Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

'Well, what did happen?' said Jack. 'Tell me in your own words.'

  'I will, your honour,' said Rogers, glaring round, pale and trembling with fury. 'In my own Gospel words. Master-at-arms comes for'ard—which I was taking a caulk, my watch below—tips me a shove on the arse, begging your pardon, and says, "Get your skates on, George; you're fucked." And I up and says, "I don't care for you, Joe Brown, nor for that fucking little cunt Evans." No offence, your honour; but that's the Gospel truth, to show your honour the lies he tells, with his "verify the statements". It's all lies.'

  There seemed to be a more familiar ring about this version; but it was followed by a rambling account of who pushed whom, in what part of the ship, with contradictory evidence from Button, Menhasset and Mutton, and remarks on character; and it seemed that the main issue might be lost in a discussion of who lent someone two dollars off of Banda, and was never repaid, in grog, tobacco, or any other form.

  'What about this ape's head?' said Jack.

  'Here, sir,' said the master-at-arms, producing a hairy thing from his bosom.

  'You say it is yours, Evans; and you say it is yours, Rogers? Your own property?'

  'She's my Andrew Masher, your honour,' said Evans.

  'He's my poor old Ajax, sir, been in my ditty-bag ever since he took sick off the Cape.'

  'How can you identify it, Evans?'

  'Anan, sir?'

  'How do you know it is your Andrew Masher?'

  'By her loving expressions, sir, your honour. By her expressions. Griffi Jones, stuffed animals, Dover, is giving me a guinea for her tomorning, yis, yis.

  'What have you to say, Rogers?'

  'It's all lies, sir!' cried Rogers. 'He's my Ajax. Which I fed him from Kampong—shared my grog, ate biscuit like a Christian.'

  'Any distinguishing marks?'

  'Why, the cut of his jib, sir: I know him anywheres, though shrivelled.'

  Jack studied the ape's face, which was set in an expression of deep, melancholy contempt. Who was telling the truth? Both thought they were, no doubt. There had been two ape's heads in the ship, and now there was only one. Though how anyone could pretend to recognize the features of this wizened red coconut heavy in his hand he could not tell. 'Andrew Masher was a female, I take it, and Ajax a male?' he said.

  'That's right, your honour.'

  'Beg Dr Maturin to come on deck, if he is not engaged,' said Jack. 'Dr Maturin, is it possible to tell the sex of an ape by its teeth, or that kind of thing?'

  'It depends on the ape,' said Stephen, looking eagerly at the object in Jack's hands. 'This, for example,' he said, taking it and turning it about, 'is an excellent specimen of the male simia satyrus, Buffon's wild man of the woods: see the lateral expansion of the cheeks, mentioned by Hunter, and the remains of that particular throat-sac, so characteristic of the male.'

  'Well, there you are,' said Jack. 'Ajax it is. Thank you very much, Doctor. The charge of theft is dismissed. But you must not knock people about, Rogers. Has anyone something to say in his favour?'

  The second lieutenant stepped forward, said that Rogers was in his division—attentive to his duty, generally sober, a good character, but apt to fly into a passion. Jack told Rogers that he must not fly into a passion; that flying into a passion was a very bad thing—it would certainly lead him to the gallows, if indulged in. He was to command his temper, and do without grog for the next week. The head was confiscated temporarily, for further examination—indeed, it had already vanished into the cabin, leaving Rogers looking somewhat blank. 'I dare say you will get it back in time,' said Jack, with more conviction than he felt. The other defaulters, all guilty of uncomplicated drunkenness, were all dealt with in the same way; the grating was unrigged; the cat, still in its bag, returned to its resting-place; and shortly after the hands were piped to dinner. Jack invited the first lieutenant, the officer and midshipman of the watch, and the chaplain to dine with him, and resumed his pacing.

  His thoughts ran on gunnery. There were ships, and plenty of them, that hardly ever exercised the great guns, hardly fired them except in action or for saluting, and if this was the case with the Lively, he would change it. Even at close quarters it was as well to hit where it hurt most; and in a typical frigate-action accuracy and speed were everything. Yet this was not the Sophie, with her pop-guns: a single broadside from the Lively would burn well over a hundredweight of powder—a consideration. Dear Sophie, how she blazed away.

  He identified the music that was running so insistently through his head. It was the piece of Hummel's that he and Stephen had played so often at Melbury Lodge, the adagio. And almost at once he had the clearest visual image of Sophia standing tall and willowy by the piano, looking confused, hanging her head.

