The Ionian Mission (31 page)

   Mr Graham pursed his lips, took the roll, and read

But on arrival at the fleet's anchorage, there

A very sad story we next did hear,

That Buenos Ayres had been retaken

And our little army very much shaken.

But a small reinforcement from the Cape

Induced the Commodore to try a feat

To reduce Monte Video was his intent

But which proved abortive in the event.

'You have begun at the end,' observed Stephen.

   'Is the beginning of the same nature?' asked Graham.

   'Rather more so, perhaps,' said Stephen.

   'Clearly I am under great obligation to Mr Rowan,' said Graham, looking through the other pages with a melancholy air. 'But I am ashamed to say that as I was dragged through the surf I did not distinguish him as clearly as I should have done: is he indeed the very cheerful round-faced black-eyed gentleman, somewhat positive and absolute at table, who so often laughed and gambolled among the ropes with the midshipmen?'

   'Himself.'

   'Aye. Well, I shall do what I can for him, of course; though the correction of verses is a thankless task.' Graham shook his head, whistling in an undertone and reflecting that perhaps being rescued was an expensive amusement; then he smiled and said, 'Speaking of midshipmen reminds me of young Milo of Crotona and his daily struggle with the bull-calf, and of his particular friend, the tow-haired boy Williamson. Pray, how do they come along, and how does the bull-calf do?'

   'The bull-calf now luxuriates in whatever part of the vessel may be appropriate, eating the bread of idleness, since it has become so much a part of the ship's daily life that there can be no question of slaughtering it, nor even of castrating it, so that in time we shall no doubt have a very froward guest in the
Worcester's
bowels. Yet it is Mr Williamson that gives me more immediate anxiety. As you may have heard, mumps is got into the ship, brought by a Maltese lad in a victualler; and Mr Williamson was the first and most thorough-going case.'

   Mr Graham could never have been described as a merry companion: few things amused him at all and fewer still to the pitch of open mirth; but mumps was one of these rarities and he now uttered an explosive barking sound.

   'It is no laughing matter,' said Stephen, privily wiping Graham's saliva from his neckcloth. 'Not only is our
Hamlet
brought to a halt for want of an Ophelia—for Mr Williamson was the only young gentleman with a tolerable voice—but the poor boy is in a fair way to becoming an alto, a counter-tenor for life.'

   'Hoot,' said Graham, grinning still. 'Does the swelling affect the vocal cords?'

   'The back of my hand to the vocal cords,' said Stephen. 'Have you not heard of orchitis? Of the swelling of the cods that may follow mumps?'

   'Not I,' said Graham, his smile fading.

   'Nor had my messmates,' said Stephen, 'though the Dear knows it is one of the not unusual sequelae of
cynanche parotidaea
, and one of real consequence to men. Yet to be sure there is something to be said in its favour, as a more humane way of providing castrati for our choirs and operas.'

   'Does it indeed emasculate?' cried Graham.

   'Certainly. But be reassured: that is the utmost limit of its malignance. I do not believe that medical history records any fatal issue—a benign distemper, compared with many I could name. Yet Lord, how concerned my shipmates were, when I told them, for surprisingly few seem to have had the disease in youth—'

   'I did not,' said Graham, unheard.

   'Such anxiety!' said Stephen, smiling at the recollection. 'Such uneasiness of mind! One might have supposed it was a question of the bubonic plague. I urged them to consider how very little time was really spent in coition, but it had no effect. I spoke of the eunuch's tranquillity and peace of mind, his unimpaired intellectual powers—I cited Narses and Hermias. I urged them to reflect that a marriage of minds was far more significant than mere carnal copulation. I might have saved my breath: one could almost have supposed that seamen lived for the act of love.'

   'The mumps is a contagious disease, I believe?' said Graham.

   'Oh eminently so,' said Stephen absently, remembering Jack's grave, concerned expression, the grave concerned expressions in the wardroom, and upon the faces of a delegation from the gun-room that waited on him to learn what they could do to be saved; and smiling again he said, 'If eating were an act as secret as the deed of darkness, or
fugging
, as they say in their sea-jargon, would it be so obsessive, so omnipresent, the subject of almost all wit and mirth?'

