His waxy, tormented face had such a glow of pleasure that Jack could not find it in his heart to fulfil his promise to the gun-?room. They might caulk their bulkheads, keyholes, skylights, drink tea or coffee, shroud themselves in mosquito netting for a day or so - what was a little discomfort, on active service? He said, ‘I have a treat for you today, Stephen - a pretty young woman for dinner ! Dashwood’s sister came aboard this morning, a very fine young woman indeed. A pleasure to look at, and very well behaved - went straight below and has never been seen since.’
‘Alas, I must beg to be excused. I am only waiting for my opiates to have their effect, and then I shall operate. Mr Floris is waiting for me, and his mates are sharpening the bistouries at this very moment. I should have preferred to wait until we reached Haslar, but with this wind I presume it will take a couple of days or so; and the patient cannot wait. They are eager to see the operation; I am equally eager to gratify them. That is why I am resting my limbs at present; it would never do to make a blunder in such a demonstration. Besides, we must consider our patient. Oh, certainly. He must feel assured of a steady hand, when we are groping in his vitals with our instrument, for it will be some little while before we tally and belay.’
The patient, the unhappy Wallace, might feel assured of a steady hand as he was led, or rather propelled, to the bench, stupefied with opium, dazed with rum, and buoyed up with accounts of the eminence of the hand that was going to deal with him; but he was assured of little else, to judge by his staring pallor. His messmates led him to his place and made him fast in a seamanlike manner: one seized his pigtail to a ring-?bolt, another gave him a bullet to bite upon, and a third told him he was saving at least a hundred guineas by being there - no physical gent with a gold-?headed stick would think of opening him for less.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Stephen, turning back his cuffs, ‘you will observe that I take my point of departure from the iliac crest; I traverse thus, and so find my point of incision.’
So, in the fore-?cabin, Jack held the point of his carver over a dimple in the venison pasty and said, ‘Allow me to cut you a little of this pasty, ma’am. It is one of the few things I can carve. When we have a joint, I usually call upon my friend Dr Maturin, whom I hope to introduce to you this afternoon. He is such a hand at carving.’
‘If you please, sir,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘It looks so very good. But I cannot quite believe what you say about carving. You cut out the Fanciulla only the other day, and surely that was a very pretty piece of carving.’
While these delights were going forward, the Lively stood across the Channel, close-?hauled to the freshening south-?west breeze with her starboard tacks aboard, under topgallants and a fine spread of staysails.
‘Now, Mr Simmons,’ said Jack, appearing upon deck, ‘this is very capital, is it not? How she does love to sail upon a bowline.’ It was a warm, bright afternoon, with patches of cloud moving across the sky, and her brilliant canvas, her white rigging, shone splendid against them as she. heeled to the wind. There was nothing. of the yacht about her; her paintwork was strictly utilitarian and even ugly;, but this one point of snowy cordage, the rare manilla she had brought back from the Philippines, raised her to an uncommon height of beauty - that, and of course, her lovely, supple command of the sea. There was a long, even swell from the south and a surface ripple that came lipping along her weather bow, sometimes sending a little shower of spray aft across the waist, with momentary rainbows in it. This would be a perfect afternoon and evening for gunnery.
‘Tell me, Mr Simmons,’ he said, ‘what has been your practice in exercising the great guns?’
‘Well, sir,’ said the first lieutenant, ‘we used to fire once a week at the beginning of the commission, but Captain Hamond was so checked by the Navy Board for expenditure of powder and ball that he grew discouraged.’ Jack nodded: he too had received those querulous, righteous, indignant letters that ended so strangely with ‘your affectionate friends’. ‘So now we only fire by divisions once a month. Though of course we run them in and out at least once a week at quarters.’
Jack paced the windward side of the quarterdeck. Rattling the guns in and out was very well, but it was not the same thing as firing them. Nothing like it at all. Yet a broadside from the Lively would cost ten guineas. He considered, turning it over in his mind; stepped into the master’s cabin to look at the charts, and sent for the gunner, who gave him a statement of cartridge filled, powder at hand, and an appreciation of each gun. The four long nine-?pounders were his darlings, and they did most of the firing in the Lively, worked by him, his mates and the quarter-?gunners.
The horizon beyond the larboard bow was broken now by the irregular line of the French coast, and the Lively heaved about on the other tack. How beautifully she handled! She came smoothly up into the wind, paid off and filled in a cable’s length, hardly losing any way at all. In spite of her spread of canvas, with all the staysail sheets to be passed over, scarcely a quarter of an hour passed between the pipe of All hands about ship and the moment when the mastmen began flemishing their ropes and making pretty, while France dropped out of sight astern.
What a ship to handle - no noise, no fuss, no shadow of a doubt as to whether she would stay. And she was making eight knots already: he could eat the wind out of any square-?rigged craft afloat. But what was the good of that, if he could not hit his enemy when he came up with him?
‘We will make a short board, Mr Norrey,’ he said to the master, who now had the watch. ‘And then you will be so good as to lay her in half a mile from Balbec, under topsails.’
‘Stephen,’ he said, some minutes later, ‘how did your operation go?’
‘Very prettily, I thank you,’ said Stephen. ‘It was as charming a demonstration of my method as you could wish: a perfect case for immediate intervention, good light, plenty of elbow-?room. And the patient survived.’
‘Well done, well done! Tell me, Stephen, would you do me a kindness?’
‘I might,’ said Stephen, looking shrewish.
‘It is just to shift your brutes into the quarter-?gallery. The guns are to fire in the cabin, and perhaps the bang might be bad for them. Besides, I do not want another mutiny on my hands.’
‘Oh, certainly. I shall carry the hive and you shall fix the gimbals. Let us do it at once.’
When Jack returned, still trembling and with the sweat running down the hollow of his spine, it was time for quarters. The drum beat and the Livelies hurried to their stations in the usual way; but they knew very well that this was no ordinary ritual, not only from the gunner’s uncommon activity and knowing looks, but also because Mrs Miller had been desired to step down into the hold, with a midshipman bearing an armful of cushions to show her the way: asked if she minded a bang, had replied, ‘Oh no, I love it.’
The frigate was gliding along half a mile from the shore under topsails alone, so close in that the members of a flock of sheep could be seen on the green grass, surrounding their shepherd as he stared out to sea; and the Livelies were not surprised, after they had been reported present and sober, sir, to hear the order ‘Out tompions.’
Some of the tompions needed a furious heave to get them out, they having sat in the muzzles of their guns for
