Master & Commander (11 page)

   Jack did not hear it: he was quite unconscious of the tension around him, far away in his calculations of the opposing forces—not mathematical calculations by any means, but rather sympathetic; the calculations of a rider with a new horse between his knees and a dark hedge coming.

   Presently he went below, and after he had stared out of the stern-window for some time he looked at the chart. Cape Mola would be on their starboard now—they should raise it very soon—and it would add a little greater thrust to the wind by deflecting it along the coast. Very quietly he whistled
Deh vieni
, reflecting, 'If I make a success of this, and if I make a mint of money, several hundred guineas, say, the first thing I shall do after paying-off is to go to Vienna, to the opera.'

   James Dillon knocked on the door. 'The wind is increasing, sir,' he said. 'May I hand the mainsail, or reef at least?'

   'No, no, Mr Dillon . . . no,' said Jack, smiling. Then reflecting that it was scarcely fair to leave this on his lieutenant's shoulders he added, 'I shall come on deck in two minutes.'

   In fact, he was there in less than one, just in time to hear the ominous rending crack. 'Up sheets!' he cried. 'Hands to the jears. Tops'l clewlines. Clap on to the lifts. Lower away cheerly. Look alive, there.'

   They looked alive: the yard was small; soon it was on deck, the sail unbent, the yard stripped and everything coiled down.

   'Hopelessly sprung in the slings, sir,' said the carpenter sadly. He was having a wretched day of it. 'I could try to fish it, but it would never be answerable, like.'

   Jack nodded, without any particular expression. He walked across to the rail, put a foot on to it and hoisted himself up into the first ratlines, the
Sophie
rose on the swell, and there indeed lay Cape Mola, a dark bar three points on the starboard beam 'I think we must touch up the look-out,' he observed 'Lay her for the harbour, Mr Dillon, if you please Boom mainsail and everything she can carry. There is not a minute to lose.'

   Forty-five minutes later the
Sophie
picked up her moorings, and before the way was off her the cutter splashed into the water, the sprung yard was already afloat, and the boat set off urgently in the direction of the wharf, towing the yard behind like a streaming tail.

   'Well, there's the fleet's own brazen smiling serpent,' remarked bow oar, as Jack ran up the steps. 'Brings the poor old
Sophie
in, first time he ever set foot on her, with barely a yard standing at all, her timbers all crazy and half the ship's company pumping for dear life and every man on deck the livelong day, dear knows, with never a pause for the smell of a pipe And he runs up them old steps smiling like King George was at the top there to knight him'

   'And short time for dinner, as will never be made up,' said a low voice in the middle of the boat.

   'Silence,' cried Mr Babbington, with as much outrage as he could manage.

   'Mr Brown,' said Jack, with an earnest look, 'you can do me a very essential service, if you will. I have sprung my mainyard hopelessly, I am concerned to tell you, and yet I must sail this evening—the
Fanny
is in. So I beg you to condemn it and issue me out another in its place. Nay, never look so shocked, my dear sir,' he said, taking Mr Brown's arm and leading him towards the cutter. 'I am bringing you back the twelve-pounders—ordnance being now within your purview, as I understand—because I feared the sloop might be over-burthened.'

   'With all my heart,' said Mr Brown, looking at the awful chasm in the yard, held up mutely for his inspection by the cutter's crew. 'But there is not another spar in the yard small enough for you.'

   'Come, sir, you are forgetting the
Généreux
. She had three spare foretopgalantyards, as well as a vast mound of other spars; and you would be the first to admit that I have a moral right to one.'

   'Well, you may
try
it, if you wish; you may sway it up to let us see what it looks like. But I make no promise.'

   'Let my men take it out, sir. I remember just where they are stowed. Mr Babbington, four men. Come along now. Look alive.'

   ' 'Tis only on trial, remember, Captain Aubrey,' called Mr Brown. 'I will watch you sway it up.'

