Jack was in tearing high spirits, but his great respect for music kept him in order throughout the quartet. It was during the collation that followed – a pair of fowls, a glazed tongue, sillabub, flummery and maids of honour – that he began to break out. Being thirsty, he drank off two or three glasses of Sillery without noticing them: and presently his face grew redder and even more cheerful, his voice more decidedly masculine and his laughter more frequent: he gave them a highly-coloured account of Stephen's having sawn the gunner's head off and fixed it on again, better than before; and from time to time his bright blue eye wandered towards Miss's bosom, which the fashion of that year (magnified by the distance from Paris) had covered with no more than a very, very little piece of gauze.
Stephen emerged from his reverie to see Mrs Brown looking grave, Miss looking demurely down at her plate and Mr Brown, who had also drunk a good deal, starting on a story that could not possibly come to good. Mrs Brown made great allowances for officers who had been long at sea, particularly those who had come in from a successful cruise and were disposed to be merry; but she made less for her husband, and she knew this story of old, as well as this somewhat glassy look. 'Come, my dear,' she said to her daughter. 'I think we will leave the gentlemen now.'
Molly Harte's rout was a big, miscellaneous affair, with nearly all the officers, ecclesiastics, civilians, merchants and Minorcan notables – so many of them that she had a great awning spread over Senor Martinez' patio to hold all her guests, while the military band from Fort St Philip played to them from what was ordinarily the commandant's office.
'Allow me to name my friend – my particular friend - and surgeon, Dr Maturin,' said Jack, leading Stephen up to their hostess. 'Mrs Harte.'
'Your servant, ma'am,' said Stephen, making a leg.
'I am very happy to see you here, sir,' said Mrs Harte, instantly prepared to dislike him very much indeed.
'Dr Maturin, Captain Harte,' went on Jack.
'Happy,' said Captain Harte, disliking him already, but for an entirely opposite reason, looking over Stephen's head and holding out two fingers, only a little way in front of his sagging belly. Stephen looked deliberately at them, left them dangling there and silently moved his head in a bow whose civil insolence so exactly matched his welcome that Molly Harte said to herself, 'I shall like that man.' They went on to leave room for others, for the tide was flowing fast – the sea-officers all appeared within seconds of the appointed time.
'Here's Lucky Jack Aubrey,' cried Bennet of the Aurore. 'Upon my word, you young fellows do pretty well for yourselves. I could hardly get into Mahon for the number of your captures. I wish you joy of them, in course; but you must leave something for us old codgers to retire upon, Eh? Eh?'
'Why, sir,' said Jack, laughing and going, redder still, 'it is only beginner's luck – it will soon be out, I am sure, and then we shall be sucking our thumbs again.'
There were half a dozen sea-officers round him, contemporaries and seniors; they all congratulated him, some sadly, some a little enviously, but all with that direct goodwill Stephen had noticed so often in the Navy; and as they drifted off in a body towards a table with three enormous punch-bowls and a regiment of glasses upon it, Jack told them, in an uninhibited wealth of sea-jargon, exactly how each chase had behaved. They listened silently, with keen attention, nodding their heads at certain points and partially closing their eyes; and Stephen observed to himself that at some levels complete communication between men was possible. After this both he and his attention wandered; holding a glass of arrack-punch, he took up his stand next to an orange-tree, and he stood looking quite happy, gazing now at the uniforms on the one hand and now through the orange-tree on the other, where there were sofas and low chairs with women sitting in them hoping that men would bring them ices and sorbets; and hoping, as far as the sailors on his left were concerned, in vain. They sighed patiently and hoped that their husbands, brothers, fathers, lovers would not get too drunk; and above all that none of them would grow quarrelsome.
Time passed; an eddy in the party's slow rotatory current brought Jack's group nearer the orange-tree, and Stephen heard him say, 'There a hellish great sea running tonight..'
'It's all very well, Aubrey,' said a post-captain, almost immediately afterward. 'But your Sophies used to be a qui et, decent set of men ashore. And now they have two pennies to rub together' they kick up, bob's a-dying like – well, I don't know. Like a set of mad baboons. They beat the crew of my cousin Oaks's barge cruelly, upon the absurd pretence of having a physician aboard, and so having the right to tie up ahead of a barge belonging to a ship of the line which carries no more than a surgeon – a very absurd pretence. Their two pennies have sent them out of their wits.'
