All the seamen who had seen action were of their Captain's opinion about gunfire: nothing would bring another man-of-war over the horizon quicker than the distant thunder of a cannonade, even one so far away that it sounded like swallows in a chimney; and if possible those aloft looked out with even greater zeal - so great a zeal indeed that a little before Jack's guests arrived for dinner a message came below: from the main masthead Jevons, a reliable man, had almost certainly sighted if not a sail then something very like it far to leeward, two points on the starboard bow, now dipping below the horizon, now nicking it again. This was not confirmed either from the fore or the mizen, but then they were both considerably lower.
'I believe there is just time to have a look,' said Jack. 'Stephen, be so kind as to entertain Blyth and Dick Richardson for a moment if they should come before I am down.' He tossed his coat on to a chair, seized his telescope and made for the door: opening it he found himself face to face with his guests. 'Forgive me for two or three minutes, gentlemen,' he said, 'I am just going aloft to see what I can make of this sail.'
'May I come too, sir?' asked Richardson.
'Of course,' said Jack. On deck he hailed the lookout, telling him to move down out of the way; and while Richardson was shedding coat and waistcoat he sprang into the shrouds and so up and up into the top, where the lookout had just arrived. 'Oh Lord, sir,' he said, 'how I hope I was right.' 'I hope so too, Jevons,' said Jack: he grasped the windward topmast shrouds while Richardson took those to the lee, and very soon they were at the masthead, the look-out post, standing on the crosstrees and breathing a little quicker in the heat; and with one arm round the topgallantmast Jack swept an arc of the western horizon. 'Where away, Jevons?' he called.
'Between one and two points on the bow, your honour,' came the anxious reply. 'It came and went, like.' He looked again, hard and steady: sea, sea and nothing more. 'What do you make of it, Dick?' he asked, passing the glass.
'Nothing, sir. No. Nothing, I am afraid,' said Richardson at last, most reluctantly.
The Diane was one of the comparatively few ships that had royal masts; they allowed her to set true royals and even skysails above them on occasion; and these royal masts rose above the topgallant, being secured by jack-crosstrees high above, by a pair of shrouds and of course by stays. But the Diane's main royal mast was not six inches across at the thickest, while the topgallant itself was not much more, its shrouds and stays correspondingly frail; and Captain Aubrey weighed at least seventeen stone.
'Oh, sir,' cried Richardson, seeing him grasp the topgallant shrouds with his powerful hand. 'I will jump up in no time at ail. Please may I have the glass?'
'Nonsense,' said Jack.
'Sir, with respect, I am only just nine stone.'
'Bah,' said Jack, already clear of the crosstrees. 'Keep still. You will wring the mast, leaping about like a goddam baboon.'
Richardson said, 'Oh sir,' again, then fairly clasped his hands in prayer as he saw Jack's massive form mount the meagre spider's web. The leverage of that revered bulk on so great a length of slender mast with the ship rolling fifteen degrees and pitching somewhere near five hardly bore thinking about, and he had put his hand on the topgallant-cap for signs of movement or yielding when Jack, firmly perched up there, one arm hooked into the royal shrouds, called, 'I have them, by God. I have them. But only proas. Three sail of proas, standing south.'
They reached the deck by the backstays, gravity lending them wings or the equivalent. 'I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Blyth,' said Jack to the purser, 'and I am very sorry not to bring you good news: they were only proas.'
'Only proas. Ruined his Sabbath nankeens to see them, and delayed the fucking poached eggs in red wine till they was fucking grape-shot in horse-piss,' said Killick to his mate, his harsh, shrewish voice perfectly audible in the cabin.
'As far as I could make out,' continued Jack, 'they were on a bowline, so perhaps our courses may converge.'
Converge they did, and with surprising rapidity: at pudding-time the word came down that they were hull-up from the deck; and when the dinner-party moved up to drink their coffee under the awning in the open air, the proas, three of them, were within gunshot - remarkably large craft, and with their outriggers remarkably stiff and fast, sailing on a wind. They were crammed with men.
