the remedies that had been suggested: they, or the wine he drank, may have done some good, for as they approached the Pantellaria channel and he spread his forces in the faint hope of a prize, he found his spirits rise to a fine point of cheerfulness. The hope was faint indeed, yet it had a reasonable existence: there were still some ships that would risk the eastern run for the sake of the enormous profits, and although these were fast, knowing craft upon the whole, often in the privateering or the smuggling line, this was one of the few sea-lanes in which they were less rare than elsewhere; and in this stretch of sea with this south-west wind a blockade-runner, beating up for home, would be at a great disadvantage.
He was so hoarse that Pullings was obliged to relay his orders, but it was with real satisfaction that he saw the Dryad steer south and the Polyphemus north until they were spread out so that in line abreast the three of them could survey the great part of the channel - a sparkling day, warm in spite of the wind, a truly Mediterranean day at last with splendid visibility, white clouds racing across a perfect sky, their shadows showing purple on a sea royal-blue where it was not white: an absurd day to have a cold on.
'Should you not go below for a while, sir?' said Pullings to him privately. 'It is perhaps a little damp.'
'Nonsense,' said Jack. 'If everybody started taking notice of a cold, good Heavens, where would one be? The war might come to an end. In any case we can only sweep for a little while: we lose Dryad once we are a day's sail from Medina, say at the height of Cape Carmo.'
All day long they sailed, searching the sea from their mastheads, and nothing did they find, apart from a group of tunny-boats out of Lampedusa, who sold them some fish and told them that a French Smyrna-man, the Aurore, had passed the day before, deeply-laden and somewhat crippled, having been mauled by a Greek pirate from Tenedos. They took it philosophically, as sailors must if they are not to run mad, being so subject to wind and tide and current; and with the sun going down astern while the full moon rose ahead, the Worcester sent the Dryad away for Medina, called the Polyphemus in and stood eastward with her, the breeze abating with the close of day. An easy sail and a flowing sheet: and while Jack consoled himself with Gluck and toasted cheese the hands gathered on the forecastle and danced in the warm moonlight until the setting of the watch, and, by Pullings' leave, beyond it. They were heartier still, since Jack had his skylight open and the wind had hauled forward; but it was a cheerful sound, one that he loved to hear, as signifying a happy ship. The confused distant noise, the familiar tunes, the laughter, the clap of hands and the rhythmic thump of feet was full of memories for him too, and as he wandered up and down his spacious, lonely domain, cocking his ear to the sound of Ho the dandy kiddy-o, he cut a few heavy, lumbering steps, in spite of his cold.
When he lay in his cot, swinging to the Worcester's lift and roll, his mind drifted back to the days when he too had belonged on the forecastle, when he too had danced to the fiddle and fife, his upper half grave and still, his lower flying - heel and toe, the double harman, the cut-and-come-again, the Kentish knock, the Bob's a-dying and its variations in quick succession and (if the weather was reasonably calm) in perfect time. To be sure there was a golden haze over those times and some of the gold was no doubt false, mere pinchbeck at the best; but even so they had an irreplaceable quality of their own - perfect, unthinking health, good company upon the whole, no responsibility apart from the immediate task in hand - and he was thinking of the rare, noisy, strenuous, good- natured fun they had had when hands were piped to mischief as he fell asleep, smiling still. His sleeping mind often strayed far away, sometimes home to his wife and garden, sometimes to beds less sanctified, but now it scarcely stirred from the ship and he woke with the word Thursday in his ears, as clearly as if it had been shouted.
Of course it was Thursday: hammocks had been piped up early, well before sunrise, at the end of the middle watch, and his unconscious being had no doubt recorded the fact. Long, long ago he too would have been required to rise and shine, to show a leg and rouse out there in the dark, cold or no cold: now he could take his ease.
On Thursdays the Worcester presented her less glorious, less martial, more domestic face. Unless the weather was extraordinarily foul or unless the ship was in action, she washed her clothes that morning in enormous tubs and rigged clothes-lines fore and aft, while in the afternoon all hands were piped to make and mend. It was also the day when Jack was invited to dine in the wardroom, and as he went there at the appointed hour by way of the quarterdeck and the companion-ladder he surveyed as fine a show of washing as the heart could desire: a thousand shirts and more, five hundred pair of duck trousers, countless handkerchiefs and smalls all waving and fluttering in the breeze. It was true that they were all washed in sea-water, the Worcester being short of fresh, that since the soap would not lather they were not very clean, and that they were harsh and salty to the touch, but they made a brave, many-coloured show, a cheering sight.
In the wardroom itself his presence had less of a damping effect than usual: there were few officers who had not either a cure for a cold or an account of a very shocking long-lasting bout, caught on some particular and clearly-defined occasion such as the leaving off of a waistcoat, the wearing of a Magellan jacket on watch one night and not on the next, standing talking to a woman with one's hat off, rain falling on one's hair, sitting in a draught, an untimely sweat; and these topics carried the meal on to the more informal stage of general conversation. Jack said little: he could not, being almost voiceless, but he looked and indeed felt amiable, and being adjured on all hands 'to feed a cold, sir, and starve a fever,' he ate a great deal of the fresh tunny that graced half the table's length, so welcome a change from salt pork. At the same time he listened to the talk at his end of the table: rhinoceroses, how best stowed, their probable weight, their diet - the one-horned kind and the two, where found - anecdote of a Sumatra rhinoceros belonging to HMS Ariel, its appetite for grog and unhappy end - the properties of powdered rhinoceros-horn, taken inwardly - regret at Dr Maturin's absence - a health to the absent Doctor - Barka, and the possibility of renewing their livestock, at least in sheep and poultry - the likelihood of the Pasha's coming it the handsome in the article of bullocks, in view of the rhinoceros and a cargo of no doubt equally valuable presents. At the far end however Mowett and Rowan, the man who had replaced the lubberly Somers, seemed to be in disagreement, strong and even acrimonious disagreement. Rowan was a round-faced, bright-eyed young fellow with a rather decided air: Jack had seen enough of him to know that although he was a man of little formal education - a West-Country shipwright's son - he was a competent officer and a great improvement on Somers; but apart from that he had gathered little and now, during a momentary pause in the talk on either side of him, he was surprised to hear Rowan say 'I may not know what a dactyl is, but I do know that 'Will you take A piece of cake is poetry', whatever you may say. It rhymes, don't it? And if what rhymes ain't poetry, what is?'
Jack quite agreed; and he was morally certain that Mowett did not know what a dactyl was either, though he loved him dearly.
Til tell you what poetry is,' cried Mowett. 'Poetry is . . .'
The midshipman of the watch came darting in. 'Beg pardon, sir,' he said at Jack's elbow. 'Mr Whiting's duty and Dryad is in sight from the masthead, sir, two points on the starboard bow. At least, we think it is Dryad,' he added, quite ruining the effect.
It would be strange if there could have been a mistake about the Dryad, with her man-of-war's pennant and her distinctive rig; but it would also be strange, the breeze being what it was, if the Dryad could possibly have reached such a position without carrying an extraordinary press of sail.
'What is she wearing?'
'Skyscrapers, sir.'
