Blue at the Mizzen (19 page)

Man-ropes had been rigged, fore and aft, and he was led, staggering, to the blue cutter. No boobies. A bosun's mate, strengthening the clamps that held the boat to the deck, said, 'Boobies, sir? Mr. Harding tossed them over the side.'

'Did they fly?'

'They flew perfectly well. They were just swinging the lead, the creatures.'

'Do you know why he tossed them over the side?'

'Why, they were brown boobies, sir. And you can't have unlucky fowl of that kind aboard the barky.'

'Ah? I did not know.'

The bosun's mate sniffed, and in the sniff could be read, among other things, that the Doctor, though a worthy soul, could not really distinguish between larboard and starboard, right and wrong.

From that truly apocalyptic beginning, the doldrums necessarily diminished to a rather commonplace dull, calm, low-skied greyness - commonplace in everything apart from the truly exorbitant heat. The thin cloud, though low, seemed if anything to increase the power of the sun, which showed right through the day, a vast ball, tolerable to narrowed eyes yet so powerful that, as all hands had foreseen, it brought the tar dripping black on the holy deck, angering the cats beyond description. They had been silent, meek, aghast, hiding in corners, grateful for comfort when the ship was so horribly buffeted; but now they stalked about, sometimes howling, sometimes treading in the liquid tar and withdrawing their paws with cries of disgust, perpetually searching for something like coolness, which was nowhere to be found, even deep in the hold among the great water-casks.

They complained above all of the lack of air: in reasonably hot weather it was their custom to lie their full length at the lower end of the wind-sails that ventilated the sick-berth; but at present the berth was empty both of patients and of fresh air and they stretched in vain. The ship's true sails hung limp from their yards; the log, when heaved, stayed just where it was, not even carrying out the stray-line, so that cast after cast was reported as 'No knots, no fathoms, sir, if you please,' and both smoke and smell from the galley hung about the ship until the next meal was due.

Yet she was not entirely motionless: the slight, obscure, often conflicting little currents that wafted fronds of seaweed along the ship's side, forward or aft, also turned her, almost perceptibly, so that at four bells she would be heading south and at six bells due north. The dog-watches, ordinarily times of cheerfulness, dancing and music, in calm, reasonably temperate waters, were now given over to weary gasping, low-voiced nattering quarrel, and unseemly nakedness.

Yet the immutable sequence of bells, relief of the watch, meals and grog, divisions, and mustering of the watch, kept them in touch with a certain reality.

'Mr. Harding,' said Jack, as he watched the frigate's top-light soar up, growing dimmer, almost vanishing in the murk as it passed the topgallant yard, 'early in the morning, when the sea may be presumed to be at its coolest, let us rouse up some pretty sound spare topsails, boom them well out amidships with a really handsome span above the surface fore and aft on either side, and so fill them with water for the people to splash about in and be cool for a while.'

These orders were being carried out the next day, after a twilit breakfast; and while Harding, the bosun and the sail-maker were making doubly sure that the swimming-bath was impregnable, even to those jellyfish that could insinuate themselves through a hole and inflict a shockingly painful sting, Stephen said, 'My dear, should you not like your usual swim? See how the people' - pointing to the naked, frolicking starboard watch - 'do enjoy it. I shall leap in too, if you will, and swim a couple of lengths.'

'Not in this sea, I thank you. It ain't quite to my taste. I was standing at the stern windows when his brethren dealt with our old blue companion. But do you go, by all means.'

'Sail ho!' called the foretop look-out. 'Sail one point on the starboard bow.'

As he spoke three ghostly pyramids of sail drifted very slowly across what path Surprise possessed. Jack clapped the helm hard over, raced forward and hailed, 'The ship ahoy! The ship ahoy! What ship is that?'

Five seconds of drifting cloud intervened: then came the answer, loud and clear. 'Delaware. USS Delaware. What ship is that?'

'His Britannic Majesty's hydrographical vessel Surprise: and pray bear up with all you have. My people are bathing over the side.'

A breath of air not only parted the gloom a little but brought the American voices with their distinctive yet not unpleasing accent as clearly across as though they had been spoken ten yards away. 'He says she's Surprise.' 'Bear up, Plimpton: bear up, there.' 'He says his people are bathing over the side.'

