Master & Commander (7 page)

   'Oh,' said Jack, taken aback, 'oh. Well, stow him for'ard. I will read him in by and by. Mr Babbington, take Mr Richards below and show him the midshipmen's berth. Come, Mr Watt, we must get to the dockyard before the idle dogs stop work altogether.'

   'There is a man to gladden your heart, Mr Watt,' said Jack, as the cutter sped across the harbour. 'I wish I could find another score or so like him. You don't seem very taken with the idea, Mr Watt?'

   'Well, sir, I should never say no to a prime seaman, to be sure. And to be sure we could swap some of our landmen (not that we have many left, being as we've been in commission so long, and them as was going to run having run and most of the rest rated ordinary, if not able . . .' The bosun could not find his way out of his parenthesis, and after a staring pause he wound up by saying, 'But as for mere numbers, why no, sir.'

   'Not even with the draft for harbour-duties?'

   'Why, bless you, sir, they never amounted to half a dozen, and we took good care they was all the hard bargains and right awkward buggers. Beg pardon, sir: the idle men. So as for mere numbers, why no, sir. In a three-watch brig like the
Sophie
it's a puzzle to stow 'em all between-decks as it is: she's a trim, comfortable, home-like little vessel, right enough, but she ain't what you might call roomy.'

   Jack made no reply to this; but it confirmed a good many of his impressions, and he reflected upon them until the boat reached the yard.

   'Captain Aubrey!' cried Mr Brown, the officer in charge of the yard. 'Let me shake you by the hand, sir, and wish you joy. I am very happy to see you.'

   'Thank you, sir; thank you very much indeed.' They shook hands. 'This is the first time I have seen you in your kingdom, sir.'

   'Commodious, ain't it?' said the naval officer. 'Rope-walk over there. Sail-Loft behind your old
Généreux
. I only wish there were a higher wall around the timber-yard: you would never believe how many flaming thieves there are in this island, that creep over the wall by night and take away my spars: or try to. It is my belief they are sometimes set on it by the captains; but captains or not, I shall crucify the next son of a bitch I find so much as Looking at a dog-pawl.'

   'It is my belief, Mr Brown, that you will never be really happy until there is not a King's ship left in the Mediterranean and you can walk round your yard mustering a full complement of paint-pots every day of the week, never issuing out so much as a treenail from one year's end to the next.'

   'You just listen to me, young man,' said Mr Brown, laying his hand on Jack's sleeve. 'Just you listen to age and experience. Your
good
captain never wants anything from a dockyard. He makes do with what he has. He takes great care of the King's stores: nothing is ever wasted: he pays his bottom with his own slush: he worms his cables deep with twice-laid stuff and serves and parcels them so there is never any fretting in the hawse
anywhere
: he cares for his sails far more than for his own skin, and he never sets his royals—nasty, unnecessary, flash, gimcrack things. And the result is promotion, Mr Aubrey; for we make our report to the Admiralty, as you know, and it carries the greatest possible weight. What made Trotter a post-captain? The fact that he was the most economical master and commander on the station. Some men carried away topmasts two and three times in a year: never Trotter. Take your own good Captain Allen. Never did he come to me with one of those horrible lists as long as his own pennant. And look at him now, in command of as pretty a frigate as you could wish. But why do I tell you all this, Captain Aubrey? I know very well you are not one of these spendthrift, fling-it-down-the-kennel young commanders, not after the care you took bringing in the
Généreux
. Besides, the
Sophie
is perfectly well found in every possible respect. Except conceivably in the article of paint. I might, at great inconvenience to other captains, find you some yellow paint, a very little yellow paint.'

   'Why, sir, I should be grateful for a pot or two,' said Jack, his eye ranging carelessly over the spars. 'But what I really came for was to beg the favour of the loan of your duettoes. I am taking a friend on this cruise and he particularly desires to hear your B minor duetto.'

   'You shall have them, Captain Aubrey,' said Mr Brown. 'You shall most certainly have them. Mrs Harte is transcribing one for the harp at the present moment, but I shall step round there directly. When do you sail?'

   'As soon as I have completed my water and my convoy is assembled.'

   'That will be tomorrow evening, if the
Fanny
comes in: and the watering will not take you long. The
Sophie
only carries ten ton. You shall have the book by noon tomorrow, I promise you.'

