‘He has a contusion on his chest,’ said Stephen, coming back to where Jack stood dripping on the quarterdeck, drying as he leaned on the rail and enjoyed the progress of the work on the running rigging. ‘But no ribs are broken. May I congratulate you upon saving him? The boat would never have come up in time. Such promptitude of mind -such decision! I honour it.’
‘It was pretty good, was it not?’ said Jack. ‘This is capital, upon my word,’ - nodding to the mainmast - ‘and at this rate we shall have the bentincks bent tomorrow. Did you smoke that? I said, the bentincks bent. Ha, ha, ha!’
Was he making light of it out of coxcombery, fanfaronade? From embarrassment? No, Stephen decided. It was as genuine as his mirth at his ignoble tiny pun, or adumbration of a pun, the utmost limit of naval wit.
‘Was you not afraid,’ he asked, ‘when you reflected upon the shark - his notorious voracity?’
‘Him? Oh, sharks are mostly gammon, you know: all cry and no wool. Unless there’s blood about, they prefer galley leavings any day. On the West Indies station I once went in after a jolly and dived plump on to the back of a huge great brute: he never turned a hair.’
‘Tell me, is this a matter of frequent occurrence with you? Does it in no way mark an epocha in your life, at all?’
‘Epocha? Why, no; I can’t say it does. Bolton here must make the twenty-?second since I first went to sea:
or maybe the twenty-?third. The Humane chaps sent me a gold medal once. Very civil in them, too; with a most obliging letter. I pawned it in Gibraltar.’
‘You never told me this.’
‘You never asked. But there is nothing to it, you know, once you get used to their grappling. You feel good, and worthy - deserve well of the republic, and so on, for a while, which is agreeable, I don’t deny; but there is really nothing to it - it don’t signify. I should go in for a dog, let alone an able seaman: why, if it were warm, I dare say I should go in for a surgeon, ha, ha, ha! Mr Parker, I think we may rig the sheets tonight and get the stump of the mizzen out first thing tomorrow. Then you will be able to priddy the deck and make all shipshape.’
‘It is all ahoo at present, sir, indeed,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘But I must beg your pardon, sir, for not receiving you aboard in a proper fashion just now. May I offer my congratulations?’
‘Why thank you, Mr Parker: an able seaman is a valuable prize. Bolton is one of our best upper-? yardsmen.’
‘He was drunk, sir. I have him in my list.’
‘Perhaps we may overlook it this once, Mr Parker. Now the sheers can go with one foot here and the other by the scuttle, with a guy to the third hoop of the mainmast.’
In the evening, when it was too dark to work but too delightful to go below, Stephen observed, ‘If you make it your study to depreciate rescues of this nature, will you not find that they are not valued? That you get no gratitude?’
‘Now you come to mention it, I suppose it is so,’ said Jack. ‘It depends: some take it very kind. Bonden, for example. I pulled him out of the Mediterranean, as I dare say you remember, and no one could be more sensible of it. But most think it no great matter, I find. I can’t say I should myself, unless it was a particular friend, who knew it was me, and who went in saying “Why, damn me, I shall pull Jack Aubrey out.” No. Upon the whole,’ he said, reflecting and looking wise, ‘it seems to me, that in the article of pulling people out of the sea, virtue is its own reward.’
They lapsed into silence, their minds following different paths as the wake stretched out behind and the stars rose in procession over Portugal.
‘I am determined at last,’ cried Stephen, striking his hand upon his knee, ‘I am at last determined - determined, I say - that I shall learn to swim.’
‘I believe,’ said Jack, ‘that by the setting of the water tomorrow, we shall have our bentincks drawing.’
‘The bentincks draw, the bentincks draw, the bentincks draw fu’ weel,’ said Mr Macdonald.
‘Is the Captain pleased?’ asked Stephen.
‘He is delighted. There is no great wind to try them, but she seems much improved. Have you not remarked her motion is far more easy? We may have the pleasure of the purser’s company once more. I tell you, Doctor, if that man belches of set purpose just once again, or picks his teeth at table, I shall destroy him.’
‘That is why you are cleaning your pistols, I presume. But I am glad to hear what you tell me, about these sails. Perhaps now we shall hear less of selvagees and booms -the inner jib, the outer jib - nay, to crown all, the jibs of jibs, God forbid. Your mariner is an honest fellow, none better; but he is sadly given to jargon. Those are elegant, elegant pistols. May I handle them?’
‘Pretty, are they not?’ said Macdonald, passing the case. ‘Joe Manton made them for me. Do these things interest you?’
‘It is long since I had a pistol in my hand,’ said Stephen. ‘Or a small-?sword. But when I was younger I delighted in them - I still do. They have a beauty of their own. Then again, they have a real utility. In Ireland, you know, we go out more often than the English do. I believe it is the same with you?’
Macdonald thought it was, though there was a great difference between the Highlands and the rest of the kingdom; what did Dr Maturin mean by ‘often’? Stephen said he meant twenty or thirty times in a twelvemonth; in his first year at the university he had known men who exceeded this. ‘At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-?sword. I have a childish longing to be at it again. Ha, ha - carte, tierce, tierce, sagoon, a hit!’
‘Should you like to try a pass or two with me on deck?’
‘Would that be quite regular? I have a horror of the least appearance of eccentricity.’
‘Oh, yes, yes! It is perfectly usual. In the Boreas I used to give the midshipmen lessons as soon as I had finished exercising the Marines; and one or two of the lieutenants were quite good. Come, let us take the pistols too.’
