H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  So I decided to get away to sea by that date; all the more so, that it would bring me home earlier. And by going very hard at our refitting, I flattered myself I had brought it off. But I must say I had my doubts. He vanished for days and days, and I was very dissatisfied with him for cutting a muster and for not being aboard to see to his stores and the sick-bay—there was no finding him, no word from him; and when Mr Stanhope came aboard he mentioned having been with him and Mrs Villiers to Elephanta Island. I had made up my mind to put him under arrest if I could lay my hands on him; but I could not. I was angry, as well as being very concerned; and I determined, when he came aboard, to give him an official rebuke, as well as a piece of my private mind, as a friend.

  We were at single anchor in the channel, blue peter at the fore since daybreak, when his boat appeared at last, and what with the heat, the anxiety, the jaded feeling of having been up all night, and some foolish words with the envoy's secretary, who would be making a nuisance of himself, I was ready to give him a trebly-shotted broadside. But when I saw him, my heart failed me: you would not credit how unhappy and ill he looked. He is as dark as a native, with the sun; but yet he somehow looked pale—grey is more the mark.

  I am afraid she must have been most bitterly unkind, for although we have been at sea some days now, and although we are back in our regular course, sailing with a fair wind for escort on a warm sea, which is the best way I know of setting the ugly side of shore-life far astern, his spirits don't recover. I could almost wish for some benign plague to break out in the ship, to rouse him; but so far only Babbington is on the sick-list—the rest of the ship's company are amazingly well, apart from Mr Rattray and a couple of men with the sun-stroke. I have never seen him so low, and now I am very glad I did not reprove him: apart from anything else, it would have been precious awkward, living together mewed up so close together as we are, block by block, with Mr Stanhope and his people taking up all the room. However, at least I think we may hope it is all over, and salt water and absence will waste it away. He is sitting over against me now, on the starboard locker, studying in a Malay dictionary, and you would say he was quite old. How I wish we could find one of Mons. de Linois's frigates and lay her aboard, yardarm to yardarm: we ply our guns pretty brisk now, and I make no doubt we should thump it into her with some effect. There is nothing like it for suddenly raising your spirits.

  And even a man-of-war, which don't fetch much in the way of prize-money, being in general handled rough before you can get possession of her, would set us up in a neat cottage. I have been thinking so of this neat cottage, Sophie! Pullings understands everything in the earthy line, his people having a farm; and I have been talking to him about gardening, and it is clear to me that with proper attention two people (not much given to luxury) could feed admirably well off a rood of moderate land. I should never grow tired of fresh green stuff, nor potatoes for that matter, after so many years of hard tack. In this drawing you will see I have attended to the due rotation of crops: plot A is root vegetables for the first year. Heaven knows when you will see the plan: but with any luck we may fall in with the Company's China fleet, and if we do, I shall send this and the rest of my packet by one of them—many of the homeward-bound China ships don't touch at Calcutta or Madras—and then you may have it before Christmas. However, the fleet's motions depend upon Linois's; if he is anywhere near the Straits they won't sail; so perhaps I shall be my own postman after all.'

  He drifted into a reverie, seeing trim rows of cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks; stout and well-grown, untouched by caterpillars, wireworms, leatherjackets or the dread onion-fly; a trout-stream at the bottom of the garden with good pasture along its banks, and on the good pasture a mild pair of cows, Jersey cows. Following the stream down he saw the Channel at no great distance, with ships upon it; and through the temperate haze upon this sea he was conscious of Stephen smiling at him.

  'Will you tell me what you were musing upon, now?' said Stephen. 'It must have been rarely pleasant.'

  'I was thinking about marriage,' said Jack, 'and the garden that goes with it.'

  'Must you have a garden when you are married?' cried Stephen. 'I was not aware.'

  'Certainly,' said Jack. 'I had provided myself with a prize, and my cabbages were already springing up in rank and file. I don't know how I shall bear to cut the first. Stephen,' he cried, suddenly breaking off, 'should you like to see a relic of my youth? I had hoped to show it to you when we were alongside the sheer-hulk, but you did not turn up; however, I have preserved it. The sight will raise your heart.'

