Master & Commander (8 page)

'
Christe
,' hummed James Dillon under his breath, shaving the red-gold bristles off his face in what light could make its way through the scuttle of the
Burford's
number twelve gun-port. '
Christe eleison. Kyrie
. . .' This was less piety in James Dillon than a way of hoping he should not cut himself; for like so many Papists he was somewhat given to blasphemy. The difficulty of the planes under his nose silenced him, however, and when his upper lip was clean he could not hit the note again. In any case, his mind was too busy to be seeking after an elusive neume, for he was about to report to a new captain, a man upon whom his comfort and ease of mind was to depend, to say nothing of his reputation, career and prospects of advancement.

   Stroking his shining smoothness, he hurried out into the ward-room and shouted for a marine. 'Just brush the back of my coat, will you, Curtis? My chest is quite ready, and the bread-sack of books is to go with it,' he said. 'Is the captain on deck?'

   'Oh no, sir, no,' said the marine. 'Breakfast only just carrying in this moment. Two hard-boiled eggs and one soft.'

   The soft-boiled egg was for Miss Smith, to recruit her from her labours of the night, as both the marine and Mr Dillon knew very well; but the marine's knowing look met with a total lack of response. James Dillon's mouth tightened, and for a fleeting moment as he ran up the ladder to the sudden brilliance of the quarter-deck it wore a positively angry expression. Here he greeted the officer of the watch and the
Burford's
first lieutenant. 'Good morning. Good morning to you. My word, you're very fine,' they said. 'There she lies: just beyond the Généreux.'

   His eyes ranged over the busy harbour: the light was so nearly horizontal that all the masts and yards assumed a strange importance, and the little skipping waves sent back a blinding sparkle.

   'No, no,' they said. 'Over by the sheer-hulk. The felucca has just masked her. There—now do you see her?'

   He did indeed. He had been looking far too high and his gaze had swept right over the
Sophie
as she lay there, not much above a cable's length away, very low in the water. He leant both hands on the rail and looked at her with unwinking concentration. After a while he borrowed the telescope from the officer of the watch and did the same again, with a most searching minute scrutiny. He could see the gleam of an epaulette, whose wearer could only be her captain and her people were as active as bees just about to swarm. He had been prepared for a little brig, but not be quite such a dwarfish vessel as this. Most fourteen-gun sloops were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty tons in burthen the
Sophie
could scarcely be more than a deed and fifty.

   'I like her little quarter-deck,' said the officer of the Watch. 'She was the Spanish
Vencejo
, was she not? And as for being rather low, why, anything you look at close to from a seventy-four looks rather low.'

   There were three things that everybody knew about the
Sophie
: one was that unlike almost all other brigs she had a quarter-deck; another was that she had been Spanish; and a third was that she possessed an elm-tree pump on her fo'c'sle, that is to say, a bored-out trunk that communicated directly with the sea and that was used for washing her deck—an insignificant piece of equipment, really, but one so far above her station that no mariner who saw it or heard of this pump ever forgot it.

   'Maybe your quarters will be a little cramped,' said the first lieutenant, 'but you will have a quiet, restful time of it, I am sure, convoying the trade up and down the Mediterranean.'

   'Well . . .' said James Dillon, unable to find a brisk retort to this possibly well-intentioned kindness. 'Well. . he said with a philosophical shrug. 'You'll let me have a boat, sir? I should like to report as early as I can.'

   'A boat? God rot my soul,' cried the first lieutenant, 'I shall be asked for the barge, next thing I know. Passengers in the
Burford
wait for a bumboat from shore, Mr Dillon; or else they swim.' He stared at James with cold severity until the quartermaster's chuckle betrayed him; for Mr Coffin was a great wag, a wag even before breakfast.

'Dillon, sir, reporting for duty, if you please,' said James taking off his hat in the brilliant sun and displaying a blaze of dark red hair.

   'Welcome aboard, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, touching his own, holding out his hand and looking at him with so intense a desire to know what kind of man he was, that his face had an almost forbidding acuity. 'You would be welcome in any case, but even more so this morning: we have a busy day ahead of us. Masthead, there! Any sign of life on the wharf?'

   'Nothing yet, sir.'

