The Unknown Shore (13 page)

Already there were stirrings, the preparatory orders and hurrying about; the yawl was in sight, coming across the line of the bowsprit. Jack swung over the side into the chains; he stood there an instant, whispering to Tobias, ‘Get him below – anywhere below,’ and then jumped down into the boat. ‘Come on, now,’ he said to Cozens; ‘one arm in here, and one in there. Way oh; haul away. Roundly, there.’ Cozens, looking very stupid and aghast, rose in the air on the tackle.

Tobias, who was not devoid of mother-wit, pinned him as soon as his legs were above the rail and called out, ‘Stop. Belay. Avast. Pull no more, there. Let it go. Sunstroke – this is a very sudden sunstroke.’ They let him down with a run, and Cozens, still altogether amazed, squelched down on deck. ‘Carry him downstairs,’ cried Tobias, waving his opened lancet.

‘What is this? – Clear the way – get forward, the idlers – what is this?’ exclaimed the master, pushing through the crowd as two men of Cozens’ watch hurried him out of sight.

‘It is the effect of the sun, sir,’ said Tobias, ‘and I shall dose him below.’

‘The sun, Mr Barrow?’ said the master. ‘Mr Snow, clear me those men to the foc’s’le. When is the side to be dressed, bo’sun? We do not have all day.’

‘I suggest that hats should be ordered to be worn,’ said Tobias, plucking Mr Clerk’s coat to draw his attention. This was the first lie of his life, and he thought he might as well make the best of it. ‘Such a stroke, my dear sir,’ he said, leering at the master and nodding
emphatically, ‘such a stroke would never have occurred without the head was too lightly covered, eh?’

Mr Clerk would have replied, but his words were cut off by the howling of calls as the captain came up the side; he composed his face to a suitable expression of complaisance and stepped forward, while Tobias nodded and becked behind him, with infinite enjoyment.

‘Who is the midshipman in the barge?’ asked the captain, after he had taken a turn on the quarter-deck with the lieutenant. He said it in a tone of considerable displeasure, and he answered it himself, for going to the side and leaning over, he looked into the boat. ‘Byron,’ he said, ‘I am surprised at him. There has been too much tom-foolery, Mr Bean: playing the merry-Andrew before the whole squadron. The barge has been making a Jack-Pudding of itself. It will do that young man no harm to be brought down to his proper level, Mr Bean.’

When Jack next set foot on deck it was just before dinner-time; in fact the hands were being piped down as he made his appearance. For a long time he had heard this tuneless up-and-down shrieking before meals, and the result was that whenever he heard the piping-down he felt hungry; not to put too fine a point upon it, he slavered. But today his wreathed smiles of anticipation were wiped off very quickly. A most unexpectedly sour Mr Bean asked him what he thought he was doing on the quarter-deck in shirtsleeves and why he considered himself privileged to play the ape in the barge, making the
Wager
despicable in the eyes of the whole squadron, with merchantmen looking on, to make it even worse.

The answer to the first question would have involved a complicated explanation, and the second was not really answerable at all, so Jack bowed to the storm, looked meek, begged pardon – did not intend to offend – would do so no more – and hoped that it would soon be over. But it was not soon over; meekness was not enough, and presently Jack found himself on his way to the masthead.

He went aloft with the melancholy but calm philosophy of one who regrets his dinner but who knows that injustice is inseparable from human existence, and most particularly from the existence of mid-shipmen. He had not been mastheaded before on this voyage, partly because everyone who knew the difference between a sheet
and a tack was too valuable on deck during the early days, partly because of the equable temper of the lieutenant, and partly because he had not transgressed the law. Not that the last had a great deal to do with it, for the young are often punished because their elders are peevish; as he climbed, Jack was inclined to attribute his fate to Mr Bean’s digestion. Rum, in hot weather, is as dangerous to handle as gun-powder, because of the fumes; for the last two days, therefore, the galley fires had been out – and cold victuals did not agree with Mr Bean.

‘I wish he may burst,’ said Jack, with an uncharitable glance at the distant quarter-deck. But his spirits were not really much affected, and he alternately admired the view and carved his initials upon the topmast cap. The view was a circle of the purest blue some thirty miles across, the full deep oceanic blue, without the shadow of a single cloud upon it; and in the middle of this glorious disk there was the squadron, brilliantly white from above, gathered in a comfortable group – he was going to say ‘like ducks', but his sense of poetic fitness as well as a due reverence for the service made him substitute halcyons, as being grander, and more classical.

