On the last but one of these days, when the ships had little more than steerage-way, Jack was asked to dine aboard the Pollux. He regretted it, dinners in his own ship being so very much more enjoyable, but he had virtually no choice, and at ten minutes to the hour he stepped into his barge rigged to the nines, from the silver buckles on his shoes to the chelengk in his hat, his bargemen splendid in watchet blue and snowy duck.
He found both Captain Dawson, whom he scarcely knew, and Admiral Harte, whom he knew only too well, in great form: Dawson was full of remorse for not having invited Aubrey earlier, but his cook had been ill, 'struck down by a treacherous crab he had ate last thing in Valletta. He is recovered now, I am happy to say: we were growing heartily sick of wardroom fare.'
Recovered he had, but he had celebrated the event by getting drunk, and the meal followed a strange chaotic course with very long pauses and then the sudden appearance of five removes all together, and eccentricities such as floating island with an uncooked carrot in it.
'I really must apologize for this dinner,' said Dawson, towards the end.
'You may well say that, sir,' said Harte. 'It was a very bad dinner, and wretchedly put on the table. Three ducks in a dish! Only think of that!'
This is most capital port,' said Jack. 'I doubt I have ever drunk better.'
'I have,' said Harte. 'My son-in-law, Andrew Wray, bought Lord Colville's cellar, and in one of the bins there was some port that would have this look like something for midshipmen, something from the Keppel's Head. Not that this is not pretty well, pretty well in its way.' Pretty well or not, he drank a good deal of it; and as they sat over their bottle he grew extremely curious about Jack's mission. Jack was vague and evasive and he would have got away with no more than the advice 'to kick the Dey's arse - when dealing with foreigners, and even more so with natives, you must always kick their arse,' if he had not unluckily mentioned his watering-place. Harte made him describe it with great accuracy three times over and said he might stand in to have a look: the knowledge might always come in useful. Jack discouraged the notion with all possible firmness and as soon as he could he stood up to take his leave.
'Before you go, Aubrey,' said Harte, 'I should like to ask a favour.' He pulled out a small leather purse, evidently prepared beforehand. 'When you go into Zambra, pray redeem a Christian slave or two with this. English seamen for preference, but any poor unfortunate buggers will do. Each time I touch the Barbary coast I usually manage to get a couple of old 'uns, past work; and I set them down at Gibraltar.'
Jack had been acquainted with Harte ever since he was a lieutenant without ever once knowing him to do a handsome thing, and this new aspect of his character added to the dreamlike quality of these last few days. An exquisite gentle dream in spite of its strong sense of 'last time' and even of doom, he reflected, as the barge took him back; but he could find no way of expressing its nature in words. Music would come nearer: he could more nearly define it with a fiddle under his chin, define it at least to his own satisfaction. With the lovely but menacing slow movement of a partita that he sometimes played running through his head he gazed at the Surprise. She was as familiar to him as a ship could well be, but because of this train of reflection, or because of some trick of the light, or because it was really so, her nature too had changed; she was a ship in a dream, a ship he hardly knew, and she was sailing along a course long since traced out, as straight and narrow as a razor's edge.
'Pull round her,' he said to Bonden at his side; and viewing her now with a prosaic seaman's eye he observed that she was sailing on a perfectly even keel, whereas she really preferred being slightly by the stern. The twenty-odd tons that he would add to his watering-place would soon see to that.
They raised Cape Raba early in the morning, a dismal morning too, with the barometer falling, the wind backing westerly, low cloud, and the threat of rain. But rain or fine, Mowett, as a zealous first lieutenant, was determined that the Surprise should do herself credit in Zambra, and the hands turned to with a perfect deluge of sea-water to remove every possible remaining grain of the hundredweight of sand they had already used for scouring the decks; then they set to drying what they had wetted and to polishing everything they had dulled. Rather before this ceremony had reached its climax the Captain appeared on deck for the second time, glanced about the sea and sky, and said 'Mr Honey, to Pollux, if you please: permission to part company.'
Wilkins, the yeoman of the signals, had been expecting this for some time; so had his colleague in the Pollux; and the request and the consent flew to and fro with extraordinary speed, together with the civil addition from Pollux, Happy return.
The Surprise stood in for the land and the ship of the line (for that was her official rating, feeble though she was by current standards) went about, to stand off and on according to their agreement, in case the frigate should rejoin before next day. Slowly the shore looming in the dull south grew clearer, and presently Jack called the youngsters, as he usually did on approaching an anchorage new to them. At this time of morning and in this weather there was no likelihood of seeing Mrs Fielding and everyone was in working clothes, most looking cold and wet. Williams was particularly squalid in a woollen Guernsey frock deep in slush, for he had been helping the bosun grease the topmast caps; but he had dutifully brought the azimuth compass, since Captain Aubrey would certainly require them to take the bearings of various sea-marks when he had explained them.
'There, on the larboard bow,' he said, nodding towards a tall dark headland with sheer cliffs falling to the sea, 'that is Cape Raba, and you must give it a wide berth, because of the reef running out half a mile from the point. And right ahead, close on two leagues west-south-west, that is Akroma.' They looked attentively at the distant promontory, which was very like the first, except that it had a fortification high on its seaward end. 'Beyond Cape Akroma there is Jedid Bay, rather open but with a good holding-ground in fifteen-fathom water and an island with rabbits on it that keeps off the westerlies and the north-westerlies- a useful place to run for if it is blowing very hard and you cannot double Akroma. But it is nothing nigh so big nor such a fine anchorage as this nearer bay we are heading for now, Zambra Bay, between Raba and Akroma.' The breeze had freshened with the rising of the almost invisible sun, and the Surprise, no longer held back to old Pollux' pace, was making well over eight knots with the wind two points free: Cape Raba moved rapidly astern and they opened Zambra Bay, a noble body of water, deeper than it was broad, an indented gulf with many spurs and capes, and the whole running roughly south ten or twelve miles into the land. The frigate brought the wind on to her beam and ran faster still for the west shore of the bay. 'You cannot see Zambra yet,' said Jack. 'It is tucked away in the south-east corner. But you can see the Brothers. Run south a couple of miles from Akroma Point until you come to a small headland with a palm-tree on it. A trifle beyond that there are four rocks in a line, each maybe a cable's length apart. Those are the Brothers.'
'I see them, sir,' cried Calamy, and Williamson said 'They bear just south-west by west.'
'You would see them better if the breeze were strong in the north-east, and if it had had time to work up a hearty sea. There is a reef between them with not much above two-fathom water over it, and with a north-east swell it shows white. But ordinarily it looks quite smooth, like this. The Moors of these parts take no account of it, but we were stuck there when I was in Eurotas, which drew eighteen foot six abaft. Generally speaking, you would be wise to assume that there is always shoal water between a string of rocks of the same kind. Mr Mowett,' he said, breaking off, 'since we have made such excellent time, we had better complete our water before running down to the port. We do not want to be there too early, and in any event I believe it will rain later, in the day, so let us get it over. The watering-place is on the east side, in the inlet beyond those three small islands.' With this he