'I am sorry Captain Oaks's men were beat, sir,' said Jack, with a decent look of concern. 'But the fact is true. We do have a physician aboard – an amazing hand with a saw or a clyster.' Jack gazed about him in a very benevolent fashion. 'He was with me not a pint or so ago. Opened our gunner's skull, roused out his brains, set them to rights, stuffed them back in again – I could not bear to look, I assure you, gentlemen – bade the armourer take a crown piece, hammer it out thin into a little dome, do you see, or basin, and so clapped it on, screwed it down and sewed up his scalp as neatly as a sailmaker. Now that's what I call real physic – none of your damned pills and delay. Why, there he is…
They greeted him kindly, urged him to drink a glass of punch – another glass of punch – they had all taken a great deal; it was quite wholesome – excellent punch, the very thing for so hot a day. The talk flowed on, with only Stephen and a Captain Nevin remaining a little silent. Stephen noticed a pondering, absorbed look in Captain Nevin's eye – a look very familiar to him – and he was not surprised to be led away behind the orange-tree to be told in a low confidential fluent earnest voice of Captain Nevin's difficulty in digesting even the simplest dishes. Captain' Nevin's dyspepsy had puzzled the faculty for years, for years, sir; but he was sure it would yield to Stephen's superior powers; he had better give Dr Maturin all the details he could remember, for it was a very singular, interesting case, as Sir John Abel had told him – Stephen knew Sir John? – but to be quite frank (lowering his voice and glancing furtively round) he had to admit there were certain difficulties in – in evacuation, too… His voice ran on, low and urgent, and Stephen stood with his hands behind his back, his head bowed, his face gravely inclined in a listening attitude. He was not, indeed, inattentive; but his attention was not so wholly taken up that he did not hear Jack cry, 'Oh, yes, yes! The rest of them are certainly coming ashore – they are lining the rail in their shore-going rig, with money in their pockets, their eyes staring out of their heads and their pricks a yard long.' He could scarcely have avoided hearing it, for Jack had a fine carrying voice, and his remark happened to drop into one of those curious silences that occur even in very numerous assemblies.
Stephen regretted the remark; he regretted its effect upon the ladies the other side of the orange-tree, who were standing up and mincing away with many an indignant glance; but how much more did he regret Jack's crimson. face, the look of maniac glee in his blazing eyes and his triumphant, 'You needn't hurry, ladies – they won't be allowed off the sloop till the evening gun.'
A determined upsurge of talk drowned any possibility of further observations of this kind, and Captain Nevin was settling down to his colon again when Stephen felt a hand on his arm, and there was Mrs Harte, smiling at Captain Nevin in such a manner that he backed and lost himself behind the punch-bowls.
'Dr Maturin, please take your friend away,' said Molly Harte in a low, urgent tone. 'Tell him his ship is on fire -tell him anything. Only get him away – he will do himself such damage.'
Stephen nodded. He lowered his head and walked directly into the group, took Jack by the elbow and said, 'Come, come, come,' in an odd, imperative half-whisper, bowing to those whose conversation he had interrupted. 'There is not a moment to be lost.'
'
The sooner we are at sea the better,' muttered Jack Aubrey, looking anxiously into the dim light over against Mahon quay. Was the boat his own launch with the remaining liberty-men, or was it a messenger from the angry, righteous commandant's office, bringing orders that would break off the Sophie's cruise? He was still a little shattered from his night's excess, but the steadier part of his mind assured him from time to time that he had done himself no good, that disciplinary action could be taken against him without any man thinking it unjust or oppressive, and that he was exceedingly averse to any immediate meeting with Captain Harte.