   'Now that is what I call a real spar,' said Mr Lamb, peering lovingly over the side at the yard. 'Never a knot, never a curl: a French spar I dare say: forty-three foot as clean as a whistle. You'll spread a mainsail as a mainsail on that, sir.'

   'Yes, yes,' said Jack impatiently. 'Is that hawser brought to the capstan yet?'

   'Hawser to, sir,' came the reply, after a moment's pause.

   'Then heave away.'

   The hawser had been made fast to the middle of the yard and then laid along it almost to its starboard extremity, being tied in half a dozen places from the slings to the yardarm with stoppers—bands of spun yarn; the hawser ran from the yardarm up to the top-block at the masthead and so down through another block on deck and thence to the capstan; so as the capstan turned the yard rose from the water, sloping more and more nearly to the vertical until it came aboard quite upright, steered carefully end-on through the rigging.

   'Cut the outer stopper,' said Jack. The spun yarn dropped and the yard canted a little, held by the next: as it rose so the other stoppers were cut, and when the last went the yard swung square, neatly under the top.

   'It will never do, Captain Aubrey,' called Mr Brown, hailing over the quiet evening air through his trumpet. 'It is far too large and will certainly carry away. You must saw off the yardarms and half the third quarter.'

   Lying stark and bare like the arms of an immense pair of scales, the yard certainly did look somewhat over-large

   'Hitch on the runners,' said Jack 'No, farther out Halfway to the second quarter. Surge the hawser and lower away.' The yard came down on deck and the carpenter hurried off for his tools 'Mr Watt,' said Jack to the bosun 'Just rig me the brace-pendants, will you" The bosun opened his mouth, shut it again and bent slowly to his work—anywhere outside Bedlam brace-pendants were rigged after the horses, after the stirrups, after the yard-tackle pendants (or a thimble for the tackle-hook, if preferred) and none of them, ever, until the stop-cleat, the narrow part for them all to rest upon, had been worked on the sawn-off end and provided with a collar to prevent them from drawing in towards the middle The carpenter reappeared with a saw and a rule 'Have you a plane there, Mr Lamb?' asked Jack 'Your mate will fetch you a plane Unship the stuns'l-boom iron and touch up the ends of the stop-cleats, Mr Lamb, if you please' Lamb, amazed until he grasped what Jack was about, slowly planed the tips of the yard, shaving off wafers until they showed new and white, a round the size of a halfpenny bun. 'That will do,' said Jack. 'Sway her up again, bracing her round easy all the time square with the quay. Mr Dillon, I must go ashore: return the guns to the ordnance-wharf and stand off and on for me in the channel. We must sail before the evening gun. Oh, and Mr Dillon, all the women ashore.'

   'All the women without exception, sir?'

   'All without their lines. All the trollops. Trollops are capital things in port, but they will not do at sea.' He paused, ran down to his cabin and came back two minutes later, stuffing an envelope into his pocket. 'Yard again,' he cried, dropping into the boat.

   'You will be glad you took my advice,' said Mr Brown, receiving him at the steps. 'It would certainly have carried away with the first puff of wind.'

   'May I take the duettoes now, sir?' asked Jack, with a certain pang. 'I am just about to fetch the friend I was speaking of—a great musician, sir. You must meet him, when next we are in Mahon: you must allow me to present him to Mrs Brown.'

   'Should be honoured—most happy,' said Mr Brown.

   'Crown steps now, and give way like heroes,' said Jack, returning at a shambling run with the book: like so many sailors he was rather fat, and he sweated easily on shore. 'Six minutes in hand,' he said, peering at his watch in the twilight as they came in to the landing. 'Why, there you are, Doctor. I do hope you will forgive me for ratting on you this afternoon. Shannahan, Bussell: you two come with me. The others stay in the boat. Mr Ricketts, you had better lie twenty yards off or so, and deliver them from temptation. Will you bear with me, sir, if I make a few purchases? I have had no time to send for anything, not so much as a sheep or a ham or a bottle of wine; so I am afraid it will be junk, salt horse and Old Weevil's wedding cake for most of the voyage, with four-water grog to wet it. However, we can refresh at Cagliari. Should you like the seamen to carry your dunnage down to the boat? By the way,' he added, as they walked along, with the sailors following some way behind, 'before I forget it, it is usual in the service to draw an advance upon one's pay upon appointment; so conceiving you would not choose to appear singular, I put up a few guineas in this envelope.'

