He did indeed. He had been looking far too high and his gaze had swept right over the Sophie as she lay there, not much above a cable's length away, very low in the water. He leant both hands on the rail and looked at her with unwinking concentration. After a while he borrowed the telescope from the officer of the watch and did the same again, with a most searching minute scrutiny. He could see the gleam of an epaulette, whose wearer could only be her captain and her people were as active as bees just about to swarm. He had been prepared for a little brig, but not be quite such a dwarfish vessel as this. Most fourteen-gun sloops were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty tons in burthen the Sophie could scarcely be more than a deed and fifty.
'I like her little quarter-deck,' said the officer of the Watch. 'She was the Spanish Vencejo, was she not? And as for being rather low, why, anything you look at close to from a seventy-four looks rather low.'
There were three things that everybody knew about the Sophie: one was that unlike almost all other brigs she had a quarter-deck; another was that she had been Spanish; and a third was that she possessed an elm-tree pump on her fo'c'sle, that is to say, a bored-out trunk that communicated directly with the sea and that was used for washing her deck – an insignificant piece of equipment, really, but one so far above her station that no mariner who saw it or heard of this pump ever forgot it.
'Maybe your quarters will be a little cramped,' said the first lieutenant, 'but you will have a quiet, restful time of it, I am sure, convoying the trade up and down the Mediterranean.'
'Well…' said James Dillon, unable to find a brisk retort to this possibly well-intentioned kindness. 'Well… he said with a philosophical shrug. 'You'll let me have a boat, sir? I should like to report as early as I can.'
'A boat? God rot my soul,' cried the first lieutenant, 'I shall be asked for the barge, next thing I know. Passengers in the Burford wait for a bumboat from shore, Mr Dillon; or else they swim.' He stared at James with cold severity until the quartermaster's chuckle betrayed him; for Mr Coffin was a great wag, a wag even before breakfast.
'Dillon, sir, reporting for duty, if you please,' said James taking off his hat in the brilliant sun and displaying a of dark red hair.
'Welcome aboard, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, touching his own, holding out his hand and looking at him with so intense a desire to know what kind of man he was, that his face had an almost forbidding acuity. 'You would be welcome in any case, but even more so this morning: we have a busy day ahead of us. Masthead, there! Any sign of life on the wharf?'
'Nothing yet, sir.'
'The wind is exactly where I want it,' said Jack, looking for the hundredth time at the rare white clouds sailing evenly across the perfect sky. 'But with this rising glass there is no trusting to it.'
'Your coffee's up, sir,' said the steward.
'Thank you, Killick. What is it, Mr Lamb?'
'I haven't no ring-bolts anywheres near big enough, sir,' said the carpenter. 'But there's a heap on 'em at the yard, I know. May I send over?'
'No, Mr Lamb. Don't you go near that yard, to save your life. Double the clench-bolts you have; set up the forge and fashion a serviceable ring. It won't take you half an hour. Now, Mr Dillon, when you have settled in comfortably below, perhaps you will come and drink a cup of coffee with me and I will tell you what I have in mind.'
James hurried below to the three-cornered booth that he was to live in, whipped out of his reporting uniform into trousers and an old blue coat, reappearing while Jack was still blowing thoughtfully upon his cup. 'Sit down, Mr Dillon, sit down,' he cried. 'Push those papers aside. It's a sad brew, I'm afraid, but at least it is wet, that I can promise you. Sugar?'
'If you please, sir,' said young Ricketts, 'the Gйnйreux's cutter is alongside with the men who were drafted off for harbour-duty.'
'All of 'em?'
'All except two, sir, that have been changed.'
Still holding his coffee-cup, Jack writhed from behind the table and with a twist of his body out through the door Hooked on to the larboard main-chains there was the Genereux's boat, filled with seamen, looking up, laughing and exchanging witticisms or mere hoots and whistles with their former shipmates The Gйnйreux's midshipman saluted and said, 'Captain Harte's compliments, sir, and he finds the draft can be spared'
'God bless your heart, dear Molly,' said Jack and aloud, 'My compliments and best thanks to Captain Harte Be so good as to send them aboard.'