One of the disadvantages of being called Byron is that B is a difficult letter to carve: however, by a course of long practice Jack had almost overcome this handicap, and the most recent of his Majesty’s ships in which he had served before the
Wager
was sprinkled with JBs of an almost professional excellence. The first lieutenant of that vessel was a man of great independence of spirit; he would never have it said that he was influenced by important connexions, and he had come down upon Jack’s slightest faults with ferocious rectitude. At that time Jack had often wished that either his grandfather had never been First Lord of the Admiralty or that Mr Toke had less greatness of soul: good came out of it all, however, for not only was he now able to carve his initials quite beautifully, having had so much practice at the masthead, but the frequency of the punishment made him take little account of it.

This was not the case with Tobias, however. When he had finished with Cozens – bleeding, purging and a strong emetic – he went along to the midshipmen’s berth for dinner.

‘Yes, he will do very well,’ he said, in reply to their questions. ‘Where is Jack?’

‘Mastheaded,’ said Campbell, helping himself to the last of the Madeiran cheese.

‘Old Bean sent him up,’ said Morris.

Tobias ate biscuit for some time in silence and then said, ‘Masthead.’ There had been such a very great deal to occupy his mind since they sailed that he had not taken very much notice of the working of the ship nor of naval discipline. He had seen the many floggings, of course, they being solemn occasions, with all hands piped up to witness the punishment; besides, it fell to him to treat the sometimes shocking wounds that a severe flogging entailed; but Morris or Cozens might have been sent to the masthead fifty times without Tobias paying any attention to it.

‘What is he doing up there?’ he asked. ‘I should have supposed him to be hungry.’ He took a weevil out of his biscuit and looked keenly at the little creature’s proboscis.

‘I dare say he is,’ said Campbell, with a prim smile; and he explained the meaning of the term.

‘Oh,’ cried Tobias, pale with fury. ‘Is that the case? What an unprincipled abuse of authority. To send him up there – that most dangerous eminence – infernal tyranny – public ignominy.’ Tobias became incoherent, and sprang about in a high state of rage and excitement. ‘Mr Bean, was it? The proud satrap, the man of blood. I shall bring down his vile presumption.’

Morris and Campbell seized him as he darted out and confined him to the berth until he had stopped foaming. ‘If you were to say a rough word to him,’ said Campbell, ‘much less lift your hand, do you know what it would be?’

Tobias breathed hard, but did not reply.

‘Mutiny,’ said Campbell.

‘There is only one punishment for mutiny,’ said Morris, imitating a hanging man.

‘Your friend may be able to command cabins and all manner of irregular favours,’ said Campbell, who meant well enough by Tobias, but who did not love Jack, ‘but his grand relations could not save you from a court-martial. He would be involved too, I dare say,’ he added.

‘You are quite right,’ said Tobias. ‘I shall be calm, prudent. Pass the biscuit, if you please, and the pork.’ He took off his neckerchief,
spread it out and very firmly carved a picnic into it: he hurried to their cabin for a piece of the remaining cake and so came on deck.

He passed close to the lieutenant, and Mr Bean, turning in his pace, received a very implacable and malignant glare which (being so unexpected) quite upset him. At the end of his next turn Mr Bean noticed Tobias again, creeping up the shrouds, and he could almost have sworn that the surgeon’s mate had been shaking his fist at him, or at least in the direction of the holy quarter-deck. Mr Bean was on the point of calling him down, but he hesitated: Mr Barrow could never have been so abandoned, so wanton; Mr Barrow was known to be sober, grave, unusually learned; Mr Barrow also had a particularly happy turn of the wrist, and Mr Eliot delegated all the
Wager’s
dental business to him. The lieutenant’s teeth were none of the best, and any day Tobias might have him hideously at his mercy. To call such a person down to explain what probably never happened, decided Mr Bean, would be the height of folly.

Jack had finished his initials, and with an Olympian detachment he was watching the last boats crawling over the sea from the victualler; the unloading was almost done; soon they would be making sail. From time to time he stared at the
Centurion,
trying to make out whether the figure at the mizzen masthead were Keppel or not: the
Centurion
was a very much stricter ship than the
Wager,
and there was somebody at the main as well.