  'I should be happy to see a relic of your youth,' said Stephen, and they walked on to the calm deck, calm with the peace of Sunday afternoon, calm and placidly crowded. The awning rigged for church was rigged still; and beneath its shade the gun-room officers, Mr Stanhope's people, and most of the midshipmen took their ease, or as much of it as they could; for now that church was over, the cabin's, the coach's, the gun-room's and the berth's hencoops and smaller livestock, including Mr Stanhope's nanny-goat had reappeared, and since there was little air to temper the fiery sun—the Surprise was running before the wind—they were all crowded into the shade. Yet at the same time the officer of the watch took his ritual turns fore and aft with a telescope under his arm, while the mate and the midshipman of the watch paced all the quarterdeck that was available on the other side, the timoneer stood at the wheel, the quartermaster conned the ship, two boys, the duty-messengers, stood meek as mice, though often trodden upon, in their due places, and an eager young Bombay mongoose threaded busily among them all, frightening the hens. Jack paused to compliment Mr White on his sermon (a strongly-worded confutation of Arminianism) and to inquire for Mr Stanhope, who had managed to take a little dry toast and broth, and who hoped to recover his sea-legs in a day or two.

  Followed by Stephen, he moved forward along the gangway, filled with seamen in their Sunday rig—many a splendid Indian handkerchief—some gazing over the hammock-cloths at the empty sea or conversing with their mates in the chains, some walking up and down, revelling in idleness; and so to the forecastle, which was deeply packed with men: for not only was it too hot to stay below, but a game was in progress, the ancient country game of grinning through a horse-collar, with a prize for who should be the most hideous. The collar was the hoop through which hammocks had to be passed, and the probable winner, to judge from the infinite mirth, was the loblolly boy, the surgeons' lay assistant. A weak head for figures had undone him as a butcher in the Bahamas, but he was a firm hand at the operating-table, and no mean dissector. Ordinarily he remained at a certain distance from the unlearned, but now, with Sunday's grog and the stirring of his youth, he was grinning like a Goth, amaranthine-purple with the strain. Grinning, that is to say, until his suffused eyes met Stephen's, when its face resolved itself into a reasonable shape, assumed a sickly look between greeting and confusion, simpered unhappily, but lacked the quickness to remove itself from the hoop.

  Silently as a ghost, and unseeing, Jack climbed slowly up the foremast shrouds, thrust his head through the lubber's hole, heard the click of dice—the deadly, illegal, fifty-strokes-at-the-gangway dice—and the horrified cry 'It's the skipper.' He looked down to guide Stephen's hands, and when at last he heaved himself into the top the men were standing in a huddle, mute by the larboard dead-eyes: they were used to an unnaturally active captain, but the foretop—and of a Sunday!—and through the lubber's hole!—it passed human belief. Faster Doudle, the only one whose wits could stand the strain, had swept the dice into his mouth: he stood now fixing the horizon with an absent gaze, a strikingly criminal expression on his face. Jack gave them a remote passing look and a smile, said 'Carry on, carry on,' and sat down on a studdingsail to haul Stephen through, in spite of his peevish cries of 'perfectly capable of coming up—have repeatedly mounted by the futtock-shrouds—scores of times—pray do not encumber me with your needless solicitude.'

  Once up, he, too, sat upon the studdingsail, and gasped
for a while: he put enormous effort into climbing, and now the sweat was running down his meagre cheeks. 'So this—this is the foretop,' he observed. 'I have been into the mizzentop, and the maintop, but never here. It is very like the others; very like indeed. The same ingenious arrangements of caps, double masts, and those round things—have you noticed, my dear sir, that it is virtually identical with the rest?'

  'An odd coincidence, ain't it?' said Jack. 'I do not believe I have ever heard it remarked upon before.'

  'And is your relic here?'

  'Why, no; not exactly. It is a little higher up. You do not mind going a little higher up?'

  'Not I,' said Stephen, glancing aloft to where the topmast soared, up and up through the brilliant diffused light, the only straight object in a billowy whiteness criss-crossed with curving ropes. 'You mean to the next story, or stage? Certainly. Then in that case I shall take off my coat, breeches, stockings. Lambswool stockings at three and nine the pair, are not to be hazarded lightly.' As he sat unfastening his knee-buckles he stared heavily at the men by the rail. 'Faster Doudle,' he said, 'has my rhubarb answered? How are your bowels, my good friend? Show me your tongue.'

