The Wine-Dark Sea (7 page)

If there had been any danger of Stephen's forgetting, then the appearance of the deck when he came up into the sparkling open air and the brilliant light after his long morning round would have brought it all to mind. Quite apart from the fact that the waist of the ship, the part between the quarterdeck and the forecastle, where ordinarily he saw a mass of spare masts, yards and spars in general covered with tarpaulins on the booms, the boats nestling among them, was now quite clear, the spars nearly all used and the boats either busy or towing astern, which gave her a singular clean-run austerity - quite apart from this there had been an extraordinary change from the apparent confusion and real filth of yesterday to a Sunday neatness, falls flemished, brass flaming in the sun, yards (such as there were) exactly squared by the lifts and braces. But there was an even greater change in the atmosphere, a formality and gravity shown at one end of the scale by Sarah and Emily, who had finished their duties in the sick-berth half an hour before and who were now standing on the forecastle in their best pinafores looking solemnly at the Franklin, and at the other by Jack Aubrey, who was returning from her in the splendour of a post-captain, accompanied by Martin and rowed with great exactness by his bargemen.

'There, sir,' said Reade at Stephen's side. 'That is what I meant by a splendid sight.'

Stephen followed his gaze beyond the Captain's boat to the Franklin. She had cast off her tow and she was sailing along abreast of the Surprise, making a creditable five knots under her courses, with the great triangular lateen drum-taut on her mizen gleaming in the sun. 'Very fine, indeed,' he said.

'She reminds me of the old Victory,' observed Reade after a moment.

'Surely to God the Victory has not been sunk, or sold out of the service?" asked Stephen, quite startled. 'I knew she was old, but thought her immortal, the great ark of the world.'

'No, sir, no,' said Reade patiently. 'We saw her in the chops of the Channel, not two days out. What I mean is in ancient times, in the last age, before the war even, she used to have a mizen like that. We have a picture of her at home: my father was her second lieutenant at Toulon, you know. But come, sir, you will have to shift your coat or go below. The Captain will be aboard any minute now.'

'Perhaps I should disappear,' said Stephen, passing a hand over his unshaven chin.

The Surprise, having checked her way, received her Captain with all the ceremony she could manage in her present state. The bosun's mates piped the side; Tom Pullings, acting as first lieutenant, Mr Grainger, the second, Mr Adams, the clerk and de facto purser, and both midshipmen, all in formal clothes, took off their hats; and the Captain touched his own to the quarterdeck. Then with a nod to Pullings he went below, where Killick, who had been watching his progress from the moment he left the Franklin, had a pot of coffee ready.

Attracted by the smell, Stephen walked in, holding a sharpened razor in his hand; but perceiving that Jack and Pullings meant to talk about matters to do with the ship he drank only two cups and withdrew to the fore-cabin in which he usually had his being. Jack called after him 'As soon as Martin has changed his clothes, he will be on deck, you know,' and at the same time Killick, whose never very amiable character had been soured still further by having to look after both Captain and Doctor for years and years, burst in at the forward door with Stephen's good coat over his arm. In a shrill, complaining voice he cried, 'What, ain't you even shaved yet? God love us, what a disgrace it will bring to the ship.'

'Now Tom,' said Jack Aubrey, 'I will tell you very briefly how things are in the Franklin. Grainger and Bulkeley and the others have done most uncommonly well and we can send up topmasts tomorrow. I have been considering the prize-crew, and although we cannot spare many, I think we shall manage. She has twenty-one hands left fit to serve, and together with what the Doctor can patch up and three of the English ransomers and a carpenter they took out of a Hull whaler to replace their own she should be adequately manned without weakening the Surprise too much. I mean they should be able to fight at least one side, not merely carry her into port. Most of the Franklins understood some English so I told them the usual things: those that saw fit to volunteer should berth with our own people on the lower deck, have full rations, grog and tobacco, and be paid off in South America according to their rating, while those that did not should be kept in the fore-hold on two-thirds rations, no grog and no tobacco and be carried back to England. One of the ransomers, a boy, spoke French as brisk as the Doctor, and what they did not understand from me they understood from him. I left them to think it over, and there is not much doubt about the result. When we have rearmed her with our carronades she will make an admirable consort. You shall have command of her, and I will promote Vidal here. We can certainly find you three men capable of standing a watch: Mr Smith, for one, and he will stiffen their gunnery. And even if we were not so well supplied, two of the ransomers were mates of their ship, the one a fur-trader on the Nootka run, the other a whaler. Have you any observations, Captain Pullings?'

