Post Captain (48 page)

'Stephen,' he said, 'how are your bees?'

'They are very well, I thank you; they show great activity, even enthusiasm. But,' he added, with a slight hesitation, 'I seem to detect a certain reluctance to return to their hive.'

'Do you mean to say you let them out?' cried Jack. 'Do you mean that there are sixty thousand bees howling for blood in the cabin?'

'No, no. Oh no. Not above half that number; perhaps even less. And if you do not provoke them, I am persuaded you may go to and fro without the least concern; they are not froward bees. They will have gone home by morning, sure; I shall creep in during the middle watch and close their little wicket. But perhaps it might be as well, were we to sit together in this room tonight, just to let them get used to their surroundings. A certain initial agitation is understandable after all, and should not be discountenanced.'

Jack was not a bee, however, and his initial agitation was something else again. It was clear to him that the Lively was a closed, self-sufficing community, an entity to which he was an outsider. He had served under acting-captains himself, and he knew that they could be regarded as intruders - that they could excite resentment if they took too much upon themselves. They had great powers, certainly, but they were wise not to use them. Yet on the other hand, he might have to fight this ship; the ultimate responsibility, the loss of reputation or its gain was his, and although he was here only for the time, and although

he was not the real owner, he was not going to play King Log. He must move with care, and at the same time with decision... a difficult passage. An awkward first lieutenant could prove the very devil. By the grace of God he had a little money in hand: he would be able to entertain them decently for the present, although he could not keep Hamond's table, with half a dozen to dinner every day. He must hope for another advance from his agent soon, but for the moment he would not look poverty-stricken. There was a Latin tag about poverty and ridicule - elusive: no hand at Latin. He must not be ridiculous; no captain could afford to be ridiculous. 'Stephen, oh my dear fellow,' he said to the tell-tale compass over his cot (for he was in his sleeping-cabin), 'what induced you to put on that vile thing? What a singular genius you have for hiding your talent under a bushel - a bushel that no one could possibly have foreseen.'

In the gun-room, however, another sound of things was heard. 'No, gentlemen,' said Mr Floris, the surgeon. 'I do assure you he is a great man. I have read his book until it is dog-eared - a most luminous exposition, full of pregnant reflections, a mine of nervous expressions. When the Physician of the Fleet came to inspect us, he asked me whether I had read it, and I was happy to show him my copy, interleaved and annotated, and to tell him that I required my assistants to get whole passages by heart. I tell you, I long to be introduced to him. I long for his opinion on poor Wallace.'

The gun-room was impressed; it had a deep respect for learning, and but for that unfortunate remark about East Indiamen it would have been ready to accept the wool garment as a philosopher's vagary, a knitted Diogenes' tub.

'Yet if he has been in the service,' said Mr Simmons, 'what are we to make of his remark about the East Indiaman? It was very like a direct affront, and it was delivered with a strangely knowing leer.'

Mr Floris looked at his plate, but found no justification there. The chaplain coughed, and said that perhaps they should not judge by appearances - perhaps the gentleman had had a momentary absence - perhaps he meant that the Indiaman was the very type of sea-going luxury, which indeed it was; a well-appointed Indiaman was to be preferred, in point of comfort, to a first-rate.

'That makes it worse,' observed the third lieutenant, an ascetic young man so tall and thin that it was difficult to see where he could sleep at length, if not in the cable-tier.

'Well, for my part,' said the senior Marine, the caterer to the mess, 'I shall drink to his health and eternal happiness in a glass of this excellent Margaux, as sound as a nut, whatever the parson may say. Such an example of courage as coming aboard like Badger-Bag, with a narwhal-horn in one hand and a green umbrella in the other, has never come under my observation. Bless him.'

The gun-room blessed him, but without much conviction, except for Mr Floris; and they went on to discuss the health of Cassandra, the last of the Lively's gibbons, the last of that numerous menagerie which she had borne away from Java and the remoter islands of the eastern seas. They did not discuss their acting-captain at all: he had come with the reputation of a seaman and a fighter; of a rake and of a protégé of Lord Melville. Captain Hamond was a supporter of Lord St Vincent; and he had gone to Parliament to vote with St Vincent's friends; and Lord St Vincent, who hated Pitt and his administration, was working to impeach Lord Melville for malversation of the secret funds and to get him out of the Admiralty. The Lively's officers all shared their captain's views - strong Whigs to a man.