They were not much to look at, he reflected, as the whip from the yardarm hoisted up their meagre belongings: three or four were decidedly simple, and two others had that indefinable air of men of some parts whose cleverness sets them apart from their fellows, but not nearly so far as they imagine. Two of the boobies were quite horribly dirty, and one had managed to exchange his slops for a red garment with remains of tinsel upon it. Still, they all possessed two hands; they could all clap on to a rope; and it would be strange if the bosьn and his mates could not induce them to heave.
'Deck,' hailed the midshipman aloft. 'Deck. There is someone moving about on the wharf.'
'Very good, Mr Babbington. You may come down and have your breakfast now. Six hands 1 thought lost for good,' he said to James Dillon with intense satisfaction, turning back to the cabin. 'They may not be much to look at -indeed, I think we must rig a tub if we are not to have an itchy ship – but they will help us weigh. And I hope to weigh by half-past nine at the latest.' Jack rapped the brass-bound wood of the locker and went on, 'We will ship two long twelves as chase-pieces, if I can get them from Ordnance. But whether or no I am going to take the sloop out while this breeze lasts, to try her paces. We convoy a dozen merchant-men to Cagliari, sailing this evening if they are all here, and we must know how she handles. Yes, Mr… Mr… ?'
'Pullings, sir: master's mate. Burford's long-boat alongside with a draft.'
'A draft for us? How many?'
'Eighteen, sir.' And rum-looking cullies some of 'em are, he would have added, if he had dared.
'Do you know anything about them, Mr Dillon?' asked Jack.
'I knew the Burford had a good many of the Charlotte's people and some from the receiving ships as drafts for Mahon, sir; but I never heard of any being meant for the Sophie.'
Jack was on the point of saying, 'And there I was, worrying about being stripped bare,' but he contented himself with chuckling and wondering why this cornucopia should have poured itself out on him. 'Lady Warren,' came the reply, in a flash of revelation. He laughed again, and said, 'Now I am going across to the wharf, Mr Dillon. Mr Head is a businesslike man and he will tell me whether the guns are to be had or not within half an hour. If they are, I will break out my handkerchief and you can start carrying out the warps directly. What now, Mr Richards?' 'Sir,' said the pale clerk, 'Mr Purser says I should bring you the receipts and letters to sign this time every day, and the fair-copied book to read.'
'Quite right,' said Jack mildly. 'Every ordinary day. Presently you will learn which is ordinary and which is not.' He glanced at his watch. 'Here are the receipts for the men.
Show me the rest another time.'
The scene on deck was not unlike Cheapside with roadwork going on: two parties under the carpenter and his crew were making ready the places for the hypothetical bow- and stern-chasers, and parcels of assorted landmen and boobies stood about with their baggage, some watching the work with an interested air, offering comments, others gaping vacantly about, gazing into the sky as though they had never seen it before. One or two had even edged on to the holy quarter-deck. 'What in God's name is this infernal confusion?' cried jack. 'Mr Watt, this is a King's ship, not the Margate hoy. You, sir, get away for'ard.'
For a moment, until his unaffected blaze of indignation galvanized them into activity, the Sophie's warrant officers gazed at him sadly he caught the words 'all these people am going ashore,' he went on 'By the time I come back this deck will present a very different appearance'. He was still red in the face as he went down into the b
oat after the midshipman. 'Do they really imagine I shall leave an able-bodied man on shore if I can cram him aboard?' he said to himself. 'Of course, their precious three watches will have to go. And even so, fourteen inches will be hard to find.'
The three-watch system was a humane arrangement that allowed the men to sleep a whole night through from time to time, whereas with two watches four hours was the most they could ever hope for; but on the other hand it did mean that half the men had the whole of the available space to sling their hammocks, since the other half was on deck. 'Eighteen and six is twenty-four,' said jack, 'and fifty or thereabout, say seventy-five. And of those how many shall I watch?' He worked out this figure in order to multiply it by fourteen, for fourteen inches was the space the regulations allowed for each hammock: and it seemed to him very doubtful whether the Sophie possessed anything like that amount of room, whatever her official complement might be. He was still working at it when the midshipman called, 'Unrow. Boat your oars,' and they kissed gently against the wharf.
