Master & Commander (9 page)

   In the sunlight once more Jack threw out his signal and, peering among the masts and criss-crossed yards, he saw a figure at the
Sophie's
masthead bend as though to hail the deck, before disappearing down a backstay, like a bead sliding upon a thread.

   Expedition was Mr Head's watchword, but the master-parker of the ordnance wharf did not seem to have heard of it. He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. 'As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,' he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change—there were several other captains in front of Jack—fair was fair—turn and turn about—them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first—he was precious short of hands.

   The
Sophie
had warped in long ago and she was lying neatly against the dock right under the derricks. There was more noise aboard her than there had been, more noise than was right, even with the relaxed harbour discipline, and he was sure some of the men had managed to get drunk already. Expectant faces—a good deal less expectant now—looked over her side at her captain as he paced up and down, up and down, glancing now at his watch and now at the sky.

   'By God,' he cried, clapping his hand to his forehead. 'What a damned fool. I clean forgot the oil.' Turning short in his stride he hurried over to the shed, where a violent squealing showed that the master-parker and his mates were trundling the slides of Middleton's carronades towards the neat line of their barrels. 'Master-parker,' called Jack, 'come and look at my twelve-pounders. I have been in such a hurry all morning that I do believe I forgot to anoint them.' With these words he privately laid down a gold piece upon each touch-hole, and a slow look of approval appeared on the parker's face. 'If my gunner had not been sick, he would have reminded me,' added Jack.

   'Well, thankee, sir. It always has been the custom, and I don't like to see the Old ways die, I do confess,' said the parker, with some still-unevaporated surliness: but then brightening progressively he said, A hurry, you mentioned, Captain? Ill see what we can do'

   Five minutes later the bow chaser, neatly slung by its train loops, side loops, pommelion and muzzle, floated gently over the
Sophie's
fo'c'sle within half an inch of its ideal resting-place: Jack and the carpenter were on all fours side by side, rather as though they were playing bears, and they were listening for the sound her beams and timbers would make as the strain came off the derrick Jack beckoned with his hand, calling 'Handsomely, handsomely now.' The
Sophie
was perfectly silent, all her people watching intently, even the tub-party with their buckets poised, even the human chain who were tossing the twelve-pound round shot from the shore to the side and so down to the gunner's mate in the shot-locker. The gun touched, sat firm: there was a deep, not unhealthy creaking, and the
Sophie
settled a little by the head. 'Capital,' said Jack, surveying the gun as it stood there, well within its chalked-out space. 'Plenty of room all round—great oceans of room, upon my word,' he said, backing a step. In his haste to avoid being trodden down, the gunner's mate behind him collided with his neighbour, who ran into his, setting off a chain-reaction in that crowded, roughly triangular space between the foremast and the stem that resulted in the maiming of one ship's boy and very nearly in the watery death of another. 'Where's the bosun? Now, Mr Watt, let me see the tackles rigged: you want a hard-eye becket on that block. Where's the breeching?'

   'Almost ready, sir,' said the sweating, harassed bosun. 'l'm working the cunt-splice myself.'

   'Well,' said Jack, hurrying off to where the stern-chaser hung poised above the
Sophie's
quarter-deck, ready to plunge through her bottom if gravity could but have its way, 'a simple thing like a cunt-splice will not take a man-of-war's bosun long, I believe. Set those men to work, Mr Lamb, if you please: this is not fiddler's green.' He looked at his watch again. 'Mr Mowett,' he said, looking at a cheerful young master's mate. Mr Mowett's cheerful look changed to one of extreme gravity. 'Mr Mowett, do you know Joselito's coffee-house?'

   'Yes, sir.'

   'Then be so good as to go there and ask for Dr Maturin. My compliments and I am very much concerned to say we shall not be back in port by dinner-time; but I will send a boat this evening at any time he chooses to appoint.'

