H.M.S. Surprise (10 page)

'Perfectly fit, my dear,' cried Stephen, flushing with new life. 'And Aubrey left his sponging-house the moment Fanshaw's clerk released him, one tide ahead of a flood of writs, He instantly repaired aboard the press-tender, went up to the Pool of London, and so to ground at the Grapes.'

'Let us turn to the details.'

'Bonden,' cried Stephen, 'take pen and ink, and write -''Write, sir?' cried Bonden.

'Yes. Sit square to your paper, and write: Landsdowne Crescent - Barret Bonden, are you brought by the lee?'

'Why, yes, sir; that I am - fair broached-to. Though I can read pretty quick, if in broad print; I can make out a watch-bill.'

'Never mind. I shall show you the way of it when we are at sea, however: it is no great matter - look at the fools who write all day long - but it is useful, by land. You can ride a horse, sure?'

'Which I have rid a horse, sir; and three or four times, too, when ashore.'

'Well. Be so good as to step - to jump - round to the Paragon and let Miss Williams know that if her afternoon walk should chance to lead her by Landsdowne Crescent, she would oblige mc infinitely; then to the Saracen's Head - my compliments to Mr Pullings, and I should be very glad to see him as soon as he has a moment.'

'Paragon it is, sir, and Saracen's Head: to proceed to Landsdowne Crescent at once.'

'You may run, Bonden, if you choose. There is not a moment to be lost.'

The front door banged; feet tearing away left-handed down the crescent, and a long, long pause. A blackbird singing for the faint approach of spring in the gardens the other side of the road; the dismal voice of a corn-cutter chanting 'Work if I had it - Work if I had it' coming closer, dying away. Reflections upon the aetiology of corns; upon Mrs Williams's bile-duct. The front door again, echoing in the empty house - the Keiths and all their servants but a single crone were away - footsteps on the stairs, continual gay prattle. He frowned. The door opened and Sophia and Cecilia walked in, with Bonden winking and jerking his thumb behind their heads.

'Lord, Dr Maturin,' cried Cecilia, 'you are abed! I declare. Why, I am in a gentleman's bedroom at last -that is to say, I don't mean at last at all, but how are you? I suppose you have just come from the bath, and are sweating. Well, and how are you? We met Bonden just as we were going out, and I said at once, I must ask how he does: we have not seen you since Tuesday! Mama was quite -'

A thundering double knock below; Bonden vanished. Powerful sea-going voices on the stairs - a booming remark about the 'oakum-topped piece' which could only refer to Cecilia and her much-teazed yellow hair - and Mr Pullings made his appearance, a tall, kind-looking, loose-limbed young man, a follower of Jack Aubrey's, as far as so unfortunate a captain could be said to have followers.

'You know Mr Pullings of the Navy, I believe?' said Stephen.

Of course they knew him - he had been twice to Melbury Lodge - Cecilia had danced with him. 'Such fun!' she cried, looking at him with great complacency. 'How I love balls.'

'Your Mama tells mc you also have a fine taste in art,' said Stephen. 'Mr Pullings, pray show Miss Cecilia Lord Keith's new Titian: it is in the gallery, together with a great many other pictures. And Pullings, explain the battle scene, the Glorious First of June. Explain it in particular detail, if you please,' he called after them. 'Sophie, my dear, briskly now: take pen and paper. Write:

"Dear Jack,

We have a ship, Surprise, for the East Indies, and must join at Plymouth instantly..

ha, ha, what will he say to that?'

'Surprise!' was what he said, in a voice that made the windows of the Grapes' one-pair front tremble. In the bar Mrs Broad dropped a glass.

'The Captain's had a surprise,' she said, gazing placidly at the pieces.

'I hope it is a pleasant one,' said Nancy, picking them up. 'Such a pretty gentleman.' The travel-worn Pullings, discreetly turned to the window as Jack read his letter, spun about at the cry.

'Surprise! God love my heart, Pullings: do you know what the Doctor has done? He has found us a ship -Surprise for the East Indies - join at once. Killick, Killick! Sea-chest, portmanteau, small valise; and jump round to the office: insides on the Plymouth mail.'

'You won't go down by no mail-coach, sir,' said Killick, 'nor no po'shay neither, not with all them bums lining the shore. I'll lay on a hearse, a genteel four-'orse-'earse.'

