Blue at the Mizzen (12 page)

But this satisfactory account was wholly set aside by Hard-ing's arrival, with the words 'Sir, we float!' which were instantly understood by Captain Aubrey and all his officers to mean that Mr. Seppings had finished well before his promised time, that the frigate was moored in the fairway, with the sheer-hulks standing by to restore her masts and the bosun on hot coals to get back to rigging her.

They were words that released an extraordinary amount of energy among the sailors, a decently-restrained grief in Sophie, less decently in her children, and not at all in Brigid, who had to be led from the room. All this distressed the men: it did not interrupt their extremely rapid movement -co-ordinated movement, some going almost by instinct rather than order to their various stations with what speed horses, wheeled vehicles or plain feet could command; some, the best-mounted, to Portsmouth to prepare those ordinarily slow-moving local minds for the laying-in of stores: powder and shot, salt beef, salt pork, beer, biscuit, rum, the necessary water, some linear miles of ropes and cordage and square miles of sailcloth; carpenter's stores, bosun's stores - all those innumerable objects that even a modest man-of-war required for a voyage of enormous length: even the common rhubarb purgative amounted to seven casks.

Chapter Four

At four bells in the morning watch, Captain Aubrey, in a tarpaulin jacket, his long fair hair, as yet unplaited, streaming over the frigate's larboard quarter, came on deck, glanced at the grey, rainfilled sky, saw a tall curling wave break over the starboard bow, dodged at least some of the water that came racing aft along the gangway, and said, 'Good morning, Mr. Somers: I think we may omit the ceremony of washing the decks today. The heavens seem to be looking after it for us.'

'Good morning, sir,' said the second lieutenant. 'Yes, sir.' And directing his powerful voice forward, 'Stow swabs, there.'

Turning, Jack saw a slim, smiling, soaked figure saluting him. 'Why, Mr. Hanson, how are you? Put your hat on again. And are you recovered?'

'Yes, sir, I thank you: quite well again.' 'I am very glad of it. I think we are through the worst of the blow - you see the lightening sky two points on the starboard bow? And if you feel quite well before division we might make an attempt on the mizzen masthead.' 'Oh yes, sir, if you please.'

Jack, having towelled himself moderately dry, returned to his still-warm cot and lay there comfortably, rocked by the measured crash and sweep of the tons of water that broke on the starboard bow. Surprise was now heading south-by-west, almost close-hauled under reefed topsails, on a strong but irregular and probably dying west wind: they had cleared the Channel at last, after many days of wearisome beating - they no longer had Ushant and the dreadful reefs he had known so well during the Brest blockade under their lee; and apart from being struck by lightning or by some demented merchantman they had nothing much to fear until they were off Cape Ortegal, which had very nearly drowned him as a midshipman in Latona, 38. However, there were still some hundreds of miles to leeward, and with that comforting reflection and the beat and tremble of the waves he drifted off again until seven bells, when he woke entirely, to bright daylight, a diminished sea, and the disagreeable face of Killick, his steward, bringing hot water for shaving. For once Killick had no bad news of any kind to report, which probably accounted for his more than usually surly mutter in reply to Jack's greeting; though on reflection he did recall that the Doctor had fallen out of his cot at some time in the middle watch and had been lashed in so tight by Mr. Wantage that he would certainly be late for breakfast.

Breakfast, whose delectable scents were wafting into the great cabin as Jack shaved in the quarter-gallery just at hand, was a good hearty meal to which he often invited one of the officers who had stood the morning watch: but today, in view of the very rough night they had had, and in view of Stephen's cursed snappishness at having been so bitterly constrained - seven double turns and scarcely a breath a minute - he thought they should eat alone.

This they did; and the customary eggs and bacon, toast with Sophie's marmalade, and above all pot after pot of coffee, had their civilising influence, and Dr. Maturin even said, 'Before I make my rounds, I may well shave.'

Several witty replies occurred to Captain Aubrey, but in his friend's precarious state of temper he risked none of them, only replying, 'What do you think of young Hanson's state at present? He stood his watch perfectly well last night.'

'Hanson? Oh yes, Hanson: he made a very quick recovery, as the young so often do. I attribute it largely to my Vera Cruz jalap: most of the others in the sick-bay were on the various kinds of rhubarb, Aleppo and Smyrna Turkey roots, and the best Russian, with some from Banbury: and perhaps half a dozen of them are still in a sad state of flux.'

