Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

by Patrick O'Brian

  These were the last words he said to Stephen until the Worcester was lying off Port Mahon in Minorca, having sailed from Gibraltar the moment the wind came far enough north of east. She now had a leading breeze for Mahon itself, but nothing, not even his respect for learning and his consideration for Professor Graham, would induce Jack to take her into that long harbour, easy to enter but the very devil to leave except with a northerly air. Many a time he had seen line-of-battle ships windbound there in former days, when he in his little weatherly brig could just beat out, but only just; and with Admiral Thornton’s squadron not two days’ sail away if the breeze held true he did not intend to lose a minute, even if begged to do so by a choir of virgins on their knees. The Worcester lay to, therefore, off Cape Mola, and Mr Graham was lowered into a boat; though at least he was indulged in the relative comfort of the pinnace. He gave Stephen a cold ‘Good day to you,’ and was gone.

  Stephen watched the pinnace hoist its sails and speed away over the short choppy sea, sprinkling its occupants at every plunge and soaking them quite often: he was sorry that he had offended Graham, who was a strong, intelligent man, no cloistered scholar, and no sort of a bore at any time. But such a degree of resentment was unamiable and he saw him go without much regret. ‘And in any event,’ he reflected, ‘he will never again think of me as a potential intelligence-agent; still less as one in fact, dear Mother of God.’

  ‘Shearwaters!’ cried a voice beside him. ‘Surely they cannot be shearwaters here?’ Stephen turned and saw Mr Martin, the only remaining parson, the thinner and shabbier of the two literary gentlemen. ‘Certainly they are shearwaters,’ he said. ‘Do they not nest in holes on Cape Mola over there? To be sure, they are less sharply black and white than those of the Atlantic, but they are shearwaters for all that - the same voice by night in their burrows, the same solitary white egg, the same grossly obese chick. See how they turn with the wave! Certainly they are shearwaters. You have studied birds, sir?’

  ‘As much as ever I could, sir; they have always been my great delight, but since I left the university I have had little leisure, little opportunity for reading, and I have never been abroad.’

  What with his wound and the superabundance of clergymen, Stephen had had almost no contact with Mr Martin, but now his heart warmed to this young man who shared his passion, who had learnt a great deal, and who had paid for his learning with long journeys on foot, nights spent in byres, haystacks, sheepcotes, even prisons when he was taken up for a poacher, and with the loss of an eye, destroyed by an owl. ‘The poor bird only meant to protect her brood: she could not tell I meant them no harm! I was culpably abrupt in my movements. Besides, it is convenient, when looking through a spy-glass, not to have to close the other eye.’ They exchanged accounts of the bustard, the osprey, the stilt, the cream-coloured courser; and Stephen was describing the great albatross with an eagerness approaching enthusiasm when he heard Captain Aubrey say, in a tone of strong displeasure, ‘Loose the foretopsail. Give him a gun.’

  It was the conduct of the returning pinnace that caused these remarks. To Stephen it seemed to be coming along well enough, beating into the wind, tacking briskly from time to time, but it was clear from the look of the other officers on the quarterdeck that Mr Somers was not handling the boat to their satisfaction. At one point they all shook their heads in unison, frowning with disapproval, and in fact a moment later a spar carried away - a spar that might be replaced in Malta, but not much nearer at hand. When the pinnace came alongside with a rending crack, Captain Aubrey said, ‘Mr Pullings, I should like to see Mr Somers in the cabin,’ and walked off.

  Somers came out of the cabin ten minutes later, red-faced and sullen. The quarterdeck was full of officers and young gentlemen, watching Minorca dwindle on the larboard quarter as the ship stood north-east for her rendezvous with the Admiral: a glance showed Somers’ state of mind, and they all studiously avoided his eye as he paced up and down for a while before going below.

