Oldmeadow remarked that the soup was excellent. Summers, who was eating his with the dexterity acquired in a dozen fo’castles, remarked that much nonsense was talked about Navy food.
“You may depend upon it,” he said, “where food has to be ordered, gathered, stored and served out by the thousands of ton there will be cause of complaint here and there. But in the main, British seamen eat better at sea than they do ashore.”
“Bravo!” I cried. “Summers, you should be on the government benches!”
“A glass of wine with you, Mr Summers,” said the captain. “What is the phrase? ‘No heel taps’? A glass with all you gentlemen! But to return—Summers, what do you say to the story of the cheese clapped on the main as a mastcapping? What of the snuff-boxes carved out of beef?”
I saw out of the corner of my eye how the captain did no more than sniff the bouquet of his wine, then set the glass down. I determined to humour him if only to see round his schemes.
“Summers, I must hear you answer the captain. What of the snuff-boxes and mastcheeses—”
“Mastcappings—”
“What of the bones we hear are served to our gallant tars with no more than a dried shred of meat adhering?”
Summers smiled.
“I fancy you will sample the cheese, sir; and I believe the captain is about to surprise you with bones.”
“Indeed I am,” said the captain. “Hawkins, have them brought in.”
“Good God,” I cried, “marrow bones!”
“Bessie, I suppose,” said Oldmeadow. “A very profitable beast.”
I bowed to the captain.
“We are overwhelmed, sir. Lucullus could do no better.”
“I am endeavouring to supply you with material for your journal, Mr Talbot.”
“I give you my word, sir, the menu shall be preserved for the remotest posterity together with a memorial of the captain’s hospitality!”
Hawkins bent to the captain.
“The gentleman is at the door, sir.”
“Brocklebank? I will take him for a moment into the office if you will excuse me, gentlemen.”
Now there occurred a scene of farce. Brocklebank had not remained at the door but was inside it and advancing. Either he had mistaken the captain’s message for such an invitation as had been issued to me, or he was tipsy, or both. Summers had pushed back his chair and stood up. As if the first lieutenant had been a footman, Brocklebank sank into it.
“Thankee, thankee. Marrow bones! How the devil did you know, sir? I don’t doubt one of my gals told you. Confusion to the French!”
He drained Summers’s glass at a draught. He had a voice like some fruit which combines the qualities—if there be such a fruit—of peach and plum. He stuck his little finger in his ear, bored for a moment, inspected the result on the end of it while no one said anything. The servant was at a loss. Brocklebank caught a clearer sight of Summers and beamed at him.
“You too, Summers? Sit down, man!”
Captain Anderson, with what for him was rare tact, broke in.
“Yes, Summers, pull up that chair over there and dine with us.”
Summers sat at a corner of the table. He was breathing quickly as if he had run a race. I wondered whether he was thinking what Deverel thought and had confided to me in his, or perhaps I ought to say our, cups—No, Talbot, this is not a happy ship.
Oldmeadow turned to me.
“There was mention of a journal, Talbot. There is a devil of a lot of writing among you government people.”
“You have advanced me, sir. But it is true. The offices are paved with paper.”
The captain pretended to drink, then set the glass down.
“You might well think a ship is ballasted with paper. We record almost everything somewhere or another, from the midshipmen’s logs right up to the ship’s log kept by myself.”
“In my case, I find there is hardly time to record the events of a day before the next two or three are upon me.”
“How do you select?”
“Salient facts, of course—such trifles as may amuse the leisure of my godfather.”
“I hope,” said the captain heavily, “that you will record our sense of obligation to his lordship for affording us your company.”
“I shall do so.”
Hawkins filled Brocklebank’s glass. It was for the third time.
“Mr, er, Brocklebank,” said the captain, “may we profit from your medical experience?”
“My what, sir?”