'Surprise!' cried Jack again. 'I have not set foot in her since I was a midshipman.' He saw her plain, lying there a cable's length from him in the brilliant sunshine of English Harbour, a trim, beautiful little eight-and-twenty, French-built with a bluff bow and lovely lines, weatherly, stiff, a fine sea-boat, fast when she was well-handled, roomy, dry... He had sailed in her under a taut captain and an even tauter first lieutenant - had spent hours and hours banished to the masthead - had done most of his reading there - had carved his initials on the cap: were they still to be seen? She was old, to be sure, and called for nursing; but what a ship to command... He dismissed the ungrateful thought that there was never a prize to be looked for in the Indian Ocean - swept clear long ago - and said, 'We could give Agamemnon mainsail and topgallants, sailing on a bowline... I shall have the choice of one or two officers, for sure. Shall you come, Pullings?'

'Why, in course, sir,' - surprised.

'Mrs Pullings no objection? No - eh?'

'Mrs Pullings will pipe her eye, I dare say; but then presently she will brighten up. And I dare say she will be main pleased to see me back again at the end of the commission; more pleased than now is, maybe. I get sadly underfoot, among the brooms and pans. It ain't like aboard ship, sir, the marriage-state.'

'Ain't it, Pullings?' said Jack looking at him wistfully.

Stephen went on with his dictation: 'Surprise, to carry H.M. envoy to the Sultan of Kampong. Mr Taylor at the Admiralty is au courant: has the necessary papers all ready. I calculate that if you take the Bath road and fork off at Dayrolle's you should pass Wolmer Cross at about four in the morning of the third, thus going aboard during the debtors' truce of Sunday. I shall wait for you at the Cross for a while in a chaise, and if I am not so fortunate as to see you, I shall proceed with Bonden and expect you at the Blue Posts. She is a frigate, it appears, of the smaller kind; she is short of officers, men, and - unless Sir Joseph spoke in jocular hyperbole - of a bottom.

In haste-

Mend your pace, Sophie. Come come. You would never grow fat as a scrivener. Cannot you spell hyperbole? Is it done at last, for all love? Show.'

'Never,' cried Sophie, folding it up.

'I believe you have put in more than ever I said,' said Stephen, narrowing his eyes. 'You blush extremely. Have you at least the rendezvous just so?'

'Wolmer Cross at four in the morning of the third. Stephen, I shall be there. I shall get out of my window and over the garden wall: you must take me up at the corner.'

'Very well. But why will you not walk out at the front door like a Christian? And how are you going to get back? You will be hopelessly compromised if you are seen stalking about Bath at dawn.'

'So much the better,' said Sophie. 'Then I shall have no reputation left whatsoever, and shall have to be married as soon as possible - why did I not think of that before? Oh Stephen, you have beautiful ideas.'

'Well. At the corner, then, at half past three. Put on a warm cloak, two pair of stockings, and thick woollen drawers. It will be cold; we may have to wait a great while; and even then as like as not we shall not see him, which will chill you even more - for you are to consider, that a disappointment on top of the falling damps - hush: give me the letter.'

Half past three in the morning; a strong north-easter howling among the chimney-pots of Bath; the sky clear, and a lop-sided moon peering down into the Paragon. The door of number seven opened just enough to let Sophie out and then slammed with a most horrid crash, drawing the attention of a group of drunken soldiers, who instantly gave tongue. Sophie walked with a great air of resolution and purpose towards the corner, seeing with despair no sign of a coach - nothing but a row of doorways stretching on for ever under the moon, quite unearthly, strange, inhuman, deserted, and inimical. Steps behind her, overtaking - faster and faster; a low cry, 'It's me, miss, Bonden,' and in a moment they were round the corner, climbing into the old leather smell of the first of two post-chaises drawn up at a discreet distance from the house. The postboys' red jackets looked black in the moon.

Her heart was going so fast that she could hardly speak for five minutes. 'How strange it is at night,' she said when they were climbing out of the town. 'As though everyone were dead. Look at the river - it is perfectly black. I have never been out at this time before.'

'No, my dear, I do not suppose you have,' said Stephen.

'Is it like this every night?'

