Clarissa Oakes (13 page)

   Some inner clock told Jack that in a few minutes he would hear two bells in the first dog-watch; and in fact before he had closed his writing-desk there was Mr Bentley the carpenter and his mates breathing at the door, waiting to hurry in with mallets and unship all bulkheads, all doors, to destroy all privacy and make the great cabin indistinguishable from the rest of the upper deck—the famous clean sweep fore and aft in full readiness for battle that had been carried out aboard the
Surprise
almost every day at sea ever since he first had the delight of commanding her. On the necks of the carpenters there breathed Killick, Killick's mate and the far more powerful Padeen, ready to seize all portable property and strike it down below, and at what could only just be called a decent distance behind them the crews of the four twelve-pounders stood on one another's toes, fidgeting to get at their guns.

   Jack put on his coat, walked quickly through them and ran up the companion-ladder. There on the windward or at least the starboard side of the barricade stood Pullings, the officer of the watch, with the drummer close at hand. The quartermaster at the con uttered the Royal Navy's ritual cry of 'Turn the glass and strike the bell' to a wholly imaginary Marine: having done so he turned it himself and hurried forward to the belfry.

   At the second stroke Jack said 'Captain Pullings, beat to quarters.'

   There were the usual repetitions, followed by the usual thundering of the drum, the usual muffled rushing sound of bare feet running fast to their action-stations, the usual report of 'All present and sober, if you please, sir' relayed to the captain, and Jack stood contemplating the silent, attentive deck, the crews grouped in their invariable pattern round their guns, the match-tubs sending up their smoke, the whole fighting-machine ready for instant action.

   Nothing could have been more improbable. The whole towering array of canvas, from courses to skyscrapers, hung limp, sagging in the bunt; the smoke rose straight from the tubs; and both to larboard and to starboard there were unruffled mirror-pools of sea, miles in length and breadth, oddly purple in the declining sun. And nowhere, in the cloudless sky or on the smooth disk of enormous ocean, was there anything that moved, living or dead.

   In the silence Dr Maturin's harsh voice could just be heard telling a very deaf dyspeptic seaman that his disorder was 'the remorse of a guilty stomach', that he must chew every mouthful forty times, and 'abjure that nasty grog'.

   'Well, Captain Pullings,' said Jack at last, 'since tomorrow is a saluting-day we will just rattle them in and out half a dozen times. Then let us take in the flying kites and topgallants and give the rest of the day to the King.'

The King, poor gentleman, had been very fond of the infant Mozart, sitting by him at the pianoforte and turning the pages of his score, and perhaps he would have liked the pieces they played that evening, all as purely Mozartian as love of the great man could make them; for although there were no canonical violin and 'cello duets to be played, a bold mind could transcribe those for violin and viola as well as a variety of songs, the fiddle taking the voice and the 'cello something resembling the accompaniment, while boldness on quite another scale could wander among the operas, stating various passages in unison and then improvising alternately upon the theme. It might not have pleased everybody—it certainly angered Killick—but it gave them the greatest pleasure; and when they laid down their bows after their version of
Sotto i pini
Jack said 'I can think of nothing in its particular way so beautiful or moving. I heard La Salterello and her younger sister sing it when I was a master's mate, just before I passed for lieutenant: Sam Rogers—a drunken whoremaster if ever there was one, God rest his soul—was sitting next to me in the silent house and you could absolutely hear the tears pittering on his knee. Lord, Stephen, joy makes me sleepy. Don't you find joy makes you sleepy?'

   'I do not. You are much given to sleep these days, I find; and sure your tedious anxious careworn endless weeks or even God forbid months in that vile penal colony required a deal of reparation; but you are to consider that sleep and fatness go hand in hand, like
fas
and
nefas
—think of the autumn dormouse, the hibernating hedgepig—and I should be sorry if you were to grow even heavier. Perhaps you should confine yourself to one single dish of toasted cheese before turning in. I smell it coming.'

   'Some other time certainly,' said Jack. 'But tonight is Guy Fawkes' Eve, and must in common decency be celebrated to the full. Anything else would be close to treason, tasting of rank Popery—oh Lord, Stephen, I am laid by the lee again. I am so sorry.'

