Master & Commander (3 page)

   'Most happy,' said Maturin, with a bow.

   They were at the door. 'Then may we appoint three o'clock at the Crown?' said Jack. 'We do not keep fashionable hours in the service, and I grow so devilish hungry and peevish by then that you will forgive me, I am sure. We will wet the swab, and when it is handsomely awash, why then perhaps we might try a little music, if that would not be disagreeable to you.'

   'Did you see that hoopoe?' cried the man in the black coat.

   'What is a hoopoe?' cried Jack, staring about.

   'A bird. That cinnamon-coloured bird with barred wings. Upupa epops. There! There, over the roof. There! There!'

   'Where? Where? How does it bear?'

   'It has gone now. I had been hoping to see a hoopoe ever since I arrived. In the middle of the town! Happy Mahon, to have such denizens. But I beg your pardon. You were speaking of wetting a swab.'

   'Oh, yes. It is a cant expression we have in the Navy. The swab is this'—patting his epaulette—'and when first we ship it, we wet it: that is to say, we drink a bottle or two of wine.'

   'Indeed?' said Maturin with a civil inclination of his head. 'A decoration, a badge of rank, I make no doubt? A most elegant ornament, so it is, upon my soul. But, my dear sir, have you not forgot the other one?'

   'Well,' said Jack, laughing, 'I dare say I shall put them both on, by and by. Now I will wish you a good day and thank you for the excellent chocolate. I am so happy that you saw your epop.'

   The first call Jack had to pay was to the senior captain, the naval commandant of Port Mahon. Captain Harte lived in a big rambling house belonging to one Martinez, a Spanish merchant, and he had an official set of rooms on the far side of the patio. As Jack crossed the open spaces he heard the sound of a harp, deadened to a tinkle by the shutters—they were drawn already against the mounting sun, and already geckoes were hurrying about on the sunlit walls.

   Captain Harte was a little man, with a certain resemblance to Lord St. Vincent, a resemblance that he did his best to increase by stooping, by being savagely rude to his subordinates and by the practice of Whiggery: whether he disliked Jack because Jack was tall and he was short, or whether he suspected him of carrying on an intrigue with his wife, it was all one—there was a strong antipathy between them, and it was of long standing. His first words were, 'Well, Mr Aubrey, and where the devil have you been? I expected you yesterday afternoon—Allen expected you yesterday afternoon. I was astonished to learn that he had never seen you at all. I wish you joy, of course,' he said without a smile, 'but upon my word you have an odd notion of taking over a command. Allen must be twenty leagues away by now, and every real sailorman in the
Sophie
with him, no doubt, to say nothing of his officers. And as for all the books, vouchers, dockets, and so on, we have had to botch it up as best we could. Precious irregular. Uncommon irregular.'

   '
Pallas
has sailed, sir?' cried Jack, aghast.

   'Sailed at midnight, sir,' said Captain Harte, with a look of satisfaction. 'The exigencies of the service do not wait upon our pleasure, Mr Aubrey. And I have been obliged to make a draft of what he left for harbour duty.'

   'I only heard last night—in fact this morning, between one and two.'

   'Indeed? You astonish me. I am amazed. The letter certainly went off in good time. It is the people at your inn who are at fault, no doubt. There is no relying on your foreigner. I give you joy of your command, I am sure, but how you will ever take her to sea with no people to work her out of the harbour I must confess I do not know. Allen took his lieutenant, and his surgeon, and all the promising midshipmen; and I certainly cannot give you a single man fit to set one foot in front of another.'

   'Well, sir,' said Jack, 'I suppose I must make the best of what I have.' It was understandable, of course: any officer who could would get out of a small, slow, old brig into a lucky frigate like the
Pallas
. And by immemorial custom a captain changing ships might take his coxswain and boat's crew as well as certain followers; and if he were not very closely watched he might commit enormities in stretching the definition of either class.

   'I can let you have a chaplain,' said the commandant, turning the knife in the wound.

   'Can he hand, reef and steer?' asked Jack, determined to show nothing. 'If not, I had rather be excused.'

   'Good day to you, then, Mr Aubrey. I will send you your orders this afternoon.'

   'Good day, sir. I hope Mrs Harte is at home. I must pay my respects and congratulate her—must thank her for the pleasure she gave us last night.'