'Surely you do not experiment on your patients, Stephen?' cried Jack.

'In course I do, just as you experiment with various sails or arrangements of sails, to see what suits a boat best. A boat does not have three mizzen topsails and a gaff written on its prow; and my patients do not have ipecacuanha tattooed on their foreheads. Of course I experiment. Experiment, forsooth.'

He had indeed experimented, different constitutions requiring different remedies, but always, in this violent outbreak of dysentery (some of the salt pork served on the first day had already crossed the Atlantic four times, with a long pause in Kingston, Jamaica) on the general basis of similia similibus, carefully noting the various results: and watching, with an anxious eye, the frightful diminution of his stores - at one time, before they were clear of soundings, three-quarters of the Surprises had been helpless, incapable of duty, but eager and willing to take enormous doses of rhubarb.

'But as for young Hanson - for whom, I may say, I feel a certain responsibility, as well as an affection - he was fit for duty three days ago.'

'I am glad to hear it,' said Jack; and later that day, after a morning of paperwork with his clerk and the purser, and after dinner, he walked the quarterdeck with a coffee-cup in his hand. The day was brighter now by far, and warm: clouds were still scudding from the west, but the breeze had dropped, so that Surprise was now wearing her courses.

At five bells they heaved the log. 'Eight knots and one fathom, sir, if you please,' said Mr. Midshipman Shepherd to Whewell, the officer of the watch. Whewell turned to Jack, took off his hat, and said, 'Eight knots and one fathom, sir, if you please.'

'Thank you, Mr. Whewell,' said Jack, gazing up at the masts' pronounced leeward angle, 'I believe we may come up a point and a half.'

'A point and a half it is, sir,' said Whewell, and he repeated the order to the quartermaster at the con.

Jack moved forward to the rail and looked down into the waist of the ship. There he saw what he expected to see, some of the younger midshipmen learning the fine points of their craft - long-splicing to leeward, a complex system of pointing to windward, and just beneath him Horatio Hanson was being shown some elementary skills such as sheet-bend, bowline, clove-hitch and rolling hitch by Joe Plaice, his recently-appointed sea-daddy, already horribly loquacious and didactic, though good-natured with it all.

'Mr. Hanson,' he called.

'Sir?' cried Horatio, dropping his fid and running up the ladder.

'How do you feel at present?' asked Jack, looking at him attentively.

'Very well, sir, I thank you. Prime,' he said, standing straight, his hands behind his back.

In a private tone Jack went on, 'You do mind my words about a first-voyager being meek and mute in the berth, I trust?'

'Oh yes, sir,' said Horatio, blushing. 'But, sir, you did say that I did not have to put up with everything, however gross.'

'Perhaps I did.'

'So when a - a shipmate - called me a pragmatical son of a bitch, I thought I had to resent it.'

'Not a superior officer? Just a member of the berth?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then of course you had to resent it. Show me your hands. Turn them over.' It must have been a heavy left-handed blow to split the skin to that extent. Jack shook his head. 'No, no: it will not do. I doubt anyone else in the berth will speak to you like that again - a gentlemanly lot, upon the whole: but if it should happen you must say, "Blackguard me as much as ever you choose: the Captain has tied my hands.'"

'Yes, sir,' said the boy, with proper deference and a total want of conviction.

'Well, now: since she is not what you would call lively' -the mastheads swept out an arc of no more than forty degrees at present - 'perhaps we might try the mizzen crosstrees. You remember what I said about both hands and never looking down?'

'Oh yes, sir.'

'Then away aloft, and I shall follow you.'

Hanson ran aft, nipped on to the rail, and leaning out he seized the third and fourth mizzen shrouds as they rose from the channel, writhed between them, setting himself on the outward side, grasped the ratlines that ran horizontally across the shrouds and climbed a step or two of the ladder they formed, and waited.

A moment later he felt the whole mass of rigging tighten as it took the captain's weight: then the captain's powerful hands on his ankles, shifting his feet in turn up and up and up. 'Do not look down,' said Jack presently, 'but just about level, at the mast. Just forward of the gaff there is a block.'

'I see it, sir.'

