Book 3 - H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  In the agreeable pause that followed, broken only by the steady champ of the midshipman's jaws as he engulfed twenty-seven rashers, they heard the cry pass through the ship. 'D'ye hear there, fore and aft? Clean for muster at five bells. Duck frocks and white trousers. D'ye hear there, clean shirt and a shave at five bells.' They also heard, clear through the thin cabin bulkhead, the metallic voice of Mr Atkins, apparently haranguing his chief, and Mr Stanhope's quiet replies. The envoy was a remote, gentle, grey man, very well-bred, and it was a wonder that he should ever have attached such a bustling fellow to his service; Mr Stanhope had been ill when he came aboard, had suffered abominably from sea-sickness as far as Gibraltar, then again right down to the Canaries; and he relapsed in the heavy swell of the doldrums, when the Surprise, log-like on the heaving sea, often seemed to be about to roll her masts out. This relapse had been accompanied by a fit of the gout which, flying to his stomach, had kept him in his cabin. They had seen very little of the poor gentleman.

  'Tell me, Mr Callow,' said Jack, partly out of a wish not to hear too much and partly to make his guest welcome, 'how is the midshipman's mess coming along? I have not seen your ram this week or more.' The ancient creature palmed off upon the unsuspecting caterer as a hogget had been a familiar sight, stumping slowly about upon the deck.

  'Pretty low, sir,' said Callow, withdrawing his hand from the bread-barge. 'We ate him in seventy north, and now we are down to the hen. But we give her all our bargemen, sir, and she may lay an egg.'

  'You ain't down to millers, then?' said Pullings.

  'Oh yes we are, sir,' cried the midshipman. 'Threepence, they have reached, which is a God-damned—a crying shame.'

  'What are millers?' asked Stephen.

  'Rats, saving your presence,'—said Jack. 'Only we call 'em millers to make 'em eat better; and perhaps because they are dusty, too, from getting into the flour and peas.'

  'My rats will not touch anything but the best biscuit, slightly moistened with melted butter. They are obese; their proud bellies drag the ground.'

  'Rats, Doctor?' cried Pullings. 'Why do you keep rats?'

  'I wish to see how they come along—to watch their motions,' said Stephen. He was in fact conducting an experiment, feeding them with madder to see how long it took to penetrate their bones, but he did not mention this. His was a secretive mind; the area of reticence had grown and grown and now it covered the globular, kitten-sized creatures that dozed through the hot nights and blazing days in his storeroom.

  'Millers,' said Jack, his mind roaming back to his famished youth. 'In the aftermost carline-culver of the larboard berth there is a hole where we used to put a piece of cheese and catch them in a noose as they poked their heads out on their way along the channel to the bread-room. Three or four a night in the middle watch we used to catch, on the Leeward Islands station. Heneage Dundas'—nodding to Stephen—'used to eat the cheese afterwards.'

  'Was you a midshipman in the Surprise, sir?' cried young Callow, amazed, amazed. If he had thought about it at all, he would have supposed that post-captains sprang fully armed from the forehead of the Admiralty.

  'Indeed I was,' said Jack.

  'Good heavens, sir, she must be very, very old. The oldest ship in the fleet, I dare say.'

  'Well,' said Jack, 'she is pretty old, too. We took her early in the last war—she was the French Unité—and she was no chicken then. Could you manage another egg?'

  Callow leapt, jerked almost out of his chair by Pullings's under-table hint, changed his Yes, sir, if you please to No, sir, thank you very much, and stood up.

  'In that case,' said Jack, 'perhaps you will be so good as to desire your messmates to come into the cabin, with their logs.'

  The rest of the morning, until five bells in the forenoon watch, he spent with the midshipmen, then with the bosun, gunner, carpenter and purser, going over their accounts: stores were well enough: plenty of beef, pork, peas and biscuit for six months, but all the cheese and butter had to be condemned—hardened as he was, Jack recoiled from the samples Mr Bowes showed him—and worse, far worse, the water was dangerously short. Some vile jobbery in the cooperage had provided the Surprise with a ground-tier of casks that drank almost as much as the ship's company, and the new-fangled iron tank had silently leaked its heart out. He was still deep in paper when Killick came in, carrying his best uniform coat, and jerked his chin at him.

