The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  It was a very old favourite they began with that evening, Benda's violin and 'cello duet in C minor, and they played it unusually well. There is a great deal to be said for a steady deck under a 'cello: a great deal to be said for a cheerful heart behind a fiddle: and they would have brought it to an unusually handsome close if Killick had not blundered in, tripping over a little stool, unseen because of his tray, and saving their supper only by a miracle of juggling.

  At one time this supper had consisted of toasted cheese held in a remarkably elegant piece of Irish silver, a covered outer dish that held six within it, the whole kept warm over a spirit-stove: the dish was still present, gleaming with a noble brilliance, but it held only a pap made of pounded biscuit, a little goat's milk, and even less of rock-hard cheese-rind rasped over the top and browned with a loggerhead, so that some faint odour of cheddar could still just be made out.

  Jack Aubrey weighed sixteen or seventeen stone, Stephen barely nine, and to avoid the tedium of self-sacrifice, protests against the sacrifice, and privy maundering afterwards it had long been agreed that they should share accordingly: finishing his fourth dish, therefore, Jack also finished his explanation of the remarkable sailing qualities of both the Franklin and the Surprise: '... so as I say, although at present we have the current setting against us, I believe I can promise we shall make as much of what breeze there is as any two ships afloat: from the look of the sky and the glass I should not be astonished if we achieved five knots tomorrow. And then, you know, as we slant down towards the equator, there is the counter-current in our favour.'

  'So much the better,' said Stephen. 'Now what do you say to our Boccherini in D major? The minuet has been running in my head these last two or three days; but we have still to work out the adagio.'

  'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. 'Killick. Killick, there. Clear the decks and bring another decanter of port.'

  'Which it is getting wery low, sir,' said Killick. 'At this rate we shall have to rouse up your feast-day eighty-nine, or be satisfied with grog.'

  'Rouse it up, Killick: let us live whilst we are alive.' When Killick was gone, looking pinched and disapproving, Jack went on. 'That reminds me of Clarissa Oakes. She said something of the same kind in Latin, you told me, and translated it for her husband. Lord, Stephen, that was a fine young woman. How shamefully I lusted after her: but it would not do, of course, not in my own ship. And I believe poor Martin was much smitten. Sheep's eyes were not in it. However, I do so hope she will be happy with Oakes. He was not perhaps quite up to her mark, but he was a tolerable seaman.'

  'Little do I know of port wine,' said Stephen. 'Was eighty-nine an uncommon year?'

  'Pretty good,' said Jack, 'but I love it because of its associations. I never drink it without thinking of the Spanish Disturbance.'

  'My dear, you have the advantage of me.'

  'Really? Well, I am amazingly glad to know something you do not. It had to do with Nootka Sound, the place where the fur-traders go. Captain Cook, that great man, discovered it during his last voyage, when he was running up the north-west coast of America; and our people had been trading there and to the northwards for years and years when all at once the Spaniards said it was a continuation of California and therefore Spanish. They sent up a twenty-six-gun frigate from Mexico and seized the English ships and the settlement. It made a great noise when the news reached home, above all as we had not long since been beaten in America; people were furiously angry - my cousin Edward stood up in Parliament beside himself with rage and said England was going to the dogs and the House cheered him - and when the Spaniards would not listen to reason the Ministry began hurrying ships out of ordinary, manning them with a hot press, and laying down new ones. Lord, we were so happy, we sailors turned ashore after the American disaster! One day I was only a wretched master's mate with no half pay, glum, blue, hipped, sitting on the beach and adding salt tears to the bitter flood, and the next I was Lieutenant Aubrey, fifth of the Queen, covered with glory and gold lace, or at least as much as I could get on credit. It was a wonderful stroke of luck for me; and for the country too.'

  'Who could deny it?'

  'I mean it was wonderfully well timed, since it meant we had a well-manned, well-equipped Navy to cope with the French when they declared war on us a little later. Bless the Spanish Disturbance.'

  'By all means. But, Jack, I could have sworn your commission was dated 1792. Sophie showed it to me with such pride. Yet our wine is 1789.'

