Blue at the Mizzen (7 page)

'Yes, sir: my father was a wine-merchant here in Funchal, and I used to come and stay with my grandmother.'

'That is a capital accomplishment, to be sure. I shall call upon you, if I may, when the ship needs an interpreter. I hope you are successful in your bargaining: but do not stick for a dollar or two - the ship comes first. Good day to you.'

He returned their salute, and after a pause he went on to Stephen, 'There is your point to the very life. Wantage may not be a Newton or a Halley or a Cook - how I honour that man! - but he did have a Portuguese grandmother, when he was a little fellow, and now he has the Portuguese, ha, ha, ha! And to think I never knew it.'

'Perhaps you never asked,' said Stephen, somewhat put out.

'On the other hand, that might have been his loss too. Without the Portuguese he could never have cuckolded the shepherd. But I must not speak lightly of serious things... I shall have a word with Harding.'

Back to the ship - the ceremony of boarding her - to the great cabin, and the word passing for the first lieutenant.

'Mr. Harding, pray take a seat. May I offer you a glass of Madeira?'

Harding bowed his agreement, and having drunk a sip, he said, 'Capital Madeira, sir, capital.'

'It is pretty good, is it not, though I say it myself: but where can you get capital Madeira if not in Funchal itself?' They drank in a grave, considering way, and refilling their glasses Jack went on, 'But I tell you this, Mr. Harding, our midshipmen's berth is not what it should be.'

'No, sir: it is not.'

'I watched them on the way from Gibraltar. The newcomers have no idea of their duty and except for the little fellow, the first-voyager, no wish to learn it. But what really angered me extremely was Store's conduct ashore. He followed that poor unfortunate Wantage, crowing like a cock in an affected eunuch's voice. For God's sake, a gentleman's son behaving so in public! I have told him very clearly that if he ever ventures upon such a caper again I shall first have him made fast to a gun and beat him very hard indeed and then put him ashore at the nearest port, in whatever country it may be. I think that has calmed him for the moment: but he is a thoroughly undesirable influence on the mere boys, and since we cannot inflict him on the gunner, I believe we must return to the old way of asking him to look after youngsters, which will leave Daniel, Salmon, Adams - who must be thirty-odd - and Soames to keep Store in order: to say nothing of poor Wantage, who must make the wretched fellow anxious.'

'I quite agree, sir. You would not consider putting him ashore here?'

'No. I did think of it; but his father and I were shipmates. Yet at the very first hint of a repetition, out he goes. You and the bosun and the bosun's mates must keep him very busy - he cannot even manage a clove-hitch. And whenever he presumes to start a seaman with fist, foot or rope-end let him go straight to the masthead. In any case, if we re-commission in England after the repair, I very much doubt that I shall invite him to come with us.'

'Stephen,' he said much later, when they had finished their rather dull game of piquet - not a really interesting hand since the very first deal, and only fourpence won or lost - and they were sitting at their ease, drinking Madeira, 'I rarely, or tolerably rarely, bore you with the miseries of command: a good ship, a happy ship - and the two are much the same - pretty well runs herself, once all the people are settled down, above all if they are mostly old man-of-war's men.'

'Certainly. One can see that particular ethos come into being: and what has struck me quite forcibly is that it differs from ship to ship.'

'Ethos is not a Christian word, brother.'

'I beg pardon: I should have said something like tribal sense of right conduct but for the fact that sea-officers usually employ tribal to signify a group of black or red men created only for the comic or picturesque effect - I mean, leaving slavery aside. However, since nothing else occurs to my wine-fuddled mind, let us go on with tribal, using tribal in the noble sense of Boadicea's Iceni.'

'I have no objection whatsoever.'

Stephen bowed and went on. 'This tribal nature, which is of course most obvious towards the end of a long commission, may be likened to that which one senses in London clubs. No one could mistake an habitual member of Boodle's for an habitual member of Black's. It is not necessarily a question of better or worse. The Bactrian camel with two bunches is a valuable creature: the Arabian with but one is also a valuable creature.'