  'Mr Bowes, we must finish this later,' said Jack. And as he dressed—the good broadcloth seemed three inches thick in this shattering heat—he thought about the water, about his position, so far westward after these weeks of drifting that when they did pick up the south-east trades he might find it difficult to weather Cape St Roque in Brazil. He could see the Surprise exactly on the chart; his repeated lunars agreed closely with the chronometers and with the master's and Mr Hervey's reckonings; and on the chart he could see the coast of Brazil, not much above five hundred miles away. Furthermore, near the line the trades often came from due south. While he was worrying with these problems and his buttons, neckcloth and sword-belt, he felt the ship heel to the wind, heel again, and very gently she began to speak—the sound of live water running along her side. He glanced at the compass overhead. WSW½W. Would it die at once?

  When he came on to the crowded, even hotter deck it was still blowing. She just had steerage-way, as close-hauled as she could be—yards braced up twanging-taut, sails like hoards. His plump, myopic first lieutenant, Mr Hervey, sweating in his uniform, smiled nervously at him, though with more confidence than usual. Surely this was right?

  'Very good, Mr Hervey,' he said. 'This is what we have been whistling for, eh? Long may it last. Perhaps we might keep her a little off—fore and main-sheets—give her a fathom.' Hervey, thank God, was not one of your touchy first lieutenants, needing perpetual management. He had no great opinion of his own seamanship—nor had anyone else—and so long as he was treated kindly he never took offence. Hervey relayed the orders; the Surprise began to slip through the water as though she meant to cut the line diagonally before nightfall; and Jack said, 'I believe we may beat to divisions.'

  The first lieutenant turned to Nicolls, the officer of the watch, and said, 'Beat to divisions.' Nicolls said to the mate of the watch, 'Mr Babbington, beat to divisions,' and Babbington opened his mouth to address the drummer. But before any sound emerged, the Marine, with a set and hieratic expression, woke the thunder in his drum, tantarara-tan, and all the officers hurried off to their places.

  As a warning or advertisement the drumbeat was a failure, there being nothing unexpected about it whatsoever. The ship's company had been lining the quarterdeck, the gangways and the forecastle for some time, standing along the appointed seams in the deck while the midshipmen fussed about them, trying to make them stand upright, keep in order and toe the line, tweaking neckerchiefs, lanyards, hat-ribbons. But the muster was understood by all hands to be a formal ceremony, as formal as a dance, a slow, solemn dance with the captain opening the ball.

  This he did as soon as all the officers had reported to Hervey and Hervey had informed him of the fact. He turned first to the Marines. From their position on the after part of the quarterdeck they had no benefit from the awning, but stood there in rigid pipeclay and scarlet perfection, their muskets and faces blazing in the sun. He returned their officer's salute and walked slowly along the line. His opinion on the set of a leather stock, the amount of powder in their hair, the number and brilliance of their buttons, was of no value; in any case Etherege, their lieutenant, was a competent officer and it would certainly be impossible to fault him. But Jack's role in all this was to be the eye of God, and he carried out his inspection with impersonal gravity. As a man he felt for the Marines broiling there; as a captain he left them to their motionless suffering—the tar was already dripping on the awnings as the sun gathered even greater strength—and with the words 'Very creditable, Mr Etherege,' he turned to the first division of the seamen, the forecastlemen, headed by Mr Nicolls,
the second lieutenant. They were the best seamen in the ship, all rated able; most of them middle-aged, some quite elderly; but none, in all those years at sea, had yet learnt to stand to attention. Their straw hats flew off at his approach and their toes remained fairly near the line, but this was the height of their formality. They smoothed down their hair, hitched up their loose white home-made trousers, looked round, smiled, coughed, gaped about, staring: very unlike the soldiers. A comforting set of forecastlemen, he reflected, as he passed slowly along the silent deck with Mr Hervey, seamen salted to the bone: several bald pates strangely white in the suffused glare under the awning—a striking contrast with their dark brown faces—but all with their remaining hair gathered in a long tail behind, sometimes helped out with tow. Such a mass of sea-going knowledge there: but as he returned Nicolls's parting salute he noticed with a sudden shock that the lieutenant's face was ill-shaved and that the man himself, his linen and his uniform, were dirty. He had scarcely ever seen such a thing before in an officer: nor had he often seen such a look of veiled indifference and weariness.