The truth of this statement, which was uttered with a certain reserve, became apparent thirty seconds later, when the breath of air, encouraged by the rising sun, tore the veil so wide apart that the mother-naked starboard watch were exposed to the mirth of the Delawares, lining the side of their handsome frigate.

There was a real danger that the two windless ships should run (or drift) each other aboard, tangling bowsprits or otherwise wrecking the perfect order so apparent in both craft; but they had right seamen aboard and within moments booms were rigged out, tipped with swabs, to make any encounter harmless.

The captains' conversation went on: 'It is improbable that you should remember me, sir, but we dined together with Admiral Cabot, when you were visiting Boston. My name is Lodge.'

'I remember you perfectly, Captain Lodge. You were there with your mother, my neighbour, and we talked about her parents' house in Dorset, not far from mine. I hope she is very well?'

'Very well indeed, sir, I thank you. We celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday just before sailing.'

'Eighty-five: that is a great age,' said Jack, and instantly regretting it, he said that he and his officers should be very happy if Captain Lodge and his wardroom would dine aboard Surprise tomorrow, wind and weather permitting.

Captain Lodge agreed, but only on condition that the Surprises should come aboard Delaware the following day: and then, lowering his voice, he asked whether he might send his master over this evening: they had a slight navigational problem.

The Delaware's master, Mr. Wilkins, came across, sullen, dogged and willing to take offence: his function was to explain the problem, and he was most reluctant to do so, although he was carrying the ship's two chronometers and their last few weeks' workings. 'Well, sir,' he said, when Mr. Woodbine had settled him into his sad, damp day-cabin, with a deep glass of bosun's grog apiece, 'to cut a long story short - not to beat about the bush - we are all human.'

'So we are indeed,' said Mr. Woodbine, 'and many a strange cocked-hat have I produced in my time. Once, when we were running for the Scillies with the wind - full topsails - at east-south-east, it was so strong that I wished I was a Roman so as to be able to pray to Saint Woodbine not to run full tilt on to that wicked reef, like Sir Cloudesley Shovel.'

'Mark you,' said the American, 'I should get it right with a couple of lunars. But there ain't no moon: and my captain is most uncommon particular.'

'Position somewhat astray, maybe?'

'Position? Frankly, taking the average of the two chronometers, there ain't no position, not as who should say position. Of course with a couple of lunars I should get it right... but for fine work... for working through shoal-water..."

Woodbine knew only too well what his colleague meant, and he suggested that they should compare chronometers. This they did: Surprise's two Earnshaws agreed within fifty seconds: Delaware's pair showed a much greater and increasing difference, so it was not surprising that the cocked-hat, the triangle of uncertainty, should vary so. The question was, which, without a lunar, a good star observation or even better one of those lovely Jovian moons, should be trusted. Of course this meant most when the ship was approaching a coast: but even in mid-ocean you could run at ten or twelve knots right on to a wicked shoal. Saint Paul's Rocks, Stephen's particular delight, were no great way off.

'I tell you what, Mr. Wilkins,' said Woodbine, suffering cruelly in his uniform coat, best Bristol double-width broadcloth, 'I have a most uncommon mate: he don't need no tables of logarithms - has them all in his head - and he dearly loves a problem. What is more, he has a youngster as is brighter still. But we should be crowded in here; so let us call them up, show them the workings from your last fix - Rio?

'Rio.'

'And let them work the whole thing through, while we take off our coats and sit in the shade on the fo'c'sle: there is nothing better for a young and active mind.'

'Well, if you insist, Mr. Woodbine, I am bound to yield.'

** *

'So you came round by the Horn, sir?' asked Woodbine, easing himself down on a well-shaded heap of mats about knee high.

'By the Horn, indeed: there's nothing like Old Stiff. For ease, if you understand me? No farting about in doubt - are we there? Aren't we there yet? With Old Stiff you either are there or you ain't: no two ways about it. No more poring over charts till your eyes drop out - how many rotten little islands was that to larboard? No. You are there, or you are not there.'

'Much ice about, Mr.?'

'No. Thin sheets now and then, and an odd lump from the glacier behind; but we never shipped a bowgrace.'