'It is sweeter sometimes - this cursed wind blows warm in other latitudes - but always at night the old world comes into its own. Hark there, now. Do you hear her? She must be in the woods above the church.' The hellish shrieking of a vixen it was, enough to chill the blood of an apostle; but Sophie was busy peering at Stephen in the faint moonlight, plucking his garments. 'Why,' she cried, 'you have come out without even so much as your dreadful torn old greatcoat. Oh, Stephen, how can you be so abandoned? Let me wrap you in my cloak; it is lined with fur.'

Stephen eagerly resisted the cloak, explaining that once the skin had a certain degree of protection, once it was protected from dissipating its natural heat by a given depth of integument, then all other covering was not only superfluous but harmful.

'The case is not the same with a horseman, however,' he said. 'I strongly recommended Thomas Pullings to place a sheet of oiled silk between his waistcoat and his shirt before setting out; the mere motion of the horse, independently of the velocity of the wind, would carry away the emanent cushion of warmth, could it pierce so far. In a reasonably-constructed coach, on the other hand, we need fear nothing of the kind. Shelter from the wind is everything; the contented Eskimo, sheltered in his house of snow, laughs at the tempest, and passes his long winter's night in hospitable glee. A reasonably-constructed carriage, I say: I should never advise you to career over the steppes of Tartary in a tarantass with your bosom bare to the winds, or covered only with a cotton shift. Nor yet a jaunting-car.'

Sophia promised that she should never do so; and wrapped in this capacious cloak they once again calculated the distance from London to Bath, Pullings's speed in going up, Jack's in coming down. 'You must make up your mind not to be disappointed, my dear,' said Stephen. 'The likelihood of his keeping - not the appointment, but rather the suggestion that I threw out, is very slight. Think of the accidents in a hundred miles of road, the possibility, nay the likelihood, of his falling off - the horse flinging him down and breaking its knees, the dangers of travel, such as footpads, highwaymen... but hush, I must not alarm you.'

The post-chaises had slowed to little more than a walk. 'We must be near the Cross,' said Stephen, looking out of the window. Here the road mounted between trees - the white ribbon was lost in long patches of total darkness. Into the trees, whistling and sighing in the north-easter; and there, in one of the pools of light among them, stood a horseman. The postboy caught sight of him at the same moment, reined in, and called back to the chaise behind, 'It's Butcher Jeffrey, Tom. Shall ee turn around?'

'There's two more of un behind us, terrible great murdering devils. Do ee bide still, Amos, and be meek. Mind master's horses, and tip 'em the civil.'

The quick determined clip of hooves, and Sophia whispered, 'Don't shoot, Stephen.'

Glancing back from the open window, Stephen said, 'My dear, I have no intention of shooting. I have -,

But now here was the horse pulled up at the window, its hot breath steaming in, and a great dark form leaning low over its withers, shutting out the moonlight and filling the chaise with the civilest murmur in the world, 'I beg your pardon, sir, for troubling you -,

'Spare me,' cried Stephen. 'Take all I have - take this young woman - but spare me, spare me!'

'I knew it was you, Jack,' said Sophia, clasping his hand. 'I knew directly. Oh, I am so glad to see you, my dear!'

'I will give you half an hour,' said Stephen. 'Not a moment more: this young woman must be back in her warm bed before cock-crow.'

He walked back to the other chaise, where Killick, with infinite satisfaction, was telling Bonden of their departure from London - a hearse as far as Putney, with Mr Pullings in a mourning-coach behind, bums by the score on either side of the road, pulling their hats off and bowing respectful. 'I wouldn't a missed it, I wouldn't a missed it, no, not for a bosun's warrant.'

Stephen paced up and down; he sat in the chaise; he paced up and down - conversed with Pullings on the young man's Indian voyages, listened greedily to his account of the prostrating heat of the Hooghly anchorages, the stifling country behind, the unforgivable sun, the heat beating even from the moon by night. 'If I do not reach a warm climate soon,' he observed, 'you may bury me, and say, "He, of mere misery, perished away." He pressed the button of his repeater, and in a lull of the wind the little silvery bell struck four and then three for the quarters. Not a sound from the chaise ahead; but as he stood, irresolute, the door opened, Jack handed Sophia out and cried, 'Bonden, back to the Paragon in t'other coach with Miss Williams. Come down by the mail. Sophie, my dear, jump in. God bless you.'