   'Was you at the Governor's then?' asked Captain Harte, who knew it perfectly well—whose dirty little trick had been based upon knowing it perfectly well. 'If you had not gone a-caterwauling you might have been aboard your own sloop, in an officer like manner. God strike me down, but it is a pretty state of affairs when a young fellow prefers the company of Italian fiddlers and eunuchs to taking possession of his own first command.'

The sun seemed a little less brilliant as Jack walked diagonally across the patio to pay his call on Mrs Harte; but it still struck precious warm through his coat, and he ran up the stairs with the charming unaccustomed weight jogging there on his left shoulder. A lieutenant he did not know and the stuffed midshipman of yesterday evening were there before him, for at Port Mahon it was very much the thing to pay a morning call on Mrs Harte; she was sitting by her harp, looking decorative and talking to the lieutenant, but when he came in she jumped up, gave him both hands and cried, 'Captain Aubrey, how happy I am to see you! Many, many congratulations. Come, we must wet the swab. Mr Parker, pray touch the bell.'

   'I wish you joy, sir,' said the lieutenant, pleased at the mere sight of what he longed for so. The midshipman hovered, wondering whether he might speak in such august company and then, just as Mrs Harte was beginning the introductions, he roared out, 'Wish you joy, sir,' in a wavering bellow, and blushed.

   'Mr Stapleton, third of the
Guerrier
,' said Mrs Harte, with a wave of her hand. 'And Mr Burnet, of the
Isis
. Carmen, bring some Madeira.' She was a fine dashing woman, and without being either pretty or beautiful she gave the impression of being both, mostly from the splendid way she carried her head. She despised her scrub of a husband, who truckled to her; and she had taken to music as a relief from him. But it did not seem that music was enough, for now she poured out a bumper and drank it off with a very practised air;

   A little later Mr Stapleton took his leave, and then after five minutes of the weather—delightful, not too hot even at midday—heat tempered by the breeze—north wind a little trying—healthy, however—summer already—preferable to the cold and rain of an English April—warmth in general more agreeable than cold—she said, 'Mr Burnet, I wonder whether I might beg you to be very kind? I left my reticule at the Governor's.'

   'How charmingly you played, Molly,' said Jack, when the door had closed.

   'Jack, I am so happy you have a ship at last.'

   'So am I. I don't think I have ever been so happy in my life. Yesterday I was so peevish and low in my spirits I could have hanged myself, and then I went back to the Crown and there was this letter. Ain't it charming?' They read it together in respectful silence.

   '
Answer the contrary at your peril
,' repeated Mrs Harte. 'Jack, I do beg and pray you will not attempt to make prize of neutrals. That Ragusan bark poor Willoughby sent in has not been condemned, and the owners are to sue him.'

   'Never fret, dear Molly,' said Jack. 'I shall not be taking any prizes for a great while, I do assure you. This letter was delayed—damned curious delay—and Allen has gone off with all my prime hands; ordered to sea in a tearing hurry before I could see him. And the commandant has made hay of what was left for harbour duty: not a man to spare. We can't work out of harbour, it seems; so I dare say we shall ground upon our own beef-bones before ever we see so much as the smell of a prize.'

   'Oh, indeed?' cried Mrs Harte, her colour rising: and at that moment in walked Lady Warren and her brother, a captain in the Marines. 'Dearest Anne,' cried Molly Harte, 'come here at once and help me remedy a very shocking injustice. Here is Captain Aubrey—you know one another?'

   'Servant, ma'am,' said Jack, making a particularly deferential leg, for this was an admiral's wife, no less.

   '—a most gallant, deserving officer, a thorough-paced Tory, General Aubrey's son, and he is being most abominably used . . .'

The heat had increased while he was in the house, and when he came out into the Street the air was hot on his face, almost like another element; yet it was not at all choking, not at all sultry, and there was a brilliance in it that took away all oppression. After a couple of turns he reached the tree-lined street that carried the Ciudadela road down to the high-perched square, or rather terrace, that overlooked the quays. He crossed to the shady side, where English houses with sash windows, fanlights and cobbled forecourts stood on unexpectedly good terms with their neighbours, the baroque Jesuit church and the withdrawn Spanish mansions with great stone coats of arms over their doorways.

