-by God I believe I see the albatross.’
believe I see the albatross,’ said Bonden’s lips silently. ‘It don’t rhyme. Another line, sir, maybe?’ But receiving no answer from his rigid teacher he looked up, followed his gaze, and said, ‘Why so you do, sir. I dare say he will fetch our wake directly, and overhaul us. Wonderful great birds they are, though something fishy, without you skin ‘em. There are some old-?fashioned coves that has a spite against them, which they say they bring ill winds.’
The albatross came nearer and nearer, following the ship’s wake in a sinuous path, never moving its wings but coming up at such a pace that what was a remote fleck when Stephen first saw it was an enormous presence by the time Bonden had finished his receipt for albatross pie. An enormous white presence with black wing-?tips, thirteen feet across, poised just astern: then it banked, shot along the side, vanished behind the cloud of sails, and reappeared fifty yards behind the ship.
Messenger after messenger ran into the mizentop. ‘Sir, there’s your albatross, two points on the larboard quarter.’ Achmet reported it in Urdu, and immediately afterwards his dull blue face was thrust aside by a ship’s boy from the quarterdeck with ‘Captain’s compliments, sir, and he believes he has seen the bird you was asking after.’ ‘Maturin, I say, Maturin, here’s your albatross!’ This was Bowes, the purser, clambering up by the power of his hands, trailing his game leg.
At last Bonden said, ‘My watch is called, sir. I must be going, asking your pardon, or Mr Rattray will give me the rub. May I send up a pea-?jacket, sir? ‘Tis mortal cold.’
‘Ay, ay. Do, do,’ murmured Stephen, unhearing, rapt in admiration.
The bell struck, the watch changed. One bell, two bells, three; the drum for quarters, the beating of retreat- no guns for once, thank God; and still he gazed and still in the fading light the albatross wheeled, dropped astern, occasionally alighting for some object thrown overboard, ran up in a long series of curves, the perfection of smooth gliding ease.
The days that followed were among the most trying that Stephen had spent at sea. Some of the forecastlemen, old South Sea whalers, were passionate albatross-?fishers:
after his first vehement outburst they would not offer to do it when he was on deck, but as soon as he went below a line would be privily veered out and the great bird would come flapping in, to be converted into tobacco-? pouches, pipe-?stems, hot dinners, down comforters to be worn next the skin, and charms against drowning - no albatross ever drowned: as many as half a dozen were following the ship now, and not one of them was ever seen to drown, blow rough, blow smooth. He knew that morally his case was weak, for he had bought and skinned the first specimens:
he was most unwilling to invoke authority, but he was much occupied in the sick-?bay - the opening of case 113 (three-?year old pork that had seen its time in the West Indies station) had produced something surprising in the dysentery way: two pneumonias as well - and in the end, worn out by darting up and down, he appealed to Jack.
‘Well, old Stephen,’ said he, ‘I will give the order, if you wish: but they won’t like it, you know. It’s against custom:
people have fished for albatrosses and mutton-?birds ever since ships came into these seas. They won’t like it. You will get wry looks and short answers, and half the older hands will start prophesying woe - we shall run into a widow-?maker, or hit a mountain of ice.’
‘From all I read, and from all Pullings tells me, it would be safe enough to foretell a gale of wind, in forty degrees south.’
‘Come,’ said Jack, reaching for his fiddle. ‘Let us play the Boccherini through before we turn in. We may not have another chance this side of the Cape, with your upsetting the natural order of things.’
The wry looks, the reproachful tones, began the next morning; so did the prophecies. Many a grizzled head was shaken on the forecastle, with the ominous words, profoundly true and not altogether outside Stephen’s hearing. ‘We shall see what we shall see.’
South and south she ran, flanking across the west wind, utterly alone under the grey sky, heading into the immensity of ocean. From one day to the next the sea grew icy cold, and the cold seeped into the holds, the berth-?deck and the cabins, a humid, penetrating cold. Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-?boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-?wine. He found the frigate was racing along under a press of canvas, lying over so that her deck sloped like a roof and her lee chains were buried in the foam; twelve and a half knots with the wind on her quarter - royals, upper and lower studdingsails, almost everything she had; her starboard tacks aboard, for Jack still wanted a little more southing. He was there, right aft by the taffrail, looking now at the western sky, now up at the rigging. ‘What do you think of this for a swell?’ he cried.
Blinking in the strong cold wind Stephen considered it: vast smooth waves, dark, mottled with white, running from the west diagonally across the frigate’s course, two hundred yards from crest to crest: they came with perfect regularity, running under her quarter, lifting her high, high, so that the horizon spread out another twenty miles, then passing ahead, so that she sank into the trough, and her courses, her lower sails, sagged in the calm down there. In one of these valleys that he saw was an albatross flying without effort or concern, a huge bird, but now so diminished by the vast scale of the sea that it might have been one of the smaller gulls. ‘It is grandiose,’ he said.
‘Ain’t it?’ said Jack. ‘I do love a blow.’ There was keen pleasure in his eye, but a watchful pleasure too; and as the ship rose slowly up he glanced again at the topsail-?studdingsail. As she rose the full force of the wind laid her over, and the studdingsail-?boom strained forward, bending far out of the true. All the masts and yards showing this curving strain: they all groaned and spoke; but none like the twisting studdingsail-?booms. A sheet of spray flew over the waist, passing through the rigging and vanishing over the larboard bow, soaking Mr Hailes the gunner as it passed. He was going from gun to gun with his mates, putting preventer-?breechings to the guns, to hold them tighter against the side. Rattray was among the booms, making all fast and securing the boats: all the responsible men were moving about, with no orders given; and as they worked they glanced at the Captain, while he, just as often, put out his hand to test the strain on the rigging, and turned his head to look at the sky, the sea, the upper sails.
‘This is cracking on,’ said Joliffe.
‘It will be cracking off, presently,’ said Church, ‘if he don’t take in.’
For a glass and more the watch on deck had been waiting for the order to lay aloft and reduce sail before the Lord reduced it Himself: yet still the order did not come. Jack wanted every last mile out of this splendid day’s run; and in any case the frigate’s tearing pace, the shrill song of her rigging, her noble running lift and plunge filled him with delight, a vivid ecstasy that he imagined to be private but that shone upon his face, although his behaviour
