The Surgeon's Mate (34 page)

'Never mind, gentlemen,' said the Admiral, 'there is still glory to be picked up in the Baltic - look at Aubrey here, as far as you can see him for his fresh laurels - and in any case who cares about filthy lucre?'

Some of the captains looked as though they cared very much indeed, and one even observed 'Non olet' in an undertone; but when the Admiral called down the table to his flag-lieutenant, desiring him to 'tip us Heart of Oak', they listened to the young man's pure tenor with great approval as he sang 'Come cheer up my lads, 'tis to glory we steer,' and they joined in the chorus:

Heart of oak are our ships,

Heart of oak are our men,

We always are ready,

Steady, boys, steady...

with a fine growling roar, the last deep steady making the wine ripple in the decanters.

'We are singing about glory, sir,' said the Admiral to Colonel d'Ullastret.

'There is no better subject for a song,' said the Colonel. 'Far more suitable than whining about some woman. I am a great friend to glory; and to song. With your permission, I will sing you one about Lord Peterbuggah and my grandfather, when they took Barcelona together - the most glorious feat of united British and Catalan arms."

The song was quite remarkably well received: indeed the whole afternoon passed off very pleasantly, not only in the flagship but aboard the transports too, where ring within ring of Catalans danced the sardana on the forecastle to the sound of oboes and a little drum, while during the intervals the foremasthands showed them the finer points of the hornpipe.

'Lord, Stephen,' said Jack, when they had returned to the Ariel, 'I do not know that I have ever been so sleepy: I shall turn in as soon as we have unmoored."

'Surely we are not to set off again without a pause, for all love?'

'Eh?'

'Are we to set off at once? And on a Friday too?'

'Yes, of course we are. You said yourself that the sooner they were repatriated the better; the Admiral and the politico quite agreed; so here it is in my orders. You had better look at them: they speak of you. And as for its being Friday, I don't believe in omens any more, not after this last caper.'

'We really might be a parcel of Wandering Jews,' said Stephen in a discontented voice. He took the orders and observed, 'There seems to be a somewhat petulant insistence upon command and authority here. After so agreeable and shall I say matey afternoon I should have looked for My dear Aubrey rather than this cold and peremptory Sir; and surely the whole tenor is arrogant, devoid of common amenity, calculated to arouse a spirit of indignant revolt. Sir, You are hereby required and directed to proceed without a moment's loss of time, in His Majesty's ship under your command, together with the ships and vessels named in the margin, to Hano Bay, where you will find a convoy under the protection of His Majesty's ships... I wish Humbug had been among them: such pompous hectoring tautologous semi-literate stuff... you will leave the convoy when you reach the Broad Fourteens and make your way with the utmost diligence to the Bordeaux stream, where you may expect to find His Majesty's ship Eurydice for intelligence of the situation in the Bight of Biscay; failing her you will proceed to Santandero or Passages for the same purpose... and in all matters having to do with the landing of the Spanish troops you will follow the advice of Dr S. Maturin, who alone is to determine... seek his guidance on the opportunity of... Marquess of Wellington... submit to his judgment... A man of any spirit would be more inclined to toss S. Maturin into the sea than to ask his advice after this... Spanish troops, forsooth.' He had been aware for some time that Jack was asleep, but he maundered on until Hyde came in with the news that the Ariel's signal to proceed to sea was flying aboard the flagship.

Light airs all night, wafting the Ariel and her charges south and westward through a gathering haze, her captain as it were stunned in the ultimate depth of sleep. Towards five o'clock he began to snore, a profound, deliberate, rhythmic sound that filled the cabin. 'Ah, your soul to the devil, Jack,' said Stephen, making an ineffectual lunge towards his cot. The snoring continued: Stephen thrust the wax balls deeper into his ears; but no bee had yet made the wax that would keep Captain Aubrey out and presently Stephen left his bed in despair.

A little after the changing of the watch the noise stopped and Jack sat up, wholly alive and conscious. It was not the noise of the ship's bell that woke him, for it had been tolling all night, ever since they entered the fog, with a musket-shot every two minutes, nor the sound of the swabs and the holystones, which were something of a lullaby to him, nor yet the light of day, there being so very little of it, but rather the working of some calculating-machine within that had sensed the shifting of the wind both in force and direction, and plotting these against the variations in the ship's course, with allowance for leeway and indraught, now informed him that they had opened Hano Bay.

