Blue at the Mizzen

by Patrick O'Brian

  '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.'

  'And so do I,' cried Wilkins. 'By God, navigating with a single chronometer is . . .' He shook his head, unable to express the horror, the extreme anxiety; and then, the men having retired, he asked Woodbine whether they ever smoked or chewed tobacco. Woodbine answered that they did both, when they could, but the ship was on very short commons, and they longed for Rio and a fresh supply.

  Wilkins nodded with great satisfaction, stowed his chronometers in a padded bag and, taking his leave, he said, 'I believe I am to have the pleasure of dining aboard you tomorrow, sir?'

  Tomorrow was another day, at least by the calendar, but the two could hardly be told apart: the heat, the faintly drifting cloud, the ship pitching heavily with no way on her, the flaccid sails, were all the same: to be sure, an outraged frigate-bird had replaced the boobies, and a slightly smaller blue shark now swam under the counter, but the tar still dripped, the hands still cursed and sweated.

  'I am sorry not to see Ringle yet,' said Stephen, gazing into the general murk.

  'I am sorry too,' said Jack. 'But I do not think you need feel really anxious. William is a tolerable navigator and his master is even better—sailed with Cook. Then again a schooner as light as Ringle is more affected by these shifting currents than we are. In any case William knows very well that we victual and water at Rio. Stephen, forgive me for saying so, but there is tar on your breeches, and our guests will be aboard in ten minutes.'

  Dining to and fro, under awnings that sheltered the deck from the misty yet strangely ardent sun, and from the now more liquid tar, they enjoyed themselves more than it might have been thought possible in such conditions. The Americans certainly had the better of it, they having victualled at Rio and still possessing stores of tropical fruit and vegetables: the Americans had also seen the Asp being refitted there, which gave rise to a number of long, highly technical descriptions during which Stephen's attention wandered, though Jack and his officers assured him that they were of the very first interest.

  'How particularly agreeable that was,' said Stephen as the Surprise's barge pulled back through the varying mist, the coxswain steering by th
e sound of a small maroon, booming every thirty seconds. 'It was indeed,' said Jack, and the other officers in the boat mentioned a variety of delights, mostly in the tropical line but some, such as chess-pie, among the foundation stones of the American cuisine: while Candish and the master agreed that they had never drunk such quantities of wine before.

  After a reminiscent pause, Jack said, 'Captain Lodge told me that as soon as it was dark and a little cooler, he meant to send his boats out ahead and tow east-north-east for a watch or two, now that they knew their position for sure. He believed there was a fairly steady current—had experienced it before.'

  When they were aboard and in the cabin, Stephen went on, 'And I was so pleased with what Dr Evans told me about young Herapath's medical studies—highly gifted—and the success of his book.'

  'Young Herapath? Yes, decent creature indeed: but no mechanical power known to science could ever make a seaman out of him—Lord above,' he cried over an enormous peal of thunder, the cabin lit through and through by lightning just overhead, and the literal crash of rain on the deck, 'those poor souls are in for a ducking.'

  The prodigious downpour was so monstrously thick that one could hardly breathe in the open; and after ten minutes naked figures could be seen flitting through the deluge, opening the inlets that would replenish the butts far below with a water as clean and pure as the heavens could provide. All this, however, angered and terrified the cats more than anything that had gone before: the more austere of the two, the long-legged animal with an apricot-coloured belly, flung herself into Stephen's unwilling lap, and could not be comforted.

  It was inconceivable that the deluge should last till dawn—the sky could not hold so much—but it did, leaving them stunned, deafened, amazed at the light of day to eastward and the familiar sails of Ringle making three or even four knots towards them, the tiny breeze right aft. Incomprehensibly the deck had become littered, even covered in places, with strange forms of deep-sea life, presumably sucked up by some remote series of waterspouts and liberated here.

  But Jack Aubrey was having absolutely none of them: Surprise's only care, and Ringle's too, was to get out of this odious part of the sea without a moment's pause—no breakfast, even, until they were well under way with clear decks, rigging free of seaweed, flying squids and various monsters—Stephen had to content himself with pocketing the less gelatinous creatures and hurrying them below before his stony-faced captain had him forcibly removed.

  Still, breakfast there was, in time—at least for those not labouring at the pumps, shooting out thick jets of water on either side—when humanity returned to Captain Aubrey's face and Stephen asked him timidly 'did he think they were out of the doldrums yet?'

  'I hope so, I'm sure,' said Jack. 'When the belt—the convergence—is very narrow and concentrated as I think this one was, it sometimes ends in a furious tantrum like this, as who should say . . .' Meeting the cats' steady, attentive gaze, he changed his mind and finished ' "Fare you well, ye Spanish ladies". Killick, Killick there.'

  'Sir?'

  'Pass the word for Poll Skeeping. Forgive me, Stephen, I trespass upon your ground.'

  'Sir?' said Poll Skeeping, tying on a new apron.

  'Be so good as to remove those cats. They know perfectly well that they are not allowed in the cabin.'

  They did, indeed, and suffered themselves to be carried away, one in each hand, limp, meek, with lowered eyes.

  'How glad I was to see Ringle,' said Stephen after a while.

  'So was I, by God: she is only a little thing; and at times the weather was close on as heavy as weather comes.'

  'Would it be improper, unlucky, to ask where we are? I mean, just a very vague approximation.'

  'After taking the sun's height at noon, which I think we shall achieve, I hope to be able to tell you in rather finer limits than that: but even now I shall hazard the guess that by tomorrow morning we shall be in the steady south-east trades, not much above a week's sailing from Rio, according to how strong they prove.'