  He was still in a surly, resentful mood when the wardroom met for supper, and they tried to cheer him up. It had long been obvious to all the sailors present that he was no seaman, but they all knew the importance of geod relations in a small community, tight-packed, always on top of one another, with no possibility of getting away throughout the whole length of the commission: but Somers did not choose to be brought into a happier state of mind. Where he had served his time they could not tell, but it must have been in some ship that did not observe the conventions they had always known, one of which was that any unpleasantness on deck was forgotten - at least pretended to be forgotten - at table. Towards the end of the meal he grew more conversable, talking to Mr Martin and the younger Marine lieutenant, Jackson, who admired him for his good looks, his comparative wealth, and his connections: without mentioning any names he explained to them the difference, as he saw it, between bosun-captains and gentleman-captains, the first being those who paid great attention to mechanical duties, the province of mere mariners, the second being the true soul of the Navy, high-spirited men who left such things to their inferiors, reserving all their energies for a superior general direction and for battle, in which they led their men (who respected, almost worshipped them) incomparably well. He grew almost as enthusiastic about gentlemen as Stephen had been about the wandering albatross - the common people instinctively recognized blood and accepted its superiority - they knew that a man of ancient lineage was as it were of another essence, and they could distinguish him at once, almost as though he wore a halo. Young Jackson abounded in his sense, applauding his higher flights, until he happened to look along the table and saw the grave faces of his companions, when a certain doubt came over him, and he fell silent. By this time Somers was too drunk to notice that, or to attend to the strong, determined conversation that drowned his voice. He was in fact so drunk, drunk even by naval standards, that he was obliged to be bundled into his cot: this was usual enough, and since he had no watch to keep that night there was no adverse comment (the purser was regularly speechless by lights out, though the Worcester was not reckoned a hard-drinking ship by any means). But his state the next morning was far from usual: he was so unwell that Stephen, having prescribed three drachms of Lucatellus’ balsam, told him that he might perfectly well decline the Captain’s invitation to dinner, on grounds of health. Somers was touchingly grateful for Dr Maturin’s attentions, and as he walked off Stephen reflected that he had often known men who were showy and arrogant in public - men with little instinctive social tact - to be pleasant enough with only one companion. He offered this reflection, in general terms, to Mr Martin as they sat on the poop under a cloudless sky after their dinner with the Captain, gazing at the white-flecked pure blue sea and the various gulls that wantoned in the wake; but Martin was too full of the bustard, the great Andalusian bustard bought in Gibraltar, that had formed the main dish, to give more than a civil assent before returning to that noble fowl. ‘To think that I should have lain three nights in a shepherd’s hut on Salisbury Plain - a hut on wheels - in the hope of seeing one at dawn, to say nothing of my vigils in Lincolnshire, and that I should have found a cock-bird on my plate in the bosom of the ocean! It is very like a dream.’

  He was also full of enthusiasm for the Navy: Such kindness in the Captain, such cordial hospitality - none of the cold formal distance or hauteur he had been led to expect - and the gentlemen of the wardroom were so friendly and considerate - he could not speak too highly of Mr Pullings’ and Mr Mowett’s amiability. The other officers had been very good to him too, while the comfort of his little cabin in spite of the enormous gun, and the -he might almost say the luxury of their fare, with wine every day, quite astonished him.

  Stephen glanced to see whether he were speaking ironically, but all he could detect was honest pleas ure and satisfaction, together with a rosy gleam from Captain Aubrey’s port. ‘Sure, we are fortunate in our shipmates,’ he observed, ‘and I have noticed that many sea-officers, nay the majority, are of the sa
me cheerful, good-natured, liberal stamp. Coxcombs are rare; reading men not unknown. Yet from the physical point of view the nautical life is usually represented as one of hardship, discomfort, and privation.’

  ‘All things are relative,’ said Martin, ‘and perhaps some years of living in a garret or a cellar and working for the booksellers is no bad preparation for the Navy. At all events it is the life for me. Both as a naturalist and as a social being, I am -’

  ‘By your leave, sir,’ said the captain of the afterguard, coming up the poop-ladder with a horde of swabbers.

  ‘What’s afoot, Miller?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘Which we hope to raise the flag before long,’ said Miller, ‘and you would not wish the Admiral to see the deck all covered knee-deep with filth, sir, would you now? With remarks passed through all the fleet?’

