The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

‘I wish he may burst,’ said Jack, with an uncharitable glance at the distant quarter-deck. But his spirits were not really much affected, and he alternately admired the view and carved his initials upon the topmast cap. The view was a circle of the purest blue some thirty miles across, the full deep oceanic blue, without the shadow of a single cloud upon it; and in the middle of this glorious disk there was the squadron, brilliantly white from above, gathered in a comfortable group – he was going to say ‘like ducks', but his sense of poetic fitness as well as a due reverence for the service made him substitute halcyons, as being grander, and more classical.

  One of the disadvantages of being called Byron is that B is a difficult letter to carve: however, by a course of long practice Jack had almost overcome this handicap, and the most recent of his Majesty’s ships in which he had served before the Wager was sprinkled with JBs of an almost professional excellence. The first lieutenant of that vessel was a man of great independence of spirit; he would never have it said that he was influenced by important connexions, and he had come down upon Jack’s slightest faults with ferocious rectitude. At that time Jack had often wished that either his grandfather had never been First Lord of the Admiralty or that Mr Toke had less greatness of soul: good came out of it all, however, for not only was he now able to carve his initials quite beautifully, having had so much practice at the masthead, but the frequency of the punishment made him take little account of it.

  This was not the case with Tobias, however. When he had finished with Cozens – bleeding, purging and a strong emetic – he went along to the midshipmen’s berth for dinner.

  ‘Yes, he will do very well,’ he said, in reply to their questions. ‘Where is Jack?’

  ‘Mastheaded,’ said Campbell, helping himself to the last of the Madeiran cheese.

  ‘Old Bean sent him up,’ said Morris.

  Tobias ate biscuit for some time in silence and then said, ‘Masthead.’ There had been such a very great deal to occupy his mind since they sailed that he had not taken very much notice of the working of the ship nor of naval discipline. He had seen the many floggings, of course, they being solemn occasions, with all hands piped up to witness the punishment; besides, it fell to him to treat the sometimes shocking wounds that a severe flogging entailed; but Morris or Cozens might have been sent to the masthead fifty times without Tobias paying any attention to it.

  ‘What is he doing up there?’ he asked. ‘I should have supposed him to be hungry.’ He took a weevil out of his biscuit and looked keenly at the little creature’s proboscis.

  ‘I dare say he is,’ said Campbell, with a prim smile; and he explained the meaning of the term.

  ‘Oh,’ cried Tobias, pale with fury. ‘Is that the case? What an unprincipled abuse of authority. To send him up there – that most dangerous eminence – infernal tyranny – public ignominy.’ Tobias became incoherent, and sprang about in a high state of rage and excitement. ‘Mr Bean, was it? The proud satrap, the man of blood. I shall bring down his vile presumption.’

  Morris and Campbell seized him as he darted out and confined him to the berth until he had stopped foaming. ‘If you were to say a rough word to him,’ said Campbell, ‘much less lift your hand, do you know what it would be?’

  Tobias breathed hard, but did not reply.

  ‘Mutiny,’ said Campbell.

  ‘There is only one punishment for mutiny,’ said Morris, imitating a hanging man.

  ‘Your friend may be able to command cabins and all manner of irregular favours,’ said Campbell, who meant well enough by Tobias, but who did not love Jack, ‘but his grand relations could not save you from a court-martial. He would be involved too, I dare say,’ he added.

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Tobias. ‘I shall be calm, prudent. Pass the biscuit, if you please, and the pork.’ He took off his neckerchief, spread it out and very firmly carved a picnic into it: he hurried to their cabin for a piece of the remaining cake and so came on deck.

  He passed close to the lieutenant, and Mr Bean, turning in his pace, received a very implacable and malignant glare which (being so unexpected) quite upset him. At the end of his next turn Mr Bean noticed Tobias again, creeping up the shrouds, and he could almost have sworn that the surgeon’s mate had been shaking his fist at him, or at least in the direction of the holy quarter-deck. Mr Bean was on the point of calling him down, but he hesitated: Mr Barrow could never have been so abandoned, so wanton; Mr Barrow was known to be sober, grave, unusually learned; Mr Barrow also had a particularly happy turn of the wrist, and Mr Eliot delegated all the Wager’s dental business to him. The lieutenant’s teeth were none of the best, and any day Tobias might have him hideously at his mercy. To call such a person down to explain what probably never happened, decided Mr Bean, would be the height of folly.