'God bless and keep you, Jack. Make Stephen wrap himself in the cloak. And remember, for ever and ever

- whatever they say, for ever and ever and ever.'

CHAPTER FIVE

The sun beat down from its noon-day height upon Bombay, imposing a silence upon that teeming city, so that even in the deepest bazaars the steady beat of the surf could be heard - the panting of the Indian Ocean, dull ochre under a sky too hot to be blue, a sky waiting for the south-west monsoon; and at the same moment far, far to the westward, far over Africa and beyond, it heaved up to the horizon and sent a fiery dart to strike the limp royals and topgallants of the Surprise as she lay becalmed on the oily swell a little north of the line and some thirty degrees west of Greenwich.

The blaze of light moved down to the topsails, to the courses, shone upon the snowy deck, and it was day. Suddenly the whole of the east was day: the sun lit the sky to the zenith and for a moment the night could be seen over the starboard bow, fleeting away towards America. Mars, setting a handsbreadth above the western rim, went out abruptly; the entire bowl of the sky grew brilliant and the dark sea returned to its daily blue, deep blue.

'By your leave, sir,' cried the captain of the afterguard, bending over Dr Maturin and shouting into the bag that covered his head. 'If you please, now.'

'What is it?' asked Stephen at last, with a bestial snarl.

'Nigh on four bells, sir.'

'Well, what of it? Sunday morning, surely to God, and you would be at your holystoning?' The bag, worn against the moon-pall, stifled his words but not the whining tone of a man jerked from total relaxation and an erotic dream. The frigate was stifling between-decks; she was more than ordinarily overcrowded with Mr Stanhope and his suite; and he had slept on deck, walked upon by each changing watch.

'These old pitch-spots,' said the captain of the after-guard in a wheedling, reasoning voice. 'What would the quarterdeck look like with all these old pitch-spots when we come to rig church?' Then, as Dr Maturin showed signs of going to sleep again, he returned to 'By your leave, sir. By your leave, if you please.'

In the heat the tar on the rigging melted and fell on the deck; the pitch used in caulking the seams melted too; and Stephen, plucking off his bag, saw that they had scrubbed, sanded and holystoned all round him - that he was in a spotted island, surrounded by impatient seamen, eager to be done with their work so that they could shave and put on their Sunday clothes. Sleep was hopelessly gone: he stood up, took his head right out of the bag, muttering. 'No peace in this infernal hulk, or tub - persecution -Judaic superstitious ritual cleanliness - archaic fools,' and walked stiffly to the side. But as he stood the sun shot a grateful living warmth right into his bones: a cock in the nearby coop crowed, standing on tiptoe, and instantly a hen cried that she had laid an egg, an egg! He stretched, gazed about him, met the stony, disapproving faces of the afterguard and realised that the gumminess of his feet was caused by tar, pitch and resin on his shoes: a trail of dirty footsteps led across the clean deck from the place where he had slept to the rail where he now stood. 'Oh, I beg your pardon, Franklin,' he cried, 'I have dirtied the floor, I find. Come, give me a scraper - sand - a broom.'

The harsh looks vanished. 'No, no,' they cried - it was only a little pitch, not dirt - they would have it off in a moment. But Stephen had caught up a small holystone and he was earnestly spreading the pitch far, deep and wide, surrounded by a ring of anxious, flustered seamen when four bells struck, and to the infinite distress of the afterguard a huge shadow fell across the deck - the captain, stark naked and carrying a towel.

'Good morning, Doctor,' he said. 'What are you about?'

'Good morning, my dear,' said Stephen. 'It is this damned spot. But I shall have him out. I shall extirpate this spot.'

'What do you say to a swim?'

'With all my heart. In less than a moment. I have a theory - a trifle of sand, there, if you please. A small knife. No. No, my hypothesis was unsound. Perhaps aqua-regia, spirits of salt...

'Franklin, show the Doctor how we do it in the Navy. My dear fellow, if I might suggest taking off your shoes? Then they might not have to scrub right through the deck and leave His Excellency without a roof to his head.'

'An excellent suggestion,' said Stephen. He tiptoed barefoot to a carronade and sat looking at his upturned soles. 'Martial tells us that in his day the ladies of the town had sequi me engraved upon their sandals; from which it is reasonable to conclude, that Rome was uncommon muddy, for sand would scarcely hold the print. I shall swim the whole length of the ship today.'