The extraordinary smoothness of the sea and the consequent immobility of his cot gave the sleeping Captain Aubrey a very strong impression of being at home, an impression so strong and a sleep so profound, his whole body limp and relaxed, that even the double swabbing of the deck and flogging it dry (this being a saluting-day) did not pierce through to his ordinary consciousness. Nor was it easy for Reade to wake him when he came bounding down at six bells to tell him that the ship had been pierced.

   'Captain Pullings' duty, sir, and the ship's side has been pierced below the waterline just abaft of
Wilful Murder
. He thought you might like to know.'

   'Are we making water?'

   'Not exactly, sir. It was a swordfish, and his sword is still plugging the hole.'

   'When you have finished playing off your humours on me, Mr Reade, you may go and tell the Doctor. I suppose the fish was not taken up?'

   'Oh but he was, sir. Awkward Davies flung a harping-iron into him so hard it went right through his head. They are trying to get a bowline round his tail.'

   Awkward Davies was rated able because he had followed Captain Aubrey into ship after ship whatever Jack might do and because the
Surprise
carried no landsman or ordinary seamen, but he possessed no seamanlike ability whatsoever apart from being able to throw the harping-iron with frightful strength, a skill that he had never been able to exercise in any commission for the last ten or twelve years. By the time Jack came on deck the swordfish, slow to acknowledge death, had at last ceased lashing; the bowline had been passed; and a gang from the afterguard, entirely directed by Davies, who would allow nobody, officer or not, to have any part in it, was gently raising the fish from the sea, brilliant in the early sun, its grey dorsal fin hanging down.

   'He is one of the
histiophori
,' said Stephen, standing there in his nightshirt. 'Probably
pulchellus
.'

   'Can he be ate?' asked Pullings.

   'Of course he can be ate. He eats better by far than your common tunny.'

   'Then we shall be able to have our feast at last,' said Pullings. 'I have been growing so shamefaced this last fortnight and more I could hardly meet her eye, a bride and all. Good morning, sir,' he cried, seeing Jack standing at the hances. 'We have caught a fish, as you see.'

   'I caught him, sir,' cried Davies, a big, powerful, swarthy man, usually withdrawn, dark and brooding but now transfigured with joy. 'I caught him. Handsomely there, you goddam swabs. I flung the iron right through his goddam head, ha, ha, ha!'

   'Well done, Davies. Well done upon my word. He must weigh five hundred pounds.'

   'You shall have his tail and belly, sir: you shall blow out your kite with his tail and belly.'

'At least the ship has steerage-way,' said Jack, taking off his shirt and trousers and placing them in the hammock-netting well clear of the trail of shining scales. 'I do so loathe plunging into the accumulated filth of two, no,
three
days and nights. Ain't you coming?'

   'With your leave I shall attend to the anatomy of this noble fish—Mr Martin, how do you do?—before the slightest change sets in.'

   'You can't have the deck above half an hour, Doctor,' said Pullings. 'This is a saluting-day, you know, and everything has to be tolerable neat.'

   'Mr Reade, my dear,' said Stephen, 'may I beg you to run—to jump—downstairs and bid Padeen bring me the large dissecting-case, and then go forward and tell the little girls to bear a hand, to lend a hand; but in their old, dirty pinafores.'

   Their old, dirty pinafores had already been put to soak; new pinafores were out of the question: they came aft naked, as naked as worms, their small black figures exciting no comment, since they were in and out of the water much of the day in this calm weather. They were valuable assistants, with their little neat strong hands, their total lack of squeamishness—they would seize a ligament with their teeth if need be—their ability to hold almost as well with their toes as their fingers, and their eagerness to please. Padeen was useful too in heaving on the very heavy parts, and even more in warding off Davies, the ship's cook, the gun-room cook, the captain's cook, the ship's butcher, and all their respective mates, who were urgent to have their pieces out of the sun and into the relatively cool part of the ship or the salting-tubs; for swordfish was like mackerel in these latitudes, mate, prime before sunset, poor-john the second day, and rank poison the third.