  Jack had finished his initials, and with an Olympian detachment he was watching the last boats crawling over the sea from the victualler; the unloading was almost done; soon they would be making sail. From time to time he stared at the Centurion, trying to make out whether the figure at the mizzen masthead were Keppel or not: the Centurion was a very much stricter ship than the Wager, and there was somebody at the main as well.

  ‘It is probably one of the ship’s apes,’ he concluded – the Centurion had bought every ape on the Madeiran market, being ashore earlier than anyone else – and he frowned, because there was a curiously familiar noise that he could not locate. ‘It is almost exactly like a bulldog,’ he said, ‘or Toby, when he is coming up into the foretop.’ A sudden doubt came into his mind. He looked down, and with a thrill of pure horror he saw Tobias’ nightcap not five ratlines below him.

  The shrouds, with the ratlines across them, form a kind of ladder; they are spread out to as wide a base as is possible at the bottom, because their chief function is to support the mast, but as they are made fast at the top to the mast itself, so of necessity the ladder that they make becomes exceedingly narrow for its last dozen rungs – narrow, and difficult to climb, because so many ropes converge. Furthermore, the roll of a ship is more and more perceptible the higher you are. A ten-degree roll is nothing much on deck once you have your sea-legs, but by the time you reach ninety feet (the Wager’s main topmast crosstrees were about a hundred from the water) a little roll like this will send you through fifteen feet of lateral distance each time. The silent rush through the air is refreshing in the heavy atmosphere of the doldrums, and the constantly changing effects of the earth’s gravity, now pressing your face on to the tarred rope of the ratlines, now plucking you backwards as the swing is reversed, are an additional delight to an inquiring spirit; but it is as well to have a head for heights and to be used to the behaviour of the upper rigging before you go swooping to and fro so near the sky.

  Tobias had begun fairly well. From the deck to the maintop (which was the highest point he had reached before) it had been fairly easy, and the first half of the topmast shrouds had not alarmed him much; but from then onwards the swing had been so much greater, and his ladder so much narrower, that his parcel hampered him sorely. Now he was mounting only between long rests; he hooked his arms right through the ratlines and hung there during the backward roll, and then as the Wager came slowly up and her masts approached the vertical he transferred his parcel to his teeth, grasped the next ratline with both hands and hauled himself up with a convulsive movement. Then he threaded himself into the web again, took the parcel in his right hand and closed his eyes while his steady aerial motion bore him out beyond the deck below (how small and far) out over the sea and back again. Sometimes it took him two rolls or three before he could arrange his feet properly for the next upward scramble, and sometimes he had to wait for a long time to recruit his strength, for this was a very laborious way of going aloft – worse than that, it was based upon a misapprehension, for although at the lower stages the space between the shrouds was amply wide enough, it was now so narrow that he could scarcely get his arm through, and after the next step, where the cat-harpings
drew the shrouds in tight, he would not be able to do so at all.

  ‘Toby,’ called Jack softly, so as not to startle him, ‘I’m coming down. Just stay where you are.’

  By way of answer Tobias shook his nightcap, surged up one more step and hung there, breathing hard. Jack ran down the starboard shrouds to the height of the cat-harpings and peered round the mast into Tobias’ face, which was candle-pale and glistening.

  ‘How are you, old Toby?’ he asked. ‘Give me that thing, will you?’

  The Wager, at this moment, was reaching the limit of her starboard roll: Tobias cautiously held out the parcel, but he mistook and let it go just before Jack’s hand was there. It fell, down, down and down; then there was a little white splash in the blue water well out from the side, and while they watched a great long shape glided fast from under the stern, and they saw the white gleam of its belly as it turned so far down there in the clear sea.

  ‘Come now, Toby,’ said Jack, ‘this will never do. You must run straight up to the crosstrees. Wait a minute.’ He swarmed round the cat-harpings to the larboard shrouds just under Tobias. ‘I will take your shoes off,’ he said, doing so. ‘Now put your feet here and here, and grip with your toes. Now up you go – quick, hand over hand.’ He ran Toby’s feet up, pushed him on to the crosstrees, writhed round him and above to get the other side of the mast and hauled him into a sitting position, talking busily all the time, adjuring him not to look down, never to worry, to look lively and to go easy there. He judged it very well: by the time the mast was upright Tobias was sitting firmly on the crosstrees with his feet on the huge fiddle-headed block of the topmast stay, his right hand on a topgallant dead-eye and his left arm round the masthead itself, as firm as a limpet. ‘There you are,’ said Jack. ‘What an intrepid topman you are becoming, Toby, upon my word and honour.’