Jack stepped on to the western rail and looked down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the light passing under the frigate's keel: her hull projected a purple underwater shadow westwards, sharp head and stern but vague beneath because of her trailing skirts of weeds - a heavy growth in spite of her new copper, for they had been a great while south of the tropic. No ominous lurking shape, however; only a school of shining little fishes and a few swimming crabs. 'Come on, then,' he said, diving in.

The sea was warmer than the air, but there was refreshment in the rush of bubbles along his skin, the water tearing through his hair, the clean salt taste in his mouth. Looking up he saw the silvery undersurface, the Surprise's hull hanging down through it and the clean copper near her water-line reflecting an extraordinary violet into the sea:

then a white explosion as Stephen shattered the mirror, plunging bottom foremost from the gangway, twenty feet above. His impetus bore him down and down, and Jack noticed that he was holding his nose: he was holding it still when he came to the surface, but then relinquished it to strike out in his usual way - short, cataleptic jerks, with his eyes tightly shut and his mouth clenched in savage determination. Some inherent leading quality about his person kept him very low in the water, his nose straining just clear of the surface; but he had made great progress since the day Jack had first dipped him over the side in a running bowline three days out from Madeira, two thousand miles and many weeks sailing to the north: or rather many weeks of trimming sail, hoping to catch a hint of a breeze in their royals and flying kites, and whistling for a wind; for although they had picked up the north-east trades off the Canaries and had run down twenty-five degrees of latitude, day after day of sweet sailing, hardly touching a sheet or a brace and often logging two hundred miles between noon and noon, the sun growing higher with every latitude they took, they had run into the Variables far north of the line, and hitherto they had not had a hint of the south-east trades, in spite of the fact that at this time of the year they were to be expected well above the equator. Three hundred miles now of calm or of capricious often baffling breezes - weeks of towing the ship's head round to take advantage of them, heaving round the yards, getting the fire-engine into the tops to wet the sails, buckets of water whipped up to the royals to help them draw - only to find the breeze die away or desert them to ruffle the sea ten miles away. But mostly dead calm and the Surprise drifting imperceptibly westwards on the equatorial current, very slowly turning upon herself. A lifeless sea, the swell invisible but for the sickening heave of the horizon as she rolled with no sail to steady her; almost no birds, very few fishes - the single turtle and yesterday's booby a nine days' wonder; never a sail under the pure dome of the sky; the sun beating down twelve hours a day. And they were running short of water... how long would the short allowance last? He dismissed the calculations for the moment and swam towards the boat towing behind, where Stephen was clinging to the gunwale and calling out something about the Hellespont, incomprehensible for the gasping.

'Did you see me?' he cried as Jack came nearer. 'I swam the entire length: four hundred and twenty strokes without a pause!'

'Well done,' said Jack, swinging himself into the boat with an easy roll. 'Well done indeed.' Each stroke must have propelled Stephen a little less than three inches, for the Surprise was only a twenty-eight gun ship, a sixth-rate of 579 tons - the kind so harshly called a jackass frigate by those not belonging to her. 'Should you like to come aboard? Let me give you a hand.'

'No, no,' cried Stephen, drawing away. 'I shall manage perfectly well. For the moment I am taking my ease. I thank you, however.' He hated to be helped. Even at the beginning of the voyage, when his poor twisted limbs would hardly carry him along the deck he had detested it, and yet daily he had made a stated number of turns from the taffrail to the break of the head and back again; daily, after they had reached the height of Lisbon, he had crawled into the mizen-top, allowing no man but Bonden to attend him, while Jack watched in agony from below and two hands darted about on deck with a fender to break his fall. And every evening he forced his mutilated hand to skip up and down the muted strings of his 'cello, while his set face turned a paler grey. But Lord, what progress he had made! This last frantic swim would have been infinitely beyond his strength only a month ago, to say nothing of their time in Portsmouth.

'What were you saying about the Hellespont?' he asked.

'How wide is it?'

'Why, not above a mile or so - point-blank range from either side.'

'The next time we go up the Mediterranean,' said Stephen, 'I shall swim it.'

'I am sure you will. If one hero could, I am sure another can.'

'Look, look! Surely that is a tern, just above the horizon,' cried Stephen.

'Where away?'

