Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

  She lay there, rocking gently, out in Mahon harbour, with the shipping on her starboard beam and quarter and the brilliant town beyond it. The breeze a little abaft her larboard beam, a northerly wind, was pushing her stern round a trifle. Jack paused, and as it came just so he cried, 'Away aloft.' The calls repeated the order and instantly the shrouds were dark with passing men, racing up as though on their stairs at home.

  'Trice up. Lay out.' The calls again, and the topmen hurried out on the yards. They cast off the gaskets, the lines that held the sails tight furled to the yards; they gathered the canvas under their arms and waited.

  'Let fall,' came the order, and with it the howling peep-peep, peep-peep from the bosun and his mates.

  'Sheet home. Sheet home. Hoist away. Cheerly there, in the foretop, look alive. T'garns'l sheets. Hands to the braces. Belay.'

  A gentle push from above heeled the Sophie over, then another and another, each more delightfully urgent until it was one steady thrust; she was under way, and all along her side there sang a run of living water. Jack and his lieutenant exchanged a glance: it had not been bad – the foretopgallantsail had taken its time, because of a misunderstanding as to how newcomer should be defined and whether the six restored Sophies were to be considered in that injurious light, which had led to a furious, silent squabble on the yard; and the sheeting-home had been rather spasmodic; but it had not been disgraceful, and they would not have to support the derision of the other men-of-war in the harbour. There had been moments in the confusion of the morning when each had dreaded just that thing.

  The Sophie had spread her wings a little more like an unhurried dove than an eager hawk, but not so much so that the expert eyes on shore would dwell upon her with disapprobation; and as for the mere landsmen, their eyes were so satiated with the coming and going of every kind of vessel that they passed over her departure with glassy indifference.

  'Forgive me, sir,' said Stephen Maturin, touching his hat to a nautical gentleman on the quay, 'but might I ask whether you know which is the ship called Sophia?'

  'A King's ship, sir?' asked the officer, returning his salute. 'A man-of-war? There is no ship of that name but perhaps you refer to the sloop, sir? The sloop Sophie?'

  'That may well be the case, sir. No man could easily surpass me in ignorance of naval terms. The vessel I have in mind is commanded by Captain Aubrey.'

  'Just so: the sloop, the fourteen-gun sloop. She lies almost directly in front of you, sir, in a line with the little white house on the point.'

  'The ship with triangular sails?'

  'No. That is a polacre-settee. Somewhat to the left, and farther off.'

  'The little small squat merchantman with two masts?

  'Well' – with a laugh – she is a trifle low in the water, but she is a man-of-war, I assure you And I believe she about to make sail. Yes. There go her topsails: sheeted borne. They hoist the yard. To'garns'ls. What's amiss? Ah, there we are. Not very smartly done, but all's well that ends well, and the Sophie never was one of your very brisk performers. See, she gathers way. She will fetch the mouth of the harbour on this wind without touching a brace.'

  'She is sailing away?'

  'Indeed she is. She must be running three knots already – maybe four.'

  'I am very much obliged to you, sir,' said Stephen, – lifting his hat.

  'Servant, sir,' said the officer, lifting his. He looked after Stephen for a while 'Should I ask him whether he is well? I have left it too late However, he seems steady enough now.'

  Stephen had walked down to the quay to find out whether – the Sophie could be reached on foot or whether he should have to take a boat to keep his dinner engagement; for his Conversation with Mr Florey had persuaded him that not only was the engagement intended to be kept, but that the more general invitation was equally serious – an eminently practicable suggestion, most certainly to be acted upon. How civil, how more than civil, Florey had been had explained the medical service of the Royal Navy, and taken him to see Mr Edwardes of the Centaur perform quite an interesting amputation, had dismissed his scruples as to lack of purely surgical experience, had lent him Blane on diseases incident to seamen, Hulme's libellus de Natura Scorbuti, Lind's Effectual Means and Northcote's Marine Practice, and had promised to find him at least the bare essentials in instruments until he should have his allowance and the official chest – 'There are trocars, tenaculums and ball-scoops lying about by the dozen at the hospital, to say nothing of saws and bone-rasps.'

  Stephen had allowed his mind to convince itself entirely, and the strength of his emotion at the sight of the Sophie, her white sails and her low hull dwindling fast over the shining sea, showed him how much he had come to look forward to the prospect of a new place and new skies, a living, and a closer acquaintance with this friend who was now running fast towards the quarantine island, behind which he would presently vanish.