'There is not much doubt of their calling,' observed Mr Blyth. 'All they lack is the Jolly Roger.
'Perhaps their presence explains the emptiness of these waters,' said Stephen. 'Perhaps they have swept the ocean clean.'
'Like pike in a stew,' said Richardson.
In his glass Jack could see their chief, a little wiry man with a green turban, high in the rigging and staring at the Diane under a shading hand. He saw him shake his turbaned head, and a minute later the proas hauled their wind, skimming away at thirteen or even fourteen knots on the moderate breeze.
Divisions, Articles, plum-duff, proas had marked that Sunday; but there was still another event to set the day apart. As the sun went down into the sea, a great red-golden ball, so into the eastern sky there rose the moon, a great golden-yellow ball, as full as a moon could be. It was not a rare phenomenon; indeed it was a very usual one; yet this time, for purity of sky, the particular degree of humidity and no doubt a host of less obvious, rarely coinciding factors, it had an extraordinary perfection, and all hands, even the ship's boys and the loquacious, thick-skinned Old Buggers, watched it in silence. All hands, including the Diane's captain and most of his officers, held it to be an omen; but there was no agreement about what it foretold until the next day, when they sailed westward, passing the False Natunas within a quarter of a mile. There was no flag, no flag whatsoever; but on the conspicuous rock, at the very top of its white streak, sat a large black bird, a cormorant with its black wings open and dangling.
It was in vain that Stephen asserted that a cormorant's presence was perfectly natural - they were usual in the southern parts of Asia - the Chinese had tamed them these many ages past. Everyone knew from that moment on that there was no chance of a meeting at this rendezvous; and although they looked out most dutifully that night and the next day, no one was much surprised when their eastward passage, their last, proved as fruitless as the first.
Jack sailed along the chosen parallel until the end of the chosen time for conscience sake, and then, sad at heart, he gave the order to steer south-west, following the course he and the master, working throughout the afternoon on all the available charts, all Dalrymple's and Muffitt's notes and observations, had plotted as the best for Java. Sad at heart and angry too, or rather deeply vexed: he and his clerk had been making their usual readings of temperature, salinity and so on for Humboldt before sunset; he had all his tubes, pots and instruments by his open book in the cabin, but before recording the figures he had retired to the quarter-gallery, his privy. Sitting there he heard a crash and a confused tumbling, and when he came out he found that Stephen had fallen off the chair from which he was trying to catch a spider under the skylight and had not only flung sea-water all over his records but had broken an improbable number of instruments - hygrometers, seven different kinds of thermometer, Crompton's device for measuring specific gravity: practically everything made of glass. He had also contrived to shatter the hanging barometer and tear down a sword-rack: all this in a very moderate sea.
By the time the cabin was in order darkness was at hand, and after quarters Jack climbed into the maintop to watch the rising of the moon; but for once the eastern sky was barred, promising rain by night, and he sat there on the folded studdingsails, feeling tired and discouraged. It had been a distinct effort heaving himself aloft and he had felt his weight: going much higher on Sunday he had not been aware of it at all. 'Is this age?' he wondered. 'God help us, what a prospect.' For a while he leant back against the sailcloth watching the stars right overhead and the truck of the mainmast weaving among them; without giving it any conscious attention he also heard the quiet steady working of the sh
ip, the occasional orders, the mustering of the watch: Richardson had taken over; Warren would have the middle and Elliott the morning watch. He found that he must have dropped off, for two bells woke him: 'This will never do,' he said, stretching and looking at the sky- the moon was well up now, slightly out of shape and veiled by low cloud; the wind was much the same, but it was likely to bring up showers and thick weather.
In the cabin he found that Stephen had retired to the lower deck, so he called for toasted cheese and a long, heavily lemoned glass of grog, wrote a note in which Captain Aubrey presented his compliments to Mr Fox and had the honour of informing His Excellency that the ship was now heading for Java; that wind and weather permitting she might reach Batavia on Friday; and that it might be thought proper for the mission's servants to begin packing tomorrow, as it was not contemplated that the Diane should make any prolonged stay in harbour, sent it round by the duty-midshipman, and turned in early.