What air was moving came from the westward – an unusual wind, and one that brought all the foul reek of the tanneries drifting wetly across. But it would serve to help the Sophie down the long harbour and out to sea Out to sea, where he could not be betrayed by his own tongue, where Stephen could not get himself into bad odour with authority, and where that infernal child Babbington did not have to be rescued from aged women of the town And where James Dillon could not fight a duel He had only heard a rumour of it, but it was one of those deadly little after-supper garrison affairs that might have cost him his lieutenant – as valuable an officer as he had ever sailed with, for all his starchiness and unpredictability.
The boat reappeared under the stern of the Aurore. It was 'the launch and it was filled with liberty-men: there were still one or two merry souls among them, but on the whole the Sophies who could walk were quite unlike those who had gone ashore – they had no money left, for one thing, and they were grey, drooping and mumchance for another. Those who could not walk were laid in a row with the bodies recovered earlier, and Jack said, 'How is the tally, Mr Ricketts?'
'All aboard, sir,' said the midshipman wearily, 'except for Jessup,cook's mate, who broke his leg falling down Pigtail Stairs, and Sennet, Richards and Chambers, of the foretop, who went off to George Town with some soldiers.'
'Sergeant Quinn?'
But there was no answer to be had from Sergeant Quinn: he could, and did, remain upright, bolt upright, but his only reply was 'Yes, sir' and a salute to everything that was proposed to him.
'All but three of the marines are aboard, sir,' said James privately.
'Thank you, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, looking over towards the town again: a few pale lights were moving against the darkness of the cliff. 'Then I think we shall make sail.'
'Without waiting for the rest of the water, sir?'
'What does it amount to? Two tons, I believe. Yes: we will take that up another time, together with our stragglers. Now, Mr Watt, all hands to unmoor; and let it be done silently, if you please.'
He said this partly because of a cruel darting agony in his head that made the prospect of roaring and bellowing wonderfully disagreeable and partly because he wished the Sophie's departure to excite no attention whatsoever. Fortunately she was moored with simple warps fore and aft, so there would be no slow weighing of anchors, no stamp and go at the capstan, no acid shrieking of the fiddle; in any case, the comparatively sober members of the crew were too jaded for anything but a sour, mute, expeditious casting-off – no jolly tars, no hearts of oak, no Britons never, never, in this grey stench of a crapulous dawn. Fortunately, too, he had seen to the repairs, stores and victualling (apart from that cursed last voyage of water) before he or anyone else had set foot on shore; and rarely had he appreciated the reward of virtue more than when the Sophie's jib filled and her head came round, pointing eastward to the sea, a wooded, watered, well-found vessel beginning her journey back to independence.
An hour later they were in the narrows, with the town and its evil smells sunk in the haze behind them and the brilliant open water out in front. The Sophie's bowsprit was pointing almost exactly at the white blaze on the horizon that showed the coming of the sun, and the breeze was turning northerly, freshening as it veered. Some of the night's corpses were in lumpish motion. Presently a hose-pipe would be turned on to them, the deck would return to its rightful condition and the sloop's daily round would begin again.
An air of surly virtue hung over the Sophie as she made her tedious, frustrating way south and west towards her cruising-ground through calms, uncertain breezes and headwinds – winds that grew so perverse once they had made their offing that the little Ayre Island beyond the eastern point of Minorca hung obstinately on the northern horizon, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, but always there.
Thursday, and all hands were piped to witness punishment. The two watches stood on either side of the main-deck, with the cutter and the launch towing behind to make more room; the marines were lined up with their usual precision from number three gun aft; and the little quarter-deck was crowded with the officers.
'Mr Ricketts, where is your dirk?' said James Dillon sharply.
'Forgot it, sir. Beg pardon, sir,' whispered the midshipman.
'Put it on at once, and don't you presume to come on deck improperly dressed.'
Young Ricketts cast a guilty look at his captain as he darted below, and he read nothing but confirmation on Jack's frowning visage. Indeed, Jack's views were identical with Dillon's: these wretched men were going to be flogged and it was their right to have it done with due ceremony -all hands gravely present, the officers with their gold-laced hats and swords, the drummer there to beat a roll.
