all of us entertain an unknown guest, and I should not be surprised if you had lost two stone.'
'So much the better,' said Jack. 'I dine with Admiral Mitchell today: I have two pair of old stockings on, as you see. Larboard mainchains,' he called to his coxswain, and almost immediately afterwards he ran down into the waiting gig, leaving Stephen strangely at a loss. 'What is the connection between the loss of two stone and the wearing of two pair of old stockings?' he asked the hammock-netting.
The connection would have been clear enough if he had gone aboard the San Josef with Jack. Her quarterdeck had a large number of officers upon it, which was natural enough in a flagship: officers tall, medium and short, but all of them remarkably lean and athletic - no sagging paunches, no dewlaps in the San Josef. From among them stepped the Admiral, a small compact man with a cheerful face and the pendulous arms of a foremast-hand. He wore his own grey hair, cut short in the new fashion and brushed forward, which gave him a slightly comic air until one met his eye, an eye capable of a very chilling glance indeed, though now it expressed a cordial welcome. He spoke with a pleasant West Country burr, and he rarely pronounced the letter H.
They talked about some improvements in the tops, the provision of a new kind of swivel-gun with little or no recoil; and as Jack had expected the Admiral said, 'I tell you what, Aubrey, we will have a look at them; and then while we are about it let us race to the jack-crosstrees - there is nothing like it for a whet to your appetite - the last man down to forfeit a dozen of champagne.'
'Done, sir,' said Jack, unbuckling his sword. 'I'm your man.'
'You take the starboard ratlines, since you are the guest,' said the Admiral. 'Away aloft.'
The captain of the maintop and his mates received them calmly and showed them the working of the swivel- guns. They were perfectly used to the sudden appearance of the Admiral, who was famous throughout the fleet as an upperyardsman and as one who believed in the virtue of exercise for all hands; they looked covertly at Captain Aubrey's face for signs of the apoplexy that had struck down the last visiting commander and they were gratified to see that from a pleasing red Jack's face had already turned purple from keeping pace with the Admiral. But Jack was a tolerably deep file: he loosened his collar and asked questions about the guns - the guns interested him extremely - until he felt his heart beat easy with the coming of his second wind, and when the Admiral cried 'Go-he sprang into the topmast shrouds as nimbly as one of the larger apes. With his far greater reach and length of leg he was well ahead until half-way to the topmast bibs, where the Admiral drew level, swung out on the mizen flagstaff stay and began swarming up the frail spider's web that supported the San Josefs lofty topgallantmast with the jack-crosstrees at its head, up and up hand over hand, no ratlines here for their feet. He was at least twenty years older than Jack, but he led by a yard when he reached the crosstrees, writhed round them and took up a strategic position that effectually stopped Jack's progress. 'You must stand on them with both feet, Aubrey,' he said without a gasp. 'Fair's fair,' and so saying he leapt outwards on the easy roll. For a split second he was in the air, free as a bird, two hundred feet above the sea: then his powerful hands grasped the standing backstay, and the immensely long rope that plunged straight from the mast-head to the ship's side by the quarterdeck at an angle of some eighty degrees; and as the Admiral swung to clasp it with his legs so Jack set both feet on the crosstrees. Being so much taller he could reach the corresponding stay on the other side without that appalling leap, without that swing; and now weight told. Fifteen stone could slide down a rope faster than nine, and as they both shot past the maintop it was clear to Jack that unless he braked he must win. He tightened his grip above and below, felt the fierce burning in his hands, heard his stockings go to ruin, gauged his fall exactly, and as the deck swept close he dropped from the stay, landing at the same instant as his opponent.
Tipped on the post,' cried the Admiral. 'Poor Aubrey, beat by half a nose. But never mind; you did very well for a cove of your uncommon size. And it has clawed some of the jam off your back, hey? Given you an appetite, hey, hey? Come and drink some of your champagne. I will lend you a case until you can pay me back.'
They drank Jack's champagne, the dozen between eight of them; they drank port and something that the Admiral described as rare old Egyptian brandy; they told stories, and in a pause Jack produced the only decent one he could remember. 'I do not set up for a wit,' he began.
'I should think not,' said the Captain of the San Josef, laughing heartily.
'I cannot hear you, sir,' said Jack, with a vague recollection of legal proceedings; 'But I have the most amazingly witty surgeon: learned, too. And he once said the best thing I ever heard in my life. Lord, how we laughed! It was when I had Lively, keeping her warm for William Hamond. There was a parson dining with us, that knew nothing of the sea, but someone had just told him that the dog-watches were shorter than the rest.' He paused amid the general smiling expectancy. 'By God, I must get it right this time,' he said inwardly, and he concentrated his gaze on the broad-bottomed decanter. 'Not so long, if you understand me, sir,' he went on, turning to the Admiral.
'I believe I follow you, Aubrey,' said the Admiral.
' 'So the dog-watches are shorter than the rest,' says the parson, 'very well. But why dog, if you please?' As you may imagine, we looked pretty blank: and then in the silence the Doctor pipes up. 'Why, sir,' says he, 'do you not perceive that it is because they are cur-tailed?' '
Infinite mirth, far greater than on the first occasion long ago, when it had had to be explained. Now the company had known that something droll was coming; they were prepared, primed, and they exploded into a roar of honest delight. Tears ran down the Admiral's scarlet face: he drank to Jack when he could draw breath at last, he repeated the whole thing twice, he drank to Dr Maturin's health with three times three and a heave-ho rumbelow; and Bonden, who had regained the gig with his crew half an hour before, having been kindly entertained by the Admiral's coxswain, said to his mates, 'It will be the gallery-ladder this tide. Mark my words.'
The gallery-ladder it was, a humane device discreetly let down so that captains who did not choose to face .the ceremony of piping the side might come aboard unseen, giving no evil example to those they might have to flog for drunkenness tomorrow, and it was by the gallery-ladder that Captain Aubrey regained his cabin, sometimes smiling, sometimes looking stern, rigid and official. But he had always had a good head for wine, and although he had lost some weight there was still a fine bulk in which wine might disperse: after a nap he woke in time for quarters, perfectly sober. Sober, but grave, rather melancholy; his head ached; his hearing seemed unnaturally acute.
The great-gun exercise was not what it had been: a ship on blockade, sailing in formation, could hardly blaze away as the Worcester had done in the lonely ocean. But Jack and the gunner had devised a framework of laths with a mark hung in the middle by a network of lines whose meshes were just smaller than a twelve-pound ball, so that the exact flight of the shot could be traced and the angle corrected; this was boomed out from the fore yardarm and different crews Bred at it from the quarterdeck twelve-pounders every evening. They still used Jack's curious private powder, which excited a good deal of ribald comment in the squadron - laborious signals about Guy Fawkes, and was the Worcester in serious distress? - but he persisted, and by now it was rare that any crew failed to cut the lines near the mark, while often they struck the bull's eye itself, to the sound of general cheering.
'I suppose, sir, that we may dispense with the firing today,' said Pullings in a quiet, considerate voice.
