for lack of support, strict obedience to the letter of the Fighting Instructions, courts-martial, and above all the enemy roaming about , the sea unchecked. 'Corbett's reputation is sound enough, so is Pym's,' he said almost to himself, and then louder, 'But now I come to think of it, Stephen, you should know all about Clonfert. He is a countryman of yours, an eminent chap, I dare say, in Ireland.'
'Sure, it Is an Irish title,' said Stephen, 'but Clonfert is as much an Englishman as you are yourself. The family name is Scroggs. They have some acres of bog and what they call a castle near Jenkinsville in the bleak north--I know it well; anthea foetidissima grows there--and a demesne south of the Curragh of Kildare, forfeited Desmond land; but I doubt he has ever set foot on it. A Scotch agent looks after what rents he can rack out of the tenants.'
'But he is a peer, is he not? A man of some real consequence?'
'Bless your innocence, Jack: an Irish peer is not necessarily a man of any consequence at all. I do not wish to make any uncivil reflection on your country--many of my best friends are Englishmen--but you must know that this last hundred years and more it has been the practice of the English ministry to reward their less presentable followers with Irish titles; and your second-rate jobbing backstairs politician, given a coronet of sorts and transplanted into a country where he is a stranger, is a pitiful spectacle, so he is; a flash Brummagern imitation of the real thing. I should be sorry if the Irish peers, for the most part of them, were Irishmen. Apart from certain naval lords, that the ministry dare not have in the English House, they are a shabby crew, upon the whole, out of place in Ireland and ill at ease in England. I do not speak of your Fitzgeralds or Butlers, you understand, still less of the few native families that have survived, but of what is commonly called an Irish peer. Clonfert's grandfather, now, was a mere--Jack, what are you about?'
'I am taking off my shirt.'
'To swim so soon after dinner, and such a dinner? I cannot advise it. You are very corpulent; full of gross, viscous humours after these weeks and months of Poirier's cooking. And now we are come to the point, my dear, it is my clear duty to warn you against gule, against ungoverned appetite . . . a brutish vice, inductive mainly to the sin of Eve . . . bulimy, bulimy . . . dinners have killed more men than ever Avicenna healed . . . ' he prosed away while Jack took off his trousers. 'So you are determined on your bathe?' he said, looking at his naked companion. 'Will you let me see your back, now?' He ran his fingers over the dull-blue scar and asked, 'Do you feel it, these days?'
'Just a trifle, this morning,' said Jack. 'But otherwise, from the time we cleared the Channel until yesterday, never a twinge. A swim,' he said, slipping over the side and plunging deep into the pure blue water with his long yellow hair streaming out behind him, 'is the very thing for it,' he continued, rising to the surface and blowing hard. 'God, it is so refreshing, even though it is as warm as milk. Come on, Stephen, bathe while you may. For tomorrow we reach the cold current setting north, the green water and the westerlies, I trust; you will have your mollymawks, and your pintadoes and maybe your albatrosses, but there will be no more swimming till the Cape.'
CHAPTER THREE
Ever since the Boadicea had made her landfall all hands had been in a state of feverish activity, putting the last touches to her beauty: now It was almost over, and she stood into False Bay with a fair breeze rounding her studdingsails and wafting the reek of fresh paint along with her. The only stage still to obscure her spotless black and white Nelson checker was that occupied by the carpenters' mates, applying carmine with anxious care to the lips, cheeks and bosom of the opulent though insipid British queen.
Jack, already fine in his best uniform, stood by the starboard rail of the quarterdeck with Mr Farquhar beside him. A little farther forward the gunner blew on his slow-match by the brass nine-pounder: all the other guns were housed, ranged with the perfection of the Guards on parade, their breeching pipeclayed. Seymour was a conscientious first lieutenant, and the deck was a pleasure to behold--the gleaming pallor of the wood, the ebony of the seams new-paid with pitch, the falls precisely flemished, a series of exact helices that no man dared disturb, the few pieces of brass the captain would permit blazing in the sun, no speck of dust to be seen from stem to stern, the hen coops, the surviving swine struck down into the hold together with the goat, which, in the general silence, could be heard bleating angrily for its long overdue tobacco. The general silence, for all hands were on deck in their Sunday frocks, and they gazed earnestly, mutely at the shore, upon which people could now be seen walking about--walking about on dry land, among trees!--most of them perceptibly black: the only sounds to be heard, apart from the goat, were the bark of the master conning the ship from the forecastle, the ritual answers of the timoneer, the chant of the leadsman in the chains: 'By the mark, fifteen: by the mark, fifteen: and a half, fifteen: by the deep, sixteen: and a half, fifteen', and the conversational voice of the Captain as he pointed out various objects to his guest.
'That flat rock is what we call Noah's Ark, and far over there is Seal Island- the Doctor will like that. And beyond the Ark where you see the white water is the Roman Rock: we shall pass between the two. Indeed, we shall open Simon's Bay at any minute now. Mr Richardson, pray see if the Doctor has finished--whether he can come on deck--he would be sorry to miss all this. Yes, there we are,' he went on, with his telescope to his eye as the inner harbour came into full view. 'Raisonable, do you see? The two-decker. Then Sirius: Neriede laying inside her, a very pretty berth: then a brig I cannot make out at all. Mr Seymour, what do you make of the brig with her topmasts on deck?' At this point Stephen appeared, blinking in the strong light, wiping his bloody hands on a woollen nightcap and looking squalid. 'Ah, there you are, Doctor,' cried Jack. 'Have you finished sawing up poor young Francis? How is he coming along? Prime, I dare say?' Francis, until today the most popular topman in the ship, endeavouring to gild the Boadicea? maintopgallant truck, had lost his hold, making a most spectacular fall from that giddy eminence, missing the deck (and certain death) by the grace of the frigate's roll, but grazing her number twelve portlid with such force as to play havoc with his thoracic cage and above all to smear the bleeding paintwork, the grass-combing bugger.
'He may do,' said Stephen. 'These young fellows are made of steel and a particularly resilient leather. So that is Africa.' He looked greedily at the shore, the known haunt of the aardvark, the pangolin, the camelopard; of birds without number, roaming at large amidst a flora of extraordinary wealth, headed by the ostrich. 'And that,' pointing towards a remote headland, 'is the all-dreaded Cape of Storms itself, I make no doubt?'
'Not exactly,' said Jack. 'The Cape is far astern: I am sorry you did not see it. We came round precious close while you was busy. But before that you did see the Table Mountain, did you not? I sent a messenger.'
'Yes, yes. I felt most obliged to you, in spite of the unchristian hour. It might also be compared with Ben Bulben.'
'Curious, ain't it? And now here on the larboard bow--no, the larboard--you have Simon's Bay, a sweet anchorage. And there's Raisonable, wearing the flag.'
'Would that be a line-of-battle ship?' asked Farquhar. 'A most imposing vessel.'
'I doubt any sixty-four would ever lie in the line nowadays,'said Jack. 'In any case, the Raisonable was built fifty years ago, and if she fired a full broadside she might fall to pieces; but I am glad she looks imposing. Then comes Sirius, a much more powerful ship in fact, although she has but one tier of guns; thirty-six eighteen- pounders, much the same broadside weight of metal as ours. Then another frigate, do you see? Nereide thirty-six;
