'Captain Corbett, a glass of wine with you.'
'I never drink a glass of wine with any man, my lord,' replied Corbett.
'Captain Corbett,' said Jack quickly, 'I was astonished to learn about the Russian brig lying inside the Nereide, and even more astonished when the Admiral told me that her captain had served under you.'
'Yes, sir, he was in the Seahorse when I had her, serving as a volunteer to learn our ways: and he picked them up pretty well, I must confess. His people are scarcely what we should rate ordinary, but I dare say he will knock some seamanship into them in time. They have a fine sense of discipline in those parts: a thousand lashes are not uncommon, I believe.'
The talk ran on about the unfortunate Diana--her sailing from the Baltic on a voyage of discovery at a time of peace between England and Russia--her arrival, all unsuspecting, in Simon's Town to learn that war had been declared--her curious status--her curious build--her people's curious ways ashore.
Eight bells struck: they all stood up. Jack detained Corbett for a moment and said, 'Before I forget it, Captain Corbett, my coxswain and some other men are aboard the
Nereide. Here, I have jotted down their names. You will oblige me by having 'em sent over.'
'Certainly, sir,' said Corbett. 'Of course ... But I beg you will not think I intend the least disrespect if I venture to repeat that I am cruelly short handed.'
'So I understand,' said Jack. 'But I do not mean to rob you: far from it. You shall have an equal number from the Boadicea, and I believe I may even be able to let you have a few more. We pressed some good men among the Hebe's prisoners.'
'I should be most uncommon grateful, sir,'said Corbett, brightening at once. 'And I shall send your men back the moment I reach the ship.'
It was with his own coxswain at his side, therefore, that the Commodore put off for his tour of the squadron. 'This is like old times, Bonden,' he said, as they approached the Sirius. 'Yes, sir; only better,' murmured Bonden: and then, in answer to the frigate's hall, he roared 'Pendant,' in a voice to wake the dead.
It did not startle the Sirius, however: from the moment of Captain Pym's return all hands had turned to-- dinner cut short, grog gulped down--in order to give her an entirely artificial and fallacious appearance, designed to make her appear what she was not. They had done so with a will, being proud of their ship, and although there had been no time for any lavish repainting, the Sirius that the Commodore beheld was as unlike her workaday self as the concentrated effort of two hundred and eighty- seven men and several women (some regular, others less so) could make her. Seeing that she was virtually disembowelled because of her tanks, they had not been able to turn her into a larger version of a royal yacht, as they could have wished; but apart frorm the pyramids of nameless objects on deck, decently shrouded with awnings and tarpaulins, she was very presentable, and Jack was pleased with what he saw. He did not believe it, of course; nor was he expected to believe it: the whole thing, from the whitewashed coal in the galley to the blackened balls in the shot-garlands, was a ritual disguise. Yet had a relationship to the facts, and he gained the impression of a fine steady ship in moderately good order with competent officers and a decent crew largely composed of man-of-war's men--she had been in commission these three years and more. Captain Pym had set up a splendid array of bottles and cakes in his cabin, and as Jack lowered a Bath bun whose specific gravity somewhat exceeded that of platinum he reflected that its consistency was in all likelihood a fair symbol of the ship--steady, regular, rather old-fashioned, reliable; though perhaps not apt to set the Indian Ocean in a blaze.
Next the Nereide. She had had no real need to turn to in order to achieve the full effect that the Sirius had aimed at, yet from the mute, weary sullenness of her crew and the anxious, laded, harassed look of her officers, every man jack aboard had been hard at it, gilding the Illy for this occasion. Jack liked a taut ship, and of course a clean ship, but the total perfection of the Nereide's vast expanse of brass alone oppressed him: he went through with his inspection, that being due to those who had tolled so hard and to so little purpose, but he made his tour of the silent, rigid frigate with no pleasure at all. His real business lay below, however, among the navel-futtocks; and there in the depths with the captain, his nervous first lieutenant and his nervous carpenter, he found that Corbett had not exaggerated greatly. Her timbers were indeed in a bad way: yet, he reflected as he prodded about with a spike, the Simon's Town surveyor might be right in saying that they would last another two or three seasons, whereas unless jack was out in his reckoning the rot on the upper deck would spread more rapidly than that. As a young fellow, a midshipman in those very waters, he had been disrated for misconduct, for venery, and turned before the mast: infinitely against his will he had been a foremast jack for six months. That ship's standard of spit and polish had been nothing remotely like the Nereude's, but she had had a tartar of a captain and a driving first lieutenant, and he knew to his cost just what it took in labour to produce even half this result. And those months, so wretched at first and indeed most of the time, had also given him something that few officers possessed: an intimate understanding of life at sea from the men's point of view, a comprehension from within. He knew their language, spoken and silent; and his interpretation of the looks he had seen before coming below, the constraint, the veiled sideways glances, the scarcely perceptible nods and signs, the total lack of anything resembling cheerfulness, depressed him extremely.
Corbett was a brisk man with figures, however: he produced his detailed statement of the Nereide's condition, neatly ruled in black and red, at the same time as his Madeira and sweet biscuits. 'You are very well found in powder and shot, I see,' Jack remarked, glancing over the columns.
'Yes, sir,' said Corbett. 'I don't believe in flinging it into the ocean: besides, your genuine recoil does so plough up the deck.'
'it does; and the Nereide's deck is a most remarkable sight, I must confess. But do you not find it answers, to have your men handy with the guns- accurate at a distance?'
'Why, sir, as far as my experience goes, it don't make much odds. I have always engaged yardarm to yardarm, when they could not miss if they tried. But I don't have to tell you anything about close engagement, sir, not after your action with the Cacafuego, ha, ha.'
'Still, there is something to be said for the other school of thought- something to be said for knocking away the enemy's sticks from a mile off and then lying athwart his hawse,' observed Jack mildly.
'I am sure you are right, sir,' said Corbett, without the least conviction.
If the Nereide had been as like a royal yacht as a man-of-war could very well be, the Otter, at first glance, was the yacht itself. Jack had never, in all his life, seen such a display of gold leaf; and rarely had he seen all shrouds and stays wormed with vermilion yarn and the strops of the blocks covered with red leather. At second glance it seemed perhaps a little much, touching on the showy, just as the perfection of tailoring on Clonfert's quarterdeck--even the midshipmen had laced cocked hats, breeches, and Hessian boots with gold tassels--had a hint of costume rather than of uniform about it: and as he stood there Jack noticed to his surprise that Clonfert's officers appeared rather a vulgar set. They could not help their undistinguished faces, of course, but their stance, now too rigid, like tailor's dummies, now too lounging and easy by far, was something else again; so was their