Breakfast was something of a disappointment. Captain Hamond had always drunk cocoa, originally to encourage the crew to do the same and then because he liked it, whereas Jack and Stephen were neither of them human until the first pot of coffee was down, hot and strong.

'Killick,' said Jack, 'toss this hog's wash over the side and bring coffee at once.'

'Ax pardon, sir,' said Killick, seriously alarmed. 'I forgot the beans, and the cook's got none.'

'Then jump to the purser's steward, the gun-room cook, the sick-bay, anywhere, and get some, or your name will not be Preserved much longer, I can tell you. Cut along. God-damned lubber, to forget our coffee,' he said to Stephen, with warm indignation.

'A little pause will make it all the more welcome when it comes, sure,' said Stephen, and to divert his friend's mind he took up a bee and said, 'Be so good as to watch my honey-bee.' He put it down on the edge of a saucer in which he had made a syrup of cocoa and sugar; the bee tasted to the syrup, pumped a reasonable quantity, took to the air, hovered before the saucer, and returned to the hive. 'Now, sir,' said Stephen, noting the time on his watch, 'now you will behold a prodigy.'

In twenty-five seconds two bees appeared, questing over the saucer with a particular high shrill buzz. They pitched, pumped syrup, and went home. After the same interval four bees came, then sixteen, then two hundred and fifty-six; but when four minutes had elapsed this simple progression was obscured by earlier bees who knew the way and who no longer had to fix either their hive or the syrup.

'Now,' cried Stephen, from out of the cloud, 'have you any doubt of their power to communicate a locus? How do they do it? What is their signal? Is it a compass-bearing? Jack, do not offer to molest that bee, I beg. For shame. It is only resting.'

'Beg pardon, sir, but there ain't a drop of coffee in the barky. Oh God almighty,' said Killick.

'Stephen, I am going to take a turn,' said Jack, withdrawing from the table in a sly undulatory motion and darting through the door with hunched shoulders.

'Why they call this a crack frigate,' he said, swilling down a glass of water in his sleeping-cabin, 'I cannot for the life of me imagine: not a drop of coffee among two hundred and sixty men.'

The reason became apparent to him some two hours later, when the port-admiral signalled Lively proceed to sea. 'Acknowledge,' said Jack, this news being brought to him. 'Mr Simmons, we will unmoor, if you please.'

The unmooring was a pleasure to watch. At the pipe of All hands to unmoor ship the men flowed rather than ran to their stations; there was no stampede along the gangways, no stream of men blundering into one another in their haste to escape the rope's end; as far as he could see there was no starting, and there was certainly very little noise. The capstan-bars were pinned and swifted, the Marines and afterguard manned them, the piercing fife struck up Drops of Brandy, and one cable came in while the other went out. A midshipman from the forecastle reported the best bower catted; the first lieutenant relayed this to Jack, who said, 'Carry on, Mr Simmons.'

Now the Lively was at single anchor, and as the capstan turned again so she crept across the sea until she was immediately over it. 'Up and down, sir,' called the bosun.

'Up and down, sir,' said the first lieutenant to Jack.

'Carry on, Mr Simmons,' said Jack. This was the crucial moment: the crew had both to clap on fresh nippers - the bands that attached the great cable to the messenger, the rope that actually turned on the capstan - for a firmer hold, and to loose the topsails so as to sail the anchor out of the ground. In even the best-managed ships there was a good deal of hullabaloo at such a time, and in this case, with the tide running across the wind - an awkward cast in which split-second timing was called for - he expected a rapid volley, a broadside of orders.

Mr Simmons advanced to the break of the quarterdeck, glancing quickly up and down, said, 'Thick and dry for weighing,' and then, before the rush of feet had died away,

'Make sail.' No more. Instantly the shrouds were dark with men racing aloft. Her topsails, her deep, very well cut topsails were let fall in silence, sheeted home, the yards hoisted up, and the Lively, surging forward, weighed her anchor without a word. But this was not all: even before the small bower was fished, the jib, forestaysail and foretopgallant had appeared and the frigate was moving faster and faster through the water, heading almost straight for the Nore light. All this without a word, without a cry except for an unearthly hooting of Woe, woe, woe high in the upper rigging. Jack had never seen anything like it. In his astonishment he looked up at the main topgallant yard, and there he saw a small form hanging by one arm;

it swung itself forward on the roll of the ship and fell in a sickening curve towards the maintopmaststay. Almost unbelievably it caught this rope, and then, altogether unbelievably, shot up from one piece of rigging to another to the fore-royal and sat there.

