Post Captain (31 page)

Babbington came in, shining with cleanliness, in a frilled shirt and fine white breeches.

'You remember Mrs Villiers?' said Jack.

'Oh yes, sir. Besides, I drove her to the ball.'

'She is in Dover, at the house where you called for her - New Place. Be so good as to give her this note; and I believe Dr Maturin has a message.'

'Compliments: regrets,' said Stephen.

'Now turn out your pockets,' said Jack.

Babbington's face fell. A little heap of objects appeared, some partially eaten, and a surprising number of coins -silver, a gold piece. Jack returned fourpence, observing that that would set him up handsomely in cheesecakes, recommended him to bring back all his men as he should answer the contrary at his peril, and desired him to 'top his boom'.

'It is the only way of keeping him even passably chaste,' he said to Stephen. 'There are a great many loose women in Dover, I am afraid.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mr Parker, 'but a man by the name of Killick asks permission to come aboard.'

'Certainly, Mr Parker,' cried Jack. 'He is my steward. There you are, Killick,' he said, coming on deck. 'I am happy to see you. What have you got there?'

'Hampers, sir,' said Killick, pleased to see his captain, but unable to restrain a wondering eye from running up and down the Polychrest. 'One from Admiral Haddock. T'other from the ladies up at Mapes, or rather, from Miss Sophie, to speak correct: pig, cheeses, butter, cream, poultry and such, from Mapes; game from next door. Admiral's clearing off his land, sir. There's a prime bold roebuck there, sir, hung this sennight past, and any number of hares and such.'

'Mr Malloch, a whip - no, a double whip to the main-yard. Easy with those hampers, now. What's the third bundle?'

'Another roebuck, sir.'

'Where from?'

'Which it fouled the wheels of the tax-cart I come in and hurt its leg, sir,' said Killick, looking at the flagship in the distance with a kind of mild wonder. 'Just half a mile after the turning to Provender bridge. No, I lie - maybe a furlong closer to Newton Priors. So I put it out of its misery, sir.'

'Ah,' said Jack. 'The Mapes hamper is directed to Dr Maturin, I see.'

'It's all one, sir,' said Killick. 'Miss told me to say the pig weighs twenty-seven and a half pound the quarter, and I am to set the hams to the tub the very minute I come aboard - the souse she put aside in thicky jar, knowing you liked 'un. The white puddings is for the Doctor's breakfast.'

'Very good, Killick, very good indeed,' said Jack. 'Stow 'em away. Handsomely with that buck - don't you bruise him on any account.'

'To think a man's heart could break over a soused hog's face,' he reflected, feigning to turn over the admiral's game; partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, mallard, wigeon, teal, hares. 'You brought the rest of the wine Killick?'

'Which the bottles broke, sir: all but half a dozen of the Burgundy.'

Jack cocked his eye, sighed, but said nothing. Six bottles would do pretty well, with what was left of his corruption from the yard. 'Mr Parker, Mr Macdonald, I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining in the cabin tomorrow? I am expecting a guest.'

They bowed, smiled, and said they should be very happy; they did indeed feel a real pleasure, for Jack had declined the gunroom's last invitation, and this had created an uneasiness in their minds - an unpleasant beginning to a commission.

Stephen said the same in effect, when he could be brought to understand. 'Yes, yes, certainly, of course -much obliged. I did not grasp your meaning.'

'Yet it was plain enough, in all conscience,' said Jack, 'and adapted to the meanest understanding. I said. "Will you have dinner with me tomorrow? Canning is coming, and I have asked Parker, Macdonald and Pullings."'

'My mind dwells with real concern, and yet with what I might term an inquisitive, slightly vulgar concern, upon the state of Mother Williams's heart when she finds her dairy, poultry-yard, pig-house, larder, stripped bare. Will it burst? Will it stop beating altogether? Dry to a total desiccation - no great step? What the effect upon her visceral humours? How will Sophie reply? Will she attempt concealment, prevarication? She lies with as much skill as Preserved Killick - a desperate stare, and her face the most perfect damask rose. My mind, I say, wanders in this region, lost. I have no acquaintance with English family life, with English female family life: it is to me a region quite unknown.'

