The Wine-Dark Sea (8 page)

'You understand, sir,' said Grainger to Dutourd in terms that he had prepared beforehand, 'that those parties who have not the happiness of being his subjects are not required to drink the King.'

'You are very good, sir,' replied Dutourd, 'but I am perfectly willing to drink to the gentleman's good health: God bless him.'

Shortly after this the table emptied and Stephen and Martin took a turn on the quarterdeck until six bells, when they were invited to drink coffee with the Captain, who however hungry he might be was required by custom to dine later than anyone else. After the shadowy gunroom the full day was almost intolerably bright, a blue day with white clouds sailing on the warm breeze, a white ripple on the small cross-seas, no marked roll or pitch. They paced up and down with their eyes narrowed until they became used to the brilliance; and Martin said, 'An odd, somewhat disturbing thing happened to me this morning. I was coming back from the Franklin when Johnson pointed out a bird, a small pale bird that overtook us, circled the boat and flew on: certainly a petrel and probably Hahnemann's. Yet although I watched it with a certain pleasure I suddenly realized that I did not really care. I did not mind what it was called.'

'We have never yet seen Hahnemann's petrel.'

'No. That was what made it so disturbing. I must not compare great things with small, but one hears of men losing their faith: waking up one morning and finding that they do not believe in the Creed they must recite to the congregation in a few hours' time.'

'One does, too. And on a scale of infinitely less consequence but still distressing there was a cousin of mine in the County Down who found - one morning, just as you say - that he no longer loved the young woman to whom he had made an offer. She was the same young woman, with the same physical advantages and the same accomplishments; she had done nothing reprehensible; but he did not love her.'

'What did the poor man do?'

'He married her.'

'Was the marriage happy?'

'When you look about among your acquaintance do you find many happy marriages?'

Martin considered. 'No,' he said, 'I do not. My own is very happy, however; and with that,' nodding over the water at the prize, 'it is likely to be even happier. All the hands who have been on the Nootka run say she is extremely rich. And sometimes I wonder whether, with such a wife, a parish and the promise of preferment, I am justified in leading my present wandering life, delightful though it may be on such a day as this.'

Six bells, and they hurried down the companion-ladder. 'Come in, gentlemen, come in,' cried Jack. He was always a little over-cordial with Martin, whom he did not like very much and whom he did not invite as often as he felt he ought. Killick's arrival with the coffee and his mate's with little toasted slices of dried breadfruit masked the slight, the very slight, awkwardness and when they were all sitting comfortably, holding their little cups and gazing out of the sweep of windows that formed the aftermost wall of the great cabin, Jack asked, 'What news of your instrument, Mr Martin?'

The instrument in question was a viola, upon which, before it was broken, Martin played indifferently, having an uncertain ear and an imperfect sense of time. No one had expected to hear it again this voyage, or at least not until they touched at Callao; but the fortune of war had brought them a French repairer, a craftsman who had been sent to Louisiana for a variety of crimes, mostly crapulous, and who, escaping from bondage, had joined the Franklin.

'Gourin says that Mr Bentley has promised him a piece of lignum vitae as soon as he has a moment to spare: then it will be only half a day's work, and time for the glue to dry.'

'I am so glad,' said Jack. 'We must have some more music one of these days. There is another thing I wanted to ask, for you know a great deal about the various religious persuasions, as I recall?'

'I should, sir, because in the days when I was only an unbeneficed clergyman,' said Martin, with a bow towards his patron, 'I translated the whole of Muller's great book, wrote my version out again in a fair copy, saw it through the press and corrected two sets of proofs; every word I read five times, and some very curious sects did I come across. There were the Ascitants, for example, who used to dance round an inflated wine-skin.'

'The people I should like to know about are Knipperdollings.'

'Our Knipperdollings?'

'Oh, Knipperdollings in general: I do not mean anything personal.'