'That is Cassandra, sir,' said Mr Simmons, seeing Jack's face of horror. 'A sort of Java ape.'

'God help us,' said Jack, recovering himself. 'I thought it was a ship's boy gone mad. I have never seen anything like it - this manoeuvre, I mean. Do your people usually make sail according to their own notions?'

'Yes, sir,' said the first lieutenant, in civil triumph.

'Well. Very well. The Lively has her own way of doing things, I see. I have never seen...' The frigate was heeling to the breeze, marvellously alive, and he stepped to the taffrail, where Stephen, dressed in a sad-coloured coat and drab small-clothes, stood conversing with Mr Randall, bending to hear his tiny pipe. Jack looked at the dark water slipping fast by her side, curving deep under the chains; she was making seven knots already, seven and a half. He looked at her wake, fixing an anchored seventy-four and a church tower - hardly a trace of leeway. He leant over the larboard quarter, and there, one point on the larboard bow, was the Nore light. The wind was two points free on the starboard tack, and any ship he had sailed in would be aground in the next five minutes.

'You are happy about your course, Mr Simmons?' he said.

'Quite happy, sir,' said the first lieutenant.

Simmons knew his ship, that was obvious: he most certainly knew her capabilities. Jack repeated this - he was convinced of it; it must be so. But the next five minutes were as unhappy as any he had ever spent -this beautiful, beautiful ship a mere hulk, dismasted, bilged... During the moments when the Lively was racing through the turbid shoaling water at the edge of the bank and where a trifle of leeway would wreck her hopelessly, he did not breathe at all. Then the bank was astern.

With as much impassivity as he could summon he drew in the good sparkling air and desired Mr Simmons to set course for the Downs, where he was to pick up some supernumeraries and, if Bonden had not vanished, his own coxswain, seeing that Captain Hamond had taken his with him to London. He set to pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck, keenly watching the behaviour of the Lively and her crew.

No wonder they called her a crack frigate: her sailing qualities were quite out of the ordinary, and the smooth quiet discipline of her people was beyond anything he had seen: her speed in getting under way and making sail had something unnatural about it, as eerie as the cry of the gibbon in the rigging.

The familiar low, grey, muddy shores glided by; the sea was a hard metallic grey, the horizon in the offing ruled sharply from the mottled sky, and the frigate ran on, the wind now one point free, as though a precise, undeviating rail were guiding her. Merchantmen were coming in for the London river, four sail of Guineamen, and a brig of war for Chatham, apart from the usual hovellers and peterboats: how flabby and loose they looked, by comparison.

The fact of the matter was that Captain Hamond, a gentleman of a scientific turn of mind, had chosen his officers with great care and he had spent years training his crew; even the waisters could hand, reef and steer; and for the first years he had raced them mast against mast in furling and loosing sail, putting them through every manoeuvre and combination of manoeuvres until they reached equality at a speed that could not be improved upon. And today, jealous for the honour of their ship, they had excelled themselves; they knew it very well, and as they passed near their acting-captain they glanced at him with discreet complacency, as who should say, 'We showed you a thing or two, cock; we made you stretch your eyes.'

What a ship to fight, he reflected: if he met one of the big French frigates, he could make rings round her, beautifully built though they were. Yes. But what of the Livelies themselves? They were seamen, to be sure, quite remarkable seamen; but were they not a little elderly, on the whole, oddly quiet? Even the ship's boys were stout hairy fellows, rather heavy for lying out on the royal yards; and most of them talked gruff. Then there were a good many brown and yellow men aboard. Low Bum, who was now at the wheel, steering wonderfully small, had had no need to grow a pigtail when he entered at Macao; nor had John Satisfaction, Horatio Jelly-Belly or half a dozen of his shipmates. Were they fighting men? The Livelies had had none of the incessant cutting-out expeditions that made danger an everyday affair and so disarmed it: circumstances had been entirely different - he should have read her log to see exactly what she had done. His eye fell on one of the quarterdeck carronades. It was painted brown, and some of the dull, scrubbed paint overlapped the touch-hole. It had not been fired for a long while. Certainly he should look at the log to see how the Livelies spent their day.