It was not a region in which Jack chose to dwell: with a start of intense pain he jerked his mind away. 'Lord, I love that Sophie so,' he cried within. He took a quick turn on deck, going right forward to pat the gammoning of the bowsprit - a private consolation from his very earliest days at sea When he came back he said, 'A most damnable unpleasant thought has just struck me. I know I must not give Canning swine's flesh, he being a Jew; but can he eat a buck? Is a buck unclean? And hare would not answer, either, for I dare say they are rated with the coney and her kind.'

'I have no idea. You have no Bible, I suppose?'

'Indeed I have a Bible. I used it to check Heneage's signal - The Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse, do you remember? What did he mean by that, do you suppose? It was not so very witty, or original; for after all, everyone knows the Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse. He had crossed his tiller-ropes, I dare say. However, I have also been reading it, these last few days.'

'Ah?'

'Yes. I may preach a sermon to the ship's company next Sunday.'

'You? Preach a sermon?'

'Certainly. Captains often do, when no chaplain is carried. I always made do with the Articles of War in the Sophie, but now I think I shall give them a clear, well-reasoned - come, what's the matter? What is so very entertaining about my preaching a sermon? Damn your eyes, Stephen.' Stephen was doubled in his chair, rocking to and fro, uttering harsh spasmodic squeaks: tears ran down his face. 'What a spectacle you are, to be sure. Now I come to think of it, I do not believe I have ever heard you laugh before. It is a damned illiberal row, I can tell you - it don't suit you at all. Squeak, squeak. Very well: you shall laugh your bellyful.' He turned away with something about 'pragmatical apes - simpering, tittering' and affected to look into the Bible without the least concern; but there are not many who can find themselves the object of open, whole-hearted, sincere, prostrating laughter without being put out of countenance, and Jack was not one of these few. However, Stephen's mirth died away in time - a few last crowing whoops and it was over. He got to his feet, and dabbing his face with a handkerchief he took Jack by the hand. 'I am so sorry,' he said. 'I beg your pardon. I would not have vexed you for the world. But there is something so essentially ludicrous, so fundamentally comic... that is to say, I had so droll an association of ideas - pray do not take it personally at all. Of course you shall preach to the men; I am persuaded it will have a most striking effect.'

'Well,' said Jack, with a suspicious glance, 'I am glad it afforded you so much innocent merriment at all events. Though what you find.

'What is your text, pray?'

'Are you making game of me, Stephen?'

'Never, upon my word: would scorn it.'

'Well, it is the one about I say come and he cometh; for I am a centurion. I want them to understand it is God's will, and it must be so - there must be discipline -'tis in the Book - and any infernal bastard that disobeys is therefore a blasphemer too, and will certainly be damned. That it is no good kicking against the pricks: which is in the Book too, as I shall point out.'

'You feel that it will make it easier for them to bear their station, when they learn that it is providential?'

'Yes, yes, that's it. It is all here, you know' - tapping the Bible. 'There are an amazing number of useful things in it,' said Jack, with a candid gaze out of the scuttle. 'I had no idea. And, by the way, it seems that roebuck is not unclean, which is a comfort, and a very great one, I can tell you. I was quite anxious about this dinner.'

The next day brought countless duties - the raking of the Polychrest's masts, the restowing of what part of her ballast they could come at, the mending of a chain-pump

- but this anxiety remained, to come into full flower in the last quarter of an hour before the arrival of his guests. He stood fussing in his day-cabin, twitching the cloth, teasing the stove until its colour was cherry-pink, worrying Killick and his attendant boys, wondering whether after all the table should not have been athwart-ships, and contemplating a last-minute alteration. Could it really seat six in even moderate comfort? The Polychrest was a larger vessel than the Sophie, his last command, but because of the singularity of her construction the cabin had no stern-gallery, no fine curving sweep of windows to give an impression of light, air and indeed a certain magnificence to even a little room, the actual space was greater and the head-room was such that he could stand with no more than a slight stoop, but this space had no generosity of breadth -it drew out in length, narrowing almost to a point aft, and all that it had in the way of day was a skylight and a couple of small scuttles Leading forward from this shield-shaped apartment was a short passage, with his sleeping-cabin on one side and his quarter-gallery on the other: it was not a true gallery, a projection, in the Polychrest at all, of course, nor was it strictly on her quarter, but it served the purpose of a privy as well as if it had been both. In addition to the necessary pot it contained a thirty-two pounder carronade and a small hanging lantern, in case the bull's eye in the port-lid should not be enough to show the unwary guest the consequences of a false step. Jack looked in to see whether it was burning bright and stepped out into the passage just as the sentry opened the door to admit the midshipman of the watch with the message that 'the gentleman was alongside, if you please, sir.'