'Go back to the ship now, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack on an impulse. 'I do not suppose I shall be long, and it may save a few minutes.'
But with the Burford's draft he had missed his chance: other captains were there before him now and he had to wait his turn. He walked up and down in the brilliant morning sun with one whose epaulette matched his own – Middleton, whose greater pull had enabled him to snap up the command of the Vertueuse, the charming French privateer that would have been Jack's had there been any justice in the world. When they had exchanged the naval gossip of the Mediterranean, Jack remarked that he had come for a couple of twelve-pounders.
'Do you think she'll bear them?' asked Middleton.
'I hope so. Your four-pounder is a pitiful thing: though I must confess I feel anxious for her knees.'
'Well, I hope so, too,' said Middleton, shaking his head. 'At all events you have come on the right day: it seems that Head is to be placed under Brown, and he has taken such a at it that he is selling off his stock like a fishwife at the end of the fair.'
Jack had already heard something of this development in the long, long squabble between the Ordnance Board and the Navy Board, and he longed to hear more; but at this moment Captain Halliwell came out, smiling all over his face, and Middleton, who had some faint remains of concience, said, 'You take my turn. I shall be an age, with my carronades to explain.'
'Good morning, sir,' said Jack. 'I am Aubrey, of the Sophie, and I should like to try a couple of long twelves, you please.'
With no change in his melancholy expression, Mr Head said, 'You know what they weigh?'
'Something in the nature of thirty-three hundredweight, 1 believe.'
'Thirty-three hundredweight, three pounds, three ounces, three pennyweight. Have a dozen, Captain, if you feel she will bear them.'
'Thank you: two will be plenty,' said Jack, looking sharply to see whether he were being made game of.
'They are yours, then, and upon your own head be it,' said Mr Head with a sigh, making secret marks upon a worn, curling parchment slip 'Give it to the master-parker and he will troll you out as pretty a pair as ever the heart of man could desire. I have some neat mortars, if you have room.'
'I am extremely obliged to you, Mr Head,' said Jack, laughing with pleasure. 'I wish the rest of the service were run so'
'So do I, Captain, so do I,' cried Mr Head, his face growing suddenly dark with passion. 'There are some slack-arsed, bloody-minded men – flute-playing, fiddle-scraping, present-seeking, tale-bearing, double-poxed hounds that would keep you waiting about for a month; but I am not one of them. Captain Middleton, sir: carronades for you, I presume?'
In the sunlight once more Jack threw out his signal and, peering among the masts and criss-crossed yards, he saw a figure at the Sophie's masthead bend as though to hail the deck, before disappearing down a backstay, like a bead sliding upon a thread.
Expedition was Mr Head's watchword, but the master-parker of the ordnance wharf did not seem to have heard of it. He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. 'As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,' he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change – there were several other captains in front of Jack – fair was fair – turn and turn about – them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first – he was precious short of hands.
The Sophie had warped in long ago and she was lying neatly against the dock right under the derricks. There was more noise aboard her than there had been, more noise than was right, even with the relaxed harbour discipline, and he was sure some of the men had managed to get drunk already. Expectant faces – a good deal less expectant now – looked over her side at her captain as he paced up and down, up and down, glancing now at his watch and now at the sky.
'By God,' he cried, clapping his hand to his forehead. 'What a damned fool. I clean forgot the oil.' Turning short in his stride he hurried over to the shed, where a violent squealing showed that the master-parker and his mates were trundling the slides of Middleton's carronades towards the neat line of their barrels. 'Master-parker,' called Jack, 'come and look at my twelve-pounders. I have been in such a hurry all morning that I do believe I forgot to anoint them.' With these words he privately laid down a gold piece upon each touch-hole, and a slow look of approval appeared on the parker's face. 'If my gunner had not been sick, he would have reminded me,' added Jack.