   'The wind is exactly where I want it,' said Jack, looking for the hundredth time at the rare white clouds sailing evenly across the perfect sky. 'But with this rising glass there is no trusting to it.'

   'Your coffee's up, sir,' said the steward.

   'Thank you, Killick. What is it, Mr Lamb?'

   'I haven't no ring-bolts anywheres near big enough, sir,' said the carpenter. 'But there's a heap on 'em at the yard, I know. May I send over?'

   'No, Mr Lamb. Don't you go near that yard, to save your life. Double the clench-bolts you have; set up the forge and fashion a serviceable ring. It won't take you half an hour. Now, Mr Dillon, when you have settled in comfortably below, perhaps you will come and drink a cup of coffee with me and I will tell you what I have in mind.'

   James hurried below to the three-cornered booth that he was to live in, whipped out of his reporting uniform into trousers and an old blue coat, reappearing while Jack was still blowing thoughtfully upon his cup. 'Sit down, Mr Dillon, sit down,' he cried. 'Push those papers aside. It's a sad brew, I'm afraid, but at least it is wet, that I can promise you. Sugar?'

   'If you please, sir,' said young Ricketts, 'the
Généreux's
cutter is alongside with the men who were drafted off for harbour-duty.'

   'All of 'em?'

   'All except two, sir, that have been changed.'

   Still holding his coffee-cup, Jack writhed from behind the table and with a twist of his body out through the door Hooked on to the larboard main-chains there was the
Généreux's
boat, filled with seamen, looking up, laughing and exchanging witticisms or mere hoots and whistles with their former shipmates The
Généreux's
midshipman saluted and said, 'Captain Harte's compliments, sir, and he finds the draft can be spared'

   'God bless your heart, dear Molly,' said Jack and aloud, 'My compliments and best thanks to Captain Harte. Be so good as to send them aboard'

   They were not much to look at, he reflected, as the whip from the yardarm hoisted up their meagre belongings: three or four were decidedly simple, and two others had that indefinable air of men of some parts whose cleverness sets them apart from their fellows, but not nearly so far as they imagine. Two of the boobies were quite horribly dirty, and one had managed to exchange his slops for a red garment with remains of tinsel upon it. Still, they all possessed two hands; they could all clap on to a rope; and it would be strange if the bosün and his mates could not induce them to heave.

   'Deck,' hailed the midshipman aloft. 'Deck. There is someone moving about on the wharf.'

   'Very good, Mr Babbington. You may come down and have your breakfast now. Six hands I thought lost for good,' he said to James Dillon with intense satisfaction, turning back to the cabin. 'They may not be much to look at—indeed, I think we must rig a tub if we are not to have an itchy ship—but they will help us weigh. And I hope to weigh by half-past nine at the latest.' Jack rapped the brass-bound wood of the locker and went on, 'We will ship two long twelves as chase-pieces, if I can get them from Ordnance. But whether or no I am going to take the sloop out while this breeze lasts, to try her paces. We convoy a dozen merchant-men to Cagliari, sailing this evening if they are all here, and we must know how she handles. Yes, Mr . . . Mr . . .?'

   'Pullings, sir: master's mate.
Burford's
long-boat alongside with a draft.'

   'A draft for us? How many?'

   'Eighteen, sir.'
And rum-looking cullies some of 'em are
, he would have added, if he had dared.

   'Do you know anything about them, Mr Dillon?' asked Jack.

   'I knew the
Burford
had a good many of the
Charlotte's
people and some from the receiving ships as drafts for Mahon, sir; but I never heard of any being meant for the
Sophie
.'

   Jack was on the point of saying, 'And there I was, worrying about being stripped bare,' but he contented himself with chuckling and wondering why this cornucopia should have poured itself out on him. 'Lady Warren,' came the reply, in a flash of revelation. He laughed again, and said, 'Now I am going across to the wharf, Mr Dillon. Mr Head is a businesslike man and he will tell me whether the guns are to be had or not within half an hour. If they are, I will break out my handkerchief and you can start carrying out the warps directly. What now, Mr Richards?'

   'Sir,' said the pale clerk, 'Mr Purser says I should bring you the receipts and letters to sign this time every day, and the fair-copied book to read.'

   'Quite right,' said Jack mildly. 'Every ordinary day. Presently you will learn which is ordinary and which is not.' He glanced at his watch. 'Here are the receipts for the men. Show me the rest another time.'