'Well, sir,' said Pullings, returning his smile, but with a certain constraint, 'I take it very kindly that you should give me the command, of course. As for Vidal, he is a prime seaman, of course: there is no doubt of that. But he is the leader of the Knipperdollings, and the Knipperdollings and the Sethians have been at odds ever since the love-feast at the Methody chapel in Botany Bay. And as you know very well, sir, some of the most respected hands on board are Sethians or their close friends; and to have a Knipperdolling set over them..."

'Hell and death, Tom,' said Jack. 'You are quite right. It had slipped my mind.'

It should not have slipped his mind. For although Shelmerston was well known for bold enterprising expert seamen - Vidal himself had armed a ship and cruised upon the Barbary corsairs themselves with remarkable success - it was even better known for its bewildering variety of religious sects, some, like the Sethians, with origins hazy in the remote past, some, like the Knipperdollings, quite recent but a little apt to be quarrelsome by land if a point of doctrine were raised; and at the love-feast in Botany Bay a disagreement on the filioque clause had ended in many a black eye, many a bloody nose and broken head.

Jack repressed some reflexions on seamen and theology, blue-light officers and tracts, and said, 'Very well. I shall rearrange the prize-crew. Peace at all costs. You shall have the Sethians and I shall bring back what Knipperdollings there may be in the Franklin. By the way, what is a Knipperdolling?'

Pullings looked perfectly blank, and slowly shook his head.

'Well, never mind. The Doctor will know, or even better Martin. I hear his voice on deck. They will start tolling the bell directly.'

Chapter Three

They buried West in 12�35'N, 152�17'W; and some days later his clothes, according to the custom of the sea, were sold at the mainmast.

Henry Vidal, a master-mariner shipping as a forecastle-hand for this voyage, bought West's formal coat and breeches. He and his Knipperdolling friends removed all the lace and any ornament that could be taken for a mark of rank, and it was in these severe garments that he presented himself, on his promotion to acting second lieutenant, for his first dinner in the gunroom.

For this occasion too Stephen dined below; but the nature of the present feast was entirely different. For one thing the ship was still a great way from her settled routine; there was still a great deal to be done aboard the frigate and in the Franklin, and this could not be the leisurely ceremony with which Grainger had been welcomed. For another the atmosphere was much more like that of a civilian gathering, three of the eight people having nothing whatsoever to do with the Navy: at the foot of the table, on either side of Mr Adams, sat two ransomers, men taken from her prizes by the Franklin as security for the sum the ships had agreed to pay for their release; in Pullings' absence Grainger was at the head, with Stephen on his right and Vidal on his left, while in the middle of the table Martin sat opposite Dutourd, invited by Adams on a hint from the Captain.

It was therefore much less of an ordeal for Vidal: there was no intimidating gold lace; many of the people were as much strangers to the table as he was himself; and he was very well with his neighbours, Grainger, whom he had known from boyhood, and Dutourd, whom he found particularly sympathetic; while Dr Maturin, his shipmate in three commissions, was not a man to put a newcomer out of countenance.

Indeed, after their first kindly welcome of the new officer there was no need for taking any special care of him: Vidal joined in the fine steady flow of talk, and presently Stephen, abandoning his social duties, as he so often did, confined himself to his dinner, his wine and to contemplating his messmates.

The ransomers on either side of Adams, the one a supercargo and the other a merchant, both out of fur-traders, were still in the full joy of their liberation, and sometimes they laughed for no reason whatsoever, while a joke such as 'What answer was given to him, that dissuaded one from marrying a wife because she was now wiser? "I desire," said he, "my wife should have no more wit, than to be able to distinguish my bed from another man's,'" threw them into convulsions. It was noticeable that they were both on good terms with Dutourd; and this did not seem to Stephen to be merely the result of their being set free, but a settled state of affairs.