'There, there,' said Stephen, releasing his hold to point. He sank at once, bubbling; but his pointing hand remained above the surface. Jack seized it, heaved him inboard and said, 'Come, let us dart up the stern-ladder. I can smell our coffee, and we have a busy morning ahead of us.' He took the painter, pulled the boat up to the frigate's stern, and guided the ladder into Stephen's grasp.

The bell struck; and at the pipe of the bosun's call the hammocks came flying up, close on two hundred of them, to be stowed with lightning rapidity into the nettings, with their numbers all turned the same way; and in the rushing current of seamen Jack stood tall and magnificent in a flowered silk dressing-gown, looking sharply up and down the deck. The smell of coffee and bacon was almost more than he could bear, but he meant to see this operation through: it was by no means as brisk as he could wish, and some of those hammocks were flabby, dropsical objects. Hervey would have to start using a hoop again. Pullings, who had the morning watch, was forward, causing a hammock to be re-lashed in an un-Sunday tone of voice - he was obviously of the same opinion. It was Jack's usual custom to invite the officer of the morning watch and one of the youngsters to breakfast with him, but this was to be a particularly social day later on, and Callow, the squeaker in question, had burst out into an eruption of adolescent spots, enough to put a man off his appetite. Dear Pullings would certainly forgive him.

An eddy in the tide brought a civilian staggering over the quarterdeck. This was Mr Atkins, the envoy's secretary, an odd little man who had already given them a deal of

trouble - strange notions of his own importance, of the accommodation possible in a small frigate, and of seagoing customs; sometimes high and offended, sometimes over-familiar.

'Good morning, sir,' said Jack.

'Good morning, Captain,' cried Atkins, falling into step as Jack started his habitual pacing - no idea of the sacrosanctity of a captain, and in spite of his before-breakfast shrewishness Jack could hardly tell him of it himself. 'I have good news for you. His Excellency is far better today - far better than we have seen him since the beginning of the trip. I dare say he will take the air presently. And I think I may venture to hint,' he whispered, taking Jack's reluctant arm and breathing into his face, 'that an invitation to dinner might prove acceptable.'

'I am delighted to hear that he is better,' said Jack, disengaging himself. 'And I trust that we may soon have the pleasure of his company.'

'Oh, you need not be anxious - you need not make any great preparations. H.E. is quite simple - no distance or pride. A plain dinner will do very well. Shall we say today?'

'I think not,' said Jack, looking curiously at the little man by his side. 'I dine with the gunroom on Sunday. It is the custom.'

'But surely, Captain, surely no previous engagement can stand in the way - His Majesty's direct representative!'

'Naval custom is holy at sea, Mr Atkins,' said Jack, turning away and raising his voice. 'Foretop, there. Mind what you are about with that euphroe. Mr Callow, when Mr Pullings comes aft, be so good as to give him my compliments, and I should be glad if he would breakfast with me. I hope you will join us, Mr Callow.'

Breakfast at last, and the tide of Jack's native good humour rose. They were cramped, the four of them, in the coach - the great cabin had been given over to Mr Stanhope - but confinement was part of naval life, and easing himself round in his chair he stretched his legs, lit his cigar and said, 'Tuck in, youngster. Don't mind me. Look, there is a whole pile of bacon under that cover; it would be a sad shame to sent it away.'

In the agreeable pause that followed, broken only by the steady champ of the midshipman's jaws as he engulfed twenty-seven rashers, they heard the cry pass through the ship. 'D'ye hear there, fore and aft? Clean for muster at five bells. Duck frocks and white trousers. D'ye hear there, clean shirt and a shave at five bells.' They also heard, clear through the thin cabin bulkhead, the metallic voice of Mr Atkins, apparently haranguing his chief, and Mr Stanhope's quiet replies. The envoy was a remote, gentle, grey man, very well-bred, and it was a wonder that he should ever have attached such a bustling fellow to his service; Mr Stanhope had been ill when he came aboard, had suffered abominably from sea-sickness as far as Gibraltar, then again right down to the Canaries; and he relapsed in the heavy swell of the doldrums, when the Surprise, log-like on the heaving sea, often seemed to be about to roll her masts out. This relapse had been accompanied by a fit of the gout which, flying to his stomach, had kept him in his cabin. They had seen very little of the poor gentleman.