They discussed the question of bowgraces, offenders, and of some very curious objects used by the Greenland whalers: and when they had exhausted the subject twice, the American, (a person from Poughkeepsie), said, 'That smart young fellow, your mate's aid de con, as you might say, is he a prize-fighter?'

'Good heavens no. He is a gentleman.'

'Oh? Well, I meant no harm, I'm sure. But he looks like as if he had played give and take pretty often. Cauliflower ear, and so on."

'Why, as for a little genteel sparring, our young gentlemen don't despise it. This young cove here, he don't weigh ten stone, but you should have seen him lambaste a big reefer out of Polyphemus when we were in the Gulf. Oh dearie me, such swipes in the eye, such bottom: they calls him the Lion of the Atlas in the berth. Aye, and on the lower deck too.'

They rambled along pleasantly, telling of rare old mills they had seen in their time, at fairgrounds, at Blackfriars, at Hockney-in-the-Hole, where there was a chimney-sweep would challenge all comers not above a stone heavier to fight for half a guinea - fair fighting: no gouging, no falling on a man or wrenching his privates. Neither listened much to the other, but at least there was no contestation, no breaking in with greater marvels: indeed, for an interview with one man who had lost his position and another who was certain of his to within ten miles it might be called unparalleled.

'Now, shipmates,' cried Woodbine, breaking off his account of the great mill between Sayers and Darkie Joe in Coldbath Fields, 'what are you a-doing of?'

'Which we are carrying the watches, sir: and the small Boston job is quite right - dead on - agrees with our Earnshaw to within five seconds.'

'Then what are you a-moaning for?' asked Woodbine, his mind (which did not move very fast) still in the Coldbath Fields of long ago.

'You can't rely on just one chronometer,' cried Wilkins. 'What, trust a ship and all her lading, to say nothing of the hands, to one chronometer?'

They all fell silent, aware of the breach of good sea-going manners, but unsure of how to improve the position. 'Here is the Doctor,' whispered the armourer's mate, a highly-skilled metal-worker who often helped Stephen with his current instruments and sometimes made him new ones - few men could set a very fine-toothed bone-saw with the same smooth precision.

'Well, shipmates,' said Stephen, 'I see you are busy about the time-keepers, those most ingenious of machines.'

'Yes, sir,' said the armourer's mate, 'and ingenious they are, by - very ingenious indeed. But they can on occasion turn fractious; and then, oh my eye!'

'But surely, Webberfore, an artist like you can open the fractious time-keeper, and very gently bring it back to its duty?'

There was a general confused sound of disapprobation and denial. 'You must understand, sir,' said Webberfore, 'that if you go for to open a time-keeper's case, by the Articles of War, you are flogged to death, your pay and allowances are forfeit, your widow has no pension, and you are buried with no words said over you.'

'You mustn't open a chronometer, no, not if it is ever so,' said the master: and the company agreed. 'Flesh on Friday ain't in it.'

The talk ran on in this righteous way for some time, but Stephen felt that it was deviously approaching an outlet. 'Of course,' said Webberfore, 'the outer case may always be opened, for the officer - usually the master himself,' - bowing to Woodbine '- to wind the machine: and it is always possible for a part such as the ratchet-click to lose its tip, which, having tumbled about with the motion of the ship, interfering with the chronometer's accuracy, works its way down to the winding-hole, from which a skilled hand may pluck it with superfine Swiss pincers. Pluck it out without ever opening the watch.'

'Very true,' said the master, looking earnestly at Stephen.

'The ratchet is the piece that rises when you wind the watch, is it not?' They all agreed. 'Like a windlass,' said one. 'Or a capstan: but then you call it a pawl,' said another.

'But surely,' said Stephen, 'if the ratchet fails, the wheel runs backwards without control. It has happened to me. I was winding my watch, and as I took out the key, there was a dismal whirr, and the watch was dead.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Webberfore, 'because the whole of the ratchet's tip had gone and there was nothing to stop the wheel or the spindle as the case may be from turning. But if only a corner of the tip had gone, which sometimes happens with over-tempered metal, the rest would hold the spring wound tight - under tension - so the watch would go - while the odd corner would ramble about making sure it would not keep true time.'

'Well, I am content, Webberfore,' said Stephen, 'and I congratulate you heartily.'