Treason's Harbour (15 page)

'Which Mr Mowett asks may he disturb you, sir,' said Killick; and since he liked to be the first with any news going he added 'Don't know where to stow the foreign gent.'

'Beg him to come in: place a chair and fetch another glass.'

The foreign gent was the dragoman; and Mowett, sitting down and drinking a glass of port, asked whether he was to sling his hammock before the mast or aft? And where was he to mess?

'Where dragomans or dragomen mess in general I do not know,' said Jack. 'But the Commander-in-Chief spoke of this one as uncommon clever - particularly recommended by Mr Secretary Wray - so I think he must eat in the gunroom. I saw him for a moment when he came aboard, and although he is said to be so learned he looked a reasonably cheerful soul. I do not think you will regret it, and in any case I hope, I very much hope it will not be for much longer than a week. And it will not be, if only this blessed wind holds - Nelson's wind. Lord, I remember when we were after the French fleet in ninety-eight, and how we ran from the straits of Messina to Alexandria in seven days..." Those long urgent summer days shone clear in his mind, the blue white-flecked sea and fifteen men-of-war racing eastwards on that blessed wind, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side, royals and skysails, and Rear-Admiral Nelson pacing the Vanguard's deck from before sunrise until after sunset: all that, and the fury of the battle by night, with the darkness perpetually torn and lit by gunfire, and in the midst of it all the unbelievably vast explosion as L'Orient blew up, leaving nothing but silence and blackness for several minutes after. He described the search for the French, and had carried the fleet from Alexandria back to Sicily and from Syracuse to Alexandria again - '... and there we found them at last, moored in Aboukir Bay' - when the Dromedary gave a modest heave and pitched Stephen, fast asleep, from his chair. Jack made a nimble spring, creditable in a man of his weight but not quite nimble enough to prevent Stephen from striking his forehead on the edge of the table and splitting the skin a handsbreath across: a reasonably close imitation of Nelson's wound at the Nile, and almost as bloody.

'All this confusion and calling out,' said Stephen angrily. 'One would think you had never seen blood before, which is absurd in a band of hired assassins. Mome, capon, malt-horse, lobcock,' - this to Killick - 'hold the basin straight. Mr Mowett, in the top left-hand drawer of my medicine-chest you will find some curved needles with gut already to them; pray be so good as to bring me a pair, together with a phial of styptic in the midmost rack, and a handful of lint. My neckcloth will serve for a bandage: it is already in need of washing.'

'Should you not lie down?' said Jack. 'The loss of blood

'Nonsense. It is merely superficial, I tell you: mere hide, no more. Now, Mr Martin, I will thank you to apply the styptic and to place twelve neat sutures while I hold the lips of the wound.'

'I do not know how you can bear to do it," said Jack, looking away as the needle went deliberately in and through.

'I am accustomed to stuffing birds,' said Martin, working steadily on. 'And to sewing them up... much more delicate skin than this, very often... except in the case of old male swans... there: I flatter myself that is a tolerably fine seam.'

'The Chaplain says you are all right now, sir,' said Killick in a loud, officious voice, close to Stephen's ear.

'Sir, I am obliged to you,' said Stephen to Martin. 'And now I believe I shall retire. I had but a short night of it. Gentlemen, your servant. Mr Mowett, I beg you will leave my arm alone. I am neither drunk nor decrepit.'

He had but a short night of it again, since just before dawn an unknown very passionate voice not six inches from the cuddy scuttle cried 'Don't you know how to seize a cuckold's neck, you God-damned lubber? Where's the bleeding seizing?' with such force as to banish sleep. His forehead hurt, but not very much, and he lay there swinging with the long motion of the ship, watching the grey light grow and musing upon cuckoldry, cuckoldom, and the almost universal mirth excited by that state. When he was in Malta one of the few letters he received from England - the Mediterranean fleet had been extraordinarily unlucky in the matter of post these last two months - had told him that he was a cuckold: that his wife was deceiving him with a gentleman attached to the Swedish embassy. He did not believe it. The same bag had brought him a hurried, blotted, but most affectionate scrawl from Diana, and although he did not suppose than any ordinarily moral considerations would stop her from doing whatever she had a mind to do, he did know that she was a gentlemanly being and that a highly personal aesthetic sense would prevent her writing him such a note at a time when she was adorning his forehead with horns: he was persuaded that she would not disgrace him unprovoked. On the other hand she lived an active social life in London; she had many rich and fashionable friends; and since she had never given a damn for public opinion he had no doubt that she laid herself open to unkind or envious tattle.