  'Of course it is. That was when the Disturbance started - the very beginning, when those wicked dogs seized our ships. The talking and the rearmament went on until ninety-two, when the Spaniards pulled in their horns as they did over the Falklands some time before. But it all began in eighty-nine. A precious date for me: a wonderful year and I had great hopes of it as soon as the news came home.' He paused for a while, sipping his port and smiling at his recollections; then he said 'Tell me, Stephen, what were you doing in eighty-nine?'

  'Oh,' said Stephen vaguely, 'I was studying medicine.' With this he set down his glass and walked into the quarter-gallery. He had been studying medicine, it was true, walking the wards of the Hotel-Dieu, but he had also spent a great deal of the time running about the streets of Paris in the headiest state of happy excitement that could be imagined, or rather exaltation, in the dawn of the Revolution, when every disinterested, generous idea of freedom seemed on the point of realization, the dawn of an infinitely finer age.

  When he came back he found Jack arranging the score of their next duet on their music stands. Like many other heavy men Jack could be as sensitive as a cat on occasion: he knew that he had touched on some painful area - that in any case Stephen hated questions - and he was particularly attentive in laying out the sheets, pouring Stephen another glass of wine, and, when they began, in so playing that his violin helped the 'cello, yielding to it in those minute ways perceptible to those who are deep in their music if to few others.

  They played on, and only once did Jack raise his head from the score: the ship was leaning half a strake, and beneath their strings the sound of the rigging could just be heard. At the end of the allegro he said, turning the page with his bow, 'She is making four knots.'

  'I believe we may attack the adagio directly,' said Stephen. 'The wind is in our poop, and we have never played better.'

  They swept into the next movement, the 'cello booming nobly, and carried straight on without a pause, separating, joining, answering one another, with never a hesitation nor a false note until the full satisfaction of the end.

  'Well done, well done,' said Dutourd: he and Martin were standing in the warm darkness abaft the lit companion, alone on the quarterdeck apart from Grainger and the men at the wheel. 'I had no idea they could play so well - no contention, no striving for pre-eminence - pray which is the 'cello?'

  'Dr Maturin.'

  'And Captain Aubrey the violin, of course: admirable tone, admirable bowing.'

  Martin did not care for Dutourd in the gunroom: he thought that the Frenchman talked far too much, that he tended to harangue the company, and that his ideas though no doubt well-intended were pernicious. But en tete-a-tete Dutourd was an agreeable companion and Martin quite often took a turn on deck with him. 'You play yourself, sir, I collect?' he said.

  'Yes. I may be said to play. I am not of the Captain's standard, but with some practice I believe I could play second fiddle to him without too much discredit.'

  'Have you a violin with you?'

  'Yes, yes. It is in my sea-chest. The man who repaired your viola renewed the pegs just before we set off from Molokai. Do you often play in the cabin?'

  'I have done so, though I am an indifferent performer. I have taken part in quartets.'

  'Quartets! What joy! That is living in the very heart of music.'

  Chapter Four

  The next morning Jack Aubrey came up from a conference, a pursers' conference with Mr Adams: Jack, like Cook and many a far-ranging captain before
him, was nominally his own purser, just as Adams was nominally the captain's clerk; but by dividing the work between them they accomplished both it and their own specific duties quite well, particularly as the anomalous status of the Surprise meant that her accounts would never have to pass the slow, circumspect eyes of the Victualling Office, for whom all persons in charge of His Majesty's stores were guilty of embezzlement until with countersigned dockets of every conceivable nature they could prove their innocence. At this conference they had weighed a number of sacks of dried peas, and Jack, taking advantage of the steelyard hanging from a convenient beam, had also weighed himself: to his shame he found that he had put on half a stone, and he meant to walk it off as soon as possible. He wished to hear no more flings about obesity, no more facetious remarks about letting out his waistcoats, no grave professional warnings about the price big heavy men of a sanguine temperament had so often to pay for taking too little exercise, too much food and too much drink: apoplexy, softening of the brain, impotence.