As soon as Jack saw Canning come aboard he knew his party would be a success. He was dressed in a plain buff coat, with no attempt at a seafaring appearance, but he came up the side like a good 'un, moving his bulk with a strong, easy agility, judging the roll just so. His cheerful face appeared in the gangway, looking sharply from left to right; then the rest of him, and he stood there, quite filling the space, with his hat off and his bald crown gleaming in the rain.

The first lieutenant received him, led him the three paces to Jack, who shook him very warmly by the hand, performed the necessary introductions, and guided the assembled body into the cabin, for he had little temptation to linger in the icy drizzle and none at all to show the Polychrest in her present state, to an eye so keen and knowing as his guest's.

Dinner began quietly enough with a dish of codlings caught over the side that morning and with little in the way of conversation apart from banalities - the weather, of course, inquiries after common acquaintance - 'How was Lady Keith? When last seen? What news of Mrs Villiers? Did Dover suit her? Captain Dundas, was he well, and happy in his new command? Had Mr Canning heard any good music lately? Oh yes! Such a Figaro at the Opera, he had gone three times.' Parker, Macdonald and Pullings were mere dead weights, bound by the convention that equated their captain, at his own table, with royalty, and forbade anything but answers to proposals set up by him. However, Stephen had no notion of this convention - he gave them an account of nitrous oxide, the laughing gas, exhilaration in a bottle, philosophic merriment; and it did not apply to Canning at all. Jack worked hard with an easy flow of tiny talk; and presently the dead weight began to move. Canning did not refer to the Polychrest (Jack noticed this with a pang, but with gratitude as well) apart from saying that she must be a very interesting ship, with prodigious capabilities, and that he had never seen such paintwork - such elegance and taste - the completest thing - one would have supposed a royal yacht - but he spoke of the service in general with obvious knowledge and deep appreciation. Few sailors can hear sincere, informed praise of the Navy without pleasure, and the reserved atmosphere in the cabin relaxed, warmed, grew positively gay.

The codlings were succeeded by partridges, which Jack carved by the simple process of putting one on each man's plate; the corrupt claret began to go about, the gaiety increased, the conversation became general, and the watch on deck heard the sound of laughter coming from the cabin in a steady flow.

After the partridges came no less than four removes of game, culminating in a saddle of venison borne in by Killick and the gun-room steward on a scrubbed scuttle-hatch with a runnel gouged out for the gravy. 'The burgundy, Killick,' murmured Jack, standing up to carve. They watched him earnestly as he laboured, their talk dying away, and they bent with equal attention to their plates.

'Upon my word, gentlemen,' said Canning, laying down his knife and fork, 'you do yourselves pretty well in the Navy - such a feast! The Mansion House is nothing to it. Captain Aubrey, sir, this is the best venison I have ever tasted in my life: it is a solemn dish. And such burgundy! A Musigny, I believe?'

'Chambolles-Musigny, sir, of '85 I am afraid it is a little past its prime: I have just these few bottles left - happily my steward does not care for burgundy. Mr Pullings, a trifle of the brown end?'

It was indeed a most capital buck, tender, juicy, full of savour; Jack set to his own mound with an easy mind at last: more or less everybody was talking - Pullings and Parker explaining Bonaparte's intentions to Canning - the new French gunboats, the ship-rigged prams of the invasion flotilla - and Stephen and Macdonald leaning far over their plates to hear one another, or rather to be heard, in an argument that was still mild enough, but that threatened to grow a little warm.

'Ossian,' said Jack, at a moment when both their mouths were full, 'was he not the gentleman that was quite exploded by Dr Johnson?'

'Not at all, sir,' cried Macdonald, swallowing faster than Stephen. 'Dr Johnson was a respectable man in some ways, no doubt, though in no degree related to the Johnstones of Ballintubber; but for some reason he had conceived a narrow prejudice against Scotland. He had no notion of the sublime, and therefore no appreciation of Ossian.'