  He turned short in his stride and brought his mind to bear strongly on the question in hand. But it was no use; the music wove in among his calculations of powder and shot; he grew more agitated and unhappy, and clapping his hands together with a sudden report he said to himself, 'I shall run through the log and see what their practice really is—tell Killick to uncork the claret—he did not forget that, at all events.'

  He went below, noticed the smell of midshipmen in the fore-cabin, walked through into the, after-cabin, and found himself in total darkness.

  'Close the door,' cried Stephen, swarming past him and clapping it to.

  'What's amiss?' asked Jack, whose mind had moved so deep into naval life that he had forgotten the bees, as he might have forgotten even a vivid nightmare.

  'They are remarkably adaptable—perhaps the most adaptable of all social insects,' said Stephen, from another part of the cabin. 'We find them from Norway to the burning wastes of the Sahara; but they have not grown quite used to their surroundings yet.'

  'Oh God,' said Jack, scrabbling for the handle. 'Are they all out?'

  'Not all,' said Stephen. 'And learning from Killick that you expected guests, I conceived you might prefer them away. There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.' Something was crawling on Jack's neck; the door had completely vanished; he began to sweat heavily. 'So I thought to create an artificial night, when, in the course of nature, they return to their hive. I also made three fires for the sake of the smoke: these did not have the desired effect, however. It may be that the darkness is too complete. Let us compromise with a twilight—dark, but not too dark.' He raised a corner of sailcloth, and a beam of sun showed an incalculable number of bees on every vertical surface and on most of those that were flat; bees flying in a jerky, meaningless fashion from point to point; fifty or so sitting on his coat and breeches. 'There,' said Stephen, 'that is far, far better is it not? Urge them to mount on your finger, Jack, and carry them back to their hive. Gently, gently, and on no account exhibit, or even feel, the least uneasiness: fear is wholly fatal, as I dare say you know.'

  Jack had the door-handle; he opened it a crack and glided swiftly through. 'Killick!' he shouted, beating at his clothes.

  'Sir?'

  'Go and help the Doctor. Bear a hand, now.'

  'I dursn't,' said Killick.

  'You don't mean to tell me you are afraid, a man-of-war's man?'

  'Yes I am, sir,' said Killick.

  'Well, clear the fore-cabin and lay the cloth there. And uncork a dozen of claret.' He plunged into his sleeping-cabin and tore off his stock—there was something creeping beneath it. 'What is there for dinner?' he called.

  'Wenison, sir. I found a prime saddle at Chators', the same as the ladies sent us from Mapes.'

  'Gentlemen,' said Jack, as the last stroke of six bells in the afternoon watch was struck and his guests arrived, 'you are very welcome. I am afraid we may have to sit a little close, but for the moment my friend is engaged in a philosophical experiment aft. Killick, tell the Doctor we hope to see him when he is at leisure. Go on,' he muttered, clenching his fist secretly and vibrating his head at the steward. 'Go on, I say: you can call through the door.'

  Dinner ran very well. The Lively might be Spartan i
n her appearance and cabin furniture, but Jack had inherited an excellent cook, accustomed to sea-borne appetites, and his guests were well-bred men, easy within the strict limits of naval etiquette—even the midshipman of the watch, though mute, was mute gracefully. But the sense of rank, of deference to the captain, was very strong, and as Stephen's mind was clearly far away, Jack was pleased to find in the chaplain a lively, conversible man, with little notion of the solemnities of dining in the cabin. Mr Lydgate, the Perpetual Curate of Wool, was a cousin of Captain Hamond's, and he was taking this voyage for the sake of his health, leaving his living not for a new career but for a temporary change of air and scenery. The air of Lisbon and Madeira was particularly recommended; that of Bermuda even more so; and this, he understood, was their destination?

  'It may well be,' said Jack. 'I hope so, indeed; but with the changing face of the war there is no certainty about these things. I have known captains lay in stores for the Cape, only to find themselves ordered to the Baltic at the last moment. Everything must depend on the good of the service,' he added piously; and then feeling that remarks of this kind might have a damping effect, he cried, 'Mr Dashwood, the wine stands by you: the good of the service requires that it should circulate. Mr Simmons, pray tell me about the ape that so astonished me this morning. The living ape.'

  'Cassandra, sir? She is one of half a dozen that came aboard at Tungoo; the surgeon says she is a Tenasserim gibbon. All hands are very fond of her, but we are afraid she is pining. We rigged her out in a flannel jacket when we came into the chops of the Channel, but she will not wear it; and she will not eat English food.'

