Blue at the Mizzen (18 page)

'My dear, the moment is passed,' he wrote, squaring up to his desk, braced against the frigate's rhythmic heave and roll, 'and I am happy to tell you of a real improvement in the master's health: he has eaten, and retained, two copious meals, the first of fresh flying-fish, the second of a moderately rich lobscouse. This may be connected with the ship's much more even pace, her greater speed, and the general air of satisfaction aboard - the brisk (though warm) and lively air. But I do not like to mention any of these factors, the master being a through-and-through mariner, choleric, and convinced of his own diagnosis: incipient leprosy, overcome by total abstinence from salt, alcohol, tobacco. I wish I could convey the delight of a well-found, well-handled man-of-war, sailing with all reasonable sail abroad, a steady, urgent wind coming in over her larboard quarter, her prow (or I think I should say cutwater) throwing a fine sheet of spray to leeward with each even measured pitch: there is a generally-diffused happiness aboard; and since this is a make-and-mend day, the front part of the vessel is littered with hands busy, some with shears, many more with needles, cutting out their lengths of duck and sewing the pieces together, making their hot-weather clothes with wonderful dexterity. And each time the log is heaved they pause, ears cocked for the midshipman's report to the officer of the watch. "Nine knots and two fathoms, sir, if you please," croaks little Mr. Wells, whose voice is breaking at last; and a discreet wave of mirth and satisfaction ripples over the forecastle, while ten knots is greeted with such thumping on the deck, such enthusiasm, that the officer of the watch desires the mate of the watch to attend to "that God-damned bellowing and trampling, like a herd of drunken heifers mad for the bull.'"

In the comparative silence that followed (comparative, for the beautifully steady wind, the working of the ship and the voice of the sea itself, did not give a damn for the mate of the watch) Stephen abandoned his desk and walked with a reasonably seamanlike pace to the taffrail, which he leaned upon, watching the interminable wake stretching away and away in a turbulent, right true line, and the ship's steady companion, always there just this side of the turbulence, a blue shark, larger than most: all this with the top of his mind, while the rest of it was concerned with Christine, her West African birds, her grace, her frankness, her singularity; while another part of it took notice of a fiddle being tuned in the cabin immediately below him and then the tentative beginning of an adagio obviously adapted from one of his own 'cello suites, but graver by far. Mixed feeling: pleasure that Jack was playing, and playing so well: sorrow that what he played was so unlike the Jack Aubrey he knew, bold, sanguine, enterprising, with a face made for laughter or at the very least for smiling.

A shadow behind him cut his reflection short, and turning he said, 'Mr. Woodbine, I am happy to see you afoot. How do you do?'

'Tolerable, sir, tolerable. Abstinence, if not carried to superstitious extremes, does it, believe you me. So you are contemplating on that old shark, I presume?'

'Just so, Master: he is not alone, not by any manner of means: yet he keeps his station just under the counter - he has a scar just behind, or abaft, his dorsal fin, that is as clear as a visiting-card; and although I suspect that there are at least half a score of his brethren in the darkness of our hull, they do not presume to make their appearance: nor will they, unless we offer them blood.'

'But tell me, Doctor, how do you suppose they know about blood? For they do, even fish's blood, as I have seen time and again.'

'Why, as you are aware, they have gills: more gills than most of their kind. Immense, immense quantities of water enter that vast mouth and shoot out by those gills, which are lined with a tissue not unlike that with which our noses are furnished. There, I believe, lies the explanation.'

'Come, sir, what are you about?' cried Killick. 'Which the gunroom's dinner is almost on table, and you in your ordinary everyday old slops. Captain has been ready and trimmed this last glass, before ever he touched his fiddle.'

With real concern Stephen observed that the master was wearing his best coat, distinguished from the others by the absence of grease. 'So we entertain the Captain?' he cried.

'Which I told you so at breakfast. Sir,' replied Killick, with a very exactly dosed insolence.

'To think that I very nearly forgot,' said Stephen, who, although he often, even usually, ate in the cabin, was ex-officio a member of the gunroom mess and therefore one of the hosts on this occasion. Killick sniffed. 'Now then, what do you think you are about?' he called out angrily, addressing one of the cook's mates, who came staggering aft over the living deck, a bucket in either hand.

