Post captain, page 30
The Polychrest, fresh from the yard, was reasonably well supplied with bosun’s and carpenter’s stores; but in any event, Jack’s intention was rather to cut down than to add. She had always been crank and overmasted, so that she lay down in a capful of wind; and her foremast had always been stepped too far aft, because of her original purpose in life, which made her gripe even with her mizen furled - made her do a great many other unpleasant things too. In spite of his fervent longing, he could do nothing about the stepping without official consent and the help of a dockyard, but he could do something to improve the mast by raking it forward and by a new system of stays, jibe and staysails; and he could make her less crank by stubbing her topmasts, striking topgallants, and setting up bentincks, triangular courses that would not press her down in the water so much and that would relieve her top-hamper.
This was work he understood and loved; for once he was not in a tearing hurry, and he paced about the deck, seeing his plan take form, going from one group to the
next as they prepared the spars, rigging and canvas. The carpenter and his mates were in the waist, their saws and adzes piling up heaps of chips and sawdust between the holy guns - guns that lay still today for the first time since he had hoisted his pennant; the sailmaker and his two parties spread over the forecastle and the greater part of the quarterdeck, canvas in every direction; and the bosun piled his coils of rope and his blocks in due order, checking them on his list, sweating up and down to his store-room, with no time to knock the hands about or even to curse them, except as a mechanical, unmeaning afterthought.
They worked steadily, and better than he had expected:
his three pressed tailors squatted there cross-legged, very much at home, plying needle and palm with the desperate speed they had learnt in the sweat-shop, and an out-of-work nailmaker from Birmingham showed an extraordinary skill in turning out iron rings from the armourer’s forge: ‘Crinkum-cankum, round she goes’, a twist of his tongs, a knowing triple rap with his hammer, and the glowing ring hissed into a bucket.
Eight bells in the afternoon watch, and the sun pouring down on the busy deck. ‘Shall I pipe the hands to supper, sir?’ asked Pullings.
‘No, Mr Pullings,’ said Jack. ‘We shall sway up the maintopmast first. Proper flats we should look, was a Frenchman to heave in sight,’ he observed, looking up and down the confusion. The foremast was clothed already, with a fine potential spread of canvas but little drawing, for want of stays; the jury-mizen still wore its little odd lateen, to give steerage-way; but the massive topmast was athwart the gangways, and this, together with the rest of the spars littering the deck, and all the other activities, made it almost impossible to move about - quite impossible to work the ship briskly. There was no room, although the boats were towing astern and everything that could be moved below had disappeared. She was making an easy three knots in the quartering breeze, but any emergency would find her helpless. ‘Mr Malloch, there. Is your hawser to the capstan?’
‘All along, sir.’
‘Hands to the capstan, then. Are you ready at the word, there for’ard?’
‘Ready, aye ready, sir.’
‘Silence, fore and aft. Heave. Heave handsomely.’ The capstan turned, the hawser tightened. It led from the capstan through a block on deck to another block on the mainmast head, thence to the head of the topmast, down to the square fid-hole in its heel, and so back to the topmast head, where it was made fast; bands of spun-yarn held it to the mast at intervals, and as it tightened so it began to raise the head. The topmast, a great iron-hooped column of wood some forty feet long, lay across the waist, its ends protruding far out on either side; as its head rose, so Jack called orders to the party on the other side to ease its heel in over the rail, timing each heave to the roll. ‘Pawl, there. Stand to your bars. Heave. Heave and rally. Pawl.’ The mast tilted up, nearer and nearer to the vertical. Now it was all inboard, no longer sloping but perfectly upright, swaying with the roll, an enormous, dangerous pendulum in spite of the controlling guys. Its head pointed at the
trestle-trees, at the block high on the mainmast: the men in the top guided it through them, and still it rose with the turning of the capstan, to pause with its heel a few feet above the deck while they put on the cap. Up again, and they cut the spun-yarn as it reached the block: another pause, and they set the square over the mainmast head, banging it down with a maul, a thump-thump-thump that echoed through the silent, attentive ship.