  'Do you hear, Stephen?' said Jack. 'There is a gibbon aboard, that is not well.'

  'Yes, yes,' said Stephen, returning to the present. 'I had the pleasure of meeting her this morning, walking hand in hand with the very young gentleman: it was impossible to tell which was supporting which. A fetching, attractive creature, in spite of its deplorable state. I look forward eagerly to dissecting it. Monsieur de Buffon hints that the naked callosities on the buttocks of the hylobates may conceal scent glands, but he does not go so far as to assert it.'

  A chill fell on the conversation, and after a slight pause Jack said, 'I think, my dear fellow, that the ship's company would be infinitely more obliged to you, was you to cure it, than for putting Monsieur de Buffon right—for putting Cassandra in order, rather than a Frenchman, eh, eh?'

  'Yet it is the ship's company that is killing her. That ape is a confirmed alcoholic; and from what little I know of your foremast jack, no earthly consideration will prevent him from giving rum to anything he loves. Our monk-seal in the Mediterranean, for example: it drowned in a state of besotted inebriation, with a fixed smile upon its face; and when fished up and dissected, its kidneys and liver were found to be ruined, very much like those of Mr Blanckley of the Carcass bomb-ketch, an unpromoted master's mate of sixty-three whom I had the pleasure of opening at Port Mahon, a gentleman who had not been sober for five and thirty years. I met this gibbon a little after the serving out of the grog—it had plunged from an upper pinnacle at the first notes of Nancy Dawson—and the animal was hopelessly fuddled. It was conscious of its state, endeavoured to conceal it, and put its black hand in mine with an embarrassed air. Who is that very young gentleman, by the way?'

  He was Josiah Randall, they told him, the son of the second lieutenant, who had come home to find his wife dead, and this child unprovided for—no near family at all. 'So he brought him aboard,' said Mr Dashwood, 'and the Captain rated him bosun's servant.'

  'How very, very painful,' said Jack. 'I hope we have some action soon; there is nothing like it for changing the current of a man's mind. A French frigate, or a Spaniard, if they come in; there is nothing like your Spaniard for dogged fighting.'

  'I dare say you have seen a great deal of action, sir?' said the parson, nodding towards Jack's bandage.

  'Not more than most, sir,' said Jack. 'Many officers have been far more fortunate.'

  'Pray what would you consider a reasonable number of actions?' asked the parson. 'I was astonished, on joining the ship, to find that none of the gentlemen could tell me what a pitched battle was like.'

  'It is so much a question of luck, or perhaps I should say of Providence,' said Jack, with a bow to the cloth. 'Where one is stationed, and so on. After all,' he said, pausing, for on the verge of his mind there was a witticism, if he could but grasp it. 'After all, it takes two to make a quarrel, and if the French don't come out, why, you cannot very well have a battle all by yourself. Indeed, there is so much routine work, blockading and convoy-duty and carrying troops, you know, that I dare say half the lieutenants of the Navy List have never seen action at all, in the sense of a meeting of ships of equal force, or of fleets. More than half, perhaps.'

  'I never have, I am sure,' said Dashwood.

  'I saw an action when I was in the Culloden in ninety-eight,' said Simmons. 'A very great action; but we ran aground, and never could come up. It nearly broke our hearts.'

  'It must have been a sad trial,' said Jack. 'I remember how you carried out warps, pulling like heroes.'

  'You were at the Nile, sir?'

  'Yes, yes. I was in the Leander. I remember coming on deck just as the Mutine rounded to under your stem, to try to heave you off.'

  'So you were in a great battle, Captain Aubrey,' said the chaplain eagerly. 'Pray, can you tell me what it was like? Can you give me some impression of it?'

  'Why, sir, I doubt that I could, really, any more than I could give you much impression of let us say a symphony or a splendid dinner. There is a great deal of noise, more noise than you would believe possible; and time does not seem to have the same meaning, if you follow me; and you get very tired. And afterwards you have to clear up the mess.'

  'Ah, that' is what I wanted to know. And is the din so very great?'