'It leads the starboard main-topsail-brace straight down on deck: give it a gentle pull when it is in reach and you will see the brace respond.'

So it did: a most gratifying sweep. But now they were close to the lower side of the top, that broad platform at the head of the lower mast that bore the topmast and its matching array of shrouds, spread by the crosstrees and towering up to the topgallantmast and the upper crosstrees. From immediately under the top Jack threaded Hanson up through the lubber's hole, himself taking the backward-leaning futtock-shrouds and dropping from the rail to join him. 'You must always come up through the hole for the first seven times,' he said. 'To be sure, it looks lubberly, but seven times is the law. You will very soon get used to laying aloft, and after those holy seven times you will use the futtock-shrouds without thinking about it. Now let me show you the things in the top...' This he did from the top-maul to the fid, fid-plate, bolster and chock.

Jack's voyages were rarely of a kind in which a first-voyager would be either proposed or accepted; yet some did come aboard, propelled by very high authority or the plea of old shipmates, and it was Jack's habit to take them aloft himself, at first. It established a particular contact, and it told him a great deal about the boy. Apart from anything else it made ordinary human conversation possible, a very rare thing between the extremes of rank.

They sat in the top for a while sitting on folded studdingsails while Jack explained various points in the running rigging and Horatio gazed out with open wonder and admiration at the immense, ordered intricacy of a man-of-war, its extraordinary beauty and the even greater beauty of its surroundings.

'I am afraid your knuckles are bleeding on your trousers,' Jack observed, after a pause.

'Oh, I am so sorry, sir,' cried the boy, in horror. 'I am afraid they are. I beg pardon, sir. I shall wrap them in my handkerchief.'

'The great thing for blood,' said Jack, speaking with some authority, 'is cold water. Just soak whatever it is in cold water overnight and in the morning it will be gone. But tell me about boxing, will you? Have you done much?'

'Oh no sir. I hardly went to school: but the boys who came to be prepared for first communion by Mr. Walker or my grandfather and I used to mill in the barn afterwards.'

'Did you use gloves?'

'No, sir: just muffles. But then there was the coachman's boy whose uncle, a real prize-fighter who kept the inn at Clumpton and who taught him a great deal - he had gloves, and he taught me.'

'So much the better,' said Jack. 'When I was a reefer in a ship of the line with a lot of others in the berth, we used to have set matches, and we challenged other ships in the squadron. So did the ratings.'

'That must have been capital fun.'

'So it was, indeed. Perhaps we might do something... what do you weigh?'

'Almost nine stone, sir.'

'We must see what can be done. Are you puffed with your climb?'

'Not in the least, sir.'

'Then let us go up to the crosstrees. You do not mind the height?'

'Oh no, sir, I do not mind it.'

Jack turned him round, set him in position, both hands firm, and once again he called, 'Away aloft.' They moved briskly up the narrowing ladder, the shrouds so close at the top that Jack swung round to the larboard set, swung up to the larboard crosstree and gave the boy a hand to heave him up to the other. There they sat, one each side of the mast, each with an arm around it. They seemed incomparably higher up here, the sea stretching almost to infinity, the sky unimaginably vast: Horatio had opened his mouth to exclaim at the ethereal beauty of the ship and her setting when he remembered the words 'mute and meek' and shut it again. Jack said, 'If the breeze comes a trifle more aft, you may see stunsails set. Now cling to the crosstree with both hands once I am under you, dangle your legs and let me place your feet.'

Down and down again: and on deck Jack said, 'You did pretty well. Next time you must lay aloft with one of your mates - Mr. Daniel, say - and in a week you will find it as easy as kiss-my-hand.'

'Sir, thank you very much indeed for taking me: I have never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life. I wish it could go on for ever.'

He regretted these last words as being enthusiastic, out of place to a post-captain: but they had barely been uttered before they were drowned by a prodigious bellowing from the look-out on the foretopsail yard, a former (and most passionate) whaler. 'There she blows! Oh there she blows! Three points on the starboard bow. Pardon me, sir,' he added in a lower tone, for this was not a Royal Naval cry.

There she blew indeed - a great dark heave in the smooth sea and then the jet - and not only she but her six companions, one after another, heaving up enormous, blowing and smoothly diving each in turn, and each heartily cheered by the Surprises. 'What kind, Reynolds?' called Jack.