His cot moved with the ship's easy roll and lift, and the few other hanging objects moved with it, their rhythmic sway just visible by the light of the small dark-lantern at his side. He felt sleep coming, and as he turned on his side to welcome it the gleam of the epaulette on his best coat caught his eye: how he had longed for it all through the time he had been struck off the Navy List! Once in those days he had dreamt he saw it, and the waking had been indescribably painful. But now there it was in fact, solid, tangible: a deep happiness flooded through his heart and he went to sleep smiling. He woke again to the distant cry of 'Do you hear the news?' the traditional facetiousness at four o'clock in the morning to tell the watch below that they must relieve the watch on deck; then the voices, closer at hand, of Warren saying to Elliott, 'Here you have her,' together with course and orders, and then Elliott's formal repetition. And there was the voice of the ship, which told him that the breeze was steady: nothing could be more regular. And out of nothing came the thought that of course Stephen would have learned acquaintances in Batavia - the instruments could all be replaced or made by skilful artisans: the chain of careful measurements carried half way round the world would be broken only by a day or two - three at the most.
A little before two bells the idlers were called and at two bells itself, by pale moonlight, the ritual cleaning of the decks began, although they had been thoroughly washed by showers throughout the middle watch. The grinding of holystones that reverberated through the ship did not wake Jack Aubrey; but the first rasping shudder as the keel scraped on rock brought him out of his cot, wholly alive and present. The moment he was upright the Diane struck with shocking force and flung
him down. Even so he was on deck before the messenger had reached the companion-ladder.
'Man the braces,' he shouted in a voice loud enough to carry over the all-pervading sound of the ship crashing on over the reef. 'Lay all flat aback. Bear a hand, bear a hand. Cheerly there, forward.' The way was coming off the Diane, and now a last heave of the sea set her high on an unseen rock, motionless.
The men of the watch below were pouring up in the half light: almost all the officers were already there. Jack sent a carpenter's mate to sound the well. 'Mr Fielding,' he said, 'let us get the Doctor's skiff over the side.'
'Two foot, sir, and rising moderate,' said the carpenter himself. 'I went down directly.'
'Thank you, Mr Hadley,' said Jack: and the news spread along the deck - only two foot, and rising moderate.
A few more urgent measures and now Richardson was calling from the skiff. 'Three fathom under her stern, sir: two and a half amidships: two under her forefoot. No bottom with this line a cable's length ahead.'
'Clew up all,' said Jack. 'Stand by to let go the best bower.' The half-light was changing: the sun sent a brilliance into the low eastern cloud and then showed above the horizon. Four bells struck. Jack walked forward to see the best bower dropped - a precaution in the event of a very violent squall but taken chiefly by way of general comfort: not all present were heroes - and when he walked back it was day, a day that showed a fairly heavy but declining sea, a sky promising fair weather, and a mile to the north an island, a green-covered sloping island of no great size, perhaps two miles across.
'What of the well, Mr Fielding?' he asked.
'Two foot seven inches, sir, and now we may be gaining. Mr Edwards would like to speak to you, if he may.'
Jack considered, looking over the side. The ship felt dead, as though she were in dry-dock; she had not stirred, much less hammered, since that last terrible heave. And she was unnaturally high in the water. In an aside to the quartermaster and the two helmsmen he said, 'You may leave the wheel,' and then he returned to his contemplation, while the chain-pumps whirred and flung out their stream. The water by the frigate's side confirmed his instinctive guess: she had struck at the last moment of spring-tide high-water; the ebb was already moving fast. Turning he saw Killick, mutely holding up a watch-coat, and beyond him Stephen and Edwards. 'Thankee, Killick,' he said, putting it on. 'Good morning, Doctor. Mr Edwards, good morning to you.'
'Good morning, sir,' said Edwards. 'His Excellency desires his compliments and can he or any of the mission be of service?'