'Make a lane there,' cried the cook's mate with equal wrath, 'if you don't want to see the deck all a' shambles.' And then, deferentially, to Dr. Maturin, proffering a bucket, 'With the cook's respects, sir.'

'On the rise,' called the master, seizing one bucket and emptying it straight over the taffrail: cook's mate did the same, spilling never a drop; and in a split second the white foaming wake was scarlet, a most splendid scarlet for thirty yards astern and in the scarlet sharks raced to the surface, sometimes breaking water, lashing and snapping in a blind frenzy of greed and when it was found that the wounded bleeding prey did not exist they turned on the king shark, the big fellow, and a seething mass of long thin fishes not half his size tore and worried and wrenched him to pieces. It was over in barely a minute.

'God love us,' said the master. 'I never seen the like.'

'Come, sir,' said Killick again, utterly unmoved, twitching Stephen by the sleeve: then sharply to the master, 'Mr. Woodbine, sir, pray lead the way. I shall put the Doctor's coat on in the cabin.'

The lieutenants were entertaining their guest with sherry when Stephen came in, his entrance successfully covered by Candish the purser and Jacob, and presently the dinner began with all due ceremony.

Although Stephen, as he was the first to admit, could boast no masculine beauty, and although he was capable of very wild extravagances of conduct, he had in fact been carefully brought up by his Catalan grandfather, to whom elegant manners, a mastery of both languages and of French, as well as horsemanship and a real ability with pistol and small-sword, were necessary qualifications. And when, as sometimes happened - this being an example - Stephen had committed a very gross blunder, he became sad, mute and oppressed, arousing himself only to make a decent number of harmless remarks to his neighbours.

The ritual bowl of dried-pea soup and a couple of glasses of wine re-established him, however, and when, as obviously the most practised carver in the company, he was called upon to dismember a pair of ducks, he became aware that Mr. Harding, the first lieutenant, was still talking about his blacking, a superb blacking of his own invention that would withstand wind, sun, spray and the noxious influences of the moon indefinitely, retaining its superb gleam until well after the day of doom: it contained dragon's blood, together with some other secret ingredients, and its function was to preserve and above all to beautify the yards. Really well blackened shining yards, exactly squared by lifts and braces, added wonderfully to the air of a handsome ship - gave her an air that the others lacked. He had heard it said that Prince William owed his flag to the perfect order in which he maintained Pegasus: and he blacked his yards like Billy-Ho - no play on words was intended, ha, ha, ha. And if blacking yards could earn a man promotion, why, perfection in the blacking itself was likely to bring it even sooner... He went on about the qualities of his invention, and in his enthusiasm he even went so far as to say that he was impatient for the calm of the doldrums - there was no blacking even of the mainyard in this close-reefed topsail blow. It would fly all over the place, ruining the deck.

Jack's face had assumed a grave, detached expression: and well before this Harding had lost the rest of his audience. Nervously passing the decanter he said, 'I beg pardon, sir: I am afraid I have been talking shop far, far too long - a man's hobby-horse can be a sad bore to others. A glass of wine with you, sir.'

This was the first time that Stephen had seen Harding so affected. It was painful in so able and highly-respected an officer; and he knew that this kind of talk - this freedom -was the kind of rambling that Jack disliked very much indeed. Yet from the casual, off-hand, semi-facetious reference to the Duke of Clarence it was evident that Horatio had taken real notice of the warning against any mention of an influential connection - the connection, let alone the relationship, was wholly unsuspected. This raised the boy high in Stephen's estimation: as a fellow-bastard he was well acquainted with the temptation to prattle, and its remarkable strength.

In all their sea-time together, Jack had virtually never discussed his officers with Stephen, who was, after all, one of their number. But in the gunroom itself the case was altered and although one or two of the members were of a somewhat Whiggish turn of mind, Harding's words about Clarence were openly condemned by the other members. 'It is true,' said Candish, 'that not a very great deal can be said for the royals at present; but after all, they are our master's sons; one of them is very likely to succeed him; and a certain reticence seems absolutely called for.'

But what really shocked and grieved the lower deck (to whom the unfortunate outburst was very soon conveyed by the mess servants - one behind each chair and all provided with a pair of ears) was Mr. Harding's 'longing for the doldrums', an observation very ill-received.