'Well, thankee, sir. It always has been the custom, and I don't like to see the Old ways die, I do confess,' said the parker, with some still-unevaporated surliness: but then brightening progressively he said, A hurry, you mentioned, Captain? Ill see what we can do Five minutes later the bow chaser, neatly slung by its train loops, side loops, pommelion and muzzle, floated gently over the Sophie s fo c'sle within half an inch of its ideal resting-place: Jack and the carpenter were on all fours side by side, rather as though they were playing bears, and they were listening for the sound her beams and timbers would make as the strain came off the derrick Jack beckoned with his hand, calling 'Handsomely, handsomely now.' The Sophie was perfectly silent, all her people watching intently, even the tub-party with their buckets poised, even the human chain who were tossing the twelve-pound round shot from the shore to the side and so down to the gunner's mate in the shot-locker. The gun touched, sat firm: there was a deep, not unhealthy creaking, and the Sophie settled a little by the head. 'Capital,' said Jack, surveying the gun as it stood there, well within its chalked-out space.
'Plenty of room all round – great oceans of room, upon my word,' he said, backing a step. In his haste to avoid being trodden down, the gunner's mate behind him collided with his neighbour, who ran into his, setting off a chain-reaction in that crowded, roughly triangular space between the foremast and the stem that resulted in the maiming of one ship's boy and very nearly in the watery death of another. 'Where's the bosun? Now, Mr Watt, let me see the tackles rigged: you want a hard-eye becket on that block. Where's the breeching?'
'Almost ready, sir,' said the sweating, harassed bosun. 'l'm working the cunt-splice myself.'
'Well,' said Jack, hurrying off to where the stern-chaser hung poised above the Sophie's quarter-deck, ready to plunge through her bottom if gravity could but have its way, 'a simple thing like a cunt-splice will not take a man-of-war's bosun long, I believe. Set those men to work, Mr Lamb, if you please: this is not fiddler's green.' He looked at his watch again. 'Mr Mowett,' he said, looking at a cheerful young master's mate. Mr Mowett's cheerful look changed to one of extreme gravity. 'Mr Mowett, do you know Joselito's coffee-house?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then be so good as to go there and ask for Dr Maturin. My compliments and I am very much concerned to say we shall not be back in port by dinner-time; but I will send a boat this evening at any time he chooses to appoint.'
They were not back in port by dinner-time: it would indeed have been a logical impossibility, since they had not yet left it
, but were sweeping majestically through the close-packed craft towards the fairway. One advantage of having a small vessel with a great many hands aboard is that you can execute manoeuvres denied to any ship of the line, and Jack preferred this arduous creeping to being towed or to threading along under sail with a thoroughly uneasy crew, disturbed in all their settled habits and jostling full of strangers.
In the open channel he had himself rowed round the Sophie: he considered her from every angle, and at the same time he weighed the advantages and disadvantages of sending all the women ashore. It would be easy to find most of them while the men were at their dinner: not merely the local girls who were there for fun and pocket-money, but also the semi-permanent judies. If he made one sweep now, then another just before their true departure might clear the sloop entirely. He wanted no women aboard. They only caused trouble, and with this fresh influx they would cause even more. On the other hand, there was a certain lack of zeal aboard, a lack of real spring, and he did not mean to turn it into sullenness, particularly that afternoon. Sailors were as conservative as cats, as he knew very well: they would put up with incredible labour and hardship, to say nothing of danger, but it had to be what they were used to or they would grow brutish. She was very low in the water, to be sure: a little by the head and listing a trifle to port. All that extra weight would have been far better below the water-line. But he would have to see how she handled.
'Shall I send the hands to dinner, sir?' asked James Dillon when Jack was aboard again.
'No, Mr Dillon. We must profit by this wind. Once we are past the cape they may go below. Those guns are breeched and frapped?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then we will make sail. In sweeps. All hands to make sail.'
The bosun sprang his call and hurried away to the fo'c'sle amidst a great rushing of feet and a good deal of bellowing.
'Newcomers below. Silence there.' Another rush of feet. The Sophie's regular crew stood poised in their usual places, in dead silence. A voice on board the Gйnйreux a cable's length away could be heard, quite clear and plain, 'Sophie's making sail.'
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