The Ionian Mission (37 page)

('I happened to have the watch, sir,' he said in an aside to Jack.)

'Remember Sire, said this self same third,

With due submission, pray let me be heard,

Your own experiences of its baleful effects

As often tried and as often made wrecks.

'Guns lying together on the sand equal to rocks annoy

The bottom of the bark, they may soon destroy;

And now it's blowing a gale of wind, what hopes

Impossible to save our lives could we get out the boats.

'Stand fast, the bold commander said, 'Tis true

The wind has shifted for us. Set topsails anew

Square sails set and braced all aback. See hence

The wonderful care of Almighty's Providence.'

In spite of the rules there was a distinct murmur of approval at the ship's coming off, for it was clearly understood from Rowan's expression, and indeed from his presence among them, that the
Courageux
had come off; but there was an even more distinct expression of scepticism about the third lieutenant's words to his captain, Wilkinson being a testy gentleman: Rowan felt this, and observed, 'The piece about Noble Chieftan is poetic, you understand.'

   'I never thought you would bring her off in time,' said Pullings. 'There were not above three grains of sand left. Next.'

   Mowett took a draught of port, turned a little pale, and said, 'My piece is a fragment too, part of something in the epical line in three cantos about people sailing in these waters or to be more exact somewhat more easterly, off Cape Spado. They run into dirty weather, furl topsails, send down topgallant yards, and then reef courses; and this is a description of the manoeuvre. But it is preceded by a simile that I rather flatter myself—by a simile that would fall into place better if I went back to
Now to the north, from Afric's burning shore, A troop of porpoises their course explore
but I doubt I could get all that in and it may seem a little strange without but anyhow here goes.' He nodded to Pullings to turn the glass, and with his eyes fixed on the falling sand he began in a hollow moaning voice,

'Tossed on the tide she feels the tempest blow

And dreads the vengeance of so fell a foe

As the proud horse, with costly trappings gay,

Exulting, prances to the bloody fray,

Spurning the ground, he glories in his might,

But reels tumultuous in the shock of fight;

Even so, caparisoned in gaudy pride,

The bounding vessel dances on the tide.'

He looked quickly round for some reaction to his simile: he saw nothing but deep, universal stupidity, but this may only have been the reserve called for by the rules. In any case he hurried on to ground where everybody would-be more at home:

'Fierce and more fierce the southern demon blew,

And more incensed the roaring waters grew.

The ship no longer can her topsails spread,

And every hope of fairer skies is fled.

Bowlines and halyards are relaxed again,

Clewlines hauled down, and sheets let fly amain;

Clewed up each topsail, and by braces squared,

The seamen climb aloft on either yard.

They furled the sails, and pointed to the wind

The yard by rolling tackles then confined.

While o'er the ship the gallant boatswain flies,

Like a hoarse mastiff through the storm he cries:

Prompt to direct th'unskilful still appears;

Th'expert he praises, and the fearful cheers.

Now some to strike topgallant yards attend:

Some travellers up the weather-backstays send;

At each masthead the top-ropes others bend.

The youngest sailors from the yards above

Their parrels, lifts, and braces soon remove:

Then topped an-end, and to the travellers tied,

Charged with their sails, they down the backstays slide.

Their sails reduced, and all the rigging clear,

Awhile the crew relax from toils severe.

But then it gets worse,' said Mowett, 'and the sun goes down—I skip the sunset, such a shame—I skip the moon and stars—

'The ship no longer can her courses bear;

To reef the courses is the master's care:

The sailors, summoned aft, a daring band!

Attend th'enfolding brails at his command.

But he who strives the tempest to disarm

Will never first embrail the lee yardarm.

So to windward, and obedient to command,

To raise the tack, the ready sailors stand.

The sheet and weather-brace they then stand by,

The lee clew-garnet and the buntlines ply.

Thus all prepared—Let go the sheet! he cries.

Impetuous—'

'Time,' cried Pullings.

   'Oh, Tom,' said Mowett, sinking in his chair, his afflatus gone.