'Ain't he ever been turned round and round in the barky - never no wind, week after week - nor no rain except for ten miles away, and water running cruel short, green and stinking; and that goddam sun beating down so mortal strong the tar drips off of the rigging and the seams open wide as a coach-house door?'

'Which he was drunk: and I've seen you drunk, Abel Trim - pissed as a kippered herring, and speechless, many a time, in Pompey, Rotherhithe and Hackney Wick.'

'Very well: and the same to you, Joe Plaice. But at least I did not go on in that unlucky way about longing for the doldrums. So parse that, you old bugger.'

'My dear,' wrote Stephen, 'I love to think of you at Wool-combe, that kind old house which I know quite well - it forms a kind of tenuous link: and not necessarily so tenuous either, since the dawn may well show us a homeward-bound ship beating up against the trade-wind, willing and able to carry our letters to an English port. So let me beg you to go into the library, there to look into Johnson's or Bailey's dictionary for the etymology of doldrum. I cannot make it out at all. The thing, the concept, I know perfectly well, having suffered from it, above all when there was gaol-fever in the ship; but how it has come by such a name I cannot tell. The French call it le pot au noir, and pretty black it can be, on occasion, when the two converging trade-winds fill a vast space more or less over the equator with clouds, gloom, thunder and lightning from both hemispheres, north and south - a prodigious space, whose width and borders vary year by year: but a space that we have to traverse, a space that no sailor in his right mind will ever mock or put to scorn. When we shall enter this unhappy region I cannot tell - we must be fairly near its northern limit - but I shall ask Mr. Daniel.'

He found Mr. Daniel and Horatio Hanson in the master's day-cabin, which the pair tended to usurp now that Mr. Woodbine spent so much longer below, abstaining. They were pricking the chart, a solemn undertaking, but they left off at once and leapt to their feet. 'Mr. Daniel,' he said, 'pray be so good as to tell me when we may expect to enter the doldrums.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Daniel, 'we have had reports of very strong and steady south-east trades, while ours has been moderate: furthermore, the glass has been behaving in a very whimsical fashion ever since the last dog yesterday' - he pointed to a series of barometric readings, clear proof of the instrument's wanton conduct - 'and I should not be surprised if we crossed its northern border tomorrow.'

'Dear Lord! So soon?' cried Stephen. 'I am so glad that I asked you. I have some delicate specimens of hydrozoa that must be protected - sometimes these seas are perfectly flat, as though oppressed by the weight of the air above them, and sometimes, with no wind or very little, they lose all rhythm, all reason, and toss you about in the most extraordinary fashion.'

'Oh, sir,' cried Hanson, 'I long to see it!'

'I must bestow my pans of hydrozoa. But you will let me know, I trust, when you are sure of our more near approach.'

Stephen was now so old a sea-dog that the grind of holystones and swabs on the deck immediately above did not disturb him: yet a little after this the gentle but persistent pushing of a hand and the repeated 'Sir, oh sir, if you please', eventually moved him to roll over on to the other side, with an ugly snarl. It did not answer. Rearing up in his cot, he saw young Hanson holding a lantern which showed his delighted face and shining eyes. 'Sir, you did say you should be told when the doldrums began. And they have begun! About six bells all the stars went out, one after the other right over the sky, and there was the most prodigious thunder and lightning, better than any Guy Fawkes' night; and the sea comes from every direction at once. There are three boobies on deck, perfectly amazed, just abaft the blue cutter. Do come and see, sir. It might all fade with the sunlight.'

It did not fade with the sunlight, which did little more than make a slightly greater extent of white-capped sea visible. The sun rose, to be sure, but it scarcely diminished the brilliance of the almost continuous lightning-flashes -the sheets, even, of lightning - that raced across the low dark base of cloud-cover, while the thunder scarcely left them a moment's silence.

'Do you see the sea, sir?' called Hanson in his ear. 'Ain't it turbid?'

'Lurid too, in a way. Pray lead me to the boobies.'

'Let me give you a hand, sir,' said Davies, dangerous in temper, not very clever nor much use except in an engagement, but much attached to Jack, Hanson, and even, in a somewhat condescending way, to Stephen.