   The scene on deck was not unlike Cheapside with roadwork going on: two parties under the carpenter and his crew were making ready the places for the hypothetical bow- and stern-chasers, and parcels of assorted landmen and boobies stood about with their baggage, some watching the work with an interested air, offering comments, others gaping vacantly about, gazing into the sky as though they had never seen it before. One or two had even edged on to the holy quarter-deck.

   'What in God's name is this infernal confusion?' cried jack. 'Mr Watt, this is a King's ship, not the Margate hoy. You, sir, get away for'ard.'

   For a moment, until his unaffected blaze of indignation galvanized them into activity, the
Sophie's
warrant officers gazed at him sadly he caught the words 'all these people . . .'

   'I am going ashore,' he went on 'By the time I come back this deck will present a very different appearance'

   He was still red in the face as he went down into the boat after the midshipman. 'Do they really imagine I shall leave an able-bodied man on shore if I can cram him aboard?' he said to himself. 'Of course, their precious three watches will have to go. And even so, fourteen inches will be hard to find.'

   The three-watch system was a humane arrangement that allowed the men to sleep a whole night through from time to time, whereas with two watches four hours was the most they could ever hope for; but on the other hand it did mean that half the men had the whole of the available space to sling their hammocks, since the other half was on deck. 'Eighteen and six is twenty-four,' said jack, 'and fifty or thereabout, say seventy-five. And of those how many shall I watch?' He worked out this figure in order to multiply it by fourteen, for fourteen inches was the space the regulations allowed for each hammock: and it seemed to him very doubtful whether the
Sophie
possessed anything like that amount of room, whatever her official complement might be. He was still working at it when the midshipman called, 'Unrow. Boat your oars,' and they kissed gently against the wharf.

   'Go back to the ship now, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack on an impulse. 'I do not suppose I shall be long, and it may save a few minutes.'

   But with the
Burford's
draft he had missed his chance: other captains were there before him now and he had to wait his turn. He walked up and down in the brilliant morning sun with one whose epaulette matched his own—Middleton, whose greater pull had enabled him to snap up the command of the
Vertueuse
, the charming French privateer that would have been Jack's had there been any justice in the world. When they had exchanged the naval gossip of the Mediterranean, Jack remarked that he had come for a couple of twelve-pounders.

   'Do you think she'll bear them?' asked Middleton.

   'I hope so. Your four-pounder is a pitiful thing: though I must confess I feel anxious for her knees.'

   'Well, I hope so, too,' said Middleton, shaking his head. 'At all events you have come on the right day: it seems that Head is to be placed under Brown, and he has taken such a at it that he is selling off his stock like a fishwife at the end of the fair.'

   Jack had already heard something of this development in the long, long squabble between the Ordnance Board and the Navy Board, and he longed to hear more; but at this moment Captain Halliwell came out, smiling all over his face, and Middleton, who had some faint remains of concience, said, 'You take my turn. I shall be an age, with my carronades to explain.'

   'Good morning, sir,' said Jack. 'I am Aubrey, of the
Sophie
, and I should like to try a couple of long twelves, you please.'

   With no change in his melancholy expression, Mr Head said, 'You know what they weigh?'

   'Something in the nature of thirty-three hundredweight, I believe.'

   'Thirty-three hundredweight, three pounds, three ounces, three pennyweight. Have a dozen, Captain, if you feel she will bear them.'

   'Thank you: two will be plenty,' said Jack, looking sharply to see whether he were being made game of.

   'They are yours, then, and upon your own head be it,' said Mr Head with a sigh, making secret marks upon a worn, curling parchment slip. 'Give it to the master-parker and he will troll you out as pretty a pair as ever the heart of man could desire. I have some neat mortars, if you have room.'

   'I am extremely obliged to you, Mr Head,' said Jack, laughing with pleasure. 'I wish the rest of the service were run so.'

   'So do I, Captain, so do I,' cried Mr Head, his face growing suddenly dark with passion. 'There are some slack-arsed, bloody-minded men—flute-playing, fiddle-scraping, present-seeking, tale-bearing, double-poxed hounds that would keep you waiting about for a month; but I am not one of them. Captain Middleton, sir: carronades for you, I presume?'