  Fore and aft, fore and aft, pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck, his own private realm, a narrow unencumbered path on which he had travelled hundreds, even thousands of miles since he first commanded the Surprise; an utterly familiar terrain on which his mind could let itself run free. The breeze was too far before the beam for the ships, steering south-east, to set studdingsails, but they were wearing everything they possessed, including that uncommon object a middle staysail, and they were making four knots. They were an elegant sight indeed, from any distance; but from close to, a seaman's eye could still see many signs of the battering they had been through: some knots had yet to be replaced by splices or new cordage; the fine finish of the decks had not yet been restored - in some places what ordinarily resembled a ball-room floor still looked more like a bloody shambles; and clouds of hot volcanic ash and scoriae had played Old Harry with the paintwork and the blacking of the yards, to say nothing of the tar. An immense amount of small, unspectacular, highly-skilled work was going on from one end of the ship to the other, and Captain Aubrey's walk was accompanied by the steady thump of caulker's mallets. It was early in the day, and although the weather was as fair as could be wished, apart from the lack of wind, the quarterdeck had nobody upon it who was not called there by duty: Vidal and Reade, officer and midshipman of the watch; the men at the helm; the carpenter and two of his crew at the taffrail, putting the frigate's modest decorative carving, her gingerbread-work, to rights. The usual daily procession of Jemmy Ducks, Sarah and Emily, carrying hen-coops and leading the goat Amalthea, had come and gone; and as usual Jack, reflecting upon the rapid growth of the little girls, thought of his own daughters, their present height, weight and happiness, their possible but unlikely progress in deportment, French and the pianoforte under Miss O'Mara. But neither Stephen nor Martin had appeared, nor any of the ransomers. A mile and a half of steady pacing followed these reflexions about home, and then two distinct thoughts arose: 'I must ask Wilkins whether he will act as third lieutenant until we reach Callao: they say he was a master's mate in Agamemnon.' This second thought ran on into a consideration of those young men who, having passed the Navy's examination for a lieutenant, remained senior midshipmen or master's mates because they did not also 'pass for a gentleman', a mute, unwritten, unacknowledged examination whose result was announced only by the absence of a commission - a practice that was becoming more and more frequent. He considered the advantages often put forward - a more homogeneous mess, less friction, the hands' greater respect for gentlemen than for their own kind - and the disadvantages - the exclusion of such men as Cook, the unstated qualifications and the varying standards of those who did the choosing, the impossibility of appeal. He was still considering when, on reaching the rail and turning, he noticed that the young man in question, one of the ransomer mates, was now present, together with some others of those who were allowed to walk the quarterdeck.

  Four turns later he heard Reade's shrill cry of 'Oh no, sir, no. You cannot talk to the Captain,' and he saw Dutourd headed off, admonished, led firmly back to the group to leeward.

  'But what did I do?' he cried, addressing Stephen, who had just come up the companion-ladder. 'I only wished to congratulate him on his playing.'

  'My dear sir, you must not address the Captain,' said Stephen.

  'You cannot possibly go over to the windward side, without you are invited,' said Wilkins.

  'Even I may not speak to him, except on duty,' said Reade.

  'Well,' said Dutourd, recovering from his surprise and concealing a certain vexation moderately well, 'you are a markedly formal, hierarchical society, I see. But I hope, sir' - to Maturin - 'that I may without sin tell you how very much I enjoyed your music? I thought the Boccherini adagio masterly, masterly..."

  They walked off, still speaking of the Boccherini, with real knowledge and appreciation on Dutourd's part. Stephen, who in any case was not of an expansive nature, tended to avoid the Frenchman on general principles; but now he would voluntarily have remained in his company had not six bells struck. The sixth was followed by pandemonium fore and aft as the launch, towing astern, was hauled alongside to receive Mr Reade, her crew, barrels of water for the parched Franklin, and two carronades. The precious water, mercifully, could be pumped from the hold into barrels in the boat, but in the nature of things carronades could not: they were lowered down from the reinforced main yardarm, lowered with an infinity of precautions as though each were made of spun glass rather than of metal, and they were received with even more. They were ugly, squat little objects yet they had their advantages, being only a third the weight of the Surprise's regular twelve-pounder cannon but firing a ball twice as heavy; furthermore they could be fought by a much smaller crew - two zealous hands at a pinch, as opposed to the seven or eight gathered round a long twelve. On the other hand they could not fire their heavy ball very far nor very accurately, so Jack, who loved the fine-work of gunnery, disabling an opponent from a distance before bearing down and boarding him, carried them chiefly as ballast, bringing them up only when he contemplated a cutting-out expedition, dashing into a harbour and blazing away at nearby batteries and the like while the boats set about their prey. Or on an occasion such as this, when the disarmed Franklin could be equipped with a two-hundred-and-forty-pound broadside.