He sat up, saw that Stephen's cot was empty, opened the slide of the dark-lantern, looked at the tell-tale compass overhead, looked at the barometer - still sinking steadily - silently drew on his clothes and crept out, moving with great caution in case he should wake Colonel d'Ullastret, who, the little ship being so crowded, slept in the dining-cabin, an ever-present menace.

On deck he could scarcely see beyond the bowsprit, but he heard the convoy at once, a remote braying of conchs, the sound of bells, the occasional musket, and far off the thump of the escort's signal-gun: the senior captain keeping his flock together. He exchanged good mornings with the pilot and the officer of the watch, noticed that although the courses and topsails hung slack from their yards the invisible topgallants must be drawing, since the ship made more than steerage-way, and looked at the log-board, saying, 'Well, Mr Pellworm, how long do you think it will last?'

'Well, sir,' said the pilot, 'I reckon it will burn off with the sun: but I don't quite like the way the glass keeps dropping. I dare say it will start to blow from the north presently, and then back into the west; and with all this here convoy, the Langelands Belt is none too wide.'

Some freak of the air brought a passionate skipper's cry, 'If you foul my hawse I'll cut your cable, you hulking Dutch-built bugger,' as clear as if he had been only a hundred yards off, instead of far along the bay; and immediately afterwards Stephen's voice floated down from the upper regions to say that if Captain Aubrey chose to come up he would see a most remarkable sight; he might make the ascent quite easily and safely by the ropes on the left, on the larboard side looking forward.

'What the devil did you let him get up there for?' said Jack, frowning upon Mr Fenton. 'He must be at the crosstrees.' And pitching his voice aloft, 'Hold fast. Do not move. I am with you this minute.'

'I am very sorry, sir,' said Fenton. 'They said they were just going into the top: Mr Jagiello is with him.'

'You might perhaps term it a hapax phenomenon,' said Stephen.

'Hapax phenomenon,' muttered Jack, climbing fast. They were not at the crosstrees: by some miracle they had managed to reach the topgallantyard and to crawl out on it. There they stood, their feet upon the horses, their hands grasping various ropes, leaning over the yard, very much at their ease. Physically very much at their ease, with Stephen positively gay: Jagiello, however, was far less cheerful than usual. 'There,' cried Stephen when Jack appeared in the frail topgallant-shrouds, 'are you not amazed?" He pointed cautiously with one finger and Jack looked out to the south-west. At this height they were above the low blanket of fog that covered the sea: clear sky above, no water below; no deck even, but a smooth layer of white mist, sharply cut off from the clean air; and ahead, on the starboard bow and on the starboard beam the surface of the soft, opaque whiteness was pierced by an infinity of masts, all striking up from this unearthly ground into a sky without a cloud, a sky that might have belonged to an entirely different world. 'Are you not amazed?' he said again.

Jack was ordinarily a good-natured man, but today he had not breakfasted and in any case the sight of his friend trusting his life to an unstoppered signal-halliard was more than he could bear. He roared, 'On deck. Belay the signal-halliard. Belay everything that belongs to the maintopgallant,' and said, 'Amazed and gratified. Stephen, leave go that rope, clap on to the yard and come in towards the tye. I will guide your feet.'

'Oh,' said Stephen, giving a galvanic leap and throwing his arms about, 'I am not at all nervous. Now that I cannot see the deck, it is as though the height were abolished. I am not at all nervous, I assure you. But tell me, have you ever beheld such a sight?'

'Not above a few hundred times,' said Jack. 'We call it the day-blink: it often happens when the breeze lies just so, or dies away - it will clear as soon as the sun is well up. But I am very grateful for having been called aloft before breakfast to see it again. Put your foot here, round the stirrup - you have fouled the stirrup. Your shoe is foul of the mouse. Mr Jagiello, leave that becket alone. Stephen, give me your hand: handsomely, now; handsomely does it.' At this point Stephen dropped abruptly from the yard; not perpendicularly, however, for Jack's powerful arm swung him inwards to the cap, while the shoe continued its free fall to the deck. 'Thank you, Jack,' he said, gasping, as he was settled on the crosstrees with a turn about his middle.

'I am obliged to you. I must have made a false movement.'