  'Oh, not on Sunday, Doctor,' said Jack. Faster Doudle was a valuable upper-yard man; he had no wish to see him at the gangway. 'You are forgetting that today is Sunday. Mellish, take great care of the Doctor's wig. Put the watch and the money into it, and the handkerchief on top. Come now: clap on to the shrouds, Doctor, not the ratlines, and always look up, not down. Take it easy; and I will follow you and place your feet.'

  Up and up they went, passing the lookout perched on the yardarm, who assumed an attitude of intense vigilance. Still higher; and Jack swarmed round the mast, up into the cross-trees, and heaved Stephen's now submissive body into place, passed a line round it, and called upon him to open his eyes.

  'Why, this is superb,' he cried, convulsively hugging the mast. They were poised high above the surface of the sea; and all that was visible of the distant, narrow deck through the topsails and courses seemed peopled with dolls, foreshortened dolls that moved with disproportionate strides, their feet reaching too far in front and too far behind. 'Superb,' he said again. 'How vast the sea has become! How luminous!'

  Jack laughed to see his evident pleasure, his bright and attentive wondering eye, and said, 'Look for'ard.'

  The frigate had no headsails set, the wind being aft, and the taut lines of the forestays plunged slanting down in a clean, satisfying geometry; below them the ship's head with its curving rails, and then the long questing bowsprit, reaching far out into the infinity of ocean: with a steady, measured, living rhythm her bows plunged into the dark blue water, splitting it, shouldering it aside in dazzling foam.

  He sat for a long while, gazing down. With the long, slow pitch—no roll—they were swept fifty feet forward through the air each time the frigate put her head down; then slowly up to the vertical, a pause, and the forward rush again. 'How much airier it is, at this great height,' he observed at last.

  'Yes,' said Jack. 'It is always so. In the light air, for example, your royals will give you as much thrust as the courses. Even more.' He looked up at the royal pole, rising bare into the unclouded sky, and he was weighing the dynamic advantages of a fidded mast with one part of his mind when another part told him he was being uncivil—that Stephen had asked him a question, and was waiting for an answer. He reconstructed the words as well as he could—'had he ever considered the ship thus seen as a figure of the present—the untouched sea before it as the future—the bow-wave as the moment of perception, of immediate existence?' and replied, 'I cannot truly say I have. But it is a damned good figure; and all the more to my liking, as the sea is as bright and toward today as ever your heart could wish. I hope it pleases you, old Stephen?'

  'It does indeed. I have rarely been more moved—delighted; and am most sensible of your kindness in carrying me up. I dare say you, for your part, have been here pretty often?'

  'Lord, when I was a mid in this very ship, old Fidge used to masthead me for a nothing—a fine seaman, but testy: died of the yellow jack in ninety-seven—and I spent hours beyond number here. This is where I did nearly all my reading.'

  'A venerable spot.'

  'Ah,' cried Jack, 'if I had a guinea for every hour I have spent up here, I should not be worrying about prizes; nor discounting bills on my next quarter's pay. I should have been married long ago.'

  'This question of money preoccupies your mind. Mine, too, at times: how pleasant it would be, to be able to offer one's friend a rope of pearls! And then again, such deeply stupid men are able to come by wealth, often by no exertion, by no handling or even possession of merchandise, but merely by writing figures in a book. My Parsee, for example, assured me that if only he had the hard word about Linois's whereabouts, he and his associates would make lakh upon lakh of rupees.'

  'How would he do that?'

  'By a variety of speculations, particularly upon rice. Bombay cannot feed itself, and with Linois off Mahé, for instance, no rice ships would sail. Clearly the price would rise enormously, and the thousands of tons in the Parsce's nominal possession would sell for a very much greater sum. Then there are the funds, or their Indian equivalent, which lie far beyond my understanding. Even an untrue word, intelligently spread and based upon the statement of an honest man, would answer, I collect: it is called rigging the market.'