Henry Andrews, the ship's corporal, brought up his charges one by one: John Harden, Joseph Bussell, Thomas Cross, Timothy Bryant, Isaac Isaacs, Peter Edwards and John Surel, all accused of drunkenness. No one had anything to say for them: not one had anything to say for himself. 'A dozen apiece,' said Jack. 'And if there were any justice on earth you would have two dozen, Cross. A responsible fellow like you – a gunner's mate – for shame.'
It was the Sophie's custom to flog at the capstan, not at a grating: the men came gloomily forward, slowly stripped off their shirts and adapted themselves to the squat cylinder; and the bosun's mates, John Bell and John Morgan, tied their wrists on the far side, more for the form than anything else. Then John Bell stood clear, swinging his cat easily in his right hand, with his eye on Jack. Jack nodded and said, 'Carry on.'
'One,' said the bosun solemnly, as the nine knotted cords sighed through the air and clapped against the seaman's tense bare back. 'Two. Three. Four…
So it went on; and once again Jack's cold, accustomed eye noticed how cleverly the bosun's mate set the knotted ends lashing against the capstan itself, yet without giving any appearance of favouring his shipmate. 'It's very well,' he reflected, 'but either they are getting into the spirit-room or some son of a bitch has brought a store of liquor aboard. If I could find him, I should have a proper grating rigged, and there would be none of this hocus-pocus. This amount of drunkenness was more than was right: seven in one day. It was nothing to do with the men's lurid joys ashore, for that was all over – no more than a memory; and as for the paralytic state of the seamen awash in the scuppers as the sloop stood out, that was forgotten too – put down to the easy ways of port, to relaxed harbour discipline, and never held against them. This was something else. Only yesterday he had hesitated about exercising the guns after dinner, because of the number of men he suspected of having had too much: it was so easy for a tipsy fool to get his foot under a recoiling carriage or his face in front of a muzzle. And in the end he had had them merely run in and out, without firing.
Different ships had different traditions about calling out: the old Sophies kept mum, but Edwards (one of the new men) had been drafted from the King's Fisher, where they did not, and he uttered a great howling Oh at the first stroke, which so disturbed the young bosun's mate that the next two or three wavered uncertainly in the air.
'Come now, John Bell,' said the bosun reproachfully, not from any sort of malignance towards Edwards, whom he regarded with the placid impartiality of a butcher weighing up a lamb, but because a job of work had to be done proper; and the rest of the flogging did at least give Edwards some excuse for his shattering crescendo. Shattering, that is to say, to poor John Surel, a
meagre little quota-man from 'Exeter, who had never been beaten before and who now added the crime of incontinence to that of drunkenness; but he was flogged, for all that, in great squalor, weeping and roaring most pitifully, as the flustered Bell laid into him hard and fast, to get it over quickly.
'How utterly barbarous this would seem to a spectator that was not habituated to it,' reflected Stephen. 'And how little it matters to those that are. Though that child does appear concerned.' Babbington was indeed looking a little pale and anxious as the unseemly business came to an end, with the moaning Surel handed over to his shamefaced messmates and hurried away.
But how transient was this young gentleman's pallor and anxiety! Not ten minutes after the swabber had removed all traces of the scene, Babbington was flying about the upper rigging in pursuit of Ricketts, with the clerk toiling with laborious, careful delight a great way behind.
'Who is that skylarking?' asked Jack, seeing vague forms through the thin canvas of the main royal. 'The boys?'
'The young gentlemen, your honour,' said the quartermaster.
'That reminds me,' said Jack. 'I want to see them.'
Not long after this the pallor and the anxiety were back again, and with good reason. The midshipmen were supposed to take noon observations to work out the vessel's position, which they were to write on a piece of paper. These pieces of paper were called the young gentlemen's workings and they were delivered to the captain by the marine sentry,with the words, 'The young gentlemen's workings, sir'; to which Captain Allen (an indolent, easy-going man) had been accustomed to reply,' – the young gentlemen's workings', and toss them out of the window.
Hitherto, Jack had been too busy working up his crew to pay much attention to the education of his midshipmen, but he had looked at yesterday's slips and they, with a very suspicious unanimity, had shown the Sophie in 39°2I'N, which was fair enough, but also in a longitude that she could only have reached by cleaving the mountain-range behind Valencia to a depth of thirty-seven miles.
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