with an unearthly radiance. 'Still,' he said, 'I do hope he comes in tomorrow. Psalms may dull the Admiral's edge.' Stephen walked into the quarter-gallery, the cabin's place of ease; and coming back he said, 'Great bands of migrant quails are passing northwards: I saw them against the moon. God send them a kind wind.'
Sunday morning broke fine and clear, and the Berwick was seen a great way off, crowding sail for the squadron on the larboard tack. But long before church was rigged, long before Mr Martin had even looked out his surplice, the breeze began to veer northwards, so that it was a question whether she might not be headed and set well to leeward. As for the quails there was no question at all. Presently the unvarying path of their migration led them straight into the wind's eye, and the poor birds, worn out with their night's flying, began to come aboard, dropping on deck in their hundreds, so tired they could be picked up. But this was shortly after the bosun's mates had piped down the hatchways, roaring, 'Clean up for muster at five bells - clean shirt and shave for muster at five bells - white frocks and trousers - muster-clothes at divisions,' and only those few men who had had the foresight to pin the ship's barber as soon as the idlers were called in the first grey light and to make sure that their clothes-bags, their quarters and their persons would pass the coming inspection could trouble with quails. Few were so provident as to have shaved with Etna pumice and to have combed out their pigtails in sheltered corners during the dark hours of the middle or morning watch; but few as they were, there were too many for Mr Martin. He skipped about the upper deck, his one eye alive with concern, moving quails to safe places, forbidding the men to touch them: 'Yes, sir: no, sir,' they said respectfully, and as soon as he hurried on they stuffed more birds into their bosoms. He ran down to Stephen in the sick-bay and begged him to speak to the Captain, the master, the first lieutenant -'They have come to us for shelter, it is impious, inhuman to destroy them,' he cried, pushing Dr Maturin up the ladder at a run. But as they reached the quarterdeck, thrusting their way through a dense red mass of Marines hurrying to form on the poop, the officer of the watch, Mr Collins, said to the mate of the watch, 'Beat to divisions,' and the mate of the watch turned to the drummer, standing three feet away, his drumsticks poised, and said, 'Beat to divisions.'
The familiar thunder of the general drowned their words and brought all quail-gathering to a stop. Encouraged by cries of 'Toe the line, there,' and sometimes by shoves and even kicks for the very stupid, all the Worcester's people gathered in ordered ranks with their clothes-bags, all as clean as they could manage with sea-water, all shaved, all in white frocks and trousers. The midshipmen of their divisions inspected the hands, the officers of the divisions inspected hands and midshipmen and then, pacing carefully through the ever-increasing flocks of quails, reported to Mr Pullings that 'all were present, properly dressed, and clean,' and Mr Pullings, turning to the Captain, took off his hat and said 'All the officers have reported, sir, if you please.'
Jack took a quail from his epaulette, set it on the starboard binnacle with an abstracted air, and replied, 'Then we will go round the ship.'
They both of them cast a disapproving glance at Stephen and Mr Martin, neither of whom was properly dressed nor yet in his right place, and set off on the long tour that would take the Captain past every man, boy and even woman in the ship through the steady gentle fall of exhausted birds.
'Come,' whispered Stephen, plucking Martin by the sleeve as Jack, having done with the Marines, approached the first division, the afterguard, and all hats flew off. 'Come, we must go to the sick-bay. The birds will come to no harm for the present.'
Jack carried on past the waisters, the gunners, the foretopmen, the boys, the forecastlemen: a slower progress than usual, since he had to edge little round birds out of the way at every step. There was still a great deal of room for improvement: there were still far too many sloppy Joes; the monoglot Welsh youth among the waisters he privately called Grey Melancholy, being unable to retain his name, was obviously finding life unbearable; the three idiots seemed no wiser, although at least they had been scrubbed this time; and young Mr Calamy appeared to have shrunk rather than grown, in spite of his noble perseverance with the bull-calf; but perhaps that was only because his best gold-looped round hat came down over his ears. Yet even so, almost all hands looked cheerful, pretty well fed, and at the order 'On end clothes' they showed an adequate array of slops.
'Sure a quail is a very acceptable dish,' said Stephen to his first assistant, 'but, Mr Lewis, I cannot recommend the eating of her in her northward migration. Apart from the moral issue at this particular juncture, apart from the impiety that Mr Martin so rightly abhors, you are to observe that the quail, eating noxious seeds on the African main, may well be noxious herself. Remember Dioscorides* words; remember the miserable fate of the Hebrews . . .'
'Quails are coming down the ventilator,' said the second assistant.
'Then cover them gently with a cloth,' said Mr Martin.
Jack reached the galley, inspected the coppers, the harness-casks, the slush-tubs, the three hundredweight of plum-duff preparing for Sunday dinner; and with some satisfaction he noticed his own private drowned baby simmering in its long kettle. But this satisfaction was as private as his pudding: the long habit of command and the necessary reserve combined with his tall erect person in full-dress uniform made him a somewhat awful figure and this impression was strongly reinforced by a scar down the side of his face that in certain lights turned his naturally good-humoured expression to one of brooding ferocity. This light shone upon it now, and although the cook knew that even Beelzebub could not justly find a fault with the galley today he was too flustered to answer the Captain's remarks: his replies had to be interpreted by the first lieutenant, and when the officers passed on he turned to his mates, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow and wringing out his handkerchief.
On through the whole length of the lower deck, with candles burning between the great thirty-two-pounders to show the exact arrangement of swabs, worms, rammers, fire-buckets, shot-garlands and their scrupulous cleanliness. On, and at last to the sick-bay, where Dr Maturin, having greeted him formally and reported the few cases under his care (two ruptures, two gleets, a fractured clavicle) said, 'Sir, I am concerned about the quails.'
'What quails?' asked Jack.
'Why, sir, the quails, the round brown birds,' cried Mr Martin. 'They are landing by hundreds, by thousands . . .'
'The Captain sees fit to be jocose,' said Stephen. 'I am concerned, sir, because they may represent a threat to the people's health; they may te poisonous, and I desire you will be so good as to order proper measures to be taken.'
'Very well, Doctor,' said Jack. 'Mr Pullings, make it so, if you please. And I believe we may now hoist the church pennant, if it is already flying aboard the flag.'
The pennant was indeed flying aboard the flag, and the moment the Worcester's Captain returned to his quarterdeck it was transformed into a place of worship: that is to say three arms-chests covered with a Union flag were arranged to form a reading-desk and pulpit for the chaplain, chairs were set for the officers, mess-stools and benches made of capstan-bars laid athwart match-tubs for the men, and Mr Martin put on his surplice.
Jack was by no means a blue-light captain - he had never brought a tract aboard in his life - nor was he what would ordinarily have been called a religious man: his only touch of mysticism, his only approach to the absolute,