‘They must be getting the cap over,’ said Stephen’s patient in the sick-bay, a young topman. ‘Oh, sir, I wish I was there He’ll splice the mainbrace for sure - it was night on eight bells when you come below.’
‘You will be there presently,’ said Stephen. ‘but none of your mainbrace, none of your nasty grog, my friend, until you learn to avoid the ladies of Portsmouth Point, and the fireships of the Sally-Port. No ardent spirits at all for you. Not a drop, until you are cured. And even then, you would be far better with mild unctuous cocoa, or burgoo’
‘Which she told me she was a virgin,’ said the sailor, in a low, resentful tone.
The mast rose up and up, the thrust coming from nearer and nearer to the fid-hole as the spun-yarn bands were cut in succession. They had Cast off the hawser in favour of the top-rope; they had got the topmast shrouds over, the stays and the backstays; and now the top-tackle was swaying it up with a smooth, steady motion interrupted only by the roll of the ship. A hitch at this point - the top-rope parting, a block-spindle breaking - might be fatal. The last cautious six inches, and the fid-hole appeared above the trestle-trees. The captain of the top waved his hand:
Jack cried ‘Pawl, there.’ The captain of the top banged home the long iron fid, cried ‘Launch ho’, and it was done. The topmast could no longer plunge like a gigantic arrow down through the deck, down through the ship’s bottom, and send them all to their long account. They eased the top-rope and the mast settled on its fid with a gentle groan, firmly supported below, fore, aft, and on either side.
Jack let out a sigh, and when Pullings reported ‘Main-topmast swayed up, sir,’ he smiled. ‘Very good, Mr Pullings,’ he said. ‘Let the laniards be well greased and bowsed taut, and then pipe to supper. The people have worked well, and I believe we may splice the mainbrace.’
‘How pleasant it is to see the sun,’ he called over the taffrail, later in the afternoon.
‘Eh?’ said Stephen, looking up from a tube thrust deep into the water.
‘I said how pleasant it was to see the sun,’ said Jack, smiling down at him there in the barge - smiling, too, with general benevolence. He was warm through and through after months of English drizzle; the mild wind caressed him through his open shirt and old canvas trousers; behind him the work was going steadily along, but now it was a matter for expert hands, the bosun, his mates, the quartermasters and forecastlemen; the mere hauling on ropes was over, and the mass of the crew forward were making cheerful noises - with this day’s rational work, with no cleaning and no harassing, the feeling aboard had changed. The charming weather and the extra allowance of rum had also helped, no doubt.
‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘It is. At a depth of two feet, Fahrenheit’s thermometer shows no less than sixty-eight degrees. A southern current, I presume. There is a shark following up, a shark of the blue species, a carcharias. He revels in the warmth.’
‘Where is he? Do you see him? Mr Parslow there, fetch me a couple of muskets.’
‘He is under the dark belly of the ship. But no doubt he will come out presently. I give him gobbets of decayed flesh from time to time.’
From the sky forward there was a guttural shriek -a man falling from the yard, grabbing at air, almost motionless for a flash of time, head back, strained madly
up; then falling, faster, faster, faster. He hit a backstay. It bounced him clear of the side and he splashed into the sea by the mizen-chains.
‘Man overboard!’ shouted a dozen hands, flinging things into the water and running about.
‘Mr Goodridge, bring her to the wind, if you please,’ said Jack, kicking off his shoes and diving from the rail. ‘How fresh - perfect!’ he thought as the bubbles rushed thundering past his ears and the good taste of clean sea filled his nose. He curved upwards, looking at the rippled silver underside of the surface, rose strongly out of the water, snorting and shaking his yellow head, saw the man floundering fifty yards away. Jack was a powerful rather than a graceful swimmer, and he surged through the water with his head and shoulders out, like a questing dog, fixing the point in case the man should sink He reached him -starting eyes, inhuman face belching water, stretching up, the terror of the deep (like most sailors he could not swim)- circled him, seized him by the root of his pigtail and said, ‘Easy, easy, now, Bolton. Hold up ‘.
