Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

'Is that a more convenient place to learn it?' said Stephen.

  'Well, it is easier for them to teach you deference,' said Jack, smiling, 'for they can seize you to a grating at the gangway and flog the liver and lights out of you with the cat. It means disrating a midshipman – degrading him, so that he is no longer what we call a young gentleman but a common sailor. He becomes a common sailor; he berths and messes with them; and he can be knocked about by anyone with a cane or a starter in his hand, as well as being flogged. I never thought he would really do it, although he had threatened me with it often enough; for he was a friend of my father's and I thought he had a kindness for me -which indeed he did. But, however, he carried it out, and there I was, turned before the mast: and he kept me there six months before rating me midshipman again. I was grateful to him in the end, because I came to understand the lower deck through and through – they were wonderfully kind to me, on the whole. But at the time I bawled like a calf – wept like any girl, ha, ha, ha.'

  'What made him take so decided a step?'

  'Oh, it was over a girl, a likely black girl called Sally,' said Jack. 'She came off in a bum-boat and I hid her in the cable-tier. But Captain Douglas and I had disagreed about a good many other things – obedience, mostly, and getting out of bed in the morning, and respect for the schoolmaster (we had a schoolmaster aboard, a drunken sot named Pitt) and a dish of tripe. Then the second time Lord Keith saw me was when I was fifth of the Hannibal and our first lieutenant was that damned fool Carrol – if there's one thing I hate more than being on shore it's being under the orders of a damned fool that is no seaman. He was so offensive, so designedly offensive, over a trivial little point of discipline that I was obliged to ask him whether he would like to meet me elsewhere. That was exactly what he wanted: he ran to the captain and said I had called him out. Captain Newman said it was nonsense, but I must apologize. But I could not do that, for there was nothing to apologize about – I was in the right, you see. So there I was, hauled up in front of half a dozen post-captains and two admirals: Lord Keith was one of the admirals.'

  'What happened?'

  'Petulance – I was officially reprimanded for petulance. Then the third time – but I will not go into details,' said Jack. 'It is a very curious thing, you know,' he went on, gazing out of the stern window with a look of mild, ingenuous wonder, 'a prodigious curious thing, but there cannot be many men who are both damned fools and no seamen, who reach post rank in the Royal Navy – men with no interest, I mean, of course – and yet it so happens that I have served under no less than two of them. I really thought I was dished that time – career finished, cut down, alas poor Borwick. I spent eight months on shore, as melancholy as that chap in the play, going up to town whenever I could afford it, which was not often, and hanging about that damned waiting-room in the Admiralty. I really thought I should never get to sea again – a half-pay lieutenant for the rest of my life. If it had. not been for my fiddle, and fox-hunting when I could get a horse, I think I should have hanged myself. That Christmas was the last time I saw Queeney, I believe, apart from just once in London.'

  'Is she an aunt, a cousin?'

  'No, no. No connexion at all. But we were almost brought up together – or rather, she almost brought me up. I always remember her as a great girl, not a child at all, though to be sure there can't be ten years between uS. Such a dear, kind creature. They had Damplow, the next house to ours – they were almost in our park – and after my mother died I dare say I spent as much time there as I did at home. More,' he said reflectively, gazing up at the tell-tale compass overhead. 'You know Dr Johnson – Dictionary Johnson?'

  'Certainly,' cried Stephen, looking strange. 'The most respectable, the most amiable of the moderns. I disagree with all he says, except when he speaks of Ireland, yet I honour him; and for his life of Savage I love him. What is more, he occupied the most vivid dream I ever had in my life, not a week ago. How strange that you should mention him today.'

  'Yes, ain't it? He was a great friend of theirs, until their mother ran off and married an Italian, a Papist. Queeney was wonderfully upset at having a Papist to her father-in-law, as you may imagine. Not that she ever saw him, however. "Anything but a Papist," says she. "I should rather have had Black Frank a thousand times, I declare." So we burnt thirteen guys in a row that year – it must have been '83 or '84 – not long after the Battle of the Saints. After that they settled at Damplow more or less for good -the girls, I mean, and their old she-cousin. Dear Queeney. I believe I spoke of her before, did I not? She taught me mathematics.'