'Perhaps you did,' said Jack. 'But what in God's name are you doing up here anyway? Jagiello, leave that becket alone. You know I have begged you both not to go above the top.'

'The fact of the matter is that Mr Jagiello is in an embarrassing position.'

'He will be in kingdom come if he don't leave go that becket. Mr Jagiello, leave go that becket: clap on to the robbens with both hands and come in to the big block in the middle.'

'We could not discuss it on the deck, since the people kept desiring us to move out of the swabbers' way, so we went up to the top; but there again buckets of water were flinging about, so we climbed still higher. He has found a woman in his bed.'

'Just so, just so,' said Jack. 'Mr Fenton, secure the Doctor's shoe.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jagiello, who had worked his way to the backbrace and whose blushing face now peered down at them. 'I found her there when I went to my cabin just now.'

'What had you been doing all night?'

'I had been playing cards in the gunroom with the Catalan officers.'

'And I collect that she is not wanted on the voyage?'

'Oh no, sir: not at all.'

It occurred to Jack that this was a very ridiculous place for a conference of such a nature, with the two landsmen poised in awkward postures between heaven and earth and himself deprived of his breakfast. He called down, 'Mr Fenton, send me up a couple of prime upperyardmen with a snatch-block and line for a whip.'

While they were coming Stephen said in a low voice, 'There: it is almost gone. And yet in its prosaic way this is almost as striking.' The mist, lifting and dissolving with the first rays of the sun, showed 783 vessels all merchantmen except for one frigate, the old Juno, three sloops-of-war and a cutter. 'Never have I had so strong an impression of the vast magnitude of sea-borne trade, of mercantile enterprise, of the interdependence of nations."

'There is Ahus,' said Jack, nodding towards a town, now clear on the shore of the bay. 'The lady will take her breakfast on dry land. Mr Fenton, lower down the gig.'

The topmen came running up, one of them bearing Stephen's shoe: Jack cast a loop round his waist, made all fast, bade him hold on to the knot, called 'Lower handsomely,' and Stephen made his ignominious descent, as he had often done before.

Jagiello followed him, and then Jack: broad grins on the quarterdeck, and a lively air of expectation. 'Now, Mr Jagiello,' said Jack, 'you must signify to the lady that she is to be over the side in two minutes. There is not a moment to be lost.'

'If you please, sir,' said Jagiello, blushing to the eyes, 'I had rather not. It would seem so unkind; and it would take so very long - tears, you know, and reclamations. Perhaps Mr Pellworm would be so infinitely obliging; he knows her, and he speaks the Swedish. Mr Pellworm is a married man.'

'You are acquainted with the lady, Mr Pellworm?'

'From afar, sir, from afar. I have seen the young person from afar. Who has not, that has ever put into Carlscrona and attended the theatre? I may have spoken to her once or twice, just to pass the time of day, as I did when she came aboard, but only when I was with officers, the young person being known to one and all, to all and sundry, sir, as the Gentlemen's Relish; and I hope I know my station. Besides, I am told she is now the Governor's private piece... a singing harlot of enormous price, in the words of the poet. But if you wish me to turn her ashore, sir, I will speak to her now - speak to her like a Dutch uncle.'

'Ay, pray do, Mr Pellworm,' said Jack. 'A man-of-war is no place for women.'

Pellworm nodded, and he walked off with a heavy tread, composing his face into a severe, determined, and even brutal expression.

A singing harlot she might be, but it was in a singularly harsh and unmusical voice that she addressed the Ariel from over the water as the stolid, reliable, middle-aged forecastle hands rowed her ashore.

'What does she say?' asked Stephen.

'Loins as hot as a goat, Heart as cold as a stcne,' said Pellworm. 'That is poetry too.'

'It is not true. She knows nothing whatever about my loins: has never seen them,' cried Jagiello from his lurking-place on the far side of the mizen-mast. He added, 'I never invited her, and I begged her to go away.'

'If only all these problems could be resolved so easily,' murmured Jack as he watched the Gentlemen's Relish growing smaller and smaller. 'Mr Fenton, we may edge down on the Juno and pick up the gig on the way.'

Stephen glanced at him and at Jagiello. 'Poltroons,' he said to himself, 'Scrubs.' And looking along the deck he noticed that apart from a few grinning ill-conditioned men and boys most of the hands looked ashamed and concerned.