  'Good, good: very good. You ease my mind: but tell me, Jack—for I see that in spite of a sleepless night you are eager to be up and about, inspecting booms, gunwales, lifts . . . Pray tell me when you are inclined to sit down quietly and talk about the less physical aspects of our affair.'

  Jack looked at him thoughtfully, revolving the less physical aspects: then smiling he said, 'Although I have a very good first lieutenant, there are many things aloft that I should not rest easy without seeing. And below too, of course. Let us say after dinner, over a private pot of coffee.'

  Jack Aubrey pushed back his chair, loosened his waistcoat, and said, 'I had no idea I was so hungry: I am afraid I must have eaten like an ogre.'

  Killick could be seen to smile: Jack's appetite always pleased him—his one deviation into amiability.

  'Oh come,' said Maturin. 'Six mutton chops is not at all excessive in a man of your weight: an abstemious ogre would call it moderation. Those dear Americans said that the animal came from some favoured state: indeed it was both succulent and tender.'

  They toyed with an elderly Essex cheese, much helped by burgundy; and Jack, recalled to a sense of his duty, asked whether Stephen's inspection had been as satisfactory as his own.

  'It was pretty well, I thank you: not quite as good, since three recent fractures will have to be re-set. But upon the whole I cannot complain. They were tumbled about, to be sure; yet most—not that there are many in the sick-berth at present—withstood the tumbling and the uneasy motion of the ship very well. I have often noticed that a prolonged and violent blow tends to dispel the megrims; and it may well be that the visible approach of death, the immediate horror of the last, may restore a virtuous equilibrium.'

  'Killick,' called Jack. 'Light along the coffee, there.'

  It took a little longer than usual and Killick—the door held by his mate Grimble—entered crabwise, the great pot and its cups flanked by a decanter. 'With Delaware's compliments, sir: Dutch schnapps.'

  'They have won again,' said Jack, shaking his head. 'How I hope that we gave them something, at least.'

  'I did have half a carboy of tincture of hogweed conveyed into their boat,' said Stephen in a doubtful voice. 'It was the best hogweed,' he added, with even less certainty.

  'Well, may it prosper them,' said Jack. 'Though they are little better than republicans and democrats, may it prosper them.'

  'Amen,' said Stephen, and they fell to drinking alternate sips.

  'You are in the moon, brother,' said Jack after a while. 'What are you thinking about?'

  'My transition to a C major passage in the adagio,' said Stephen, and he whistled it.

  'I know the piece.'

  'It seemed to me, out of nothing, during the blast, that it was out of place, a little flashy.'

  'I should never, never say flashy: but out of place—well, perhaps.'

  'Thank you, Jack. I shall leave it out. Now may I pour you a cup of coffee and leap on to Rio?'

  'By all means.'

  'You have told me a certain amount about Sir David Lindsay, but not as I remember a considered opinion in a consecutive narrative. Do you feel inclined to do so now? He may possibly be of the first importance in our enterprise.'

  'That is scarcely my line of country, you know, Stephen. Even a pretty simple dispatch in which I know all the details comes out looking like an unravelled stocking, even when you and Adams have had a hand in it.'

  'Certainly: an impersonal account for official publication must be shockingly difficult to write, and the Dear knows that very few admirals or their secretaries manage it handsomely. But as between friends in a ship that seems to be sailing along in an exemplary fashion—these are the south-east trades, I gather?—could you not tell me roughly what to expect?'

  'Well,' said Jack, 'no one can say he is not a good seaman. He has fought two or three creditable sloop or frigate actions and he handles a ship well; yet he does not look at all like a sailor. If you were to see him in ci
vilian clothes you might put him down for a soldier; and I think that is because, being rather on the small side, he holds himself up quite straight. He is a gentlemanlike fellow. I know nothing about his family, but they have had a baronetcy for a couple of generations and I believe they live in the north country or just in Scotland. He speaks—perhaps rather too much and too long . . . but Stephen, do not think I am taking the man to pieces: I am just speaking openly, as I would not speak at anyone else.'

  'I fully understand you, my dear.'

  'Well, since I have said so much, I will tell you that he is extremely touchy—cannot bear interruption, and the least aspersion on his understanding or his knowledge of the world, let alone his family, is very ill-received indeed. Oh, and I should have said before this that he was bred in one of the great English public schools, until an uncle took him aboard as a rather elderly mid. During his time there he did much more reading, came by more Latin and Greek than most people in the service, which is no doubt one of the reasons for his talking so. But to go back to his touchiness: if you go on prating to that extent, somebody is sure to interrupt or contradict, and that, as I said, he cannot bear.'

  'Yet he must have borne both at school?'

  'And in the midshipmen's berth as well. But once he had the King's commission and the implied licence that goes with it, he had a pretty free hand. He was in fact extremely quarrelsome, and I do not think anyone went out in the special sense of pistols for two and coffee for one, so often as Lindsay. I do not think it increased his reputation for courage: probably the reverse, it being forced and exaggerated. Yet courage was there, without a doubt: you do not board an enemy of equal strength and carry her unless you are tolerably brave.'

  'Certainly.'

  'But it was that touchiness, impatience of control, or possibly courage, which proved fatal to him. During fleet exercises, when his 28-gun frigate was being coppered, he was given a ship-sloop, and he let her fall very badly from her station, spoiling the line in a shocking manner. The admiral sent for him and, from what I have heard, uttered a long and particularly scathing reproach. Lindsay bore it; but in the morning he sent the admiral a challenge. How he induced anyone to carry it I do not know, because calling your superior officer out—above all a flag-officer—is just plain impossible in the service. Calling him out for having given you a punishment or an order or a reproach that you do not like, is just plain impossible, as any friend would have told him. He had few friends, I think. At all event, he was taken up, laid by the heels, court-martialled and dismissed the service.