hatred die away, so that by the time the evening gun roared out aboard the Admiral something like benevolence returned, and when he came forward to watch the dancing on the forecastle on warm, still, moonlit nights, or to see how the band was coming along, they would greet him very kindly.
There was a surprising amount of musical talent aboard. Quite apart from the fiddler and the Marine fifer who ordinarily played to encourage the hands at the capstan by day and for the hornpipes in the evening, at least forty men could play some instrument or other, and many more could sing, often really well. A decayed bagpipe-maker from Cumberland, now a swabber belonging to the starboard watch, helped remedy the lack of instruments, but although he and his fellow north-countrymen set up a spirited shrieking, the band would not be much of a credit to the ship until one of the victuallers brought Jack's order from the music-shop in Valetta; and the Worcester's chief present joy lay in her choir.
Mr Martin's ship, the Berwick, had still not rejomed from Palermo, where her captain was known to be much attached - moored head and stern - to a young Sicilian lady with bright chestnut hair: he therefore remained in the Worcester, taking service every Sunday that church could be rigged, and he had noticed the full-throated rendering of the hymns. To the more full-throated he suggested that they should make an attempt upon an oratorio: the Worcester carried no scores of any oratorio whatsoever, but he thought that with industry and recollection and perhaps some verses from Mr Mowett something might be achieved. However, the word had hardly spread in the lower deck before it was reported to the first lieutenant that the ship possessed five men from Lancashire word- perfect in Handel's Messiah, they having taken part in it again and again in their native wastes. They were poor thin little undernourished creatures with only a few blue teeth among them, though young: they had been taken up for combining with others to ask for higher wages and sentenced to transportation; but as they were somewhat less criminal than those who had actually made the demand they were allowed to join the Navy instead. They had in fact gained by the change, particularly as the Worcester was a comparatively humane ship; yet at first they were hardly aware of their happiness. The diet was more copious than any they had ever known. Six pounds of meat a week (though long preserved, bony and full of gristle), seven pounds of biscuits (though infested) would have filled them out in their youth, to say nothing of the seven gallons of beer in the Channel or seven pints of wine in the Mediterranean; but they had lived so long on bread, potatoes and tea that they could scarcely appreciate it, particularly as their nearly toothless gums could hardly mumble salt horse and biscuit with any profit. What is more, they were the very lowest form of life aboard, landlubbers to the ultimate degree -had never seen even a duckpond in their lives - ignorant of everything and barely acknowledged as human by the older men-of- war's men - objects to be attached to the end of a swab or a broom, occasionally allowed, under strict supervision, to lend their meagre weight in hauling on a rope. Yet after the first period of dazed and often seasick wretchedness they learnt to cut their beef right small with a purser's jack-knife and pound it with a marlin-spike; they learnt some of the ways of the ship; and their spirits rose wonderfully when they came to sing.
Musical gifts cropped up in the most unexpected places: a bosun's mate, two quarter-gunners, a yeoman of the sheets, a loblolly boy, the aged cooper himself, Mr Parfit, and several more were found to be able to sing a score at sight. Most of the others could not read music, but they had true ears, a retentive memory, a natural ability to sing in part, and they were rarely out when once they had heard a piece: the only trouble (and it proved insuperable) was that they confused loudness with excellence, and passages that were not so pianissimo as to be almost inaudible were taken with the utmost power of the human voice. In singing the immense difference between Mr Parfit, with two pounds five and sixpence a month plus perquisites, and a landsman with one pound two and six minus deductions for his slops was abolished, and as far as the vocal part of it was concerned the Messiah came along nobly. They most delighted in the Halleluiah Chorus, and often, when Jack walked forward to lend his powerful bass, they would go through it twice, so that the deck vibrated again and he sang away in the midst of that great volume of true ordered sound, his heart lifted high.
But most of his musical pleasure was on a less heroic scale, and he took it much farther aft, in his great cabin with Stephen, the 'cello singing deep in its conversation with the violin, sometimes plain and direct, sometimes immensely intricate, but always profoundly satisfying in the Scarlatti, Hummel and Cherubini that they knew very well, more tentative and still exploratory as they felt their way far into the manuscript pieces that Jack had bought from London Bach's young man.
'I beg pardon,' said Stephen, as a lee-lurch made him slur his C sharp into a quarter-tone lower than a lugubrious B. They played on to the end of the coda, and after the moment's triumphant silence, the tension dying, he laid his bow on the table, his 'cello on a locker, and observed, 'I am afraid I played worse than usual, with the floor bounding about in this irregular, uneasy fashion. It is my belief we have turned round, and are now facing the billows.'
'Perhaps we have,' said Jack. 'The squadron wears in succession at the end of every watch, you know, and it is now just a little after midnight. Shall we finish the port?'
'Gule, or gluttony, is a beastish sin,' said Stephen. 'But without sin there can be no forgiveness. Would there be any of the Gibraltar walnuts left, at all?'
'If Killick has not blown out his kite with them, there should be plenty in this locker. Yes. Half a sack. Forgiveness,' he said thoughtfully, cracking six together in his massive hand. 'How I hope Bennet may find it, when he rejoins. If he has any luck he will come into the fleet tomorrow. The Admiral is less likely to blast him on a Sunday, and this is still a fine leading wind from Palermo.'
'He is the gentleman who commands Mr Martin's ship?'
'Yes. Harry Bennet, who had Theseus before Dalton. You know him perfectly well, Stephen: he came to Ashgrove Cottage when you were there. The literary cove, that read Sophie a piece about the school at Eton and teaching the boys how to shoot, while she was knitting your stockings.'
'I remember him. He made a particularly happy quotation from Lucretius - suave mare magno, and so on. Why should he be blasted, so?'
'It is common knowledge that he stays in Palermo far, far longer than he should because of a wench, a red- haired wench. The Spry and two victuallers saw the Berwick at single anchor, yards crossed, ready for sea on Monday, and yet there was Bennet driving up and down the Marina in an open carriage with this nymph of his and an ancient gentlewoman for decency's sake, looking as pleased as Pontius Pilate. No one could mistake that flaming hair. In all sober earnest, Stephen, I do hate to see a good officer-like man such as Bennet jeopardize his career, hanging about in port for a woman. When he rejoins I shall ask him to dinner: perhaps I could drop a few tactful hints. Perhaps you could say something in the classical line, about that fellow who contrived to hear the Sirens, listening to them while seized to the mainmast, the rest of the ship's company having their ears blocked with wax: it happened in these waters, I believe. Could you not bring it in by some reference to Messina, the Straits of Messina?'
'I could not,' said Stephen.
'No. I suppose not,' said Jack. 'It is a most infernally delicate thing to take notice of, even to a man you know very well.' He thought of the time when he and Stephen had competed for Diana's quite unpredictable favours; he had behaved much as Harry Bennet was behaving now, and he had savagely resented anything in the way of tactful hints on the part of his friends. His eye rested on the dressing-case she had given Stephen: it had long since been confided to Killick, to be kept dry and shipshape, and it now lived in the cabin, where it acted as a music-stand, an unbelievably polished music-stand. Its candles shone on the gold mountings, the gleaming wood,