   A party of seamen went by on the other side, some wearing broad striped trousers, some plain sailcloth; some had fine red waistcoats and some ordinary blue jackets; some wore tarpaulin hats, in spite of the heat, some broad straws, and some spotted handkerchiefs tied over their heads; but they all of them had long swinging pigtails and they all had the indefinable air of man-of-war's men. They were Bellerophons, and he looked at them hungrily as they padded by, laughing and roaring out mildly to their friends, English and Spanish. He was approaching the square, and through the fresh green of the very young leaves he could see the
Généreux's
royals and topgallants twinkling in the sun far over on the other side of the harbour, hanging out to dry. The busy street, the green, and the blue sky over it was enough to make any man's heart rise like a lark, and three-quarters of Jack's soared high. But the remaining part was earthbound, thinking anxiously about his crew. He had been familiar with this nightmare of manning since his earliest days in the Navy, and his first serious wound had been inflicted by a woman in Deal with a flat-iron who thought her man should not be pressed; but he had not expected to meet it quite so early in his command, nor in this form, nor in the Mediterranean.

   Now he was in the square, with its noble trees and its great twin staircases winding down to the quay—stairs known to British sailors for a hundred years as Pigtail Steps, the cause of many a broken limb and battered head. He crossed it to the low wall that ran between the stair-heads and looked out over the immense expanse of enclosed water before him, stretching away left-handed to the distant top of the harbour and right-handed past the hospital island miles away to its narrow, castle-guarded mouth. To his left lay the merchantmen: scores and, indeed, hundreds of feluccas, tartans, xebecs, pinks, polacres, polacre-settees, houarios and barca-longas—all the Mediterranean rigs and plenty from the northern seas as well—bean-cods, cats, herring-busses. Opposite him and to his right lay the men-of-war: two ships of the line, both seventy-fours; a pretty twenty-eight gun frigate, the
Niobe
, whose people were painting a vermilion band under the chequered line of her gun-ports and up over her delicate transom, in imitation of a Spanish ship her captain had admired; and a number of transports and other vessels; while between them all and the steps up to the quay, innumerable boats plied to and fro—long-boats, barges from the ships of the line, launches, cutters, yawls and gigs, right down to the creeping jolly-boat belonging to the
Tartarus
bomb-ketch, with her enormous purser weighing it down to a bare three inches off the water. Still farther to the right the splendid quay curved away towards the dockyard, the ordnance and victualling wharfs and the quarantine island, hiding many of the other ships: Jack stared and craned with one foot on the parapet in the hope of catching a glimpse of his joy; but she was not to be seen. He turned reluctantly away to the left, for that Was where Mr Williams' office lay. Mr Williams was the Mahon correspondent of Jack's prize-agent in Gibraltar, the eminently respectable house of Johnstone and Graham, and his office was the next and most necessary port of call; for besides feeling that it was ridiculous to have gold on his shoulder but none to jingle in his pocket, Jack would presently need ready money for a whole series of grave and unavoidable expenses—customary gifts, douceurs and the like, which could not possibly be done on credit.

   He walked in with the utmost confidence, as if he had just won the battle of the Nile in person, and he was very well received: when their business was over the agent said, 'I suppose you have seen Mr Baldick?'

   'The
Sophie's
lieutenant?'

   'Just so.'

   'But he has gone with Captain Allen—he is aboard the
Pallas
.'

   'There, sir, you are mistaken, if I may say so, in a manner of speaking. He is in the hospital.'

   'You astonish me.'

   The agent smiled, raising his shoulders and spreading his hands in a deprecating gesture: he possessed the true word and Jack had to be astonished; but the agent begged pardon for his superiority. 'He came ashore late yesterday afternoon and was taken to the hospital with a low fever—the little hospital up past the Capuchins, not the one on the island. To tell you the truth'—the agent held the flat of his hand in front of his mouth as a token of secrecy and spoke in a lower tone—'he and the
Sophie's
surgeon did not see eye to eye, and the prospect of a cruise under his hands was more than Mr Baldick could abide. He will rejoin at Gib, no doubt, as soon as he is better. And now, Captain,' said the agent, with an unnatural smile and a shifty look, 'I am going to make so bold as to ask you a favour, if I may. Mrs Williams has a young cousin who is with child to go to sea—wants to be a purser later on. He is a quick boy and he writes a good clear hand; he has worked in the office here since Christmas and I know he is clever at figures. So, Captain Aubrey, sir, if you have no one else in mind for your clerk, you would infinitely oblige . . .' The agent's smile came and went, came and went: he was not used to be on the asking side in a favour, not with sea officers, and he found the possibility of a refusal wonderfully unpleasant.