‘It is probably one of the ship’s apes,’ he concluded – the
Centurion
had bought every ape on the Madeiran market, being ashore earlier than anyone else – and he frowned, because there was a curiously familiar noise that he could not locate. ‘It is almost exactly like a bulldog,’ he said, ‘or Toby, when he is coming up into the foretop.’ A sudden doubt came into his mind. He looked down, and with a thrill of pure horror he saw Tobias’ nightcap not five ratlines below him.

The shrouds, with the ratlines across them, form a kind of ladder; they are spread out to as wide a base as is possible at the bottom, because their chief function is to support the mast, but as they are made fast at the top to the mast itself, so of necessity the ladder that they make becomes exceedingly narrow for its last dozen rungs – narrow, and difficult to climb, because so many ropes converge. Furthermore, the roll of a ship is more and more perceptible the
higher you are. A ten-degree roll is nothing much on deck once you have your sea-legs, but by the time you reach ninety feet (the
Wager’s
main topmast crosstrees were about a hundred from the water) a little roll like this will send you through fifteen feet of lateral distance each time. The silent rush through the air is refreshing in the heavy atmosphere of the doldrums, and the constantly changing effects of the earth’s gravity, now pressing your face on to the tarred rope of the ratlines, now plucking you backwards as the swing is reversed, are an additional delight to an inquiring spirit; but it is as well to have a head for heights and to be used to the behaviour of the upper rigging before you go swooping to and fro so near the sky.

Tobias had begun fairly well. From the deck to the maintop (which was the highest point he had reached before) it had been fairly easy, and the first half of the topmast shrouds had not alarmed him much; but from then onwards the swing had been so much greater, and his ladder so much narrower, that his parcel hampered him sorely. Now he was mounting only between long rests; he hooked his arms right through the ratlines and hung there during the backward roll, and then as the
Wager
came slowly up and her masts approached the vertical he transferred his parcel to his teeth, grasped the next ratline with both hands and hauled himself up with a convulsive movement. Then he threaded himself into the web again, took the parcel in his right hand and closed his eyes while his steady aerial motion bore him out beyond the deck below (how small and far) out over the sea and back again. Sometimes it took him two rolls or three before he could arrange his feet properly for the next upward scramble, and sometimes he had to wait for a long time to recruit his strength, for this was a very laborious way of going aloft – worse than that, it was based upon a misapprehension, for although at the lower stages the space between the shrouds was amply wide enough, it was now so narrow that he could scarcely get his arm through, and after the next step, where the cat-harpings drew the shrouds in tight, he would not be able to do so at all.

‘Toby,’ called Jack softly, so as not to startle him, ‘I’m coming down. Just stay where you are.’

By way of answer Tobias shook his nightcap, surged up one more step and hung there, breathing hard. Jack ran down the starboard shrouds to the height of the cat-harpings and peered round the mast
into Tobias’ face, which was candle-pale and glistening.

‘How are you, old Toby?’ he asked. ‘Give me that thing, will you?’

The
Wager,
at this moment, was reaching the limit of her starboard roll: Tobias cautiously held out the parcel, but he mistook and let it go just before Jack’s hand was there. It fell, down, down and down; then there was a little white splash in the blue water well out from the side, and while they watched a great long shape glided fast from under the stern, and they saw the white gleam of its belly as it turned so far down there in the clear sea.

‘Come now, Toby,’ said Jack, ‘this will never do. You must run straight up to the crosstrees. Wait a minute.’ He swarmed round the cat-harpings to the larboard shrouds just under Tobias. ‘I will take your shoes off,’ he said, doing so. ‘Now put your feet here and here, and grip with your toes. Now up you go – quick, hand over hand.’ He ran Toby’s feet up, pushed him on to the crosstrees, writhed round him and above to get the other side of the mast and hauled him into a sitting position, talking busily all the time, adjuring him not to look down, never to worry, to look lively and to go easy there. He judged it very well: by the time the mast was upright Tobias was sitting firmly on the crosstrees with his feet on the huge fiddle-headed block of the topmast stay, his right hand on a topgallant dead-eye and his left arm round the masthead itself, as firm as a limpet. ‘There you are,’ said Jack. ‘What an intrepid topman you are becoming, Toby, upon my word and honour.’