'I should not deny it for a moment - though I could wish that Black's did not have what some people might call an almost Whiggish complexion - but my real point is that in peace-time everything becomes much more difficult. You cannot distinguish yourself; and although as a captain it is your obvious duty to do your best for the people under your command, how can it be done? Getting a ship at all, when so many are being paid-off, is a near impossibility, like....' He searched for the word.

'Making a mountain out of a molehill?'

'Even worse, Stephen, even worse. These three young fellows who came aboard were able to do so only because they have very highly influential fathers; two of whom were my old shipmates anyhow. And boys, youths, with very highly influential fathers have to be handled with tongs: above all in peace-time... No, I don't mean for myself, Stephen - I shall tell you about that on Sunday - but if any of the lieutenants or the master or any of the warrant-officers comes down on them heavy, it might cost him very dear. I have known it: some miserable little scrub writes to his mother, "Mr. Blank boxed my ears so cruelly in the middle watch that I can hardly see out of my right eye at all." And if Father Scrub votes for the ministry and knows someone in Whitehall, in peace-time Mr. Blank may whistle for a ship until Kingdom Come.'

Jack Aubrey could never have been described as enthusiastically evangelical, but he did possess a sort of disseminated piety, sometimes expressing itself in mere superstition, sometimes in a very powerful singing of his favourite psalms, and sometimes in little private rites, such as keeping presents or good news for Sundays.

Sunday, and a very welcome pause from the hellish beating of mauls and square-headed mallets in the forepeak. Wantage, who knew Funchal through and through and who was recovering some of his self-possession with the familiar life of the Royal Navy going on all around him, had told Harding of the best eating-house in the town, and there the first lieutenant was entertaining Reade of the Ringle, Whewell, Candish and Woodbine of the gunroom, and the two master's mates, Daniel and Wantage. He had hoped to invite Jack and Stephen too, but his servant, sounding Killick first, had learnt that the Captain and the Doctor were engaged to eat a young wild boar, roasted according to the Madeiran fashion, in the hills.

'Please tell the Senhor that I have never eaten better porco in my life,' said Jack, holding up a bare white bone. Jack had a variety of little imbecilities, but none irritated Stephen more than his way of tossing in the odd word or two of a foreign language.

'Oh mind your breeches, sir,' cried Killick, interposing a napkin, a napkin too late. 'There: now you've gone and done it.'

'Never mind,' said Jack, and he tossed the bone into the glowing embers. 'What now?' he called, addressing a nervous horse-borne midshipman on the edge of the picnic dell.

'If you please, sir, Mr. Somers thought you might like to know that a packet is come in from Gibraltar.'

'Thank you, Mr. Wells. Ride back and tell him that we are just about to take our leave.'

A packet it was, and a fine fat one too, with English letters of various degrees of antiquity, a great parcel of dockets for Mr. Candish the purser, post for the cabin, gunroom and midshipmen's berth, and two waxed sailcloth rolls for Dr. Maturin.

'Forgive me,' said Stephen, and as he went he heard orders given for the general distribution. It was long before he came back: his first roll had contained some curious feathers of an unidentified nocturnal bird, probably cousin to the rednecked nightjar, and a particularly agreeable note from Sierra Leone, written before Christine Wood had received his letter; and the second was a coded message from Jacob, written according to a system they rarely used - a system in which Jacob had clearly lost his way, for although the first section spoke of certain Chileans and their arrangements (apparently with some anxiety), the second, third and fourth could not be induced to yield any meaning at all, whatever combinations were applied to them.

The attempt at decoding took much time and spirit, and well before he abandoned all hope the ship was alive with steps and voices once more, sounds that died as the letters were read; yet when he walked into the cabin he found Jack still smiling over his post. 'There you are, Stephen,' he cried.

'I do hope your letters were as pleasant as mine? I had a very agreeable foretaste on Friday, and I meant to keep it for today: but here is a confirmation,' holding up a sheet -'so I shall contain no longer. You remember that dear man Lawrence?'