  On to the foretopmen under Pullings, who greeted him as though they had never met before with a 'Present, properly dressed and clean, sir,' and fell in behind the captain and the first lieutenant. Here was worldliness, here was sinful vanity: all hands were in their best clothes, of course, snowy trousers and frocks with blue open collars; but the younger foretopmen had ribbons sewn into their seams, gorgeous handkerchiefs shawlwise round their necks, curling sidelocks falling low and gold earrings gleaming among them.

  'What is the matter with Kelynach, Mr Pullings?' he asked, stopping.

  'He fell off the topgallant yardarm on Friday, sir.'

  Yes. Jack remembered the fall. A spectacular but a lucky one, a direct plunge on the roll that sent him clear of spars and ropes into the sea, from which he was fished with no trouble of any kind. It could hardly account for this glum look, dull eye, lifelessness. Questions yielded nothing: he was 'quite well, sir: prime.' But Jack had seen that puffed face and sunken eye before; he had seen it too often; and when he came to Babbington's waisters and saw it again in Garland, an 'innocent' whose lifetime at sea had not taught him to wield more than a swab and that badly, a gigantic simpleton who always laughed and simpered whenever he was mustered, he said to Hervey, 'What do you make of this man?'

  The first lieutenant thrust his head forward to focus Garland's face and replied, 'That is Garland, sir: a good fellow, attentive to his duty, but not very bright.'

  No blushing merriment, no sidling, followed this remark; the innocent stood like an ox.

  Jack passed on to the gunners, honest slowbellies for the most part, whom he had found in the usual state of neglect, but whose lives he would make a misery until they learnt to serve their pieces as they ought to serve their God. Young Conroy was the last in the division: a blue-eyed youth as tall as Jack but much slimmer, with an absurdly beautiful mild smooth girl's face; his beauty left Jack totally unmoved (this could not be said for all his shipmates) but the bone ring that fastened his handkerchief did not. On the outward face of the bone, a shark's vertebra, Conroy had worked so perfect a likeness of the Sophie, Jack's first command, that he recognised her at once. Conroy was probably related to someone who had belonged to her: yes, there had been a quartermaster of the same name, a married man who always remitted his pay and prize-money home. Was he sailing with an old shipmate's son? Age, age; dear me. This was no time to speak, and in any case, Conroy, though not dumb, had such a shocking stutter as to make him nearly so. But he would look into the muster-book when he had a moment.

  Now the forecastle, where he was received by the bosun, the carpenter and the gunner, suffering and motionless in their rarely-worn uniforms; and at once the oppressive feeling of great age fell away, for these were the frigate's standing officers, and one of them, Rattray, had been with her from the beginning. He had been bosun of the Surprise when Jack was a master's mate in her, and Jack felt painfully young under his keen, grey, respectful but somewhat cynical eye. He felt that this eye pierced straight through his post-captain's epaulette and did not think much of what it saw below, was not deceived by the pomp. Inwardly Jack agreed, but withdrawing into his role he stiffened as they exchanged the formal courtesies, and passed on with some relief to the master-at-arms and the ship's boys, taking a mean revenge in reflecting once more that Rattray had never been much of a bosun from the point of view of discipline and that now he was past his prime in the article of rigging too. The boys seemed spry enough, though here again there were more spots than was usual or pleasant; and one had a monstrous black mark on the shoulder of his frock. Tar.

  'Master-at-arms,' said Jack, 'what is the meaning of this?'

  'It dropped on him from the rigging, sir, this last minute: which I see it fall.' The boy, a stunted little adenoidal creature with a permanently open mouth, looked perfectly terrified.

  'Well,' said Jack, 'I suppose we may call it an act of God. Do not let it happen again, Peters.' Then seeing at the edge of his official gaze that three of the boys in the back row had worked one another into a hopeless pitch of strangled mirth, mutely writhing, he passed quickly on to the larboard waisters and the after-guard. Here the quality fell off dismally: a stupid, unhandy set of lubbers on the whole, though some of the recent Landsmen might improve. Most of them looked cheerful, good-natured fellows; only three or four right hard bargains from the gaols; but here again he saw more gloomy, lack-lustre faces.