Bolton writhed and grasped with convulsive strength Jack kicked him free and bawled right into his ear, ‘Clasp your hands, you fool. Clasp your hands, I say There s a shark just by, and if you splash he’ll have you.’
The word shark went home even to that terrified, half-drunk, water-logged mind. Bolton clasped his hands as though the force of his grip might keep him safe: he went perfectly rigid: Jack kept him afloat, and there they lay, rising and falling on the swell until the boat picked them up.
Bolton sat confused, obscurely ashamed and stupid in the bottom of the boat, gushing water; to cover his confusion he assumed a lumpish catalepsy, and had to be handed up the side. ‘Carry him below,’ said Jack. ‘You had better have a look at him, Doctor, if you would be so kind.’
‘He has a contusion on his chest,’ said Stephen, coming back to where Jack stood dripping on the quarterdeck, drying as he leaned on the rail and enjoyed the progress of the work on the running rigging. ‘But no ribs are broken. May I congratulate you upon saving him? The boat would never have come up in time. Such promptitude of mind -such decision! I honour it.’
‘It was pretty good, was it not?’ said Jack. ‘This is capital, upon my word,’ - nodding to the mainmast - ‘and at this rate we shall have the bentincks bent tomorrow. Did you smoke that? I said, the bentincks bent. Ha, ha, ha!’
Was he making light of it out of coxcombery, fanfaronade? From embarrassment? No, Stephen decided. It was as genuine as his mirth at his ignoble tiny pun, or adumbration of a pun, the utmost limit of naval wit.
‘Was you not afraid,’ he asked, ‘when you reflected upon the shark - his notorious voracity?’
‘Him? Oh, sharks are mostly gammon, you know: all cry and no wool. Unless there’s blood about, they prefer galley leavings any day. On the West Indies station I once went in after a jolly and dived plump on to the back of a huge great brute: he never turned a hair.’
‘Tell me, is this a matter of frequent occurrence with you? Does it in no way mark an epocha in your life, at all?’
‘Epocha? Why, no; I can’t say it does. Bolton here must make the twenty-second since I first went to sea:
or maybe the twenty-third. The Humane chaps sent me a gold medal once. Very civil in them, too; with a most obliging letter. I pawned it in Gibraltar.’
‘You never told me this.’
‘You never asked. But there is nothing to it, you know, once you get used to their grappling. You feel good, and worthy - deserve well of the republic, and so on, for a while, which is agreeable, I don’t deny; but there is really nothing to it - it don’t signify. I should go in for a dog, let alone an able seaman: why, if it were warm, I dare say I should go in for a surgeon, ha, ha, ha! Mr Parker, I think we may rig the sheets tonight and get the stump of the mizzen out first thing tomorrow. Then you will be able to priddy the deck and make all shipshape.’
‘It is all ahoo at present, sir, indeed,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘But I must beg your pardon, sir, for not receiving you aboard in a proper fashion just now. May I offer my congratulations?’
‘Why thank you, Mr Parker: an able seaman is a valuable prize. Bolton is one of our best upper-yardsmen.’
‘He was drunk, sir. I have him in my list.’
‘Perhaps we may overlook it this once, Mr Parker. Now the sheers can go with one foot here and the other by the scuttle, with a guy to the third hoop of the mainmast.’
In the evening, when it was too dark to work but too delightful to go below, Stephen observed, ‘If you make it your study to depreciate rescues of this nature, will you not find that they are not valued? That you get no gratitude?’
‘Now you come to mention it, I suppose it is so,’ said Jack. ‘It depends: some take it very kind. Bonden, for example. I pulled him out of the Mediterranean, as I dare say you remember, and no one could be more sensible of it. But most think it no great matter, I find. I can’t say I should myself, unless it was a particular friend, who knew it was me, and who went in saying “Why, damn me, I shall pull Jack Aubrey out.” No. Upon the whole,’ he said, reflecting and looking wise, ‘it seems to me, that in the article of pulling people out of the sea, virtue is its own reward.’