“Talbot—Mr Talbot here,” said the captain in a vexed voice, “Mr Talbot—”
“What the devil is wrong with him? Good God! I assure you that Zenobia, dear, warm-hearted gal—”
“I myself,” said I swiftly, “have nothing to do with the present matter. Our captain refers to Colley.”
“The parson is it? Good God! I assure you it doesn’t matter to me at my time of life. Let them enjoy themselves I said—on board I said it—or did I?”
Mr Brocklebank hiccupped. A thin streak of wine ran down his chin. His eyes wandered.
“We need your medical experience,” said the captain, his growls only just below the surface, but in what for him was a conciliatory tone. “We have none ourselves and look to you—”
“I have none either,” said Mr Brocklebank. “Garçon, another glass!”
“Mr Talbot said—”
“I looked round you see but I said, Wilmot, I said, this anatomy is not for you. No indeed, you have not the stomach for it. In fact as I said at the time, I abandoned Aesculapius for the Muse. Have I not said so to you, Mr Talbot?”
“You have so, sir. On at least two occasions. I have no doubt the captain will accept your excuses.”
“No, no,” said the captain irritably. “However little the gentleman’s experience, we must profit by it.”
“Profit,” said Brocklebank. “There is more profit in the Muse than in the other thing. I should be a rich man now had not the warmth of my constitution, an attachment more than usually firm to the Sex and the opportunities for excess forced on my nature by the shocking corruption of English Society—”
“I could not abide doctoring,” said Oldmeadow. “All those corpses, good God!”
“Just so, sir. I prefer to keep reminders of mortality at arm’s length. Did you know I was first in the field after the death of Lord Nelson with a lithograph portraying the happy occasion?”
“You were not present!”
“Arm’s length, sir. Neither was any other artist. I must admit to you freely that I believed at the time that Lord Nelson had expired on deck.”
“Brocklebank,” cried I, “I have seen it! There is a copy on the wall in the tap of the Dog and Gun! How the devil did that whole crowd of young officers contrive to be kneeling round Lord Nelson in attitudes of sorrow and devotion at the hottest moment of the action?”
Another thin trickle of wine ran down the man’s chin.
“You are confusing art with actuality, sir.”
“It looked plain silly to me, sir.”
“It has sold very well indeed, Mr Talbot. I cannot conceal from you that without the continued popularity of that work I should be in Queer Street. It has at the very least allowed me to take a passage to, to wherever we are going, the name escapes me. And imagine, sir, Lord Nelson died down below in some stinking part of the bilges, I believe, with nothing to see him by but a ship’s lantern. Who in the devil is going to make a picture of that?”
“Rembrandt perhaps.”
“Ah. Rembrandt. Yes, well. At least Mr Talbot you must admire the dexterity of my management of smoke.”
“Take me with you, sir.”
“Smoke is the very devil. Did you not see it when Summers fired my gun? With broadsides a naval battle is nothing but a London Particular. So your true craftsman must tuck it away to where it does not obtrude—obtrude—”
“Like a clown.”
“Obtrude—”
“And interrupt
some necessary business of the action.”
“Obtrude—captain, you don’t drink.”
The captain made another gesture with his glass, then looked round at the other three of his guests in angry frustration. But Brocklebank, his elbows now on either side of the marrow bone intended for Summers, droned on.
“I have always maintained that smoke properly handled can be of ma-material assistance. You are approached by some captain who has had the good fortune to fall in with the enemy and get off again. He comes to me as they did, after my lithograph. He has, for example, in company with another frigate and a small sloop—encountered the French and a battle has ensued—I beg your pardon! As the epitaph says, ‘Wherever you be let your wind go free for holding mine was the death of me.’ Now I ask you to imagine what would happen—and indeed my good friend, Fuseli, you know, the Shield of Achilles, and—well. Imagine!”
I drank impatiently and turned to the captain.
“I think, sir, that Mr Brocklebank—”
It was of no avail and the man drooled again without noticing.
“Imagine—who pays me? If they all pay there can be no smoke at all! Yet they must all be seen to be hotly engaged, the devil take it! They come to blows, you know!”