Her cousin Sophie, Jack Aubrey's wife, was completely different. She was not a prude, and she cared no more for Mrs Grundy than Diana; and yet no one but a maniac would ever write to tell Jack that he was a cuckold, although on a basis of reciprocity he deserved a whole hall-f of antlers. He pondered upon this: was it a question of sexual appetite, or rather of potentiality, dimly yet accurately perceived by others? He pondered upon sexual appetite in elegant females as opposed to the freer products of nature; and he was pondering still when the cabin door quietly opened and Jack looked in. 'God and Mary be with you, Jack,' he said. 'I was just thinking about you. Pray what is a cuckold's neck, by sea?'

'Why, if you wish to make a rope fast to a spar, you cross its two parts the one over t'other and clap a seizing on 'em, and that is your cuckold's neck. But tell me, how do you do?'

'Very well, I thank you.'

'Perhaps you will take a little weak tea, and a lightly boiled egg?"

'I will not,' said Stephen in a strong, determined voice. 'I will take a large pot of strong coffee, like a Christian, and some kippered herrings.'

Jack considered for a moment and then said with a stern look, 'What the devil did you mean by saying, I was thinking about you - what is a cuckold's neck?'

'Someone hallooed the words outside my window: I wanted to know what they meant, so I asked you, as a nautical authority. I desire you will not top it the Othello, brother, for shame: suff on you. If any man so far forgot himself as to make a licentious suggestion to Sophie, she would not understand him for a week, and then she would instantly lay him dead with your double-barrelled fowling-piece.'

'It is kind to call me a nautical authority," said Jack, smiling at the idea of Sophie slowly coming to understand the hypothetical rake, and her polite attention changing to icy rage. 'And you may call me a nautical diplomat too, if you choose. I had a most satisfactory interview with the master of the Dromedary last night. It is a very, very delicate matter, telling a man how to conduct his ship or suggesting improvements, you know; and Mr Allen is in no way my subordinate. Besides, the masters of merchant ships often have a grudge against the Navy for pressing their men, and they resent the airs some officers give themselves. If I had offended him, he might, out of mere contrariness, have reduced sail to courses alone. But, do you see, he came below to ask what was afoot just after you had turned in - he had been told that you had attacked us in a drunken frenzy and that we had beaten you almost to death - and he stayed to drink a glass while I finished telling Mowett and the parson how the squadron cracked on like smoke and oakum, sailing over this very same tract of water before the battle of the Nile.'

'I believe I remember your mentioning the Nile,' said Stephen.

'I am sure you do,' said Jack kindly. 'Well, now, he proved a most capital fellow, once it appeared that we did not mean to take him up short or snib him aboard his own ship; and when Mowett and the parson were gone I put it to him frankly; brought it out without any guile or premeditation. I did not criticize his handling of the Dromedary in any way, he was to understand - he knew her humours and her possibilities better than any man -but I should be happy to offer him a couple of score of hands, and if with a much stronger crew he saw fit to spread more canvas, and if in consequence anything should carry away, why then I should be perfectly happy to indemnify his owners, straight away and out of hand.

He said he asked nothing better - had seen me fretting, but could not put himself forward for fear of being brought up with a round turn - yet I must not expect too much of the old hooker even if she was manned like Jacob's ladder or the Tower of Babel, because not only was her bottom foul but she had not a mast, no, nor a yard that was not more woolding and fishes than wood, and all her rigging was twice-laid stuff; though indeed she had the lines of a swan - the sweetest lines he had ever seen - and with a proper crew she could show a fine turn of speed with the wind before the beam. So we shook hands on it, and when you go on deck you will see a very different state of affairs."