'Faith, I shall not soon forget him. He did his profession infinite credit.' Mr. Lawrence was the barrister who had done his utmost to defend Jack Aubrey when he was charged with rigging the Stock Exchange - a completely false charge brought by those who profited by the fraud and a trial conducted on political motives by one of the most prejudiced and unscrupulous judges to have sat on the English bench. Lawrence had worked extremely hard to save his innocent client, and his failure to do so had marked him deeply.

'He did indeed. We often dine together when I am in town; and long ago, oh very long ago, before ever we went to Java and New South Wales, he happened to say that a nephew of his who had worked for years with Arthur Young had set up as an agricultural consultant and agent, but found it difficult to get a start. "I am the man for him," I said, and I told him about the little estate my cousin left me.'

'The place with a glorious spread of fritillaries in the water-meadows and the borough you represent in Parliament?'

'Just so. I have nothing against fritillaries: but I do assure you, Stephen, that with their sodden fields, the few farms and small-holdings produce nothing whatsoever except the ten or eleven electors and their families and just enough for them to eat. Every Lammas they send me a petition begging to be forgiven their rent this year, and please may they have twelve loads of stone for Old Hog Lane? It is an estate that costs me half a guinea for every snipe I have shot there: not that I have ever gone down much - it is far away, over vile roads, and there is no pleasure in looking at those barren fields and those coarse rank pastures. My cousin only bought the place because of the parliamentary seat. Indeed, the borough may be rotten, but the land is very much worse. Killick,' he called, barely raising his voice at all.

'Sir?' replied Killick, almost immediately.

'Light along a pot of coffee, will you?'

After a pause, Jack went on, 'One really should keep a log-book, you know; a diary: after some years it is difficult to put your ideas in order. At least, that is what I find. Well, the nephew - his name is Leicester, by the way: John Leicester - went down and reported that things were bad, very bad, but not incurable, and given the lie of the land, draining would answer very well. It would take time, it would take years; but most of the tenants would give their labour according to a scheme he had devised which would allow them time for their farming, and there would be no great outlay of money. So since at that time there had been some elegant prizes I told him to carry on: but there were to be no evictions, no distraints...'

'Pot of coffee, sir,' said Killick.

'Where was I? Told him to carry on, which he did; and we sailed away. I almost entirely forgot it... to be sure, Leicester, who was acting as agent as well, did send annual reports, but with so many things happening I am afraid I neglected them until last year, when he paid in rents of I think nearly forty pounds; and this year he spoke of the likelihood of a really abundant wheat harvest, ha, ha! However, I did not mention it, for fear of ill-luck: but today I have the truly welcome news that he has given the tenants a Lammas dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, at which they drank my health, and that he had placed �450 to my credit at the bank. �450, Stephen! More than my pay as a post-captain. There: that was my good news.'

'And very good, very welcome news it is, my dear. I give you joy with all my heart. There you are... I am very glad of it.'

So he was; but Jack, though not preternaturally sharp, detected the uneasiness, not so much in Stephen's expression as in a kind of particular tension in his attitude, and he said, 'Forgive me, Stephen, for boring you with all this personal and rather commonplace talk about money - you are uneasy.'

'No. You mistake: I was not in the least degree bored, weary, inattentive. And if I am at all uneasy, it is from another cause. Jack, tell me how long will these repairs take before you can sail?'

'With two saint's days coming and the vast amount of work to be done in so many of the shipwrights' own houses, eight or nine days.'

'Then I must beg for Ringle to carry me to England. And if she could sail tonight how happy I should be.'

It was at once clear to Jack that the request and the Gibraltar packet were connected: he asked no questions but passed the word for Mr. Reade, and when he came, said, 'William, how soon can you be under way?'

'In twenty minutes, sir, if I may sail without my carpenter.'

'You have his mate aboard?'

'No. He is aboard you, sir.'

'Then I shall send him over directly. Good-bye to you, William: you have the breeze as fair as ever you could wish.'

Almost all voyages, from that of Noah's Ark to the sending of the ships to Troy, have been marked by interminable delays, with false starts and turning wind and tide; perhaps the schooner Ringle was too slim and slight to count as a worthy adversary, because she gently sailed her anchor out of the ground and then bore away a little east of north with a wind that allowed her to spread every sail she possessed, other than those reserved for foul or very foul weather.