  'It is enormous. At the Nile, for example, we had the L'Orient blow up near us, and we all conversed in shouts for ten days after. But St Vincent was noisier. In what we call the slaughter-house, where I was stationed at St Vincent—that is the part of the gun-deck in the middle of the ship, sir—you have sixteen thirty-two pounders in a row, all roaring away as fast as they can load and fire, recoiling and jumping up with a great crash when they are hot, and running out again to fire; and then just overhead you have another row of guns thundering on the deck above. And then the smashing blow as the enemy's shot hits you, and maybe the crash of falling spars above, and the screams of the wounded. And all this in such a smoke you can hardly see or breathe, and the men cheering like mad, and sweating and gulping down water when there is a second's pause. At St Vincent we fought both sides, which doubled the row. No: that is what you remember—the huge noise everywhere, the flashes in the darkness. And,' he added, 'the importance of gunnery—speed and accuracy and discipline. We were firing a broadside every two minutes, and they took three and a half or four—that's what wins the day.'

  'So you were at St Vincent too,' said the parson. 'And at what other actions, if I am not too indiscreet—I mean, apart from this last most daring capture, of which we have all read?'

  'Only small affairs—skirmishing in the Mediterranean and the West Indies in the last war—that kind of thing,' said Jack.

  'There was the Cacafuego, sir, I believe,' said Mr Simmons, with a smile.

  'It must have been wonderful, when you were young, sir,' said the midshipman, sick with envy. 'Nothing ever happens now.'

  'I am sure you will forgive me if I seem personal,' said the chaplain, 'but I should like to form an image of the officer who has seen, as you say, a moderate amount of fighting. In addition to your fleet actions, about how many others have you taken part in?'

  'Why, upon my word, I forget,' said Jack, feeling that the others had an unfair advantage of him, and feeling too that parsons were out of place in a man-of-war. He signalled to Killick for fresh decanter and the roast; and as he set to carving the flow of his mind changed as thoroughly
as if an eighteen-pound shot had hulled the frigate. He felt a rising oppression in his bosom and choked, standing bowed there, carving the venison. The first lieutenant had long ago seen that Mr Lydgate's persistence was disagreeable to Captain Aubrey, and he turned the conversation back to animals aboard. Dogs in ships he had known: the Newfoundland that so lovingly brought a smoking grenade; the Culloden's pet crocodile; cats . . .

  'Dogs,' said the chaplain, who was not one to leave his corner of the table silent long. 'That reminds me of a question I had meant to put to you gentlemen. This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches—why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?'

  'Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed, of course.'

  A total blank. Stephen gave a faint inward sigh; but he was used to this. 'Mr Butler, the bottle stands by you,' said Jack. 'Mr Lydgate, allow me to help you to a little of the undercut.'

  It was the midshipman who first reacted. He whispered to his neighbour Dashwood, 'He said, cur-tailed: the dog-watch is cur-tailed. Do you twig?'

  It was the sort of wretched clench perfectly suited to the company. The spreading merriment, the relish, the thunderous mirth, reached the forecastle, causing amazement and conjecture: Jack leaned back in his chair, wiping the tears from his scarlet face, and cried, 'Oh, it is the best thing—the best thing. Bless you, Stephen—a glass of wine with you. Mr Simmons, if we dine with the admiral, you must ask me, and I will say, "Why, it is because they have been docked, of course." No, no. I am out. Cur-tailed—cur-tailed. But I doubt I should ever be able to get it out gravely enough.'

  They did not dine with the admiral, however; no loving messages answered their salute to the flagship; but the moment they dropped anchor in the crowded Downs Parker came aboard from the Fanciulla with his brand-new epaulette, to congratulate and to be congratulated. Jack felt a certain pang when the boat answered the Lively's hail with 'Fanciulla', meaning that her captain was aboard; but the sight of Parker's face as it came level with the deck and the affection that beamed from it, did away with all repining. Parker looked ten, fifteen years younger; he came up the side like a boy; he was wholly and absolutely delighted. He most bitterly regretted that he was under orders to sail within the hour, but he solemnly engaged Jack and Stephen to dine with him at the very next meeting; he thought cur-tailed by far the best thing he had ever heard in his life—should certainly repeat it—but he had always known that Dr Maturin was a towering intellect—was still taking his pill, morning and evening, and should continue to do so until the end of his life; and on leaving he took Jack's hesitant 'Captain Parker would not be offended if he suggested a relaxation—a curtailing of the cat, as he might say' very well indeed. He said he should pay the utmost attention to advice from such a—such an esteemed quarter, such a very, very highly esteemed quarter. On saying good-bye he took both Jack's hands in his and, with tears in his small, close-set eyes, he said, 'You don't know what it means, sir, success at fifty-six—success at last. It changes a man's whole, eh heart. Why I could kiss the ship's boys.'