‘I had so looked forward to getting my packet off to England. And I am sure you would have liked to do the same. However, salt water washes away disappointment as well as other things. I have often been amazed at how you forget, after a few days at sea. You might be sailing in Lethe, once you have sunk the land. I said, you might be sailing in Lethe, once you have sunk the land.’
‘Yes. I heard you. I do not agree. What is the object behind you, on the locker?’
‘It is a case of pistols.’
‘No, no. The ill-?wrapped parcel, from which feathers protrude.’
‘Oh, that. I had meant to show it you earlier. Theobald brought it me. It is for Sophie - a paradise-?bird. Was it not handsome in him? But he was always as open-?handed as the day. He picked it up some time ago, in the Spice Islands; and he very candidly told me he had meant it for his sweetheart, to put in her hat. But it seems she turned sour and threw him over for a cove in the law line, I believe: the Secondary of the Poultry Compter. He did not mind it much, he said - what could a fellow with a wooden leg expect? - and he wished them happiness in this very bowl. But he hoped it would bring me better luck. Do you feel it might be a trifle ostentatious in a hat? Perhaps more suitable for a chimney-?piece, or a fire-?screen?’
‘What emerald splendour! What a demi-?ruff - I hardly know what to call it. What a tail! Never have I beheld such extreme delicate magnificence. A cock bird, of course.’ He sat handling the brilliant feathers, the improbable streaming tail; and Jack pondered mildly over a joke, or pun, connecting this fowl with the Poultry Compter; but abandoned it as heartless to Theobald.
Stephen said, ‘Have you ever contemplated upon sex, my dear?’
‘Never,’ said Jack. ‘Sex has never entered my mind, at any time.’
‘The burden of sex, I mean. This bird, for example, is very heavily burdened; almost weighed down. He can scarcely fly or pursue his common daily round with any pleasure to himself, encumbered by a yard of tail and all this top-?hamper. All these extravagant plumes have but one function - to induce the hen to yield to his importunities. How the poor cock must glow and burn, if these are, as they must be, an index of his ardour.’
‘That is a solemn thought.’
‘Were he a capon, now, his life would be easier by far. These spurs, these fighting spurs, would vanish; his conduct would become peaceable, social, complaisant and mild. Indeed, were I to castrate all the Surprises, Jack, they would grow fat, placid and unaggressive; this ship would no longer be a man-?of-?war, darting angrily, hastily from place to place; and we should circumnavigate the terraqueous globe with never a harsh word. There would be none of this disappointment in missing Linois.’
‘Never mind the disappointment. Salt water will wash it away. You will be amazed how unimportant it will seem in a week’s time - how everything will fall into place.’
It was the true word: once the Surprise had turned south about Ceylon to head for the Java Sea, the daily order seized upon them all. The grind of holystones, the sound of swabs and water on the decks at first light; hammocks piped up, breakfast and its pleasant smells; the unvarying succession of the watches; noon and the altitude of the sun, dinner, grog; Roast Beef of Old England on the drum for the officers; moderate feast; quarters, the beating of the retreat, the evening roar of guns, topsails reefed, the setting of the watch; and then the long warm starlight, moonlit evenings, often spent on the quarterdeck, with Jack leading his two bright midshipmen through the intricate delights of astral navigation. This life, with its rigid pattern punctuated by the sharp imperative sound of bells, seemed to take on something of the nature of eternity as they slanted down towards the line, crossing it in ninety-?one degrees of longitude east of Greenwich. The higher ceremonies of divisions, of mustering by the open list, church, the Articles of War, marked the due order of time rather than its passage; and before they had been repeated twice most of the frigate’s people felt both past and future blur, dwindling almost into insignificance: an impression all the stronger since the Surprise was once more in a lonely sea, two thousand miles of dark blue water with never an island to break its perfect round: not the faintest smell of land even on the strongest breeze - the ship was a world self-?contained, swimming between two perpetually-?renewed horizons. Stronger still, because in these waters there was no eager impatience to see over the eastward rim: they sailed with no relation to an enemy, nor to any potential prize The Dutch were bottled up; the French had disappeared; the Portuguese were friends.
They were not idle. Mr Stourton had a high notion of a first lieutenant’s duties, a religious horror of anything approaching dirt or shakings; his speaking-?trumpet was rarely out of his hand, and the cry of ‘Sweepers, sweepers!’ resounded through the ship as often as the voice of the cuckoo in May, and with something of the same intonation.
He had at once fallen in with his captain’s views on discipline, and with great relief, but the force of habit was strong, and the Surprise might have been inspected by an admiral any day without having to blush for it. Stourton was much more efficient than Hervey; it was clear that he could see to the daily running of the ship - in a thoroughly-?worked-?up frigate with a captain who knew what he was about, any fairly competent officer could have done so, but Stourton did it excellently. It is true that the midshipmen’s berth often wished him in hell in the early morning, but his natural cheerfulness was a real addition to the domestic comfort of the gunroom.
The frigate’s sailing qualities were Jack’s concern, however His master, Harrowby, was no phoenix, either in navigation or seamanship. In the hurry of their departure Harrowby had allowed an imperfect stowing of the hold, and the ship, as soft-?mouthed as a filly with her fine narrow entry, would neither lie as close to the wind as Jack could have wished nor stay with the smooth and certain rapidity that was in her power. She was splendid, sailing large -had never been better; but by the wind she left much to be desired; there was a slowness, a tendency to gripe, and want of ease that no fresh combination of sails would overcome; and it was not until they reached the line that pumping their water from one tier to another and shifting several thousand shot brought her by the stern enough to give him some ease of mind: it was only a half-?measure, to be sure, and the true solution must wait until they could land a mass of stores, come at the ballast and the ground-?tier, and restow the hold; but even this alteration in her trim made her a pleasure to steer.
He had a great deal to do; so had the frigate’s people; but there were many evenings when the hands danced and sang on the forecastle, and when Jack and Stephen played, sometimes in their narrow coach, sometimes on the quarterdeck, and sometimes in the great cabin - trios with Mr Stanhope, who blew a tremulous, small-?voiced flute, and who had a great deal of sheet-?music by him.
The envoy’s delicate health had taken great benefit from Bombay, and after his week of sea-?sickness his strength and spirits recovered remarkably. He and Stephen often sat together, hearing one another their Malay verbs or rehearsing his address to the Sultan of Kampong. It was to be delivered in French, a language that Mr Stanhope did not possess in great perfection: nor, it was to be presumed, did the sultan, but there was a French resident at Kampong, and Mr Stanhope felt that for his master’s credit he must be word-?perfect, and they went through it again and again, breaking down every time at ‘roi des trente-?six parapluies, et tres illustre seigneur de mille ?l?phants’, Mr Stanhope transposing the seigneur and the elephants out of mere nervousness. The address was to be translated phrase by phrase into Malay by his new oriental secretary, a gentleman of mixed parentage