   'I am most obliged, Mr Brown, infinitely obliged. Good night to you, then, and my best respects wait on Mrs Brown and Miss Fanny.'

'Christ,' said Jack, as the shattering din of the carpenter's hammer prised him from his hold on sleep. He clung to the soft darkness as hard as he could, burying his face in his pillow, for his mind had been racing so that he had not dropped off until six—indeed, it was his appearance on deck at first light, peering at the yards and rigging, that had given rise to the rumour that he was up and about. And this was the reason for the carpenter's untimely zeal, just as it was for the nervous presence of the gun-room steward (the former captain's steward had gone over to the
Pallas
) hovering with what had been Captain Allen's invariable breakfast—a mug of small beer, hominy grits and cold beef.

   But there was no sleeping; the echoing crash of the hammer right next to his ear, ludicrously followed by the sound of whispering between the carpenter and his mates, made certain of that. They were in his sleeping-cabin, of course. Jets of pain shot through Jack's head as he lay there. ' 'Vast that bloody hammering,' he called, and almost against his shoulder came the shocked reply, 'Aye aye, sir,' and the tip-toe pittering away.

   His voice was hoarse. 'What made me so damned garrulous yesterday?' he said, still lying there in his cot. 'I am as hoarse as a crow, with talking. And what made me launch out in wild invitations? A guest I know nothing about, in a very small brig I have scarcely seen.' He pondered gloomily upon the extreme care that should be taken with shipmates—cheek by jowl—very like marriage—the inconvenience of pragmatic, touchy, assuming companions—incompatible tempers mewed up together in a box. In a box: his manual of seamanship—and how he had conned it as a boy, poring over the impossible equations.

Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the trim of the sails, and expressed by the symbol b. This is the complement of the angle DCI. Now Cl:ID = rad.:tan. DCI = I:tan. DCI = I: cotan. b. Therefore we have finally I: cotan. b = A¹:B¹:tan.²x, and A¹ cotan. b B ͭangent², and tan. ¹x = A/B cot. This equation evidently ascertarns the mutual relation between the trim of the sails and the leeway . . .

   'It
is
quite evident, is it not, Jacky darling?' said a hopeful voice, and a rather large young woman bent kindly over him (for at this stage in his memory he was only twelve, a stocky little boy, and tall, nubile Queeney sailed high above).

   'Why, no, Queeney,' said the infant Jack. 'To tell you the truth, it ain't.'

   'Well,' said she, with untiring patience. 'Try to remember what a cotangent is, and let us begin again. Let us consider the ship as an oblong box . . .'

   For a while he considered the
Sophie
as an oblong box. He had not seen a great deal of her, but there were two or three fundamentals that he knew with absolute certainty: one was that she was under-rigged—she might be well enough close to the wind, but she would be a slug before it; another was that his predecessor had been a man of a temper entirely unlike his own; and another was that the
Sophie's
people had come to resemble their captain, a good sound quiet careful unaggressive commander who never set his royals, as brave as could be when set upon, but the very opposite of a Sallee rover. 'Was discipline to be combined with the spirit of a Sallee rover,' said Jack, 'it would sweep the ocean clean.' And his mind descending fast to the commonplace dwelt on the prize-money that would result from sweeping the ocean even moderately clean.

   'That despicable main-yard,' he said. 'And surely to God I can get a couple of twelve-pounders as chasers. Would her timbers stand it, though? But whether they can or not, the box can be made a little more like a fighting vessel—more like a real man-of-war.'

   As his thoughts ranged on so the low cabin brightened steadily. A fishing-boat passed under the
Sophie's
stern, laden with tunny and uttering the harsh roar of a conch; at almost the same time the sun popped up from behind St. Philip's fort—it did, in fact,
pop
up, flattened like a sideways lemon in the morning haze and drawing its bottom free of the land with a distinct jerk. In little more than a minute the—greyness of the cabin had utterly vanished: the deck-head Was alive with light glancing from the rippling sea; and a single ray, reflected from some unmoving surface on the distant quay, darted through the cabin windows to light up Jack's coat and its blazing epaulette. The sun rose within his mind, obliging his dogged look to broaden into a smile, and he swung out of his cot.