   'I am sorry, old fellow,' said Pullings, 'but fair's fair, you know, and the Royal Marines must have their whack.'

   Mr Driver, always pink, was now the colour of his uniform coat; but whether this was port, or confusion, or the heat, could not yet be determined. He gave the gun-room to understand that his poem was not a fragment; oh no, not a piece of anything larger, if they understood him, but a whole, complete in itself, as he might say. By listening attentively they gathered that it was a cove thinking of getting married—advice to this cove from a knowing friend, a deep old file that had seen a thing or two in his time—but Mr Driver chuckled so extremely and spoke in so low and bumbling a voice, hanging his head, that they missed almost everything until

'Her person amiable, straight, and free

From natural or chance deformity.

Let not her years exceed, if equal thine;

For women past their vigour soon decline:

Her fortune competent; and, if thy sight

Can reach so far, take care 'tis gathered right.

If thine's enough, then hers may be the less:

Do not aspire to riches in excess.

For that which makes our lives delightful prove,

Is a genteel sufficiency and love.'

'Very good,' cried the purser as he wrote on his voting paper. 'Tell me, sir, what would you reckon a genteel sufficiency; supposing, I mean, a man only had his pay?'

   Mr Driver laughed and wheezed and at last brought out 'Two hundred a year in the Funds, at her own disposal.'

   'No remarks, gentlemen, if you please,' said Pullings, shaking his head at Professor Graham, who was obviously about to speak. 'No remarks before the voting.' He passed round the ballot-box, a sextant-case on this occasion, set it down filled in front of Jack, and said to Graham, 'I cut you short, sir: I beg your pardon.'

   'I was only going to observe that Captain Driver's poem reminded me of Pomfret's
To his Friend Inclined to Marry
.'

   'But it
is
Pomfret's
To his Friend
,' said Driver, surprised: and amidst the general outcry he could be heard to say, 'My guardian made me get it by rote.'

   Battered on all sides, he appealed to Jack: 'How could a man have been expected to guess that it was to be original poetry?
Original
poetry, for God's sake! He had supposed it was to be a prize for elegant delivery.'

   'Had it been a prize for elegant delivery,' said Jack, 'I dare say Mr Driver would have borne the bell away; but as things are he must be scratched and given back his stake; and the ballots in his favour do not count. As for the remaining competitors,' he said, examining the votes, 'I find that Mr Rowan carries the day as far as poetry in the classical manner is concerned, whereas Mr Mowett wins for poetry in the modern style. The prize is therefore divided into two equal halves or moieties. And I think I do not misinterpret the company's sentiments when I urge both gentlemen to enter into contact with some respectable bookseller with a view to the publication of their works, both for the gratification of their friends and for the benefit of the service.'

   'Hear him, hear him,' cried the rest of the gun-room, beating on the table.

   'Murray is the man,' said Graham, with a significant look. 'John Murray of Albemarle Street. He has an excellent reputation; and I may observe for the credit of the booksellers that his father, who founded the shop, was the son, the legitimate son, of a lieutenant in the Marines.'

   Mr Driver did not seem at all pleased. He said that if a cove had a son with no talent of any kind and no presence or personal beauty then the cove was quite justified in putting him to a shop: the family was not obliged to take notice of him after he grew up, unless he made himself an estate or at least a more than usually genteel competence. And anyhow a bookseller was not a common shopkeeper: many that Driver knew could read and write, and some spoke quite pretty.

   'Just so,' said Graham, 'and this Mr Murray is a particularly well-conducted example; furthermore, he is comparatively free from the sordid parsimony that has brought the Trade, as it is emphatically called, so unenviable a reputation. I am told that he gave five hundred pounds, Five Hundred Pounds, gentlemen, for the first part of Lord Byron's
Childe Harold
.'

   'Heavens,' said Stephen, 'What would the adult Harold have fetched entire?'

   'Childe is an archaic term for a young man of good family,' said Graham.

   'I should not expect so much,' said Rowan, 'not being a lord; but I should like to see my piece in print.'