  He walked up through the town with his mind in a curious state; he had suffered so many disappointments recently that it did not seem possible he could bear another. What was more, he had allowed all his defences to disperse – unarm. It was while he was reassembling them and calling out his reserves that his feet carried him past Joselito's coffee-house and voices said, 'There he is – call out – run after him – you will catch him if you run.'

  He had not been into the coffee-house that morning because it was a question either of paying for a cup of coffee or of paying for a boat to row him out to the Sophie, and he had therefore been unavailable for the midshipman, who now came running along behind him.

  'Dr Maturin?' asked young Mowett, and stopped short, quite shocked by the pale glare of reptilian dislike. However, he delivered his message; and he was relieved to find that it was greeted with a far more human look.

  'Most kind,' said Stephen. 'What do you imagine would be a convenient time, sir?'

  'Oh, I suppose about six o'clock, sir,' said Mowett.

  'Then at six o'clock I shall be at the Crown steps,' said Stephen. 'I am very much obliged to you, sir, for your diligence in finding me out.' They parted with a bow apiece, and Stephen said privately, 'I shall go across to the hospital and offer Mr Florey my assistance: he has a compound fracture above the elbow that will call for primary resection of the joint. It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation.

  Cape Mola lay on their larboard quarter: the troubled blasts and calms caused by the heights and valleys along the great harbour's winding northern shore no longer buffeted them, and with an almost steady tramontana at north by east the Sophie was running fast towards Italy under her courses, single-reefed topsails and topgallants.

  'Bring her up as close as she will lie,' said Jack. 'How near will she point, Mr Marshall? Six?'

  'I doubt she'll do as well as six, sir,' said the master, shaking his head. 'She's a little sullen today, with the extra weight for'ard.'

  Jack took the wheel, and as he did so a last gust from the island staggered the sloop, sending white water along her lee rail, plucking Jack's hat from his head and streaming his bright yellow hair away to the south-south-west. The master leapt after the hat, snatched it from the seaman who had rescued it in the hammock-netting and solicitously wiping the cockade with his handkerchief he stood by Jack's side, holding it with both hands

  'Old Sodom and Gomorrah is sweet on Goldilocks,' murmured John Lane, foretopman, to his friend Thomas Gross Thomas winked his eye and jerked his head, but without any appearance of censure – they were concerned with the phenomenon, not with any moral judgment. 'Well, I hope he don't take it out of us too much, that's all, mate,' he replied.

  Jack let her pay off until the flurry was over, and then, as he began to bring her back, his hands strong on the spokes, so he came into direct contact with the living essence of the sloop: the vibration beneath his palm, something between a sound and a flow, came straight up from her rudder, and it joined with the innumerable rhythms, the creak and humming of her hu
ll and rigging The keen clear wind swept in on his left cheek, and as he bore on the helm so the Sophie answered, quicker and more nervous than he had expected Closer and closer to the wind They were all staring up and forward: at last, in spite of the fiddle-tight bowline, the foretopgallantsail shivered, and Jack eased off. 'East by north, a half north,' he observed with satisfaction. 'Keep her so,' he said to the timoneer, and gave the order, the long-expected and very welcome order, to pipe to dinner.

  Dinner, while the Sophie, as close-hauled on the larboard tack as she could be, made her offing into the lonely water where twelve-pound cannon-balls could do no harm and where disaster could pass unnoticed: the miles streamed out behind her, her white path stretching straight and true a little south of west. Jack looked at it from his stern-window with approval: remarkably little leeway; and a good steady hand must be steering, to keep that furrow so perfect in the sea. He was dining in solitary state – a Spartan meal of sodden kid and cabbage, mixed – and it was only when he realized that there was no one to whom he could impart the innumerable observations that came bubbling into his mind that he remembered: this was his first formal meal as a captain. He almost made a jocose remark about it to his steward (for he was in very high spirits, too), but he checked himself. It would not do. 'I shall grow used to it, in time,' he said, and looked again with loving relish at the sea.