   Professor Graham, however, had moved almost to the very end of the Ocean's empty wardroom, where he stood with his face by an open scuttle; and as Stephen approached he limped swiftly towards the door, pausing there to say, 'Upon recollection, I find I am compelled to decline the
Worcester's
wardroom's most polite and obliging invitation, because of a previous engagement. You will present my best compliments and tell the gentlemen how much I regret not seeing them tomorrow.'

   'They will be disappointed, I am sure,' said Stephen. 'But there is always the oratorio. You will see them all at the oratorio, on Sunday evening.'

   'On
Sunday
evening?' cried Graham. 'Heuch: how unfortunate. I fear I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to be present at a public exhibition or display on the Sabbath, not even a performance that is far from profane; and must beg to be excused.'

   Sunday evening came closer. Thursday, Friday, and on Saturday the mistral, which had been blowing for three days, setting the squadron far to the south of its usual station, suddenly shifted several points and turned dirty, bringing black cloud and rain-showers from the east-north-east. 'It will soon blow out,' said the harmonious Worcesters as they gathered, necessarily under hatches, for their grand dress-rehearsal. It had not been represented to them that neither costume nor action was usual in an oratorio, but as the sailmaker said, 'If we have no wimming to sing, we must have costumes: it stands to reason.' They certainly had no wimming, for the three or four warrant-and petty-officers' wives aboard were negligible quantities in the article of song (the oratorio was therefore strangely truncated) and the costumes were a matter of great concern to all the
Worcester's
people. Although ship-visiting was discouraged in the squadron on blockade a good deal of intercourse in fact took place: it was perfectly well known, for example, that the
Orion
, having pressed the male part of a bankrupt travelling circus, had a fire-eater aboard and two jugglers, amazing in calm weather, while the
Canopus's
weekly entertainments were always opened and closed by dancers that had appeared on the London stage. The
Worcester
passionately longed to wipe
Orion's
eye, as well as
Canopus's
; and since a large audience was expected, the Admiral having publicly, emphatically expressed his approval of the oratorio, it was absolutely essential that this audience should be struck all of a heap: and elegant refined costumes were to do some of the striking.

   Unhappily the victualler carrying the Aleppo muslin ordered from Malta was intercepted by a French privateer—it now adorned the whore-ladies of Marseilles—while Gibraltar sent nothing whatsoever; and the day came nearer with no elegant refined costumes within a thousand miles and all the purser's duck irrevocably turned into common slops long since. The sailmaker and his mates, indeed the whole ship's company, began to look wistfully at the rarely-used light and lofty sails, the kites, skyscrapers, royal and topgallant studdingsails: but the
Worcester
was a taut ship, a very taut ship; her Captain had already proved that he knew every last thing about capperbar, or the misappropriation of Government stores, and with the squadron so short of everything and so far from sources of supply it was impossible that he would tolerate even a modest degree of innocent theft. However, they sounded Mr Pullings, who was obviously concerned with the success of the performance and the honour of the ship, and at the same time they made devious approaches to the Captain by means of Bonden and Killick, to Dr Maturin through a small black boy who acted as his servant, and to Mr Mowett by 'ingenuous' requests for advice as to how to proceed. The whole matter had therefore been present in Jack's mind—present in the atmosphere and with a favourable bias—well before he was called upon to make a decision, and the decision came out with all the directness that the seamen looked for: any God-damned swab—any man that presumed to tamper with any sail, however thin, however worn in the bunt or chafed in the bands, should have his ears nailed to a four-inch plank and be set adrift with half a pound of cheese. On the other hand, there were seven untouched bolts of number eight canvas, and if Sails and his crew liked to shape the cloths for a fair-weather suit of upper sails, that might do the trick. Sails did not seem to comprehend: he looked stupid and despondent. 'Come, Sails,' said Jack, 'How many two-foot cloths do you need for a main royal?'

   'Seventeen at the head and twenty-two at the foot, your honour.'

   'And how deep are they?'