  'Aye? Well, damn them for a pack of greasy hounds. Let me show you my relic. I preserved it south of Madagascar, and I preserved it in Bombay. You will have to stand up. Steady, now—clap on to the cheek-bolt. There!' He pointed to the cap, a dark, worn, rope-scored, massive block of wood that embraced the two masts. 'We cut it out of greenheart in a creek on the Spanish main: it is good for another twenty years. And here, do you see, is my relic.' On the broad rim of the square hole that sat on the topmast head there were the initials JA cut deep and clear, supported on either side by blowsy forms that might have been manatees, though mermaids were more likely—beer-drinking mermaids.

  'Does not that raise your heart?' he asked.

  'Why,' said Stephen, 'I am obliged to you for the sight of it, sure.'

  'But it does raise your heart, you know, whatever you may say,' said Jack. 'It raises it a hundred feet above the deck. Ha, ha—I can get out a good thing now and then, given time—oh ha, ha, ha! You never smoked it—you was not aware of my motions.'

  When Jack was as amused as this, so intensely amused throughout his whole massive being, belly and all, with his scarlet face glorious and shining and his blue eyes darting mirth from their narrowed slits, it was impossible to resist. Stephen felt his mouth widen involuntarily, his diaphragm contract, and his breath beginning to come in short thick pants.

  'But I am truly grateful to you, my dear,' he said, 'for having brought me to this proud perilous eminency, this quasi-apex, this apogee; you have indeed lifted my heart, in the spirit and in the flesh; and I am now resolved to mount up daily. I now despise the mizzentop, once my ultima Thule; and I even aspire to that knob up there,'—nodding to the truck of the royal. 'What an ape, or even I may say an obese post-captain can accomplish, that also I can do.'

  These words, and the conviction with which they were uttered, wiped the laugh off Jack's face. 'Each man to his own trade,' he began earnestly. 'Apes and I are born . . .' The lookout's hail 'On deck there,' directed nevertheless straight up at the captain, 'sail ho!' cut him short.

  'Where away?' he cried.

  'Two points on the larboard bow, sir.'

  'Mr Pullings. Mr Pullings, there. Be so good as to send my glass into the fore crosstrees.'

  A moment later Mr Callow appeared, having run from the cabin to the crosstrees without a pause; and the white fleck in the south-east leapt nearer—a ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack: topsails and courses, taking it easy. Already there was a hint of her dark hull on the rise. She would be about four leagues away. At the moment the Surprise was running seven or eight knots with no
great spread of canvas; and she had the weather-gauge. There was plenty of time.

  'Lose not a minute' was engraved on his heart, however, and saying 'Shin up to the jacks, Mr Callow: do not watch the chase, but the sea beyond her. Doctor, pray do not stir for the moment,' he hailed the deck for his coxswain and swung himself into the shrouds with a speed just short of hurry. He met the ascending Bonden, said, 'Bring the Doctor down handsomely, Bonden. He is to be dressed, full rig, in the top,' and so reached the quarterdeck.

  'What have they seen, Captain?' cried Atkins, running towards him. 'Is it the enemy? Is it Linois?'

  'Mr Pullings, all hands to make sail. Maintopgallants'l, stuns'ls and royal; and scandalise the foretops'l yard.'

  'Maintopgallants'l, stuns'ls and royal, and scandalise foretops'l yard it is, sir.'

  The boatswain's call piped with a fine urgency; the ship was filled with the unaccustomed click of Sunday shoes; and Jack heard Atkins's shrill voice cut off suddenly as the afterguard bowled him over; in a few moments the wild melee had resolved itself into ordered groups of men aloft and alow, each at his appointed rope. The orders came in the dead silence: in quick succession the sails were sheeted home, and as each filled on the steady breeze so a stronger impulse sent the ship faster through the water—her whole voice changed, and the rhythm of her pitch; all far more living, brilliantly awake. At the last cry of 'Belay' Jack looked at his watch. It was pretty well; they were not Livelies yet, not by a minute and forty seconds; but it was pretty well. He caught a look of whistling astonishment on his new first lieutenant's face, and he smiled privately.

  'South-south-west a half south,' he said to the helmsman. 'Mr Pullings, I believe you may dismiss the watch below.'

  The watch below did in fact vanish into the berth-deck, but only to take off its best shirts, embroidered at the seams with ribbons, its spotless white trousers, and little low-cut shoes with bows; it reappeared a few minutes later in working clothes and gathered on the forecastle, in the head and the foretop, staring fixedly at the sail on the horizon.