'Lucky Jack Aubrey,' said the master. 'He was always a great one for the guns.'
While the hands were running to their stations and the carpenters pinning and swifting the capstan-bars, Jack said to Draper, 'Please to introduce the officers.' They were all there, just at hand: Hyde, the first lieutenant, Fenton the second, Grimmond the master, and the rest. Draper hurriedly named them: he was on fire to get his cabin cleared and his mumchance guests away. Jack stated that he was very glad to see them, begged Draper to make his humblest excuses to the ladies, said 'Carry on, Mr Hyde,' and took up his station near the wheel. Throughout the bustle of getting the guests ready he stood there, watching attentively.
The hands were very conscious of his gaze, and they jumped to their duties as they rarely jumped for young Mr Draper. They had known he was coming ever since the flag-lieutenant had brought a Baltic pilot aboard, together with orders for Captain Draper - the news, coming by way of the Captain's steward, had spread through the sloop in rather less than two minutes - and although many of the Ariels were landsmen or boys there were quite enough man-of-war's men aboard to tell them of Lucky Jack Aubrey's reputation as a fighting captain, while the three or four who had sailed with him magnified it extremely: he ate fire for breakfast, elevenses, dinner and supper; it was his custom to head up defaulters in a cask and toss them overboard; he could do so without let or hindrance because why? because he had made a hundred thousand pounds, two hundred thousand pounds, a million of money in prizes, and rode in a coach and six; and the poor unfortunate buggers he served in this way were those that took more than forty seconds to fire their broadsides, or missed their mark. All those who could possibly do so eyed him as they heaved round the capstan-bars to the brisk squeaking of a fife, eyed him apprehensively, for he was indeed a formidable figure, standing there silent, larger than life in the twilight, by the nervous Mr Hyde: a figure that did not seem in the best of tempers either, one that obviously had the habit of command, a figure that emanated authority.
The starboard cable glided in; the afterguard, the Marines, and most of the topmen heaved; the others veered out through the larboard hawse; the quartermasters and the forecastlemen coiled the cable won in tiers, stinking of Thames mud. The cat-fall was overhauled, the fish was clear.
'Up and down, sir,' called the second lieutenant from the forecastle.
'Thick and weigh for drying,' replied Mr Hyde in his agitation, and then with a nervous glance at Jack, 'I mean thick and dry for weighing.'
The Ariel's best bower broke the surface; the cat was hooked to the ring; her people clapped on to the fall, ran it up to the cat-head and fished it in a most seamanlike manner; and with scarcely a pause the ship began to move over to her small bower, the capstan turning steadily.
'Up and down,' came the cry, and now for the first time the new captain intervened. 'Vast heaving,' he called in a voice calculated for a far larger ship. 'Back and pawl. Side-boys aft,' for he had seen that Draper was ready, and he wished him to go over the side in proper style, although it would cost minutes of this beautiful windward tide.
This Draper did, to the wail of pipes, with something like a tear in his eye, and his glum companions mute in the boat; and the moment it was decently clear and pulling for the shore Jack called 'Away aloft. Trice up and lay out.'
The topmen raced up the shrouds, ran out along the yards, cast off the gaskets and stood poised there holding the sails. 'Let fall. Sheet home, sheet home. Man the halliards: haul, haul. Belay.' The yards rose, the sheets were tallied aft, the billowing sails stood taut, and the Ariel, surging ahead, plucked her anchor from the ground. The hands at the capstan ran the remaining fathoms of cable in as briskly as the tierers could handle it, and the small bower was catted and fished just as she shaved past the Indomitable, a biscuit's toss to windward, passed between her and her next ahead, and headed out to sea on the tail of the ebb.
'She cast pretty,' said the master of the Indomitable.
'It was damned impertinence to go to windward of us,' said the first lieutenant. 'She would have ruined my fresh paint, with the least hint of a check to the anchor.'
A few minutes later the Ariel dropped her topgallantsails and Jack said, 'Lay me for the Mouse, Mr Grimmond. There is always some garbage there, at slack water.'
Up until this time Stephen, Jagiello, and the King's Messenger had been standing meekly out of the way, like parcels, by the ensign-staff. Jack called the first lieutenant, introduced him, and said 'Mr Hyde, we must bestow these gentlemen as well as we can. Dr Maturin can share my cabin, but you will have to find room to swing two more cots somewhere below.'
Hyde looked more anxious still. With a deferential mirthless smile he said that he should do his best, but the Ariel was a flush-decked ship.
If Jack had not already noticed that she lacked anything but a theoretical quarterdeck and forecastle - that her deck ran without a break from stem to stern so that although beautiful she was decidedly cramped - he noticed it immediately afterwards, when he led his charges below. Long experience had taught him to bend between decks, and without taking thought he ducked as he entered the cabin. Jagiello was not so fortunate: he struck his head against a beam with such shocking force that although he protested that it was nothing - he felt nothing - his face turned deathly white, so that the blood running down it showed even more distinctly. They sat him down on a locker - even the Messenger displayed a glimmering of humanity - and while Stephen mopped him, Jack called for grog, told him that it might happen to anyone, and that he should always watch out for low beams in unrated ships, particularly in French unrated ships. Captain Aubrey did not sit with them long, however: as soon as it became apparent that Jagiello would survive he went on deck again.
The squadron at the Nore was already far astern, Sheerness no more than a looming blur. The Ariel was slipping easily through the calm slack water, making a good five knots with the gentle breeze, her wake as straight as a well-drawn furrow.
He took half a dozen turns on the little quarterdeck, looking aloft, looking over her side, getting the feel of her. It was much as he had expected, the feel of a well-built, well-rigged ship, fast, weatherly, and easy in hand. He knew her well, having chased her twice without success when she was still a French corvette and having seen her often after she was captured, one of the few French ship-rigged corvettes that the Admiralty had not ruined by adding a superstructure, though as usual they had over-gunned her, cutting an extra port a side, which probably dulled her fine point of sailing and certainly brought her a little by the stern. A trim little ship, a frigate in miniature, but with a purer unbroken line; a formidable little ship too, with her sixteen thirty-two pounder carronades and her two long nines - formidable, that is to say, at close range, a match for anything of her own class, so long as she could get near enough.
From the moment she had been mentioned in Whitehall he had been confident that the Ariel, well handled, would do anything he asked her, within sea-reason: what he did not know was the capacities of those who were to do the handling. There were obviously some prime seamen among them; they had unmoored creditably and everything on deck was shipshape and Bristol-fashion except for that stray slab-line forward; but the Ariel was obviously short-handed, perhaps twenty below her complement of a hundred and twelve, and there was an undue