   'What a humane regulation,' said Stephen, looking pleased. 'Is it often taken advantage of?'

   'Invariably,' said Jack. 'It is a universal custom, in the service.'

   'In that case,' said Stephen, taking the envelope, 'I shall undoubtedly comply with it: I certainly should not wish to look singular: I am most obliged to you. May I indeed have one of your men? A violoncello is a bulky object: as for the rest there is only a small chest and some books.'

   'Then let us meet again at a quarter past the hour at the steps,' said Jack. 'Lose not a moment, I beg, Doctor; for we are extremely pressed. Shannahan, you look after the Doctor and trundle his dunnage along smartly. Bussell, you come along with me.'

   As the clock struck the quarter and the note hung up there unresolved, waiting for the half, Jack said, 'Stow the chest in the fore-sheets. Mr Ricketts, you stow yourself upon the chest. Doctor, you sit down there and nurse the 'cello. Capital. Shove off. Give way together, and row dry, now.'

   They reached the
Sophie
, propelled Stephen and his belongings up the side—the larboard side, to avoid ceremony and to make sure they got him aboard: they had too low an opinion of landmen to allow him to venture upon even the
Sophie's
unaspiring height alone—and Jack led him to the cabin. 'Mind your head,' he said. 'That little den in there is yours: do what you can to make yourself comfortable, pray, and forgive my lack of ceremony. I must go on deck.

   'Mr Dillon,' he said, 'is all well?'

   'All's well, sir. The twelve merchantmen have made their signal.'

   'Very good. Fire a gun for them and make sail, if you please. I believe we shall Just get down the harbour with topgallants, if this fag-end of a breeze still holds; and then, out of the lee of the cape, we may make a respectable offing. So make sail; and by then it will be time to set the watch. A long day, Mr Dillon?'

   'A very long day, sir.'

   'At one time I thought it would never come to an end.'

Two bells in the morning watch found the
Sophie
sailing steadily eastward along the thirty-ninth parallel with the wind just abaft her beam; she was heeling no more than two strakes under her topgallantsails, and she could have set her royals, if the amorphous heap of merchantmen under her lee had not determined to travel very slowly until full daylight, no doubt for fear of tripping over the lines of longitude.

   The sky was still grey and it was impossible to say whether it was clear or covered with very high cloud; but the sea itself already had a nacreous light that belonged more to the day than the darkness, and this light was reflected in the great convexities of the topsails, giving them the lustre of grey pearls

   'Good morning,' said Jack to the marine sentry at the door.

   'Good morning, sir,' said the sentry, springing to attention.

   'Good morning, Mr Dillon.'

   'Good morning, sir,' touching his hat.

   Jack took in the state of the weather, the trim of the sails and the likelihood of a fair forenoon, he drew deep gusts of the clean air, after the dense fug of his cabin. He turned to the rail, unencumbered by hammocks at this time of day, and looked at the merchantmen they were all there, straggling over not too vast an area of sea, and what be had taken for a far stern lantern or an uncommonly big top-light was old Saturn, low on the horizon and tangled in their rigging To windward now, and he saw a sleepy line of gulls, squabbling languidly over a ripple on the sea—sardines or anchovies or maybe those little spiny mackerel The sound of the creaking blocks, the gently straining cordage and sailcloth, the angle of the living deck and the curved line of guns in front of him sent such a jet of happiness through his heart that he almost skipped where he stood.

   'Mr Dillon,' he said, overcoming a desire to shake his lieutenant by the hand, 'we shall have to muster the ship's company after breakfast and make up our minds how we are to watch and quarter them.'

   'Yes, sir: at the moment things are at sixes and sevens, with the new draft unsettled.'