope, into the scuppers. And since they hung on like good 'uns this meant that they raised the heel of the mast right up above the cross-trees, so that although the fid was out it could not be lowered down. Do you follow me, Stephen, with my fid and heel and cross-trees?'

'Perfectly, my dear. A most uncomfortable position, sure.'

'So it was, upon my word. And before we could do anything about it the topmast-springstays parted, then the topmast stay itself; and the mast went, a few feet above the cap, and falling upon the lee topsail yardarm carried that away too. And all this mare's nest came down on the mainyard, parting the lee-lift -that is the lee-lift, you see? Then the weather quarter of the mainyard, hitting the top, shattered the weather side of the cross-trees; so that as far as the sails were concerned, the mainmast was useless. At that very moment the ship broached to, huge green seas coming aft. We survived; but ever since then I have been perhaps over-cautious. Though this afternoon I had meant to reduce sail in any event.'

'You do not fear losing the prize?'

'Certainly I fear losing the prize: I should never say anything so unlucky as No, she is ours. I may lose her, of course; but you saw her start her water over the side, did you not?'

'Sure I saw the water and the guns; and I saw how she drew away, free of all that weight. I spent a few moments liberating poor Mr Martin from behind the seat of ease where the wreckage had imprisoned him and he so squeamish about excrement, the creature, and when I looked up again she was much smaller, flying with a supernatural velocity.'

'Yes, she holds a good wind. But she cannot cross the Pacific with what very little water she may have left - they pumped desperate hard and I saw ton after ton shoot into the sea - so she must double back to Moahu. The Sandwich Islands are much too far. I think he will put before the wind at about ten o'clock, meaning to slip past us with all lights dowsed during the graveyard watch - no moon, you know - and be well to the west of us by dawn, while we are still cracking on like mad lunatics to the eastward. My plan is to lie to in a little while, keeping a very sharp look-out; and if I do not mistake she will be in sight, a little to the south, at break of day, with the wind on her quarter and all possible sail abroad. I should add,' he went on after a pause in which Stephen appeared to be considering, 'that taking into account her leeway, which I have been measuring ever since the chase began, I mean first to take the ship quite a long way south.'

'The very same thought was in my mind,' said Stephen, 'though I did not presume to utter it. But tell me, before you lie in, do you not think it might calm our spirits if we were to contemplate let us say Corelli rather than this apocalyptic sea? We have scarcely played a note since before Moahu. I never thought to dislike the setting sun, but this one adds an even more sinister tinge to everything in sight, unpleasant though it was before. Besides, those tawny clouds flying in every direction and these irregular waves, these boils of water fill me with melancholy thoughts.'

'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. 'I do not intend to beat to quarters this evening - the people have had quite enough for one day - so we can make an early start.'

A fairly early start: for the irregular waves that had disturbed Stephen Maturin's sense of order in nature now pitched him headlong down the companion-ladder, where Mr Grainger, standing at its foot, received him as phlegmatically as he would have received a half-sack of dried peas, set him on his feet and told him 'that he should always keep one hand for himself and the other for the ship'. But the Doctor had flown down sideways, an ineffectual snatch at the rail having turned him about his vertical axis, so that Grainger caught him with one iron hand on his spine and the other on his upper belly, winding him to such an extent that he could scarcely gasp out a word of thanks. Then, when he had at last recovered his breath and the power of speech, it was found that his chair had to be made fast to two ring-bolts to allow him to hold his 'cello with anything like ease or even safety.

He had a Geronimo Amati at home, just as Aubrey had a treasured Guarnieri, but they travelled with rough old things that could put up with extremes of temperature and humidity. The rough old things always started the evening horribly flat, but in time the players tuned them to their own satisfaction, and exchanging a nod they dashed away into a duet which they knew very well indeed, having played it together these ten years and more, but in which they always found something fresh, some half-forgotten turn of phrase or of particular felicity. They also added new pieces of their own, small improvisations or repetitions, each player in turn. They might have pleased Corelli's ghost, as showing what power his music still possessed for a later generation: they certainly did not please Preserved Killick, the Captain's steward. 'Yowl, yowl, yowl,' he said to his mate on hearing the familiar sounds. 'They are at it again. I have a mind to put ratsbane in their toasted cheese.'