He picked her up, and followed by the old woman, a few friends and the Brahmin, he carried her to the strand, her head lolling against his shoulder. The dawn broke as they went down through the bazaar: three parties were already there before them, at the edge of the calm sea beyond the wood-?sellers.
Prayers, lustration; chanting, lustration: he laid her on the pyre. Pale flames in the sunlight, the fierce rush of blazing sandalwood, and the column of smoke rising, rising, inclining gently away as the breeze from the sea set in.
‘nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,’ he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.
The Surprise lay at single anchor, well out in the channel: the wind was fair, the tide near the height of flood, and her captain stood at the rail, staring at the distant land with a grim look on his face. His hands were clasped behind his back: they clenched a little from time to time. Young Church came bounding up from the midshipmen’s berth into the expectant silence, filled with some unreasoning delight of his own, and he met the warning eye of his mess-?mate Callow, who murmured, ‘Watch out for squalls.’
Jack had already seen the boat pulling away from the flagship, but this was not the boat he was waiting for; it was a man-?of-?war’s cutter, with an officer and his sea-?chest in the stern sheets - his new first lieutenant sent by the facetious admiral the moment he returned from a shooting-?expedition up country. The boat that Jack was looking for would be a native craft, probably filthy, and he was still looking for it when the cutter hooked on to the chains and the officer ran up the side.
‘Stourton, sir,’ he said, taking off his hat. ‘Come aboard to join, sir, if you please.’
‘I am happy to see you at last, Mr Stourton,’ said Jack with a constrained smile on his lowering face. ‘Let us go into the coach.’ He cast another glance shoreward before leading the way, but nothing did he see.
They sat in silence while Jack read the Admiral’s letter, and Stourton looked covertly at his new captain. His last had been a gloomy, withdrawn, hard-?drinking man, at war with his officers, perpetually finding fault, and flogging six days a week. Stourton, and every other officer aboard who did not wish to be broke, had been forced into tyranny:
between them they had made the Narcissus the prettiest ship, to look at, east of Greenwich, and they could cross over yards in twenty-?two seconds - a true spit-?and-?polish frigate, with the highest rate of punishment and desertion in the fleet.
Stourton’s reputation was that of the hard-?horse first lieutenant of the Narcissus. he did not look like a slave-? driver, but like a decent, pink, very close-?shaved, conscientious, brisk young man: however, Jack knew what the habit of power could do, and putting the Admiral’s letter away he said, ‘Different ships have different ways, sir, as you are aware. I do not mean to criticise any other commander, but I desire to have things done my way in Surprise. Some people like their deck to look like a ball-?room: so do I, but it must be a fighting ball-?room. Gunnery and seamanship come first, and there never was a ship that fought well without she was a happy ship. If every crew can ply their gun brisk and hit the mark, and if we can make sail promptly, I do not give a damn for an occasional heap of shakings pushed under a carronade. I tell you this privately, for I should not wish to have it publicly known; but I do not think a man deserves flogging for a handful of tow. Indeed, in Surprise we do not much care for rigging the grating, either. Once the men understand their duty and have been brought to a proper state of discipline, officers who cannot keep them to it without perpetually starting them or flogging them do not know their business. I hate dirt and slovenliness, but I hate a flash ship, all spit and polish and no fighting spirit, even worse. You will say a slovenly ship cannot fight either, which is very true: so you will please to ensure the pure ideal, Mr Stourton. Another thing that I should like to say, so that we may understand one another from the beginning, is that I hate unpunctuality.’ Stourton’s face fell still further: through no fault of his own he had been abominably late reporting aboard. ‘I do not say this for you, but the young gentlemen are blackguards in the middle and morning watches; they are late in relieving
the deck. Indeed, there is little sense of time in this ship; and at this very moment, at top of flood, I am kept waiting. .
There was the sound of a boat coming alongside, then a thin, high wrangling about the fare. Jack cocked his ear and shot upon deck with a face of thunder.
Surprise, at sea
Sweetheart,
We have picked up the moonsoon, after baffling winds and light airs among the Laccadives, and at last I can turn to my letter again with an easy mind:
we are sailing through the Eight Degree channel with flowing sheets, Minicoy bearing NNW four leagues. The people are recovering from our refit in Bombay, when I must confess I pushed them pretty hard, and the dear ship is stretching away south-?east under all plain sail like a thoroughbred on Epsom Downs. I was not able to do all I could have wished in the yard, as I was determined to sail on the seventeenth; but although we are not altogether pleased with her shifting backstays nor her trim, we did make hay while the sun shone, as they say, and with the wind two points free she handles as sweet as a cutter - a vastly different Surprise from the pitiful thing we brought in, frapped like St Paul’s barky and pumping day and night. We logged 172 miles yesterday, and next week, at this rate, we should go south about Ceylon and bear away for Kampong; and it will be strange if in two thousand miles of ocean we do not overcome her very slight tendency to gripe (it is no more). And even with her present trim, I am confident we can eat the wind out of any man-?of-?war in these seas. She can bear a great press of sail, and with our clean bottom, I believe we could give even Lively skysails and perhaps an outer jib.
Indeed it is a great pleasure to feel her answer to a light air and stand up stiff to a strong breeze; and if only we were heading west rather than cast, I should be perfectly happy. Was she homeward bound, she should be under topgallants and studdingsails too, for all it is Sunday afternoon.
Our people behaved uncommon well in Bombay, and I feel truly obliged to them. What a capital fellow Tom Pullings is! He worked like a black, driving the hands day and night; and then when the Admiral sent this Mr Stourton to be first lieutenant over poor Pullings’s head (all the labour of refitting being over), not a word of complaint, nor a hint of being ill-?used. It was heavy work, as heavy as I can remember, and the boatswain being sick, even more fell to his share: I do not believe he went out of the ship above once, saying in his cheerful way ‘that he knew Bombay - had often been there before -it was no more than Gosport to him’. Fortunately there was a rumour that Linois’s squadron was off Cape Comorin, and that kept the men to their task with a will: I did not contradict it, you may be sure, though I cannot conceive he should have beat so far westwards, yet.
Lord, how we toiled in the broiling sun! Mr Bowes, the purser, was a great support - are you not amazed? But he is the most seamanlike officer; and he and Bonden (until he boiled himself with tar) supplied the boatswain’s place to admiration. William Babbington, too, is an excellent young man; though he was harpooned by a
