even more. Do you see those green roofs and terraces? That is Elsinore.'
'Elsinore itself? The very Elsinore? God bless my soul: and yours too, joy. A noble pile. I view it with reverence. I had supposed it to be merely ideal - hush, do not move. They come, they come!'
A flight of duck wheeled overhead, large powerful heavy swift-flying duck in files, and pitched between the castle and the ship.
'Eiders without a doubt,' said Stephen, his telescope fixed upon them. 'They are mostly young: but there on the right is a drake in full dress. He dives: I see his black belly. This is a day to mark with a white stone.' A great jet of white water sprang from the surface of the sea. The eiders vanished. 'Good God!' he cried, staring in amazement, 'What was that?'
'They have opened on us with their mortars,' said Jack. 'That was what I was looking for.' A puff of smoke appeared on the nearer terrace, and half a minute later a second fountain rose, two hundred yards short of the Ariel.
'The Goths,' cried Stephen, glaring angrily at Elsinore. 'They might have hit the birds. These Danes have always been a very froward people. Do you know, Jack, what they did at Clonmacnois? They burnt it, the thieves, and their queen sat on the high altar mother-naked, uttering oracles in a heathen frenzy. Ota was the strumpet's name. It is all of a piece: look at Hamlet's mother. I only wonder her behaviour caused any comment.'
The next shot pitched well over the Ariel, sending up its plume a cable's length to larboard. Jack took the telescope and trained it on the battery. Five whiffs of smoke that drifted away down the Sound; five fountains in the sea, three beyond, two short; and the long sullen roar. 'Tolerably good practice,' he observed. 'They are increasing their charge.'
The pilot came aft and said, 'Shall I put her into Helsingborg, sir?'
'No,' said Jack, glancing at the Swedish port a little abaft the larboard beam. 'Carry on down the Sound, Mr Pellworm. You may shave the Swedish shore as close as you please, however.' And to Stephen he said, 'Tossing a two-hundred-pound bombshell at a moving object is a chancy business at this range, you know; a hit or miss affair; nothing like lobbing them into a fortification, or an anchored fleet. And they have just as much chance of hitting us if we put back as if we stand on - indeed, rather more, since we should be going from them in a right line. Mr Jagiello, good morning to you. The Danes are busy, as you see.'
'I wish they may burst,' said Jagiello. 'Good morning, sir. Doctor, your servant.'
A group of three shells, directly in the Ariel's path, sent up three distinct columns, instantly shattered into a confused mass of flying water as the charges exploded under the surface.
'Down with your helm,' called Jack, and the Ariel began to perform a languid jig, swerving, letting fly her sheets or hauling aft, diminishing and increasing her gentle pace: never by very much, but at least enough to make sure that every fresh discharge would have to be the result of a separate calculation on the part of the Danes.
'Mr Hyde,' he said to the first lieutenant, pointing to a number of large fish that lay belly-up where the shells had exploded, 'let a net be put over the side. We may as well profit by the situation.'
Slowly, slowly, the nearer sea moved by; the shore seemed quite motionless. Sometimes the courses and the topsails flapped, with no thrust in them; and the hands on the forecastle could be heard whistling quietly for a breeze. They had not much time for brooding, however: at seven bells hammocks were piped up, at eight the men were piped to breakfast, and the pleasant smell of frying fish wafted about the deck.
'Were you ever in Elsinore, Mr Jagiello?' asked Jack.
'Oh, many a time, sir,' said Jagiello. 'I know it well. I believe I could show you Hamlet's grave from here.'
'I was really wondering whether they were ten or thirteen inch mortars on the upper terrace,' said Jack, 'but I should be very happy to see Hamlet's grave as well.'
'Both ten and thirteen, sir. And if you go a little to the right from the farthest turret, there are some trees: and among those trees there is the grave. You can just make out the rocks.'
'So there he lies,' said Jack, his telescope levelled. 'Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life.'
'A capital piece indeed,' said Stephen, 'and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind classed it among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?'
'I never read it at all,' said Jack. 'That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that - I acted in it. There, the upper terrace fires. I was a midshipman at the time.'
'What part did you play?'
Jack did not answer at once: he was watching for the fall, counting the seconds. At the twenty-eighth it came, well pitched up but wide to starboard. 'Port your helm, there,' he called, and then went on, 'I was one of the sexton's mates. There were seventeen of us, and we had real earth to dig, brought from shore; it played Old Harry with the deck, but by God it was worth it. Lord, how we laughed! The carpenter was the sexton, and instead of going on in that tedious way about whose grave it was he made remarks about the ship's company. I was Ophelia too: that is to say, one of the Ophelias.'
Another salvo tore up the sea, true in line this time, but short: and as he watched Jack caught the flash of a single mortar. Again the line was true and he saw the shell soar to its height, soar until it was no more than a small black ball against the pale sky, then curve down, racing down, growing fast, to burst well astern. 'Judging from the height,' he said, 'I fancy they have reached their full elevation and their full charge.'
The next salvo confirmed his judgment; the last hundred yards had carried them beyond the battery's malice; and he suggested that they too should have breakfast. 'The smell of that fish is more than I can bear,' he said privately to Stephen.
At the breakfast-table, with a fine view of the narrows and the now silent Elsinore, Stephen said, 'So you were Ophelia in your youth, Captain Aubrey.'
'A part of Ophelia. But in this case the part was greater than the whole: I was called back three times, and the other fellows were not called back at all, even the one that was drowned in a green dress with sprigs. Three times, upon my honour!'
'How did the poor young lady come to be divided up?'
