‘To think a man’s heart could break over a soused hog’s face,’ he reflected, feigning to turn over the admiral’s game; partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, mallard, wigeon, teal, hares. ‘You brought the rest of the wine Killick?’
‘Which the bottles broke, sir: all but half a dozen of the Burgundy.’
Jack cocked his eye, sighed, but said nothing. Six bottles would do pretty well, with what was left of his corruption from the yard. ‘Mr Parker, Mr Macdonald, I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining in the cabin tomorrow? I am expecting a guest.’
They bowed, smiled, and said they should be very happy; they did indeed feel a real pleasure, for Jack had declined the gunroom’s last invitation, and this had created an uneasiness in their minds - an unpleasant beginning to a commission.
Stephen said the same in effect, when he could be brought to understand. ‘Yes, yes, certainly, of course - much obliged. I did not grasp your meaning.’
‘Yet it was plain enough, in all conscience,’ said Jack, ‘and adapted to the meanest understanding. I said. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow? Canning is coming, and I have asked Parker, Macdonald and Pullings.”‘
‘My mind dwells with real concern, and yet with what I might term an inquisitive, slightly vulgar concern, upon the state of Mother Williams’s heart when she finds her dairy, poultry-?yard, pig-?house, larder, stripped bare. Will it burst? Will it stop beating altogether? Dry to a total desiccation - no great step? What the effect upon her visceral humours? How will Sophie reply? Will she attempt concealment, prevarication? She lies with as much skill as Preserved Killick - a desperate stare, and her face the most perfect damask rose. My mind, I say, wanders in this region, lost. I have no acquaintance with English family life, with English female family life: it is to me a region quite unknown.’
It was not a region in which Jack chose to dwell: with a start of intense pain he jerked his mind away. ‘Lord, I love that Sophie so,’ he cried within. He took a quick turn on deck, going right forward to pat the gammoning of the bowsprit - a private consolation from his very earliest days at sea When he came back he said, ‘A most damnable unpleasant thought has just struck me. I know I must not give Canning swine’s flesh, he being a Jew; but can he eat a buck? Is a buck unclean? And hare would not answer, either, for I dare say they are rated with the coney and her kind.’
‘I have no idea. You have no Bible, I suppose?’
‘Indeed I have a Bible. I used it to check Heneage’s signal - The Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse, do you remember? What did he mean by that, do you suppose? It was not so very witty, or original; for after all, everyone knows the Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse. He had crossed his tiller-?ropes, I dare say. However, I have also been reading it, these last few days.’
‘Ah?’
‘Yes. I may preach a sermon to the ship’s company next Sunday.’
‘You? Preach a sermon?’
‘Certainly. Captains often do, when no chaplain is carried. I always made do with the Articles of War in the Sophie, but now I think I shall give them a clear, well-?reasoned - come, what’s the matter? What is so very entertaining about my preaching a sermon? Damn your eyes, Stephen.’ Stephen was doubled in his chair, rocking to and fro, uttering harsh spasmodic squeaks: tears ran down his face. ‘What a spectacle you are, to be sure. Now I come to think of it, I do not believe I have ever heard you laugh before. It is a damned illiberal row, I can tell you - it don’t suit you at all. Squeak, squeak. Very well: you shall laugh your bellyful.’ He turned away with something about ‘pragmatical apes - simpering, tittering’ and affected to look into the Bible without the least concern; but there are not many who can find themselves the object of open, whole-?hearted, sincere, prostrating laughter without being put out of countenance, and Jack was not one of these few. However, Stephen’s mirth died away in time - a few last crowing whoops and it was over. He got to his feet, and dabbing his face with a handkerchief he took Jack by the hand. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I would not have vexed you for the world. But there is something so essentially ludicrous, so fundamentally comic. . . that is to say, I had so droll an association of ideas - pray do not take it personally at all. Of course you shall preach to the men; I am persuaded it will have a most striking effect.’
‘Well,’ said Jack, with a suspicious glance, ‘I am glad it afforded you so much innocent merriment at all events. Though what you find.
‘What is your text, pray?’
‘Are you making game of me, Stephen?’
‘Never, upon my word: would scorn it.’
‘Well, it is the one about I say come and he cometh; for I am a centurion. I want them to understand it is God’s will, and it must be so - there must be discipline -’tis in the Book - and any infernal bastard that disobeys is therefore a blasphemer too, and will certainly be damned. That it is no good kicking against the pricks: which is in the Book too, as I shall point out.’
‘You feel that it will make it easier for them to bear their station, when they learn that it is providential?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s it. It is all here, you know’ - tapping the Bible. ‘There are an amazing number of useful things in it,’ said Jack, with a candid gaze out of the scuttle. ‘I had no idea. And, by the way, it seems that roebuck is not unclean, which is a comfort, and a very great one, I can tell you. I was quite anxious about this dinner.’
The next day brought countless duties - the raking of the Polychrest’s masts, the restowing of what part of her ballast they could come at, the mending of a chain-?pump
- but this anxiety remained, to come into full flower in the last quarter of an hour before the arrival of his guests. He stood fussing in his day-?cabin, twitching the cloth, teasing the stove until its colour was cherry-?pink, worrying Killick and his attendant boys, wondering whether after all the table should not have been athwart-?ships, and contemplating a last-?minute alteration. Could it really seat six in even moderate comfort? The Polychrest was a larger vessel than the Sophie, his last command, but because of the singularity of her construction the cabin had no stern-?gallery, no fine curving sweep of windows to give an impression of light, air and indeed a certain magnificence to even a little room, the actual space was greater and the head-?room was such that he could stand with no more than a slight stoop, but this space had no generosity of breadth -it drew out in length, narrowing almost to a point aft, and all that it had in the way of day was a skylight and a couple of small scuttles Leading forward from this shield-?shaped apartment was a short passage, with his sleeping-?cabin on one side and his quarter-?gallery on the other: it was not a true gallery, a projection, in the Polychrest at all, of course, nor was it strictly on her quarter, but it served the purpose of a privy as well as if it had been both. In addition to the necessary pot it contained a thirty-?two pounder carronade and a small hanging lantern, in case the bull’s eye in the