  'I believe you did: a Hebrew scholar, if I do not mistake?'

  'Exactly so. Conic sections and the Pentateuch came as easy as kiss my hand to her. Dear Queeney. I thought she was to be an old maid, though she was so pretty; for how could any man make up to a girl that knows Hebrew? It seemed a sad pity: anyone so sweet-tempered should have a prodigious great family of children. But, however, here she is married to the admiral, so it all ends happy… yet, you know, he is amazingly ancient – grey-haired, rising sixty, I dare say. Do you think, as a physician – I mean, is it possible… ?'

  'Possibilissima.'

  'Possibile и la cosa, e naturale,' sang Stephen in a harsh, creaking tone, quite unlike his speaking voice, which was not disagreeable. 'E se Susanna vuol, possibilissima,' discordantly, but near enough to Figaro to be recognized.

  'Really? Really?' said Jack with intense interest. Then after a pause for reflexion, 'We might try that as a duetto, improvising… She joined him at Leghorn. And there I was, thinking it was my own merit, recognized at last, and honourable wounds' – laughing heartily – 'that had won me my promotion. Whereas I make no doubt it was all dear Queeney, do you see? But I have not told you the best – and this I certainly owe to her. We are to have a six weeks' cruise down the French and Spanish coasts, as far as Cape Nao!'

  'Aye? Will that be good?'

  'Yes, yes! Very good. No more convoy duty, you understand. No more being tied to a lubberly parcel of sneaking rogues, merchants creeping up and down the sea. The French and the Spaniards, their trade, their harbours, their supplies – these are to be our objects. Lord Keith was very earnest about the great importance of destroying their commerce. He was very particular about it indeed – as important as your great fleet actions, says he; and so very much more profitable. The admiral took me aside and dwelt upon it at length – he is a most acute, far-sighted commander; not a Nelson, of course, but quite out of the ordinary. I am glad Queeney has him. And we are under no one's orders, which is so delightful. No bald-pated pantaloon to say "Jack Aubrey, you proceed to Leghorn with these hogs for the fleet", making it quite impossible even to hope for a prize. Prize-money,' he cried, smiling and slapping his thigh; and the marine sentry outside the door, who had been listening intently, wagged his head and smiled too.

  'Are you very much attached to money?' asked Stephen.

  'I love it passionately,' said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. 'I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.'

  'That's right,' said the marine.

  'My dear old father was always poor too,' went on Jack. 'But as open-handed as a summer's day. He gave me fifty pounds a year allowance when I was a midshipman, which was uncommon handsome, in those days… or would have been, had he ever managed to persuade Mr Hoare to pay it, after the first quarter. Lord, how I suffered in the old Reso – mess bills, laundry, growing out of my uniforms… of course I love money. But I think we should be getting under way – there's two bells striking.'

  Jack and Stephen were to be the gun-room's guests, to taste the sucking-pig bought at Leghorn. James Dillon was there to bid them welcome, together with the master, the purser and Mowett, as they plunged into the gloom: the gun-room had no stern-windows, no sash-ports, and only a scrap of skylight right forward, for although the peculiarity of the Sophie's construction made for a very comfortable captain's cabin (luxurious, indeed, if only the captain's legs had been sawn off a little above t
he knee), unencumbered with the usual guns, it meant that the gun-room lay on a lower level than the spar-deck and reposed, upon a kind of shelf, not unlike an orlop.

  Dinner was rather a stiff, formal entertainment to begin with, although it was lit by a splendid Byzantine silver hanging lamp, taken by Dillon out of a Turkish galley, and although it was lubricated by uncommonly good wine, for Dillon was well-to-do, even wealthy, by naval standards. Everyone was unnaturally well behaved: Jack was to give the tone, as he knew very well – it was expected of him, and it was his privilege. But this kind of deference, this attentive listening to every remark of his, required the words he uttered to be worth the attention they excited – a wearing state of affairs for a man accustomed to ordinary human conversation, with its perpetual interruption, contradiction and plain disregard. Here everything he said was right; and presently his spirits began to sink under the burden. Marshall and Purser Ricketts sat mum, saying please and thank you, eating with dreadful precision; young Mowett (a fellow guest) was altogether silent, of course; Dillon worked away at the small talk; but Stephen Maturin was sunk deep in a reverie.

