Three days after crossing the tropic the Lord Nelson East-?Indiaman, Captain Spottiswood, homeward-?bound from Bombay, broached to in a westerly gale; the ship survived, but she lost her maintopmast and its topgallant, carried away her mizen just above the cap, sprang her fore and main masts, and damaged her rigging to an extraordinary extent. She also lost her boats upon the booms and most of the booms themselves; so, the wind being foul for Madeira, the passengers in a state of panic and the crew near mutiny after a very long and uniformly disagreeable voyage, Mr Spottiswood bore away for Gibraltar, right under his lee, although like all homeward-? bound captains he was very unwilling to put into a naval port. As he had expected, he lost many of his English-?born sailormen to the press, all prime hands; but he did repair his ship, and as some meagre consolation he did embark a few passengers.
The first to come aboard were Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin; they were received by the captain at the head of his officers in some style, for the Company possessed, or at least arrogated to itself, a particular status, and its ships adopted many of the ways of the Royal Navy. There were sensible reasons for some of these - the chequered gun-?ports, for instance, and the general appearance of regularity had persuaded many an enemy cruiser that he had to do with a man-?of-?war and that he had better look elsewhere -but there were many little pretensions that vexed the real Navy, and King’s officers aboard a Company ship were apt to look about them with a carping eye. In this case a critic could have found fault straight away: in spite of the black side-?boys in their white gloves, the reception
was incorrect - that vague huddle of figures would never have done aboard the Superb, for example, in which Jack had dined, and whose hospitality was still ringing in his head, although he could walk straight. Furthermore, he was conscious of a huge grin from the midst of that same huddle, a kind of half-?determined nodding and becking, a bashfulness accompanied by familiarity that brought a hint of stiffness into his expression. He spoke with particular civility to Captain Spottiswood, who privately damned him for his condescension, and then turning he recognized the stare.
‘Why, Pullings!’ he cried, all his ill-?humour - a very slight ill-?humour in any case - vanishing at once and the hard lines of his face dissolving into a delighted smile. ‘How happy I am to see you! How do you do? How are you coming along, eh? Eh?’
‘And this is our supercargo, Mr Jennings,’ said Captain Spottiswood, not best pleased at having his regular sequence changed. ‘Mr Bates. Mr Wand. Mr Pullings you already know, I see.’
‘We were shipmates,’ said Jack, shaking Pullings’s hand with a force in direct proportion to his affection for the young man, a former master’s mate and acting-?lieutenant in the Sophie, who was now beaming over his shoulder at Dr Maturin.
The Lord Nelson had never been a happy or a fortunate ship, but within an hour of taking her passengers on board a brisk Levanter sprang up to carry her right out through the strong current of the Gut and into the full Atlantic; and poor Captain Spottiswood, in the innocence of his heart, reckoned this a great stroke of luck - a good omen at last, perhaps. She was not a very comely ship, either, nor much of a sailer: comfortable for the passengers, roomy for her cargo, certainly; but crank, slow in stays, and near the end of her useful life. This was, in fact, to be her last voyage, and even for her trip in 1801 the underwriters had insisted upon an extra thirty shillings per cent.
It also happened that she was the first Indiaman Jack had ever sailed in, and as he walked about with Pullings during his watch below he gazed with astonishment at the general lumber of the deck and at the casks and water-?butts lashed between the guns. Twenty eighteen-?pounders and six twelves: an imposing show of force for a merchantman. ‘And how many people have you aboard?’ he asked.
‘Just above a hundred now, sir. A hundred and two, to be exact.’
‘Well, well, well,’ said Jack. in the Navy they did not think nine men and a powder-?boy too much for an eighteen-?pounder, seven and a boy for the twelves: a hundred and twenty-?four men to fight the guns one side -a hundred and twenty-?four beef- and pork-?fed Englishmen, and another hundred to trim the sails, work the ship, repel boarders, ply the small arms, and fight the other side on occasion. He glanced at the Lascars squatting around their heap of junk, working under the orders of their turbanned serang; they might be tolerably good seamen in their way, perhaps, but they were very slight, and he could not see five or six of them running out a two-?ton gun against the Atlantic roll. This impression of smallness was increased by the fact that most of them were cold; the few European members of the crew were in their shirts, but several of the Lascars had pea-?jackets on as well, and all had a blueish tinge in their dark complexions.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Jack again. He did not like to say more, for his opinion of the Lord Nelson was crystallizing fast, and any expression of it could not but give pain - Pullings must feel himself part of the ship. The young man certainly knew that Captain Spottiswood lacked all authority, and that the Lord Nelson moved like a log, and that she had twice missed stays off Cape Trafalgar, having to wear round at last: but there was certainly no point in putting this into words. He looked round for something that he could praise with at least an appearance of candour. The gleam of the brass larboard bow-?gun caught his eye, and he commended it. ‘Really quite like gold,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Pullings. ‘They do it voluntary - poojah, poojah, they say. For days off the island and again when we touched at the Cape, they had a wreath of marigolds around the muzzle. They say their prayers to it, poor fellows, because they think it is like - well, sir, I hardly like to name what they think it is like. But she is medium dry, sir, and she is roomy - oh, as roomy as a first-?rate. I have a vast great spacious cabin to myself. Would you do me the honour of stepping below, sir, and drinking a glass of arrack?’
‘I should like it of all things,’ said Jack. And stretching himself cautiously on the locker in the vast great spacious cabin, he said, ‘How do you come to be here, Pullings, in all your glory?’
‘Why, sir, I could not get a ship and they would not confirm me in my rank. “No white lapels for you, Pullings, old cock,” they said. “We got too many coves like you, by half.”‘
‘What a damned shame,’ cried Jack, who had seen Pullings in action and who knew that the Navy did not and indeed could not possibly have too many coves like him.
‘So I tried for a midshipman again, but none of my old captains had a ship themselves; or if they had -and the Honourable Berkely had - no vacancy. I took your letter to Captain Seymour - Amethyst, refitting in Hamoaze. Old Cozzens gave me a lift down as far as the Vizes. Captain Seymour received me very polite when I said I was from you, most obliging: nothing starchy or touch-?me-?not about him, sir. But he scratched his head and damned his wig when he opened the letter and read it. He said he would have blessed the day he could have obliged you, particularly with such advantage to himself, which was the civillest thing I ever heard - turned so neat - but that it was not in his power. He led me to the gunroom and the mids’ berth himself to prove he could not take another young gentleman on to his quarter-?deck. He was so earnest to be believed, though in course I credited him the moment he opened his mouth, that he desired me to count their chests. Then he gave me a thundering good dinner in his own cabin just him and me - I needed it, sir, for I’d walked the last twenty miles - and after the pudding we went over your action in the Sophie: he knew everything, except quite how the wind had veered, and he made me tell just where I had been from the first gun to the last. Then “damn my eyes,” says he, “I cannot let one of Captain Aubrey’s officers rot on shore without trying to stretch the little interest I have,” and he wrote me