   'Seven and a quarter yards, not counting the tabling or the gores: which is all according.'

   'Why then, there you are. You fold your cloth four times, tack a couple of grommets to each clew of the open ends, clap it over your shoulders fore and aft and there you are in an elegant refined costume in the classical taste very like a toga, and all without cutting canvas or wronging the ship.'

   It was in these costumes then that they gathered for the dress rehearsal: but although the togas were not a week old they had already lost their classical simplicity. Many were embroidered, all had ribbons neatly sewn into the seams, and the general aim seemed to be to outdo
Orion's
feathers and tinsel as quickly as possible—the cooper and his friends had come out in gilded keg-hoops by way of crowns. Yet although the choir looked a little strange, and would look stranger by far given time and leisure, they made a fine body of sound as they sang away, all crammed together below with the deck touching the cooper's crown, the taller men's heads, but so deep in the music that the discomfort counted for nothing.

   In spite of the foul weather Captain Aubrey heard them on the wind-swept, rain-swept, spray-swept quarterdeck. He was not an extremely amorous man: hours or even days might pass without his thinking of women at all. But even so he had no notion of the eunuch's tranquillity and although he did his duty, visiting the sick-bay daily and standing doggedly by the cases of mumps for three full minutes he tended to avoid his friend Maturin, who wandered about in a most inconsiderate way, as though he did not mind spreading infection—as though it were all one to him if the entire ship's company piped like choir-boys rather than roaring away in this eminently manly fashion, so that the
Worcester's
beams vibrated under foot. He stood by the weather-rail with his back to the rain, partly sheltered by the break of the poop, wearing a griego with the hood pulled up, and he stared forward in the dim late afternoon light at the
Orion
, his next ahead on the larboard tack, as the squadron stood westward under close-reefed topsails with the wind two points free: part of his mind was considering the effects of resonance and the harmonics of the hull, the singers being in rather than on the sound-box, while the rest concentrated upon the
Worcester's
mainmast. This massive piece of timber, a hundred and twelve feet long and more than a yard across where it rose from the deck, complained every time the ship lifted to the short steep seas under her larboard bow. Fortunately there was no topgallantmast aloft to add its leverage on the roll, nor any great press of canvas, but even so the mast was suffering. He would give it another preventer travelling backstay, and if that did not answer he would turn to his old caper of getting light hawsers to the mastheads, however uncouth it might look. But the whole ship was suffering for that matter, not only the masts: the
Worcester
hated this particularly Mediterranean rhythm that caught her between two paces as it were, so she could neither trot easy nor canter, but had to force her way through the sea with one reef more out of her topsails than her better-built companions, many of them from French or Spanish yards.

   Yet although hawsers might secure the masts, holding them even more strongly to the hull, if the
Worcester
did not mind looking lumpish and untidy, what measures could secure the hull itself? As Jack listened below the oratorio, below the complaining of the masts, below the innumerable voices of the sea and the wind right down to the deep confused groaning of the timbers themselves, out of tune and unhappy, he reflected that if she could not be provided with new knees in the course of a thorough refit he might eventually have to frap her whole carcass, winding cable round and round until it looked like an enormous chrysalis. The idea made him smile, and smile all the wider since the choir forward had worked their way to their favourite chorus, and were now topping it the Covent Garden with all their might—with infinite relish, too. 'Halleluiah,' sang their Captain with them as a fresh sheet of rain struck the ship, drumming on the back of his hood, 'halleluiah,' until an unmistakable gunshot to leeward cut his note short and at the same moment the lookout hailed 'Sail ho! Sail on the larboard quarter.'

   Jack plunged across the deck to the lee rail, helped on his way by the
Worcester's
roll and lurch: hammocks had not been piped up that soaking day and there was no barrier between him and the sea to the southward. Yet nothing could he make out: he and Mowett, who had the watch, stood there searching the thick grey squall of rain.

   'Just abaft the mizzen backstay, sir,' called Pullings from the maintop, where he too had been sheltering from Dr Maturin: and the veil parting both Jack and Mowett cried out '
Surprise!
'