  The filth was not discernible to a landsman’s eye, unless it were for a very slight dusting of little pieces of worn tow fallen from the rigging and gathered under the lee of the rail, but Stephen and the parson were chivvied off the poop to the quarterdeck. Five minutes later the tide of powerful cleaners dislodged them once again and they moved on to the gangway. ‘Should you not like to go below, sir?’ asked Whiting, the officer of the watch. ‘The wardroom is almost dry by now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stephen, ‘but I wish to show Mr Martin a Mediterranean gull. I believe we shall go to the forecastle.’

  ‘I will have your chair sent forward,’ said Pullings. ‘But you will not touch anything, will you, Doctor? Everything is quite clean, fit for the Admiral’s inspection.’

  ‘You are very good, Mr Pullings,’ said Stephen, ‘but I can walk and stand quite well now. I do not need the chair, although I am sensible of your attention.’

  ‘You will not touch anything, Doctor?’ called Pullings after them: and on the forecastle a midshipman and two elderly sheet-anchor men desired them to take great care, and to touch nothing. They were unwelcome and in the way, but after a while Joseph Plaice, an old shipmate of Stephen’s and a forecastle-hand, brought them each a cheese-shaped bag of bow-chaser wads and there they sat in some comfort, touching neither the beautifully flemished falls nor the gleaming gun-sights.

  ‘The Navy is the life for me,’ said Martin again. ‘Quite apart from the excellent company - and I may say that as far as I have seen, the ordinary sailormen are quite as obliging as the officers.’

  ‘I have certainly found it so, in many cases. Aft the more honour, forward the better man, as Lord Nelson put it,’ said Stephen. ‘Aft being the officers and young gentlemen, forward the hands - the container for the contents, you understand. Yet I think that by forward we are to take him to mean real sailors; for you are to observe that in a crew such as this a great many scrovies are necessarily swept in, froward dirty disreputable rough good-for-nothing disorderly ragabashes and raparees to begin with, and sometimes for ever.’

  Martin bowed, and went on, ‘Apart from that, and only to be mentioned long after, there is the material aspect. I must beg pardon, sir, for alluding to such a subject, but unless a man has earned his bread by a calling in which he must rely on himself alone, in which any failure of invention, any bout of sickness, is fatal, he can scarcely appreciate the extraordinary comfort of a certain hundred and fifty pounds a year. A hundred and fifty pounds a year! Good heavens! And I am told that if I consent to act as schoolmaster to the young gentlemen, an annual fee of five pounds a head is due for each.’

  ‘I conjure you to do no such thing. There is a Mediterranean gull, just perched on the long pole running out in front: you see her heavy dark-red bill, the true blackness of her head? Quite different from ridibundus.’

  ‘Quite different. At close range there is no possible confusion. But pray, sir, why must I not teach the young gentlemen?’

  “Because, sir, teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul. It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over his pupils: he often beats them and insensibly he loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings. He does them harm, but the harm they do him is far greater. He may easily become the all-knowing tyrant, always right, always virtuous; in any event he perpetually associates with his inferiors, the king of his company; and in a surprisingly short time alas this brands him with the mark of Cain. Have you ever known a schoolmaster fit to associate with grown men? The Dear knows I never have. They are most horribly warped indeed. Yet curiously enough this does not seem to apply to tutors: perhaps it is scarcely possible to play the prima donna to an audience of one. Fathers, on the other hand -’

  ‘Mr Pullings’ compliments, sir,’ said a young gentleman, ‘and begs Dr Maturin will take his feet off the fresh paint.’

  Stephen gazed at him and then at his feet. It was quite true: the glistening surface of the carronade that served him for a footstool gleamed not as he had supposed with polish nor yet with spray but with jet-black paint, newly laid on. ‘My compliments to Mr Pullings,’ he said at last, ‘and pray desire him to let me know, at his leisure, how I am to take my feet off the fresh paint without instantly and indelibly marking both the deck here and at every step I take to the main staircase. These bandages are not lightly to be taken off. And in any case, sir,’ - to Mr Martin - ‘the question hardly arises, for as you remarked yourself, you found the Pythagorean proposition impossible to be understood; and the education of the young gentlemen aboard is almost all a matter of trigonometry: even of algebra, Heaven preserve us.’