  The guns were not a success. Even with only half a cartridge the bow-chaser recoiled so strongly that at the third discharge the carpenter came running up on deck, so pale and perturbed that all discipline went by the board. 'Don't ee do it, sir!' he cried, covering the touch-hole with his hand. 'If you could but see her poor knees – and the spirketting started in five separate places, oh dear, oh dear.' The poor man hurried to the ring-bolts of the breeching. 'There. I knew it. My clench is half drawn in this poor thin old stuff. Why didn't you tell me, Torn?' he cried, gazing reproachfully at his mate.

  'I dursen't,' said Torn, hanging his head.

  'It won't do, sir,' said the carpenter. 'Not with these here timbers, it won't. Not with this here deck.'

  Jack felt his choler rising – it was a ludicrous situation on the overcrowded fo'c'sle, with the carpenter crawling about at his feet in apparent supplication, peering at the seams; and this was no sort of a way to address a captain. But there was no resisting Mr Lamb's total sincerity, particularly as Jack secretly agreed with him. The force of the recoil, all that weight of metal darting back and being brought up with a twang by the breeching was too much, far too much for the Sophie. Furthermore, there really was not room to work the ship with the two twelve-pounders and their tackle filling so much of what little space there was. But he was bitterly disappointed: a twelve-pound ball could pierce at five hundred yards: it could send up a shower of lethal splinters, carry away a yard, do great execution. He tossed one up and down in his hand, considering. Whereas at any range a four-pounder.

  'And was you to fire off t'other one,' said Mr Lamb with desperate courage, still on his hands and knees, 'your wisitor wouldn't have a dry stitch on him: for the seams have – opened something cruel.'

  William Jevons, carpenter's crew, came up and whispered, 'Foot of water in the well,' in a rumble that could have been heard at the masthead.

  The carpenter stood up, put on his hat, touched it and reported, 'There's a foot of water in the well, sir'

  'Very well, Mr Lamb,' said Jack, placidly, 'we'll pump it out again Mr Day,' he said, turning to the gunner, who had crawled up on deck for the firing of the twelve-pounders (would have crept out of his grave, had he been in it), 'Mr Day, draw and house the guns, if you please. And bosun, man the chain-pump'.

  He patted the warm barrel of the twelve-pounder regretfully and walked aft. He was not particularly worried about the water: the Sophie had been capering about in a lively way with this short sea coming across, and she would have made a good deal by her natural working. But he was vexed about the chasers, profoundly vexed, and he looked with even greater malignance at the main-yard.

  'We shall have to get the topgallants off her presently, Mr Dillon,' he observed, picking up the traverse-board. He consulted it more as a matter of form than. anything else, for he knew very well where they were: with some sense that develops in true seamen he was aware of the loom of the land, a dark presence beyond the horizon behind him – behind his right shoulder-blade. They had been beating steadily up into the wind, and the pegs showed almost equal boards – east-north-east followed by west-north-west: they had tacked five times (Sophie was not as quick in stays as he could have wished) and worn once; and they had been running at seven knots. These calculations ran their course in his mind, and as soon as he looked for it the answer was ready: 'Keep on this course for half an hour and then put her almost before the wind – two points off. That will bring you home.

  'It would be as well to shorten sail now,' he observed. 'We will hold our course for half an hour.' With this he went below, meaning to do something in the way of dealing with the great mass of papers that called for attention: apart from such things as the statements of stores and the pay books there was the Sophie's log, which would tell him something of the past history of the vessel, and her muster-book, which would do the same for her company. He leafed through the pages: 'Sunday, September 22, 1799, winds NW, W, S. course N4OW, distance 49 miles, latitude 37°59' N longitude 9°38'W, Cape St Vincent S27E 64 miles. PM Fresh breezes and squally with rain, made and shortened sail occasionally. AM hard gales, and 4 handed the square mainsail, at 6 saw a strange sail to the southward, at 8 more moderate, reefed the square mainsail and set it, at 9 spoke her. She was a Swedish brig bound to Barcelona in ballast. At noon weather calm, head round the compass.' Dozens of entries of that kind of duty; and of convoy work. The plain, unspectacular, everyday sort of employment that made up ninety per cent of a service life or more 'People variously employed, read the Articles of War convoy in company, in topgallantsails and second reef topsails. At 6 made private signal to two line of battle ships which answered 'All sails set', the people employed working up junk tacked occasionally, in third reef maintopsail… light airs inclinable to calm… scrubbed hammocks. Mustered by divisions, read Articles of War and punished Joseph Wood, Jno. Lakey, Matt.Johnson and Wm. Musgrave with twelve lashes for drunkenness… PM calm and hazy weather, at 5 out sweeps and boats to pull off shore at 1/2 past 6 came to with the stream anchor Cape Mola S6W distance 5 leagues. At 1/2 past 8 coming on to blow suddenly was obliged to cut the hawser and make sail… read the Articles of War and performed Divine Service… punished Geo. Sennet with 24 lashes for contempt… Fra. Bechell, Robt. Wilkinson and Joseph Wood for drunkenness…'