  'If this weather continues,' said Jack '- and the glass is perfectly steady - the Franklin should soon be a very useful consort: and we are, after all, getting somewhat nearer the path of merchantmen, to say nothing of roving whalers.'

  'I wish it may go on,' said Stephen. 'The temperature in Paradise must have been very like this.'

  It did go on, day after golden day: and during the afternoons Martin and Dutourd could often be heard playing, sometimes evidently practising, since they would take a passage over and over again.

  Yet in spite of his music, and in spite of the fact that he played better with the Frenchman far forward than he did in the cabin, Martin was not happy. Stephen was rarely in the gunroom - apart from anything else Dutourd, a frequent guest, was an inquisitive man, apt to ask questions, by no means always discreet; and evading enquiries was often potentially worse than answering them - and apart from the general taking of air on the quarterdeck Stephen and his assistant met for the most part either in the sick-berth or in Stephen's cabin, where their registers were kept. Both were much concerned with the effects of their treatment: they had kept accurate records over a long period, and at present it was the study and comparison of these case-histories that made up the great part of their professional duty.

  At one of these meetings Stephen said, 'Once again we have not exceeded five knots at any time in the day, in spite of all this whistling and scratching of backstays. And it makes a great while since fresh water has been allowed for washing anything but the invalids' clothes, in spite of our prayers for rain. Yet providing we do not die of thirst, I comfort myself with the thought that even this languid pace brings us nearly a hundred miles closer to my coca-l
eaves - a hundred miles closer to wallowing in some clear tepid stream, washing the ingrained salt from my person and chewing coca-leaves as I do so, joy.'

  Martin tapped a sheaf of papers together and after a moment he said, 'I have no notion of these palliatives, which so soon become habitual. Look what happened to poor Padeen, and the way we are obliged to keep the laudanum under lock and key. Look at the spirit-room in this ship, the only holy of holies, necessarily guarded day and night. In one of my parishes there are no less than seven ale-houses and some of them sell uncustomed spirits. I hope to put all or at least some of them down. Dram-drinking is the curse of the nation. Sometimes I turn a sermon in my mind, urging my hearers to bear their trials, to rely on their own fortitude, on fortitude from within, rather than their muddy ale, tobacco, or dram-drinking.'

  'If a man has put his hand into boiling water, is he not to pull it out?'

  'Certainly he is to pull it out - a momentary action. What I deprecate is the persistent indulgence.'

  Stephen looked at Martin curiously. This was the first time his assistant had spoken to him in a disobliging if not downright uncivil manner and some brisk repartees came into his mind. He said nothing, however, but sat wondering what frustrations, jealousies, discontents had been at work on Nathaniel Martin to produce this change not only of tone but even of voice itself and conceivably of identity: the words and the manner of uttering them were completely out of character.

  When the silence had lasted some heavy moments Martin said, 'I hope you do not think there is anything personal about my remarks. It was only that your mention of coca-leaves set my mind running in another direction..."

  The shattering din of the Franklin as she fired first her starboard and then her larboard broadside and as her captain desired his men to 'look alive, look alive and bear a hand', interrupted him. There were only these two, to test the slides and tackle, but they were rippling broadsides and they lasted long enough to drown Martin's last words and the first of those spoken by the newly-arrived Norton, although he roared them: he was therefore obliged to repeat, still as though he were hailing the masthead, 'Captain's compliments to Mr Martin and would be glad of his company at dinner tomorrow.'