  ‘Then I must abandon my midshipmen, I see,’ said Martin smiling. ‘But still I feel that the Navy is the life for me - an ideal life for a naturalist.’

  ‘To be sure, it is a very fine life for a young man with no ties on land and with a robust constitution, a young man who is not over-nice about his victuals, and who does not make a god of his belly. And I am of your opinion entirely, in believing the better kind of sea-officer to be excellent company: though there are others; and the poison of authority can sap a captain, with the unhappiest effects upon the whole ship’s company. Then again, if it is your misfortune to have a bore or a petulant coxcomb aboard, you are penned up with him for months and even years on end, so that his shortcomings grow exquisitely tedious and the first words of his often-repeated anecdotes a hellish torment. And as to its being a life for a naturalist, why, it has advantages to be sure; but you are to consider that the Navy’s prime function is to take, burn, or destroy the enemy, not to contemplate the wonders of the deep. The utmost power of language is not enough to describe the frustration a naturalist must endure in this jading pursuit of merely political, material ends: had we been allowed some days ashore at Minorca, for example, I could have shown you not only the black wheatear, not only the curious Minorcan chat, but Eleanora’s falcon! The bearded vulture!’

  ‘I am sure what you say is profoundly true,’ said Martin, ‘and I bow to your experience - I shall nourish no illusions. And yet, sir, you have seen the great albatross, the southern petrels, the penguins in their interesting diversity, sea-elephants, the cassowary of the far Spice Islands, the emu scouring the sultry plain, the blue-eyed shag. You have beheld Leviathan!’

  ‘I have also seen the three-toed sloth,’ said Dr Maturin.

  ‘Sail ho,’ called the lookout at the foremasthead. ‘On deck, there, four sails of ships, six sail, a squadron, fine on the larboard bow.’

  ‘That will be Sir John Thornton’s fleet,’ said Stephen. ‘Presently we must make ourselves trim: perhaps we might call the ship’s barber.’

  Captain Aubrey, as trim as his newly-brushed best uniform could make him, the Nile medal in his buttonhole, the regulation sword at his side (Admiral Thornton was a stickler for etiquette) went down the Worcester’s side with the full naval ceremony, preceded by a midshipman with several packets under his arm. He was grave and silent as the barge pulled along the broad expanse of sea between the two ranges of towering line-of-battle ships stretching ahead and aste
rn of the Ocean, each exactly in station, two cable lengths apart. Although this was only a parenthesis in his career, a routine turn on the everlasting Toulon blockade, with little likelihood of action, there was always the sea to cope with, the sudden savage winds of the Gulf of Lions; and the unexpected was always at hand. Admiral Thornton was himself an outstanding seaman; he required a very high degree of competence in his captains; he never hesitated to sacrifice individuals when he thought the good of the service was at issue- many an officer had he set on the beach for ever - and although Jack could hardly hope to distinguish himself during this parenthesis it was quite possible that he might take a fall, particularly as Admiral Harte, the second in command, did not love him. His thoughts were more sombre, his face far less cheerful than usual. After the first few very active weeks of getting the Worcester into shape, weeks in which he had brought her gunnery to a moderately high standard of efficiency, the ship had settled into the steady naval way of life, a happy ship upon the whole; and since he had an excellent first lieutenant in Tom Pullings he had had plenty of time to worry about his affairs at home, his horribly involved and dangerous legal affairs. He had retained little Latin from his brief, remote, and largely ineffectual days at school, but one tag still ran through his head and the substance of it was that no ship could outrun care. The Worcester had run some two thousand miles as fast as he could drive her, yet care still sat there, dispelled only by the great-gun exercise and his evenings with Stephen, Scarlatti, old Bach and Mozart.

  Bonden brought the barge kissing alongside the flagship. Jack was piped aboard with even greater ceremony, bosun’s calls howling, Marines presenting arms with a fine simultaneous clash; he saluted the quarterdeck, observed that the Admiral was not there, saluted the Captain of the Fleet, shook hands with the captain of the Ocean, took the packets from his midshipman, and turned to a man in black, the Admiral’s secretary, who led him below.