   But with all their dispatch—and the seamen hurried off with their prizes the moment they were released by the anatomists—they were not hasty enough for Pullings. He had already sent the gun-room's compliments to Mr and Mrs Oakes and would be honoured by their presence at dinner, while Jack had accepted even before diving: the first lieutenant therefore had to set everything in train for a feast that would make up for the long delay, and at the same time he had to prepare the ship, dressed all over, for the grave ritual of saluting the Fifth of November. He and the bosun had of course laid aside great quantities of bunting and streamers, but they knew very well that nothing could be sent aloft until everything below was so clean that a maiden could eat her dinner off of it—until all guns and their carriages were spotless, until what little unpainted brass the ship possessed outshone the sun, until a whole catalogue of tasks had been carried out, all of them calling for great activity.

   Early in these strenuous preparations Stephen handed the fishy little girls over the side, and having seen them thoroughly dipped, and having learnt from Jemmy Ducks that their divisional pinafores were ready for the ceremony, he hurried aft, drawn by the scent of coffee, to have breakfast with Jack, who had also invited West and Reade: it was a pleasant meal, yet with so much to be done none of the sailors lingered.

   Stephen followed them on deck, but at the sight of the turmoil he retired to his cabin, and there, having smoked a small paper cigar out of the scuttle, he sat to his desk, reflected for a while and then wrote 'My dearest love, when I was a child and had to have my paper ruled for me I used to begin my letters "I hope you are quite well. I am quite well." There the Muse would often leave me; yet even so, as a beginning it has its merits. I hope you are very well indeed, and as happy as ever can be. Come in,' he cried. Killick opened the door, laid Stephen's best uniform, cocked hat and sword on the table with a significant look, nodded, and walked off. 'When last I sat at this desk,' continued Stephen, 'I was telling you, if I do not mistake, about Mrs Oakes: but I think I never described her. She is a slim, fair-haired young woman, a little less than the average size, with a slight figure, grey-blue eyes, and an indifferent complexion that I hope will be improved by steel and bark. Her chief claim to beauty is an excellent, unstudied carriage, not unlike yours. As for her face—but where faces are concerned, what can description do? All I will say is that hers reminds me of an amiable young cat: no whiskers, no furry ears, to be sure, but something of the same triangularity, poise, and sloping eyes. Its expression, though modest, is open and friendly, indeed markedly friendly, as though she were eager if not for downright affection then at least for general liking. This, or even both, she has certainly acquired; and a curious proof of the fact is that whereas some time ago all hands were intensely eager to know what crimes or misdemeanours had brought her to Botany Bay, she is now no longer troubled with any of the ill-bred hints that she at one time dismissed with a firmness that I admired—I believe that the very curiosity itself has died away, she being accepted as a person belonging to the ship. The question of guilt or reprobation is quite left aside.

   'She is, there is no doubt at all, good company, willing to be pleased, taking an unfeigned interest in naval actions—I was there when West gave her a detailed account of Camperdown and I am sure she followed every stroke—and she never interrupts. She never interrupts! Yet I must insist that there is nothing in the least forward or provocative or inviting about her manner, nothing whatsoever of the flirt; she does not put out for admiration and although some of the officers feel called upon to say gallant things she does not respond in kind—no protestation, no simpering—a civil smile is all. Indeed I should say that she is in general much less aware of her sex than those she is with; and this I say with the more confidence since I have sat with her for hours, right through the afternoon watch for example, when her husband was on duty and I was looking out for Latham's albatross, or on occasion through much of the night, when it is close below and fresh on deck. We have few things in common: she knows little about birds, beasts or flowers, little about music; and although she has read a certain amount no one could call her a
bas bleu
; yet we talk away in a most companionable manner. And through all our conversations by day or by night, I might have been talking to a modest, agreeable, quite intelligent young man; though few young men I know are more conciliating, more willing to be liked—and none more capable of resisting intrusion on his privacy. Without being in the slightest degree what is called mannish, she is as comfortable a companion as a man. You may say that this is because I am no Adonis, which is very true. But unless I mistake it is the same with Jack, on those rare occasions when he comes to exchange the time of day; the same with Davidge, a more constant attendant; and both are reckoned tolerably good-looking men. Tom Pullings and West, whose nose mortified on the outward voyage, are even less lovely than I am: they are treated with the same friendliness. So is one-eyed Martin, though he, poor fellow, is not always discreet, and has sometimes seen the cold side of the moon, the Medea I spoke of long ago.