They were not back in port by dinner-time: it would indeed have been a logical impossibility, since they had not yet left it, but were sweeping majestically through the close-packed craft towards the fairway. One advantage of having a small vessel with a great many hands aboard is that you can execute manoeuvres denied to any ship of the line, and Jack preferred this arduous creeping to being towed or to threading along under sail with a thoroughly uneasy crew, disturbed in all their settled habits and jostling full of strangers.

   In the open channel he had himself rowed round the
Sophie
: he considered her from every angle, and at the same time he weighed the advantages and disadvantages of sending all the women ashore. It would be easy to find most of them while the men were at their dinner: not merely the local girls who were there for fun and pocket-money, but also the semi-permanent judies. If he made one sweep now, then another just before their true departure might clear the sloop entirely. He wanted no women aboard. They only caused trouble, and with this fresh influx they would cause even more. On the other hand, there was a certain lack of zeal aboard, a lack of real spring, and he did not mean to turn it into sullenness, particularly that afternoon. Sailors were as conservative as cats, as he knew very well: they would put up with incredible labour and hardship, to say nothing of danger, but it had to be what they were used to or they would grow brutish. She was very low in the water, to be sure: a little by the head and listing a trifle to port. All that extra weight would have been far better below the water-line. But he would have to see how she handled.

   'Shall I send the hands to dinner, sir?' asked James Dillon when Jack was aboard again.

   'No, Mr Dillon. We must profit by this wind. Once we are past the cape they may go below. Those guns are breeched and frapped?'

   'Yes, sir.'

   'Then we will make sail. In sweeps. All hands to make sail.'

   The bosun sprang his call and hurried away to the fo'c'sle amidst a great rushing of feet and a good deal of bellowing.

   'Newcomers below. Silence there.' Another rush of feet. The
Sophie's
regular crew stood poised in their usual places, in dead silence. A voice on board the
Généreux
a cable's length away could be heard, quite clear and plain, '
Sophie's
making sail.'

   She lay there, rocking gently, out in Mahon harbour, with the shipping on her starboard beam and quarter and the brilliant town beyond it. The breeze a little abaft her larboard beam, a northerly wind, was pushing her stern round a trifle. Jack paused, and as it came just so he cried, 'Away aloft.' The calls repeated the order and instantly the shrouds were dark with passing men, racing up as though on their stairs at home.

   'Trice up. Lay out.' The calls again, and the topmen hurried out on the yards. They cast off the gaskets, the lines that held the sails tight furled to the yards; they gathered the canvas under their arms and waited.

   'Let fall,' came the order, and with it the howling peep-peep, peep-peep from the bosun and his mates.

   'Sheet home. Sheet home. Hoist away. Cheerly there, in the foretop, look alive. T'garns'l sheets. Hands to the braces. Belay.'

   A gentle push from above heeled the
Sophie
over, then another and another, each more delightfully urgent until it was one steady thrust; she was under way, and all along her side there sang a run of living water. Jack and his lieutenant exchanged a glance: it had not been bad—the foretopgallantsail had taken its time, because of a misunderstanding as to how
newcomer
should be defined and whether the six restored
Sophies
were to be considered in that injurious light, which had led to a furious, silent squabble on the yard; and the sheeting-home had been rather spasmodic; but it had not been disgraceful, and they would not have to support the derision of the other men-of-war in the harbour. There had been moments in the confusion of the morning when each had dreaded just that thing.

   The
Sophie
had spread her wings a little more like an unhurried dove than an eager hawk, but not so much so that the expert eyes on shore would dwell upon her with disapprobation; and as for the mere landsmen, their eyes were so satiated with the coming and going of every kind of vessel that they passed over her departure with glassy indifference.

'Forgive me, sir,' said Stephen Maturin, touching his hat to a nautical gentleman on the quay, 'but might I ask whether you know which is the ship called
Sophia
?'

   'A King's ship, sir?' asked the officer, returning his salute. 'A man-of-war? There is no ship of that name but perhaps you refer to the sloop, sir? The sloop
Sophie
?'

   'That may well be the case, sir. No man could easily surpass me in ignorance of naval terms. The vessel I have in mind is commanded by Captain Aubrey.'

