‘Do you hear, Stephen?’ said Jack. ‘There is a gibbon aboard, that is not well.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Stephen, returning to the present. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting her this morning, walking hand in hand with the very young gentleman: it was impossible to tell which was supporting which. A fetching, attractive creature, in spite of its deplorable state. I look forward eagerly to dissecting it. Monsieur de Buffon hints that the naked callosities on the buttocks of the hylobates may conceal scent glands, but he does not go so far as to assert it.’
A chill fell on the conversation, and after a slight pause Jack said, ‘I think, my dear fellow, that the ship’s company would be infinitely more obliged to you, was you to cure it, than for putting Monsieur de Buffon right - for putting Cassandra in order, rather than a Frenchman, eh, eh?’
‘Yet it is the ship’s company that is killing her. That ape is a confirmed alcoholic; and from what little I know of your foremast jack, no earthly consideration will prevent him from giving rum to anything he loves. Our monk-?seal in the Mediterranean, for example: it drowned in a state of besotted inebriation, with a fixed smile upon its face; and
when fished up and dissected, its kidneys and liver were found to be ruined, very much like those of Mr Blanckley of the Carcass bomb-?ketch, an unpromoted master’s mate of sixty-?three whom I had the pleasure of opening at Port Mahon, a gentleman who had not been sober for five and thirty years. I met this gibbon a little after the serving out of the grog - it had plunged from an upper pinnacle at the first notes of Nancy Dawson - and the animal was hopelessly fuddled. It was conscious of its state, endeavoured to conceal it, and put its black hand in mine with an embarrassed air. Who is that very young gentleman, by the way?’
He was Josiah Randall, they told him, the son of the second lieutenant, who had come home to find his wife dead, and this child unprovided for - no near family at all. ‘So he brought him aboard,’ said Mr Dashwood, ‘and the Captain rated him bosun’s servant.’
‘How very, very painful,’ said Jack. ‘I hope we have some action soon; there is nothing like it for changing the current of a man’s mind. A French frigate, or a Spaniard, if they come in; there is nothing like your Spaniard for dogged fighting.’
‘I dare say you have seen a great deal of action, sir?’ said the parson, nodding towards Jack’s bandage.
‘Not more than most, sir,’ said Jack. ‘Many officers have been far more fortunate.’
‘Pray what would you consider a reasonable number of actions?’ asked the parson. ‘I was astonished, on joining the ship, to find that none of the gentlemen could tell me what a pitched battle was like.’
‘It is so much a question of luck, or perhaps I should say of Providence,’ said Jack, with a bow to the cloth. ‘Where one is stationed, and so on. After all,’ he said, pausing, for on the verge of his mind there was a witticism, if he could but grasp it. ‘After all, it takes two to make a quarrel, and if the French don’t come out, why, you cannot very well have a battle all by yourself. Indeed, there is so much routine work, blockading and convoy-?duty and carrying troops, you know, that I dare say half the lieutenants of the Navy List have never seen action at all, in the sense of a meeting of ships of equal force, or of fleets. More than half, perhaps.’
‘I never have, I am sure,’ said Dashwood.
‘I saw an action when I was in the Culloden in ninety-?eight,’ said Simmons. ‘A very great action; but we ran aground, and never could come up. It nearly broke our hearts.’
‘It must have been a sad trial,’ said Jack. ‘I remember how you carried out warps, pulling like heroes.’
‘You were at the Nile, sir?’
‘Yes, yes. I was in the Leander. I remember coming on deck just as the Mutine rounded to under your stem, to try to heave you off.’
‘So you were in a great battle, Captain Aubrey,’ said the chaplain eagerly. ‘Pray, can you tell me what it was like? Can you give me some impression of it?’
‘Why, sir, I doubt that I could, really, any more than I could give you much impression of let us say a symphony or a splendid dinner. There is a great deal of noise, more noise than you would believe possible; and time does not seem to have the same meaning, if you follow me; and you get very tired. And afterwards you have to clear up the mess.’
‘Ah, that’ is what I wanted to know. And is the din so very great?’
‘It is enormous. At the Nile, for example, we had the L’Orient blow up near us, and we all conversed in shouts for ten days after. But St Vincent was noisier. In what we call the slaughter-?house, where I was stationed at St Vincent - that is the part of the gun-?deck in the middle of the ship, sir - you have sixteen thirty-?two pounders in a row, all roaring away as fast as they can load and fire, recoiling and jumping up with a great crash when they are hot, and running out again to fire; and then just overhead you have another row of guns thundering on the deck above. And then the smashing blow as the enemy’s shot hits you, and maybe the crash of falling spars above, and the screams of the wounded. And all this in such a smoke you can hardly see or breathe, and the men cheering like mad, and sweating and gulping down water when there is a second’s pause. At St Vincent we fought both sides, which doubled the row. No: that is what you remember - the huge noise everywhere, the flashes in the darkness. And,’ he added, ‘the importance of gunnery - speed and accuracy and discipline. We were firing a broadside every two minutes, and they took three and a half or four - that’s what wins the day.’
‘So you were at St Vincent too,’ said the parson. ‘And at what other actions, if I am not too indiscreet - I mean, apart from this last most daring capture, of which we have all read?’
‘Only small affairs - skirmishing in the Mediterranean and the West Indies in the last war - that kind of thing,’ said Jack.
‘There was the Cacafuego, sir, I believe,’ said Mr Simmons, with a smile.
‘It must have been wonderful, when you were young, sir,’ said the midshipman, sick with envy. ‘Nothing ever happens now.’
‘I am sure you will forgive me if I seem personal,’ said the chaplain, ‘but I should like to form an image of the officer who has seen, as you say, a moderate amount of fighting. In addition to your fleet actions, about how many others have you taken part in?’
‘Why, upon my word, I forget,’ said Jack, feeling that the others had an unfair advantage of him, and feeling too that parsons were out of place in a man-?of-?war. He signalled to Killick for fresh decanter and the roast; and as he set to carving the flow of his mind changed as thoroughly as if an eighteen-?pound shot had hulled the frigate. He felt a rising oppression in his bosom and choked, standing bowed there, carving the venison. The first