  ‘I have got up,’ said Tobias, and this remark seemed to satisfy him for some time. ‘But I regret your dinner,’ he said at last, ‘and if you wish I will fetch you some more.’

  Jack was infinitely obliged, infernally grateful, but it so happened that he had no appetite: it had suddenly left him, he said. They sat for some time, while the sun declined on the right hand and the Wager’s shadow grew on the smooth sea: it was smooth, with hardly a ripple upon it, but the long slow swell from the south was increasing.

  ‘It is most significant, Jack,’ said Tobias, peering round the mast, ‘most significant that I am not at all seasick. The motion is very great – it is becoming greater – but there is no nausea, no vertigo.’

  ‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said Jack, ‘and I dare say it is uncommon significant. But what of?’

  ‘It signifies that Mr Eliot may be right – that seasickness may be in some degree a creature of the imagination. I am too much preoccupied by terror to be sick. Query: are the timid less seasick than the bold, as being more readily distracted?’

  ‘I wish you were safely down below,’ said Jack, who had no philosophy to spare. ‘I do indeed.’

  Down below the boats were being hauled in, hoisted up by tackles on the yard-arms and brought inboard to be stowed on the booms: the blue watch was on duty, and it had its full share of men who hauled stupidly, at the wrong moment, or not at all; this was a piece of work that called for exact coordination at any time and now it was complicated by the heavy swell. When Jack heard, among the roaring and the fending-off, that a back-stay had parted, he felt sure that all hands would soon be called. A glance round the squadron made him surer still. The signal to make sail was flying aboard the Centurion; the Severn already had her fore-topsail shaken out, and, as he looked, her main-topsail fell white from the yard and was sheeted home directly; everywhere in the squadron canvas was breaking out. The Industry was already under way, flying a signal that said I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO COMMUNICATE, but its intention was generally understood to be Farewell, or possibly Merry Christmas. Only the Wager was still blundering about with the longboat, later than everybody else, as usual.

  ‘Listen, Toby,’ he said, ‘we must get you down. I shall have to go on deck in a moment, so let us put you on this preventer-stay at once, and send you down to the foretop. You will not mind climbing down from the foretop.’

  ‘What stay?’ asked Tobias, looking alarmed.

  ‘This,’ cried Jack, kicking the block under Tobias’ feet so that the stays vibrated again: there were two, running straight and taut from the main-topmast head to the foretop at an angle of about 45°, and as the staysail was not bent they made an excellent road. ‘Come now, give me your belt. Hold on here. Hook your leg round the stay.’ Jack passed both their belts round Tobias and the stay: as he was fastening them the watches below were called, and there was a general bellowing of ‘All hands on deck. All hands to make sail.’

  ‘You are as safe as the ark,’ said Jack, ‘but don’t go too fast.’ With these words he vanished, leaving Tobias hanging under the stay, attached to it by his hands and legs somewhat in the manner of the Brazilian (or three-toed) sloth, except that the sloth would never have been supported by a belt and in general would have been calmer in its mind – the sloth’s bosom would have been less agitated by conjecture and doubt.

  ‘What did he mean by too fast?’ asked Tobias of the sky. ‘What is considered a moderate speed, in these circumstances?’ He loosened his cataleptic grasp a little and allowed himself to slide a few feet before gripping again: the experiment pleased him, for it proved that he could start and stop. He now had complete confidence in his suspension, and as his face was turned upwards he had no impression of petrifying height, but rather a sense of being pleasingly afloat. He let himself go a little further, and smiled; then further, in a steady glide.

  ‘This is capital,’ he said aloud. ‘Before we reach the equator I shall accustom myself to the upper rigging; and before we cross the tropic of Capricorn I shall (sub Deo) climb to that ball,’ – nodding to the distant truck of the main-mast, which looked like a ball from below – ‘and put my nightcap upon it.’ So saying he let himself go a little faster, and then faster and faster until at length with a shrill whizzing sound he shot, amazed, feet first into the foretop, scattering its unsuspecting occupants like ninepins.