“Mr Brocklebank,” said the captain fretfully, “Mr Brocklebank—”
“Give me one single captain who has been successful and got his K! Then there will be no argument!”
“No,” said Oldmeadow, cawing into his collar, “no indeed!”
Mr Brocklebank eyed him truculently.
“You doubt my word, sir? Do you, because if you do, sir—”
“I, sir? Good God no, sir!”
“He will say, ‘Brocklebank,’ he will say. ‘I don’t give a tuppenny damn for me own part, but me mother, me wife and me fifteen gals require a picture of me ship at the height of the action!’ You follow? Now after I have been furnished with a copy of the gazette and had the battle described to me in minutest detail he goes off in the happy delusion that he knows what a naval battle looks like!”
The captain raised his glass. This time he emptied it at a gulp. He addressed Brocklebank in a voice which would have scared Mr Taylor from one end of the ship to the other if not farther.
“I for my part, sir, should be of his opinion!”
Mr Brocklebank, to indicate the degree of his own cleverness, tried to lay a finger cunningly on the side of his nose but missed it.
“You are wrong, sir. Were I to rely on verisimilitude—but no. Do you suppose that my client, who has paid a deposit—for you see he may be off and lose his head in a moment—”
Summers stood up.
“I am called for, sir.”
The captain, with perhaps the only glimmer of wit I have found in him, laughed aloud.
“You are fortunate, Mr Summers!”
Brocklebank noticed nothing. Indeed, I believe if we had all left him he would have continued his monologue.
“Now do you suppose the accompanying frigate is to be portrayed with an equal degree of animation? She has paid nothing! That is where smoke comes in. By the time I have done my layout she will have just fired and the smoke will have risen up round her; and as for the sloop, which will have been in the hands of some obscure lieutenant, it will be lucky to appear at all. My client’s ship on the other hand will be belching more fire than smoke and will be being attacked by all the enemy at once.”
“I could almost wish,” said I, “that the French would afford us an opportunity for invoking the good offices of your brush.”
“There’s no hope of that,” said the captain glumly, “no hope at all.”
Perhaps his tone affected Mr Brocklebank, who went through one of those extraordinarily swift transitions which are common enough among the inebriated from cheerfulness to melancholy.
“But that is never the end of it. Your client will return and the first thing he will say is that Corinna or Erato never carried her foremast stepped as far forrard as that and what is that block doing on the main brace? Why, my most successful client—apart from the late Lord Nelson if I may so describe him—as a client I mean—was even foolish enough to object to some trifling injuries I had inflicted on the accompanying frigate. He swore she had never lost her topmast, her fore topmast I think he said, for she was scarcely in cannon shot. Then he said I had shown no damage in the region of the quarterdeck of his ship, which was not accurate. He forced me to beat two gunports into one there and carry away a great deal of the rail. Then he said, ‘Could you not dash me in there, Brocklebank? I distinctly remember standin’ just by the broken rail, encouragin’ the crew and indicatin’ the enemy by wavin’ me sword towards them.’ What could I do? The client is always right, it is the artist’s first axiom. ‘The figure will be very small, Sir Sammel,’ said I. ‘That is of no consequence,’ said he. ‘You may exaggerate me a little.’ I bowed to him. ‘If I do that, Sir Sammel,’ said I, ‘it will reduce your frigate to a sloop by contrast.’ He took a turn or two up and down my studio for all the world like our captain here on the quarterdeck. ‘Well,’ said he at last, ‘you must dash me in small, then. They will know me by me cocked hat and me epaulettes. It’s of no consequence to me, Mr Brocklebank, but me good lady and me gals insist on it.’”
“Sir Sammel,” said the captain. “You did say ‘Sir Sammel’?”
“I did. Do we move on to brandy?”
“Sir Sammel. I know him. Knew him.”
“Tell us all, Captain,” said I, hoping to stem the flow. “A shipmate?”