   'Just so: the sloop, the fourteen-gun sloop. She lies almost directly in front of you, sir, in a line with the little white house on the point.'

   'The ship with triangular sails?'

   'No. That is a polacre-settee. Somewhat to the left, and farther off.'

   'The little small squat merchantman with two masts?

   'Well'—with a laugh—'she
is
a trifle low in the water, but she is a man-of-war, I assure you And I believe she about to make sail. Yes. There go her topsails: sheeted borne. They hoist the yard. To'garns'ls. What's amiss? Ah, there we are. Not very smartly done, but all's well that ends well, and the
Sophie
never was one of your very brisk performers. See, she gathers way. She will fetch the mouth—of the harbour on this wind without touching a brace.'

   'She is sailing away?'

   'Indeed she is. She must be running three knots already—maybe four.'

   'I am very much obliged to you, sir,' said Stephen, lifting his hat.

   'Servant, sir,' said the officer, lifting his. He looked after Stephen for a while 'Should I ask him whether he is well? I have left it too late However, he seems steady enough now.'

   Stephen had walked down to the quay to find out whether the
Sophi
e could be reached on foot or whether he should have to take a boat to keep his dinner engagement; for his Conversation with Mr Florey had persuaded him that not only was the engagement intended to be kept, but that the more general invitation was equally serious—an eminently practicable suggestion, most certainly to be acted upon. How civil, how more than civil, Florey had been had explained the medical service of the Royal Navy, and taken him to see Mr Edwardes of the Centaur perform quite an interesting amputation, had dismissed his scruples as to lack of purely surgical experience, had lent him Blane on diseases incident to seamen, Hulme's
Libellus de Natura Scorbuti
, Lind's
Effectual Means
and Northcote's
Marine Practice
, and had promised to find him at least the bare essentials in instruments until he should have his allowance and the official chest—'There are trocars, tenaculums and ball-scoops lying about by the dozen at the hospital, to say nothing of saws and bone-rasps.'

   Stephen had allowed his mind to convince itself entirely, and the strength of his emotion at the sight of the
Sophie
, her white sails and her low hull dwindling fast over the shining sea, showed him how much he had come to look forward to the prospect of a new place and new skies, a living, and a closer acquaintance with this friend who was now running fast towards the quarantine island, behind which he would presently vanish.

   He walked up through the town with his mind in a curious state; he had suffered so many disappointments recently that it did not seem possible he could bear another. What was more, he had allowed all his defences to disperse—unarm. It was while he was reassembling them and calling out his reserves that his feet carried him past Joselito's coffee-house and voices said, 'There he is—call out—run after him—you will catch him if you run.'

   He had not been into the coffee-house that morning because it was a question either of paying for a cup of coffee or of paying for a boat to row him out to the
Sophie
, and he had therefore been unavailable for the midshipman, who now came running along behind him.

   'Dr Maturin?' asked young Mowett, and stopped short, quite shocked by the pale glare of reptilian dislike. However, he delivered his message; and he was relieved to find that it was greeted with a far more human look.

   'Most kind,' said Stephen. 'What do you imagine would be a convenient time, sir?'

   'Oh, I suppose about six o'clock, sir,' said Mowett.

   'Then at six o'clock I shall be at the Crown steps,' said Stephen. 'I am very much obliged to you, sir, for your diligence in finding me out.' They parted with a bow apiece, and Stephen said privately, 'I shall go across to the hospital and offer Mr Florey my assistance: he has a compound fracture above the elbow that will call for primary resection of the joint. It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation.

Cape Mola lay on their larboard quarter: the troubled blasts and calms caused by the heights and valleys along the great harbour's winding northern shore no longer buffeted them, and with an almost steady tramontana at north by east the
Sophie
was running fast towards Italy under her courses, single-reefed topsails and topgallants.

   'Bring her up as close as she will lie,' said Jack. 'How near will she point, Mr Marshall? Six?'

   'I doubt she'll do as well as six, sir,' said the master, shaking his head. 'She's a little sullen today, with the extra weight for'ard.'