They lapsed into silence, their minds following different paths as the wake stretched out behind and the stars rose in procession over Portugal.
‘I am determined at last,’ cried Stephen, striking his hand upon his knee, ‘I am at last determined - determined, I say - that I shall learn to swim.’
‘I believe,’ said Jack, ‘that by the setting of the water tomorrow, we shall have our bentincks drawing.’
‘The bentincks draw, the bentincks draw, the bentincks draw fu’ weel,’ said Mr Macdonald.
‘Is the Captain pleased?’ asked Stephen.
‘He is delighted. There is no great wind to try them, but she seems much improved. Have you not remarked her motion is far more easy? We may have the pleasure of the purser’s company once more. I tell you, Doctor, if that man belches of set purpose just once again, or picks his teeth at table, I shall destroy him.’
‘That is why you are cleaning your pistols, I presume. But I am glad to hear what you tell me, about these sails. Perhaps now we shall hear less of selvagees and booms -the inner jib, the outer jib - nay, to crown all, the jibs of jibs, God forbid. Your mariner is an honest fellow, none better; but he is sadly given to jargon. Those are elegant, elegant pistols. May I handle them?’
‘Pretty, are they not?’ said Macdonald, passing the case. ‘Joe Manton made them for me. Do these things interest you?’
‘It is long since I had a pistol in my hand,’ said Stephen. ‘Or a small-sword. But when I was younger I delighted in them - I still do. They have a beauty of their own. Then again, they have a real utility. In Ireland, you know, we go out more often than the English do. I believe it is the same with you?’
Macdonald thought it was, though there was a great difference between the Highlands and the rest of the kingdom; what did Dr Maturin mean by ‘often’? Stephen said he meant twenty or thirty times in a twelvemonth; in his first year at the university he had known men who exceeded this. ‘At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-sword. I have a childish longing to be at it again. Ha, ha - carte, tierce, tierce, sagoon, a hit!’
‘Should you like to try a pass or two with me on deck?’
‘Would that be quite regular? I have a horror of the least appearance of eccentricity.’
‘Oh, yes, yes! It is perfectly usual. In the Boreas I used to give the midshipmen lessons as soon as I had finished exercising the Marines; and one or two of the lieutenants were quite good. Come, let us take the pistols too.’
On the quarterdeck they foined and lunged, stamping, crying ‘Ha!’ and the clash and hiss of steel upon steel seduced the midshipmen of the watch from their duty until they were banished to the heights, leaving their happier friends to watch the venomous wicked dart and flash entranced.
‘Stop, stop! Hold - belay, avast,’ cried Stephen, stepping back at last. ‘I have no breath - I gasp - I melt.’
‘Well,’ said Macdonald, ‘I have been a dead man these ten minutes past. I have only been fighting speeritually.’
‘Sure, we were both corpses from very early in the battle.’
‘Bless us all,’ said Jack, ‘I had no notion you were such a man of blood, dear Doctor.’
‘You must be uncommon deadly when you are in practice,’ said Macdonald. ‘A horrid quick murdering lunge. I should not care to go Out with you, sir. You may call me pudding, and I will bear it meekly. Do you choose to try the pistols?’
Jack, watching from his side of the quarterdeck, was wholly amazed: he had no idea that Stephen could hold a sword, nor yet load a pistol, still less knock the pips out of a playing-card at twenty paces: yet he had known him intimately. He was pleased that his friend was doing so well; he was pleased at the respectful silence; but he was a little sad that he could not join in, that he stood necessarily aloof - the captain could not compete - and he was obscurely uneasy. There was something disagreeable, and somehow reptilian, about the cold, contained way Stephen took up his stance, raised his pistol, looked along the barrel with his pale eyes, and shot the head off the king of hearts. Jack’s certainties wavered; he turned to look at his new bentincks, smoothly filled, drawing to perfection. Finisterre would be under their lee by now, some sixty leagues away; and presently, about midnight, he would alter course eastward - eastward, for Ortegal and the Bay.