  It was the pig that saved this melancholy feast. Impelled by a trip on the part of the steward that coincided with a sudden lurch on the part of the Sophie, it left its dish at the door of the gun-room and shot into Mowett's lap. In the subsequent roaring and hullaballoo everyone grew human again, remaining natural long enough for Jack to reach the point he had been looking forward to since the beginning of dinner.

  'Well, gentlemen,' he said, after they had drunk the King's health, 'I have news that will please you, I believe; though I must ask Mr Dillon's indulgence for speaking of a service matter at this table. The a4miral gives us a cruise on our own down to Cape Nao. And I have prevailed upon Dr Maturin to stay aboard, to sew us up when the violence of the King's enemies happens to tear us apart.'

  'Huzzay – well done – hear, hear – topping news – good – hear him,' they cried, all more or less together, and they looked so pleased – there was so much candid friendliness on their faces that Stephen wд intensely moved.

  'Lord Keith was delighted when I told him,' Jack went on. 'Said he envied us extremely – had no physician in the flag-ship – was amazed when I told him of the gunner's brains – cabled for his spy-glass to book at Mr Day taking the sun on deck – and wrote out the Doctor's order in his own hand, which is something I have never heard of in the service before.'

  Nor had anyone there present – the order had to be wetted – three bottles of port, there Killick – bumpers all round – and while Stephen sat looking modestly down at the table, they all stood up, crouching their heads under the beams, and sang,

  'Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay, Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay, -Hussay, huzzay, huzzay, Huzzay.'

  'There is only one thing I do not care for, however,' he said as the order was passed reverently round the table, 'and that is this foolish insistence upon the word surgeon. "Do hereby appoint you surgeon… take upon you the employment of surgeon… together with such allowance for wages and victuals for yourself as is usual for the surgeon of the said sloop." It is a false description; and a false description is anathema to the philosophic mind.'

  'I am sure it is anathema to the philosophic mind,' said James Dillon. 'But the naval mind fairly revels in it, so it does. Take that word sloop, for example.'

  'Yes,' said Stephen, narrowing his eyes through the haze of port and trying to remember the definitions he had heard.

  'Why, now, a sloop, as you know, is properly a one-masted vessel, with a fore-and-aft rig. But in the Navy a sloop may be ship-rigged – she may have three masts.'

  'Or take the Sophie,' cried the master, anxious to bring his crumb of comfort. 'She's rightly a brig, you know, Doctor, with her two masts.' He held up two fingers, in case a landman might not fully comprehend so great a number.

  'But the minute Captain Aubrey sets foot in her, why, she too becomes a sloop; for a brig is a lieutenant's command.'

  'Or take me,' said Jack. 'I am called captain, but really I am only a master and commander.'

  'Or the place where the men sleep, just for'ard,' said the purser, pointing. 'Rightly speaking, and official, 'tis the gun-deck, though there's never a gun on it. We call it the spar-deck – though there's no spars, neither – but some say the gun-deck still, and call the right gun-deck the upper-deck. Or take this brig, which is no true brig at all, not with her square mainsail, but rather a sorts of snow, or a hermaphrodite.'

  'No, no, my dear sir,' said James Dillon, 'never let a mere word grieve your heart. We have nominal captain's servants who are, in fact, midshipmen; we have nominal able seamen on our books who are scarcely breeched – they are a thousand miles away and still at school; we swear we have not shifted any backstays, when we shift them continually; and we take many other oaths that nobody believes -no, no, you may call yourself what you please, so long as you do your duty. The Navy speaks in symbols, and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words.'

  Chapter Five

  The fair copy of the Sophie's log was written out in David Richards' unusually beautiful copperplate, but in all other respects it was just like every other bog-book in the service. Its tone of semi-literate, official, righteous dullness never varied; it spoke of the opening of beef-cask no. 271 and the death of the loblolly-boy in exactly the same voice, and it never deviated into human prose even for the taking of the sloop's first prize.