  The ship's company was done: not a bad company at all, and for once he was not undermanned. But poor ailing Simmons, his predecessor, had let discipline grow slack before he died; the months in Portsmouth had done no good; and Hervey was not the man to build up an efficient crew. He was an amiable, conscientious fellow, very good company when he could overcome his diffidence, and a profound mathematician; but he could not see from one end of the ship to the other, and even if he had had the eyes of a lynx, he was no seaman. Still worse, he had no authority. His kindliness and ignorance had played Old Harry with the Surprise; and anyhow it would have called for an exceptional officer to cope with the loss of half the frigate's people, drafted off by the port-admiral, and their replacement by the crew of the Racoon, turned over to the Surprise in a body on returning from a four years' commission on the North American station without being allowed to set foot on shore. The Racoons and the Surprises and the small draft of landsmen still had not mixed; there were still unpleasant jealousies, and the ratings were often absurdly wrong. The captain of the foretop did not know his business, for example; and as for their gunnery . . . But this was not what he was worrying about as he walked into the galley. He had an enchanting ship, frail and elderly though she might be, some good officers, and good material. No: what haunted him was the thought of scurvy. But he might be mistaken; these dull looks might have a hundred other causes; and surely it was too early in the voyage for scurvy to break out?

  The heat in the galley brought him up all standing. It had been gasping hot on deck, even with the blessed breeze: here it was like walking straight into a baker's oven. But the three-legged cook—three-legged because both his own had been shot away on the Glorious First of June, and he had supplemented the two provided by the hospital with a third, ingeniously seized to his bottom, to prevent him from plunging into his cauldrons or his range in a heavy sea. The range was now cherry-pink in the gloom, and the cook's face shone with sweat.

  'Very trim, Johnson. Capital,' said Jack, backing a step.

  'Ain't you going to inspect the coppers, sir?' cried the cook, his brilliant smile vanishing, so that in the comparative darkness his whole face seemed to disappear.

  'Certainly I am,' said Jack, drawing on the ceremonial white glove. With this he ran his hand round the gleaming coppers, gazed at his fingers as though he really expected to find them deeply crusted with old filth and grease. A drop of sweat trembled on the end of his nose and more coursed down inside his coat, but he gazed at the pease-soup, the ov
ens and the two hundredweight of plum-duff, Sunday duff, before making his way to the sick-bay where Dr Maturin and his raw-boned Scotch assistant were waiting for him. Having made the round of the cots (one broken arm, one hernia with pox, four plain poxes) with what he intended to be encouraging remarks—looking better—soon be fit and well—back with their messmates for crossing the line—he stood under the opening of the air-sail, profiting by the relative coolness of 105°, and said privately to Stephen, 'Pray go along the divisions with Mr M'Alister while I am below. Some of the men seem to me to have an ugly look of the scurvy. I hope I am wrong—it is far too early—but it looks damnably like it.'

  Now the berth-deck, with an ill-looking cat that sat defying them with studied insolence, its arms folded, and its particular friend, an equally mangy green parrot, lying on its side, prostrated with the heat, that said 'Erin go bragh' in a low tone once or twice as Jack and Hervey paced along with bowed heads past the spotless mess-tables, kids, benches, chests, the whole clean-swept deck checkered with brilliant light from the gratings and the hatchways. Nothing much wrong here; nor in the midshipmen's berth, nor of course in the gun-room. But in the sail-room, where the bosun joined them again, a very shocking sight—mould on the first stay-sail he turned over, and worse as the others were brought out.

  This was lubber's work, slovenly and extremely dangerous. Poor Hervey wrung his hands, and the bosun, though made of sterner stuff, was quickly reduced to much the same condition. Jack's unfeigned anger, his utter contempt for the excuses offered—'it happens so quick near the line—no fresh water to get the salt out—the salt draws the damp—hard to fold them just so with all these awnings'—made a shattering impression on Rattray.