he did so. 'Although I like Jagiello and esteem his parts, there are times when his youth and energy and high spirits and beauty arouse ill feelings in my bosom. It is envy, no doubt, mere base ignoble grovelling envy. No Gentleman's Relish ever pursued me in my youth, nor at any other time.'
'He is an engaging young fellow, to be sure; but upon my sacred honour I cannot tell what women see in him.'
'This is the last of the toast, I presume?'
'I am afraid it is,' said Jack, 'and I am afraid there will be no more soft tack to make it with until we are in the Downs.'
'When will that be, do you suppose?'
'If only this breeze holds, in a couple of days now that we are no longer tied to the slugs of the convoy. But I should not like to answer for the wind: the weather is all ahoo - the glass skips up and down - and we may have Pellworm's blow upon us yet. Still, if it does not come much south of west, we might strike the Broad Fourteens on Thursday, and so tide it down the Channel.'
The weather was indeed all ahoo, upset, chaotic, unpredictable; and there was a very great deal of it, almost always thick, with winds from north-east and north-west varying from light airs to close-reefed topsail gales, often accompanied by rain and heavy seas. These at least kept the Colonel below, but otherwise Jack had a somewhat disagreeable time of it. For one thing, he was frustrated in his wish to invite the captains of the troop-carriers, all elderly lieutenants who lacked the influence or the luck of successful action needed for promotion, but all excellent seamen who brought their ships along in a manner he whole-heartedly admired, hardly keeping the Ariel back at all. And then in his reckoning he had to allow for the curious North Sea indraught, irregular variation of the compass, the lack of observations, and the absence of a chronometer, so that what was ordinarily a simple routine passage became a long-lasting anxious test of navigation by instinct, with the devil to pay if his guess proved wrong. Yet not by instinct alone, for although the sky remained impenetrable for most of the time, and the grey waves told him little, the bottom of that shallow sea was a vast mosaic of different colours and he kept the lead going continually - wet, miserable hands in the windward mainchains uttering their dismal chant by day and night -and together with Pellworm and the master he continually examined the samples that the tallow on the lead brought up; grey sand, fine yellow sand with shells, sludge, coarse ground with small black stones, shingle. But the tesserae of this mosaic were often many miles across; the appreciation of their nature varied from man to man, so that the master and the pilot were sometimes in strong disagreement; and there were occasions when Jack was tempted to ask his way of the many fishermen, English and Dutch, who haunted those perilous banks in their shallow-draught doggers, schuyts, busses, howkers, and even bugalets, and who made his progress all the more uneasy by lying across his hawse until the last possible minute or suddenly looming out of the darkness without a single light so that he had to throw all aback. Like most English commanders, Jack never interfered with fishermen, whatever their nationality; and twice he was rewarded by strong Dutch voices out of the gloom cursing him for a Goddam boggart for having fouled their hand-lines. As for Stephen's watch, it was an elegant machine and admirably calculated for taking a pulse, but it asserted that the ship was ten miles clear of the Galloper at a time when they could actually see the light-ship guarding the shoal hoist its lanterns in the western murk.
'God send we may not run plump on to the Goodwin,' said Jack to the master as the Ariel and her charges hauled their wind and fled to the deep-water channel.
'Oh sir,' said Grimmond, who never expected facetiousness from so imposing a figure, 'Surely that is well to the south.'
They were spared the Goodwin, as they had been spared the Haddock Bank, the Leman, the Ower, and the Outer Dowsing: indeed they ran into the Downs on the one clear morning of the week, and it was just as well that they did so, for the roadstead was crowded with shipping, great convoys for the Indies, East and West, the Mediterranean, and the Guinea Coast, and if the weather had been as dirty as they had found it these last few days it would have been difficult to thread through the various fleets. There were few merchantmen setting off on their own, however, in spite of the favourable wind: the French had been unusually busy in the chops of the Channel, and it was rumoured that two American frigates were lying off the Land's End.
The Ariel only paused long enough to hail a Deal pilot-boat, to set Mr Pellworm ashore: as he went over the side he said, 'Mark my words, sir, mark my words: it will come into the west yet, whatever Mr Grimmond may say; and when it does come, it will blow all the harder for the waiting.' He moved three steps down the ladder and paused, his eyes just over the rail. 'Sick Earth convulsive groans from shore to shore, And Nature shuddering feels the horrid roar,' he said: his eyes took on a particularly knowing and significant look for a moment, and then vanished.
The quarterdeck frowned: Pellworm might be an old respected pilot, but this was coming it too high by half; this was taking a liberty with their Captain.
'Fill the maintopsail,' said Jack in a strong, displeased voice; and more privately to Stephen, 'I am glad we are shot of Mr Pellworm. He is an excellent pilot, but he prates too much. Poetry is not at all suitable on the quarterdeck of a man-of-war, particularly on such a subject: it might make the hands uneasy.'
It might also be right. There was perhaps something unpleasant in the smiling sky; and although the breeze seemed firmly settled in the north-east Jack was determined not to lose a minute of it but to run down-Channel with a press of sail until he could round Ushant with plenty of sea-room. He would not even stop long enough to take in fresh supplies from the bum-boats that came round the ship, observing in his decided manner 'that they were not here to blow out their kites with lobscouse, nor to choke their luffs with figgy-dowdy, but to convey the Catalan troops to Santandero without a moment's loss of time -dried peas would answer very well until they should reach Santandero,' and with a fresh breeze, a following tide, and a fine sense of urgency they stood south-west.
A fair wind right down the Channel was rare enough: often and often he had had to anchor for the tide, beat up tack upon tack in the narrow seas, winning a few miles only to be driven back again - weeks sometimes before he could get clear into the Atlantic; but now the familiar landmarks filed by in fine brisk succession: the South Foreland, Dungeness, Fairly, and Beachy gleaming through a wall of rain with solid blue-black cloud behind it; and then late in the evening there was the Wight clear on the starboard bow. Jack climbed into the mizentop with a telescope and before the green light vanished in the west he thought he caught the glint of his observatory dome at Ashgrove Cottage. He stared at it in a strange confusion of spirits, as though at another world, farther from him now than when he had been in the Antipodes.
The wind increased with the setting of the sun, and seeing that it would certainly come on to blow they struck topgallantmasts, reefed topsails and made all snug, even to the extent of rolling-tackles and puddening - storm- canvas had been the order of the day since Jutland - and they passed the Start as though they meant to fly out of the Channel without once changing course and reach the Spanish coast before the end of the week, a fitting crown to a most uncommon expedition.
Once again the dawn broke fair enough after a rainy night, though a heavy swell was setting from the southwest against the wind and tide, sending green water over the Ariel's bows, and they ran past the Eddystone,. with Rame Head and the homelike entrance to Plymouth plain beyond it, past the Dodman; and between the