The sun had reached Dr Maturin ten minutes earlier, for he was a good deal higher up: he, too, stirred and turned away, for he too had slept uneasily. But the brilliance prevailed. He opened his eyes and stared about very stupidly: a moment before he had been so solidly, so warmly and happily in Ireland, with a girl's hand under his arm, that his waking mind could not take in the world he saw. Her touch was still firm upon his arm and even her scent was there: vaguely he picked at the crushed leaves under him—dianthus perfragrans. The scent was reclassified—a flower, and nothing more—and the ghostly contact, the firm print of fingers, vanished. His face reflected the most piercing unhappiness, and his eyes misted over. He had been exceedingly attached; and she was so bound up with that time . . .

   He had been quite unprepared for this particular blow, striking under every conceivable kind of armour, and for some minutes he could hardly bear the pain, but sat there blinking in the sun.

   'Christ,' he said at last. 'Another day.' With this his face grew more composed. He stood up, beat the white dust from his breeches and took off his coat to shake it. With intense mortification he saw that the piece of meat he had hidden at yesterday's dinner had oozed grease through his handkerchief and his pocket. 'How wonderfully strange,' he thought, 'to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.' He sat down and ate the piece of meat (the eye of a mutton chop); and for a moment his mind dwelt on the theory of counter-irritants, Paracelsus, Cardan, Rhazes. He was sitting in the ruined apse of St. Damian's chapel high above Port Mahon on the north side, looking down upon the great winding inlet of the harbour and far out beyond it over a vast expanse of sea, a variegated blue with wandering lanes; the flawless sun, a hand's breadth high, rising from the side of Africa. He had taken refuge there some days before, as soon as his landlord began to grow a shade uncivil; he had not waited for a scene, for he was too emotionally worn to put up with any such thing.

   Presently, he took notice of the ants that were taking away his crumbs. Tapinoma erraticum. They were walking in a steady two-way stream across the hollow, or of his inverted wig, as it lay there looking very like an abandoned bird's nest, though once it had been as neat a physical bob as had ever been seen in Stephen's Green. They hurried along with their abdomens high, jostling, running into one another: his gaze followed the wearisome little creatures, and while he was watching them a toad was watching him: their eyes met, and he smiled. A splendid toad: a two-pound toad with brilliant tawny eyes. How did he manage to make a living in the sparse thin grass of that stony, sun-beaten landscape, so severe and parched, with no more cover than a few tumbles of pale stone, a few low creeping hook-thorned caper-bushes and a cistus whose name Stephen did not know? Most remarkably severe and parched, for the winter of 1799-1800 had been uncommonly dry, the March rains had failed and now the heat had come very early in the year. Very gently he stretched out his finger and stroked the toad's throat: the toad swelled a little and moved its crossed hands; then sat easy, gazing back.

   The sun rose and rose. The night had not been cold at any time, but still the warmth was grateful. Black wheatears that must have a brood not far: one of the smaller eagles in the sky. There was a sloughed snake's skin in the bush Where he pissed, and its eye-covers were perfect, startlingly crystalline.

   'What am I to think of Captain Aubrey's invitation?' he said aloud, in that great emptiness of light and air—all the more vast for the inhabited patch down there and its movement, and the checkered fields behind, fading into pale dun formless hills. 'Was it merely Jack ashore? Yet he was such a pleasant, ingenuous companion.' He smiled at the recollection. 'Still and all, what weight can be attached to . . .? We had dined extremely well: four bottles, or possibly five. I must not expose myself to an affront. He turned it over and over, arguing against his hopes, but coming at last to the conclusion that if he could make his coat passably respectable—and the dust does seem to be getting it off, or at least disguising it, he said—he would call on Mr Florey at the hospital and talk to him, in a general way, about the naval surgeon's calling. He brushed the ants from his wig and settled it on his head: then as he walked down towards the edge of the road—the magenta spikes of gladioli in the taller grass—the recollection of that unlucky name stopped him in his stride. How had he come to forget it so entirely in his sleep? How was it possible that the name James Dillon had not presented itself at once to his waking mind?

   'Yet it is true there are hundreds of Dillons,' he reflected. 'And a great many of them are called James, of course.'