To a seaman's eye it was no doubt a very different state of affairs, the Dromedary having set her weather studdingsails, her spritsail and her spritsail topsail, but Stephen was more immediately struck by a row of scarlet patches on the deck. The Dromedary had not yet rigged any awnings and the brilliant sunlight gave the red an extraordinarily vivid life, a pleasure to behold. He contemplated the scene, slowly adjusting his nightcap so that it should not press on his stitches, and presently he understood what was happening. The crew of the Surprise were being mustered with arms and bags; the order 'on end clothes' had been given and each man's possessions were now in a heap in front of him, a meagre heap, but in almost every case one topped by a beautifully laundered, pressed and folded pair of white duck trousers, a watchet-blue jacket with brass buttons, and an embroidered waistcoat, usually scarlet, for the frigate had recently touched at Santa Maura, famous for cloth of that colour. These garments, the hands' shore-going rig, were carefully spread abroad in an attempt at concealing the absence of a proper supply of everyday clothes beneath- a perfectly hopeless attempt even with a newly-joined youngster, let alone a post-captain who had spent most of his life at sea, but one that a sort of imbecile cunning had suggested to almost every man on deck. Jack angrily poked about among the unsaleable rags concealed beneath the finery and dictated the list of clothes required to the officer of the division. It was worse than he had expected: the arms were in excellent order, for in the hope of deprecating wrath the men had furbished their muskets, bayonets, pouches, pistols, cutlasses to a state of more than military brilliance, but the clothes were in a very shocking state. 'Come, Plaice,' he said to an elderly forecastleman, 'surely you must have something in the way of a spare shirt? You had several, embroidered down the front, when last we mustered bags. What has happened to them?'

Plaice hung his grizzled head and said he could not tell, he was sure: perhaps it was them rats, he suggested, without much conviction. 'Two shirts and two duck frocks for Plaice, as well as the stockings and petticoat-trousers,' said Jack to Rowan, who wrote it down; and they passed on to the next shiftless soul, who in a drunken frolic had contrived to leave himself with only one shoe as his whole sea-stock. 'Mr Calamy,' said Captain Aubrey to the young gentleman attached to this division, 'tell me what constitutes a well-regulated seaman's kit in high latitudes - a sober, responsible seaman in a King's ship, I mean, not a fly-by-night piss-in-the-corner privateersman that cannot hold his liquor.'

'Two blue jackets, sir, one pea jacket, two pair of blue trousers, two pair of shoes, six shirts, four pairs of stockings, two Guernsey frocks, two hats, two black Barcelona handkerchiefs, a comforter, several pair of flannel...'he blushed and in a low voice said 'drawers. And two waistcoats; as well as one bed, one pillow, two blankets and two hammocks, sir, if you please.'

'And in warm climates?'

'Four duck frocks, sir, four pair of duck trousers, a straw hat, and a canvas one for squalls.'

'And any man that falls much short of this by his own vicious waste and negligence or vile debauchery deserves to be on the defaulters' list- deserves to be brought to the gangway, seized up to a grating and given a round dozen for every item he does not possess: is not that so?'

'Yes, sir,' very faintly.

'This man is in your division; he is one of your boat's crew; yet knowing all this you have seen him bring himself down to one solitary shoe. Have you no sense of responsibility for your men, Mr Calamy? You are a disgrace to the service. Your grog is stopped until further notice. This is very bad.'

It was indeed worse than Jack had expected, acquainted though he was with squalor, naval squalor; but he and Mr Adams had provided for something near total destitution and all that morning the purser's steward served out slops, while all that afternoon those Surprises who made no part of the Dromedary'?, watch on duty sat in little groups on deck, unpicking the Navy Board's contractor's slops, carefully refitting, recutting and resewing them again, to avoid the intolerable reproach of 'looking like a pusser's shirt on a handspike.'

Jack, rambling about the upper rigging with Mr Allen and discussing various ways of increasing the ship's pace when the breeze should haul forward, looked down on a deck that resembled a tailor's sweat-shop with shreds of cloth everywhere and ends of thread and earnest forms sitting cross-legged, bowed over their work, right arm rising, needle flashing rhythmically. He looked down with guarded satisfaction, for not only were the hands recovering from their debauchery, but even with the wind right aft, by no means the Dromedary's or any other square-rigged vessel's favourite point, she was throwing a modest bow-wave and running at five knots four fathoms, enough to accomplish the voyage in a week with an unchanging breeze.

The wind was in the same quarter the next day, and the morning after that; and most of the Surprises were still busy with needle and thread. Their working clothes were now in order, and they were moving on to the fine work: it was known that church was to be rigged on Sunday -Mr Martin was already leading some of the better voices through the Old Hundredth in the empty fore-hold and the deck vibrated like the soundbox of some vast instrument - and it was thought that the Dromedaries would attend dressed fancy. The Surprises had no intention of having their eyes wiped by a parcel of merchantmen, and since on the one hand shore-going rig would be ostentatious and inappropriate while on the other there was no time for really delicate embroidery, they were putting ribbon in their seams.