'He is very good: for the moment nothing but keeping those people out of the way' - nodding towards a group of servants huddled in the waist. 'But no doubt he would like to hear of the position. Pray join us, Doctor: this is for your ear too. We have struck an unknown, uncharted reef at high water. We are now aground. I cannot yet tell what damage the ship has suffered, but she is in no immediate danger. There is a strong
likelihood that by lightening her we may float her off the reef at the next high tide. It may then be possible to make her seaworthy enough to take us to Batavia to be docked. In any event we are about to lower down the boats, and it would be as well if Mr Fox with all his people and as much baggage as possible were to go ashore under a proper guard and leave us to our task.'
Chapter 10
Their task, their arduous, complex task: very severe and often highly-skilled labour day and night with peaks of intensity at full tide as extreme as anything Jack had known in his long experience.
All day they lightened ship: perpetually rousing out stores and carrying them to the shore in boatloads; lowering all uppermasts and spars over the side, there to be formed into rafts; starting the ship's water, though none had yet been found on the island (an island inhabited only by ring-tailed apes), and pumping it away by the ton together with the sea-water that still came in almost as fast as they could fling it out. And as they worked they saw the ebb, the most surprisingly rapid ebb, bare the reef on either hand, so that there was white water all around: moderate white water, since there was no considerable sea and the breeze was neither here nor there: but as the ebb proceeded so the ship took more and more of her own unsupported weight, and her timbers groaned again. And now from the boats they could see her plain, standing there unnaturally high, showing her copper, supported by three dark weed-grown heads of rock, two under her quarters and one beneath her keel about as far forward as her belfry, where that last surge had set her down, almost upright, before she could grind her way over the rest of the reef and into deep water.
So upright and so solid was she at low water that once Jack had placed some shores by way of precaution all hands had their dinner aboard, by watches, and with extra allowance to recruit them for the heavy work past and to come. The pumping went on all the time of course, and to its steady churning the carpenter and his crew, with lanterns and with all the hatchways wide open for the help of what reflected sun might get down, crept about the encumbered hold and orlop dealing with what damage they could reach and making out the nature of the rest, the Captain being with them most of the time. Meanwhile the bosun and his mates, together with the most experienced forecastle hands and tierers, roused out the best cable the Diane possessed, the most nearly new and unfrayed, a seventeen-inch cable that they turned end for end - no small undertaking in that confined space, since it weighed three and a half t
ons - and bent it to the best bower anchor by the wholly unworn end that had always been abaft the bitts: the bitter end. There was thought to be good luck attached to the bitter end, as well as greater strength.
The best bower, backed with the smaller stream anchor, they lowered carefully down into the launch, and at last the boat, moving over the longed-for grateful rising tide, dropped the two into what Fielding and the master, after prolonged sounding in the skiff, considered the best and cleanest holding ground in a most indifferent and rock-strewn anchorage.
All this while the other boats had been plying to and fro, shifting great quantities of stores, lightening the ship as fast as ever they could. And much of the time Stephen and Macmillan had been sitting not in their usual action-station far below where they would now have been a great hindrance, but in the after cabin. This was a time of great hurry and even greater effort and they had already treated many falls, sprains and twists and even one most unfortunate hernia - a good man who had undone himself in his zeal. Now their patient was Mr Blyth. A hen-coop flung from the waist had struck him down in the small cutter and he was bleeding profusely from a scalp-wound: they sewed him up, staunched the flow, and asked him how the ship was doing.
'I hope, oh how I do hope, she will be afloat in half an hour,' he said. 'It is very near high-water; the leak is not much worse, though she sat right down; and the Captain believes he may pluck her off. If she leaks extremely when she is in deep water,
then he means to beach and careen her; she will certainly last as far as the island, and there is a good berth there. The breeze is on the land and we shall drop our courses while the boats tow as well. But I do not believe it will come to that: he thinks she will swim. The lower futtocks have suffered, in course; but he thinks she will swim, with the pumps going and maybe a sail fothered over the bottom, until we reach Batavia. But the first thing to do is to pluck her off. Hark!'
The Thirteen Gun Salute Page 31