As for Dutourd himself, Stephen already knew him pretty well in his present condition, since Dutourd came every day to visit those Franklins who had been brought across to be cared for in the Surprise's capacious sick-berth. Stephen necessarily spoke French to these patients, and with such frequent contact it would have been childish to conceal his fluency. Dutourd for his part took it for granted and made no comment, any more than Stephen took notice of Dutourd's English, remarkably exact and idiomatic, though occasionally marked by the nasal twang of the northern colonies, in which he had spent some early years.

He was sitting there in the middle of the table, upright, buoyant, wearing a light-blue coat and his own hair, cropped in the Brutus fashion, talking away right and left, suiting himself to his company and apparently enjoying his dinner: yet he had lost everything, and that everything was sailing along under the lee of the Surprise, commanded by those who had taken him prisoner. Insensibility? Stoicism? Magnanimity? Stephen could not tell: but it was certainly not mere levity, for what Stephen did know was that Dutourd was a highly intelligent man with an enquiring not to say an inquisitive mind. He was now engaged in extracting an account of English municipal government from Vidal, his right-hand neighbour and Stephen's vis-a-vis.

Vidal was a middle-aged seaman with much of the dignity that Stephen had often observed in those who were masters of their trade: yet apart from his earrings one would scarcely have taken him for a sailor. His face, though tanned mahogany, was more that of a good-natured reading man and it would have been no surprise to see him reach for a pair of spectacles. He had the habitual gravity expected of an elder, but his expression was far from humourless; there was nothing of the Holy Joe about him and he was perfectly at home in a ribald, profane ship's company and in a bloody, close-fought action. He laughed at his messmates' mediaeval jokes, at the young men's occasional horseplay, and at the facetiousness of his cousin the bosun; but no one, at any time, would have attempted to make game of him.

Stephen's mind wandered away on the subject of authority, its nature, origin, base or bases: authority whether innate or acquired, and if acquired then by what means? Authority as opposed to mere power, how exactly to be defined? Its etymology : its relation to auctor. From these thoughts he was aroused by an expectant silence opposite him, and looking up he saw Dutourd and Vidal looking at him across the table, their forks poised: reaching back in his mind he caught the echo of a question: 'What do you think of democracy?'

'The gentleman was asking what you thought of democracy, sir,' said Vidal, smiling.

'Alas I cannot tell you, sir,' said Stephen, returning the smile. 'For although it would not be proper to call this barque or vessel a King's ship except in the largest sense, we nevertheless adhere strictly to the naval tradition which forbids the discussion of religion, women, or politics in our mess. It has been objected that this rule makes for insipidity, which may be so; yet on the other hand it has its uses, since in this case for example it prevents any member from wounding any other gentleman present by saying that he did not think the policy that put Socrates to death and that left Athens prostrate was the highest expression of human wisdom, or by quoting Aristotle's definition of democracy as mob-rule, the depraved version of a commonwealth.'

'Can you suggest a better system?' asked Dutourd.

'Sir,' said Stephen, 'my words were those of some hypothetical person: where my own views are concerned, tradition seals my mouth. As I have told you, we do not discuss politics at this table.'

'Quite right too,' called out the merchant on Adams' left. 'If there is one thing I hate more than topics it is politics. Damn all talk of Whigs, Tories and Radicals, say I: and damn all topics too, like the state of the poor and slavery and reform. Let us talk about the enclosing of commons, annuities and South Sea stock, like this gentleman here, and how to make two groats where only one grew before, ha, ha!' He clapped Martin on the shoulder and repeated 'Two groats where only one grew before.'

'I am very sorry to have offended against your tradition, gentlemen,' said Dutourd, recollecting himself, 'but I am no seaman, and I have never before had the honour of sitting down in an English officers' mess.'

'A glass of wine with you, sir,' said Stephen, bowing to him across the table.

It had been foreseen that with so much work to do inboard and out the dinner would come to an early end; and once the cloth was drawn it moved on quickly to the loyal toast.