'Well, sir, historically they were the followers of Bernhard Knipperdolling, one of those Miinster Anabaptists who went to such very ill-considered lengths, enforcing equality and the community of goods and then going on to polygamy - John of Leiden had four wives at a time, one of them being Knipperdolling's daughter - and I am afraid that even worse disorders followed. Yet I think they left little in the way of doctrinal posterity, unless they can be said to live on in the Socinians and Mennonites, which few would accept. Those who use the name at present are descendants of the Levellers. The Levellers, as you will recall, sir, were a party with strong republican views in the Civil War; they wished to level all differences of rank, reducing the nation to an equality; and some of them wanted land to be held in common - no private ownership of land. They were very troublesome in the army and the state; they earned a thoroughly bad name and eventually they were put down, leaving only a few scattered communities. I believe the Levellers as a body did not have a religious as opposed to a social or political unity, though I cannot think that any of them belonged to the Established Church; yet some of these remaining communities formed a sect with strange notions of the Trinity and a dislike of infant baptism; and to avoid the odium attached to the name of Levellers and indeed the persecution they called themselves Knipperdollings, thinking that more respectable or at least more obscure. I imagine they knew very little of the Knipperdollings' religious teaching but had retained a traditional knowledge of their notions of social justice, which made them think the name appropriate.'

'It is remarkable,' observed Stephen after a pause, 'that the Surprise, with her many sects, should be such a peaceful ship. To be sure, there was that slight want of harmony between the Sethians and the Knipperdollings at Botany Bay - and in passing I may once more point out, sir, that if this vessel supplied her people with round rather than square plates, these differences would be slighter still; for you are to consider that a square plate has four corners, each one of which makes it more than a mere contunding instrument.' He perceived from the civil inclinations of Captain Aubrey's head and the reserved expression on his face that the square plates issued to the Surprise when she was captured from the French in 1796 would retain their lethal corners as long as he or any other right-minded sea-officer commanded her: the Royal Navy's traditions were not to be changed for the sake of a few broken heads. Stephen continued '... but generally speaking there is no discord at all; whereas very often the least difference of opinion leads to downright hatred.'

'That may be because they tend to leave their particular observances on shore,' said Martin. 'The Thraskites are a Judaizing body and they would recoil from a ham at Shelmerston, but here they eat up their salt pork, aye, and fresh too when they can get it. And then when we rig church on Sundays they and all the others sing the Anglican psalms and hymns with great good will.'

'For my own part,' said Captain Aubrey, 'I have no notion of disliking a man for his beliefs, above all if he was born with them. I find I can get along very well with Jews or even...' The P of Papists was already formed, and the word was obliged to come out as Pindoos.

Yet it had hardly fallen upon Stephen's ear before a shriek and the crash of glass expelled embarrassment: young Arthur Wedell, a ransomer of Reade's age, who lived and messed in the midshipmen's berth, fell through the skylight into the cabin.

Reade had been deprived of youthful company for a great while, and although he was often invited to the gunroom and the cabin he missed it sorely: at first Norton, though a great big fellow for his age, had been too bashful to be much of a companion in the berth, but now that Arthur had been added to them his shyness wore away entirely and the three made enough noise for thirty, laughing and hooting far into the night, playing cricket on the 'tween-decks when the hammocks were out of the way or football in the vacant larboard berth when they were not; but this was the first time they had ever hurled one of their number into the cabin.

'Mr Grainger,' said Jack, when it had been found that Wedell was not materially injured and when the lieutenant had been summoned from the head, 'Mr Wedell will jump up to the mizen masthead immediately, Mr Norton to the fore, and you will have Mr Reade whipped up to the main. They will stay there until I call them down. Pass the word for the carpenter; or for my joiner, if Mr Bentley is not in the way.'

'I have rarely known such delightful weather in what we must, I suppose, call the torrid zone,' said Stephen, dining as usual in the cabin. 'Balmy zephyrs, a placid ocean, two certain Hahnemann's petrels, and perhaps a third.'

'It would be all very capital for a picnic with ladies on a lake, particularly if they shared your passion for singular birds; but I tell you, Stephen, that these balmy zephyrs of yours have not propelled the ship seventy sea-miles between noon and noon these last four days. It is true that we could get along a little faster ourselves, but clearly we cannot leave the Franklin behind; and with her present rig she is but a dull sailer.'

