read it out, and when Jack handed back the captain's sword with an elegant if somewhat studied formal speech. They were happy with Captain Woolcombe, and the sentences for some of the desertions and embezzlements that followed were quite remarkably light. Yet for all that the sentences took a great while to reach: the stately process went on and on. In his own ship a captain could deal with any delinquent foremast hand so long as the offence did not carry the death-sentence, but he could not touch any officer holding a commission or a warrant; they had to come before the court; and at times it seemed to Jack, on the boil with impatience to get to sea, to make the most of the situation before the French knew of the forces on La Reunion, that no warrant officer in the squadron had found any better use for his time than getting drunk, overstaying his leave, disobeying, insulting, and even beating his superiors, and making away with the stores entrusted to his care. Indeed, a steady diet of courts-martial gave a most unpleasant impression of the Royal Navy: crime, oppression? complaints of illegal conduct, sometimes justified, sometimes fabricated or malicious (one master charged his captain with keeping false musters, on the grounds that he had a friend's son on the ship's books when in fact the young gentleman was at school in England, a perfectly normal practice, but one which would have wrecked the captain's career if the court had not performed some singular acrobatics to save him), brawling in the wardroom, against officers, evidence of long-standing ill- will; and all the bloody violence of the lower deck.
Between these grim sessions the presiding judge turned sailor again, and he drove on the refitting of his ships, fighting a most determined battle against obstruction and delay. But having all the time in the world, the dock-yard won hands down; they had gauged his needs and his impatience quite exactly, and he had not only to bleed borrowed gold at every vein, but even to thank his extortioners before the last sack of thirty-penny nails and ten-inch spikes came aboard. These actions took place at dawn and dusk, for at dinner-time the president of the court necessarily entertained the other members.
'Pray, Commodore, do you not find passing sentence of death cut your appetite?' asked Stephen, as he watched Jack carve a saddle of mutton.
'I cannot say I do,' said the Commodore, passing Captain Woolcombe a slice that dripped guiltless blood. 'I don't like it, to be sure; and if the court can possibly find a lesser offence, I think I should always give my vote for it. But when you have a straightforward case of cowardice or neglect of duty, why, then it seems to me plain enough: the man must be hanged, and the Lord have mercy on his soul, for the service will have none. I am sorry for it, but it don't affect my appetite. Captain Eliot, may I help you to a little of the undercut?'
'It seems to me perfectly barbarous,' observed Stephen.
'But surely, sir,' said Captain Pym, 'surely a medical man will cut off a gangrened limb to save the rest of the body?'
'A medical man does not cut off the limb in any spirit of corporate revenge, nor in terrorem; he does not make a solemn show of the amputation, nor is the peccant limb attended by all the marks of ignominy. No, sir: your analogy may be specious, but it is not sound. Furthermore, sir, you are to consider, that in making it you liken the surgeon to a common hangman, an infamous character held in universal contempt and detestation. And the infamy attaching to the executioner arises from what he does: the language of all nations condemns the man and a fortiori his act: which helps to make my point more forcibly.'
Captain Pyrn protested that he had not intended the least reflection upon surgeons--a capital body of men, essential in a ship, and on shore too, no doubt: he would not meddle with analogies any more; but still perhaps he might adventure to say that it was a hard service, and it needed a hard discipline.
'There was a man,' remarked Captain Eliot, 'who was sentenced to death for stealing a horse from a common. He said to the judge, that he thought it hard to be hanged for stealing a horse from a common; and the judge answered, 'You are not to be hanged for stealing a horse from a common, but that others may not steal horses from commons.
'And do you find,' asked Stephen, 'that in fact horses are not daily stolen from commons? You do not. Nor do I believe that you will make captains braver or wiser by hanging or shooting them for cowardice or erroneous judgment. It should join the ordeal of the ploughshare, floating or pricking to prove witchcraft, and judicial combat, among the relics of a Gothic past.'
'Dr Maturin is quite right,' cried Lord Clonfert. 'A capital execution seems to me a revolting spectacle. Surely a man could be . .
His words were drowned in the general flow of talk that Stephen's word 'shooting' had set going; for Admiral Byng had been shot to death on his own quarterdeck. Almost everybody was speaking, except for Captain Woolcombe, who ate in wolfish silence, his first meal without anxiety; and the names of Byng and Keppel flew about.
'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' cried Jack, who saw the far more recent Gambler and Hervey and the unfortunate engagement in the Basque roads looming ahead, 'let us for Heaven's sake keep to our humble level, and not meddle with admirals or any other god-like beings, or we shall presently run foul of politics, and that is the end of all comfortable talk.'
The noise diminished, but Clonfert's excited voice could be heard carrying on, the possibility of judicial error, and the value of human life--once it is gone, it cannot be brought back. There is nothing, nothing, so precious.'
He addressed himself to his neighbours and to those sitting opposite him; but none of the captains seemed eager to be the recipient, and there was the danger of an embarrassing silence, particularly as Stephen, convinced that two hundred years of talk would not shift his kind, bloody-minded companions an inch, had taken to rolling bread pills.
'As for the value of human life,' said Jack, J wonder whether you may not over-estimate it in theory; for in practice there is not one of us here, I believe, who would hesitate for a moment over pistoling a boarder, nor think twice about it afterwards. And for that matter, our ships are expressly made to blow as many people into kingdom come as possible.'
'It is a hard service, and it requires a hard discipline,' repeated Pym, peering through his claret at the enormous joint.
'Yes, it is a hard service,' said Jack, 'and we often call our uniform buttons the curse of God; but a man--an officer--enters it voluntarily, and if he don't like the terms he can leave it whenever he chooses. He takes it on himself--he knows that if he does certain things, or leaves them undone, he is to be cashiered or even hanged. If he has not the fortitude to accept that, then he is better out of the service. And as for the value of human life, why, it often seems to me that there are far too many people in the world as it is; and one man, even a post-captain, nay'smiling--'even a commodore or a jack-in-the-green, is not to be balanced against the good of the service.'
'I entirely disagree with you, sir,' said Clonfert.
'Well, my lord, I hope it is the only point upon which we shall ever differ,' said Jack.