“I was the lieutenant commanding the sloop,” said the captain moodily, “but I have not seen the picture.”
“Captain! I positively must have a description of this,” said I. “We landsmen are avid, you know, for that sort of thing!”
“Good God, the shloop! I have met the sh—the other sh—the lieutenant. Captain, you must be portrayed. We will waft away the sh—the smoke and show you in the thick of it!”
“Why so he was,” said I. “Can we believe him anywhere else? You were in the thick of it, were you not?”
Captain Anderson positively snarled.
“The thick of the battle? In a sloop? Against frigates? But Captain—Sir Sammel I suppose I must say—must have thought me in the thick of it for he bawled through his speaking trumpet, ‘Get to hell out of this, you young fool, or I’ll have you broke!’”
I raised my glass to the captain.
“I drink to you, sir. But no blind eye? No deaf ear?”
“Garçon, where is the brandy? I must limn you, Captain, at a much reduced fee. Your future career—”
Captain Anderson was crouched at the table’s head as if to spring. Both fists were clenched on it and his glass had fallen and smashed. If he had snarled before, this time he positively roared.
“Career? Don’t you understand, you damned fool? The war is nigh over and done with and we are for the beach, every man jack of us!”
There was a prolonged silence in which even Brocklebank seemed to find that something unusual had happened to him. His head sank, then jerked up and he looked round vacantly. Then his eyes focused. One by one, we turned.
Summers stood in the doorway.
“Sir. I have been with Mr Colley, sir. It is my belief the man is dead.”
Slowly, each of us rose, coming, I suppose, from a moment of furious inhospitality to another realization. I looked at the captain’s face. The red suffusion of his anger had sunk away. He was inscrutable. I saw in his face neither concern, relief, sorrow nor triumph. He might have been made of the same material as the figurehead.
He was the first to speak.
“Gentlemen. This sorry affair must end our, our meeting.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Hawkins. Have this gentleman escorted to his cabin. Mr Talbot. Mr Oldmeadow. Be good enough to view the body with Mr Summers to confirm his opinion. I myself will do so. I fear the man’s intemperance has destroyed him.”
“Intemper
ance, sir? A single, unlucky indulgence?”
“What do you mean, Mr Talbot?”
“You will enter it so in the log?”
Visibly, the captain controlled himself.
“That is something for me to consider in my own time, Mr Talbot.”
I bowed and said nothing. Oldmeadow and I withdrew and Brocklebank was half-carried and half-dragged behind us. The captain followed the little group that surrounded the monstrous soak. It seemed that every passenger in the ship, or at least the after part of it, was congregated in the lobby and staring silently at the door of Colley’s cabin. Many of the crew who were not on duty, and most of the emigrants, were gathered at the white line drawn across the deck and were staring at us in equal silence. I suppose there must have been some noise from the wind and the passage of the ship through the water but I, at least, was not conscious of it. The other passengers made way for us. Wheeler was standing on guard at the door of the cabin, his white puffs of hair, his bald pate and lighted face—I can find no other description for his expression of understanding all the ways and woes of the world—gave him an air of positive saintliness. When he saw the captain he bowed with the unction of an undertaker or indeed as if the mantle of poor, obsequious Colley had fallen on him. Though the work should have gone to Phillips, it was Wheeler who opened the door, then stood to one side. The captain went in. He stayed for no more than a moment, came out, motioned me to enter, then strode to the ladder and up to his own quarters. I went into the cabin with no great willingness, I can assure you! The poor man still clutched the eyebolt—still lay with his face pressed against the bolster, but the blanket had been turned back and revealed his cheek and neck. I put three hesitant fingers on his cheek and whipped them back as if they had been burned. I did not choose, indeed I did not need, to lean down and listen for the man’s breathing. I came out to Colley’s silent congregation and nodded to Mr Oldmeadow who went in, licking pale lips. He too came out quickly.
To the Ends of the Earth Page 14