'I noticed that you have changed her elegant great triangular sail behind.'

'Yes. Now that we are making progess with her lower masts we can no longer afford that very long lateen yard: we need it for pole topgallants. Presently you will see that twin jury mainmast of hers replaced by something less horrible made up from everything you can imagine by Mr Bentley and that valuable carpenter we rescued: upper-tree, side-trees, heel-pieces, side-fishes, cheeks, front-fish and cant-pieces, all scarfed, coaked, bolted, hooped and woolded together; it will be a wonderful sight when it is finished, as solid as the Ark of the Covenant. Then with that in place, and the respectable fore and mizen we already possess, we can send up topmasts and the pole topgallants I was telling you about. That will be best of what breeze there is. How I long to see her royals! I have sworn not to touch my fiddle until they are set.'

'You are in a great hurry to reach Peru, I find.'

'Of course I am. So would you be, could you see our bread-room, our spirit-room, reckon up our water and count our pork and beef casks, with all these new hands aboard. Above all our water. We had no time to fill at Moahu, or the Franklin would have run clear. And she having pumped all hers over the side, we are now in a sad way. There is only one thing for it: no fresh water will be allowed for washing clothes or anything else: only a small ration for drinking - no scuttle-butts standing about -and a minimum for the steep-tubs to get what salt off the pork and beef that towing them in a net over the side won't do.'

'But since we can go so much faster, could you not give the Franklin a modicum, sail briskly on and let her follow? After all, Tom found his way here: he could surely find it back.'

'What a fellow you are, Stephen. My whole plan is to arm her with our carronades and cruise in company, snapping up what China ships, whalers and fur-traders may appear, then to send Surprise in to Callao with, I hope, a captured ship or two so that they can be disposed of there and you can go ashore. Tom will be in command - they are used to him in Callao because of the prizes he took on the way out - and the barky will go on topping it the privateer. And while you are looking after your affairs and Tom is victualling, watering and getting in stores, I shall cruise alone offshore, sending in captures from time to time or at all events a boat. But without we spread more canvas we shall never get there before we die of thirst and starvation: that is why I am so eager to see the Franklin fully masted and looking like a Christian ship at last, instead of a God-damned curiosity.'

'So am I, upon my word,' said Stephen, thinking of his coca-leaves. 'I can hardly wait.'

'Possess yourself in patience for a day or two, and you will see her set her royals. Then that evening we shall have a concert -we may even sing!'

At the time Stephen wondered that Jack should speak so thoughtlessly, tempting a Fate that he almost always placated with a perhaps or if we are lucky or tide and weather permitting; and Stephen being by now a thorough-going seaman at least as far as weak superstition was concerned he was more grieved than surprised when a top-maul fell upon Mr Bentley's foot early the next morning. The wound was not dangerous but it confined the carpenter to his cot for a while and in the mean time his crew, most unhappily, fell out with the carpenter from the Franklin. The privateer had taken him from a Hull whaler and he spoke a Yorkshire dialect almost entirely incomprehensible to the west-country hands from Shelmerston, who looked upon him with dislike and suspicion as little better than a foreigner, a French dog or a Turk.

Work therefore went forward slowly, and not only work on the mast but the innumerable tasks that waited on its erection; and with an equal or even greater dliberation the two ships moved over the quiet sea through this perfect picnic weather. In spite of his eagerness to be in South America it pleased Stephen, who spread himself naked in the sun and even swam with Jack in the mornings: it pleased most of the people, who could devote themselves to a detailed reckoning of the Franklin's worth and the value of the goods she had taken out of her various prizes and dividing the total according to each man's share; and it would have pleased the midshipmen if the Captain had not come down on them like a thousand of bricks. Football was abolished, cricket prohibited, and they were kept strictly to their duty, taking altitudes right and left, showing up their day's working (which rarely amounted to fifty miles of course made good) and writing their journals neat and fair. No blots were allowed, and a mistaken logarithm meant no supper: they walked about barefoot or in list slippers, rarely speaking above a whisper.