In the evening, when the frigate was sailing very slowly into a mist that rose from the warm surface of the sea, a mist deeply tinged with rose from the setting sun, Jack said, 'I cannot tell you how happy I am to be in the dear
Surprise
again.'

   'So I see,' said Stephen, 'and I give you joy of it.' He spoke a little shortly: the end of his 'cello bow had just come to pieces in his hand, and irritation was boiling up within. In Malta he had lain ashore, and Maltese bedbugs, fleas and mosquitoes had bitten him extremely, so that even now he itched from head to foot, and felt far hotter than he found agreeable. He was not positively malignant however, and he considered his friend attentively. Had Jack made some amorous conquest in Valetta, or rather (Jack being less enterprising than Babbington) had some odious wench led him by guile, by gentle force, to a pagan altar, persuading him that it was he the conquering hero? No, the look was not quite right for that: it had nothing of male self-complacency. Yet it was some heathen state of grace, he was sure; and when Jack, tucking his fiddle under his chin, struck out a strange leaping phrase and then began to improvise upon it he was surer still.

   What with his self-taught technique and various wounds Jack could never be a very good player, but this evening he was making his fiddle sing so that it was a joy to hear. It was a wild, irregular song, expressing glee rather than any respect for rules, but a glee that was very, very far from being puerile; and contemplating Jack as he played away there by the stern-window Stephen wondered that a sixteen-stone post-captain, a scarred and battered gentleman with an incipient dewlap, could skip with such subtle grace, could possess such gaiety, could conceive such surprisingly witty and original concepts, and could express them so well. The dinner-table Jack Aubrey, delighted with a pun, was a different being: yet the two lived in the same skin together.

   The 'cello bow was mended; the violin improvisation ended with an elfin shriek trilling up almost beyond the limit of human hearing; and they set to their old well-paced Scarlatti in C major, playing on into the middle watch.

   'Will William Babbington have remembered my mastic, I ask myself?' said Stephen as they parted. 'He is a worthy young man, but the sight of a smock drives all other considerations from his mind; and Argostoli is renowned not only for mastic but also for handsome women.'

   'I am sure he will have remembered it,' said Jack, 'but I doubt we meet him in the morning. Even we are making barely two knots, and that poor misbegotten rig, that Dutch tub of a
Dryad
is no use in light airs. Besides, if this mist don't clear tomorrow we may be becalmed altogether.'

   Stephen had the utmost faith in Jack as a weather-prophet, a mariner and a sea-pope; but it so happened that his bites and the lack of air (the
Worcester's
luxurious twenty square feet had made him forget the dank unventilated crib under the
Surprise's
waterline) prevented him from sleeping—he was on deck at first dawn, when the pale mists were thinning and the handpumps wheezing up the water of the ritual scouring; and when the lookout called 'Sail ho! Sail on the larboard bow,' he looked in the right direction, saw the sail in question looming vaguely, but not so vaguely that he could not tell she was a brig, and said 'Fallible, fallible, Jack Aubrey. I shall have my mastic after all.' With this he walked forward, scratching himself; he picked his way among the sand and water sprinklers and passed the mate of the watch, who, perched on a carronade with his trousers rolled against the wet, was staring at the ghostly brig. Stephen said, 'There is Mr Babbington; perhaps he will come to breakfast,' but the youth, still staring, only answered with a vacant laugh. Stephen walked on as far as the starboard forechains, took off his nightcap and nightshirt, stuffed them under the dead-eyes, scratched himself industriously for a while, crept out on to the projecting shelf, and holding his nose with his left hand, crossing himself with his right, dropped with tightly-shut eyes into the sea, the infinitely refreshing sea.

   He was not a powerful swimmer; indeed by ordinary standards he could hardly be called a swimmer at all, but with infinite pains Jack had taught him to keep afloat and beat his way through the water as far as fifty and even sixty yards at a time. His journey along the ship's side from the forechains to the boat towing astern was therefore well within his powers, particularly as the ship herself was in gentle forward motion, which made his relative progress towards the boat so much the faster.