  Thursday,June 28, winds variable, SE,by S, course S5OW, distance 63 miles. – Latitude 42°32'N, longitude 4°17'E, Cape Creus S76°W 12 leagues. Moderate breezes and cloudy PM. at 7 in first reef topsails. AM d° weather. Exercising the great guns. The people employed occasionally.

  Friday, June 29, S and Eastward… Light airs and clear weather. Exercising the great guns. PM employed worming the cable. AM moderate breezes and clouds, in third reef maintopsail, bent another foretopsail and close reefed it, hard gales at 4 handed the square mainsail at 8 more moderate reefed the square mainsail and set it. At noon calm. Departed this life Henry Gouges, loblolly-boy. Exercising the great guns.

  Saturday, June 30, light airs inclinable to calm. Exercised the great guns. Punished Jno. Shannahan and Thos. Yates with 12 lashes for drunkenness. Killed a bullock weight 530 lb. Remains of water 3 tons.

  Sunday, July 1. Mustered the ship's company by divisions read the Articles of War performed Divine Service and committed the body of Henry Gouges to the deep. At noon d° weather.

  Ditto weather: but the sun sank towards a livid, purple, tumescent cloud-bank piled deep on the western horizon, and it was clear to every seaman aboard that it was not going to remain ditto much longer. The seamen, sprawling abroad on the fo'c'sle and combing out their long hair or plaiting it up again for one another, kindly explained to the bandmen that this long swell from the south and east, this strange sticky heat that came both from the sky and the glassy surface of the heaving sea, and this horribly threatening appearance of the sun, meant that there was to be a coming dissolution of all natural bonds, an apocalyptic upheaval, a right dirty night ahead. The sailormen had plenty of time to depress their hearers, already low in their spirits because of the unnatural death of Henry Gouges (had said, 'Ha, ha, mates, I am fifty years old this day. Oh dear,' and had died sitting there, still holding his untasted grog) – they had plenty of time, for this was Sunday afternoon, when in the course of nature the fo'c'sle was covered with sailors at their ease, their pigtails undone. Some of the more gifted had queues they could tuck into their belts; and now that these ornaments were loosened and combed out, lank when still wet, or bushy when dry and as yet ungreased, they gave their owners a strangely awful and foreboding look, like oracles; which added to the landmen's uneasiness.

  The seamen laid it on; but with all their efforts they could scarcely exaggerate the event, for the south-easterly gale increased from its first warning blasts at the end of the last dog-watch to a great roaring current of air by the end of the middle watch, a torrent so laden
with warm rain that the men at the wheel had to hold their heads down and cup their mouths sideways to breathe. The seas mounted higher and higher: they were not the height of the great Atlantic rollers, but they were steeper, and in a way more wicked; their heads tore off streaming in front of them so as to race through the Sophie's tops, and they were tall enough to becalm her as she lay there a-try, riding it out under a storm staysail. This was something she could do superbly well: she might not be very fast; she might not look very dangerous or high-bred; but with her topgallantmasts struck down on deck, her guns double-breeched and her hatches battened down, leaving only a little screened way to the after-ladder, and with a hundred miles of sea-room under her lee, she lay to as snug and unconcerned as an eider-duck. She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and travelled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between – a natural anemometer – and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon. With the greatest pleasure he saw that his forecast of her qualities as a sea-boat was fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed, 'She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.

  'She – is – remarkably – dry.'

  Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling. -

  But the rising sun swallowed up the wind, and by half-past seven the next morning all that was left of the storm was the swell and a line of clouds low over the distant Gulf of Lions in the north-west; the sky was of an unbelievable purity and the air was washed so clean that Stephen could see the colour Of the petrel's dangling feet as it pattered across the Sophie's wake some twenty yards behind. 'I remember the fact of extreme, prostrating terror,' he said, keeping his eye on the tiny bird, 'but the inward nature of the emotion now escapes me.'