  A good many entries of that kind a fair amount of flogging, but nothing heavy – none of your hundred-lash sentences. It contradicted his first impression of laxity: he would have to look into it more thoroughly. Then the muster Geo Williams, ordinary seaman, born Bengal, volunteered at Lisbon 24 August 1797, ran 27 March 1798, Lisbon. Fortunato Carneglia, midshipman, 21, born Genoa, discharged 1 June 1797 per order Rear-Admiral Nelson per ticket Sam! Willsea, able seaman, born Long Island, volunteered Porto 10 October 1797, ran 8 Februry 1799 at Lisbon from the boat. Patrick Wade, landman, 21, born County Fermanagh, prest 20 November 1796 at Porto Ferraw, discharged 11 November 1799 to Bulldog, per order Captain Darley. Richard Sutton, lieutenant, joined 31 December 1796 per order Commodore Nelson, discharged dead 2 February 1798, killed in action with a French privateer. Richard William Baldick, lieutenant, joined 28 February 1798 per commission from Earl St Vincent, discharged 18 April 1800 to join Pallas per order Lord Keith.

  In the column Dead Mens Cloaths there was the sum of Ј8.lOs. 6d. against his name: clearly poor Sutton's kit auctioned at the mainmast.

  But Jack could not keep his mind to the stiff-ruled column. The brilliant sea, darker blue than the sky, and the white wake across it kept drawing his eyes to the stern-window. In the end he closed the book and indulged himself in the luxury of staring out: if he cho
se he could go to sleep, he reflected; and he looked around, relishing this splendid privacy, the rarest of commodities at sea. As a lieutenant in the Leander and other fair-sized ships he had been able to look out of the ward-room windows, of course; but never alone, never unaccompanied by human presence and activity. It was wonderful: but it so happened that just now he longed for human presence and activity – his mind was too eager and restless to savour the full charm of solitude, although he knew it was there, and as soon as the ting-ting, ting-ting of four bells sounded he was up on deck.

  Dillon and the master were standing by the starboard brass four-pounder, and they were obviously discussing some part of her rigging visible from that point. As soon as he appeared they moved over to the larboard side in the traditional way, leaving him his privileged area of the quarter-deck. This was the first time it had happened to him: he had not expected it – had not thought of it – and it gave him a ridiculous thrill of pleasure. But it also deprived him of a companion, unless he were to call James Dillon over. He took two or three turns, looking up at the yards: they were braced as sharp as the main and foremast shrouds would allow, but they were not as sharp as they might have been in an ideal world, and he made a-mental note to tell the bosun to set up cross catharpings – they might gain three or four degrees.

  'Mr Dillon,' he said, 'be so good as to bear up and set the square mainsail. South by west a half south.'

  'Aye aye, sir. Double-reefed, sir?'

  'No, Mr Dillon, no reef,' said Jack with a smile, and he resumed his pacing. There were orders all round him, the trample of feet, the bosun's calls: his eyes took in the whole of the operation with a curious detachment – curious, because his heart was beating high.

  The Sophie paid off smoothly. 'Thus, thus,' cried the master at the con, and the helmsman steadied her: as she was coming round before the wind the fore-and-aft mainsail vanished in billowing clouds that quickly subsided into the members of a long sailcloth parcel, greyish, inanimate; and immediately afterwards the square mainsail appeared, ballooning and fluttering for a few seconds and then mastered, disciplined and squared, with its sheets hauled aft. The Sophie shot forward, and by the time Dillon called 'Belay' she had increased her speed by at least two knots, plunging her head and raising her stern as though she were surprised at her rider, as well she might have been. Dillon sent another man to the wheel, in case a fault in the wind should broach her to. The square mainsail was as taut as a drum.