  Chapter Seven

  WHO SHALL DESCRIBE the crossing of the equator, with Neptune dispensing the traditional ordeals to all who had not been south of the line? Cozens, with a seaweed beard was Neptune, and it would take a great deal of space to describe the merriment and the jollity, the way everybody was soused, covered with tar, made to drink bilge-water. Tobias did not think it worth describing, but Jack, who had been as nearly as possible drowned – Neptune bawling, and weeping with laughter the while – was not of the same opinion. He had worn the necessary grin throughout the licensed Bedlam and the violent horseplay, but he was still privately indignant, and meditated a satirical poem.

  ‘You may say that I am not a Pope,’ he said.

  ‘My dear Jack,’ said Tobias, ‘I am sure of it. A Pope, ha, ha.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Jack in something of a huff; but in a moment he said, ‘I mean Mr Pope, you know: not the gentleman in Rome.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mr Pope, damn it, Toby: the one I hoped to show you at Will’s, only he was not there. Strike me down, I don’t believe he even knows who I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Jack. The poet. You have often mentioned him, with approval.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, who was easily mollified, ‘you may say that I am not a Pope and that my piece would not be a Dunciad; but I reply, that there is the same disproportion between the subject of his poem and mine – which is pretty well put. What was that?’

  ‘Six bells. If you do write it, you must not omit the flying-fish.’ He looked out over the sea in case there should be another flight – there had been thousands of flying-fish that afternoon and a good many doradoes. ‘I can conceive nothing more poetic than a flying-fish, unless indeed it is the pelagic loxodrome.’

  Jack leaned back with
a faint sigh: in spite of the breeze it was too hot to try to make Tobias understand poetry in the correct, or Popish manner. They were sitting in the weather mainchains, which was about the pleasantest place aboard, though damp: strictly speaking they were not aboard at all, for the chains were outboard, they being the very strong projections from the ship’s side that hold the chain-plates and the immense dead-eyes of the shrouds. It was a kind of shelf that they sat upon, and if the Wager had been on an even keel they would have been suspended about half-way up the side, six or seven feet from the water and six or seven feet from the rail; but the east-south-east wind was blowing steadily over the Wager’s quarter, and with every possible sail set and drawing she heeled so as to raise them much higher from the sea. Even so, spray and sometimes solid water reached them now and then, for the wind was across the current and it chopped the surface into short, steep waves; it was very welcome, the coolness of the water, and it did their clothes no harm, for they were dressed in the simple elegance of calico drawers and nothing more.

  ‘There is Old Spots,’ said Tobias. In spite of the waves the sea was astonishingly clear, and the dolphin was plainly to be seen: it was a rather large fat dolphin with a protuberant forehead, a contented smile and a particular arrangement of light patches on its shoulders that distinguished it from the others. The Wager was making a good ten knots, but the dolphin had leisure to turn half over and scratch its back on the ship’s side before running up to play in the bow wave, to pass down the lee, to cross the wake with divers leaps and bounds and to reappear under their feet with an air of simple-minded joy.

  The smile on the face of the dolphin was also to be found on board the Wager, this was delightful sailing at last, with the wind so steady and true and the braces untouched day after day: in this weather the watch on deck was occupied with beautifying the ship or preparing gear for harder times ahead, and the watches below really were watches below – that is to say, that they were not roused out the moment they had turned in by piping of all hands for some emergency or other. The watches below took their ease: in the last dog-watch they would often sing and dance to the squeak of the barber’s fiddle, and at other times they would spread abroad for repose and meditation. This was one of the reasons why Jack and Tobias were sitting in the chains – there was no room anywhere else. The Wager was about a hundred feet long, and her people numbered two hundred and twelve; she was not what would have been called a crowded ship, by naval standards, and at all ordinary times the hands loved to huddle into the smallest possible compartments, there to smoke and to work up a truly staggering fug, which left room enough for those who like to breathe; but now the ‘tween decks was untenable even for the whaler’s men (the most devoted to fug) and everyone sought a place in the breeze and out of the sun. Even the sick were on deck, and a short row of hammocks swung in the waist of the ship – the pensioners and a few new cases of tropical calenture, but nothing that disquieted Mr Eliot. In the other ships this was not the case: the Severn, next in line, had sick-bay hammocks as far as the catheads, and the Centurion was as bad, in spite of the commodore’s scuttles; it was difficult to see into the other ships, for they sailed in so precise a line, two cables’ lengths apart, that the Gloucester and the Pearl were obscured by the white cloud of sails.