she will fly. Indeed,’ he added, having reflected for a while, for a whistling pause, ‘if we start to fly this very moment, we may yet overhaul the China fleet, and send our packets off. They are slow, close-?reef topsails-? every-?night old tubs, for all their man-?of-?war airs and graces. You should not have said that about lovers, Stephen.’
It was in longitude eighty-?nine east that the frigate caught them. A string of lights had been seen towards the end of the middle watch, and as the sun came up most of the Surprise’s people were on deck to contemplate the cloud of sails that stretched along the horizon: thirty-?nine ships and a brig in two separate bodies; They had scattered somewhat in the night, and now they were closing up in response to their commodore’s signals, the laggards crowding sail on the moderate northeast breeze. The leeward division, if such a wandering heap could be called a division, was made up of country ships bound for Calcutta, Madras or Bombay, and some foreigners who had joined them for safety from pirates and to profit by their exact navigation; it straggled for three miles along the distant sea. But those to windward, all sixteen of them the larger kind of Indiamen that made the uninterrupted voyage from Canton to London, were already in a formation that would not have done much discredit to the Navy.
‘And are you indeed fully persuaded that they are not men-?of-?war?’ asked Mr White. ‘They look wonderfully like, with their rows of guns; wonderfully like, to a lands-?man’s eye.’
‘They do, do they not?’ said Stephen. ‘It is their study so to appear; but I believe that if you look closer you will see water-?butts placed, stowed, between the guns, and a variety of bales on deck, which would never be countenanced in the service. And the various flags and streams that fly in the appropriate places are quite different: I am not prepared to say just in what the difference lies, but to the seaman it is instantly apparent - they are not the royal insignia. Then again, you will have noticed that the Captain has given orders to close them; which I conceive he would scarcely have done, had they been an enemy fleet of such magnitude.’
‘He said, “Keep your luff,” and followed it with an oath,’ said the chaplain, narrowing his eyes.
‘It is all one,’ said Stephen. ‘They speak in tropes, at sea.’
From his perch in the main crosstrees Pullings summoned William Church aloft, a very small midshipman in his first voyage, who seemed rather to have shrunk than to have grown in the course of it. ‘Now, younker,’ he said, ‘you are always flattering about the wealth of the Orient and the way you never seen none of it in Bombay nor parts east but only mud and flies and a mortal lot of sea: well, now, just take a look through this spyglass at the ship wearing the pendant. She’s the Lushington: I made two voyages in her. Then next astern there’s the Warley: a very sweet sailer - works herself, almost - and fast, for an Indiaman: trim lines - you could take her for a heavy frigate, if you had not been aboard. You see they carry forestaysails, just as we do: they are the only merchantmen you will ever see with a forestaysail. Some call it impertinence. And then the one with her topsail atrip, that they are making such a cock of trimming -Judas Priest, what a Hornchurch fair! They have forgot to pass the staysail sheet - you see the mate in a passion, a-?running along the gangway? I can hear him from here. It is always the same with these Lascars: they are tolerable good seamen, sometimes, but they forget their ABC, and they can’t be got to do their duty brisk, no not if it is ever so. Then on her quarter, with the patched inner jib, that’s the Hope: or maybe she’s the Ocean - they’re much of a muchness, out of the same yard and off of the same draught. But any gait, all of ‘em you see in this weather line, is what we call twelve-?hundred-?tonners; though to be sure some gauges thirteen and even fifteen hundred ton, Thames measurement. Wexford, there, with her brass fo’c’sle eight-?pounder winking in the sun, she does: but we call her a twelve hundred ton ship.’
‘Sir, might it not be simpler to call her a fifteen hundred ton ship?’
‘Simpler, maybe: but it would never do. You don’t want to be upsetting the old ways. Oh dear me, no. God’s my life, if the Captain was to hear you carrying on in that reckless Jacobin, democratical line, why, I dare say he would turn you adrift on a three-?inch plank, with both your ears nailed down to it, to learn you bashfulness, the way he served three young gentlemen in the Med. No, no: you don’t want to go arsing around with the old ways: the French did so, and look at the scrape it has gotten them into. But what I called you up here for, was to show you this here wealth of the Orient. Just you look ahead of the commodore to the leading ship, Ganges, if I don’t mistake, and now cast your eye to old slowbelly in the rear, setting his topgallants and sagging to leeward something cruel. Look hard, now, because you will not likely see such a sight again; for there you have a clear six millions of money, not counting the officers’ private ventures. Six million of money: God love us, what a prize!’
The officers who were wafting this enormous treasure across the ocean in their leisurely East-?India fashion were well rewarded for doing so; this pleased them, because, among other things, it allowed them to be magnificently hospitable; and they were the most hospitable souls afloat. No sooner had Captain Muffit, the commodore, made out the frigate’s tall mainmast in the light of dawn, than he sent for his chief steward, his head Chinese and his head Indian cook; and signals broke out aboard the Lushington: the one to the Surprise, Request honour of captain’s and officers’ company to dinner, the other to the convoy, All ships: pretty young female passengers required dine frigate’s officers. Repeat young. Repeat pretty.
The Surprise ran within a cable’s length of the Lushington. Boats plied to and fro along the fleet, bringing young women in silk dresses and eager officers in blue and gold The Indiaman’s splendid stateroom was filled with people, filled with cheerful noise - news of Europe, of India and the farther East; news of the war, of common acquaintances, gossip; inane but cheerful conversation; riddles! toasts to the Royal Navy, to the honourable East-? India Company, to trade’s increase - and the frigate’s officers filled themselves with splendid food, with charming wine Mr Church’s neighbour, a lovely rounded creature with golden hair, treated him with the attentive respect due to his uniform, urging him to try a little more of this lacquered duck, a trifle of pork, a few more slices of pineapple, calling for Canton buns, exchanging her third plate of pudding with him - no one would notice but even her overflowing goodwill sought to restrain his hand at last It sought in vain Church had secured to himself a cake in the form of the Kwan-?Yin pagoda, there were eight stories still to go, and his beloved captain’s motto was Lose not a minute. He lost none in small-?talk, at all events, but silently ate on and on. She looked anxiously round - gazed at the frigate’s surgeon, sitting in moody silence opposite her - but found no help. When the ladies withdrew, instantly followed by Babbington, who muttered something about ‘his handkerchief being left in the boat’, she paused by the Lushington’s chief officer and said, ‘Pray, sir, take care of the blue child; I am sure he will do himself a mischief.’
She watched him apprehensively as he went down the side; but her eye could not follow, nor her heart conceive, his rapid progress from the frigate’s deck to the midshipmen’s berth, where those who had been obliged to stay aboard were sitting down to a feast sent across by the Indiaman.
For his part Jack could not manage a second dinner when he reached the Surprise again, nor indeed anything of a solid nature; but throwing off his coat, neckcloth, waistcoat and breeches, he called for nankeen trousers and coffee. ‘You will join me in another pot, Stephen?’ he said. ‘Lord, how delightful it is to have room to move.’ The envoy’s suite, apart from Mr White, who was too poor to pay his passage, had removed into an Indiaman, and the great cabin was itself again. ‘And how glad I am to be shot of that wicked little scrub Atkins.’
‘He was a nuisance, but he was not a wicked man. Weak he was, and silly.’
‘When you say weak you say all the rest. You are much too inclined to find excuses for scrubs, Stephen: you
